Page 8 of This Divine Revelry

‘Oh, great Earthshaker,’ I intone – then panic at how few epithets for Poseidon I can remember, so begin to hum instead.

The boy scowls his confusion – then recognition sparks in his eyes as I press a reel of string into his palm.

‘Tie this to the door of the labyrinth,’ I whisper. ‘It will help you find your way out.’

Maybe the door can hide marks but perhaps it cannot shift a physical tie. And if it can, the string will still guide them to its vague location. It will be easy enough to spot once I’ve opened it.

‘Zosime,’ the boy snaps at the girl clutching her foot. ‘Hum.’

Zosime takes up the tune I had abandoned and our conversation is masked as the boy turns his attention back to me. He offers a small smile that feels decidedly intimate in this dimly lit space. ‘A seed of rebellion in a place like this? That’s either awfully brave or awfully stupid.’

‘Both, I think.’

‘That makes two of us,’ he says, tossing the string into the air. ‘This ought to make it easier to recover our bodies. What’s left of them, at any rate. Do you have garlic too? That might at least make it quick.’

I hesitate. I’d not been expecting such brevity and it unsettles me. He unsettles me. ‘Asteri– The Minotaur won’t be a problem. It’s starving and I just poured a great quantity of drugged meat into its path.’

‘Brave, stupid and clever,’ the boy says, and I raise my finger to his face, smearing olive oil across the blades of his cheeks. Fine cheekbones, I note. Stubble stretches nearly to their peak, dark and bristling beneath my thumb, and it takes concerted effort to ignore the heat coiling in my stomach and return to the matter at hand. ‘But that door locks tight. You’ll only be delaying the inevitable.’

‘I’ll free you. I’m not sure when but … they’ll be drinking. Celebrating. If we can get to the forge, I’ve arranged for merchants to smuggle you out with the wares. Everyone will assume the sacrifice worked and …’

‘And we’ll sail off into obscurity,’ the boy finishes.

I scowl at his tone – though he won’t see that through the fine silk covering my face.

‘If the king finds out you live, he’ll hunt you down like it’s sport.’

The boy’s smile becomes a flash of teeth. ‘I’m counting on it.’

‘Who are you?’ I ask – because bravado I could dismiss as the clung-to delusion of a terrified boy. But this isn’t hollow – I can feel the solidity behind it, the certainty. The sort of assurance with which men like my father speak and a confidence no sacrifice should have.

He steps closer to the bars and when he speaks, his amusement rings out, like this entire conversation is a joke between us. ‘You’re no priestess, obviously. Your hands aren’t worn enough to be a servant. So what is it? The wife of some noble? The daughter of a palace guard? A relative of the king? Forget who I am, priestess. Why don’t you lift that veil and let me know exactly who I owe this glimmer of hope to?’

I tense so suddenly that the jug feels brittle in my hands. The challenge is clear in the boy’s gaze but there’s something beyond the curiosity – a sort of mirroring. Both of us brave and stupid. Both of us hiding something. And altogether it’s palpable …

Zosime’s hum grows, and I startle. I had been so lost in this boy that I’d quite forgotten the others were here. I move to the next person in line, reaching to draw oil across the girl’s face. But the boy catches my hand, his thumb finding the groove of an old scar from intercepting a lash meant for Charis.

‘Thank you, priestess,’ he says, those dark eyes boring into mine. He hesitates a moment, and then his gaze is pleading. And … perhaps even hopeful. ‘But if you wish to truly save us … to take the brave and clever option. If you wish for us to stand a chance in all this, then you might consider bringing us a blade instead of string.’

CHAPTER FOUR

IDO NOT BRING A weapon.

I consider it, at length. But I am doing this to save my brother as much as the Athenians.

For nine years I’ve gone over every single possibility of freeing him, but even as a child the most obvious endpoint of every scenario I could conceive was a blade slicing through his neck as some hero clamoured to become the man who slayed the Minotaur. This is what happens, time and again. Only last year the servants whispered tales of Medusa, a monster who could turn men to stone with a single glance. She’d taken herself to an isolated island to avoid such murder, and still the men came, desperate to be the one who ended her tale – and to cement their own. Eventually one had succeeded.

Cruel as it is, the labyrinth is protection. No one can get to Asterion there.

Until now.

If the drugs didn’t work, Asterion could kill every Athenian. A blade might keep him at bay until I could free them. But still. But still …

And then it is morning and the palace is in disarray and evidently the servants no longer fear my inauspicious birth because this birthday I’m under their constant watch as they ready me for the evening’s procession and my sister is glowering every few seconds as though expecting me to apologize – for what? – and decidedly not letting me out of her sight either.

The ceremony that evening begins with music – so often barred from these halls where the slightest irritating noise can set my father off on a rampage.

But now drums smash every step, a lyre screeches high, an aulos cuts a discordant noise that hits far too deep and a salpinx thunders a triumphant beat.