“You know?” I asked.
“I do,” he said, sounding a little awed.
It is a testament to how much had happened on the voyage that our gaining god-powers seemed such a minor part of it. And yet the story of what had happened to us wouldn’t make an epic. Or would it? I thought it over. It seemed too ambiguous, but Homer embraced ambiguity. Homer had heroes on both sides. I remembered Ficino saying he’d fight for Troy. How would people tell the story of Kebes? Would they tell how Apollo beat him in a contest and skinned him alive? Or would it all be forgotten as Father believed? But Father had said everything the gods did became art, and he was still a god. Maybe it was more like a tragedy, heroes overcome by their flaws.
We tacked in to the harbor and tied up, safe at the wharf, home at last.
It felt strange to be greeted by Baukis and Boas and Rhea, to see people I knew well who hadn’t been with us. I had almost forgotten they existed, that home was still there behind us all the time. It must have been how Odysseus felt coming back to Ithaka.
26
APOLLO
I spent the voyage home composing a song. It was the song I had been reaching for for months, the song that wouldn’t come, because I couldn’t make any true art about Simmea’s death while I didn’t understand why she had chosen to die.
I had been maddened with grief, and now I was not. I still missed Simmea. But I understood now that she had died to increase my excellence and the excellence of the world, and I would increase it, for her, for myself, and for the world. I would savor this mortal life while I had it, learn and experience all I could. And when it ended, I would take what I had learned and be a more excellent god and make the world better. That was what I always wanted. That was why I had chosen to become mortal.
The song I had sung in the colosseum at Lucia had been a cold Platonic composition, perfect but passionless. This one was the opposite. It made the Dorian mode burn with passion. If I had been on Olympos my hair would have stood on end and glowed as I made the song. I would also have concentrated and done nothing else for however long it took until the song was done. As it was, onboard the Excellence I had to stand my watches, sleep, and eat, and beyond that I was constantly interrupted. There’s no privacy on a ship, and it’s hard to be alone. I couldn’t so much as play a chord without someone stopping to listen, and I didn’t want anyone to hear this song before it was ready. The ship was teeming with people—in addition to the surviving crew we had a whole slew of envoys. Maecenas was very firm that I wasn’t allowed ashore. I don’t know what he thought I was going to do, or whether he thought the Lucians would try to kill me if they had the chance. I wanted nothing more than to be quiet somewhere alone to work on the song, but instead I trimmed the sails and talked to people who wanted to talk to me. These frustrations too were part of mortal life, and fueled the song.
Every day I went up on deck to watch the sun rise, as the lyrics and music echoed through my head. One morning Maia was there by the rail, twisting Ficino’s hat in her hands as she stared out to sea. Always thin, she was gaunt now, and her silvering hair wisped out of its neat braid in the sea wind.
“One thing I have learned about grief,” I said to her, “is that nothing anyone says to you is useful, but it can still be comforting sometimes to know you’re not alone and not the only person who cares about missing them. Ficino was my friend too.”
She smiled through her tears. “Thank you, Pytheas. And Simmea was also my friend.”
“We have to do the work they left undone,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “Oh, I know. But it makes me so tired to think of it.”
“We have to stop the art raids, and come to an equitable solution with the Lucians, and bring up the next generation to be more excellent than their parents.”
“The Lucians skin heretics, and have gladiatorial fights, and their irons are almost like slaves,” Maia said. The edge of the sun showed red over the rim of the world.
“Nobody’s perfect,” I said. “The Romans had gladiatorial combats, they dislocated the arms of heretics in Renaissance Florence, all of the classical world had slavery, and so did we in the City before we realized that the Workers were self-aware.”
“Plato—”
“Plato was laying out an unachievable ideal, to spur people to excellence,” I said. “What was it Cicero said about Cato?”
“That Cato acted as if he was living in Plato’s Republic instead of the dunghill of Romulus?” She switched into Latin to quote it.
