A/N: Have you ever rewatched a beloved childhood film with a friend and suddenly become possessed by your thesis on why it should have ended with a polyamorous triad? No? Lucky you.
This fic kicked my ass six ways from Sunday, but I kept on blasting Harry Gregson-Williams soundtracks and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! The title is from part of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae, translated by Helen Waddell, whose work I always adore.
Posse pati volui nec me temptasse negabo: | vicit Amor.
I longed to be able to accept it, and I do not say that I have not tried: Love won.
- Orpheus (Ovid, Metamorphoses X.25–6, trans. Kline)
So they were gone, then, into the sunset. Proteus watched their sails – torn but strong – fill with wind, and with it the last light. Orange sails, a flame against flame. Yes. They were gone.
He could not say what he felt. Relief, that they were free, and happy: it filled his heart so that it lifted, like a sail. And a sorrow as heavy as the coming night, jewelled with the weight of stars.
Poetry again? That was what Marina would say, if she were standing beside him. But Marina was on that ship with its sails full of fire, heading into the horizon. She would see the sea, now, and breathe freely. She would write her own poetry, instead of trading quotations with him.
He watched from the balcony a moment more, and went indoors, quietly. He had been raised into this life. His duty was a quiet thing, always part of him.
A prince of Syracuse was a busy man, even now – especially now. The Book of Peace took many cares from the Twelve Cities, but it was still newly come to Syracuse, and that meant work. There were guards to be assigned to it, there were scholars who wished to consult it, there were religious rites which had to be altered around it. There were still harbour repairs to be completed.
And in addition to all of this, there were, as always, political concerns to smooth away.
Proteus set to it with a will: it was work he loved. To be in the right place, at the right time, with the right words – that was his business. His instincts were good. He trained with the guard, and the guard loved him; he spoke with the scholars and they knew he was a well-read man. Ambassadors and local leaders found themselves charmed and reasoned into compliance.
And so the months passed. He was busy, not just with working, but with living. A hundred little things occupied his senses, the blend of spices at a state dinner, the different textures of the many formal outfits he wore. The good, bone-deep feeling of exhaustion in his body, when he had sweated in the practice ring.
So he was not sad, exactly. Your life occupies you: you adapt to it, whether you will or no. If there were moments of sorrow, they were swallowed into a thousand other moments of satisfaction, irritation, tiredness, glad surprise. The months passed.
When he missed Marina, it was in small things. He had lived close by her, worked alongside her, for many years. So it was the marks of her presence that now marked where she was not. The sound of her jewellery as she moved, and the glint of it in the light; the perfume she wore, lingering in the air. The instinctive awareness of another body at his side.
He had not known his senses were so attuned to her. They catalogued silence, space, empty air, as sharply as sound and presence.
Little things, sensual things. Fragments, without a human being to spin them into a whole.
That was how he missed her: as a shadow, an absence. Her loss did not feel like an open wound. It was an empty shape at his side.
A bright shadow, so bright it was almost as if she had never left.
The way he missed Sinbad was different. He had spent years missing Sinbad, quietly, but that had long since subsided into an equally quiet acceptance.
This – this was new. For the space of an afternoon or two, he had had Sinbad close enough to see, to touch. To circle those newly-strong shoulders with his arms. Sinbad had smelled of salt. His eyes had glittered like the sun on a dark, dark sea. Proteus remembered thinking, his clothes are of fine make, almost as good as mine – he has done well, then. He is well.
For the space of an evening, if that, he had heard Sinbad laugh again.
Sinbad was not part of his life, and had not been for a long time. There was nothing there for Proteus to miss. And yet he did. It was as if a magic door had suddenly opened, revealing some miraculous land of the gods, and the next moment it had slammed shut.
Like a child who still believed in miracles, his thoughts kept wandering to that closed door. To that what if, what if, what if.
Time passed with no news of the Chimera. Proteus' father seemed relieved; so did the Council of Twelve. None of them asked Proteus what he felt – perhaps none of them dared. It was just as well, since he had no idea what he would say.
Much of the time, his usual calm prevailed. But it was a wide calm, with space for many things in it. Sometimes those things were echoes of his wild joy and relief – when he thought of Sinbad's reappearance, or his proven honour and safe passage from Syracuse. With Sinbad long absent, those echoes sounded strange, wistful.
Sometimes there was the thought of Marina, and her face when he told her to follow her heart. Mine is here in Syracuse, he'd said, and it was true. It was even true when he missed her, for what was the shadow of her that remained by his side, if not his heart?
There was a satisfaction in knowing that he had done right by her. She was where she was born to be, with someone who loved her fiercely and honourably. It was a painful satisfaction, but it was real.
What is the word for that, Proteus wondered, watching the sun sink beneath the horizon, and it came to him as the light dwindled to the glow around the Tower of Peace: bittersweet.
Summer turned to autumn, and autumn to winter. The sea grew grey and full of storms, like an old man who has nothing left in him but rage. Ships returned to the harbour in Syracuse to wait for spring.
The Chimera did not return. Proteus had not expected her to: Sinbad was an old hand, and most likely the ship and her crew had some place of their own where they usually wintered, some less-than-legal port with its own rough kind of safety. He hoped it was safety.
He went to the temple, and prayed for safety for them, amid the winter storms. Around him, anxious wives and parents entreated the gods to watch over their loved ones who were far away. For a moment he felt a kind of peace: the great letting-go of distance and long journeys, the universal separation which even he could not fight.
The months passed.
