Chapter Three
The morning and afternoon pass in a blur of arrivals: relief, hope—for other people—and then the hour of solemn burials at sea for those dead we’ve collected, including Lieve. I know there will be many days like this to come for the Crocus Isles. But the rest will be without me.
By now, the council is all here, the island is flooded with people, the weeping is shot all through with joyful reunions and glad surprises.
Under the bright sun and over the azure waves—mocking things when they were so harsh and cruel yesterday—the rescue fleet from Andalappo arrives.
They carry supplies for my weary citizens: clean water, fresh food, canvas and rope, promises and well wishes.
The last ship to throw anchor and send in boats is the Merrymaker, which holds Delarte.
My cousin is twenty-six summers and favored in looks, but soft from drink and good food, and while he makes his obeisance to me, it’s hesitant because we both know it’s ephemeral and by tomorrow I’ll owe him the bow.
“You’re all here,” I say, looking up at my counselors and Delarte hovering a little away and speaking in hasty whispers. “Which should be more than enough for you to conduct a wedding and wish your monarch well on her new life.”
“You don’t have to do this, cousin,” Delarte says.
It’s performative, but that’s fine because everyone knows it’s his piece in this little drama. He’s delivered it well. It even sounds heartfelt, and maybe it is, but it doesn’t matter because it’s a throwaway line. It’s the ones that come after that matter.
“We do,” I say calmly, gravely.
There’s doubt in Delarte’s eye. I’m sure there’s doubt in mine. But I received my boon, and now I will pay the price.
Turbote is grim. “I heard the voice of the gods. This is the payment they take for their mercy. Our queen is right to offer herself as the price.”
“You should have managed it, Turbote,” one of my counselors says in a tetchy tone.
“It’s a simple thing to order a man to stay in his boat.
If it had been a member of our nobility, there’d be no talk about a change of rule.
We could have said she was staying with her people and that the noble was of her station.
Things would go on as they always have. Instead, you’ve let it all fall apart! ”
Turbote wrings his hands.
“You don’t have to do this, Your Serene Majesty,” another counselor says. I will not recite my counselors’ names. That they had nothing more valuable than empty objections tells all that is needed to know about them.
“If I do not fulfill my vow, I will have broken trust with the gods,” I tell them quietly. “And if I break trust with them, then they will break trust with me. Do you already forget how many of our own we have lost? How severe the storm was? How very narrow our escape became?”
They’re silent.
“Still…” Delarte lets the word hang in the air. “To step away from the Crown…”
“Is the only option left,” I tell him, and this time I put steel in my voice. “A commoner stepped onto the docks. A commoner’s wife I will be. That means I will no longer be queen. It is the price the gods demand and I will pay it.”
“They ask for too much,” Delarte mutters. As if me giving up my crown and marrying a stranger are the true tragedies here. As if it is not Lieve and the others being sent back into the sea.
It is agreed that the wedding will take place the next morning.
Morning is the time of weddings and the tide pool will be warm and ready for the ceremony.
For one last night, I will be queen. Delarte is happy, for he looks benevolent as a result of this decision, and the council feels they have done all they can, which sets their hearts at peace.
“I’ll stay here,” I say, looking down the pier to where a pair of guards has been set by the council to watch the fisherman I’m to wed tomorrow.
He sits, leaning against the bitts, huddled over himself as if he is still ill or injured.
I wonder if he’ll be a problem. “If it’s good enough for him, then it’s good enough for me. I’ll be his wife in the morning.”
Turbote scoffs. “We set the guard so he wouldn’t slip away.”
“You didn’t set a guard on me.”
Turbote looks side to side as if he’s uncomfortable, and then to my utter surprise he steps forward and wraps me in an embrace. I’m so stunned that I freeze, arms straight and stiff.
“What is this?”
“Coralys.” His voice breaks. “Like a daughter you’ve been to me. Willful and brave. Fair and just. No one would think you would run from your duty. Not even now.”
And I know I should feel something. Surprise would be appropriate.
Affection would be permissible. But I see an old man touched by the voice of the gods who thinks now that his queen is the center of some great epic tale.
