“Don’t be frightened,” I tell them. “It won’t be for long.” Speechless, they look at me, then at each other. I’m pleased at the effect of my words and drift away, running a finger along a shelf as I go.

  Pyrrhaios is in the stables, mucking out. I’ve had reason to watch him lately and I lean in the doorway for a while now, silently. I’ve seen Herpyllis do the same. His torso is as articulated as a beetle’s, I’ll give her that.

  “Missed some,” I say finally, pointing at the straw.

  He starts. “You, is it? How long have you been there?”

  I say my bit about the move to Chalcis being only temporary.

  “That’s not what your father says.”

  “My father is a great man with many worries.”

  He laughs.

  Next the other slaves: Tycho, Philo, Olympios, his toddler, and Ambracis. I find black-eyed Ambracis first, in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. She’s not much older than me. She listens staring at her hands and when I’m finished says, “Yes, Lady.”

  “You may look at me, girl,” I say.

  She looks at my chin.

  “Have you been crying?”

  “Onions, Lady.”

  I look at her chopping board and see the clutter of onions. I feel a bit silly then. I find I can’t ask about Myrmex while I’m feeling silly.

  Olympios and Philo are in the courtyard with the toddler: clever Olympios is mending a leather harness with an enormous needle and a length of sinew; thick-witted Philo is turning carrot scrapings into the compost. The child, tethered by the waist to a column, is whining after a ball that’s rolled just out of its reach. When I nudge it back with my toe the child squints up at me, little crab-hands pinching for my dress. I step back out of reach.

  “Lady,” the men say.

  “Her face is dirty,” I say. “She needs a wipe.” Before either of them react I go to the barrel and dip the hem of my dress. Holding it bunched into an ear, I approach the child, who coos. I squat in front of it and wipe at the dirt and food and nose-pick on its face. It plucks at my hands, trying to get my rings.

  “You must keep her clean,” I tell Olympios. “She will have better health if you keep her clean. My father teaches this to his students.”

  Olympios bows. “Most gracious lady.”

  Olympios got the child on another of our slaves, who died during the birth the spring before last. My father said we were not to be angry. They did as animals do, he said, experiencing coolness and heat according to the seasons, and should not be punished for the demands of their animal natures, which were utterly involuntary. The girl was a loss, certainly, but the baby would have value one day.

  How cold that sounds! In fact Herpyllis and I both wept for the girl, and Herpyllis took it on herself to find a wet nurse. The house was sombre until the baby learned to smile, at about forty days. Nowadays the toddler is mostly Ambracis’s charge, though Olympios is unusually attached to it and likes to work near it when he can. We all find this endearing. My father is not a cold man, and we all take pride in the reputation of our house for indulgence to the slaves. We’re known for it, for many streets around.

  “Do you have questions about the trip to Chalcis?” I ask now.

  His eyes stray to the child.

  “Of course,” I say. “We wouldn’t leave her.”

  “Thank you, Lady.”

  “That’s very good work, Philo,” I say, and he beams. He smacks the compost a few more times with the fork, patting it down. “Ambracis probably has some more scraps for you in the kitchen.” He trots off, happily. He’s cheerful and good for heavy work, even if he doesn’t talk much. He likes to keep near Olympios and the child.

  “Where is, where is—Tycho?” I ask. Tycho, I think to myself. Who cares where Tycho is?

  “Master sent him on errands. Arranging for carts, I think.”

  I stop myself from thanking him. I do yank a ring I’ve grown tired of from my finger, a cockleshell on a plain gold band, and drop it in the child’s lap on my way out of the yard. It shrieks with pleasure.

  I detour through the men’s quarters on the way to my own room just to breathe the air, the hot leather smell.

  “No,” my father says, seeing the veil I’ve put on as he passes from his study to his bedroom, where the pot is. A trip he makes a couple of times an hour, every hour.

  “Please,” I say.

  “No.”

  I take the veil off, ball it up, and throw it on the ground. Housebound, then, I must wait for Tycho, pacing up and down the yard where everyone can see me.

  “Do you need something to do?” Herpyllis calls from her room.

  “No!”

