The Just City by Jo Walton

and especially not enough glorification of the importance of the doves. I value Klymene, even if she’ll never believe it now.”
    â€œThe masters say we are all equally valuable,” I said.
    â€œBut they don’t act as if it’s true.” Pytheas frowned. “The worst thing about that hunt is that there was nobody there who really knew how to do it, nobody who had done it before. Atticus and Axiothea are scholars, not warriors. The city is heavy with scholars, unsurprisingly. Testing us for courage isn’t a bad idea, but that was a stupid way to do it. Boars are really dangerous. People could have been killed or crippled if I hadn’t known what to do.”
    â€œWrite a poem glorifying peace,” I suggested.
    â€œAnd you paint a picture doing it, and you’ll soon see how easy it is.”
    Ikaros was walking towards us, no doubt to find out what we were doing standing still for so long. “Come on, let’s wrestle properly,” I said.
    At the festival I came second in swimming and third for running long distance in armour. As I had taught swimming to Kornelia, who had won, I regarded this too as a victory. I could have eaten from the boar Pytheas had killed, but I declined in favour of bread and honey.

 
    9
    M AIA
    A month or so after the art collections began, Ficino and Ikaros blandly presented to the Art Committee a lost bronze of Michaelangelo, a David, but very unlike his most famous David. They told us unblinkingly that it was Theseus with the head of Kerkyon. I nodded and made a note of it. “Excellent,” Atticus said. “One of the best artists of your time.”
    â€œOf any time,” Ficino said, smiling.
    I asked Ikaros if I could speak to him a little later. He agreed at once. After dinner, that day a kind of nut porridge, we went for a walk.
    The island was beautiful, even then when the city was still a building site. We walked off to the west and sat under a pine tree overlooking the sea to watch the sunset. “You’re a monk,” I began. I was speaking in Latin as we usually did together.
    Ikaros jumped. “I am not! I was just wearing the habit. I’ve taken no vows of celibacy, don’t worry.”
    It was my turn to jump. “Did you think this was a sexual assignation?” I asked. I was simultaneously horrified and delighted. Ikaros was a handsome man, only about ten years older than me, and I had believed everyone who told me that nobody would ever want a bluestocking. Yet at the same time I felt diminished, as if it meant he wasn’t taking me seriously.
    â€œSuch things have happened,” he said, smiling. “Even here. Plato does not describe how the first generation of teachers are supposed to regulate their lives.”
    â€œHe does talk about how children are to be born,” I said, as sternly as I could. “And really, sneaking off to the woods is against everything he says.”
    He took my hand and ran one finger around my palm, making my breath catch. “But if it were a proper festival of the Republic, and you and I had drawn each other by lot?”
    â€œThat would be entirely different,” I said, pulling my hand away in as dignified a way as I possibly could. Entirely different and far too exciting, I thought. “Come on Ikaros, we’re friends.”
    â€œAnd what does Plato say about friendship?”
    â€œHe says not to get Eros mixed up with it,” I said crisply, though far from unmoved. I was very aware that the kiton left far more of me uncovered than the clothes of my own period. I had never really noticed that before, because nobody had been looking at me the way Ikaros was looking at me. I stared straight ahead. The sun was setting into the sea and turning both sea and sky as crimson as my cheeks felt.
    â€œIf you didn’t want that, then why did you want to drag me off alone?”
    â€œI wanted to ask you about the David