In the cold depths of winter, he hoped they were somewhere warm. On a beach somewhere, perhaps, dicing and staking their plunder, watching their treasure change hands. Marina would fleece the lot of them. She had a gift for games of chance – she and Proteus had played many of them, fierce battles. Marina had a way of bringing out his competitive spirit.
It was strange to think of that, now. If Sinbad was an old hand at sailing, Proteus was an old hand at letting go of things: ego, insults, his free time… It was the first skill you learned, as a dutiful prince. Proteus, raised into duty, excelled at it.
Only twice had he ever seized something he wanted and held on: when he asked Marina to marry him for love, and when he wagered his life for Sinbad's. Both beyond his reach, now.
He looked out on the sea and sent up a prayer to the sea-gods, who helped him to let go, even against his will.
Spring came to Syracuse, and the first boats dared to leave or enter the harbour. Traders arrived, some of them daring, weather-beaten men, some of them powerful merchants with many friends in the Twelve Cities. Where there had been winter festivals to shut out the cold, now there were spring celebrations to welcome back life and travel.
The rhythm of the year swept Proteus up with it, into meetings with wealthy traders and out again into the marketplaces of Syracuse. He trained hard with the royal guard. Their training increased as the days grew longer, ready for summer, the season of battle. May the gods give us peace, the saying went; and if not peace, honour.
But the gods had given them peace, through Sinbad and Marina. Proteus' thoughts turned to them when he saw sails on the horizon – the peace-bringers who wandered the edges of the world, outside the Book's protective circle, outside the light of the Tower.
That spring was a gentle one: the whole world seemed glad. The winds were soft, the new-come flowers in his father's garden as vivid as flame. To look on them felt like a gift.
Light bloomed on the horizon each morning, and with it Proteus' silent hopes, unspoken.
Like a gift, in the summer, they came.
Proteus saw the orange sails from the balcony, and was racing down into the city before the royal guard could catch up with him. Market stallholders waved him hello to no avail. A flock of gulls scattered into the air, startled, as he sprinted through their midst. With his outer garment flapping around him, he was a streak of starflower-blue across the streets.
"Now would you look at that," Sinbad's voice drawled, as he reached the Chimera. "We haven't been here five seconds, and they're already sending out the guards."
He looked Proteus dead in the eye and grinned. "Sinbad," Proteus said, reaching for him.
Under Proteus' hands he was warm from the work of sailing. Proteus let his hands reach out and spread to cover as much of Sinbad's back as they could, half-unconsciously, fingers pressing in to hold him.
"It's good to see you," Sinbad said quietly. Proteus didn't think he'd seen Sinbad smile like this since – gods, since they were both about twelve, or so. His heart lit up to see it. Marina must have been good for him.
And there she was, dressed for sailing but still recognisable in brilliant teal, her earrings catching the sun. Her eyes were bright and dancing. She stood back, as if unsure, but when Proteus opened his arms she came running into them.
She smelled of sweat and the sea, and with them some new perfume: Proteus wondered if Sinbad had bought it for her, extravagant. She smelled like herself. Her body still fit in his arms the way it always had, and he couldn't help smiling against her hair.
Whatever happens, he thought – a strange thought, for what did he think would happen? – whatever happens, I am glad to hold her again. I am glad to see them again.
The invitation to his family's summer home – a small place outside the city, with its own small harbour – seemed to flow easily. One of the men had joked about leaving Fiji for this, complaining to Sinbad the way one of Proteus' own men would to him. "Oh, you want to stay in Fiji for the rainy season?" the big man, Kale, said. "That can be arranged." The crew laughed.
But Proteus, some impulse lighting up in him, had said, If it's a private beach you want, and invited them. It hadn't even occurred to him until afterwards that his father had the right to be asked – he felt half-drunk on the idea of it, of time with them in the sun, where the wildflowers grew.
Dymas, to his surprise, liked the idea. "You work too hard, son," he said firmly. "You need a holiday, and if bringing a band of pirates to our ancestral home is what it takes – then I'll welcome them myself."
"You're sure you don't mind?" Proteus asked. Dymas had never let Sinbad come with them to the summer palace when Proteus was a boy: he remembered missing Sinbad, every time. "No fears that he'll steal the family treasure?"
"He gave my son back to me." His father's voice was very soft. "Nothing he could take is worth more than that."
When Proteus came back to make the invitation official, Sinbad raised the same question, threatening to rob him blind. Proteus laughed. "I put my faith in Marina," he said, throwing her a smile.
"We all put our faith in Marina," said the man known only as Rat, dropping upside-down from the rigging.
They poured into the summer palace like an army, though in truth they were very few. The crew ran here, there and everywhere, divvying up bedrooms with no regard for whose they might have been beforehand. Proteus stood by and laughed.
Unpacked, they took to the coast for a picnic. Marina, who had been to the summer palace before, had made her way unerringly to the wine cellar and brought out a few of the better vintages. "Stealing the prince's wine?" Sinbad had said, with a rakish quirk of his eyebrow – Proteus wasn't sure who it was intended for, him or Marina. "Look at this, Proteus, she's more of a pirate than I am."
"Oh, you're just bitter you didn't get to it first," Marina had replied, with that wicked, bright-eyed smile Proteus knew so well, and his breath had caught in his chest.
"I hope you don't mind that I took your wine," she said to Proteus afterwards, as they walked out towards the cliffs under the sun. She looked at him with dark, speaking eyes – eyes that said, is it all right, is this all right, I'm sorry.
Proteus smiled at her, warm and genuine. "What else is it there for?" he said laughingly. In truth, he liked how casually she treated his possessions. He wanted her to feel that she had a right to what was his, that she could rely on it.
Stealing wine could be the prerogative of a friend, not just a fiancée, after all. Right?
