Revel

by Maurissa Guibord

  Jax shook his head. “You’re interfering with a punishment ordered by the Council.”

  “Well, they don’t have to know about it,” I said. “Right? We could keep it on the down low.”

  Jax didn’t move, only glowered at me with his face like a battered prizefighter’s and his eyes like dark diamonds. “You don’t know your place.”

  I pushed past him and tipped some of the water on the Glaukos. “Yeah. That’s very true.”

  “You’re not going to stop?”

  “No.” I was breathing hard, but surprisingly, I didn’t feel any tightness from my asthma. The sea air must have been good for my lungs. But still, how long could I keep this up? And would it make any difference? Even if the tide came in, the Glaukos would still be trapped here. I wondered if there was something in the shed I could use to cut the chain.

  “Come on,” I urged, nudging the Glaukos’s leathery black head with my foot. “Wake up, little Susie.” I tipped the pan of water so the contents sluiced once more over the gills.

  This time there was something. The gills closed with an audible snap. The Glaukos’s head arched up and it emitted a squawk.

  Encouraged, I scrambled back down the rocks and scooped more water, being more careful now to keep an eye on the tail. As I climbed back up I stumbled next to Jax, and the dishpan went bouncing down into the water. Jax straightened, moving so quickly it was a blur, and grasped my arms to steady me. For a moment we stood as if locked together, my hands splayed against the bare contours of his chest.

  I was soaking wet. He might as well have been pressed to my naked skin. I couldn’t meet his eyes; instead, I found myself staring at the raised scars beneath my fingertips.

  Immediately, I was brought back to the first moment I’d seen him. The sensations were different this time, and yet the same.

  I wasn’t drowning. So why can’t I breathe?

  “You are a very annoying little human,” Jax said in a low voice, and released me. He strode past and stood over the Glaukos. With one swift motion he pulled his knife from its sheath, raised it high and hacked off the creature’s foot.

  A jet of black blood arced and the air shattered with the animal’s scream of pain. I could only watch in horror as the severed webbed foot of the creature rolled toward me.

  The Glaukos recoiled from Jax and pulled the gory stump of its leg from the shackle. With a screeching cry it leapt from the rocks and splashed into the water, disappearing beneath the rolling surface without ever looking back. I felt sick.

  “You animal!” I cried, turning on Jax. “You didn’t need to do that!”

  The Glaukos’s foot on the ground twitched. Jax picked it up and tossed it into the water.

  “I know. You’re welcome.”

  Suddenly a sound like the hiss of rain on hot pavement filled the air. We both turned to see a ten-foot spiral of water rising up from the surface of the sea. Inside the whirl of water stood a figure. The walls of water quieted to rolling waves that spread from a central point beneath the figure’s feet. It was a man. Another demigod, I realized, but one very different from Jax.

  Long silver-blond hair fell down his shoulders like the smooth mane of a prized stallion. His face was unearthly, gorgeous with elegantly sculpted features beneath quicksilver eyes. He seemed to stride over the water, carried on a rolling white-capped wave.

  I was too surprised to take my eyes from the newcomer, but I heard Jax mutter beneath his breath, “Mikos. This is not good.”

  The newcomer regarded Jax and smiled. It was a smile of pure beauty and it seemed to glow, lighting his handsome features like a candle. I found myself smiling in return before he even looked at me. When he did, I felt at first warmed, and then uncomfortable under that incandescent gaze. I averted my eyes.

  “You released the slave,” said the pale demigod to Jax. “Why?”

  Jax shrugged. “The creature’s squawking annoyed me. I meant to kill it. I missed.”

  I was trying to figure out why Jax would lie about freeing the Glaukos when the stranger turned back to regard me. “You’ve frightened the little oyster,” he said to Jax, rebuke in his tone.

  Jax made a derisive sound and resheathed his knife with a smooth, practiced motion.

  “Come here, Lander,” the newcomer said, extending his hand. His voice had the same rich, deep quality as Jax’s. And yet underneath the warmth was something steely and detached. Something inhuman.

