“Ari.” Ariadne hardly recognized Icarus’s voice; it sounded like cloth tearing. His twisted lips twisted even more, and a bead of fresh blood welled between them. The talons at the end of his fingers scrabbled weakly at the dirt.
Ariadne turned to her father. “The pirate attack,” she said. “Was there one?”
He smiled down at her. “Oh, yes. The ship went down—after my men got these three off. Just before it burned. It sank, and everyone else with it. But these three . . .” He was smiling down at them, now. “They deserved more.”
Daedalus lifted his head and spat. He’d probably meant the mucus to land on the king’s feet, but instead it clung to Daedalus’s chin. “And now,” he rasped, “you have come to give us this ‘more.’”
Minos’s laugher echoed off the cavern’s walls and up into the emptiness above them. “I have,” he said. “And my daughter, who deserves to know this secret, will be here to watch.”
A sour taste surged into her mouth—fear and anticipation; disgust too, because the prisoners’ own fear stank so badly. I told you: no more blood, she thought. I told you to send them away. Why this?
Minos spun on his heel and strode back toward the cavern’s opening. “I thought about starting with Naucrate,” he said as he picked something up from the ground there, “but I have reconsidered. I believe I will start with the great and clever Daedalus.”
He walked back. His hand was wrapped around a hammer—one that Daedalus or Karpos might have used to work their colossal blocks of stone. Minos’s other hand closed around Daedalus’s dirty collar and hauled him up and over to a low, flat rock that Ariadne hadn’t noticed until now. Daedalus choked, and his bent-back body lashed like a snake.
“Now, then,” said the king, and drew a dagger from his boot. He cut the rope that attached Daedalus’s wrist and ankle bonds. “Let us get you settled properly. You are an artisan, after all; arrangement and order matter to you.” He pulled Daedalus’s bound hands onto the rock and pinned them there, pressing down on the rope around his wrists. Ariadne stared at his upturned palms. The lines in them looked so deep, in the dancing light. His fingers jerked inward as if he wanted to make fists, but Minos adjusted his hold and flattened them out.
“Little Queen,” he said. “Come and help me.”
Her feet felt heavy, but she forced them to carry her across to the rock. Minos took her hand. His skin was so hot that the sick feeling burst up inside her again, but she didn’t flinch.
“Kneel behind him. . . . Yes. Now press here on the rope, as I did. . . . Good. He will try to move, in a moment. Use all your strength to keep him still.”
She licked her dry lips. “Yes, Father,” she said.
Daedalus turned his head so that one bright eye was on her. “Ariadne,” he said, in a low, rough voice. “Minnow.”
“No. Don’t call me that. Do not.” She tightened her grip on his wrists and looked up at her father.
Minos raised the hammer and brought it down on Daedalus’s right palm.
His hands flapped and a tremor went through the rest of him—Ariadne saw it bend his spine, from buttocks up to skull. He hardly moved, otherwise. He screamed, but only once. As the hammer came down on his other palm and all his fingers, one by one, he dug his chin into his chest and shuddered. Bones cracked in skin and Icarus shouted and Naucrate wailed and Ariadne sucked in her breath with every hammer strike, but Daedalus was silent.
When Minos was done he laid the hammer down and crouched in front of Daedalus. “You will never make anything again, old friend,” he said, shaking his head regretfully. Red light glowed behind his teeth. Cinders drifted between them and into his beard. “Surely this will be a relief: first exile, then endless seeking for things you could never quite touch; your art has only ever caused you pain.”
Ariadne let go of Daedalus’s wrists. Her hands were slick with sweat. She rubbed her fingers together and didn’t look at his. Her blood pounded in her head so loudly that it almost drowned out Naucrate’s sobbing.
“Little Queen,” Minos said, rising, “would you agree that it is not just the great Daedalus’s hands that have caused unhappiness in our palaces?”
Ariadne swallowed hard. Speak firmly, she thought. Don’t let them imagine that you’re afraid. And think—think what he’ll want to hear.
“I would agree,” she said firmly. “He has also spoken wrongly—yes; I remember the feast at which he said my noble brother Androgeus’s name over and over, in defiance of your command.”
