CHAPTER TWO
OVER THE YEARS I’VE SQUIRRELLED away the secrets of this palace.
I’ve sat perched on the roof slats as servants ferry barrows of meat to that secretive hatch, depositing it into the labyrinth below.
I’ve watched as tiles have been layered over tiles, and my brother’s cries have softened beneath their weight until they do not carry through at all.
I’ve heard envoys from Athens beg my father for mercy, and watched the smile twitch on to his face in turn.
They call my brother the Minotaur now. The bull of Minos. A monster – a legend to be feared.
But I’ve prepared: stockpiling herbs and medicines, packing away jewels and fabrics in case I am found out and need to flee, even sending away my one and only friend so my father can’t slaughter her in my stead.
The labyrinth, though, remains a mystery.
Thankfully, the man who made it is currently trying to teach me how to conjugate verbs in Lycian.
‘I’m sorry,’ I half weep, tossing my wax tablet aside and burying my face in my hands. ‘I just can’t focus, not today. Not with … what’s coming.’
Phaedra’s head snaps up beside me.
It’s risky, admitting any form of discomfort about all this.
Daedalus lowers his scroll by the barest hair – which is as close to his full attention as I’m getting.
‘Yes,’ Phaedra says dryly. ‘It’s so difficult to concentrate amidst all the excitement.’
I shoot her a look and find her glaring right back.
After years of looking near identical, we spun in differing directions the moment puberty hit.
I take after our mother – tall and undoubtedly regal, from the tightly bound curls wreathed about my head to the sharp tip of my upturned nose.
But Phaedra has more of our father to her – golden and sleek but with an edge of savagery the polish can’t mask.
It’s in her clenched jaw and the way she shows her teeth when she smiles, and it’s here right now as she narrows our father’s glacial eyes.
‘Shall we imagine it a thought exercise,’ Daedalus says – always searching for the opportunity to twist anything into a lesson.
His son, Icarus, is quite the opposite, constantly dragging Glaucus into trouble, and so I wonder if he sees Phaedra and me as his only chance to impart wisdom.
‘You find yourself in a labyrinth. What steps do you take?’
‘I would find the exit,’ Phaedra says at once. ‘If you consistently turn in one direction in a maze, you will escape it with ease.’
Daedalus nods. ‘But if danger lurks within, you would run the risk of stumbling upon it as you search.’
‘I got in somehow,’ Phaedra says. ‘An entrance is an exit – so I would walk back out.’
Daedalus catches my eye and my gut tightens. He knows.
I feel it with certainty. I have not been as careful as I thought.
‘Let us say this labyrinth is clever. The door not at the end of its spiral but some place in between, and containing a series of mechanisms that make it immediately unrecognizable from any other wall.’
Phaedra is quick, growing antsy with the constant additions. ‘I’d mark it.’
‘Clever enough to shift any substance on its surface.’
‘And let me suppose – once I do find it, it’s locked? Barred? Some other force to make me reconsider my ingenious plans?’
‘Quite impossible from within,’ Daedalus agrees. ‘The door is as hungry for blood as the labyrinth itself. But let us assume, in this exercise, that you are both capable of feeding it.’
My sister pales, and I suspect this brings it too close to the realm of reality. Her lips press thin, and she glowers murderously. ‘It is inescapable – is that the point of this exercise? To prove that there is no way out?’
Daedalus turns to me, his dark eyes shrewd. ‘You have been awfully silent, Ariadne. What do you think?’
I have been so busy cataloguing his clues that I had not thought to answer myself, but now I meet his eye and I consider the puzzle at hand. That’s all this is. Fourteen lives in the balance, yes, but a puzzle nonetheless.
‘It’s not a maze,’ I say at last. ‘It’s a labyrinth. A single path, no matter the twists it takes. Death, if it lurks within, will find you.’
‘So?’ Daedalus pushes, and I feel my heart sink. The solution he offers is the only one I cannot possibly take – the tributes are watched day and night, the guards more heavily armoured than the labyrinth itself.
‘So you do not find yourself in the labyrinth. You escape before you ever step through its door.’
Daedalus snaps his scroll, rolling it up quickly. ‘I think that’s enough for today. But it’s worth ruminating on your perception of a path, Ariadne. Often, not all directions are blocked. Only those you might consider taking.’
