They soon disembarked the fishing vessel where so much had occurred and hurried to retrieve their horses from the beautiful stables where they’d left them. Sea servants continued to gawk and smile at them as they passed, but their friendliness seemed less genuine to Teela, now that she’d met their master. One such Sea gentleman greeted them at the stables with a warm grin and invited them to sit on a shaded bench just outside the entrance to the elegant building to await their rested mounts.

  In the same thoughtfully lavish way as the other homes and establishments in the wealthier areas of Okedam, the stables were built of sturdy white stone, roofed with exotic orange tiles and accented with various lovely decorations in shiny metals and artfully carved woods. Teela had no names for any of the building materials used in the picturesque port town, but everything there seemed far more rare and expensive than what she was used to in Pirn. She was thankful, at least, for that. The opportunity to admire such delightful prosperity was not one to ignore, for an ignorant serving girl from a poor traditionalist community such as herself. Especially if, as her earlier conclusions had so harshly informed her, it might be her last peek into the wonderful, magic-rich world that surrounded her bubble of enclosure.

  The kind man returned, leading their horses by the reins. Clover looked well, much better than he had when Teela had last seen him. They had washed him down lightly from the collected dirt and sweat from their traveling, brushed and groomed him, and it was likely that he’d drunk and eaten much better during his stay at the stables than Teela herself had in the last few days.

  She took his reins from the Sea man and rubbed Clover’s long neck with affection. It was embarrassingly reassuring to see him again. She needed his loving presence more than she’d known after the traumatizing events aboard the fishing boat. Her friend lightly nudged her with his big muzzle and Teela felt a sad little smile spread on her face.

  “Do return anytime, miss. We’d be happy to look after your beautiful stallion again, if you find yourself in town,” the man said to Mantis after taking two shiny little coins from her extended hand. The woman kept her mouth firmly shut throughout the whole interaction and had their little group away from the stables and walking down the neatly cobbled streets at the earliest opportunity.

  “Do you rob your…victims? For coin?” Teela asked Mantis in not quite a whisper. The thought had just popped into her mind, and she hadn’t cared to suppress it.

  The woman spun to give her a scowl and Leroh, strangely enough, seemed to not have even heard her rude question. He kept his eyes on the road ahead, his expression blank if not a bit incredulous. Teela only gave Mantis a sideways look and continued to walk by her side, pretending to be unaware of her own forwardness.

  “Yes,” she replied at last.

  Teela turned to give her a long, assessing look. Then she said, “I think it’s time for Leroh and I to go home. We can ride back to Pirn, just the two of us.”

  “No,” Mantis said.

  “I…I don’t—”, Teela fumbled for words as she tried to find a response to her curt answer. “I wasn’t…asking permission. I want to go home.”

  “You are in danger at the moment. The Sea is not happy with me, or you, by extension. I will not have two defenseless, unsworn children traveling two days alone.”

  “Then, what? We have to follow you to stay safe? Where are you even going?” Teela did not want to accompany the woman anymore, knowing the likeliness that she’d continue to kill people, unjustified, as she pleased.

  Would Mantis choose to give the Sea God two more people like Ennet, whose attitudes she disagreed with? People who she alone deemed acceptable to sacrifice? If so, Teela wanted nothing to do with it.

  “You will accompany me for protection, yes, eastward, to fulfill the Sea’s bargain. Or would you prefer to be hunted down by his people until you’re dead? He’s not the forgiving type, and I only have two days to get him his lives. Once that’s done, I’ll take you home.”

  “But-but I don’t want…” she stuttered with confusion and frustration. “Leroh, you can keep us safe, can’t you? We should go back to Pirn.” Teela tried to appeal to her only ally. She quickly found that she could not count on him, either.

  “No. I can’t protect us. We should stay with the Mantis.”

  Both women stopped in their tracks to stare at him then, but Leroh only motioned with a hand for them to continue walking. He seemed eager to get away from the port town, even if it meant following Mantis into something potentially awful. Teela then resolved to acquire some answers, if nothing else. She would at least go knowing what the woman planned to do, this time.

  “Who are you going to kill? Will it be more innocent people, like that man on the ship?”

  Mantis glared at her for a long moment. Her eyes were as mesmerizing as ever in the softening light of the late afternoon, strange speckles of bright orange appearing to dance in the swirling chestnut brown of her irises. It was a sight both hypnotizing and frightening in its intensity. Her crimson mouth was pressed into a flat line, disappointment and anger plainly visible in her expression. Beneath it all, however, Teela sensed a wave of despair that threatened to topple her over. The emotions roiling inside Mantis were ever a swirling pit of darkness, she realized. Now that the overwhelming discomfort the woman had been feeling had dissipated, the sense of dread wafting off her had changed in color, but it was still there.

