The whirl of swallow feathers had deposited him back in his room. Now he sat once more among the silk and the finery of his chamber. He didn’t know what time of day or night it was. He couldn’t see the sun out of his window, but the shadows in his room were long.

Agatha burst into the room, mid-sentence: ‘… looking after this princeling when there’s a new baby to see to …’ She spotted Tisamenos and immediately he covered up his mutilated hand. Her eyes narrowed. ‘And where have you been? Gallivanting about all day …’

‘All day?’

‘Yes, all day, and you know that very well too.’

Her eyesight was none too good, and she didn’t appear to notice the marks on his face. He would have to find a way to keep his hand covered permanently. His mind was spinning, and he ignored Agatha as she flounced about the room, plumping up cushions and rootling in chests. Eventually, when she had finished whatever she had come in to do, she left, still mid-flow, and Tisamenos went to the door and stood with his back against it, out of breath.

Who could he turn to? He had sworn to take his revenge.

The Swallows – what were their motives? They’d wanted the head of the Last Gorgon as a weapon, but for what? Were they bent on the destruction of his family, his kinghouse?

He’d kept the Last Gorgon’s head. He had not wanted to render it to them, unsure of their plans. Because he held it still, they had not been able to take it from him.

And if he did take his revenge on Erigone, what would then happen? Orestes would have him killed, surely, or exiled.

Maybe that was a better fate. To be exiled, into the lands of Achaea. To be a wanderer among the cities, like the bards; an adventurer, living on his wits alone.

And at what price?

He remembered the stories. How Orestes had been haunted by the Furies when he’d killed Clytemnestra.

But Electra had helped him. And Electra was still alive.

A thought fired through Tisamenos.

Electra. His aunt Electra. He would go and see her now. She had always been rather a distant figure, glimpsed at ceremonies and the larger family events, a dark-clothed, ghostly presence.

She knew about revenge. She knew its cost.

He found his aunt in her quarters, near those of the women of the kinghouse, but spacious and apart.

Arrows of light pierced the gloom in her apartment. She was standing by the window, looking out, as she often did, at nothing, her hands clasped to her bosom. Her attendants were not with her.

There was no loom in the room. Electra did not occupy herself with weaving. The only furnishing was a small table with a chair set by it, and on it an open wax tablet on which Electra had been marking something down.