  Nico passes by me and walks straight out of the gate. An hour later he’s back with a sack of burnet. He shows it to me for approval.

  “Bring everything out here,” I say.

  We’re rolling and tying the last of his toys in the springy dried bushes, which leave long fine scratches on our hands, when Tycho returns. “I’ll bring you a crate, young master,” he says to Nico.

  I follow him inside, to the pantry. “Why isn’t Myrmex home yet?” I ask, when everyone else is out of earshot.

  He shakes his head.

  “Has Daddy not told him we’re going?”

  He looks at my face. “I’ll see to it he knows.”

  “I could write a letter for you to take to Akakios. This afternoon?”

  He removes some jars of oil from a small crate and shakes his head. “Master has jobs for me this afternoon. Let me give this to the young master and I’ll go do it now.”

  “A very quick letter.”

  He bows. I follow him back to the courtyard, intending to run to my room for paper and ink, but he gives Nico the crate and is gone through the gate before I can stop him. Oh.

  Herpyllis has closed her door, which is unusual. I can’t think why she would be changing her clothes before lunch. Though if she’s going out, maybe she’ll take me. I hesitate, wondering whether to knock.

  “Come in, and close the door behind you, Pytho,” she calls. My baby name.

  Her room is dark. The curtains are drawn and she’s lit just one single-wick lamp. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back to the door, busy with something in her lap.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “Close the door,” she says again.

  I close it.

  “I always know when it’s you,” she says. “I feel the fuss in the air, like a storm coming, and I smell the wild lavender that grows by the sea.”

  She smiles at me over her shoulder and I stick my tongue out at her. “What are you doing?”

  She pats the ground beside her and I sit. She’s braiding something.

  “Don’t you want more light?”

  She shakes her head. “Your father doesn’t like me doing this. It’s quickly done and then he doesn’t need to know. Want to help?”

  I recognize it now: an iunx. She’s using various threads and hairs, probably sneaked from each of us, and cups of milk, honey, and water, and a little mound of spices in the charred saucer she uses for burning.

  “To protect us on our journey,” she says.

  I get up. “Of course I don’t want to help,” I say. “If my father disapproves, then so do I. That’s just superstition.”

  “La, la, la,” Herpyllis says. “I can’t hear you. Shall we go out? I need some laurel to finish this. We can go to the grove near your father’s school.”

  “Daddy won’t let us.”

  Herpyllis draws a tiny knot tight and clips a loose end expertly with her teeth. “He can’t say no if we don’t ask him.” She filches something fine off her tongue, looks at it, and flicks it onto the floor. “Nico will chaperone us, and Pyrrhaios will come, too. We’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “Don’t expect me to do any picking.”

  “Of course not. You’d spoil it anyway with your unpleasantness. The leaves would shrivel in your hands.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “Shrivel and catch fire, probably,” Herpyllis says. “I could teach you so much, you know, but you’re a stubborn nut.”

  “That’s right,” I say again, and skip back to my room to retrieve my veil, grateful as a dog for its walk.

  On our too-brief walk this afternoon, I got my own sackful of burnet. Despite her show of nonchalance, Herpyllis took care to have us all back far too soon. I’ve laid out what I want to bring on my bed. Herpyllis, passing my open doorway, rolls her eyes. “Gods,” she says, but she’s too busy to interfere. She and Ambracis ripped the kitchen apart after we got back this afternoon, and they’re working on the linens now. We leave tomorrow morning.

  First are Daddy’s old surgical tools, inherited from his father: pipes, probes, needles, knives, spoons, forceps, clamps, extraction hooks, and the enormous vaginal dilator I’ve always loved for its great complicated importance. Daddy gave me the whole lot to play with long ago, saying he had no use for them anymore. They take a whole crate to themselves. Next comes my mother. She’s resting at the moment, but when the time comes we’ll have her ashes exhumed to be mingled with Daddy’s. I keep ready an unusually small, beautiful funerary urn. Daddy said my mother loved small things, which was why he chose that particular urn. The image on it is of a mother and a little girl, who is me. I’ll carry the urn on my lap until it’s safely in my new room in Chalcis.