Minos nodded. A blotch of flame appeared beneath his flesh, at the hinge of his jaw. She watched it wriggle up past his ear to the pouch beneath his left eye, where it stopped and pulsed, perhaps in time with his heart. “Precisely, dearest. His words have wounded us. What else, then, might we do to him?”
The knife was in his hand. His fingertips stained the haft with coursing, molten orange.
She could feel Icarus’s little round bird eyes boring into her back. She could hear his talons, still scritching at dirt and pebbles. She could hear Naucrate too, whispering Daedalus’s name over and over.
“We might cut . . .” Ariadne’s voice cracked. Godsblood, she thought savagely, if you falter now you don’t deserve to rule anywhere, ever. “We might cut out his tongue,” she said, and smiled at Minos.
The king smiled back at her and thrust Daedalus onto the ground and fell to his knees beside him and pried open his jaws—which stayed open, gaping, fish-like—and with that same hand he pulled Daedalus’s tongue out between his teeth and with his other hand he raised the knife and set it to the tongue and sliced.
Icarus and Naucrate had gone quiet. The only sounds were a far-off, steady dripping and the low moan that bubbled from Daedalus’s weeping mouth.
“Minnow.”
Naucrate spoke softly, but the cavern’s rock caught the word and made it louder.
Ariadne watched Minos drop the wet, dark tongue onto the dirt. She swallowed more convulsively than she had before, and turned to look behind her.
“You will not call me that, either.” She sounded calm and threatening at once. This surprised her.
Naucrate was holding her head up as best she could, but it was trembling, bent at an angle. Tears had made clean streaks on her skin. “Princess,” she said, “I loved you. Even as I watched you grow and change and scheme, I loved you, because when I looked at you I always saw the little girl who used to bury her face in my lap and cry. The little girl who ached for her life to be different.”
Her dresses always smelled like lemon, Ariadne thought, before she could stop herself. She kept oatcakes in an alabaster jar beside the doorway that led to the workroom with all those blocks of marble and the ivy and the tiny little Knossos made of wood. . . .
“I do not know why you expect me to feel mercy.” Ariadne heard herself speaking but didn’t feel it. She was very far up, where the cavern’s roof became a second sky. “I do not know why you even try. After all, I am my father’s daughter.”
Naucrate’s head sagged back onto the ground. Her eyes were wide and fixed on nothing. A long, tangled strand of hair slid across her forehead and nose. It rose and fell gently, with her breath.
Minos pointed at her. Sparks hissed and fell from his forearm. “Look here: the beautiful, brave Naucrate does know how to fear!” He went to stand above her. More sparks fell. Ariadne watched them light and linger on Naucrate’s hair; she smelled burning. “You have never feared me enough,” he said, suddenly quiet. “Even when I took you as my lover, you never trembled. I would have killed you then, except that I grew too bored with you to bother. And I am glad. For this, now, will be far more pleasing.”
Naucrate’s head came up again. Her lips parted and the singed strand of hair sank between them, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I have always hated you,” she said in a cold, flat voice Ariadne hadn’t heard before, “but I have never feared you. So do this pleasing thing. Do
it quickly or do it slowly. It will not matter. And remember: I hate but do not fear.”
Minos made a growling noise deep in his throat. The fire that had lit him from beneath throbbed brighter and higher until it leapt from his skin and out into the air. It fell on Naucrate like a sheet of rain. Her hair, her neck, the grimy cloth stretched tight over her back: all of it kindled and glowed. She thrashed until she was on her stomach. Minos chuckled as he bent down and cut all of her bonds. Ariadne covered her nose and mouth but the stench of filth and burning was still terrible.
She remembered another thing, though she didn’t want to: Naucrate bending down to her, murmuring, But even though it crackled and smoked and made me very hot, it never hurt me. Now it was: now Minos’s fire was turning her to sizzling hair and spitting fat and a high, broken voice.
Ariadne didn’t see how Naucrate rose, but she did. She wrenched herself around and up, streaming, screaming. She reached her blazing hands out to Icarus, who curled himself away from her. She reached for Daedalus, who was crouching with his hands swollen and limp behind him, his mouth still dribbling blood. He tipped toward her but she was already past him, stumbling for the hole that led out to the sky. Minos held his hands up and sent flames after her. It didn’t matter: she was gone, leaving smoke and skirling sparks in her wake.
