The bottom of the lake was too deep here for my toes, so I treaded water with difficulty as I recovered from being hit in the stomach for no good reason.
I’d borrowed a short, black linen shift from a moon-priest as a bathing costume, and it puddled around my armpits when I was upright, so my furious look at the bird wasn’t very effective intimidation.
“I am, thank you,” I snapped.
“Lazy girl! You’re supposed to be finding me a way out of the Summerlands, not lolling around and listening to moon-priest poetry,” Awi insisted as she bobbed in the water.
“You didn’t put a time limit on your vow, and Taran’s not exactly in a hurry to get me to the Painted Tower,” I reminded her, though I felt a stab of guilt for Drutalos, who by now was surely worried about whether I’d ever return.
Awi honked judgmentally, long neck swaying like a snake.
“You need to gonow. Today. Make him take you—what are you waiting for?”
“Do you know something?”
The bird didn’t immediately answer, as withholding as always. I resisted the urge to squeeze her feathered neck.
“Is it Death?” I pressed. “Have you seen him yet?”
“No! And that worries me. He spent three hundred years acting the demon, trying to get Wesha’s attention, and he just gives up? No. He must be here, planning something.”
“I need more than that if you expect me to make Taran do anything except compare wine-tasting notes with Marit,” I said, still suspicious that she knew more than she was saying.
The bird heaved a sigh. “I did see something yesterday. On the Mountain, all the way to the east. Smenos Shipwright was cutting timbers, big ones. For the hull of a ship.”
“The Shipwright is building ships? Sounds like him,” I said, not following.
“Not since he helped trap poor Wesha in her tower! How does he think he’s getting through the Gates? Wesha would never let him pass. He came and asked her last month, was a real jackass about it. She told him no, uh,forcefully. So what’s changed?”
That was enough to make me frown. Smenos had to be one of the ones Genna was worried about, the Stoneborn who wanted to cross the Sea of Dreams and punish the disobedient mortals.
For all that I’d known this stay was temporary and I hadn’t come here of my own volition, I was reluctant to climb out of the lake and ask Taran about what Awi had told me. I supposed that Awi might be right, and I was lazier than I’d thought—nobody expected anything of me here but that I’d take the occasional turn in the scullery or fill in if someone needed a mezzo-soprano to test their new musical composition.
Lixnea’s people mostly kept late hours, but she and the other two Stoneborn were eating breakfast on the veranda after I’ddressed. I slid in on a bench next to Taran, and he made room and passed me a carafe of orange juice without pausing his conversation.
I had decided not to feel guilty about enjoying any simple pleasures of the Summerlands. And some of the pleasures of mornings at Lixnea’s palace were simple: trays of sliced fruit and cheese pastries drizzled in honey, the experimental harmonies of the moon-priests’ songs, the light on the calm surface of the lake. Others were more complex, like the warm solidity of Taran’s thigh pressed against my own.
I didn’t think for a moment that he’d ended his campaign to add me to his retinue in a permanent way. He introduced me to everyone we met as his priestess, like it would become true if he repeated it often enough. And I wouldn’t give an inch on that. I’d meant what I said—I was never going to accept less from him than what he’d promised me. I’d never be his priestess after wanting to be his wife.
But sometimes he touched me without thinking about it. When his eyes were on the horizon or a group of actors performing a new play, his fingers would unconsciously seek to rest on my hip or my knee. And I wouldn’t object. He’d look up, startled, after half an hour with his lips against my bound hair, and shoot me a suspicious glance, like I’d somehow snuck his arm around my waist.
That wasn’t a simple pleasure. It was a complicated one: a single rented room in a home that was supposed to have been mine.
Marit didn’t notice my arrival at the breakfast table: someone had mentioned a few days ago that he’d liked carving driftwood, so he’d obtained a knife and the raw materials, then taken to the hobby with gusto. He had already managed the recognizable shape of a sea serpent with sharp fins and spread jaws, and he’d promised it to Lixnea over her gentle attempts to demur.
“Who could Smenos be building ships for?” I asked Lixnea rather than Taran.
The Moon goddess raised a faint white eyebrow. “Who did you hear that from?”
“Awi. She said Smenos asked Wesha to open the Gates, and Wesha refused. But he’s building ships anyway.”
“I saw that too, and wondered myself,” Lixnea said after a speculative look at Taran.
“Taran, was Smenos one of the Stoneborn that Genna was worried about?” I asked, afraid this really was the preparation for an invasion.
“No,” Taran said, voice cautious. “He’s angry that the mortals burned his temples, of course, but he has hundreds of priests here. There’s no reason for him to cross the Sea of Dreams.”
Lixnea didn’t say anything, but I could tell she didn’t quite agree. She saw the mortal world. She knew it wasn’t just a matter of burned temples but of all craftsmen falling silent at the queen’s command, when they would have once muttered prayers to Smenos while they worked.
