“Lead the way, Colonel,” Bronte said, her singsong voice too cheerful for my taste.
We left the horses tethered in front of the tavern and crossed to the docks. Our footsteps rang hollow on the wooden planks as we passed boat after boat of fishermen unloading their daily catches and tying off their lines for the evening. At the far end of the main dock, hedged in by water on three sides, a dilapidated hut hung halfway over the sea. Its clay roof had been patched so many times I couldn’t discern its original color. A sign outside read: GO AWAY.
Theo knocked. “Hello?”
Waves lapped against the dock.
I stepped in front of him and pushed the door open. Fishing gear and buckets cluttered the cramped interior, and light streamed in from holes in the roof and the cracked shutters.
“He isn’t here,” I said.
“What now?” Bronte asked.
“We wait for him to return.” I took off my velo to let my skin breathe and caught a glimpse of my reflection in a dirty pail. Several bruises discolored my cheek where I had been struck, and I had a black eye.
Theo stayed outside. “We’ll wait at your boat. Which one is it, Althea?”
“I don’t know.”
He blinked at me. “You don’t know which boat is yours?”
“I bought it from a merchant friend. He said the harbormaster would direct us to it.”
Theo grunted disapprovingly. I must have been dazed from Decimus’s blows to have brought him along.
I tugged Bronte aside. “Are you certain about having him as our guide?” I asked.
“I don’t know why, but I like him. Maybe it was the way he handled the hoplites or the harbormaster, but I feel he’s genuine.”
“Genuinely a pest.”
Bronte peered upward as if seeking some sort of guidance—or patience—from the heavens. “I think we should give him a chance, but you tell me. You’re the one who met with the oracles.”
They had mentioned a guide. Was it too much to ask that they send a less irritating one?
An old man strolled down the dock hefting a bucketful of oysters. He edged past us to the harbormaster’s hut and went in without a word. I exchanged a cursory glance with Bronte, then pushed open the door after him.
“Hello?” I said. “We’re looking for the harbormaster.”
The stout man had more gray hair on his face than on his head. He kicked over a pail to sit on, then removed from his boot a hunting knife that was so massive, it was a wonder he could walk with it. He shucked a shell with the giant blade and sucked down the oyster.
“What do you want?” he asked with his mouth full.
“Proteus sent us,” I replied. “He sold me his boat.”
The harbormaster shucked another oyster. “He sold you his boat? You’re a woman.”
I was also not wearing a velo as an obedient maiden should. I jutted out my chin. “I’m well aware of my gender, sir. I paid good silver for Proteus’s boat.”
“Proteus said the new owner was coming, but . . . you? I could get into trouble giving a boat to a woman.”
“Then give it to Theo,” I said. “He’s our . . . brother. He knows how to sail.”
The harbormaster cast him a courtesy glance and then pointed his knife at me. “You just said Proteus sold you the boat.”
“He sold it to our family,” I amended.
Theo and Bronte both hesitated, then they nodded. I much preferred people thinking we were siblings with Theo rather than his spouses.
The harbormaster gave a skeptical huff as he pried open another oyster with his ridiculously large knife. “Oceanus’s child,” he gasped. He plucked out a pearl as big as his fingertip. “I’ve shucked hundreds of oysters this season, and this is the first pearl I’ve found.”
“We brought you good fortune, hmm?” Bronte posed.
He chuckled and replied, with an edge of sarcasm, “Fate must have brought you here.”
I locked gazes with Theo, then promptly looked away.
The harbormaster picked up a sack by the door and ambled outside. “Come. Your vessel is this way.”
We followed him to a quieter area of the docks where the boats were smaller and tied more closely together. He stopped before a weathered wood-planked sailboat. Its raggedy cotton sail hung limply in the windless sky. Seagull droppings speckled the deck and upper hull.
“I scrubbed the barnacles off the hull while it was dry-docked ten days ago,” he said. “The sail was patched last month, and all the lines were inspected yesterday . . . No, perhaps the day before. I cannot remember.”