On the cliffs, they feasted on bread and cheese, and passed around sesame-honey sweets along with the wine. The first time one of the pirates made a dirty joke, a look of shock went round the company as they all seemed to remember Proteus' presence at once. Proteus let them stew for a moment, and then countered with one he'd heard from the palace guard: that had them in fits. Any remaining tension was gone after that.
Food finished, some of the pirates lay still in the grass, as if to soak up the sun; others started play-fights or, in the case of Rat, turned cartwheels. Sinbad refereed the play-fights. Marina demonstrated her newfound skill in backflips.
There was a moment in the afternoon when the sun, already bright, broke out between clouds and made all the air and sea dazzling with light. Proteus, looking towards the sea, found his eyes meeting Sinbad's. He watched as Sinbad's face broke into a smile, before Sinbad turned his head to look back at the pirates roughhousing, wind rippling through his hair.
Proteus thought, suddenly and with blinding certainty: I cannot let him go.
Oh, no.
The days passed in long, warm stretches, brightness fading into evenings of music and the wind from the sea. Sinbad's crew were always making music. They filled the summer palace with songs from far-off ports, until Proteus found himself humming them along the corridors of the palace, or adding his voice to the night's singing without even knowing the words.
Marina coaxed him into playing his aulos for them at times, the slow elegiac songs and sometimes – when he felt like showing off – the faster dances. Sinbad dug out an old lyre and demanded that Proteus demonstrate his boyhood skill with it, which had in truth been very little. Proteus strummed clumsily but convincingly.
He waited until Sinbad was off-guard to say, as if deep in thought, "I seem to remember teaching you some of this stuff, Sinbad…"
Sinbad cursed him with a sailor's inventiveness, but that didn't save him from his crew, eager to hear exactly how bad their captain could be at playing the lyre. Very bad, as it turned out.
It was very funny, but that wasn't why Proteus couldn't stop smiling. It reminded him of childhood, but that wasn't the reason for the warm glow of his heart, like embers in his chest. He looked over at Marina: she smiled at him. It was a smile he knew well, that warm smile that made her eyes wrinkle at the corners, half-lidded. It said, this is funny, I love it, I love these people, I love you.
Proteus wished strongly that he were better at lying to himself.
He knew why he loved to see Sinbad play the lyre badly, his lyre, at his urging – the same way he knew why he kept flinging an arm round Sinbad's shoulders, or catching him when he stretched and made a noise of pain, pressing a hand into his back and kneading at the stiff muscle. Not that he ever seemed to know why at the time. It was afterwards that he understood that impulse, the urgent voice that said of Sinbad, Mine, my own. Mine to care for. Mine to keep. Sinbad was not a man who could be kept.
As the evening turned to night, most of the pirates sought their beds. A chill came into the air. Proteus, arms laden with half-empty wine-jars, was the last to go indoors.
He had meant to go to bed, but leaving the kitchen, he heard sounds of movement and laughter not far away. He found Sinbad and Marina in a sitting-room close to his own quarters. It looked out on the sea, but neither was looking: Marina was lounging on a couch, and Sinbad on cushions on the floor, his head pillowed in her lap. She was playing with his hair.
Sinbad's eyes flickered up when Proteus entered the room. "Look who it is," he said, his voice lazy and satisfied. "Party never stops. I'll get us some more wine." He made a move as if to get up, and fell back onto the cushions with a sigh.
"Stay," Proteus said. "I'll get it." He went back to the kitchen.
When he returned, Sinbad had hardly moved, and his eyes were closed as Marina's fingers moved in his hair. Proteus felt a flash of satisfaction so strong it was like lightning – so strong he was sure it showed, naked, on his face – at the sight.
Sinbad's eyes were closed, but Marina's were open, and Proteus knew that she had seen it. Marina had always been perceptive. She knew that flash of gladness had to be because Sinbad had stayed. Because all Proteus had been saying all along, even against his own will, had been, Stay. Stay for me.
She did not look troubled by it. Proteus took a seat, stretched out, and let Sinbad joke with him, in the manner of a drowsy, tipsy man who finds everything funny. He watched Marina, more relaxed than he had ever seen her. Every now and then she joined in, quiet and unbearably funny, or broke into elated laughter. Her sharp wits, too, were blunted by this gentle weariness.
It was warm in the sitting-room, and breezy. Proteus lay back on the cushions and let their laughter carry him somewhere else, somewhere soft, somewhere good.
It was good, being with them. It was happiness. A carefree, sunlit happiness, that sometimes grew so bright it was like pain.
In the day they slept, or wandered the cliffs. They held mock-games – Proteus was amused to see that Sinbad's crew knew some of the games Syracuse's guards used to train. Sinbad had remembered Syracuse vividly, it seemed. They ate when they felt like it. When the day grew too hot to bear, they would sleep. At night they drank and made music for the crickets and the bats.
When the weather permitted, they went down to the seashore. Marina knew full well how to protect her skin from sun and sea winds, but Sinbad still checked that she had, and it was common to see him diligently applying lotion to her face and the back of her neck. The naked tenderness of the gesture – it brought the happiness in Proteus to that dazzling point of pain again.
He was still in love with Marina. The shadow of her that had haunted his steps in Syracuse was gone, fleeing before the real woman, but a hundred new bright shadows had risen up to take its place. A hundred little intimacies he had once had, that now were become tiny points of pain.
He saw a hair fall out of place, over her ear: his fingers smarted because they could not move to fix it. A dab of lotion on her cheek that he could not smooth away. In the evening, when they sat apart, Proteus' shoulder ached for the lack of her weight.
