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Icarus had barely walked through the door, doing his usual dodge-and-miss of the falling cage, when he heard his father’s voice calling him.
“Icarus! Come meet Pythagoras.”
Icarus had almost forgotten about the mathematician he’d arranged for his father to meet. Daedalus had expressed some concern that his knowledge of this subject, though extensive, might not be quite specialized enough for his current project. Icarus had made inquiries around the city to see if there might be someone who could help. One of his various associates, who sold flowers to the palace, had told him of a man from Samos who might serve. Normally, Icarus would have gone to vet a potential new associate himself, but he’d been so busy with various meetings and transactions this week that he had given his father the address and told him to go and introduce himself.
He wended a habitually careful path through the room of inventions towards the workshop. He found his father bent over the long table, forehead to forehead with a pale man with curly blond hair, whose tunic looked about three sizes too big for him.
“You have truly sent me a treasure this time, my boy,” his father said. “Here is the only person in the whole of Atlantis who has grasped even the rudiments of my thoughts on chemical reactions. What I would not give to have met you long ago. With such a brain as yours, what could we not have accomplished!”
This was the highest praise Icarus had ever heard his father give anyone. Daedalus looked at this Pythagoras the way Icarus had always wished his father would look at him. Icarus resented him immediately. The bright face that looked up at him and shy wave Pythagoras gave him only made it worse. However, this commission was lucrative and needed to be finished, so Icarus plastered a welcoming smile on his face.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said.
Pythagoras looked over to the far corner of the room, where Daedalus, always easily distracted, had pottered off to measure something. “He says you are to thank for this introduction.”
“Yes, though I must say,” Icarus replied, “I expected someone a bit… older.”
“Yes, without knowing my age, your father somehow calculated that we were born in the same year, basing the sums solely on my teeth. It was an ingenious process, actually…”
Icarus watched rather than listened to the explanation. Pythagoras’s entire face lit up, and his mouth quirked into endearing shapes as he spoke. His hands waved, drawing visuals in the air that no one else could see. All the awkwardness and peevishness that had etched his features a moment ago was replaced by wonder and enthusiasm. Icarus had difficulty holding onto his initial irritation. He felt his expression slowly softening.
Pythagoras must have read the inattention on Icarus’s face because he stuttered to a stop. One of the excited gestures morphed into a shy scratch to the back of his head. “I’m sorry. Hercules says I do go on and bore everyone.”
“I was not bored.”
“You were also not listening.”
“I… I cannot lie. I was not attending to what you were saying. But I was not bored. I promise.”
“You must see the contradiction in your words.”
“It is the same with me,” Daedalus called from the other side of the room. He had a habit of appearing to have retreated into his own thoughts, only to suddenly insert himself into conversations. “My son never listens and he never observes, which is why he remains ignorant of even basic physics.”
Icarus grimaced at the words, especially in comparison to the praise Daedalus had given Pythagoras a minute ago.
“How did you come to hear of me?” Pythagoras asked, seeming to sense Icarus’s discomfort.
“I heard Hercules has been going around the city with a new friend in tow, a clever man from Samos, who got them thrown out of one of the gambling halls when his skill in mathematics predicted too many outcomes in their favor.”
“I should have been more subtle about it that night. As a result, all the gambling halls specializing in games of probability are closed to us. Hercules is furious.”
“From what I hear, Hercules makes use of the other types, so it is no great loss.”
“You hear correctly.”
“I asked Pythagoras if he would like to stay with us, given that he is new to the city,” Daedalus said, at random.
Icarus tried not to show his surprise. His father had never taken on an assistant before, much less invited anyone into their home. It had been just the two of them ever since Mother had died, long ago, when he was too small to remember more than a few snatches of images.
“And?” he asked nervously. “What is your answer?”
“It is a kind offer, but…” Pythagoras said, watching Icarus with a sad, serious frown. “If I stayed here, who would take care of Hercules?”
“But we’ll be seeing much of each other all the same,” Daedalus continued.
Looking at Icarus, Pythagoras shyly replied, “I look forward to it.”
Icarus paid the barkeeper for his table’s drinks and carefully made his way back to the corner where his friends, Endymion and Aristaios, were waiting. Only a little wine sloshed its way out of the tankards as he walked.
“You said you know one of the people who jumped the bull today, did you not?” Endymion asked.
“Yes,” Icarus replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, they are over there, the whole lot of them.”
Icarus followed to where his friend pointed. Indeed, there was Pythagoras, talking very closely with two beautiful women—one blonde, one brunette.
“No surprise they have pretty girls hanging off their arms,” Endymion said, “after their heroics today.”
“The blonde is Princess Ariadne’s favorite maid,” Icarus informed them, “and the brunette works in the palace kitchens.”
“How do you know?” Endymion asked.
“He knows everything that goes on in this city. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” Aristaios said. “He has fingers in every pie that is being baked, in all of the bakeries. He’s got an arrangement with the city watch to keep them apprised of any items of interest. He’s got all sorts of connections, does our Icarus.”
“I wish you’d connect me to one of those fair ladies,” Endymion said.
“Perhaps in a minute,” Icarus said absently, too busy watching. “Though you ought to sort out which one each of you would prefer to meet before we go over there.”
While Endymion and Aristaios debated who was prettier, Korinna or Medusa, Icarus quietly observed Pythagoras.
Not for lack of trying, it had been some time since Icarus had been able to secure for his father the kind of client that would necessitate Pythagoras’s assistance. As a result, the past few months were the longest they had gone without seeing one another since the partnership had begun, a few years ago by now. Not until this moment, seeing him again after a long absence, did Icarus understand how big a part of his life Pythagoras had become. Icarus knew he should go greet him, and facilitate the introductions that Endymion and Aristaios wished for, but he was rooted in his seat, stunned by the scene before him.
Icarus knew, of course, how devoted Pythagoras was to Hercules, no matter how much he complained about him. And the last time they’d seen one another, Pythagoras had told Icarus all about the strangely ignorant but undoubtedly special young man he and Hercules had recently taken in, and the woman they had rescued from the Maenads. But Icarus had never met any of them.