“That’s it. Plato wanted to give people something to aspire to. That’s why he isn’t here, he didn’t really imagine it as a possibility, just as something to encourage everyone to think, and to work toward excellence. In reality, while we aim for excellence, we’re always living on somebody’s dunghill. But that doesn’t mean we’re wrong to aim to be the best we can be. And the Lucians aren’t all like Kebes. If they were we’d all be dead. We can find a way to help them toward excellence.”
She sighed. “Everything is complicated and compromised.”
“It is,” I said. “That’s the nature of reality.” A gull swooped down low over the water.
“Ficino understood how to go on amid the compromise and find a way forward,” Maia said.
“Yes. He took over the Laurentian Library for the Florentine Republic after Piero de Medici fled,” I agreed.
“How do you know that?” she asked. “Were you there?”
I had frequently been there, but of course I didn’t want to tell her so. “I’ve heard him talk about it,” I said, truthfully. “I know nobody is supposed to talk about their lives before they came to the City, but everyone does.”
“I don’t think we were wrong to make idealistic rules,” Maia said, her voice shaking a little. “I don’t know, Pytheas. I’ve been trying to make the Republic work since I was a young woman, and I’m getting old now. Ficino was always so delighted to be here, to be doing it. He loved everything, except when we divided after the Last Debate. When I came back from Amazonia he was so pleased to see me. I don’t know how I can take it all up again without his enthusiasm to keep me going.”
“I’m the worst person to ask,” I said. “I only just worked out that what I’m supposed to do is keep on working and doing Simmea’s share too, as best I can.”
“I can’t possibly do Ficino’s share!” she said, horrified.
“You can do some of it, and I’ll do some of it, and other friends will do some of it.”
“You’ll teach music and mathematics?”
I had been teaching gymnastics in the palaestra but diligently avoiding teaching music and mathematics, as we called all intellectual study. I had evaded it by taking a larger share of the physical labor we all had to share since the Workers left.
“And you’ll serve on committees for Simmea?” she went on.
“Oh Maia!”
“You can teach Ficino’s beginning Plato course, for the fourteen-year-olds,” she said, relentlessly. “And you can teach the advanced lyric poetry class. I don’t understand how you’ve got out of that so far.”
“I always volunteer to judge at festivals, and I couldn’t judge fairly if I were teaching them too,” I said smugly.
“Well, that’s been a good argument, but now you can teach them. You can do it better than anyone else, so it’s your Platonic duty. And you can serve on the Curriculum Committee too, as well as taking Simmea’s place on the Foreign Negotiations Committee.”
I looked at her face in the glow of the sunrise. She had stopped crying. “I believe I have actually comforted you a little,” I said.
“And I you,” she replied.
It was true. Taking on those responsibilities wouldn’t be any fun, but knowing they needed doing and I could help do them in Simmea’s name did ease my grief a little.
As for stopping the art raids, I was working on a song.
When the Excellence tied up at the City, the travelers who had been together for so long divi
ded immediately. Kallikles went off with his girl, Rhea. Maia headed for Florentia to tell the sad news to Ficino’s friends there. Arete was immediately embraced by her agemates. Neleus and Phaedrus headed for Thessaly. Everyone else went their separate ways. I was so desperate to be alone to get my song straight that I went straight to the practice rooms on the Street of Hermes.
I shut myself into one of the little rooms and worked nonstop on the song for several hours. The last time I sang it through I was happy with it, but a song isn’t real until somebody hears it. I went home to Thessaly, and was astonished to find my son Euklides there, Lasthenia’s boy, who lived in Psyche. Phaedrus and Arete and Neleus and he were sitting in the garden by Sokrates’s statue of Hermes, under the lemon tree. They looked up when they saw me, and all of them tried to speak at once.
“Just listen to this first,” I said, and drew my lyre into place.
It couldn’t have been more different from the colosseum in Lucia, the banked rows of spectators, Kebes’s hate burning hot, the judges uneasy in their seats, and my own soul longing to escape. Now I was at home, my soul was sure of the work set before it, and the audience were my own children, who loved me. In my memory Sokrates and Simmea and Kebes also populated the garden. Simmea sat intent, leaning forward, bursting with ideas; Sokrates was running his fingers through his hair distractedly; Kebes was frowning and drawing breath to speak. I smiled and let go of them. All of their souls had gone on to start again and learn new things. It was the solid and present Young Ones I wanted to reach with this song.
