What From the Water Rises #23

In which Azar must make a decision.

The hours he spent roaming the island after speaking with the Mesaanoti woman felt like Azar’s last moments of freedom.

That wasn’t a certainty—but he knew, in a distant and abstract sort of way, that he was on the precipice of his life fundamentally changing. For now, while he remained in a stunned and almost dreamlike haze, he allowed his feet to carry him along the path branching away from home, moving inland toward no destination in particular.

The dirt path was narrow between the tall, broad-leafed plants growing on either side, but it was well-trodden enough that it must have led somewhere important. He was grateful to find it empty, anyway; everything was silent but for the insects buzzing around him and the birds calling overhead and the sounds of his own feet shuffling. 

He walked for a long time, his mind near-silent but for a wordless hum of anxiety lingering at the periphery—until abruptly, it wasn’t. The sight of a patch of those sharp-scented herbs Phaeon always used in his tea brought his thoughts back to the present, and he realized at once what he needed to do.

Azar spun around to head back down the path, toward the ocean and home—and Phaeon.

It did not surprise him that Phaeon occupied his initial coherent thoughts. His regret that he had not told the truth sooner was near-overwhelming once he began to face it.

At first, it had been so easy to justify withholding the truth from Phaeon. He hadn’t wanted to worry him further; he hadn’t wanted him to feel obligated to serve forever. Azar convinced himself that he needed to solve his problems on his own, that it was better to leave Phaeon out of the conversation with the Mesaanoti.

There was so much to tell, now—so much silence to apologize for.

And despite all of his omissions, he still never came to believe in his ability to survive without Phaeon’s help. The way he’d defaulted to presenting Phaeon’s sword as a threat when cornered proved as much.

He forced aside thoughts of Phaeon once the path dropped him at a rocky cove not far down the coastline from their home. He stepped forward into the sand, took a seat on the flattest of the large rocks bounding the cove, and stared into the glittering water.

There was no more avoiding it; he needed to stop wallowing in his guilt and confront the few options remaining to him. He let out a shaky breath—closed his eyes for a moment—and began to sift through his clouded thoughts.

As he saw it, he had two choices.

He could refuse to leave the island, risking his life—and Phaeon’s life, by extension—for the sake of his own selfish desire to continue living on Isle Ezu. They’d live in hiding, in fear; they would always have to be vigilant as word of his presence spread. His life would be in Anvashe’s hands, but his trust in the god had been shaken. His silence, even now, was concerning.

Fleeing from the island seemed like the wiser—and kinder—option, but to where?

Sehmera would welcome him back, but that was no option at all. They would kill Phaeon for helping him abandon his duty, and even if he spared Phaeon’s life by leaving him behind, Azar would still prefer death to the throne. This certainty may have surprised him if he didn’t have more pressing considerations; as it was, he just accepted it as true and moved on.

He could start over somewhere entirely different—with Phaeon—but if they landed anywhere other than Sehmera or Mesaanot, they would be unable to speak the language. It would mean being alone in a foreign land with no money, no possessions, and no home—not truly a viable option at all.

So what remained was taking the absurd risk of meeting the Mesaanoti woman the following morning and letting her take him away on a boat. As he stared out into the expanse of water—wondering whether he would make it to Mesaanot at all, and if he did, what sort of life he could have in such a place—it occurred to him that his travels would be across the ocean. Ezu-anvashe’s domain. 

The god had promised to protect Azar; whether he’d let his own people kill him was unclear, but surely he had no reason to let the Mesaanotis harm him. If the promise of amnesty proved to be a trap, Anvashe would read the intentions of the ship’s crew and save Azar from his fate to secure his loyalty.

He repressed the flicker of hope that he might bring Phaeon along; Anvashe had not promised to protect him, after all.

Either way, he quickly accepted that this was his only real choice. He stood—took one last long look at the ocean—and turned to head back home.

Perhaps, then, it was better that he hadn’t told Phaeon the truth. The best thing he could do for Phaeon, the only way he could protect him, was to slip away without a word. If he’d taken the time to teach Phaeon to read, he could’ve left a note, but as it was, he would just have to disappear. Otherwise, Phaeon would insist on coming—on risking his own life and safety to continue serving him. 

Azar could not allow it. His final gift to Phaeon would be his freedom, whether he wanted it or not.

It still hadn’t hit him that this was all real, so whatever he felt about the notion of abandoning Phaeon stayed distant from him for now. He knew he was a coward for even thinking it—but for that absence, he was grateful.

* * *

On the day he snuck after Phaeon to watch him fight—the day he’d first been approached by someone who knew his identity—he carried the note he found stabbed into the door with him for hours before reading it.

