Page 77 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“No, you would have been fine at Troy,” I said. She would.

“You have to say that.”

I let the silence fill up with all my suicidal opinions about how she was a mad despot and how her fish were stupid.

“True,” she admitted, as if I’d said something. She thought about it for a little while. We were halfway along the cloister, with gardens on either side, and ivy bursting up the pillars. The slaves were still trying to cut it back, but as we went by, I saw one of them stop and unwind a vine that had grown around his ankle while he’d been standing there. “I lost three children before Pentheus. It was because I had them when I was too little; I was fourteen and babies are big, so it was a bit silly.”

Nothing ever made me feel sick. I could watch a witch do surgery on someone’s brain while I was having dinner and have no reaction at all except general interest, but I had to slow down now.

“Don’t look like that, it’s how just things are for married girls, it’s part of growing up,” she said, as if that wasn’t worse. “But the point is, if the mad god was going to come for anyone, it was me. He didn’t, though. He didn’t take my mind away to make anything easier. I was in my right mind for every second, no one tried to help, not a god or a person, which is a thoroughly good thing, because I learned to fulfil my function. My mother said something I’ll always remember. She said, being Sown is about being hammered out in a furnace. You suffer, and if you’re not careful, you crack on the anvil. But not if you learn to love the anvil. In the end, really, cracking or not is a choice. It isn’t a god; there’s no mad god, he’s just a story to make people feel better about letting themselves break. Love the anvil, and what it can make you, and you’ll be a marvel knight.”

I stayed quiet for a long time, so long that she must have thought I had nothing to say about it, because she moved on.

“But Phaidros—I thought you could hear this week. You were deaf before, or a little bit, but this week, you’ve been much better. What happened there?” She said it carefully, and with a surprised little drop I realized she was worried about prying.

“A witch,” I said.

“What did she do?”

I didn’t want to talk about Dionysus, not to anyone, but especially not to her. It felt like I was drawing a thin but crucial thread between them, one that might tighten, and reel them nearer and nearer, until they crashed into each other. “He told me I was safe and I believed him.”

“Why? You didn’t believe Circe just now.”

“He’s deinos. He doesn’t try to be, he’s kind and he laughs, but—he is.”

I thought she would grumble about mummery, but she grinned. “Enchanting.”

The Nothing caught up with us, stretching.

“I’m too old for that,” I said, as much to remind me as her.

“Oh, fuck off, Phaidros, you can’t say that to someone ten years older than you.”

It was the first time I’d heard her swear properly and it cheered me up a lot.

“No, I mean too old for men. I should be on the marriage register.”

She looked interested. “Why aren’t you? You must be paying a fine.”

“I punch things that make me jump. I kill things in my sleep.” I pressed my teeth into my lip. I didn’t want to say it, because if it was only Dionysus who knew, then it was a sort of shared dream, but once I told her . . . “Maybe my slaves. They’re dead.”

“Oh. Well, the Palace can supply you with new ones, the Egyptians brought us some as gifts. There are some big men you’d struggle to sleep-murder.”

“Not quite the moral of that story, lady?”

“Yes it is, knight,” she said, smacking my arm. “Gods’ sake, get new slaves, get on the marriage register, and get a fucking grip. And sacrifice to Athena, to apologise for all the grip you haven’t been getting.”

I laughed, then put my hand over my mouth, because it was wildly improper, but then she laughed too, and I actually heard it sing around the cloister. For the first time all week, I felt like I’d done something good.

A minnow of a thought said: Blue. Dionysus tries to make you laugh, and you have this deep-down sense that she needs to laugh sometimes, and that’s . . . blue.

“Here you are,” she said, about a doorway open and filled with candlelight. There were lamps everywhere, and food set out on a table, and a marvel cup-bearer by the door, holding a jug of water. The Queen put a cup in its free hand and it hinged forward to pour out the water, beautifully calibrated. Once the cup was full, she gave it to me. “Get some rest. I’ll tell the Guards you might sleepwalk, and one of them will bring you back.”

“Thank you,” I said, and relaxed. She was right. It was safe. I couldn’t hurt the Guards. They wore full armour. Slowly, because there was time now, I started to feel the bruise down my shield arm from earlier, and the place where my cloak had been on fire, and a cut through my eyebrow I didn’t remember getting. After all the hazy dislocation of the way I’d been thinking before, it was lovely.

“No, I should be thanking you. You might have saved my crown tonight.”

“What are you going to do, lady? If anyone who wears a god mask now starts to turn into . . .”