Chapter 10
The air in the banquet hall was frigid but shouldn’t have been cold enough to keep the snow under my boots from melting.
Skyfather’s power, even though he was nowhere to be seen.
This hall was filled with empty tables set for hundreds, and ice crept up the inside of the blue marble pillars despite the summer weather outside.
I’d wandered out of the arena with no particular destination, but when the rest of the City proved vacant, I’d returned to the arena and found this meal set and abandoned in an adjacent palace.
I’d never seen ice sculptures before. The ones decorating the banquet tables all depicted Marit’s heroic feats—slaying sea monsters, commanding the waves. The monsters were constructed entirely of fresh seafood, which would have made me giggle if I weren’t so battered by the past week’s events.
I chafed the gooseflesh under Wesha’s pink dress as I heard a familiar step behind me. My heart lurched at everything that was familiar about him. The way he walked. The way he breathed. I wanted so much for him to be alive, to be my Taran, to take my hand and call me his nightingale.
But when he approached, it was to call me by my given name, so I forced a polite smile to my face instead of turning and wrapping my arms around his waist.
“Here you are. Feeling better?” he asked, taking in my diminished hostility.
“A little.”
“Teuta seemed relieved to see you. All the peace-priests will be at this banquet later, if you’d like to come.”
I hummed noncommittally. I hadn’t quite forgiven the peace-priests for enjoying eternal summer while the world burned.
When I didn’t snap at him, Taran relaxed, producing a heavy cloak in a shimmering gray-green and draping it around my shoulders.
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “You shouldn’t wear pink.”
I welcomed the warmth, and he was right, so I didn’t stop him from reaching around me to pin it closed.
“You brought this for me?” I asked, surprised. I’d been anything but polite to him so far.
“I thought you might get cold at dinner.” His hands still rested lightly on my shoulders after he was done arranging the fabric, gentle and coaxing.
“Thank you. Was it Wesha’s too?”
“No, one of Skyfather’s concubines left it unattended, and I decided it would look better on you.”
I closed my eyes and silently retracted my thanks, refocusing on things that mattered. Getting out of here.
“Where were all the other gods this morning?”
Taran ignored my question and ran his palms lightly over the cloak where it draped my arms. “What did you wear before? Wesha’s white? I don’t think that would suit you either. How about blue? A different shade than Marit’s priests wear, perhaps?”
“Taran. Where do you think Death is?”
He ignored me again, instead lifting one hand to brush the edge of his thumb along the knot of my hair. He used to do the same thing whenever I was near.
“Do you ever wear it down?” he asked, idly winding a fingertip into a stray curl. I shivered as his knuckles brushed the bare skin on the nape of my neck.
“No, never.”
“Pity,” he said. “I bet it’s lovely.”
One night Taran had taken all the pins out of my hair and coaxed me into brushing it until I could run a comb through the waves from root to tip.
He’d wrapped the ends around his fingers and held on too long, until my light laugh had caught deeper in my stomach, and the look he’d given me had felt like a promise.
Oh, that’s what desire means, I’d thought.
“Would you consider it?” he asked, hand still on my nape.
“If you’ll answer my questions, I vow I’ll dress however you want,” I blurted, trying to resist the tightening of my body at the memory of his hands in my hair.
Taran released me and stepped to my front, one corner of his mouth quirking up.
“You should really stop making so many vows. You are going to have to live with them for a very long time.” His smile made my stomach drop. “But alright. I vow it.”
I felt a slight chill of foreboding as the new vow wrapped its way through my bones, but his choices of clothing could hardly hurt me. Wasn’t it a good bargain?
“Where are the other Stoneborn?”
Taran shrugged. “I don’t know.” Before I could object, he amended his answer with an air that suggested he was humoring me.
“Some Stoneborn, Skyfather chief among them, would like to re-form the armies of Heaven and march back to the mortal world. Restore the rule of the temples by force.” He strolled over to the closest banquet table and took a plate.
He smiled at the enormous sea monster, whose claws were formed of steamed crab legs and eyes of mollusk shells.
Large prawns on waves of ice stood ready to reinforce it in battle.
“The Peace-Queen, on the other hand, thinks that if you’re left to your own devices for a few decades, you’ll remember that you enjoy rain and flowering plants and her blessings of healing, and come to your senses. ”
“Marit’s in the first group?”
“No, the second. Not that he’d be opposed to a good campaign of conquest. I’ve just told him that Wesha wouldn’t let them through the Gates even if the gods did agree on something for once.
” Taran surveyed the food, then used tongs to remove some pink slices of fish edged in caviar from the robes of Marit’s ice statue.
“But is sending a giant wave to teach us a lesson entirely off the table?” I asked unhappily.
“Yes,” Taran said, tone light. “Marit doesn’t have the power to manage it anymore.” He added prawns to the plate with a dollop of sauce. “Have you ever had these shrimp things? Are they any good? I can’t remember.”
I ignored his question for a change.
“And Death?”
“Death is not going to come and snatch you in the night, little priestess. As I’ve told you, I’ll keep you far out of his way.”
“How can you say that, if you don’t know where he is or what he’s planning?”
Taran scrunched up his proud face in distaste at my repeated demand for basic information about the god who’d spent three years trying to murder me.
“Why should I keep track of him? If he’s back, there’s no reason to think he’ll do worse than pound on Wesha’s door to insist on his marital rights, which is all he’s done for centuries. Honestly, they deserve each other.”