I disentangle myself from his arms and say kindly, “You’ve been a good counselor, Turbote. Do not ruin it by softening now.”
He laughs, dashing tears from his eyes. “You’ve saved us all. Who would think the gods themselves would barter with you? You’re honored, Your Serene Majesty.”
“Live a long life, Turbote. Make Delarte as miserable as you’ve made me.”
He laughs again as if that was a joke, but then he’s on his way and I’m grateful to see his back.
I look down the pier to where the fisherman sits with his head tipped back.
Hardly an auspicious beginning to a marriage—one forced by the hands of guards and man, the other forced by the threat of the gods.
I make my way down the dock, watching him as the distance grows shorter. I have not had a good look at him yet. I do not know if I am wedding a youth tomorrow or a man as old as Turbote.
Even as I draw close, it’s hard to tell.
He’s hunched over himself as if in pain, one arm wrapped around his middle, his head bowed.
He has a wild beard that hangs in hunks like rushes and spreads out to the sides like the tail of a thrush.
It is not an attractive thing, but to be frank I’ve never met a man good at judging what’s attractive in a beard.
Mayhap the fisherman thinks he looks very well indeed with a face like a thrush’s tail.
“I don’t think we need guards,” I say mildly when I reach him. He has not bothered to stand at my arrival—or even look up. The guards don’t move, so I fix them with my steady gaze. “Leave me one lantern.”
They look at each other. I don’t know their names, though I know the names of all my own palace guards, so these are part of the regulars. They’re worn and tired, uniforms salt-stained and rumpled.
I’m surprised by how offended is the part inside me that can feel their hesitance. But no one forced to marry a piece of flotsam after a storm can brag that she’s too good to be ignored by the guards. I’m still laughing at myself when I put a hand out to be given a lantern.
“There’s food at the palace, they tell me.”
I’ve hit the right note. They exchange another glance, offer a pair of reticent salutes, and give me one of the lanterns.
Their footsteps echo down the pier. Voices drift in muffled tones and the sounds of people preparing for night echo over the water.
The waves batter the sides of the various craft tied up along the pier, and the shushing lull of them calms me enough to sink down to the decking and place the lantern between myself and this mysterious heap of beard and cloth.
“Do you believe in fate, lady?” he asks me, and I’m so startled by his voice that I nearly tip over the lantern.
“No,” I say a little sadly.
I wish I could lay all this at the feet of some unknown divine storyteller, cruel and immovable. It would be a comfort.
“Do you believe, then, that your choices shape the course your life sails? That you are arbiter in the place of fate?”
He mocks me. And he does it with such a voice.
His appearance may be shabby, but the gods have given him a voice that seems to have the power of the great swells of the sea behind it.
I think if he were dressed well, giving orders, there’d be no hesitation in those he commanded.
He wouldn’t have to tempt the guards away with food. I smile slightly at the comparison.
“Who should I blame but myself?” I put to him.
He makes a sound that at first I take to be a fit of some kind and I look around helplessly. I am not practiced in healing arts. I make to rise, but his hand snaps out and grabs my wrist, and I freeze.
There’s a lot of power there. Too much to make me feel safe.
Not an old man, then. The hairs on his arm are dark.
His forearm is well shaped and darkened by the sun.
He holds my wrist in a firm grasp, but not so tightly that it hurts.
I am surprised at the gentleness of his touch.
It takes a breath before I realize that the sound I hear is him laughing.
“You don’t blame the gods, then? For this fate of yours? To marry me, a poor fisherman?” His expression is hidden by the long hair that falls around his face.
“Is that what you are?” I ask curiously. But his words strike a chord in me. I do blame the gods. Not for the marriage. I care not about that. I blame them for the death of my Lieve. For the deaths of the rest. For being able to stop it but toying with me first instead.
The fisherman’s hold on my wrist tightens, and for one terrible moment I have a strange feeling that he is not what he seems at all, but rather some monster of the deep come up to claim my soul.
