Chapter 21
Medea
The ship was a cacophony of sound and movement: shouts piercing the air, footsteps drumming against the deck, the rhythmic slap of
oars against the water. The wooden walls creaked and sea spray misted my face.
Around me was a bubble of silence. In it, I held my dying brother.
Absyrtos’s eyes were glassy and his breathing labored. I tried to make him comfortable, my hands dancing across his skin as
gentle as the wings of butterflies, and just as useless. Absyrtos was far beyond the capacities of healing magic; I could
ease the edges of broken bones and speed the healing of wounds, but repairing damage in a vital organ was beyond me. When
the body has been so grievously damaged, one cannot expect the spirit to remain.
For the first time, I saw my brother not as a bully or a braggart, but a mere boy. He had tormented me for so much of my life,
belittling me and circumscribing my sphere of influence. He would have killed me back on the beach, and yet I held him in
my arms and soothed the sweat on his brow.
What might have become of us if we had grown up outside the shadow of our cruel father? I would never know.
Absyrtos gave a last rattling breath and lay still.
A chorus of shouts startled me out of my silence. I looked up from the dying boy in my arms to see an even more dreadful sight: the sails of my father’s fleet outlined against the sky.
Cold fear washed over me. Aeetes’s ships had been designed by Phoenician sailors and were swifter than the west wind. I saw
the battering rams that protruded from their prows, waiting to sink us like a stone.
It did not matter whether Chalciope succeeded in her coup or if Aeetes had triumphed. These ships rode for war, and we would
be dead in the water once they caught up to us. No power on earth could save me from the torment that would follow; my witchcraft
might be able to turn back fire, but I knew no spell to make water into breathable air.
I looked down at my hands and saw that they were shaking.
Jason and his followers would be doomed as well if the warships caught up with us. I glimpsed my future husband on the deck,
sunlight illuminating his handsome features, howling orders at the crew. As if this would make the slightest bit of difference.
In my arms, my brother was motionless. Whether he was dead or dying, it was hard to say. Perhaps his heart still beat sluggishly,
perhaps his faint breath would still fog a mirror if I had one to hold to his lips. But life was slowly departing from him
all the same.
I looked up at the approaching ships, then back down at my brother. I recalled the corpse trees outside the city of Aea and
the law laid down by my father that the bodies of men must be placed in the arms of the sky, while burial at sea was reserved
only for the worst criminals.
A plan began to take shape in my mind. My soul shrunk back from the horror of it, but my sister’s words rose in my memory,
the words she had spoken when we walked a lonely seashore and discussed the best way to kill our father.
If not us, then who?
If I would not accept responsibility and take the knife in hand, who would? I already knew that everything worth having was paid for in blood.
Laying Absyrtos’s limp body on the deck, I rose to my feet. “An axe!” I screamed. “Bring me an axe.”
I received only baffled looks in response. In their haste to escape, it seemed the Argonauts had forgotten that I existed.
Irritated, I shouted my command again, startling them into motion. Finally, one of the men slapped the wooden shaft of an
axe into the palm of my hand. I swung it experimentally and found that it was heavy but well weighted, more useful for cutting
wood than separating out the fat and bones of sacrificial animals. Still, it would have to do.
I glanced down at the body of Absyrtos, which lay unmoving. This is the only way, I told my hammering heart. The only way. Absyrtos was beyond all feeling now, absent from this cold flesh, or about to be.
The blade sparkled as I raised it, then bit into the wood of the deck as it fell. Another swing and a thud, and another. My
hands were slick, but my grip was strong as I threw the severed parts into the sea.
Not so different, I told myself, trying to quell the gibbering hysteria that threatened to spill its bounds and render me useless. Not so different
at all from the sheep and goats I butchered to lay on the smoking altars of Hekate.
I raised my eyes to the merciless circle of the sun, ignoring the pain. What do you think of me now, Grandfather? I asked silently.
When the sun dazzle left my eyes, I saw that the flagship of the Qulhan fleet had veered to the side, losing speed. The others
followed suit. Sailors hung from the railings, dangling nets into the water to scoop up their grim harvest.
We sailed unimpeded to safety.
Despite my exhaustion and lingering terror, I felt a flicker of satisfaction.
I had been right; proper burial was such a sacred duty among our people that even battle had to wait.
The sailors of the royal fleet would not let the body of the crown prince, dismembered and cut into parts, go down into the depths of the sea like a criminal’s.
The bitterness of guilt coated my tongue, even as my body went boneless with relief.
Cheers broke out all around as the crew realized they were going to live. Ecstatic, I sought the face of Jason, my savior
and future husband, only to find him staring at me in horror.
I looked down at my arms and saw that they were stained to the elbow with blood. My brother’s blood. So were my skirts, though
the stains were hard to make out against the Tyrian purple.
Desperate, I lifted my arms in supplication to Jason. I did this for you, I wanted to say. I did this to save us all. But he slipped away like an eel, disappearing into the shadows.