Chapter Seventeen #2
He looks to me a little uncertainly as he says, “And I declare I have gained a bride, a wife, a full equal.”
The blood in my ears roars. I smile reassuringly and absolutely falsely. I cannot stop my shaking, but I can force my mouth into an upward bow. Within, my heart howls.
“Yes,” I agree.
And I hate him for the flicker of hope I see in his eyes. For how he almost smiles, for how he looks away, intent on the scenes of his ruined kingdom as if he has any right to even look at them after all he’s done.
And I hate their King of Heaven, too, whoever he is, because the glory comes down and Okeanos fills with it, and his golden corona is so bright that I can’t even look, can’t even think, as he pulls me away so that Aurelius might take his turn.
“Well done, wife of mine,” he murmurs, but he can stuff his “well dones” down his own throat and gag on them. Or I can do that for him if he finds it too difficult.
I’m too upset to watch Aurelius place his gift on the altar. I can’t even say what it is.
I’m so deep in thought that I do not notice the rest of the ceremony.
It is pageantry and ritualistic observance and drama and I care for none of it.
The ceremony ends, the glory fades, and I am just beginning to wonder what comes next when I hear someone gasp, and I look up in time to see Treseano leap onto the altar.
His face is still glowing and bright from the power that has descended upon him, and as he spins to face us all, adopting a wide, half-crouched stance, he still carries the squirming burlap sack over one shoulder.
“What nonsense is this, Treseano?” Alexandros begins, but the God of Death is looking around the circle.
“Someone is killing gods,” he says grimly, his gaze flicking to the side, and I can’t tell if it is Aurelius or Pagetto he has glanced at, but it seems to grow his courage.
“And it is not me, though death is my purview.” He pauses long enough that Alexandros opens his mouth to speak again and once more he is interrupted.
His jaw shuts with an audible snap as Treseano raises his voice.
“Now that we have received our blessings, it is time to speak freely.”
“Though perhaps not standing on the king’s altar,” Glorian murmurs, and is ignored.
“The King of Heaven,” Treseano says, glaring down at us, “has not prevented this murder, nor has he seen fit to establish an heir for El’Dorian’s worshippers. I am no malevolent force. No revolutionary. But I put to you this: Why do we worship a king at all when we are gods?”
“Why, indeed,” Aurelius murmurs, flicking a hand out and flourishing a dagger as if he is bored by the proceedings.
“For the sake of vows made and powers granted,” Markanos says dismissively, but Aurelius tosses the dagger at him. Markanos catches it with a glare.
“I’d hear the rest of Treseano’s speech,” the God of the Air says. “He seems to have thought well on the matter.”
“I’d hear from him, too,” Heskatan murmurs, and there are nods from Alexandros and Pagetto. That’s half of them.
But why am I surprised? Betrayal is the spice of the day, it would seem. Okeanos betrays his people. I betray him. Why should these other gods not betray this mysterious King of Heaven?
Beside me, Okeanos stiffens, and his voice is very low. “I’ll have no part in treachery.”
“Who is speaking of treachery?” Treseano rumbles, spreading a hand across his chest in mock surprise. “Long have we been ruled by a distant specter. But we owe him no loyalty. What claim has he on us?”
“The claim of his blessing granted just now,” Okeanos returns.
Glorian makes a sound of assent, and I see a nod from Ordanus.
“Make up your mind tonight,” Treseano says brazenly from his perch on the altar. “Those who do not stand with me, stand against me.”
“This is madness,” Glorian says. “Why disrupt things when all goes so well? We’ve had bounty and plenty for a handful of centuries in a row and I’ve found I like the taste of it.”
“‘Well,’ you say?” Treseano scoffs. “For you, perhaps. Tell El’Dorian it has gone well.”
“But surely her murderer is among us,” Glorian says. “Or a mortal has slain her and taken her place and will soon make an appearance.”
“Reveal her murderer, then. I’m waiting,” Treseano taunts her, and then strikes a dramatic waiting pose. “No? Then let us seek justice of our own. Let us tear down the King of Heaven and take his place. Who is he to rule over us and do it so poorly?”
I swallow. His thoughts echo my own. I can hardly disdain Treseano for wanting what I want: Justice. Protection. Basic competence.
“This has all the seeming of a ruse,” Okeanos says. “Who speaks through you, Treseano?”
