There was a finer point to make about how Poseidon and his legacy had achieved their glory. As Dam and Aerander had learned from the Old Ones, the Oomphalos had cleaved the island of Atlantis from ice during an age when titan gods clutched the world in an eternal winter. The stone’s life-giving energies had turned the land fertile so that people there could thrive. From that prosperous city-state, Poseidon and his heirs had claimed colonies in the frozen continents where barbarian races had eked out primitive settlements from the stingy earth. When the Oomphalos had been returned underground, centuries ago, the above-world had gradually been set off balance. Ultimately, the thawing of the land had made the sea rise up and swallow the island.
No matter. The response to Aerander’s speech was deafening. It began with the freed prisoners in the back of the room taking to their feet and hollering, and then everyone was standing, cheering and throwing up their fists and calling out Aerander’s name. Dam stood and gazed at his cousin with pride. Aerander had managed to include every person in the hall in his speech. He had been an emblem of hope since the evacuation, but in that moment, he had earned his right to lead.
The cheers went on for quite some time. Aerander bowed his head again and again, and then he started back to the head table. A murmur from the crowd dispersed abruptly. While everyone had sat down, Calyiches remained standing.
Dressed in princely splendor, Calyiches was even more arresting than usual, the embodiment of the handsome hero from the adventurous tales of his martial clan Mneseus. Calyiches looked to Ysalane, awaiting a chance to speak.
“I have something to say to our fine new leader.”
Aerander halted on his way to his seat. He raised his eyebrows, bidding Calyiches to go on.
“Your speech was apt,” Calyiches said. He glanced at his companions. “As legacies of the royal Houses, we are, of course, dedicated to restoring glory to our kingdom. But let us not forget that our country was founded by sacred laws. ‘Ten kings for one kingdom.’ Such was the decree of Father Poseidon.
“We, who are all that is left of the confederacy of ten kings, have a duty to spread his dominion over every realm of the earth. Yet we remain refugees in a foreign country. What glory is there in that?” Calyiches looked to Ysalane, disarming as always with his artful smile. “I mean no disrespect to you and your people, Your Grace. You have sheltered us with the utmost generosity.” He turned to Aerander. “But the time has come for us to make our own way. We are sovereigns, and we want a sovereign land.”
Dam could not believe his audacity. Raising a complaint right after Aerander had been feted for saving his skin and ridding the underworld of their greatest enemy? On a night that was supposed to be a celebration for Ysalane’s people? Calyiches’ friends egged him on. The better part of the hall was silent.
Aerander answered him. “We will have our sovereign land when it is safe to return to the surface.”
Calyiches’ companions hemmed and hawed. Their spokesman grinned cleverly, and then he launched his voice above the fracas. “How long must we wait for an answer from that amulet of yours? There are lands beyond this city that we could claim as our own. There are passages to the surface that we could explore.”
Besides the portals to the city of Atlantis, there were rumors of a passage far away in the backcountry that led to the mountains of Mauritania where the highland might still stand above the sea. But even the Old Ones could not confirm that such a portal existed. An expedition to find it could be a colossal waste of time, not to mention extremely dangerous.
“Calaeno has promised to give us the signal as soon as the sea relents,” Aerander said. “We must be patient, and we must stand united. We have men among us who are not fit to leave the city.”
Lys called out, “Hear, hear!” and Aerander’s friends joined in. The highborn boys from the other tables grumbled and sneered.
“Your fellow Poseidonidae do not agree with you,” Calyiches said. “We have the right to vote on our country’s future. In point of fact, it is the tradition of our fathers that our leader shall be chosen by a council of ten Houses. Yet we have been given no such privilege. In the meantime, you allow your kingship to be bought by a foreign race.”
