What is that?” I cried, gripping Terix’s arm. Beside me, Bone growled, his hackles rising.

“Jupiter’s hairy balls, I’ve got no idea.”

Together we gaped at the tall, dun-colored beast lazily chewing grain beside a market stall lined with deeply colored carpets, glassware in hues of green and blue, and platters and lamps of polished copper. With nothing to do to fill our afternoon before moving into the palace, Sid had suggested that Terix and I explore the marketplace while he took a nap. I was glad of the distraction, as it kept me from stewing on how inappropriately I had been dressed for court, and from second-guessing every word I’d said.

Fenwig and two soldiers followed several steps behind us, their own astonishment at the riches of the marketplace as great as ours, though they did a better job of hiding it. We’d already seen more new sights in this short time than in all our years put together: people in all shapes and colors, foodstuffs we didn’t recognize and tasted with shrieks of surprise and disgust, brocade cloths and dyed leathers and embroidered trims that dizzied me with their colors and artistry—but this tall, four-legged, lumpy creature made all else seem commonplace.

Gripping each other’s hands for courage, we inched closer. “It looks tame,” Terix said.

“I wouldn’t think they’d leave it tied to a stall post if it was dangerous. Would they? Perhaps it guards against thieves.”

It had a long, flexible neck and a head like a misshapen loaf of bread. It turned its head to stare at us. I giggled.

“What?”

“Its big eyes, with those long lashes. They’re like Alaric’s.”

As we got closer, Terix reached out a hand to touch it. Bone moved forward at the same time, alarming the beast: it craned its neck and spit a wad of slobber and grain right into Bone’s face.

Bone yelped, then hunched down and pawed at his muzzle, trying to scrape off the mess. Terix and I both laughed, and our voices brought the stall owner out from the shadows, where he’d been sitting on a stool working on a piece of jewelry.

The middle-aged man was short and swarthy, with a narrow black beard that came to a point. He put his hands on his hips and gave us a mock-serious look. “Are you thinking of buying my Jasmine?” he asked in Latin. “She comes at a very high price, I warn you. You’d have to go a thousand miles to find such a beauty as this.”

“I do not doubt it,” I said. “Please, could you tell us: what is your Jasmine?”

He stroked the animal on the neck, and she responded by baring her front teeth. “Hey, hey, no more spitting. It’s bad manners. And besides, you love me.” He reached into her bucket and held a handful of grain for her. “My Jasmine is a camel; a beast of burden from the deserts, where they travel for hundreds of miles before needing water.”

“Oh! I’ve heard of camels, I think. How comes she to be here, so far from a desert?”

“She came with me, of course! Every summer I come from Syria with my goods, and my Jasmine would pine away to nothing if I left her home without me. Camels are sensitive creatures.” He winked. “And she gets attention, yes? Everyone knows which stall is Naji’s. I am Naji.”

“And this is your stall.”

“Why yes! Won’t you come in? I have a pair of golden slippers that would turn your feet into those of a nymph.”

“I think nymphs go barefoot.”

“Only because they don’t have slippers such as these.”

We let him draw us into his stall, where he sat us on stuffed leather stools and brought us sweet mint tea and almond cakes, chattering all the while. I suspected his friendliness was an act meant to make us feel awkward if we did not buy something, but he was so good at it—or so genuine, and perhaps the two were the same—that I did not want to leave, and felt as if I would buy a goblet or platter I didn’t need purely to stay in his good graces.

Terix fell for a belt decorated with bronze studs in the shapes of stylized animals, each one different and many of them unrecognizable to us. When he strapped it around his hips, the long tongue hung down in front to mid-thigh. “It will make women think my mentula is just as big,” he said happily.

“They might think it as floppy, too,” I said as I paid for the belt out of the purse Clovis had given me.

Terix grasped the strap in his fist and slowly stroked downward, as if pulling his rod. “No woman can see this and not want to make it stand. Here Nimia, touch it.” He waggled the end of the belt at me.

I laughed, slapping at it. “Get it away!”

He let the end droop over his hand. “Aw. Now he’s sad.”

“Good. He needs to behave himself, at least in public.” I’d talked to Terix about the prudery that reigned at Alaric’s court. He was as befuddled as I was, and dismayed that there might not be many carefree young maids eager for a bit of fun behind the kitchens, in the stables, under shrubberies. . . .

I bought a richly colored red and blue carpet for Clovis—he would be the only Frank to have such a thing—as well as a finely woven, impossibly soft blanket for Theo; an exotic dagger for Basina; and with Terix’s advice I chose a silver and turquoise necklace for Audofleda. I had gone mad with my shopping, but never in my life had I had either a purse full of coin or temptations such as these.

“Now you must have something for yourself,” Naji said. “A necklace of amber, I think, to draw upon the gold in your eyes.” He was reaching for such when I stopped him.

“I have the only necklace I’ll ever want,” I said, and shifted aside the filmy scarf at my neck to reveal the labyrinth and bee.

