Chapter 8 Echo
Echo
‘I assume you’ve never been to a symposium?’ Nabu says, straightening Echo’s ivy garland.
Lasers in a dark warehouse; ’scuse me have you got a light; tequila o’clock; waking up with a head like hell and mascara-smeared cheeks—
‘No,’ she replies, because, as she so often finds with the Not Here, it’s easier. She yawns.
‘No sleep again?’
‘A little.’ She considers telling Nabu about her dream—the thrill of hearing English, the confirmation that the Forward Traveller he promised her half a moon ago does exist, the relief that she’s no longer alone amongst relative strangers.
But she wants to keep her hope secret and safe for a little longer, so she just says, ‘I remain nervous.’
Nabu takes in her tired eyes. ‘The lock will hold. Trust me, I installed it.’
He knows what she’s frightened of, he fears it too.
The whole household fears Hippias and Hipparchos, and whispers about the ways they take their furies and appetites out on the enslaved people, as well as the other women and children.
Not even the tyrannos’s family are exempt from the threat of violence.
Still, there are gradations of risk. Echo’s spot is not the most precarious—she is the free assistant of a free, employed artisan—but it’s still dangerous.
She’s still just a boy to Hippias and Hipparchos, and there’s no visible differentiation between her and one of the enslaved people, who she lives and eats and breathes beside, and exchanges jokes and gossip with in a way that citizens rarely do.
Yet the enslaved members of the household still eye her warily.
At first, she thought it was about her being free, but during one of Kosmos and Nabu’s walks around the orchard, Hanno explained it’s more than that.
She, Hanno, and Absalon were following Nabu and Kosmos at a distance, close enough to intervene if an assassin leapt from the shadows, but far enough away to give them privacy.
‘Even Khemut gets wary of me and Absalon sometimes,’ Hanno said, his quiet, lisping voice always a surprise emerging from his giant body. ‘It’s because of Nabu.’
‘Because he is a freeman?’ Echo asked.
Absalon shook his head. For a while, Echo had thought he was nonverbal, but by that point she’d seen him whisper a few words to Hanno when they thought they were alone, and knew he just refrained from talking to anyone else.
‘No, Nabu being a freeman is a victory, especially with his childhood being so sad,’ Hanno said, continuing without prompting when he registered Echo’s surprise.
‘Oh, he hasn’t told you? His father was killed resisting the Persians when Nabu was only hip-height.
Nabu and his mother ended up on the streets, and you can imagine what the mother had to do to keep them alive. Horrible.’
Echo watched Nabu and Kosmos kick a rock between them, Nabu laughing like nothing terrible had ever happened to him. Curiosity overwhelmed her discomfort at not learning all this from him. ‘How did he arrive here?’
Hanno leant against an olive tree. ‘As I understand it, the mother ran into trouble in Ephesus, and was forced to sell Nabu to an old healer—Batnoam. He was losing his sight and needed someone to act as his eyes. Eventually, they landed up here. When the old man died four years ago, he freed Nabu in his will, and Hippias kept him on in Batnoam’s old post. So I guess in some ways, it’s a lucky story. ’
Hardly lucky and hardly free, the Not Here whispered, but Echo kept it in check, playing with the long grass. ‘Poor Nabu.’
Absalon shook his head vehemently, and Hanno explained, ‘“Poor Nabu” is exactly what he doesn’t want.’
‘So why does every person avoid us?’ Echo asked again.
‘It’s the thing with Kosmos,’ Hanno said, lowering his voice further. ‘Everyone’s too wise to say anything, but we all know about Nabu and Kosmos, and we all know the trouble that might come from it.’
‘The others do not want to be in this trouble.’
‘Exactly,’ Hanno said. ‘Nor do we, but we don’t have a choice.’
‘How long have they been lovers?’
‘About two years, right, Absalon?’
Absalon nods, eyes glued to Kosmos.
‘Don’t think Kosmos would’ve touched Nabu if he hadn’t been freed. He never touches any of us, doesn’t hit us, none of it.’ Hanno shrugs. ‘I reckon it’s probably something to do with the way his father and uncle were with him as a kid. His older brothers too, rotten lot.’
In her clumsy Hellenic, Echo asks, ‘Kosmos is kind, then?’
Hanno laughs. ‘Well, kinder than the rest maybe.’
In this way, the worlds of the enslaved and aristokratic are overlaid but discrete, threatening to breach each other, with Hanno, Absalon, Echo, and Nabu caught between.
Mostly, the safest thing Echo can do is just shrink into Nabu’s shadow and remain unseen.
