Icarus Descending - Atlantis Fanfic
Icarus hurried through the streets of Atlantis, keeping the hood of his cloak low over his face, heading home as fast as he could. Being out after curfew was getting more and more risky and they’d all pushed their luck far too much that night. Icarus still couldn’t believe his father had thought it was a good idea to set off an explosion in the temple courtyard of all places. And then there was the foolhardy idea of disguising themselves with lepers… worse, standing there with lepers, risking contamination… But once his father had an idea in his head, once that gleeful expression settled itself on his face, there was no dissuading him. Certainly not by his son, who was well aware that he was the very last person Daedalus would ever listen to.
But it had worked and they’d got away with it. Icarus could hardly believe it. He’d thought it was a stupid plan, but both his father and Pythagoras had been so confident. Okay, his father had been confident anyway. Daedalus was always confident. One of the many things Icarus had failed to inherit from him.
Pythagoras had got into the building while the guards were distracted, and had stolen the artefact so that he could carry out whatever idiotic plan he had up his sleeve. It was strange, Icarus thought, that the two people he cared most about in the world were also at the same time the most brilliantly clever, brave and fearless idiots he knew.
Splitting up had been his father’s suggestion, and Icarus had been only too happy to be the one who waited around to help Pythagoras escape the city with the precious artefact. He had wanted to see for himself, to make sure. Now he would know if his father had been as lucky.
Icarus wasn’t too worried. His father was as slippery as he was brilliant. He would have talked his way out of any trouble he might have encountered on the way home. In some ways his father seemed as indestructible as he was brilliant. And yet, the way the city was now, the patrols, the new laws, the way everyone was so afraid…
He passed the dark shadow of a body hanging over the street and was careful not to look up. That could have been them, it could so easily have been them.
A patrol was up ahead, marching down the street. He slipped quickly into the shadow of a doorway, waiting until they had passed before continuing on his way.
Icarus was good at hiding. He’d spent most of his life hiding in some way. Hiding from his father as a boy, when his tutor had let his father know how poor Icarus was at learning the sciences. Hiding his feelings for Pythagoras when he’d started to realise how much his friend meant to him. Hiding in the streets after dark in secret and making now illegal rendezvous. Hiding just how much time he had been spending with Pythagoras. Yes, it was something Icarus was good at, for the most part. Not good enough to make his father proud, he didn’t seem to be good enough at anything for that. And not good enough to ever hide any of it from his father for long. Daedalus had dragged it all out of him eventually, he always did.
There was no light in the doorway when he arrived home, but that wasn’t surprising. His father wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to attract attention. Besides, they lived for the most part down in the cellars where Daedalus had built his workshop. The rooms on the ground floor were small and cramped. Downstairs they had all the space they wanted.
Quickly, Icarus pushed open the door, glanced around one last time to make sure he wasn’t observed, and slipped inside, bolting the door behind him.
Sure enough, his father was downstairs. The man was grinning from ear to ear, probably still high from setting off the explosions. Daedalus loved anything like that. He’d probably be in an excitable mood from it for days. One day, Icarus thought, his father’s love of blowing things up was going to get them into a lot of trouble. They were lucky it hadn’t already happened that night.
“Did Pythagoras get away?”
Pythagoras had got away. That was the one good thing in all of this, that at least for a short time Pythagoras was out of danger. Until the next time Pasiphae sent troops after him and his friends, or worse.
“He did. I don’t know when we will see him again.” That last bit had slipped out, unintentionally. He saw his father look at him sharply, briefly, then away. Daedalus always seemed to approve of Icarus’ gently blossoming relationship with Pythagoras, probably because it was Pythagoras, but he could never be completely sure.
“Pythagoras is an intelligent man. I am quite sure you will see him again, Icarus. After all, there’s barely been a single week this past year when either he hasn’t found some excuse to visit us, or you have found some excuse to visit him. And being a fugitive doesn’t seem to be making much difference.”
