‘Whether it is hard words or harsher hands, it does not matter really. I am not so easy to break.’
‘So … is it a test? Your master continually assessing your strength?’
She is quiet a while, staring at our world, at nothing.
‘It is difficult to explain. He – I – he taught me everything I know. Everything I am, I learned from him. He has been my parent, teacher, master, all. I have had no – no real friends and so, in a way, he has been that too.’
‘Do you love him?’ I ask it without thinking. She does not answer at first. Perhaps she is testing the oath. Perhaps it is too hard a question.
‘I was not taught to love.’
I am aware that she did not say yes. I am aware that she did not say no. ‘Has he ever …’ I hesitate, not knowing how to continue. She does not need me to.
‘No, he has never desired me.’
‘I wasn’t going to ask about desire.’
She stills. She must answer carefully. ‘He has never … taken me against my will.’ Then, ‘He could, though, of course.’
‘The oath.’ I nod.
‘Yes, but also – it’s difficult to explain,’ she says again. ‘Even without the oath, I would find it hard to refuse him. He has made up too much of my world. I wonder, can the master’s tool pull apart his palace? Every direction I’ve ever taken has been along a path laid by him. He is origin and journey and destination.’
It makes an awful kind of sense.
‘And your sisters, they exploit this?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why?’
Her eyes are flat and black once more. ‘We – they – have been turned from each other and on each other. It is not their fault. It is like you with the girls in the palace. We are crabs in a bowl. It is just our world.’
Her voice is tight – brittle and small. It is nothing like me and the girls in the palace; I do not want to imagine how whispers and looks compare to violent, jealous, punishing Nereids. I want to dive into the sea and carve their faces with coral knives. I want to relight the candle in her eyes.
‘Amphitrite could have killed me.’
‘She probably wanted to, yes.’
‘So why didn’t she?’
‘Well, Poseidon might react badly, being robbed of his best bride.’
‘Or he would see the act of killing me as making Amphitrite worthy of becoming his wife.’
Ceto says nothing.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t have sisters.’
‘So?’
‘Amphitrite … is different. She was the youngest before me. She and I do not like each other. We do not respect each other. But we love each other, in the way that we can,’ she says it in a rush, a waterfall of words, ‘we fight and slap and say cruel things … but these are flesh wounds only. She … she would not attempt a mortal blow.’Do not forget what happened the last time someone touched what is mine.
She will not say it directly, she steps carefully around it in much the same way as she does the oath, but she has not sworn to be so silent. The Master of the Sea would never have conceived of this, ofus. He would not have thought to forbid such declarations. I humour her, drawing her out and in towards me, turning the green bottle in my hand.
‘I may never bleed. I may never marry. I may go on, as I am now.’
