My mouth opens and the words I speak are not my own. I hate myself because in the cavity where once sat my heart, before I gave it to the Nereid burning black before me, lies a desire to voice this truth and spare my mother. Though I know the cost.
‘It is a lie, my Lord Poseidon.’ The words carry and my mother is frozen, suspended in the air. Her attendants have flocked to my father, gathered around him like moths following a candle. Her women weep and look at me now, hopeful.
The God of the Sea regards me disdainfully. ‘Ceto cannot lie. She cannot break her oath.’
I do not understand how he cannot know that this is exactly what she has done, surely Horkos must give him the truth. Then my mouth opens again, and I realize that I,Iam giving him the truth.
‘She would. She would see her sister on the sea’s throne.’ Ceto’s grip is slack on my arms. She stares at me, at the lips she has kissed a thousand times, that have now betrayed her.She shakes her head slightly as though some false image was planted there and she wishes to dislodge it.
‘It is no lie, master.’ The words trip out, hasty and unconvincing through numb lips. ‘I believe my sister to be the greater beauty.’
‘A falsehood!’ It is Amphitrite now. Her head moves as if she is a doll, jerky and strange, her body still atop her dolphin. ‘Even I can see that the princess’s radiance outshines mine. I will not live as second best.’
‘Sister!’ Comprehension dawns with despair.
Poseidon roars and the sea roars back. Thunder blasts through the air with such violence that I hunch beneath it, my body bowed almost against my will. My father’s chair has been lowered to the floor and I cannot see him; he cowers behind his men. Those that surround him sob and beg for mercy, but they are as irrelevant as sand flies.
‘I will not fall to the tricks of women.’ The sea god’s voice cracks and echoes, rocks being split. ‘I have allowed you all too much freedom these years. This arrogant kingdom should have been met with punishment, but I was merciful.’ Those too-small, too-close eyes are alive with destruction. I have been kept from him now by his own oath, and I will not be forgiven for it. ‘I swore to stand by Ceto’s judgement, and I will. I shall not marry Andromeda. Amphitrite shall be my bride. But I will not be merciful again.’
The sea grows. It inflates as though taking a great breath. Higher and higher, a wall of water behind him, it colonizes the sky, darkening the already clouded day. We cannot see its peak.
‘King Cepheus.’ Poseidon addresses my father.
I hear his squeak even from here. He scrambles to hunch at the feet of the god who is a behemoth before him.
‘My lord,’ he pants.
‘I have learned well not to make covenant with women and so it is you I present with a choice. Your kingdom has displeased me. I wish to rip it from the world. I shall wash it away, cleanse the land of your presence, your people.’
No, no, no.The nobles and guards behind him scream and beg. I think of those who stayed to ready the coffers, I think of girls who smell of jasmine selling oil in the markets, I think of Achiroe’s stretch of river filling with salt and death.
‘Please, my lord! Bid me as your servant, I humble myself before you, I will do anything, I—’
Poseidon raging is terrible, but Poseidon smiling is a horror. He interrupts my father’s blithering. ‘Well, you might make a sacrifice. Sacrifices please the gods, I hear.’
‘Yes! Yes! Of course! I will call for an altar! I have a priest!’
Poseidon points to the coast. ‘I take the cape as my altar but you may fetch your priest.’
‘Of course, my lord.’ My father is obsequious, sweating and scraping and pissing on his knees. ‘What would you have me sacrifice?’
‘It is your decision. It must be worth your kingdom.’
Ceto shifts beside me. Her breath is quick, she moves and stands before me, a reflex. My father flounders, stuttering, hands flailing in front of his face like an infant. ‘I – I have nothing worth so much, I—’
‘No? Nothing?’
My father looks at me and he knows. He sees it in Poseidon’s gleaming smile and hears it in the wing beats, surelyhe can hear the wing beats. Surely they all sense the great looming bird and her punitive rider lurking just out of sight.
My mother, suspended in the air above the ocean, still pinned to her throne, shrieks in rage, but she cannot compete with these friends of the Furies. ‘You swore you would not hurt her! You swore it! You swore you would not harm my Andromeda!’
‘And I will not. I have ordered a sacrifice. It is her father’s choice.’
‘The deed will be yours! The blood on your hands!’
He is awful in the blue-black half-light. He looks at his hands, blithely mocking. ‘I assure you my hands shall remain clean. I am no oath breaker. You seek to humiliate me, to manipulate me, to turn those loyal against me, and you shall not. You shall be humbled.’
She screams her anguished dissent, she snarls and spits. ‘I shouldneverhave forsaken my gods for ones so petty and small!’
