The Philosopher Kings: A Novel

  “You’ve been swearing blood and vengeance on whoever has the head,” Ikaros said. “I’d be a fool to admit it if we had it.”

  “As you may have heard, I took vengeance on Kebes. That’s enough. Besides, while there are some circumstances where it’s appropriate, this isn’t one of them. The important thing is to stop wasting lives and effort over this foolishness, not to make everything worse.” Father was utterly sincere.

  “Our Young Ones enjoy the art raids. It makes them feel important and gives them a chance to let off steam,” Ikaros said. “And then they get out of control, and they feel important, and they have weapons. So you don’t need to tell me, because I can see exactly and precisely how things disintegrate into timarchy from here, and so I want to stop this as much as you do. But if we had the head, and I’m not saying we do, what would you suggest we do with it? We couldn’t return it with everything else.” He was telling the truth too, but Father didn’t look away from him to see me signal.

  “And you can’t secretly keep it either, because then everyone will know that it wasn’t returned, and if that was kept back then other things might have been.” He hesitated, and continued in a lower voice. “And besides, she died for it.”

  “Sneak it back into the temple,” I said. “Put it back where it came from, without admitting you ever had it in the first place.”

  Ikaros laughed, and looked toward me, but not quite at me. “Audacious. But how do you suggest we do it? A troop heading for the temple would be assumed to be raiding and attacked. And half of my problem is how wild the Young Ones in the troops are. I need to keep them under control, and they wouldn’t respect me at all if I tried to stop them from fighting back if they were attacked. They might not even want to return it. And they have votes in our Assembly.”

  “Let me sing to them, and see whether that will help change their minds about the fun of art raids,” Father said. “As for the head, get Rhadamantha to give it to Arete. Then Arete can quietly put it back. You and I won’t be directly involved. I won’t have to know officially who took it, or take any vengeance, and we can swear we didn’t do it. It can be a divine intervention.”

  “An angelic one,” Ikaros said.

  “Kebes and the Goodness Group have been practicing muscular Christianity all over the Aegean,” Father said, switching subjects smoothly.

  “What?” Ikaros looked stunned.

  “They have eight cities, mostly filled with refugees from mainland wars, mostly converts. It’s not your New Concordance, nothing like that subtle. They say Athene was a demon, perhaps Lilith.”

  “What?”

  “They’ve been teaching people to worship Yayzu and his mother Marissa, and revile Athene.”

  “In a Platonic context?” Ikaros asked, quite calmly, surprising me because I was expecting him to say “What?” again.

  “Oh yes. But with torture for heretics, you’d feel quite at home.”

  “I would not! We don’t do anything to heretics but debate with them. And we have Saint Girolamo in our calendar.”

  “Saint Girolamo, and the Archangel Athene too. You’ll have to send missionaries,” Father said, quite comfortably. “Nag them to death. Teach them your beautiful complex system. Let them know Christianity is all just fine up to a point, and torturing heretics is well beyond that point.”

  “I thought you wanted people to worship the Olympians,” Ikaros said, frowning a little.

  “I do, and so did Plato. I didn’t say we wouldn’t be sending out missionaries too.”

  Ikaros laughed, and just then the girl Rhadamantha came back with the others. She looked a tiny bit like Erinna, she had the same kind of hair and the same lean grace. I was glad when she stayed for the debate.

  The debate was long. Father and I explained the Lucian civilization and the two conferences. I had heard it all before, but I had to stay to sing, when Father decided it was time, and also to let him know when people were lying. By dinner time, I had realized that there was something seriously wrong with Ikaros’s sight, although he was trying to hide it. He didn’t have cataracts, and he didn’t peer and lean forward to see close up like Aristomache, but he never seemed to be focusing on what he was looking at. When Lysias passed him a note, he didn’t even glance at it. He fumbled picking up his wine cup. He couldn’t be blind. He had seen that I looked like Father. But that had been outside, in full daylight.

