Kebes sat stunned for a moment, then roared to his feet. “This is blatant cheating!”
Aristomache raised a hand to cut him off. Father had not missed a note. He raised an eyebrow, and she nodded to him to continue. He played the upside-down lyre, left-handed, through all the complexities of the song, flawlessly, just as if it were the natural way. This time there was perfect silence as the last note died away.
“It’s not against the rules of a musical competition to make things more difficult for yourself,” Aristomache said, answering Kebes.
“Nobody expects you to do as well,” Father said, smoothly. “Your instrument isn’t made for it.”
But Kebes for the first time looked uncertain. He guessed that if he played as he had before, the judges would find for Father, who had done something more difficult. He frowned hard and turned the syrinx over. Of course he shouldn’t have tried. It wasn’t meant to be played that way, and he hadn’t practiced, which Father certainly must have. Kebes blew, but what came out wasn’t the same rippling hypnotic music as before but a discordant babble. The crowd laughed, with an uncomfortable edge. Kebes righted his instrument and played as he had the first time. But he didn’t have the same confidence, and without the energy of the crowd the Myxolydian music felt hollow.
There was no doubt what the judges were going to decide. They didn’t take long in their deliberations this time. Aristomache stood. “We have a majority,” she said. “We will each give our votes. I vote for Pytheas.”
“Pytheas,” Erinna said.
“Pytheas,” Ficino echoed.
“Matthias,” Klymene said, staring straight in front of her and not meeting anyone’s eyes.
“Pytheas,” Neleus said, very firmly.
“Pytheas,” Nikias said, in the same tone.
“Matthias,” Sabina said.
“Pytheas,” said Alexandra.
“Matthias,” concluded Erektheus.
“That’s six for Pytheas and three for Matthias, so Pytheas has won. But I beg you Pytheas, be merciful.”
And as she spoke that word, Kebes shouted “Fix!” He grabbed a sharp knife from the collection on the ground and rushed at Father. But I hardly noticed, because throughout the crowd people were drawing weapons and attacking those of us from the Excellence. It was what Erinna and Maecenas had predicted. The whole colosseum erupted into chaos.
21
ARETE
The shape of the colosseum, the steps where people were sitting and the clear aisles for moving about, were on our side. The preparation and the weapons were all on the other side. Kebes’s people had been ready and planning angles of attack, picking out victims in advance. It all seemed to happen in a split second.
Phaedrus drew his knife. I had no weapon. Auge leaped to her feet, scowling, and I shrank away, but she was bellowing “Is this what we call guest friendship?” She took a hammer from her belt and knocked away a blade that was coming for me. She thrust me down toward her children, who were clinging together and cowering under the step. “Stop this at once!” she bellowed. “These are friends. There are children here. Are we savages?”
Father and Kebes seemed to be wrestling by the wooden pole. A woman was lying dead at Phaedrus’s feet. There was shouting everywhere, a cacophonous din that roared in my ears. I looked around. There was fighting here and there in the crowd, but no more near me, where people seemed to have listened to Auge and were looking ashamed of themselves. The man who had attacked me was backing away, sheathing his sword. But on the other side of the colosseum I could see a group of people with blades charging down the clear aisle toward the stage, making for the place where the judges were sitting. Without thinking I leaped down toward them—it began as a leap and ended as a flight, or I would have smashed to the sand.
I landed beside Father’s swords, still lying neatly where he had put them down. I bent and picked them up, one in each hand, and ran toward the attackers. Erinna saw me coming and stood, taking a step toward me. She reached for the bigger sword in my left hand, and I gratefully gave it up to her. She put it up just in time to block an attacker. I blocked another, much more clumsily, and ducked away from a third, kicking at his knee as I did. I didn’t have any idea what to do in a fight that wasn’t just friendly wrestling in the palaestra. I was too young for weapons training. The smaller sword felt very heavy in my hand. Neleus came up beside me and punched an attacker hard in her side. “Give me the sword,” he said, and I did. He swung it at her throat as she came forward again, nearly severing her head. She vanished at once. The one I’d dodged fell over as he was coming for me again—I discovered later that Nikias had thrown the white stone at his temple.