He wondered if she knew; he did not know if he wanted her to. She had seen what he felt towards Sinbad. He could rest a hand on the back of Sinbad's neck, casually, and her eyes would flicker. Push Sinbad into the water for the excuse to touch his sea-cold skin, and Marina would laugh, eyes glinting.
When Sinbad sang along to some love song from a foreign port, hands drumming in rhythm against the ground, Proteus' gaze would catch on him and never draw away.
When Marina joined the song, he was lost.
I cannot let him go, that was what he had thought. Not Sinbad, not either of them. Proteus was adept at letting go. In his calm prince's faith, he knew he could do it again, when asked. But he had never dreaded it like this before, like his own death.
It was happiness. That was why it hurt.
So he stopped fighting it. In the cool sea air, it seemed pointless to try to draw back and stem the pain. It would come, when the time came, but the time was not yet.
He took to watching for Marina's posture at the breakfast table: she often slept in odd positions, and came down to eat with her shoulders high and tight. He let himself go to her and coax the knots away. When she sighed, sleepy with pleasure, he felt it in the breathing warmth under his fingers. Sometimes she said: Sinbad, you have to try this. Proteus dug his thumbs in and wrung relaxation out of cords of muscle, and a groan out of Sinbad's throat.
Every brush of fingers, every sound, was like sparks; like the sudden, golden sweetness of the tiganites they ate, edged with the day's heat.
He noticed how they both leaned into his touch. He noticed it when the crew held wrestling bouts, and he pinned Sinbad and felt Sinbad still in his hold. Body to warm body, skin to living skin. He let his hand linger in Sinbad's afterwards and watched Sinbad's eyes grow soft and dark.
I want to see that all the time, Proteus thought. As he wanted the way Marina's face lit up, when he turned to her with a question of politics. He freed a strand of hair caught in her earring, and her breath hitched: he wanted that. It was a good sound. The little shiver as his thumb pulled away, a happy shiver that he knew of old, from the long years of betrothal when they grew bolder with each other.
It made him impulsive. Every time he acted on impulse – to reach out and touch, to keep, mine to keep – he saw little marks of comfort, desire. He felt drunk on it.
What did the future matter? He stumbled onwards, casting wisdom to the wind.
Sinbad acquired a sunburn, for which his crew was quick to mock him. "What did I tell you," Kale said to him, with a wide grin, as he winced in pain. Proteus reached for a pot of salve. Beneath his hands the burnt skin was very hot. He could tell when it brought relief to Sinbad, when the sharpness in his body eased: he could feel Sinbad's breathing.
Without his mind's command, his hands made themselves gentle. He brushed salve over Sinbad's shoulder-blade. For a moment, the tenderness of it made him want to weep.
That night, Marina reached over to brush spilled wine from Proteus' tunic. It was by an effort of will that he kept his breathing steady. She smiled and leaned into him as the sea breeze flowed in, as if it were the old days. With her head on his shoulder, he felt as he had back then – as if he had swallowed all the stars in the sky.
Another night, they were in the sitting room near Proteus' quarters. The sky was very clear, crowded with stars. Proteus looked over to Marina: in the moonlight, he could see the goosebumps starting on her arms.
He went to his room and came back with a thin shawl in deep blue, something he'd planned to give her long ago. Marina's head was in Sinbad's lap, Sinbad's fingers massaging her scalp. "Oh, Proteus," she said, in that sleepy, blissful tone he loved. "Thank you."
She got up and held her arms out, letting Proteus wrap it around her shoulders. Silver light caught on her cheekbone.
"Hey, I wasn't finished," Sinbad protested, a laugh in his voice. "Get back here." He raised an eyebrow at Proteus. "Unless you want to be my next victim?"
Proteus looked to Marina. She nodded at him, ensconced again in the cushions by Sinbad. "You should do it," she said, "he's got magic hands."
Proteus laughed and sat on the ground, his back to Sinbad. The stars were bright, blurry, each with a nimbus of light around it… His eyes closed. Sinbad's fingers were very gentle, carding through his hair. He hummed with pleasure and tilted his head further back. It felt like… rain meeting a river. A hundred little touches, bringing the surface of the water to life. The great, peaceful, powerful current beneath.
He hummed again, and realised it was taking on a tune, an old Thracian song Marina had taught him. There she was, harmonising. Proteus felt a glad, spellbound shiver within himself as her silvery voice spiralled up, up, up into the night.
At last Sinbad's hands stopped. "I wasn't finished," Proteus murmured, and Sinbad said, "My hands are tired." Proteus reached for one of Sinbad's hands and kissed it, just a brush of lips across the knuckles.
"You charmer," he heard Marina laugh. He got up and clambered onto the couch, next to Sinbad. The world felt soft at the edges. He shifted closer, head on Sinbad's shoulder now. Pressed into the warm, dark crook of his neck, nosing at dried sweat. His mouth brushed the place where neck and shoulder met.
He felt, more than heard, Sinbad make a soft noise – not quite a gasp, not quite a laugh. The cushions gave a little, underneath him, and he shifted to compensate. It brought him further up along Sinbad, mouth just below his jaw, just barely touching. He pressed in closer. A warm weight went round him: Sinbad's arm.
The night was silver, the sky wine-dark. Wine in a goblet. Proteus felt drunk, tranquil and very alive. He snaked an arm over the back of the couch, round Sinbad's shoulder. Found the baby-soft hair at the back of Marina's neck and stroked.
"Oh, you can do that more," she said. He felt her shift on the couch, move halfway onto Sinbad's lap. She was kissing Sinbad, slow and deep.
