“Ah,” Melaina said, “so she gave you a knife, did she? And what else?”
Theseus’s eyes were on Chara again, as narrow as the boy’s were round. “Tell her,” Theseus said. “Since you were there when the princess gave me these things.”
Chara sucked the last of the blood from the inside of her lip and looked at Melaina. “A ball of string.” She watched the other girl’s lips twist into a sneer. “A ball of string fashioned by the great Master Daedalus, whose godmark is in everything he makes. Perhaps the prince will show it to you.”
Careful, she told herself; he is a prince—the prince of your enemies, no less—don’t be rude. Then she thought, with a rush of something like abandon, like hope: It doesn’t matter. We’re all prisoners, here.
Theseus let the sleeve fall away from his right arm. The ball of string was attached to his bicep, the hooked end of it looped around and through the rest of the ball. Chara imagined him squeezing it between his arm and body, as the priestesses prodded him toward the mountain door.
Melaina reached out a finger, touched the string, pulled the finger sharply back. “Yes,” Chara said, “it’s warm, and it vibrates. I used to think it was alive, somehow. It goes on and on and on, even when you’re sure the other end will have to appear soon, because you’ve trailed it all through the palace.” Asterion and Icarus laughing as they ran around corners and down steps, holding the hooked end; Chara panting, trying to catch up, holding the ball that grew smaller but didn’t ever run out.
“We’ll secure it here, somewhere,” Theseus said. He walked back to the wall and craned up at the invisible door.
The boy, who had been very quiet, said in a quavering voice, “It won’t help, though, will it? There’s no way of getting up there again, even if the string did lead us all the way through the labyrinth and back.”
“There would be,” Chara said. “The hook on the end—it’s weighted, and when it finds nooks and crannies it clings. You can climb it.” She remembered Icarus sending the string whistling through the air to the top of the waterfall outside Knossos. She remembered him climbing swiftly, and Asterion trying to go after him—except he’d fallen with a thump that knocked his breath out, so that his laughter sounded like an old man’s wheezing. “We’ll be able to get up there.”
Theseus tossed the hook; it fell back toward him and he had to leap aside so that it wouldn’t hit him. The string whined as it re-spooled itself.
Chara cleared her throat. “Would you like me to do it? I’ve had some practice with it.”
He grunted and handed her the ball. As it warmed her palm she forgot all the times she’d watched Icarus use it successfully; all she could see was him standing beneath the polished black pipes on the slope above and outside where she was now, spinning and throwing, spinning and throwing, uselessly. And now here I am, my poor, lost friend, she thought with a sickening surge of fear and giddiness. Inside.
The corridor was only wide enough for her to swing it in arcs, rather than full circles—and yet the first time she let it go, it flew and stuck in a spot far up the wall. Theseus grunted.
“Excellent,” Melaina said, “but now what? Will we wait another two years for the door to open again, then charge out with the bull-thing’s head and hope everyone lets us pass?”
Chara glanced at Theseus, who smiled a little. “I suppose you know this part too, slave of Ariadne?”
“No. But I can guess. You’ll call Ariadne with your mind-voice, when you’re ready. And she’ll come with her sister, the Princess Phaidra, whose godmark lets her open locks. Either that, or she’ll get the key from her father—assuming Daedalus even had one made.”
“Yes,” Theseus said. “Something like that.”
“Except you’ll do this without the bull’s head.”
He shook his own head. “That cannot be. It is my task. I have promised.”
“Promised Ariadne, who lied to you, who didn’t tell you what he was! Please—”
“Enough!” the boy cried. His voice cracked. “I’m hurt, and so are you, Melaina! We can’t stay here forever—we need to find food and water. I heard there’d be food and water, for the beast!”
Melaina grunted and took two steps away from them, favouring her left ankle. “Alphaios speaks sense, for once. Pull on your godmarked string, my Lord, and let’s be off.”
A long, silent look passed between Melaina and Theseus. At last he said, “You are hurt; let me carry you.”
