by Chris Howard
Gregor smiled, a genuine response to her surprise and joy. "You can make them of bronze and other types of stone and metal, but gold is the finest."
Elizabeth shook her head, stunned. "I mean. This must have cost a fortune. I cannot take this, Gregor. I'm not seaborn. I can't even use it."
"That's only my half of the gift." Gregor surprised Kassandra by throwing his arm over her shoulder, pulling her close. She had a feeling that Ampharete had put him up to it, now that she was free of the others and inside her husband's soul. "The girl you waited thirteen years to save from the king?" He paused for effect, and then released his daughter. "Show Elizabeth who you really are."
Kassandra bowed her head again to Elizabeth, running with her father's—and mother's—impromptu generosity. "We never properly thanked you for risking everything to save many seaborn from a tyrant—and in particular, one girl with a Rexenor father and an Alkimides mother from her own grandfather. I was the Wreath-wearer, if that means anything to you."
Elizabeth nodded. "A little." Scowling now because she wasn't sure about the past tense.
"I am no longer...just that. When you agreed to take in a seaborn girl, when you heard my mother's call, you saved more than someone with Alkimides blood, more than an heir to the throne you hate." Kassandra pointed east. "The oceans, all of them? They are mine, Elizabeth Shoaler. I rule every drop. I rule every shoreline, every molecule of water in the air, the pressure, the depths—every square inch of it." With that, she twirled the fingers on her left hand and held out her right to grab the shaft of the trident as it slid to the floor with a thud. Her crown flashed lightning, a piece of the sun opened indoors. There were several gasps behind her; she felt Olivia's muscles go tight in fear, and when Kassandra spoke, there was a current like thunder in her voice. "I am the Sea, Elizabeth Shoaler, and I thank you. If you wish to see the world under the waves, I can take you."
Kassandra reached out and took Elizabeth's hand, and then she was inside her soul. Elizabeth tried to pull away, but Kassandra held on, pulled her closer. I want to give you the seaborn curse. I believe your husband is alive, in the lithotombs, a prisoner of the king. I know what house your husband calls his own. I know the secrets you keep. They are safe with me.
Elizabeth wanted to scream, panic clawing through her mind. Her voice came out soft. "Believe?"
Kassandra nodded, let go of Elizabeth's hand to wipe away the woman's tears. We will speak more of this later—of your husband, your son, Alex. Sit by me at the table. I just wanted you to know what you saved when you heard the plea from Lady Ampharete. You saved more than a seaborn girl. You saved the Sea. Kassandra willed her crown and trident away, and then bowed deeply. "I am grateful, Elizabeth Shoaler. Please take the trilithon—even if you don't ever plan to use it."
She walked away, didn't look back, went through the dining room to check the seating arrangements. Bachoris was setting places, a stack of china in one open hand, forks, knives, spoons in the other, a thick folded group of dark blue napkins tucked under his chin.
He nodded when Kassandra glided past the chairs blocking the doorway, lifting his chin enough to drop the napkins neatly on the table. "Dearest?"
She smiled slowly, pulled her long loose waving hair into one thick bundle, held it tight, rolling and shifting slippery in her fists, more like water. "Sorry about this." She tugged it. "I'm changing, Bachoris."
He looked worried. "Into what...exactly?"
Kassandra shrugged, but he could see the effort she spent on staying calm about it. "Don't know. I thought I was getting the whole ocean goddess thing down, trident, crown, blood flowing like the tides, feeling the torment of every soul lost at sea. Now, I'm sort of getting...I don't know how to describe it. Richer? Deeper? Wild, like I don't belong among civilized humans? This world is getting thinner, and I feel others crowding in on me. I feel expanded, like...I can think in several worlds at once—not sure if that makes any sense. I thought my head was busy when I had three, four, five old Wreath-wearers in here. I went inside this afternoon, and on a whim, woke everyone else up. All of them. A hundred and more. Polemakles on up. Every past king and queen. And you know what? They aren't half the crowd in my head that the first four were."
She picked up his place card—the little brown card now folded into a tent, and moved it to the other end of the table, smiling over her shoulder at his stunned look. "Gods and goddesses at the heads of the table, Bach. Besides, I want Elizabeth Shoaler to sit on my left. The ladies need to talk. Nicole goes on my right, then Jill next to her." She straightened Nicole's deep ocean blue card and Jill's sunny yellow card, and then swept around the table, moving guests' little brown cards to suit her mood.
