“You call the planning of centuries impulse?” Treseano asks, flicking the tip of his sword free of blood. But his words smack of the same posturing that led him to eat food laid out beside a corpse.
“Centuries?” Okeanos looks around him, flint-faced. “This looks like the planning of a single moment.”
Treseano smirks, glancing over his shoulder as if to include everyone in his taunt. “And yet your islands are burned. And you have done nothing. Or did you lie when you tallied them up for the King of Heaven?”
Okeanos’s cheeks flush dark.
“Oh yes,” Treseano continues. “Your people are ripped from you—and you stand there impotent. What is the sea but a holding tank for water no one wants or needs? We cannot grow our crops with it. We cannot succor our people. It is refuse, and your home is the place where refuse is stored.” Treseano flicks a finger, screwing up his mouth in an expression of disgust. “Have your night of peace. Have your calm before the storm. I’ll not break it and neither will those with me. We have no need. When dawn breaks, we will leave and everything you love will come to an end.”
He turns his back as if he has nothing to fear from any of them, and I see Okeanos’s hand tremble as if he wishes he could thrust his spear right into it. But Treseano walks down the temple steps and out of sight and Aurelius and Alexandros follow, a single step behind him. I do not see what the other gods do. I admit I am shaking too hard to keep track.
I blink away the black dots swirling across my vision andit takes me a moment to compose myself. I have just watched men and women butchered like fish on the docks. It could have been me. I hold the contents of my stomach down by sheer force of will, tasting acid.
When at last I have charge of myself, I catch a glimpse of Markanos and Okeanos sharing a weighted look before the God of War marches away. The only one left is Ordanus, holding the severed head of his musician in both palms and looking lost. He sits heavily on the altar, still clasping the head, his eyes staring into the blank eyes of the mortal. They are very large.
“Fair Andrane’s voice lit the sky and flushed the flowers of the field,” he says in a way that is almost a song.
“You should have taken better care not to bring him to such a place as this, then,” Okeanos says gruffly, and then he turns and grips my arm, and I let him.
I didn’t realize I was crying, but of course I am. Silently, thank the gods.
Or don’t thank them. This is, after all, entirely their fault.
Chapter Eighteen
This plane of the gods makes no logical sense, though I’m too shaken to dwell on its strangeness. We backtrack—me with shaking limbs and a set expression, and Okeanos with a grim jaw and easy grace—to the island with the tall statues. In silence, we follow another small archipelago of pale spinelike rocks. I scrape my palms twice as I scramble to keep up with Okeanos. He hardly seems to notice how difficult it is to traverse this non-path.
Eventually we emerge at the end of the spine to where a group of small islands hang in the air wreathed in mist, connected only by ridges of crenellated rocks that can be climbed like stairs if you are a god or a mountain goat.
I stare at the nearest hanging island as we circumnavigate it. Watching a chunk of rock hang over the water supported only by a slender branch of stone the width of my wristmakes my stomach flip. The mist is too thick to see what lies upon each island and it even muffles sound so that when Pagetto and Glorian disappear up an arch of rock ahead of us, they are lost to us entirely.
I’m sweaty almost immediately, my muscles trembling as I leap from rock to rock, trying not to tumble into the dark waters. To my shame, Okeanos catches me when I slip on a spur of rock, one hand supporting my lower back while the other catches my elbow. Every muscle tenses at his touch. He is a god. He still glows with power. I just watched the gods cut down mortals like overgrown grass. And he is touching me. My stomach swims with the knowledge of that.
Elaborate lanterns hang from the bottom of each island, lit with an otherworldly flame. They cast stark shadows on Okeanos’s face so I cannot divine his thoughts as he leads us to the highest hanging island and helps me to scramble up the last nearly vertical climb.
I crawl over the edge of the rock and sit a moment, gasping as I collect myself. The island is double the size of Oke’s cottage and boasts a large bed, the headboard of which is made of silver-inlaid coral; two inlaid chests, again with a spreading coral motif; a little table laid out with crystal bottles of drink; and a cunningly crafted wardrobe carved like dancing waves. The wardrobe is set with mother-of-pearl, and between the swirling panels, little carved fish poke out in unexpected places. On either side of the wardrobe someone has set carved statues of a pair of swordfish leaping.
I am disheveled, tattered, abraded, and streaked in otherpeople’s blood. I do not look very queenlike and certainly do not look like the wife of a god—even a god like Okeanos who is as responsible for the deaths of thousands as if he had murdered them himself.
I wipe my face with a hand and swallow down a spike of fear before reaching a trembling hand into my belt pouch. I hope I have not lost Vesuvius’s pearl. I may need him yet. I draw the pearl out as Okeanos is hauling himself over the lip of the island, his shoulders tense with the effort. He leaves a trail of blood—this time not only from his wound but from the carnage he helped to create. His fishing spear remains in one hand. It’s stained with killing.
I must have been crying without realizing it, for the moment I draw Vesuvius’s pearl out of the pouch, he slips from it in a searing stream of mist. He takes one look at Okeanos and the expression on his face is crowing delight mixed with animosity. One finger presses over his lips as he looks at me, and swallowing, I tuck the pearl deeper into my fist.
He’s no ally of mine, but if I have to run, if I have a chance to kill, he might be the tool I need in that moment.
“We must tarry here until morning,” Okeanos says distractedly. “The blessing of the King of Heaven is not complete unless a night is spent under his roof. Markanos told me once of a god who left before it was completed. Bareus, God of Fire.”
“There is no God of Fire,” I say between chattering teeth. What is wrong with me?
“Certainly not anymore. Not all gods are replaced when they pass. Sometimes, they just cease to exist at all,” Okeanos murmurs. “Can you calm yourself, Coralys?”
In Okeanos’s terribly glowing face, I can almost make out those familiar green eyes. I can almost remember the kind fisherman I married, but trying to put the two of them together in my mind makes me shudder even more.
I just watched thirty people smashed to unrecognizable pieces. I just watched a god idly pick up the head of a man as a child might pick up the piece of a vase he broke—a little regretfully, but with no intention of preventing it from happening a second time. Still shaking uncontrollably from witnessing such a horror, I have followed Okeanos onto this impossible island and felt his hands touch me as if he were a mortal man and not a god. But I must not let myself forget the truth—that evil can have a lovely face, that horror can be an artist.
“What is this place?” I whisper.
“It looks different to each one,” he says. Behind him, Vesuvius has drifted over to the table and peers at the food laid out upon it. “But I think you see it as I do—as an island of refuge.”
