The Philosopher Kings: A Novel

“Of course I am,” she snapped. “Sorry. I’m just trying to deal with the fact that I killed at least two people yesterday.”

  “But you’re an ephebe,” I said. “You’re trained.”

  “Knowing how to do it is different from actually doing it,” she said. “Is that—no, it’s just a dolphin.”

  “They were trying to kill us,” I ventured.

  “Maybe Plato’s right and we should have been going out to battles since we were little children, so that we could get used to it.”

  “Is that really what he suggests?” I was horrified. “Slaughter is such a horrible thing that it’s hard to imagine thinking it right for children to watch. But the Lucian children were there yesterday.”

  “Yes. And I don’t think having seen it would have helped when it came to killing people myself. Didn’t it bother you at all?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone. I gave the swords to you and Neleus, because I didn’t know how to use them.”

  “You pushed that one man onto my sword. And how did you do that anyway? You leaped right over him from a standing start.”

  “I don’t know.” I was uncomfortable. I didn’t want to lie to her. “It felt natural, like the normal thing to do when he was coming at me.”

  “They tell us to jump in the palaestra, but not like that! You’ll have to teach me.”

  “I’m not sure I can.” The sky was starting to pale behind the city and the fading stars seemed to be listening to me lie. “I never leaped that high before. It was fear I suppose, or battle frenzy.”

  “So you were afraid? Even though you rushed straight in?”

  “I didn’t have time to think about being afraid. I saw them running toward you with swords, and I saw Father’s swords on the ground, and I just leaped for them.” Just then I saw Father come walking down toward the harbor with Neleus, Nikias, Timon, and some of the other Lucians. I called the news to Maecenas below.

  “I was terrified,” Erinna said. “Until I saw you coming with the swords, I was frozen where I was. I didn’t think of going for them, though I’d seen Pytheas put them down earlier. I’d have just sat there and let myself be spitted.” She was still staring at the horizon, not looking at me.

  “You might have been afraid, but you did everything right. You knew how to use the sword, you killed them, and when that one surrendered you stopped.”

  She nodded. Father had reached the side of the quay, where I could see him clearly. He was covered in blood, but he seemed unconscious of it as he stood talking to the others. They were gesturing at the wreck of the Goodness, which had sunk further overnight.

  “You saved my life,” Erinna said.

  “You saved mine. We fought side by side. You knew how to use the sword. I realized as soon as I got there that I was useless.”

  “You’re not an ephebe yet. You haven’t had training. And you were safe where you were up on the stand,” Erinna said.

  “I couldn’t just stay there while you and Ficino and Neleus and Father got killed!” I was indignant. On the quay everyone was waving their arms around. Clearly, the argument was getting heated.

  “You came straight toward me,” she said. I didn’t say anything. I had, and I couldn’t deny it. “Thank you.”

  I still didn’t know what to say. “You were in danger. Anyone would have—”

  “You really like me, don’t you?” she asked.

  Now I really didn’t know how to answer. “Yes.” I stared down at the argument on the quayside.

  “I like you, but not like that,” Erinna said.

  “Like what?” I muttered, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks. “I know,” I went on, making it worse.

  “You’re so much younger, and losing Simmea—I was looking out for you a bit. That’s all.”

  “I know,” I said, more loudly. “It’s all right. I understand. I don’t want anything but to go on being friends the way we have been.”

  “Good,” she said, but I knew that everything was spoiled. Tears stung my eyes. On the quayside, Father shrugged and dove neatly into the sea.

  “You should go down to talk to him,” Erinna said.

  I slid down the mast. The blood was washed off his hair and skin by the time he pulled himself onto the deck, but his cloak and kiton were still stained. He pulled them off and stood naked on the deck, dripping sea-water, with a strand of seaweed caught over his shoulder.

  Maecenas looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Erinna’s still up there watching,” I said. He nodded. I embraced Father, getting myself wet in the process. Kallikles and Phaedrus came up the ladder onto the deck and embraced Father one at a time, and we all wished each other joy. The sun was up behind the hill and the sky was bright. Again I thought that this was like a scene in a play. But in a play, the gods show up at the end to sort everything out, and let the people who love each other be together. I picked the seaweed off Father’s shoulder and dropped it back into the water.

