Chapter Eleven #2
But not tonight. Tonight—while my husband is away—I will see if I can work magic, too.
I slip to the very end of the dock where the water-soaked wood is dark against a darker sea. Oke is not here. I am alone.
The moon is veiled by lacy threads of clouds and the surf pounds its familiar rhythm, but my heart races too quickly to fall in time.
I put my toes on the edge of the dock just as Oke’s cousin did, but then I think better of it and I swirl one foot in the water instead.
I bring to mind an image of the Crocus Isles, of my people, of my home.
And—laughing at myself for being such a gullible fool—I lift my hand like I’m holding a bowl, and I twist my wrist.
I must have expected to fail, for success leaves me breathless.
The world spins so suddenly that I have to clap a hand over my mouth to keep from vomiting. I blink, lose my balance as my vision goes first black and then white. I glance off some hard surface, hit my head, see stars, and slump to my knees… in water.
Blinking hard, I wrench myself to my wobbling feet, splashing embarrassingly, and gasp, clutching at my head.
It has worked. Or at least, something has happened and I am no longer on Oke’s island.
I am on the terrace of my old Winter Palace on the island of Calypsala, standing in one of the mosaic tide pools. My fingers find the marble banister and trace the carving I’d commissioned last year—ships setting out to sail.
I’m home. Really, home. It feels incredibly right.
I’m choked up for a moment. In my mind’s eye I see my parents in this very place, speaking together in low voices as they often did so as not to disturb the peace as they breakfasted.
I’m seeing it when I would drift out to the balcony to catch my breath during parties, tired from too many smiles and too many nuanced conversations.
I’m seeing it as the terrace where Lieve would kiss my neck and draw me out into the sea to bathe.
I blink back tears and try not to indulge in too much hope. I may be home, but I am not queen and this terrace is no longer mine. My place—if I have one here—will be helping somewhere else.
Even so, it is good to see it again.
I’m not in a hurry to leave. I linger a little, wanting to soak back into my world.
A tiny pang of regret reminds me that Oke will return home and find me gone, but he was well enough before I came to his home and he will be well enough again without me.
I will return to him once I have established that all is well here.
If four weeks with that wound hasn’t killed him, then I doubt he is going to die of it.
It’s only when I reach my former bedroom that I frown.
Where are the guards? They ought to have been standing watch on that door. Why is this room in such disarray?
I’m frowning as I pick up my pace, leaving the room and entering the halls beyond, noticing how they echo, how they stand silent as the crypts filled with our ancestors. Why is that vase broken and the shards not gathered up? Why is that table overturned?
All the elation I felt on my arrival is leaking out of me. Something is terribly wrong here.
The smell of smoke hangs heavy in the air. I open doors as I race down the hall, looking in each one.
No one is in the library. No one in the studies set across from it. No one in the Green Room, where I used to receive scholarly guests. And every room is in chaos.
A book lies on its face in the hall. There’s a blank spot on the wall where a tapestry of Queen Lyseries and the Great Fish used to hang—a gaping spot like a lost tooth from an otherwise tidy row.
Someone has smashed one of the ornamental tables.
Fragments are thrown about as if a great wind has blown through the hall, picking up bits of wood and parchment in equal measure and settling them like fallen leaves across the floor.
It is just as the coin in the fish’s mouth predicted. Turmoil has struck my people and I was not here to prevent it. The floor seems to sway under my feet, but I know it is only my guilt making the world tilt and roll.
I clench my jaw, furious at myself for not trying to work the magic I saw sooner. Four weeks I lingered, mending nets, watching birds, and playing the good fisherman’s wife… and what has happened here while I was flitting those weeks away?
I wonder for a moment if I am dreaming, but just as I start to fear I’ve somehow shifted my reality into some plane empty of human life, I stumble into the map room and there is someone here I know.
Turbote stands with a sack in his hands—a common grain sack—and he’s stuffing priceless maps into it one after another.
“What are you doing?” I gasp, still not sure if I’m dreaming or if this is real. Somewhere in the distance is a rumbling that could be thunder or could be the feet of many people.
Turbote startles and turns. His hand flutters birdlike to his open mouth and he presses the back of it to his gasping lips as if he’s afraid this is a dream.
“It cannot be,” he whispers. “I have lost my mind.”
“Turbote?” I ask in a wavering voice as he gathers me into his arms sobbing soundlessly.
