It made me happy to hear this said. But then Pytheas looked around sadly at the chilly space the garden had become.

“We will plant more green things out here. It’s sad that the lemon tree couldn’t survive the winters,” I said. “But the wood will be useful to make many good things. I could make you a comb, and when you used it you could think of them.”

“I’d like that,” he said.

“And a pen,” I added.

He nodded. He was no longer mad with grief, the way he had been immediately after Simmea’s death, but he still felt it, as I did myself. Now that I had comforted him, or at least made an effort towards trying, I wanted to get back to the conversation. “If Plato was wrong,” I said, and we both glanced at the arch over the door where the words could have been incised, “why did he imagine the gods that way?”

“He was wrong about the purpose of the gods,” Pytheas said. “He imagined that we existed as inspiration, examples, much the same way he imagined art.” He laughed. “He was wrong about art too.”

“And why do you exist?” I asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “Not why we exist, or why humans do, or Workers either. I’m sure Father knows, but he probably wouldn’t tell me.” He smiled at me, the smile that wasn’t like anyone else’s smile. “Plato might have been wrong a lot of the time, but at least he was trying to figure important things out. He deserves credit for that.”

VII. On Friendship

The reason why Pytheas only joked about it and didn’t have me inscribe Plato Was Wrong over his doorway was to avoid distressing his friends, especially Maia and Aristomache.

5

JASON

Walking through the city with Thetis, I kept wanting to pinch myself so I could be sure it wasn’t a dream. Except that if it was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up, so there was that. I had my arm around her, around the outside of her cloak that is, which was fairly thick, whatever shimmery stuff it was made out of. But as we walked through the streets behind the harbor she sort of half-leaned into me, as if she couldn’t have managed to walk without my help. The sun was down now, not that we’d seen a glimpse of him since the morning. The clouds had been low out on the water. It had been grey all day, and raining on and off. Now twilight was closing in as we made our way through the streets, and a cold wind was coming up from the southwest. At first Thetis was crying, but after a little while, as we started heading uphill, she stopped. She wiped her face, took a deep breath, then turned her lovely eyes on me expectantly. “Well?”

“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, completely at a loss. “It would be wrong to tell you to cheer up, when you’ve so recently lost your grandfather.”

“You don’t think it’s un-Platonic of me to grieve?” she asked.

I couldn’t remember what Plato had said about it. I’d read the Republic when I was an ephebe, like everyone else, but that was a while ago and I’d been busy since. “Unnatural not to, if you ask me. It’s five years since Leonidas and Aelia died, and I’ve recovered from the shock, mostly, but right away the grief was like an open wound.”

“Did you weep?”

She was exactly my height, taller than her sister although she was so much slighter. She must have used some flower scent in her soap, because I could smell it on her skin. “Yes, right away I did,” I said. “When we found the wreckage. And at the memorial, and then afterwards whenever I’d think about them I’d feel tears coming to my eyes. Even now sometimes. We all grew up together in the same nursery, sucked milk from the same breasts, as they say, and then we worked together on the boats. You can’t forget people you’re that close to as if they’d never been. Yes, I wept. There’s nothing shameful about tears like that.”

“Thank you.” She wiped her eyes again, unselfconsciously. “We should keep walking. It’s cold.” She took my arm and we walked on, past the Temple of Nike with its neatly swept gravel courtyard. “I never knew Leonidas, but I remember Aelia. She used to eat in Florentia sometimes, with the quilters. She helped old Tydeus when his sight was going. She was kind. And you’re kind too, Jason, you’re always kind.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I do my best,” I muttered. If it had been a dream I’d have had dream eloquence, but it was waking life and the girl I’d been in love with since we were both fifteen was telling me I was kind and my tongue was thick in my mouth. “Tell me about your grandfather. I didn’t know him well.”

“He wasn’t like anyone else. Of course, he was the god Apollo, and you couldn’t forget that. But he was also a man, a man astonished at growing old, at grey hair, at weakening muscles.” We came to the walls and turned in at the gate. Thetis’s voice echoed for a moment as we passed beneath the arch. “I always loved him. He had so many grandchildren, and he cared about all of us. I’m not really his grandchild, did you know that?”

“Yes, Marsilia mentioned that your father, Neleus, was festival-born.” We came out from under the walls and were in the old city. I lived down by the harbor and worked at sea, and hardly ever came up here at night. I was surprised how many people were about in the evening chill. By the harbor, everything had been built for the climate of Plato, thick walls and narrow windows, all the houses huddling together against the cold, with light bars running along the sills of the buildings. Here you could tell everything had been intended for a warmer climate—there was a great variety of styles, but all of it was freestanding and mostly pillared, with individual sconces glowing gold above all the doors.

“Well, all of his children were except Arete. And she—” Thetis shrugged, as if to say that Arete was something special, which she definitely was. “He loved her. Dad’s mother. Simmea. And I think I must remind him of her in some way, because he’s always had a soft spot for me.”

“You don’t look like her.” I’d seen Crocus’s colossus of Simmea, the one by the steps of the library. She looked more like Marsilia.

“Yes, she was a true philosopher,” Thetis said, smiling a little, sadly.

“Marsilia says they only started saying that about philosophers being naturally ugly because of Simmea and Sokrates. She says Plato assumed beauty, and that there are plenty of good-looking philosophers. Pytheas himself was an example, and Ikaros was another.”

“They’re gods,” Thetis said. “That’s different.” She hesitated, then went on. “I used to think that I couldn’t hope to be a philosopher, because of how I looked. When I was a little girl, I mean. Marsilia’s older, and she was brilliant, and also she looked like one, of course. And so it was what everyone said, that it was clear that she’d be a Gold, that her metal shone through. Whereas to me, they said I was pretty as a picture or that somebody ought to sculpt me. Everyone except Grandfather. Pytheas. He always treated me as if what I thought mattered. Dad was busy running the city, and Ma was away at sea so often, and in classes they tended to treat me as if I had to be empty-headed and thistledown-weight because I was pretty.”

“Not only pretty, beautiful,” I said. “But that shouldn’t have been all they saw.”

“That’s right,” she said, and gave my arm a little pat. “I realize that now, but I didn’t at the time. And so I didn’t work hard, which you probably remember from that year we took classes together, and when they classified me Iron it simply seemed appropriate.” The crowds had thinned out, and we had the street to ourselves except for a Saeli pod walking the other way, arms entwined.

“But do you like your work?” I asked.

She smiled, and I caught my breath, to see a smile like that from so close. “I love it,” she said. “Plato was right. It’s so good to have our work carefully chosen for us and to feel every day that in doing what I love I am helping make the City better.”