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Inside the cell, Aurora just glowered. The girl looked pale and hungry, with dark marks under her eyes, but Belit was surprised by her appearance; she wasn't in the sniveling and crying state that she would have expected.
When Aurora said nothing in reply, Belit knocked on the bars with the hilt of her sword. "Are you paying attention in there?"
"To everything," the girl said eventually. "Still here to teach me a lesson?"
"The most important one of your life: Don't get yourself killed." She hung her sword on her belt again. "At least until I get back."
As they prepared to launch the boats, they found they'd picked up an extra passenger: Enyo. The women all muttered, and Belit even allowed herself a surprised scoff. The old mystic had never once asked to go along on any scout or raid. She rarely even left the ship when they were at port.
"I have a destiny of my own," was all she said by explanation. "Things I'm meant to see and to do."
Nobody would argue with her, although it was obvious that this made the women even more spooked than usual. Belit decided to take this as a good sign though. She assigned Stikla and Rusila the harder parts of the rowing, and with that they were off.
She ended up sitting face to face in the small boat with Valeria as they cut their way through the fog. The navy woman busied herself trying to scan the coastline. She had her hand on her belt in an absent gesture that Belit knew meant she was reaching for her sword and finding it not there.
"Remember," Belit said, "Aurora is still aboard. Don't think of running off once we're ashore."
The reminder wasn't necessary. A starched, proper captain of the Empress wouldn't break her word of honor no matter what. Belit simply liked rubbing in Valeria's situation whenever she could.
"Will the locals recognize you?" she asked Larissa. The ambassador nodded. "What do we do to convince them to give us the gold?"
"Not much," Larissa said. "Remember, it's worthless to them. They have more than they'll never need, and in truth they don't need it for much."
"What will they think when we keep asking them for it, then?" said Achillia.
"Mostly that we're not very bright."
Valeria snorted. She'd made it clear that she didn't believe the Gorgon Island myth, even when the Empress' ambassador herself told her it was true. Belit ignored her. Soon it wouldn't matter what people thought about her or anything else. Money ended every argument.
The shore was sandy, the sky overcast, and the jungle thick and brooding. The sisters dragged the small boat ashore while Belit tried to get her bearings. High cliffs to the west, nothing but jungle to the south, and no sign of habitation anywhere.
No, that wasn't quite true: If she squinted, she could just make out the silhouettes of women on the summit of the cliff. Larissa waved in their direction, and they seemed to respond.
While they waited for the welcoming party, Larissa set them about a curious task: She took an empty tun they'd brought and asked everyone to fill it with odd objects.
"Seashells are best," she said. "Bones are good if you can find them. Sticks and roots if there's nothing else. Anything that used to be alive, or still is."
"What do we need this junk for?" said Stikla, the fox-faced woman bearing an armful of branches too soft and rotten even for firewood.
"Tribute," Larissa said. "It will all make sense soon."
The island women were a strange lot: naked except for brown and green skirts twined around their waists, all on the short side, with long, dark hair, very large dark eyes, and something strange about their skins. They had, Belit eventually figured out, a faint greenish tinge; slight, but impossible to overlook once you noticed.
She could scarcely tell the four who came down to meet them apart, but Larissa seemed to know them. She greeted them in their own language, a hodgepodge of noises that Belit found immediately unpleasant.
The island women said little in return, communicating mostly through nods and gestures. When Larissa brought the chest full of detritus forward they looked it over and seemed satisfied.
No one else had any idea what they were saying, but eventually the women indicated that the crew should come with them. The sisters marched at the back of the line, hauling the trunk full of seashells and firewood, while Achillia lingered to help old Enyo with the more difficult parts of the climb.
"They're taking us to the temple," Larissa explained. "There we'll meet the Gorgon Queen."
Belit expected another scoff from Valeria, but the navy woman was quiet. The appearance of the islanders seemed to make an impression on her.
"Once, they had a city that covered half the island," Larissa continued. "Now there's only the temple. There are so few women left that their entire population can live in it."
"Why so few?" Belit said.
"The Gorgon Queen is also their goddess. She's stopped making any of the women fertile with child because she's afraid one of them will give birth to the new Gorgon Queen and depose her—as she did to the queen before her."
