The sea god’s body flailed as Taran held him up, the cords in his arms straining from the effort.
“Stop it, please,please,” I yelled. He’d known this would happen. This must have happened before, at some point since Marit was reborn only slightly less mad than the day Taran rescued him from the freshwater well.
“Do you want me to kill him?” Taran’s voice held far less panic than the situation deserved.
“What?”
He pulled my stone knife off his belt. Marit was so panicked that he didn’t even notice the weapon, instead clawing at Taran’s hand on his tunic while the water rose higher and higher.
“Do you want me to kill him again?” Taran repeated, face finally flashing with the anger that must have lurked under that cheerful mask ever since I rebuked him for Marit’s dead priests.
“Just stop him from bringing the building down,” I said, tears finally rising to my own eyes. I grabbed for the divan as the water rose high enough to knock me off my feet, pulling at my legs like a retreating tide even in the enclosed space. The furniture wasn’t buoyant enough to keep me afloat though.
“You want to do it instead?” Taran demanded, dark and bitter.
With a grunt, Taran took a wide step to shove the knife at my hands. I took it to keep him from dropping it in the floodwaters, but once it was tight in my fist, I could imagine using it.
“If you want to do it, I’ll hold him,” Taran growled at me. “Go on! Here’s your chance. Better do it in one blow, but I’m sure you know where the heart is,maiden-priest.” The water was nearly to his chin, but he spun Marit so that his chest faced me and looped an arm around the other immortal’s neck to bow him backwards.
The water was past my nose, and the room was shaking so badly that I could barely see for the foam splashing in my eyes. The handle of the blade was icy in my fist.
I sobbed once, out of anger more than fear.
“Cover your ears!” I yelled, then gulped a deep breath and sunk until my feet hit the floor. I had to kick up to get my head above water again. When I opened my mouth to sing, my voice was thin and hysterical, totally drowned out by Marit’s screams.
How many times would I have to sing this song or die, or worse,sing this song so that someone else died? I learned this blessing to save suffering patients from pain.
Blessed Maiden who separates day from night, dawn-star who opens and closes the eyes of Marit Waverider, hear my song and bless my voice.
I didn’t know if it would work. But it wasn’t in me to kill the weeping god of the sea, who was afraid of water and didn’t remember the ocean. A wave hit me and salt water choked my throat, leaving it raw and hoarse as I chanted the words. There was a sense of pressure—not just the cold water pulling me down or the shaking of the building that obscured my voice, but also like heat, pressing against me and through me. Wesha’s power, overcoming Marit’s.
I didn’t even realize it had worked until I could hear my own voice above the crashing of furniture against the walls of the room. Marit had stopped screaming and hung slack in Taran’s grip. Slowly, slowly, the waves receded, but I kept singing, repeating the blessing as a chant instead of a melody. My feet touched the ground, and then the floating objects found their rest.
I fell to my knees, exhausted and terrified, as Taran lowered Marit to the floor. He pressed his ear to the sea god’s chest and nodded in satisfaction when he heard his breathing.
I could have anesthetized an entire team of oxen for the number of times I’d repeated the chorus. Dropped an army in their tracks. But Marit was just asleep, his expression finally easing from horror.
I ended my song, leaving my panting as the loudest noise in the room. No, I heard Taran’s raspy breathing too. There was a tremor in his arms when he shook them out—it must have taken all his strength to hold the other god.
My fingers clenched around the knife before I made them relax.I met Taran’s eyes as I tucked it into my own belt—a wordless threat—instead of returning it.
He squeezed some excess water from his tunic and stepped around Marit’s limp form to stand over me. With one graceful hand, he swept his wet hair back from sharp cheekbones, then pulled me to my feet. His expression was practically glowing with affection.
“Thank you, Wesha,” he said to the empty air. “She’s perfect.”
The floor wasbone-dry even before Taran laboriously draped Marit’s snoring body over his shoulder and hauled him off. I slumped on the divan, dazed, watching as tiles clicked back into place and vases turned themselves upright.
Is that you, Maiden?I gathered my strength and stumbled to the bathing chamber to clean the salt off my skin and hair. Whatever divine protection kept this palace as Wesha had left it did not extend to me.
If you’re listening, Maiden, and if it please you, fill Taran ab Genna’s boots with scorpions, his underclothes with lice, and his perfect chin with boils, I sincerely prayed to my goddess. But she was as silent as she had ever been.
I unlocked the door to Taran’s bedroom and went through the chests of her clothes in search of a nightgown, but after I found a marginally acceptable linen shift with only a little gilt embroidery on the hem, I discovered that I couldn’t put it on. My hands shook when I tried to pull it over my head, and my skin burned when I imagined it covering my body. I added gallstones and ingrown toenails to the ailments I wished on Taran and put on a green dress embellished with horridly tacky carnelian starbursts instead.Green, to match his eyes.
Taran was imperfectly whistling the melody of Wesha’s blessingof night when he came back. He sat down right next to me on the divan, ignoring my stormy lack of welcome, and batted his knee against mine.
His silence was bait, and I was determined not to fall for it, but as he picked up the tail of my braid and ran a fingernail across the ribbon that held it together, I spoke when I couldn’t jerk it from his hands.
“Please don’t,” I said through gritted teeth.