Sinbad moved his arm; Proteus let go of Marina, hand falling back to Sinbad's shoulder. He watched as Sinbad brought a hand up to cup Marina's jaw. The way Sinbad kissed her was achingly tender. They knew each other: there was a rhythm to it. Slow and deep, like the tide.
Proteus mouthed at Sinbad's jaw again, and almost felt a shiver go through him to Marina. They broke apart for a moment – "Hang on," Marina said, shifting on the couch again. She was trying to get all the way onto Sinbad's lap, legs across him. Proteus reached out and lifted her legs so she was sitting across them both.
"Ah," she breathed, "that's better," and nuzzled at Sinbad's neck, just below his ear. Proteus' hand was still on her thigh. Absent-mindedly, his thumb stroked at her hip. There was that happy shiver again, that glad exhale. He kept stroking. She kissed Sinbad again, and he sighed into her mouth like a man coming home.
Some other night, things might have gone differently, perhaps. But they were tired, and the wine that night had been good and strong. It wasn't long until real weariness set in. They parted and went to their beds.
Around them, the night was blue and silver.
Nothing seemed much changed, when Proteus came down to the breakfast table that morning. He dipped his bread in wine and watched Marina blink sleep out of her eyes. Sinbad came down and clapped him on the shoulder, in his usual fashion.
And why should anything change? Last night had simply continued the pattern between the three of them: little actions, momentary pleasures. Chasing a closeness that felt good, without any need to name it. Proteus wondered if the other two had the same sense of what they were doing that he did – a feeling of reaching out blindfolded, stepping forwards in the dark, eyes shut for fear of seeing where they were going.
We keep thinking that if we take only one small step at a time, we'll never reach the edge, he thought, and a silent, mirthless laugh broke his lips.
Then a sea breeze blew in, bringing with it the sounds of the crew already on their way to the cliffs, and he let the thought go.
Sinbad and Marina had not changed towards him, but over the next few days Proteus realised that the crew had. They had never looked at him with respect for his status, which he found refreshing. But neither had they ever looked at him like this. It felt rather like being in the glare of the noonday sun, but for hours on end.
His skin prickled with unease, a prince's social instincts. He noticed how their eyes flickered to him and then away. Their body language was easy, relaxed, but there was a sharp edge to it now, a veteran's readiness to fight at will.
One afternoon, he was on board ship with Rat, checking the spare rope for signs of fraying. It was a common ship's task and one that Proteus had done often. His eyes and fingers traced the rope methodically, almost unconsciously, as they talked and joked together in the sun.
"Tell me something," said Rat, in his easy, lazy way. "You knew Sinbad as a boy. Was he always this reckless, or did it take practice?"
Proteus laughed, looking out for a moment at the glittering sea. "Oh, he got plenty of practice… But he didn't really need it. He was always throwing himself into danger." He looked Rat in the eyes and knew his face looked rueful. "I have to admit, I encouraged him."
Rat grinned slyly. "The prince likes a little danger too, eh? Adds a little spice to life."
"It certainly felt like it." Proteus brought his eyes back to the rope, passing steadily under his hands. "It… seems to have worked out better for him, as a pirate captain."
Rat's fingers flew over the twisted fibres. "Let me tell you a little something about the captain," he said, conspiratorial. He leaned a fraction closer to Proteus. "He doesn't just like danger. He's in love with danger. Falls for it every time."
Like a flash of lightning, the image of Sinbad fighting the kraken, leaping with unthinking grace, seared across the inside of Proteus' eyelids.
"And not just in a fight," Rat went on. "Not just when he sails us through the Dragon's Teeth, like a madman! I'm talking about love. Amore, hm?
"He falls in love with danger." He was looking Proteus dead in the eyes. "A real pirate. He always falls for what he can't have."
Proteus had a sudden sense of walking a tightrope across an abyss. "Then it's a good thing he has Marina," he said, very softly.
"Yes," Rat said. There was steel in that lazy voice. He pulled the rope suddenly taut and straight in his hands. "It's a good thing he has Marina."
Late that night, Proteus stood on a balcony looking out at the sea. A sense of déjà vu throbbed in him like a grip around his heart. Had it really been a bare year ago that he had knelt before Marina, on a balcony like this one? And three days later, held her in his arms, before she shook the dust of Syracuse from her feet?
There was no wind. The gauzy curtains behind him lay still; the sea was a mirror. It was as if time had stopped.
That was what he had been longing for, wasn't it. For time to stop. A time outside of time, with no past to hurt them, and no future to fear. And that was what they had had, for a while; but Proteus was a sailor. He knew no sea stayed becalmed for ever.
They had been acting as if there were no boundaries between them, no ties, no bonds. But there were. One year did not dissolve them. Proteus thought of the webs of obligation and loyalty that bound them all, and the old wounds that lurked beneath.
All is changed, he had thought, when Eris was defeated. It was; but he had not asked how, or what that meant. The border lines had never been redrawn. He was in the dark, and very close to the edge.
No-one had been wronged, yet.
It was time to take the blindfolds off.
It was simple, in the end. All he had to do was tell Marina: We need to talk. He had borne the words in him all day, a weight in his throat, like the sight of a setting sun.
Marina nodded, her eyes dark and serious, when he said them. It was what they had always said to each other in the days of their long engagement. They had been used to talking to each other, once.
Now, they found themselves in the little sitting-room near Proteus' quarters. The last light was dying over the sea. Neither of them sat down. Marina stood by the window, and the shadows around her were blue and gold, blue and gold.
She turned to him, her face expectant. "Marina," Proteus said. Her name came out softer than he had meant it to. He thought of words, and discarded them. "Marina, what are we doing?"