The boat was a lackluster prize for the silver we had paid. Proteus was a fair man, but this caused me to question him.
“Is it suitable for open water?” Bronte asked, stating the exact thought I hadn’t gotten around to expressing. Crete was two days’ voyage across open water. We needed a reliable vessel that could handle the might of the sea.
The harbormaster patted her arm. “Your brother will take care of you.”
He drew Theo aside to discuss the boat’s history. I caught snatches of their conversation, but every time I crept closer to eavesdrop, the harbormaster turned his back to me. He passed Theo the sack he had brought from his hut, then strolled away.
Theo threw the sack on board and began untying the line.
“Well?” I asked.
“He said we should have calm waters. The Oceanids won’t risk violating the treaty between Oceanus and the Almighty by misbehaving this close to the First House Festival.”
“The harbormaster couldn’t tell me that? I should be included in conversations about my boat.”
“Our boat,” Bronte corrected.
I gave a slight nod and went on. “What’s in the sack?”
“Supplies,” Theo answered. “Proteus sent food and water for our journey. Low tide is coming. We need to leave, or we’ll be stuck in the harbor until morning.” He stepped onto the boat as it began drifting away from the dock.
I grabbed the slack line to stop the boat from floating away. “Can you navigate at night?”
“Yes.” He stared at the cloudless sky, the twilight deepening to a dramatic expanse of navy. “All I need are the stars.”
Bronte chewed her lower lip. “Think of Cleora,” she murmured to me.
Truth was, I tried not to imagine how Cleora was faring. After what Decimus said about her first encounter with Cronus, such ponderings were unbearable.
We stepped onto the boat together and found a place to sit out of the wind. Theo took up the oars and rowed us out of the harbor. Once we reached open water, he untied the lines to release the sail. The cloth snapped as wind flooded it, and the boat glided south.
Nightfall crept across the Aegean Sea. Its reflection fused with the starlit sky into a single velvet tapestry. Bronte rested her head against my shoulder and drifted off. I sensed Theo’s attention on me and gazed ahead, searching for the blade-thin line where the heavens hugged the ocean to the horizon with its comforting weight.
After a whole night and most of the day on the water, I was certain the ocean was for imbeciles. Bronte had vomited at least once every hour since we entered open water yesterday evening. I held her hair back from her face as she dry-heaved overboard. I hadn’t retched, but I had come close more than once. Pride alone kept me from humiliating myself in front of our captain.
Theo manned the sail, poised, at home with the crystal-blue sky and sunshine-drenched waves. Only he had eaten since we’d left. I didn’t dare have anything other than water, and Bronte refused even that. At this rate, the provisions Proteus sent with us would easily last until we arrived at Crete the next day.
Daylight had chased away the chill that accompanied the red-washed morning. Bronte lay on the hard deck curled into a ball, sleeping fitfully. I stood vigil beside her, my back against the rail, my face to the wind.
Bronte moaned in her sleep. “Cleora.”
This was the longest the three of us had been apart, and I lo
nged for our reunion like a missing limb. I rubbed Bronte’s back until she drifted into a deeper slumber. Most of the time, she hummed herself to sleep, but she didn’t have the strength for even that.
I pried myself up off the deck and teetered over to Theo. I was less queasy in the center of the boat where the rocking wasn’t as noticeable.
Theo had rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, revealing the dark hair on his forearms. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“Well enough.”
We cruised past another island with blinding-white limestone cliffs, lush craggy inlets, pallid grasses clinging to razor-sharp hillsides, and a turquoise bay lined with alabaster sandy beaches. Crete lay across the widest stretch of the Aegean Sea, farther south than I ever imagined I would venture. Our small but sturdy vessel rolled over a large wave. I gripped the line, my insides roiling.
“When will we arrive?” I asked.
“By dawn tomorrow, as long as the winds and sea remain calm.”
“This is calm?”
