Father set the five Republics of Kallisti and the eight Lucian Republics down carefully on the new planet, without so much as bumping any of their art or architecture. He also took all the people who chose to go, which was everyone except for a scattering of stubborn idiots who stood alone to see their cities and civilization disappear around them. (And who do you think has to be their patron and look after them forever after? Well, did you think Athene was going to get stuck with it?) He set the cities down the same distance apart they had always been. It didn’t matter at all to Father that he put them on a rocky volcanic plain on the edge of a great ocean, or that many of them now had harbors that went nowhere. It looked exceedingly peculiar, but we coped.
Porphyry did indeed get us some new robots, and that helped a great deal.
Maia became the first leader of the City after the move, and she and Crocus were the first Consuls of the Senate of Plato, the council made up of representatives of all twelve cities. She helped lead us into the era of peace and exploration, and when the aliens came she was the first after Arete to learn their language. She was thrice Consul, and after she died we put that on her memorial stone, along with all her other achievements. As Father had predicted, Neleus led us after that. By then we were thoroughly involved with the alien confederation, and we’d persuaded a surprising number of aliens to strive for excellence and justice in a Platonic context before the human spaceships discovered all of us and things got complicated.
As for me, I kept writing songs, and learning things about myself, about mortal life, about my children and other people. I kept on striving toward excellence, for myself and for the world. All the worlds.
I could still see my chariot at night from our new home, a distant glimmer, shining to me across space and time, which are Mysteries, and in strange ways almost the same thing. I was glad I could see it. I would have been very sad without it. But I’d have managed. I managed without Simmea, after all.
Not even Necessity knows all ends.
THANKS
Ada Palmer gave the right answers to all my questions, lent me books, sent me useful links, and talked to me about Pico when she was supposed to be grading. Then, after all that, she read it and made brilliant suggestions. This book wouldn’t exist without her. Buy her books and listen to her music. You’ll be glad you did.
I’m very grateful to my husband, Emmet O’Brien, for putting up with me when I’m writing. Elise Matthesen spent much longer than she imagined we would in the Bronze Age Greece section of the National Museet in Copenhagen, not to mention snarky Apollo comments in Antwerp cathedral. Gillian Spragg and Lauren Schiller were a great help with references.
This book was read by Mary Lace and Patrick Nielsen Hayden while it was being written, and after it was finished by Bo Balder, Biersma, Maya Chhabra, Pamela Dean, Ruthanna and Sarah Emrys, Magenta Griffith, Steven Halter, Sumana Harihareswara, Madeleine Kelly, Nancy Kremi, Marissa Lingen, Elise Matthesen, Clark E. Myers, Kate Nepveu, Lydia Nickerson, Emmet O’Brien, Ada Palmer, Doug Palmer, Susan Palwick, Eliana Rus, Drew Shiel, Sherwood Smith, and Nicholas Whyte.
I’d like to thank Patrick for editing, his assistant Miriam Weinberg for wrangling, Teresa Nielsen Hayden for her sensitive and thoughtful copyedits, and everyone in Tor Production and Publicity and Sales who work so hard at the unglamorous part of publishing, without which we wouldn’t have any books.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JO WALTON won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012 for her novel Among Others. Before that, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Tooth and Claw won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. The novels of her Small Change sequence—Farthing, Ha’penny, and Half a Crown—have won widespread acclaim. More recently, her novel My Real Children won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. A native of Wales, Walton lives in Montreal. You can sign up for email updates here.
BOOKS BY JO WALTON
The King’s Peace
The King’s Name
The Prize in the Game
Tooth and Claw
Farthing
Ha’penny
Half a Crown
Lifelode
Among Others
What Makes This Book So Great
My Real Children
The Just City
The Philosopher Kings
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
1. Apollo
2. Arete
3. Arete
4. Maia
5. Arete
6. Arete
7. Apollo
8. Arete
9. Arete
10. Maia
11. Arete
12. Arete
13. Apollo
14. Arete
15. Arete
16. Maia
17. Arete
18. Arete
19. Apollo
20. Arete
21. Arete
22. Apollo
23. Maia
24. Arete
25. Arete
26. Apollo
27. Arete
28. Arete
29. Maia
30. Arete
31. Arete
32. Apollo
Thanks
About the Author
Books by Jo Walton
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS
Copyright © 2015 by Jo Walton
All rights reserved.
Cover art: The School of Athens (detail) by Raphael / Vatican Museums and Galleries / Bridgeman Images
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
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ISBN 978-0-7653-3267-7 (hardcover)