“I would be willing to go alone,” Jathery said, gla inner eyelids shining over gla eyes.

Pytheas shook his head. “No. If Athene trusted gla, she’d have left the message for gla, not for me. I have to go, Marsilia. Jathery can come, we’ve agreed that, but I don’t trust gla, and I’m not letting gla go alone.”

“Besides these instructions are for two gods working together,” Arete said. “But I don’t see how you’re any less likely to get stranded there than she was, if you go there using the method she left you. You’d simply be repeating what she did, which worked to take her out but not to bring her home. So all you’d achieve by going after her would be to make things worse.”

Pytheas stared at her grimly. “We have a shield she did not. Jathery is bound by Necessity, that great force. Alkippe is his child, but he hasn’t yet been back to conceive her. Does that affect your estimate of our safety?”

“What? You can’t risk Alkippe like that!” Tears sprang to Thetis’s eyes at once. She leapt to her feet. “Grandfather! That’s the worst thing I ever heard. You can’t! And you, Jathery or whoever you are, you have to go there right now and set things straight!” I’d forgotten she hadn’t been there when we’d found out about this, back in Thessaly.

“Calm down, it’s all right,” Marsilia said.

I stood up and put a tentative hand on Thetis’s arm. “Let’s hear more about it,” I said. “Marsilia—”

“It isn’t all right! It can’t be!” Thetis shook me off. “It’s unbearable.”

“But Alkippe might be keeping all of us safe, the whole of our civilization even,” Marsilia said.

“The whole of history, potentially, Thee,” Pytheas said.

“I don’t care!” Thetis said. “You can’t take risks with her like that! How can you think of it? She’s only seven.”

Marsilia looked at me pleadingly. I didn’t know what to say or do. I felt sorry for Thetis, but things were bad enough without getting upset about them. It seemed strange that she could hear about the potential unravelling of the world as calmly as any of us, but a threat to one child she loved overcame her this way.

“I’m horrified too, but if it’s really keeping all of us safe, then the risk is no worse for Alkippe than for any of us, all of us,” I said.

To my surprise Hilfa got up and put his arms awkwardly around Thetis, and she sank down on the bed and allowed him to hold her.

“Are you Alkippe’s mother, Thetis?” Sokrates asked gently.

Thetis shook her head.

“No, I am,” Marsilia said quietly to Sokrates, as poor Thetis wept on Hilfa’s shoulder.