22
Jason
Images sear themselves into Jason’s mind like brands into flesh.
Medea with an axe in her hands. Blood pooled on the deck. The stiff marble of a severed limb, meat hanging off one end. And on the other, a hand with fingers outstretched.
Jason reaches the railing of the ship just in time to disgorge the contents of his stomach into the roiling sea.
It is no surprise that he would be saved once again—that divine favor would preserve him—yet now Jason sees the terror of it. He is saved but has no say over the nature of that saving. This is what it means to have cultivated power in the way that he has, through charm and persuasion. The precise mechanisms are always in the hands of another.
His distaste for the act is secondary to the fact that he feelsoutdone. This woman, this foreign woman, has proved herself more of a man than him. Because Medea’s planworks. The Colchian fleet turns aside, delayed by its grim task, and theArgocontinues unmolested across the Euxine Sea. The crew cheers.
As he looks at the small form of Medea slumped with exhaustion on the deck, Jason feels a surge of fear. What exactly is she capable of, this woman he promised to take as his wife? How well does he know her, really?
If Medea would do something like this to her own brother, what might she do to Jason?
23
Medea
Nightfall found me curled up on the deck of theArgo. In Qulha I had rested my head on goose-feather pillows and tucked myself under sheets of the finest linen, but here I had nothing more than a few bloodstained blankets. Worse, I’d had nothing to eat except some bread and a little water, and was horrified to learn that the best method of relieving oneself was to hang off the side of the ship waist-deep in the water. A far cry from my former life as a princess.
I pulled the largest blanket around myself more tightly. It had been given to me by the gray-eyed woman, the one who’d saved my life back on the beach. I’d accepted the blanket with caution, shivering after scrubbing the blood from my arms with cold seawater. The woman wasn’t Amazon, as I had previously thought, but Greek like all the rest of theArgo’s crew. She did not speak but only silently handed me the blanket, as though I were beneath her notice.
The crew was settling down to sleep, pillowing their heads on the hard wood of the deck. They treated me with respect—and a little fear—but it was unseemly for a young woman to be alone among all these men. I waited for Jason to come and escort me to more suitable chambers, but he never did, and I was surprised at the pain of his absence. I’d given him the Fleece and saved his lifefrom the pursuing fleet; the least he could do was wish me good night.
Suddenly I was struck by the full scope of what I’d given up and I began to weep, shaking with violent sobs. I thought of Xanthippus, free at last to dance across the sky. I thought of Chalciope, and wondered if her revolt had succeeded. I could conduct divination to discover this but decided against it. Better to assume my sweet, stalwart sister triumphed; better to assume Xanthippus lived free. It wasn’t as though I would see either of them again.
Never again would I walk the stormy seashore of Qulha or look up at its green hills. The temple of Hekate would have to go on without me. I cried for a long time, my body shaking, until I felt like cloth bleached white by the sun, everything extraneous cast away.
Dry-eyed, I looked out at the vast expanse of the sea shining under the moonlight. The waters were in constant motion yet reflective as glass, stretching away as far as the eye could see. The crew rowed through the night in shifts, determined to put as much distance between themselves and Aeetes’s kingdom as possible. We were beyond the sight of land now, beyond anything that might hold us back.
With dawning wonder, I realized that I was finally free. Free to make my own life and choose my own love, free of the shadow of Qulha. No, I would call it Colchis now, as the Greeks did, adopting their language as my own. After all, I would marry a Greek man and give birth to Greek children, living the rest of my life among those people.
I would see sights unknown and distant shores I’d only dreamed of, and face a thousand perils as well on the journey to my new home. Monsters, barbarians, threats unfathomable. With a creeping trepidation, I wondered if I would survive to see the shores of Greece.
But was this not a life worth immortalizing?
A sound startled me out of my reverie. Two human forms unfurled from the dark reaches of the area belowdecks. I recognized Orpheus the musician, along with one of the north wind brothers, who moved like eels through the air.
The son of the north wind was not flying now, though. He and Orpheus were both breathing hard, as though they had been running, though surely there was no space for that belowdecks. Sweat slicked back the hair on Orpheus’s forehead, and a flush suffused his skin. The two men pressed their foreheads together, hands on each other’s cheeks.
Lovers?I averted my gaze, as though I had stumbled upon something that should be kept private. I had not known two men could be lovers, but then again, I would learn many new things over the course of this voyage.
Another set of footsteps stumbled up from the rowing deck. Orpheus and the north wind brother sprang apart, melting into the shadows. One of the twins from Sparta—I could not tell them apart—came up the stairs and onto the deck, cutting to the railing. Taking no notice of my presence, he fumbled with his clothing to release a golden arc of urine over the side of the ship.
I flushed red to my ears with embarrassment and threw the blanket over my head. I was a long way from the royal palace now.
24
Atalanta
As I dozed languidly in the morning sunlight, a shadow fell across me.
“Atalanta!” Jason said, far too brightly. “Just the person I was hoping to see.”
My eyes narrowed. I could think of no good reason Jason should ever hope to see me, nor I him. Moreover, I was in a foul mood; we had just sailed back through the Hellespont, and in that corridor of rock where he had died, the ghost of Meleager seemed close enough to touch. My losses lay heavy upon me, and I was keenly aware that I was no closer to finding Procris than I’d been at the beginning of this journey. Indeed, I’d lost my chance to search for her in Colchis, a significant setback.