  All that remains are my clothes and jewels, which I dump into the trunk at the end of my bed. I’ll strip the bed linens in the morning. My collections of shells and rocks and bird skeletons and pressed wildflowers can all wait here until we return. I remember to add the little pot of kohl Herpyllis gave me; she’ll notice if I leave it behind by-accident-on-purpose.

  “Pytho, help!” she calls now.

  I find her in the storeroom with Ambracis and Thale, all three of them sweating and dusty and struggling to hold up one end of a shelf that’s somehow ripped off the wall. They’re up to their ankles in shards of pottery and an explosion of dried beans. I unload the remaining pots so they can safely lower the shelf, and offer to fetch the broom and pan.

  “Look in Myrmex’s room,” Herpyllis says. “I was sweeping there before this.”

  Myrmex’s room smells of leather and horses and something else, something I don’t know. I wonder if I’ve left a thread of my wild lavender smell for him.

  After the cleaning of the beans and the cramming of the carts, we sit in the courtyard drinking a tonic before bed to help us sleep. Nico and I don’t often get wine.

  “Nicomachos and I will visit the school in the morning while you finish packing,” Daddy tells Herpyllis. “I have some last instructions for Theophrastos. You’ll have the carts ready in the street, please, so we can set off once we’ve returned.”

  “Take Pythias, too.” Herpyllis leans forward to refill our glasses. “She’ll just mooch about and get under my feet.”

  “Mooch,” Nico says, giggling.

  Herpyllis takes his glass and pours his wine into her own.

  “What about Myrmex?”

  Daddy and Herpyllis look at me.

  “We can’t just leave him,” I say.

  Daddy and Herpyllis look at each other. “He’s been told,” she says.

  “Pretty one.” Daddy moves to my couch to put his arm around my shoulders. “We all love him. But he’s grown now. Soon he’s going to start making his own decisions. Maybe even tomorrow.”

  “Not tomorrow,” I say. Daddy holds me while I sob. When I lift my face from his shoulder, I see Herpyllis is pouring my wine into hers, too.

  “Come with us tomorrow, then, pet,” Daddy says. “If it’ll make you feel better.”

  I nod, and snuffle, and feel for the pouch I’ve hidden under my dress at my waist. It contains the black hairs I picked from Myrmex’s fur blanket before Herpyllis called to ask what was taking me so long with the broom.

  Apollo of the Twilight stands just inside the gates of Daddy’s school. He rests one forearm on the top of his head, like Daddy when he’s frazzled and trying to think, as he leans on a tree trunk. His marble hair is braided like a child’s, though he’s taller than Theophrastos.

  We’re in our heavy travelling clothes, the clothes we’ll be sleeping in tonight, and I’ve borrowed Herpyllis’s finest muslin veil. Daddy walks ahead, saying many serious things to Theophrastos, who listens attentively, and to Nico, who does not. I trail behind. Dragonflies, poppies, tiny dandelions, light purple iris, snail shells bleached white in death. Curious looks my way.

  I worked it out last night in bed. It’s been four years since I was last here, ten minutes’ walk from our house.

  I pick up a snail shell and a small white stone to put in my pouch, later, when I can get under my dress.

  Men are coming up to Daddy, touching him, hugging him, wiping away tears. Daddy looks tired. I know it’s the effort of not crying himself. I slip up quietly so he can feel me near. “Pythias?” he says, starting.

  I blush under my veil as the men look politely away from me, from this gross breach of my modesty: the public utterance of my name.

  “So like your mother, for a moment.” He touches my cheek through the cloth. “I mistook you.”

  I go up on my toes to whisper in his ear that I need to sit down. He looks relieved. We go into one of the lecture halls, where Theophrastos has had a table laid with food and drink. Daddy settles onto his couch with a pained groan while his students assemble around him. I whisper to Theophrastos that we might send word to Herpyllis to have the carts brought here so he won’t have to walk home again. He nods. Libations, blessings, valedictory speeches.

  “I’m bored,” Nico murmurs to me. We’re at the back of the room, out of the way, supervised by Theophrastos.