Naji squinted at it, then begged my pardon and leaned closer. I held it away from my skin so he could see the intricate work of the labyrinth, which perfectly echoed the tattoos over my loins and sex. The goldsmith who made the necklace had suffered through an afternoon of blushes and a stiff erection as he traced the designs from my body.

Naji’s mouth tightened and he stroked his beard, staring at the necklace. “An unusual piece. Where did you find it?”

“It was made for me. The labyrinth is the same as was tattooed on my body when I was a child.” I had become so comfortable with Naji, the information spilled from me without thought.

“And the bee?”

“Ah. That is a different story, and too long to tell.”

“And yet it is part of the necklace.”

“I wanted it there, I’m not sure why. It felt . . . fitting. As if that was where it was meant to be.”

Naji wound the end of his beard around his finger and tugged at it, looking strangely nervous. “I thought you said you were from the north, that you lived among the Franks.”

“At the moment. Before that, somewhere in the Alps.”

“Not farther south?”

I shook my head. “Not that I know of, but my people, the Phanne, seemed more likely to travel than not. Why?”

He released his beard and smiled. “I was thinking of the story of Ariadne, and the labyrinth.”

I got the feeling that wasn’t entirely what had been going through his head. What was he hiding? “Yes, I know it.”

“A myth, of course. A story the Greeks created.”

I nodded, curious where this was going.

“There was truth at the base of it, though; a memory of ancient peoples who built great stone labyrinths such as the design you wear on your neck and skin.”

I leaned forward, excitement rising within me. “Which peoples?” This was the first I’d ever heard of labyrinths being real structures, rather than drawn designs or decorative patterns of tiles upon a floor.

“Their names are lost to time . . . but not all their works are. Many years ago I was on a trading voyage, and came to the harbor of Cnossos on the isle of Crete. Repairs to the ship meant a delay, and a local woman I befriended—a beauty, she was, with long black hair in silken ringlets and a bosom like . . . Never mind that, you don’t want to hear it—brought me to the ruins of such a labyrinth, hidden away in the hills, near the remains of a forgotten palace buried in the soils of time. She said that the local women believed that if one made love at the center of the labyrinth, with honey smeared upon one’s loins, the gods would grant a child from the union.”

“Did you try it?” I asked, breathless.

Naji’s eyes showed strain at the corners, and his smile was almost a grimace. “I wanted her badly enough, but not so much the child, eh? And besides that . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Naji, tell me, please. I know so little of my people. I was taken from them when I was too young to learn their ways.”

“Perhaps the gods were being kind.”

I waited.

Naji breathed out a long breath through his nose and tossed up his hands. “My beautiful woman, she was not alone. There were other women waiting in the labyrinth, and one held a gold, double-headed axe. I chose life over lust, and fled.”

“Wh-what were they going to do to you?”

“I chose not to find out.”

My distress must have shown on my face, for he refilled my cup of mint tea and gave me a sad smile. “Surely they were not your people. They were ignorant peasants, following the echoes of a ritual from centuries past. It’s your bee that made me remember that day. It’s not so usual to see a bee—the maker of honey—with a labyrinth, is it? So I wondered if your people, too, made love smeared with honey, at the center of a maze.”

“And if we sacrificed the man afterward with an axe? Gods, I hope not.” I remembered how I had used honey to trace the design in the chalice, before using it to cure myself. Could the Phanne have originally come from Crete, centuries past? And if so, what had happened to drive them out? More important still: were those women Phanne? “Did you discover anything else about the labyrinth, or the people who had built it, or lived in the palace?”

“There was not much more talking between us. But on the way to the labyrinth, she’d taken me down into a small room in the buried palace ruins, and showed me a fragment of fresco that had somehow survived. There wasn’t much left to see, or that could be made out. I remember spirals, though. . . . Endless spirals.”

“Spirals,” I echoed, and felt my breasts tingle. They were covered in spirals, too.

“Over these years since, I have sailed to many of the ports along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Sometimes I have heard of other labyrinths: in Egypt. In Africa, in the lands of the Mauri. In Byzantium. I have had a fascination with them since that day in Crete.”

“Have you heard of the Phanne, in any of these places?”

He shook his head, then said with false cheer, “Maybe someday you will see one of these labyrinths for yourself.”

I nodded, my mind lost in possibilities . . . and impossibilities. How would I ever get to Crete, or Byzantium? I hadn’t even made it to Britannia, to find Maerlin of the Phanne. I wasn’t even so certain now that I wanted to.

A double-headed axe of gold . . . There was only one thing you did with such a weapon: you killed a living creature, and sacrificed its blood to the gods.

My stomach turned uneasily, remembering how I’d made Terix spill his blood into the chalice, and I cast a glance his way, to find him doing the same to me.

“And when you walk one of these labyrinths,” Naji went on without enthusiasm, “you should be wearing golden slippers such as these.” He brought out a pair of slippers embroidered with golden threads and encrusted with small circles of polished tin that glinted like sunlight on water.

Naji’s delight in our company had clearly worn thin. I sensed he wanted to be rid of us, my association with labyrinths bringing up too many dark suspicions. So I bought the slippers and we left.