  “I only kill bad men, or in self defense. Any person who doesn’t fall into either of those categories is safe from me,” she said at last.

  “You said that man was not a rapist,” Teela accused her.

  “He wasn’t, yet. But I do not take risks.”

  “What does that even mean? You can’t know what someone is going to do—”

  “I can. I’ve seen into the minds of enough of them to know.”

  “How many?” The question escaped Teela’s lips before she’d had a chance to consider it.

  “Thousands.”

  Her brother’s head snapped up then, as if he’d been poked with a needle. He had become paler than before, and his tight curls now hung at his temples damp with sweat.

  “You look into their minds?” Teela asked.

  “Their minds violate me with their memories is more accurate.”

  “Did…did you see into his mind? The sailor’s?” She tentatively dug further, still resolved to extract the truth from her.

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  “I take their knowledge into myself when I eat them. I cannot just look into anyone’s mind.”

  “Then you did kill him for mocking me!” Teela was indignant, perhaps more than was normal for her, but she could not put the Seaman’s death to rest in her heart. His youthful, tanned face, the oddly accented sound of his voice, even the smell of his simple, work-soiled clothes haunted her thoughts. He’d never see another day, and those who loved him would have to continue living without him forever, because of her. Teela could not forgive so evil a deed. “You murdered him for nothing.”

  “He didn’t only mock you. He revealed something far deeper about himself to me, and it is my duty, to my Goddess and to my people, to eliminate filth like him from our midst. If it weren’t for me, Yriaa would be swarming with vermin like that man. If not for the threat of the Mantis looming over all their heads, you, little girl, would know a much worse world today. Do you not understand?”

  “I understand justice, fairness, a wrong punished accordingly. What you did today was not that, and I think you know it!”

  “Please,” Leroh stepped in front of Teela with his hands raised at his chest, showing her his palms. “Please, Teela. Leave her alone. Just stop. We need to leave this place, now. M-Mantis?” He cowered as he addressed her by her name for the first time, to Teela’s knowledge. “How long will it take to find him the two lives? How far must we travel?”

  “I can’t be sure. It might be half a day’s ride away, or longer. I sense two, I think, in that direction,” she said and raised a hand to motion vaguely down the coast, “but I can’t tell how far away.”

  “Then we should probably hurry, to account for the way back and the time it will take to-to find another ship to take us to him… But what if it’s a full day away? Or even longer? What happens if we’re too late?”

  Mantis raised a delicate copper eyebrow and then, infuriatingly, shrugged at him in response.

  Teela was seething, her heart pounding against her chest and her brow tightly cinched. They were brushing that innocent man’s death under the rug like he meant nothing! All three of them had seen his corpse, limp and lifeless, a few paces away from where they stood on that deck. His eyes had remained half-open, as had his mouth. The image would not vanish from her thoughts, and yet her brother and Mantis were having no trouble moving past it. Teela could not allow that. She would not ever forget that sailor and the cause of his early demise.

  Initially, Teela had dared to hope that Mantis would take her in as a sort of apprentice, or, at the least, agree to teach her the ways of her kind, to communicate with her Goddess so she could pray and become a God servant, too. But the incident aboard the ship had disturbed all her assumptions of the woman.

  She had seemed such a kindhearted person, beneath her hardened shell. She’d brought Teela back to life when she’d accidentally killed her, and her behavior toward her since they’d met had only spoken of gentleness, of a sweet and unfamiliar caring protectiveness. Like a fool, Teela had taken her for a caring, trustworthy guardian, someone she could harmlessly attach herself to in her pursuit of growth and adventure.

  A strong, luring magic permeated the beguiling woman. She felt, to Teela’s every sense, magnificent, barely short of a Goddess herself. How could a person so dazzling and lovely be anything less than wonderful, she’d thought.

  Evidently, Teela had misjudged what was before her, fallen victim to some sort of charm, like the siren’s. Mantis was a corrupted woman who possessed a great power, and nothing more.

  Unless… Could her Goddess have made her so? Teela wondered whether a God servant’s morality might be altered with magic, if Mantis’s master could be the one responsible for her heartlessness. If that were the case, it was a lucky thing they’d part ways soon, she decided. Perhaps Mantis had saved Teela from a grim fate by denying her any information pertaining to her way of life.

