Chapter Twenty-Six #2
But I don’t answer him. I simply lead him to the cottage as calmly and regally as possible. I must make this plan with him. I need a powerful ally. Markanos is my only option to fill that role.
I open the cottage, offer him a seat, and begin to brew tea.
“Let us be clear,” he tells me as he sprawls on the same seat he sat on to threaten me so many mornings ago.
“I do not want to play games or raise lighthouses or any other nonsense, so we leave that behind now. What we need is to free Okeanos and wage war against Treseano, and for that we need allies. And my first choice is Ordanus. He’s bright and creative and…
amenable to persuasion. Do you have any reason to object to that? ”
“None.”
I arrange a pair of cups on the table, weighing my words with care. How much should I share with him?
“We could free Okeanos and complete one of his tasks,” I say carefully.
“I don’t want to hear about his fool ambitions,” Markanos says.
But they fill my mind, and for two reasons.
Firstly, because I have agreed to help Okeanos raise this Lighthouse and I have never been one to go back on my word.
But secondly, because I can still feel his eyes on me, still feel his longing that this be accomplished, and I can no more fail him in this than I can fail him in seeing him freed from his torture.
His face fills my memory, his words my heart, and it’s like I’m soaked in him and can’t get dry.
It’s like he’s seeping right into my bones.
I could not be free of him now if I never saw him again.
I could not be free of him if I slipped into the Nightwaters myself.
And so, as I brew our tea, and listen to Markanos try to explain why Ordanus might be a valuable ally, I am thinking of how if I were to heal Okeanos, it would also mean healing the Crown of the Sea. I’m thinking of how I can accomplish his task while making him whole.
Which is madness.
I’m a wife in mourning for a lost husband. I have no right to be letting myself soften for another. And yet I am. I feel it with every breath. I soften like fruit left in the sun and I am no more able to stop it than the fruit can.
I’m still struggling over that when I surface to find Markanos is still trying to persuade me.
“Ordanus, for all his foolish-seeming ways, has ever been an untangler of what is tangled. A solver of puzzles and clever tricks. You can’t love art without understanding the basis of what makes a thing beautiful and that’s usually its own kind of puzzle.
So we’ll visit Ordanus and see if he can shed a little light on the matter of how to free Okeanos. ”
“Why would he?” I ask grimly, trying to return to the task at hand. “It seems to me that all the gods but Okeanos have lined up in a row against this King of Heaven. Oke has made himself their enemy by virtue of his faithfulness and none of them can stand it.”
He offers me a mocking half smile. “Oke, is it? Stay your pet names. Ordanus sits on the marker post, neither jumping one way nor the other. And you’re a fool to think all of them are against your husband.
There are ways to oppose a thing quietly.
Not everyone dramatically kills a perfectly good husband just to make a point.
“Ordanus will hear our request. Chances are, he will even help, if only to restore the balance again and stay firmly in the middle. Trust me. I have tried to take Ordanus’s territory before.
He is a formidable enemy. Slippery and difficult to pin down.
He does not like to commit himself to one thing or another. We’ll find him firmly neutral.”
I nod. I would never have guessed this of the God of Art. I would have expected… I don’t know… dreaminess, perhaps?
“Is that your god weapon?” Markanos points to my trident as he takes a sip and I hand it to him.
“Hmm. This is Vesuvius’s trident. Terrible thing.
I’d hate to have it score my flesh. I suspect there’s more to it than the usual.
Vesuvius was a tricksome monster when he ruled the blue, and I tremble to think what he might now be plotting in the Nightwaters. How did you come by it?”
“Okeanos has a host of strange items laid up in a storeroom.”
Markanos gives me a sharp look. “And he did not warn you to stay away from them?”
“He might have,” I say. What business is it of his? Besides, this trident gave me victory over the sea serpent. I will not give it up. Especially not now when I might need it.
“Well, if you took it up as your first weapon as a god, then it’s yours now,” Markanos says. “Let’s see what we can do with it.”
He has the trident cleaned and sharpened and the shaft free of burrs very quickly. I sip my tea quietly and watch. I am growing tired and my thoughts are far away.
Now that I know it was Okeanos who saw and saved me in my youth, who was there when no other was, who later knew what I had done when all else believed a different story, I can’t shake the thought that he’s still one with the sea, watching my actions and knowing everything that happens while he is tortured far away.
Is there a way that I might watch him—watch over him in return?
“Have a care with this trident,” Markanos says, frowning as he finishes his work. “It sings to me of a dark power. I think it could pin a thing so well in place that it could stitch a soul back into the world of the living.”
“Truly?” I ask, not certain if I believe him. “How would you know?”
“I am God of War, Drowned Queen. I can feel the heart of a weapon in a way you never could. Tell me, have you used it?”
“I killed a sea serpent with it,” I say uneasily as he hands it back to me. “What do you expect me to do with it now?”
“Stick it in your enemies.”
A laugh gusts from me without any conscious thought. “So simple?”
“It usually is. It’s only people who insist on complicating things. Death is as simple as breathing. Now. We have a plan. You have a weapon. I will return tomorrow at dusk and we will see what Ordanus might reveal to us.”
“Why not now?” I ask. I’m exhausted but unwilling to let such an opportunity pass.
“Because I am tired and so are you,” Markanos says with a wry twist to his lips. “Besides, war has begun on the mainland. I have prayers to attend. I’ll not leave my people without my aid. Get some rest. Don’t play crab all day.”
And with that, he rises, slices the air with his sword, and is gone.
I follow his lead, spending the rest of the night trying to do my best to answer what small prayers I can.
My people are stirred up. We’ve lost trading ships close to where Alexandros and Glorian fight along disputed shores, merchants far from home when hostilities broke out, and traders who thought to profit on the chaos, and there’s little I can do to ease their pain except help the passage of those in flight.
When dawn rises, I am a crab again. I cannot be otherwise because far away there is an ache in the sea that I am failing to mend, and I fear that if I do not find some way to heal it, then I will lose it entirely.