  “I wonder if they do this every time he goes on holiday,” I say.

  “Shh.” Theophrastos frowns: sternly at me, cross-eyed at Nico.

  “I’ve been enjoying the book you gave Daddy,” I whisper. “On botany.”

  “Ah,” he says.

  “The part on medicinal herbs especially,” I whisper. “I was wondering—”

  “It’s hard to hear you in here,” Theophrastos says. “Perhaps it’s better if you don’t try to talk.”

  I bow my head obediently. I’ve had my fun with him, anyway.

  When it’s time to leave, I touch Daddy’s arm.

  “All right, pet,” he says. “It’s all right. Don’t be frightened. Don’t be sad.”

  I whisper in his ear to speed us along, to spare him.

  “My daughter is unwell.” His voice is loud, hoarse. The men part for us.

  The carts are indeed waiting in the street, loaded with our goods and our people. Simon holding the horses; Herpyllis in the first cart; Thale dandling the child; Pyrrhaios, Olympios, Philo, and Ambracis holding Philo’s hand so he won’t wander away; Tycho; and—leaning against the last cart—Apollo of the Twilight himself, but loose-curled, chewing on half a smile.

  “Too much sun and standing,” Daddy diagnoses, as many hands reach to catch me and my weak knees.

  He makes me wait. He walks at the end of our caravan with Pyrrhaios. Guarding us, oh yes. Knowing he’s with us, I can ignore him for the moment. The streets are busy, busier than usual, with a lot of doorway loitering and dart-eyed muttering and finger pointing. Daddy is famous. But then someone calls “Macedonians,” and “fucking Macedonians” again from another part of the street, and then a chorus of voices call other words—Herpyllis claps her hands over my ears. The cart speeds up, the horses rump-smacked by Simon, and I’m thinking of Gaiane, and I’m understanding why she wouldn’t see me, or was told not to. Daddy’s face is white. He takes Nico’s hand in one of his and mine in the other, and sits as tall as he can.

  The stone hits him in the side of the head and bounces back onto the road. A small stone. Daddy drops my hand to swat at the place, as though at a bug, and then touches his temple with his fingertips, feeling the blood there.

  Myrmex is beside us now, knife drawn. Oh, he’s fierce! He’s shouting all kinds of things, but Herpyllis, behind me, is wiggling her fingers so hard in my ears, I can’t make out a thing. Pyrrhaios is on the other side of our cart too, suddenly, saying something to Herpyllis. She pops her fingers out of my ears and wipes them reflexively on her lap. “Stand up,” she tells me and Nico.

  Another stone rebounds off Daddy’s shoulder.

  “Stand up, babies,” she says. “Let them see who they’re hurting.”

  We stand. I have to set my legs wide to balance on the bumping cart. I feel a tug at my back and air on my face and understand: Herpyllis has pulled my veil off. I take Nico’s hand and close my eyes, waiting for the bite of a stone on my face or breasts, but nothing happens. We ride like that, standing, me with my eyes closed, until we leave the shouting behind.

  “Sit, now,” Herpyllis says.

  We’re in a quieter street, closer to the outskirts of the city. Daddy is lying in the bottom of the cart on a pile of skins. His entire face is an apology. I shake my head: It’s not your fault.

  “You see,” he says. “I wasn’t wrong.”

  Myrmex climbs up beside me.

  “That was magnificent,” he says, and then I want it to happen all over again.

  We sit for a long time shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. He pulls my veil back on himself and spends a couple of moments arranging the muslin with his fine fingers. I want to rest my head on his shoulder, as Nico rests on Herpyllis, but that might be less than magnificent, so I hold myself nobly upright instead. He keeps a hand on his knife and scans the landscape like an eagle. Gods, we are a pair!

  The journey to Chalcis takes two days. We pass the first night in a field, sleeping in the carts. Herpyllis and I have a cart to ourselves, and Tycho rigs up an oilskin tent over us as he did for me at the beach. We eat Herpyllis’s picnic—bread and cheese and fruit and nuts—and we each get another tonic. I read by lamplight while she tidies the camp, but I put the book away when she returns.