That was his father. He always noticed everything, it was one of the reasons he was so brilliant. Icarus noticed things too. He noticed the way his father always listened to Pythagoras. He noticed the way his father always took very little notice of anything Icarus said. He noticed the way that the pair of them would huddle together, excitedly discussing theories and inventions. He noticed the way that his father would roll his eyes if Icarus failed to keep up.
Icarus wasn’t stupid. He’d always done well with his studies, although never quite well enough to please his father. Daedalus had evidently expected to produce a genius. But Icarus took after his mother, whom he could barely remember. Clever enough, but not so much that she hadn’t succumbed to a fever and left them both too quickly.
“I pray he will stay safe,” was all Icarus said. “Tonight was dangerous. We…”
There was a sudden hammering on the door upstairs. The two men stared at each other in horror.
“Open up in the name of the queen!”
Not the rightful queen.
“Hide!” Daedalus pushed him towards the door of the little room where Icarus slept. Daedalus preferred his workshop so that if some wild idea came to him in the night he could start work right away. But Icarus had his own small corner of the world where he could hide away. “You’re asleep. You’ve been asleep for hours when they ask.”
“But…”
“Just do it or they’ll take both of us. And if they take me, get out of the city. Go and find Pythagoras and stay with him. Do not tell him what has happened, I knew what I was doing. Do not let him try to stage a rescue, and do not come back here.”
“Father…”
“Don’t argue. You always try to argue. You’re no good at it. Now go!” He pushed Icarus inside the room and slammed the door in his face.
For a moment Icarus wanted to run back out, face whatever it was with his father. But Daedalus was right, as always. There was nothing to be gained by both of them being captured. As he scrambled out of his clothes and into his sleep tunic he heard the soldiers shouting again, heard the door being opened and his father arguing with them.
“It was a scientific experiment! Lepers have such dull, dreary lives. I thought I’d liven things up a bit for them. Nobody was hurt…”
It wasn’t the time to play around, but that had never stopped him before. Icarus quickly rumpled the bedding, then headed back out to the workshop, doing his best to look half-asleep.
“What’s going on?”
Goran, the much-feared head of the queen’s army was out there. So many soldiers with him, the workshop suddenly seemed tiny and cramped. And there, in the centre of them, hands already bound, was his father.
“That’s my son,” he said. “See, he was asleep. He’s not very bright, he had nothing to do with this.”
It wasn’t unusual for Daedalus to say such things, Icarus had lived his entire life listening to it. But there was a real risk that it might be the last thing he ever heard his father say.
There had never really been any question that the queen wouldn’t know who had set off the bomb. His father was famous for it, accidental explosions at any random time of the day or night. Anything dangerous and insane. Someone would have talked.
“What’s happening?” Icarus asked again. He didn’t have to force the panic into his voice. What they’d done… Pasiphae wasn’t a benevolent ruler. She would have his father’s head for this. People had been hung in the streets for far less. “Father?”
“Your father is under arrest. He tried to blow up the temple.”
“Oh I did not,” Daedalus protested. “If I had tried to blow up the temple there would be nothing left of it! Obviously I had no intention of doing any such thing. Those were carefully controlled explosions. You see, the scientific…”
“Silence!” Goran snarled. “Not another word.” He turned to Icarus, looked him up and down in some disdain, then appeared to dismiss him. “Take that one away,” he ordered the guards holding Daedalus.
“But what will happen to him?” Icarus asked. “Please… he’s my father…”
“Be strong, Icarus,” Daedalus urged him. “Keep out of this.”
“But…”
Goran turned on him angrily. “Your father has as good as confessed. He will be questioned, and then punished accordingly, as all traitors to the crown are.”
“No…”
There were several punishments, but with the number of people being executed at present, hanging was far and away the most likely.
“Silence, or you may find yourself joining him,” Goran warned.
Several of his men were searching around, being none too careful. They’d found one of Daedalus’ pots of firepowder, which was evidence enough to damn him. Icarus’ eyes widened at the triumphant expression on Goran’s face when his men showed them what they’d discovered. He opened his mouth to protest again.
