“You should think what it’s like growing up being part of the other half of the family. Never let them think you’re inferior. Come on.” She put her hand on the door, but Hermes had stepped up before she opened it.

“Joy to you,” he said, glancing at me then focusing on Thetis, naturally. He was naked, apart from the hat and the sandals. It was usual to exercise naked, though most of the palaestras had been enclosed and heated a long time ago. (The few that hadn’t were only popular in the middle of summer.) Being naked in the street was unusual though, and what was especially odd was the way he seemed comfortable naked outdoors on a chilly evening. He was out of context, and not only in that way. We had gods, of course. Half Thetis’s family were gods, as she’d said. But Hermes was different. We worshipped him! And he hadn’t grown up here. All of this went through my mind while he was still greeting us, and then as Thetis started to speak and introduce us I thought that there were ways he was more like an alien, and maybe that was a useful way to think about him. He spoke Greek; well, so did the Saeli, that didn’t mean they really understood us. He was a Greek-speaking visitor from another culture, like they were.

“Joy to you,” Thetis said. “I am Thetis of the Hall of Florentia and the Tribe of Apollo, Iron of the Just City. This is Jason, Silver of the Just City. And you, no doubt, are Hermes the son of Zeus?”

“The tribe of Apollo?” Hermes echoed, smiling. “Is there a tribe of Hermes too? Or does that mean you’re one of my brother’s descendants?”

“Yes, Pytheas was my step-grandfather,” Thetis said, calm and self-possessed. “I suppose that makes you my step-granduncle. No, step-half-granduncle. This could get confusing.”

“Don’t call me step-granduncle, it makes me seem so much older than you!”

“When in fact you’re thousands of years older than me?” Thetis countered. He looked younger than either of us, barely more than an ephebe, perhaps twenty.

“And yes, you have a tribe too, and I belong to it,” I said, as boldly as I could. This was not the way I had imagined interacting with my patron god.

“Charming, delightful,” Hermes said, smiling and looking around at Thessaly and the other nearby sleeping houses with appreciation. He patted the trunk of an olive tree affectionately. “What a lovely place.”

6

MARSILIA

Thessaly was packed. I’d never seen it so full of people. The noise was ear-splitting. Over the roar of conversation I could hear Alkippe and the other little ones shouting as they chased each other in the garden. Pytheas wasn’t immediately visible, so I assumed he wasn’t there. All my uncles were, and Arete, along with most of Grandfather’s close friends, all my cousins, and what felt like half the city. It seemed as if all my relations and everyone who knew Pytheas and hadn’t needed to be in Chamber had squeezed themselves in here. Thessaly was a standard-size sleeping house, and there really wasn’t room for everyone, even packed so tightly together that there was hardly room to move. Ma and Uncle Fabius were mixing wine in one corner and some of my cousins were passing it around. There were so many people that even though I was looking around to see whether Grandfather was attending his own wake, it took me a moment to notice the naked man talking to Thetis.

He was young, and he was gorgeous, and even in profile across the room I recognized him instantly. He didn’t seem to have aged a day in the eight years since I’d seen him. Of course, he had been naked then too, which might have helped. “Poimandros,” I said. He looked up as I said it, even though he could hardly have heard me across the room. His eyes met mine with absolutely no sign of recognition.

I know I’m not Thetis. I’m used to that. By most measures I’m better than she is. I’m a Gold. I had chaired a meeting that day which made decisions about the future of the planet, the future of humanity. I can haul a net of fish unaided over the side of the boat. It shouldn’t matter that nobody’s eyes linger longingly when they look at me. But it stung a little when Jason looked at her that way, and at me as if I’m a good comrade. I try not to feel it, or if I do feel it then not to act on it or let anyone know how I feel. But even though Poimandros was standing next to Thetis, I would expect a man who’d been married to me at festival to at least remember having seen me before!

My uncle Porphyry had noticed us come in and was pushing his way through the crowd towards us, two cups of wine in each of his big hands. “Do you know him?” Dad asked me, sounding much more surprised than I’d have expected.

“His name is Poimandros, I think he’s from Psyche. I only met him once. He’s Alkippe’s father,” I answered, looking back at them. Poimandros had turned back to Thee. Jason was on her other side, she was smiling teasingly, flirting with both of them at the same time. I tried to smooth out my brow and look serenely at Dad.

I always volunteer for the Festival of Hera. Plato was in favor, so if you want to stand for civic office, it’s a good idea to do it. Besides, it’s a great opportunity to enjoy uncomplicated sex. There are two little festivals every year and one big one, at the end of summer, when people come here from all the cities. Long ago, when there was only one city and the Masters were in charge, participation was compulsory and the Masters cheated to get what they thought would be the best children. Plato says that’s what they should do, though how he, or anyone, imagined they could tell what the children would be like I don’t know. That ended at the Last Debate, and resulted in Dad’s generation, which was followed by a decade or so when they didn’t have any Festivals of Hera here at all, though they kept on with them in Athenia and Psyche. Then they started them up again, on a voluntary basis, and with the lots chosen truly at random, though still always within the same metal. I’ve been volunteering since I was seventeen and wildly curious.

Being drawn together at a Festival of Hera left people with no obligation to each other afterwards. The marriage was strictly time-bound, until the participants left the room. By Plato’s original rules, that was supposed to be the end of it—indeed, what Poimandros had done, in never seeking me out again, and even ignoring the half-besotted note I’d sent him (at Thee’s urging) was precisely in accord with the Republic as Plato wrote it. But in present-day practice, if the people had got on well, which we had, a marriage at festival often develops into a friendship or a love affair, occasionally even a long-term marriage. Marriages that began that way were considered to be lucky. All my other such pairings were now friends, or friendly acquaintances. In any case, looking straight through me as if he’d never seen me before was well beyond what Plato had written, never mind custom. By any interpretation, that was rude. Though it had been eight years; perhaps he really had completely forgotten me.

Porphyry reached us and gave winecups to me and Dad and Aroo. Dad swallowed down a great gulp of his right away. “Gods!”

Porphyry laughed. “He didn’t get here until well after Father was dead,” he said. “He told me explicitly that he didn’t come as a psychopomp, and seemed surprised at the idea. And while he seems intrigued by everyone and everything, he has been paying a great deal of attention to your Thetis. He’s very strange, not how I would have imagined Hermes at all. What do you think?”

Hermes. Was he? Of course he must be. It wasn’t really warm enough for anyone human to be comfortable naked. I felt icy cold inside and out. Though I suppose it did explain both why the sex had been so wonderful and how he could have forgotten. If he was a god, probably it was always like that for him. I wished I hadn’t revealed what I’d admitted to Dad.