“A fisherman?” he says, seeming pleased with the title. His words break my reverie and he loosens his hold on me. “Among many things, I am certainly that.”
“And will you take me willingly to wife tomorrow?”
“Isn’t that what they’ve kept me here for?”
I open my mouth and then shut it with a click when he looks up at me for the first time. His eyes are bright and sharp. Those are not the eyes of a fool. They are dangerous eyes.
And they are also beautiful, like the sea just before a storm. They draw me into an intimacy I do not want.
I swallow hard. I know nothing of this man but his dress and conveyance. He could be anyone. Not a ghazul or a kraken, obviously, but perhaps a criminal. Perhaps a man who enjoys the torture of the innocent. Perhaps a pirate or reprobate or drunk.
And I will be his wife.
It will not be like my marriage to Lieve, where I was queen as well as wife, equal—superior, even—by birth and blood. Nor will it be the sweet partnership between us where trust was so strong.
I am about to learn a very different kind of marriage now—the binding of disparate souls, the tying of divergent fates.
“You know that you’ve been held here to marry me,” I say coolly, refusing to break our shared gaze. I will not bend first. “They would have told you.”
“A bargain with the gods.” His eyes flash in the lantern light. Against my will, my breath catches. “As if a mortal can bargain with the immortal for anything and come out the winner.”
“And yet, I did,” I tell him. And I’m not sure if my voice is cold because he is toying with me, or because the idea that the gods were playing with me last night is taking root and growing in my heart.
“Tell me, fisherman, why else but because you are to wed me tomorrow are you kept here on my pier unmolested?”
“Your pier?” He finds that amusing.
“Until I marry you,” I say firmly. “Until I marry you and abandon this life of mine, I am Coralys, Her Serene Majesty, queen of the Crocus Isles, seventh of her line. My ancestors built this pier—and the others of the five islands. They carved our palaces and courthouses, shiphouses and temples from this rock. They set in pools and springs, fountains and terraced gardens. We are a haven of bounty and spices and peace between men.”
He smiles as if he is charmed by a tale. “Is this so, Coralys? You are so very favored as all that?”
“Yes.” I am annoyed now.
His voice softens. “Is it true that your husband died in the storm? Or is that one more exaggeration I should lay at this man Turbote’s feet?”
I feel the blood drain from my face, annoyance shattered with the strict reminder that grief is my companion this night.
“It is true.”
I cannot decipher the emotions rippling across his face, but he is very grave when he speaks.
“Your people lived—mostly—but your kingdom is drowned. Where will the terraced gardens be today? Washed away. Your beloved fountains filled with debris and brackish water. Your silks ruined, your rugs trashed, your riches washed out into the greedy mouth of the howling sea. I name you Queen of the Drowned, for that is what you are.”
“What is that to you?” I ask softly.
His answer is so faint that I barely catch it. “What indeed?”
He drops his hand suddenly, as if stung, and I feel cold.
Carefully, I retreat to put a post at my back and close my eyes.
“Are you going to run?” I ask him.
“There’s nowhere to flee.” His words sound bleak and one corner of his mouth hitches in a way that makes me wince in sympathy.
“Is marriage to me so grim as that?”
But he does not answer and I do not care if he runs. It will only mean that I am bound to follow, and I think that maybe chasing him would be preferable to him chasing me, so I close my eyes and I lean back against the pier.
This journey is too important to abandon now.
Because I have made a choice as I spoke to him.
I have decided I will climb up out of the mortal mirk and find the gods, and I will have my revenge on them for withholding their mercy like it was a game and plucking my husband’s life like fruit from a tree.
And the thought of this new purpose swells in my breast in a way that sits very nicely alongside my grief and drives all doubt from my mind.
The fisherman is whistling something tuneless that sounds like the wind in the rocks of the shore more than the song of a man.
It suits my mood perfectly. Neither one thing nor the other, just like me tonight.
I drift in and out of cold, comfortless sleep, and I clench my fists and wish I could pray for revenge, but with the gods as my enemies I refuse to pray at all.
Instead, I simply hope and I cling to the haunting sound of that whistle until dawn.