Ariadne stumbled after her.
No. What are you doing? Go back; go, and attend to your father the king. . . .
She crawled until the tunnel opened onto sky. She rose and teetered on the ledge, her arms and mouth wide, grasping at air. She peered over the edge and saw a ball of fire, falling very slowly. She heard a long, high, warbling bird cry, swelling and dying over the sea.
When she ducked back into the cavern, Minos was waiting for her. Smiling.
“What now?” Icarus’s voice was scratchy and stark. “How will you break me, great king?”
Minos didn’t turn to him. Ariadne didn’t want to, but she did. Icarus was lying still, his face turned up to the king. His pale eyes were steady and unblinking.
“Poor bird-boy,” the king said, still smiling at Ariadne. “He cannot fashion anything—certainly not wings that fly, despite the mark his god has given him. I shall let him stay here to keep his father company.” At last he looked down at Icarus. “Perhaps you will chirp while he gabbles?”
“Ari.” She’d heard Icarus sound shy and awkward and unsure before, but she’d never heard him plead. It made her feel sick in a way that the sound of Daedalus’s shattering hands had not.
“Ari, please. Your father listens to you. Don’t let him do this.”
She crouched beside him and reached for him slowly, with her steady hands. She watched him watch her. Watched his horrible beady eyes brighten a little, on her face.
The ball of string was where it always had been: wrapped up under his belt. He flinched when she put her fingers on the cloth, and again when she drew the hook out of the end of the ball and pulled it free. She sat back on her heels and tossed it up and down as if it were a child’s plaything.
“Ari—no—leave me something. . . .”
She laughed. “Oh, Icarus: why would we leave you with this, when it might help you escape this cave? No: you have no more need of it. Not ever.” The ball felt light and cool in her palm. Its hum vibrated from her wrist into her chest, which unsettled her—but she didn’t drop it.
Minos said, “You will find that the walls, deeper in, run with fresh water. Do not imagine you will be able to follow it out; it comes from rock and returns to rock. One of my men will come, once a month, with food and wine. Take care not to eat and drink too much.”
Icarus looked away from Ariadne at last. “My King,” he said, “why not kill us and be done with it?”
Minos walked toward the exit. His feet left black impressions in the dirt. “I may yet have need of you,” he said over his shoulder. “And also, gods enjoy the suffering of mortals. That is simply the way of things. Daughter: cut him free.”
Minos tossed a knife to the ground next to her. She picked it up and set it to the rope around Icarus’s ankles. They took a while to part, but the ones around his wrists were quicker. He shifted and writhed, and she stood and tucked the knife into the hem of her open bodice. Then she threaded the ball’s hook next to it.
As she ducked out after Minos, Daedalus made a sharp, agonized sound behind her, and Icarus yelled, full-throated and raw. She heard him scrabble for the tunnel; she felt the air ripple behind her as he threw himself in behind her. She crawled faster, panting. Minos’s orange glow bobbed and vanished briefly, as he reached the air. Something brushed the sole of her foot; she kicked out and crawled faster yet, whimpering now. When she reached the opening Minos leaned in and pulled her and she cried out at the burning of his hands but at least she was free, and he slammed the rusted metal door home with a clang that echoed over the sound of Icarus’s scream.
“You fear that I am mark-mad.”
Ariadne slid her gaze to her father. They were walking side by side, back along the tunnel Theron had led her through earlier. It seemed like an age since she’d been here. Theron himself was behind them—far behind, at Minos’s command. (This had made her smile, despite the sickness that lingered in her gut.) The king wasn’t looking at her now. His eyes were fixed on the way ahead—so fixed that she wondered whether he were seeing anything at all.
“Your godmark is terribly strong,” she said slowly, “and I worry . . . We agreed, after Asterion wounded you, that you would send Icarus and Daedalus away—yet you made this decision without me! This is not like you. So, yes: I worry.”