All through the crowd people were shouting out for peace and friendship and civilization, and even for excellence. I flew over a man with a sword who was coming at me and pushed him back onto Erinna’s waiting blade. Neleus was still fighting the last of the group, but his opponent looked desperately around and then threw down his sword to surrender, and that was the end of it.
Kebes was bound to the pole, where he had wanted to bind Father. It seemed as if people had been falling everywhere, but in fact we learned later there were only nineteen dead from Excellence, and fourteen from Lucia.
As the last man surrendered, Erinna and I grinned at each other. Then an instant later I realized that one of the bodies at our feet was Ficino. His hat had fallen off and was lying on the sand. I knelt beside him and Erinna knelt at his other side. He had taken a sword thrust and was bleeding but still alive. “Amazons,” he said, trying to smile. “Trojan heroes couldn’t have done better. Don’t grieve for me, my dears. I’ve had a wonderful life, and what a way to die, at ninety-nine, fighting to defend arete.”
“We’ll get you home to Florentia, and you’ll live another ninety-nine years and fight plenty more battles for Plato yet,” Erinna said, but there were tears in her eyes.
“Phaedrus!” I called, as loudly as I could. “Ficino needs you!” Phaedrus could heal him, mend whatever was wrong. Phaedrus came down the stairs running, but Father heard too, and he was nearer and got there first. Father bent over, and Ficino saw him.
“Apollo!” he said, surprised. For a moment I couldn’t tell if he was swearing or recognizing Father. “Of course!” He sounded the way he did when I made a really conclusive point in debate. Then he laughed delightedly, and coughed up a bubble of blood. A flood of bright red blood followed it, bursting out of his mouth and taking his life with it. By the time Phaedrus reached us he was gone, leaving nothing but blood on the sand, and his battered old hat beside it.
Phaedrus wiped his eyes, and turned to Aristomache, who was clutching her arm. “Are you a doctor? I think it’s broken,” she said to him.
He set his hand on it. “Just a bad bruise, I think,” he said. “But let me strap it for you.”
“Aristomache, now that the riot seems to have died down, I want you to speak to Kebes,” Father said, as Phaedrus was finishing.
“Good heavens, is he still alive?” she asked.
Father gestured to the pole, where Kebes was writhing against the iron rings, where Father had bound his wrists and ankles. Aristomache took a step toward it. Auge came down the stairs and onto the stage. “You, Timon!” she roared, pointing at a man in the crowd. “You’re a king this year, and you weren’t fighting. Come here.”
The man came forward. The crowd hushed. “If you’re a doctor, go around to the left. If you’re wounded, go there where the doctors are. If not, sit down,” Timon said, firmly, taking charge. People obeyed him. Phaedrus went over to the left where some other people were gathering. He started helping the wounded.
“Are you responsible for this disgraceful behavior?” Auge asked Kebes.
“For the fixed contest?” Kebes answered, loudly enough for everyone to hear. “No. For my friends who weren’t ready to watch me murdered? No.” He was lying.
“Yes he was,” called the man who had resheathed his sword before Auge’s anger.
“He told us to be ready to fight if he shouted fix.”
“And he had us ready to attack the judges,” the man on the ground confirmed.
Timon looked at Aristomache. “Death is the penalty for attacking guests,” he said. She nodded. “Those who surrendered or thought better of it are condemned to iron for ten years,” he went on. The man near me collapsed in sobs. “As for Matthias—”
“Don’t I get to speak?” Kebes asked.
“Ficino is dead,” Aristomache said, as if that were sufficient to convict him, as indeed it was in my eyes too.
“Good,” Kebes said. “I hated him, hated all the Masters, you included. I hate Kallisti and everyone who stayed on it. I wanted to be ready in case Pytheas cheated, that’s all, and as you can see, he did. For us, seizing the ship and killing the sailors was the best way. Now we can sail to Kallisti, where they’re weak and divided, and conquer them all.”