“No.” The word wobbled, just a little. Melaina turned away from all of them and limped off into the corridor.
Theseus followed her, and Alphaios—after a glance over his shoulder at Chara—followed him. She took as deep a breath as she could of the hot, thick air. Before she moved, Theseus’s mind-voice was in her again, drumming like bull’s hooves on packed earth.
::I will think on what you have told me. I can promise you nothing more.::
Thank you, she thought, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her. She went after them, into Asterion’s mountain.
“What’s that?” Alphaios whispered. They’d been walking for hours—or so Chara’s body was telling her, with its hunger, thirst, and weariness—through chambers and corridors, into dead ends that sent them shuffling back again, along the length of Icarus’s string. Only one of these places had been utterly dark, forcing them to crawl around on hard-packed dirt, looking for doorways that ended up being only knee-high. Every other space had had light sources of some kind: darting ones that looked like sparks or fireflies; small gold ones that flickered, set in rows. But the light that Alphaios was gesturing at, reflected on a wall at the end of their corridor, was the bright white of noon sun on stone and didn’t flicker at all.
“Perhaps we have already come to the centre of Master Daedalus’s creation,” Theseus murmured. “Perhaps the monster awaits us here.” He turned to Chara. “Hold this,” he said as he handed her the string. “I may need both of my hands.”
She wrapped her fingers around the ball. Its humming turned into a buzz when she closed both her hands around it. No, she thought. Asterion’s not there; I’d know if he was.
Theseus crouched and reached under his robe. “Ah,” Chara said, when his hand emerged holding Daedalus’s blade. “There it is.”
Melaina gave a low whistle as the blade snicked to its full length. “And a most impressive gift it is. I’m glad we won’t have to saw at her brother’s neck with a shard of—”
“Stop talking,” Alphaios hissed, and, though she shot him a spiteful look, she did.
They flattened their backs against the corridor’s wall—rough, unfinished rock, veined with crystal that caught the white light and spun it into tiny rainbows. “Stay behind me,” Theseus murmured, “except for you, Melaina. You must be ready to cast your darkness on whatever waits for us.”
“Yes, my Prince,” Melaina said, too sweetly. Gods and mussels, Chara thought, Ariadne would have flogged me senseless, if I’d spoken to her like that.
Theseus and Melaina edged closer to the corridor’s turning. “You next,” Alphaios said to Chara, and she thought she saw him flush, in the passage’s strange, underwater glow. She smiled at him and went after Melaina.
“Ready?” Theseus said, craning back to look at them. Melaina nodded; Chara tightened her hand around Icarus’s string; Alphaios was motionless. Just as Theseus was putting out his foot, they heard a sound.
“Someone’s crying,” Melaina said. Sniffling and sobbing, a gulp, more sobbing. “Godsblood,” she said, much more loudly, “it’s Phoibe.”
“No,” Alphaios said, “that’s not her light: it’s never steady like that, and never white—it’s some sort of trap, and—”
Chara stepped past them all. She’d narrowed her eyes in anticipation, but the light was so blinding that she had to put her hands over her face. By the time she’d let them fall and blinked the world
back into focus, Alphaios and Melaina were already past her, kneeling on either side of the crying girl, who was almost invisible within her own glow.
“What happened to your godlight, Phoibe?” Alphaios said, but the girl wasn’t looking at him: her gleaming white eyes were fixed on Theseus.
“Oh, my Lord: I’m so glad you’re here!” The words stirred the light, like fish making paths in water. “I don’t know what happened to my godmark—it must be because I’m so afraid; it’s stronger, and it hurts, and I was all alone—and I heard things; things coming to hurt me . . .”
“Quietly,” Theseus said, and again Chara imagined his mind-voice, thrumming in Phoibe’s bones and blood, warming and steadying. The white trembled around them. Silver forked within it, thin, then spreading to streams that ran together. Within moments, the white had become a soft, fading gold—and moments after that, all that was left were silver ribbons, rippling lazily in the air above Phoibe’s head. She gasped and fell forward, and Theseus caught her.
