Ikaros laughed, and looked toward me, but not quite at me. “Audacious. But how do you suggest we do it? A troop heading for the temple would be assumed to be raiding and attacked. And half of my problem is how wild the Young Ones in the troops are. I need to keep them under control, and they wouldn’t respect me at all if I tried to stop them from fighting back if they were attacked. They might not even want to return it. And they have votes in our Assembly.”

“Let me sing to them, and see whether that will help change their minds about the fun of art raids,” Father said. “As for the head, get Rhadamantha to give it to Arete. Then Arete can quietly put it back. You and I won’t be directly involved. I won’t have to know officially who took it, or take any vengeance, and we can swear we didn’t do it. It can be a divine intervention.”

“An angelic one,” Ikaros said.

“Kebes and the Goodness Group have been practicing muscular Christianity all over the Aegean,” Father said, switching subjects smoothly.

“What?” Ikaros looked stunned.

“They have eight cities, mostly filled with refugees from mainland wars, mostly converts. It’s not your New Concordance, nothing like that subtle. They say Athene was a demon, perhaps Lilith.”

“What?”

“They’ve been teaching people to worship Yayzu and his mother Marissa, and revile Athene.”

“In a Platonic context?” Ikaros asked, quite calmly, surprising me because I was expecting him to say “What?” again.

“Oh yes. But with torture for heretics, you’d feel quite at home.”

“I would not! We don’t do anything to heretics but debate with them. And we have Saint Girolamo in our calendar.”

“Saint Girolamo, and the Archangel Athene too. You’ll have to send missionaries,” Father said, quite comfortably. “Nag them to death. Teach them your beautiful complex system. Let them know Christianity is all just fine up to a point, and torturing heretics is well beyond that point.”

“I thought you wanted people to worship the Olympians,” Ikaros said, frowning a little.

“I do, and so did Plato. I didn’t say we wouldn’t be sending out missionaries too.”

Ikaros laughed, and just then the girl Rhadamantha came back with the others. She looked a tiny bit like Erinna, she had the same kind of hair and the same lean grace. I was glad when she stayed for the debate.