Chapter 2 Echo #3
Echo looks to Nabu, who beckons with his fingers, and Echo slides forward, perching in her oversized tunic and dipping her feet in the pool.
The caress of the water on her blistered soles is pure relief.
She glares at the wavelets, daring them to show her that strange face that isn’t quite hers again, but they just twist and marble the shadows.
‘He’s trembling like a kit, Nabu.’ Kosmos whispers over her, not with the same dismissal he threw his shoes at the maid earlier, but as if he’s not sure she’s real or conscious.
Echo thinks of a kit stuck in a warren, just a ball of fur and weak bones, squealing pathetically.
Feels about right. ‘You haven’t done something dreadful to him, have you? ’
‘Of course not, don’t be obscene.’
‘Good thing too.’ Kosmos lowers his voice. ‘I’d have to disown you if you became like Uncle Hipparchos.’
Nabu scowls. ‘Don’t be disgusting—especially not now, after what he did to Harmodios’s sister.’
The Not Here murmurs in its sleep at the mention of Harmodios: Hipparchos likes Harmodios, Harmodios likes another man, so Hipparchos takes vengeance by publicly accusing Harmodios’s sister of not being a virgin.
Perhaps, given Kosmos’s gallows humour about his uncle, it was worse than that.
Echo’s skin crawls at the casual ownership of other humans, even nominally free women and girls.
Her world wasn’t like this. In the shadows, the guards watch her.
She wonders what their names are, where they’re from, what they must think of her, a strange, dirty boy coming from the kitchens with Nabu and being invited to wash his feet.
Kosmos watches her, dabbling his toes and tilting his head. ‘Really though, the boy’s in a state. Where did you find him?’
Nabu shakes his head with a pointed glance at the guards. ‘Not in here.’
‘As you like.’ Kosmos shrugs.
Once their feet are clean, Kosmos leads them through the labyrinthine villa to his room.
At the door, he turns to the guards, ‘Hanno, you keep watch. Absalon, find us something to eat.’ The taller of the two men nods and trudges to the kitchen, as if Kosmos taking dinner in his room with Nabu is a regular occurrence.
Stomach growling, Echo can only hope she’ll be included in the meal.
Kosmos ushers Nabu and Echo inside and the door swings shut behind them, the latch dropping into place like an axe.
Kosmos throws his cloak on the floor and sprawls on his bed, while Echo clings to the wall.
It’s gloomy, the oversized window shuttered against the heat, but the air’s still close and sweaty.
Scrolls scatter the floor between plates of old pear cores and olive pits.
There’s a desk, its surface obscured by stacks of papyrus sheets and clay tablets, dotted by candles left burning, which have dripped honey-scented puddles over a pile of papers and walnut shells.
A kylix with half an inch of unmixed wine sits by the bed, dangerously close to Kosmos’s chamber pot, and Echo wonders if he ever mixes them up.
Kosmos lights more candles, illuminating a tapestry of the Pandora myth, Elpis the goddess of hope’s gleaming wings picked out so deftly Echo strokes them to check they aren’t woven with real metal.
Touching the fabric is like linking hands with the other unseen household women, reaching through time to the moment their fingers worked the loom, borrowing their strength.
‘It’s one of the bigger bedrooms, but no one else will have it because it was an old storeroom and they don’t like the way the winter winds howl in from the sea.’ Kosmos explains to her matter-of-factly, throwing the shutters open on the sunset over Athens. ‘Still, I like it because of the view.’
‘And because I can sneak in any time through that old hatch to the kitchen,’ Nabu adds, pointing it out.
Kosmos frowns at Echo, plucking a half-eaten fig from a cluster of scrolls on his bed and munching. ‘I take it from Nabu’s tone that you’re the helper from the gods, then?’
Echo looks to Nabu, and the question mark must be plain on her face because he says, ‘She’s still confused, Kosmos. Give her some time.’
Echo gasps involuntarily as Nabu reveals the secret of her gender, but he only makes a shushing motion and returns to Kosmos.
‘Her?’ Kosmos asks, re-examining Echo as he finishes the fig and licks his fingers. ‘Are you sure?’
Nabu chuckles, slipping onto the bed next to Kosmos and stroking the hair out of his eyes. ‘About as certain as I am that you’re a man.’ So that’s how it is between them.
Tensing, Kosmos asks, ‘And we can definitely trust her?’
‘I wouldn’t have brought her home if I didn’t trust her.’
Kosmos offers Nabu a smile, half his lip curling while the other half remains paralysed by a neat old scar. ‘Then I suppose I’ll trust her too. The circle is complete.’
A knock at the door sees both men bolt off the bed, and Kosmos furtively accepts the food from Absalon before shutting him straight out again.
Kosmos sighs over the tray of steaming dishes.
‘Khemut must know you’re here, Nabu, she’s got the kitchen girls to brew up Lydian spices specially.
’ Echo stops herself from snatching as Kosmos hands her a heaped bowl of marinated goat, with a side of feta and marrows drizzled in olive oil and honey.
She sinks cross-legged onto the floor, tapestry at her back and bowl in her lap.
The meal’s warmth reaches her bones in a way the cloying evening can’t, as she scoops mouthfuls with trembling fingers.
Flavours explode on her tongue, and she swallows before she’s finished chewing, racing for the next bite.
After some minutes, she looks up to find the others watching her with amusement.
Kosmos sips his spiced wine. ‘Khemut’s cooking’s as good as the Olympians’, is it?’
Nabu elbows him. ‘Don’t tease, Echo’s still confused like I said, and while I’ve given you reason to trust her, she’s had no such assurances she can trust you.’
Kosmos smirks. ‘Should I be offended that you didn’t tell her about me?’
