Page 3 of The Hymn to Dionysus

2

I didn’t feel like I’d had much sleep at all when someone woke me up. It was the Queen, holding a lamp. She wasn’t trying to wake me, only Helios, but I was tucked up against him, so she couldn’t shake him without shaking me as well.

“Helios. I need some help. I don’t trust the slaves.”

“Oh—what?” he asked, confused from dreaming. “Agave—what’s the matter?”

“I need some help,” she said again, low and measured. “And I don’t trust the slaves.”

He stared at her as if she had just confessed to flinging someone off the High City, and then he looked down at me. “I—right. Phaidros, you go back to sleep. I’ll ... I’ll be back soon.”

“What?” I whispered, horrified. I’d never slept by myself, ever. It wasn’t safe. If you slept by yourself, then an Enemy could come and kill you in the night about nobody would be able to fight them off. “No—”

He stroked my hair. “No, come on, you’re big enough to be by yourself for an hour. Look, the dog’s here, she’ll keep you company—”

“No, no, I’m not—”

“Obedience is strength,” he said softly.

As always, it put a wall down in my head. I couldn’t have not done as I was told after he’d said that even if the room was on fire. Knights obey, and if they don’t, they’re not real knights, and they don’t have honour, and the only thing in the world that’s ever really yours is your honour. “Obedience is strength,” I whispered back, like you’re meant to, even if you’re scared; especially if you’re scared.

“I love you, tiny knight. I’ll be back soon.”

So they both vanished into the dark corridor, and I stayed where I was, hunched in a miserable ball and staring at all the unfamiliar shadows in the corners. The unmenacing dog was asleep, and definitely not paying attention to the nighttime noises of the Palace. I could hear someone walking on the stone floor a long way away. It was hard not to wonder if they were an Enemy on their way here to kill me while Helios was away. I pulled the blanket with me and hid under the bed.

It didn’t help.

He had been gone for years.

This was dangerous. Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous —the word thumped around my head in time with my pulse, which was loud. Sitting alone in a strange place is how you die. That was our main rule at camp. No one ever goes anywhere alone. He shouldn’t have left me. It was dangerous. Obedience is strength, but strength is no good if you’re dead.

I crept out into the corridor.

It wasn’t that dark. There were banks of lamps lit here and there, not bright, but enough to see the way by. A slave in plain clothes and a bronze collar was trimming the wicks on some of them, and she gave me a puzzled look as I trailed past. I was afraid she would stop me, but she seemed to decide it was none of her business. I had to look back, disconcerted, because grown-ups never just left you alone if you were about alone at night. There could be Enemies.

Maybe she thought I was big enough to look after myself.

I swallowed. “Um. Excuse me. Have you seen Helios?”

“I think the Queen took him over that way, sir.”

That threw me. “I’m not sir, I’m four,” I said.

“You’re Sown,” she said, laughing a bit.

“So—over there,” I said, looking the way she had pointed. I wondered how you were ever supposed to find anyone in this place, but she was studying me as if she were reconsidering whether or not to put me somewhere, so I hurried away, not sure what was beyond the corner, and then fell over, because there was a statue of Apollo that looked exactly like a person. I picked myself up, and He moved. I knew what He was, but it was dark and I spooked. I ran, and only slowed down when I realized I could hear Helios’s voice.

He was in the courtyard with the Poseidon statue, and he was carrying something heavy-looking rolled up in a rug. He set it down on the ground. He had no lamp, even though the rain and the thunderclouds made the night very dark. I could only just see him. An unhappy cry came from somewhere on the ground, and he bent down and picked up a baby.

“Put it down,” the Queen told him. She was, of all the odd things, negotiating with a kite. She was trying to find the angle where the wind would take it out of her hands. I frowned. It was stupid to wake us both up just because she wanted to play with a kite.

He didn’t put the baby down. “We can just give him anonymously to the Temple of Artemis. They’ll find him a family.”

“And what if he grows up looking exactly like us?” she asked. The kite caught and sailed out of her hands. She let the reel unspool and the kite shot right into the air, vanishing into the rain, winking with silver thread. But she didn’t hold on to it. She tied it to the rug Helios had moved.

“Then people will say, that’s funny, you look a bit like the Queen, and get on with the day, because that’s what humans do!”

“Move, come on, before the lightning hits—put it down , Helios!”

“Agave, please—”

“We haven’t killed him. Zeus will decide.”

