“I like you, but not like that,” Erinna said.

“Like what?” I muttered, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks. “I know,” I went on, making it worse.

“You’re so much younger, and losing Simmea—I was looking out for you a bit. That’s all.”

“I know,” I said, more loudly. “It’s all right. I understand. I don’t want anything but to go on being friends the way we have been.”

“Good,” she said, but I knew that everything was spoiled. Tears stung my eyes. On the quayside, Father shrugged and dove neatly into the sea.

“You should go down to talk to him,” Erinna said.

I slid down the mast. The blood was washed off his hair and skin by the time he pulled himself onto the deck, but his cloak and kiton were still stained. He pulled them off and stood naked on the deck, dripping sea-water, with a strand of seaweed caught over his shoulder.

Maecenas looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Erinna’s still up there watching,” I said. He nodded. I embraced Father, getting myself wet in the process. Kallikles and Phaedrus came up the ladder onto the deck and embraced Father one at a time, and we all wished each other joy. The sun was up behind the hill and the sky was bright. Again I thought that this was like a scene in a play. But in a play, the gods show up at the end to sort everything out, and let the people who love each other be together. I picked the seaweed off Father’s shoulder and dropped it back into the water.

“Kebes is dead?” Maecenas asked, as Phaedrus stepped back.

“Dead,” Father confirmed. “Dead and gone back where he came from. And after all the trouble I had getting the skin off in one piece, it vanished with him.”

I shuddered. The worst of it was that he said it so calmly. There were times when he wasn’t like other people at all. Maecenas started to speak, then swallowed hard and began again. “How are the rest of them?”

“They want reparations because we burned their ship,” Father said.

“Zeus burned it,” Maecenas said. “Literally, by all accounts. They tried to burn us, but the wind changed all in an instant and drove the fireship back on the Goodness.”

Father glanced at Kallikles, who smiled. “The winds do back unexpectedly sometimes,” Father said.

“Yes, but they tell me also that the first man to try to board was struck by lightning, out of a clear sky,” Maecenas said. He too looked at Kallikles. “You saw that, didn’t you?”

“I was right there,” Kallikles agreed.

“I didn’t want to believe it either, but you see there’s no question about it,” Maecenas said. “It discouraged the rest of them, as you can imagine.”