“I speak for myself, Sea God. I am not a pawn in the hands of a great lord as you are,” Treseano says with a sneer.
“And I stand with Death,” Aurelius says mildly, drawing out a second tiny dagger and trimming his nails with it. “The time has come, I think. Change breathes in the wind and wafts into the air.”
I watch Okeanos out of the corner of my eye and wish I’d been taken as a bride by someone else. Someone who truly did understand what matters in this world as the god beside me never will. Someone with the ambition to do something about it instead of entrenching themselves in useless loyalty.
“Enough,” Okeanos says in a low tone, startling me. He is lovely and terrible with the glory of the heavens still shining in a corona around his head. “This will not happen.”
“It is not for you to say.” Treseano adjusts his grip on his mace.
Like lightning, Alexandros draws his hammer, and Aurelius pockets his tiny dagger and slips his spatha from its sheath. I’m counting in my head, trying to keep track of them all.
“It’s for all of us to say,” Treseano says, staring down my husband for a long moment until Alexandros shifts his weight to his left foot and spins slightly to his right.
Now his back is to Aurelius, his weapon up, and both of them stand with their backs to Treseano as if they have become his honor guard.
“Is this war, then?” Markanos says, and he sounds far too excited.
“What else would it be?” Treseano calls back in what is clearly a taunt.
I take a stumbling step backward, sensing violence in the air. I’m only just in time.
Markanos bulls past me, sword in hand, and as he dashes forward, Treseano leaps from the altar, flinging his bag out.
From it tumbles a writhing black creature.
It looks almost like an oversize leech, black and glossy, large as a ship’s cat.
It wriggles toward Markanos at the same moment that Treseano roars a battle cry.
Okeanos has dropped his grip on me and my vision is seared by the glory of the gods. Too many of them are moving too quickly. It sends bursts of pain through my skull, shattering my perception into short little snatches.
I don’t dare let that glory pin me in place, I shuffle backward blindly, feeling for one of the uprights to dodge behind. I am unarmed and very, very mortal.
There’s a roar just in front of me as Markanos’s two blind companions—Rethgar and Rothgar—tear into Treseano’s host.
“For glory!” they shout as they burst into the ranks of the sewn-mouthed priests.
“No!” Markanos exclaims, but he is too late.
These are mortals.
They scream and die like mortals, butchered on both sides by a sudden fury of sharp blades and gasping intensity. They fight for their gods. And neither side dares cower when their devotion is so high.
It has always been so that priests or monks or even heroes will give their lives for the glory of the gods, flinging themselves into certain death for the promise of an unrivaled afterlife, but I have never seen it done with such flagrant abandon before.
It is as if they came here to die and must race one another to do it.
On the mortal plane the gods are forbidden from directly murdering mortals or ruling them as a king would and so they have always fought and acted through our monarchs and armies. But this is not the mortal plane, and I did not expect that the gods would spend their mortal followers so cheaply.
Something hot hits my legs and I look down. A spray of blood streaks across my skirt. I try to shake it off, as if that is what is important right now, but my brain is not working properly. It is not offering me the right kind of options.
I force my eyes to look up and my legs to stumble backward.
A single one of Markanos’s guards drops beneath a heap of Glorian’s followers right in front of me. They’ve fallen on him like gulls upon a rotting fish. His screams grow fainter and then cut off.
I should run. I cannot make my legs so much as twitch.
With a sudden howl, the head of one of Ordanus’s harpists goes spiraling through the air in an arc over the mass of gathered bodies. It seems heavier than I would have guessed.
Ordanus shouts angrily, and a wave of sound bursts across the mortals, bursts across me, and I’m clutching at my ringing ears, all sound ripped away.
The world around me is a grunting, ripping tangle of fighting limbs and terrible carnage. Feet squeak on marble as they slip in blood.
I don’t know when I stopped breathing, but the world is spinning and my vision is narrowing. I’m afraid that if I turn, my back will be exposed, but if I don’t run… My heels strike the wall behind me and I’m trapped. There’s no way to flee with a wall at my back.
A hand reaches toward me from the crowd and one of Treseano’s sewn-mouthed ghouls bursts from the tumult toward me. I just have time to suck in a breath for a scream when someone curses fierce and furious beside me.
