Page 102 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“No.” He laughed. “You might as well pray to wine not to make you drunk, it isn’t the nature of wine.”

“Well,” she said. “Thank you, sir, it was interesting to speak to you.”

We left in silence, and in his sunbeam, Not Apollo went contentedly back to his manuscripts. I looked back at the door, though, and as I did, I caught him looking at me. There was something quizzical about the tilt of his head.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said, to himself, not me. “The steersman. No wonder.”

The Queen was waiting for me a few paces ahead. “Phaidros? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I felt cold and prickly. “What he said about the holy raving.”

She paused. “I know. I know. But . . . here’s . . . what I think. The madness began when the rations went down. I think it might lift once they go up again. And once we have that grain—which will be tonight—we can supply ships. There can be raiding again. Whatever this is, whether it is this old god of madness and the Hunt, or just the displeasure of our own gods—it seems to be a function of crisis. Get rid of the crisis, and the rest will go too. Is it now?” she added, because an acolyte in indigo had stopped near us and bowed.

“It is, lady. The Oracle will speak to you now.”

I looked back for Pentheus, who was giving me a speculative look. He didn’t say why, though, and only fell into step with me behind the Queen.

We walked slowly down the length of the long hall, towards the altar; the Queen ahead, and Pentheus and me behind. He looped his arm through mine, more like a grown-up—more like a knight—with every passing hour.

He smiled at last. “You know, you do sound like Helios. Not just distantly, I mean really like. If I shut my eyes I’d think you were him.”

“When did you meet Helios?”

“He came back to Thebes when I was little. He was kind.”

“Oh, right,” I said, not convinced Pentheus could possibly remember him properly, given that I barely did, but not wanting to say that. “Tiresias said that. I can’t hear it.”

“You even look like him.”

“Dogs look like their owners,” I agreed.

He pushed me, and laughed when I pushed him back.

The Queen glanced back, and although I had argued with her before, she looked at least halfway to pleased, and I realized that even if she didn’t feel she could act on it, she did prefer it a great deal when Pentheus was happy. As we drew near to the altar, I looked between the two of them. I hadn’t had any family for ten years, and I’d forgotten what it was like. I didn’t know them, either of them, but it didn’t matter. I belonged to someone and although it wouldn’t last for long, I was glad to have it for now. Despite that, I could hear my heart again.

Where are you, where are you.

On the dais behind the altar, the sacred fire flared, and a glorious marvel of Apollo, twice life-sized, opened its hands, and the moving bronze was silent even as the joints and hinges worked. When it spoke, its voice was echoey and golden from the chambers of the holy devices hidden inside, not human, though somewhere, of course, it would be the Oracle talking. I stared up at the marvel. A few days ago, this would have been holy. It was older than the Furies outside the walls, older than Thebes, probably, maintained down the centuries by priest-smiths sworn to never to tell anyone outside their order how the mechanisms worked, if they even knew themselves. And somewhere in that clockwork, sometimes—or I’d thought so—moving those fine bronze springs in the same way he had once moved matter to make human beings, would be Apollo. I’d used to feel that sometimes there was something mighty here in these holy machines.

Tiresias’s voice came back to me. There is yet holy transmutation in the great machines, and the god will speak true, even when he has been paid to be false.

No; they must have just said that to make me feel better. They must have, because the alternative was that Apollo was actually talking to me, and that was . . . somewhere between ridiculous and cosmically arrogant.

Whoever was speaking through the marvel breathed in, and it sang through the mechanisms.

“Agave of Thebes, Shining Apollo greets you, and answers your question. In marrying this man, you both condemn yourself to and save yourself from the prophecy of the boy who should have been king.”

The silence was so deep I could hear the slaves behind us breathing. When I looked at the Queen, trying to tell if she understood, I caught her giving me exactly the same look; and the slaves; and the Guards. But you can’t ask the Oracle what the message means.

The only person who didn’t look confused was Pentheus.

“Did you understand that?” I asked him.

He was quiet at first, and then he leaned up, close enough that he had to hold my shoulder. “They mean it’s you,” he whispered. “They think you’re the lost prince.”

30

We were supposed to go back to the Palace, but Pentheus took hold of my elbow and said with an authority I’d not heard from him before that we were going out for a little while. The Guards looked perturbed and four of them came with us, without the purple cloaks, so that they might have been slaves, not that they were fooling anyone. Pentheus was dressed like a king in waiting. He took a pair of horses from some grooms at the gatehouse of the city wall.