“Joy to you, Matthias,” Aristomache said, seeming delighted to see him. “I’ve been doing my best to explain to everyone what we’ve been doing, but you’ll be able to do it so much better.”
“And what have you been doing?” Kebes said, mostly to Father.
“Walking in the steps of Sokrates,” Father said, calmly and evenly, and, typically, speaking perfect truth even if it wasn’t very helpful information.
I took a step forward again, so I was next to Maia, who hadn’t said anything at all. She glanced down at me, looking worried, and that drew Kebes’s attention to me for the first time. He looked at me, and then quickly at Father, and then he laughed. “Not so much with the agape, then, Pytheas?”
I didn’t see Father move, but suddenly Kebes was on his back on the ground with his cap in the dust. He had a shaved circle on the top of his head.
Maia grabbed Father, and the crowd that had been moving to and fro across the agora crystallized around us, and other people also grabbed Father. Aristomache bent over Kebes as he was starting to get up. “Simmea was killed by pirates recently,” she said to Kebes, directly into his face. She was about half his size and more than twice his age, but she clearly wasn’t afraid of him.
Kebes froze as he was, up on one elbow, clearly shocked. “Killed?”
“Also,” Father said, calmly, as if continuing a debate, standing quite still and ignoring the people holding onto him, “What did you imagine you were doing calling your city after my wife?”
Kebes face immediately closed up again.
“What?” Maia asked, puzzled.
“Lucia was Mother’s childhood name,” I said. Maia looked down at Kebes and let go of her grip on Father.
“I had no idea she was dead,” Kebes said, getting up. He was a head taller than Father, but I hadn’t noticed it until now. He dusted himself off, then picked up his hat. He looked at me again, and didn’t laugh this time. His expression mingled grief and anger.
“So why did you call the city after my mother?” I asked, while I had his attention.
“We all wanted light,” Kebes said, looking truculent. “It’s a coincidence.”
Aristomache and most of the strangers in the little crowd around us looked satisfied. Father looked as if his face was carved from marble and couldn’t change expression. I didn’t believe Kebes. Moreover, even though I didn’t know him and couldn’t possibly tell, I knew he was lying. It was certain knowledge—another divine power unfolding itself in me.
“Look, no hard—” Kebes stopped, looking at Father. “I suppose there are hard feelings on both sides. But she’s dead. Let’s agree to leave each other alone.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to wrestle a bout in the palaestra?” Father asked, the essence of politeness. People were still holding on to his arms, but he wasn’t struggling at all.
“No, I really wouldn’t,” Kebes said. “But I’ll tell you what. The music competitions are over. But we could have another, just the two of us, tomorrow. Extend the festival a little. Compete in a different sphere. That way there will be no damage done.”
Father was smiling one of his most terrifying smiles now. “But what if I want to do damage?”
“Do it with your lyre,” Kebes said.
Father had won every musical competition he had entered in my lifetime, and probably before it as well. If Kebes knew how good he was in the palaestra, Kebes must also have also known how good he was at music. I didn’t understand why he would even make such a suggestion, unless he was hoping to deflect Father’s anger by giving him a victory that wouldn’t hurt.
“I know what you did to her,” Father said, intent on Kebes, ignoring the people still holding his arms and the large circle of people gathered around us listening.
“I didn’t do anything to her you didn’t do too,” Kebes said, deliberately glancing at me. “Did I give her a child?”
I stepped between them before Father could throttle Kebes in broad daylight in the agora before half of Lucia and half the crew of Excellence. “You are talking about my mother,” I said. “And she’s dead.”
“Nothing against you, little one. And I’m very sorry she’s dead,” Kebes said, looking down at me. “I loved her. And she loved me.” He meant what he was saying. But that didn’t mean it was true, only that he believed it.
Father put a hand on my shoulder, and I realized they must have let him go and that he was ready to thrust me aside to get to Kebes. “This music contest,” I said, quickly. “What’s the prize?”
“A heifer,” somebody in the crowd said. I hadn’t asked because I wanted to know. I didn’t take my eyes off Kebes. Now that he was looking at me, I could see by his eyes that he hadn’t offered it thinking it was an easy way to lose. He was sincerely confident of winning. But I was just as confident that nobody could beat Father at music. (He is the god Apollo. He invented music.)
“No,” Kebes said, looking at Father over my head. “Not a heifer. How about if, instead, the winner gets to do what they want to the loser? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? We’ve always hated each other. This way we both have a fair chance.”
Father’s hand on my shoulder seemed to become heavier. There was a hiss of drawn breath from the crowd. Maia was frowning. Saying do what they want seemed better to me at that moment than saying kill. But why would Kebes suggest it? He was lying when he said they both had a fair chance. He believed he would win. How could he?
“I can agree to that,” Father said. “What should it be? Original lyre composition?”
“Any instrument,” Kebes said. “Original composition. I have an instrument you may not have seen.”
I could almost hear Father’s sneer. “Who judges this competition?” he asked.
“Four of yours and four of ours,” Kebes said, then he glanced down at me again. “None of our children.”
“Nine judges,” Father countered. “Four of yours, four of ours, and one chosen by lot.”
“Very well,” Kebes said. “And the winner does what they want to the loser, and the loser doesn’t stop them?”
“Without a judgment? That’s barbaric,” Aristomache put in. There was a muttering of agreement in the crowd. “It’s one thing when somebody has been condemned, but we’ve never done it without that.”
“We’re all civilized people,” Kebes said, lying again, and still staring over my head at Father.
“Pytheas has been unhinged since Simmea’s death,” Klymene said. I hadn’t noticed her there in the crowd. “This is madness. We know the Goodness Group didn’t kill her. The ship was in Troy last autumn, nowhere near Kallisti.” She was speaking the truth as she knew it, even about Father being mad.
“I believe that,” Father said. “This isn’t about that. It’s about what he did to Simmea before he left.” Father didn’t ever lie, I realized. He sometimes deliberately said things that could be misinterpreted, but as far as I could see he always told the truth.
“What did you do to Simmea?” Maia asked. She had a soft voice but it sounded hard now.
“Nothing you didn’t personally sanction,” Kebes said, looking at her for the first time since he had greeted her. “You chose the partners for the Florentines for the Festival of Hera. You yourself matched me with her.”
Maia made an inarticulate choking sound.
“He raped her,” I said, into the silence, to make it clear, since it seemed nobody else was going to. “She wrote about it.”
Klymene looked shocked. “Is this true?”