She said it as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world, but there was one problem with Diotima’s suggestion.
“You want me to blackmail the Chief Judge?”
“No, not at all!” she said calmly. “Merely point out an unpleasant consequence of his intended actions. You’re an officer of the judges, Nico, after you swore the Olympic Oath; you should bring this detail to his attention.”
“It sounds like blackmail to me!”
“Pericles would tell you to do it, wouldn’t he?” she wheedled. “All Pericles wants is for you to get Timodemus off. He doesn’t care how you do it.”
It was an odd thing that Pericles and Diotima, who couldn’t stand each other, were so alike when it came to ruthlessly achieving their objectives.
I sighed. “You’re right. I’ll talk to Exelon.” I told myself I’d be more diplomatic about it than Diotima.
We’d missed most of the lunch, but we could smell it, and we headed that way. As we walked across the Sanctuary of Zeus, discussing the case, we came across a man lying in the dirt. I recognized him at once.
“Niallos, are you all right?” It was the manager of the Theban chariot team, who had tried to protect Iphicles from our questions and who had sat with the charioteer while he died.
“No, I’m not bloody all right,” he said, his face in the dirt. “I killed my friend.”
His hair was shredded almost to nothing. He’d cut it with a knife, and either the knife had been blunt, or he’d been mighty careless as he hewed, because there were ugly wounds in his scalp that had barely scabbed over. To cut one’s hair is the traditional sign of mourning, but usually it’s a polite shear. Niallos had really meant it.
I helped him up and wrinkled my nose. Niallos hadn’t washed or eaten or, if the way he clutched a wineskin was any indication, done anything but drink since Iphicles had died the day before. The dust caked on his face had tracks where the tears had fallen.
He said, “If only it had been a decent death, I could accept it, you know? Racing’s a deadly game, always has been. If another chariot had gone into him, or his team went down, or he didn’t make the turn, then it’d be the will of the gods. I could accept that. If only it weren’t my chariot that killed him.”
He stifled a sob.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.
“Of course it’s my bloody fault! I’m the team manager. Iphicles died because I gave him a faulty vehicle. Did you see the way that wheel came off?”
“Accidents happen,” Diotima said. I heard the pity in her voice.
“Yeah, well, that’s what I tell myself, but it’s not much consolation.” He swayed from side to side, and his face was gray. For a moment I wondered if Niallos was about to pass out.
Instead, he said, “I’ve known Iphicles ever since he was a lad. He used to hang around the chariot teams and bother the drivers, when he was, oh, I don’t know, eight or nine years old? That boy was born to race.”
“You’d been together that long?”
“All he ever wanted was to be a driver. Back then, I was a crew member, a chariot specialist. All I wanted was to be manager. I was working my way up.”
He upended the wineskin. I thought about taking it from him, but it would have been cruel. He needed to forget.
Niallos went on, “The drivers are the stars, you know. They thought Iphicles was just another fan boy, but I knew the lad loved the race as much as I did. He and I used to talk chariots long into the night. Now see what it’s brought us.”
The way he said it, I could tell they’d done more than just talk. Niallos had lost his love.
“Can we help?” Diotima asked gently.
“You can’t bring back the dead, can you?”
Diotima was silent.
Niallos began to sob once more. All we could do was sit him in the shade with his wine and leave him alone.
“These Games are cruel,” Diotima said.
Exelon was a hard man to catch, which was not surprising for someone running the largest athletic event in the world. I eventually managed by waylaying him at lunch, where he sat with the other judges before bowls of steaming ox meat.
I pushed my way into their group with mumbled excuses. “Exelon, I must ask you some questions.”
“Now?” he said. He looked meaningfully down at his bowl of hot food.
“Have you any idea how hard it is to get hold of you?”
He said angrily, “I’ve been working since before dawn yesterday morning. It’s the middle of the day; I will be up half the night and at work again before Apollo rises tomorrow. So yes, young man, I have some vague awareness of how busy I am. What do you want?”
I studied the man who was hated so very much by his daughter Klymene, and I wondered which of them was in the right. For my purposes, though, the answer didn’t matter.
“Exelon, new evidence has come to light that, when you’ve heard it, will probably cause you to drop all charges against Timodemus.” I began praying that Diotima’s idea would work.
Exelon looked amazed. “That’s an extraordinary statement, young man!”
“It’s extraordinary evidence, sir.” I took a deep breath. Then I whispered, so quietly that no one else could hear, “Exelon, I must report to you, in your official role as Judge of the Games, that the Priestess of the Games may be a tad … er … impure.”
Exelon looked left and right to make sure no one had heard me. “Shhhh! Don’t say that out in the open, you idiot.” He set aside his bowl of food. “Come with me at once.”
He dragged me across the grounds of Olympia to where the judges had their tents, in the best, most central location. He ushered me into his own tent and went straight to an ornately carved traveling cabinet I knew must hold wine, since it was decorated with the figure of the god Dionysos surrounded by grapes. He opened the door to pull out a cooler in the shape of a flying heron.
Exelon poured himself a slug of wine into a cup fashioned and painted to look like an egg. He took a hefty swallow, then collected himself and held the cooler up to me. “Do you want some?”
“Yes.” I felt I was about to be as depressed as he looked.
Exelon pulled out another egg-shaped cup from a chest and handed it to me. I was surprised at the weight and then saw that it was solid silver.
“They’re family heirlooms,” he said when he noticed my interest. “My family is one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most respected in all of Elis. I come from a long line of judges stretching back generations, but I believe I am the first of my genos to be Chief Judge of the Games. For the Chief Judge, young man, the Games he runs define the success or failure of his entire life. I’m not the suicidal type, but I wonder if by the end of this disaster I might not feel like it.”
“Has it been that bad?”
“What do you think? How many Games have seen contestants murdered? No matter what trouble this might mean for Athens and Sparta, for me it’s a personal disaster, and now Olympia is becoming an armed camp. Will this be the first Olympics in history to be abandoned due to war? And to top it off, there was that impious idiot with the cow made of dough.”
“It was an ox.”
“My Olympics will be a laughing stock because of him. A hundred years from now men will still be calling this the Olympics of the bread cow, and they’ll laugh.”
“I’m pretty sure it was an ox.”
“An ox, you say? You must have looked more closely than I.” Exelon emptied his cup and filled himself another. He fell back on a comfortable stool. “Now you may say what you have to say.”
“I’ve said it. Your daughter, the Priestess of Demeter, was having it off with two of the contestants. Arakos and Timodemus. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
Exelon snorted. “What you bring me is no news at all, and it’s no coincidence. The pankratists are the stars of the Olympics. It seems my daughter likes them strong and flashy.”
“What?”
“I’m not blind, young man. I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t I stop it? Well, by the time I found out, the damage was done. If I made a fuss, it would have hurt her more than them.”