Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
I can’t believe I’m talking to a dying god about this instead of…
well, of his death, his hopes, his fears.
It feels like eating dinner on a table with dead El’Dorian there like a macabre centerpiece.
Like her, tiny golden flowers are forming and budding in the blood that drips from his lips to the floor.
His laughter sprays it farther, like dandelion seeds.
He has something else jammed in his chest—some kind of dagger with a strange guard. It’s in there so deeply that there’s barely a fingerbreadth of hilt showing. It must be a god weapon, or how would he be dying now?
Ordanus is still talking, his words thick and slow. I don’t dare linger when the creature is certainly coming back, but I can’t look away from his dying words.
“What do you think he bought with the price of agreeing to carry… two of them?”
Something otherworldly screams. I wrench my gaze from Ordanus’s, scanning the room for the enemy. Markanos has one creature by the throat and he’s shaking it brutally. There’s a bite on his arm that’s flicking blood out with every shake.
I’ve lost track of Treseano. The other creature has turned around and launches itself at me again. I bring up the trident and try to thrust it at the inky strands. I feel it catch, but the force is more than I expected and it bowls me over, tumbling me to the ground.
My elbow crashes against the floor and my hand is suddenly numb.
The tail of the creature wraps around my torso, throttling me hard.
I gasp jaggedly, my ribs creaking, my breath snatched away, panic clawing up my throat.
And then I’m twisting the trident, sliding my hands down the haft so they’re closer to the spear points and I can angle it to thrust into the tangle of smoky strands.
I manage one strike, two, and then the creature drops me suddenly and my head smacks hard on the ground.
I rise, blinking back stars, clawing across the ground to catch up the trident again.
I am just in time to see the black… thing…
cover Ordanus’s face. I drag myself back to my feet, swaying hard, vision flickering with black stars, and then I draw the trident back and jam it into the shadow as hard as I can.
It bunches and gleams like a leech as thick as my torso but I twist the skewer, twisting, twisting, until it shrieks, yanking itself quickly from the grip of my weapon and leaping away.
It’s gone so suddenly that my trident pushes through the air where it was and clangs against the marble floor.
Ordanus’s eyes are glazed with death. His mouth gapes even farther open. Repulsed, I stumble backward, my panicked breath loud in my ears.
There’s a sharp curse and then Markanos is beside me, examining the dead god.
“But why kill Ordanus?” he mutters as I spin, expecting another attack, but there’s no one there.
Not in the room. Not on the ceiling. I’m shivering so hard that my teeth rattle, but I don’t feel cold.
“And why El’Dorian? Neither one makes sense.
And why would Treseano let us see it was him if he didn’t mean to kill us, too? ”
“Maybe he did,” I say grimly. “He certainly made an effort.”
“Then why not finish the job?” Markanos grumbles, shaking blood from his blade. “If he wanted us dead, you, at least, could be dead. Why stop now? Why gather up those two creatures instead of using them for their purpose?”
I swallow. “Ordanus didn’t think he wanted to be using them. He seemed to think that carrying them was a price he was paying to create a working.”
Markanos pauses, looking from the wound to me and then back again. “Well, then maybe that is why. He was killed to keep him silent on the matter. Not to hide his killer. Treseano has a secret, it would seem.”
“But we know what working he has paid for,” I say, suddenly uncertain. “He’s paying to keep Okeanos tied to the anchor.”
Markanos frowns, his eyes still glued to the dead god. “They might not know that we know that. Or—perhaps things are not what we think. Either way, another of us is dead. And in the middle of a rebellion, that’s a deeply concerning thing. Ordanus might have been an ally given enough time.”
“Maybe that’s why they killed him, then,” I suggest.
He grunts.
“Who will be God of Music now?” I ask, feeling a sudden sadness wash over me. Ordanus was never my god. But somewhere on the mainland people are worshipping in his name. And they’ll go on worshipping, long past the death of the god they claimed it is for.
Markanos gives me a long look. “You can claim his lands and people if you want them. And if you love music enough. Or art.”
I’m already shaking my head. My words are thick with emotions I don’t want to have.
“I don’t want any of this. I didn’t come for any of this.”
Markanos shrugs. He hardly seems to care that Ordanus is dead. It’s a far cry from how torn up he was over El Dorian.
“Then the King of Heaven will call someone else to fill his place. Or it will be left abandoned. We need not trouble ourselves with it for now. We have learned what we must tonight—that Treseano is certainly the one binding Okeanos in place and that he will kill to prevent others from either revealing that or joining against his rebellion. I think our next move is clear.”
“Finding a different ally,” I say at the same moment that he says the opposite.
“Hunting down Treseano directly. This second creature in his sack may very well be payment to bind Okeanos—as you have suggested. It makes the most sense of what we’ve seen.
And perhaps that first creature in the sack at the Resurgence was from the original wound to the sea god.
We will confront Treseano and destroy them both. ”
“We?” I ask, thinking about my terrible performance in the fight we just had, but he isn’t listening to me. He is lost in thought, looking like he might just stand here in the middle of this carnage and think all night.
“We need to do something about the dead,” I say. I can’t stop my teeth from chattering.
