Page 54 of The Hymn to Dionysus

Flee.

“It’s prophecy,” the scribe said quietly.

Dionysus touched my wrist, just over the red string and its bee charm. “Don’t write it down,” he said, soft but urgent.

He was right. It was treason. Into ruin shall fall the House of Kadmus, that was bad, but She shall murder her sorrow—Pentheus’s name meant sorrow. When the god goes before the Queen . . . There was supposed to be no god.

A crown of ivy. I’d called him Ivy.

“I think it’s too late,” I said, because there were too many people here. Not just the witches, but the priests from Ares who had helped to bring the mad knights across town, administrators from the Palace, the Chamberlain’s staff. Some of them would be reporting to the Guards.

The knights kept on, though, all of them staring into the middle distance with something horribly like joy in their faces.

Dionysus was just at the right angle with a lamp for me to see his face through the veil. I don’t think he knew I could, though, because when I turned to him, he didn’t look concerned or unsettled, or even confused about what the prophecies might mean. He looked annoyed. As I watched, he clenched his hand, the way I always did at Jason to say stop that fuckwittery right now.

The knights went silent.

Then they started their ordinary song again. The ones who had been partially cured with the masks went back to eating or talking to the witches as though nothing had interrupted them.

I stared at Dionysus with what felt like gravel in my throat.

Of course it was him.

“Are you all right?” he said. I must have looked bad.

I almost laughed.

Pretending to be friendly, making me feel like maybe I wasn’t quite so alone, that someone would be angry if I got myself killed, and that sometimes there were miraculous enraging strangers who came along and saved you from an auroch—that wasn’t revenge. That was—

Haha.

Madness.

“Yes,” I heard myself say, “I’m all right.”

He didn’t look convinced. “Let me take you home.”

“No,” I said, “I can take myself.”

“But you just said—”

“I can take myself,” I said sharply, just to get away from him, and not even sure why. He knew where I lived. I made sure I vanished into the crowd. On the way, I found a herald and sent a report to the Palace, as dry as I could make it so the Queen wouldn’t take it as a frayed knight overstating.

But once I was on the road, I slowed down. The Nothing was there with me again, keeping pace. Like always, it took up the air, and tinted the world darker.

Someone coming for you on a revenge quest is much better than nobody coming at all.

19

Along the roadsides, there were more people sleeping out than ever, sometimes in makeshift tents, sometimes just on the grass. They were the ones who hadn’t managed to sell themselves; mostly men, but plenty of families who must not have wanted to split up. There were bits of smashed wine jars everywhere and the smell of stale alcohol hung in the air. Tiny fires jagged gold over people. Everyone was hard lines and bones. Down on a dry stream bed, some girls danced, not in a way that looked like they were choosing to. I couldn’t hear if they were singing, but there was a dull thump that might have been a drum. Someone was trying to use it to slow them down. I couldn’t tell if it was working.

I felt light and strange from not eating, but even if you had put me in front of a banquet table, I don’t think I would have been hungry. I was all churned up like I hadn’t been since that huge fight with Helios. Which was ridiculous, because I owed Dionysus all the revenge he wanted, uncomplaining. It wasn’t a bad thing at all, either. It was fantastic. He was here, he was all right, he hadn’t died on that shore a decade ago. That was all I’d wanted. I was grateful, I was, and I had no right to feel betrayed, or sad, or any of it.

“Wine, sir? Helps keep the madness away, the witches say so!” Someone shoved a jar right in my face.

I shook my head and told myself to get a fucking grip before I walked obligingly into a band of thieves.

A lot of people, I started to notice through the hunger haze, were wearing clothes that were quite good; the kind of clothes I’d have expected from clerks and accountants and the owners of olive groves. A few months ago, they would have been well off.