Lys, Dardy, Evandros, and all the others at Aerander’s table stood from their benches, readying for a brawl. Dam had never been part of any sort of group tussle, but at that moment, he felt quite ready to try his fists against Calyiches and any one of his arrogant friends. How dare he twist things around to embarrass Aerander and insult the Old Ones? They had been nothing but gracious to Calyiches and his band of ingrates.
Aerander looked over his companions, steady and temperate.
“You are right, Calyiches. My place as leader has not been put up to a vote as law prescribes. This will be done. But not tonight. This is an evening of celebration.”
Calyiches turned to his friends, and they spoke to one another quietly. Calyiches came back quickly with a response. “In two nights’ time then. We need just one to draw up a balloting procedure and another to cast the votes. We see no need to delay things any further. And I herewith announce my nomination as Governor-Magistrate.”
Dam gazed helplessly at his cousin. If electing a leader was up to the royal Houses—one Governor-Magistrate to preside over their council—Aerander was doomed. He had his own House and Dardy’s on his side. Lys was House Eudemon’s leader by birthright, but even that third House’s endorsement was not assured with Leo and Koz from his clan cozying up to Calyiches. Calyiches had seven Houses in his pocket. He would easily oust Aerander. His cousin stepped over to consult with Ysalane.
Aerander returned to give his bearing on the matter. “It is agreed, in two nights’ time,” he said. “As we have no proper statehouse, Ysalane has offered this hall as the place where the vote can proceed.” He looked broadly across the room. “But we are no longer the same kingdom that we were aboveground. We have no protectorates to allot, no armies to raise, no trade to manage, not even a spare penny to start a treasury. We are two hundred and twenty, and every one of us arrived here with no more than the clothes on his back. We need every one of us to build a future for Atlantis. For that reason, I motion that for the vote in two days’ time, every man and woman born of our great country shall have a chance to cast a ballot. Every one of us shall have a say in Atlantis’ future.”
Calyiches raised his voice to challenge him. Dam could not believe himself what Aerander had said. Common folk casting ballots for a king? It would be the end of centuries of House rule. It would make the claim of birthright meaningless.
It was genius.
The boys in the front tables shouted Aerander down. Calyiches tried to speak over them, but he could not be heard over the din. Then a thunder even greater rose up from the back of the hall. The freed prisoners, ten dozen strong, pounded their fists on their tables. They shouted in unison, “A vote for every man.”
Dam stared at the commotion. It was a savory dilemma for the highborn boys. They couldn’t very well bully back the freed prisoners. Not if they expected to win them over as subjects. Dam fastened his gaze on Calyiches. With his clever smile, he played things off like he was taking them in stride. He had to know that Aerander had bested him. What was Calyiches plotting for his next move?
Chapter Eight
The next morning when Dam awoke, his mind spun rapidly. In one day’s time, a vote would decide the leader of a new Atlantis. It would change everything he had known about his country. It would dissolve the tradition of sovereignty by bloodline. Effectively, it would make Dam equal to any other man, though believing that boggled his mind.
Calyiches and his highborn companions would fight hard to maintain the old ways. If the vote didn’t go the way they wanted, which seemed assured, the rift could divide the survivors nearly in half. Dam realized Aerander needed his support, and he felt very selfish for having given his cousin a hard time about sitting at his table at the feast.
Dam was also going to a “feast
after the feast” with Hanhau later that day. That thought made his stomach cramp up nearly as much as thinking about tomorrow’s vote. Dam set it adrift as a worry for later. He pulled on a shift and washed his face in the basin in his room. Hephad still slept, so Dam tried to be quiet.
Red morning bled into the house. It was still quite early. Most everyone in the Honeycomb had to be sleeping. They had all stayed up late after the feast. They had so much to talk about: trying to figure out how many votes were assured for Aerander, guessing at the schemes Calyiches might try to influence the outcome, and going through scenarios of victory or defeat.
One thing was certain, the boys in the middle houses were thoroughly behind Dam’s cousin. Aerander promised them land and freedom when they returned to the surface. Hephad’s friends, Callios and Heron, had big dreams of building homes and reviving the trades of their fathers. They would be unfettered by tariffs and guild masters setting rules and taking commissions for their trade.
