“Yes, Marsilia mentioned that your father, Neleus, was festival-born.” We came out from under the walls and were in the old city. I lived down by the harbor and worked at sea, and hardly ever came up here at night. I was surprised how many people were about in the evening chill. By the harbor, everything had been built for the climate of Plato, thick walls and narrow windows, all the houses huddling together against the cold, with light bars running along the sills of the buildings. Here you could tell everything had been intended for a warmer climate—there was a great variety of styles, but all of it was freestanding and mostly pillared, with individual sconces glowing gold above all the doors.

“Well, all of his children were except Arete. And she—” Thetis shrugged, as if to say that Arete was something special, which she definitely was. “He loved her. Dad’s mother. Simmea. And I think I must remind him of her in some way, because he’s always had a soft spot for me.”

“You don’t look like her.” I’d seen Crocus’s colossus of Simmea, the one by the steps of the library. She looked more like Marsilia.

“Yes, she was a true philosopher,” Thetis said, smiling a little, sadly.

“Marsilia says they only started saying that about philosophers being naturally ugly because of Simmea and Sokrates. She says Plato assumed beauty, and that there are plenty of good-looking philosophers. Pytheas himself was an example, and Ikaros was another.”

“They’re gods,” Thetis said. “That’s different.” She hesitated, then went on. “I used to think that I couldn’t hope to be a philosopher, because of how I looked. When I was a little girl, I mean. Marsilia’s older, and she was brilliant, and also she looked like one, of course. And so it was what everyone said, that it was clear that she’d be a Gold, that her metal shone through. Whereas to me, they said I was pretty as a picture or that somebody ought to sculpt me. Everyone except Grandfather. Pytheas. He always treated me as if what I thought mattered. Dad was busy running the city, and Ma was away at sea so often, and in classes they tended to treat me as if I had to be empty-headed and thistledown-weight because I was pretty.”

“Not only pretty, beautiful,” I said. “But that shouldn’t have been all they saw.”

“That’s right,” she said, and gave my arm a little pat. “I realize that now, but I didn’t at the time. And so I didn’t work hard, which you probably remember from that year we took classes together, and when they classified me Iron it simply seemed appropriate.” The crowds had thinned out, and we had the street to ourselves except for a Saeli pod walking the other way, arms entwined.

“But do you like your work?” I asked.