She nodded. Father had reached the side of the quay, where I could see him clearly. He was covered in blood, but he seemed unconscious of it as he stood talking to the others. They were gesturing at the wreck of the Goodness, which had sunk further overnight.
“You saved my life,” Erinna said.
“You saved mine. We fought side by side. You knew how to use the sword. I realized as soon as I got there that I was useless.”
“You’re not an ephebe yet. You haven’t had training. And you were safe where you were up on the stand,” Erinna said.
“I couldn’t just stay there while you and Ficino and Neleus and Father got killed!” I was indignant. On the quay everyone was waving their arms around. Clearly, the argument was getting heated.
“You came straight toward me,” she said. I didn’t say anything. I had, and I couldn’t deny it. “Thank you.”
I still didn’t know what to say. “You were in danger. Anyone would have—”
“You really like me, don’t you?” she asked.
Now I really didn’t know how to answer. “Yes.” I stared down at the argument on the quayside.
“I like you, but not like that,” Erinna said.
“Like what?” I muttered, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks. “I know,” I went on, making it worse.
“You’re so much younger, and losing Simmea—I was looking out for you a bit. That’s all.”
“I know,” I said, more loudly. “It’s all right. I understand. I don’t want anything but to go on being friends the way we have been.”
“Good,” she said, but I knew that everything was spoiled. Tears stung my eyes. On the quayside, Father shrugged and dove neatly into the sea.
“You should go down to talk to him,” Erinna said.
I slid down the mast. The blood was washed off his hair and skin by the time he pulled himself onto the deck, but his cloak and kiton were still stained. He pulled them off and stood naked on the deck, dripping sea-water, with a strand of seaweed caught over his shoulder.
Maecenas looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Erinna’s still up there watching,” I said. He nodded. I embraced Father, getting myself wet in the process. Kallikles and Phaedrus came up the ladder onto the deck and embraced Father one at a time, and we all wished each other joy. The sun was up behind the hill and the sky was bright. Again I thought that this was like a scene in a play. But in a play, the gods show up at the end to sort everything out, and let the people who love each other be together. I picked the seaweed off Father’s shoulder and dropped it back into the water.
“Kebes is dead?” Maecenas asked, as Phaedrus stepped back.
“Dead,” Father confirmed. “Dead and gone back where he came from. And after all the trouble I had getting the skin off in one piece, it vanished with him.”
I shuddered. The worst of it was that he said it so calmly. There were times when he wasn’t like other people at all. Maecenas started to speak, then swallowed hard and began again. “How are the rest of them?”
“They want reparations because we burned their ship,” Father said.
“Zeus burned it,” Maecenas said. “Literally, by all accounts. They tried to burn us, but the wind changed all in an instant and drove the fireship back on the Goodness.”
Father glanced at Kallikles, who smiled. “The winds do back unexpectedly sometimes,” Father said.
“Yes, but they tell me also that the first man to try to board was struck by lightning, out of a clear sky,” Maecenas said. He too looked at Kallikles. “You saw that, didn’t you?”
“I was right there,” Kallikles agreed.
“I didn’t want to believe it either, but you see there’s no question about it,” Maecenas said. “It discouraged the rest of them, as you can imagine.”
I looked with admiration at Kallikles. Without him we might have lost the ship and everyone aboard. My own powers weren’t anything like as useful.
Neleus and Nikias came aboard, dry, from the fishing boat that had been acting as a ferry. Nikias came over to Maecenas at once. “I want to go back to Kallisti with my son,” he said. “Will you give me passage?”
Maecenas looked from Nikias to Neleus, and then to Father, who nodded. “Well, of course I will, but this could be a problem if there were a lot of people who wanted to leave Lucia and go with us.”
“We promised to take Aristomache and the others back to Marissa,” Phaedrus pointed out.
“That’s easy. The problem is that without the Goodness these people aren’t going to be able to keep on doing as they have been doing,” Father said. “Timon was starting to say that when I dived into the sea. They want the Excellence.”
“So they can keep on rescuing people and founding cities,” Kallikles said.
“That’s a matter for Chamber,” Maecenas said. “Did they offer compensation for Caerellia and Ficino and the others they killed?”
“They think we took it out of Kebes’s hide,” Neleus said. This remark was followed by an awkward silence, broken after a moment when Klymene came on deck.
“Pytheas,” she said, by way of greeting.
“No thanks to you,” Neleus said.
“If Klymene prefers the Myxolydian mode, that’s no disgrace,” Father said, quite sharply.
Klymene blushed. “I did prefer it. And I thought you were cheating by turning your lyre over. I had no idea what Kebes was planning.”
“Of course not,” Father said. “No hard feelings. I don’t know how it is, but you always manage to see me at my worst moments.”
I looked at him in complete incomprehension. She had voted for his death by torture, and he must now understand what that meant. However little he minded being dead and returned to his proper divine self, he had said he didn’t want to be skinned. How could he not have hard feelings?
Kallikles looked at his mother incredulously. “You voted for Kebes?”
“You didn’t hear him play,” Father said. “He had a syrinx. He was very good.”
“But it wasn’t just a musical contest!” sputtered Kallikles. “It was your life.”
“Kebes was Klymene’s friend,” Father said. “And three of the Lucians preferred the Phrygian mode, as it turned out.”
Kallikles shook his head.
“Son—” Klymene said, putting her hand on his arm.
“Don’t talk to me,” he said, shaking her off. “You voted for my father’s death.”
“We are not going to have a feud over this,” Father said, firmly. “If Klymene has wronged anyone it’s me, and I refuse to have this be the cause of trouble.” Again I thought this was like something from Aeschylus, except that it was also my family. There was an awkward silence.
“The problem is what we’re going to do about the Lucians now,” Maecenas said.
“If all the Lucians were treacherous and prepared to break guest friendship we’d all be dead. It was just a minority of them. Many of them fought beside us in the colosseum,” Phaedrus said.
“Auge and Timon restored order,” I said.
Maecenas shook his head. “We’ll have to take a mission home with us, and then at the very least bring them back. This will have to be discussed in Chamber, and voted on in the Assembly. It’s too much for us.” He looked at Nikias. “You can come with us. We’ve never stopped anyone coming back to the Remnant, there’s clear precedent for that. And if you’re a Christian, you can mix in with the New Concordance lot. They have a little temple down on the street of Hermes.”
“I’m not bothered about religion,” Nikias said. “I have useful skills. I’m a glassblower.”