One corner of Theo’s mouth slid up. “It is for those who have experienced the sea when Oceanus is raging.”
Oceanus was renowned for his moodiness. I had heard it said that he had as many faces as the sea had shades of jade and indigo. His temper had claimed the lives of countless sailors and fishermen.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Theo started. “Your mother, Stavra, was—”
“Was what?” I hadn’t thought he would have the gall to mention her to me.
“She was an admirable woman. She stood for what she believed in.”
“Yes, I know,” I said coolly. “You must be worried about your own mother. Do you think Decimus will—?”
“He wouldn’t dare harm her.”
I hoped he was right. “How did Decimus know you had turned on Cronus?”
“How well do you hide your hatred for the Almighty?” Theo retorted.
“I wasn’t working in the palace.”
The corners of his eyes tensed. “I’ve expressed how I feel about Cronus.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“The same way you feel, I imagine.”
I doubted that. The severity of my loathing ran deep. “Then you don’t believe in the Titans.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You believe in the Protogenoi?”
“You continue to call out my beliefs and allegiances as if you know them,” he answered. “Do you do that to everyone?”
“Do you answer everyone’s questions with another question?”
His eyes narrowed on the horizon. “Get down.”
My gaze darted out to sea. A massive trireme approached us, fast, its gleaming hull flying over the waves.
“Who is that?” I asked, thinking the worst. A slave ship? Drifters come to rob us?
“Rhea’s royal vessel.”
The trireme was about forty yards long and six yards wide, with three rows of oars, manned by one rower per oar. Two sails puffed in the wind, a large one off the mainmast and a smaller one off the bowsprit. The main propulsion came from the approximately 140 men rowing. The massive vessel dominated our tiny boat, casting us into its shadow.
Theo kneeled and bent his head to the deck, and I sank to my knees.
Titans were known for their elusiveness—they were the sun, stars, air, and sea, blending into the world with a seamlessness that was both omnipotent and tangible. Rhea purportedly possessed extraordinary elegance and allure, a consort fit for the Almighty. I craned my neck for a glimpse of her.
“How does that ship carry her?” I asked. “Titans are immense.”
Theo turned to me. “Have you ever seen a Titan?”
“No.”
The shadow of the trireme raced over us. On the middeck, the piper sat above the sailors and led the rowers’ flawless rhythm, the horn of an ibex slung across his chest. I searched for the Titaness in her turret crown, with her legendary guard of tawny lionesses. Rhea was the only Titan I took a genuine interest in, because of her resistance in the face of Cronus’s many infidelities. It was common knowledge that theirs was not a love match. They were siblings. All of the Titans espoused each other. Monsters wed monsters, and together they bred monstrous children.
Before long, the ship trailed off into the fading daylight.
“Where do you think she’s going?” I asked.
“Back to the Aeon Palace for the First House Festival, I would wager.”
A flare of anger hit me. Rhea would likely see Cleora before I did.
“Why doesn’t Rhea do anything about her husband?” I asked. “He took away their children. I don’t understand why she doesn’t stand up to him.”
“We don’t know that she hasn’t,” Theo said, somewhat vacantly. “Rhea is as much his subject as we are.”
Feeling nauseated again, I returned to my sister’s side and lay down close to the rail, in case I needed to retch.
Fate willing, none of us would be under Cronus’s rule for much longer.
My nausea woke me from a fitful sleep in the middle of the night. Wiping my clammy forehead, I sat up and leaned over the rail while my empty belly churned. Bronte slept soundly, curled up on her side behind me. I was glad her sickness had abated enough for her to rest, but I was also envious.
Waves slapped against the hull of the boat, and cold, briny spray speckled my face and lips. Currently a mirror of the countless diamond stars, the restless sea spanned from one horizon to the opposite, limitless in its splendor. I had started to drift off again when a cool wind ruffled my hair and brushed past my ear, laced with a man’s raspy voice.
Daughter.