“Simmea asked me to write this song when we were fourteen years old,” I said. Before she had met Sokrates, before we had discussed our agape, before we knew the Workers were people. “It’s called ‘The Glory of Peace.’”
I knew I had them before the end of the first verse. By the final chorus, they were all openly weeping. The best of it was, the song didn’t mention either Simmea or the art raids directly. It was all about the things worth fighting to defend and being our best selves.
Neleus, who had fought in art raids, was the first to speak after the last chord had died away. His voice was choked. “Is that really what we were doing? Were we going against Plato and making ourselves worse?”
“Yes, we evidently were,” Euklides said, wiping his eyes. I didn’t know him well, and I hadn’t known until that moment that he had fought in them.
“The art raids are a falling away from excellence,” Phaedrus said. “Toward timarchy. Fighting for honor instead.”
Arete looked at me with awe in her eyes. “Maybe you really could stop the art raids! If people hear that, they might understand. It gives us a different way to think about it. And it’s really true. The dreams shared with a friend,” she quoted.
“And that’s what Mother died for,” Neleus said.
They all looked a little stunned. “I’ll have to sing it to harder audiences,” I said. “But stopping the art raids is what this song is for. And that’s the best thing I can do now in memory of Simmea.”
“Not just stopping the pointless deaths, but bringing the City closer to excellence,” Neleus said, seeing the point at once, as Simmea would have done.
“All the cities,” Arete said.
I nodded. “All the cities. I want to teach you to sing the harmony, so you can sing it with me when we go.”
“There’s a harmony?” she asked.
“Yes. Why are you looking at me like that?” They were all staring at me with eyes wide open in astonishment.
“You never write songs with multiple parts,” Phaedrus said. “You always write things you can perform alone.”
“Well, this song can be sung alone, as you’ve just heard, and it will sound even better with Arete singing the harmony, and it also has an arrangement that can be sung as a choral ode with parts for a whole chorus, which I am planning to have sung before the conference. But you’re going to have to rehearse them, Phaedrus, because Arete and I will be going around to the other cities to persuade them to come.”
They still looked stunned. I smiled, and sat down and began to eat a lemon.
“Have you ever written something for a chorus before?” Neleus asked. “Ever, ever? I know you haven’t done it in the City.”
“I haven’t, and it was an interesting challenge, especially without any privacy on the boat to work on it. But you wait until you hear the choral version, with the men’s chorus singing low down home and hearth and love and life and the women’s chorus singing high up worth the cost of risking life and the lines working with and against each other.” I sang the lines as I quoted them. They kept on staring at me. “Yes, it’s a new thing for me. But life is about moving forward and learning new things.”
“You’ve stopped being cracked,” Arete said.
“Yes, I think I finally have. I haven’t stopped missing her. But I’m whole again. I’m finally doing what she wanted.”
“Stopping the art raids?” Euklides asked.
“That’s part of it,” I said.
27
ARETE
In our absence, my brother Euklides had run away from Psyche and sworn a new oath to the Remnant City. He was staying in Thessaly and drilling with the Delphian troop. His armor stood on a stand in the corner, and he had moved things around in the house. He apologized for disturbing things, and said he didn’t know whether he was host or guest, welcoming us back. It was wonderful to see him, but on the second day after our return he discovered that Kallikles and Phaedrus and I had powers.
“You have to take me to Delos,” he said to Father, as soon as he understood how it had happened.
“It isn’t an unmitigated blessing,” Kallikles said. He hadn’t found a way to tell Rhea about his powers yet.
Euklides looked at Kallikles with cold dislike. “Let me be the judge of that.”
