But I can no more stop thrashing than the whale can.
“We’ll plead with any god who will listen when we get to the top,” Turbote gasps. “Let me do the talking—pray byall means, but any bargain should be made by me. I am the priest.”
We spill out into the temple—two tiny figures at the highest point of the Crocus Isles standing under the last sign of our strength and will. Above us stone waves crash. Below us real ones swell ever higher, lashed by rain.
We told the council that I would go and pray, but Turbote and I both know what that means. Nothing comes from nothing. If any of the gods deigns to bargain with me, then I’m going to be asked for something. Yet my riches are already lost to the sea, my people scattered to the winds, my power evaporated with them. So, it’s my life they’ll have or nothing.
Turbote is praying loudly to any god who will hear, but mostly to Okeanos. He presses my head down hard so that my chin hits the white rock and I taste blood in my mouth, half expecting to feel the knife of his blade cut my throat. He’s dousing me with holy ocean water. In his enthusiasm I’m half drowned.
“Pray,” he begs from above me. “Add your words to mine! Please, Your Serene Majesty.”
“Gods of the sea and storm,” I shout out over the blast of the wind, and as if in answer the wind blows twice as hard, whipping my long black hair behind me until it snaps like a banner. “Show yourselves!”
And for a long moment there is no response.
Not that I thought there would be.
Everything is still. Everything waits with me. Watertrickles down my neck, down my spine, making me shiver, and there is no god who comes to claim my life. And no god who comes to save us. I draw in a deep breath, about to let out my resignation with a sigh, when I freeze.
A whirl of wind kicks up, spinning so hard around the temple that I hear a crack, and then one of the decorative waves behind me falls and shatters. Turbote screams and falls back, but I do not. Because worse—so much worse than the destruction of the temple or the wrath of the gods—I’ve lost sight of the little dot bobbing on the waves.
I swallow, stand, and take a step forward as if I could fly out like a pelican and swallow up my beloved from the waters and carry him to safety.
But of course, I can’t. I’m mortal still.
WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE OF ME, MORTAL QUEEN?
They aren’t spoken words. They’re the crash of the sea and the beating of the waves. They’re the howl of souls caught up in the shaking power of the storm. And yet they make my heart race. I fight against a chattering jaw—my body’s natural flinching from so great a glory washing against my mind. My will must be greater.
“Spare my people,” I beg succinctly. “Still this storm.”
WHAT BARGAIN WOULD YOU MAKE FOR THIS BOON?
I had thought I was not one to plead. How naive of me.
“What would you take, Lord?” I ask, choked. I dare not withhold anything.
YOUR FUTURE.
I swallow, looking again at the empty patch of ocean where my husband has disappeared. The grief swelling in my throat tells me he asks for too little, for already my future is lost to me. But if I am bargaining for lives, then I am bargaining for Lieve’s life, too, if he is not yet lost. If there’s even a chance he could survive this, then I must fight for it.
“Yes,” I say so quickly that the word blurs into the storm. “All of it.”
I think I hear a laugh, but I am not certain, for the wind shakes us again, ripping at us so hard that a piece of my dress tears away and is a tenth league out over the sea before I notice it has broken free.
I can barely breathe, my air is snatched before I can draw it in, and then suddenly the wind stops. The waves still. I hear water pouring, and it takes a heartbeat for me to realize that it’s running from the stone down the slope of the hill in rivulets.
Out over the still sea—unnaturally bright and peaceful to my eye—my green islands rise up out of the water like a half-drowned child rescued and hauled into a boat. They are torn and ragged, but they gleam like lost gems recovered. My islands. Restored to me. My heart leaps.
Can it… would the gods truly bless me so? It feels like grasping at air. Impossible to hold. I can no longer deny that they exist. I must not deny their blessing, too.
AND NOW THE PRICE.
The storm has passed, and yet the voice in my mind is as howling as a turbulent wind.
“The price,” I agree, but my eyes ache from looking, searching. I don’t dare blink. I’m scanning every bit of water I can see. He only disappeared for a moment. He might be out there in that calm water. He must be.
YOU WILL MARRY THE FIRST PERSON TO SET HIS FOOT UPON THE PIER. YOU WILL BE HIS BRIDE. HIS STATION WILL BE YOUR STATION. HIS CROWN YOUR CROWN. HIS PEOPLE YOUR PEOPLE.
