I didn’t say anything. If Simmea were alive, we wouldn’t have been here. And if we had been, and she’d been here, Kebes would have been civil to me in her presence, as he had promised years ago. And besides, I have never truly understood what Plato meant by agape, especially when it came to men and women. I wasn’t sure that Plato even really understood that men could fall in love with women, or that women could fall in love at all. It wasn’t until the Renaissance that Platonic love was interpreted that way. There aren’t any simple words for what Simmea and I were to each other. She was my friend and my votary. That was enough.
“Why didn’t you just kill him?” Phaedrus asked. “When he said that and you hit him?”
“I didn’t think,” I said, and it was true. I’d smashed him to the ground with a blow. I could just as easily have crushed his throat and watched him choke to death. I had acted entirely without thinking, and on that instinctive level I was used to drawing back and not killing Kebes.
Neleus had the wine. I waited until he had swallowed. “I need you to help me,” I said to him. “You haven’t accepted their hospitality.”
He nodded, eager. “I haven’t. Not here, and not at Marissa.”
“Good. That was well thought through. The rest of you did accept it, didn’t you.”
“Sorry,” Phaedrus said.
“I didn’t think,” Kallikles said.
“They’re not all Kebes. They’re good people, doing good work. Mother would have liked them,” Arete said.
“They’ll be utterly forgotten,” I said, confident of it. I’d been shaken for a moment at Marissa, but I knew the future couldn’t be changed, that anything done here was nothing more to history than a marginal note. I’d been to the future, after all. On the beach where we were sitting there would one day be a wonderful little restaurant that made mouth-watering kalimari and grilled fish, crisp outside and moist within. “Forgotten. Kebes and all his works.”
“Maia says they’re the cities Plato heard about. The ones that lived according to his rule, and then degenerated to timarchy and so on,” Arete said. “And they do show signs that way.”
I laughed, amused. “Then maybe they are.”
I looked back at Neleus. “Kebes said the judges couldn’t be our children—by which I assume he’s not practicing clerical celibacy and he has some children here. But you’re technically not my child, which is a good thing, because it means you can be one of the judges. And because you haven’t accepted their hospitality, you’re not restricted in what you can do. If Kebes tries to cheat, you’re free to act without any inhibitions.”
Neleus grinned at me across the flames. “Do you think he has any chance of winning, though?”
“He’s certainly seems to think he can. And he’s definitely going to try to get biased judges. So we may as well do what we can. He must think he has a chance, or he’d never have suggested it.”
“I don’t understand how the judges are going to be able to judge fairly,” Arete said. “They’ll know they’re condemning one of you to death.”
“It will all be done in public. Everyone will see. It will affect how relations go in future between Kallisti and the Goodness Group. They’ll want to be seen to be fair. So I think it will be a real competition.” I was actually looking forward to it. “And even if I lose, it doesn’t matter. If he kills me, I’ll just kill him right after. If that happens, don’t stand right next to him.”
“Will you blast him with lightning?” Kallikles asked.
“No, only Father can do that. But I will have the arrows of my wrath, which cannot miss.” I missed the weight of the quiver on my back. “I won’t use one of the ones that brings plague. But there won’t be much left of him. There may be a crater.” That would be very satisfying. But it would be even more satisfying to defeat him first, so that he had to understand before he died that I was better than he was.
Kallikles was clearly pondering saying something. He looked at Neleus and then away.
I went on. “The other thing, Neleus, is that your other father, Nikias, is here—I saw him in the crowd this morning.”
“I had thought he might be, or if not here then in one of their other cities,” Neleus said, looking down.
“It’s a good thing. Simmea liked him, and he liked her. They were friends, the same as she was friends with Aeschines. He’ll probably be pleased to meet you and know you. But he’ll also be an ally. If you can find him tonight, you might be able to persuade him to be one of their judges—there can’t be much competition for the job. And he might be able to tell us about Kebes’s mysterious instrument, and what things are really like here.”
“Did you think Aristomache was lying?” Arete asked. “Because she wasn’t.”
“Aristomache would no more lie than lay an egg,” I said. “But good people can be deceived, more easily than bad people sometimes.”
“You can tell whether people are lying, can’t you?” she asked.
“I can tell whether they’re sincere,” I said.
Neleus looked at her, and at me. “You’re not talking about something people can do. You’re talking about some kind of hero thing? Because I can also usually tell when people are telling the truth just by the way they talk, and where they look when they talk.”
“I can do that too,” Arete said. “But just recently I’ve started being sure.”
“Yes, that’s a power,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
“We’ve all been getting powers,” Kallikles said. “I don’t want to keep it from you, Nel. I don’t want to hurt you by making you feel different either, but keeping it secret is worse. Ever since we went to Delos, we’ve been able to do some things.”
“Like what?” he asked, looking at the three of them. “I knew there was something.”
“Healing,” Phaedrus said. “And heat.” He put his hand into the fire and left it there. “I don’t burn. And I can walk on air.”
“I can walk on air too. And I have lightning, just a little.” Kallikles held his hands a few inches apart and a tiny bolt of lightning jumped between them. “I found out in the storm. I can control weather. I think that’s why the storm was so bad. I was drawing it by mistake. I think I have it under control now, though.”
“And you?” Neleus asked Arete.
“The truth thing. And I can understand other languages. I can walk on air too, and I can also fly. And I think I could fly carrying somebody, if I had to. That’s all.” Fly? Simmea and I had imagined that she’d be a philosophical hero. There’s never any control over how children will come out. I thought again of the unknown boy Fabius.
“That seems like enough!” Neleus said. “Fly?”
“I’ve only tried it once, but yes,” she said. She looked along the beach. We were still in sight from the ship, if anyone was looking. “I don’t want anyone to see me, but I’ll show you when it gets darker, if you like.”
“It won’t get much darker. The afterglow is fading, but the moon’s close enough to full that when she’s up people would be able to see you.” There was already a silver glow behind the hill where the moon was about to rise.
“I’ll show you another time, then,” Arete said. “It’s not weird—it’s just like being able to do math in your head, or knowing how to swim.”
“Not weird? Being able to walk on air and heal people and fly?” Neleus’s voice rose. “It’s about as weird as things get!” He looked at me suddenly. “I’ve never seen you do anything like that.”
“I gave up my powers to become incarnate,” I said. “You know that. I can’t do anything like that now.”