My delicate bubble of hope popped at the unmistakably smug cast his grin took on. He leaned back and spread his arms across the back of his chair, biting his lower lip in gratified amazement.
Bastard.
“Taran’s lucky to have you. You’re very good,” Marit put in with evident jealousy.
“Isn’t she?” Taran said with satisfaction in every line of his body. He was obviously patting himself on the back for his cleverness in acquiring a talent such as myself.
I resisted the urge to chuck the kithara at his grinning face, instead mentally arranging the rest of my performance around the theme ofmen who were sorry they hadn’t been nicer to women, which was a perennially popular genre among certain of Wesha’s worshippers.
There was an amused glint in Taran’s eye when my next few songs described lonely winter nights and young brides who left over the hill and never returned, but I put my soul into it and made the instrument sing along with me. If he had any heart at all, he’d cry himself to sleep, but he just wrinkled his nose.
“Perhaps something more upbeat next,” Taran suggested, flicking his eyes to Marit, whose face showed all the sorrow I was wishing on Taran’s head.
A big, wet tear rolled down the sea god’s pearly pink cheek.
“I don’t have any priests that play music anymore,” he explained mournfully. A second tear rolled down his face, so large it splashed onto the floor. “Do you know any sea shanties? I bet I would like a song about the sea.”
“I do know a few.”
“I wouldn’t,” Taran warned me, but I’d already started the song.
For a while, the two of them seemed content to listen to the music. My fingers were getting tired, but I found some defiant pride that two gods wanted to hear me play.
Lovers drowned at sea was also a theme I was willing to explore.
Marit flopped to his back on Taran’s divan, fingers tapping along with the rhythm. “They don’t hate Napeth,” he complained, still stewing in his thoughts. “And he nearly destroyed the whole world. If Napeth had a party, I bet they’d all go. But they hate me.”
“That’s not true,” Taran said with a bit of an edge. “They’re just afraid you’re going to flood someone else’s palace.”
Tears began freely leaking out of Marit’s eyes, plentiful enough to puddle on the floor. I stilled my hands, but Taran gave me a stern look, and I kept playing.
“I didn’t mean to,” Marit said, voice thick. “I just remember the well.”
“Do you remember anything else from before?” I asked curiously, looking from him to Taran.
“No. He can’t remember anything.” Taran took a swig from his goblet and set it aside. The sharp glance he sent Marit made me think that perhaps Taran was not as drunk as he’d seemed when he entered the room.
“I do!” Marit protested. “I do remember.” He choked back a sob, wiping splashes of tears away from his face. “It was dark, and I couldn’t feel which way was up.”
“You don’t remember. You’re imagining it. You don’t even remember the ocean,” Taran insisted.
I noticed with alarm that there was water beginning to puddle on the floor under Marit’s couch, with more seeping in under the doors from the other rooms.
“They hate me,” Marit repeated, beginning to weep in earnest. He gripped his goblet in his fist and drained it. “When I try to sleep, I can feel it. The walls and the dark.”
Taran lifted his feet off the floor and put them on a stool when the first wave, just a few inches high, slid through the room. I stopped and put the kithara aside.
“I think he’s had enough,” I told Taran when Marit reached for the fluted carafe he’d come in with.
“I can’t stop him, he’ll just make more,” Taran said.
It was true; the carafe in Marit’s hand looked full again, even though he’d set it aside almost empty.
“Marit? Can I take that?” I asked in my politest voice, but the sea god clutched it to his chest, face screwing up in fear and dismay. Another wave swept through the room, ankle high and larger than the last. With it came a subtle vibration, a distant sound. I tensed, looking around the room with an eye to disaster management.
“You’re afraid of me too,” Marit accused me, his mouth crumpling. “You think they should have left me in the well.”
“No, of course I don’t think that,” I said, but the sea god had passed beyond rational conversation. He flopped to his back again and started to wail, big drunken sobs shaking his chest. The floor began to shake with the same tempo.
