Mother and I had fought about all kinds of things, mostly when she thought I wasn’t working hard enough, or when I forgot to do things. She could be impossibly sanctimonious and stiff-necked. She never let me get away with sliding along as my friends sometimes did; she wanted me trying my hardest every moment. But we’d been the only women in a household of men, and even when she drove me mad with irritation she was still Mother. I loved her and knew she loved me. If she had no patience with irrationality, she would always listen to reason, and sometimes change her mind. “She was a philosopher,” I said.

“She was,” Father agreed. “She was a Philosopher King, she was what Plato wanted to produce, the ultimate aim of his Republic. And she was killed in a silly fight for the head of Victory.”

“The head of Victory?” I asked, and then I realized what he meant, the statue in the shrine outside the south gates. She was killed trying to stop the raiders from stealing the head of Victory. It sounded almost too symbolic to be true.

“We don’t know who it was, but Klymene thinks it might be Kebes.”

“Kebes? The Goodness Group?” I pulled away from his arm, which wasn’t giving me any comfort anyway, and leaned against the tree where I could see his face. “They’ve never taken part in an art raid before.”

“They’ve never had any communication with us since they left,” Father agreed.

“It was probably Psyche. Or the Amazons.” They were the two that raided us for art most frequently. It had been the Council of Psyche who had started the whole thing by demanding that the art be shared out equally to all the cities in proportion to their population. Some of us had wished ever since that we’d just agreed there and then. Plato had set out rules for warfare, but he only ever imagined one Just City, not five of them squabbling over a pile of sculpture.

“Klymene said the Goodness had been seen. And she said she didn’t recognize anyone.”

I shook my head. “I never heard that Kebes wanted art.”

“Who knows what he wants? I never did. He broke a statue once, on purpose. He just wanted to get away, and to destroy the City if he could.” Father’s eyes came into focus. “I remember him sitting where you are sitting now and saying as much.”

It was strange to think of Kebes as a real person my parents had known, and not a demon to be afraid of. He had left at the Last Debate, years before I was born. “Maybe—” I began to say, then stopped. I’d been going to say that maybe Mother would understand what Kebes wanted, and I had to face up to the fact that she might well, but she wouldn’t be able to tell us.