Harry Turtledove - Departures

The look Raga and Tishtrya exchanged was eloquent. Like any master with good sense, Mithredath pretended not to see it. The servants bent and began uprooting shrubs and weeds. They moved at first with the resigned slowness servants always used on unwelcome tasks, but then even they began to show some interest as sherd followed sherd in quick succession.

“Themistokles, Neokles’ son,” Polydoros read again and again, and then once, to vary the monotony, “Themistokles of the district Phrearrios.” He turned to Mithredath and raised an eyebrow. “I think we may assume this to be the same man referred to by the rest of the sherds.”

“Er, yes.” Mithredath watched the pile of potsherds grow by Polydoros’ feet. He began to feel like a sorcerer whose spell had proved stronger than he had expected.

His servants had speculations of their own. “Who d’you suppose this Themis-whatever was?” Tishtrya asked Raga as they worked together to uproot a particularly stubborn plant.

“Probably a he-whore putting his name about so he’d have plenty of trade,” Raga panted. Mithredath, listening, did not dismiss the idea out of hand. It made more sense than anything he’d been able to think of.

“Themistokles, son of Neokles,” Polydoros said almost an hour later. He put down another sherd. “That makes, ah, ninety-two.”

“Enough.” Mithredath threw his hands in the air. “At this rate we could go on all summer. I think there are more important things to do.”

“Like the ruin, for example?” Polydoros asked slyly.

“Well, now that you mention it, yes,” Mithredath said with such grace as he could muster. He kicked a foot toward the pile of potsherds. “We’ll leave this rubbish here. I see no use for it but to prove how strange the men of Athens were, and it would glorify neither Khsrish the Conqueror nor through him our Khsrish IV, may Ahura Mazda make long his reign, to say he overcame a race of madmen.”

The eunuch’s servants laughed at that: they were Persians, too. Polydoros managed a lopsided smile. He was on the quiet side as the four men made their way back to the ruined building in the marketplace.

Once they were there, the Hellene quickly regained his good spirits, for he found he had a chance to gloat. “This building is called the Stoa Basileios,” he said, pointing to letters carved on an overthrown piece of frieze. “The Royal Portico. If we wanted to learn of kings, we should have come here first.”

Chagrin and excitement warred in Mithredath. Excitement won. “Good Polydoros, you were right. Find me here, if you can, a list of the kings of Athens. The last one, surely, will be the man Khsrish overcame.” Which will mean, he added to himself, that I can get out of these ruins and this whole backward satrapy.

Seized perhaps by some of that same hope, Raga and Tishtrya searched the ruins with three times the energy they had shown hunting for potsherds. Stones untouched since the Persian sack save by wind, rain, and scurrying mice went crashing over as the servants scoured the area for more bits of writing.

Mithredath found the first new inscription himself, but already had learned not to be overwhelmed by an idle wall scratching.

All the same, he called Polydoros over. “ ‘Phrynikhos thinks Aiskhylos is beautiful,’ “ the Hellene read dutifully.

“About what I expected, but one never knows.” Mithredath nodded and went on looking. He had been gelded just before puberty; feeling desire was as alien to him as Athens’s battered rocky landscape. He knew he would never understand what drove this Phrynikhos to declare his lust for the pretty boy. Lust-other men’s lust-was just something he had used to advance himself, back when he was young enough to trade on it. Once in a while, abstractly, he wondered what it was like.

Raga let out a shout that drove all such useless fancies from his mind. “Here’s a big flat stone covered with letters!” Everyone came rushing over to see. The servant went on. “I saw this wasn’t one stone here but two, the white one covering the gray. So I used my staff to lever the white one off, and look!” He was as proud as if he’d done the writing himself.

Mithredath plunged pen into ink and readied his papyrus. “What does it say?” he asked Polydoros.

The Hellene plucked nervously at his beard and looked from the inscription to Mithredath and back again. The eunuch’s impatient glare finally made him start to talk: “ ‘It seemed good to the council and to the people-’ “

“What!” Mithredath jumped as if a wasp had stung him. “More nonsense about council and people? Where is the list of kings? In Ahura Mazda’s name, where if not by the Royal Portico?”

“I would not know that, excellent saris,” Polydoros said stiffly. “If I may, though, I suggest you hear me out as I read. This stone bears on your quest, I assure you.”

“Very well.” It wasn’t very well, but there was nothing Mithredath could do about it. Grouchily, he composed himself to listen.

“ ‘It seemed good to the council and to the people,’ “ Polydoros resumed, “ ‘with the tribe of Oineis presiding, Phainippos serving as chairman, Aristomenes as secretary, Kleisthenes proposed these things concerning ostrakismos-’ “

“What in Ahriman’s name is ostrakismos?” Mithredath asked.

“Something pertaining to ostraka-potsherds. I don’t know how to put it into Aramaic any more precisely than that, excellent saris; I’m sorry. But the words on the stone explain it better than I could in any case, if you’ll let me go on.”

Mithredath nodded. “Thank you, excellent saris,” Polydoros said. “Where was I? Oh, yes: ‘Concerning ostrakismos: Each year, when the sixth tribe presides, let the people decide if they wish to hold an ostrakophoria.’ ‘‘ Seeing Mithredath roll his eyes, Polydoros explained, “That means a meeting to which potsherds are carried.”

“I presume this is leading somewhere,” the eunuch said heavily.

“I believe so, yes.” Polydoros gave his attention back to the inscribed stone. “ ‘Let the ostrakophoria be held if more of the people are counted to favor it than to oppose. If at the ostrakophoria more than six thousand potsherds are counted, let him whose name appears on the largest number of ostraka leave Athens within ten days for ten years, suffering no loss of property in the interim. May there be good fortune to the people of Athens from this.’ “

“Exiled by potsherds?” Mithredath said as his pen scratched across the sheet of papyrus. “Even for Yauna, that strikes me as preposterous.” Then he and Polydoros looked first at each other, then back the way they had come. “Raga! Tishtrya! Go gather up the sherds we were looking at. I think we may have a need for them, after all.” The servants trotted off.

“I also think we may,” Polydoros said. “Let me read on: ‘Those who have been ordained to leave the city: in the year when Ankises was arkhon-’ “

“Arkhon?” Mithredath asked.

“Some officer or other.” Polydoros shrugged. “It means ‘leader’ or ‘ruler,’ but if a man only held the post a year, it can hardly have been important, can it?”

“I suppose not. Go on.”

“ ‘In the year when Ankises was arkhon, Hipparkhos, son of Kharmos; in the year when Telesinos was arkhon, Megakles, son of Hippokrates; in the year when Kritias was arkhon-’ “ The Hellene broke off. “No one was exiled that year, it seems. In the next, when Philokrates was arkhon, Xanthippos, son of Ariphron, was exiled, then no one again, and then-” He paused for effect. “-Themistokles, son of Neokles.”

“Well, well.” Mithredath scribbled furiously, pausing only to shake his head in wonder. “The people really did make these choices, then, without a king to guide them.”