Mantis and her charges stood huddled together at the bow of the ship for the remainder of the trip. She felt uncomfortable in all sorts of ways, and could almost hear her own composure wearing thinner and thinner. At the slightest of provocations, she could snap. It had taken control Mantis didn’t have in her to warn the men off rather than to defend, to just eliminate the threat. But that would have been a poor decision however she looked at it. She, and the children, needed the men. And not all the fishermen aboard the ship deserved to die, she forced herself to recognize.

  The remaining Seamen had returned to their posts but kept their furious gazes on her. She’d feared they would try to avenge their fellow, forcing Mantis to fight them whether she considered it a wise decision or not, but, luckily, one of the dead man’s companions had spoken up to the angry captain, saying that he’d seen what Mantis could do, and didn’t doubt the veracity of her threats. He reasoned that he had a family to provide for at home, and several others joined him in his attempt to cool the tensions that had built among them.

  Teela seemed fine. She stood with her hands cupped around her little sparrow, asleep, over her chest, and stroked its head with one finger, Mantis’s cloak’s hood pulled over her head. It was a wonder that she hadn’t wanted to discuss the incident, and Mantis felt a prick of concern about what that could mean. Had she been more affected by the man’s assault than she’d let on?

  It was Leroh who broke the long silence. “Was he a…rapist? A bad man?” Mantis did not reply, and he dared to push her further. “Or did you kill that lad for what he did to Teela?”

  At that, the girl turned to give Mantis a sideways look freighted with pain and disbelief. When she remained silent, Teela answered for her. “She killed him for his offense to me.”

  Leroh glared. “Is that true? That was all it took for you to end his life?” His tentative accusation was rapidly growing into outrage.

  “It was enough,” Mantis told him, and looked away.

  Her fists were clenched at her sides. The souls in her chest kept giving agonizing bursts of increased pressure, and her anxiety for their meeting with the Sea combined with the lingering rage from the incident with the sailors were building to a dangerous level of strain to her already teetering emotional balance. Not to mention her Goddess’s never-ending, excruciating push.

  She had not perceived any targets among the Sea folk. It seemed the town as a whole was clear, including the unlucky sods that had agreed to transport them. However, she did feel a light but constant tugging eastward following the line of the coast. A village or settlement of some kind, she guessed, where a target or perhaps two awaited her. Ombira’s patience was wearing extremely thin.

  Mantis could find a safe place to put Teela upon their return to shore, and ride out and back within a few hours or maybe a day to quench the thirst, she thought. If she was quick enough, the girl would not have to know where she’d gone, or what she’d gone to do. It could work, maybe, if she could find a place to leave her. And her brother, she supposed.

  “I don’t think…I don’t think he deserved to die for that, Mantis.” Teela spoke in a small, hurt voice. “I can forgive it. What he did. It did me no harm and, if he had a family, I don’t want to be the reason—”

  “I don’t forgive,” Mantis cut her off. “He chose his own fate, and I helped to seal it. You bear no blame here.”

  “I disagree,” Teela argued. “I blame myself. And you.” At that, Leroh’ss eyes widened and his mouth pinched into a tight line. “Could you not…bring him back? Like you did with me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “No more questions.”

  The girl gave her a wounded look for a long moment, and then buried her face in her cupped hands. She started crying.

  Mantis felt the tears sliding down Teela’s face like strings pulling at the cold, dark corners of her heart. If she had been able to bring the piece of filth sailor back to life, she might have even considered it at that moment, only to quench the girl’s sadness. He did not deserve to live, Mantis knew, and it was a kindness to humanity that he be removed from their midst, but Teela would have to carry, for the rest of her life, what had transpired on that boat, and that tragedy had the power to almost rival Mantis’s rational thinking.

  She felt the weight of her self-loathing hang just a little heavier than it had, like a scale when another fat grain was added to the pile of wheat.

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  Ennet had never gone so far as to force himself on another. That, she knew from her God-given sense to point out her targets. But she’d learned there were indicators. Bad men often took smaller steps before that final leap, and she delighted in preventing it ever happening at all. If she was ever lucky enough to catch a man before he could wound another irredeemably, she nipped him in the bud like one would an invasive weed. It was ideal to do away with them at the earliest sign of wickedness.

  This one had been well on the path to abusing those he considered lesser than himself. The signs were clear. When he chose to distinguish himself in front of his comrades at the expense of an outnumbered woman, when he took a convenient chance to exploit someone he perceived as defenseless, he’d shown his nature. He’d likely thought, if the man with her gets aggressive, there’s ten of us. If he doesn’t mind, here’s two women, prone, weak, sweet as low hanging fruit. What’s the worst that can happen?