“Be quiet!” Daedalus urged, and Icarus reluctantly obeyed. He dropped back, never taking his eyes off his father. Daedalus was all the family he had ever known, his mother was only a vague memory. The thought of losing his beloved father was horrific.
“Guards!” Goran ordered.
Icarus could only stand there and watch as his father was led away. And then he was alone in the house they’d shared for so many years, surrounded by his father’s inventions. Some were broken by the rough entry of the queen’s men. He bent to pick one up, some strange contraption his father had been working on the previous day. Ruined now, and likely to never be finished. His hands shaking, he laid it carefully on the workbench. He didn’t try to fix it. Not yet.
---
They wouldn’t let him see his father the next day, or the day after that.
By then Jason had appeared in the city carrying the gorgon’s head, killed many soldiers and rescued the true queen. It was whispered that he’d turned men to stone, and that it had blackened his own heart in turn. Medusa had been his friend, they said. How could he do such a thing? There were rumours and half-truths, whispers and lies. Icarus listened to them all, trying to find word of Pythagoras without actually asking for it.
Despite what his father had ordered, Icarus hadn’t left the city. He couldn’t bear to, not with his father locked up. Every day he went to the palace, trying to gain access to the dungeons. But he was just one of many people trying to get in, trying to see their loved ones or at least hear their fate. Every day he queued up with them. Every day he was turned away.
On the third day the queue was shorter. Icarus tried not to think of what the reason for that might be. There had been a lot of people executed after Jason’s rescue of Ariadne. People hung in the streets just for breaking curfew. Icarus had seen them, had looked at each one just in case. And then he had read the lists of those executed inside the palace, the list that was posted every day on the gates. His father’s name wasn’t among them.
Slowly the people in front were let in. He would see them come out again a short while later, grieving, crying.
And then, suddenly he was at the front.
“Name!” the guard barked.
He almost said Icarus, then realised it was his father’s name they wanted. He watched the guard scroll up and down his list, pause on Daedalus and look back at Icarus suspiciously.
“No visitors for that one.”
“Please! He is my father!”
“No exceptions. Try again tomorrow.”
“But why can’t I see him?”
The guard had already turned away, was already asking for the next name. Icarus pushed his way in front of the man, not giving up so easily.
“I have been waiting for days. I have to see him. Please!”
The guard looked at him, then held out his hand expectantly. That, Icarus realised, was how it would be. It was probably what was happening to everyone.
“I have very little,” he explained, placing a coin in the man’s hand. The guard looked at it, then stuck his hand out again. Icarus doubled the amount, and finally was allowed past.
The stench as he descended was disgusting. There were too many people down there in various stages of deterioration. Several of the cages he passed looked as if they contained dead bodies, but he didn’t look too closely. The guard had directed him down, and Icarus was intent only on finding the cell he wanted. It had been made clear to him that he wouldn’t be allowed to stay for long. There were other men scattered around, guarding the cells. One of them would order him out soon enough.
After seeing the state of the other prisoners, he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised.But finding his proud and brilliant father, the man he had looked up to all his life, curled in the corner of a prison cell looking frail and vulnerable was a shock.
“Father!”
It seemed to cost Daedalus a great deal to raise his head and look up at his son. Icarus pressed as close as he could to the bars. He wasn’t allowed inside, he knew that much. He could see from the way his father moved, favouring his right side, that his time in prison had not been easy.
“Icarus.” Daedalus shifted closer to the bars, keeping his voice low. He was moving very slowly, gingerly. “You should not be here.”
“I could not leave you. What has happened to you?” He crouched down so that they were at a level.
“They believe I know where Jason and Queen Ariadne are hiding. Oh, do not worry, I said nothing no matter what they did.”
“What did they do?” Icarus breathed. “Father…”
“It does not matter. My son, you must leave the city.”
“No, I will find a way to help you…” Icarus began. He had no idea what he could do, but right then he would do anything to quell the rising panic he felt inside just from looking at the state of his father.
“There is no help. I am to be hanged. The only question is when.”
