“I am grateful for your consideration,” Sokrates said, standing straight and hearty. There was a laugh. “Why did you not extend that consideration to those older than me, or frailer? How about Tullius, or Plotinus, or old Iamblikius and Atticus there, who might well have been even more useful than I am if they’d been allowed to come here later when the work of setting it up was done?”

“You were more important,” Athene said.

You’d think that would upset the older masters, but not a bit of it. They agreed with Athene that Sokrates was more important. After all, he was Sokrates.

Sokrates laughed. “I’m glad to hear it even if they are not. But I don’t entirely believe you. I think you knew I wouldn’t approve of this city and didn’t want me to have a say in its foundations. I think you knew I wouldn’t have agreed, and too many of the others would have sided with me. I did not ask to be here. I was brought here directly against my will. The children and workers were given no choice. I actively refused to come.” He looked for Krito in the crowd. “My old friend Krito prayed to you to rescue me, even though I had told him I was ready to die by the laws of Athens. I drank the hemlock. I did not fear death. Nor do I fear it now. I ask you again, why did you bring me here?”

“I can’t imagine,” Athene snapped. Everyone laughed.

Sokrates looked into the crowd again. “Maia,” he said. “Do you truly believe that what Plato wrote is the way to reach excellence?”

“Yes,” she said, unhesitatingly.

“And you have dedicated your life to that?”

“I have.”

“And when you learned that the workers were people, did you vote for their emancipation?”

“I did. And now I support their education,” she said, waving at the workers on the edge of the crowd.

“And if you had known earlier?”

“I would have supported their education earlier. From the very beginning,” she said.

“And do you think you have been doing good here?”

“Yes!” she said, passionately.

“And have you never had doubts about what Plato said and following everything he wrote?”

“I—” Maia started to speak, then stopped. “I have had doubts,” she admitted. “There was so much he didn’t specify and we had to improvise. And then when we first had the children. And now with the festivals. I do think we need to modify some of what Plato said there. But I still believe we’re trying to reach excellence, trying to reach justice and the good life.”

Sokrates leaned back a little, shifting his weight. “Thank you.” He turned back to Athene. “I hate arguments that blame everything on the gods,” he said, conversationally. “But it seems that here I have one. The children and the workers are doing their best to pursue the good life. So are the masters, as best they can in their limited way. For the most part they truly believe all Plato wrote and want to implement it as best they can, but even they have doubts. But you are ignorant, and you have great power, and you don’t hesitate to meddle with the lives of others.”

“What is he doing?” I whispered to Simmea.

“He’s baiting her,” she said.

“Why?” I really couldn’t understand it.

“I expect he’s going somewhere with it,” she said. “He’s leading up to something.”

Sokrates looked at Athene in a friendly way. “And is it true that you lie and cheat?”

“No!” she raged.

“Mistake,” Simmea whispered.

Sokrates looked taken aback. “I’m sorry. You’re not following Plato in that either, then?”

“The Noble Lie isn’t a lie, it’s a myth of origin,” Athene said.

“For those of you who haven’t yet been allowed to read the Republic, and won’t be until you’re fifty years old, and only then the golds among you, I should explain that the Noble Lie is the lie about the metals in your soul and that your life before you came to the city is a dream,” Sokrates explained.

“She’s absolutely right, it’s a myth of origin,” Simmea said.

“Your children will believe it,” I said.

“Good,” Simmea said, firmly.

“An origin myth,” Athene said again. “Not a lie.”

“By the dog!” Sokrates said. “And the cheating on the lots for the festivals?”

Athene was silent.

“It’s in the Republic. Or is that somewhere else where you’re not following Plato?”

There was an unhappy murmur rising among the children in the crowd.

“Ikaros? Is this somewhere that you are following Plato?”

Ikaros just stared at Sokrates for a moment, clearly horrified. It really was too bad of Sokrates, making poor Ikaros betray Plato and Athene together. He could have asked any of the masters. But I suppose he knew that Ikaros would tell the truth. “Yes, it is,” Ikaros admitted quietly.

There was another louder buzz in the crowd. Athene scowled. Sokrates looked over at where I was standing with Simmea, and then at Kebes. “And didn’t you yourself—” he began, and I really thought he was going to accuse her of fixing the results at the last festival to spite me, which might well have let everyone know who I was. Sokrates would never have mentioned it, but Athene in this mood couldn’t be trusted to respect my need for secrecy. But if he had been intending that he changed tack, perhaps realising the risk. “—know this was going on?”

Athene nodded angrily.

“Oh, you did? I thought so. But I just use these as examples,” Sokrates said. “Though that one is an example of how the city is giving people a bad life. As we established earlier, the festivals go against human nature and make many people very unhappy indeed. And then there’s the way you manipulated the numbers to get precise Neoplatonic fractions of each class, instead of fairly choosing based on the excellence of each child. Also—”

“Stop,” Athene said, and as she spoke her owl flew down to her outstretched arm, wings wide, making everyone jump. “You’re just attacking me, you’re not making any points.”

“You are a god, you should be better than mortals, but instead you are worse. We act within our limitations and you within yours, and you choose to take our lives and meddle to amuse yourself, doing what you please with them, against our will and in ignorance of whether the outcome is good or evil. You didn’t know about the workers. You didn’t give the children a conscious choice. You brought me here against my directly expressed wish. You say that this city is the good life, but how can it be the good life if it takes constant divine intervention to keep it going! It can’t be the good life unless people can choose to stay or leave, and can choose for themselves how to make it better. Instead you imprison them on this island, with no legacy and no posterity, and you make them have children here whose souls are bound to this time and who will die when the volcano erupts.”

Athene took a breath, as if she was about to speak. I don’t know what I expected her to say. But she snapped her fingers in Sokrates’s face. He shrank and shifted and transformed, until where he had been there was only a gadfly. He had always metaphorically called himself a gadfly, stinging people out of complacency, and now he was no longer a man but an actual literal gadfly, buzzing around the rostrum. Everyone gasped, myself included.

Athene stood still staring for a moment, and I still thought she was going to speak, explain herself, perhaps restore Sokrates. But she just looked in silence, shaking her head, with the castle crown still sitting on her unruffled curls. She gave no last speech, no farewell, no explanations. She looked at Ikaros, but she did not look towards me, or even meet the eyes of Manlius or any of the rest of her favourites. She simply vanished, and with her at the same instant vanished the workers—not just the ones gathered to listen to the debate but, we later learned, every worker in the city except for Crocus and Sixty-One.

In that moment of shock, Kebes jumped up to the rostrum, though Ficino tried to hold him back. “We’ve heard enough!” he shouted. “These pagan gods are unjust!”