The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton Page A

were mentioned in Homer’s Catalog of Ships.
    We put down our anchor and slept aboard. Erinna showed me how to sling my hammock, next to hers, and how to get into it sideways. I slept better that night than I had any night since Mother was killed. Erinna woke me before dawn in time for our watch and I sprang out of my hammock, feeling fresh and ready for a new day.
    â€œYou seem better,” Erinna said as we came up on deck.
    â€œI feel better. The sea is good for me. And doing different things. I still miss her, but it doesn’t weigh on me the same way. And you were right about writing the autobiography, too.”
    â€œShe was right about that,” Erinna said. She hugged me suddenly, and I hugged her back, tightly. “We can remember her without being sucked down into grief.”
    â€œThat would be wonderful,” I said. “If only Father could.”
    The Nyx watch were ready to hand over to us then, and so we had to work. I swarmed up to the top of the mast and relieved the Nyx lookout there, who that morning was the Captain of the Nyx watch, a Child called Caerellia.
    â€œNo signs of life at all,” she said.
    I was disappointed. I was hoping for people. Amorgos is about the easiest island to get to from Kallisti, in normal winds, and Neleus had made a very convincing argument that it was the most likely place for Kebes to have founded his city. We put an armed party ashore as soon as it was properly light, then we sailed around the island to collect them from the other side. I wasn’t allowed ashore. Phaedrus and Erinna went, and I looked down from the masthead with envy.
    At the end of the Eos watch I stayed on deck, staring over at the Amorgian shore as it slipped past, glancing up occasionally at the Hesperides watch as they ran about trimming sails. Ficino came up to me as I was standing there. The sea-breeze ruffled his white hair where it stuck out under his old red hat. I saw him every day so I didn’t normally think much about it, but he really was the oldest person I had ever met.
    He grinned at me. “Not feeling seasick?”
    â€œNot even a twinge,” I replied.
    â€œGood. Well then, it’s time for lessons, I think,” he said.
    Ficino was nominally part of the Eos watch, but he had declined learning how to climb the masts and had learned only how to steer, which was both the easiest and the most fun. “Lessons? But surely I’m learning enough just being here. I’ve learned a lot about how the ship works already. And also geography, and I’ll learn history as soon as we locate some people.”
    Maia laughed, and I jumped, because I hadn’t heard her come up and she was right next to me on my other side. “You need philosophy and rhetoric and history and mathematics,” she said, as if I wasn’t already ahead of her in mathematics.
    â€œBut we don’t have any books,” I said. I had my notebooks, though I had left behind the two I had filled already.
    â€œWe have sufficient books,” Ficino said. Trust them to bring books, I thought. “But for now, how about calculating the angle the ship’s bow makes?”
    I calculated angles in my head for hours, until we had rounded the point of Amorgos and were tacking our way up the other side to where we hoped to meet the shore party. Ficino and Maia then began to make me work on rhetoric, aloud. “Plato says young people shouldn’t learn rhetoric, it makes them contradict their elders before they have wisdom,” I pointed out.
    â€œYou wouldn’t be studying it yet in Athenia,” Maia said. “But we think fifteen is old enough to begin.”
    â€œI learn more the older I get,” Ficino said. “I’m glad I began so young.” His eyes were on the gentle curve of the shore we were slipping past. “I don’t sleep much these days. Growing older I need it less, perhaps as I need the time more to learn things and