Phaedrus wasn’t home because he was going around the city healing everyone. I missed his friendly presence in the family argument. Neleus wasn’t home either, but then I’d barely seen him since the first afternoon when we came back, when Father had sung to us in the garden. He was spending a lot of time with Nikias, and also with Erinna. He was also working hard, with Maia and Manlius, on arranging the conference.
“If there’s another voyage, and if I have any say, I’ll make sure you get to visit Delos,” Father said. “And Alkibiades and Porphyry if they want to go. And maybe I should arrange it for Fabius in Lucia too.”
“If there isn’t another voyage, could we get there anyway?” Euklides asked. “Could you fly that far with me, Arete?”
“I don’t know. It’s a long way.”
“Could you fly to Amorgos and rest, and then to Naxos, and so on?” Kallikles suggested.
“I don’t know. I’ve never flown carrying anyone for longer than that time with you by the rock. There’s a big difference between flying for a few minutes and flying for hours. I’d want to try it somewhere I could land if I needed to rest, not over the open sea!”
“It’s a possibility anyway,” Euklides said.
“I hope it won’t come to that,” Father said. “They’ll have to send the Lucians home at the very least. And I expect we’ll have trade voyages, and missions of mercy helping the Lucians.”
“I wonder what powers I’ll have,” Euklides mused. “It seems so random.”
Perhaps it wasn’t as random as it seemed. I couldn’t quite see how my own powers fit together, but my brothers’ were beginning to make sense to me. I had spent one morning up on the mountain with Phaedrus, standing on the edge of the lava ready to swoop down and rescue him if he got into trouble. It didn’t bother me to see him walk through the lava, or when he diverted the flowing stream around himself. But I could hardly look when he lay down and sank into it.
“Didn’t you need to breathe?” I asked, when he came up after what felt like a long time.
“I could tell when I needed to,” he said. “And I did start to burn, but I healed myself.” And he had been thinking about
developing an excellence of volcanoes before we went to Delos.
As for Kallikles, lightning and weather working certainly fit together. “Perhaps Zeus will devolve weather to you,” I suggested, when Kallikles demonstrated his lightning by blasting a rowan tree on the lower slopes of the mountain. There was nothing left of the tree but blackened roots at the edge of the little pool.
“I wish I could do that to Klymene,” was all Kallikles said. He wasn’t getting over his anger at his mother. He was having fun with electricity, though. He could make the light-beams in Thessaly come on without touching the switches.
My own abilities didn’t seem in any way coherent. They also weren’t very useful. Nobody on Kallisti spoke different languages, so I never had the chance to use that ability. I already knew Greek and Latin. And I could only fly when I was sure I was unobserved. The truth recognition was useful, and I think that was why Father decided to take me with him on his missions to the other cities. Well, that and wanting me to sing the harmonies to “The Glory of Peace.”
Over the course of the next month I went on four embassies, accompanying Father on his new quest to end the art raids. His proposal was radically simple—everyone would return everything they had stolen, and then the art would be fairly distributed according to population. This had been Psyche’s original proposition, which we had rejected with scorn the first time we had heard it. Mother had wanted to accept it, but back then she couldn’t persuade enough people. Then the raids had started, and the honor of people and cities had become tangled up with them.
Father had three advantages in stopping the art raids now. First was the song, which really was a wonderful tool. It made people stop and think. We’d been trained to fight, but we’d also been trained to think and debate, and the song broke the cycle of raids and revenge by making people question why they were fighting and whether it was worth it. Secondly, because people generally liked and respected Father, and because he had been so vehemently in favor of vengeance for so long, his renouncing that now was very powerful—especially at home in the Remnant, where everyone had seen the force of his madness. Everyone had also heard what he’d done to Kebes, from those of us who had been there. To go from that to singing about peace and civilization and excellence made a powerful statement on its own. And thirdly, there were the Lucians. The specific way the Lucians were falling into timarchy was easy for us to see—the bloodsports and torture, and their focus on the physical side of life over the intellectual side. But their horror at our wars made us see that we were doing the same thing in our own way. The existence of the Lucians, and the need to do something about them, provided a new factor that made everyone refocus.