Sacred Games (15 page)

“What would you have done, if they had?”

“Let them, and watched what happened. If they fight you one at a time, then it’s honorable. That’s what my dad says.”

“Is that why you helped me?”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t a fair fight, them beating you up all together,” said the small boy who had taken on a dozen and won. “Besides, I saw you try to hit them, even when you knew they were going to beat you. You didn’t give up like a coward.”

Timodemus became my firm friend from that day on, two lonely boys together. By rights every boy in the city should have admired him, but they didn’t. They feared him. Timodemus was mild until someone pushed him a step too far, and then he had a terrible temper, which always ended in someone else getting hurt. I think I was the only boy he never hit in anger. Because of that, we often sparred together when he needed to practice—no one else his own size would face him—and though I never had Timo’s natural talent I came to know something of the art of pankration.

I know why I liked and admired Timodemus. I had never before met anyone so completely unaware of his own virtues. I don’t know what he saw in me, a boy who didn’t get on with other boys.

I said, “Don’t worry about it, Timo. Investigation is what I do. You know I’m happy to help.”

Timo was depressed. “I didn’t kill Arakos, but there’s no way I can prove it. They’re going to execute me, aren’t they?”

I thought of the boy lying in the street, and I said, “No, they’re not, Timo. I’m going to save you.”

I’
D AGREED TO
meet Markos at the Athenian camp so we could interview One-Eye and Timo’s uncle Festianos together. I got there first. A slave took great delight in telling me I’d wasted my time; Festianos wasn’t there, and One-Eye had walked out of the camp, heading south. I left a message for Markos with the slave and threaded my way south, crouching so my head didn’t show over the height of the tents to avoid my father.

My head was so low I ran into a man as he walked north to the Games.

“There you are,” Father said. “Have you lost something?”

“I, uh …”

“I almost died when I saw you run onto the chariot track. What in Hades were you thinking? Never do such a thing again.”

“Sorry, Father.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “It was well done. All the men around me remarked on your bravery. I was proud to tell them you were my son.” He paused and looked me over. “Are you all right?”

I was shaking, not from the recollection of near death under the wheels of a chariot, but because they were the first words of praise I’d heard from my father in a long time.

I swallowed and said, “Yes, Father. I’m fine. Scratched and bruised, but fine.”

Father took me by the arm and led me to our own tents. “That fellow who pulled you out of the path of the chariots. Who is he?”

“Markos, of Sparta.”

“A Spartan, eh? Well, he saved the life of my elder son. Tell him he’s welcome in my home—or my tent—anytime.”

“Thank you.”

Sophroniscus was dressed in his best formal chiton, an old but
respectable ankle-length garment that covered his body, arms, and legs. It had once been brightly patterned in red, green and yellow, but the dyes had faded, the borders were a trifle frayed, and the material stretched across his paunch. He looked about as comfortable in formal wear as a sheep wearing sandals. Father usually wore a short exomis to leave his arms and legs free to move, essential for his work, since he was a sculptor. It was strange to see him not covered in gritty marble dust. When I looked at Father, I imagined I could see the future Socrates, which wasn’t hard, because Socrates at that moment sat outside our tents, turning something over in his hands and ignoring our conversation.

“I’m sorry about Timodemus, son. I know he’s your friend. Are they to execute him?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Don’t go getting yourself killed along with him. Your mother would never forgive me.”

“I’ll do my best, Father.”

Then he frowned. “Pythax came to see me today about this supposed marriage. He’s not a happy man. Why did you have to act so rashly? Now we have this mess to sort out.”

“You could approve the marriage?” I said in hope. “Pythax is happy for it to go ahead.”

“Of course he is!” Sophroniscus thundered. “How many former slaves can marry their metic daughters to a citizen?”

A metic was a resident alien with permission to live in Athens. The prejudice against marriage with metics was strong and getting stronger all the time. Pericles even talked of a law to make the children of such marriages non-citizens. If that happened, Diotima and I would have a problem.

“Please don’t blame Diotima’s family.”

