Chapter Twenty-Five #2
I will never take it in stride that he is dead but not dead, that I killed him and yet he discusses it as if it is merely misfortune as he eats and drinks from the hand of Markanos with a gouge from my spear still set into his flesh.
He’s shockingly alive-looking for someone who is dead, though I do see that his skin is very pale, almost grey, and his eyes are glassy in a way they were not in life.
“Then we shall both be glad there was nothing to find.” Markanos grits his teeth and drags more driftwood over, throwing it on the fire, creating a swirling plume of sparks. They dance and extinguish just like all my plans and assumptions.
“You are friends, then?” I ask, looking from Okeanos to Markanos and back. It’s an odd kind of friendship if that’s what it is.
Oke nods. “Yes.”
“I would not trouble myself so much as this for an enemy and there’d be a knife in the gullet at the end of the night,” Markanos agrees.
“Yes, I believe that’s what you threatened me with,” I say acerbically. “Twice.”
“You did murder the greatest of my friends, girl.” He sits again, sprawling on a driftwood log he must have brought here himself, for it was not on the island when I arrived in the daylight.
“The only of your friends.” Oke quirks a smile. How does he smile right now—even tightly, painfully? He’s still chained. He’s still dead.
“Greatest,” Markanos corrects. “I did have Rothgar and Rethgar.” For a moment his expression is haunted and then he blinks it away and is back to good humor.
“Did I not just list a portion of your exploits? You forget, girl, or you never knew and you ought to know, what a powerful god you married and murdered. He’s so humble he’ll not tell you himself. You met him at his worst.”
I look Okeanos up and down and raise a brow. Oke makes a face that suggests he wishes he could hide from my gaze but is trapped in place.
“You met him besieged by shadow enemies, outmaneuvered, unmanned…”
“I think that description suffices,” Oke tries to interject.
“Outclassed and outplayed,” Markanos charges onward, seemingly unaware of the tightness around Oke’s mouth.
“Wounded in a way bound to bring any man shame. This is not him at his best. He was… he is yet, even now that he is dead… the greatest of us, and you did a dread deed when you drove your spear through his heart.”
I am still looking Oke steadily in the eye. He looks away sharply. Embarrassed. Shy. And it’s that shyness that makes me believe Markanos.
“There’s more to power than violent deeds, God of War,” Oke says grimly.
“Well, if that is a prompting to tell your bloodstained bride of how you saved her own reign in its early days, I’m happy to oblige,” Markanos says, and there is something challenging in his eyes when he looks at me.
“Did you not find it odd, unworthy queen, that your nation found fish in plenty in the Blasted Year? That half the world strained under the heat of the sun that year, and they fainted and died of heat and starvation, and yet there your isles sat, in blowsy plenty, barely acknowledging the miracle of what your god did for you.”
“That was you?” I ask Oke, a little breathlessly, for I remember that year well. I know how I smiled and smiled in public and fretted behind closed doors, certain the famine would take us, too, if our nets began to fail even once.
He does not look at me and that is all the answer I need.
I take a single step toward him then, and he exhales. How long was he holding his breath?
“If you are his friend, then why is he still a prisoner here?” I ask Markanos. “Are you not a god? Can you not set your will into the world and free him?”
The God of War laughs and draws a whale-bone pipe from a little leather satchel he has with him. He makes a show of packing it, tamping it, lighting it, and offering a puff to Oke before answering me.
“I could ask you the same. I did ask you, if you’ll recall.”
“When? When did you ask this?” Oke’s voice is sharp, but his friend speaks right over him.
“This is not an enchantment easily untangled, paltry queen, because the power of it lies in his death. If he was not dead, he could not be held this way.”
“I am yet unaware of a way to raise the dead,” I say grimly, and he wiggles the fingers of his hand dismissively.
“You’re new yet. New enough that your eyes are still closed and you stumble with each step.
You’re like as not to break your own neck as survive to grow.
He won’t tell me why he wed you. We don’t marry as a rule.
Last I heard a god had wed was well before my time.
Before even Aurelius or Glorian or Heskatan, and they are the oldest of us.
No one would open themselves up to the chance of such treachery.