He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the crowd, at his people, who had loved him. Some of them looked at him with agreement, but too few.
“This isn’t what Yayzu would have done,” Auge said.
“It’s what the Knights of St. John would have done,” Kebes replied.
“I won the contest,” Father said. “And even leaving aside guest friendship and inciting riot, he broke his oath to abide by the decision of the judges.”
“I did not break my oath!” Kebes shouted. “We attacked because you cheated. I told them to be ready if I shouted fix. I kept my oath, and would have accepted a fair verdict against me, but not this!”
“Kill him, Pytheas,” King Timon said. “This is a civilized city. Do to him what he was going to do to you.” The crowd cheered loudly.
Father looked to the tools, spilled on the grass now, then at Kebes where he writhed on the pole, and lastly at the crowd in the stands. “If this is your justice,” he said. He looked over toward me, and then past me. “Neleus? Help me please.”
Neleus went over to him and gathered up the knives. Then he knelt beside him holding them as Father began to cut.
Erinna and I stayed where we were, crouched on the bloodstained sand beside Ficino’s hat.
Kebes began swearing at Father, calling him names, accusing him of all kinds of vile crimes. Father began with a shallow cut down the breastbone, and then began carving the skin off. Kebes kept on yelling and taunting. Father didn’t respond and just kept on cutting, until Kebes shouted out “And Sokrates didn’t love you! And Simmea didn’t love you!” Then Father paused for a second and looked at him evenly.
“Both of them loved you, in their ways, but both of them loved me more.” Then he lowered his voice so the crowd couldn’t hear and said, “Now tell me, did Athene give you the syrinx? Why? When? And how did you learn that music? Tell me, and I’ll kill you quickly.”
“Oh you’re enjoying this!” Kebes shouted, and began another torrent of abuse.
I’m sure it’s not true that Father deliberately used the dull knives to make it take longer. It’s just that he didn’t have much experience with flaying the skin off a living man. Who does, except Kebes himself? I’d never considered before the way skin folds over muscles and fat and bones, certainly never seen it. Kebes abused him on and on for as long as he could, and Father kept asking his questions, patiently, but after a while it was mostly screaming.
I picked up Ficino’s hat and left then. I’d seen enough—too much. I don’t know how Father could stand it. He stood there skinning him alive, with parted lips and a half-smile, remote, intent on the work, peeling back the skin, seeming as calm as if he were composing music, repeating his questions. Neleus stayed beside him, spattered with blood, handing him new knives when he reached down for them. I couldn’t have done it. Kebes deserved to die, yes, and I would have killed him myself. But if I had been Father I’d have let my knife slip when I was near an artery, and ended it quickly.
Erinna left with me, and Auge entrusted her children to us. “I don’t think I could torture anyone to death,” I said as we went out. “Not even Kebes.” I could still hear his screams echoing around the marvelous acoustics of the colosseum.
“Kebes must have done it before. To other people,” Erinna said. “Did you know there were Young Ones killed today? And locals? There are bodies. Somebody will have to bury them.”
“Only murderers and heretics get flayed,” Auge’s daughter said.
“They’ll burn the bodies and put the ashes in urns,” Auge’s son said.
I nodded. It was a sad necessity we’d experienced a few times at home after art raids. “What are heretics anyway?”
“People who think the wrong thing about God and Yayzu,” she said.
My eyes met Erinna’s and we both grimaced. “And this seemed like such a nice place,” she said.
“How often did Matthias flay heretics?” I asked.
“Not often. Every year or so, here, less often in the other cities,” Auge’s son said. “Some people like it, but I think it’s horrible to watch. I hate screaming.”
“It’s horrible. But Kebes deserves to end up that way,” I said.
The sun was setting as we came down to the harbor, sinking peacefully and splendidly into the sea, which spread out gold and blue like a bolt of shot silk, an even more beautiful sunset than the day before. Auge’s children had invited us to their home, but we wanted to get back to our ship. The Excellence was still bobbing safely at her anchorage in the bay, but to our astonishment the Goodness was a smoldering wreck at the dockside.