“We will be triumphant,” he said quietly, one hand on either side of her face, gazing into her eyes (which, Chara saw, were brown). “The Princess Ariadne has risked her own life to help us: she has given me two gifts that will see the beast dead and us away from here.”
No, Chara thought, no, no: not that first one.
“All hail the wondrous Cretan princess,” Melaina muttered, but Theseus didn’t move his gaze from Phoibe’s.
“You will help us, Phoibe: your godmark will see us safely through any darkness we may find.” He smiled. “And you won’t be alone anymore.”
“Oh, noble Theseus,” Melaina warbled, clasping her hands beneath her chin—and Theseus rose, very suddenly, and twisted to seize her by the shoulders.
“Melaina,” he said, in a cold, flat voice Chara hadn’t heard before, “this place, it seems, is full of light: Daedalus’s, and now Phoibe’s. It seems we have no need of someone who offers only darkness. So,” he went on, gripping her chin as she tried to turn away from him, “take care, or you may find yourself alone.”
Chara could hardly hear Melaina when she spoke, also in an unfamiliar voice. “But my Lord—you promised me—”
He let her go, and she stumbled backward. “Those of you who wish to continue on together: follow me.”
He took Phoibe’s hand and lifted her to her feet. She leaned on him, and they walked the length of the oval chamber, to a doorway framed by two black columns. Alphaios scrambled to his feet and went after them.
“Melaina?” Chara said. The girl stared at her—through her—and didn’t move. Chara walked to the columns and hesitated there—and suddenly Melaina was behind her.
“Faster, slave-girl,” she snapped, “or we’ll leave you behind.” She brushed Icarus’s string, as she swept past Chara, and it made a long, tremulous sound. Chara followed it.
Chapter Twelve
There were so many sounds. A dripping that made Chara’s dry mouth drier, as she imagined water. Hissing steam. Skittering pebbles—and, once, a different skittering: the claws of white lizards surging up and across the corridor’s wall. Phoibe shrieked and kindled her godlight. Melaina laughed. Theseus lunged for the creatures, his mind-voice shouting wordlessly in Chara’s head as they flowed away from his hands and vanished.
One day or night, a wolf howled.
They were standing close together, because the chamber they were in was so small. The ceiling was low and rough with tiny stalactites; Theseus had to bend his head to his chest so they didn’t catch at his hair. The walls, though, were ringed with squat, smooth columns. Phoibe’s soft light showed that the walls between them were painted with images of the sea: waves rolling into a harbour, with birds perched atop them; writhing octopus arms and plants beneath. Tiny bright buildings lined the harbour.
“Great Goddess,” Alphaios whispered as the howl faded. “What was that?”
Chara watched Melaina slip her hand into Theseus’s, watched him shake his free and edge away from her.
“We should really have a blade,” Phoibe said in a rush. “All of us should—not just you, my Prince.”
“Of course we should.” Melaina rolled her eyes as she spoke. Phoibe’s godlight trembled for a moment—long wavering lines that grew and broke against the stone.
Theseus was leaning against a column, now. Chara saw him nod.
“I suppose that’s me, then,” said Alphaios. He got onto his knees and scuffed his way into the circle of light, his hands patting at the chamber’s hard-packed earthen floor.
“Something that once lived but’s now dead,” he murmured. He was smiling, leaning forward into the silver-orange glow. He plucked something from the ground. “This’ll do.”
Melaina clutched his hand and pried it free. “An empty snail shell? Maybe the great Master Daedalus wished to mock us, by putting it here with these paintings. Maybe he wanted us to despair.”
Or maybe he was thinking only of Athens, Chara thought. Of his home, and yours. Because the buildings in the paintings aren’t Cretan.
“I’ve never seen such a big shell,” Phoibe said. It was big: apple-sized, with a pointed tip that cast a formidable shadow on the earth-and-stone wall. I’d have given it to Asterion, Chara thought, like I gave him all those other ones, at the summer palace, when he’d turned back into a boy again after being a god.
