Chapter 5 Echo #3
Mid-afternoon, Kosmos stumbles in and leans on the doorframe, pale and trembling. ‘I’m dying, Nabu. Hephaestus has my stomach in a clamp and Hades fills my head.’
Nabu smirks, focussed on grinding dried sheep kidneys. ‘Never fear, there’s life in you yet.’
‘You haven’t even looked at me! I could have boils in my armpits and fur growing on my tongue.’
‘Evidence at my disposal leads me to believe you’ll be hale and healthy by evening.’
Kosmos glances at Echo, who suppresses a giggle. ‘And what might this evidence be?’
‘You reek like a sack of wine.’ Nabu doesn’t add that he was there to watch Kosmos drinking. He grabs a necklace of leaves from a hook and chucks it at Kosmos. ‘Wear that—it’s leatherleaf, it’ll help with the headache. And for the gods’ sake wash.’
‘That’s it?’ Kosmos examines the necklace dubiously.
‘Well, there’s only one certain cure: Next time, mix your wine better and drink less of it.’
Kosmos chucks the necklace around a statue of a snake goddess half-buried in one of the crates. ‘I’ll look ridiculous wearing that.’
‘Some fresh air then?’
Excited by the idea of escaping this oppressive house, Echo sticks her head out the door. ‘Nobody waits for help.’
Nabu looks up from his pestle and mortar. ‘You’re sure?’ She nods. ‘Alright, let’s go.’
Heat pounds down from the sky and up from the pavement as the three of them amble into town, Hanno and Absalon shadowing a few paces behind.
The roadsides are thick with wild herbs and wind-blown flowers, rustling with birds and mice.
Geckos doze on sun-hot walls and laundry hangs limp between the houses.
As they near the city centre, the streets become crowded, a tide of people sweeping them up and washing them into the packed agora.
Nabu grabs Echo and Kosmos’s hands to stop them being separated, and pulls them to the opposite side of the square, into the shade of a long stoa.
A gaggle of boys cluster cross-legged around a seated man, who taps his cane in rhythm as one of them recites tracts of the Odyssey.
‘Nobody—that’s my name—’ Another group is more various in age, five men all shouting over each other, though Echo only catches the words ‘wanderers’ and ‘aether.’
‘Nabu!’ comes a call from the stoa’s far end, and they move towards it, past an artist painting a mural of interlocking vines and birds. Echo skirts his apprentice, who mixes paint powders as he sings for his employer’s entertainment, and joins the party at the other end.
The hail came from a man of perhaps thirty, who smiles at their approach and, embracing Nabu, mutters, ‘And who do you bring me but a boy and a Peisistratid—what will you drag in next?’
Nabu answers just as quietly. ‘Let it alone, Aristogeiton, Kosmos has explained himself to you enough times, and the boy is my assistant.’
Aristogeiton takes Echo in. ‘What a skinny thing, I hope you didn’t pay too much for him—ah, but I forget, the broad-minded Amel-Nabu doesn’t keep slaves.’
Nabu’s expression darkens. ‘Nor would you had you ever been one.’ Echo takes care not to change her expression, as if this isn’t new information, but she looks at Nabu sidelong, wondering about his story.
‘Let’s not debate it again, Nabu! Either way, this slip-of-a-thing isn’t worth his wage.’
‘Forgive Aristogeiton his mood,’ says the well-built young man beside him, rattling a pair of obols in a half-opened fist. ‘We all indulged too much last night, and he most of all.’
‘My dear Harmodios, when Kleisthenes says drink, you drink.’ Aristogeiton says, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. ‘He’s one of our greatest politicians, we need him on our side.’
Harmodios smiles indulgently. ‘As you say. But you missed him, Kosmos! You left so early, before sunset even, we wondered if the Furies had got you. What took you away?’
‘Business.’ Kosmos replies with the terseness of young men who don’t much like each other but frequent the same circles. Apparently, all had attended Hippias’s symposium, and none are to discover Kosmos left to be with Nabu. Kosmos changes the subject. ‘I hope your family fare better?’
‘As well as can be in such times.’ Harmodios shrugs. They can’t be far apart in age, though Harmodios’s hair is already long enough to make a man’s braid, and he’s more comfortable in himself. Kosmos might never reach such comfort, but stay, like his father, all limbs and angles.
