Chapter 10 Echo #3
The bee flies away, Nabu following its path. ‘We can trust how much he hates his uncle and father.’ Nabu taps the skin just above his lip with a raised brow. ‘I’ve lived in that household for years. Believe me, we have nothing to fear.’
Aristogeiton leans on his knees, lowering his voice.
Sweat glistens on his back. ‘No matter. If it all goes wrong, yours will be the first hemlock cup. So easy to frame: the Lydian healer living in the tyrannos’s house, in the employ of the Persian kings, twisting the aristokracy against our gracious leader… ’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Nabu doesn’t move, but the muscles in his shoulders harden and Echo’s heart is suddenly in her throat.
Aristogeiton smiles. ‘Of course not. I’m just telling you something you already know.’
In the wrestling ring, Harmodios slams his knee into Kosmos’s belly, then spins out of range.
The gaggle of observers nod and clap, a communal referee.
Still winded, Kosmos lunges, but Harmodios leaps over him, landing on his back but righting himself in time to grapple Kosmos out of the circle.
Glowing with victory, Harmodios gives Kosmos a handshake, but uses it to whisper something that makes Kosmos’s eyes widen.
Aristogeiton stands, dislodging the beads of sweat on his skin. ‘You brought Kosmos in, Nabu, you take responsibility for ensuring he doesn’t talk.’
Again, Nabu nods silently, but his teeth clench and temples pulse as he watches Aristogeiton stalk to the baths.
Once the other men have cleared the colonnade, Echo sits on the bench. ‘You are shaking. Are you OK?’
Nabu puts his head in his hands, fingers gripping his veil of curly hair.
‘They offer friendship so freely, but as soon as it doesn’t suit them—as soon as their connection to me might become shameful…
’ He trails off. ‘We’ll be lucky if Athens doesn’t become a seething mob with this attitude to leadership.
But we can’t leave Hippias and Hipparchos in power. ’
Echo sees her chance. ‘What if we should leave them to fight? The previous Traveller maybe was wrong. What if there is something different we are destined for?’
Nabu leans back, arms folded, and watches a group of discus players. ‘No, he was adamant. Gods to mud and mud to gods.’
‘The phrase is open to interpretation.’
‘You seem determined to hold this conversation, so let’s have it out.’ He takes a steadying breath. ‘What’s your interpretation?’
‘It is as you argued with Xenophanes the other night—’
‘Can we do this without Xenophanes?’
Echo tunes into the Not Here. ‘Heraclitus?’
‘That impenetrable upstart from Ephesus? Xenophanes is better!’
‘You are determined not to listen.’
‘Fine, go on. Heraclitus.’
The Not Here gapes, swamping Echo in information to sift and translate.
‘The metaphysics of Heraclitus and Xenophanes are similar: Both are monists and believe the universe comes from a divine “goodness.” But Heraclitus is better at integrating the conflicting nature of the world. This is what you argued about with Xenophanes the other night. Heraclitus agrees with you, he says the balance of the world is in its duality.’
Nabu looks at her sidelong. ‘I was wondering when you’d use the Traveller’s voice again. Anyone would think you’d been hanging out at the stoa without me.’
‘When would I have time for that!’ She’s irritated that the voice that worked some magic on Kosmos has no bearing on Nabu, but then, he’s dealt with a Traveller before.
‘Heraclitus is obsessed with opposites: hot and cold; light and dark; mortal and immortal … he can rest with these conflicts as Xenophanes cannot, but only if they are in balance. He says, in differing, the world agrees with itself—a back-turning harmony, like that of a bow and lyre.’
‘I’ve never read such assertions in his work.’
Echo leans in, whispering. ‘Well perhaps he has not written it yet. It is the balancing of these opposites that he believes leads to harmony. A ship moves because of the tension between wind and sail. Too little and the boat is becalmed, too much and it is wrecked.’
‘It’s the same with crops,’ Nabu says, ‘a tension between sun and rain, too much of either and they’re drowned or baked.’
‘Exactly. But in the times that come, this balance will be lost. Natural will be eclipsed by unnatural; nonhuman by human; co-existence by consumption. Until nothing is left. We must preserve this balance by founding a philosophical school.’
‘A school?’ Nabu snorts despite the Traveller’s voice. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Thought without action never changed anything.’
‘But founding a school—engagement, discussion—those are actions. Actions that lead to more actions. There are many ways to make change.’
‘It’s not enough.’ Nabu frowns. ‘The only way to make lasting change is to rebalance the dynamics of power. Permanently.’
