Page 24 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“Sir, we’re just so tired,” Jason tried. “And that thing in the parade ground . . .”

There was an unhappy agreeing murmur from the others.

I let my shield thunk down. “All right. Tell me what you’re worried it was.”

“A sign from Apollo,” Amphitrion’s sister said, sounding dull and strange. “He’s angry with us.”

“Stars fall sometimes,” Jason said, with a good effort at knightly unconcern only slightly ruined by the worried crack in his voice. I was glad see to some things did worry him. “My commander says they’re just rocks.”

“It was Zeus punishing us,” someone else said. “The drought’s happening because the lost prince is supposed to be on the throne and it won’t break until he is.”

“It was an actual god, who came down from Olympus. They can look like people, what if someone in the crowd . . .?”

Footsteps in the glass. There had been footsteps.

“What if it was him, what if it was the lost prince?”

I put my hands up to say quiet, because they were all talking at once and I couldn’t hear anything. Lately I couldn’t hear, I’d started to use signs, unconsciously at first, but we were developing a kind of code now. They knew my signs for form up, turn, thank you, put that down, where the fuck is Jason.

I looked between them all once they were quiet. “All right. Lots of ideas. It could be any of those. It could be none of them. All of us: we’re much too stupid to know. That’s what the royal prophet is for. Until Tiresias tells us what it means, it means nothing. We have our own duty. Which is?”

“To train no matter what,” someone mumbled.

“Wrong,” I said, “it’s to fuck up the fucking Athenians. Which,” I added, motioning at the corpse of the dead pomegranate tree at the gate, almost mummified from the drought, “we will shortly have the pleasure of doing.”

They laughed, and there was a little cheer.

“Form up.”

I picked up my shield again too and tried to take my own advice. It was true: there was no point guessing. It was easier said than done, though, and as I counted them through their steps and walked through the turn with them again, I couldn’t stop thinking about those prints in the glass, and the smoke from my prayer going up into the sky.

Because I was expecting the Guards to come and interrogate me about Amphitrion, I kept watching the gates. No Guards materialised, though, and after an hour or so, I realized there were no more people moving between courtyards at all, even though it was about lunch time. Plenty of people came to eat in our yard and watch the knights train; it was a nice way to spend an hour. Nobody was here.

Just as I was wondering what was going on, two Guards closed the courtyard gates and stopped a slave going through.

Then an alarm gong rang, and a clear-voiced herald shouted that the Palace was in lockdown: everyone needed to stay exactly where they were.

Lockdown. What?

Maybe some important slaves had run.

Fuck, another Hidden ride in the space of twelve hours, if it was slaves. That was going to be unpleasant.

Wanting them to get some rest now if they did have to ride again soon, I called an end to the drill. The little knights broke ranks gratefully and made for the shade and the fountains. From the next courtyard, someone was shouting: I thought I recognised Amphitrion’s commander’s voice. He must have wanted to get to Ares. Someone was saying no.

The Guards opened the gate just enough to let a Palace scribe slip through. She was important: she was dressed in blue and silver, and she had that amazing, rounded gleam you can only get if you have enough food and you don’t have to exercise all day; though there was ash in her hair. We all went quiet as she looked between us. Her eyes settled on me, running over the scar on my face.

“Are you Phaidros Heliades?” she asked.

Odd that a royal scribe had come to ask me about Amphitrion. That was well below her. “Yes.”

“The Queen wants to see you.”

The little knights all looked at me like kittens who had seen a ball of flax swing by.

“It’s all right, I’ll be back,” I promised. My oath snagged as I said it. “I expect.”

Nobody knows who built the Marvel Throne. Maybe King Kadmus himself, a thousand years ago, after he defeated the dragon and planted its teeth. But it is a miracle. Built into it, still gleaming even after a millennium, are two dragons. Beneath it somewhere is a hypocaust. The steam powers up and up, through the mechanism inside the throne, until the dragons breathe it into the throne room, masking everything in a weird haze. They move, too, the dragons, turning their heads, shifting their wings, sometimes retracting or baring their claws like lions do. Thebes is full of sacred machinery, but the throne is the nearest I think anyone in my lifetime and many after will ever be to the artifice of the gods.