Pythagoras had always struck Icarus a touch shy, almost awkward. He was so contained, and Icarus had always felt like an even greater oaf around him, blundering about like a stupid puppy with too much energy and not enough foresight, while the smarter grown-ups calmly talked about science. But watching him like this, with friends Icarus had never met, in his everyday life outside of the five or six days a month that he spent at the workshop… Pythagoras didn’t seem shy or reticent at all. He wielded what seemed like a very sharp tongue with Hercules, exchanged sly and mirthful glances with a man Icarus knew to be Jason, and conversed easily and animatedly with pretty palace girls. He seemed relaxed in a way he never quite was around Icarus. The wrinkle in his forehead that Icarus had learned meant Pythagoras was concentrating or nervous was currently unfurrowed, leaving him looking rather handsome, Icarus found himself thinking. He wondered if the girls thought so, as well. Or perhaps even Jason.
Daedalus had always insisted that Pythagoras was not shy at all, that he laughed and joked with the best of them; but he did concede that Icarus was not wrong, that Pythagoras was always a bit quieter at the end of the day. Daedalus had hypothesized that Pythagoras was simply always tired by the time Icarus returned home. But it was now much, much later than it had been on any of those days, and Pythagoras was the image of animation. It had to be him, Icarus thought. There was something about him that put Pythagoras off. The thought saddened him, because once he’d gotten over his initial and irrational dislike—it had only taken a few meetings for it to dissolve away entirely—he’d come to look forward to finding Pythagoras in his home. Their sporadic dinners with his father had become a real treat. It pained him to think that Pythagoras didn’t feel the same way.
Icarus’s eyes flitted to the rest of the party. From sources even beyond Pythagoras, he had heard much about Jason: the savior of the city, the defeater of the Minotaur, admired by Princess Ariadne herself, if one believed the rumours. Icarus had even seen him a couple of times, but only from a great distance, and as part of the hoi polloi. Today, for example, when Icarus and his father had gone to the arena, fearful that it would be the last time they ever laid eyes on Pythagoras.
Icarus had never known himself to be a jealous sort, but Pythagoras seemed to bring it out in him. First, he’d been jealous of Daedalus’s admiration of him, and now, here he was feeling rather jealous of… well, he wasn’t certain whom. Jason. Possibly Korrina and Medusa. Possibly of Pythagoras himself, again.
Everyone, really. Except Hercules.
“Icarus!”
Icarus’s eyes must have glazed over as he’d shifted from watching the scene to mulling it over. Pythagoras was suddenly standing in front of him and pulling him into a standing position. He enveloped Icarus in a crushing hug.
“Why didn’t you come say hello?” Pythagoras asked.
“I did not see you,” Icarus lied, because it was easier than trying to explain what he had been thinking and feeling, especially when he still wasn’t sure what those thoughts and feelings were.
“You were staring right at me.”
“I was lost in thought and blind to what lay before me. But what are you doing here? I have never seen you in this part of town before.”
“Hercules wanted to celebrate our joyous state of not being dead, and Korrina sent word that we should come to this tavern, even though it is not our usual.” Pythagoras lowered his voice, even though he was still wrapped around Icarus and whispering directly into his ear. “Princess Ariadne herself sent her with a purse to pay for our drinks, as congratulations.”
“That is generous of her,” Icarus said, and catalogued this confirmation of the rumours. “My father and I tried to come wish you luck today, but we were not allowed below. You did very well.”
“Only because Jason coached me,” Pythagoras said reverently.
Icarus tried not to frown, for what was the alternative? The idea of Pythagoras being gored to death for sport was hardly an acceptable outcome. A hiccup escaped Pythagoras’s lips and Icarus felt his frown quirk into a smile.
“No matter the reason,” he said, “I am glad to see you safe and whole. Especially after so long.”
As though sharing a great secret, Pythagoras stage-whispered, “I believe Hercules slipped spirits into my drink.”
Icarus chuckled. “Yes, I’d guessed that already.”
“You are clever.”
“Come, why don’t you sit.”
Endymion and Aristaios had struck up a conversation with two young men that Icarus had met only once or twice before. Seeing Icarus give up his seat, one of them had already slipped in to occupy it. Icarus led Pythagoras to bench at the far end of the tavern where there was a little more room. He deposited Pythagoras onto it, and sat down beside him. Pythagoras immediately flopped onto Icarus’s shoulder. It would have been nice, had he not been so bony. Icarus had never known collarbones could be so sharp. He'd never seen Pythagoras this loose and floppy; he had always been the epitome of collected and upright.
“I have missed…” Pythagoras began. “I have missed supper at your house, and listening to you and your father bicker. I have missed feeling like part of a family again. I have missed… you.”
You have? Icarus thought to himself, because while they had always gotten along, he had never considered the possibility that Pythagoras thought of him as anything more than his colleague’s unexceptional son. He’d thought he’d been the only one missing all those things.
“And I have missed you,” he replied honestly. “I am sorry it has been so long. I am always trying to find something for my father that would include you, but…” Icarus did not say how he had fretted to his father about this, and how Daedalus had had to talk him out of inventing a story about remittances or delayed payments in order to send Pythagoras money. Daedalus had had to remind him of how proud Pythagoras was, not to mention too intelligent to fall for such a ruse. Yet Icarus had brought up the plan multiple times, not only because he worried for Pythagoras’s livelihood, but also as an excuse to see him.
“Do you know,” Pythagoras blathered, in a way that made it clear he didn’t care at all about the commissions, “that in all the time we have been friends, this is the first time I have seen you outside of your father’s house. Why is that?”
Probably because Icarus had not known they were friends, but he could hardly say that.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “We live at opposite ends of the city. I suppose our daily paths take us in different directions.”
“We could force them to collide.” Pythagoras began gesticulating wildly, as he did when his mind was whirring; Icarus loved to see how he lit up, illuminated with excitement. “Like two vectors, we could change the velocity or direction of one or another of our paths. Or we could curve them so that they intersect.”
Icarus laughed. “Even when you are drunk, you think in such terms. I had not thought it possible.”
Pythagoras pouted and slumped into himself. “Even when I am drunk, I am boring.”
“Not at all. You forget who I grew up with. Of all the people in Atlantis, I may be the most accustomed and receptive to such conversation.”
