Page 63 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“I’m sure they would,” said the Queen, sounding very much like she had the same concerns as me. “Thank you, Heliades.”

Apophis drifted away, still looking puzzled.

The Queen switched into Achaean. “Anything?”

“Nothing,” I said quietly, aware that it would have been idiotic for the Egyptians to come here without at least one person who could understand Achaean. Still, maybe they were arrogant enough not to bother.

She nodded once. “Well. Thank you.”

“What will happen if we can’t find him?”

“The grain ships are anchored at Aulis. They’re guarded by three thousand soldiers.”

“Three thousand?” I repeated.

She nodded again. She was beginning to look calm to the point of disinterested. Helios had used to do that. It was instead of screaming and punching someone. “What do you think? Can the garrison take those ships, against those numbers?”

Egyptians are terrible sailors. It’s because the Nile is so straightforward. The current takes you to the sea even if you sit on a raft with no rudder and you flounder about like a confused octopus. On the open sea, we would have the advantage; but in total, including my unit of brand-new, barely trained knights, some of whom had never sailed, there were only two thousand of us. It had been five thousand before Troy.

“Yes, but we’d lose half the garrison.”

“I might yet have to give that order,” she said. She looked grey, and not just from the smoke.

I bowed my head. “Duty is honour.”

22

Despite the Hidden raid last night, there were people selling things at the roadside again when I made my way home just after sunset. Lots of wine in rough jars, and lots of straw masks now, cheap ones that didn’t need a potter, just string and some imagination. Where the hot wind stirred through the branches, the trees rattled with prayer tablets. The things were everywhere: they had crept through the trees all the way up to the maze. As I came round the corner, I saw someone had even put one in one of my olive trees, on a bright green ribbon.

I slowed down and had a little drop of happiness, because Dionysus was waiting by my gate. He seemed not to feel the heat, or anything else; he was unnaturally still and straight in the shade of the lemon tree, so still I almost didn’t see him. When I came up close enough to talk to him, he still didn’t move, and I had a strong feeling he wasn’t really there.

“Dionysus?” I said tentatively.

I saw him come back, and saw him feel the heat properly, for all the world as if he hadn’t been standing in it. I smiled, hoping he was going to tell me about something weird he’d done to an unreasonable census taker, but he didn’t smile back.

“So I need you to swear something,” he said, without any preamble.

“What?”

“Whatever you see now, you are not going to vanish into the Temple of Ares, because that won’t help anyone and you’ll die there.”

“Why?”

“Swear,” he said, with an edge in his voice I hadn’t heard before; or, not for a long time. There was pyre smoke in it, and hot ash.

“All right, I swear?”

“On your commander’s soul.”

“I swear on his soul,” I said, much more slowly.

Dionysus let his breath out. “Come inside.”

I followed him like it was his house, not mine, five paces behind him. He held the door open for me, and with dread pulling its bowstring tighter and tighter, I looked around for the triplets, surprised they hadn’t come out yet.

And then in the corridor: bodies.

The triplets.