Chapter Fifteen
Though I watch all around me, the arrival of the first god still takes me by surprise. There’s a faint sound similar to someone opening a wine bottle and at the base of the statue of Aurelius, God of the Air, a man appears.
My fingers wrap tensely around the base of Okeanos’s statue, but I am very still, barely even breathing.
The statue of Aurelius is easy to recognize. He’s always depicted as a young man in a very short chiton, a crown of olive leaves on his head and three arrows in one hand. It’s only when the man appears that I realize I’ve seen the real Aurelius in the flesh before.
This man carries no arrows and the crown he wears is gold and glittering; his chiton is the color of wine and his chlamys worked with silver and gold thread in an olive leaf pattern, but it is the same man I met on the docks of Oke’s island.
The very same one who suggested I cut off my own finger and throw it in the sea.
I can see now why Oke was so nervous about him.
My eyes keep passing over his face as if they are too afraid to latch on to his terrible beauty and hold there. I must force them to stay on him and force my shoulders straight. This is not my god. Nor is he the one I want dead. All I need from the God of the Air is to escape his notice.
Aurelius strides into the room from the base of the statue where he has materialized.
He moves like a wounded lion, stalking with a slight hitch in his step, his lithe muscles flowing as he looks around him quickly and then hurries to the table.
One hand rises and lingers just over the body of the dead woman and then he draws it back, swallowing visibly.
His eyes narrow as he looks around the room a second time, and my heart picks up speed. Will he see me hiding here?
To my relief, there’s a second pop and beneath the rough-hewn statue of Markanos, God of War, emerges a man dressed in continental armor—a muscle cuirass and flowing cape, crested galea and embossed greaves.
A large ruby dangles from one ear. He’s older than we are, maybe twice the age of Aurelius—though if they are both gods, then they are ageless—with the barrel-chested look of a fit older man who has maintained his looks.
His face is hewn from rock, his features almost ugly, yet they possess the grandeur of rough-cut mountain peaks.
It’s a beauty hard to define, and impossible to reproduce.
He’s flanked by a pair of mortal men bearing swords. They’re both blindfolded, though they move at his back in perfect synchronization. Rethgar and Rothgar—the blind guardians of War. I am witnessing legends come to life.
A stab of fear shoots through me. If they find me spying, what pain may be visited on me by an angry war god? Surely they will not spare me.
My knees wobble as Markanos’s eyes flicker over my hiding place, but just like Aurelius he strides to the table, his eyes narrowing as they take in the dead woman.
“El’Dorian?” His words come out in a growl, but his face is troubled rather than furious.
One of my hands flies up to cover my mouth before I can stop it.
The dead woman is the Goddess of Love and Virginity. I steal a quick glance at her statue—the only one without water pouring from its open mouth. Its joyful expression looks nothing like the dead woman, and its hands are full of blooming flowers, where she has flowers growing in her death wound.
Three gods. Only seven more, a hysterical voice in my head says, and the child’s song begins to sing in my mind as Markanos’s hand drifts to the hilt of his sword.
Take your breath for Aurelius,
Drink your drop for Okeanos,
Plant your seed for Glorian,
Give your kiss for El’Dorian,
Sing your song for Ordanus,
Strike your hammer for Alexandros,
Walk your trail for Pagetto,
Dig your grave for Treseano,
But for me it is Heskatan with her snorting horses,
And Markanos will guide me through battle’s courses,
And your love will fade, my dear, as my death takes me
And in the Nightwaters, all ten gods I’ll see.
I want to laugh and I know it’s simply the strain of seeing actual gods that makes me feel that way. No one will be giving El’Dorian kisses now.
“You shouldn’t have killed her, Aurelius,” the God of War says grimly, but before he draws his sword the God of the Air lifts a palm in peace.
“Hold your wrath, War. This is no work of mine. What grudge have I ever had against the beauty of El’Dorian?”
The God of War frowns at the corpse on the table. His hand trembles on the hilt of his sword. He is unsettled by this and so is Aurelius, though they speak so calmly.
“If it is not you, then it must be one of the others,” Markanos says in a low voice, but he does not take a seat; rather, he withdraws back to lean against the feet of his own statue, Rethgar and Rothgar following him.
He rubs at a pair of parallel lines in his forehead, but they do not fade away.