For a moment she looked like a statue, untouched and unmoving. Then her ambassador's calm seemed to desert her: her face crumpled. "I don't know," she said, her voice just as soft, just as tired as he felt. "Are we? Are we doing something?"
"The crew seem to think we are." Even now, it was a relief just to tell her things, to share a problem, if nothing else… "Rat spoke to me yesterday," he said. "I think he wanted to know what I was doing with you. Both of you."
Marina smiled, briefly. "He would."
"That was when I realised," Proteus said, "that I didn't know. I didn't know what we were doing." Their eyes met. "Do you?"
She bit her lip. The dying sun was a slash of fire across her face.
"No," she said. "Proteus, I –" She fell silent a moment. "I didn't leave because I didn't love you."
"I know." He felt that grip around his heart again.
She went on as if he hadn't spoken: "When I left… I could hardly believe you weren't angry with me. I thought you had to be."
"No. Never," Proteus said, the words torn out of him.
A smile crossed her face. "I know that now," she said, something bittersweet in her voice. "But I kept thinking… How? Anyone would be angry – I set out to save your life, and I came back with my new lover in tow –"
She had not raised her voice, and yet it had become more urgent: a trained speaker's trick. Proteus knew it well.
"Marina, you saved my life," he said. "You saved his life. How could I ever be angry with you?"
Marina looked at him, with those dark, speaking eyes. In the sunset her face was half shadowed, half glowing at the edges. She was sun-tanned and callused and so beautiful that Proteus' heart ached.
Voice almost cracking, she said, "Didn't you miss me?"
The ache of fondness in his heart became a flood. "Every day," he said, rough and honest. "Every moment," and she seemed to lurch forward, and then their arms were round each other once more, her head on his shoulder.
I missed this, Proteus thought, and I am glad.
At length they broke apart. Marina looked up at him: her face was full of that deep, painful sweetness.
"Then how could you not be angry?" she said.
For a moment, he could not speak. He had never questioned it, never tried to put words to it before.
As if it had been dredged up out of him, he said, low and ragged, "Because I love him." And then the words came in a torrent, and he could not stop them: "Because I know what it is to be loved by you, and I want that for him. I want it as badly as I've ever wanted anything for myself." He let out a shaky breath, something like a laugh. "How could I be angry with you for loving him? I'd be the biggest hypocrite alive."
He had looked down. When he lifted his gaze again, he saw that Marina's eyes were bright. Wet. Her lips were parted as if the breath had been knocked out of her.
"Do you know how he talks about you?" she said, her voice halfway to a whisper. "Proteus, when he tells stories about the two of you, he's like a man in love. And the more he is, the more I love him."
Proteus stared: he could not help staring. There was a strange look on her face, something halfway between weeping and hope.
Her mouth broke into a tiny, wondering smile. "I thought I'd be jealous. I thought my love for him would get smaller, every time, but it just grows. It never runs out."
He took her hands in his. He felt like a rain-soaked traveller, blinded and dazed by the sun. "I love you," he said, in the same whisper. "I love you, for the way you love him." His heart was light, saying it, freed from the weight of silence.
Marina gripped his hands – "And I love him for the way he loves you," she said. Her voice was hardly more than a breath, but it was a breath filled with such pain and wonder… "Neither of us can let you go. You're part of us, Proteus."
"The two of you have all my heart."
She looked at him with dancing eyes. "You said your heart was in Syracuse."
Proteus lifted one hand from her grip to brush a knuckle against her cheek. "The only things I have ever prized above Syracuse," he said softly, "are you and him."
It was in that moment, the air still and hushed around them, that they heard Sinbad's footsteps reach the doorway.
Proteus saw his face fall, the fleeting look of hurt like a lightning strike, followed by the thunder of his body tensing. "Am I interrupting?" he said. It was his usual drawl, but it was shaking.
"No," Proteus heard, from Marina at his side, "Sinbad –", just as Sinbad moved as if to turn away, tension and sharp grief in every line of his body.
For a moment, Proteus was frozen. Then he thought, white-hot and light-headed with it: I can do something about this. At last, at last –
"No," he said, voice ringing out. "Wait." His feet carried him forward. He felt weightless, half mad. His heart, his head, blazing with sunlight.
"For what," he heard Sinbad say, and Proteus' arms went out, one hand to his waist, one to his jaw. He let his fingers spread across Sinbad's cheek and jaw, revel in it. Pulled Sinbad in close.
"This," Proteus said, and kissed him.
Sinbad was a warm weight in the circle of his arm, a rise and fall of breath beneath his fingers – and then, suddenly, a live thing, moving, gasping, kissing back. One of Sinbad's arms came up to grasp at his shoulders. Proteus clasped him even tighter, thumb stroking at his jaw all the while. Sinbad, Sinbad, here and this close where Proteus could kiss him, have the joy of him under his hands. Body to warm body, skin to living skin.
He broke away, and then leaned back in to brush Sinbad's mouth with his again: he couldn't help it. He did not ever want to let go.
"I've been waiting to do that all summer," he said. "All year."
Sinbad laughed, breathless. He said nothing. His arm went to slip from around Proteus' shoulder, but Proteus slid his own arm up, up from Sinbad's waist, along the warm strength of his back to grasp Sinbad's shoulder in turn. They stayed there, close, almost forehead to forehead.
Marina came up and pressed the line of her body to Sinbad's on his other side, pressed her lips to his, very gently. Sinbad's arm slid round her waist almost unthinkingly. He exhaled into the kiss.
"That's what we were talking about when you came in," she said softly.
