Was it my imagination, or did Jason’s light fade a little at that? There was a silence.
“What of the blood I washed from your hands?” I said.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I come to it. My father was enraged. He set out after us, his witchcraft drawing the winds to his sail, and by morning he was very close. I knew my spells were no match for his. Our ship, however blessed, could not outrun him. One hope only I had: my younger brother, whom I had taken with us. He was my father’s heir, and I had thought to exchange him as a hostage for our safety. But when I saw my father at his prow, shouting curses across the water, I knew it would not work. The killing rage was plain on his face. He would be satisfied with nothing but our ruin. He spoke spells in the air, he lifted his staff to bring them down upon our heads. I felt a great fear run through me. Not for myself, but for blameless Jason and his crew.”
She looked at Jason, but his face was turned to the fire.
“At that moment—I cannot describe it. A madness came over me. I seized Jason and commanded him to kill my brother. Then I cut the body into pieces and threw them into the waves. Wild as my father was, I knew he must stop to give him proper burial. When I woke from my fit the seas were empty. I thought it had been a dream until I saw my hands covered in my brother’s blood.”
She held them out to me, as if in proof. They were clean. I had cleaned them.
Jason’s skin had gone gray as raw lead.
“Husband,” she said. He started, though she had not spoken loudly. “Your wine cup is dry. May I fill it for you?” She rose, moving with the goblet to the brimming bowl. Jason did not watch, and I would not have noticed if I were not witch myself: the pinch of powder that she dropped into the wine, the whispered word.
“Here, my love,” she said.
Her tone was coaxing as a mother’s. He took the wine and drank. When his head rolled back, and the cup would have fallen from his hands, she caught it. Carefully, she set it upon the table, and took her seat again.
“You understand,” she said. “It is too difficult for him. He blames himself.”
“There was no madness,” I said.
“No.” Her golden eyes pierced mine. “Yet some call lovers mad.”
“If I had known I would not have done the rite.”
She nodded. “You and most others. Perhaps that is why suppliants may not be questioned. How many of us would be granted pardon if our true hearts were known?”
She took off her black cloak and laid it over the chair beside her. Her dress beneath was lapis blue, bound with a thin silver belt.
“Do you feel no remorse?”
“I suppose I could weep and rub my eyes to please you, but I choose not to live so falsely. My father would have destroyed the whole ship if I had not acted. My brother was a soldier. He sacrificed himself to win the war.”
“Except he did not sacrifice himself. You murdered him.”
“I gave him a draught so he would not suffer. It is better than most men get.”
“He was your blood.”
Her eyes burned, bright as a comet in the night’s sky. “Is one life worth more than another? I have never thought so.”
“He did not have to die. You could have turned yourself in with the fleece. Gone back to your father.”
The look that passed over her face. Like a comet indeed, when it veers to earth and turns the fields to ash.
“I would have been made to watch while my father tore Jason and his crew limb from limb, then been tormented myself. You will pardon me if I do not call that a choice.”
She saw the look on my face.
“You do not believe me?”
“You have said many things of my brother that I do not recognize.”
“Let me introduce you then. Do you know what my father’s favorite sport is? Men come often to our isle, looking to prove themselves against a wicked sorcerer. My father likes to set the captains of those ships loose among his dragons and watch them run. The crew he enslaves, stealing away their minds so they have no more will than stones. To entertain his guests, I have seen my father light a brand and hold it to one of those men’s arms. The slave will stand there burning until my father releases him. I have wondered if they are merely empty shells, or if they understand what is being done to them and scream inside. If my father catches me, I will find out, for that is what he will do to me.”
It was not the voice she had used with Jason, that cloying sweetness. It was not her gleaming self-assurance either. Each word was dark as an axe-head, heavy and unrelenting, and my blood drained at every blow.
“Surely he would not hurt his own child.”
She scoffed. “I am no child to him. I was his to dispose of, like his seed-warriors or his fire-breathing bulls. Like my mother, whom he dispatched as soon as she bore him an heir. Perhaps it might have been different if I’d had no witchcraft. But by the time I was ten I could tame the adders from their nests, I could kill lambs with a word and bring them back with another. He punished me for it. He said it made me unmarketable, but in truth, he did not want me taking his secrets to my husband.”
I heard Pasiphaë as if she whispered in my ear: Aeëtes has never liked a woman in his life.
“His greatest wish was to trade me off to some sorcerer-god like himself who would pay with exotic poisons. None could be found except his brother, Perses, so he offered me to him. I say my prayers every night that that beast did not want me. He has some goddess of Sumeria he keeps in chains for a wife.”
I remembered the stories Hermes had told me: Perses and his palace of corpses. Pasiphaë saying, Do you know how I had to keep him happy?
“It is strange,” I said, the words weak even to my own ears. “Aeëtes always hated Perses.”
“Not now. They are closest friends, and when Perses visits they talk of nothing but raising the dead and bringing down Olympus.”
I felt numb, barren as a winter field. “Does Jason know all this?”
“Of course he does not, are you mad? Every time he looked at me, he would think of poisons and burning skin. A man wants a wife like new grass, fresh and green.”
Had she not seen Jason flinch? Or did she not want to see? He shrinks from you already.
She stood, her dress bright as a cresting wave. “My father pursues us still. We must leave at once and drive on to Iolcos. They have an army not even he can stand against, for the goddess Hera fights with them. He will be forced to turn back. Then Jason will be king, and I queen at his side.”
Her face was incandescent. She spoke each word as if it were a stone she built her future with. Yet for the first time she seemed to me a creature clinging to a precipice, desperate, its claws already slipping. She was young, younger than Glaucos when I had first met him.
I looked at Jason, drugged, his mouth hanging open. “You are sure of his regard?”
“You suggest he does not love me?” Her voice sharpened in an instant.
“He is still half a child, and full mortal besides. He cannot understand your history, nor your witchcraft.”
“He need not understand them. We are married now, and I will give him heirs and he will forget all this like a fever dream. I will be his good wife, and we will prosper.”
I touched my fingers to her arm. Her skin was cool, as if she had been walking a long time in the wind.
“Niece, I fear you do not see all clearly. Your welcome in Iolcos may not be what you imagine.”
She drew her arm away, frowning. “What do you mean? Why would it not be? I am a princess, worthy of Jason.”
“You are a foreigner.” I could see it, suddenly, as plain as if it were painted before me. The fractious nobles waiting at home for Jason’s return, each jockeying to match their daughter with the new-made hero and claim a piece of his glory. Medea would be the one thing they would agree upon. “They will resent you. Worse, they will suspect you, for you are the daughter of a sorcerer and a witch in your own right. You have lived only in Colchis, you cannot know how pharmakeia is feared among mortals. They will seek to undermine you at every turn. It will not matter that you helped Jason. They will push that aside, or else use it against you as proof of your unnaturalness.”