  We had meetings with the committees, and then their Chamber, where we sang, several times. It took three days, but in the end they agreed to send envoys. They agreed to send their art back on the Excellence, too.

  On the evening of the third day, after everything was agreed, I went for a walk up into the hills with my brother Porphyry, as I had done with Alkibiades. I didn’t know Porphyry well. He had always lived in the City of Amazons, and only made occasional visits to us. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he said, awkwardly, kicking at a stone.

  “We’re trying to stop the art raids in her memory,” I said.

  “Is it true that Father tortured Kebes or Marsias or whatever his name was to death?” he asked.

  “Yes. And it was Matthias. But he was Kebes when he was here, so we always call him that.”

  “So does my mother. Matthias is a difficult name to get my tongue around anyway. So Father really killed him in that horrible way?”

  “Yes. But Kebes was going to do it to him.” I explained the competition, and the battle afterward.

  “I suppose he had to.” We were sitting down on the edge of a little stream, in the shade of a plane tree, dabbling our feet in the water. “But I think I would have cut his throat instead, even if that was their idea of justice.”

  “So would I, and so would Kallikles,” I admitted.

  “I’ve always been a bit frightened of Father, and this doesn’t help,” he said.

  “Frightened of him? Why?” I couldn’t imagine it.

  “Oh, because he’s so excellent. It makes it difficult to live up to. My mother always says he was just clearly the best when they were all growing up together. And she was beautiful then, of course.”

  “I think your mother is still beautiful,” I said. Euridike had a lovely face and wonderful hair.

  “She says she hasn’t been the same since she had babies. And she says it has been better for her, because she used to be vain about it. But anyway, back then when she tried to be friends with Pytheas because he was beautiful too, he never had any time for anyone except your mother. And he’s not just beautiful, he’s so good at everything. I always felt that I wasn’t good enough for him. Children are supposed to outdo their parents, but how could I ever outdo Pytheas?”

  “You have your own excellence,” I said. “You just have to develop it. I never heard we were supposed to outdo our parents, or compare ourselves to anyone else, just that we had to work to become our best selves, the best that it’s possible for us to be.” I looked up at him. Porphyry was tall. “Do you know about Father?”

  “Know what? He’s hard to get to know. Especially when I didn’t see much of him.”

  I lay back and stared up at the blue sky through the dappled leaves. I had to ask him whether he wanted to go to Delos, but if he didn’t know who Father was that made it very difficult. “If you could have divine powers, but you had to keep them to yourself, would you want to?”

  “Would I have divine responsibilities too?”

  “What a good question! What do you mean?”

  “Well, what kind of powers are we talking about?” Porphyry asked, treating the whole question as an abstract Platonic inquiry.

  “Flight. Healing.”

  “Right. So say I could heal people, would I have a responsibility to go around healing everyone all the time? Of course I would, nobody could have that power without. With flight I suppose I’d have a responsibility to take messages rapidly everywhere, and rescue people from burning buildings, and that kind of thing.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Assuredly, Sokrates, that mu
st be the case.”

  He laughed. “Your mother said Sokrates hated it if they said that.”

  “I know.” I was thinking about whether I had a responsibility to take messages quickly around the world. If I did, it could explain where my language skills fitted in. But I didn’t much want to be a messenger god. Besides, did the world need another?

  “I don’t know if I’d want divine powers. It would be so disruptive. But it could be fun. And it would give my life a purpose. I wouldn’t have to worry about what my excellence was, I’d know.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” I said. “What if you had them and couldn’t tell anyone.”

  “You mean I could heal people but they wouldn’t know I was doing it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be very strange. And how would that work with flight? I could only fly if nobody was looking? I’d have to stand by burning buildings knowing I could rescue people and let them burn to death?”

  I started to cry. I didn’t mean to, but I was remembering Erinna in the storm. Porphyry put his arm around me, not awkwardly like Father but as if he was used to being comforting to people. “What’s wrong? Is the debate making you miss Simmea?”