She took the baby off him and set it down with the rug, even though the rain was heavy now. “I said move.” She dragged him away from the fountain. The kite did a mad dance on the wind. I watched them go, horrified, waiting for Helios to go back for the baby, but he didn’t. The two of them vanished into the cloister opposite. The baby was crying, probably wet and cold now. The kite writhed way above him. If she had meant for it to distract him, it wasn’t working. There was nothing peaceful or nice about it. The wind was wild and the kite was straining. I looked over at the other cloister one last time, then left and right (no chariots), then ran out and scooped him up—the rain was so hard now it soaked me straightaway—and rushed back under cover with him.

He was still crying, but in the reproachful way that was more to let me know that he’d been having a horrible time rather than to say he was still having it. His purple blanket was all wet, so I took it off him and put it over the plinth of a column to dry out, and bundled him up in my blanket instead. It was more boring than his, but it was warm. He sniffed and gave me a now what look.

I didn’t know. I turned around twice, probably looking stupid, trying to think what to do, and brimming with that nasty sort of panic that can drown you. The Queen had left him outside. If I asked anyone for help, they would just put him back, for whatever grown-up reason she’d done it in the first place.

The kite was making a thrumming noise where the wind pulled at the string, the way bows sound if you leave one on the ground as people are marching outside.

The baby didn’t seem so upset any more. In case he was worried about being stolen, I told him he was having an adventure.

Only, people in adventures always knew what to do. You didn’t catch Persephone umm-ing and panicking when she met Death. She all but grabbed him by the collar and went, “Aha, you’re coming with me.”

It was with a horrible, heavy feeling that I realized for the first time I was never going to be like Persephone. I was just Phaidros. I wasn’t the right kind of person for this at all. I’d been hiding under the bed not long ago.

Over by the kite and the rolled-up carpet, a slave stopped sharply. I slunk back into the dark, because I could see what he was doing. He was looking for the baby.

“Lady?” he called into the corridor behind him. “Lady! It’s gone, the child is—” He ran that way.

I still didn’t know what to do.

The air was getting a strange taste to it, sharp and bitter, and out in the courtyard, the kite’s dance was madder than ever. But the string was bronze. It wouldn’t break.

The baby sniffed, and I realized—a lot later than literally anyone else would have realized, never mind Persephone—that he needed his mother, and I should have been running to find her all along. Mothers can protect babies, even if queens steal them. I’d seen mothers do incredible things when cities fell. They could be stronger than Herakles; it was, Helios said, an ancient kind of magic.

I didn’t know where her rooms were, but if I asked someone and I was quick, I could maybe get there before anyone managed to stop me, and then he would have his mother and not just a stupid Phaidros—

Lightning hit the kite.

I’d seen lightning strike before. You do, if you live mostly in a tent on a beach surrounded by people wearing a lot of bronze. But not like this.

It zithered down the kite string, delicately, and then there was a flash so blinding I fell over backwards. I felt the ground jump. If a titan had pulled free of its chains underground and punched the bedrock, it would have felt like this. And then there was fire. Everywhere, burning things it shouldn’t have been able to burn—the fountain, the flagstones—and heat blasted off it, waving the air so much it looked like we were underwater.

All around me, parts of the cloister roof collapsed, flaming, and like it was alive, the fire vaulted from one roof to another to another, tiles exploding, beams breaking, until half the Palace must have been caught in it, and worse, it was in the wind, spinning, not ordinary fire any more at all but a fire animal, raving and whirring with a noise like I’d never heard before and hoped I would never, ever hear again.

I had seen cities fall and all that came with that, but I’d never seen destruction like this. I couldn’t even tell what I was seeing. Later, a lot later, I realized that the liquid hell-glow was the sand in the courtyard vitrifying. Molten glass writhed everywhere, and everywhere there was roiling steam and a weird patter of condensation from where the water in the fountain had vaporised, only to condense again as it hit the colder air above the fires. Where it was still in its bedtime plait over my shoulder, the ends of my hair started to smoke. I had to shove it under my tunic. The baby was holding onto me as hard as he could. He was still all right.

Inside the Palace, people were pouring into the corridors, shouting so much I couldn’t hear the words from any one voice, and all at once I was paralysed again. I’d never find his mother now. Helios would be going out of his mind trying to find me, but I couldn’t remember the way back. We couldn’t stay here, but I didn’t know where to go.

But what I knew from sieges was that if something was on fire, whether it was a tent or a citadel, you had to get away from it, and you had to do it fast before everyone else realized and crushed you.

