Page 81 of The Hymn to Dionysus

If, like Dionysus, you could ask a hawk if she would lend you her eyes, and fly above Thebes, you would have seen people running away from the arena, some with their white clothes stained red, and towards the Temple of Athena.

As the arena emptied, Athena’s courtyards filled. The priestesses were confused at first, but when they understood what had happened, the sacrifice fires flared and slaves leaned into the great bellows, and as the water that ran beneath the altars boiled and steamed, the great marvels of the goddess lifted their heads, like they were waking, called to attention by the howls from the crowd. The black-plumed helms gleamed in the punishing sun, the greaves and gauntlets whispered. Sometimes, you can tell when the ghost of the god is there in the holy devices. You can feel that something immense is close by, listening.

Before you start a blood feud, you sacrifice to Athena. It’s a way to show her that you understand your duty, and that even if it takes you years to get revenge for the person who was killed, you won’t ever forget. It’s important that she knows. If you fail in that duty, she will curse you.

I did it when Helios was killed. I took Athena a black ram, and I had the name of the Trojan princess etched onto my sword to prove that however long it took me, it was destined for her. It was still there. It was what Dionysus had seen earlier: ANDROMACHE.

Hardly any of the people whose relatives had been killed were soldiers. There were young girls and old men, and nobody had a sword to swear on, but that didn’t matter. The priestesses hammered out silver bands in the furnaces where they usually repaired armour, twisted the bands into torques, and sealed them around the wrists of the survivors with Athena’s sigils—the spear and the owl. War and wisdom, strength and justice.

It took twenty of us to get the Queen out of the stadium. The road to the Palace wasn’t much better. When people saw the purple cloaks, they threw stones. The second we were on the stairway up to the High City, the watchmen slung the iron gates shut behind us. For the first four flights—within arrow-shot—the stairs were covered, and we all eased.

“What happened to them?” It was the first time there was enough quiet to ask questions instead of bark instructions. The Queen unstrapped a shield from her arm too.

“I think we can safely say that was the displeasure of a god,” said a slim older man whose name I was nearly sure was Lord Halys. I liked him distantly for reasons I couldn’t remember; I had a feeling he had been a general when I was little, and that Helios had liked him. Sometimes you inherit liking people.

“Why only the knights, why not everyone? And why not even all of the knights? Phaidros is all right, some of the others too. I saw General Alexandra, she isn’t mad.”

“Lady, we can’t guess at divine reasoning—”

“Halys, if I didn’t question what appeared to be divine reasoning, I would have been overthrown by frauds four times now.”

I couldn’t concentrate. After the howling in the stadium, the sudden quiet didn’t seem real and everything had turned strange and dreamy, and I was teetering right on the edge of one of those insane moments where I was convinced I was back at Troy. I had my shield strapped on my injured arm because I could still lift it a bit, and I couldn’t stop staring at the little picture of a tortoise etched on the inside rim. I must have seen it every day for years, but I hadn’t really been seeing it. I’d etched that on when my boy was alive, because baby knights need a gauge for how high to hold a shield and for reasons I can’t remember, tortoises are supposed to protect you against bad magic. Hold it up, remember you have to be able to see the tortoise, tiny knight . . . it had just been a game. He had been too little to use an adult-sized shield, but he’d loved playing dress up with it.

Divine reasoning, had they just said?

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to say, look, of course he didn’t choose the knights. Dionysus is lightning and we’re kites.

“More pressingly,” the Guard captain said, “the knights aren’t coming back here. I saw some of them just wandering in the street, they weren’t in their right minds, and the ones who are were running away. We can’t even begin to resolve any of this until we have them back.”

By resolve, he meant execute some of them and hope it was enough to satisfy the families of the victims. There was no other way around it.

“People will think they’re here, though,” Lord Halys said. “We’re going to be under siege soon.”

If the Queen had heard them, she seemed not to have. “Captain, you and your soldiers need not make the climb. Leave your cloaks here, go the underground way, and report to the twenty largest Sown estates. Tell the ladies of each house that their children have dishonoured the garrison.”

The captain bowed briskly. “Yes lady.”

I watched him go, at a loss. Of all the things she could have used the Guards for, informing the knights’ blood relatives didn’t seem like a very important one. Maybe she thought the knights must have been going home, if they weren’t here—maybe that was right, even. I must have looked confused, because the Queen knocked me gently. On the wrong side: pain burst right up my shoulder. It was hurting in a very urgent, inconvenient way now.

“You don’t know your mother, do you?”

“No, lady.”

“Most knights are not so fortunate,” she said, and didn’t elaborate, already climbing the stairs.

I looked at Halys in case he understood what was happening, but he was grey and staring at a space of air beyond my shoulder.

Sitting like a rock in my throat was the need to tell the Queen she was wrong, it was a god, he was back in the stadium and he was doing all this in the way a cat will play-pounce on a mouse and then pretend to lose interest before shredding it.

At the top, she sent more Guards down to defend the stairway if the gates broke, and then bronzesmiths to assess whether the gates might break, and then slaves down through the same underground passages as the Guard captain, but this time to the temples. Why the temples, I couldn’t tell, and I couldn’t ask, because she was surrounded by people. I had nothing to do: none of my little knights were here. Hardly any knights at all. The few red cloaks I could see belonged to people who hadn’t been at the stadium. They’d drawn the short straw for guard duty at the garrison here, and everyone looked confused and worried. I asked one of the officers of the Guards if there was anything I could do to help, but he only snapped that I could sit still and try not to murder anyone important.

So I sat still, shield propped against one knee, on the wall that blocked off the sheer drop down to the lower city. On this side, it was about a hundred feet. People were swarming around the gate, yelling, and hammering on the bronze: it wouldn’t be long before someone organised enough of them to get a battering ram. On the other side, where there were no stairs, it was a rocky and jagged slope. Only mountain goats made the climb there. A rank of Guards stood at that wall anyway, in case anyone tried. Maybe they would, because since I’d last looked at it properly, it was tangled with ivy.

I’d never been on the inside of a siege before. It was difficult not to think of those people I’d used to see on the high balconies at the palace in Troy, and how much I’d hated them for having an inside to go to, and food, and baths.

Beyond the heaving crowd at the gates, I could see down into the streets. There was some looting—unless those boys were running with sacks of flour just for the exercise—and up where the night market would be later, something was on fire. Every so often, there was a flash of red that might have been a cloak, but I never caught it for long before the knight disappeared under their own mob.

“Heliades,” the Queen’s voice said right behind me.