I felt an idea rise in me. I would need all the secret herbs of Dicte, and with them the strongest binding weeds, ilex root and withy, fennel and hemlock, aconite, hellebore. I would need as well the rest of my moly stores. I slipped through those trees unerring, hunting down each ingredient in its turn. If Artemis walked that night, she kept out of my way.
I carried the leaves and roots back to the pool and ground them on its rocks. The paste I gathered in one of my bottles, and added some of the pool’s water. Its waves still bore the blood it had washed from my hands, mine and my sister’s too. As if it knew, the draught swirled red and dark.
I did not sleep that night. I stayed on Dicte until the sky went gray and then began walking back to Knossos. By the time I reached the palace, the sun was bright on the fields. I passed a courtyard that had caught my eye the day before, and stopped now to examine it more closely. In it was a great dancing circle, ringed by laurels and oaks for shade from the beating sun. I had thought its floor was made of stone, but now I saw it was wood, a thousand tiles of it, so smoothed and varnished that they seemed like a single piece. They were painted with a spiral, traveling outwards from its center like the furling crest of a wave. Daedalus’ work, it could be no other.
A girl was dancing on it. No music played, yet her feet kept perfect time, each step the beat of a silent drum. She moved like a wave herself, graceful, but with relentless, driving motion. On her head shone the circlet of a princess. I would have known her anywhere. The girl from Daedalus’ prow.
Her eyes widened when she saw me, just like her statue’s. She bowed her head. “Aunt Circe,” she said. “I am glad to meet you. I am Ariadne.”
I could see pieces of Pasiphaë in her, but only if I searched: her chin, the delicacy of her collarbone.
“You are skilled,” I said.
She smiled. “Thank you. My parents are looking for you.”
“No doubt. But I must find Daedalus.”
She nodded, as if I were only one of a thousand who wanted him instead of her parents. “I will take you. But we must be careful. The guards are out looking.”
She slipped her fingers into mine, warm and a little damp from her exercise. Through dozens of narrow side-passages she led me, her feet silent on the stones. We came at last to a bronze door. She beat six times in a rhythm.
“I cannot play now, Ariadne,” a voice called. “I am busy.”
“I am with the lady Circe,” she said.
The door swung open, revealing Daedalus, sooty and stained. Behind him was a workroom, half open to the sky. I saw statues with their cloths still on them, gears and instruments I did not recognize. At the back, a foundry smoked, and metal glowed hot in a mold. A fish spine lay on a table, a strange jagged blade beside it.
“I have been to Mount Dicte,” I said. “I have glimpsed the creature’s fate. It can die, but not now. A mortal will come who is destined to dispatch it. I do not know how long it may be. The creature was full-grown in my vision.”
I watched the knowledge settle on him. All the days ahead that he must be on his guard. He drew a breath. “So we contain it then.”
“Yes. I have brewed a charm that will help. It craves…” I paused, feeling Ariadne behind me. “It craves that flesh you saw it eat. It is part of its nature. I cannot take away that hunger, but I may set bounds upon it.”
“Anything,” he said. “I am grateful.”
“Do not be grateful yet,” I said. “For three seasons of the year, the spell will keep its appetite at bay. But every harvest it will return, and must be fed.”
His eyes flicked to Ariadne behind me. “I understand,” he said.
“The rest of the time it will still be dangerous, but only as a savage beast might be.”
He nodded, but I saw he was thinking of harvest time, and the feeding that must come. He glanced at the molds behind him, tinged red with heat. “I will be finished with the cage tomorrow morning.”
“Good,” I said. “It cannot come too soon. I will work the spell then.”
When the door closed, Ariadne stood waiting. “You were speaking of the baby that was born, were you not? He is the one that must be kept until he’s killed?”
“He is.”
“The servants say he is a monster, and my father shouted at me when I asked about him. But he is still my brother, is he not?”
I hesitated.
“I know about my mother and the white bull,” she said.
No child of Pasiphaë’s could remain innocent for long. “I suppose you may say he is your half-brother,” I said. “Now come. Take me to the king and queen.”
Griffins preened, delicate and regal, on the walls. The windows spilled sun. My sister lay on her silver couch glowing with health. Beside her, on an alabaster chair, Minos looked old and puffed, like something left dead in the waves. His eyes seized on me as snatcher-birds take fish.
“Where have you been? The monster needs tending. That is why you were brought here!”
“I have made a draught,” I said. “So we may transfer it to its new cage more safely.”
“A draught? I want it killed!”
“Darling, you sound hysterical,” Pasiphaë said. “You haven’t even heard my sister’s idea. Go on, Circe, please.” She rested her chin on her hand, theatrically expectant.
“It will bind the creature’s hunger for three seasons of each year.”
“That’s it?”
“Now, Minos, you’ll hurt Circe’s feelings. I think it’s a very fine spell, sister. My son’s appetite is a bit unwieldy, isn’t it? He’s gone through most of our prisoners already.”
“I want the creature dead, and that is final!”
“It cannot be killed,” I told Minos. “Not now. It has a destiny far in the future.”
“A destiny!” My sister clapped delightedly. “Oh, tell us what it is! Does it escape and eat someone we know?”
Minos paled, though he tried to hide it. “Be sure,” he said to me. “You and the craftsman, be sure it is secure.”
“Yes,” my sister crooned. “Be sure. I hate to think what would happen if it got out. My husband may be a son of Zeus, but his flesh is thoroughly mortal. The truth is”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“I think he may be afraid of the creature.”
A hundred times I had seen some fool caught between my sister’s claws. Minos took it worse than most. He stabbed a finger through the air at me. “You hear? She threatens me openly. This is your fault, you and your whole lying family. Your father gave her to me as if she were a treasure, but if you knew the things she has done to me—”
“Oh, tell her some of them! I think Circe would appreciate the witchcraft. What about the hundred girls who died while you heaved over them?”
I could feel Ariadne, very still, beside me. I wished she were not there.
The hate in Minos’ eyes was a living thing. “Foul harpy! It was your spell that caused their deaths! All you breed is evil! I should have ripped that beast from your cursed womb before it could be born!”
“But you did not dare, did you? You know how your dear father Zeus dotes on such creatures. How else can all his bastard heroes win their reputations?” She cocked her head. “In fact, shouldn’t you be slavering to take up a sword yourself? Oh, but I forgot. You have no taste for killing unless it is serving girls. Sister, truly, you should learn this spell. You need only—”
Minos had risen from his seat. “I forbid you to speak further!”
My sister laughed, her most silver-fountain sound. It was calculated, like everything she did. Minos raged on, but I was watching her. I had dismissed her coupling with the bull as some perverse whim, but she was not ruled by appetites; she ruled with them instead. When was the last time that I had seen true emotion on her face? I recalled now that moment on her childbed when she had cried out, her face twisted with urgency, that the monster must live. Why? Not love, there was none of that in her. So the creature must somehow serve her ends.