“No!”
“Yes, and the only reason it has not already been done is because they believed I had information.I have given nothing, therefore I am useless to them. Pythagoras, he would see the logic.”
Icarus felt a pang of fear just at the mention of the name. He had heard nothing since Pythagoras had fled the city. For all Icarus knew he could already be dead.
“Father, I could petition the queen…”
“No. Do not go near her. My son,” he gripped the bars of his cage, keeping his voice low and their faces close. “You mustn’t risk yourself. Don’t come here again. Leave the city. I would rather die knowing you at least are safe.”
Icarus could not leave the city, not while his father was trapped there. Daedalus had no idea what he was asking of him.
“Time’s up!”
Icarus didn’t need to look around to know that the guard’s shout was directed at him. It was too short a time, there was much he wanted to say.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Icarus promised. “I’ll find Pythagoras, tell him what’s happened. He’ll come and help.”
This was Pythagoras’ fault, after all. He’d come into the city, they’d helped him, and now their lives were torn apart. But Icarus couldn’t find it in him to blame Pythagoras. Instead he blamed the little-known Jason, the barely-known queen. He bore them no ill, but in the grand scheme of things they were nothing to him.Pythagoras believed in them, and that had brought them all to this.
“No. You’re not to tell him anything. What he’s doing is more important. Promise me, Icarus. Promise me you won’t tell him what’s happened.”
Icarus looked down at his father behind the heavy bars. His face was beaten so badly that one eye was half-closed, and had been left so weak that he hadn’t even attempted to stand and greet him. Even his voice, making demands, sounded weak.
“Promise me.”
People died in jailbreaks. His father was too weak to run if it came down to it. No, the only way was to get him released.
“I promise,” he agreed.
“Out! Now!” the guard shouted. Reluctantly Icarus got to his feet.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised. His father just gave him a small smile. It appeared to cost him a great deal of effort.
Heading back up into the light, Icarus swore he’d find a way.
---
Days passed, and Icarus had indeed found a way.
Given an unbearable deadline, he had blurted out an offer to Goran. It was an unforgiveable betrayal of Pythagoras’ trust that would undoubtedly cost him any chance of love if it was ever discovered. Once done, he could never take it back. He had given his father an extra day down in the cells, then another.
Far away, Pythagoras would be trusting him, counting on him. But Pythagoras was free. He wasn’t trapped and helpless. He stood a chance, more of a chance than Daedalus anyway. Icarus had to keep telling himself that. He hated himself for what he was doing.
There was no longer any need to bribe the guard. Instead he was escorted down by the head of the queen’s army himself, allowed to take food and water, allowed into the cage that held his father.
He tried not to allow himself to wonder if one day the cell might hold the other man he loved instead, and if it might be his fault. It wasn’t a thought he could deal with. Instead, he tended to his ailing father.
“How, Icarus?” Even beaten, tortured and half-starved in a prison cell, his father had the power to make him feel small, inconsequential. He couldn’t lie. But he couldn’t utter the truth either. The truth was something his father would never forgive him for. But what else could he have done? If he hadn’t done it then Daedalus would be dead by now.
“How did you stop the execution, Icarus? What did you do?”
He looked down at his father’s weary, battered face. He’d bought them time at least, but at how high a price?
“I’ll come back tomorrow.”
Not answering the question was never going to work. His father leaned as close as he could, his face pressing against the bars of the cell, his voice a hissed whisper. “No, tell me what you did. Gods, Icarus, tell me it wasn’t something that’s going to make me ashamed.”
He looked down, trying to hide the nervous twitch in his face that he could never quite control. He couldn’t answer, but he was afraid it was answering for him.
Before he could give himself away, Icarus fled.He could not, would not think of Pythagoras and the way he looked at him, the way he made Icarus’ heart sing when they were together. His father would still be in danger tomorrow, and that had to remain his concern.Daedalus might be the one in the prison cell, but it was Icarus who was locked away, trapped in a hell of his own creation. If he tried to break away now, his father would pay with a slow and painful death. And if he didn’t, it might well be Pythagoras who paid. In the end, whatever he did, both his father and his love were going to hate him for it.
