“You are young to be holy counsel to a man such as Heracles.”
She touched her forehead and replied, “Age is no quantifier of ability.”
He shifted his weight closer toward her. He smelled of altar smoke and something sour, like long-curdled milk.
“How oldareyou, child?”
“Old enough to know the will of the gods.”
“Of course.” He smiled obsequiously. “Under whom did you train?”
She let the question hang in the air for a moment then met his gaze, her face calm as the cerulean sea.
“One could almost be forgiven for thinking you are questioning my place on this voyage.”
With satisfaction, she watched his features squirm into a mask of mortification.
“Never, sister.”
He turned and walked briskly to the other side of the deck, leaving Danae alone. She moved her hands and saw her nails had made two rows of crescent indents in the wood.
They had barely sailed a league before the sky darkened.
“Jason!” called Tiphys. “I don’t like the look of those clouds.”
Danae followed the navigator’s gaze and saw thick gray clouds rolling in from the west. They were moving fast and had soon swallowed the sun. The air chilled.
From what she knew of sea storms, the old navigator was right to be worried.
“Idmon,” called Jason. “You said we’d have fine sailing to Troas.”
“The omens indicated we would, Captain,” said Idmon. “I’m sure the clouds will pass.”
“My ass they will,” said Telamon. “That’s a storm coming.”
Then a rumble of thunder came, and a fork of lightning cracked the sky. Orpheus stopped playing and clutched his lyre to his chest. Soon, dark clouds boiled above the ship. The wind picked up, and the sea frothed, tossing theArgobetween swelling peaks. Danae and Idmon climbed down to the mid-deck and braced themselves against the wall of the prow platform.
“The omens are in our favor, it will pass,” yelled Idmon. He sounded a lot less certain than before.
“Pull in the oars and sheath the mainsail!” called Tiphys.
“Shit.” Jason clenched his jaw as rain pelted the deck. He pointed at the twins. “Castor, Pollux, do what he says!”
The twins abandoned their benches and battled their way across the swaying ship. They started to undo the sail knots, then a sharp gust ripped the sodden rope from Castor’s fingers, and the untethered sheet flapped violently in the wind.
They were going to lose the sail. Danae had seen it happen on her father’s boat, when they’d been caught out in a flash storm.
“It’s going to rip!” she shouted.
The rope was writhing like a possessed serpent, the half-tethered sail screeching under the pull of the wind. Without thinking, she launched herself across the deck. Rain and saltwater blew like grit into her eyes but as the rope whipped back, she threw herself forward and caught it. The friction burned her palms, but she held on, crashing down between the rowing benches.
Then a blast of wind caught the sail. She was thrown into the air, her screams lost to the raging storm. Something gave way in her left shoulder, and pain seared through her arm, but she held on. She was tossed across the ship and just as she was about to fall into the iron embrace of the sea, something clamped around her legs.
Heracles had one arm around her thighs and his free hand clasped the end of the rope.
“Let go!”
She obeyed, her left arm hanging useless as she slid down Heracles’s torso. She fell back between the rowing benches, where Hylas caught her and Atalanta and Telamon fought to secure the sail.
