Part 67 (1/2)

The queen stood up from her chair, shattering the light behind her. ”Is it safe to approach?”

The narrow man hunched from the shoulders. You imagined someone pulling his drawstring. ”It can never be said to be truly safe to approach a beast,” he temporized, transformed from the martinet of the grooming chamber. You realized, this queen wielded power over him.

You began to consider the next step in your plan.

”Nevertheless-” she said, her voice another tug on his drawstring.

”The risks might be acceptable to her majesty,” he admitted.

She tossed her hair back and descended the steps, and when she came before you, you saw that she was delicately beautiful. The beauty of a mature woman, not the unformed features of a girl. You breathed envy across her face, imagining you could see it roll from you like a mist.

You were not beautiful. You wished you were beautiful.

When you breathed in, the scent of her came with your air, cutting through the fog of cologne. When she extended her hand, flat, a sugar cube lay upon the palm. She giggled when your whiskers brushed her skin and winced as the swipe of thick tongue greased the sugar away. While your head was bent, she brushed fingers across the velvet-fuzzed rim of your ear, where the cold golden rings collected from sailors dangled. You drew your wet muzzle across the offered palm again, wincing when the ring in your nose dragged on skin. You hoped for another lump of sugar, but all you got was the clink of your golden chains.

”Chain him to the floor,” she said.

”Your majesty-”

”We wish,” she said, an imperious drawl, ”to speak with him privately.”

The narrow man stared at you. You lifted your chin, the way the queen had, and wondered. If the narrow man was willing to trust your sworn word, your legal contract-why did he feel the need to conceal that from his queen?

Another thing to think on.

”Yes, your majesty,” the narrow man said, and gestured to the footmen.

You were not surprised to find that the flipped-back carpets revealed steel rings inset in the floor, nor that the footmen came equipped with locks, to link your chains to those rings. The locks, like the rings, were steel. But the chains were still gold, and still-soft.

Because you gave your word of honor, you did not strain against them when the footmen left the chamber. The narrow man paused reluctantly at the door, and for a moment you thought he would argue. But he squared his shoulders, collected his dignity, and continued on without so much as a gesture of his head.

The door shut softly behind the narrow man. The queen had turned to watch him go. You lowered your head and whuffed against her hair. Now, with her so close, the rich scent of woman cut through the musty, acrid oil of lavender.

”I am an oracle,” she said. She stepped away. Momentarily insensible of the chains, you followed, click of your boots echoing the click of her heels. But the third step brought you to the limit of your tethers, the yoke slanting into your collarbone, and you lowed frustration.

Like the narrow man, the queen did not turn. Unlike him, she spoke to you softly: ”Why do you not burst your chains?”

You thought, because I have given my word. Because my word is my duty. But you could not answer. If you are an oracle, do you not know that already?

”Gold is soft,” she said. ”And you are hard.”

Then, she faced you again. Her eyes were pale brown under dark golden lashes. She looked up at you through them, and one corner of her mouth dragged itself up, as if unwillingly. ”A beast,” she said. ”I see.”

You wanted to ask her what do you want from me? What is my responsibility to you? You think, unlike the narrow man, she might understand obligation. But in all the world, there had never been anyone for you to speak to. The humans-you may have known all their words, each of their words, every one of their words.

They still did not understand yours. And cattle-do not use language.

”Do you have a name?”

You did. You have not heard it since the woman who gave it to you died, on Crete more than four thousand years before. You could not p.r.o.nounce it.

But yes. You did have one.

”You are very strong.” She placed a hand upon your collar. At the full extension of her arm, she could reach you comfortably. At the full extension of yours, you could have clutched her, dragged her close.

You permitted your arms to dangle. You lowered your head and stretched your muzzle towards her. She stroked your mucus-sticky nose, rubbed the crumbs from the corners of your eyes with her own regal fingers. ”So very strong,” she said.

You angled your head so she could reach to scratch around the base of your horns, and she laughed. ”I suppose, strong as you are, you don't need to be cruel to make people fear you. You can afford to be gentle, and no one will ever forget you are dangerous.”

In answer, you rattled the chains, tilted the yoke so it would catch the light. The queen drew her hand back, her face perfectly impa.s.sive. Already, you were beginning to understand that when she made her face smooth like that, she was registering emotion. Surprise, or anger, or determination. Queens did not betray themselves through melodrama.

”You understand me,” she said.

You ducked your head and lowed.

This time, you saw the movement of her jaw, the brief resulting flex of lower lip against upper. Her eyes were the color of toast, and you wished you could tell her so.

You went to your knees, bending your neck, and pushed your muzzle heavily into the midsection of her gown. The green gla.s.s beads and the embroidery p.r.i.c.kled your nose. Rings clicking, she wrapped her hands around your horns, as if to remind you to be careful of them.

You did not need the reminder. You spent your youth as the pet of a king, the child of a king's wife who named you Asterion. You were a queen's son, but you would never be a prince. And when you grew in size and stature and the king came to fear you, he imprisoned you in the labyrinth, where you killed because it was your burden, your duty. If Poseidon had made you to claim his t.i.the, then claim it you would. You were strong; you were deathless; you could with ease shoulder that enc.u.mbrance.

You were a monster. But to be a monster did not mean to be uncultured. You have known many monsters. Many of them have been civilized. Most have been human.

One such civilized monster sought you, but could not kill you. He could not even find you, in the bowels of your labyrinth, though he could kill the white bull your father and claim the head was your own. Your father was a gentle creature, though no great conversationalist, and you mourned him.

You even mourned the kings who imprisoned you, when others came to burn them from their palaces. That was millennia ago, and knowing the turnings within the labyrinth is not the same as being able to leave it, for there were always those who would have killed you if they could. But a bull needs little more than gra.s.s and sun and pure water, and those things you had in abundance within the palace-maze your mother's husband built for you. So there you dwelled among mossy stones and crumbling columns through Mycenaean occupation, and Greek, and Roman, and Turkish.

In the end someone came, and you were liberated to travel by steamer across the Mediterranean, by carriage and by train across Europe and finally to a new and foreign island. You have walked in chains through the streets of this ancient city, amidst its smog and smoke and the soot caked upon its walls.

In four thousand, one hundred, and thirteen years, you have neither gored nor trampled a soul you did not mean to. You were not about to begin with your rescuer's queen.

You placed your hand over hers, on your horn. You had to angle your arm strangely to work it around the shoulderpiece of your yoke. Even her pampered skin was not so pale as your own.

You were gentle with her, as gentle as you would have been with a kitten. She did not seem as if she were significantly stronger than a kitten-physically. Everything about her gave evidence of the strength of her will.

But she was beautiful.

”Barrister wants to display you, Minotaur,” the queen said. ”You are a spoil of empire. You are the proof of his power, his foreign-affairs successes. What a concession, what a coup, to have obtained not merely the loan but the actual possession of the world's only Cretan minotaur!”

Was the lawyer's name really Barrister? Did these people refer to one another by position rather than name? Cook, cabbie, teacher, governess. You wanted to tell her that Minotaur-bull of Minos-was not your name, that your name was Asterion. Star. You wanted to tell her she was beautiful.

She said, ”You will spend your days chained in the Museum with the marbles, and folk will come and stare.”