“Coralys. My queen. Gods have mercy, it’s you.”
He’s blinking back tears and I feel like someone has dropped heated lead through my chest. I push myself out of his clinging embrace.
I have never seen Turbote cry. I am not sure he cried at his own brother’s funeral. I was there that day and he was stoic and firm. Now he ripples with spasms like a jellyfish swimming through the water.
“The gods have not abandoned us after all.”
“You’re a priest of Okeanos,” I say, gripping his arm in a way that I hope imparts some kind of strength. “You will never be abandoned.”
He laughs, a terrible hollow laugh.
“Okeanos? Whose fault do you think this is? We trusted him. We gave you up. And now disaster has struck.”
“Disaster? What has happened?” I can’t quite catch a full breath. Something in the distance rumbles again.
“You have to help us, Coralys,” Turbote says, shaking hard.
His eyes are watery and shadowed. Veins stand out blue on the backs of his hands.
“They arrived in the night. Suddenly. There was no warning. They must have overwhelmed our fleet. They’ve been sacking the city.
The guards are dead. Everything burns. The people are slaughtered in the streets. ”
That doesn’t explain why there is no one here. Surely they would take refuge in the palace.
“Who has attacked us?” As far as I ever knew, we have no enemies. We are peaceful people with peaceful goals.
I steal to the window and look out.
Gods have mercy.
“It was too sudden. It was too fast.” He’s babbling. “There wasn’t even time to pray. Not even time… not even time…”
What I didn’t see from the tide pool I see from here. The city on fire, flames dancing in tentacle trails up what I know to be the major streets of the city. My heart begins to race and my body twitches as if urging me to run.
“Who?” I demand again.
“We don’t know. They didn’t say. They wear the tentacles of Okeanos and claim to be his scourge.”
“That makes no sense. We are the people of Okeanos.”
He must not be telling me something. Surely they could not be so utterly surprised.
“Are we?” he asks, his hands crumpling a precious map as he shudders. “Are we? He took our queen. He drowned our lands. And now, as we recover, he’s taken the rest. No one else could render us so desolate. We have no other enemy with such power. We’ve failed him.”
“Where is Delarte?” I ask, and it’s only now that I notice Turbote is streaked in black soot. He’s missing a sandal. He’s wild-eyed and his hair sticks out in every direction. “Where is your king?”
He’s not answering me. He’s lost in his story.
“It started with a demand. From the sea god. A virgin sacrificed to the sea every night, or disaster would strike. We didn’t listen.
We thought it couldn’t be true. That we would be asked for such a thing.
” He’s shaking so hard it’s like he’s in a heavy wind.
“And then they burned Tempest Reef.” Tempest Reef is one of my five islands.
“Gone in the night. Only five ships managed to flee to Calypsala. That night we threw a girl into the sea with a rock tied to her foot.” I gasp, but he presses on.
“We threw one in every night until the people revolted the day before yesterday under the urging of Gheric Rodehands. I did warn you of him. ‘No more daughters,’ they said, and look where we are. Look! Calypsala is lost. Delarte seized.” I did not think it possible for his eyes to grow wilder, but they do now.
“They cut out his tongue, Coralys. I watched them do it. They cut out the tongue of our king.”
“This can’t be real,” I say, half to myself. My stomach sloshes queasily and my mouth is watering as if it is preparing to vomit. “I’ve only been gone a short time.”
“A short time?” Turbote’s laugh is hollow and nearly hysterical.
“You’ve been gone for weeks. Terrible weeks.
Do you know how long a week can stretch when you are in hell?
Gods have mercy on us.” He pauses and laughs again.
“Or perhaps I ought to beg the gods abandon us. No longer touch our shores, O Great Okeanos! We cannot bear your presence.”
I can’t absorb this. It feels like madness. I grasp at practicality.
“You came for the maps,” I remind him.
“Yes, the maps.” He seems relieved that I noticed. “I came for the maps. They’re priceless, you know.” I do know, though I wouldn’t risk my life for them. “Maybe they’ll have some clue. Some place we can hide from his wrath. Some place safe.”
“Do you have anyone waiting for you? Any way of escape?” I prompt.
I am looking at a man who threw innocent girls into the sea to drown. I am looking at him as he loses his mind.
“A fishing boat.” He sounds like he isn’t sure.
“You’d better get to it, then,” I say, but he clings to my arm.