  Still, I stepped into the water and walked toward him. There was something irresistible about the voices of these First Ones. Maybe it was like some kind of hypnosis. And this demigod certainly looked the part. I’d never seen such a beautiful man in my life. But the calculating gleam of his eyes set off alarm bells in my head. It was as if he enjoyed some secret joke at my expense.

  The demigod drifted closer, water curling in gentle ripples around his legs. Like Jax, he wore a garment tied low on his lean hips, though his was pieced together from silvery plates that rippled and reflected as he moved. His skin was burnished gold, perfect and gleaming.

  “My name is Mikos,” he said, brushing a cool finger down my cheek. His touch somehow elicited a reaction from nerve endings that I never knew I had. A frisson of sensation that mingled fear and fascination. He leaned closer. “Would you like to come with me?” His breath caressed my cheek and made me shiver.

  Suddenly Jax was in the water beside me. “I was the one who released the Glaukos. Not her.”

  Mikos glanced at Jax and his smile narrowed into something harder. “Always causing trouble, Jax. I would have thought the Council’s lesson would still be fresh in your mind.”

  A muscle in Jax’s jaw tightened, making his chin look even more square and bullish. “I remember it, Brother.”

  Brother? This surprised me. The two demigods seemed nothing alike in either appearance or manner. I decided I preferred Jax’s brusque, unpolished ways to Mikos’s glittering charm. They couldn’t be very close; Jax didn’t seem very happy to see his sibling.

  “The Council wishes to see the new human,” said Mikos. Jax looked at me, seeming torn by some inner argument with himself; then he shrugged. “Take her. It’s no concern of mine.”

  Mikos gave Jax a look of faintly puzzled surprise. “Did I ever suggest that it was?” He laced an arm around my waist; it felt like a band of cool steel. “Come, little one,” he said. “Let’s go swimming.”

  CHAPTER 12

  I pushed against Mikos, trying to free myself, but it was like pushing against a concrete wall. He felt cool and hard and he seemed calmly unaware of my frantic struggle, it was that pathetically weak against him. So I took a gulp of air and held my breath, preparing for him to pull me under the waves. Instead he extended one hand and secured me with the other. Without any visible effort on his part, we began to move through the water. The water parted and swept to either side of us in blue, arcing waves, as if Mikos’s hand were the nose of a high-speed boat. The last thing I saw before the waves of water rose high and obscured everything was Jax staring at me, his eyes shadowed and unreadable. Some desperate inner urge made me reach out my hand to him, but Mikos pulled me closer as walls of water enclosed us.

  I felt our violent speed over the water. Spray blew into my face like sharp pellets, blinding me, and my feet bumped against the rolling surface. The roaring sound of water surrounded me, as if I were standing behind a waterfall. Where was he taking me? Was he going to drown me or drop me into the middle of the ocean somewhere? Before I had a chance to even worry about the possibilities, we stopped. The walls of water splashed down around us. Mikos released me and I plunked down hard, knee-deep in water, gasping for my breath and my balance. It was warmer water. And warmer air, without the freshening breeze of the beach. And the sound of the surf was gone; there was an eerie quiet around me. I wiped my face and blinked into what at first seemed like inky darkness. The blue sky overhead was gone; we were inside a cave. After a few seconds my eyes adjusted. The water surrounding me and even th
e walls were lit with a glowing, phosphorescent green light. A faint echoing plink of water dripping came from somewhere in the shadows.

  “This way,” said Mikos. Again it seemed as if the water simply parted around the handsome demigod; he strode through it like air.

  Wading behind Mikos, I struggled to keep my footing on the slippery cave floor as he guided me along a twisting tunnel. I had no idea how much distance we might have traveled to get here.

  “Are we still on Trespass, or underneath it, I mean?” My voice sounded plaintive and small. Mikos didn’t answer.

  I followed him through a narrow opening between two massive stones. The area opened up and we entered a colossal domed space divided by towering pillars of tapered stone.

  The walls seemed to stretch up into nothingness as their upper limits were lost in the darkness. I blinked, trying to take in the details of the cave in the dim light as well as keep my footing behind Mikos. All the stone surfaces radiated that faint, eerie green light.