One of the gods strides through the masses, scattering mortals like fish scatter before a dolphin.
His shadow falls over me, and I flinch back before I realize it is Okeanos stepping between me and the fight.
He flicks a hand and a wave rises from the sea, swells over the edge of the pale island, and sweeps the sewn-mouthed villain over the other side.
Okeanos strides into the mess, hindered by his limp, but not stopped.
He grabs Ordanus by the hair and drags him up from the ground as he plants his spear into one mortal warrior—one of Treseano’s, I think.
His waves rush again over the masses, flattening some to their knees and sending some over the side like they swept aside the sewn-mouthed priest. Before Okeanos, the last mortals fall, or still, twitching in fear and death.
“Enough.” The sea god’s words are calm, quiet. Treseano strides forward, but Okeanos points his spear at him in warning, roaring, “I told you. Enough. Have you not been sated on sufficient blood this night? Restrain yourself, or watch me cut your throat with your own sword.”
Treseano stops.
So do the rest, frozen in place, wary as they watch these two gods stare at each other. My eyes flick to Aurelius and I frown. He is untouched, leaning against one upright as if he is merely a spectator like me.
“The declaration has been made,” Okeanos says grimly.
His wound is worse. Blood pours down his leg.
“We’ve all heard it. You will have your god war and you will have your revolt against heaven.
But we are all of us here until morning.
Or have you forgotten that our godhood and the powers just renewed are dependent on keeping vigil here this night?
Will you spend every hour fighting to the death, or shall we call a truce until we return to our holdings below? ”
“I have not forgotten,” Glorian says airily. I hadn’t even noticed her there, but she’s close to Okeanos. She has not a speck of blood on her. Shocking, considering her entire entourage lies in shreds before her slippered feet.
“Then you know,” Okeanos says, and his voice is the thunder of the breakers upon the rocks. His voice is the angry sea. “If you leave before the proper time, you will lose your godhood.”
She looks away but she does not speak again.
None of them do. They simply look one to another as if to divine each one’s intent.
Okeanos turns now to Treseano, barely leashed fury in his voice. “This is impulsively done. You will think better of it come the dawn.”
“You call the planning of centuries impulse?” Treseano asks, flicking the tip of his sword free of blood. But his words smack of the same posturing that led him to eat food laid out beside a corpse.
“Centuries?” Okeanos looks around him, flint-faced. “This looks like the planning of a single moment.”
Treseano smirks, glancing over his shoulder as if to include everyone in his taunt. “And yet your islands are burned. And you have done nothing. Or did you lie when you tallied them up for the King of Heaven?”
Okeanos’s cheeks flush dark.
“Oh yes,” Treseano continues. “Your people are ripped from you—and you stand there impotent. What is the sea but a holding tank for water no one wants or needs? We cannot grow our crops with it. We cannot succor our people. It is refuse, and your home is the place where refuse is stored.” Treseano flicks a finger, screwing up his mouth in an expression of disgust. “Have your night of peace. Have your calm before the storm. I’ll not break it and neither will those with me.
We have no need. When dawn breaks, we will leave and everything you love will come to an end. ”
He turns his back as if he has nothing to fear from any of them, and I see Okeanos’s hand tremble as if he wishes he could thrust his spear right into it.
But Treseano walks down the temple steps and out of sight and Aurelius and Alexandros follow, a single step behind him.
I do not see what the other gods do. I admit I am shaking too hard to keep track.
I blink away the black dots swirling across my vision and it takes me a moment to compose myself. I have just watched men and women butchered like fish on the docks. It could have been me. I hold the contents of my stomach down by sheer force of will, tasting acid.
When at last I have charge of myself, I catch a glimpse of Markanos and Okeanos sharing a weighted look before the God of War marches away.
The only one left is Ordanus, holding the severed head of his musician in both palms and looking lost. He sits heavily on the altar, still clasping the head, his eyes staring into the blank eyes of the mortal. They are very large.
“Fair Andrane’s voice lit the sky and flushed the flowers of the field,” he says in a way that is almost a song.
“You should have taken better care not to bring him to such a place as this, then,” Okeanos says gruffly, and then he turns and grips my arm, and I let him.
I didn’t realize I was crying, but of course I am. Silently, thank the gods.
Or don’t thank them. This is, after all, entirely their fault.