The Flame in the Maze by Caitlin Sweet Page B

her hair, or fingernails raking more bloody lines into her flesh—but Ariadne just frowned at her as if she weren’t really seeing her.
    â€œDoes it matter?” Ariadne said. Her voice was as far away as her gaze. “We’re going to help. Icarus and Daedalus didn’t care at all. We do.”
    An almost unbearably vivid certainty gripped Phaidra:
They
do
care, even if Icarus said they didn’t. Maybe he and Daedalus escaped somehow, right after Ariadne told them about Asterion and Chara. Maybe they’ve gone to the Goddess’s mountain. And now I will go there, too.
    â€œVery well,” she said steadily. “How do you intend to get Asterion out, once I let you in?”
    â€œThis.” Ariadne’s eyes were keen again, as she drew an enormous ball of string from beneath her girdle. When the cloth fell back over it, stone dust puffed and scattered. “We’ll attach it to the entrance and let it out as we go. It’s not godmarked, as Theseus’s is, but it may be long enough, and lead us back again.”
    Someone screamed from across the courtyard. Silver-gold light bloomed a moment later; a godmarked, healing light, perhaps, or a numbing one, at least. The pain of Phaidra’s own wounds returned, throbbing from the surface of her skin deep into everything that lay underneath.
    â€œWas it ever the gods’ will, to build the mountain temple?” She could barely hear herself. Ariadne’s chuckle, though, seemed loud.
    â€œNot for you to know, Sister. Now, let’s go.”
    The statue of Androgeus had fallen face-down onto the dancing ground. One of his arms was bent at a terrible angle; if this hadn’t been Karpos’s work, the marble would have shattered.“No,” Ariadne whispered. She was staring at the dancing ground: its uprooted, broken stones, jumbled among the clods of earth in a meaningless pattern. Her eyes shone.
    Tears?
Phaidra thought incredulously—though what she said was, “Hurry! Before he sees us, or Mother comes out.” She tugged at Ariadne’s skirt and her sister started, as if she were waking. She dragged a hand over her eyes.
    â€œYes,” she said, her gaze once more sliding past Phaidra, to some invisible place inside her own head. “Hurry.”

    They didn’t speak, on their way to the Goddess’s mountain. Ariadne walked ahead, kicking up puffs of dust that stung Phaidra’s eyes and nose. The morning sun slanted to afternoon. The sea turned from smooth, polished gold to angry grey as a wind blew up, gathering clouds. Ariadne stopped once or twice, hands on hips, cursing under her breath.
    She thinks she should be in a palanquin
, thought Phaidra.
She thinks slaves should be sweating so that she wouldn’t have to.
    When they came to the place where the path branched away from the road, Phaidra saw that the path had become churned earth—rocks and dirt loosened by the quake. Ariadne picked her way onto its grassy edge. Phaidra lengthened her stride until she passed her sister. It was the same as it had been the other two times, even though there were no musicians or dancers now, no banners snapping or Athenian slaves shuffling along in their masks and robes. The mountain door called to her, as it always had. She felt her blood stirring to silver, as she got closer: her god urging her to go to the lock and wish it open, as she had the one on Ariadne’s puzzle box, so long ago. The one Daedalus had made for her. Icarus had been beside Phaidra that day, gangly and young, the layers of his strange hair dimming and brightening in the light that had streamed into the palace after the storm. Asterion had been there, too. And Chara, dressed in unaccustomed finery so that she could be given as a birthday gift to Ariadne. They’d watched as Phaidra’s godmark had flowed through her fingers for the first time. There had been a tiny metal bull at the centre of the puzzle