  “Glow stone,” said Mikos impatiently. He picked up a rock from the ground and scraped the wall. Instantly a line of neon light flared along the line he’d drawn in brilliant orange and red. After a moment it faded. Mikos dropped the stone with a plunk and proceeded.

  I turned and through the gloom spotted shadowy mouths of tunnels branching off from the walls like the spokes of a wheel. We were inside a huge warren of interconnected caves with an underground river of seawater running through it.

  These must be the sea caves that I’d seen the openings to. The domain of the First Ones.

  When I turned back, Mikos was watching me. He smiled. It was the same smile as before, only now the gleam of his teeth, lit with the cave’s emerald glow, made him look like something feral. “Don’t think about running, Lander,” he said, his voice echoing around us. “Not even the First Ones know all the passages of these caves. You’d be lost in a dark maze, until something sharp and hungry found you.” He took my elbow in a hard grip. “And we wouldn’t want that.”

  We approached a platform of rough steps and walked up. Well, Mikos walked. I scrambled after him, half dragged by his hold on my arm. At the top the surface was a smooth plateau of rock inlaid with an intricate mosaic of multicolored shells. Whatever the picture was, I couldn’t make it out. It was on too big a scale for me to see, and I was way too preoccupied by the three figures sitting on stone benches before us. Three of the First Ones regarded me silently.

  They were two men and a woman. They looked like two men and a woman, anyway, but they weren’t. The First Ones all shared a striking characteristic, I realized: the gleaming, otherworldly intensity of their eyes. The three were dressed in more elaborate coverings than either Jax or Mikos, their shimmering tunics fastened by heavy golden clasps at the shoulders.

  A row of Glaukos monsters stood behind them. The creatures’ hulking forms glistened in the dim light, and their yellow eyes glowed like bare bulbs in the dark.

  The demigod in the center was massively built, his chest rounded like a barrel and furred with silvery hair. “Lukus,” said Mikos, addressing him with a bow. “I’ve brought the new Lander, as you requested.”

  Lukus eyed me with fiery green eyes that mirrored the phosphorescent walls around us, and gave a very slight nod. By the deferential way that Mikos had addressed him, I got the feeling that he was the leader of this Council, or maybe of the whole clan, as Jax had called it.

  Mikos turned to bow to the woman. “Dona,” he said, his rich voice practically a purr. “As always, you look as beautiful as Aphrodite herself, rising from the foam. Lukus has truly been blessed with you as a mate.”

  The woman Dona was beautiful, with skin as pale and luminescent as the inside of a shell. Her black hair tumbled over breasts only barely concealed by her sheer blue tunic. She leaned forward and smiled at Mikos, showing teeth like a perfect strings of pearls.

  Pearls weren’t sharp, though, and Dona’s gleamed like tiny blades.

  Lastly Mikos bowed to the man on the end. This man was very ordinary-looking at first glance: short, with sparse salt-and-pepper hair and a visible paunch beneath his gray tunic. “Father,” said Mikos, bending his golden head briefly. This surprised me too. If Jax and Mikos were unlikely as brothers, it seemed absolutely impossible that this man had fathered them. He looked like an accountant. Or a dentist. Though his eyes did gleam with the same silvery color as Mikos’s.

  The man inclined his head to acknowledge Mikos but said nothing.

  “She looks weak,” announced the woman, Dona. She considered me with a pout of her arched red lips and dabbled her toes in a rivulet of water that ran at her feet. “And small,” she observed. “Even for a Lander.”

  With this comment she seemed to dismiss me and turned her attention to running a jeweled comb through her cascading hair.

  Lukus stood up. He was impressively tall. Thick cuffs of silver encrusted with jewels circled his muscled arms. “This is an unusual step for this Council, to address a Lander face to face. But these are unusual circumstances, and I wished to see you. The Council suffered you to come to Trespass without permission and live.” He spoke in a ringing voice made even more powerful by the echoes in the huge cavern. “Yet now you have interfered with a judgment of the First Ones.”

  I shivered from fear as well as the cling of damp clothes to my skin. “It was dying. I only tried to help.”

  “Silence,” Lukus said, his tone icy. “I did not ask you to speak, Lander.”

