He checked his watch: nearly eight already. It was incredible how fast time slipped away.
Back up the stairs and through the tank-room to the Queen's Megaron. Then out the light-well by which he'd entered, and through the gathering dark to the Shrine of Oracles.
Because that was where he'd have to start; he knew that from the things he'd heard as prisoner. The entrance to the Labyrinth, the way to the Minotaur, was through some passage in the shrine.
Only there was a guard on the first entrance he tried, and on the second also.
In ten minutes he knew the truth: a mouse couldn't creep into the shrine tonight without being run through by a Sudani spearman.
So, he had no choice but to try a different route, the route of legend.
First, he'd have to locate Ariadne, even though it demanded another hair-raising human fly act, clambering down a pitch-black light-well.
Then, through her, he'd reach Daedalus, demand a thread, plunge into the Labyrinth.
Only that wasn't right. The legend said Theseus did that.
Yet Theseus was drunk, dead drunk, back there in Ariadne's quarters.