Empire of Dust (24 page)

He finds it incredibly annoying that Aristotle isn't looking at him but at something in the water, and doesn't appear to be listening. He's the prince regent of Macedon now, not a student. “And it would calm Athens,” he adds, “which is getting nervous about my father's expansion into other kingdoms.” Though born in Macedon, Aristotle has spent most of his life in Athens. Maybe this will sway him.

“Aha!” Plunging both hands into the pool, Aristotle pulls out a golden whelk shell as water drips from his beard. “I've been looking for one of these. Do you see how the opening is on the left side instead of the right? Isn't it fascinating that seashells can be right-or left-handed just like people?”

Alex wonders if his frustration will burst right out of his head. “Aristotle, please listen to me. I need you on my council,” he says, and his voice is sharper than he intended.

Aristotle turns the shell over and over in his hand, then holds it up to his eye. “No, no, no,” he says, frowning and peering inside. Alex isn't sure if he is saying he won't join the council or if he's talking to himself about the whelk. He crosses his arms and waits.

Aristotle places the shell in his basket and raises inscrutable eyes to Alex. “I will not join your council,” he says.

“You're refusing?” Alex can hardly believe his ears. “Why?”

“I don't want to witness your transformation into Philip of Macedon.”

He feels as if his former teacher has punched him hard in the gut. “How can you say that?” he spits, thinking of his father, drunk and staggering at a banquet, cuffing male cup bearers on the head and fondling servant girls' breasts. Most palace servants keep a wide berth around the king when he's in his cups, carrying dishes and chamber pots twice the distance to avoid him. Everyone knows Philip to be barbaric, pompous, and uncivilized, both at home and afield, and Alex has endeavored for the last sixteen years to be
nothing
like his father.

Aristotle looks at Alex with solemn gray eyes the color of the storm clouds churning overhead. “I know
why
there are openings on the council.”

Alex bristles. “You don't understand—I
had
to do it. I cleansed the council of treachery. Gordias confessed. Hagnon was guilty, and Theopompus is, too, though I didn't get a confession from him. When I return I will send him into exile.”

Aristotle looks at Alex thoughtfully, as though Alex were responding to a question in class. “And where do you think Theopompus will go?”

“What do you mean?” Alex asks. What kind of a question is that? Who cares where Theopompus goes?

“Carry out the scene, Alexander,” Aristotle says, pushing past his former student to sit on damp sand. He grabs a towel and dries his feet. “Once Theopompus leaves, he will go straight to the Persians and do the exact thing you have accused him of. This time, he'll
actually
sell all the information he has, in exchange for a comfortable lifestyle under the Great King. No, no. It's far better to keep him close at hand. As long as he is comfortable in Macedon, he will never betray you.”

I wish I had taught you to think.
Alex wants to slap his forehead. Of course. Whenever the Athenians, jealous of one man possessing too much influence, exiled their most successful generals, the exiles usually took their knowledge and experience to a grateful enemy. Themistocles went to Persia, Alcibiades to Sparta. Alex should have anticipated that a man like Theopompus would probably do the same. He feels a blush rising up his neck.

Still, Theopompus is guilty of something. Why else would the Athenian in Alex's vision have given him the Praxiteles statue? And Alex is no longer a little boy sitting on a bench scratching notes on his wax tablet with a stylus as his teacher lectures. “You've been to his country estate,” Alex says. “The furnishings, statues, jewels, tapestries. And a Praxiteles from Athens. It can't all be ambassadorial gifts.”

Aristotle barks out a laugh as he ties his sandal strap. “Oh, poor Theo! If you were older, Alexander, you would know he runs the most expensive brothels in all of Greece. He buys the finest young slaves of both sexes when he travels as ambassador. Black-skinned Ethiopians. Golden-haired Gauls...”

Aristotle shakes his head, still chuckling. “That Athenian gave Theo that statue from his private collection in return for a gorgeous Persian hermaphrodite. The poor man couldn't decide if he liked boys or girls better, so he got two at once for an enormous price. It was all the agora could talk about two years ago.”