The time for choice was long gone. With every day that he kept Daedalus alive, a little piece of Icarus died. Outside the cells, as always, Goran would be there asking for payment.
With a heavy heart, Icarus waited.
But it had worked and they’d got away with it. Icarus could hardly believe it. He’d thought it was a stupid plan, but both his father and Pythagoras had been so confident. Okay, his father had been confident anyway. Daedalus was always confident. One of the many things Icarus had failed to inherit from him.
Pythagoras had got into the building while the guards were distracted, and had stolen the artefact so that he could carry out whatever idiotic plan he had up his sleeve. It was strange, Icarus thought, that the two people he cared most about in the world were also at the same time the most brilliantly clever, brave and fearless idiots he knew.
Splitting up had been his father’s suggestion, and Icarus had been only too happy to be the one who waited around to help Pythagoras escape the city with the precious artefact. He had wanted to see for himself, to make sure. Now he would know if his father had been as lucky.
Icarus wasn’t too worried. His father was as slippery as he was brilliant. He would have talked his way out of any trouble he might have encountered on the way home. In some ways his father seemed as indestructible as he was brilliant. And yet, the way the city was now, the patrols, the new laws, the way everyone was so afraid…
He passed the dark shadow of a body hanging over the street and was careful not to look up. That could have been them, it could so easily have been them.
A patrol was up ahead, marching down the street. He slipped quickly into the shadow of a doorway, waiting until they had passed before continuing on his way.
Icarus was good at hiding. He’d spent most of his life hiding in some way. Hiding from his father as a boy, when his tutor had let his father know how poor Icarus was at learning the sciences. Hiding his feelings for Pythagoras when he’d started to realise how much his friend meant to him. Hiding in the streets after dark in secret and making now illegal rendezvous. Hiding just how much time he had been spending with Pythagoras. Yes, it was something Icarus was good at, for the most part. Not good enough to make his father proud, he didn’t seem to be good enough at anything for that. And not good enough to ever hide any of it from his father for long. Daedalus had dragged it all out of him eventually, he always did.
There was no light in the doorway when he arrived home, but that wasn’t surprising. His father wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to attract attention. Besides, they lived for the most part down in the cellars where Daedalus had built his workshop. The rooms on the ground floor were small and cramped. Downstairs they had all the space they wanted.
Quickly, Icarus pushed open the door, glanced around one last time to make sure he wasn’t observed, and slipped inside, bolting the door behind him.
Sure enough, his father was downstairs. The man was grinning from ear to ear, probably still high from setting off the explosions. Daedalus loved anything like that. He’d probably be in an excitable mood from it for days. One day, Icarus thought, his father’s love of blowing things up was going to get them into a lot of trouble. They were lucky it hadn’t already happened that night.
“Did Pythagoras get away?”
Pythagoras had got away. That was the one good thing in all of this, that at least for a short time Pythagoras was out of danger. Until the next time Pasiphae sent troops after him and his friends, or worse.
“He did. I don’t know when we will see him again.” That last bit had slipped out, unintentionally. He saw his father look at him sharply, briefly, then away. Daedalus always seemed to approve of Icarus’ gently blossoming relationship with Pythagoras, probably because it was Pythagoras, but he could never be completely sure.
“Pythagoras is an intelligent man. I am quite sure you will see him again, Icarus. After all, there’s barely been a single week this past year when either he hasn’t found some excuse to visit us, or you have found some excuse to visit him. And being a fugitive doesn’t seem to be making much difference.”
That was his father. He always noticed everything, it was one of the reasons he was so brilliant. Icarus noticed things too. He noticed the way his father always listened to Pythagoras. He noticed the way his father always took very little notice of anything Icarus said. He noticed the way that the pair of them would huddle together, excitedly discussing theories and inventions. He noticed the way that his father would roll his eyes if Icarus failed to keep up.
