The gate would not shut with the new jar standing there.
Keleos pushed it with his heel. The great clay belly scraped across the threshold and caught against the jamb.
“Wrong size,” he said.
Ione measured the gap with her eye. “Turn it.”
“You turn it. My back’s finished.”
Beyond the gate, the passage bent sharply left. Her lamp showed a strip of wall, a stain beneath it, and nothing else. Somewhere inside, water dripped at intervals too slow to count. She set her bag of tools beside the outer door and stepped forward to help.
Keleos stopped her with an elbow.
“One inside. One outside. That’s how it’s done.”
He had delivered water here longer than she had worked wood. She stayed outside.
The jar shifted. He grunted, bending his knees, and its base cleared the jamb. Then he vanished backward.
His hand struck the gate as he fell. The jar burst against the floor.
Ione seized a bar. The gate swung toward her and stopped short, held by a thick shard beneath its lower corner. On the other side, Keleos lay across the passage with one foot twisted under him.
Something black moved beyond his shoulder.
“Pull it shut,” he said.
She pulled. Wood groaned against the clay.
A horn emerged into the lamplight. It curved pale above a black forehead. The broad wet nose beneath it lifted, drawing air. Ione could see one dark eye and, lower down, a hand spread against the wall.
Five fingers. A palm like hers, much larger.
The guard in the outer chamber shouted, “Close it!”
“There’s a man under it.”
“Close it!”
The creature lowered its head. Keleos dragged himself toward her, his tunic rasping over the broken jar. Ione crouched and caught his wrist through the gap.
“Up,” she said.
“My foot.”
“Bend your knee.”
“I can’t.”
His heel had fallen into the socket where the gate’s old pivot had once stood. His swollen sandal strap was caught beneath a jagged lip of stone.
The Minotaur breathed out. The sound filled the narrow passage. Ione jerked backward, taking Keleos’s arm with her, and he cried out so sharply that she let go.
The horn withdrew.
She waited for a charge. Instead she heard a footstep, then another, farther away. The passage returned each one from a different direction.
“Is he gone?” she whispered.
Keleos rolled onto his elbow. “He’s still there.”
The guard ran to the gate with his spear. He thrust it through the opening, past the old man’s head. The point struck the wall and threw a chip of plaster into the water.
“Get out of the way,” he told Ione.
“You’ll hit Keleos.”
“I’ll hit what comes for him.”
She looked at the spear, at the guard’s white fingers, at the strip of darkness the point could not reach. Then she took the lamp from its hook and lowered it.
The Minotaur stood just beyond the turn. His head was hidden, but his hand remained visible against the stone. One finger moved slowly through the spilled water.
“Give me room,” she said.
She lay down, pushed her arm beneath the gate, and reached for the sandal. Her fingers found leather. She pulled until it cut into them. Keleos tried not to make a sound.
The strap would not come free.
Her knife was in the tool bag beside the outer door. She glanced back. Only six paces. She could fetch it, return, cut the leather—
A hand closed around the gate’s inner latch.
The guard drove his spear forward. The hand disappeared, and the shaft struck wood. The latch jumped upward.
Ione dropped the lamp and caught it.
For a moment she and the Minotaur held opposite ends of the same piece of oak.
His fingers curled over the top. She saw the dark crescents beneath his nails, the knuckles pale with pressure. The gate moved toward him. The clay shard split. Through the widening space she saw his mouth open beneath the black muzzle.
She threw her whole weight against the bar.
“Wedge,” she gasped. “My bag. The long one.”
The guard did not move.
“The wooden wedge!”
He dropped the spear and ran. The latch ground against her palms. She planted one foot against the opposite wall and held until the guard thrust the wedge into her hand.
She drove it beneath the gate with her heel.
The pressure stopped moving her. The Minotaur struck the wood once, hard enough to jar her teeth. Then the hand released the latch.
Ione stayed braced against it, listening to her own breath.
“Leave me,” Keleos said.
She could see his face now, turned sideways against the wet floor. There was clay dust in his beard.
She reached through and took his hand again.
“I need you to keep still.”
With the guard holding the gate, she fetched the knife. She worked it between the old man’s ankle and the strap, turning the dull back against his skin. The leather parted. His foot remained caught.
She tugged. He struck the floor with his free hand.
“Stop. Stop.”
The sandal had come loose, but the broken edge of the socket pressed against his heel. She needed to lift it, just the width of a finger.
Her wedge could do that.
She looked down at the piece of wood beneath the gate.
The guard understood first. “No.”
“Hold the latch down.”
“No.”
“Keleos. When I lift your heel, push with your other foot. Don’t wait for me to pull.”
The old man nodded once.
Ione put her shoulder against the gate, worked the wedge free with the knife, and slid it under Keleos’s heel. She pressed its thick end against the floor.
The heel rose.
Keleos shoved himself toward the opening. His shoulders struck the jamb. Ione caught his collar and pulled while the guard dragged his other arm. He came through with a rush, overturning the lamp.
A black muzzle filled the gap behind him.
Ione tried to withdraw her hand. Fingers closed around her wrist.
The Minotaur pulled her against the bars. She could smell his breath. His horn scraped the wood beside her temple, but the head was too broad to follow the reaching arm.
She twisted her wrist. The grip tightened.
The guard lifted his spear.
“Wait!”
Ione had once watched her father prise a seized peg from a beam. He had worked it toward the opening, never against the whole ring of wood. Now she found the Minotaur’s thumb with her free hand and turned her trapped wrist toward it, making the narrow edge of her arm meet the gap between thumb and fingers.
She pulled with her shoulder, her back, both feet against the wall.
Her hand came free.
The guard slammed the gate. Ione caught the latch before it could bounce and drove the outer bolt home. On the other side, the Minotaur struck the bars with both hands.
Once. Again.
The bolt held.
Ione sat beside Keleos until the sound stopped. Her wrist had begun to swell. Beneath the gate she could see the point of her wedge, still lying in the water.
The guard picked up her tool bag and set it beside her.
“You’ll need to fit a better latch tomorrow.”
He put the day’s payment on the sill.
Ione helped Keleos stand. He leaned heavily against her, one bare foot lifted clear of the floor. At the outer door he paused and looked at the money.
She shifted his arm across her shoulders and took another step.
The coins stayed where they were.