  “Kebes is dead?” Maecenas asked, as Phaedrus stepped back.

  “Dead,” Father confirmed. “Dead and gone back where he came from. And after all the trouble I had getting the skin off in one piece, it vanished with him.”

  I shuddered. The worst of it was that he said it so calmly. There were times when he wasn’t like other people at all. Maecenas started to speak, then swallowed hard and began again. “How are the rest of them?”

  “They want reparations because we burned their ship,” Father said.

  “Zeus burned it,” Maecenas said. “Literally, by all accounts. They tried to burn us, but the wind changed all in an instant and drove the fireship back on the Goodness.”

  Father glanced at Kallikles, who smiled. “The winds do back unexpectedly sometimes,” Father said.

  “Yes, but they tell me also that the first man to try to board was struck by lightning, out of a clear sky,” Maecenas said. He too looked at Kallikles. “You saw that, didn’t you?”

  “I was right there,” Kallikles agreed.

  “I didn’t want to believe it either, but you see there’s no question about it,” Maecenas said. “It discouraged the rest of them, as you can imagine.”

  I looked with admiration at Kallikles. Without him we might have lost the ship and everyone aboard. My own powers weren’t anything like as useful.

  Neleus and Nikias came aboard, dry, from the fishing boat that had been acting as a ferry. Nikias came over to Maecenas at once. “I want to go back to Kallisti with my son,” he said. “Will you give me passage?”

  Maecenas looked from Nikias to Neleus, and then to Father, who nodded. “Well, of course I will, but this could be a problem if there were a lot of people who wanted to leave Lucia and go with us.”

  “We promised to take Aristomache and the others back to Marissa,” Phaedrus pointed out.

  “That’s easy. The problem is that without the Goodness these people aren’t going to be able to keep on doing as they have been doing,” Father said. “Timon was starting to say that when I dived into the sea. They want the Excellence.”

  “So they can keep on rescuing people and founding cities,” Kallikles said.

  “That’s a matter for Chamber,” Maecenas said. “Did they offer compensation for Caerellia and Ficino and the others they killed?”

  “They think we took it out of Kebes’s hide,” Neleus said. This remark was followed by an awkward silence, broken after a moment when Klymene came on deck.

  “Pytheas,” she said, by way of greeting.

  “No thanks to you,” Neleus said.

  “If Klymene prefers the Myxolydian mode, that’s no disgrace,” Father said, quite sharply.

  Klymene blushed. “I did prefer it. And I thought you were cheating by turning your lyre over. I had no idea what Kebes was planning.”

  “Of course not,” Father said. “No hard feelings. I don’t know how it is, but you always manage to see me at my worst moments.”

  I looked at him in complete incomprehension. She had voted for his death by tor
ture, and he must now understand what that meant. However little he minded being dead and returned to his proper divine self, he had said he didn’t want to be skinned. How could he not have hard feelings?

  Kallikles looked at his mother incredulously. “You voted for Kebes?”

  “You didn’t hear him play,” Father said. “He had a syrinx. He was very good.”

  “But it wasn’t just a musical contest!” sputtered Kallikles. “It was your life.”

  “Kebes was Klymene’s friend,” Father said. “And three of the Lucians preferred the Phrygian mode, as it turned out.”

  Kallikles shook his head.

  “Son—” Klymene said, putting her hand on his arm.

  “Don’t talk to me,” he said, shaking her off. “You voted for my father’s death.”

  “We are not going to have a feud over this,” Father said, firmly. “If Klymene has wronged anyone it’s me, and I refuse to have this be the cause of trouble.” Again I thought this was like something from Aeschylus, except that it was also my family. There was an awkward silence.

  “The problem is what we’re going to do about the Lucians now,” Maecenas said.

