Chương 12: Balanced Ledgers

Archon Menekrates returned to the villa with the taste of ash on his tongue. Servants met him at the door, eyes down. The air inside was cool, the lamps already lit, the wine poured, the cushions plumped exactly how he liked them. The house smelled faintly of olive oil and beeswax, and everything was clean and ordered, exactly as it should be. None of it comforted him. The smell of burning hair and flesh still clung to his nose. The argument at Kalliope's house unreeled in his head again.

He had expected compliance. He had expected to be the man who set the terms and had them obeyed. He had not expected open defiance. He had not expected Kalliope to be so callous as to kill his men just to make a point. He was angry. Angry at the girl, at Kalliope, but mostly at his son. Menandros had always been a fool—loud, cruel, and proud of it. The boy had been bound to die for his arrogance. Menekrates just hadn't expected it to happen this soon, or to happen in a way that dragged him down with it.

Though he probably should have, and that made him even angrier. Menandros had been an idiot, a bully who asked for consequences the way a drunk asks for another drink. How many times had he had to clean up after him? Too many. There was an ugly relief beneath the anger. Menandros would no longer be a thorn in his side, no longer tempt fate or shame the family with one more public spectacle. The boy had been reckless, violent, and in the end useless to his father. Kalliope's girl had done him a favor, really.

But of course Menandros couldn't even die without causing him trouble. One last inconvenience, even in death. He reminded himself that he still had three other sons—strong, intelligent, loyal. They listened. They did what they were told. They brought pride to the family name. They were everything Menandros was not. With that blemish finally gone, he could turn his attention back to what mattered. No more apologies. No more quiet payoffs. No more sleepless nights wondering what his idiot son had done this time.

The distraction was gone. He could focus on strengthening his house again. Restoring its dignity. Elevating it further than before. Nothing would stand in his way now. Nothing, except for Kalliope. He should have been thanking her girl. She'd gotten rid of the one thing holding him back. His one failure, now erased. The problem was that Menandros was still his son, and people had seen her kill him. Annoyingly, even that story was unclear.

Arouraios claimed she'd shot Menandros in the head with a pistol, said it had come clean off. Impossible. Menandros might have been a bully, but he wasn't weak. No pistol should have been able to pierce his barrier, let alone kill him. Skouliki insisted she'd cursed him, that his head had exploded on its own. Menekrates had seen what Kalliope could do, the name Voice of Ruin was well earned. It would make sense for her girl to take the same class. But could a [Katarologa] be that powerful at level one?

He didn't know. Choiros hadn't seen anything. He'd said the girl was pretty, and that he'd been too distracted by her beauty to notice what happened. Unsurprisingly his idiot son kept equally idiotic company. One thing they all agreed on, though, was the reason it had happened. Menandros wanted the girl. He had pursued her, cornered her, and she had kept rebuffing him, mocking him, insulting him.

Apparently, despite the fool that he was, Menandros had not been so stupid as to harm the daughter of a High Priestess outright. So he took his anger out on her friend instead—the friend who had not even raised a hand, who had nothing to do with any of it. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Then, in a moment of absolute lunacy, Menandros had apparently kept telling the girl to shoot him in the head.

And she either shot him in the head and somehow managed to pierce his barrier, or she cursed him. The end result was the same. He got what he asked for, and it killed him. Menekrates was left staring into space, baffled by the sheer stupidity of it all. So not only had the girl acted in defense of her friend during an unprovoked attack and removed the one thorn in his side, but Menandros had actually told her to do it. Threatened to kill her friend if she didn't. Still, she had to die.

The boy was still his heir, and people had watched him die. That was enough. A story that simple would spread fast, and he could not afford to look weak. If he let it go unpunished, others would start getting ideas—ideas about what they could get away with, and what the Archon would tolerate. He could not allow that. Not for a moment. And then there was Kalliope, and, to a lesser extent, Kleon. They had killed his men and openly defied him. For that alone they deserved to be executed.

If he did that, though, the Order of Mēnē would turn against him. Mēnē might be one of the lesser gods, but she was still the Moon, and the Sisters were powerful. Their information network reached every corner of the city. They had always been loyal to him. Taking away their High Priestess would complicate things. It could even destroy that loyalty entirely. The Sisters were all witches, shrouded in silence and secrets. Every time he'd needed an adversary dealt with quietly, he had turned to them.

They made problems disappear without a trace, with no blood on the streets and no questions afterward. To make them his enemies would be suicide. Some of them might even poison him if they thought Kalliope's execution unjust. Once again he felt his anger rise at Menandros. This truly was his crowning achievement, creating enemies out of allies, even in death. Kalliope's words came back to him: If she dies, so will you. He'd seen what that woman could do. He doubted it was a bluff.

If he had Hecate executed, Kalliope would kill him. If he killed Kalliope, the Sisters would turn on him, and the city would lose one of its most useful networks. Mēnē's priestesses heard everything, saw everything, and knew how to handle problems quietly. He'd prefer not to lose their allegiance. So he needed balance—justice without martyrdom. Punishment without a funeral pyre. He needed to look strong, righteous, in control, and somehow walk away alive. He could probably smooth over the dead guards.

Call it a misunderstanding. Offer condolences and coin to their families. Even pretend to forgive it, if he had to. That would make him look wise, measured, merciful. And if he was being honest with himself, it was also personal. Menandros had been a disappointment, yes. A fool. But he'd still been his fool to deal with. The girl had stepped into his household, into his authority, and made a decision about his family without his say. She'd taken what was his—worthless or not—and that theft demanded an answer.

Not because he mourned the boy. But because no one got to make those choices for him. He stared at the wall until his thoughts lined up. One thing was certain: the girl had to die. Not out of hatred. Out of necessity. Menandros's death could not stand unanswered. The city would expect that. His standing required it. He counted the costs. Execution would close the ledger cleanly. The city would see an answer given. His rivals would hear the message. It would restore order in a single, brutal stroke.

But it would hand Kalliope a corpse and a reason to act. She had said what she'd said, she had shown what she could do. What she would do. A High Priestess with a body to mourn would be dangerous in a way coin could not buy, especially if that body was her daughter. Exile sounded tidy on paper. Send her away, remove the disturbance. But exiles returned. An exile keeps the story alive. Banishment would postpone the problem, not end it. Fines and forfeiture were insult, not justice. They would be seen as weakness.

The wrong message would travel faster than any decree: the Archon forgave a woman who killed his son. That impression would be poison. He ran alternatives. Ways to make the law do the violence he could not. Make the city pronounce what would let other methods finish the job without blaming him. Each option had its price in favors, in threats, in the judges who could be leaned on and those who could not. Some could be bought, others kept records with stubborn virtue. Some could be scandalized, some could not.

There were men who owed him, men who feared him, men who counted favors like coin. He already knew which ones to call on. He thought of optics. He thought of lines to speak in the Areopagus that would make a later mercy plausible. He thought of how to frame grief so the council would not see only vengeance but a reluctant ruler compelled to act. He thought of witnesses and how to shape a story so that the law's machinery would move exactly where he needed it to move. He liked the cleanliness of systems.

He liked the way a law could look like justice even when it was a blade in disguise. He balled his hands into fists and let his calculations run, converting risk into numbers, numbers into pressure, pressure into leverage. Then it came to him. Simple, effective, elegant. Menekrates smiled. He had the perfect idea.