“That is true. So you do not mind it?” Pythagoras perked up.
“Not at all. Tell me more about these vectors.”
Pythagoras did, in great detail. Icarus stretched out his legs, leaned back against the stone wall, and let him talk. He understood a little of the subject—just enough to ask questions that he knew would prompt Pythagoras into talking more. He imagined, knowing what he did of Hercules, at least, that Pythagoras hadn’t been able to go on like this in some time. Judging from the happiness in his voice, he’d needed it.
“There you are,” someone interrupted. “We had begun to worry we’d find you unconscious in the street.”
“Jason!” Pythagoras said, looking up. “Jason, this is my… this is Icarus.”
“Oh! So you’re Icarus.” A variety of expressions—surprise, terror, apprehension, dismay—flashed across Jason’s face. He looked as though he was going to be sick, but not from wine.
No one had ever reacted to Icarus thus before. It got his back up.
“You look like one who has heard unfortunate tales about me,” he said.
“No, not at all,” Jason stammered. “I have only heard of you through Pythagoras.”
Icarus had heard Jason spoken of as a man of honor. It must have been true, for he was a terrible liar. Beside him, Pythagoras stiffened. Icarus looked over and saw that he was staring at Jason, his eyes widened in alarm.
“What vile teasing have you subjected me to when I am not there?” Icarus asked him, because it was the only explanation for these reactions that he could guess.
“None at all. He has told me only good things,” Jason said.
This, at least, was accompanied by an easier, more honest-looking expression. Icarus preened a little to hear that Pythagoras had spoken of him, so favorably and often. And yet… Jason continued to look troubled. Icarus couldn’t make sense of it.
“And Pythagoras tells me that you are to thank for his survival today. For that, you have my gratitude. I don’t know what I would have done if…”
“Me neither,” Jason said, equally unable to even voice the words.
Well, Icarus supposed, he and this mysterious hero had something in common after all. They both looked fondly down at their mutual friend, who had now collapsed completely into Icarus’s lap, and was burrowing into it with his head.
“I can take him home if you and Hercules would like to continue…” Icarus whispered.
“I’d appreciate it.”
It took a few minutes to lumber Pythagoras out of the tavern. It was a long walk to his quarter of the city—even longer with Icarus having to support Pythagoras’s entire weight. He was heavier than he looked. Icarus quietly cursed Hercules for spiking the drinks, despite knowing that without his interference, he would never have learned that Pythagoras spoke about him, cared about him, wanted to be friends outside of his work with Daedalus.
“How did I get so drunk?” Pythagoras asked, as his feet tripped over each other.
“I doubt it takes much, my friend,” Icarus said, enjoying the way the words sounded.
“I’ve been wanting you to meet Jason,” Pythagoras said on the way there. “So he can see what a good person you are, and stop warning me away.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing. You’re hardly the first person whose name he has had an odd reaction to. It happened with Medusa, too, even a baby… He hears a name and thinks… Who knows what he thinks. He can never give a reason when asked. I don’t believe he has a reason. Hercules believes it is part of his madness. The madness that causes his great and mysterious ignorance. He had such a moment when I first told him about you. Said… He said… I don’t remember. Doesn’t matter. Was nonsense anyway.”
Such a long speech took some time for Pythagoras’s thick tongue to articulate, and left him rather tired at the end of it. They walked silently the rest of the way to his house. Icarus thought back to the odd combination of expressions on Jason's face earlier. His mind raced to process this information.
Their house was much smaller than Icarus’s, despite housing three grown men, and it was very bare. Still, it was Pythagoras’s. Icarus didn’t need to ask which room was his; surely it was the one with the desk upon which sat perfectly neat and organized stacks of paper.
“I am glad our vectors intersected tonight,” Icarus said once he’d deposited his charge safely into the bed.
This elicited the biggest grin—drunken or not—that Icarus had ever seen grace Pythagoras’s face. Again, he found himself thinking how nice he looked like this, happy and relaxed. Icarus wanted to see him look like that always. Now that they had run into one another like normal friends, he wanted to meet him again one day, in a tavern, or any of the other places he went with his friends. He wanted…
Oh gods, he realized, as he absently ruffled Pythagoras’s hair. He wanted. Had for awhile, he saw, as he replayed his confused, displaced longings of the past few months in his mind. He wanted his father’s colleague-apprentice, or whatever he was. No wonder he was still sitting here, stroking Pythagoras's head when he should have been on his way. He wanted a man whose intelligence so far outstripped his own as to be laughable. He, Icarus, who’d never been good for much, if one believed Daedalus, wanted the man who was the brains behind a great hero. Who was a hero in his own right.
Why couldn’t he have wanted someone around whom there was less complication, someone a bit more within reach? His father was right. He was a headstrong fool.
“You won’t go yet,” Pythagoras mumbled, halfway between a question and a command.
“I can stay until Jason and Hercules return, if you like.”
“Good.”
Icarus dragged the large iron jug from the common room over to Pythagoras’s bed. He knew what kind of morning his friend was likely in for. He settled himself into a comfortable position on the floor, far from Pythagoras’s head.
Icarus woke at the sound of the front door creaking open. He got up and left Pythagoras’s bedroom, closing the door behind him.
“Thanks, Icarus,” Hercules whispered, dispensing with introductions. “Had no idea so little would affect him that way. It’s a disgrace for a friend of mine to hold his drink so poorly. I have a reputation to maintain.”
The words were rough, but Icarus could hear the genuine worry and love underneath.
“Your reputation is made largely of lies, Hercules, so you needn’t worry,” Jason teased.
“May I speak to you for a moment?” Icarus asked. He nodded at the door.
Jason grimaced, and avoided Hercules’s eye (Icarus could tell that he’d be coming up with a story to explain their conversation to him in a moment), but followed Icarus out and down the stairs a bit.
“What quarrel do you have with me?” Icarus asked directly.
“He told you, didn’t he?” When Icarus nodded, Jason continued, “It was nothing, really. I… I mistook you for… for someone I once heard of.”
Icarus could hear the confused twisting of some mysterious truth. Hercules may have thought Jason mad, and Pythagoras may have gone along with the notion for lack of a more logical hypothesis, but Icarus knew they were wrong. Jason was concerned and he was confused, but he was not mad.
