Chapter 10 Echo #2
‘No, I suppose not. Nabu’s always said you came from the gods, but I don’t think I believed it till now. I mean, why would the gods send a woman?’
‘They would send Demeter or Hera. Why not me?’
‘You’re more like Kassandra.’
‘Kassandra was still right. It is not her fault the men ignored her and died.’
He frowns at her. ‘You know, that voice really is frightening.’
They stare at the mountains, Echo giving Kosmos time to process the ridiculousness of believing an artisan’s female assistant over his aristokrat friends.
He’s never been totally comfortable with the plan to kill Hippias.
She gets it. Hippias is his father, and it can be hard to utterly damn someone who’s supposed to love you, even when their love is painful.
But Kosmos is torn by conflicting familial loyalty and filial vengeance, and perhaps that friction will be enough to sway him.
Kosmos taps his scar. ‘Let’s say, for a moment, that I believe you. What happens next?’
Not thinking she’d get this far, Echo improvises. ‘We would need a school building. Away from town, to be safe and independent. The rebellion goes ahead with or without us, and so we must be at a safe distance.’
‘Very wise.’ Kosmos gives her something that could be a sneer or smile.
‘Funnily enough, I have a farm like that. My father gave it to me when I came of age. It’s nothing really, just an old house with a rock-riddled vegetable garden and a handful of barley fields.
Couple of slaves, but they’re mostly too young to be useful.
Same problem with the goats. Can’t imagine Xenophanes lying back getting his bunions rubbed in that house. ’
‘But philosophy happens everywhere,’ Echo says. It’s as if until now she’s been in the dark and someone’s just lit a lantern, illuminating the path ahead.
‘Perhaps.’ He looks pensively at the mountains, then barks laughter, and Echo’s trapped in the darkness again.
‘Ha! Listen to me, talking as if I’m going to go off and found a school of philosophy.
That would be more dangerous than kissing Nabu in public.
Well, maybe not. If that really is why you’re here, though, you’ll have to look for another accomplice.
Try Nabu, seems like he’s into senseless ideas this morning.
Though I can’t see that he’ll like abandoning the last Traveller’s instructions.
Or going against Aristogeiton’s wishes either. ’
Kosmos slaps her on the back as he leaves, and she wants to throw her apple core at him. The solutions are all right in front of her, twirling just out of reach.
Over the ensuing days, Nabu becomes increasingly sullen and fractious, snipping at Echo like a wasp, until she’s at her wits’ end.
Worse, she’s getting less sleep than ever, forced onto the stone floor now Nabu’s no longer welcome in Kosmos’s bed.
She’s isolated because he isolates, rarely attending the gymnasion or stoa—fearful of bumping into Kosmos, though he’d never admit it.
He eschews wine in favour of hot barley water with honey and pennyroyal, and sees his patients with short shrift.
So when one evening Khemut comes for her regular cumin and bone-marrow poultice, Nabu rubs the first layer in with uncharacteristic roughness.
‘Just because you’ve had a lover’s tiff doesn’t mean you can take it out on the rest of us,’ she grumbles.
‘He’s not my lover. You have to be loved to be a lover.’
Khemut winces as Nabu continues massaging her arthritic fingers. ‘He irritates me with his whinging too, you know.’
‘Yes, and you’re always in a foul mood.’
Nabu clicks his fingers for Echo to grind marrow faster.
‘I cannot be faster,’ she snaps, letting out her frustration while Khemut’s around to mediate. ‘At least a bad mood suits Khemut. You have a bad mood and become a toad.’
Khemut laughs as Nabu grabs the pestle and mortar from Echo. ‘Give me that. I ought to turn you out.’
‘And deal with Hippias on your own?’ Khemut shakes her head. ‘Now who’s the lunatic!’
Nabu’s venom wilts and he applies the second layer of poultice more carefully.
As Khemut leaves, she cups his cheek and mutters, ‘It’s his loss, Nabu. You know it is.’ Nabu can’t meet her gaze, but nods. ‘Take it easy on Echo. It’s not the boy’s fault. You remember what it’s like.’
Nabu keeps his eyes on the ground, but at sunset he gives Echo the bed, claiming he’ll stay up late reading.
‘Are you sure?’ she double-checks.
He stares at the leech-jar on his desk, their black knots squiggling in the lamplight.
‘Yes, you have it. We should get a second one, really…’ He turns, examining her like a reflection.
How many nights he must have fallen asleep on this very floor, and Batnoam clearly never bought him a bed.
Echo cocoons thankfully in the blanket, despite the balmy evening.