He walks swiftly from the atrium. I move to do the same.
The tributes arrive tomorrow and Daedalus has made this even more complicated.
The door vanishes. It cannot be marked. It cannot be opened from the inside.
So there goes my original plan of making a copy of the key and slipping it to one of the Athenians.
I might have to wait until my father parades them there and see how it is opened, who has the key and how the door works. Then make some rash, ill-considered move.
‘Ariadne.’
I blink – finding my sister still standing beside me and not running off to her room at the first opportunity.
She hasn’t played the aulos since the last tribute but an Anatolian dignitary gifted her a barbitos a few weeks ago and I swear I can hear the softly plucked strings whenever I pass her door.
‘I’d like to speak with you,’ she says, pushing her shoulders back and tucking a loose blonde curl behind one ear.
I haven’t had a proper conversation with my sister in months, so please gods tell me my prying into the labyrinth has not made her suspect me too. Let her think me stupid – running the foolish risk of voicing my disturbance – and not probing for answers to something so much more unforgivable.
‘I expect Father will turn his attention to marriage offers once all this is over with.’
I nod. For months he’s been fixated on the coming tributes but I’m sure he’ll awake from his bloodthirst in a few days to the sudden realization he has two daughters of marriageable age and no arrangements in place.
‘Do you know who has expressed interest?’
‘No,’ I say slowly, trying to work out if there is any way this conversation might get us in trouble if we are overheard.
Deciding that it’s one of the few things we might talk somewhat freely about, I add: ‘But dignitaries have been visiting. And our classes have been quite linguistically focused of late.’
Daedalus is brilliant. Having him teach his children is another press of Father’s power.
Daedalus built half the ships in my father’s fleet.
He created a labyrinth with a supposedly impossible door.
And now he’s stuck teaching sums to girls.
It’s intended to humiliate him, but Daedalus seems to have taken it in his stride, normally teaching us mechanics and formulae far beyond what any other tutor would consider sharing.
But for the last few months, it’s been Lydian, Lycian, Carian and Hittite, which clearly hasn’t escaped Phaedra’s notice either because she’s nodding and finally surmises: ‘They’re talking to kingdoms in Anatolia.’
I press my lips together. ‘I imagine other Hellenistic nations aren’t particularly excited to ally with us after … this.’
‘I imagine with such a display of our might, many would consider us,’ she says tightly.
‘I’m sure the Anatolians are only to have options in reserve – or perhaps Father means to host some sort of games for our hands and wants a wealth of contestants.
Whatever it is he intends, I mean to inform you that – if there are options, if there are two, for instance – I will be doing my utmost to secure the best.’
I frown, needing a second to understand what she’s saying. And then, yes, of course. This is no moment of sororal bonding. This is a contest.
‘I see.’
‘Well?’ she pushes.
‘Well? What exactly do you expect me to say?’
She hisses, her tongue flicking between her teeth.
‘I want you to tell me you’ll do the same.
I want you to try to best me, to make things even – so I don’t feel so damnably wretched about wanting to do whatever it takes to assure as decent a future for myself as I can, even if it means taking it from you. ’
‘Forgive me,’ I say, unable to keep the edge from my voice, ‘if marriage isn’t at the top of my priorities right now.’
‘Don’t, Ariadne,’ she scolds. ‘Don’t make this worse like you always do.’
‘Always do?’
‘You provoke Father. Deliberately, I might add.’
Yes, normally to distract him from turning his wrath on my siblings, but I wouldn’t expect Phaedra to actually pick up on that.
Zeus above, he was accusing her of fraternizing with that dignitary and might have had her lashed with the strings of that barbitos if I hadn’t jumped in with the suggestion I marry Prince Theseus of Athens.
Mention of that city is the swiftest way to distract him and, well, better I take the rebuke than Phaedra.
‘We can discuss this later,’ I say firmly. ‘Perhaps I’ll take up the challenge after we have … nobly avenged our brother.’
Phaedra glares at me again, but now those oceanic eyes are alight with fury rather than scorched with their usual cold.
‘We only have to get through this one more time,’ she says, keeping her voice low. ‘And then we’ll be sent away. So don’t make me feel guilty about wanting a husband who takes me as far from this place as possible.’
Horns blare through the halls, and Phaedra startles. The Athenians are early.
It is time to discover who I am risking everything for.