“You were a poet and a philosopher when you left us,” Pytheas said.
“We’ve all grown up a lot since then,” Nikias said, smiling.
“And you’re not abandoning a family here?” Klymene asked, familiarly. I realized as she spoke that of course she knew him, even though they hadn’t seen each other for longer than my entire lifetime. All the Children knew each other. Whatever city they lived in now, they had long complex histories of growing up together in the original Republic.
“No. I did, but we’re separated. She went to Hieronymos.” He looked down.
“You might like to know that as well as Neleus here you have a daughter in Psyche. Andromeda was pregnant when you left.”
“I’m going ashore,” Maecenas grunted. “I’ll talk to Timon and try to sort things out.”
“Is it safe ashore?” Klymene asked.
“Armor, and an armed escort.” Maecenas sighed. “I’ll take Dion and—no, by Hekate, not Phaenarete. Klymene, find me half a dozen trained unwounded Young Ones for a shore mission.”
She nodded.
“I’m going to swim some more,” Father said.
“Not alone you’re not,” Maecenas said. “Arete, Kallikles, stay with your father. Swimming is all right, but you’re not going ashore, none of you. You’re a provocation.”
“And me?” Phaedrus asked.
“Keep helping the doctors, you’re good at that.”
Klymene looked at Kallikles again, but he didn’t look at her. She caught my eye, and I spread my hands. I didn’t know what to say to her. I was also horrified that she had voted against Father, but if he was prepared to deal with it, so was I. She was Klymene, Mother’s friend, Kallikles’s mother. I had known her all my life.
“Kallikles,” she said.
He turned to her. “We won’t have a feud, since Father doesn’t want one, but you can’t expect me to feel the same toward you.”
“That’s fair,” she said. She turned and went below, moving as if she had aged twenty years in the last half hour.
25
ARETE
The voyage home was strange. On the voyage out, even during the storm, we’d had a sense of adventure, of the world opening before us. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt like that. Ficino had wanted to find the Trojan heroes. We had all sung in the evenings. We were sailing into the unknown, and we looked forward to what we would find. It was a voyage of discovery. The voyage home was a journey through anti-climax. I stood my regular watch, but all the joy had gone out of it. The ship still felt alive, and the sky and the sea and the islands were still beautiful, but that was all. Erinna seemed to be avoiding me, after the conversation on the masthead. She was polite when I spoke to her, but uncomfortable. I wasn’t sorry I had saved her life, how could I be? But I cried myself to sleep missing her, and missing Ficino, who might still be alive if I hadn’t thrown myself into the fight. I had always been told that all actions have consequences. Now I was starting to understand what that meant.
We had envoys aboard to Kallisti from Lucia—to all the five cities. And we had people who wanted to go to other Lucian cities, and a handful like Nikias who wanted to come back to the Remnant. There were no more secrets about where the Lucian cities were. Timon had given Maecenas a map, a beautiful thing, drawn like an illuminated manuscript, embellished with dolphins and triremes, with all their cities neatly marked.
“Ah,” Father said, when he saw it, and then when we looked at him curiously he just said “Beautifully drawn.”
We called at the Lucian cities, one after another, where the news that Kebes was dead and the Goodness destroyed was met each time with shock and horror. Aristomache tried to explain to them that it wasn’t really our fault, but it was hard to avoid feeling guilty nevertheless.
“The problem is that it’s a subtle complex thing and hard to explain,” she said to me as we sailed toward Marissa. “Matthias was in the wrong, and he started the attack. But you did destroy the Goodness, and that does destroy our civilization. And we were doing so much good.”
“The Goodness would still be safe if Matthias hadn’t attacked us,” I said. It felt strange to call Kebes by his other name.
“Indeed,” she agreed. “That attack was wrong and unprovoked. And you didn’t destroy the Goodness on purpose. The wind changed. It was Matthias’s fault for using a fireship and trying to destroy this ship. God punished him. But he has punished all of us for Matthias’s hubris.”
It was strange. I knew Kallikles had made the wind change. In one way that did make it unquestionably a divine action. But I was much less ready than Aristomache to see it as part of Providence, or being inherently just. To Aristomache, even though she had known Athene, the actions of the gods were something that happened on a different moral plane. To me they were not, they couldn’t be. “Kebes—Matthias—was one of your leaders,” I said.
“One of them, yes, but one among many. You saw how we didn’t all follow him.”
“I did. But he wasn’t acting alone, either.”
“The other conspirators, those who survived, were condemned to iron for ten years. I thought you heard that.” A cloud passed over the sun, and in the changed light Aristomache looked old and frail, though she was nowhere near as old as Ficino had been.
“I heard it, but I didn’t understand it.”
“They’re reduced to iron, the fourth rank,” she said.
“We have irons, but it isn’t a punishment.” The idea was very strange to me. “Do you mean that they’ll be slaves?”
Aristomache winced. “Not slaves. But the irons do all the hardest work. They mine, and do all the things nobody else wants to. Especially in the new cities it’s dangerous and difficult work.”
I thought about it. It seemed almost like slavery. And the way Kebes behaved seemed like putting pride above the good, exactly as Plato said timarchy began. Sparta had been a timarchy, valuing honor above truth. But saying this to Aristomache would hurt her without helping anything, and she was among the best of the Lucians. I was glad she was coming to the City with us as one of the envoys, and glad that Auge was another—though poor Auge was seasick, even in these calm breezes.
We set people down and picked up more envoys at all eight Lucian cities. I wasn’t allowed ashore anywhere, though I sometimes had a chance to swim. Maecenas wasn’t taking any more risks with the ship.
I kept on grieving for Ficino. Maia missed him even more. She wasn’t grieving extravagantly the way Father had. She withdrew into herself and never mentioned him. She spent hours standing at the rail in the wind. She avoided Aristomache much as Erinna was avoiding me.
“He always said he’d die when he was ninety-nine,” I said, coming up next to her.
She jumped. “Arete, don’t creep up on people that way!”
“I wasn’t creeping up, you were completely locked in your thoughts.”
“It’s not true that I don’t love people,” she said, out of nowhere. She had Ficino’s hat crushed between her hands.
“Of course it’s not! Who said that?”
“Ikaros,” she admitted.
“That idiot.” I had never met Ikaros. “What does he know about it? You love lots of people. You love me.” I put my arm around her.
Maia snorted, half way between laughter and tears.
“Come on, Magistra, you haven’t taught me anything for days.” It was the best way to cheer her up, giving her something to do. And besides, my birthday was coming the next month, and with it my tests and my oath. I wanted to be ready.
We sailed on among the islands, and I wished them unknown again and empty of consequences. I stood my watches and did lessons with Maia and had occasional conversations with Father and my brothers. We did not stop at Ikaria, but I looked longingly at the shore and the pine woods as we sailed past.