Those thoughts were dazzling, though Dam had no idea what he would do with land and freedom. A son’s duty was to take up the trade of his father, but how was he to make a living raising horses? He had never had a father to teach him.
In any case, Aerander’s vision for a new Atlantis shone splendid and true. The refugees were all descendants of Poseidon one way or another, so why shouldn’t they all come together to rebuild their country? It didn’t matter who was noble or peasant. Dam had lived as both, and he didn’t see how some men were better suited for owning land and gold than others based on their heredity.
He left the house to catch up with his cousin and see if he could do anything to help on the eve of the vote. He hadn’t seen the overgrown kittens since the previous night—a mild curiosity—and he went on his way without investigating that. They were probably out hunting for those lizards. Dam took a stairwell to the upper tier of the Honeycomb and traveled to the house that Lys and Aerander had taken as their own.
At the early hour, things were desolate on the terrace of the upper tier. Dam moved along briskly. He would be happy to make it to his cousin’s quarters without running into anybody. The highborn boys had marked up the outer walls of their houses with their clan emblems. They needed those reminders of where they stood in society even though it was quickly becoming apparent that no one else cared. Coming around the side of the terrace where Aerander and his friends lived, those markings had been washed and rubbed away. A single doorway had been embellished with drawings of twin columns and a crowning arch with engraved lettering.
Here lives Aerander, slayer of Ouroborus, and the new King of Atlantis.
The gas lamps lit up a thin aura in the interior, and the partially shuttered light from the Oomphalos Tower didn’t help Dam anticipate what he was walking into. Aerander had always been an early riser. Dam was counting on that habit. He stole into the house and glanced around, trying to penetrate the shadows.
A body came at him quickly and forcefully. Before Dam could back away, someone trapped him with two powerful arms and held a sharp blade at his throat.
“Who goes there?”
Dam recognized the voice. “Lys, it’s me.”
The blade fell away. “Sorry, Dam. You ought to announce yourself.” Lys went to a gas lamp at the wall and turned up the fuel.
Light laid bare the small, sparsely furnished room. Aerander’s imposing boyfriend stood in front of Dam in a pair of silk trousers. His fair hair was sleep-tossed. Lys was martially trained and built in proportions to wrangle an ox. He was a good friend to have on one’s side.
“If you’re looking for Aerander, he’s down at the polyandrium.”
The boys had built a yard with grave markers for their families. Aerander used to go there every morning, and Dam realized he still did.
“How’s he doing?” Dam said.
Lys shrugged. “Fine. We had company all night. Dardy and Evandros wanted to stay over in case Calyiches had any bright ideas about sabotaging the vote. Aerander wouldn’t let them. He said it wouldn’t look right to be surrounded by bodyguards all the time.”
Dam smirked. Lys smirked back. Either one of them could have told Aerander that having some protection was no dishonor. But Aerander had his pride and his stubbornness. They were family traits.
“Has Calyiches tried anything?”
“Not to speak of. The lot of them cleared out of here early. Who knows where.”
That had left Lys to guard the house like a fighting dog. Methodically, he looked back to the doorway. His broad shoulders were tense and alert. When they first met, Dam had a touch of a crush on Lys. He was a celebrated athlete from the Eudemon clan, which was known for its hearty sea captains who fought off barbarian raiders in the fearsome North Atlantic Sea. Standing face-to-face, alone, with the older boy half-clothed, that little crush bedeviled Dam for a moment.
But they were friends now. Lys had once wanted to crack Dam’s skull open when he had thought Dam had been corrupting his cousin Leo. Their lives had been interwoven when they each joined up with Aerander to journey underground and clear the way for evacuees from the flood. That adventure had made their differences seem petty. When they found the prisoner camp of the New Ones and roused a rebellion with fire bombs of niterbats, Lys had kept Leo and Koz in line, battering back their unkind words about Dam.
