Lost in the Labyrinth by Patrice Kindl (ereader with android txt) 📗

mark yesterday’s arrival of the new Athenians. Ariadne paid my worried glances no heed.

“I said that you might be allowed to keep one of the Athenians if nothing further came up. Something further has come up. The last Athenian will go to Polyidus.” Mother made an abrupt gesture of dismissal. “You may go now, daughter.”

Stony-faced, Ariadne executed a sketchy salute that barely escaped insolence in its brevity. She turned and moved stiffly toward the door.

“By the bye, Ariadne,” my mother said softly, “you are not my heir. Acalle is my oldest daughter.”

Ariadne halted, as though a rock had struck her squarely between the shoulder blades.

I closed my eyes and prayed that my sister would keep silent and go.

Praise the Lady, my prayer was heard. Ariadne stood still for a long moment. Then she walked away without a word.

I regarded my mother with some surprise. She had not the look of a woman who believed her oldest daughter dead or beyond recall; she was smiling a little, unmindful of my eyes upon her.

But where could Acalle be? Had my mother recent tidings of her, that she smiled so? Why not then announce them? Perhaps she had known all along where Acalle was. What if Acalle were absent at her request and conniving? My mother had not wept a tear when this oldest, most precious daughter had disappeared.

“Speak no more about it. She is gone.”

That is all she ever said on the subject, in my hearing at least, from that day to this. When one considered the many years of mourning and the vengeance exacted against the Athenians for the death of Androgeus, who was only a boy and could therefore never sit upon the throne, that fact was remarkable.

There were as many opinions on the subject as there were inhabitants of Knossos. Some said that Acalle, like many a royal heir, had grown querulous and discontented, tired of waiting for the day when she would be given some measure of real power, and had therefore been sent away to learn humility elsewhere. Some said she had died of a dreadful disease and been quietly buried. Others said that Acalle had fled south across the sea without her mother’s consent.

For several months before she disappeared, the young king of Libya had been visiting Knossos to negotiate a trade agreement. All could see how my proud sister grew red and white by turns whenever he came near. Libya was a poor and desert land. Acalle would never have received permission to marry the ruler of Libya.

But why, if any of these things were true, would we not have heard after all these months?

I myself believed that our mother in her wisdom had discovered a spell aimed at her daughter and heir by some malignant magician and had therefore sent Acalle secretly away to a place of concealment until the spell was counteracted or the magician was discovered and destroyed.

But then, what would happen when Acalle returned? What a whirlwind that would bring!

I found myself hoping that Acalle was happily married, a queen in her husband’s land, without designs on the throne of Kefti. I wished her well, but far away. She too was my sister, but, being so much older and the acknowleged heir, we had never been on terms of intimacy. It was Ariadnes happiness that most affected mine.

Ariadne would not be able to bear the loss of the throne. She had not the temper to accept having high estate snatched away from her. Even this loss of the Athenian slave was a bitter fruit she could not easily swallow.

The keeper of the granaries now entered with a complaint about the way the records were kept, and I decided to remove myself and the children. The need to understand proper accounting practices for all the great store of treasure and goods hidden in the bowels of the Labyrinth was one of the many reasons I would not wish to be the next queen. And besides, my wrist had begun to throb, although the doctor Asclepius had given me poppy juice in wine to ease it. Like Icarus, he did not believe that it was broken, only that the small muscles were torn and bruised.

We had been lucky. The arrival of the new Athenians meant that much less attention had been paid to our mishap than might otherwise have been the case. The servants who had been present on the mountaintop would now be dispersed to many households and have other things to think about. And the boy’s parents would not speak of it. The child had escaped injury, and Lord Asterius was the queen’s son.

So I comforted myself, and so I believed.

“Phaedra, Molus,” I said quietly, “let us go to the kitchens and see if they will give us some dates to eat before the Presentation of the Athenians.”

“Figs in honey.” proposed Phaedra instead.

I shuddered, remembering Glaucus in his thick coating of honey. “No,” I said. I picked the baby up with my uninjured arm, and Phaedra and I bowed to our mother and retired. She nodded and went back to listening to the keeper of the granaries speaking in a high, indignant voice about sixteen missing sacks of barley.

We the Keftiu are a people who enjoy celebration. There are many holidays, both major and minor, festive and grave, throughout the year. The Presentation of the Athenians is a modern rite, begun only twelve years ago. Since it is followed so soon after by the Festival of the Bulls, one of the great holidays of the year, it has over the years tended to flow into that celebration. The ritual is a solemn one, being in commemoration of the death of my brother Androgeus.

All of the attending populace wore their best mourning costumes as they gathered in the Bull Court, that central courtyard at the heart of the Labyrinth where most public occasions took place. Years ago, there had perhaps been a little more real grief as well as a good