Page 37 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“Are you sure?” the guard who had been washing his face said. “Your rations are half of what they were a few months ago, sir.”

“And I still have most of what I had a few months ago. It’s just me here, and the boys. I haven’t got a secret legion of ravenous wives locked in the maze.”

“Even so,” he said, looking excruciated.

“This is a lot of dentistry you’re doing on the gift horse,” I said.

The driver’s little assistant burst out laughing. She was just getting her new teeth, and they were still too big for her.

The guard grinned too. “You’re a true knight, sir.”

Finally, they all helped themselves properly.

“You should come back with us,” the driver said to me. “We can take you round to the garrison. The way it’s looking . . . even in broad daylight, I wouldn’t like to think of anyone on the road alone. Even a knight,” he said over me when I took a breath to say I’d be fine.

Nothing happened on the road, but when we reached the High City on the zigzagging, laborious way for carts and horses, the main square was much more crowded than it had been yesterday. A huge slave market had appeared, hundreds of people selling themselves, clay signs around their necks, sometimes whole families. A tiny little girl with a ribbon in her hair had a sign that said I CAN POUR WINE!

A garrison unit was out, making sure there was a way through for traffic, and so were Palace stewards—they were buying fleets of people at a time, paying relatives with invoice tablets. The preference was always for women, in the Palace: nobody wanted a big angry man who might lose it one morning and stab someone, but it meant the men were struggling, the prices lower than what I’d normally expect to pay even for one very unwell ox. I tried to keep my eyes front, not looking at faces, not reading the lips of people yelling at me that I could afford fifty of them, and not saying that I couldn’t afford to feed fifty, even with a knight’s allowances. The noise was so much that I couldn’t hear anything particular inside it, just the roar of bartering and crying and sudden, explosive rows, the ones that always happen when it’s too hot and nobody’s had enough to eat. And everywhere, over and through it all, the endless smoke of the sacrifice altars.

Getting in through the garrison gates wasn’t any relief. The Knights’ Court was heaving too, a mixture of units all going to and fro, bringing horses, asking things of harassed-looking clerks bringing armour. Black armour. Before I could find anyone to ask what the fuck was happening, someone caught my arm and yelped when I smacked them off.

“Gods, man, you’re too quick for your own good,” the general told me.

“Sir—I’m so sorry—”

“No, no, I’m the same, just not quite so—alacritous,” he said, shaking his head. I felt terrible. He was the same age as Helios, and so small he only reached my shoulder, maybe just over five feet tall. He had been a general for about ten years: he was one of those courteous, brittle-seeming people who nobody ever wants to upset, the same way everyone is at the mercy of wise kittens. Of course he used it brutally. “Heliades, I’m glad I caught you—can you explain why I’m signing you off to Palace service and giving your unit to Polydorus just as a hundred and forty slaves have run from the Temple of the Mother’s estates and I have to call the first all-units Hidden run in ten years?”

“A hundred and forty!”

“It’s the rations,” he said, balancing a tablet on his arm while he peered at a half-peeled pomegranate. It looked off, the rubies going brown. “This tastes . . . distantly of naphtha.” As if he hadn’t interrupted himself, he went on, “For field slaves they’ve gone down to almost nothing.”

Field slaves become field slaves because they’re rapists and murderers, so the conditions for them were pretty shocking even in good times, but it was still a crazy number. Usually the only people who risked running were career criminals with something to run to and a fast ship waiting.

“Yes, and so I have this transfer order for you because . . .?”

“I’m sorry, sir, the Chamberlain called me in yesterday. It’s . . .” I lunged after the first true but boring word I could think of. “Administrative rubbish I inherited from Helios.”

“Hm. Make sure the Queen doesn’t expect you to inherit too much from Helios,” the general said with a seriousness I didn’t understand. “Duty is honour, but there was a reason he was Helios Polytropos.” Polytropos, “many-turning”; it means tricky fucker. I’d forgotten the nickname. Remembering was like a little punch in the stomach and just for a flash, there Helios was, laughing, playing the three-cup game with me. Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows. I’d never been able to find the ball under the right cup even when I was much older. “You can’t be straight down the line and survive the court. Either find a way out, or develop . . .” The general mimed spirals.

“It—is not a permanent thing,” I said, not sure what he was saying.

“I should hope not. Those feral little fuckers are going to eat Polydorus alive in forty-eight hours.” He lifted the seal bead from its cord round my neck and rolled it along his tablet, which made me stoop forward. He was wise-kittening me. “Well. Good luck, and do hurry the fuck back, would you please.” He made the bull sign and waved me away.

I had to wait at the Chamberlain’s office for nearly an hour before there was space for the Queen to see me. Helios had always said that most of life in royal service is just about waiting uselessly, but I’d thought he was doing that thing noblemen always do, which was complaining pointedly about glamorous connections so everyone would know they weren’t starry-eyed about it. He was right, though. I sat on the steps of one of the pretty inner courtyards, watching a little flock of parakeets. They were perched on a marvel and sometimes it moved, and they’d be startled and fly away, but someone had put grain in its hands, and so they always came back. After a while, I scooped up some grain to see if they’d come to see me too. They did, all soft and green and interested. I laughed and then stopped, because the Nothing was there next to me. I shut my eyes, wishing I could just fucking enjoy something instead of moping around like some twat in a poem.

A Guard appeared, the same one I’d spoken to in the cells yesterday. We stared at each other and then we both pretended not to know each other.

“The Queen will see you.”

In the throne room, the Queen was talking to a very tall Egyptian man. I hung back, wary. He must have been with the trade delegation. He was wearing gold around his wrists, and there was gold filigree on his belt, and his broad neck piece was so heavy with turquoise it was forcing him to stand with his shoulders back, as if he were waiting to start a drill. I thought she would ignore me until he was gone, but she tipped her head to invite me over. I went, thinking that it was her way of telling the Egyptian man to move on because now she had other business, but I was wrong.

“Prince Apophis, this is Phaidros Heliades. He was sworn to my brother,” she told him in exquisite Egyptian.

I wanted to ask why she was introducing an Egyptian prince to an inconsequential knight, and the man looked like he wanted to ask that too, but he seemed willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.

“Sworn, what does that mean?” he asked.

Egyptians are annoying for the following reasons.