Page 26 of The Isles of the Gods
“Simple as that.”
“Except for King Anselm,” I concede. “The royal burden is a heavy one. For some more than others.”
“Doesn’t seem to be weighing very heavily on the prince,” she snorts.
I press my lips together, and allow my silence to make my reply for me.
“So tell me how this gets us on a boat now,” she says, holding her hand out for the screws. “No, give them to me one at a time.”
I hand her a screw. “Every twenty-five years, the sacrifice is renewed by one of the royal family.”
She drops the screw and stares at me in open horror. “You’re not saying the prince wants to sail to the Isles to die?”
I shake my head, and she drops to her knees to hunt for the lost screw. “The royal family doesn’t share the details,” I say, “but one of the king’s descendants travels to the Isles of the Gods—to the Isle of Barrica in particular—and makes a sacrifice of their own. They always come back unharmed, so one assumes it will be something small—that the effort of the journey is an act of faith, and a sacrifice in itself.”
“And it’s been twenty-six years,” she concludes, rising to her feet and returning to work. “So he’s a year late for his appointment. They’ve been sailing there every twenty-five years for all this time?”
“Without fail. Discreetly, for obvious reasons.”
“Nobody’s ever tried to stop them?”
“They’d hardly talk about it if they did.”
“And an extra year matters that much?”
“Not exactly,” I say, passing another screw as she extends her hand. To my surprise, I’m almost…enjoying the conversation. Or the instructional element, in any case. I’ve daydreamed this sort of thing will happen all the time when I’m at the Bibliotek. When it’s been hard, I’ve imagined myself lounging about in the library, debating issues of history and culture. “Tell me, are you religious?”
“I don’t worship at temple,” she says, closing one eye to focus on fitting the screwdriver into the head of the latest screw. “But who does? I’ve got a healthy respect, though.”
I nod. “Faith is different in Alinor, compared to other places. The other gods withdrew from the world completely, and their religion has become more of a…formality, for want of a better word. But Barrica the Warrior remained to watch over the sleeping Macean. That’s how she became Barrica the Sentinel instead. She left the door ajar, is the way the clergy often puts it. She no longer healed the sick, or performed great miracles, but she showed us she was present. The yearly filling of the wells, the way the flowers bloom in the temples no matter the season.”
“The temple flowers don’t do that anywhere else?” she asks, blinking. “How do they know their gods are real?”
“Well, they don’t,” I say. “They just hope, and believe, and not even very much of that these days. And in recent years faith has waned in Alinor, too. Most people are like you—they don’t make it to temple very often. But in Mellacea, they say, the churches are full.”
“Oh.”
“Their green sisters say soon Macean will be strong enough to break free of his slumber. So inthatcontext, with less and less faith empowering Barrica, and more and more empowering the sleeping Macean…an extra year might matter very much. A war between two countries is one thing. If he can shrug off her bonds and awaken, then war between twogods…We have only to look at the Barren Reaches to understand there’s no telling how many would die, or what the world would look like afterward.”
She shakes her head slowly. “You scholars really think they can come back and fight each other?”
“Personally, I’d prefer not to find out.”
She considers this, reaching for another screw. “A war like that, they’d conscript ships like ours, wouldn’t they? Do you think it’ll happen? Is that why you took passage for Trallia?”
“No. I have no interest in being caught up in a religious war, but my motives were personal. I was going to travel from Trallia to the Bibliotek and take up a place as a student.”
And I was so, so close to making it there.
“The war will be personal too,” she points out. “Isn’t your family in Alinor?”
“My family can defend themselves.” My family are military through and through. They’dlovean excuse to put their training to use.
We both hear the shift in my tone—the words arrive in a rush, too defensive. She turns her head, and I brace for a jab or a pointed question.
Instead, she takes the opportunity to shift to another topic I don’t particularly want to discuss, correctly supposing I’llstill choose it over the topic of my parents. “So, you know the prince? I saw how you looked at him, up on deck.”
I grimace involuntarily. “I knew him at school,” I settle on.
