I reach through the screams and cries, through the quiet pleas and distraught tears. They shred at my mind, scrape across my nerves. I know I need to help them, but I don’t know how to answer so many at once. No wonder Markanos was so desperate when I saw him this morning, if he was answering prayers just like this for his own people.
I need Oke to show me what to do. This sudden cataclysmic threat is too big for me alone.
I see my people in tiny glimpses—mothers clinging to little children; tiny ones sobbing, their hands clutching desperately for parents who cannot come. Whoever has attacked our shores has come quickly and brutally.
I didn’t expect this yet. I thought there was time.
I try to focus. Where are these attacks? Where are these prayers coming from?
It’s the shores of the mainland, not my islands. I almost sigh, but then my heart clenches hard, for I am no longer Coralys of the Crocus Isles, I am Coralys, God of the Sea, and that makes all those who pray to me mine. My people on the mainland have been attacked by the armies of these rebel gods who wish to start a war and overthrow their ruler.
I see little bursts of what is happening, a fleet flooding into a harbor, armies roaring as they take to the smaller craft and cross the swell of ocean to reach the shore. My men swept away by waves or floating on the water trailing red for the sharks. My women so cut to pieces that they cannot be recognized. I recoil from it, but I cannot stop the onslaught. The god war has started just as Markanos said it had and my people need me.
They need Okeanos.
I claw through their prayers, looking, searching, sobbing in my frantic scramble.
I do not feel my husband in the sea. It is as if he has ceased to be entirely.
“Oke!” I scream beneath the waves, but he’s not there.
“Okeanos!” I call mentally with all my heart as if my prayer—the prayer of a living god—might somehow trump the prayers of the desperate mortals calling out to him and to me.
Something is terribly wrong. Not just with my people,but with the missing dead god who ought to be here waiting for me.
I stumble back up to shore feeling cored and gutted. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to help first.
“Oke!” I call, but the only ones who answer are the gulls and they are far off. I hope that is not because they float somewhere on a corpse. I hope it is only because without him here there is nothing to draw them.
It’s no matter. I have Vesuvius’s pearl here and he will tell me—for a price. I lift my trident as I remember that Markanos didn’t even have to pay a price. Perhaps I, too, can use his method to pry information from the former god.
I draw the pearl from my belt and it’s not hard to drop a tear on it. I’m frantic enough that the tears are coming whether I want them to or not.
But the tear does nothing. Or at least—it doesn’t draw Vesuvius. There’s a moment where I think it drawssomeoneout. There’s a glimpse of tentacles and an impression of the struggling shape of a man, but then he’s gone again. Is it possible that Markanos harmed Vesuvius more than I realized?
I feel cold all over. There will be no help from him, then.
Fine. Markanos will help me. He is, after all, as culpable as I am for whatever befell Oke. I don’t know how to get to Markanos’s home. I should have asked while I had the opportunity. I grip the trident hard in one hand and stand in the water, twisting my hand and thinking of Markanos, but again, nothing happens.
I try enough times that I feel like a fool.
I want to abandon this search for my husband and go and help my people. I want to travel from place to place and beat back their enemies, but I know that a frantic leader loses battles and that if I simply throw myself into the fray, I will be destroyed and my people with me.
For there is only one conclusion I can draw—Okeanos has been taken by his enemies. The magic was broken, he was freed, but dead and tortured, he was easy to snatch up and steal away.
And if they have him, then they have half the sea.
And that alone changes the decision here. Where I might have had to balance his safety with the safety of our people, it is clear that both are tied together. Whoever has him has access to them, and with that access, the ability to conquer them outright.
I must focus all my resources on getting Okeanos back.
I hurry home to gather what resources I can. I must make a plan. For my people. For my husband. I tie up the boat, chewing my lip, deep in thought, trying to formulate a plan.
My eyes drift to where Aurelius stood just months ago taunting us, and there, on the upright he’d leaned against, my husband’s fishing spear is jammed into the wood affixing a fluttering piece of vellum to the upright.
That wasn’t here when I left. I would have seen it. Markanos would have seen it. Trembling, I clamber out of the boat and over to it. The spear—stained yet by the lifeblood of my husband—quivers in the wood. My hand hovers near the shaft, but then I draw it away. I have no right to take it up again.
I have to bring my breathing under control to turn my attention to the vellum. Someone has left me a note written in a delicate, florid script. My eyes skip down to the closing.