Echo presses herself against the cool wall, praying the Not Here behaves itself, as she watches Aristogeiton show off his new himation. ‘Linen all the way from Thebes, I bought it last week—beautiful, isn’t it?’
Harmodios takes Aristogeiton’s arm, murmuring, ‘Stop drawing attention to how good it looks or you’ll have the whole agora after you.’
‘Always the worrier! You know no one comes close to you.’
‘Even that hetaira?’
‘Yes, even Leaina.’ Aristogeiton tucks the young man’s hair behind his ear and strokes his cheek, like Patroklos and Achilleus.
Nabu casts a look at Kosmos, eyes falling away quickly, and Echo wonders if he might be jealous of such public displays of affection.
A non-citizen, non-Hellenic artisan and a tyrannos’s son is hardly a match destined for happiness.
Kosmos clears his throat. ‘Listen, I was studying the wanderers last night, and I want to revisit my theory that the night sky is a blanket, and that the stars are merely aether shining through the weave.’
‘Not again, Kosmos!’ Harmodios groans. ‘It doesn’t make any sense—how then do you explain eclipses? We all agreed last week, Anaximander’s tubular channels are the most likely story.’
‘Well, we were wrong. Look, let me show you…’ Kosmos plucks a stick from the ground and makes a map of the universe in the dusty pavement in front of the stoa.
One by one, the party gets drawn in—Nabu, Aristogeiton, even Harmodios, plus three more men whose names Echo doesn’t catch.
They jump between philosophical theories, leaving Echo too disoriented and language-bound to keep up, afflicted by the Not Here’s dizzy nonsense.
Monists and Miletos; fire and aether; generation and destruction; and the limitless limitless limitless—
As they debate, Aristogeiton and Harmodios share raisins and make private asides.
They’re not beautiful as such, both are stocky with overlong arms, and Aristogeiton hides his lack of chin under his beard, while Harmodios’s hairline comes down almost as far as his close-set brow.
However, though Kosmos’s awkward cordiality might be more likeable, Aristogeiton and Harmodios are magnetic.
Their combined bearing and tone creates attraction: They’re so exclusive they exude the impression that, if you tried very hard, you might be lucky enough to orbit them.
Even Echo feels it. Despite Aristogeiton’s arrogance towards Nabu, and Harmodios’s riling of Kosmos, she wants to be included under the aegis of their approval.
No wonder these are the tyrannicides, the Not Here shouts, pushing the words against her closed mouth.
514 BCE; Harmodios and Aristogeiton; the tyrannicides— She fights the urge to say it aloud, but of course it’s true, this is not just a pack of philosophers.
Amongst them are plotters, and her reason for being here is to help them usurp the tyrannos.
Around them, the stoa swells and empties, until the sun sags into the horizon and they’re the last ones left. Aristogeiton waves their attendants away, and Hanno and Absalon retreat into the last of the sunshine, pulling out a board for the Game of Ur.
In the group’s sudden hush, Aristogeiton turns his head, listening to Hanno and Absalon’s knucklebones on the board, the grasshoppers creaking, and an unbound shutter banging in the sea breeze.
Across the agora, a merchant packs up his stall, whistling, too far away to be in earshot.
‘You’re sure the boy is trustworthy, Nabu? ’
‘Certain. On my life.’ Nabu doesn’t look at Echo, but the promise settles heavily on her.
‘We’ve identified the time: the first day of the Panathenaia, when carrying weapons won’t look suspicious,’ Aristogeiton murmurs. ‘Hippias and Hipparchos will be resting on their laurels, certain nobody will try anything that might anger the gods.’
‘And you aren’t frightened of doing that yourself?’ asks Kosmos, voice quiet too.
‘This is the work of the gods,’ Harmodios mutters. ‘They will not begrudge us the time. Athens must be freed from the yoke of single rulers—every man’s voice must be heard.’
Yes but not every woman, or child, or enslaved person. Not for a long, long, long— The Not Here swills words around Echo’s mouth, but she traps them in.
Kosmos glances at Aristogeiton. ‘How will we exile them with all those people around? They might turn the crowd in their favour.’
Aristogeiton and Harmodios exchange a look. ‘The crowd will be with us,’ Aristogeiton says. ‘But we’ve moved away from the exile plan.’
‘To what?’ Nabu frowns.
Aristogeiton purses his lips and jerks his head.