"A woman can't be a goddess," Valeria said. "Only the three true goddesses and their priestesses can grant children."
"And where do you suppose the children come from in places where they've never even heard of your goddesses?" Enyo said. Then she laughed.
They passed hunched cyclopean buildings and tumbledown walls so overgrown with vines and creepers that only a glimpse of them was visible. The jungle grew fast, Larissa explained. The Gorgon women spent half their lives keeping it from overrunning them. "Their priestesses say that when the end of the world comes, the jungle will grow twice as fast as it can be cleared away, and then consume all."
Belit felt uneasy as they trekked through the ruins. This was it: The island existed. The stories were true. Everything around them proved it: the strange light of the sun filtered through the mist, the clinging vines and hanging fronds of the island jungle, even the whine of unfamiliar insects in the air as they marched.
They'd found a place that wasn't supposed to exist. The natives were such easy marks that they were being taken straight to the queen without so much as sword in hand. It was all coming together. She should have been happy.
But something seemed wrong. Did the Gorgon women really just take whoever showed up on their beach right into their temple and to their queen? Where were their defenses? No one was even armed.
The temple was a broad step pyramid, flanked by columns in the shape of enormous serpents. Several of the crew gaped at the building; had these island primitives really made such a thing? Belit was surprised that no gold decorated the structure. But she reminded herself, they didn't care about that sort of thing.
Still, if the islanders had more gold than they knew what to do with, then where was it all? She hadn't seen a scrap so far.
The air inside the temple was cool and perfumed, a relief from the steaming green hell of the jungle. Here more women greeted them, silent, passive creatures whose long hoods and robes hung open in the front, none bothering to hide the nakedness underneath. They exchanged a few words with Larissa and then kissed her, apparently their traditional greeting. Belit accepted the kiss cautiously, as if it might be a trap. Achillia stared, seemingly entranced by the sight of the islanders, with their long limbs and supple, graceful bodies. She had to bend almost all the way over to accept a kiss.
Stikla and Rusila grinned stupidly and gave lecherous winks to the temple women; none seemed to notice or understand. Valeria stood up straight and almost bristled at the greeting, as if she'd been insulted.
Oddly, the women ignored Enyo.
"Are we expected?" Belit asked Larissa.
"They're used to receiving me."
"What about the rest of us?" "They don't care who else comes along. In their culture, the queen is the only one who's a complete person. Everyone else is considered a kind of...extension." "They think you're a queen?" Valeria said.
"I've tried to explain the concept of a royal representative, but it goes right over their heads." Larissa shrugged.
They came to a chamber with a high ceiling and no windows, lit by a great bronze bowl filled with fire. Some 40 women gathered here to chant, pray, burn incense, feed the fire, and supplicate before a woman sitting cross legged on a dais overlooking the blaze.
A shimmering veil that fell well past even her knees obscured this figure, behind which she was only a dark silhouette. Though almost entirely obscured, there was something unsettling about her, something not altogether right about the outline underneath that veil...
Rusila and Stikla dropped the chest full of shells with a thump. Larissa gestured that they should all sit. The chamber women offered wine. Belit couldn't take her eyes off the unmoving figure with the veil. "Is that the Gorgon Queen?"
"Yes. It's taboo to look directly at her. Their gravest crime," Larissa said.
When Belit tasted the wine in the simple wooden bowl she nearly choked. The stuff was so strong it was like being slapped awake. She gave Achillia a look that advised caution when passing it along.
Larissa said some more things in the islander's baffling language, and although the queen didn't speak a woman attending on her seemed to communicate her reply somehow. The chamber was naturally cool, but the fire in the center an inferno, and the contest of extremes made Belit anxious. The scent of strong incense and the headiness of the powerful wine didn't help.
Eventually, Larissa indicated the chest full of junk, and two of the small women hauled it up the stairs to the platform, where the Gorgon Queen plucked a conch shell out (the first time she'd moved a muscle), seeming to examine it critically. Then she nodded, and Belit saw her grab the hem of the great veil as if to lift it up. Belit's pulse quickened.
