Dad turned to look at Crocus, took a deep breath and calmed himself. I wish I could do that. I almost never lose my temper, but I’m always bursting out crying whenever I feel something strongly. “This is all very unexpected,” he said mildly, then turned back to me. “I don’t know what your mother will say.”

“Unexpected for us too,” I said, which was an understatement. Ma would be fine with it if I were the one to explain it to her. We always understood each other. And she often said we should get married.

“More importantly,” Sokrates said, turning to Athene. “Jathery told Hilfa that Zeus wants us to learn, experience and comprehend. Is that something he wants of everyone, or only the Saeli?”

Athene exchanged a glance with Ikaros. “All of us,” Athene said. “Saeli, humans, gods, everyone.”

“You told us you didn’t know what he wanted,” Sokrates said to Grandfather, with a tiny hint of accusation in his tone.

“I didn’t know when I told you that, long ago, here in this garden. This is something we learned when we spoke to him now, after we came back from being out there.”

“Out in Chaos?” I asked.

“It isn’t Chaos. Well, it isn’t only Chaos,” he said.

“That’s what Athene has been telling me,” Ikaros said. “How marvelous and unexpected. I have to rethink everything. I can’t wait to see it.”

“You’re there,” Athene said.

“Everyone is there. Everything,” Grandfather said. “I have a song about it. I’ll sing it tomorrow in Chamber.”

“Do you want to sing before the session?” Marsilia asked. “The way you legendarily did to stop the art wars?”

“Are you chair tomorrow?”

“I am,” she said, apprehensively.

“Who’s supposed to go first?” Pytheas asked.

“Androkles. Then Porphyry and the others. Then Sokrates,” she said.

“I’ll sing after Sokrates,” Pytheas said.

“All right,” she said, biting her lip as if she wasn’t at all sure.

“And Athene and I can debate, like at the Last Debate,” Sokrates said cheerfully, grinning at Athene, who smiled unrepentantly back. “For now, I only have one more question about what Zeus wants from us. What should we learn, experience, and comprehend?”

“Everything,” Athene said.

“Yourself,” Pytheas contradicted her at once. She glared at him. “Well, you should know yourself first, and then once you do, you can move on out to everything else,” he said.

“Do I take it Zeus didn’t specify?” Sokrates asked.

Ikaros laughed, and the owl flew off Athene’s arm at the sound and circled silently around the garden before perching back on her shoulder.

“He didn’t specify, but he seemed to approve of what Athene has been doing,” Pytheas said.

“So should we put knowledge ahead of excellence?” I asked.

“No,” both of them said together, and the owl twisted its head around to stare arrogantly into my eyes.