Chapter 12 Echo #4
‘Nothing,’ Echo says, wincing as he applies a salt poultice.
‘Nonsense, look at the state of you. I know Hippias’s work when I see it. Will he come for you again? Are you in danger?’
‘We both are,’ Kosmos replies.
‘Why, what did you do?’ Nabu asks, pressing harder on Echo’s wound and making her skin catching on the linen rag.
Kosmos shakes his head. ‘What I should’ve been doing all along, probably.’
‘The right thing?’
‘Something like that.’
Nabu stands back and examines Echo’s blood-soaked tunic. ‘How bad was it?’
The waves of what she’s done—of what she and Kosmos have done together—break over her. ‘I insulted him. I saw Leaina and I could not be silent.’
‘Can you fix it?’ Nabu folds his arms and leans against his desk.
Echo exchanges a look with Kosmos. ‘No. I do not think I can be safe here. But…’ Her Not-Here-self breaks out again, and the endemic wrongness of everything that’s been bubbling in her since she arrived boils.
‘I have no wish to become silent again. Everything is upside down here. Women are unseen and unheard. Humans own other humans. My world is not perfect, but where I am from, humans are free—or, they have a right to be free. In my country, you and Kosmos could be together, could even be husbands to each other.’ Kosmos’s head whips up, jaw slack, as if this is inconceivable.
‘Change comes, but it is slow. Very slow. We must make it faster. That is what I am here to do, not to sneak in the house of the tyrannos.’
Nabu nods, eyes on his feet. ‘You’re leaving, then.’
She lowers her voice in case anyone outside is listening. ‘I cannot stay here. I am not safe, and I can do nothing because Hippias watches.’
‘Where will you go?’
She hasn’t thought this far ahead, she’s just following an instinct that she must not and cannot go back in the box she’s just broken out of.
She looks to Kosmos, wealthy and well-connected, the only one who might be able to safely hide her.
He meets her gaze, both of them remembering the conversation they had so many days ago in the orchard.
‘I have a farm we can go to,’ he says, ‘just beyond the city walls.’
‘You’re leaving too?’ Nabu’s arms fall to his sides.
‘I can’t stay either. The rebellion might’ve failed—for now—but I can’t stand by and watch anymore. Nabu, the things my father did to Leaina…’
Nabu pauses. ‘She is dead then?’
Kosmos nods, examining the crates of healer’s trinkets around them. ‘But I didn’t touch her. I could never do the things—’
‘But you stayed!’ Nabu says. ‘You watched, you didn’t stop him!’
‘What could I do? What would you have done?’
‘I would’ve—would’ve—’ Echo watches Nabu struggle with the knowledge that he too stood by. He and Echo knew what was happening just as well as Kosmos. In their own ways, they all capitulated to Hippias’s cruelty. Echo can see him rolling out the ugly argument and giving up. ‘The river farm?’
Kosmos nods. ‘Echo and I have discussed it.’
‘Have you indeed?’ Nabu says, arching an eyebrow at Echo.
She shuffles. ‘Only briefly!’
‘Echo says we must start a school of philosophy—’
‘Not this again!’ Nabu rolls his eyes. ‘You really believe you can change the world by making people think differently?’
‘Well, violence hasn’t worked, has it?’ Kosmos retorts.
They’ve both raised their voices and there are footsteps in the hallway, interspersed with the telltale tap of Khemut’s cane. Echo glances at the door, shushing them.
Nabu ignores her. ‘What about you, Kosmos? You want to change how people think, you should start with yourself!’
‘This is me starting on myself!’
‘Stop!’ Echo shouts over them both, and then, dropping her voice, ‘Quiet, someone is listening!’
Kosmos and Nabu turn to her as if seeing her anew. They blink at each other, the door, and her again.
She lowers her voice. ‘Kosmos, you should pack. It will be best if we leave soon. At daybreak.’ Then, realising she’s issued him an order, adds, ‘Do not you think?’
‘Yes.’ He gathers himself, avoiding looking at Nabu. ‘Daybreak it is. I must say farewell to Myrrhine and my grandmother as well.’
When he leaves, Khemut is waiting outside, apparently dusting an old amphora, glaring warnings at them.
The door swings shut behind Kosmos, and Nabu slumps into his chair. ‘Don’t you need to pack too?’
Echo looks around. She picks up her pouch of menstrual rags and spare breast-binding strips.
Nabu frowns. ‘That’s it?’
‘I do not own any other items.’ Echo shrugs. ‘You know this.’
He looks around, as if only just realising that, except when he lends her tunics for special occasions, she’s been wearing the same clothes he gave her on arrival.
‘Well, you’ll need more than that.’ He tips the herb jars out of his spare medicine bag and bashes dirt off it.
‘Here, you’ve been using this for errands, let’s put some things in it.
You’ll need a new tunic too, you can’t walk through Athens covered in blood. ’
‘Some things’ turns out to be a jar of salt poultice for the cut on her brow, two spare tunics—one for dirty jobs, one for occasions, both of which Nabu must’ve outgrown years ago—extra bandages to use for binding, a felt hat for cold nights, and a wooden-clasped wool travelling cloak that doubles as a blanket.
Once Echo’s changed clothes, Nabu throws the cloak over her, then hands her the bag.
‘Good luck, Traveller. You’re going to need it.’
She takes the bag, swallowing. ‘Come with us.’
Nabu shakes his head.
‘Do you not trust me?’
‘Even if I did, there are other reasons for me not to come. I could still be useful as a plant in the tyrannos’s house. Besides, things with Kosmos are … difficult.’
‘I understand. I will miss you.’
‘And I you, strange female creature, but we’ll see each other again. Your Deed isn’t over, and neither is mine.’
Their eyes lock, and Echo is fleetingly hopeful, but as she turns and puts her hand to the door latch, he asks, ‘What happened to Leaina?’
The Not Here croons and froths. ‘Leaina, beloved of the tyrannicides, died at the hands of Hippias, tortured for information.’
For once, Nabu starts at the Traveller’s voice. ‘And is it true what the servants are saying? That he cut out her tongue?’
Echo sighs, releasing the information she’s been trying to repress ever since she met Leaina. ‘No. She bit it out to make sure she would not betray anyone. In many years, they will make a statue for her and place it in the agora. A golden lion, without its tongue.’
‘That doesn’t make it alright.’
‘No,’ Echo replies, in her own voice again, opening the door and stepping out of the old room in which she’s been so intolerably quiet and biddable. ‘Nothing can.’
In the corridor, she’s surprised to find the sun is rising, though she hadn’t noticed the long sleepless night pass. Khemut’s returned to the kitchens, but the corridor is still loud with whispers: ‘Wrong—broken—getting it wrong—’
She looks around for the speaker, but she’s alone.
After a moment’s search, she realises the voice is coming from reflections: dawn light glancing off a row of glass jars, the still surface of stored oil, the bowl of a silver ladle.
It’s Hazel’s voice, the only other person who ever speaks English.
How long has she been speaking? Have the whispers followed Echo all day and night, inaudible under the chaos and bloodshed?
‘Getting it wrong—’
Even if she is wrong, Echo can’t turn from her path now.
This is the only way she can be safe, have agency, honour Leaina’s memory, and Echo’s own Not-Here-self, the girl from the puddle who she can’t remember but is certain deserves to speak.
This is her path, and at last it’s one that leads her closer to the Deed she was sent to complete. She will make it work.
Still, the whispers haunt her exit. ‘Timeline—problem—gone wrong—stop now stop—’