I glanced back at him. The look he gave me contained respect. “That should work. Come on!”

I scrambled to my feet and took his offered hand. We stood again in the intense heat and brilliant light of a Greek afternoon, made even brighter by the way the sun reflected from the sparkling water. Another harbor—did all of Earth consist of harbors and blue water? Another boat, this one low in the water with banks of oars. Perhaps it was a fabled trireme; I wouldn’t know. She had a ram at the front, and a slanted mast with a pale purple sail. Sailors were swarming all over her. One group of people were beginning to disembark. I’d never seen any of them before, but I had no difficulty telling which one was Phila. She was tall and stately, with a huge bosom and red hair. She was wearing the kind of women’s clothing you see on dressed statues sometimes, a long draped kiton with some kind of long cloak over it. Her clothes were good quality, and she had more jewelry than the other women in the group, but I could tell she was the important one by her bearing. She moved with the dignity of a woman who is used to exercising power. At home, I’d have unhesitatingly guessed she was a Gold. Here I wasn’t sure whether she’d even classify herself as a philosopher—and yet she ruled. We must be only about forty years after Plato’s death. And I had thought Lucia was strange.

“Welcome to Cyprus,” Hermes said. I saw that he was wearing a kiton, so I looked down and saw that my own clothes had transformed again, this time to a long kiton like Phila’s, and a cloak. My kiton was red again. The cloak was cream, with red embroidery. It was pinned with my gold pin, my only ornament, though Hermes was wearing heavy jewelry in the same style as the men crowded around Phila. I was glad he hadn’t changed that for me.

Phila was off the boat now and coming closer, still surrounded by her entourage, who I thought must be her attendants, secretaries and assistants perhaps. There were soldiers leading the way, and I could see servants coming along behind with bundles and baggage. As I glanced at them, I realized that all of the well-dressed people around Phila were pale-skinned, and only among the servants and the sailors did I see anyone as dark as I was. Also, every one of the soldiers was a man. It was easy to forget this kind of thing when reading about history.

I wondered how Hermes was going to attract her attention. We stood there as they bustled up to us and past us. “Ideally we want to catch her alone,” Hermes murmured as they were met by an official-looking group of men. A child gave Phila flowers, which she handed off to one of her female attendants. “Let’s give her a couple of hours.”

The shadows changed, and so did our position. We were in a walled garden. There was an equestrian statue in the center, surrounded by a bed of pink and white flowers. Phila was sitting alone on a stone bench, looking at some papers wearily. Hermes drew me forward.

“Joy to you, Phila, daughter of Antipatros,” he said.

She started, visibly. “No strangers should be in here,” she said. Her voice was higher than I had expected, for her size.

“We did not come past your guards,” Hermes said. His clothes vanished, so she could see the wings on his ankles and on his hat. She gasped and put a hand to her throat. “You had safe travel, as you asked. Now I require the paper Athene gave you for safekeeping.”

Phila set down her papers with commendable calm. I’m not sure I’d have done as well if a naked god had interrupted me unexpectedly. She looked at him, then at me, then back at him. She raised her arms, palms up, towards Hermes, and I could see they were trembling slightly, but she kept her voice even. “Joy to you.”

I echoed her greeting.

“I will certainly give you Athene’s message, but first allow me to welcome you and make you my guest-friends. You must dine with me.”

Hermes nodded graciously.

“And I would love to converse with you,” she went on, emboldened by this permission.

“There is much I may not reveal,” Hermes said.

“Of course,” Phila said. Her eyes slid towards me. “Will you introduce your companion?”

“This is Marsilia of the Hall of Florentia and the Tribe of Apollo, Gold of the Just City,” Hermes said. I was surprised he knew those details, I’d never told him.

“Oh!” Phila looked delighted. “You come from Athene’s City of wisdom!”

Surely that would be Athenia, where they were still trying to do the Republic exactly the way Plato wrote it. Maybe my rival consul Diotima should have been here instead. Though maybe not, thinking how terribly she would have handled Kebes. “I come from the original city that Athene founded,” I temporized.

“Is it true that there women live as freely as men?”

“Yes,” I said, with no hesitation. That’s true of all our Cities but Psyche.

Phila smiled. She wasn’t beautiful, her bones were too big, but she had a wonderful smile. “And they are philosophers, despite what Aristotle says?”

“Aristotle was a jerk,” Hermes said.

Phila and I laughed. I touched my gold pin. “Some of us are philosophers,” I said. I was, of course, though I didn’t often think of myself that way. I worked on the boat and in Chamber for the good of the City, as we all did in our own ways. I took being a philosopher too much for granted. I swore to do better with that in future.

“Aristotle is the only philosopher I have met. He taught Alexander and my brothers, but he had no time for me. Here and now it is not possible. Women are almost invisible. We live knowing all we do will be forgotten,” she said, not so much saddened as resigned.

“It’s not true. I have read about your deeds,” I said.

“In a book written about me? Or one written about my father, or my brother Kassandros?”

“Your husband,” I admitted. “But—”

“My husband?” she interrupted me, surprised. “But he’s so young. So the Antigonids will win out over the Antipatrids? I wouldn’t have expected that.”

“We should not tell you such things,” Hermes said, looking at me reproachfully.

“Of course not. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to entice secrets from you,” Phila said, not sounding in the least regretful. She clapped her hands, and two servants appeared, a man and a woman both dressed in grey. They bowed to her. “Bring food,” she commanded.

“Here, mistress?” the woman asked.

“Yes, here, of course here, what did you think I meant by bring? And for three people.” They hastened back inside. Phila looked chagrined. “I’m sorry. It’s infuriating how stupid slaves can be. I should have brought more people with me from Macedon. If you haven’t trained them yourself you can’t do anything with them, you have to spell out every single thing or they get it wrong.”

I didn’t know what to say. I liked Phila, but she owned slaves, and what’s more she couldn’t have managed without them, nobody could at that level of technology. It was one thing to read about it and another to see it. Hermes was murmuring something about it being no inconvenience. The slaves came back carrying chairs. I sat down in the chair offered me. “Thank you,” I said. The slave ducked away from me. His cringe reminded me of the serving woman in Lucia, but it was much worse, more exaggerated. “Aristotle was wrong about slaves too,” I said.

Phila frowned. “There are many people whose minds are not capable of higher thought,” she said. The slaves brought wine, and cups in red-figure ware, very fine, as good as anything I had seen at home, and set them beside the statue. A young boy, not quite old enough to be an ephebe, came out and began to mix the wine.

“Yes, and Plato agreed with that, people who should be classified Iron and Bronze. My sister is an Iron.” The slaves came back with a table and a cloth, which they spread over it before scurrying back in. “It should be determined by aptitude, not accident of birth.”