A chill prickled across my scalp. Theo sat stern-faced at the sail and paid me no mind.
Daughter . . .
The tag on the back of my neck burned. A black patch on the surface of the sea drew my gaze. The dark waves reflected the stars everywhere except that patch, where a huge shadow slid nearer, just under the surface.
I’m waiting for you, daughter. Release me.
“Papa?” I whispered. My father died when I was too young to remember him. I wouldn’t recognize his voice, but who else would call me “daughter”? And my father’s spirit would be in Hades, where most mortal souls went after death. My mother insisted that her husband had earned the honor of going to Elysium, where deceased heroes spent the afterlife. If that was true, then she was there too.
The shadow slithered alongside us. Lofty appendages bloomed from it, extending like black-winged night across the water. Everywhere it spread, the starlit sea lost its luster. The wings approached the boat, and a single hooklike claw uncoiled from a wing tip and scratched the hull with an earsplitting screech.
I scrambled back from the rail. My tag burned so hotly that tears pricked my eyes. I pressed my hand over it. My skin there was icy.
“Althea?” Theo asked. “Is everything all right?”
“Did you see . . . ?” I trailed off at his puzzled expression.
The winged figure had vanished.
I crawled back to the rail and ran my hand along the smooth wooden hull until my finger found it—a long, deep scratch.
More unsettled, I moved to the center of the deck and lay between Bronte and Theo while he continued manning the sail. The thing in the water was unlike anything I had ever seen. It had devoured the starlight reflecting off the sea. A Star Eater.
Theo yawned, then splashed his face with seawater. I rested my head in the crook of my arm and wished for a sound sleep, but my mind reeled with what I had seen, and my nausea was unrelenting.
Sometime later that night, still awake, I heard a rich, solemn voice begin to sing.
“Already half my days spread out behind me.
Look, girl, gray hairs sprinkle my head,
Announcing that age and wisdom draw close.
But still, I care only about laughing,
Drinking, and the pleasures of the night.
And yet, in my unsatisfied heart, a fire burns.”<
br />
Theo hummed a poignant melody that I had never heard before, and then began to sing it again, the mood of the tune shifting from morose to hopeful.
“Oh, Fate, write me an end.
Say, ‘This woman, this one here,
She is your soul’s reflection. She—
Yes, she—is the end of your madness.’”
As the last note drifted out to sea, I noticed my nausea was gone. I felt almost as good as if I was back on dry land. I pushed up onto my elbows to see Theo better in the dark. “I didn’t know you could sing.”
“Why would you?”
It struck me how standoffish I had been to this man who had sailed for hours on end without a reprieve. I could be friendlier, at least until morning. “I dance, but Bronte has a talent for singing, like you. What was that tune?”
“It’s an old fishermen’s ballad.” Theo’s voice hushed. “My wife and I used to sing it together.”
“You’re married?”
“Widowed. Charmain, my wife, worked in the tavern her family still owns. She would sing in the evenings for patrons. Sometimes I would join her.”
“Did you marry for love?” I didn’t care either way, but I found myself curious.
“Soldiers marry when their battalion leader appoints them a wife. I was fortunate Charmain was given to me. She and I were childhood friends. Very few have the privilege of marrying for love.”
Decimus’s oath rose in my thoughts. He thought he had cursed me never to fall in love with anyone but him, but no outside power could claim ownership of my heart. My heart was the only heart I would have, forever. I wasn’t interested in giving it away.
“How did your wife die?” I asked.
Theo licked his lips, collecting his thoughts. “Charmain was born with shallow lungs. She fell ill a year after we wed, and never recovered. Despite how it pained her to breathe, she sang all the way to the end.”
“Brave.”
“Audacious. Charmain was stubborn about what and who she loved. You remind me of her.”
I squinted at him. “Do you intend that as a compliment?”
“Undoubtedly. Your heart lies with your greatest passion.”
My pulse picked up speed. “I’m a stranger to you.”
Wings of Fury Page 9
