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.”

“You were a poet and a philosopher when you left us,” Pytheas said.

“We’ve all grown up a lot since then,” Nikias said, smiling.

“And you’re not abandoning a family here?” Klymene asked, familiarly. I realized as she spoke that of course she knew him, even though they hadn’t seen each other for longer than my entire lifetime. All the Children knew each other. Whatever city they lived in now, they had long complex histories of growing up together in the original Republic.

“No. I did, but we’re separated. She went to Hieronymos.” He looked down.

“You might like to know that as well as Neleus here you have a daughter in Psyche. Andromeda was pregnant when you left.”

“I’m going ashore,” Maecenas grunted. “I’ll talk to Timon and try to sort things out.”

“Is it safe ashore?” Klymene asked.

“Armor, and an armed escort.” Maecenas sighed. “I’ll take Dion and—no, by Hekate, not Phaenarete. Klymene, find me half a dozen trained unwounded Young Ones for a shore mission.”

She nodded.

“I’m going to swim some more,” Father said.

“Not alone you’re not,” Maecenas said. “Arete, Kallikles, stay with your father. Swimming is all right, but you’re not going ashore, none of you. You’re a provocation.”

“And me?” Phaedrus asked.

“Keep helping the doctors, you’re good at that.”

Klymene looked at Kallikles again, but he didn’t look at her. She caught my eye, and I spread my hands. I didn’t know what to say to her. I was also horrified that she had voted against Father, but if he was prepared to deal with it, so was I. She was Klymene, Mother’s friend, Kallikles’s mother. I had known her all my life.

“Kallikles,” she said.

He turned to her. “We won’t have a feud, since Father doesn’t want one, but you can’t expect me to feel the same toward you.”

“That’s fair,” she said. She turned and went below, moving as if she had aged twenty years in the last half hour.

25

ARETE

The voyage home was strange. On the voyage out, even during the storm, we’d had a sense of adventure, of the world opening before us. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt like that. Ficino had wanted to find the Trojan heroes. We had all sung in the evenings. We were sailing into the unknown, and we looked forward to what we would find. It was a voyage of discovery. The voyage home was a journey through anti-climax. I stood my regular watch, but all the joy had gone out of it. The ship still felt alive, and the sky and the sea and the islands were still beautiful, but that was all. Erinna seemed to be avoiding me, after the conversation on the masthead. She was polite when I spoke to her, but uncomfortable. I wasn’t sorry I had saved her life, how could I be? But I cried myself to sleep missing her, and missing Ficino, who might still be alive if I hadn’t thrown myself into the fight. I had always been told that all actions have consequences. Now I was starting to understand what that meant.

We had envoys aboard to Kallisti from Lucia—to all the five cities. And we had people who wanted to go to other Lucian cities, and a handful like Nikias who wanted to come back to the Remnant. There were no more secrets about where the Lucian cities were. Timon had given Maecenas a map, a beautiful thing, drawn like an illuminated manuscript, embellished with dolphins and triremes, with all their cities neatly marked.

“Ah,” Father said, when he saw it, and then when we looked at him curiously he just said “Beautifully drawn.”

We called at the Lucian cities, one after another, where the news that Kebes was dead and the Goodness destroyed was met each time with shock and horror. Aristomache tried to explain to them that it wasn’t really our fault, but it was hard to avoid feeling guilty nevertheless.

“The problem is that it’s a subtle complex thing and hard to explain,” she said to me as we sailed toward Marissa. “Matthias was in the wrong, and he started the attack. But you did destroy the Goodness, and that does destroy our civilization. And we were doing so much good.”

“The Goodness would still be safe if Matthias hadn’t attacked us,” I said. It felt strange to call Kebes by his other name.

“Indeed,” she agreed. “That attack was wrong and unprovoked. And you didn’t destroy the Goodness on purpose. The wind changed. It was Matthias’s fault for using a fireship and trying to destroy this ship. God punished him. But he has punished all of us for Matthias’s hubris.”