To my great relief, Thetis came back in with beakers and water before Hilfa asked me any more difficult questions. She began to mix the wine at the table. Everyone turned to watch her.

Hilfa took the two full beakers from Thee, and handed one to Sokrates and the other to Ikaros, who smiled at Hilfa and set down a pile of books on the table so he could take it. Thetis went around with the jug refilling cups. Sokrates and Ikaros each took the first ritual sip of their wine, thus formally accepting Hilfa’s hospitality and becoming his guest-friends.

“Joy to you both, and be welcome to my home,” Hilfa said. “Will you answer my question? What are you?” I’d have thought he was being rude, except that Sokrates and Ikaros both responded to being addressed this way with an identical air of delighted alertness that reminded me of the way a boat sometimes, after handling sluggishly coming out of harbor, suddenly comes clear of the land and catches the wind and goes racing away. They looked at each other, and Ikaros spread his hand in the rhetorical gesture meaning that Sokrates should speak first. Sokrates smiled. Pytheas too had a smile playing around his lips. I realized that they were all looking forward to that most characteristic of all entertainments, a Socratic debate. I sipped my wine, which Thetis had mixed strong, and felt uncomfortably aware that it was getting late and I had missed my dinner. I felt out of my depth in this company. I was only a Silver.

“My name is Sokrates, the son of Sophronikos. As for what I am, that’s another matter. I have been human. I have been a fly. I appear to be a plaything of gods and time.”

“When did you stop being a fly?” Thetis asked. She was standing over by the table, holding the wine jug, looking like one of Hestia’s more radiant nymphs.

“Apollo was kind enough to turn me back an hour or so ago,” Sokrates said, turning to her for a second with a smile, and then back to Hilfa. “As for what else I am, I am a philosopher, that’s certain, a lover of wisdom and an inquirer after knowledge.”

“You do not wear a philosopher’s pin,” Hilfa said, in his usual earnest, slightly hesitant way.

“Ha! I am a philosopher without being part of the system of the Just City, or in any way endorsing that system,” Sokrates said, grinning, his head jutting forward, clearly looking forward to the response.

“They don’t wear pins in Sokratea,” Thetis pointed out.

Sokrates looked away from Hilfa, taken aback. “Sokratea?” he asked, warily. He had an exceedingly mobile face; his expression could change in an instant.

“There are twelve Platonic Cities now,” Pytheas said, grinning. “All different. Sokratea is the one Patroklus founded, on the principle of re-examining everything.”

“Patroklus? Not Kebes?” Sokrates asked at once.

“Kebes—” Pytheas stopped smiling. “Oh Sokrates, I’m sorry to bring this news. Kebes left, with some of the others. He founded eight cities of his own on other islands. We were out of contact with them for a long time. When we found them again, we discovered that they had set up a very unpleasant form of Christianity, and institutionalized torture.”

“I told you about Christianity,” Ikaros put in.

Sokrates looked sad. “Kebes had told me about it too, and his version was different from yours. Torture … yes, I can see how he might have come to it, from the anger and self-righteousness in his own soul. But I thought he had learned to question.”

“He learned to tear down other people’s arguments, but never to truly examine his own where it made him uncomfortable,” Pytheas said. He set down his almost full winecup at his feet.

“He always was too sure he was right,” Sokrates said, sadly. “I failed him. Where is he now? I should talk to him.”

“I killed him,” Pytheas said, calmly and quietly, looking up at Sokrates from where he sat. “I used his own judicial methods and flayed him alive.”

“What!?” the word exploded from Sokrates. Then he stopped and rocked back on his heels. “You did what? What did he—what could make you—where’s Simmea?” He looked around the room, as if expecting to see her hiding in a corner.

“She’s dead too,” I said quietly, after too long a silence when it seemed nobody else was capable of responding. Pytheas’s face looked like stone. Thetis had tears rolling down her cheeks.

Sokrates sighed. “Was Kebes involved in her death? Is that why you did that? Or did you need to kill him to help his cities change? But that way, Pytheas?”

“Good guesses, but no. I did think he might have been involved, but in the end her death wasn’t personal. There was a war.” Sokrates didn’t say anything but his eyebrows rose. “I stopped it, afterwards. Kebes—I do believe it was the best thing for his soul, to let it go on and have another chance. He was so set on everything, and so wrong. He did need to be removed to help the Lucian cities, and it did help them. They don’t torture people now, and most of them have become pretty good places to live. But that’s not really why I did it. I wanted to kill him because I found out he raped Simmea. At the Festival of Hera when they were matched together. I know she didn’t tell you, she didn’t tell me either. She wrote about it, and I read it after her death, when I was half-mad with missing her.” Sokrates started to say something, but Pytheas raised a hand and he stopped. “The real reason I killed Kebes with his own slow unpleasant justice was because he had cheated in a musical contest.”

“He must have been desperate to enter a musical contest with you,” Sokrates said.

“No, I think the idea of beating me that way must have been irresistible. He very nearly won,” Pytheas said. “He had a new instrument, and a really good song, though as it turned out not an original composition, a song from the twentieth century. We don’t know where he found either of them, he wouldn’t say.”

“I’m surprised he cheated in a contest. That’s not like him—though maybe he made himself feel that the song belonged to him and was therefore his. He was always deceiving himself that way. But for you to do that—” Sokrates shook his head. “I wish I could still believe the gods knew what they were doing.”

“You know what I am,” Pytheas said. “You know we’re not perfect.” He glanced at Ikaros as he said this, and Ikaros smiled back ruefully. “Kebes was never my friend, and he’d hurt Simmea. He deceived himself and deceived others and made everything worse. I have learned from it. I learned the futility of revenge, and about what things are worth fighting for. I wrote a song.”

“By the dog!” Sokrates said. “I’d prefer it if one of my friends didn’t have to die horribly so that another one can learn from it, even if the other one is you!”

“You’re not being fair. Kebes cheated twice,” Thetis put in, indignantly. “As well as plagiarizing, so that Pytheas had to turn his lyre upside-down to win, he arranged a treacherous attack on the ship and the crew, after they’d been given guest-friendship. People were killed.”

“It’s all right, Thee, I hold myself to higher standards too,” Pytheas said. Thetis shook her head.

“I saw him this morning. He was so eager for me to defeat Athene.” Sokrates shook his head. Then he looked at Thetis, who was wiping her eyes on the corner of her kiton. “You’re Simmea’s daughter?”

“Her granddaughter,” Thetis said. “My father is Neleus.”

“I’m glad she has descendants,” Sokrates said.

“She has lots of descendants,” Pytheas said.

“Also she wrote dialogues, which I and many people have read, and there are statues of her,” Hilfa put in.

“When did all this happen?” Sokrates asked.

“About forty years ago,” Thetis said.

“Forty years?” Ikaros echoed, sounding surprised. “So it’s been sixty years here since the Last Debate?”

“The Last Debate?” Sokrates asked, frowning.

“That’s what we call the time when Athene turned you into a fly,” Thetis explained. “We didn’t really stop debating after that.”