  “If all the Lucians were treacherous and prepared to break guest friendship we’d all be dead. It was just a minority of them. Many of them fought beside us in the colosseum,” Phaedrus said.

  “Auge and Timon restored order,” I said.

  Maecenas shook his head. “We’ll have to take a mission home with us, and then at the very least bring them back. This will have to be discussed in Chamber, and voted on in the Assembly. It’s too much for us.” He looked at Nikias. “You can come with us. We’ve never stopped anyone coming back to the Remnant, there’s clear precedent for that. And if you’re a Christian, you can mix in with the New Concordance lot. They have a little temple down on the street of Hermes.”

  “I’m not bothered about religion,” Nikias said. “I have useful skills. I’m a glassblower.”

  “You were a poet and a philosopher when you left us,” Pytheas said.

  “We’ve all grown up a lot since then,” Nikias said, smiling.

  “And you’re not abandoning a family here?” Klymene asked, familiarly. I realized as she spoke that of course she knew him, even though they hadn’t seen each other for longer than my entire lifetime. All the Children knew each other. Whatever city they lived in now, they had long complex histories of growing up together in the original Republic.

  “No. I did, but we’re separated. She went to Hieronymos.” He looked down.

  “You might like to know that as well as Neleus here you have a daughter in Psyche. Andromeda was pregnant when you left.”

  “I’m going ashore,” Maecenas grunted. “I’ll talk to Timon and try to sort things out.”

  “Is it safe ashore?” Klymene asked.

  “Armor, and an armed escort.” Maecenas sighed. “I’ll take Dion and—no, by Hekate, not Phaenarete. Klymene, find me half a dozen trained unwounded Young Ones for a shore mission.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m going to swim some more,” Father said.

  “Not alone you’re not,” Maecenas said. “Arete, Kallikles, stay with your father. Swimming is all right, but you’re not going ashore, none of you. You’re a provocation.”

  “And me?” Phaedrus asked.

  “Keep helping the doctors, you’re good at that.”

  Klymene looked at Kallikles again, but he didn’t look at her. She caught my eye, and I spread my hands. I didn’t know what to say to her. I was also horrified that she had voted against Father, but if he was prepared to deal with it, so was I. She was Klymene, Mother’s friend, Kallikles’s mother. I had known her all my life.

  “Kallikles,” she said.

  He turned to her. “We won’t have a feud, since Father doesn’t want one, but you can’t expect me to feel the same toward you.”

  “That’s fair,” she said. She turned and went below, moving as if she had aged twenty years in the last half hour.

  25

  ARETE

  The voyage home was strange. On the voyage out, even during the storm, we’d had a sense of adventure, of the world opening before us. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt like that. Ficino had wanted to find the Trojan heroes. We had all sung in the evenings. We were sailing into the unknown, and we looked forward to what we would find. It was a voyage of discovery. The voyage home was a journey through anti-climax. I stood my regular watch, but all the joy had gone out of it. The ship still felt alive, and the sky and the sea and the islands were still beautiful, but that was all. Erinna seemed to be avoiding me, after the conversation on the masthead. She was polite when I spoke to her, but uncomfortable. I wasn’t sorry I had saved her life, how could I be? But I cried myself to sleep missing her, and missing Ficino, who might still be alive if I hadn’t thrown myself into the fight. I had always been told that all actions have consequences. Now I was starting to understand what that meant.

  We had envoys aboard to Kallisti from Lucia—to all the five cities. And we had people who wanted to go to other Lucian cities, and a handful like Nikias who wanted to come back to the Remnant. There were no more secrets about where the Lucian cities were. Timon had given Maecenas a map, a beautiful thing, drawn like an illuminated manuscript, embellished with dolphins and triremes, with all their cities neatly marked.

  “Ah,” Father said, when he saw it, and then when we looked at him curiously he just said “Beautifully drawn.”

  We called at the Lucian cities, one after another, where the news that Kebes was dead and the Goodness destroyed was met each time with shock and horror. Aristomache tried to explain to them that it wasn’t really our fault, but it was hard to avoid feeling guilty nevertheless.

