Chapter 16 Don’t Look So Surprised
Don’t Look So Surprised
But now I had to get dressed again, and I couldn’t put Hades’s tunic and pants back on. They were too filthy and too shredded by the rocks. And they were the clothes that Mackr had died on.
Unfortunately, the only other clothes I had were the dresses.
Well, fuck it.
I rinsed my face and hands and neck and hair in the bowl of water. Then I fluffed my drying hair in front of the fire while I tried to decide which of the dresses was most practical for managing a dig. Probably the set of threadbare brown rags.
But instead of donning the threadbare dress, I stepped into the violet ballgown. I felt almost defiant, even though no one was around to see.
The silk shimmered like oil in the firelight. It was strapless, the heart-shaped neckline edged by beautiful, intricate handmade lace. I’d thought the lace might be itchy, but far from it. It brushed my collarbone and the upper swell of my breasts softly, like feathers.
The corset laces cinched in front. I tightened and tied them myself. I was happy for the corset; it meant I could actually make the dress fit my underfed torso.
Elke still hadn’t arrived.
I wrapped a new set of black bandages around my feet. I fluffed the skirts of the gown over top.
Still no Elke.
I couldn’t spend any more time getting dressed, though.
I had to get back to work. My stomach was tight at the thought of facing the godlings again after I’d killed one of them, but I would only feel worse the longer I sat here.
Better to get it over with. And who knew how much work they were undoing with their incompetence while I sat here and rotted?
So I went out myself.
I’d thought I would find someone who could show me to the reservoir.
But it wasn’t that hard to find my own way, actually.
Down, up, down, left. I was learning that the catacombs, although they moved, moved slowly.
And as long as you knew where you were going, it wasn’t really that hard to follow their path.
You could sense it, somehow, through the tremors in the earth.
Wearing foot-wraps instead of shoes was good for that.
At the entrance to the reservoir-cavern, I took a deep breath and fisted my hands in my skirts.
There was nothing for it. I stepped through.
And gawked.
Because none of the workers were sleeping. No one was arguing fruitlessly. No one was digging southeast instead of northwest. And certainly no one spotted me and started screaming that I had killed Mackr and I ought to be drowned in the Lake.
Instead… they were working.
A cluster of godlings moved in and out of the pipe-shaft, carrying shovels and barrels of soil and excavated rock. Another cluster carried segments of pipes, one after the other, lying them down head to head to check the sizes.
For a moment, I assumed they were just listening to Hades more obediently than they’d ever listened to me.
But Hades was nowhere to be seen.
At that moment, Elke popped out of the crowd and scuttled over. “I was just coming to get you! Did someone else bring you?”
“No, I came myself. Elke, what’s going on?”
Her eyes widened. “You what?”
“I walked. I have feet. Don’t look so surprised. Answer the question.”
Elke turned, surveyed the workers. “They’re building the pipeline,” she said uncertainly. “Please don’t get mad. I know they’re slow, but they’re really trying.”
“I’m not mad. I’m… I don’t get it. Did Hades threaten them?”
“No. They’re working because you asked them to.”
“They didn’t care when I asked them yesterday!”
“Yesterday,” Elke said gently, “you had not cried for one of our own.”
My stomach plunged. Who cared whether I’d cried or not? I hadn’t done anything, hadn’t fixed anything. Mackr was still dead.
“You tried to save him. Everyone saw it. You went to rescue him yourself, even though you have no carapace, even though your body is so soft. Not even the Prince could stop you — and no one defies the Prince. But you did, for a chaosgotter who did not even like you.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around what she was saying. “Elke… it doesn’t matter. He died. I mean, he died because of me. I made him go in there. I practically killed him with my own hands.”
“It is okay,” Elke said. “It could be worse.”
My throat crumpled. “I wanted you to say it wasn’t my fault!”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I mean, it’s not your fault.”
I wanted to curl up in a ball on the floor.
“Persephone. Really. Death is not so bad to us chaosgotten. We live for such a long time. And at least he wasn’t resurrected.”
Resurrected? “He wasn’t what?”
Silence from Elke. “I forgot you are not supposed to know,” she said at last. “I always forget.”
“Forget what?” But Elke was already backing away from me, mouthing, Don’t tell His Lordship, practically running in her haste to avoid answering my question. “Elke!” I howled. But she was gone.
And then I heard another crack. Like the rockslide.
