“Nobody’s perfect,” I said. “The Romans had gladiatorial combats, they dislocated the arms of heretics in Renaissance Florence, all of the classical world had slavery, and so did we in the City before we realized that the Workers were self-aware.”

“Plato—”

“Plato was laying out an unachievable ideal, to spur people to excellence,” I said. “What was it Cicero said about Cato?”

“That Cato acted as if he was living in Plato’s Republic instead of the dunghill of Romulus?” She switched into Latin to quote it.

“That’s it. Plato wanted to give people something to aspire to. That’s why he isn’t here, he didn’t really imagine it as a possibility, just as something to encourage everyone to think, and to work toward excellence. In reality, while we aim for excellence, we’re always living on somebody’s dunghill. But that doesn’t mean we’re wrong to aim to be the best we can be. And the Lucians aren’t all like Kebes. If they were we’d all be dead. We can find a way to help them toward excellence.”

She sighed. “Everything is complicated and compromised.”

“It is,” I said. “That’s the nature of reality.” A gull swooped down low over the water.

“Ficino understood how to go on amid the compromise and find a way forward,” Maia said.

“Yes. He took over the Laurentian Library for the Florentine Republic after Piero de Medici fled,” I agreed.

“How do you know that?” she asked. “Were you there?”

I had frequently been there, but of course I didn’t want to tell her so. “I’ve heard him talk about it,” I said, truthfully. “I know nobody is supposed to talk about their lives before they came to the City, but everyone does.”

“I don’t think we were wrong to make idealistic rules,” Maia said, her voice shaking a little. “I don’t know, Pytheas. I’ve been trying to make the Republic work since I was a young woman, and I’m getting old now. Ficino was always so delighted to be here, to be doing it. He loved everything, except when we divided after the Last Debate. When I came back from Amazonia he was so pleased to see me. I don’t know how I can take it all up again without his enthusiasm to keep me going.”

“I’m the worst person to ask,” I said. “I only just worked out that what I’m supposed to do is keep on working and doing Simmea’s share too, as best I can.”

“I can’t possibly do Ficino’s share!” she said, horrified.

“You can do some of it, and I’ll do some of it, and other friends will do some of it.”

“You’ll teach music and mathematics?”

I had been teaching gymnastics in the palaestra but diligently avoiding teaching music and mathematics, as we called all intellectual study. I had evaded it by taking a larger share of the physical labor we all had to share since the Workers left.

“And you’ll serve on committees for Simmea?” she went on.

“Oh Maia!”

“You can teach Ficino’s beginning Plato course, for the fourteen-year-olds,” she said, relentlessly. “And you can teach the advanced lyric poetry class. I don’t understand how you’ve got out of that so far.”

“I always volunteer to judge at festivals, and I couldn’t judge fairly if I were teaching them too,” I said smugly.

“Well, that’s been a good argument, but now you can teach them. You can do it better than anyone else, so it’s your Platonic duty. And you can serve on the Curriculum Committee too, as well as taking Simmea’s place on the Foreign Negotiations Committee.”

I looked at her face in the glow of the sunrise. She had stopped crying. “I believe I have actually comforted you a little,” I said.

“And I you,” she replied.

It was true. Taking on those responsibilities wouldn’t be any fun, but knowing they needed doing and I could help do them in Simmea’s name did ease my grief a little.

As for stopping the art raids, I was working on a song.

When the Excellence tied up at the City, the travelers who had been together for so long divided immediately. Kallikles went off with his girl, Rhea. Maia headed for Florentia to tell the sad news to Ficino’s friends there. Arete was immediately embraced by her agemates. Neleus and Phaedrus headed for Thessaly. Everyone else went their separate ways. I was so desperate to be alone to get my song straight that I went straight to the practice rooms on the Street of Hermes.

I shut myself into one of the little rooms and worked nonstop on the song for several hours. The last time I sang it through I was happy with it, but a song isn’t real until somebody hears it. I went home to Thessaly, and was astonished to find my son Euklides there, Lasthenia’s boy, who lived in Psyche. Phaedrus and Arete and Neleus and he were sitting in the garden by Sokrates’s statue of Hermes, under the lemon tree. They looked up when they saw me, and all of them tried to speak at once.

“Just listen to this first,” I said, and drew my lyre into place.

It couldn’t have been more different from the colosseum in Lucia, the banked rows of spectators, Kebes’s hate burning hot, the judges uneasy in their seats, and my own soul longing to escape. Now I was at home, my soul was sure of the work set before it, and the audience were my own children, who loved me. In my memory Sokrates and Simmea and Kebes also populated the garden. Simmea sat intent, leaning forward, bursting with ideas; Sokrates was running his fingers through his hair distractedly; Kebes was frowning and drawing breath to speak. I smiled and let go of them. All of their souls had gone on to start again and learn new things. It was the solid and present Young Ones I wanted to reach with this song.

“Simmea asked me to write this song when we were fourteen years old,” I said. Before she had met Sokrates, before we had discussed our agape, before we knew the Workers were people. “It’s called ‘The Glory of Peace.’”

I knew I had them before the end of the first verse. By the final chorus, they were all openly weeping. The best of it was, the song didn’t mention either Simmea or the art raids directly. It was all about the things worth fighting to defend and being our best selves.

Neleus, who had fought in art raids, was the first to speak after the last chord had died away. His voice was choked. “Is that really what we were doing? Were we going against Plato and making ourselves worse?”

“Yes, we evidently were,” Euklides said, wiping his eyes. I didn’t know him well, and I hadn’t known until that moment that he had fought in them.

“The art raids are a falling away from excellence,” Phaedrus said. “Toward timarchy. Fighting for honor instead.”

Arete looked at me with awe in her eyes. “Maybe you really could stop the art raids! If people hear that, they might understand. It gives us a different way to think about it. And it’s really true. The dreams shared with a friend,” she quoted.

“And that’s what Mother died for,” Neleus said.

They all looked a little stunned. “I’ll have to sing it to harder audiences,” I said. “But stopping the art raids is what this song is for. And that’s the best thing I can do now in memory of Simmea.”

“Not just stopping the pointless deaths, but bringing the City closer to excellence,” Neleus said, seeing the point at once, as Simmea would have done.

“All the cities,” Arete said.

I nodded. “All the cities. I want to teach you to sing the harmony, so you can sing it with me when we go.”

“There’s a harmony?” she asked.

“Yes. Why are you looking at me like that?” They were all staring at me with eyes wide open in astonishment.

“You never write songs with multiple parts,” Phaedrus said. “You always write things you can perform alone.”

“Well, this song can be sung alone, as you’ve just heard, and it will sound even better with Arete singing the harmony, and it also has an arrangement that can be sung as a choral ode with parts for a whole chorus, which I am planning to have sung before the conference. But you’re going to have to rehearse them, Phaedrus, because Arete and I will be going around to the other cities to persuade them to come.”