  “I do have divine powers, and I don’t know what to do about the responsibility,” I sniffed.

  “What, really?” he looked down at me, astonished, but not disbelieving.

  “Stand up and I’ll show you,” I said, getting to my feet. There was nobody around. I leaped into the air, and swooped down to scoop him up, as I had Kallikles. Porphyry went rigid for a moment, and then he started to laugh. My tears dried in the wind and in the face of his delight.

  “Take me right up,” he called. “Take me so high I can see the city from above, like an eagle.”

  “But then they’d see us,” I said.

  “How about over the mountain then? Could we fly over the crater? That would be so great.”

  “I don’t think I can carry you for ten miles,” I said. “I don’t know. I never have and I don’t want to risk dropping you.” I went up, so he could see the stream and the hill it ran down and the City of Amazons in the distance. Then I made a series of loops around the tree and set him down again. “Sometime we could meet up on the mountain and I’d fly you over the crater, if you want.”

  “I’d love that! That was such fun. The wind on my face. It was amazing. How can you do that? And why can’t you tell anyone?”

  “I can do it because Father is Apollo, and I went to Delos and it woke my power.”

  Porphyry sat down again, and I sat down beside him. “Father is Apollo? Incarnate? Like Jesus?”

  “Yes, pretty much exactly like, as far as I understand it,” I said, pleased that he’d understood so rapidly. “But he doesn’t want anyone to know except family. I didn’t know whether he’d told you, but when we were talking about Delos he said he’d take you if you wanted to go. And he asked me to tell you about the powers.”

  “It makes so much sense that he would be Apollo. Why did I never think of that? And … how could I possibly try to compete! Did Simmea know? Of course she did.” He shook his head in wonder.

  “She figured it out herself,” I said, proud of my mother. I’d heard the story of how she’d figured it out many times, from both my parents.

  “And what happened on Delos?”

  “Kallikles and Phaedrus and I found a spring and drank from a cup, and then we had powers. Different powers. Phaedrus can heal and control the volcano, and Kallikles has lightning and weather powers.”

  “Lightning? Amazing. But they can’t fly?”

  “They can walk on air, but I’m the only one who can fly properly.”

  “And why can’t you tell anyone? Will you lose the powers if you do?” He seemed eager and enthusiastic.

  “No, just that everyone will know we’re freaks. Father says he wants to live a normal life as best he can.”

  “But my burning building question made you cry because in that situation you’d have to give yourself away?”

  “Of course I would. I couldn’t just stand there.” I rubbed my eyes hard to stop myself crying again. “I don’t know if I can live a normal life, with powers. It’s going to be hard. I already used them, in the battle in Lucia. I flew over a man who was attacking me. People thought it was a leap, but really it was flight. And Phaedrus healed people. Aristomache had broken her arm, but he healed it and said it was just a bruise, that kind of thing.”

  “And Kallikles?”

  “He struck an attacker with lightning, and he made the wind change so that the burning boat burned the Goodness instead of the Excellence. But people didn’t know it was him. They thought it was Zeus.”

  Porphyry shook his head. “I don’t see how you can keep powers like that secret, long term, if you use them. And you can’t help doing it, when something happens like that. It would be better if people knew and could plan for it. And maybe Pytheas ought to talk to Ikaros about being Apollo. Ikaros would be so interested. He’d instantly work out a way to make it fit with the New Concordance.”

  “But then people would always be pestering him about it.”

  “And people would always be asking you to get kittens out of trees.”

  I laughed. “And taking messages between cities, like you said.”

  “If it turns out that you can fly that far.”

  “I don’t know whether I can. I need to practice. But for now, do you want to go to Delos and get some powers of your own?”

  He grinned. “Yes, definitely, as soon as I possibly can. It would increase my excellence, and also be a ton of fun. But I’m not going to promise to keep them secret and not use them for the good of humanity.”

