So, to my surprise, was Father. I wanted to talk to him about my powers, but the first time I caught him anything like alone he was standing at the rail with Neleus, looking out at the waves. Neleus had been extremely ill all through the storm and still looked wobbly. He was one of the very last people I wanted to know about my powers. It was unfair enough as it was. “I want to go to their city to see Kebes. Or Matthias if that’s what he wants to call himself,” Father said, as I came up to them, sounding as grim as ever I had heard him.

“But do you really still think he killed Mother?” I asked. “They don’t have any of our art, and they said they avoided Kallisti until now for fear of Athene.”

“Perhaps he didn’t kill her,” Father agreed. He looked at me and then at Neleus. “I still want to know where the Goodness was that day. The Marissans may not know everything. But even if he didn’t—I didn’t want to tell you. But she wrote in her autobiography that he raped her.”

“What?” I thought for a moment that he meant Kebes had raped Mother on the day she was killed.

“When? Before the Last Debate?” Neleus asked.

“Yes. At the last Festival of Hera.” Father was staring out at a shadow of a shoreline on the horizon. Before I was born, I thought, and only a few months after Neleus was born.

“But if it was the Festival of Hera, weren’t they supposed to…?” Neleus asked.

“They were supposed to try to make a baby. He wasn’t supposed to take her against her will when she was saying no.” Father sounded vehement enough to bring the storm back. I saw people turning to look from across the deck.

“If they’d been married in front of everyone…” Neleus trailed off again.

“That’s why she didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t tell me.” There was a lot of pain in his voice, but it was quieter now. “It was rape, and he hurt her, and I’m going to kill him.”

“Right,” Neleus said. “I’ll help.”

“The punishment for rape is flogging,” I said. I had been reading the laws in preparation for my adulthood tests. “And it would be very hard to prove now, even with her direct written testimony.”

“We’re not going to take him to court in the City, we’re going to kill him in Lucia,” Father said, looking irritated. Neleus nodded.