Trying to understand, Icarus asked, “What is it you were afraid of? What would this person you mistook me for do?”
“It was nothing bad that you would do, no complaint about your character. I mean, his character. I just don’t want to see Pythagoras hurt.”
“Why would I ever hurt him?”
“He is very fond of you. If anything were to happen to you… If one day he lost you, he… But as I said. I, er, I was mistaken. And it’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have said anything at all. She told me I oughtn’t to. I’m sorry.”
“Who? Who told you not to say anything?” Icarus asked.
“No one.”
Much as Icarus wanted to know the truth (as well as who this mysterious ‘she’ was), listening to Jason try to lie was painful. He could tell that, whatever it was, he would not get it out of him tonight.
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere other than home. And I have no intention of hurting anyone. Goodnight.”
Icarus continued the rest of the way down the stairs and back out into the street.
He was angry and baffled, but in the middle of these negative feelings, something Jason had stammered struck him. Even when sober, Pythagoras had expressed fondness of him. Enough of an attachment to have occasioned Jason such fear for... for something.
Armed with this information, Icarus resolved to invite Pythagoras out later that week. He thought he had an evening free in his busy schedule. And if not, he would clear it.
The joy of this plan almost counteracted the negativity of Jason’s strangeness.
Pasiphae’s army was coming to take the city, and rumours had reached Icarus’s always-listening ears that the Palladium was missing. If these rumours were true—and Icarus had it on very good authority that they were—the city would not last the week.
Icarus was ready to pack up the most valuable of their possessions. He’d already asked his many captain friends at the harbor for passage out of the city. They’d all said yes, anything for the young friend who had helped them out of a tight spot at one point or another. Icarus and his father could be out of Atlantis within a day.
But Daedalus refused to leave. This was his home, he said, and nothing save the gods themselves would budge him.
And so, Icarus climbed the steps of the temple, two at a time, en route to see the Oracle in hope that she would tell him what he wanted to hear.
After stating his name and business, the priest, Melas, led him through the warren of rooms that formed the Oracle’s wing of the temple. He did a double take along the way. Through one of the many doorways along his path, he spied what was shaped like a girl, though her—his?—head was as bald as an old man’s. The person looked up and locked eyes with him.
“Come along,” Melas said, pushing Icarus on his way with a gentle but firm hand on the small of his back.
The hallway opened into a large room, at the center of which sat a silver bowl of water. A woman emerged from a dark corner.
“You,” she said, with a hint of surprise and trepidation.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Of course. You, Icarus, have a part to play in what the great events to come. A small one, but vital.”
“Events in Atlantis?” he asked, because he’d been coached by many friends to stay on topic with the Oracle; she apparently had a habit of deflecting so far that the questions a man came to ask were left unanswered at the end of a session.
“And beyond.”
“That is what I have come to ask you about.” He explained his dilemma to her—how he wanted to flee the city in order to keep his father safe, and how he sought a higher reason to convince Daedalus to leave. “Can you tell me what I am meant to do?”
The Oracle sat in front of her bowl, but instead of the trance that Icarus had been told to expect, she merely looked sadly up at him. “I will try, but I fear it will be the same as the last times.”
“You have looked at my future before?” he asked stupidly, before remembering that she’d already hinted at something of the sort.
“Yours is a future unlike any I have ever tried to read. It is as though some power causes it to shift wildly—as though someone or something meddles with it. Almost as though I am meddling with it, even though the Oracle is never to intervene, and even though I would never. Me, but not me. Others, too. You yourself cause upheaval. Because of all this shifting, your story is unique among all. It is a story that has been written, and written again. But which is the true ending, I cannot see.”
Icarus didn’t like this at all. He’d grown accustomed to being ordinary. He was barely even worthy to be the son of his own father. Not for him was the fate of heroes. He had no business having a unique story. He was no Jason. He was not Pythagoras.
Pythagoras…
“Does this… Does this part I am meant to play have to do with Pythagoras and Jason?”
The Oracle smiled wanly. “You care for your friend.”
“Very much. More than anything.”
She tilted her head and regarded him curiously. “Are you certain?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Search your heart, and ask yourself,” she said, finally beginning to rock and stare into the bowl. “You say you care most for Pythagoras, yet you are here for your father. What is it you truly hold dearest?”
“You cannot ask me to make such a choice,” Icarus said.
“And yet one day soon you will have to. That, Icarus, is where the uncertainty lies. To whom are you most desperate to prove yourself? To your father? To Pythagoras? To yourself? Whom are you most desperate to save?”
“Which is the correct choice?” he asked, because he could not bear to even consider the question.
“I cannot see that. But I do see pain. I see those you love most hurt and betrayed, sick and under siege. I see corpses pointing fingers of blame at you.”
“Whose?” he asked, panicked.
“I do not know. Their faces change, along with everything else. But I also see joy and love. The sun and the moon, each fraught with mortal dangers. Endless water and bursts of fire. But I see these things all at once, writing and rewriting over each other, unable to agree upon a single narrative. This is not the first time I have been asked to read your story, but it is the first story I have read whose contradictions have left me dizzy.”
The Oracle’s words made little sense to Icarus, but they did remind him of something that had long bothered him.
“You said this is not the first time you have been asked to look into my future. Did Jason… Did Pythagoras’s friend ask you about me?”
He wasn’t certain if she was allowed to answer such a question, but the expression on her face said enough.
“You told him some of this, didn’t you?” he said.
“No,” she said, most mystifying of all. “He told me.”
“How? Is he a seer, too?” Icarus asked. He thought about it; it would explain so much, so many of the moments of strangeness Pythagoras had used to tell him about, but to which he had apparently become too accustomed to notice anymore. Perhaps such power was part of being touched by the gods.
“No, he is not a seer," the Oracle said, putting an end to that theory. "However, further than that, I cannot tell you. I can tell you what you need for your own path, but it is not my place to tell you about the worlds in which others have walked. You are meant to stay in the city through this immediate crisis, that I know. But in the one that comes after… I cannot say for certain… The only glimmer of hope I see is through the very worst pain and sacrifice you can inflict—whether on yourself, or he whom you love best, or on all—though what route will cause the most pain, the pain that will serve, only you can know. And how it will end… As I said, your future cannot be read.”
