Page 97 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“People think you might be magic,” Tiresias told me, appearing as usual from nowhere. I was starting to think that maybe they materialised when it was useful but spent most of their time floating around in the ether, eavesdropping. “Plenty of people were there when you turned him back.”

“It was just witchcraft,” I said.

“If I were you,” they said seriously, “I would not tell people it was witchcraft. If I were you, I would not say anything that makes you sound like anything more extraordinary than an honest knight.”

“I don’t . . . understand.”

“Phaidros, you are about to marry the Queen, and you come from an unusual background in that nobody has any idea what that background is. It is standard protocol to consult the oracle at the Temple of Apollo in situations like this, so that we don’t have another Oedipus episode.”

“Who’s Oedipus?” I asked, increasingly at sea, and watching land bob further and further away. It was one of those old-sounding names from when people gave a child a brief once-over and said what they saw. Oedi-pos: sore foot.

“King of Thebes a long time ago, accidentally married his mother.”

“How do you accidentally—”

“That isn’t the point, the point is that as of at least an hour ago, but probably days ago given how clearly the Queen has been auditioning you for higher duties, the intelligence network of Apollo has been gathering information about you, and if you think I’m well-informed, you haven’t seen anything yet. You do not want to give them any reason to think you’re in any way magic.”

I still didn’t understand, but I’d fallen down a peripheral rabbit hole. “The Temple of Apollo has . . . an intelligence network.”

“Has one? It’s the one. How do you think the oracles know what to tell people?”

“They’re possessed by Apollo.”

Tiresias rolled their head despairingly. “They are sometimes possessed by Apollo. He doesn’t come on demand; you don’t ring a bell and there he is. He’s a god, he’s wild and greater and stranger than anyone can ever know. But people need answers on demand. And so?”

“And so they . . . have spies,” I said, feeling that same dull loss I had when the Queen explained the Apollo marvel to me, and understanding more and more why she was so flat about never even considering there might be a god in Thebes. Almost all the things most people could point to and say, There, a god working—none of it was anything to do with gods. It was clever artifice and good intelligencers.

“When someone says oracle to you,” Tiresias told me seriously, “read spymaster. There will be at least twenty people in this room who report to someone from Apollo, whether they know that someone is from Apollo or not. Do not tell them you brought Pentheus back with magic.”

After that, they left a significant pause, the one that means we both know why—even though they hadn’t given me nearly enough data for me to know why. I’d always hated the Pause. I’d heard it from generals again and again, and its only real function was to force you to do a mental uphill climb in order to look like you knew what was going on, the effect of which was put you off balance and make them feel all clever. It had been a point of honour for me, for years now, to force them to climb down and get me. The Pause never works if you’re clever enough to know that asking a pertinent question doesn’t make you sound stupid.

“Explain why, please.”

“Phaidros, you sound like a child. Go away and think about it.”

I tipped my head, about to ask why they were trying to make me feel stupid rather than just answering a straightforward question. But then I saw why. They were frightened of me. I was going to have a great deal of power soon. Tiresias had only survived this long at court because they were strange enough and right enough, often enough, that the Queen didn’t feel safe getting rid of them. They wanted to make me feel small, so that I would never feel safe enough either.

I hunted around for something penetratingly unfrightening to say.

I poked them gently. “Look, either you tell me, or I’ll tell everyone that your secret passion is Athenian poetry and if people want to get on your good side, they should insist, no matter your protests, on bringing you to special poetry-writing evenings where everyone gets together and talks about trochaic hexameters. And people will believe it, because you’re so sweary and pragmatic: they’ll all go, Aha, so it’s a front to hide the soft and fluffy soul within, we knew it all along, we shall henceforth communicate only in epic metaphor.”

Tiresias laughed as if they hadn’t expected to. I saw their shoulders sink a little as they relaxed. “You’re a monster, knight, that’s the worst thing anyone’s ever said to me. Come on.”

They took my arm and tilted me away from the crowd, towards the cloister and Semele’s shrine, where the ivy was out of control. Offering candles and sacrifices were nestled through it everywhere. The slaves were still out there, trying to collect it all up, but—actually, no. They were pretending to collect it up. They were putting things in hessian bags, but then taking them out again and setting them down in different places, expressions tight with the knowledge that if anyone noticed, they would die; they must have decided it was worth dying for. I didn’t blame them. They looked very thin indeed. They would die soon anyway.

I wondered if Dionysus knew about this. What did it feel like, to be a god when someone sacrificed to you? He had heard my prayer, or felt it, or something. Was it like someone talking to you? Could he hear an increasingly loud crowd of voices behind everything now, all the time?

“Phaidros,” Tiresias said softly, “if anyone thinks you can do magic—even if you and I both know it was very standard witching—then some people will say, you know what else was magic? What happened in the stadium. The masks. The ivy. And who is this Phaidros person anyway? We don’t know who his parents are. All we know is that the Queen’s brother was his commander and they look rather alike, in some lights. He’s young. What if he’s the lost prince?”

“What?” I said. It was true, we did look alike, but that was because we were both medium-sized dark-haired dark-eyed explosively swearing men in the same armour. “That’s stupid.”

“And the Queen would still kill you for it,” Tiresias said quietly, “because if the lost prince is indeed alive, then he owes her a blood debt for the murder of his mother.” They looked towards the courtyard too, and the light fell strangely across them, so that I could see what they’d looked like when they were Pentheus’s age. Slim, sharp, long-necked, one of those swan people who never hurried. “I’m not trying to tell you I think it’s credible. I’m trying to tell you that if someone were to feel resentful of your frankly meteoric rise at court, that is an efficient way to shoot you down. Be very careful.”

They were right. I’d been an idiot not to think of it. “Thank you. For warning me.”

“I serve the crown,” they said, looking exhausted.

“Come and sit with me for a bit; let’s pretend to be talking about important things.”