Icarus wasn’t stupid. He’d always done well with his studies, although never quite well enough to please his father. Daedalus had evidently expected to produce a genius. But Icarus took after his mother, whom he could barely remember. Clever enough, but not so much that she hadn’t succumbed to a fever and left them both too quickly.
“I pray he will stay safe,” was all Icarus said. “Tonight was dangerous. We…”
There was a sudden hammering on the door upstairs. The two men stared at each other in horror.
“Open up in the name of the queen!”
Not the rightful queen.
“Hide!” Daedalus pushed him towards the door of the little room where Icarus slept. Daedalus preferred his workshop so that if some wild idea came to him in the night he could start work right away. But Icarus had his own small corner of the world where he could hide away. “You’re asleep. You’ve been asleep for hours when they ask.”
“But…”
“Just do it or they’ll take both of us. And if they take me, get out of the city. Go and find Pythagoras and stay with him. Do not tell him what has happened, I knew what I was doing. Do not let him try to stage a rescue, and do not come back here.”
“Father…”
“Don’t argue. You always try to argue. You’re no good at it. Now go!” He pushed Icarus inside the room and slammed the door in his face.
For a moment Icarus wanted to run back out, face whatever it was with his father. But Daedalus was right, as always. There was nothing to be gained by both of them being captured. As he scrambled out of his clothes and into his sleep tunic he heard the soldiers shouting again, heard the door being opened and his father arguing with them.
“It was a scientific experiment! Lepers have such dull, dreary lives. I thought I’d liven things up a bit for them. Nobody was hurt…”
It wasn’t the time to play around, but that had never stopped him before. Icarus quickly rumpled the bedding, then headed back out to the workshop, doing his best to look half-asleep.
“What’s going on?”
Goran, the much-feared head of the queen’s army was out there. So many soldiers with him, the workshop suddenly seemed tiny and cramped. And there, in the centre of them, hands already bound, was his father.
“That’s my son,” he said. “See, he was asleep. He’s not very bright, he had nothing to do with this.”
It wasn’t unusual for Daedalus to say such things, Icarus had lived his entire life listening to it. But there was a real risk that it might be the last thing he ever heard his father say.
There had never really been any question that the queen wouldn’t know who had set off the bomb. His father was famous for it, accidental explosions at any random time of the day or night. Anything dangerous and insane. Someone would have talked.
“What’s happening?” Icarus asked again. He didn’t have to force the panic into his voice. What they’d done… Pasiphae wasn’t a benevolent ruler. She would have his father’s head for this. People had been hung in the streets for far less. “Father?”
“Your father is under arrest. He tried to blow up the temple.”
“Oh I did not,” Daedalus protested. “If I had tried to blow up the temple there would be nothing left of it! Obviously I had no intention of doing any such thing. Those were carefully controlled explosions. You see, the scientific…”
“Silence!” Goran snarled. “Not another word.” He turned to Icarus, looked him up and down in some disdain, then appeared to dismiss him. “Take that one away,” he ordered the guards holding Daedalus.
“But what will happen to him?” Icarus asked. “Please… he’s my father…”
“Be strong, Icarus,” Daedalus urged him. “Keep out of this.”
“But…”
Goran turned on him angrily. “Your father has as good as confessed. He will be questioned, and then punished accordingly, as all traitors to the crown are.”
“No…”
There were several punishments, but with the number of people being executed at present, hanging was far and away the most likely.
“Silence, or you may find yourself joining him,” Goran warned.
Several of his men were searching around, being none too careful. They’d found one of Daedalus’ pots of firepowder, which was evidence enough to damn him. Icarus’ eyes widened at the triumphant expression on Goran’s face when his men showed them what they’d discovered. He opened his mouth to protest again.
“Be quiet!” Daedalus urged, and Icarus reluctantly obeyed. He dropped back, never taking his eyes off his father. Daedalus was all the family he had ever known, his mother was only a vague memory. The thought of losing his beloved father was horrific.
“Guards!” Goran ordered.
