“My mother’s sister married the King of Troezen,” explained Daedalus. He too gave the impression that he and the queen were having an interesting but not especially momentous discussion. “The boy Theseus is her grandchild. He and I are related by ties of blood.”
Something strange seemed to happen to my mother’s face then; it sagged on one side. She passed a hand over it and murmured something in an oddly slurred voice that sounded like, “Blood, so much blood . . .”
“It isn’t true,” someone said loudly. When every eye turned to look at me, I knew that the someone was me.
“I took the key and gave it to Ariadne,” I said. “She begged me to. She said she loved him, that she was going to have his baby. So I crept into Daedalus’s workshop one day when he was gone and I searched and searched until I found it. It was in a safe hidden in the floor,” I added, feeling that this detail might carry conviction. “All that I wanted was that no one should die.”
Daedalus shook his head.
“No, child,” he said, smiling at me. “You know you’re not telling the truth.”
I lifted my chin. “You are speaking to the Princess Xenodice, Daedalus,” I said coldly. “Do not call me a child.”
Icarus laughed. It was a strange laugh, happy and carefree. “But how can we call you anything else, little bird, when you tell such outrageous lies? It was I who carried the key to Princess Ariadne and gave it into her keeping. She thanked me for it very prettily.”
“Seize them,” came a raven’s croak. To my shock, I realized that it was my mother who spoke. “Xenodice—” she faltered, and then continued, “go to your quarters.” She staggered, and fell heavily against my father.
He jerked to life. “The queen is ill!” he shouted, and the scene dissolved in confusion.
The dead have been conveyed down into the Underworld with as much ceremony and ritual as we could manage under the circumstances. The potters and stone carvers and goldsmiths and silversmiths worked day and night trying to keep pace with three royal funerals. Normally such a rite would be a major social occasion, with much ostentatious grieving and shows of fine feelings on the part of every ambitious noble family, but no one seemed able to put their heart into it this time. The whole court is distracted, wondering what will happen next.
We have settled into a strange state of suspense. My mother still lives, but she does not speak or move. She cannot last long like this—she can swallow nothing more than a little barley water or wine. Every physician in the land, down to the humblest herbal healer, has offered advice—some maintain that an Athenian enchanter ill-wished her, others that her heart burst from grief. Many sacrifices of rare incense, perfumed oils, cows, sheep, and goats have been offered up to the Goddess, but to no avail. The light in the queen’s eye is dimming.
Acalle is beginning to assume the reins of government. She spends much of the day conferring with our mother’s counselors. The fool Polyidus is less of a fool than one might think. He sees which way the wind blows and has attached himself to her service with the persistence of a barnacle clinging to a storm-lashed rock. He compliments her beauty and sagacity, runs petty errands for her, pours a steady stream of gossip and malice into her ear, and is clearly planning to carve out an important position as intimate advisor to the next queen. I believe—I hope—that she sees through him but all the same finds him useful.
She gets no advice or counsel from our father. He has become an old man, shrunken and frail. When she tries to consult with him he waves her away, and she has ceased asking.
Once, only once, did my father speak of what happened the night that Asterius and the others were killed. He was sitting in his chair of state, staring indifferently at the ground, when I came into the room to fetch some embroidery I had left there. I did not trouble myself to offer him obeisance, and he did not comment on my omission. Indeed, I thought that he would let me leave the room without any remark at all, when he spoke.
“I had intended to send Rhesos ahead of Theseus,” he began, as though we had been already engaged in conversation on the matter. “He was to remove you from the Bull Pen. That was why I had to have him along to begin with. You would not have been harmed.”
“And Catreus and Deucalion? What about Maira and the servant set to watch the door?” I asked, although I knew that those last two deaths weighed lightly on his heart compared to the others. “What plan had you to safeguard them?”
“If only you had not screamed—”
I looked at him with contempt and left the room.
I wondered which of them, Ariadne or my father, had drugged the wine. Perhaps both of them; Rhesos had seemed quite certain that we all should have “slept like the dead.” No wonder my glass tasted so foul! Would any of us have ever wakened in the morning had I drunk my share and other events not intervened?
My mother’s last words, or very nearly, had been to order Daedalus and Icarus seized. While she hung suspended in this indeterminate state, alive still yet unable to issue further orders, their fate too hung in suspension. No one had the authority to order either their release or their execution, save perhaps my father, and he did not seem to care.
I knew what my sister Acalle would do the moment my mother was told, because I asked her.
“Execute them, of course.” she said. “They have been fed, clothed, and sheltered by our mother’s generosity, and now they have betrayed her.”
“That was not charity, but payment for services rendered,” I reminded her. “You may come to regret