"How irresistible I am?" Sinbad said. He still sounded a little out of breath, and there was a wild light in his eyes.
"Yes," Proteus said. He felt fingers interlace with his, as Marina took hold of his free hand. "Both of you are, to me."
"Really?" Sinbad looked surprised as soon as the word was out, as if he hadn't expected to say it. There was a kind of soft disbelief in his face. Proteus saw Marina's arm tighten a little around him.
He raised an eyebrow at Sinbad. "Do you need more convincing?" He meant it to sound teasing, but he knew the way his mouth broke into a smile – helpless – gave him away.
There was that breathless almost-laugh again from Sinbad. "I wouldn't say no," he said. "I've – wanted that for a long time."
The rueful look on his face, the hint of sadness at the corners of his eyes… Proteus wanted to brush it away. He settled for letting his hand press into Sinbad's shoulder, letting his joy and his hunger show in the touch. Beside him, Marina's eyes were alight.
Proteus loved to see her look at Sinbad like that, fierce and ecstatic.
Sinbad turned a little to look at her. "Marina," he said. Oh, Proteus thought. We say her name the same way. "Is this what you want?"
Her answering smile was breathtaking. "Sinbad, look at him," she said, voice low and tender. "How could I not?"
She lifted her head to kiss his cheek, brushing against the corner of his mouth. "I want you. And I want you to have what you want." Proteus felt her fingers tighten around his. "I want all of us to have what we want."
The corner of Sinbad's mouth quirked up. "Well, I am a pirate," he said softly. "So that sounds good to me."
The setting sun was gone; the sea and the room were dark. Marina's eyes were still a little wet, still shining now in the faint moonlight. "Good," she breathed. "Good."
She let go of Proteus' hand and stepped forward, Sinbad's arm releasing her. Proteus knew what she meant when she tilted her face up towards his. When their lips met, it was as natural as the phrase of a well-worn song.
Gods, he'd missed this, this familiar kiss. The touch of her mouth on his, a touch he knew so well, that could still send white-hot fire racing through his veins. His thumb stroking over the sweet arch of her cheekbone.
They broke apart: Sinbad was watching them. "All of us get what we want, huh?" he murmured. His eyes met Proteus', no fear in them, only delight.
Proteus grinned back, feeling suddenly out of breath. He relaxed into it. Let desire show in his face and his body.
"Why don't we get started?" he said.
Later, in the deep dark of night, they lay sprawled on Proteus' bed. It was easily wide enough for three, but still they lay close together.
They were all three panting, a little. Proteus lay still, feeling his chest rise and fall, his breathing even out. He felt very aware of his body. The sweat drying on his skin, the heat where it met Sinbad's, Proteus' head kissing-distance from his shoulder. The lightning urgency of touch settling into the calm, glad ache of a body well used.
He was unbelievably happy. He couldn't stop smiling, breathing into Sinbad's shoulder. Oh no, he thought, still smiling. I want to do that again. And again, and again. Possibly every day for the rest of his life.
He lay to one side of Sinbad, one leg slung over Sinbad's. On the other side lay Marina. She was pressed up against Sinbad's flank: one of his arms was around her, easy, natural. One single strand of her hair caught the moonlight, moving as she breathed.
Sinbad breathed out, long and slow. He said, his voice hoarse and wonder-struck: "Wow."
Proteus laughed into his shoulder. He couldn't help it, with this much joy in him. "Wow," he agreed.
He had thought he knew what he felt for them. He had – and yet he had not known, until it had come pouring out of him in every touch, exulting in every closeness, in every sign of pleasure.
The moon was fully risen: it poured silver into the room, outlining things in sharp shadow. Sleepy, Proteus watched the pulse of breath in Sinbad's throat. The movement of Marina's hair, gentle as the lap of waves on the shore, which he could hear, far off…
"I never thought I'd end up here," Sinbad said, very quietly. The words sounded like a confession.
Marina rolled over a little, so that she was facing him and Proteus more. "What were you thinking," she murmured, "when you found us?" Her fingers stroked over Sinbad's chest, soothing.
Sinbad's eyes closed. It seemed, for a long moment, as if he weren't going to answer.
"I knew you loved him once," he said, at last. His voice was very soft, but there was no trace of sleep-haze in it. "I knew you still wanted him. Who wouldn't want him?" His eyes met Proteus' for a moment.
He turned his head to face Marina fully. "I never thought that you would leave me. Believe me, I never suspected you of that." The words seemed to be drawn out of him, slow and heartfelt. "But when I saw you two standing together… I fell into old habits.
"For a moment, it was like seeing you come to Syracuse on that ship, all those years ago. Like there was no room for me."
Proteus felt something squeeze around his heart like a vice. He bent his head to press his mouth to Sinbad's shoulder, unable to speak. Took Sinbad's free hand in his. Across the bed, Marina whispered fiercely, "Never. Never think that."
Sinbad leaned over to kiss her. "I know," he breathed, so quiet that Proteus felt the words more than heard them. His hand, caught in Proteus', squeezed tight.
Coolness rolled over them as the faint hint of a breeze filled the room, and the sea grew a little louder, far off. The three of them huddled closer as if by instinct. "And you?" Sinbad said, addressing Marina. "What were you feeling, all this time?"
Marina shifted, trying to get comfortable again, before she spoke. "When we came here…" She broke off: Proteus knew she was thinking what to say. "I'd given up on that part of my life. I thought it was over. I didn't regret my choice – I was happy, starting something new, with you." Warmth filled her voice for a moment. "But I thought Proteus was lost to me. I thought that was what I'd chosen. And then we came back here, and… I realised that part of me never let go of anything at all."
