I’m already braced for the sound of flesh rent by steel, already swallowing down bile as I know I am next, when my defender flicks the first two fingers on his raised hand.
Inky tentacles shoot up from the waves in a gurgling froth of water as if the sea has grown roots into the air at the pace of several centuries of growth to the second. They jut and rise between the scrambling forms of our enemy, curling and lashing.
I feel the brush of slimy skin against my leg and barely hold back a startled cry, and just as I am looking up from the dark water, the nearest man—the one I knocked down—is snatched by a tentacle with lightning speed and dragged screaming beneath the waves.
I hear the sound I expected of steel hacking flesh, but it is not our flesh being attacked and all his furor does the manno good at all as the water churns red and white like a liquid banner of death.
Oke turns so calmly to me that I do not expect the molten rage in his pale eyes, but I should. For behind him his deep creatures have crawled up onto the tumbled shore and snatched a dozen men, one by screaming one, into their clutching grasp and dragged them beneath the swell. The men are drowned in inches of water, battered on the rocks like floundering ships, and left behind in floating, lifeless pieces. And the creatures, barnacle-crusted and slick with blood and water, pay no more mind to their screams than I pay to the call of the gull.
I gasp and then Oke sweeps me up in his arms like a man carrying his bride and plunges us both beneath the waves.
He drags me deeper and deeper.
I tug at his wrist, terrified of drowning, but it’s no use, he’s stronger than I am and bent on drawing us under the waves. The world spins and whirls—worse than could possibly be the case simply from the rip of the tides pulling on me—and I’m so disoriented that I can’t tell up from down. Again the arms tighten, dragging me, pulling me, and then shoving my head by the back of the skull upward through the surface. My face breaks into air and I gulp in a hungry breath.
I’m relief and pain and panic all mixed into one.
Frantically, I spin in the water, trying to get my bearings, but there is no fishing boat. No dead enemies. No unnatural creatures where they ought not be. I’m on a lonely shorelineof rock and trees, the water deep and surrounding me rather than only waist-high.
“Coralys,” pants a voice wetly beside me. I turn and gasp at the face of my husband, flushed with exertion. Something has left a ragged scratch down one of his cheeks.
I cough out water, heaving in a way that makes it hard to keep my head up, and then suddenly he’s there, holding me up so I don’t drown myself as I cough and cough.
“You rescued me?” I ask breathlessly when my lungs are clear.
He’s speaking but I’m not listening. I keep seeing Turbote’s fluttering hands. I keep seeing Delarte’s corpse strung up across the anchor. I keep seeing the tentacles and my last glimpse of the sea where a huge many-toothed mouth had opened and sucked in a man’s entire torso. I keep thinking the impossible.
“You were in the sea,” Oke is saying as if that explains anything.
He pulls himself up onto slick rocks and reaches a hand back for mine. He grips it and drags me up on shore, and I’m trembling, shaking so hard that my teeth rattle. I can’t seem to order my thoughts. They keep skittering away like drops of water on a hot surface. I’m dazed, dwelling on stupid details, jumping to wild conclusions.
But it cannot be… can it? Have I been so blind?
I watch him come out of the water. He’s naked and his godwound in his leg looks worse than before. It has not scabbed over or mended and the skin around it is red and inflamed and hanging loose in ragged shreds.
“It’s easier to find things in the sea without anything in the way,” Oke says as he lowers himself to a rock to catch his breath. “Clothing. Weapons. Anything.”
“I don’t care,” I say, realizing it’s true as I find my own rock and wrap my arms around my knees. I am shuddering apart like a ship on too strong a sea. I will never recover. And I can’t hold it in anymore. I mean to say one thing, but an accusation springs to my lips instead.
“If you could find me and rescue me, then you knew somehow what was happening. Why didn’t you warn them? If you could call up tentacles and snatch men from the surf, why did you not drag themallbeneath the sea? What are you doing? No. Wait. What are youfailingto do?”
My chest is heaving and it’s not from trying to breathe again. It’s all the emotions of the past four weeks coming together in this single point because Iknownow. This man is not the sea god’s champion. No mere hero can call up monsters. No mortal man, however elevated, can command the seas.
He shakes his head. The scratch on his cheek is bleeding. A single red rivulet runs down his jaw and I shudder at the memory of Delarte, but it does not dissuade me.
“I found you because you called me and your call is loud. I have been doing what I can.”
“And?” I press, tightening my arms around myself.
It’s him. It’s him who let my people die. Not just this time but every time. He spoke with me while my Lieve sank beneath the waves and offered me a bargain when it was toolate. What was our misery to him? What was my loss? A lark? A joke?
And no wonder he would not confess to being god touched.
I am shaking with fury as I try to say the thing I’ve wanted to say all along. “What right do you have to choose who to spare and who to ignore? What right did you have to dismiss cries for help? What right did you have to withhold your protection? I don’t want you picking me when you didn’t pickthem!”
Tears flow down my cheeks, but they are not tears of sorrow. They are distilled fury.
He tries to take my hand and I can’t shake his grip away. I’m not sure if he realizes I’m trying to, because the expression on his face is tender and understanding as if he’s comforting grief and guilt, as if he doesn’t realize that all I feel right now is fury. I clasp his hand back tightly, twisting it so that our two hands are clenched like fists between us, unwilling to let him think I am weak. Unwilling to let him dominate me in this. My guts clench and then it comes pouring out.