  “The problem is that it’s a subtle complex thing and hard to explain,” she said to me as we sailed toward Marissa. “Matthias was in the wrong, and he started the attack. But you did destroy the Goodness, and that does destroy our civilization. And we were doing so much good.”

  “The Goodness would still be safe if Matthias hadn’t attacked us,” I said. It felt strange to call Kebes by his other name.

  “Indeed,” she agreed. “That attack was wrong and unprovoked. And you didn’t destroy the Goodness on purpose. The wind changed. It was Matthias’s fault for using a fireship and trying to destroy this ship. God punished him. But he has punished all of us for Matthias’s hubris.”

  It was strange. I knew Kallikles had made the wind change. In one way that did make it unquestionably a divine action. But I was much less ready than Aristomache to see it as part of Providence, or being inherently just. To Aristomache, even though she had known Athene, the actions of the gods were something that happened on a different moral plane. To me they were not, they couldn’t be. “Kebes—Matthias—was one of your leaders,” I said.

  “One of them, yes, but one among many. You saw how we didn’t all follow him.”

  “I did. But he wasn’t acting alone, either.”

  “The other conspirators, those who survived, were condemned to iron for ten years. I thought you heard that.” A cloud passed over the sun, and in the changed light Aristomache looked old and frail, though she was nowhere near as old as Ficino had been.

  “I heard it, but I didn’t understand it.”

  “They’re reduced to iron, the fourth rank,” she said.

  “We have irons, but it isn’t a punishment.” The idea was very strange to me. “Do you mean that they’ll be slaves?”

  Aristomache winced. “Not slaves. But the irons do all the hardest work. They mine, and do all the things nobody else wants to. Especially in the new cities it’s dangerous and difficult work.”

  I thought about it. It seemed almost like slavery. And the way Kebes behaved seemed like putting pride above the good, exactly as Plato said timarchy began. Sparta had been a timarchy, valuing honor above truth. But saying this to Aristomache would hurt her without helping anything, and she was among the best o
f the Lucians. I was glad she was coming to the City with us as one of the envoys, and glad that Auge was another—though poor Auge was seasick, even in these calm breezes.

  We set people down and picked up more envoys at all eight Lucian cities. I wasn’t allowed ashore anywhere, though I sometimes had a chance to swim. Maecenas wasn’t taking any more risks with the ship.

  I kept on grieving for Ficino. Maia missed him even more. She wasn’t grieving extravagantly the way Father had. She withdrew into herself and never mentioned him. She spent hours standing at the rail in the wind. She avoided Aristomache much as Erinna was avoiding me.

  “He always said he’d die when he was ninety-nine,” I said, coming up next to her.

  She jumped. “Arete, don’t creep up on people that way!”

  “I wasn’t creeping up, you were completely locked in your thoughts.”

  “It’s not true that I don’t love people,” she said, out of nowhere. She had Ficino’s hat crushed between her hands.

  “Of course it’s not! Who said that?”

  “Ikaros,” she admitted.

  “That idiot.” I had never met Ikaros. “What does he know about it? You love lots of people. You love me.” I put my arm around her.

  Maia snorted, half way between laughter and tears.

  “Come on, Magistra, you haven’t taught me anything for days.” It was the best way to cheer her up, giving her something to do. And besides, my birthday was coming the next month, and with it my tests and my oath. I wanted to be ready.

  We sailed on among the islands, and I wished them unknown again and empty of consequences. I stood my watches and did lessons with Maia and had occasional conversations with Father and my brothers. We did not stop at Ikaria, but I looked longingly at the shore and the pine woods as we sailed past.

  We struck the shore of Kallisti from the northeast, and so we saw the City of Amazons first, immediately recognizable with its immense statues on the quayside. We sailed on. “Home first,” Maecenas said, decisively, and nobody disagreed.

  We arrived home at sunset on the twenty-ninth day after our departure, though it felt as if we had been away for centuries. The mountain was rumbling and belching out red-black streams of lava as we sailed in. “Just a normal little eruption,” Phaedrus said reassuringly.