I went on and protested anyway. “Why? You can have privacy simply by speaking in Saeli. Arete’s the only other person here who speaks it and she’s in there.” I gestured to the main room of the sleeping house, where the sounds of the party could be heard.

“It’s a Saeli matter, you wouldn’t understand,” Jathery said.

“Please explain it to us,” Sokrates said, in his usual tone of enthusiastic enquiry.

Hilfa was rocking again. I put a hand on his arm. “I’m Hilfa’s friend, and I’m not leaving him unless he wants me to.”

Then as Jathery opened gla mouth to respond, Marsilia jumped in. “We’re his pod,” she said. “Surely there isn’t anything you need to say to a Sael without their podmembers. Indeed, by our law any Sael can specifically request the presence of podmembers even when accused of a crime.”

Sokrates opened his mouth, clearly dying to ask something about this, but managed for once to keep quiet.

“All podmembers,” Jathery said. Gla had his eyes fixed on Marsilia’s as if they were children in a staring contest. “You are only three.”

“Get Thetis,” Marsilia said to me, without looking away from Jathery’s gaze.

Sokrates stepped forward and took one of Hilfa’s hands. Marsilia took the other. I turned and went into the main room. Everyone there was drinking wine and talking loudly. Thetis was still with her mother, deep in conversation.

“Thee, you have to come,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s really important. Marsilia sent me.” She looked impatient. “Hilfa needs you.”

“I’ll be back soon,” she said to Erinna, who was frowning, and followed me. “What is it?”

“Jathery’s trying to bully Hilfa, and Hilfa’s afraid gla wants to kill him, or worse, and Marsilia has told him that we’re Hilfa’s pod,” I explained as succinctly as possible as we crossed the crowded room.

“His pod?” she asked, astonished. Then we stepped into the fountain room. “His pod,” she confirmed with a brisk nod at the alien god. “Don’t you dare think you can do anything to Hilfa without our consent.”

“That is still only four,” Jathery said.

“I’d be honored to make the fifth,” Sokrates said.

“Pods are not a joke, or an arrangement to be hastily put together and hastily abandoned,” Jathery said.

“Are they your sphere of patronage?” Sokrates asked, in his best tone of interested enquiry.

Jathery snarled at him. Sokrates was famously good at making gods lose their tempers. Perhaps he had got the better of gla in their debate outside.