“You have a goddess too?”
“I used to.”
“Would you have died for her?”
Seymour closes her eyes, then breathes out. “I did, and have done, much else for her. But no, I will never die for her. If I die, it will be for me.”
“Then we are not the same.”
Cecilia looks through the whorl again. The wall between her and them is not only physical now. She wants to pry these two open, to extract the meaning of this impossibly oblique conversation. They seem to be talking of love, which she understands in a theoretical way, but the weight of their words, the way they do not look at each other and yet sit the same way, suggests there is more to their meaning that she cannot decipher.
“I will never again worship a deity that demands my body and soul,” Seymour says. “I do not think any god has that right.”
“If you knew Cecie—”
“I know her kind. Grasping for a power that does not belong to them because they lack substance within themselves. How old are you?” Seymour says. Cecilia rolls her eyes and Florin bristles.
“Why ask such a question?”
“You put me in mind of someone I met once or twice; that is all.”
“Do they desire your death also?” Florin says. Is he flirting? Cecilia will have his tongue.
“Is she going to kill me on this ship, or let her brother have that pleasure?” Seymour says.
“She wants one of Elben’s castles, that is all. And she will use you to get it in whatever way she deems fit. Don’t we all desire our very own sanctuary?”
Seymour regards him coolly. “I repeat, sir: is she going to kill me on this voyage?”
Florin takes a deep breath. “Cecie has a reputation. She likes having that reputation. And death does not disturb her the way it may a normal person. But she does not kill unless it serves a purpose.”
“So her brother will do it, then,” Seymour says. She leans back against the wall of the cell, closes her eyes and smiles.
“You may leave now,” she tells Florin.
He stands, looking down at her. “You are strange, lady, to smile at the thought of your own death.”
“Yes, I am very strange. Goodbye, my lord.”
Cecilia shifts her angle to study Seymour. She remains like that, still and smiling, long after Florin has gone, long after the rats emerge from the shadows to sup on the bread and cheese he brought her. Something about Seymour’s questions niggles at Cecilia. She had no regard for what might happen to her once they reach Elben. All her concern was for the voyage.Why?
It hits her then. Seymour is not concerned about their arrival, because she knows that someone – either on the ship or beyond – knows where she is and intends to help her escape. Cecilia sits back on the sack. What an excellent, excellent game.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cleves
Three days
Cleves’s library is ill-equipped for telling her of the magic of Elben. Her knowledge is rudimentary. When she came from Ezzonid, she had learned only what was necessary. Her focus was and is ever on the matters she can influence. Divine power had never helped them much in Ezzonid. How could the immortal ever be expected to have compassion for the transient?
By the time she began to wonder if she was wrong, it was too late. She was a finished sculpture, a dry oil painting. Her talents and interests lie in the practical. She was and is and will be this way.
She writes a list to impose some order upon her thoughts:
What exactly is the bordweal?
How might we control it?