Proteus felt his heart ache at the words as if it sought to echo what she had felt. What he had felt, that sharp, sweet pain from breastbone to throat.
"You've always known how to make hard choices," he said, lifting his head a little to meet her eyes. "But – you never were good at letting go."
Sinbad laughed under his breath. "He's right," he said, his voice full of affection. "If you knew how to let go, you wouldn't be Marina." There was a seriousness to the words, underneath. It was Marina's stubborn, unyielding love that had saved them both.
Marina smiled, sleepy. She leaned further up, head and shoulders half-cradled on Sinbad's chest. "And you, Proteus?" she asked. "What were you thinking?"
Proteus let his eyes trace the moonlit room before he replied. "I don't know," he said, his gaze still on the ceiling. In his mind's eye, he saw fiery sails in the harbour.
"I never thought that this would happen." The words came out rueful. "I didn't even know how to hope for it. But when you both came back…" How to phrase it? What words could there be, for this?
"You taught my heart to hope again," he said. He heard their breath catch. "I suppose in the end, I found that I couldn't let go."
A hand reached out to touch him: Marina's. He sat halfway-up, balanced on an elbow, to see that she was leaning over Sinbad. "I don't want you to let go," she said, low and heartfelt. She looked at Sinbad. "I don't want to let go again. Not after everything."
Sinbad closed his eyes for a moment, the way he often did, when he felt something very deeply. He opened them again. "I think I've done enough letting go in my life," he said, the words so quiet they were almost pitchless. There was the echo of old pain in his voice. "But I'm still a pirate."
Marina was watching Sinbad, but when Proteus shifted to look at her, she met his gaze. There was a silent, bittersweet understanding between them: it was the same for her. The sea, once given, was not a gift that could be taken back.
"I wouldn't ask you to stop," Proteus said. He stroked a thumb over the back of Sinbad's hand, the one he was still holding, tenderly, helplessly. "I would never ask either of you to change that for me."
Briefly, Sinbad's eyes met his. He knew Sinbad could see he was sincere. Watched Sinbad's mouth twist in pain again, thinking of the sea, and the land, and the gulf between them.
"It's late," Marina said gently. In just such a way had she ended many a council meeting. "We don't have to solve it tonight. We have time." She curled in close to Sinbad, and Proteus let himself fall back to the mattress again.
From the window, he heard the sea murmuring, lapping at the shore.
Yes, they had time. But time was what would take them away, in the end. Soon they would have to sail, making the most of what remained of the summer, while calm seas lasted. And then would come another long winter without them. A winter of patience, and prayer, and the gnawing ignorance of where they were, whether they were safe, whether they would ever return…
In his mind, Proteus rehearsed the motions: the walk up the temple steps. The kneeling to pray. The presence of those few others whose loved ones were away at such a time, praying desperately, faced with the blank unknown of the winter sea.
And suddenly it came to him, like the moon through the clouds.
He sat up again. "I won't keep you from the sea," he said, into the silence of the room. "I won't ask you to end your journeys. But come back to winter here."
Sinbad shifted to face him, Marina moving with him. They were both staring.
Proteus met their gazes steadily. A rush of affection was flooding through him: he knew they could see it, in his eyes, in his mouth. "Come back," he said. "When the storms come. Come back here. Come back to me."
He watched as it dawned on them, as their eyes lit up. Come back to winter in Syracuse every year, safe and beloved, free both to wander and to come home… Sinbad's eyes blazed with hope, Marina's lips were parted in delight. It could work. They knew it, as he knew it. This could work.
"We'd have to talk to the crew," Sinbad said, slowly. "They've gotten pretty used to Fiji…"
"They like it here, too," Marina said. "They'll go for it. Trust me."
"Oh?" Sinbad raised an eyebrow. How could such a small gesture make Proteus need to touch him so badly? "Do you know something I don't?"
Proteus lay back against the pillows, so that their heads were close together. "I suspect," he murmured, "the crew have some idea what's been going on."
Marina grinned, sudden and wicked. "He's been staring so much, Rat cornered him to ask what his intentions were," she told Sinbad.
Sinbad closed his eyes. "The crew are onto us. Of course the crew are onto us." He groaned. "That's why Kale had that talk with me the other day."
"They love you," Proteus said, thumb rubbing at Sinbad's thigh, just above his knee – when had he started doing that? "This might come as a surprise, but I like it when people do that."
Sinbad laughed. "I thought that was the whole point of this," he said. There was wetness at the corners of his eyes, and Proteus closed his own, feeling suddenly and sharply that sweet ache in his chest again. This time it didn't feel like yearning. It felt like something falling into place.
He heard Marina shift back against the pillows. "We can talk to them in the morning," she said. Drowsiness was beginning to seep into her voice. "But if they do say yes…"
The air was still for a moment. Everything seemed to hold its breath.
"If they say yes," Sinbad began. His voice was rough. He started again. "If they say yes. Then we'll come back. This winter, and every winter afterwards."
Proteus felt a smile break over his face, like moonlight over the sea.
He shifted position, resting against Sinbad's shoulder again. The living warmth of him, here, and safe, and promised to return to Proteus with the turning of the tide. And on the other side of him, Marina's sleep-slow breathing, a sound so faint and familiar that Proteus' ears hardly registered it any more, but knew it for home.
The day's weariness seemed to catch up with him all at once. He heard Marina, on the edge of sleep, murmur something to Sinbad, and Sinbad reply. The sea outside was calm and gentle, the waves just barely whispering, like a song sung under the breath.
Proteus drifted off, knowing he had reached safe harbour.