“I don’t want any of this. I didn’t come for any of this.”
Markanos shrugs. He hardly seems to care that Ordanus is dead. It’s a far cry from how torn up he was over El Dorian.
“Then the King of Heaven will call someone else to fill his place. Or it will be left abandoned. We need not trouble ourselves with it for now. We have learned what we must tonight—that Treseano is certainly the one binding Okeanos in place and that he will kill to prevent others from either revealing that or joining against his rebellion. I think our next move is clear.”
“Finding a different ally,” I say at the same moment that he says the opposite.
“Hunting down Treseano directly. This second creature in his sack may very well be payment to bind Okeanos—as you have suggested. It makes the most sense of what we’ve seen. And perhaps that first creature in the sack at the Resurgence was from the original wound to the sea god. We will confront Treseano and destroy them both.”
“We?” I ask, thinking about my terrible performance in the fight we just had, but he isn’t listening to me. He is lost inthought, looking like he might just stand here in the middle of this carnage and think all night.
“We need to do something about the dead,” I say. I can’t stop my teeth from chattering.
“What? Oh. Yes. Them.” He pauses for a moment before making a brushing-away motion with his hand. “Light the place on fire.”
I stare at him, mouth open.
“We’re too far away to flood it, Sea God,” he says impatiently. “Just light a nice fire. There are all kinds of canvases in the next room.”
“You mean the priceless paintings?” I can’t help that my voice is shrill. “There’s surely a better way than simply torching things all the time. Even for a God of War.”
He shrugs. He’s still lost in thought. I open my mouth to argue, but the smell of smoke is already in the air. It seems that Markanos is not the only one who believes that flames cover over a multitude of violences.
Nervously, I grip my trident tighter.
“Could those things kill Treseano? Those things in the bag.”
I can’t stop thinking of how they ripped at me. Their twisting torsos looked like braided roots mixed with shadows, but they tightened around me like snakes. I shiver at the memory.
He’s distracted when he answers. “Oh no, they are there to torment him. Otherwise, how could he use them to torment others?”
“That makes no sense.” I’m out of patience. I hurry to the door, but it’s closed and jammed shut. My heart begins to pound. Are we trapped? “Aren’t they just two animals he somehow needs to keep alive?”
Markanos snorts. He’s digging the dagger out of Ordanus’s chest, an activity I don’t wish to watch. I stand back, nervously watching the doors. If they so much as twitch, I’ll attack.
“I wager he wishes that were so every morning, but these creatures are not his friends. He can bind them in the sack, it would seem, but they will fight him every step of the way, looking for their opportunity to tighten around him and choke his life out or fasten those maws full of teeth on his flesh and tear out a chunk. They’re soul saps. They’ll drain a little of his life and sense of well-being every single day until he’s nothing but a twitching husk, and he must be ever vigilant that they don’t do more than that. Perhaps he withdrew from this skirmish so precipitously for that very reason. I was just beginning to enjoy myself.”
I shudder. “Even as part of an exchange for magic, that feels like a steep price.”
I glance back to see Markanos cleaning the dagger and examining it.
“Treseano’s,” he says to my raised eyebrow.
“I thought he bore a mace,” I reply, trying to keep my gorge down.
“A man can own more than one weapon, Drowned Queen. And of course the price is steep. If Treseano paid for something that will hurt a person day after day—as wethink he did—then he must pay the price of feeding these monsters a bit of his soul every day. And he must tend them faithfully or risk seeing his work undone.”
“Can they be killed?”
“Anything can be killed.” He winks at me. “You of all people know that. How we will kill them is another question. I’ve never heard tell of a soul sap dying while its victim remained alive.”
“This is madness,” I mutter. There’s no way out of the room except through the door or out the stained glass windows. Smoke rolls in from under the door and I’m done with waiting for Markanos.
I raise my trident, breaking one of the windows, but far from letting fresh air in, the room suddenly seems smokier than ever.
Markanos seems to notice for the first time what’s happening. He looks up, grabs my hand in his to form a bowl, and distractedly twists them together, and we’re whirling away again without a single explanation or argument. I suppose I should be used to men just taking me wherever they please, but instead it irritates me. My lips press firmly together in censure.
When we arrive on the shore of Oke’s island again, I grasp at the dock’s upright and suck in huge gasps of fresh air. My lungs are hot and clogged from smoke and the smell of blood, and without another word to my so-called friend, I leap into the water, desperate to be cleaned of everything I’ve seen these last hours.