So I ran, at random, away from the fire, into the Palace, weaving through people and hunching over the baby so no one could bump him, on and on, until I was outside again, and then I had to stop, because the fires must have broken the stables, and dozens and dozens of horses were escaping across the vast courtyard, lit up orange in the fireglow, their hooves sparking, some of them streaming embers from their manes.

One of them stopped, right next to us. I shied, because I’d always been taught to be careful of horses. Ours bit anyone they didn’t recognise and liked to trample most people they did. But this one put her nose right up to me and snuffed at the baby, very gentle. He seemed not to mind. Then she sat down and gave me an expectant look.

“Um,” I said blankly, because I’d never seen a horse do that. I was nearly sure that it was against every Horse principle there was.

The baby stretched out with his whole tiny self for the horse.

He wasn’t wrong. Tentatively, I climbed onto her back, and the second I had, she stood up again and shot away, after her family.

It was the most frightening thing I’d ever done, including being run over by a chariot. I had to hold onto the baby with one hand and clamp the other round the horse’s mane, scared I was going to hurt her and she was going to bite me, only just staying on her back as her gigantic shoulder blades heaved underneath us. And then even worse, she left level ground and charged down the steep steps to the lower city, and I was jammed up against her neck feeling like I was going to slip off at any second, and behind us, the Palace was a column of furious black smoke.

When the horse stopped, we were outside what looked like a temple. There were priestesses in bright red standing outside, watching the fire, murmuring the way people always do when something enormous has happened but nobody can do anything about it.

Very carefully, I let go of the horse’s mane and stroked her neck.

In my arms, the baby cooed like it was him I’d stroked.

I hesitated, then blew in the horse’s ear.

The baby squeaked and pushed one tiny fist against his ear.

I wondered what I was supposed to do about a baby who was sometimes a horse.

“Hello,” one of the priestesses said to me. “You look like you’ve had an interesting night.”

“I’m ... I ...” I trailed off, trying to think what Persephone would say, or at least, a grown-up knight, and whether I should run away. I’d never met a priestess before. I’d seen them, but only when they threw themselves off towers when city walls fell. In their bright robes, they look like shot birds when they fall, but up close, she was big, person-sized, much bigger than me, and what if she wanted me to jump off a tower? Helios had always been hazy about why they did that and I was worried it was a sort of inherent instinct that might overtake them at any moment. “I found this baby,” I said miserably, “and I don’t know where my commander is.”

“Ah, well,” she said, as if that was normal. She lifted me down. “You’ve done wonderfully, though, you know. You’ve come to exactly the right place. This is the Temple of Artemis. It’s where lost children come.”

“It ... is?” I said, to her but also half to the horse.

The horse was already walking away, shaking her head as if she was trying to dislodge something annoying in it.

The baby laughed.

“He’s merry, isn’t he,” she said, tickling him. He laughed again, happy now. “You found him, you said?”

“I—yes—I don’t know where his mother is.”

“It’s all right. She’ll know to look for him here. Come in and we’ll get you nice and clean.” She held my hand and led me inside.

The temple was quiet inside, but as I sat there and drank a hot honey drink another friendly priestess made for me, people came in with more children. There were other babies, some girls my age, then a boy of about nine, tearstained and smoke-grey. I gave him the rest of my drink to have while someone went to make him one too. As frightening as it had been for me, at least I was brought up for all this, at least I sort of knew what to do, and I’d had help from a possibly magic baby and a horse. It would have been awful if I hadn’t. I showed him the baby and he cheered up before too long. The baby seemed like he was having a good time. I tried to concentrate on that, not on the dark pit opening up in my insides, the one that echoed with voices that said, What if Helios doesn’t know about the Temple of Artemis, what if he doesn’t find you, what if you just have to live here now?

In the middle of the courtyard was a great marvel of Artemis, holding a bow. Sometimes, She moved Her head, looking up at the sky, or down towards the temple doors. It made me feel better. Even the Queen couldn’t argue with Artemis.

The second I put him down, the baby crawled off to inspect a flower bed and sat in it, looking triumphant. I hurried over too to make sure he didn’t eat anything mad, but he didn’t. He gave me a flower.

“Thanks.” I stroked his head. “Did you—tell that horse where to come?”

It sounded stupid as soon as I said it, and for his part, the baby was more interested in some lemons.

“Phaidros.”

I looked up, not wanting to believe it in case I was mistaken, but Helios was there, kneeling at the edge of the flower bed. He held his arms out and I dived into them, and he hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe and the filigree image of Ares on his breastplate printed right into my cheek so that later I looked like I had a strange Ares tattoo, but it didn’t matter.