And then, without any leave-taking, she retreated back into her dark corner, leaving Icarus standing there, speechless. Melas came to lead him out.
He was too troubled to remember to look for the odd person he’d seen on his way in.
The only person he told was Endymion.
Endymion told him the Oracle was an old bat who had lost her touch. He told Icarus to put it all out of his mind.
Icarus tried to listen.
The knife Icarus had thrown into the sentry’s chest had caused a mortal wound, but death was not immediate. As soon as Pythagoras had gone inside the temple, Icarus had run to hold the soldier. He’d muffled the man’s dying groans and kept him from thrashing hard enough to draw attention.
They lived in a dangerous city and in dangerous times, but Icarus had somehow managed never to get this close to death before. And he’d certainly never been the cause of it.
Now all was quiet on the balcony. The man’s face had frozen into its last expression of pain, and his blood had begun to congeal on the cool floor. Gingerly, and cringing all the while, Icarus wrenched his sword from the man’s chest and cleaned it on his cape.
Pythagoras had been inside for quite some time—long enough to have either found Melas or been captured. There was no way to tell which. For all Icarus knew, he could be sitting here forever. This had been a fool’s errand, just like the last. A practical man would have gone home. A practical man would not have agreed to help at all.
But then again, one look at Pythagoras’s face had long been enough to make Icarus forget all about practicality.
The night grew chillier, and a breeze reached him even over the balcony wall. Unwilling glances at the body beside him only made Icarus shiver harder. He worried about Pythagoras inside the temple. He worried about his father in prison. He worried about what would happen to him if he were found here beside the body of a soldier he had killed. He worried for the city under Pasiphae’s rule.
“You’re still here.”
Icarus looked up to see Pythagoras standing before him. He stood up and was immediately bundled into a tight and lengthy embrace.
They’d been doing this more and more recently, he’d noticed. The tightness was usually Pythagoras’s doing, but the length of the embrace was entirely Icarus’s.
“I said I would wait for you, did I not?” he said. “Did you see Melas? Did you find the answer you sought?”
Pythagoras nodded.
“Then let us go,” Icarus said.
Together, they made their way down the wall and into the street, taking care to avoid a troop of soldiers.
“We are too far from where I live, and my friend the street cleaner has long since moved on,” Icarus said. The words were true, but context was hidden; he did not want Pythagoras in his house, to see Daedalus’s absence and question it. Pythagoras would only feel needless guilt that would distract him from the work he needed to do. And it was not his fault. Daedalus’s safety had always been Icarus’s responsibility, and he had failed. He had failed to get them out of the plaza quickly enough, and he had failed to throw the soldiers off their tracks. Daedalus would die, and Icarus knew he was to blame. The knowledge had weighed on him for a week. It took everything he had to put on a brave face for Pythagoras; even his happiness to see his friend made him feel guilty. There should have been no room in his heart for joy at such a moment.
“What do you propose we do?” Pythagoras asked. “Where should we hide while we wait out the curfew?”
“I know a man. He is currently at sea, but before he left, he asked my father to create a security system to guard his house. Since I was the one to install it, I am the only one who knows how to disable it. It is not far. We can stay there until morning. If we are followed, the soldiers will not be able to enter.”
“You have more useful friends than anyone I have ever met.”
“Cultivating as many useful friendships as possible is a necessity when you have a father like mine.”
“Brilliant, you mean?”
Icarus chuckled. “I was thinking ‘eccentric’, but that works, too.”
After evading the next group of soldiers that passed, they climbed up yet another balcony, which Icarus knew how to reach via an upwards path of barrels, clothes lines and felicitously jutting bricks. He activated a nearly impossible to find loophole in the quintessentially Daedalean contraption on the door just so and pushed it open. Smiling, as though playing host in his own home, he held it open to let Pythagoras pass through.
“What does he need such intricate security to protect?” Pythagoras asked as Icarus shut them in again.
“I do not know. I believe it is something he intends to procure on his current voyage and bring back with him.”
Icarus watched Pythagoras explore the dwelling and find the bedroom. He watched the way the moonlight caught his features and put them into beautiful relief. Eventually, Pythagoras caught Icarus staring.
“What is it?” he asked.
Icarus forced himself to smile, as though everything were jolly and his heart didn’t yearn, for so many things. “It is nothing, my friend. After so many weeks in the forest, you must be desperate for a soft bed and a roof over your head. There are enough hours between now and dawn for you to enjoy them.”
“What about you?”
“I shall take the floor.”
“I have already put you out of your home tonight. The bed is big enough for two, if you don’t mind sharing. I promise I do not snore, but Hercules says I sometimes talk in my sleep.”
“And I’ve been told that I kick, so you can count us even.”
“Well, then I’ll have to find a way to pin you down.” At his own words, Pythagoras’s face twitched even more violently than Icarus felt his own doing. “I mean… I didn’t mean…”
Even though their recent meetings had given him a feeling—a hope—that Pythagoras had meant it, Icarus replied, “It’s all right. I know.”
Pythagoras removed only his shoes and his belt. Icarus usually slept without anything on, but decided to match his friend’s state of dress on this occasion. The bed was technically large enough for two people, but was not designed to be so. There was scarcely an inch between them when they lay down. Their sleeves of their tunics rubbed against one another.
Icarus listened to Pythagoras inhaling and exhaling, and tried to alternate his own breathing—he needed to concentrate on anything but how close they were.
Pythagoras broke the silence first. “I didn’t know you could wield a sword like that.”
“Neither did I.” Icarus thought of how close the sentry had been to slitting Pythagoras’s throat. Throwing the sword had been an unconscious act of self-defense. No matter that Pythagoras existed outside of himself; he felt like an extension. Icarus’s arm had simply thrown, and his sword had hit its target in a way that it never had when he’d sparred for practice.
“You killed that man,” Pythagoras continued. “You told me, not long ago, that you never had. This was your first, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right?”
Icarus thought back to the balcony and sitting beside the body. He hadn’t been all right then, but here, now, with Pythagoras safely beside him… “I think so. Perhaps in the morning, I will feel it more. But right now, I feel nothing, numb.”