“I don’t. I blame you. If you wanted to be married, son, all you had to do was ask me. Didn’t I just tell you every man at Olympia remarked on your courage this morning? By the end of that race, any man in the hippodrome would have been pleased to match
his daughter with you. In fact I had two offers as I left. It’s not too late; I can still find you a good girl.”

“I did find a good girl, Father.”

“You found a non-citizen. How do you know she won’t turn to her mother’s trade?”

I laughed. “One thing I can guarantee you, Father: Diotima will never be involved in prostitution.”

Sophroniscus sighed. A long, deep sigh like I’d never heard from him before. “We’ll have to see what sort of a dowry this Pythax can offer to accompany his daughter.”

Had I really heard that? I felt an unexpected flutter of hope. “You mean, sir, you might consider taking Diotima after all?”

My father’s shoulders tensed, and he shuffled his feet like a guilty man. “I hate to admit it, son, but business has been slow. Too slow. The truth is, we’re close to the point where I’ll not be able to feed the family.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize.”

“I know you didn’t. You’ve been too busy gallivanting about. But if your Diotima comes to us with enough dowry to keep our heads above water … well, I’d have to consider that very carefully.”

“Is there anything I can do, Father?” I asked. I was genuinely, deeply, and suddenly concerned. He lived for sculpting. If he were unable to continue, it would break him.

“I need work, son. Perhaps one of these athletes will commission me for his victory statue.”

Dawn lit up for me. “So that’s why you’ve flocked to congratulate the winners! I thought you’d become a sports fan.”

“If it will help win work, I’ll join the mob.” He sighed. “There are too many good sculptors. Onatas of Aegina is here. So is Myron of Eleutherae.” Sophroniscus named the most fashionable, most popular, and most expensive sculptors in Hellas.

“If I see a chance to help—”

“Oh, so you have time to work with your father now?”

“No—I mean, yes! But Father, if I find someone who needs a statue—”

“You’ll mention it. Yes, I know you will, son. By the way, there was a message left for you.”

“A messenger? What did he say?”

“No messenger, a written message, and we don’t know how it got here. It’s all a bit of a mystery. Socrates has it.”

Socrates sat outside our tents. He’d ignored our conversation. Instead he stared at something in his hands. He’d obviously fallen into one of his trances, during which he was oblivious to the world. Father and I had both become accustomed to his strange behavior.

“Socrates!” Sophroniscus yelled into my brother’s ear. “Wake up, will you?”

Socrates looked up as if he’d suddenly noticed the world existed. “What?”

“Show Nico the message,” our father said.

Socrates held out the thing in his hand. It was an ostrakon, a piece of broken pottery, red on the outside and black on the inside. On this one, words had been scratched in stark white into the inner black:

He said the secrets would kill me to if I told you but I had to do sumthing the Athenian dinnt do it the secrets killed the Spartan

“Where did you find this?” I demanded.

“In the middle of our tent,” Socrates said. “When I returned from the chariot race. It lay in the middle, where you couldn’t miss it.”

The tent flap had been up. Anyone could have tossed it in as he walked by.

“What secrets could kill a man?” I asked myself aloud.

“Many,” Sophroniscus said. “You’re old enough to know that.”

I inspected the ostrakon closely to deduce what I could from it.
I hoped for a clue as to who might have thrown it into our tent. Then I sighed.

“It’s difficult, isn’t it, Nico?” Socrates sympathized.

“It certainly is.”

“Yes. Other than that the writer was a nervous, left-handed man with a blunt knife and tawny-colored hair, there’s almost nothing we can get from it. But you know that, of course.”

I almost dropped the ostrakon. “You can’t possibly know all those things,” I said, but I was afraid he could.

“Sure you can, Nico,” he said. He was too absorbed in the problem to notice the insult. “See here where the knife has slipped? It slipped from left to right. So he held the ostrakon in his right hand and the knife in his left.”

Now that he pointed it out, it was obvious. “All right,” I granted. “But the blunt knife?”

“The same slip happens here and here and here,” Socrates pointed to the slight scratches. “The knife point wouldn’t hold.”

I had to concede he was right. “And the nervousness?”

“He can spell secrets, but not didn’t. He couldn’t think straight.”