Nabu tears a flatbread. ‘By your own arrangement, darling, I’m not in the habit of telling anyone about you.’ He glances at Echo. ‘You can trust him. I know he seems like the rich idiot son of a tyrannos, but he’s got a heart of gold. Somewhere in there.’
‘Charming.’ Kosmos rolls his eyes, then looks to Echo. ‘But really, don’t worry about me. Ha we not drone onboard pair divined and all that.’
‘Are we not drawn onward ere divided,’ Nabu corrects, Echo’s anxieties unravelling at the words.
‘And I told you not to use the Traveller’s Cipher in vain.
It’s only for when we really need it.’ He turns to Echo.
‘What Kosmos is trying to say is that he’s on our side.
He’s not a Caretaker exactly, but he’s a friend of mine and, therefore, a friend of yours. ’
She frowns, nodding but unconvinced. Nabu has smooth, even features, barring his nose, which bears a forked scar across the bridge.
His eyes are so dark she can’t separate the pupil from the iris, unless the candlelight sputters just right and turns them burnt umber.
They’re still a little wide and na?ve when he’s unguarded like now, and Echo realises he’s younger than she thought—maybe twenty-one, twenty-two?
—the years just hang heavy on him. The choice to let him help her, and help him in return, is a decision she can’t step back from, but she only realises now that the crossroads is far behind her.
The bargain was struck the moment he told her to cut her hair and she obeyed.
That severance was the making of their pact.
He stares at her, with the distant but insatiable curiosity of a religious zealot looking at a priestess, or a child staring at a lion through the bars of a cage.
She assembles a sentence carefully in her mind, simple so she can get the grammar right. ‘Why am I here?’ Or at least, what does Nabu think she’s here to do.
‘You know this city?’
‘Athens.’
‘Correct, and you know the time?’
She thinks of the buildings that are here, and those that aren’t, and the Not Here whispers and giggles away.
Limestone temples on the Acropolis means it’s before Xerxes’s invasion; expression of elite architecture means pre-democracy; but far enough out of the Dark Ages that there are trade routes for spices and enslaved humans, papyrus for writing.
Sixth century? Late? That won’t mean anything to Nabu and Kosmos though.
It barely makes sense to her. ‘Yes. I know the time.’
‘Then you know who rules Athens?’
‘The Peisistratids,’ she says, trying to make it sound like she isn’t guessing.
‘Exactly right.’ Nabu lowers his voice and joins her on the floor, kneeling.
‘The tyrannos in power, Hippias, is not a good man. A malady of the mind twists him, turning him to violence and recklessness. He’s dragging the polis into chaos and ruin.
Nothing can be done about this lunacy—I should know, I’ve been treating him for long enough. ’
‘We are part of a growing group of dissidents intent on stopping him,’ Kosmos continues, bringing a candle into the middle of their whispering circle. ‘And you, Echo, have been sent to help us.’
Her full stomach turns bilious, and she puts her next pinch of food back on her plate.
It’s not like the phrases that Nabu called the Traveller’s Cipher—this doesn’t feel right, doesn’t knock into the Not Here and make it resonate.
‘You are wanting me to help’—her mind races to find the right word—‘usurp the tyrannos?’
‘Our plan is to exile him,’ Kosmos adds quickly. ‘No one will be hurt, just a peaceful exchange of power.’
The Not Here wriggles but stays silent. ‘Where is the tyrannos?’
Nabu snorts. ‘Here of course. In this house. This is the house of the Peisistratids.’
Her frown deepens, heart thudding with fear as the Not Here rouses, whispering exile, execution, torture.
He’s so close, just beyond these tapestries, walls, and flimsy door.
Suddenly, the guards Hanno and Absalon aren’t hulking enough.
‘But you are the healer of the tyrannos. And you are the son of the tyrannos, yes?’
Kosmos inclines his head just a little, glancing to the floor as if he can’t quite meet her eye. ‘She catches on quickly for a woman, Nabu, maybe this isn’t such a lost cause after all. Yes, I’m the youngest of six sons.’
Her sentence construction is all over the place, holding her back from expressing her full confusion. Still, she must get the point across. ‘You not need me.’
Nabu smiles winningly like he did to Khemut in the kitchens, but it’s authentic this time, brimming with hope.
‘We may not have been expecting you per se,’ he says, no doubt meaning they weren’t expecting a woman.
‘But we need a Traveller and you’re it. Twenty-four moons ago another of your kind came—another Traveller, from a place where the gods live and do impossible things every day.
He spoke of gaseous lighting implements and great ships of steam that fare oceans wider than the sea beyond Athens.
He told me to watch for you near the rivers and pools—that you may never come, but if you did, I was to recite the Cipher, and be your Caretaker.
And that if I did all that, in return you would transform our gods to mud and our mud to gods. ’
‘Gods to mud and mud to gods?’ she repeats, hitting the phrase against the Not Here like a singer trying to match a lyre. The Not Here vibrates with disharmony. ‘But what is the meaning of such words?’
‘It means you’ll be the catalyst for our revolution.’ Nabu’s smile widens. ‘Don’t worry, your memories have faded for now, but they’ll start returning—and as they do, you’ll see we’re right.’
She looks from Nabu to Kosmos and back, their faces glowing with a glory that’s abruptly, unexpectedly within their reach. She was right: The point when she could have refused to help them passed hours ago. She has no choice. ‘Yes. I will help.’
The two men beam, and set about their scrolls and papyri with enthusiasm, explaining politics that need repeating many times, and which fall out of Echo’s head as quickly as she grasps them. As Kosmos and Nabu flit around her, she finishes her meal, but the food tastes less sweet than before.