“How in the world did you know to come to the Temple of Artemis, tiny knight?” he asked me, sort of laughing, and sort of crying. He drew his hands over my face to smooth away the ash, rough from sword hilts and reins, and safe. “The priestess said you just turned up on a horse?”

“It wasn’t me, it was the baby, he knew, I think he told the horse ...”

“A,” the baby put in, and gave Helios a flower too.

He took it slowly and brushed the baby’s cheek with his knuckle. “Who’s this then?”

I took a breath to say, It’s Semele’s baby , I took him out of the courtyard because you shouldn’t have left him there, what if he’d caught fire, it would be your fault, and how come you don’t recognise the same baby just because he’s got a different blanket now, but something stopped me. It was a strange kind of pressure inside my head, the kind I felt if I saw a dust plume moving on the road outside a sieged city, or when the ground juddered from chariot wheels.

With a flash of understanding that strikes me now as completely adult, completely impossible for a child of four to arrive at alone—I think perhaps I wasn’t arriving at it alone—I realized that Helios did know, but he wanted me to lie.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just found him.”

“Well. His mother will find him here if she’s alive.”

And at last I understood that she wasn’t. I understood what had been in that rug. “What if she’s not? Can we take him to the legion?”

“No. The priestesses will find him a nice new family.”

“But why can’t we—”

“Knight.”

I shut up. I’d disobeyed once tonight already and I didn’t have it in me to try again. Even when I was much older, even trying to contemplate it was so gear-grinding that it made me freeze and cry. That didn’t stop me seeing when he might have been wrong, but it didn’t matter.

He let his breath out slowly. “Right. We have to go, before Agave—before the ships go without us. Time to say goodbye.”

“Bye,” I said unwillingly to the baby.

But he had found a little fox, and unlike every other fox I’d ever seen, it wasn’t trying to bite him. It just sat on him looking interested. He sneezed, and so did the fox.

“Funny,” Helios observed, puzzled.

“He’s magic,” I told him, very quiet, because he wouldn’t believe me.

But Helios smoothed his hand over my hair and didn’t tell me not to be so stupid. “Maybe,” he said, sounding strange.

The baby was distracted because the fox was trying to get into his tunic. It was making him laugh. I was glad. He would be all right; he wouldn’t miss us.

All of us jumped when horns sounded. They were battle horns. I twisted around to see past Helios, expecting chariots to be bursting through the temple gates.

Helios, though, was looking up towards the High City, back the way we had come, and his expression had shut down in a way I’d never seen before. I followed his eyeline. Pouring down the steps up there were riders. All in black. Black horses, black armour, black helmet plumes, under a black banner.

“Who are they?” I whispered.

“The Hidden.” He sounded—wrong. Like he wasn’t seeing people riding, but spirits.

“What’s—”

He gripped my shoulders. “Phaidros. They’re looking for the baby. I’ve got to take him away somewhere safe. Knights only ever have one child, I can say he’s my new ward if I take him, but not if I have you with me too. You have to stay here. Just for now. The priestesses will look after you. I will come back for you. I love you, tiny knight.” He kissed my forehead and snatched up the baby, who waved at me, and then they were both gone.

Helios always did what he promised, so I decided there was no point worrying about it, and settled down to play with the fox.

“But then ,” I always said, when he told me the story safe in our tent in the camp, because it was my favourite part, “you came back! Here I am. Surprise Badger!”

He caught me up and hugged me, and turned me round in his lap so I could sit with my back to his chest and we could look at my toys together. He had made me the wonkiest hippo who had ever been made, but I loved it and its name was Rameses. “Yes,” he always said against the top of my head, “here you are, tiny knight. And what do we do?”

“We never say anything about the baby,” I said faithfully. I stole his helmet, which he had been polishing, and put it on. It was the most beautiful thing in the world. Bronze, with silver filigree, a leather lining, and—this was the best part—a visor that was a mask, removable on tiny hinges. Most other officers had them made to look like Ares, or Athena, or heroes from stories, but Helios was the least showy prince there had ever been. It was just a cast of his own face. He said he didn’t want to go into battle pretending to be somebody else. “We never saw him and we don’t know what happened to him. Echo, echo, echo,” I added, because my voice sounded funny inside the helmet.

“Exactly,” he said, and he always sounded tight then, and if I looked back, his eyelashes were a blacker shade of black. I’d never asked him why. The things that upset him had always been a bit odd: thunder and sudden noises. Now, I was content enough to add babies to the list.