All of the attending women covered their faces. Larissa indicated, with frantic gestures, that the crew should do the same. Then there was a sound like ice breaking, but much louder, an awful sound that made Belit clench her jaw until it ached. It passed in a second, but seemed to draw itself out and make that one second many times as long.
Only when it was finished were they permitted to uncover their faces, and Belit saw that the still, silent queen had replaced her veil. Although two women had taken the chest up to the platform, it took twice as many to haul it back down.
When they presented the tun to Belit again she blinked several times, unsure of what she was seeing. It wasn't until she picked up the conch and examined it up close that she realized:
The shell had turned to gold. Everything in the chest was gold.
She rubbed at it with the hem of her shirt, expecting the color to come off. It didn't.
She looked at Larissa. The ambassador nodded. It took many attempts before Belit was able to speak again. "How?" she said.
"It's her curse," Larissa said. "The queen's naked eye transforms any creature it looks on, living or dead. Only the power of the sacred veil protects us now."
Belit perceived for the first time the dried, crinkly texture of the queen's veil, and realized what it surely must be: the skin of the old Gorgon Queen, whom this one had deposed, and who had surely worn a similar garment made from the hide of her own predecessor, the only thing in the world that could withstand that cursed gaze...
But she barely had time to register any horror at this, too busy spilling the contents of the chest across the temple floor, pouring shells and bones—or what had once been shells and bones—into glittering heaps. An insane laugh bubble up inside of Belit—and why not? She laughed. Soon, she couldn't stop.
"Achi, do you see it?" she said.
"It's real, Captain," Achillia said. Her eyes were big as coins as she plunged her hands into the gleaming mess.
The sisters, Rusila and Stikla, were no less wide-eyed as they scrabbled through the treasure. "Captain, you were right," Rusila said, stunned. "You were right all along."
"Of course I was, you silly cunt," Belit said.
But she wasn't angry anymore. She stuffed a handful of golden seashells down Rusila's shirt, and the other woman laughed as she shook them out and sent them clattering in a golden rain to the floor.
Belit turned back to Larissa. "And she can make as much as she wants? As much as WE want?" "As much as your ship can carry," Larissa said. "It means nothing to her."
"This is how you fund the empire," said Valeria. She sounded horrified. "This is how the Empress pays for the wars; every year you just come here, and they give you all the gold you could ever need?"
"And if our enemies ever knew, they'd invade and try to take it all for themselves," Larissa said. "It's the empire's most closely guarded secret. A thousand times a thousand women have died to keep the world from knowing what you've all just learned."
"Let them rot," said Belit.
When the temple women offered wine again she accepted and drank the whole thing in one go, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. Then she actually grabbed the Gorgon priestess and kissed the foreign woman. To her surprise, the priestess returned the kiss. The strange woman's scent made Belit feel even more drunk.
Larissa said that the temple women were preparing a feast to honor them, so the crew followed them to a long hall with dishes laid on a carpet. The Gorgon women seemed to have no furniture except for simple cushions. Two priestesses attended to each member of the crew, refilling her wine bowl and feeding her treats by hand, as all of the women got more drunk and happy and mad.
The two sisters posed many toasts to their captain, which Achillia joined and which Belit accepted over and over again. Old Enyo sat and ate by herself, and Belit was barely aware of the knowing looks the seer gave her from time to time. Only Valeria maintained her reserve. Several rounds in, Belit slapped her on the back.
"What the hell do you have to look so down about?" she said.
The navy woman frowned into her wine bowl, which she barely partook from no matter how many times it was offered. "This isn't right," she said.
"Don't give me that royal honor bullshit," Belit said. "You worried about Aurora still? Fuck her. Take the girl. Take her twice. What do I care? Here, you're free."
She unbuckled Valeria's sword and held it out.
"Don't you get it?" Belit continued. "Part of this treasure is yours. I'll give it to you, I don't care. You can buy a ship, be your own woman instead of taking royal orders. Or just buy a castle somewhere, get a wife, and pray for babies. We're all free to do as we want now. We've got all the freedom that gold will buy."
"It's not right," Valeria said again. "Treasure for nothing? Gold out of beach junk? The world doesn't work that way. The goddesses punish women who look for the easy way out."