"I love to see you helping out. Sorry about the couscous."
Bachoris gave her a warm smile, setting down the flatware, grabbing the dishes with both hands. "You just surprised me. I'll make it for you again sometime."
She tensed up at the regret she felt in his voice, tasted sour at the doubt in his use of "sometime," as if it was inevitable that their relationship would be short-lived, that he would never have the opportunity to cook for her. She would just have to show him that they could fall in love, and it could last.
She relaxed, let her hair go. "I'd love that."
Coming around the other side of the table, she slid her hands along his arms, her fingers running over the lines of his muscles, down to his wrists, encircling them, squeezing enough to hurt. He set the plates down roughly, dropped them an inch off the table.
Her nails dug into his skin. "I love you." She let go of him, ducked under his elbow, and came up inside his arms, pulled him into a kiss. "You know that?"
"Certainly." He let out a breath, blinking, returning to this world—or at least to his, with his manners and old fashioned perspective. "Kassandra, I...uh."
She didn't wait for him finish. "Now, I have to be the good party hostess." And she was gone, dashing off commands in the kitchen before catching Jill and leading her outside along the back walk. Jill had been a little jumpy after Eupheron had moved in. Lately she seemed distracted, preferring to be alone, hanging out in the study, talking to the king.
Jill gave Kassandra half a weary smile. The other half went to Eupheron in her head.
Jill blinked at he sister. "How am I going to explain this to Jordan?"
Kassandra opened her mouth to answer, then realized the question wasn't for her.
Eupheron laughed. Don't, my beautiful Jillian. Why do you have to?
"And the next time we're...close?" She let out an exasperated breath. "You're in my space, like you're attached to me. What happens the next time we're in bed?"
He will be putty in our hands.
"My hands!"
Do not be selfish.
Kassandra leaned against Jill, whispered, "How's Eupheron?"
Jill pulled in a deep breath and took a moment too long letting it out. "I do like him, really, but he can't stay in here." She tapped the side of her head.
Kassandra caught her eyes. Jill shrank back with a spasm of fear, and then realized her sister was just passing some threat in to Eupheron, something to keep him in line. "He's not going to bother you—you need someone to help you control the bleeds. You need a teacher, and there's no one better."
Jill rolled her eyes. "All he's done so far is give me way too much from his alleged hit book on seaborn sex secrets, and every couple hours he goes off to who knows where in my head, setting up a secret lab or something."
Kassandra sighed. "I told him to tone it down. I'll deal with him if he becomes a problem."
Jill frowned, blinking at Kassandra as if she'd only just found time to get a good look at her. "Do you want me to braid your hair? It's looking a little...wild."
"Please. I feel that wildness—not just in my hair. My skin itches. My vision's weird, like I can focus on more than one thing at a time. Freakier than I've ever been in my life, which is saying a lot." She locked her teeth, breathing hard, riding some
internal struggle, and then turned around for Jill, everything back under control. "Is Jordan coming tonight?"
Jill didn't answer at first, her fingers working Kassandra's hair into threes, and then threes again, looping, tightening, pulling an orange elastic ring out of her own hair to tie off the middle braid. Her expression soured. "No. Something came up, a family thing. He's at their house on the Cape." She tied off the second braid, and looked in through the back door at the naiads in the kitchen, disappointed. "It's okay. He wouldn't fit in here anyway."
"That's not a reason—an excuse." Kassandra looked over her shoulder, tried to catch Jill's eyes, but she knew better and looked away. "Jilly, If he makes you happy, then he will fit in. As long as he makes you happy, he is welcome." Jill fiddled with the end of the third braid, started to tear up, and Kassandra twirled and hugged her. "I'm sorry. I'm pushing. I'll stop. Come on. Let's go see what Alex and Kaffia are doing—how they're fitting in with our crowd." Kassandra gave her a meaningful stare and said, "When we're in the study, lock the door."
Corina and Thennas stood near the basement steps, Thennas sticking his tongue in a glass of a dark brown carbonated drink, a worried look on his face. Kassandra led Jill to the kitchen, stopping next to Kaffia and Alex as Michael and Zypheria showed up with grocery bags and a dozen thick white paper wrapped packages from the fish market, tuna, scallops, clams, squid.