He wasn’t sure what delayed him. Cowardice, maybe—both the fear of what the letter contained and the worry that Phaeon would see his reaction and demand to know what was going on. He wasn’t emotionally prepared to tell Phaeon anything yet, and as exhausted as Phaeon was, he didn’t seem ready to hear it, either.

Only when Phaeon headed out to secure their dinner did Azar dare to look. Any other day, he would’ve seen Phaeon in such a state—pale, with dark circles ringing his empty eyes—and demanded the right to help with the fishing and foraging. He would’ve wanted to prevent Phaeon from carrying the full burden of caring for them both despite his exhaustion.

For now, though, he needed the privacy—the time alone to read, to process, to consider. So he guiltily let Phaeon go without a word, then waited a few minutes longer to feel confident that he was truly alone before kneeling by the kitchen table and unfolding the paper with trembling hands.

A—the letter read—I know your secret.

He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a shaking breath before forcing himself to continue. Every subsequent word made him more nauseous as an overwhelming dread began to coalesce in the pit of his stomach.

He thought he might be sick, but his body proved too rigid to move; he just sat on the floor, curled forward with his arms wrapped around his stomach, struggling to breathe. The full force of everything struck him at once, and it was almost too much to bear.

People knew. At least two—and those were only the ones who had made themselves known to him. People knew, and there was nothing he could do to stop them from knowing.

He couldn’t tell how much time passed before his breathing returned to normal; he hadn’t realized he had been crushing the note in his clenched fist until he finally recovered enough to crack his eyes open.

With a slow, deep breath, he flattened the paper out again on the table—realizing only then that there were other words written on the back. His curiosity overcoming his horror, he began to read and found that it was a page of notes from an old council meeting. He recognized the hand and tone from the other documents he’d read from the archive, though the events they described—something about Anvashe’s judgment on a legal matter—were new to him.

That didn’t matter, though, as much as the possibility that someone truly had entered his home. Yet when he forced his stiff muscles to stand and carry him around the single room, he found no other sign of entry. Nothing was missing, and even the collection of papers he’d stowed away in his bag was otherwise untouched. 

Another wave of horror hit him when he realized how foolish he was for just leaving the papers on which he’d experimented with a false new identity lying around—but even those incriminating files were all still present.

He reread the letter once more, pushing through it despite the renewed nausea that hit him as he considered the implications. This time, though, he noticed how strange the hand was, how stilted the language; maybe the writer was not a native Sehmeri speaker.

He’d have to tell Phaeon about all of this once he returned, and yet… he still wasn’t sure if it was wise. If the meeting with the letter’s writer proved to be a trap, he didn’t want to drag Phaeon into it. If this person did intend on an actual conversation, then he wanted it to happen on his own terms. Phaeon could be so nervous, so reactive; Azar had to admit to himself that he didn’t quite trust him to handle such a delicate situation.

Having gleaned all he could from the words, he searched through his collection of documents to find where the paper had come from—and, sure enough, he found its place in the middle of a file he didn’t remember reading. He’d have to revisit it later; for now, he slotted it back into place and paced the room.

The most hopeful option he considered was that the Sehmeri ex-noblewoman wanted to speak to him again—but she wouldn’t have had time to deliver it after their meeting earlier. She could’ve hired a messenger, he supposed, and if the messenger had also transcribed it, that would account for the strange handwriting and wording. But why chase him down and confront him in person if she already planned on inviting him to meet?

If it was someone else, though… who was it, and how did they know? It seemed entirely too coincidental that two people would’ve approached him regarding the same topic on the same day. Unless the Sehmeri woman was lying, and she had told somebody else—

A shock of sudden inspiration struck him then, and he hurried outside of the house without pause. Ezu-anvashe could hear all on the island—could read people’s intentions. Why should Azar waste his time speculating about what the god who had promised him protection already knew?

He went to the water—no longer nauseous, but now feeling oddly weightless—and took off his shoes. It was a pleasant afternoon, the sun warm but not overwhelming overhead, the breeze soft on his skin. The cool water lapped, gentle and inviting, against his feet.

He took another step, rolled up the legs of his pants, and waded further until the waves almost reached his knees.

“Ezu-anvashe,” he said, his voice timid but clear. When there was no response, he continued: “I wish to speak with you.”

Still, he heard nothing. He waited another minute this time, squinting toward the horizon, but no words rose from the whispering waves.

He swallowed hard, then decided to lay out his dilemma. “There’s someone here who knows who I am; you heard, I suppose. I don’t—I don’t think there’s anything I could’ve done to prevent her from knowing. She said I look like my father, so—” He cut himself off and shook his head. Anvashe hadn’t asked him for an excuse; what happened wasn’t Azar’s fault, he thought, and there was no reason to justify it.