  “I think you’ll have to talk to Father about keeping it secret. And maybe to all of us. Because it doesn’t just affect you. If people know you have powers, they’ll want to know why.”

  “I’ll talk to Father.” He looked as if he was bracing himself for it. “And Kallikles and Phaedrus. And it will depend what my powers are, and whether they’d be useful. I wish I could choose what they would be. I’d love so much to be able to fly. Would you take me up again? Just for a little bit?”

  “Of course.” It was lovely to meet such enthusiasm. I swooped up with him in my arms. We went quite high, so he could see the landscape, and then I let him direct me along the stream toward a cove. I took him down again then and set him down gently on the black sand. I spiraled a few times around the cove before coming down in front of him, on the edge of the sea. Only then did I see a man sitting against the base of the cliff, with his arms wrapped around his legs, watching us. Ikaros.

  He looked stunned and delighted. There was no point pretending it hadn’t happened, because he’d clearly seen the whole thing, and besides there were no tracks in the sand. “Joy to you,” I said.

  Porphyry spun around. “Ikaros! Joy to you,” he stammered. “We were just … that is I … my sister was just showing me…”

  “She’s an angel!” Ikaros believed every word he was saying, but that didn’t make it true.

  I flew over to him in one swoop and sat down in the sand beside him. I pinched the skin of the back of his hand. “Real,” I said. “Not an angel.”

  “So was Sophia—Athene—as tangible and corporeal as anyone else,” he said. “She never pinched me, but I brushed against her several times and touched her hands when we were acquiring art together. But if you’re not an angel, explain to me what you are, and I’ll figure out how it all fits together.”

  I opened my mouth, but Porphyry interrupted before I could. “Don’t tell him anything.”

  He was standing, with his shadow falling over me. He had composed himself in the walk across the beach and no longer looked worried. “What? Why?”

  “For one thing it’s not only your secret, as you were just telling me. But I’ve just worked out the most important reason is that knowing for sure would break his heart.”

  I frowned up at him. “How? You said be
fore he’d work out how it fit together, and that’s just what he said himself.”

  “Yes. But I was wrong. I know Ikaros a lot better than you do. He’s my sister Rhadamantha’s father, so he’s been around our house a lot all my life. He’s my teacher. He thinks he wants to know, but—”

  “I’m right here,” Ikaros said, plaintively.

  Porphyry looked at him and smiled. “Tell me truthfully you want Arete to explain it to you, instead of letting you work it out for yourself.”

  “Oh!” Ikaros put his hand to his heart. “A hit! And from my own disciple!”

  Porphyry smiled and sat down. “What are you doing out here anyway? You shouldn’t come this far alone. Your eyes aren’t up to it.”

  “I keep telling you, I can still see perfectly well in full daylight.” He was lying. “The debate ended earlier than I thought, and I came to get something that’s hidden in the cave.” That part was true.

  Porphyry’s eyes flicked toward the cleft in the cliff.

  “If that’s where you’re keeping the head of Victory I can just go in myself and take it now,” I said.

  “And fly home to the City with it, and set it back in the temple,” Ikaros suggested. “While I work on my theory of how it is that you’re a girl born in the Remnant City and grown up at a normal speed, but you can fly. You say you’re not an angel, and I admit it does seem unlikely. Maybe it’s because your mother was such an exceptional philosopher and you’re developing angelic abilities because of that. Maybe if we all study Plato hard enough the entire next generation will be able to fly.”

  I laughed, because while he was joking, he also half hoped he was right. “You really do believe in the perfectibility of humanity,” I said.

  “Despite everything, I keep hoping. And from time to time I find some evidence.”

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” I said. “Once everyone knows I can fly they’ll always be getting me to carry messages and rescue kittens from trees.”

  “I won’t tell anyone until I’m sure I have the right answer. But can I come to you with my guesses?”

  “To me, or to Porphyry,” I said.