None but our hubris-bloated friend here.
But it is for that reason that I’m here.
I would try my hand at freeing him and I would have your help. ”
“She’s already committed to helping me with my task,” Okeanos says sharply. There’s fear showing in how he holds his limbs so rigidly. “Nothing must take precedence over that.”
“While he is bound here,” Markanos says, ignoring Oke, “the rebellion grows. Those of us who do not like it are isolated and harried on every side. We need Okeanos back. When his power is full, there is none who dare defy him. I would have your help to free him from his bonds so he might stand shoulder to shoulder with us.”
“The rebellion will fail,” Okeanos says. “You have no need of me. But my people need their sanctuary.”
Markanos growls in his throat as if they have covered this ground before and now he has lost patience. “You are too single-minded, Okeanos. Take pity on us all and have a moment’s self-interest.”
“Can I speak a moment with my husband?” I ask Markanos. I’m still wary of him, but I won’t reject an offer of alliance.
He shrugs. “Do as you must.”
But he goes nowhere, simply leans back in his seat and savors the smoke of his pipe. I must creep very close to Okeanos and squat down to speak to him privately.
“Oke,” I begin, trying to compose my thoughts. He’s very cold so close to me. The fire paints him with a wash of violet light, a pretense at life and health, but the Okeanos I remember warmed the bed and the air around him. This one is but a cold shell. I shiver.
“Coralys.” For a moment his eyes are unguarded.
There are so many words we aren’t saying. Mine are full of regret. Full of guilt. His are full of something else—something I’m terrified to name.
“Keep your promise to me,” he begs.
I look away, swallowing. “One of the tasks on the list is to heal the Crown of the Sea. Who is that but you? I can keep my promise to you and help Markanos.”
“That’s a girl,” Markanos says from his place on the log. I shoot him a poisoned look. He is not helping. “We don’t have much time. If we’re going to free this seaweed-encrusted god, then we must leave now. While our enemies are distracted. Before their plans are in place.”
“If you can heal me while you attend my tasks, that is well and good, but, Coralys, I beg you,” Oke says, lurching violently toward me.
His restraints hold him back, but I feel his cold breath on my cheek and look directly into his green eyes.
“Don’t waste your time on me alone. Not as a crab.
Not as a woman. Go home. Fulfill the tasks.
Save our people as you said you would. Don’t follow the lead of my old friend.
His heart carries him down the wrong path. ”
I won’t promise him that. How can I?
But now his eyes are frantic and my heart squeezes. How can I deny him this request when I’ve taken everything else from him?
I feel terribly torn. I would like to fulfill his requirements while giving him back his freedom—maybe even his life.
And that could absolve me of my guilt and still save my people in the end.
For surely he would do a better job of being their god and lifting their Lighthouse than I would. I want both things at once.
I stand abruptly.
“We must make ready to leave, Markanos of War.”
“So we must.” The God of War stands, dusting off his trousers and knocking the ash from his pipe.
Okeanos spasms against his bonds, his face a rictus of pain. He barks a short, hard curse. But my back is already turned to him.
I hear a sharp inward draw of breath as he gets himself under control, speaking then in a tight tone to my back. “No matter what you feel for me—no matter what pity or regret—it cannot outweigh the needs of our people.”
He’s right, of course. He must be right.
I speak quickly so that I won’t have to think too hard about what I am saying. “I give you my word that my primary aim will be to raise your Lighthouse, Okeanos. But I will do it my way.”
“And I will help, of course,” Markanos surprises me by saying.
I’m distracted for a moment by a small wave that moves up a little farther on the land than it ought to be able to go.
It laps gently across my foot and then it is gone.
I stare at it. I feel as if I’ve relived a moment of my life.
My mouth is falling open and my breath draws in long and slow. Oh. Oh no.
I hear sand being kicked over the fire and then a hand is in mine before I can shake it off, and Markanos says bluntly, “We’ll go to your island and make a plan before we act.”
And then a sword is slashing through the air and we’re both taken far from the tiny island in the middle of the sea. The last thing I hear is Okeanos’s rasping breath going in and out of his ruined chest, and I wish I’d made no promise to him at all.