“Hephaistos?” I ventured. “He’s supposed to have his forge in one. That Titian picture in the temple, remember?”

“But his main area is making things, isn’t it?”

“Yes, overlapping with Athene on technology. She designs things and he implements them. Athene overlaps with a lot of people on a lot of things. Ares on war, Fa—Apollo on learning. I suppose knowledge does cover a lot of ground.” I looked at Phaedrus, who was still looking at the mountain as the Excellence sailed east. I lowered my voice, although nobody was near enough the overhear us. “Have you been talking to Father about how to become a god?”

He flushed. “You must have done the same or you wouldn’t know what I was thinking.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” I said. “But volcanoes seem like a huge area.”

“But there isn’t anyone specific for them. Poseidon has earthquakes, and the ocean. It’s hard to think of anything that’s vacant. I could specialize in volcanoes, learn about them. We’ve grown up next to one, after all.”

“But how would you do it?” I couldn’t imagine how such a thing could possibly work, how Phaedrus could go from the young man at my side to becoming a patron deity of volcanoes. I couldn’t picture the intermediate steps at all. “It’s hard to see how you could develop an excellence of volcanoes.” I looked at the plume of smoke, being blown on the same wind that was drawing the ship. “I was just hoping it wouldn’t erupt and destroy the city before we get back.”

“That would be terrible,” Phaedrus said, immediately without any hesitation. Then he stopped. “Why would it be worse than if it did it when we were home?”

“Guilt at surviving.” Without meaning to, we both looked at Father as I said that. He was standing by Maecenas at the wheel, looking almost happy. Phaedrus and I looked back at each other, uneasily.

Just then Klymene came along and hustled us into a group learning to shoot from the mast. The first part of this consisted of learning to climb the mast, which was a skill we’d need to acquire in any case. The Excellence was sailed by wind-power, and it required a number of people able to scale the masts to rearrange the sails. We had been organized before we left into three watches, and each watch had officers and sailors, who were people like Maecenas and Erinna who already had the necessary skills. The rest of us would learn as we went along. Some of us knew how to sail fishing boats, but the skill of going aloft and managing the great sails was very different in practice, even though the theory was the same.