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been carried into the throne room because the courtyard they usually used for dining was too wet.)
    The king rose. “Speak, man! Tell me of my son’s latest triumph in Athens!” The king’s teeth glinted in his beard. He smiled, while everyone around him went silent and still. He smiled, even as Pasiphae stood and put her hand on his arm and pressed her fingers white.
    “My lord king, Prince Androgeus is dead.”
    Someone gasped—Naucrate, Ariadne guessed, though she didn’t look away from her parents. For a moment Minos and Pasiphae were statues, one smiling, the other beautiful. Pasiphae moved first. She turned and put her other hand on his arm and clutched it as if it were the only thing holding her up. Which it was—for when he drew it from her grasp, slowly and carefully, she crumpled. She pulled herself to her knees and raised a hand to him and he wrenched himself around, away from her. He seemed to be gazing at the fresco of the griffins and trees.
    “How?” Smoke curled from his mouth. The backs of his hands were webbed with kindling flame.
    The messenger swallowed. He was beardless; a man who spent more time in Athens than at home and had taken on Athenian fashion.
    “My lord, it was King Aegeus’s nephews—the Pallantides—they were jealous of the prince’s prowess. They . . . they stabbed him with the tusks of the boar he had tamed. Others were there, too—someone tried to reach the prince, but one of the Pallantides summoned a net made of silver fire and cast it over Androgeus so that no one could touch him. He died slowly. Many watched.”
    “King Aegeus. What has he done?”
    “He has sent a message.”
    “And what does it say?”
    “My King?”
    “Say it to me.”
    “It . . . it says:
Minos, King of Crete, my city mourns your son and begs your mercy
.”
    “That is all.”
    “Yes, Minos King.”
    “That is
all
.”
    “It is.”
    Minos whirled to face the messenger. Flames leapt from his fingertips and seared black lines into the floor.
    “Then there will be war.”
    “Yes, my King. It is . . . expected.”
    Ariadne looked at all of them in turn: Minos; Pasiphae, her hands buried in her hair, pulling her head down toward her knees; Glaucus and Deucalion, pale and gaping; Daedalus, frozen mid-stride, his own head turned sideways as Icarus’s so often was. And Asterion. Asterion, who was crying.
    “Leave me.” Minos’s voice rasped. “Everyone leave me.”
    The boys almost ran between the pillars and Phaidra followed, tripping over her skirts. Naucrate took Daedalus’s hand and drew him out after them. Soon only Pasiphae and Ariadne were left, with the king.
    “Husband.” Pasiphae looked broken; she sounded broken.
    “Go!” Minos thundered. She rose. Her skirts were dark-damp where her legs had been pressing on them. Water ran down her brow and neck but not her cheeks.
    “May Lord Zeus abandon you,” she said. “May you cry out for him in your solitude and find him gone.” She lifted her face to the rain, once she was outside, and then she walked, and it swallowed her.
    Ariadne and Minos were alone. He was staring blindly at his hands and the flames that dribbled down from them. She took a step closer. Still he stared.
    “Father,” she said, very softly.
    His eyes leapt to her, saw her, filled with tears. “Ariadne,” he whispered. He held out his arms and she ran into them, as if she were still a child—only now
he
was the child. He sobbed and clung and she didn’t care that his palms scalded her through her bodice.
    “Hush,” she said, and smiled.

CHAPTER SIX
    Chara fell so hard that all the breath seemed to leave her body. She made a sound like “umf” as the dust from the path rose and settled around her, and then she gasped and flipped onto her back. Glaucus was above her, brandishing the blue-and-scarlet painted stick he carried everywhere. Chara lunged up and grasped the end of it with both hands. She tugged sharply and he stumbled; she hooked her