Chapter Eleven #4
And then the figurative arms of the sea morph and become the very real arms of a man, and I am wrenched up from the waves and thrown behind his naked back.
I stumble and shove handfuls of hair out of my face so that I might see.
Water pours off my rescuer in rivulets as he soundlessly raises a hand.
The man I knocked over surges up from the waves with a roar, sword held expertly in a neat lunge.
He is not alone. The others have caught up and they throw themselves forward in a wave of man and steel and sharpened blades.
Their battle cries slice through the sound of their feet churning up the water and I’m frozen in helpless fear, watching violence come alive and set itself against me.
I’m already braced for the sound of flesh rent by steel, already swallowing down bile as I know I am next, when my defender flicks the first two fingers on his raised hand.
Inky tentacles shoot up from the waves in a gurgling froth of water as if the sea has grown roots into the air at the pace of several centuries of growth to the second. They jut and rise between the scrambling forms of our enemy, curling and lashing.
I feel the brush of slimy skin against my leg and barely hold back a startled cry, and just as I am looking up from the dark water, the nearest man—the one I knocked down—is snatched by a tentacle with lightning speed and dragged screaming beneath the waves.
I hear the sound I expected of steel hacking flesh, but it is not our flesh being attacked and all his furor does the man no good at all as the water churns red and white like a liquid banner of death.
Oke turns so calmly to me that I do not expect the molten rage in his pale eyes, but I should.
For behind him his deep creatures have crawled up onto the tumbled shore and snatched a dozen men, one by screaming one, into their clutching grasp and dragged them beneath the swell.
The men are drowned in inches of water, battered on the rocks like floundering ships, and left behind in floating, lifeless pieces.
And the creatures, barnacle-crusted and slick with blood and water, pay no more mind to their screams than I pay to the call of the gull.
I gasp and then Oke sweeps me up in his arms like a man carrying his bride and plunges us both beneath the waves.
He drags me deeper and deeper.
I tug at his wrist, terrified of drowning, but it’s no use, he’s stronger than I am and bent on drawing us under the waves.
The world spins and whirls—worse than could possibly be the case simply from the rip of the tides pulling on me—and I’m so disoriented that I can’t tell up from down.
Again the arms tighten, dragging me, pulling me, and then shoving my head by the back of the skull upward through the surface.
My face breaks into air and I gulp in a hungry breath.
I’m relief and pain and panic all mixed into one.
Frantically, I spin in the water, trying to get my bearings, but there is no fishing boat. No dead enemies. No unnatural creatures where they ought not be. I’m on a lonely shoreline of rock and trees, the water deep and surrounding me rather than only waist-high.
“Coralys,” pants a voice wetly beside me. I turn and gasp at the face of my husband, flushed with exertion. Something has left a ragged scratch down one of his cheeks.
I cough out water, heaving in a way that makes it hard to keep my head up, and then suddenly he’s there, holding me up so I don’t drown myself as I cough and cough.
“You rescued me?” I ask breathlessly when my lungs are clear.
He’s speaking but I’m not listening. I keep seeing Turbote’s fluttering hands.
I keep seeing Delarte’s corpse strung up across the anchor.
I keep seeing the tentacles and my last glimpse of the sea where a huge many-toothed mouth had opened and sucked in a man’s entire torso. I keep thinking the impossible.
“You were in the sea,” Oke is saying as if that explains anything.
He pulls himself up onto slick rocks and reaches a hand back for mine.
He grips it and drags me up on shore, and I’m trembling, shaking so hard that my teeth rattle.
I can’t seem to order my thoughts. They keep skittering away like drops of water on a hot surface.
I’m dazed, dwelling on stupid details, jumping to wild conclusions.
But it cannot be… can it? Have I been so blind?
I watch him come out of the water. He’s naked and his godwound in his leg looks worse than before. It has not scabbed over or mended and the skin around it is red and inflamed and hanging loose in ragged shreds.
“It’s easier to find things in the sea without anything in the way,” Oke says as he lowers himself to a rock to catch his breath. “Clothing. Weapons. Anything.”
“I don’t care,” I say, realizing it’s true as I find my own rock and wrap my arms around my knees. I am shuddering apart like a ship on too strong a sea. I will never recover. And I can’t hold it in anymore. I mean to say one thing, but an accusation springs to my lips instead.
“If you could find me and rescue me, then you knew somehow what was happening. Why didn’t you warn them? If you could call up tentacles and snatch men from the surf, why did you not drag them all beneath the sea? What are you doing? No. Wait. What are you failing to do?”
My chest is heaving and it’s not from trying to breathe again. It’s all the emotions of the past four weeks coming together in this single point because I know now. This man is not the sea god’s champion. No mere hero can call up monsters. No mortal man, however elevated, can command the seas.
He shakes his head. The scratch on his cheek is bleeding. A single red rivulet runs down his jaw and I shudder at the memory of Delarte, but it does not dissuade me.
“I found you because you called me and your call is loud. I have been doing what I can.”
“And?” I press, tightening my arms around myself.
It’s him. It’s him who let my people die. Not just this time but every time. He spoke with me while my Lieve sank beneath the waves and offered me a bargain when it was too late. What was our misery to him? What was my loss? A lark? A joke?
And no wonder he would not confess to being god touched.
