The light dimmed, and he was gone; Tisamenos was not sure whether he’d even opened the door or not.

Use what you have. He had a sliver of stone in his mind. He was becoming part of the kinghouse. He had been fighting it; he should try to make peace with it.

He breathed deeply, and calmed himself.

Now he closed his eyes, and laid his forehead against the stone. It was quiet now, and he wandered the halls of the kinghouse in his mind.

But this time, the halls were peopled. Some he recognised, and some he did not.

His mother Hermione was rounding a corner, her robes sweeping the floor, confiding something to a companion. He strained to hear what she was saying, but could not, and when he caught up with her she was gone. In the hall, Menelaus and Helen were enjoying a banquet. He was fatter than Agamemnon, and gazed adoringly at his wife, who had enough of Hermione about her to make Tisamenos stop and stare. There, in a corner, his grandmother Clytemnestra was gripping a sword, full of intent, and there marched Agamemnon, unknowingly heading towards his death at his wife’s hands.

It was as if all time had collapsed into itself. This was how the kinghouse saw things. It was a great pattern, everybody moving about like pieces on a board. If only he could work out how the pattern formed. If only he could work out how to break it.

Deep in the cellars he focused on the haunting, dark presence of the Fury. He edged around her, feeling her terrible power.

As he walked, he caught sight of a face, handsome and smiling, flitting just out of sight. Demos. He began to know who Demos was. Sometimes he wore a helmet out of which poked two tiny wings. Sometimes he flew, alighting on roof beams and door lintels. Sometimes he was leaning against a clothes press, a staff in his hand, and around the staff, a snake twined with its twin.

Hermes, messenger of the gods, in human guise. He was sure of it. Hermes had come to him, to help him.

Everything was the same to the kinghouse, he understood. Wars, famines, raids, plagues. Everything that might devastate a city had happened to it, and it had lived through it all.

It knew Tisamenos now, and he knew it wanted to help him. He would channel its power into the right course.

He did not have to wait long for his trial.

His father came the next morning, carrying a bowl of warm stew and a fine horn of ale. Orestes ordered aside the guard, and came to sit by his son on the stone floor.