“You think he wants to be alone?” Dam said.
“I don’t think he ever minds seeing more of you. You’re family.”
Was a hint of a grudge in that statement? Dam wasn’t sure. He sympathized with Lys in any case. For a long time after the flood, Aerander hadn’t had the will to get out of his bed. Aerander gave Dam credit for bringing him out of that, but Lys had been the one who had spent day and night with him, keeping after Aerander to drink and eat. Since Aerander had taken on leading the survivors, Lys had stood loyally at his side. It couldn’t be easy being Aerander’s boyfriend. Aerander put his duty as a politician ahead of everything.
Dam glanced at the two pallets in the room that had been pulled together into one bed. “You’re family too,” he told Lys.
Lys gave him a tight half-smile.
“I know he doesn’t show it, but he really does care for you an awful lot,” Dam said.
Lys looked askance. He put up a good front, but he was struggling with his emotions. That made Dam antsy. What was he supposed to do if his cousin’s boyfriend broke down in front of him?
“I’ll go check up on him,” Dam said.
Lys gave a quick nod. Dam figured Lys wanted to be alone. It made sense. He would have an easier time pulling himself together in private. Dam turned back to the doorway and headed out to the stairwells.
*
The polyandrium yard was on the basin of the Honeycomb, on the opposite side of the bathing yard. It had been started by a young man named Kaleidos, who had built a pile of stones to signify a marker for his family some days after the boys had come underground. That gesture had caught on. Boys had gathered rubble from the construction sites and staked out spots in the yard to represent the graves of parents and siblings who had perished in the flood.
They had built a low perimeter wall twice as long as it was wide. In short time, the yard filled with many mounds, and the boys had taken great care to inscribe each stone with the name of one of their kin. They didn’t have honey or wine to sanctify the gravesite, but they collected the most precious things that they could find—silvery, polished shells from underground pools—to leave at the foot of their memorials. Altogether, the yard looked something like a potter’s field and something like a trawled beach. No matter. The boys took great pride in it. Amid the city of tiered bedrock and gas-fueled torches, they had created a place that they could call their own.
The grounds sparkled in the blossoming light of the Oomphalos. Dam spotted Aerander easily. No one else was in the yard. In the middle of the space, he knelt at a collection of rocks laid out like a trident spear encircled by an oblation of shells. That was meant to symbolize the
channel around the mounted Citadel of House Atlas.
Dam charted out a careful path through the polyandrium’s narrow lanes. He didn’t want to displace the stones, or gods forbid, knock a mound to rubble with a careless step.
He arrived behind his cousin. Aerander wore a short traveler’s cloak over his tunic. His head was bowed. He appeared to have his eyes shut, making silent prayers. It was strange peeking in on his cousin’s private life, but Dam worried that they might not have another chance to talk that day. He waited for Aerander to stir a jot from his prayers. Then he spoke his name softly.
Aerander turned. Tears scored his face. In a moment, his eyes beamed and a smile crept up on his lips. He gestured for Dam to sit beside him. “Come.”
Dam stooped down and smoothed out his shift over his knees.
Aerander pointed out the different stones in his construction. “There’s Father. And Thessala. Alixa and Danae. I could have used Thessala’s help. She knew every bit of the family’s genealogy. I did the best I could.”
Dam was amazed by what his cousin had created, and a bit self-conscious about the fact that it was the first time he had seen the memorial. Aerander had etched the names in each one of the stones by hand. Thessala had been Aerander’s stepmother. Alixa and Danae had been his younger half sisters. Dam didn’t recognize some of the names of lesser relatives he had never known. There must have been close to one hundred stone tokens. Dam noticed the name Sybilia. That had been Aerander’s birth mother. Somehow, that triggered an ache of sorrow in Dam’s heart.
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