I leaned my forehead against the mast. The clothes were slipping off my shoulders. The cloak dragged at my neck, and my skin prickled with heat. The spell had ended. I was myself again.
“Goddess.”
Daedalus was kneeling. The other men were ranged on their knees behind. Their faces—thick and haggard, scarred and bearded and burnt—were gray and shaken. They bore scrapes and lumps from being thrown across the deck.
I scarcely saw them. Before me was Scylla, her ravening mouths and those dead, empty eyes. She had not known me, I thought. Not as Perses or anything. Only the novelty of my being a god had momentarily checked her. Her mind was gone.
“Lady,” Daedalus said. “We will make sacrifice to you every day of our lives for this. You have saved us. You brought us through the straits alive.” The men echoed him, murmuring prayers, their great hands lifted like platters. A few pressed their foreheads to the deck, in the Eastern style. Such worship was the payment my kind demanded for services rendered.
The bile rose in my throat.
“You fools,” I said. “I am the one who made that creature. I did it for pride and vain delusion. And you thank me? Twelve of your men are dead for it, and how many thousands more to come? That drug I gave her is the strongest I have. Do you understand, mortals?”
The words seared the air. The light from my eyes beat down upon them.
“I will never be free of her. She cannot be changed back, not now, not ever. What she is, she will remain. She will feast on your kind for all eternity. So get up. Get up and get to your oars, and let me not hear you speak again of your imbecile gratitude or I will make you sorry for it.”
They cringed and shook like the weak vessels they were, stuttering to their feet and creeping away. Above, the sky was cloudless, and the heat pinned the air to the deck. I yanked off the cloak. I wanted the sun to burn me. I wanted it to scorch me down to bone.
Chapter Ten
FOR THREE DAYS I stood at that prow. We did not stay over on an island again. The oarsmen worked in shifts, sleeping on the deck. Daedalus repaired the rail, then took his turn among them. He was unfailingly polite, offering food and wine, a bedroll, but he did not linger. What did I expect? I had loosed my wrath on him as if I were my father. One more thing that I had ruined.
We reached the island of Crete just before noon on the seventh day. The sun threw off great sheets of light from the water, turning the sail incandescent. Around us ships crowded the bay: Mycenaean barges, Phoenician traders, Egyptian galleys, Hittites and Aethiopians and Hesperians. All the merchants who passed through these waters wanted the rich city of Knossos as their customer, and Minos knew it. He welcomed them with wide, safe moorings and agents to collect for the privilege of using them. The inns and brothels belonged to Minos also, and the gold and jewels flowed like a great river to his hands.
The captain aimed us squarely at the first mooring, kept open for royal ships. The noise and motion of the docks clattered around me: men running, shouting, heaving boxes onto decks. Polydamas spoke a word to the harbormaster, then turned to us. “You are to come at once. You and the craftsman both.”
Daedalus gestured that I should go first. We followed Polydamas up the docks. Before us, the huge limestone stairs wavered in the heat. Men streamed past us, servants and nobles alike, their shoulders sun-darkened and bare. Above, the palace of mighty Knossos glowed on its hill like a hive. We climbed. I heard Daedalus’ breaths behind me and Polydamas’ in front. The steps were worn smooth from years of endless hurrying feet.
At last we reached the top and crossed the threshold into the palace. The blinding light vanished. Cool darkness flowed over my skin. Daedalus and Polydamas hesitated, blinking. My eyes were not mortal and needed no time to adjust. I saw at once the beauty of that place, even greater than the last time I had come. The palace was like a hive indeed, each hall leading to an ornate chamber, and each chamber to another hall. Windows were cut in the walls to let in thick squares of golden sun. Intricate murals unrolled themselves on every side: dolphins and laughing women, boys gathering flowers, and deep-chested bulls tossing their horns. Outside in tiled pavilions silver fountains ran, and servants hurried among columns reddened with hematite. Over every doorway hung a labrys, the double-axe of Minos. I remembered that he had given Pasiphaë a necklace with a labrys pendant at their wedding. She had held it as if it were a worm, and when the ceremony came her neck bore only her own onyx and amber.
Polydamas guided us through the twisting passages towards the queen’s quarters. There it was more lavish still, the paintings rich with ochre and blue copper, but the windows had been covered over. Instead there were golden torches and leaping braziers. Cunningly recessed skylights let in light but no glimpse of sky; Daedalus’ work, I supposed. Pasiphaë had never liked our father’s prying gaze.
Polydamas stopped before a door scrolled with flowers and waves. “The queen is within,” he said, and knocked.
We stood in the still and shadowed air. I could hear nothing beyond that heavy wood, but I became aware of Daedalus’ ragged breath beside me. His voice was low. “Lady,” he said, “I have offended you and I am sorry. But I am sorrier still for what you will find inside. I wish—”
The door opened. A handmaid stood breathless before us, her hair pinned in the Cretan style at the top of her head. “The queen is in her labors—” she began, but my sister’s voice cut across her. “Is it them?”
At the room’s center, Pasiphaë lay upon a purple couch. Her skin gleamed with sweat, and her belly was shockingly distended, swollen out like a tumor from her slender frame. I had forgotten how vivid she was, how beautiful. Even in her pain, she commanded the room, drawing all the light to herself, leeching the world around her pale as mushrooms. She had always been the most like our father.
I stepped through the door. “Twelve dead,” I said. “Twelve men for a joke and your vanity.”
She smirked, rising up to meet me. “It seemed only fair to let Scylla have her chance at you, don’t you think? Let me guess: you tried to change her back.” She laughed at what she saw in my face. “Oh, I knew you would! You made a monster and all you can think of is how sorry you are. Alas, poor mortals, I have put them in danger!”
She was as quicksilver cruel as ever. It was a relief of sorts. “It was you who put them in danger,” I said.
“But you are the one who failed to save them. Tell me, did you weep as you watched them die?”
I forced my voice to stay even. “You are in error,” I said. “I saw no men die. The twelve were lost on the way out.”
She did not even pause. “No matter. More will die on every ship that passes.” She tapped a finger to her chin. “How many do you think it will be, in a year? A hundred? A thousand?”
She was showing her mink teeth, trying to get me to melt like all those naiads in Oceanos’ halls. But there was no wound she could give me that I had not already given myself.
“This is not the way to get my help, Pasiphaë.”
“Your help! Please. I am the one who got you off that sand-spit of an island. I hear you sleep with lions and boars for company. But that’s an improvement for you, isn’t it? After Glaucos the squid.”
“If you don’t need me,” I said, “I will happily go back to my sand-spit.”
“Oh, come, sister, don’t be so sour, it’s only a jest. And look how grown you are, slipping past Scylla! I knew I was right to call you instead of that braggart Aeëtes. You can stop making that face. I’ve already set aside gold for the families of the men who were lost.”
“Gold does not give back a life.”