Ceto raises a dark eyebrow, quirks her lip as if she is perpetually amused by me. ‘If I am not the best, why am I here?’
We stand opposed, my harp master having gratefully departed our fraught presence for the day.
‘Oh yes, you’re the best guard worm! Why don’t you slither back between your master’s legs where you belong?’
‘Are you suggesting your future husband would be impotent without me, princess?’ She tuts as though she is scolding a child. ‘I’m flattered, but those are hardly words of uxorial devotion.’
‘I didn’t realize you were such an expert in marital duties, worm. Do tell me of all your suitors and proposals.’
‘You are right. I can change my shape and travel the worlds, but oh, how I would love to be kept prisoner by endless courting and a pretty face.’
‘I am no fucking prisoner! I am not bound to serve as you are!’
She grins, delighted by my profanity, dragging me into the dirt with her. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘I would rather have my face than your shape,’ I fling out. ‘You can’t be the best if you’re the only one.’
‘You just live and die by comparison, don’t you, mylittle queen? You cannot imagine yourself without less fortunate others stood beside you. At least I am honest about how I serve. When my master does not require me, I am my own.’
‘Iam my own.’ I stamp my foot in temper.
Her grin widens. ‘Oh, are you?’
‘Yes! I am a princess, and I will serve my people, my kingdom, but I am also my own!’ I am shouting now, drowning out the doubt, the part of me that hears truth in her words and hates it. She never shouts, which only makes me want to shout more. I swing from the room, stalking out of the palace to the gardens. She follows, of course.
‘A princess who’s seen but a corner of her kingdom. A princess of jewels and dresses but nothing more. Everything from the way you dance, to the harp that you play – howprettyyou are, mylittle queen. Howsweet. Your mother is allowed to stand tall and challenge gods but not her little Andromeda—’
That thrill of our first meeting, that antipathy, spikes in me once more. ‘Don’t youdarespeak about my mother!’ I round on her as we pass the orange trees. I want to rip the smug smile from her face.
‘And gods, imagine being descended from divinity with barely a fraction of your godhood—’
‘My grandmother—’
‘Is much the same as the rest of them. She strokes and pets you and weaves flowers in your hair as your mother does with jewels and politics. Oh, she would spare you from my untamable master but only because she fears what cannot be tamed. She could not tame her first sons’ ambition and so she keeps her mortal kin small and—’
‘You do not know what you are talking about! You do not know what it is to becared for! For that is what you describe! Your mother and father sold you to the sea god and—’
‘And we shall soon have that in common, will we not, mylittle queen? You say you are no prisoner, but gods, I hope you are. I hope who you are is notyourchoice. Because if you are your own – ifthisis your own – then my! How embarrassing for you.’
I launch myself at her then, all royal sense of decorum abandoned. I think this surprises her. Perhaps I am faster than she expects or perhaps it is the fact that I retaliate at all, but I am upon her and we roll in the dust. It clouds around us, clinging, wanting more of our skin. I smell the jasmine above us, the sea in her hair, the heat of storms. I should be afraid, but I am not. She is cool to the touch, and I claw at her smooth green-gold skin. I want to see her bleed, but I do not leave a mark. Ceto holds me off easily but does not strike me back. She cannot, I suppose, it’s not a fair fight. Or maybe it is. She is laughing again, her hair falling forward, curtaining us so that the world is our two faces alone. I flip her, pinning her, and she allows it. Dust clouds again. My whitekalasirisis stained with red and brown earth.
Ceto has never been so close and, disdainful distance no longer maintained, I cannot help but notice her eyes once more. I have not looked into them since that first day and I am struck again by the force of her. Their colour is unnatural – there is nothing in this world as dark as her eyes, not the space that surrounds the stars, not the deepest parts of the river. My chest heaves and I want to tear my throat.
Loathing rises as she laughs softly into my face. My heartbeats the fierce tattoo of my favourite drums. I show my teeth and she grins, showing hers back. I am so frustrated, so wild with fury, that I scream, animal and raw, in her face. It is fear of what I cannot prevent, it is rage at what I have been twisted into, it is weeks of this new, building pressure spilling forth in a torrent of heat. She blinks, the first time I have seen her mask of bored, amused contempt slip, and the heavens open.
Our heads snap skywards. I feel our shared thought,did we do that?It almost never rains in Aethiopia. Years and years can pass without so much as a drop, making rain fortuitous in these lands. Our people dance and celebrate, catch water in bowls and drink it for prosperity, kill cattle as thanks to the gods. But I cannot forget the last time rain lashed my face, the storm that brewed unnaturally inside my home, where I have always been safest. Ceto seems to be thinking the same thing because she pushes me off gently, preparing to depart. I seize my opportunity.
‘Your own, are you?’ She hears me above the increasingly heavy thrumming, turns back. ‘Off you run, like a good little guard worm.’
She laughs wildly and widens her arms, embracing the rain as it falls and slides off her in reddish rivulets, turning the sand to silt and taking it home. ‘And off you go to Mama and Papa! Off you go to get cleaned up, mylittle queen! What a mess you look.’
I scrabble to my feet. ‘You may have had me in the mud today,’ I throw a finger at her, ‘but I will marry your master. And then I will have you on your knees.’
I hear her laugh again, then she is gone.
The rain lasts no more than an afternoon, and is not, according to Achiroe, the work of Poseidon, who has little dominion over the land and affects it only in special circumstances. Her father informs her that the blessing and the promise of an auspicious winter comes from Zeus himself. He is pleased by his brother’s match, Nilus informs her, and my father wastes little time in making this known.
Our winter is plentiful, our feasts abundant, the land swells ripe with growing things as befits the season. The famed prosperity of the Aethiopians does not waver. I had expected, once word had spread of my conditional betrothal to the sea god, that men would stop visiting, that we might enjoy some quiet. I had been wrong. Poseidon did not appear again and those who had pissed themselves in his presence swore that they had shared cups of wine with him and had the ear of an Olympian. The palace becomes flooded with envoys seeking trade agreements and negotiating new alliances, from the Kings of Kerma, murmuring of bolstering the line against Pharaonic rule, to ambassadors of the Pharaohs themselves, eyebrows raised at our notable lack of slaves and strange Hellenic customs. My father hears them all and promises nothing, accepting and exchanging gifts – silver from Egypt, spices from the far-flung Persians, cleverly spun Kerman pots – and naught else.