“I may well be mad,” he said briskly. “But there is no cause for you to fear this. In fact, I call you ‘Little Queen’ for a reason!” His voice leapt. For a moment he sounded like an excited child. “For I will make you queen before I give myself to the fire.”
She stopped walking. He continued on for a few paces before he realized she was no longer beside him. He turned: dark shadow, to shadow with silver-orange teeth.
“But I have no godmark,” she said hoarsely. “It would not be permitted. The priests and priestesses—the people would never accept me.”
She hadn’t ever spoken these words aloud before; had barely spoken them within her own head. The people would never accept me. As they echoed from the rock, she shrank even farther back, more fearful than she had been in the cave.
Minos shook his head as he walked back to her. “Sweet girl—how could you think this? Priests, priestesses, people—all will heed me. And if they do not, I shall unleash my madness upon them.” He stroked her hair with both his hands. She leaned into them.
“But Deucalion—your heir, since Androgeus . . .” she murmured.
“No. He is not cruel enough. And it is not a matter of sequence, my dear—you know this. It is the reigning monarch who chooses the next one. This choice is mine, alone.”
She nodded until her vision swam. “Glau—but of course not.” She laughed unsteadily. “And you will not choose a husband for me and make him king, and me queen only through him?”
He chuckled. “And what husband of my choosing would be strong enough for you, Daughter?”
She pulled slowly away. Blinked against the heat that lapped at her skin like the breath of the Goddess’s mountain. “Queen,” she whispered. “Do you swear this?” The dank walls grasped her words and sent them back to her, over and over.
“I do. You shall rule. You may well take a husband of your own choosing and produce godmarked children—but this does not matter. You, Daughter, shall rule.”
The chuckle was a laugh, then a bellow. Ariadne covered her ears. Fire streaked from the centre of his chest and out along his arms and blasted from his fingertips like molten rain. She ducked and felt sparks pattering on her neck and arms. Behind her, Theron gave a startled yelp.
When she looked up, Minos was walking away from her. Though she hurried, he did
n’t glance at her again—not even when they emerged into the storeroom. Not even when they came to the staircase that led to the royal apartments. She put her foot on the lowest stair, expecting him to do the same; instead, he turned sharply and strode across the courtyard and out between the gate columns. She watched pulsing flame fade into darkness.
“Princess,” Theron murmured. He was leaning against a pillar. The light from a brazier at its base flickered over his scarred flesh and his grin. She turned and walked up the stairs.
Chara was in her room, arranging food on a tray. “Go,” Ariadne snapped.
“Princess?” The slave raised her eyebrows, which disappeared beneath the unruly thatch of her hair. “What is wrong?”
Ariadne lifted a hand as if she would strike the girl, but Chara didn’t blink, let alone flinch. “Out,” Ariadne snapped. “Before I beat you. Again.”
Chara set a fig carefully on the tray. She lifted a tiny spoon from a tiny jar and drizzled honey over the fig. “Princess,” she said, and bowed her head, and slipped from the room.
Ariadne waited until the sound of the slave’s footsteps had faded. Then she removed Icarus’s ball of metal string from her girdle pocket. She reached up and placed it on the shelf above her bed. Daedalus’s maze box already sat there; she’d brought it with her from Knossos, knowing she’d exult, as she imagined Asterion in his own prison. She set the thrumming ball up against it. It rolled a bit because her hand was shaking.
“Queen Ariadne,” she said. Her laugh shook too, at first, but then it rang from the painted stone, hard and cold and sure.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Asterion,
This is silly, but I have to do it. I’m much better at writing now than I was when you were here—and this, if you can believe it, is due to your sister. She makes me write her letters for her, on long scrolls of Egyptian paper. (She says pressing lines into clay takes far too long, and the tablets are far too heavy. She’s actually right about some things.) They’re love letters, mostly. “Thalcion—if you continue to gaze at me with such fervour, I shall have you flogged. Come to my chamber tomorrow at moonrise.” Sometimes hate letters too. “Diantha—you have been less than nothing to me for years. Stop flaunting your lovers or I shall have you flogged.” I’ve become very good at writing. So, now that she’s sleeping, all I want to do is write to you. It makes me feel as if I’m talking to you. As if you might laugh and reply.
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