Alex feels his stomach clench into a coiled knot. While running brothels is distasteful, it isn't illegal. It certainly isn't deserving of capital punishment.

“And...Gordias?”

“A true priest of the gods,” Aristotle says, placing his rolled-up towel in his basket. He looks up and Alex flinches under his teacher's hard, gray stare.

“So incorruptible, in fact, that he confessed to a crime he didn't commit in order to save Theopompus, who, let us admit, you would have executed even if he
had
told you about the brothels, just to show the people how strong a ruler you are at sixteen.”

Alex feels something tighten in his throat. He
would
have executed Theopompus. And Gordias, too, if he hadn't been protected by priestly law. He would have killed two men innocent of treason.

A memory rolls through him with the force of a punch: a kneeling body, blood spraying the scaffold like the first hard, fat raindrops of a storm, and a head rolling into the crowd like a children's leather ball. Alex doesn't want to ask the next question, but he must. “Hagnon?”

“Oh, Hagnon deserved death, don't worry about that.” Aristotle stands up, puts a hand on Alex's shoulder, and starts guiding him down the beach toward his hut. “Everyone knew that Hagnon was corrupt. He arranged it so that foreigners docking in Macedon's ports wouldn't have to pay duty on cargo. The ship owners paid him half the price they would have paid Philip.”

That explains exactly what Alex saw. The Persian plunking down a sack of gold, Hagnon giving him a small scroll. A duty-free certificate.

“But I saw such pure hatred in Gordias's eyes,” Alex says, remembering how the dark eyes smoldered with loathing.

“I'm sure you did,” Aristotle replies. A jagged bolt of lightning illuminates the sky over Samothrace, and thunder spreads out in silent waves, practically rattling the little islet. They quicken their pace. “Hatred for what you were doing. Hatred for the brutal ruler you so quickly and readily became. Those who are truly strong don't need to make a public show of strength, you see. True strength often calls for walking away from a situation even if you might look weak or foolish.”

Alex shakes his head. “No. Now the people respect me.” He thinks of the beautiful story Sarina told him, of the god who demanded loyalty of his subjects, made them choose death to prove it to him.

“They fear you,” Aristotle says gently. “That is different.” He bends down and grabs a fistful of gray powdery sand. With his index finger, Aristotle sifts through the grains in his palm, examining tiny pieces of shell ground down by waves and rocks.

For a moment, Alex wonders if he, too, is but a shell in the ocean of tumultuous political winds and tides that will wear him down to grist. Is there any other end for him than being crushed between Persia and the Aesarian Lords, between Byzantium and Athens?

“Is fear not equal to respect?” Alex asks, hating that his voice rises like an angry child's. He takes a deep breath. “How can there be respect if there is no fear?”

“Fear leads to more treason, not less,” Aristotle replies coolly, picking a shiny pearlescent shard from the sand, examining it, and throwing it down. “Some people will want to kill you before you can kill them. Others will submit, becoming sheep, meekly obedient without thoughts of their own.”

He looks at Alexander, his eyes calm now, like the placid waters of a mountain lake on a cloudy autumn day. “We are not Persians, Alexander, too cowed by the whip of the Great King to utter a word or think a single thought he might disapprove of. You would grow to despise your own people if they were like that. When you possess power over those whose lives, whose minds, you do not value, all you will have...”

Aristotle opens his hand slightly and sand slides out in a steady trickle. “...is an empire of dust.”

The words hit Alexander hard, like a physical blow. Aristotle is practically accusing him of being stupid enough to destroy Macedon. Hot anger rises in him and he knocks Aristotle's hand, spilling all the sand at once. Aristotle's eyes open wide in surprise. This is not the usual behavior of students or former students with the man many consider to be the wisest person in the world. But his hard gaze immediately softens. While Alex's other teacher, Leonidas, routinely disciplined with beatings and starvation, Aristotle always said bad behavior contained the seeds of its own brutal punishment so he didn't need to lift a finger.

Alex runs a hand through his hair and rubs his sore neck. Clearly, Aristotle thinks he behaved unwisely in dealing with his council. But what else could he have done? “An empire of treachery, you mean!” he says. “If the spy wasn't Hagnon, Gordias, or Theopompus, then who was it? Because whoever it was is still in the palace in a position to spill secrets to my enemies.”

