Page 8 of The Hymn to Dionysus

With a flash of understanding that strikes me now as completely adult, completely impossible for a child of four to arrive at alone—I think perhaps I wasn’t arriving at it alone—I realized that Helios did know, but he wanted me to lie.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just found him.”

“Well. His mother will find him here if she’s alive.”

And at last I understood that she wasn’t. I understood what had been in that rug. “What if she’s not? Can we take him to the legion?”

“No. The priestesses will find him a nice new family.”

“But why can’t we—”

“Knight.”

I shut up. I’d disobeyed once tonight already and I didn’t have it in me to try again. Even when I was much older, even trying to contemplate it was so gear-grinding that it made me freeze and cry. That didn’t stop me seeing when he might have been wrong, but it didn’t matter.

He let his breath out slowly. “Right. We have to go, before Agave—before the ships go without us. Time to say goodbye.”

“Bye,” I said unwillingly to the baby.

But he had found a little fox, and unlike every other fox I’d ever seen, it wasn’t trying to bite him. It just sat on him looking interested. He sneezed, and so did the fox.

“Funny,” Helios observed, puzzled.

“He’s magic,” I told him, very quiet, because he wouldn’t believe me.

But Helios smoothed his hand over my hair and didn’t tell me not to be so stupid. “Maybe,” he said, sounding strange.

The baby was distracted because the fox was trying to get into his tunic. It was making him laugh. I was glad. He would be all right; he wouldn’t miss us.

All of us jumped when horns sounded. They were battle horns. I twisted around to see past Helios, expecting chariots to be bursting through the temple gates.

Helios, though, was looking up towards the High City, back the way we had come, and his expression had shut down in a way I’d never seen before. I followed his eyeline. Pouring down the steps up there were riders. All in black. Black horses, black armour, black helmet plumes, under a black banner.

“Who are they?” I whispered.

“The Hidden.” He sounded—wrong. Like he wasn’t seeing people riding, but spirits.

“What’s—”

He gripped my shoulders. “Phaidros. They’re looking for the baby. I’ve got to take him away somewhere safe. Knights only ever have one child, I can say he’s my new ward if I take him, but not if I have you with me too. You have to stay here. Just for now. The priestesses will look after you. I will come back for you. I love you, tiny knight.” He kissed my forehead and snatched up the baby, who waved at me, and then they were both gone.

Helios always did what he promised, so I decided there was no point worrying about it, and settled down to play with the fox.

“But then,” I always said, when he told me the story safe in our tent in the camp, because it was my favourite part, “you came back! Here I am. Surprise Badger!”

He caught me up and hugged me, and turned me round in his lap so I could sit with my back to his chest and we could look at my toys together. He had made me the wonkiest hippo who had ever been made, but I loved it and its name was Rameses. “Yes,” he always said against the top of my head, “here you are, tiny knight. And what do we do?”

“We never say anything about the baby,” I said faithfully. I stole his helmet, which he had been polishing, and put it on. It was the most beautiful thing in the world. Bronze, with silver filigree, a leather lining, and—this was the best part—a visor that was a mask, removable on tiny hinges. Most other officers had them made to look like Ares, or Athena, or heroes from stories, but Helios was the least showy prince there had ever been. It was just a cast of his own face. He said he didn’t want to go into battle pretending to be somebody else. “We never saw him and we don’t know what happened to him. Echo, echo, echo,” I added, because my voice sounded funny inside the helmet.

“Exactly,” he said, and he always sounded tight then, and if I looked back, his eyelashes were a blacker shade of black. I’d never asked him why. The things that upset him had always been a bit odd: thunder and sudden noises. Now, I was content enough to add babies to the list.

3

The next time I met Dionysus was at sea.

It was the year when I went from being one of the stars of the legion to being mud on people’s boots.

I fought on the front line beside Helios for the first time when I was nineteen. I’d been chafing for years to do it, because nineteen is elderly to join the line for the first time—almost everyone else I knew had gone at sixteen, but all through my teens I was little for my age, and I didn’t grow until late. I’d been worried that I never would, but then up I went, and in one summer I was suddenly taller than Helios.