  If the Glaukos standing behind the First Ones had any understanding of what was being discussed, or if they cared, they gave no sign of it. They stood so still they looked like statues, or some kind of macabre Halloween decorations.

  “My lord,” said Mikos. “Jax was there, aiding the human. He set the slave free.”

  “Really,” said Lukus, his mouth set in grim lines. “No wonder he doesn’t dare show his face. Jax grows more distant from this clan every day. Xarras.” He addressed the older man beside him. “I will leave you to manage your son.”

  “Adopted son,” murmured Mikos beside me. Softly but distinctly.

  I looked at Mikos’s bent golden head and for some reason felt like punching him.

  Xarras cleared his throat almost apologetically and spoke to me. His gaze was shrewd but not unkind. “Did Jax harm you, girl?”

  “No,” I answered. My voice was steady, which surprised me. I didn’t feel steady. My wet clothes clung to my skin uncomfortably. I wrapped my arms around myself.

  “Well,” Xarras said, letting out a sigh. “That is something, anyway.” He looked at Lukus. “I apologize, my lord, for the shame Jax brings to the house of Aitros. He is passionately headstrong. It has always been his great failing.”

  “It is not your shame to bear, old friend,” said Lukus.

  “My thanks,” said Xarras, bowing his head.

  “But now we must decide about this girl.” Lukus regarded me. “There’s been discontent among the Landers over her. And now she interferes with a punishment ordered by the Council.”

  “Tie her to the rocks,” said Dona. She splayed her toes like fingers, displaying the delicate white webbing between the digits. “And let the crabs and the sea stars feast on her flesh.”

  Lukus gave her an affectionate smile and chuckled. “You have always loved the old ways, my dear.”

  This is not happening. My knees felt as if they might crumple any second. I looked around. Screaming wouldn’t help. No one on the island could possibly hear me. There could be hundreds of feet of rock over my head. And even if they did hear me, what could they do? I thought of running. Mikos might have only been trying to frighten me into submission with his talk of mazes. I looked down the long flight of steps, toward the dark openings to the tunnels. I couldn’t even be sure which of those he’d led me through. And I had no desire to test the land speed of the Glaukos. I had a feeling they might surprise me.

  Meanwhile, Xarras watched me. “They tell me she was born of a Lander fr
om Trespass,” he remarked. “A woman who fled years ago. After the Revel.”

  For some reason this comment seemed to surprise the others.

  Dona sat up straighter, her eyes flashing. “Show me.”

  Mikos turned to me and, before I could react, lifted my shirt.

  “Hey!” I clutched the material and wrenched away from him, but not before he had run cool, hard, probing fingers over my belly, as if searching for something.

  “Lander,” said Mikos, releasing me roughly. His voice held an unmistakable tinge of contempt.

  “Of course she is,” said Dona, sitting back.

  “You are the eldest of my counselors, Xarras,” said Lukus. “What punishment would you suggest?”

  Xarras sighed and tented his fingertips together before him. “Let us not act in haste, my lord,” he replied at last. “Our community is a fragile one.” He leaned forward and spoke to me directly. “Listen to me, girl. Your people and ours need each other, do you understand?”

  “No. Not really,” I answered, still angry and flustered by Mikos’s sudden strip search. Or whatever that was.

  Xarras smiled. “I enjoy honesty. But as you get older you will learn that sometimes silence is better.” He regarded me for a moment and added softly, “I am curious, though, as to the interest that my son Jax has shown in you. That is something unusual.” He turned to Lukus. “The Revel is coming. In my humble opinion, we should not create discord with the Landers at such an important time. I think the girl can serve our needs alive more than dead.”

  Lukus nodded, eyeing me. “Yes,” he said. “I believe you’re right, Xarras. She will pay tribute at Revel, along with the rest.” He waved a hand toward Mikos. “Take her back.”

  Mikos took my wrist in a grip of cold steel and brought me back in the same maelstrom fashion as before, storming across the sea within a corridor of water before setting me down on the beach. I sank to my knees, feeling nauseated. The speed and tumult of traveling that way wasn’t good on my nerves, or my stomach.