Conscious of an attendant passing with a stack of clean towels, Echo whispers. ‘Harmodios and Aristogeiton do not want a true balance of power, only to make power available to a select few.’
‘But I don’t. I want to remake Athens, and I can use them to do that; I can make them part of something beyond their own ends.
’ Nabu stands, wrapping his towel around his waist. ‘Don’t think I take this lightly, Echo.
I know firsthand the impacts of uprising.
I lost my own father to it. If I thought there was another way, I would take it. ’
She slumps. ‘And Kosmos?’
Nabu starts. She hasn’t mentioned his name since their argument. ‘What of Kosmos?’
‘You believe he will not talk?’
‘He’s got no spine to talk. Besides, with him out of sight is out of mind.’ Nabu glowers. ‘Man’s got a real blind spot, he just can’t see what’s right in front of him. I can’t explain, it’s like … like the eyes of his soul are broken.’
‘More than some, less than others,’ Echo replies. Nabu shoots her a look and she throws her hands in the air. ‘Yes, I know your meaning. I see these things also.’
Nabu shakes his head. ‘Perhaps you want to, Echo, but your eyes are trained for another place entirely. The gods alone know what you see.’
He turns, ready to leave, and she trails after him. The one thing she can’t see right now is how on earth to complete the Deed.
The Panathenaic Games roll around faster than Echo wants, and with every passing day her dread ripens. She tries talking to Hazel about it, but her voice keeps getting lost in the dreamscape, and the Forward Traveller just can’t understand how trapped she is here.
To attend the Games, Nabu lets Echo borrow a red tunic with bronze wire sewn into the neckline, and dots myrtle oil on her neck and wrists.
She wonders why they’re bothering given the chaos about to be unleashed, but it’s the principle: If they’re to wield knives, Nabu says, they should at least look respectable doing it.
She tries neatening her shorn hair in the reflection of the atrium pool, but it persists in sprouting around her headband.
‘Leave it,’ Nabu says. ‘You’re presentable enough.’
The crowds press in as they amble along the Sacred Way, midway through the pack of the tyrannos’s household.
The road slopes upwards, hairpin turns crammed with men and women, all pampered and preened as if the gods themselves are coming to visit—which in Athenian eyes they are.
Echo struggles to believe in any gods, repressing smirks when Khemut sacrifices mice to the hearthside statue of Hestia, and yawning behind locked teeth when Hippias or Hipparchos gather them all to sprinkle wine for the household gods in the atrium.
Nabu has a collection of divine statuettes too, tucked into an alcove in his room, some animal-headed, others winged, none of them Hellenic, but gods nonetheless.
Even here on the Sacred Way, walking up to the gods’ own temporary homes, a dangerous laugh bubbles inside Echo.
Her hubris is an arrogance from the Not Here, and she keeps her head down, avoiding eye contact.
As they reach the hilltop the crowd thins, and the gold around the citizens’ wrists and necks multiplies.
The air grows thick as heavy perfumes fight with the human scents of sweltering humidity.
She spots faces she recognises: Other plotters whose names she hasn’t caught; Harmodios with his family, the sister Hipparchos ruined hidden behind a veil; Aristogeiton, one eye on Hippias, the other on Harmodios, with no time for the wife on his arm; and Leaina, snuck into the aristokracy by Aristogeiton and dressed in yards of dancing buttercup-yellow linen.
She catches Echo’s eye and blows her a kiss.
Echo smiles back. In Athens, there are few chances for a woman to meet her own acquaintances, especially when the men that might bring them together frequent different circles, so they haven’t spoken since the Xenophanes symposium, restricted to distanced waves.
In high spirits, Leaina sticks her tongue out and Echo returns the gesture, but the Not Here chants: her tongue is her tongue is her—
A bellowing bull parts the throng, whose cheerful hollers increase.
The bull is laced in garlands of wildflowers: poppies, cornflowers, daisies, thyme.
Gladioli coat its horns and priestesses fling dianthus petals at its feet.
A summer squall blows in from the coast, disturbing the confetti and hurling dove-grey clouds across the otherwise blue sky.
The wind lifts sweat from Echo’s cheeks as it starts to spit.
Under the shadow of the Acropolis gate, she spots Kosmos shuffling into line beside his family, nodding sombrely to his uncle and hugging his father.
Hippias tweaks the band in Kosmos’s hair, almost but not quite long enough to braid yet, and whispers something in his ear.
They part from the embrace with that Peisistratid laugh which sounds like pickaxes on marble, and look up into the rain.