“Sell me, you mean.”
Zyak didn’t slap. That remark had earned Nova a backhand. At least it wasn’t a fist—though even a fist would be kinder than what he’d said next. “He would have paid more for Kora.”
Nova had laughed in his face. “Is that what he told you? The old fool could never tell us apart! He was only haggling, and you fell for it.”
Zyak had been furious, because it was true, but it was Nova, not Shergesh, who’d caught the ice of his displeasure, as she had a year ago when the Mesarthim took Kora without compensating him. Somehow, Zyak was sure—though Nova had never told what had happened in the wasp ship—it was all her fault. Every time he looked at her, she was reminded what his gift had been. He’d turned things to ice, though not very well. It was funny. He didn’t even need his gift to freeze her to her core.
Anyway, it was done. Shergesh had paid in full—not in sheep or hides or dried fish, but actual imperial coin. Nova knew where Zyak kept them. Last week, in the night, when everyone was sleeping, she’d gotten them out and held them: five bronze coins engraved with the emperor’s face. How strange to hold her value on the palm of her own hand.
Men have decided between them that this is what my body and labor are worth for life.
The only reason she wasn’t married already was that Skoy? had bargained to keep her through the Slaughter, and get one last season’s worth of work out of her. Not that she was getting much. “If this is the best you can do,” she said now, leaning close with her fishy breath, and prodding at Nova with her gaff, “I’ll hand you over to him now. Let him beat the work out of you, or get his money’s worth how he pleases.”
She turned to go. Nova was shaking. She stared out to sea. Sharks thrashed in the shallows, mad with bloodreek, all that meat just out of their reach. If she waded out and kept walking, how long would it take? How much would it hurt? Would the frigid water numb her before they began to feed? Could she drown first? Did it even matter? At most it would take a few minutes. Surely shark teeth were a cleaner pain than what was devouring her now.
And what then? What came next? Was there anything after death, or only nothingness forever? It was a mystery. As the saying went, the ones who know can’t tell us, and the ones who tell us don’t know.
A little flare burst in Nova’s heart. A curious lightness overcame her. She saw herself do it, one step, then another into the killing water. She felt the cold around her ankles, then her calves. She thought it was real until Skoy?’s voice rang out. “Thakra help me, are you really still standing there? Did they do something to your brain inside that skyship?”
Nova blinked. She was still on the beach. She was almost sorry. Dully, she turned to face her stepmother. Other women had paused to listen. One shook her head in sympathy—for Skoy?, not Nova. “I don’t know how you stand her,” said another.
“I don’t stand her,” said Skoy?. “I never have.”
“Look at her,” said someone else. “It’s no wonder they didn’t take her.”
“She thought she’d be so strong,” scoffed Skoy?, “and they spat her out like gristle.”
They thought her gift was weak, like all of theirs. They thought she was like them.
Nova was nothing like them. “You’re wrong,” she said, and there was a snarl in her voice. “They might have spat me out, but not because I’m weak. They left me behind because I’m too strong. Do you hear me?” She looked around. “They left me because they were afraid of me. And you should be, too.”
Brows furrowed. Laughter mocked. No one feared her. She sounded mad. Skoy? shook her head in disgust. “You’re becoming a tragedy, girl. You thought you were something and you’re not. Time to get over it, like everybody else.”
Nova looked around at the gloating, gore-smeared women, and pulled a smile out of some deep place inside her. It was the smile of a girl backed up to the world’s edge, ready to spread her arms like wings and fly or fall. “I am something,” she said with a fervor dredged up from those same depths. “And one day you will know it.”
The words felt like a vow, and she wanted to make them true. There would always be the sea, cold and sure and full of teeth. It was there for her if she needed it. But not today.
Chapter 37
The Punishment Is Death
After the Slaughter, while the cyrs picked the uul bones and the year’s crop of flies died in winter’s first frost, Nova married Shergesh—or was married to him; the ceremony did not require her consent. That morning, beforehand, she went down to the beach. In bride’s garb, amid the skeletons and the swirling contemptuous carrion birds, she stood and considered the sea.
The sharks had left the shallows. She could probably drown before they got her. If she breathed water in, it would be over quite fast, with hardly any pain at all.
Such thoughts were only playthings, though. She wasn’t going to do it, but it helped. It still helped every day to remember that she could.
She went back up the switchback path, and walked alone to her own wedding. No one worried that she wouldn’t turn up. After all, where could she go? For the whole of the ceremony, which had not space in it for her to utter so much as a single word, she stared at the old man who’d bought her for five coins. She stared without expression, hardly blinking, never smiling, and spoke to him with her mind, as though it were a conversation.
There are things you can’t own, old man, not for five coins or five thousand.
And:
I am not what you think. I’m a pirate. What do you say to that? Did you know I stole power from the Mesarthim smith?
He feared me.
I saw it.
He struck me.
I remember.
I hate him.
I hate you.
I’m not afraid of him.
And I am not afraid of you.
If she said it enough, would it become true?
I’m not afraid of you, I’m not afraid.
I. Am not. Afraid.
Shergesh didn’t care for the weight of her stare. Later, he made sure it was dark, so he couldn’t see if her eyes were open. They were open, the whole time, and he felt their weight as she felt his, crushing her flat in their sleeping furs, his rancid breath on her face.
Weeks passed. Days shortened, which, perversely, meant nights lengthened. Nova still went, while she could, to play her game with the sea. This, too, became a conversation. With Kora by her side, she’d always had someone to talk to. Now that she had no one, she talked to everything, but only inside her head.
Good morning, sea, still here?
She imagined its voice, seductive. It knew her by her old name only, and she didn’t correct its mistake. Koraandnova, it called her, beckoning, and she closed her eyes and smiled. Are you coming to me today?
No, thank you. I think I’ll stay ashore. You see, I’m expecting my sister.
It’s too late, said the sea, but Nova didn’t listen. She knew—she knew, she knew—that Kora would not desert her. So each day she turned her back on the sea, and mounted the path that would take her back up to the village and the labor and the old-man husband that were what passed for a life. And every day, morning came later and dimmer, until the sun clung sluggish to the horizon, barely peering up at all before subsiding. Deepwinter’s Eve dawned—the day when Kora and Nova had always climbed the ridge trail to bid the sun farewell for an entire month.
This year Nova went alone. The trail was treacherous with ice, and sunless but not dark. Cold starlight lit her path. She stopped at the ridge, toes inches from the edge, looked up, and chose a star. She chose it of the thousands and, as was now her way, she talked to it.