Page 95 of The Hymn to Dionysus

Then his mind would kill his soul, now that I’d taken away the mechanism that had been stopping that.

“How did you find him, exactly?” the Queen asked me. She had made everything seem less formal now, but the question was as precise as any of the others.

“He broke into my house,” I said. “He was in the maze underneath. He was there all along, I knew someone was—we talked about it, when you were making chain mail—but I didn’t realize.”

She only inclined her head, which made her hair fall over her shoulder. Helios’s had used to fall in the same way. I had a sudden painful vision of combing it out for him, after a battle and he couldn’t move his hands. Hold a shield for long enough and you can’t open and shut your fingers.

“I’m sorry I broke into your house,” Pentheus said to me. “I don’t remember.”

I hesitated. “Do you remember me bringing you here? You fought.”

“No.”

I rubbed his shoulder, not knowing what else to do. He was still too thin, but it wasn’t as bad as before. He felt stronger. He had run around out there, at least. “I’m glad. It wasn’t very nice.”

The Queen was watching us. I had a feeling she found it distasteful, that I was being gentle with him. I watched her back, and wondered how different she would have been, if someone had just been kind to her at the right moment. I wanted to say, Trust me, I know how to build a human. This is how Helios built me.

“Pentheus, what made you go to Phaidros in the first place?”

“He was sworn to Helios. I’d heard he was honourable. The knights my age all like him. I thought he might honour an oath-bond, even though we’re not blood.”

“Yes,” the Queen said. “So why didn’t you?” she asked me.

“Because I couldn’t help,” I said. “I’m in no position to negotiate for anything from the crown.”

“But,” she said, steady and gradual, “you live above the maze. You know very well how to get someone out of the city in secret, because you police it. Why didn’t you say, well, come home with me, no one will look for you there, and even if they do, no one will find you in the maze, particularly not in a mask, and even better, the Queen is likely to ask me to help find you, and I can make sure she never does? As soon as the weather cools down, you can be in Corinth, or Sparta.”

“Oh, fuck off,” I said wearily.

“I beg your pardon?”

“If I wanted him out of the city, he’d be gone, I wouldn’t be keeping him incriminatingly in the fucking maze for the first fucking poacher to find, fuck me.”

She blinked twice.

“He’s fun, isn’t he?” Pentheus said. He sounded, now, the way he had been trying to sound when he spoke to me on the parade ground: clear, cool, lightly interested in a way that said he was here talking to us because it was an acceptably engaging way to pass half an hour, and certainly not because anything important rested on it. He didn’t care about the outcome. She could execute me if she wanted. Or him. He was free for the rest of the afternoon anyway.

“My lady, I can quote what Phaidros said to me when I asked him to help me. I said, ‘I’m scared she’s sending me to Egypt to start again,’ and he said, ‘Are you certain she isn’t sending you away because you’re a whiny little prick and no one likes you?’ Half the regiment heard him say it. Ask them.”

The Queen frowned. “Did you really say that?” she asked me.

“Nope, I am famously mellifluous, ask anyone,” I said. Usually I had a lot of patience for her let’s-kick-the-mooring-lines-and-see-if-anything-comes-loose approach—it was only wise—but today I was tired and upset, and I had growing feeling, like mould, that Dionysus had been exactly right after all.

“I know you didn’t help me,” Pentheus said, “but I think I might love you.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, wondering how long I’d have to enjoy that. Maybe even a whole hour.

Pentheus shook his head once. “We all know what happens to kings and queens who make a habit of accusing those most loyal to them of treason. Generally they that find nobody wants to be loyal any more. I assure you, lady, if it had been my choice, I would have stayed mad in that maze. The only reason I’m here is Phaidros’s unquestioning and unswerving loyalty to you, which I think he should reconsider before you kill him for no reason.”

“I think you’re aiming for louche and rakish, but the note you’re hitting really is more towards whiny little prick,” she remarked.

“Needs work,” he agreed, and smiled a bit at me.

She looked more puzzled with that small show of level-headed maturity than anything he had said before. She almost smiled. “Get yourself cleaned up. The Egyptian ambassador is here and we need that grain yesterday.”

Pentheus got up without arguing, bowed precisely, and left. I stared after him, and then at her, completely unable to tell if she was about to send me home, or send me to be executed just in case. I wanted to say, You can’t make him go to Egypt now, he needs some time to recover at least, but I didn’t, because if I was about to be executed, then anything I said to try and help Pentheus would only achieve the opposite.

She studied me for a long time. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to see what your reaction was.”