Limnoria and Helodes peeled off the tape spreading out the prizes in their paper, leaning in to sniff.
Limnoria already had a fillet knife in one hand, slicing off a strip of fresh tuna, pushing it into her mouth to savor. "Just beautiful."
Helodes stared at the variety. "Kallista's bre—uh—breath."
Scowling, Limnoria followed her sister's gaze to Thennas. "What's particularly bountiful about Kallista's breath?"
Helodes jutted her chin at The guests. "It's. . .kids present."
"Where?" Limnoria looked from Helodes to Thennas, shaking her head disappointedly. "They never heard the word breasts before?" She grabbed her own for emphasis. "Teets, tits, titties, hoots, rack, globes, melons? Kallista's breasts, sometimes I don't know where your head goes, Hel."
Helodes went pink. Alex laughed and continued on to a serious red. Kaffia, Jill and Kassandra tried to hold in their laughter, shaking their heads. Corina smiled sadly. Thennas swallowed the soda wrong and went into a coughing fit.
"Come on, Alex. I have something to show you." Kassandra led them to Gregor's study. "This way." She pointed at the big leather chair, which Kaffia and Alex immediately squeezed into. Jill closed and locked the door behind them, and leaned against the bookcases, wondering what her sister was up to.
Kassandra handed Alex a wide plastic tray with an inch lip all the way around. He took it with a frown, and a sidelong glance at Kaffia. Then he looked up at the water running off the binding of a thick yellowy brown book with hundreds of uneven pages, Kassandra's long sleeved shirt dark and wet above her elbows.
Kaffia leaned back as the book shuddered and made a humming noise...and opened on its own, the front board swinging away, and the pages fanning out, showing the Telkhines lord everything inside, letters still, fixed on the sheets in ink very black and blood red and blues like tropical shallows, diagrams and animal sketches and neat blocks of writing in several hands.
The room was silent, Alex flipping through the book, holding the thing of his dreams in his hands, the flash of discovery—that it had never been a dream, but somehow real—encouraging him to look deeper, to find answers.
It was Jill who surprised them all, including Kassandra, using a slow careful voice, bowing her head first. "King Eupheron wishes to address you, Alexander Shoaler. He says, kinsman and lord, it gladdens me that you have the chance to open our closed city, to see the Nine-cities once again from our second's walls, and lead our brethren back from Rhodes to their true home in the Atlantic. I hope to see it with these eyes."
They all looked up at Kassandra, Kaffia scowling, Jill wondering what the hell Eupheron had just said, Alex fingering the next page somewhere in the middle of the book, all of it readable.
Jill could see a chapter heading clearly, peri exagoges, and Kassandra said it meant, "On drawing out" and probably had something to do with souls drawn from bodies, probably something for Telkhines youngsters to tackle in their fourth year of study.
"The book, Nastaros, has finally found its master." Kassandra gave them all a crooked smile, one side of her mouth lifting, scheming, everything going right with her plans in this world. Then she took back the book, closed the cover lovingly, and slipped it into the aquarium. "Soon, Alex, it will be yours to read, to teach to others of your House. Soon. As I am the ruler of all the oceans from their depths to the heavens, I promise you that."
Agatha, the eldest naiad sister, nominally in charge of everything in the kitchen—at least she thought so, cleared her throat, and declared dinner served, beginning with plates of cold seaweed strips with a sweet vinegar dressing.
Kassandra nodded to Agatha seated at the other end of the table next to Bachoris.
The Sea stood up as everyone else took their seats, raised her glass of wine, looked into every set of eyes staring back at her.
Kassandra lowered her head and whispered, "Thank you." Then she raised her glass higher and spoke up. "Thank you all for honoring our house and table—my court in exile—with your presences and your hard work. Friends, family, loves, and guests all dear to my heart...and many of us were enemies at one time, different kinds of adversary, many levels of rivalry."
