Neleus grinned at me across the flames. “Do you think he has any chance of winning, though?”

“He’s certainly seems to think he can. And he’s definitely going to try to get biased judges. So we may as well do what we can. He must think he has a chance, or he’d never have suggested it.”

“I don’t understand how the judges are going to be able to judge fairly,” Arete said. “They’ll know they’re condemning one of you to death.”

“It will all be done in public. Everyone will see. It will affect how relations go in future between Kallisti and the Goodness Group. They’ll want to be seen to be fair. So I think it will be a real competition.” I was actually looking forward to it. “And even if I lose, it doesn’t matter. If he kills me, I’ll just kill him right after. If that happens, don’t stand right next to him.”

“Will you blast him with lightning?” Kallikles asked.

“No, only Father can do that. But I will have the arrows of my wrath, which cannot miss.” I missed the weight of the quiver on my back. “I won’t use one of the ones that brings plague. But there won’t be much left of him. There may be a crater.” That would be very satisfying. But it would be even more satisfying to defeat him first, so that he had to understand before he died that I was better than he was.

Kallikles was clearly pondering saying something. He looked at Neleus and then away.

I went on. “The other thing, Neleus, is that your other father, Nikias, is here—I saw him in the crowd this morning.”

“I had thought he might be, or if not here then in one of their other cities,” Neleus said, looking down.

“It’s a good thing. Simmea liked him, and he liked her. They were friends, the same as she was friends with Aeschines. He’ll probably be pleased to meet you and know you. But he’ll also be an ally. If you can find him tonight, you might be able to persuade him to be one of their judges—there can’t be much competition for the job. And he might be able to tell us about Kebes’s mysterious instrument, and what things are really like here.”

“Did you think Aristomache was lying?” Arete asked. “Because she wasn’t.”

“Aristomache would no more lie than lay an egg,” I said. “But good people can be deceived, more easily than bad people sometimes.”

“You can tell whether people are lying, can’t you?” she asked.

“I can tell whether they’re sincere,” I said.