“What? Oh. Yes. Them.” He pauses for a moment before making a brushing-away motion with his hand. “Light the place on fire.”
I stare at him, mouth open.
“We’re too far away to flood it, Sea God,” he says impatiently. “Just light a nice fire. There are all kinds of canvases in the next room.”
“You mean the priceless paintings?” I can’t help that my voice is shrill. “There’s surely a better way than simply torching things all the time. Even for a God of War.”
He shrugs. He’s still lost in thought. I open my mouth to argue, but the smell of smoke is already in the air. It seems that Markanos is not the only one who believes that flames cover over a multitude of violences.
Nervously, I grip my trident tighter.
“Could those things kill Treseano? Those things in the bag.”
I can’t stop thinking of how they ripped at me. Their twisting torsos looked like braided roots mixed with shadows, but they tightened around me like snakes. I shiver at the memory.
He’s distracted when he answers. “Oh no, they are there to torment him. Otherwise, how could he use them to torment others?”
“That makes no sense.” I’m out of patience. I hurry to the door, but it’s closed and jammed shut. My heart begins to pound. Are we trapped? “Aren’t they just two animals he somehow needs to keep alive?”
Markanos snorts. He’s digging the dagger out of Ordanus’s chest, an activity I don’t wish to watch. I stand back, nervously watching the doors. If they so much as twitch, I’ll attack.
“I wager he wishes that were so every morning, but these creatures are not his friends. He can bind them in the sack, it would seem, but they will fight him every step of the way, looking for their opportunity to tighten around him and choke his life out or fasten those maws full of teeth on his flesh and tear out a chunk. They’re soul saps.
They’ll drain a little of his life and sense of well-being every single day until he’s nothing but a twitching husk, and he must be ever vigilant that they don’t do more than that.
Perhaps he withdrew from this skirmish so precipitously for that very reason. I was just beginning to enjoy myself.”
I shudder. “Even as part of an exchange for magic, that feels like a steep price.”
I glance back to see Markanos cleaning the dagger and examining it.
“Treseano’s,” he says to my raised eyebrow.
“I thought he bore a mace,” I reply, trying to keep my gorge down.
“A man can own more than one weapon, Drowned Queen. And of course the price is steep. If Treseano paid for something that will hurt a person day after day—as we think he did—then he must pay the price of feeding these monsters a bit of his soul every day. And he must tend them faithfully or risk seeing his work undone.”
“Can they be killed?”
“Anything can be killed.” He winks at me. “You of all people know that. How we will kill them is another question. I’ve never heard tell of a soul sap dying while its victim remained alive.”
“This is madness,” I mutter. There’s no way out of the room except through the door or out the stained glass windows. Smoke rolls in from under the door and I’m done with waiting for Markanos.
I raise my trident, breaking one of the windows, but far from letting fresh air in, the room suddenly seems smokier than ever.
Markanos seems to notice for the first time what’s happening.
He looks up, grabs my hand in his to form a bowl, and distractedly twists them together, and we’re whirling away again without a single explanation or argument.
I suppose I should be used to men just taking me wherever they please, but instead it irritates me.
My lips press firmly together in censure.
When we arrive on the shore of Oke’s island again, I grasp at the dock’s upright and suck in huge gasps of fresh air.
My lungs are hot and clogged from smoke and the smell of blood, and without another word to my so-called friend, I leap into the water, desperate to be cleaned of everything I’ve seen these last hours.
I wash myself in the sea. I wash out all the blood and dirt and soot and tears.
But this time, as I plunge beneath the surf, I can feel Okeanos in the water wondering why I am smoky and smelling of blood.
I can feel his confusion and then, over top of that, a deep peace as if the God of the Sea himself is trying to calm me.
I do not want to be calm. I do not want to be told how to feel.
I clamber out of the water.
Markanos stands there looking grim. “You’ll need sleep if you’re planning to be a crab all day.
Get that done now and be ready for me at dusk tomorrow.
Together, we’ll hunt Treseano and his creatures.
You’re not much in a fight, but you’re still God of the Sea.
Let us accomplish this task, free Okeanos, and then I can fight the bigger war we’re in with my friend instead of his useless wife. ”
I’m so stunned that I have nothing to say. He wants me to work with him after insulting me and ordering me about. Typical. He starts to swipe his sword and then stops.
“I’m angry about Ordanus. He wasn’t a friend, but he’s been a god nearly as long as me. I don’t like changes.” He glares at me—a change—as if he’d like to wipe me out, too.
“Fear not,” I say grimly. “I’ll just be here doing useless things until you return to kill more gods.”
What else does he want me to say? It must be exactly that, because he snorts, slices the air with his sword, and is gone.
I don’t even go up to the cottage to sleep.
I just collapse on the beach, and the tide must rise farther than I expect, because I dream of Oke in the sea trying to comfort me as I cry.
But when I wake up, it is not his arms trying to wrap around me but rather the swirl of the waves reaching, reaching forever for the shore.
The first ray of dawn spills golden across the water’s surface and I just have time to gasp before I have six more legs and the sand is suddenly very close and the sea very deep.