“Look offended all you like, lady. You are the one who came to bargain with me. And I’ve already done as I agreed. Now you must do as you have promised. Kill Okeanos. Take his pearl. Do it swiftly and with a sure hand.”
“You still haven’t shown me how to get to this Resurgence,” I remind him.
“Put your feet in the sea, fix the place you wish to go in your mind as fully as possible. Do this.” Here, he twists his hand as if he is gripping a bowl but his fingers are shaped differently than I have seen before. I try to replicate the pattern. “You will be transported.”
“Explain that more fully,” I say firmly.
“This mortal plane is all you know. But the gods dwell on many planes layered over one another as a wet cloth hugs theground it’s set upon. You can shift between these planes and to different locations. There’s a trick to it—if you know it, you can go anywhere you like unless a god bars you from it.”
I swallow against a dry throat. That I, a once-queen and definitely a mortal woman, would think I could mingle among gods and even kill one is out of the realm of reason. As if I am slipping my own moorings. But think, I remind myself, your life is already madness. Why fight against the current, when you can work with it to get what you want?
He slides across the rock over to the statue and leans against it again, sunning himself.
“Make a shape like this.” He holds up his palm, fingers spread wide as if he cups a bowl, but the first two are crossed and I notice the others are subtly shaped. I imitate him. “You’ll give it a one-quarter turn, at a speed of about one heartbeat. Flick your thumb at the end. And while you do it, tell the sea you belong to him and will not stand in his way and think of the Hall of the Gods. Surely you’ve heard of it in story and song.”
“And if my imagination does not suffice?” I ask dryly.
“It won’t matter. Thinking of it is what counts.” He tilts his head to the side and closes his eyes for a moment as if he is counting, and when he opens his eyes, he is smiling that wicked smile again. “It’s definitely in two nights. The Resurgence. You’ve made your bargain just in time.”
I swallow down a lump in my throat. I’ve made a bargain. With what is inarguably a malevolent spirit. And now I must do as I have said I would and slay a god.
“I need a plan,” I say. “To go in with no plan feels foolhardy.”
“What do you want, lady?” He turns his sharp gaze on me, flicking out two tentacles in a way that makes me think he’s mocking me. “Do you want the gods to send you a map of where they will sit? Do you want an engraved invitation? Shall they line up and let you choose from their weapons and then place their heads upon the table so you may sever them one by one? Do you think Incanus had a plan when he slew the dragon? How about Carthinus when he lopped off the five heads of the Leopard of Neb? Heroes don’t have plans. They have intestinal fortitude, a willingness to think on their feet, and enough motivation to dive in and do what they must. You’ll be going in blindfolded like any other hero. Use your brain if you have one. Adapt. Don’t mewl to me about a plan. You cannot possibly know what you face until you arrive—and neither can I. But you’ve made your bargain with me for good or for ill and you owe me the death of one god whether you like it or not.”
He glances at me curiously, as if weighing how his words have taken me, and then shrugs again and leaps. At first, I think he’s attacking me and it’s only when he somehow leaps backinto the pearlthat I realize he simply grew bored of me and left.
“Well, then,” I say to an empty rock and a harsh-carved woman. “Steal a weapon. Kill a god. Take his pearl.”
This list is as ridiculous as the one Oke has written.
His name makes something squeeze inside my chest. Forit is he whom I will be destroying if I really do this. When I do it.
I pause, nausea rolling over me in waves, my brow hot and suddenly slick.
“You can do this, Coralys,” I tell myself. “You must do this.”
Killing a god would constitute a great act of power. It makes sense that it terrifies me and feels impossible. Anything less would never work at all.
Chapter Thirteen
On the morning of the seventh day I go swimming. My chores are done, my nets out, and my plan laid. There are no weapons on this island, and so tomorrow I will dress in my husband’s gifted chiton and I will stand in the water, twist my hand, and go to bluff the gods.
But for now, I will swim. And I will try to find in myself the inner reserves I will need to kill a man… a god… who I have lived with and liked. For that is the only way to take his authority and end this calamity that has befallen my people. And I do not lie to myself. I know that if I do this thing and succeed, then I will take his place.
But it’s too much to grasp, and so I do not grasp it. I simply try to think of those I’ve lost and those who remain and try to plumb my own depths and discover if there might be a little more courage, a little more resolve that I might bring tobear upon this task.
I think especially upon Lieve today. I see his sacrifice reflected in my own. I do not expect to survive tomorrow. I go only because I have seen a wreck and cannot abandon it to the waves, just as he did.
I do not go down to the sandy bay. I do not know why, but it does not feel right to be in that public entrance to our island. Instead, I find my way to a slender strip of beach beneath a rocky incline that looks like mismatched giant’s steps, worn and washed by the sea.
Here, I step into the tossing surf and let it take me away as I have not since I was a young girl. Queens have little time to frolic and I have not swum for pleasure since I was crowned. I’m almost horrified by the delight I take in the feeling of my body slicing through the water, the grip of the waves against my hands, the slide of my fingers through their drag, and the way all of it cups and buoys my form. It is the closest feeling to the embrace of a lover that I know—and the closest to that I am ever likely to receive again now that my course is plotted and my goal set.
I fling myself into it with full abandon, and it is not until the tide is on its way out again that I follow the tumbled shells and stones back toward the dark swell of the land, my limbs languorous from happy exertion and my feet idly tracing the lace of the surf along the edge of the clear water. I wade for a while, glad that my mind idles without directed thought, akin almost to relief.
I’m waist-deep in the water when I sense something largein the sea around me. My breath catches in my throat, fearing a shark or some other great fish, and then right in front of me, rising up out of the water, is Oke. Where he has come from, I cannot say, and unless he has aided my people, I hardly care.
He’s bright and gleaming under the sun, his skin more weathered than I remember, the light stubble on his chin darker, the strands of his sun-bleached hair lighter. It’s caught and tied in a knot at the back of his head and both it and his face run with rivulets of bright water.
