GRP Chapter 29

"The spirits stealing food—that was for you too?"

"Yes."

"And divine power alone isn't enough to sustain your body."

"Yes."

Garthe turned over, vaguely, the day Mariaeks had broken in and the time the spirits had been captured. The calculation came to roughly two to three weeks without food. The rotten potato—she must have picked it up by chance at tonight's afterparty.

'Wait.'

One more thing nagged at him. Garthe tossed the potato aside without ceremony and asked.

"Do you need water too?"

The woman slowly nodded. Olgidphaenn sourced its water by melting clean snow and ice. Inside the fortress, the main kitchen handled this. But he hadn't heard that Mariaeks had been anywhere near the kitchen. Had she been getting it from outside, then—the one advantage of a land buried in snow? That didn't seem right either. She spent nearly all her time in her room. How would she have managed to bring in clean snow and melt it?

"So how have you been drinking."

The woman's eyes moved, tentatively. Toward the table. The vase, its water nearly gone.

"You mean—the water in that vase?"

"One sip. Each day."

A god of Heimdrykze—snow on all sides—had nearly died of thirst. Comedy or tragedy. He couldn't say which.

Garthe looked her over. The wrists the clothing didn't cover were thin and fragile as winter branches. Come to think of it, he had seen Mariaeks unclothed. He had been the one to lift her from the bath, dry her, treat her, and dress her—so not a glance, but a thorough catalog of every part of her.

Mariaeks's body was white and soft all over, without a single firm place, like bread dough. But where her abdomen should have curved gently it had caved in, and her ribs stood out with the clarity of a starving animal's on a battlefield.

He had assumed she was lean by nature. There were gods who were nothing but bones and still moved; an unusually thin god hadn't seemed noteworthy. But that thinness had been starvation. Near-death starvation. What was this. Garthe looked down at her with one eyebrow raised.

Mariaeks stood motionless, breath suppressed, like someone afraid of shattering the stillness. She hadn't wiped the saliva from the corner of her mouth. Hadn't thought to soothe the throat that had been gripped hard only moments ago. There wasn't even the smallest movement—no faint rise of the chest, no shift of a shoulder. Every action, even breathing itself, she was suppressing for fear of irritating him.

This was what she did every time he put out killing intent. She had the fear and tension of trapped prey wound through her. But this reaction didn't seem to come simply from having her throat gripped or being threatened. Her fear hadn't crystallized at the moment of direct threat. It had crystallized after. Specifically after the answers I'm hungry and one sip a day. She reacted more acutely to exposing her own imperfection than to the immediate risk of death.

Shame over having had to eat rotten potatoes—over her imperfect divinity being laid bare? That didn't seem right. Mariaeks's reaction was clearly closer to fear than to shame.

Ah. Garthe ran a hand along his jaw. He recalled the strained justification for keeping Mariaeks in the fortress.

'To conduct research on the great god of Heimdrykze—wasn't that how it went?'

The Mariaeks before him certainly seemed far removed from words like "great" or "god." She didn't know the real reason she was needed for that research. And so she also didn't know that what was needed was not "the great god of Heimdrykze" but "Mariaeks, who eats rotten potatoes and feels the cold."

Cold, hungry, thirsty—and nearby, someone putting out killing intent several times a day. That her thinking had leapt ahead was understandable. She's hungry? Not a perfect god, then. Kill her. He couldn't say the logic was incomprehensible, even saying he'd seen it coming.

Garthe let out a short, humorless laugh, and Mariaeks went rigid as though it were a death sentence. He knew how prolonged hunger and thirst transformed into agony. Any renowned high priest turned thief after three days without food—and she stood there watching him as if she didn't register the pain at all. He had been giving her a hard time. Garthe exhaled, slowly.

What filled her entire field of vision was an empty wooden bucket.

Mariaeks gripped its rim and whimpered. Every time she tried to pull back, the hand clamped around her nape allowed no movement at all. 'Wretched man. Mad man.' Mariaeks called up every insult she knew. Of course, she couldn't get a single one past her lips.

"Vomit."

Cold spread across her skin at the low voice laid over the air like frost.