“We will wait and see what they have to say for themselves.”
I can’t tear my eyes away from Markanos.
He looks exactly as I would have expected him to look.
It’s said he was dropped into a battlefield by a great stork and that in his wrath he leveled both armies and claimed all the lands from the Elephant Spire to the Frigid Plains as his personal territory; for the gods own pieces of us mortals.
We are broken up by them into flocks and herds—or, in Okeanos’s case, schools of fish—and each attends to his own like a shepherd. Or like a butcher.
Another pop startles me and three gods arrive at once. The first one I see is Glorian, arguably one of the most powerful gods. She is just as lovely as Aurelius, but where he is dark-haired, pale, and ephemeral, she is golden and lush.
Glorian is crowned with uncut emeralds, her golden-red hair wraps around her limbs in thick curls, and flanking her—odd for the Goddess of Plenty and Growing Things—is a whole squadron of burnished soldiers, their spears in hand, their shields gleaming.
But their peaked helms don’t disguise the faraway looks in their eyes.
It is as if they are not exactly here in mind in the same way that they are in body.
My subjects were never things to me, and it makes me feel tight and worried to see these people treated so.
“An army, Glorian?” Markanos says from where he lingers, leaning against his statue. “That’s not like you. Do you know something we do not? Something about the death of our sister, perhaps?”
“She’s no sister to me. Not one of you is my family.”
“Harsh,” Aurelius murmurs with a raised brow, but she carries on.
“Only Aurelius was even a god when I joined your ranks,” Glorian says, but I see she pales as she says it, and the goddess who emerged beside her has a distinctly green look around the edges of her brown face.
“Forgive me if I do not trust you, God of War, even in this neutral place. I have seen how your worshippers posture at my borders. There are whispers that King Torfang assembles a secret army and eyes the olive groves of Pescatore with greed. Shall I trust you when you assemble against me, Markanos?”
I miss the details of Markanos’s denial. I’m too busy looking at the others who arrived with the goddess Glorian.
Her companions are Heskatan of the Hill Countries, Goddess of Horses, and Pagetto, Goddess of Travelers. I identify them both easily—though it is still shocking to see gods living and breathing before me when I was not certain they even existed only weeks ago.
Heskatan is a very dark woman, whose long hair hides most of her face. She is silent and grave and her eyes never leave the corpse of El’Dorian. She is the only one who has not arrived on foot. She is mounted on a wide-chested black horse, and when she dismounts, she feeds him treats from her hand.
With her is Pagetto, a goddess with sharp eyes and a voluptuous figure. Her hair is shaved entirely and a cap woven of gold and dripping gems is worn in its place.
“Leave us our small defenses, Markanos,” Pagetto says in a purring voice. “You cannot be the only one to bring your guards. Look at the table. If El’Dorian brought mortals along, perhaps she would not be laid out like dinner.”
Despite her words about guards, she has brought only one companion—a woman so veiled that I can see nothing but her eyes, bearing a large snake.
The snake wraps around both the woman and Pagetto at once, its pale yellow skin roiling and writhing as if it has recently eaten and its prey is still within.
For a moment, a shape very like a human face passes across the snake’s pale midsection.
I count silently to myself. Six gods are here.
Each of them as nebulous in their morality as a fish or a bird—I see no heroes or even villains, only strange and elevated beings.
But if I have met six, then four more remain.
And one is Okeanos. My palms sweat at the thought that he could be here at any moment.
And then what? Shall I dart out and snatch a weapon from one of the gods before he notices?
While every statue of the gods carries some weapon as decoration, so far only Aurelius, Heskatan, and Markanos are visibly armed.
Could I steal a sword while they are distracted with the death of one of their own?
“If El’Dorian is dead, then where is her heir?” Glorian asks incisively. She looks around, peering at the bases of the statues, and I shrink back a little more. “Did either of you think to look, or were you just going to sit there?”
Despite her accusation, Aurelius lifts a pitcher, carefully disentangles one of the dead goddess’s curls, and pours himself a drink.
Pagetto shudders delicately.
“It’s been ages since someone killed one of us,” she says in her bell-like voice. “Who was the last?”
“Okeanos, killing Vesuvius.” It’s the first time Heskatan has spoken. Her voice is soft, barely above a whisper.