Chapter Sixteen
I choke and I am not the only one. Around the room curses and exclamations ring out. At first, I think the gods are that horrified by our marriage, but then I see the color has drained from their faces for another reason.
Every eye is glued to the godwound in Oke’s thigh—every eye but his.
He shoves back Markanos’s sword and whispers, “El’Dorian?”
“Dead,” Markanos says, staring at his wound.
He has intentionally torn his breeches in such a way that the wound—ragged-edged and bloody—shows plainly to all. Strange that he would keep it a secret from my advisors only to show it so dramatically here.
His eyes wrench from mine and flick from face to face. His trap has been sprung. He’s looking for their reactions as if they will give him an answer to an unspoken question. But perhaps it is more than that now for him.
“Who killed her?” His voice is upset enough that I feel a twist of jealousy—though why I would be jealous that the god I want to murder might care about a dead woman, I do not know.
“We thought it was this mortal you claim as wife,” Markanos says gruffly.
“If it were, then she would be Goddess of Love and Virginity, and it would hardly be your place to kill her,” Oke says as Markanos lowers his sword.
The God of War shrugs awkwardly. “I liked El’Dorian. And besides, whoever murdered her ruined our meal.”
“It’s not ruined,” Aurelius says from his place at the table. He has thrown one leg indolently over the arm of his chair. “The wine is excellent.”
Whatever else they say is lost on me. Could the one who wounded Okeanos and the one who killed El’Dorian be the same?
And if he had succeeded, would he have become god to our people? It is unsettling to think our fate can be decided by the bickering of deities and that we would have no chance to influence our future at all.
“Why do you all sit at table when El’Dorian flowers upon your meal?” Okeanos says in a tight voice. A muscle in his jaw jumps when he clenches it. He leans against one of the chairs, seeming casual, but I note how he takes a little weight off his wounded leg.
“While we yet live, we celebrate. We can hardly pause for every loss, or we would never feast at all,” Pagetto says neutrally, but I can tell she’s shaken, because her wine has dribbled from her goblet onto El’Dorian’s shoulder.
“And look, even you, marked as you are by a cruel wound, are not killed by it.”
“Do you wish me so?” My husband’s tone is light, but his body is tense.
“Fate forfend,” she says, a little breathlessly. “But how do you stand before us so wounded?”
“One of you,” Okeanos says grimly, “has underestimated me.”
It’s such a preposterously mild statement for what’s happened that a surprised laugh slips from my mouth.
They all turn to me at once and frown.
“I think, husband, that all have underestimated you,” I say coolly.
“And you, Coralys?” he asks me as if it is just we two and not an entire audience. “Have you underestimated me?”
“You did say you absolved me of all guilt,” I remind him.
Outside the ring of looming god statues, the sky is darkening and the wind kicks up, swirling the sea into waves that crash against the white rock.
I am not distracted by them. I look steadily into my husband’s eyes and I cannot read the expression he wears.
He’s gripped by a powerful emotion—I can only imagine it must be fury—but when he answers, he does not sound angry, merely determined.
“It is so, Coralys.” He clears his throat and turns away from me to the others. “As courageous as it no doubt is to scream into the abyss and mock death by feasting at a table laid with our dead friend, I have no care to join you in it.”
“It’s tradition,” Glorian counters, but I notice she has yet to eat, and her retainers hug close to her back as if they fear for her safety.
“Tradition to eat over the dead?” Okeanos presses.
“Tradition to break bread with one another,” Glorian says, her voice still tight.
“Even in the face of incursions and brewing wars. Even in the face of insults and mortal losses. All of which are stirring now.” She looks down at his wound speculatively.
“Even in the face of grievous wounds inflicted by brothers.”
“Brothers or sisters?” Okeanos murmurs, and she does not meet his eye.
Markanos coughs. “We could break tradition. This one time.” He looks upward. “Heaven forfend we incur the wrath of the King of Heaven.”
King of Heaven? Is this a real being or a superstition? I am mystified by the pronouncement. I have never heard of that name, not in our religious ceremonies, not in my libraries or reading. Not even in the books of Okeanos’s library, but it seems to suit the others, for they stand almost as one.
“The tuna was off anyway,” Pagetto says with a false note of bravado in her voice. I do not think she tasted the tuna.