Irritating as Nabu’s been in his anger, this evening’s implosion into misery is somehow worse.
Still, it presents an opportunity. With Kosmos and Nabu barely talking, Echo’s had no chance to turn Kosmos’s opinion in favour of the philosophic school.
On the other hand, though she’s physically around Nabu all the time, he’s been in no mood to approach, so the Deed has been languishing.
Perhaps this new quiet Nabu will be more open-minded.
She curls her fingers around the blanket. ‘Nabu?’
He turns, looking through her, as if gazing at faraway stars. ‘Yeah?’
She bites her lip. ‘Nothing.’ She rolls onto her back, watching the lamplight lap the ceiling, the future’s weight roiling in her like unfastened ballast.
When Echo finally reaches the dreamscape, Hazel is almost as unresponsive as Nabu, and she wakes frustrated and tangled in sweaty blankets.
However hard Echo tries, she’s unable to speak to Hazel the way she did that night with the hul gil.
Hazel is likewise mysteriously quiet—perhaps her ability to communicate in dreams is as restricted as Echo’s.
They’ve got to find a workaround but, beyond smoking gods-awful hul gil again, Echo’s stumped.
She throws her legs out of bed and rubs her face. Across the room, Nabu’s fallen asleep in his desk chair, wrapped in a cloak. Echo tiptoes over and watches him, hands on hips. He looks younger asleep. ‘What are we going to do with you?’ she mutters.
There’s a knock at the door and he stirs as she answers it. Khemut stands outside holding a letter, her shoes already dewy and grass-stained from a morning walk. ‘From Aristogeiton.’
Echo passes the message to Nabu, who squints at it sleepily, like it’s a liver to divine.
‘He’s requesting a meeting today at the gymnasion.
Apparently, he wants to discuss “philosophical matters.” Very unlikely.
I should’ve known they’d make me put my face in at some point.
You’d better accompany me, Echo. You’re useless when it comes to standing up to those men, but I’d rather not walk into the scorpion burrow alone.
’ He hasn’t entirely lost his waspishness then.
Aristogeiton, likewise, brings only one ally to the gymnasion: Harmodios, who a dozen other young men soon draw into a wrestling ring.
Nabu and Aristogeiton hang back on a bench in the colonnade.
Echo hovers bedside them, soaking up the shade.
She nudges her cheek into the breeze, but it’s so meagre it makes no difference.
A line of sweat dribbles from her earlobe, pooling at her collarbone, which seems hollower than it used to be.
Since the rift with Kosmos, she and Nabu eat with Khemut and the kitchenhands, or other less well-to-do friends Nabu has in the potters and sculptors’ quarter, and the meals aren’t as filling.
Across the yard, Harmodios thwacks his opponent to the dirt, ending their match.
Kosmos emerges from the opposite side of the colonnade, strolling to the wrestlers, and Nabu inhales sharply.
Kosmos throws his hand in for the next round and the assembled men whoop and catcall: The plot to usurp the tyrannos may be secret, but Hipparchos’s abuse of Harmodios’s sister is not, and the rivalry is palpable.
Harmodios smirks, squaring off, and taunts Kosmos with jeers too low to hear.
‘If the games were happening,’ Aristogeiton murmurs, ‘Harmodios would be the sure winner.’
A fortnight ago, Nabu might have defended Kosmos’s chances; now he merely grunts assent. Still, he glances pointedly at the attendants around them. Aristogeiton’s own serving boy, distinguishable by his blue tunic, is not five feet away. ‘Careful, the walls have ears.’
Echo stares at the white tiles marking the wrestling ring’s edge, ignoring the heat radiating off the men’s naked bodies.
Mercifully, Nabu always cites her Celtic heritage to excuse her not being naked in the gym like all the other freemen.
Even so, she can’t get used to the liberty with which Athenians wield nudity, partly because she can’t take off her own clothes and relax into the sweltering, oil-slick slouch of it all, but mostly because it’s another thing that’s just too different from the Not Here.
‘My slaves are reliable, and there are events we must discuss. First, we hear that you and Kosmos have fallen out. Then, you both stop coming to the stoa.’
Nabu stares harder at the fight. ‘Kosmos hasn’t been to the stoa either?’
Echo catches Aristogeiton’s look of exasperation. ‘You’re not even keeping an eye on him?’
‘He’s his own man, there’s nothing I can do.’ Kosmos takes a hit and Nabu looks away, focusing on a bee drinking from a puddle of spilt water.
‘You don’t worry he might have turned against us?’
Nabu shakes his head. ‘He might have pulled away, but he wouldn’t endanger our lives.’
‘Can you be sure of that?’