“Trouble?” she asked Crocus, ignoring Thetis.

“News, and a complication,” he replied, in his slightly odd mechanical voice. Before either of them could say anything more, Thetis ran towards Marsilia, who braced herself and clutched her barely in time to prevent both of them falling over the edge of the quay into the icy water. “Grandfather’s dead,” Thetis said.

That was news. Old Pytheas, Apollo himself. He was one of the Children, and so he must have been eighty or thereabouts, but he’d seemed well enough when I’d seen him singing at the Festival of Artemis a few days before. What did it mean for an incarnate god to die?

Marsilia patted Thee’s back and made soothing noises. Hilfa went to fetch the cart to get the fish into the warehouse. I began to swing the heavy tubs of fish onto the hoist, to be ready when he came back with it.

“Is this the news or the complication?” Marsilia asked Crocus. She sounded taken off balance. It must be strange to have a grandfather who’s a god. I wondered what she felt about him.

“Neither,” he responded. “Though I should give you my condolences. The news and the complication are the same thing.” Because he didn’t have eyes, I had no way to tell where he was looking. I couldn’t tell whether he was paying any attention to me at all. I looked away from Marsilia and poor Thetis and saw Hilfa coming back with the cart. Dion was helping him push it over the cobblestones, and little Camilla came skipping along beside them. I was looking at them, and moving the tubs on their swivel along the sloping deck, and I almost didn’t take it in when Crocus said: “A human spaceship is in orbit.”

“That changes everything,” Marsilia said, suddenly all practical, the way she was when we were out with the nets. “Thee, stop crying, it’s un-Platonic. I have to go.”

“Marsilia! You can’t go off and worry about spaceships right after Grandfather has died,” Thetis said, outraged.

“Oh yes I can,” Marsilia said. “And Dad will do the same.”

“Neleus is already in the Chamber,” Crocus confirmed. “I came to fetch you for the sake of speed.”

“Hilfa says you have a good haul!” Dion said, as he came up. “Joy to you, Marsilia, Thetis, Crocus.”

Camilla ran to me and put her arms up to be swung onto the boat. I heaved her aboard and hugged her. “Gloaters!” she exclaimed. A human spaceship, I was thinking, recontact with the mainstream of human civilization at last. And Pytheas dead. Everything had changed and nothing had. Hilfa came aboard beside me. I swung the first tub up so that the fish that filled it cascaded down into the cool boxes on the cart in a swirl of red and black.