Sokrates stepped forward and took one of Hilfa’s hands. Marsilia took the other. I turned and went into the main room. Everyone there was drinking wine and talking loudly. Thetis was still with her mother, deep in conversation.
“Thee, you have to come,” I said.
“What?”
“It’s really important. Marsilia sent me.” She looked impatient. “Hilfa needs you.”
“I’ll be back soon,” she said to Erinna, who was frowning, and followed me. “What is it?”
“Jathery’s trying to bully Hilfa, and Hilfa’s afraid gla wants to kill him, or worse, and Marsilia has told him that we’re Hilfa’s pod,” I explained as succinctly as possible as we crossed the crowded room.
“His pod?” she asked, astonished. Then we stepped into the fountain room. “His pod,” she confirmed with a brisk nod at the alien god. “Don’t you dare think you can do anything to Hilfa without our consent.”
“That is still only four,” Jathery said.
“I’d be honored to make the fifth,” Sokrates said.
“Pods are not a joke, or an arrangement to be hastily put together and hastily abandoned,” Jathery said.
“Are they your sphere of patronage?” Sokrates asked, in his best tone of interested enquiry.
Jathery snarled at him. Sokrates was famously good at making gods lose their tempers. Perhaps he had got the better of gla in their debate outside.
“Here in the City, they have to be registered before a magistrate,” Marsilia said. “I am such a magistrate. So is my father, and so is Crocus. We also have any number of gods here who would be delighted to give their blessing if that’s necessary or useful. We’re perfectly serious, and we’re not about to yield Hilfa to you.”
“I need to speak to him.”
Marsilia’s face was set. “I think you mean to hurt him. And I won’t let you. We’re guest-friends, Jathery. You won’t hurt me, and I won’t let you hurt Hilfa. And I think you owe me this for the help I gave you.”
Marsilia took my hand, and I took Thetis’s hand in my other hand, so we were all standing there in a line with linked hands, the latrine-fountain closets behind us and Jathery between us and the door to the garden.
“If you want to talk to Hilfa, go ahead,” Thetis said.
There was a long moment of silence. “Very well, you are a pod, and I wish you all joy of it,” Jathery said. Gla bowed the sideways Saeli head bow, and we all solemnly echoed gla. Then gla spat out a long string of Saeli to Hilfa, who nodded at the end of it but did not reply.
Then Jathery turned to look at Marsilia. “You may be a pod, but Hilfa still belongs to me,” gla said.
“Then I’ll buy him from you,” Marsilia said. She let go of my hand and pulled out a little leather purse and drew out a coin from it. “Here. Is he free now?”
Jathery took the coin and turned it between gla fingers. “Hilfa is,” gla said.
“And freedom is one of your attributes,” she said.
“You’re consul,” gla responded.
“Then I will buy from you the freedom of all the Saeli on Plato, and all those who are hatched here or come here and choose to take oath.” She drew out another coin and handed it to Jathery.
“Yes,” gla said.
Then Marsilia deliberately shook out the purse. As she did, gla vanished on the instant, leaving us staring at the bare tiles where gla had been standing.
“Well, that was odd,” Marsilia said, with a quaver in her voice that had been absent the whole time she was standing up to Jathery. She stuffed the empty purse back into the fold of her kiton.
“I find I grow older but I learn nothing,” Sokrates said, ruefully.
“You mean being turned into a fly didn’t stop you going head to head against gods?” Marsilia asked.
“Oh, that? But the unexamined life isn’t worth living, you know. No, I was thinking of the wisdom of entering into marriage once again at my time of life.”
22
MARSILIA’S POD
I. Marsilia
And there it was, the great achievement of my political career, in haste, in the fountain room of Thessaly. Platonic Saeli didn’t need to ransom themselves individually from Jathery anymore. I had freed them all with a coin he had given me.
I don’t know how I sounded, but I was frightened inside the whole time. I’d spent all that time with Jathery, thinking gla was Hermes, but seeing gla in gla real form threatening Hilfa was terrifying. If I hadn’t spent that time with gla in disguise, and especially if I hadn’t known that we were guest-friends, I doubt I’d have been able to stand up to gla. I think it was what gla wanted, though. Gla wasn’t pretending. Gla would have liked to take back the power gla put into Hilfa. But gla was also tricking us, tricking me. Gla really wanted the Saeli to be free and equipped with Platonic ideas. Why else had gla given me the purse? It was one of gla riddles, and I think I guessed right.
I was focused on that, and it wasn’t until Sokrates used the word marriage that I fully realized what I’d done to my friends.
“Marriage!” Thetis said, pulling her hand away from Jason’s. I couldn’t look at Jason, so I looked at Hilfa. His expressionless face was soothing.
“A pod isn’t exactly a marriage,” I said. I was exhausted. The need to save Alkippe and then Hilfa had buoyed me up, and now that I had done it and they were both safe the relief came with a wave of tiredness and a familiar cramping in my belly that meant my bleeding would likely start the next morning.
“It’s the Saeli way of forming a family,” Jason said, speaking gently and looking at Thetis in that way nobody ever looked at me. “Hilfa was talking about it last night after you left.”
“But I—” Thee’s expression was comical as she looked from Sokrates to Hilfa to me and then back at Jason, who was standing there, solid and warm and reliable. You could always count on him to have your back.
“This is merely an expression of our intent to form a pod. We haven’t gone to a magistrate or asked a god for blessing, only said we could,” I said. Jason had taken my hand again, and Hilfa was still clinging to the other. Jason’s was warm, and Hilfa’s was slightly cold, as was normal for him. “Hilfa’s free now whatever we do, and so are the other Saeli. And anyway, nobody is trapped. Pods can be dissolved here. It takes the consent of all members, and the magistrate has to be satisfied by the arrangement for the care of children. Nobody who has been part of a pod dissolution may enter into any form of marriage for a year, including marriage at the Festival of Hera.”
Thetis sighed, and I thought she was going to accuse me of knowing too much law and not enough about people, the way she always used to. “It’s really only that it’s so unexpected,” she said. “Jason said Hilfa needed me, and then suddenly that.”
“He did need you,” I said.
“Yes, I saw. Jathery was so menacing. But a pod!” Thetis took a step backwards on the black and white tiled floor, and almost fell into the drain recess. She caught herself with a hand to the wall, laughing.
“It’s a most interesting experiment,” Sokrates said. “The practical details may take a little working out. This is my house. Pytheas said I could have it back. I know Hilfa has a house.”
“Maybe it would make more sense if we looked for a house down near the harbor,” Jason said, sounding the way he did on the boat when he was laying out what needed doing. “And there’s also Camilla and little Di. I have a responsibility to them.” He looked at Sokrates. “Their parents were killed at sea five years ago. They were friends of mine, we grew up together. I think I should ask Camilla and Di if they would like to live with our new family, or if they’d prefer to stay where they are in the sleeping houses. Would we get an allocation if we gave up our places and asked for a house, do you think, Marsilia?”
“I expect so,” I said. “There’s not much precedent.” This was moving very fast. I hadn’t thought at all about practical arrangements. Indeed, I hadn’t thought it through at all. There would be political repercussions, too—I didn’t know whether they’d be good or bad, but they’d certainly exist. A consul cannot marry without drawing attention, and this really was a kind of marriage. No humans had ever formed part of a pod before, so that was sure to cause comment. I couldn’t even hope everyone would be so focused on the gods and the space humans that they’d take no notice, because Sokrates was involved. Well, it would never be boring, having Sokrates in the family. And Alkippe would love having somebody around to answer all her questions with more questions. And she’d be delighted to live in the same house as Camilla.