My heart froze. I whipped around to the pipe-shaft. I was so far away. There was nothing I could do.
The godlings were screaming again.
No. I couldn’t have this happen. I couldn’t have two deaths on my hands. I wanted to turn away but instead I started running. If only I weren’t so small, so soft, as Elke had called me, if only I had spider-legs and could move faster, faster, faster —
Then I slowed.
The godlings weren’t screaming. They were cheering.
They were pouring out of the pipe like water. But they weren’t water, they were bodies, whooping and hugging each other.
Hades came tumbling out, riding the wave. He leapt down from someone’s shoulders and raced toward me and swept me up. He was laughing, beaming so hard he looked like a different person.
“Hades — I mean, Your Lordship, what —!”
“Just wait,” he said, happily, and plunged with me back into the shaft. He was gripping my thighs the way he had when he had stolen me from my mother, when he had borne me to his father’s throne room. But this was different.
My heart felt like a balloon.
He carried me up and up, past the rest of the crowd, past the spot where he had held back an avalanche while I had tried and failed to save Mackr.
The rough unfinished texture of the green glasslike pipes, which had been laid into the shaft, paled as we rose.
Even the color of the air was lightening, almost imperceptibly. And then —
We burst out together over the steep cliff-face.
I squealed. I almost fell. But Hades had me. I was clinging to him and he had me. He was still laughing. He hadn’t stopped.
We teetered at the edge of the opening of the pipe-shaft that the godlings had built.
That I had designed. The cliff fell straight down beneath us into the Tourmaline Sea, and directly before us, not twenty feet away, the resplendent band of white runoff water crashed and roared off the Primordial Mountain.
The mist from it sprayed into my mouth, my face, my eyelashes.
I reached out a hand in wonder, as if I could catch it.
The pipe-shaft had been dug. The water was here. So close I could literally taste it.
High above, the sun blazed. The beautiful sun, hot and eternal. I had not seen it in two days.
Rainbows danced in the mist.
“You did it,” Hades was saying to me, over and over again. “You did it, goddess, you did it.”
We still had to lay the half-pipe. Secure it to the cliff-face.
But he was right.
I had done it.
It took me a moment to recognize the feeling expanding in my chest as triumph.
I had never felt this way in my life.
“You did it,” Hades was still saying, still laughing, “you did it,” and he swung me around and clutched my waist and kissed me on the mouth.
My breath caught in my chest like a fluttering bird.
My arms had fallen around his neck. His tongue was in my mouth. His stomach was flat and warm against mine, as it had been under the avalanche.
I whispered into his mouth, “What are you doing, Your Lordship?”
I felt his breath stutter. He pulled back a bare inch, his breath still ghosting over my lips. He stared at me with blue eyes that matched the open sky.
I swallowed. I didn’t know what was going on. The words that came out of my mouth were, “It’s stupid your eyes are that color.”
“Sorry,” he rasped.
“Sorry for your blue eyes, or sorry for kissing me?”
“Do you want me to be sorry for kissing you?”
What a stupid question. But: “Yes,” I lied. “You kidnapped me. You’re a monster.”
Hades’s mouth broadened into a smile. He was so happy, he couldn’t even be mad. I couldn’t believe that the open, joyful expression on this powerful, handsome godling’s face was because of me. The thrill almost matched my thrill of triumph.
In a flash I remembered the moment when I’d told him my process for mapping the underworld.
He’d been carrying me then, too, I remembered the light, open, smooth look of curiosity on his face, and my own traitorous desire to do whatever I could to make it so that expression could stay.
To keep him happy and thoughtful and open and light, instead of angry and hurt and furrowed and worried.
And look. I had given him that. I had really done it.
“In that case,” Hades said, “I’m a monster who got what he wanted. Look.” He gestured to the waterfall.
I did look. Because I had gotten what I wanted, too.
We had less than half a day left to lay the pipe. We could do it. And then Hades would free me from the underworld, and together, we would build a new pipeline to a new reservoir in Limer. My mother would live. And I would live, too. Safe from the jaws of the Monarch.
Neither of us could get enough of the sight of the waterfall. But eventually we turned and slid back to the reservoir. Hades kept bubbling with laughter. It was contagious; I was laughing, too.
I even thought he might kiss me again.
Or at least stop moving long enough for me to kiss him.
But the laid pipes were smooth as grease. We slid down them as fast as water ourselves.
And when we got to the bottom of the shaft, the Vizeking was waiting for us.