Aristotle smiles ruefully. “Indeed,” he agrees. “When you return, you must look more closely at those you didn't suspect of treachery. Look at them very closely indeed, Alexander.” Their eyes lock, and Alex feels a frisson of something. An understanding that hits him with the force of an arrow tearing through flesh in the heat of battle.

He hears the rain before he feels it, a soft patter of shimmering sound all around them. They should run back to the hut, he knows, but he can't move. He studies his teacher. The weathered face is mapped with the lines of time, wisdom, and humor. The gray eyes peering out from under bushy eyebrows spark with a hidden secret.

He knows.

Aristotle
knows
about Alexander's ability to read men's eyes. He knows about Snake Blood. He
knows
about Alex—and he's kept it from him. Always taught him to revile magic.

“Why—” The betrayal has lodged somewhere in his throat, making it hard to speak. Rain falls on his forehead and he impatiently rubs it off. “How—”

“Alexander.” Aristotle says his name so gently, that the anger building within Alex is suddenly extinguished, as though the older man smothered the burning sparks with the liquid kindness of his voice. “Do not be angry. Do not let this keep you from seeing reason—for
reason
is why I have never told you what I have always suspected.”

“Explain,” Alex croaks. “Tell me why you kept my magic hidden from me.”

The philosopher scowls, and silver raindrops pool on the tips of his gray-streaked dark hair. “Magic such as you mean does not exist,” he says. “The only true magic is human ingenuity. Search for answers to your problems within yourself, Alexander. For in yourself all problems and all answers lie. Not outside.” He turns and starts walking quickly as the rain falls now in silver sheets, sticking Alex's tunic to the skin of his back.

“When did you know?” Alex asks above the rising hiss of rain, his injured shoulder nearly touching his teacher's as they walk.

“Do you remember,” Aristotle says, “the first time we ever met?”

“Of course,” Alex says. When he was five he often liked to stand outside his father's office and try to listen at the door, while the guards on duty rumpled his hair and gave him honey cakes. One day he overheard Philip arguing with a man about becoming Alex's tutor.

“As for me, I don't give a cracked obol whether you do or not,” Philip was saying, “but my wife insists, and it's not easy to keep that one happy.”

“Highness,” the other voice came wearily, “many kings have begged me to instruct their spoiled princelings, and I always give them the same answer: no.”

Finally, the man reluctantly agreed to at least meet Alex before deciding. Alex ran back to his nursery, only to have a guard fetch him moments later and take him back to the office.

“Good day, Prince Alexander,” Aristotle said, and Alex had the odd feeling he was being treated as an adult. The man bent down to peer at him more closely. For the first time ever, Alex felt himself pulled into someone's eyes, going through the tunnel of white light, and out the other side. He saw this man as a child, not much older than Alex himself, standing next to a funeral pyre laid out with mother, father, sisters, and brothers. All around him, mourners wore cloth masks pinned with parsley and cloves of garlic. Plague.

When Alex returned to himself, he looked around at the familiar furnishings—the battle standards and torn shields—and wondered briefly where he was. Then he looked up at the dark-haired man bending over him, and remembered. A tear slipped down Alex's cheek. He looked up and saw his father's face turning red.

When the man asked him why he was crying, he said, “Because you lost your whole family in the plague. I can see you standing there as the pyre was lit, see you throwing your plague mask into the fire.”

“What nonsense are you prating there?” Philip said angrily.

“No, it's all right,” Aristotle replied, holding up a finger. He turned to Philip and said, “I am too valuable to teach reading, writing, and figures. Anyone can do that. Send the boy to me when he is thirteen and needs to learn how to think.”

Now, they turn left on the narrow footpath from the beach through the trees, and in the clearing ahead Alex sees smoke rising from the roof of Aristotle's hut and hears a comforting clatter of pots. Kadmus must be attempting to prepare dinner. But he's not ready to go in. Not yet. He needs to finish this conversation in private.