I hadn’t understood from what Kebes said about attacking the Excellence that this was something that he had arranged to have happen during the contest. Flaying suddenly seemed too good for him.
It seemed our little boat had been burned in the fighting, but Erinna persuaded one of the women who had a fishing boat ready to go out that she could do better ferrying people back to the Excellence. She gave her a coin. “Where did you get that?” I asked as the fisherwoman rowed us to the ship.
“Maecenas gave me a handful at Marissa, for buying stores. I have a few left.”
There had been a battle aboard, very bloody, but we had won and beaten off the Lucians. As in the colosseum, not all the Lucians had wanted to fight us, and the small number Kebes could organize to attack weren’t all that many more than the watch Maecenas had left aboard.
Maia was standing at the rail with a bow slung as we came aboard. She had a cut on her forehead which had bled a great deal, staining her kiton, but she was otherwise unharmed. “I killed two people,” she said, shaken.
“I killed one in the fighting in the colosseum, and so did Neleus,” Erinna said. “I also wounded two people, but of course I don’t know if they’ll recover.” I was sure the man I’d pushed onto her blade would die. Maia hugged her, and then me too. She gave her bow to somebody else and we sat down together on the big coil of rope on the deck.
“What happened?” she asked. We started to tell her, the contest first, and then the fight. I was relieved that Erinna’s description of my flight was that I took a great leap in the air and landed as easily as a cat.
“Ficino’s dead,” I said, realizing for the first time that Maia didn’t know. “He said he’d had a wonderful life and he had died defending excellence and we shouldn’t grieve.” I began to weep as I remembered it. I pulled his hat out of my kiton and gave it to her.
She took it and turned it over in her hands. “He always said he’d die at ninety-nine,” Erinna said.
“Idiotic numerology,” Maia sniffed, wiping her eyes on her kiton.
“He said we were Amazons,” Erinna said. “And Trojan heroes.”
“It wasn’t the way I imagined fighting side by side,” I said, only then realizing that we had indeed fought side by side, in a battle.
“It’s one of those things that’s better in stories,” Erinna said.
“We can put up a monument to Ficino when we get home,” I said, trying to comfort Maia, who was trying to stifle her sobbing. “I
n Florentia, which he loved so much.”
“I’ve seen his tomb,” Maia said, wiping her eyes again. “Years ago, of course, before I came here. He’s buried in the Duomo, a temple in the heart of the original city of Florentia. It’s a Renaissance building based on a classical original, which couldn’t be more appropriate for him. He was buried with the greatest honor his people could give him.”
“Good,” I said. “And we will do the same. But I miss him. I miss him like I miss Mother. Of course we’ll honor their memory, and of course their souls have gone on to new lives, but I hadn’t finished talking to them in this life.” I knew what death meant now. It was conversations cut off.
“I know what you mean. He was my friend from the first day I met him,” Maia said, steadying her chin with her hand. “Without him both the Renaissance and the Republic would have been poorer. But that we can honor. It’s the twinkle in his eye that I’ll really miss.”
I hugged her. It was odd, but in a way I felt closer to Maia than anyone else. Father was Father, with all the advantages and disadvantages of that. And for Mother, of course, he came first, second, and third, while the rest of us came somewhere around ninth. That’s why Maia and Ficino were both so important to me. I’d realized that since Mother died. They both really did put their pupils first, after philosophy and the City. I was on the edges of Father and Mother’s lives, but I was in the heart of theirs. And that was reasonable, was all right, because after all Father was the god Apollo, and how could I possibly be as important as that? Even if now I had divine powers, and maybe I was going to be a god. (But a god of what? Flight was taken. Was there a god of translation?)
The deck lights came on. The Goodness was plainly sinking, but a few of her lights also flickered on even as she foundered. “What happened in the fighting here?” Erinna asked.
“They used a fireship,” Maia said. “But the wind changed. And they came to board us, but we stood them off. I shot one. Only a few of them got aboard. Caerellia was killed, fighting, and young Phaenarete.”