I am shaking with fury as I try to say the thing I’ve wanted to say all along.
“What right do you have to choose who to spare and who to ignore? What right did you have to dismiss cries for help? What right did you have to withhold your protection? I don’t want you picking me when you didn’t pick them! ”
Tears flow down my cheeks, but they are not tears of sorrow. They are distilled fury.
He tries to take my hand and I can’t shake his grip away.
I’m not sure if he realizes I’m trying to, because the expression on his face is tender and understanding as if he’s comforting grief and guilt, as if he doesn’t realize that all I feel right now is fury.
I clasp his hand back tightly, twisting it so that our two hands are clenched like fists between us, unwilling to let him think I am weak.
Unwilling to let him dominate me in this.
My guts clench and then it comes pouring out.
“You’re a god.”
He pales.
“Stop lying to me,” I practically shout, holding up our linked fists between us like a threat, a defiance. “Do you think I’m such a fool that I can’t see? You’re the god. Okeanos of the Sea.”
He almost drops my hand, but I won’t let him. He must not think he can turn me aside.
He shakes his head, but it’s not denial of who he is. It’s a defensive thing, like he’s denying the underlying accusation—that this is his fault. That my dead are laid on his deck.
“Okeanos demanded human sacrifices.” I fling the words at him. “And they gave them. And that was not enough. Still he sent his forces to mete out punishment.”
He’s a very good liar. His shock looks genuine.
“What?” He sounds breathless, as if he cannot bear to hear my answer when he asks, “Who told you this?”
“Turbote told me,” I say. “I am certain it is true.”
He’s shaking his head. “It is not so. I can tell you now that it isn’t.”
He tries to take a step backward, but I step forward with him, keeping him close, not letting him distance himself from his guilt.
“I believe Turbote’s words to me. Gods do as they please.
They spare no pity. And the God of the Sea did this to my people.
” I’m choking on my own words, filled with a mixture of grief and fury that overwhelms me.
“You did it. You had no pity on them, just as you had no pity on me. No pity on Lieve. You tried to make me trust you! You tried to make me fall in love with you.”
He flinches back as if from a blow, but this time it is him who doesn’t release my hand and I can’t shake his grip free. He uses it to reel me toward him, until his face is inches from mine and I can read every twitch in it.
“All will be well, Coralys,” he says intently. “I will make it well again.”
Another lie. He cannot fix what has been broken.
I sob silently, bowing into our tangled fists, biting my own knuckle to keep from making a sound.
These are not tears of sadness. They’re angry, furious, helpless tears steeped in hatred.
I’m scared. I’m so scared of being helpless.
I’m so scared that if I don’t reef in my sails, I will give myself away.
It takes me several breaths before I manage to gather control of myself again.
“All will not be well,” I tell him grimly, wrenching myself from his embrace. “Because you have made it unwell, and you cannot stitch back together what has been broken.”
“Cora.” His hollow voice sounds like I’ve landed a blow to him, but I don’t see how when I’ve spoken only the truth.
I point a shaking finger at him. “And you are who I hold responsible now. Not gods in some vague sense but you. Tell me you are not Okeanos. Tell me you are not the God of the Sea.”
He flinches and that’s just fine with me. He’s shaking his head, his wet hair limned by moonlight. He is tight as a sail line.
“This is not the time,” he says, and his eyes are desperate. “I must go. I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have time? What will you do? Fish?” I scoff, shaking my head. “You said we wanted the same thing. You said we wanted to save our people. Are you not my people’s god?”
He’s trembling slightly now, too. Perhaps he is as angry with me as I am with him. Have I angered a god? He has not yet admitted it and I don’t think he will.
“That’s why I must go, Coralys. And right now. I have not time to spare in dealing with you.”
It feels like a slap, but he’s right. My people are more important. We will deal with his guilt after he mitigates his failure.
“Are you going to rescue the survivors and bring them here?”
“No. I am not. And you must not, either. You barely survived your foray into that burning city today. Don’t be a fool by going back. I will discover who these enemies of your people are. You stay here. Allow no one on our island. I will return.”
He takes a step toward the sea, but I am vibrating with frustration.
“Discover?” I ask in a shuddering breath. “I am not asking for an investigation. I am asking that you go back and you save them like you saved me.” My voice grows hard. “Or that you die trying.”
Lieve died trying. And Okeanos did not spare him. I should not feel ashamed for holding him to the same standard.
His eyes harden like ice in a northern harbor. “Enough, woman. Is this about stopping what’s happening on your islands? Or is this about vengeance for your lost power and dead husband?”
“Why can’t it be both?” My voice is loud but it is small compared to the roar of the sea, and I’m furious at myself for not being strong enough.
“How charming,” he says, taking a step back from me to the edge of the dark rocks. “It must be a wonderful thing to judge justly without requiring evidence.”
“I thought you had somewhere to go.” I lace each syllable with poison.
His lip curls and he shakes his head at me in censure, and then, in a graceful dive, he leaps from the rocks and cuts a clean path into the sea. There is not even a splash to give evidence that he was ever here.
And I am left alone and shivering on the rocks with nothing to warm me but the sure knowledge that I have angered my husband and fought with him, but I have also narrowed my possible enemies from ten gods to one.
And better still, I have a weapon I did not expect—a black pearl and a strange creature who offered to bargain with me.