Faced with Aristomache’s pious mouthings here, I felt shaken for the first time. I knew time couldn’t be changed. But if it could … if it could and if Christianity could have taken root here, at the very beginning, then the world I cared about most deeply might never exist. Christianity was a religion with a good story and an appealing simplicity—forgive and be forgiven, be washed in the blood of the sacrifice and be saved. If it could catch on in the Aegean before the Trojan War then everything would be different. I knew time was fixed and unchangeable. I had lived outside it. But even so, I felt a chill.

Our ship was warping in toward the wharf. “Do you want to trade?” the old man asked me.

“Certainly we do, though that will be for our captain to negotiate,” I said, smoothly, still thinking about Christianity and Kebes.

“Tonight we will feast the Excellence!” the old man announced. The crowd cheered.

“Where are your other colonies?” I asked Terentius, as casually as I could. “Where’s your main city?”

“What are your intentions toward us?” Aristomache asked.

“Exploration, a little trade,” I said, spreading my hands peacefully. “Unless you raided us last autumn. Somebody raided us and killed Simmea.”

Aristomache looked shocked and put her hand on my arm. “Oh, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry. I remember you two were inseparable. I remember when she gave birth, you didn’t want to stop holding on to her hands. She told me how you were both practicing agape. What an awful thing to happen! It must have been pirates. There’s so much turmoil on the mainland, and some of them have ships. But we’d never do such a thing. It’s true we have been avoiding Kallisti to keep away from Athene, and philosophical trouble. But we’d never do anything like that.”

Terentius was nodding, looking appalled. They both seemed utterly sincere. I exchanged a quick glance with Dion. I didn’t like to think that Kebes was doing better at civilization than we were.

14. Arete

14

ARETE

I seemed to spend half my time at the top of the mast looking far out at the sea and thinking, and the other half at the rail looking at close-up islands. Usually my time at the masthead was peaceful. I suppose I should have been contemplating philosophy, but my mind had a tendency to wander.