Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [109]
‘Well,’ she said. That was all.
I didn’t see her again for days. I took baths and thought guiltily of our love-making – if that’s what it was. And I found that I thought of Melaina – which seemed like treason, except that she was more my speed, if you take my meaning. I wondered why I hadn’t even tried to kiss her.
Archi went to the conferences, and met with men like Aristides and Aristagoras, plotting a campaign against the Medes for the freedom of Ionia.
I found myself a lonely man in a city that had been my playground. I couldn’t exactly go and sit by the Fountain of Pollio, could I?
I met my Thracian girl in the back alley, almost by accident, and tried to get her to go for a walk with me, but she ran. That hurt.
So after two days of failing to be the returning hero, I went up the hill to the Temple of Artemis. And there I found boys sitting in front of Heraclitus. I wasn’t a boy, but I sat at his feet.
He nodded to me. He was laying out the rules of triangles. There were three new boys. I had been gone just two months, and even that world had changed. But I listened, and my mind went down the paths of numbers and figures in the sand, instead of death and war and sex, and I took a little healing, as I always have from the wise.
When he was done with the other boys, he came and sat next to me.
‘What you did to Diomedes was cruel,’ he said.
‘The logos speaks through strife,’ I said, quoting him.
‘Don’t give me that shit,’ he said. His gaze met mine and ground mine down like stone against iron. ‘You hurt that boy.’
I shrugged. ‘He had it coming.’
Heraclitus sat and leaned on his staff. I can’t remember another time that he sat with me. Finally he looked at me. ‘I have so many things I want to say to you. You can all but see the logos – and yet you are so far from true understanding, aren’t you? You understand me when I talk, and yet you can hurt a boy like that – for a child’s reasons.’
I blinked tears. I had been blinking tears since he sat with me. Hah! I feel them in my eyes even now. No one else had cared, except Stephanos and Archi. He sat there, and listened.
‘I did it because he broke his engagement with Briseis,’ I said. ‘He hurt her. I did the right thing!’
Heraclitus’s eyes rested on me, and you could almost see the sparks as his gaze ground away at mine.
Finally, I hung my head. ‘No, I did not.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Tell the truth, at least to yourself. I knew the truth as soon as I heard that the boy had been hurt. You hurt him. Cruelly. Is that who you are? A man who hurts for his own satisfaction?’
I couldn’t meet his eyes. And I began to weep. I sat on the steps and told him the tale of Cleisthenes. He shuddered when I cut off the hand. But he smiled when I told him, through my own tears, of the funeral pyre.
‘It is the pity of the world that we must come to wisdom through fire,’ he said. ‘Why can no man learn wisdom from another?’
I couldn’t answer him. Perhaps no one can. After a while he went on, ‘You have discovered one of the secrets of the world of men.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked. Those boys – most of them knew me – were wondering why the teacher was sitting with me, and why I was pouring tears the way a mended pot leaks water.
‘The secret is that men are easy to kill. That if you are brave and have a steady hand and a cold heart, you can have whatever you desire.’ He looked away. ‘This city is about to go to war with Persia, and then it will learn a lesson that I think you already know. War is the king and father of all, my son. Some men it makes lords, and others it makes slaves. Do you understand?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Ah!’ he said, and laughed – at himself. ‘The strife I preach – some men master it without knowing why, and use it for themselves, without a thought to consequence. War makes them lords and kings. But they are not good men. The killer lies in every man – closer to the surface in some than others, I think. I saw the