Sokrates looked sad. “Kebes had told me about it too, and his version was different from yours. Torture … yes, I can see how he might have come to it, from the anger and self-righteousness in his own soul. But I thought he had learned to question.”

“He learned to tear down other people’s arguments, but never to truly examine his own where it made him uncomfortable,” Pytheas said. He set down his almost full winecup at his feet.

“He always was too sure he was right,” Sokrates said, sadly. “I failed him. Where is he now? I should talk to him.”

“I killed him,” Pytheas said, calmly and quietly, looking up at Sokrates from where he sat. “I used his own judicial methods and flayed him alive.”

“What!?” the word exploded from Sokrates. Then he stopped and rocked back on his heels. “You did what? What did he—what could make you—where’s Simmea?” He looked around the room, as if expecting to see her hiding in a corner.

“She’s dead too,” I said quietly, after too long a silence when it seemed nobody else was capable of responding. Pytheas’s face looked like stone. Thetis had tears rolling down her cheeks.

Sokrates sighed. “Was Kebes involved in her death? Is that why you did that? Or did you need to kill him to help his cities change? But that way, Pytheas?”

“Good guesses, but no. I did think he might have been involved, but in the end her death wasn’t personal. There was a war.” Sokrates didn’t say anything but his eyebrows rose. “I stopped it, afterwards. Kebes—I do believe it was the best thing for his soul, to let it go on and have another chance. He was so set on everything, and so wrong. He did need to be removed to help the Lucian cities, and it did help them. They don’t torture people now, and most of them have become pretty good places to live. But that’s not really why I did it. I wanted to kill him because I found out he raped Simmea. At the Festival of Hera when they were matched together. I know she didn’t tell you, she didn’t tell me either. She wrote about it, and I read it after her death, when I was half-mad with missing her.” Sokrates started to say something, but Pytheas raised a hand and he stopped. “The real reason I killed Kebes with his own slow unpleasant justice was because he had cheated in a musical contest.”

“He must have been desperate to enter a musical contest with you,” Sokrates said.