I knew what to look for now. I rotated the shard until I found the short hair trapped in a crack at the bottom edge, where the break was particularly ragged. I didn’t know how a hair could have caught there, but there was no doubt it was tawny colored.

I put the ostrakon in a cloth pouch and tied it to my belt. I had no idea what it meant, but I’d find out. This was the first evidence that Timo might be innocent.

“Good work, Socrates.”

“Thanks, Nico!” Socrates beamed.

I
FOUND
O
NE
-E
YE
in a dusty patch he’d taken for an exercise ring, surrounded by dry, spindly grass. Not an official athlete, One-Eye wasn’t permitted use of the Olympic facilities. He danced about in the dust in a sequence of oddly elegant movements, each
ending in a blow, a kick or a punch against the empty air. One-Eye practiced the standard routine of a pankratist. He danced naked and glistened with sweat. The red, empty eye socket gave him the forbidding look of an angry Cyclops. He snarled and grunted, dodged, swerved, and struck so smoothly that I knew I observed a daily routine. One-Eye might have been an old man, but I for one wouldn’t have wanted to face him. I doubted anyone but a current contestant could have taken him on.

One-Eye saw me, but he didn’t stop his practice. If anything, his momentum increased ever so slightly. Had he picked up the pace to impress me?

I said nothing but waited for the routine to slow to a halt, which finally it did.

“Nicolaos,” he acknowledged me. He began to alternate jogging in place and straining his arms against a large piece of granite.

“Very impressive, sir. Are you finished?”

“The heavy, useful part of the routine is over, yes. I must cool down slowly now, or the muscles will knot.”

“Does Festianos exercise like this, too, sir? Where is he?”

One-Eye laughed, but without humor. “My brother has let himself go these last years. But perhaps I shouldn’t criticize too much,” he allowed. “My brother has been afflicted with poor health. No, Festianos has gone to the stadion to watch the pentathlon.”

“Oh, of course.” I’d forgotten for a moment there were Games on. “I don’t suppose you know where I could find him on the hill?”

“He left late. I imagine he’ll be toward the back, close to the entrance.” One-Eye continued his warm-down exercise without pause while we talked.

“Don’t you want to watch, too, sir?” I asked.

“There’s only one sport I care about, young man, and it’s not the pentathlon.”

“I see.”

“You’re the one assigned to free my son. Why aren’t you out doing it?”

“It’s why I’m here, sir. There are some questions I have to ask.”

“I know nothing about the killing,” One-Eye said at once. “Except that it was thoroughly deserved.”

“Arakos didn’t
deserve
to die,” a voice said. Markos came to a halt beside me. He was surprisingly calm considering One-Eye had just consigned a Spartan to Hades.

One-Eye looked him over. “You’re the Spartan they assigned to make sure my son dies.”

Markos said mildly, “I’m the Spartan assigned to investigate a murder.”

“Then perhaps your time would be better expended elsewhere. Chasing the killer, for example?”

The tension oozed between One-Eye and Markos, between One-Eye and me. I said, “One-Eye, I understand your love for your son makes you anxious—”

“My love? When I learned my wife was pregnant, I sacrificed to Zeus for a son. I sacrificed every day of her term. Do you understand why?”

“Er … because you wanted a son?”

One-Eye snorted. “If that’s your idea of incisive deduction, then my son is doomed. Yes, you idiot, I wanted a son so that I could pass onto him the family tradition of the pankration.”

“Why did you say just now that the death was deserved?” Markos asked, then added, his voice dripping with irony, “Please don’t mind my feelings in your answer.”

One-Eye turned to me. “I know you’ve talked to my son. He must have told you what transpired on the march here.”

I knew, because Pindar had told me. Timo hadn’t thought to mention it. It occurred to me that my friend Timo hadn’t told me everything. I said, “I heard. Arakos harassed Timo.”

“Arakos had it coming. Like most Spartans, he was an arrogant
bastard.” One-Eye glared at Markos, daring him to interject. Markos kept his face a carefully controlled mask. He was a superb interrogator. One-Eye went on, “Whoever got him, I’ll wager it was someone understandably angered beyond control.”

I wondered if he realized that description might apply to him or to his son. For the first time I noticed how Timo’s propensity to wild anger had been inherited from his father.