“You killed someone for me,” Pythagoras whispered, growing more hushed with every word.
Icarus finally turned his head to look at Pythagoras, who was already gazing back. “That was the easiest part of it. I would do anything for you. You know that.”
“I didn’t before tonight.”
“Then you aren’t nearly as clever as my father thinks. Perhaps I should seek him a new colleague.”
Pythagoras looked up at the ceiling again. “You have so very many friends. I thought… I assumed I was merely one of your useful acquaintances.”
“What utility has your acquaintanceship brought me?” Icarus teased. “Come, Pythagoras, you cannot truly have thought you meant so little to me. After all this time.”
“We only became proper friends because I begged you to when I was drunk. You would never have thought of it otherwise.”
“I thought you didn’t remember that night.” Icarus had tried to bring it up in later weeks, but Pythagoras had always turned red and said the night was a blur.
“I pretended not to. I made a terrible ass of myself.”
“No more than usual,” Icarus joked.
Pythagoras elbowed him in his side, and within seconds, they were wrestling like two overgrown children. Icarus could have easily won, but he let Pythagoras overpower him, savoring the feeling of his body on top of his. They laughed into one another’s faces for a minute before Pythagoras realized how close they were and rolled off.
“Who told you?” Pythagoras asked next, after another long, tense silence.
“Told me what?”
“That you kick. Was it… Was it Daedalus?” Pythagoras sounded eager for confirmation.
“Yes,” Icarus replied, but since he wanted desperately to believe that Pythagoras was trying to ask something else, and he wanted to be honest with him, he felt compelled to confess, “but not only him.”
“I see,” Pythagoras replied in a small, and, yes, disappointed, voice. “Have you... Have you kicked many people? Anyone lately?”
“Not many. And no one recently. Have you… spoken to many people while asleep?”
“Only Hercules and Jason. From my own bed, I mean.” Pythagoras’s speech was increasing in speed the more flustered he got. “While they were in theirs, in the other room, so—”
Icarus leaned over and kissed Pythagoras full on his still babbling lips, putting both of them out of their misery. It was little more than a chaste peck, but it sufficed to shut him up whilst conveying the message. He pulled back almost as soon as he’d done it. Pythagoras’s mouth remained open, but then again, it often did.
“If that was not all right—if I have misunderstood…” Icarus said when the tense silence had gone on too long. “It can be as though it never happened, I swear.”
“It was more than all right.”
Icarus sighed with relief. But before he could say anything further, Pythagoras had propped himself up on his elbows and half climbed on top of him. He lowered his head and kissed Icarus again, for longer this time, chapped lips teasing Icarus’s and slowly pressing against different spots on his cheeks, on his nose, on his chin.
Icarus had never been kissed like this before—like every inch of him was something precious. He tried to capture Pythagoras’s roaming lips with his own, and to hold them in place so that they could kiss more deeply, but the slow and unsuccessful chase resulted in him missing and kissing all over Pythagoras’s face as well.
Eventually frustrated with this game, he began feeling with his hands for Pythagoras’s waist. With his usual forthrightness, he maneuvered them onto their sides and pulled Pythagoras closer, tangling their legs together. The bed began to sink in the middle, drawing their faces and bodies still closer. Pythagoras was all bones against him, but stronger than he looked, and certainly stronger than he’d been when first they’d met.
Icarus began to squirm for a better position, but Pythagoras remained as still and serene as a statue, or perhaps a man in a happy trance. He calmed Icarus with a gentle hand to the side of his head and the kind of focused kiss that Icarus been trying for some time to initiate. Pythagoras gasped a little when Icarus’s tongue slipped out and flicked at his lower lip, and then again.
Fearing he’d been too bold, Icarus let go of Pythagoras’s face, to let him create space, if that’s what he wanted.
“What’s wrong?” Pythagoras asked, just as Icarus had opened his eyes.
Pythagoras was staring at him, out of those huge, intelligent, worry-wart blue eyes of his. Staring at Icarus like he was even more fascinating and sublime than one of his equations.
“There has never been less wrong in the whole world,” Icarus replied.
Pythagoras grinned. He reached for Icarus and brought their faces together again. There was nothing quiet or chaste about their kisses this time. Always a quick learner, Pythagoras mimicked Icarus’s earlier movements and slid his tongue along his lip, but went farther, to push it inside Icarus’s mouth. That was all Icarus needed to pull their hips even closer together. He didn’t mean to do it—he’d meant to take this slow, to make it last, to ease his friend into it—but at the sensation of Pythagoras’s hot tongue massaging his own, Icarus’s hips rolled of their own accord, rubbing his already present erection against Pythagoras’s quickly hardening one.
Pythagoras moaned and rolled right back. The dance soon turned into a frantic back and forth, until there was no sense of timing at all, and they merely rubbed one another through their clothes and kissed, sloppy and wet, breathing hard into each other's open mouths. Pythagoras’s fingers worked their way into Icarus’s wavy hair, pulling ever so gently during the hardest thrusts. He moaned every time Icarus worried his lip between his teeth.
Icarus could have gone on like this forever, lost in bliss that he’d never thought he’d be lucky enough to find, but, without warning, Pythagoras pulled back.
“Icarus… Icarus, wait,” he panted.
“What is it?”
“Since I have been living in the woods, these are the only trousers I have. I cannot… If we continue, I will…”
“Then let us get you out of them.”
“Excellent notion.”
They pushed themselves up so that they were both sitting back on their heels. Icarus lifted Pythagoras’s shirt over his head and threw it into a corner. Their arms collided and Icarus elbowed Pythagoras in the nose.
“This is perhaps not the most efficient of maneuvers,” Pythagoras said, wincing in pain, as Icarus peppered remorseful kisses all over his face.
“Lie back. Stretch your legs out,” Icarus ordered.
He undid the fastenings on the side of Pythagoras’s trousers and motioned him to lift his hips so that he could pull them off. When he was done, Icarus straddled Pythagoras’s knees and looked down at him. Lit by the moonshine that streamed in through the window, Pythagoras fairly gleamed, naked and wanting, just for Icarus. There was more muscle in his arms and along his torso than Icarus had expected. A result of all his recent adventures, no doubt. His cock was not as long as the rest of Pythagoras’s body had led him to assume. But neither was it as slim as Icarus had imagined. It was thick, with a red and leaking tip that curved sweetly towards his navel, and it twitched when Pythagoras noticed him looking.
