This was the one argument that made me hesitate. I had learned better since Daphne had turned into a tree. I hadn’t understood what was happening with Daphne. Kebes gave every sign of failing to understand what he had done. But he wasn’t sorry. He had hurt her and gone on when she asked him to stop, and afterward he had insulted her. Now he seemed to have deluded himself again into believing, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that she was really his. He had named his city after her. He had insisted on knowing whether she’d had a child. He said she loved him. He kept on claiming her, over and over, when in fact she was … her own. (And, yes, all right, mine, but mine because she wanted to be. One of the reasons I hated Kebes was because he was my dark and twisted mirror, and forced me to confront these things. I do try to be just and pursue excellence.)

I struggled to say some of this to Maia. “He didn’t sound as if he has learned better. He wasn’t acting as if he believed she had equal significance and was her own self. He thought he owned her. She wrote that he said that to her at the time, and I believe from what he said today that he still thinks that.”

“But Pytheas, do you truly think it’s just to kill him for thinking that?”

“What is justice, Maia? It took Plato ten books, and it’s taking us decades, and none of us has a proper answer.”

I don’t know what she would have replied, because at that moment Ismene came up, and with her my son. He looked like me, and like his brothers. He was much taller than his mother. She was still pretty. I had never known her well. “Joy to you, Ismene,” I said. Maia turned to greet her.

“This is Fabius,” she said, presenting the boy. He wished me joy gruffly, not knowing where to look. I looked at him, almost as much at a loss. I had met sons before who had been strangers, but they had always known who I was. Should I tell this boy he had a heroic soul? How could I, in front of Maia and his mother? And what could he make of the information in any case? He might not even believe me. It seemed kinder to leave him to make what he could of himself. So we had a limping uncomfortable conversation, and after a little while he and his mother went away together.

“Another son,” Maia said, watching them go.

“I can’t do anything for that one,” I said.

“Oh Pytheas, do you really think you might lose tomorrow?”

“That’s for the gods,” I said. “Are you thinking of going to talk to Kebes to urge him not to kill me if he wins?”