He turned toward her, put both arms around her and kissed her, then held her, feeling the shape and warmth of her against his chest, a comfort for every grief. When he asked Hieron for her, he had not known that it was even possible to feel for a woman what he felt now. From the first day of their marriage, she had astonished him. It now seemed to him that she was best at everything he was worst at, that, like the second leg of a compass or the second flute of a pair, she completed him.
Even with war, even with siege, even with catapults they had been so happy.
He thought, painfully, of Marcus dead; Marcus burned, and the smoke rising from the funeral pyre high into the sky above Syracuse. Perhaps he had seen it, and not known what it was. He had noticed Marcus little enough in life.
Marcus had done his best to fulfill all his obligations honorably, and had died in their contradictions without complaint. He himself, no better a man, had everything to make himself joyful. By what calculation could those shapes be made to balance? Archimedes sighed and glanced down at the small riddle he had solved, the perfect ratio, already dwindled in his estimate.
And yet, that ratio was perfect still. Perfect, and known. It rested whole in his mind, needing no use, sufficient in its existence. Like the soul. But unlike the soul, comprehended.