Page 72 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“May I see the Queen?”

“Go straight in,” she said.

“You are not a reliable person!” I growled.

It was early, but there was already a stack of clay tablets on the Queen’s desk. She was ignoring them. Instead, she had turned her chair around to face the courtyard, and she was making chain mail. It was fiddly and boring, and I knew exactly why she was doing it, because I’d used to do it for the same reason. It kept your hands busy and your mind in a straight line, because if you didn’t pay it enough attention, you stabbed yourself in the hand.

I’d made chain mail, when I was waiting for the witches to tell me if my ward would live or not.

“Did I just hear you giving the Egyptian ambassador a considerable dose of Theban honesty?” she said.

“You did, lady,” I said to the floor.

“Good, keep doing that. I don’t think he’s ever met anyone who doesn’t pretend to like him before. He keeps talking about you.”

That sounded dreadful. “Any chance we can discourage that, lady?”

“No. Duty is honour, and so forth. You look terrible, what’s happened to you?” she said.

I went down on one knee near the chair. Even doing an ordinary thing that any human would do waiting for news of a lost son, there was a holy-mechanism quality about her. It was a stillness and a precision, a sense of perfect counterweights working and springs blessed by gods long ago. It made me worry less about what I was going to have to say. She was a marvel queen. She would carry on no matter what. “Someone broke into my house in the night. He’s been in the maze for a while. But . . . then he climbed out of the cupboard.”

“That’s exciting.”

“It was,” I agreed, and loved her for that. She would never say, Gods, are you all right? Of course I was all right, and if I wasn’t, I could take myself to the garbage well and get in it, thanks. It was a reassuring vote about my capabilities. “He was . . . turning into an auroch. He was wearing a bull mask. But it wasn’t exactly a mask any more. He had hooves.”

She didn’t do me the indignity of asking if I was sure. Instead she nodded slowly. “Yes. There have been other reports. Tiresias is doing an experiment at the Temple of Apollo.”

I wanted to ask, but it wasn’t my place. If I needed to know, she would tell me.

She coughed. She was getting ill, from the weather or the strain or both. Of course, she would sit there and disintegrate before she said anything. I could see her attendants hovering in doorways, not sure if she would defenestrate them if they gave her something for it.

“You look like someone hit you with a rock and left you under a hedge,” I said, because I was probably too heavy to hurl from the balcony. “Are you going to let them make you a tea or something?”

She snorted. “I’m fine.”

“I’m the Queen of Sparta,” I said, and nodded to the closest boy to say it was probably all right to make that tea now.

“Are you here for a reason?” she asked me, putting arrowheads in her voice, but she was only play-fighting.

I shifted to go down on both knees rather than just one. “I think we should consider a funeral,” I said, and heard how flat it sounded, but I was so tired I couldn’t think of anything better.

I thought she would hit me. She didn’t move.

“I was going to say the same thing to you,” she said. “At least it will mean we’re blameless, in the eyes of the Egyptians. Perhaps if Apophis is sympathetic enough, the agreements will go ahead even without a hostage.”

I looked up at her and wondered how many people ever had the luck to serve under a just and careful monarch. Not many. Not many people at all would be able to kneel beside the throne and want to be kneeling there. But I did, then.

“Can the Treasury afford to hold funeral games?” I asked. “Do we have anything spare in the warehouses?” Even as I was saying it, it felt improper. I was talking as if we were family, a widow and a widowed brother-in-law awkwardly joining households and trying to find ways, without offending each other, to get some idea of the other person’s finances and how things were going to look until winter. I regretted it straightaway. I sounded like I was trying to shoulder my way into royal decision-making.

“No,” she said, astonishingly unoffended, and I sank down onto my heels with relief. “If we properly supply the games . . . we’ll be perhaps a week off famine conditions even for the Sown.” She was studying me as if the answer might be in the scars on my face. “But that’s why it’s a good idea. Apophis knows we’re close to starving. We wouldn’t stretch to the expense if it wasn’t real. If we can make him believe it, he’ll renegotiate the grain deal. Meanwhile—all garrison units will be drilling war games this week. You need to rehearse how to take a heavily defended cargo ship.”

“There’s really nothing left, then,” I said.

She sighed, and tilted a tablet at me. “This is a Guard report. They found an old lady on what used to be a successful olive farm. No crop this year. When the census-takers visited, they saw a man’s shoes and coat by the door, but no man, and she wouldn’t admit to there being any in the house. They thought she was hiding a fugitive, but when they looked into the shed . . . anyway, the Guards are having to go around the outer estates to make sure nobody else has eaten a tax collector.”

I made a noise I’ve never made before or since and smacked my hand over my mouth.

“I’m glad you did that as well,” the Queen said, tapping my shoulder with the tablet. “But that’s what we’re looking at now. There will have been more cases that have not been reported.” She was studying me again. “You think I should have sent the garrison out raiding months ago.”