“How did he take from the gods?” I ask warily.
“He stole back the sacrifices, O Shining One,” Garnet murmurs. “He took from your hand what we held in keeping to offer to the depths.”
They exiled him forsavingthe girls they were throwing into the sea? This grows worse and worse.
“You will invite him back,” I say sternly. “You will need every possible ally here when the storm comes.”
If there truly is a god war, it will come to these islands as well. No place on earth will be spared.
“We will deny you nothing,” Turbote repeats. “Only please… please, if you will, plead with Okeanos for us that we might have full nets again.”
“I make you no promises,” I say abruptly, for I am choking on what I have heard. This is worse than madness. They exiled people. Because they refused to submit to insanity. They killed others. For nothing. “But you must promise me not to sacrifice any more people to the sea.”
“That,” Turbote says earnestly, “we will never agree to do. We must obey the gods.”
But I am a god and he is not obeying me.
I turn back to the sea, sick and reeling. I must find whoever is impersonating my dead husband and issuing such grim orders in his place, and I must determine if I still have a people left to save or if they have all become as corrupt as my old advisor.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ireturn to my home—for that is what Okeanos’s island has become for me. I no longer feel at home in the Crocus Isles. My people have filled it with their virgin sacrifices and god wars, and I do not yet know how to turn them away from those things.
I’m exhausted, alone, and out of sorts. I almost wish I could drag Vesuvius out of his pearl just so I could have someone to talk to about what I’ve seen, but I’m not quite that desperate yet.
I collapse into my bed dirty and despairing. My people cower and do evil in my name. Others are dead because of things they said I ordered them to do. The damage done is irrevocable. My only bright light this night was a lonely priest and a little girl carrying a ball of fabric and even they are threatened by the actions of others who mean to start a war.
Is this what Oke dealt with when he was God of the Sea? No wonder he paid no mind to my accusations. It seems that mortals lay any number of things at our feet.
But I am Coralys, the Drowned Queen, and I do not give up. So, the next morning, I rise early and I fish. I fish all day. I do not know if I must keep my catch to fill my people’s nets, but I do not want to risk it, so at the end of the day the dock is heaped with the silvery bodies of dead fish.
I cook one for my dinner, collapse into bed, and do it again the next day and the next and the next. It is a full seven days that I fish from the moment dawn breaks until the moment the sun falls into darkness. I fish until my hands are red and blistered and aching from seawater and rough ropes. I fish until the catch stacked on the docks reeks and rots and fills my harbor with gulls. I fish until I know Oke’s boat like I know my own bones. I fish until I fear I have caught every fish that ever existed.
I fish and I think about gods and men and how people seem to worship whatever is the most convenient for them. And I think about how I killed a god and nothing changed. It only made things worse. I wish I hadn’t been so hasty. I wish I’d gone with him that morning of the Resurgence instead of going off on my own. I wish I’d shown even a little humility, but then I wouldn’t be here, would I? Because humble people don’t decide that they’re going to kill gods and take their places. Or if they do, then they’re not called humble anymore.
Only then, after I’ve done all I can, worn, weary, and filthy, do I set out to find my people again.
The king they’ve crowned in Delarte’s place is a disappointment. He seems more concerned with restoring the ruined palace that was once mine than with the fates of our people. I suspect he is only a figurehead set up by the priests and controlled by them entirely.
I find him in his palace, where he cowers and abases himself. I never enjoyed being bowed to, and it is growing so thin now that my temper feels as frayed as Oke’s bedding.
“We honor you, Goddess. Spare us your wrath.”
There’s more. I don’t listen to it all because it’s the same as it was with Turbote. He refuses to stop killing helpless victims. He refuses to listen when I counsel him against war.
“But our enemies are amassing on the coast, Great Goddess,” he says. I have told him I am Coralys, but he will not call me by name. “It is said there are so many ships in the harbor of Bel Amos that an entire forest was leveled to make their masts.” This is patently untrue as rumors of war have only been a few months in the making. No one levels a forest in a month. “If we do not choose a side, we will be forgotten. Our time of glory is now. Let the Crocus Isles go down in history as the great land of Okeanos, God of the Sea. Is it not right and good to fight for the honor of the gods?”
“It is not either of those things,” I snap. “And Okeanos is not your god anymore. I am.”
“Of course, Wife of Okeanos. Your great bounty has blessed us.”
I still don’t know how that name slipped out, but someone said it the last time I was on the islands and now thename is everywhere. I glance over my shoulder at the sea. Already, I wish I were back within it rather than here. Oke’s hermit ways are becoming more and more appealing to me.
“Our nets have been full to bursting. All are fed and our wealth grows.”
Good. There will be no more hungry children. No more refugees with nothing to eat. I’m just beginning to smile when he wipes the expression from my face.
“With this bounty we grow rich enough to foot a navy. A navy of almost every able-bodied man and boy. They will sail for the mainland, where we will slay anyone who stands against Okeanos. Our allies in the Andalappo Isles have sent an ambassador begging for our support and we will give it wholeheartedly.”
