“And these are your enemies?” I am stalling for time. I do not know how to respond to this. Hysterics seem like a bad idea even though they keep suggesting themselves to me.
“Generally those who try to kill you are considered enemies, yes. These ones, I think, were merely sent to see that I was still chained and report back to their master. Unfortunately, ambition is never far from any man’s heart and they hoped to do better than merely observe me.” He sounds very tired. “What are you doing here, Coralys?”
“I was worried someone might try to harm you,” I say in a small voice. My eyes are back on the dead. They wear dark clothing. Nothing distinguishable. Neither has a belt pouch. There is no boat here. One is fairer-skinned than the other. Beyond that, they are both so average in looks I would struggle to find them in a crowd. “It seems I had every right to be concerned.”
“You are worried for me?” He says it like it is a joke and my eyes snap up to his. They are so very green in the dancing light of the lantern. The warmth of the light adds a flush to his skin, shades the hollow of his throat, dances over the spill of his hair across one cheek.
“They could have killed you.”
He shakes his head minutely like this isn’t important. How powerful was he in life that he thinks killing two men while dead and trapped is hardly worth acknowledging?
“They’re mortals. It was cruel to send them against me. Iwas God of the Sea a long time, Coralys. Why do you think my captor pinned me here and fled? Why is he not here gloating when you come to see me? He fears me still.”
“What would these two have done to you if you had not killed them?” I ask, concern making me frown. “Can mortals truly hurt a dead god?”
“They could do all the vicious things beasts do to a man when he is vulnerable to their knives. My enemy does not like to be thwarted and this was simply a message.” He is very calm. “Which reminds me, you took my torture yesterday. I asked you not to do that.”
I have always hidden emotion in action. I do not like facing the idea that I might not want this man dead—that I might need him to be alive—and so I busy myself with dragging the corpses away and throwing them into the sea. I cannot leave them to rot beside him.
I speak as I work, not looking at him. “You were there. The day I was seventeen and my boat was swamped and I had to pull my guard from the sea. You were there, weren’t you?”
He sighs. “By now, you must know what it is to be the sea.”
“You were there,” I say firmly. “You pushed my boat back to shore.”
But though my words dwell on this one incident, my mind is spooling out and showing me others. The time my negotiations with the Andalappo Isles were going poorly and the waves kicked up at just the right moment that I couldremind their king that we were the heart of the sea and that they needed us for trade and so we forged that alliance—the most important one of my reign, and it couldn’t have happened without that.
The time the Spice Coast sent pirates running through our waters. They kept disappearing before they could destroy our ships. I had thought I was so clever when I identified them as ships of the Spice Coast navy and not pirates at all. A wave had rocked one suddenly as I was watching, revealing a bit of the paint beneath the waterline of their ships. I’d known immediately what I was seeing. And I’d thought it was my bravery and cleverness that landed me on the deck of their “captain” Hoffness’s ship. I negotiated his surrender with the promise of an alliance and a reminder that we were protected by the God of the Sea.
Now, I know Okeanos orchestrated that.
All the successes of my reign are playing out in my mind in little bursts, little flashes of memory, but I’m seeing them through a new lens and they sting. He was there for every one. He’s been there watching and pushing. I would not have been the queen I was without such influence.
I’m breathless by the time the second corpse falls into the water, and I want to pretend it is from dragging the bodies, but of course it’s not.
It’s only when they’ve both slipped beneath the sea that I realize he hasn’t answered my question.
“It was you,” I say firmly, refusing to let him avoid this question. “You who pushed my boat back to shore.”
He watches me warily. He’s intoxicating in his savage beauty. Wounded, tattered, and yet glorious. Debased and caught affixed upon an anchor, and yet every movement of his expressive face, every tightening of his stricken body bewitches me. I hate that he has this unconscious power over me. Hate it and want it even more.
“Whatever you think of me, surely you must agree that I am not the kind of monster who would glory in the death of a young woman fighting to keep another alive.”
I am not wrong. He was there. Which means he was there for all the other times, too.
I feel the blood drain from my face and I straighten, staring into his eyes as if there might be an answer there.
“Why did you let him get the credit for your act of courage?” he asks me.
“He would have been dismissed. Or worse. The people loved me. If they thought he’d endangered their princess…”
I let my words trail off.
“You were always one to let others take the credit, but your actions were forever for them,” he says. “When you tricked that pirate ship into a negotiation, for instance. That was all your guidance, but you let your advisor take the credit. He was honored in a ceremony in my sea. I remember this.”
I can’t stop staring at him. He’s admitting aloud what I just realized is true. That he has known me all my life and I had no idea. That he has meddled in my life for reasons of his own. Even if they are benign, I feel suddenly vulnerable and afraid.
“You’ve known me all this time.” It is hard to keep my voice from trembling. I don’t take the step backward deliberately, but I take it. “You’ve been watching me all this time. Should I not be wary of this?”
