Page 99 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“Phaidros. Is my name as well. That’s why the temple adopted me. Would you like to come inside? It’s a bit cooler.”

“Can I bring this other unobtrusive and manageably sized human also?” I said about Pentheus, who smiled.

“Of course.”

I followed him gratefully. He was right, it was cooler inside, and when he showed me to a marble table inside the cloister, the surface of it was nearly cold. I put my arms flat to it and felt like I might die happy. Pentheus sat down silently in the window, which was wide and unshuttered, just one step up from what had used to be a flower bed below. It made him look like he wanted a straightforward escape.

“How are you finding it at the Palace?” Other Phaidros asked as he poured us both some wine. I passed my cup back to Pentheus, and Other Phaidros held his hands up to say he’d just realized that of course knights couldn’t have wine. He gave me water instead. “It must be a change from the legion.”

“It is a change from the legion.” I paused, because I did understand what he was asking: whether I was happy to tell him a few things about the Palace, on the understanding that he might be able to tell me a few useful things back, now or later. Whether it would be worth my while for us to be intelligence friends. “I’m worried about this grain deal with Egypt. If it falls through, then we’ll have to go raiding.”

None of that was secret. That Pentheus didn’t want to go to Egypt was public knowledge, at least at court: Other Phaidros would have heard it before, but it was still true. All I had to do here was be honest without handing over unnecessary information. His work now would be to try and edge me towards more, and mine was to push back, politely. I liked things like that. It was subtle and delicate, and it was the nearest to dancing I could decently go.

In the window, Pentheus had tightened as if I’d pointed at him and said, This useless fucker won’t do as he’s told. I made an internal note to give him some translation lessons. He was right, people didn’t always say what they meant, but assuming that they never did, and that when I spoke about factual strategic problems I was criticising him personally, was just as counterproductive as taking everyone precisely at their word.

“Go to Athens,” Phaidros suggested, “Athens is a hell pit.”

I love priests who don’t talk like priests. There are two kinds, in my experience: boys made of elbows who spent a lot of their time being bullied, and who signed up with the nearest sanctuary to talk loudly about How I Am Growing Under the Eye of Apollo in order to convince everyone they weren’t doing it purely because they’d given up on trying to interact with other humans; and priests who were genuinely cut out for it, and managed to be holy but ordinary at the same time in that fine balance that always reminded me of a well-made sword. “My first choice too. Have you been?”

“I don’t know.” He looked into his wine like he was hoping to consult it for helpful images. “I think maybe I did once, before I was given to the sanctuary. I remember . . . being somewhere with no women on the street. It was scary.”

“That’s the one. Better off if it was a hole in ground.”

“Khaire,” he said, and touched our cups together. “Well, good luck.”

“Thanks if you don’t tell their Temple of Apollo.”

“Bunch of bastards,” he said easily. “So. The Queen is here to ask the god about your bloodline. There’s no record of it?”

“No. I’m from the Furies, they were all over the place. Sometimes my commander said I was the son of a noble lady but I honestly I think he found me in a swamp somewhere in Egypt.”

He snorted, and so did Pentheus. “So your commander was Helios Artemiades. The Queen’s brother. Do you think you could be his son? I mean his blood son.”

“No, he didn’t have any children, even unofficial ones. He was a real knight. I’d stake my life on it.”

“Mm.” He was looking at my armour as if something about it was troubling. He didn’t say what. “Did you ever have siblings—other knights, whose commander he was?”

“No, there’s only ever one.”

“Sorry. I meant before you, boys before you.”

“He . . . no, I don’t think so. He was only fifteen when he got me, he wouldn’t have been assigned a ward before then—fifteen was pushing it, even in those days. I was the first. Or he never mentioned anyone else.”

Other Phaidros was quiet for what felt like a long time. “And that’s his armour.”

“Yes.”

“Ares on the front. Persephone on the back,” he said. “Be like Persephone. Always negotiate.”

“Yes,” I said, more slowly, wondering how he knew that. It was a known thing in the legion, but I wouldn’t have expected a random priest to know it any more than he would have expected me to speak Old Cretan.

“How did he die?” he asked abruptly.

“He was killed in battle ten years ago.”

“But how?”

“He was shot by a Trojan general. Andromache.”