“You are a wonder,” Icarus said.
Pythagoras looked shyly off to the side. “And you are an idiot.”
“As long as you don’t mind.”
He began untying the knots on one of his bracelets, but Pythagoras’s fingers on his wrists stopped him.
“Leave them on,” he whispered.
“Why?”
Even in the semi-darkness, Icarus could see Pythagoras’s face reddening. “Because I like it. I always… I used to think about you, with only these on.”
“Oh, really?” Icarus leaned forward and began trailing his lips lightly down the center of Pythagoras’s chest. He moved his head along the faint outline of muscles he found there, to the side. Before taking one nipple into his mouth, he asked, “And what else did you used to think about?”
“Well, not exactly this, though it is nice,” Pythagoras said, a little more articulately than Icarus would have liked.
He needed to work harder.
“Go on, tell me the rest,” he said, as evilly calm as possible.
“I’d pictured, ah,” Pythagoras stuttered, when Icarus nibbled and licked at the hard bud in his mouth, “I’d pictured you on your father’s worktable.”
“He wasn’t there, I hope.”
“No, of course not, don’t be... Oh, gods…”
Icarus had, without any warning, slithered down and taken Pythagoras entirely into his mouth. He swept his tongue up and down before sucking lightly on the head. Listening to Pythagoras’s pants and moans of pleasure was almost as good as a hand on his own desperate cock would have been, but that was something he was too busy to worry about right now. He wanted to make this good, so good. He pushed Pythagoras’s legs farther apart and settled into a more comfortable position between them.
Pythagoras gasped when Icarus, still with the heavy weight filling his mouth, wrapped a hand around the base and looked straight into Pythagoras’s eyes. “Icarus, what are you…?”
“A man as clever as yourself should be able to work it out,” Icarus mumbled, slipping the cock out of his mouth and licking all around it. He’d only done this a few times, and not in a long while. Part of him was glad that Pythagoras had never had this done to him; he could not be disappointed by Icarus’s relative inexperience. “Tell me more about what you wanted to do to me on my father’s worktable. That was developing into an interesting tale.”
“There was… I swept the papers onto the floor, with no… Icarus, please…” He paused again when Icarus began teasing him, moving off to the side to suck a spot on Pythagoras’s thigh.
“What about the papers?”
Pythagoras bucked his hips, trying to connect his cock with Icarus’s mouth again. “They fell, all in disarray, and I did not care where they would, ah, land.”
At that, Icarus sat up in shock.
“Why did you stop?” Pythagoras begged. “Please don’t stop.”
Icarus stretched himself up the bed and kissed Pythagoras deeply. When he came up for air, he said, “I had no idea you felt so strongly about me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t mind if you mussed up your research if it meant you could… What? Splay me out beneath you and have your way with me?”
“I’d much rather continue on with the reality instead of debating my stupid fantasies,” Pythagoras groused.
“How long?” Icarus asked. “Tell me how long you’ve wanted to do that, and I promise I will continue.”
Pythagoras shut his eyes and looked pained, embarrassed. “Since the day I met you.”
“What?” Icarus had had no idea. “That cannot be.”
“Why not?”
“I rather wanted to hit you the day I met you,” Icarus confessed.
“Wonderful. That’s is just what I have always wanted to hear.”
“It is simply surprising to learn that you felt that way, when all I felt was hostility.”
“Is this really the moment to discuss how much you didn’t like me?” Pythagoras muttered, still wriggling in an effort to get some friction, even if it was only against the fabric of Icarus’s trousers.
It wasn’t, but Icarus was savoring how tonight, the bossy, slightly waspish side that he had occasionally seen Pythagoras exhibit around his other friends, but never around him, had begun to peek out. It made him feel as though Pythagoras had finally relaxed around him, had finally let him in, and no longer felt the need to be on his best behaviour. The exasperation, almost more than the sex, signified that this was real. Icarus had finally gotten what he wanted.
“I like you very much now,” he said on his way back down the bed to keep his promise.
The next minute or two were filled with broken language and curses that Icarus was astonished to hear that Pythagoras even knew. When he was close—as evidenced by his inability to actually finish any of the words, trailing off each time into broken syllables—Pythagoras buried his fingers in Icarus’s hair again and pulled him by it, pulled himself farther into Icarus’s mouth. Icarus liked it, liked feeling Pythagoras take a little control. Pythagoras trembled all over and then bitter liquid spurted into Icarus’s mouth. Icarus gagged a bit; even if he hadn’t been sorely out of practice, he’d never been accustomed to this part. He pulled off and wiped away one last burst that hit his chin.
“That was…” Pythagoras sighed dreamily, as Icarus moved to lie beside him again. “That was better than geometry.”
Icarus had been rubbing his still clothed cock against the bed while he’d sucked Pythagoras, and was now close—pathetically close for someone who had yet to be touched—and in desperate need of release. But at Pythagoras’s statement, he laughed so hard that he was distracted even from his throbbing agony of want.
“I should very much hope it was better,” Icarus said.
“I should like to…” Pythagoras’s actions were much more forthright than his words. He reached towards the front of Icarus’s trousers and felt the hardness there before slipping a hand inside. He stroked once, twice, and Icarus felt himself begin to shake.
“Let me take them off,” Pythagoras said, nipping at Icarus’s neck while he stroked.
Careful not to dislodge Pythagoras’s hand, Icarus did as he was told. But it was too much. Before he’d even finished unfastening the ties, he jerked and felt rather than heard a guttural shout escape his lips. And then he was coming, coming with Pythagoras’s hand still stroking him, coming in the trousers he still wore.
With one arm Pythagoras hugged Icarus, held him through the last of the spasms, and with his other hand, he milked him through it, all while kissing any patch of skin his lips could reach on Icarus’s face.
“This is mortifying,” was the first thing Icarus could say. He elbowed himself around within Pythagoras’s embrace until they were nose to nose. He kissed him, and enjoyed the little jolt Pythagoras gave the moment he realized that new taste on Icarus’s tongue was himself.
