Page 6 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“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.