Porphyry shrugged. “Yes, of course he is, but not exceptionally more excellent than you’d expect of a human born here and brought up by Pytheas and Simmea and who chose to move to Athenia as an ephebe. He’s faster and more beautiful than Neleus, but not a better philosopher.”

“Dad hates being used as the exemplary human,” I put in. “It always comes up in conversations about this kind of thing.”

“He’s such a useful example, though,” Porphyry said, smiling at me.

“And how about people who aren’t children of gods? Do they ever have heroic souls?” Sokrates asked.

Porphyry sighed. “We think so, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. Gods like to mate, is what Father says. So if there’s somebody with a heroic soul, it can be hard to know for sure who their father is.”

Alkippe, I thought, again. How could Jathery deceive me that way? But I wanted her to exist. So since I willed the end, I must will the means, deception and being trapped by Necessity and all.

“So that could be you,” Sokrates said to Ikaros.

Ikaros blinked. “They say it about you, and about Plato,” he said.

“Me!” Sokrates laughed. “What god would own me as his son? Silenos?”

“Apollo.”

“We know what sons of Apollo look like,” Sokrates said, gesturing to Porphyry, with his chiselled features and bright blue eyes. Even for a man of sixty he was eye-catching, and like all my uncles he had been beautiful when he was younger. (Dad used to say he stopped being jealous of his brothers after Ma fell in love with him. I definitely shouldn’t ever tell them that she might be Kebes’s daughter.) “And Plato had a great broad forehead and a bit of a stoop!”

“You’re young,” I said, realizing it as I looked at Ikaros. “You look younger than you do on the temple frescos.”

He ran a hand through his long hair. “I was old and nearly blind. I grew young again on Olympos. I don’t know if it was Zeus or Athene or simply the place itself. I haven’t seemed to age at all since then. But I’ve spent a lot of time outside time.”

“It’s very strange being outside time,” I said, without thinking.

“Yes,” Ikaros said. “Interesting though.”

“Marsilia?” Porphyry asked.

“Jathery took me outside time last night,” I said. I didn’t want to explain everything to Porphyry until Jathery and Pytheas either came back or didn’t. But I knew how to distract him. “Jathery is Alkippe’s father. So when you’re giving her generation their choice of going to Olympos with you to get powers, you should ask her too.”

Porphyry nodded. “All right. That’s surprising. I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know either until yesterday. It was a Festival of Hera. He said he was from Psyche. He looked human.”