Pico looked uncomfortable at this compliment. He looked about thirty, but he had been over sixty and almost blind at the Relocation, before Father had restored his youth on Olympos so that he could work with Athene. He didn’t seem to have aged at all since then. He introduced us, Apollonaire de Delos and Socrate d’Athen, who unhappily knew no French. We sat down in the little uncomfortable chairs. “We’re passing by, we can’t stay,” he said, in response to Florent-Claude’s offer of hospitality for the night. The flunkey returned and gave us all sherry, in little glasses, and offered around a plate of petits fours. I neither ate nor drank, but it was almost worth the delay for the expression on Sokrates’s face when after turning the highly colored confection in his fingers he bit into the cloying marzipan.

I wished Athene had given me more to go on. I didn’t know what she’d said when she asked Florent-Claude to keep the paper for him, or what name she’d been using or who he thought she was. Fortunately, Pico did. “You remember my friend Athenais de Minerve?”

“Of course,” Florent-Claude said. “So beautiful, so wise.”

“Did she by chance give you an incomprehensible paper to look after?” Pico asked.

Sokrates was ignoring us all and pleating the lace of his undersleeve intently.

“So, you are on her treasure hunt?” Florent-Claude smiled.

I could not understand why Athene had gone through this elaborate charade and divided up her message. It was dangerous as well as unnecessary. Ordinary mortals involved this way could easily have lost the paper. Pico’s could have been stolen, and what Kebes might have done with it didn’t bear thinking about. He could have burned it for pure spite.

“We are,” Pico said.

“Then can you answer her riddle?”

“We’ll have to see when you ask it,” Pico said, confidently.

“Let me fetch it,” he said. “But first I should tell you that it’s in English, and if none of you speak that language you have leave to find another who does.”

“English,” Pico said, dismayed. “I know many languages, but not that barbarous tongue.”

“Barbarous? I think not, since I speak it,” I said. (You’re reading this. You already know I speak English.)

Florent-Claude chortled, and went off to fetch the paper. I hoped he hadn’t lost it among his bibelots.

“Who did she think would come who would need to find an English speaker?” Pico asked, in Greek.

“Porphyry?” I suggested.

“Old Porphyry’s still alive?” Sokrates asked, looking up from his sleeve, surprised.

“No, he died. But Euridike named one of my sons after him, and that’s who we’re talking about. Ikaros was one of his teachers.”

Sokrates seemed to accept that calmly. “Where did Florent-Claude go?”

“He’s fetching Athene’s message,” I explained.