  Men with that mindset, those who measured their actions by the likeliness of their negative consequences, took as many liberties as were allowed to them, always. It would not have been long before another easy prey came into his path, and he, again, saw an opportunity to feed his desires and purposes. It was only a shock that he’d not done so already before that day.

  Mantis was satisfied with herself to have killed him. But, for Teela, she might have humored the thought of taking it back, if that were possible. It wasn’t, of course. His soul remained in his body, and would rightfully be consumed by the Sea, along with the rest of him.

  The human soul burned inside one’s chest like a flame, she’d always said. Mantis could shoot a link into someone’s heart and steal the flame, carrying it away inside herself as if with a candle, to later deliver to her Goddess. If a person, servant or otherwise, simply perished, the flame went out with their life, but the deities could still consume the embers that remained of that fire, if only for a short period of time before decomposition extinguished them forever. They made no distinction between the living and the dead, as long as they could be consumed, for the human soul was akin to water to the Gods, as crucial to their survival as breathing was to humans.

  The mind was another thing entirely, however. A person’s brain and dark matter held a different sort of power, one the Gods chose to consume. The memories, knowledge, and essence of an individual were stored in one’s mind and, different from the vital energy of the soul, the nourishment that the Gods could get from consuming a full body was rather like an addiction for them. They loved and craved that richness and strength, rather than needed it.

  The flame inside of Ennet had been forever put out and the lingering embers now awaited his master, as did the life essence of his mind. As it turned out, Mantis would have three souls, not two, to present to the Sea.

  “We’re there.” Leroh interrupted her thoughts with a trembling voice. His eyes were wide and locked on the soft waves. “The waters are darker here. This must be his lair.”

  “Don’t call it that, you hapless idiot.” Mantis scowled at him.

  “You think he can hear?” He’d gone pale and still.

  “They can hear when you talk about them, yes, and now’s the worst possible time to say, or think, anything he might find insulting. You’re like a fine bit of meat dangled in his face, right now. So keep your words and thoughts…flattering.” This, she said to Teela. She almost didn’t care what happened to the boy, but the girl could do with a clear warning.

  They were slowing in speed as the Seamen rushed to back the sails, positioning them so that the Wind would push the ship backward and to a slow stop. She heard the chain of the dropped anchor and saw, from the corner of her eye, how violently Leroh shivered at that sound. He understood that the heavy weight would be far less effective there than in shallower waters. The color of the Seas around them, crystalline and blue up until that point, had turned a darker shade, almost black, from the sudden drop in the Sea floor below them. They’d gone over the edge of the cliff, and now floated above an immeasurable depth of water that harbored the Sea God in its darkness.

  It was common knowledge that he resided somewhere in the lightless pit of an underwater chasm, his entire anatomy seemingly designed to inhabit the cold, empty environment.

  In a brief moment of self awareness, she acknowledged to herself that she felt a flicker of curiosity to finally see him with her own eyes. The rumors of his physical form had always sounded to her rather vague and far-fetched, so now she’d be able to judge for herself if he truly was ‘unfathomably large and formidable’. For obvious reasons, Mantis had not gotten a chance to see the Sea God the one and only time Ombira had steered her toward Okedam. The bastard lived at the bottom of the ocean, after all.

  She’d been glad to leave the coastal town behind, and never wished to return, and, strangely, her wishes had been granted until then. For that, Mantis could thank the fact that the Sea God’s men were less rotten than those among the free folk. With the exception of Ennet, who rested unmoving where he’d fallen, Mantis had not had a reason to deploy her weapons against any Sea followers, ever. Or any other God servants at all, for that matter.

  Her Goddess had brought her to the port town only once, early in their acquaintance, and the few she’d taken then had been unsworn men, too. Mantis reluctantly gave credit to the Gods for the lack of vile men in their service, for she assumed some command was in place to stop them from violating others in the brutal way those without a God tie tended to do.

  A wave larger than any before it rocked the meager vessel all of a sudden, and Mantis walked over to the waist-high roughened oak railing to peer out at the open water. Teela was at her back, and Leroh behind hers, watching all with eyes as wide as plates. The boy was shivering and hyperventilating with panic, but the girl looked surprisingly calm, more intrigued than frightened. Mantis gave a sigh of frustration.

  Then she saw him, ascending toward them from within the dark abyss.