I sighed, and my anger rose up again. “Athene certainly knew. She messed about making a half-alien demigod to give me a message, creating a living being with a perplexed soul, when she could have simply given the message to me directly and explained what was going on. She could have trusted me. She should have!” I sat there on the wall and waited, calm on the surface but still utterly livid. This was all so completely unnecessary.

Pico looked extremely uncomfortable at that. “She used you.”

“Yes! She used me as if I’d been of no account. And not only me.” I glared at the stone coping of the well. I wasn’t used to being treated that way. Granting equal significance to others was something I had only learned, slowly and painfully, over the course of my mortal life. Being granted it was something I was so accustomed to that I felt affronted when I was not. That was interesting to consider. I stepped out of time and considered it for a while, staring out from Olympos over the distant blue isles of Greece, until I was calm and fully understood my anger and affronted pride. Then I slipped back to the moment in the cloister beside Pico. He hadn’t noticed my absence.

“She might have thought you’d try to stop her,” Pico said.

“I would have, of course. But she could have trusted me. There was no need for any of this.” I was calm now, but I hadn’t forgiven her.

“Yes. Well. About the other thing,” he said.

The church bells rang for Vespers, deafeningly close. The monk let go of the cat, set down his book, and straightened himself up. I spoke as soon as the bells were quiet enough for me to be heard. “I’d have taken you with me anyway. I wouldn’t leave anyone stranded, waiting indefinitely in Bologna. She needn’t have done it like this.”

“I told her as much,” Pico said, with his open smile. “And even without your promise to take me with you, I’d have told you where Sokrates is.”

9. Marsilia

9

MARSILIA