He Named Me His Son

Tick, tap-tick, tick, tick... The razor's edge shivered wildly as it closed in under my jaw, and Ariadne's hands, locked around the handle, shook every bit as hard. I narrowed my eyes and looked down at my impractical sister with open unease.

"Um... Sister."

"Y-yes! What is it, Asterion? Hold still, or you'll get hurt!"

"Have you... ever shaved another person?"

"Hic—!"

Ariadne's shoulders jumped. Her eyes darted, and she made no effort at all to hide the panic.

"Wh-what? Th-then—of course I haven't! No, I have! When I was little I cut a doll's hair..."

"...A doll and a man's beard are the same thing?!"

A well-honed razor. Yes, it would be well-honed. Anything used in the palace would have been ground by the finest craftsman of the age.

Wait. Hold on.

That craftsman is in the cell right next to me.

And this is bronze, isn't it?

A foul premonition slid the length of my spine. However fine an edge it was, unless Hephaestus himself—smith-god of Olympus—had quenched and whetted it into a divine blade, I had no business expecting the smooth, gentle cut I remembered from the modern world. I never got to finish that perfectly reasonable doubt.

Skreeeeeeech—!!

"Grrrghk!"

A strangled groan tore out of me. This isn't cutting hair. If luck held, a few strands actually parted. Most of them snarled on the blunt metal and came away skin and all. Th-this is torture. Tears sprang to my eyes. It hurts so fucking bad! Worse, the hair covering my jaw was coarse and thick, and she was ripping it out by main force with a miserable Bronze Age razor. I'm going to die.

"AAAAAGH! L-let me hone the blade myself! Please! Have mercy! Just burn it off with fire!"

Right on cue, a scream went up from the next cell—Daedalus, sounding exactly like a pig having its throat cut. Knowing I wasn't the only one in pain was a strange sort of comfort. It did nothing to make the pain smaller.

I couldn't bring myself to scream in front of my sister. I bit down hard on my lip and endured, a crushed groan leaking through my teeth. But Daedalus's wretched howling startled Ariadne, and she froze where she stood, razor still in hand.

"Asterion? A-are you all right? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠D-does it hurt a lot?"

"I-I'm all right... J-just don't stop. One hard pass. Please finish it quickly..."

My voice shook pathetically. Between my clenched eyelids, a brimmed tear slipped free. Ariadne sucked in a sharp breath at the sight and spoke as if she were about to cry.

"Asterion, y-your tears..."

"Th-this isn't something for you to cry over, Sister. Quickly. Please, quickly."

"R-right! I understand! Hold on tight! I'll finish it fast—really fast!"

Scritch. Skreeeeech! For a while the cell was full of nothing but the merciless sound of coarse hair being torn out.

Fuck. This hurts ten times worse than smashing through the Labyrinth wall.

Back then I'd been mad with hunger and half out of my mind, so the pain had come dulled. Now I was full, I'd slept deep, my condition was excellent, and my nerves were drawn taut and perfectly sober. Every bit of it arrived whole.

"D-done! It's all done, Asterion!"

Ariadne let the razor drop and dragged in a ragged breath. Only then did I let out the one I'd been holding and sag against the chair I was bound to. Jaw and cheeks burned as if they'd been scalded.

"I-I'm sorry, Asterion... It hurt a lot, didn't it? You're not bleeding. I'll put something on it."

She opened a small clay bottle she had brought ahead of time. Costly olive oil, carrying a faint scent of flowers. With a gentle hand she spread it over my jaw and cheeks, flushed an angry red, and worked it in with care. A delicate warmth after crude torture. Under that heat, the burning slowly sank.

When the oil was done, Ariadne took one step back. For the first time she looked straight at my bare face, the husk of the beard cast off. My unfamiliar face lay whole in her large, clear eyes. The line of the jaw was rather heavy, the bones large, but the features were unmistakable.

Human.

Cover the two horns rising at either side of my head, and no one alive could have called me a bull-monster. Ariadne's eyes widened in astonishment. Seeing myself caught in her pupils, I was swept by a strange, fierce gladness. As if we had rehearsed it—

"You're ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠human."

"I'm human."

We spoke at the same moment. We were still looking at each other, a laugh just about to slip free, when iron clanked, screamed on its hinges, and the cell door banged open.

"The hour of judgment is at hand! Drag the prisoners out!"

Deucalion stood in the doorway in full armor, soldiers at his back. They came in, lashed me and Daedalus with prisoner-rope, and hauled us outside. Ariadne moved to follow, but Deucalion's stern refusal stopped her, and her feet stayed planted at the mouth of the cell. She watched my back recede, eyes anxious, both hands clasped tight.

Led into the corridor, I came at last face to face with the old man who had been locked in the next room. Neither of us spoke. I stared blankly at the state of him: a shining bald crown, the hair stripped clean away, and—thanks to the merciless shave the soldiers had just given him—a round face whose whole lower half, from under the nose to the tip of the chin, glowed as red as a monkey's backside. Before I knew it my lips were twitching and my shoulders had begun to jump.