Oke ignores her. “We will perform the Resurgence. We will do our duty, and then we will leave.”
When Aurelius clears his throat, his voice is light as if he is trying very hard not to weight it with anything. “You’ll leave tonight, Okeanos?”
Everyone stills, looking toward him.
Okeanos grimaces with half his mouth. “I will leave the next morning. As will my wife. As will any of you who possess the sense with which you ascended to godhood.” He flicks his gaze to me. “No god will remain a god for long without the blessing of the King of Heaven.”
So, he believes, too.
“Speaking of wives,” Alexandros says, crossing the floor to Okeanos.
His golden head is held high. “You have married, Okeanos. And you have brought your short-lived bride here.” He lifts an eyebrow.
“How fortuitous. Tell us, what tempted you to take a mortal to wife when none of the rest of us have made ourselves so vulnerable?”
Oke shifts so that his body is between me and Alexandros. I feel a twinge of guilt shiver through me.
“My wife is not what is at issue here.”
“Though she was hiding behind the statuary,” Aurelius says, sotto voce.
“Far more important is the question—who killed a goddess and left her here in our meeting place? And what will we do about it?”
“We are all of us god-killers. And what’s one more dead?” Treseano asks around a mouthful of some flaky pastry.
“One more might be you,” Okeanos says mildly.
“It won’t be.”
Though I feel chilled at the idea of a violent god murdering other gods, it is no more chilling than when a god watched my islands ravaged by storms and did nothing, when the waves choked my Lieve and no one came to help, when the fires swept across Calypsala and not a single divinity extinguished them, so they will forgive me if I am somewhat preoccupied by greater, heavier murders than the one done to El’Dorian. She was never my god, anyway.
Okeanos makes the ancient holy sign suddenly—the same he’d made on his little boat before he confessed to me that he had enemies bent on his harm. He had not exaggerated his situation. But I find I do not much care. After all, I am one of his enemies.
“Then I demand my right as one of the divine council to force the Resurgence at once. May each be washed of the past, relieved of the present, propelled to the future, and may it be done immediately, and done well, and done for a time and half a time,” he intones, as if speaking holy words.
They must have the authority of law, for the others put down their food, grimacing.
“We will still discuss this wife of yours and why she hid here spying on us instead of arriving with you,” Alexandros says, and his words seem threatening when he looms so close to Oke. “Even if it must wait until after proceedings occur.”
My husband is silent, silent enough that it sounds like a retort.
There’s a moment and then Treseano spreads his hands, mollifying.
“I’m not one to humor anyone, but he’s spoiling my appetite with that miserable wound.
I propose we expedite the ceremonies and then we may make proper work of some repast while the sea goes off to sulk.
Who would have thought he’d be more isolated and miserable married than he was unmarried?
” He waves an indolent hand. “But then who has ever predicted what the tides might bring?”
There is no grumbling as there would be with humans.
No dithering or discussing. There is a small grunt of annoyance from Markanos and a lifted eyebrow from Alexandros, but together they walk toward a spur of ground that splits off from this gathering place and toward another raised island carved from another heap of rock.
The rock curves up from the sea like the arch of a rib and forms a delicate bridge.
Around it, the waves surge and spray, the storm only growing as mauve twilight fills the sky.
Glorian is last to leave but us, her huge procession trailing after her. She spares me one hard glance that sends a spike of fear down my spine.
I swallow hard, my knees trembling as I take the first steps onto the stone bridge. I don’t remember seeing it here when I arrived, but I wasn’t looking for other islands. I was only looking to my goal—the death of a god.
Okeanos, as if oblivious to where we march, grips my hand like a sailor grips a line in a storm, as if somehow I will keep him from being blown to his death, though surely he knows—he must know—that nothing at all has changed.
And though I must be sensible and wait for a moment when we are alone, when he trusts me, and when I have a god weapon, I am still just as determined to spill out his life as whoever spilled out El’Dorian’s.
I dare not do otherwise, not even now that I have met the gods themselves in all their terrible glory and strange familiarity.
“What are you doing?” I murmur as we walk, him with a pronounced limp.
“What are you doing?” he repeats back, and he is right. I cannot question him when I will not allow him to question me. We must both march to our fates on our own. We are married in name only, never in heart.