"On the one hand..." She stopped her gaze on Agatha, and let her right hand fall to indicate Nicole and Jill. "Mrs. Vilnious. Years ago, you were our teacher in middle school, the Scourge of any classroom. We loved and hated you for your fairness, your command of the class—and, of course we were whiny, thin-skinned teenagers who thought we were the centers of this world." She smiled sadly and bowed her head to Agathameria Vilnious who governed the entire length of the Merrimack River, spring to the sea. "You are my teacher. I have learned so much, and you have so much more to teach me. I owe much of my intelligence and any common sense I still possess to you."
She moved on to Corina, pale as a ghost, her white hands folded calmly on the table in front of her. "On the other hand...Corina Lairsey, you have tried to kill me several times. With simple deception, and with armies. You were a pawn of the ostologos, Aleximoros, without a way to assert your will. You gathered your army of the dead and fought the forces of Rexenor—against me. In league with the Erratic One, Akastê, you—" Kassandra's gaze darted to Bachoris. She felt a stab of anxiety from him, from the other side of the table. His gaze dropped, and he stared at his salad. "Corina, you fed that immortal evil to me, hoping to take my soul from the inside. And you are the most resourceful woman I know, waiting for the time to strike back, holding back when that monster Aleximor was killing, capturing the lives of others, trading your own life away, slowly bringing you closer to death. And you vanquished him, locked him away, using his own power against him." Kassandra bowed to Corina Lairsey. "Studying your path to triumph, I owe any resourcefulness I possess to you."
Her gaze moved up the table to the naiads.
"Parresia, you led your younger sisters against me. I was a frightened fifteen year old who heard voices in her head, cried demons, I was lost in a world I knew wasn't mine. You were in the employ of my grandfather, the king, and we met by chance." They both glanced at Olivia with faint mocking smiles. "And we talked, and I was afraid you were going to kill me—the way you looked at me, I still have nightmares, and then I got inside your head and put the fear of the sea in you without really knowing what I was doing. Surprised I didn't kill you. And we both figured out that the king was doing some bad stuff that neither of us liked, and we ended up trusting each other. It is not easy, but I am a more trusting person because of you, Parresia Atania Matronis Potamilla. Thank you."
Kassandra nodded to the naiad with sharp teeth.
; "Oh, god, Olivia. I met you before any guest in this room except Agatha—and I had no idea she was a naiad—she was just my really strict teacher. You..." Kassandra laughed. "The moment I saw you... You simply scared the shit out of me, Olivia. You showed your teeth, and I knew I was going to die. You dragged me to the bottom of Red Bear Lake. But in the despair I found my courage to fight you. And I did fight you. I just didn't know I had that kind of courage before we met. Thank you, Olivia."
"Limnoria, you are unstoppable. You worked against me, sent the storm that carried the dream of my father in prison. You broke my hope—and then gave it all back to me—even more, hope for things I didn't know I had. You have given me strength of heart like no one else I have ever met. Thank you."
"Helodes, it's difficult to ever say you were my enemy, but you were with your sisters. I don't know anyone as down-to-earth, unassuming, and at the same time so passionate. I liked you the moment I saw you. When I met you and Parresia, Limnoria, and Olivia in Nebraska, before I knew your names, I immediately knew you were the 'nice one.' You were the first to smile. You did not frighten me. Just the opposite. You were friendly the moment we met." Kassandra bowed her head. "Thank you, Helodes. I have friends and passion because of you."
"Theupheides...lover of trains, you're a sweet man who has never wished me ill, never tried to kill me with anything deadlier than incessant chatter and indecision." Limnoria exchanged a glance with Parresia, a look that made it clear that Kassandra obviously wasn't aware how deadly those two things could be when wielded by a master like their cousin. Theupheides just beamed.
Kassandra took a sip of wine, moving up the table.
"Elizabeth, you hate the Alkimides, but somehow you found a way not to hate me. I know what you aren't, Elizabeth Shoaler. I just don't know what you are. I know some things about you. You are a woman who loved a man so much that all of his enemies became your own, his fight yours, that you willingly gave everything, fought, spent your life, stared hard into the face of two thousand years of war, deception, a deep cultural hate, and—somehow—it's still beyond me—you found some way to accept me, an Alkimides. You walked up to a wall a thousand miles high, and with something you have, I don't know, hope? Love? With just that, you found a way through. You are not a naiad, not seaborn, you have no bleed, no power that I can detect. And somehow you are more magical than all of us put together."