  Leroh helped Teela to mount Clover first, offering her a grounding shoulder to push herself up with, which was unusual. She looked him up and down, confused. His posture and gait had changed. He moved slower and his back was stiff, and a grimace of pain came to his face any time he made a strenuous movement. The drop onto the deck of the ship had been rough. Teela imagined he was suffering from his bruises and bumps, but he’d told her nothing felt broken. Aside from that, however, his behavior had been peculiar since his encounter with the Sea God. He was quieter, and less hostile. Maybe he had not yet shaken the fright of the experience.

  They rode down a crowded street lined with quaint businesses of all kinds. Teela was busy observing the charming facades, but was soon distracted by a strange realization. Too many of the people around her were close to her age or younger. A much larger portion of the population than she was accustomed to was very young there. Children of all ages were everywhere in sight, moving about in groups or on their own, largely outnumbering the adults among them. A cluster of boys and girls not yet past the awkward bump of early adolescence chatted amongst themselves with familiarity in a bright street corner. They laughed together as if nothing but their happiness at that moment mattered, not seeming to care about appearances, decorum, or responsibility whatsoever. Before her very eyes, a golden haired boy of twelve or thirteen wrapped his arm around the waist of a pretty girl in bright yellow skirts, leaned over, and placed a long, smacking kiss on her cheek, causing her to burst into delighted giggles.

  Teela had been told, over and over, how grateful she should be for her ‘freedom’, that she should count herself lucky for her independence from the Gods. As she watched the Sea’s children then, she wondered what that had ever meant at all.

  Mantis led them back in the direction they’d come from, and, confusingly, came to a stop as they reached the harbor. The port was busier than it had been earlier in the day, with fishermen and workers of all sorts occupied about their ships, loading and unloading cargo, barking commands, or generally bending their backs at some task or another. It was fascinating. Teela saw three men handling a fish as big as a sheep, and marveled that there existed a species that large. Others carried boxes brimming with foodstuffs she could not even name that looked like small, smooth rocks, with a seam down the middle. She longed to be able to discover what such a thing might taste like, how it could be cooked or eaten.

  The smell of Sea food in the air was dizzying. It was not a particularly pleasant scent, but Teela had only had the opportunity to consume fish a number of times in her life, and so she’d grown to appreciate the exotic aroma. What lived in the water had a large cost, her mother had always said. It was a food for special occasions or times of plenty in their home.

  “Yilenn,” Mantis called out in a stern voice and brought Teela’s mind back to the present.

  The brightly colored siren had returned to the little white booth where they’d initially encountered her. Or been encountered by her, Teela supposed. Her neat red eyebrows shot up with surprise at the sight of them still astride their horses at the mouth of the harbor.

  “You live,” she said with a little smile, her deep blue eyes fixed on Mantis’s face.

  “Again I must remark on your observational skills, I see.”

  Yilenn stared at the woman for a moment, then her eyes crinkled with a suppressed smile. She said nothing.

  “Is there a settlement in that direction?” Mantis asked with more seriousness.

  “Yes. Rather small, two or so days’ travel on horseback, I think.”

  “Two!” Leroh cried out and covered his mouth with a hand. “Two days away! We’ll never make it in time!” He was aghast. Teela’s breath started coming faster, too, with a sensation much like fear, but shamefully tinted with curiosity. Or excitement? No, not excitement.

  “What is it?” the siren asked.

  “He gave me two days to bring him more lives. There are two at that settlement, but we won’t have enough time to get there and back.”

  Yilenn looked confused. “There are two what? Unsworn lives? We have plenty of those nearer than that—”

  “No.” Mantis cut her off. “I don’t kill innocents.”

  Yilenn gave a jolt of astonishment and shook her head a little then, blinking repeatedly. The words had shocked her. She and Mantis stared at each other for what seemed like a long time. When Teela started getting restless and uncomfortable, the siren spoke again. “You only kill a certain kind?”

  “Yes. Bad people.”

  “But how? Does your God let you choose?”

  “My God chooses.” She was very grave then, her mouth pinched and her posture rigid.

  “I never heard of such a thing,” the red-haired woman muttered. Mantis gave a tight nod at that, as if it confirmed or explained something. “Well. I’ll help you, then,” Yilenn said.

  “I was hoping you would.” Mantis gave her a sideways glance and an almost imperceptible tilt of her red lips. “You do owe me that, after that whole thing earlier, when you tried to eat me.”

  “I meant to drown you, not eat you.”

  “You wanted to get me eaten. Let us not argue over semantics.” She was amused.

  “What is happening?” Teela interrupted their…teasing?

  Both God servants turned to her then, eyebrows raised as if her words had caught them by surprise. A silence stretched for a long moment before the siren finally said “I will help, with her task. To make it faster.” Her words were soft and kind as she replied to her question literally and ignored the true meaning of what she’d said.

  “We must leave now,” Mantis declared.