‘We ruled out execution, you can’t put it back on the table just like that,’ Kosmos says, stroking the line of his scar from his nose to his lip.
‘We can, given what your uncle’s done to my sister—to my family name,’ Harmodios says.
‘Death is not a proportionate response to accusations of promiscuity.’
‘It wasn’t just accusations, Kosmos,’ Harmodios’s voice drops, ‘and even if it were, she’d never marry as she should. We can’t let it stand.’
‘I need a more valid reason than your personal grudges,’ Kosmos replies.
‘It’s not as if you don’t have personal grudges of your own,’ Harmodios says, glancing pointedly at Kosmos’s scar.
Kosmos snatches his hand from his mouth, working to control his features, suddenly less of a brat than Echo thought. ‘Yes, but they’re not why I’m here.’
‘How about this, then.’ Aristogeiton’s tone is snakelike, quiet but brimming with threat.
‘Hippias has had too many volatile episodes. We leave him and Hipparchos alive in the Persian provinces, and they’ll raise an army and return.
Persia is a much greater power than we are, they will slaughter us all—horribly, you’ve seen how your father can be—and undo any good we manage to achieve.
They have to go, they’re too dangerous to let live. ’
‘Kosmos, maybe they’re right,’ Nabu murmurs. ‘I know they’re your family, but you believe in what we’re about. This is the most expedient way to open the laws to all Athenian citizens. Even your grandfather strove for unification, he would have wanted it.’
‘I doubt he would have wanted it this way.’ Kosmos taps his scar again, staring at the ground, memories washing over his face.
Presently he nods, meeting Aristogeiton’s glower.
‘You’re right, of course. Would that their blood didn’t run in my veins.
The first day of the Great Panathenaia it is. One-and-a-half moons, so close.’
A baby’s cry and answering woman’s lullaby weave from a nearby house.
The merchant on the other side of the agora turns his whistle to a song as he urges his ox and cart homeward.
These streets are never silent, these houses never empty; Athens’s inhabitants are never truly alone.
Echo catches Hanno’s eye as Absalon packs away their game, and wonders how much they overheard.
On the way home, swallows darting on a pink dusk, Echo can’t shake Kosmos’s sad tapping of his scar.
Hippias and Hipparchos have done unthinkable, unforgivable things, and Echo’s anger boils as a latch rattles in her mind’s eye.
She wants to tear them limb from limb for all the fear and hurt they’ve caused.
Her small spike of empathy remembering Hippias’s bloodshot, paranoid eyes doesn’t outweigh her anger at Myrrhine’s bruises, Khemut’s sewn-shut eye, or Kosmos’s scarred lip.
The tyrannos and his brother shouldn’t have been able to gain their positions of power in the first place given their violent proclivities, and they should face retribution.
Yet, this plot the conspirators are putting together feels wrong.
This small gang of men are taking the fate of Athens into their own hands, and they’re talking about revenge, not retribution.
By making violence their source of hope, they’re risking making whatever follows the tyrannos equally unjust. Vengeance, even against those who commit atrocities, does not necessarily balance the scales.
There must be some objective, legal way of overthrowing and punishing Hippias and Hipparchos that’s being overlooked.
Then again, if it were up to Echo half of Athens would face justice, everyone who treats another human being as property, or otherwise violates their consent—even Kosmos, who she doesn’t totally dislike.
She’s an interloper to whom Athenian laws and ethics are utterly incomprehensible.
Of course, she knew the theory of this society before she travelled—the Not Here has told her that much—but seeing it all in practice makes her skin crawl at every turn.
It’s one thing knowing history and another living it, the Not Here purrs, and the complete alienation of it all makes her ache with homesickness.
Though Athens does need to be rid of Hippias and Hipparchos, Echo can’t shake the feeling that’s not what she’s here to do.
She pauses, Nabu and Kosmos a step ahead, Hanno and Absalon three steps behind, and gazes at the mountains.
Her feet itch. She could run. A breeze brings her the scent of herbs and fresh olives.
She takes one stride, and another, breathing hard.
Just a few steps more and she’ll be sprinting, off the hook.
But how far could she get before she was discovered as a woman?
Or some well-meaning citizen chased her down as a runaway slave?
Or the Not Here made her do something stupid?
These Hellenes are stronger and faster than she is, better fed, better trained.
She falls in behind Nabu, trailing home with hunched shoulders, trying to align herself with a calling that feels wrong.