"Easy?" said Belit. She knocked the wine out of Valeria's hand. "Do you know what I had to go through to get us here? The women who died? And you call it easy?" She sneered. "What you do is easy: wear a uniform, kill whoever they order, and wash your hands at the end of the day."
"I'm not a killer," said Valeria. "And I'm not a thief."
"Everyone's a thief," said Belit. "I bet you were born rich. Never had to worry about where your next coin was coming from. Only a rich woman would turn her nose up at gold. You don't care about it because you've never had to work for it. But behind every fortune there's a thief somewhere, if you go far enough back."
For a second—just a second—Valeria looked furious, and her anger seemed so impertinent at that moment that Belit became furious too, and she might even have hit the other woman then and there.
But Achillia got between them and pushed them apart. "It doesn't matter," the big bosun said. "Come on, knock it off you both. You've got nothing in the world to fight about."
Belit and Valeria glared at each other over Achillia's muscular arms. Then Belit held out her bowl for a priestess to refill and gulped the dark wine down all at once. "If you don't want your share of the treasure, fine," she said. "More for me. Go back to your empress. We're all as rich as she is now. See if she seems so special to you now that you know that."
Silence, Valeria left. Everyone else stayed.
Drunk and happy, Belit grabbed the first of the temple women she could get her hands on and kissed her. The silent foreign women all returned her kisses, and even removed their robes and skirts when she pawed at them. The feast hall was soon full of naked bodies, the strange women's long limbs appearing lithe and graceful as they served. None of them resisted when Belit grabbed them. They were perfectly pliant.
Soon the other women (except for Enyo) joined in. Dishes and bowls overturned and rolled across the floor as the crew threw the temple women down. Belit rolled on top of one, struggling out of her own clothes. Her vision was blurry from wine, and her hands shook. The Gorgon woman's long arms twined around her like creeping vines, pulling her down for kisses that seemed to make her even more drunk. The taste of the foreigner's lips was sweet, as if honey dappled every kiss.
Naked bodies wrapped around one another in every possible position and combination. The room grew hot and muggy with so much sweating. The women in the crew were loud: laughing, gasping, moaning. The Gorgon women were quiet, only sometimes murmuring their pleasure, a sound like the purring of cats. Or maybe the hissing of snakes, Belit thought.
But she put that thought away before it spoiled the mood. Why ruin things? Wasn't this what she'd dreamed about all of her life? Finally, enough gold for everyone and everything. Life didn't have to be anything except wine, food, and women from now on if she didn't want it to be. Hadn't she earned it? "I have," she whispered, out loud, although a grunt obscured the words, as she had her legs all in a tangle with one of the priestesses, grinding their bodies together with powerful thrusts of each other's thighs. Meanwhile, another woman kissed Belit, sliding a wet tongue deep inside the captain's mouth, her lips seemingly unnaturally smooth and pliant as Belit opened hers wider, swallowing the strange woman's kisses, as many as she could get.
A third woman crawled over Belit's body, applying the tip of her thin tongue to the captain's breasts, sharp teeth occasionally grazing Belit's skin. When the first of the women parted her legs Belit laid her mouth between her thighs, curious to taste. She thought she'd sampled every type of girl in every port in every country, but here was something new even to her.
In truth, it tasted more or less the same all over, and this was no exception. But the bare thighs and legs of the temple woman seemed to have a strength to them, as if she were always coiled up and waiting to make some move that Belit couldn't anticipate or understand. A nagging thought suggested that this should bother her, but that voice had a hard time penetrating the haze of the wine and her increasingly piqued desire.
Belit licked and sucked one woman until, quietly but forcefully, she came, and then she grabbed the leg of the nearest passing priestess and pulled her down to the rug as well, not even hesitating before burying her mouth in this new one. The Gorgon woman gasped, squirmed, moaned, and twisted, swiveling her hips and arching her back to a degree that was almost alarming. The tongue that darted between her teeth was very red.
Belit closed her eyes and shut out everything except for her sense of touch: the feeling of warm, soft skin, of cold, bare stone, of silken clothes discarded and piled high, of sweat and body heat all around her, like clinging mist. The more of it she felt, the more she wanted.