"...Are you laughing?"

Daedalus glared, shot out a bound foot, and kicked me square in the rear.

"You laugh in an elder's face? Think you're something special? You horned beanpole!"

"No, sir, it's just—your face is so..."

"Silence! Prisoners will hold their tongues!"

Deucalion rapped the hilt of his sword and roared, and the two of us shut our mouths as if we'd agreed on it. Daedalus pursed his lips, looked away, then stole one more glance at my bare face.

"Human. Without the horns."

Blunt as it was, the line was a strange comfort. Under the soldiers' escort I walked the corridors of the palace of Crete. I had been certain they would drag me to some solemn audience hall or courtroom inside the palace. They led us out instead.

Step. Step. We started down the streets of Crete beneath a morning sun that stung the skin. People abroad took one look at me—roped tight in nothing but a thin inner garment—and recoiled, clearing the road. A moment later they were whispering, and trailing after us in a trickle.

We walked a long time. No. A fucking long time.

"Hah... hah... Aigoo, my knees... How far are we going..."

After some two hours Daedalus had already gone the color of ash, tongue hanging out, more than half dead. Even my own legs were beginning to ache. At last the column halted. The cool sound of water reached us.

The riverbank was packed so tight there was nowhere to set a foot. The people of Crete had drawn themselves into a vast ring, opening an empty ground like a plaza, and at its center stood a stone altar where a sacred flame burned. And out in the river—

"Hm...?"

I doubted my own eyes. A middle-aged man stood naked in the middle of the current, taking the water on his body, washing himself with sacred gestures as if in the midst of a rite. A short while later he came out, and attendants approached to fit armor carefully over his wet torso. But the shape of that armor—

A woman's?

It was brilliant, well-kept golden bronze, and yet the chest swelled in an unmistakable curve: a woman's cuirass. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Across his shoulders lay a goatskin cloak adorned with a woman's head wreathed in snakes.

"That is..."

Daedalus, panting at my side, whispered low, as if supplying the recognition I couldn't quite place.

"That man... is King Minos. Ruler of Crete."

"The king..."

"And the arms he's wearing now are borrowed from the Lady Athena, goddess of wisdom ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and of righteous war. An oath-rite. For a little while, he takes from the gods the right to judge without favor."

He swallowed drily and went on.

"First time you've seen it, I'd wager. Five years ago, when he sentenced you not to death but to confinement in that vast Labyrinth, the king stood at the altar in those same clothes."

The moment I heard it, something heavy settled in my chest. A bastard, born of his wife's adultery. The offspring of bestiality—a living shame no water could ever wash clean. Rather than put me to death, he had, five years ago as well, borrowed that heavy armor of a goddess and passed down a fair judgment in a god's name, so that I might live, sealed inside the Labyrinth.

That man was King Minos. Lawgiver. The great lord who led the golden age of Crete. The man who had bestowed on me the hallowed name of his own adoptive father: Asterion.

Perhaps...

When all the world called me monster, the one man who might have thought of me as his son. My father, if only in name.

Helmeted, King Minos walked slowly out before the altar.

"Kneel."

At Deucalion's command, Daedalus and I lowered ourselves toward the altar. Cold earth at the river's edge met our bare knees. Thousands of citizens watched us, not daring to breathe. The world held only the running of the water and the crackle of wood burning down upon the altar. King Minos spread both arms toward heaven.

The king's great voice crossed the riverbank and rolled, solemn, through the sky over Crete. He lowered his arms, let his gaze travel once over the crowd, and pointed at me.

So he declared. And then—

"His son? Not the queen's bastard, but His Majesty's own son?!"

"King Minos has acknowledged that monster as his own blood!"

"Gods above—that horned monster is Prince Asterion?!"

The citizens erupted. Shock-struck cries and a furious mutter poured out of them, and the whole bank heaved as if it had gone mad. Even Deucalion, who had been escorting me, stared at his father Minos as if he could not believe it, lips trembling. I felt my own heart slam so hard I thought it would burst.

A sacred judgment, with every citizen looking on. Toward the horned, man-eating monster born of his wife's adultery, Minos, the great king of Crete, had said it in the open. That I was his son.

Tick. Tap-tick. Tick. Inside the roar the crowd was pouring out, one sound—utterly foreign, and yet familiar—bored into my ear. I jerked my head around and raked the packed mass of people, then realized almost at once that it was useless. The woman I had seen in the prison the night before, Calliope, Muse of epic poetry, stayed veiled in deep shadow even in full light. Her features could not be made out at all. There was no finding, in this chaos, a woman whose face I had never even known.

Tick, tap-tick, tick, tick... I could not see her. But that steady, razor-clear sound of a sharp stylus scraping down a clay tablet cut through even the vast murmur of the gathering and rang, distinct, at my ear.