At my wounded look, Taran rolled his eyes.
“Wesha’s well capable of defending herself, likely because she never bothers to defend anyone else. Certainly not you, my darling. So please forgive me if I choose to reserve my protection for those who merit it.”
I gnawed on the inside of my lip, wrapping my new cloak more closely around myself.
He had undeniably done that, despite his enormous deception.
Kept me and the young acolytes safe. Genna hadn’t asked him to do that—probably would not even have approved, since he’d been sent to bring us back in line.
Perhaps he’d done the best he could under Genna’s command.
“Teuta told me what happened with Marit. With his priests,” I said tentatively.
“With his priests?”
“How you saved them. Even though you had to kill your friend.”
Taran paused before answering. “Yes, I suppose I did.”
I was very alert to the caution in his voice, what he wasn’t saying.
“Isn’t it true? Teuta told me—”
“It’s true. I did kill him, though he doesn’t remember that half the time.”
The little evasion there was obvious to me.
“You mean you didn’t try to save the rest of his priests?”
With a little shrug, Taran popped a prawn into his mouth.
“It’s against the Allmother’s laws to interfere with another Stoneborn’s priests, so I couldn’t have done anything for them even if I’d wanted to.
Genna was angry at me for letting Marit out of the well, and I was strongly urged to clean up my mess before he destroyed her palace too. ”
He said it with total unconcern, but I marked the way he looked away and kept his expression bland.
“You’re lying.”
All the gods damn him, I’d made him promise to answer my questions, but I hadn’t made him promise to answer them truthfully.
I was never going to survive this place. I was like a toddler in a foundry, wandering around with arms outstretched. My chagrin must have showed on my face, because Taran almost smiled.
“Am I? Oh fine, you caught me.”
If I had to live in this world, with all these merciless gods, I wouldn’t reveal it either if I had a soft spot for mortal lives. I clung stubbornly to the hope that Taran had failed to put down the mortal rebellion because of it.
“Why did you kill him?” I asked again. We were alone in the big banquet hall, with echoes muffled by the high coffered ceilings. Maybe he’d tell me the truth.
Taran shrugged uncomfortably.
“The other Stoneborn wanted to put him back in the well.” His tone was soft, edged with regret.
It wasn’t what I had hoped to hear. I spun around, voice rising with outrage.
“So it was mercy for him? Not for the mortal cities that Skyfather wanted Marit to wipe out? Not for Marit’s own priests, the ones he killed?”
Taran tilted his jaw. Yes?
“I suppose you would have killed him for purer reasons?” he demanded.
“By the time you were standing over your friend with a knife, his priests dead around him, I think nobody had pure in sight. Do you know how we prayed that the gods would come and save us from Death? Are any of you better than he is, or was Wesha protecting us from you too when she locked the Gates?”
“Ah. Sounds like you’re closer to the ‘big wave and start afresh’ camp than you think, then,” Taran said, mocking me. “No. None of us are any better than the others, and I’m sure there are good reasons to murder us all. Alas, the Allmother is strictly opposed to it.”
I stared at my feet. I still had my own boots on, and they looked worn and crude with Wesha’s dress.
“I saw Death kill thousands of people, but I had no idea he came from such cruelty,” I said, shoulders sinking.
“Cruelty?” Taran asked incredulously. “What do you know about it? All I’ve done since you arrived uninvited is house you and keep you safe. You haven’t suffered any cruelty.”
“I didn’t want to come here! I just wanted my betrothed back, and if I can’t have him, I want to go home.”
I knew I sounded childish, but the contempt of the gods I’d spent my life worshipping was grinding down my soul.
Taran looked at me with confusion, like I’d shown poor manners. Teuta, who wouldn’t have bowed to the queen, had deferred to him—this was probably the first time a mortal had ever spoken to him harshly.
“Are you used to getting what you want?” he asked.
I pressed my lips together, shook my head. Though when I’d set sail for Wesha’s prison, I’d held the naive belief that surely, after everything, the gods owed me something.
“No, never.”
His expression was faintly pitying. “Me neither.”
With that deflating agreement, I stared at the full banquet tables, at this unimaginable plenty set out while people were starving in the mortal world.
It wouldn’t rot in the Summerlands, not if it sat out for three hundred years, but it had not occurred to any of the gods to simply share their bounty and hope for the mortals to return to worship out of gratitude.
Taran refilled his plate with more food, then pressed it into my hands.
“Here,” he said beneficently. “Better take this back to my rooms, if neither of us is going to cook. I’ll be minding Marit for the rest of the day.”
“Alright,” I agreed, dejected. I took the plate from him and turned to go.
My lack of fight seemed to make him frown.
“If you’d like, I’ll ask if anyone’s seen Napeth,” he offered.
“Would it matter to you if he were planning another war?” I asked, voice numb.
“Well, of course not, since I’m not about to tell him he can’t have his wife back. I’m just mildly curious on your behalf.”
I hadn’t really expected him to answer, but then I recalled that he was now obligated to, truthful or not. I halted because, for a moment, it felt like I’d caught him in another lie.
Taran swept by me and brushed a thumb over the lapel of my cloak one more time.
“I think I’ll put you in green,” he said, making it sound like the conclusion of a long, thoughtful deliberation. He pointed at his face and smirked. “To match my eyes.”