Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
It was nearly a week before Jaykun allowed Jileana to speak of Maxum without shutting her down immediately.
That week had been spent helping the empress construct her new council and negotiate the finer details of the siren hunting parties.
Jalaya had demanded Jaykun be by her side for all of this, and he had willingly complied and worked diligently on her behalf in both matters.
They first had to decide how big the council should be.
Then they had to decide who should be on it.
Jalaya knew her people far better than Jaykun did of course, but she was able to give him brief pictures of each applicant’s worse and better points.
The members of the court jockeyed for the open positions for all they were worth.
Jileana had never seen so much kowtowing and foot kissing in her life.
Courtiers sent Jalaya lavish gifts or poetic verses or whatever they could think of to sway her attention their way.
But Jalaya ignored most of it and focused on what would serve her best and who.
Jaykun did not distance himself from Jileana entirely.
They still spoke of other things. They still made love—although there was a taste of feverishness to his love-making that had not been there before.
It was something almost desperate at times.
As though somehow, in the warmth of her body, he could find the solution he was looking for.
She felt as though she let him down every time the solution did not come.
But finally, when she happened upon him sitting at the edge of the chains, staring out at the solid bedrock and the people bolted to it, he had something to say to her about MaXum.
“I suppose we could just chip away at it for the next thousand years,” he said, his tone wry and full of pain.
“We could. Perhaps we could give the task to the prisoners … give them something to do. It might break up the monotony of their imprisonment.”
“I have already thought of that. The truth is, there is nothing to be done to find him if Sabo doesn’t want him found.
But perhaps … now that we know where he is, perhaps I can beg Weysa to help us retrieve him.
For I know only a god can offer me a solution to this.
I do not care if he has to suffer the same fate I do night after night, as long as he is free the rest of the time.
Perhaps I can convince Weysa that he would make another fine soldier in her army, that he can help us fight for her cause. ”
“You have the ear of a goddess. It seems the wisest course of action,” she said.
“I have that ear only when it pleases her. I cannot make demands of her. She will not take kindly to it.”
“Then ask. Beg. Supplicate. Do whatever you need to do.”
He nodded. “If only there was a temple here.”
“Jalaya has begun work on the ones she has promised to you. But they will not be complete until after you have left. Do you need a temple to contact her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. I have never called for her before. Perhaps my brothers would know, but …” He trailed off. They both knew why he couldn’t contact his brothers. She had cut him off from them.
“I’m so sorry. I never meant to cause you any pain or inconvenience.”
He turned and looked at her with surprise on his features.
“Do you think I blame you for something? Hold you responsible?” He then thought about it a second.
“I do blame you. If not for you, I would never have heard this story. I would never have come here and found my brother. I would have sailed away to the next city on my list and been completely ignorant. Yes, I blame you for all of that.”
He jerked her into his arms, up against the hard length of his body, and sealed his mouth over hers.
Kissing him beneath the water like this always flooded her senses with the taste of the salt water first, then overwhelmed her with the taste of him.
His kisses were bold and warm and so very much a reflection of what Jaykun was, it made her dizzy with sensation and excitation.
He had not kissed her with such unfettered zeal in many days.
Before, there had always been the shadow of his brother hovering over them.
But he had shared his pain with her and that had somehow lightened the weight of it. He couldn’t explain it and neither could she. But he kissed her now on the edge of the chains as though someone were going to come along any minute and chain him down amongst the other prisoners.
Eventually she drew back, her fingers stroking along the side of his face, toying lightly with his hair. “It will be all right,” she assured him. “Somehow, some way, you will get your brother back. I believe that with all of my heart.”
“How do you believe it? How can you believe something about me that I don’t believe myself?”
“I believe you have been punished enough for your sins, that something somewhere has to give way. One day it will all work out. I don’t know how long it will take for it to come about, but it will happen.”
“I wish I could believe the way you do. I wish I could have that kind of hope. But hope was something that was burned out of me a long time ago.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. If you had lost all hope, you wouldn’t have bothered looking for Maxum in the first place.
You would have merely abandoned him to his fate and carried on with yours.
But you’ve had hope that you would find him and now that hope has been rewarded.
You must continue to have hope. You must try. ”
He realized she was right. If he hadn’t had hope, he would have given up long ago.
By all rights, he should have given up. He should have lost any ability to see a future at all—for himself and for his brothers.
But when he was rescued from that star and given a life again …
perhaps that was when hope had been reborn in him.
If he could be rescued from hell, then anything might be possible.
Including freeing his brother from his.
“From now on I will be dedicated to finding a way to free Maxum. I will win a thousand cities for Weysa if that is what it will take to convince her to free him. I will do whatever she asks of me in return. Surely she must grant me this one thing. I have always been loyal to her, even when I was not cursed. That has to count for something.”
“I’m sure it does. Pray to her. See if that does not call her to you. Otherwise, it is only a short while before you can return to the Overworld, where you will find a temple that can bring you closer to her. She has to hear your call then. She just has to.”
Jaykun reached to trace a warm pattern over her cheek and nose and lips. “Ever the optimist. You have such a light heart; you believe anything is possible. I wish I could see the world like you do. All the good in it, all the joy in it.”
“You can, you know,” she said with a smile. “You simply have to open yourself up to it.”
“I have. Since meeting you, I have. I look at the world through your eyes and it seems so much brighter, so much more special. Thank you for giving me that.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Now come. Jalaya is expecting us. We need to make the final choices for the council.”
“Of course,” he said, turning to swim beside her.
Sometime later all but one of the council seats had been filled.
“So … whom do we choose for the last seat?” Jalaya asked.
“I don’t think you’ll enjoy my suggestion,” Jaykun mused.
“Whom do you have in mind?”
“Horgon,” he said.
“Horgon!” the empress exclaimed. “Never!”
“You said yourself he is from one of the most influential families of the selkies.”
“But didn’t you say not to choose someone who will always say no? Who will always oppose me? You are the one who wanted him eliminated!”
“And you are not willing to do that, so the best course of action is to keep him as close to you as possible. Give him a voice. Perhaps if he believes he is being heard … Plus, it will look good to your people, to see you trying to make the effort to pull all the most influential families along together. He may be a hindrance more than a help, but at least you will have your eyes on him. It might even mollify him to some extent. Although, it is clear nothing will keep him from wanting to be emperor and deposing you.”
“The thought of eliminating him has grown more and more appealing over this past week,” Jalaya said. Then she sighed. “But I am not as cutthroat as he would be.”
“I know,” Jaykun said with kind understanding. “And that is what will make you an infinitely better monarch than he would be. Better even than I would be. You are willing to find solutions to your problems—difficult solutions—rather than take the easy way out.”
“So … Horgon on the council,” she said uneasily.
“Remember, it is your council. You can just as easily remove him from it as you can place him on it.”
“This is true,” she said. “Very well. I will send messengers right away to inform all the members of their chosen status and we will convene a council meeting right away. And, Jaykun,” she said, looking directly into his eyes, “it would mean a great deal to me if you were there for our first few sessions. Just to help me run things smoothly, and for your advice. I find I am quite lost without you.”
“Nonsense. You have been ruling alone for decades. You know what it means to be ruler and you have earned your place at the head of your people a thousand times over.”
“Except lately … lately things have been escalating out of my control. I am not too proud to admit that. You have helped me to find ways to bring order back to my life. I cannot tell you what a valuable gift that is to me and I have no idea how I will ever repay you for it. I can start by telling you this: If there is some way my people and I can help you to retrieve your brother, then we will do it. You need only ask it of us.”