“I just wanted to talk to you,” he concluded. “I’m not sure… how worried I should be, or what I should do.”

But of course, Anvashe knew that; the god could read intentions and certainly knew that Azar’s were conflicted beyond even his own understanding. Perhaps because of this insight—or, optimistically, because nothing was urgent or dangerous enough to be worth discussing—the god continued to ignore him.

Azar waded out of the water and sat on top of a rock, sticking out his legs to let the warmth of the sun dry them. Once he was no longer dripping wet, he hurried inside to grab his bag of papers and went back out to read them in the warm sand.

Something was missing from his understanding, and he hoped he would find it in the pages someone had rifled through. First, he reread the note for a third time—but he heard the sound of someone approaching when he reached the end.

He stiffened, shoving the pages back into his bag and clutching it to his chest in case he needed to flee—but it was only Phaeon who appeared from around the side of the house.

Phaeon, too, looked startled to see him there, but Azar forced a smile. “I thought I’d do some reading while it’s still light out,” he said, surprised by how convincing his casual tone was. “Let me know if you need help making dinner.”

Phaeon looked down at the bucket in his hands and nodded gravely. “Thank you,” he said, his weariness ringing through his voice. “I don’t need any help tonight.”

Azar knew better than to believe him, but today, he had something else to occupy his thoughts—so he would not insist that Phaeon accept his help. Phaeon, distracted as he still seemed, was probably grateful for the time alone, too.

So Phaeon slipped into the house, and Azar returned to his reading. The file the letter had come from was one he never bothered finishing before; he recalled some of its opening, but not what came next. It was a record of a particularly dull council meeting about an inter-guild dispute and a proposal to alter the layout of the weekend market, which he’d skimmed the first few pages of before skipping over the rest.

This time, he pushed through it in search of a hidden meaning and found a record of an emergency meeting held soon after. From this point, there was a description of a murder case brought before Zuenos’s city council.

The story went that a woman had killed a man one night and received no punishment from their god. The council speculated at length as to why this was—whether he’d died of unrelated causes just after she assaulted him, whether Anvashe had actually killed the man himself, but in a way invisible to the witnesses—and whether it was within their role to seek justice if their god had deemed it unworthy of concern.

They met and quickly adjourned, so one councilor could ask Anvashe for clarity and another could retrieve the woman from where she waited at home. Hours later, they reconvened.

The woman confessed—again, openly. Anvashe did not react.

The councilor who had spoken to the god shared that, though this woman was taking credit for the crime and had perhaps delivered the final blow, the murder had been a group effort. The man had been stoned to death by several women, and the one who stood before the council had confessed in order to protect the others.

Why Anvashe previously permitted whatever behavior had warranted this man’s execution—and what his behavior was—nobody knew. Yet the majority of the council concluded that Anvashe had simply accepted the will of the collective this time. 

Some councilors speculated that Anvashe had delivered a lesser punishment to each participant, but if he’d even rebuked any of them, they all refused to speak of it. The accused woman insisted that she’d never received any reaction from the god.

A few of the councilors who weren’t satisfied with accepting Anvashe’s judgment without question had tried to speak to him about it, but apparently, he had not answered. So, the collective arrived at the obvious conclusion: there were specific circumstances under which Anvashe found killing acceptable, though enough was left unanswered that they could not determine exactly what those conditions were.

Azar closed the file and sat staring down at the first page, unsure what to think. His trembling hands tightened, crinkling the edges of the paper, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop; the horror hit him in full force again, the dread at his center solidifying into something too heavy for him to move.

There it was, in writing. To kill someone on Isle Ezu without punishment required nothing more than a collective of people throwing stones. Either Anvashe had ceded to the will of his people regarding who deserved to live or die, even when it differed from his own opinion, or he’d weighted their lives against the one already lost and decided that killing off so many of his sparse collection of worshippers would not be worth it.

Here—on an island full of Mesaanotis, displaced Sehmeris, resentful ex-nobles, and those peoples who had been forced from their homes by his own family’s policies—Azar could imagine that more people wanted him dead than alive.

He’d always understood this on some level. What he hadn’t understood until now was that those people may have the power to make it happen. All they needed was this knowledge—once, and perhaps still, publicly available—and to accumulate enough of a bloodthirsty crowd that Anvashe wouldn’t or couldn’t kill all of them.

Did he trust that Anvashe would protect him? As soon as the question occurred to him, he recognized the futility of it—of all of this.

Azar’s fate was in Ezu-anvashe’s hands, and what happened to him would depend entirely on whether the god had been honest with him. His dread did not lessen, but it shifted as he realized—with an anxiety more rooted in helplessness than fear—that the only real option remaining to him was to rely on the possibility that Anvashe kept his promises.