Icarus could only stand there and watch as his father was led away. And then he was alone in the house they’d shared for so many years, surrounded by his father’s inventions. Some were broken by the rough entry of the queen’s men. He bent to pick one up, some strange contraption his father had been working on the previous day. Ruined now, and likely to never be finished. His hands shaking, he laid it carefully on the workbench. He didn’t try to fix it. Not yet.
---
They wouldn’t let him see his father the next day, or the day after that.
By then Jason had appeared in the city carrying the gorgon’s head, killed many soldiers and rescued the true queen. It was whispered that he’d turned men to stone, and that it had blackened his own heart in turn. Medusa had been his friend, they said. How could he do such a thing? There were rumours and half-truths, whispers and lies. Icarus listened to them all, trying to find word of Pythagoras without actually asking for it.
Despite what his father had ordered, Icarus hadn’t left the city. He couldn’t bear to, not with his father locked up. Every day he went to the palace, trying to gain access to the dungeons. But he was just one of many people trying to get in, trying to see their loved ones or at least hear their fate. Every day he queued up with them. Every day he was turned away.
On the third day the queue was shorter. Icarus tried not to think of what the reason for that might be. There had been a lot of people executed after Jason’s rescue of Ariadne. People hung in the streets just for breaking curfew. Icarus had seen them, had looked at each one just in case. And then he had read the lists of those executed inside the palace, the list that was posted every day on the gates. His father’s name wasn’t among them.
Slowly the people in front were let in. He would see them come out again a short while later, grieving, crying.
And then, suddenly he was at the front.
“Name!” the guard barked.
He almost said Icarus, then realised it was his father’s name they wanted. He watched the guard scroll up and down his list, pause on Daedalus and look back at Icarus suspiciously.
“No visitors for that one.”
“Please! He is my father!”
“No exceptions. Try again tomorrow.”
“But why can’t I see him?”
The guard had already turned away, was already asking for the next name. Icarus pushed his way in front of the man, not giving up so easily.
“I have been waiting for days. I have to see him. Please!”
The guard looked at him, then held out his hand expectantly. That, Icarus realised, was how it would be. It was probably what was happening to everyone.
“I have very little,” he explained, placing a coin in the man’s hand. The guard looked at it, then stuck his hand out again. Icarus doubled the amount, and finally was allowed past.
The stench as he descended was disgusting. There were too many people down there in various stages of deterioration. Several of the cages he passed looked as if they contained dead bodies, but he didn’t look too closely. The guard had directed him down, and Icarus was intent only on finding the cell he wanted. It had been made clear to him that he wouldn’t be allowed to stay for long. There were other men scattered around, guarding the cells. One of them would order him out soon enough.
After seeing the state of the other prisoners, he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised.But finding his proud and brilliant father, the man he had looked up to all his life, curled in the corner of a prison cell looking frail and vulnerable was a shock.
“Father!”
It seemed to cost Daedalus a great deal to raise his head and look up at his son. Icarus pressed as close as he could to the bars. He wasn’t allowed inside, he knew that much. He could see from the way his father moved, favouring his right side, that his time in prison had not been easy.
“Icarus.” Daedalus shifted closer to the bars, keeping his voice low. He was moving very slowly, gingerly. “You should not be here.”
“I could not leave you. What has happened to you?” He crouched down so that they were at a level.
“They believe I know where Jason and Queen Ariadne are hiding. Oh, do not worry, I said nothing no matter what they did.”
“What did they do?” Icarus breathed. “Father…”
“It does not matter. My son, you must leave the city.”
“No, I will find a way to help you…” Icarus began. He had no idea what he could do, but right then he would do anything to quell the rising panic he felt inside just from looking at the state of his father.
“There is no help. I am to be hanged. The only question is when.”
“No!”
“Yes, and the only reason it has not already been done is because they believed I had information.I have given nothing, therefore I am useless to them. Pythagoras, he would see the logic.”
Icarus felt a pang of fear just at the mention of the name. He had heard nothing since Pythagoras had fled the city. For all Icarus knew he could already be dead.