In the dreamscape, with the Forward Traveller, there will be no such shrinking—Echo will be herself and relish it.
Tonight’s symposium will no doubt be another instance of hiding in plain sight.
The only reason she’s going is because of Nabu and his assertion that her purpose is to help overthrow the tyrannos.
It’s not that Hippias doesn’t deserve it: He is constantly, casually violent towards the household, from his wife and sons to Hanno and Absalon, though the worst he’s ever given Echo is a cuff around the ear for spilling his daily calming infusion.
Still, in that moment, she wanted to knock him cold.
It wouldn’t have been justice, but it would’ve felt good—and that’s what worries her about the usurpation plot.
Aristogeiton and Harmodios might lead discussions about justice in the agora sometimes, but they don’t unpick Athens’s myriad discriminations with enough depth to make her believe they’ll be good replacements for the tyrannos.
They’re more interested in revenge than equality.
‘You look pensive.’
‘Just tired.’ She’s given up talking to Nabu about her concerns, especially given she can’t offer an alternative plan.
In the atrium, the old paidogogos is changing the water clock, while Kosmos sits by the pool, feet splashing but eyes fixed on the heavens through the skylight.
A commotion by the door makes him freeze, and Echo and Nabu hang back as Hipparchos enters, followed by a coterie of guards, clients, and hetairai.
He passes Kosmos, ruffling his nephew’s hair so roughly his gold laurel crown almost falls in the pool.
Hipparchos laughs, teeth glinting. Echo hides behind Nabu, but Hipparchos still spots her.
She crosses her arms over her chest as his gaze scrapes her ivy crown and the short hem of her tunic and cloak.
His laughter deepens at her discomfort but to her relief he doesn’t stop, carried to the andron by his wave of guests.
The more rumours she hears about him, and the more often she passes his hungry gaze, the fewer her qualms about assassinating him.
In his wake, Hanno and Absalon pace the atrium, while Kosmos readjusts his crown, muttering about how he can’t wait for his hair to grow out. He looks back to the sky as Nabu and Echo approach. ‘Seirios is twinkling more than usual.’
‘Must be summer dust in the aether.’
Kosmos gives Nabu a sidelong smile, rubbing the stubble he’s desperately trying to grow into a man’s beard. ‘Do you actually know what you’re talking about?’
Nabu returns the look. ‘More than you, I’ll wager.’
‘Ready then?’ Kosmos leans so he can see Echo and she nods. ‘Party time!’
She follows them, tracing Kosmos’s wet footsteps across the floor and out into the balmy night.
The moon is just too ripe to be full anymore and they dash across Athens under a handful of stars, clinging to their crowns as their footsteps slap the pavement, Hanno and Absalon keeping pace behind.
In the agora they slow, tiptoeing past migrant workers asleep under the scaffolding for a new stoa, speeding up again as they trace a river through a suburb of workshops, some still clattering with potters’ wheels.
Herms watch with blind marble eyes as the trio cross a graveyard, stopping by a half-erected tomb to catch their breath and rearrange their clothes.
Kosmos tuts at the graves’ elaborate relief of a nude man, simpered over by his grieving wife and miniature slaves.
‘As if Alexios and his wife were so in love.’
‘There was only one woman in that old bastard’s heart, and it was me.
’ The voice—like the figure that follows it out of the shadows—is full and rich.
The woman shrugs, making her moonlight-thin dress sigh against her body.
‘Then again, a woman can’t go believing every little thing a man tells her in bed. ’
‘Leaina!’ Kosmos swoops her into an embrace. ‘You always have the inside scoop.’
‘So they say!’ She winks.
Nabu groans. ‘I’m not sure how, but I’m fairly certain I should be disgusted by that.’
‘Miss me?’ Leaina plays with the hem of his sleeve affectionately.
‘Not when I could help it,’ he replies, but he’s smiling.
Leaina dances between the two men like a moth, the tree branches and grave flowers bending to flirt with her.
So, this is the hetaira Aristogeiton favours over all other women—the only person with a place in his heart even close to Harmodios.
No wonder. Her back is straight and words playful, as if she’s never been in a cage of marriage like Myrrhine.
Being a hetaira is still a cage, no doubt, but maybe it’s bigger.
She turns her attention to Echo, her gauzy dress catching up to her movements as if the air is water.
‘And who’s this then?’ she asks, toying with the neckline of Echo’s tunic.
‘Echo. My new assistant,’ Nabu says.
Echo flushes, aware of Hanno and Absalon’s quiet gaze, and of how close to her breast-binding Leaina is tugging her neckline.
‘He’s been of great help already and he’s only just started,’ Kosmos adds.