“Luckily, you can wash your trousers in the morning, when you return home. My only regret is that I didn’t get to see you.”
“Next time.”
Pythagoras frowned. “If only I could say when that might be.”
Icarus’s heart broke as the chaos and impossibility of the world around them settled back into focus. No matter what they felt, this had only ever been a stolen moment, he saw now. “You have to return to the forest. To Jason and the queen.”
“Hercules always teased me about being unable to love anything but my triangles. It would have been so much easier if he’d been right. I must go to the salt mines in the morning, and then back to the forest. This… you and me… Until this is over, my duty is to aid Jason and help the city. I cannot think of myself.”
“I understand. You know I would not want you to shirk your duty until there is peace, I will wait.”
Pythagoras kept kissing him, sad little nips to his cheek to convey his sorrow. “I have wanted this for so long. I don’t know how I will be able to leave you come morning, not after this. And I cannot ask you to join me…”
“I could not go even if you asked. My father—”
For the first time all night, Pythagoras remembered. He squinted in remorse. “His fever. You said he was sick. And I have taken you from his side tonight.”
“I will see him in the morning. Do not worry, my friend.” Icarus thanked the gods for the darkness that hid the falseness of his smile.
“When all this is done, and we have defeated Pasiphae…”
“You can return to the city.”
“I will come to your house directly. And then…”
“I will think of nothing but that day,” Icarus said.
They kissed lazily for awhile longer, whispering promises and secrets that they had long held close and barely articulated before, even to themselves, until they started to drift off. Icarus shivered at a breeze that kicked up through the window. Pythagoras passed Icarus his tunic. They both sleepily pulled their clothes back on before resettling on the bed, with Pythagoras’s arm slung possessively around Icarus, drawing him into his chest.
Icarus listened to Pythagoras’s breathing grow quieter and quieter until he had to be asleep. Here, being held like this, he knew he had never been so happy or sated. And he hated himself, for while he lay here happy, his father rotted in prison, sick and dying and about to be executed.
He remembered the Oracle’s words. That of all the twisting, uncertain paths he could take, the only one with any hope at all was through the greatest pain, through the sacrifice of that which he held dearest. Sleeping beside him right now was a fugitive dearly desired by Pasiphae. One word to the general, who had long known Icarus, and a garrison would be here to capture him in minutes. Daedalus was already doomed. Icarus could not sacrifice him if he wanted to. And it didn’t matter. The choice was clear. He knew how he’d felt when his father’s execution had been announced, and he knew how he felt now at the thought of losing Pythagoras.
He was a terrible son. And was about to be a terrible friend… or whatever he now was to Pythagoras. All in the name of the Oracle's uncertain hope and a desperate bid to save his father.
For a few more hours, he thought, he could be happy. Then the moon would give way to the sun and his part would begin.
Icarus and Cassandra huddled together at the cornermost part of the bow, looking down the entire length of the Argo before of them.
They did this almost every night. Jason and Ariadne, by virtue of being newlyweds and royalty, had the one properly sized cabin on the ship. Everyone had tried to give Cassandra the next-best, but she’d refused, saying that after a life spent in the bowels of the temple, she’d much rather sleep under the stars. Which left Hercules quite pleased to have his own cabin, and Icarus and Pythagoras to share the last.
Unfortunately, it turned out that Pythagoras did talk in his sleep, quite loudly, not to mention nonsensically. Insanity about diameters and radii and circumferences. The entire cabin rumbled with his chatter. Even Jason heard it through the walls and said it had never been quite this bad before. It was the rocking of the waves, he said. It worsened something that had been an occasionally humorous tick into a real problem. It would go back to normal once they landed, Jason said.
Icarus loved Pythagoras, but he could not sleep like this. Every night, after snuggling him into slumber, Icarus crept out of their cabin and went to join Cassandra, who, he decided, had been alone for long enough in her short life.
To compensate for not having a room, they’d given her the very best and thickest of the mattresses. Wide enough to hold both of them.
They’d recently begun to sail far past where Icarus had ever traveled before—and he had traveled, to procure rare ingredients and books for his father’s work. Far from being frightened, he relished the adventure. The harder he pushed himself, the more he felt that he was making it up to the others, to his father back in Atlantis, and to himself. They all said it was all right. Anyone would have done it, they said, anyone who loved their father. Icarus had even tried to double-cross his own double cross a few times to ameliorate the outcomes, they said. He had risked his life to save them in their most desperate hour. He was one of them now. It was all forgotten, they said.
They were kind, but Icarus would never forget.
“May I ask you something?” he said, drawing the blanket he’d brought more tightly around them.
“I already know what it is,” Cassandra said.
“What I have to say cannot possibly be important enough for the gods to have foretold it.”
“One does not need the Sight to know that you want to ask me if it is all over. If what the previous Oracle said about you has been fulfilled. You want to know if the shifting story has settled.”
“You know that I went to see her?”
“I saw you leave that day, though you did not see me. You had a kind face—kinder than most who came to see her—and you left looking very troubled. So I looked for myself.”
“And what did you find?”
“The same things she did. But…” Cassandra frowned. “I have a confession to make. I did something naughty our first night on board.”
Icarus gaped at her. “You! The Oracle. Did something naughty?”
But it shouldn’t have come as a shock. He, more than anyone alive, now that Melas was gone, knew that she was a girl, too, like any other, in some ways.
“You thought the wings your father made fell into the sea and were lost by a clumsy accident.”
“Are you saying they were not?”
“I threw them overboard. After first breaking them into as many pieces as I could without being observed.”
“But why?”
She smiled enigmatically.
Icarus thought back to that day. He remembered how unaccountably pleased Jason had been to hear of the precious invention’s loss. At the time, Icarus had been furious with him, and had thought all sorts of ungenerous thoughts about him, because why should someone be glad to see the destruction of another man’s property.
But ever since, Jason had completely ceased to be strange and anxious around him, and had warmly taken him aside and told him how pleased he was that everything had worked out with Pythagoras, and reiterated for the thousandth time how there were no hard feelings.
Curious.
“I thought you were not allowed to interfere,” he said.
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”