A few minutes earlier, Garthe had let out that short laugh and left the room, then returned carrying two wooden buckets. One empty, one filled with water. Come here. Tie your hair back. Following his carelessly tossed words, Mariaeks moved stiffly. The moment she had roughly twisted her hair up, Garthe took hold of her nape as if it belonged to him, pressed her down close to the bucket, and issued the preposterous command: "Vomit."

"I said vomit."

Mariaeks, taking advantage of the angle he couldn't see, directed the sharpest look she could manage at him. 'Terrible. Terrible man.' Not content with what was in her mouth—now he wanted her to bring back up what had gone down her throat. She didn't know what his intentions were in not killing her on the spot, but—

"Mariaeks?"

The same low, expressionless voice as always. But Mariaeks was certain this was a gentle threat. She fumbled for words.

"I already... swallowed it."

"Then bring back what you swallowed."

"How do you bring back what you've swallowed."

"You don't know how?"

The skill that mattered for survival was eating well, not expelling what had been eaten. There had been rare occasions of vomiting from spoiled food, but none had been by choice.

"You really are a lot of trouble.... Can't be helped, then. Should I help?"

"No."

She answered before he'd finished.

"There's a painful method and a less painful one. Which would you prefer?"

Refusal was not among the options. There was only one answer available to her. A faint voice crept out between slightly trembling lips.

"The less... painful one."

The hand pressing her nape slid down to her left cheek and closed around her jaw. Garthe's grip was hard and gave nothing. Wherever that hand was—her nape, her jaw—she couldn't move at all. So Mariaeks moved the one part of her still free, rolling her eyes to steal a look at the man's face angling down toward her.

What terrible method was he planning to use to make her expel what had already gone down her throat. And what expression was this villainous man wearing as he prepared to carry it out. Every muscle in her body had seized with tension until even her eyes felt stiff. But the man looked exactly as he always did—sharp gaze resting on her mouth, entirely uninterested.

"Open your mouth."

The grip on her jaw tightened steadily. If she didn't open it willingly, he would open it for her. Garthe had a remarkable gift for threatening people in a variety of ways. Mariaeks opened her mouth, helplessly.

"More."

She opened it a little wider. Garthe's brow furrowed. Why was her mouth so small. What had she been doing when everyone else's was growing. Mariaeks was subjected to unreasonable criticism for the size of her mouth.

"Tongue out too."

Mariaeks's tongue crept out of her mouth with hesitation. At that moment, two of Garthe's fingers invaded her mouth without warning. Even just two, his thick fingers filled her completely, and they were wet with slick saliva. Startled, Mariaeks bit down on his fingers before she knew what she was doing. She froze, only her eyes moving. The face that came into view had one eyebrow raised and looked distinctly displeased.

"That hurt."

He said it with an expression and in a tone that showed absolutely no pain. There wasn't the slightest killing intent, but Mariaeks had no courage left to bite him again. The moment she loosened her jaw, his fingers pressed deep into her mouth and bore down hard on the base of her tongue. Sudden nausea made her body lurch violently, but the hand holding her face didn't move.

Kgh—a short, agonized sound, and she clutched the bucket. Only then did the grip on her jaw release. Mariaeks felt the pressure flood to her head and brought up what she'd eaten. Into the bucket went watery stomach acid and a few poorly chewed pieces of famine food.

Saliva ran from the corner of her mouth. Mariaeks clung to the bucket, trembling, drawing ragged breaths. Her nasal passages burned. Her head rang. The inside of her stomach ached. Tears filled her eyes until her vision blurred. One fell, landing on her cheek. She was fairly certain he had said the less painful method. As if reading that thought, his answer came, unchanged.

"For reference—the painful method is a blow to the solar plexus. The solar plexus—yes, you know where that is. There."

Mariaeks found herself carefully covering her upper abdomen before she'd made the decision. The bucket with its contents disappeared from in front of her, and the bucket of water took its place.

"Wash your face."

Mariaeks followed his words, still blank, and scooped water with her hands. Each time the lukewarm water touched her face, the shock was gradually washed away with it. When she'd finished washing and was rinsing her mouth, she turned her head at the sound of footsteps. Garthe was just coming back through the door. She must have been more out of her mind than she'd realized—she hadn't noticed when he'd left.