“Father, I could petition the queen…”
“No. Do not go near her. My son,” he gripped the bars of his cage, keeping his voice low and their faces close. “You mustn’t risk yourself. Don’t come here again. Leave the city. I would rather die knowing you at least are safe.”
Icarus could not leave the city, not while his father was trapped there. Daedalus had no idea what he was asking of him.
“Time’s up!”
Icarus didn’t need to look around to know that the guard’s shout was directed at him. It was too short a time, there was much he wanted to say.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Icarus promised. “I’ll find Pythagoras, tell him what’s happened. He’ll come and help.”
This was Pythagoras’ fault, after all. He’d come into the city, they’d helped him, and now their lives were torn apart. But Icarus couldn’t find it in him to blame Pythagoras. Instead he blamed the little-known Jason, the barely-known queen. He bore them no ill, but in the grand scheme of things they were nothing to him.Pythagoras believed in them, and that had brought them all to this.
“No. You’re not to tell him anything. What he’s doing is more important. Promise me, Icarus. Promise me you won’t tell him what’s happened.”
Icarus looked down at his father behind the heavy bars. His face was beaten so badly that one eye was half-closed, and had been left so weak that he hadn’t even attempted to stand and greet him. Even his voice, making demands, sounded weak.
“Promise me.”
People died in jailbreaks. His father was too weak to run if it came down to it. No, the only way was to get him released.
“I promise,” he agreed.
“Out! Now!” the guard shouted. Reluctantly Icarus got to his feet.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised. His father just gave him a small smile. It appeared to cost him a great deal of effort.
Heading back up into the light, Icarus swore he’d find a way.
---
Days passed, and Icarus had indeed found a way.
Given an unbearable deadline, he had blurted out an offer to Goran. It was an unforgiveable betrayal of Pythagoras’ trust that would undoubtedly cost him any chance of love if it was ever discovered. Once done, he could never take it back. He had given his father an extra day down in the cells, then another.
Far away, Pythagoras would be trusting him, counting on him. But Pythagoras was free. He wasn’t trapped and helpless. He stood a chance, more of a chance than Daedalus anyway. Icarus had to keep telling himself that. He hated himself for what he was doing.
There was no longer any need to bribe the guard. Instead he was escorted down by the head of the queen’s army himself, allowed to take food and water, allowed into the cage that held his father.
He tried not to allow himself to wonder if one day the cell might hold the other man he loved instead, and if it might be his fault. It wasn’t a thought he could deal with. Instead, he tended to his ailing father.
“How, Icarus?” Even beaten, tortured and half-starved in a prison cell, his father had the power to make him feel small, inconsequential. He couldn’t lie. But he couldn’t utter the truth either. The truth was something his father would never forgive him for. But what else could he have done? If he hadn’t done it then Daedalus would be dead by now.
“How did you stop the execution, Icarus? What did you do?”
He looked down at his father’s weary, battered face. He’d bought them time at least, but at how high a price?
“I’ll come back tomorrow.”
Not answering the question was never going to work. His father leaned as close as he could, his face pressing against the bars of the cell, his voice a hissed whisper. “No, tell me what you did. Gods, Icarus, tell me it wasn’t something that’s going to make me ashamed.”
He looked down, trying to hide the nervous twitch in his face that he could never quite control. He couldn’t answer, but he was afraid it was answering for him.
Before he could give himself away, Icarus fled.He could not, would not think of Pythagoras and the way he looked at him, the way he made Icarus’ heart sing when they were together. His father would still be in danger tomorrow, and that had to remain his concern.Daedalus might be the one in the prison cell, but it was Icarus who was locked away, trapped in a hell of his own creation. If he tried to break away now, his father would pay with a slow and painful death. And if he didn’t, it might well be Pythagoras who paid. In the end, whatever he did, both his father and his love were going to hate him for it.
The time for choice was long gone. With every day that he kept Daedalus alive, a little piece of Icarus died. Outside the cells, as always, Goran would be there asking for payment.
With a heavy heart, Icarus waited.