“Hush.” Theseus’s body didn’t move, but this one word stilled them all. “Let Alphaios use his godmark in peace.”
Alphaios took the shell from Melaina. He set it on the ground in front of him and laid his palms on it. Now for the silver, Chara thought—and there it was, coursing from his skin just as it did from every other godmarked person’s. I’ve never been jealous before, but now I am, because they have godmarks and I have nothing at all except some rhymes and hope born only of myself—and look where we are.
The shell warped and twisted in his hands. It was molten metal, then writhing vines; it twined between his fingers and onto the earth, where it bubbled like a pool of silver lava. Melaina leaned closer; Phoibe drew back. Theseus pushed himself away from the column, very slowly, and stood above them all.
Alphaios whimpered. His eyes were wide, staring at a place beyond the rest of them. The silver curled and grew, straightened and tapered to a glinting point. Edges sharpened. Chara let her breath out noiselessly, between her teeth—not that anyone would have heard it over the grinding of the metal.
“Well,” Melaina said, as the grinding stopped. “Look at that—Alphaios can actually do something. Why haven’t you done anything before now? We could have used better food on the boat, and we could certainly use some—”
“Shut up,” Alphaios whispered. His eyes were closed. One of his hands was on the knife—for it was that, or nearly. A long, thin blade with a lumpy pommel, which he curled his fingers around. The silver in the metal and his skin dimmed. He opened his eyes. “I can’t make food—I told you that! I turn dead things into other dead things—”
“Well, dead cows are delicious,” Melaina interrupted—and then the wolf howl came again, much closer.
The silver of Theseus’s weapon shone as it turned from dagger to sword, one tapering section at a time. “Phoibe,” he said, “make as much light as you can, the moment you see the beast.”
Only it wasn’t a beast: it was a girl.
She stumbled into the chamber, and her howl twisted into a human cry as Phoibe’s light flooded over all of them. She doubled over, holding her arms above her head. Her hair was a dark, tangled mass; her robe was blackened with dirt and maybe blood.
“Enough,” Theseus murmured, and Phoibe’s light dimmed from blinding noon to starlight. He stepped toward the girl, who straightened and met his gaze.
“What is your name?” he said. Chara watched her eyes dart and widen and knew that he was using his mind-voice—the prince calming and awing his subject.
“Ligeia.” Her whisper was so broken that it took Chara a moment to understand the word.
“Ligeia,” Theseus repeated, and smiled—though Chara saw the fingers of his right hand tighten around the sword’s hilt, and the fingers of his left around the ball of string. Melaina frowned and crossed her arms over her chest.
“When did you fall?” he said.
Ligeia thrust at a hank of hair, and it stuck out above her filthy ear. “With the first ones.” Her voice was a little stronger, but still splintered. She doesn’t use it any more, Chara thought, and felt a chill run through her, despite the mountain’s heat.
Theseus’s eyes were dark—with anger, Chara knew, because she felt him say, ::You see? You see what your king has done to the youth of my city? You see why I am here?:: The words dragged through her like claws. When he collapsed the sword back into a dagger, each snick made her start.
“How have you survived this long, here?” he said gently, motioning at Phoibe to dim her godlight even more. Phoibe did, with a small, tired moan.
Ligeia blinked at him. “I found a stream. The water’s hot, but I know how to gather it.”
“And what do you eat?” Melaina demanded, limping forward to stand beside Theseus.
“I eat . . .” Ligeia’s brown eyes darted. “I eat dead things. The beast’s dead things. What he leaves when he’s done with them.” She swallowed. “There are other things, in the round chamber, but I only go there when it’s safe. The bits are mostly enough.”
“What round—” Melaina started to say, but Chara interrupted.
“Have you seen him kill?” she demanded. Her chest was hot and tight and the blood sang so loudly in her ears that she could barely hear herself.
Ligeia’s eyes swivelled to Chara. She squinted. “You don’t sound Athenian,” she said.
“Have you seen him kill?”
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