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release the calf, which sank at once. A big, flat rock jutted out of the water; she made for it, climbed out of the sea onto its top and stood silhouetted against the pale sky. Then she lay down upon her back, pillowed her head on her arms folded behind her, and seemed to sleep.
    An outlandish ritual, not one condoned by the New Religion. Thetis had accepted my offering in the name of Poseidon, then had given it instead to Nereus. Sacrilege! And she the high priestess of Poseidon. Oh, Lykomedes, you were right! In her lie the seeds of destruction for Skyros. She is not giving the Lord of the Seas his due, nor does she respect him as Earth Shaker.
    The air was milky and calm, the water limpid, but as I walked down to the waves I trembled like a man with the ague. The water had no power to cool me as I swam; Aphrodite had fastened her glossy claws hard enough in me to lacerate my very bones. Thetis was mine, and I would have her. Save poor Lykomedes and his isle.
    When I reached the rock I fastened my hands in a ledge on its side and jerked myself upward with an effort that cracked my muscles; I was crouching above her on the stone before she realised I was any nearer than the palace above Skyros Town. But she was not sleeping. Her eyes, a soft, dreamy green, were open. Then she scrambled away and looked at me black-eyed.
    ‘Don’t you touch me!’ she said, panting. ‘No man dares touch me! I have given myself to the God!’
    My hand flashed out, stopped barely short of her ankle. ‘Your vows to the God are not permanent, Thetis. You’re free to marry. And you’ll marry me.’
    ‘I belong to the God!’
    ‘If so, which God? Do you pay lip service to one and sacrifice his victims to another? You belong to me, and I dare all. If the God – either God! – requires my death for this, I will accept his judgement.’
    Mewing a note of distress and panic, she tried to slide off the rock into the sea. But I was too quick for her, grasped her leg and dragged her back, her fingers clawing at the gritty surface, her nails tearing audibly. When I took hold of her wrist I let go of her ankle and hauled her to her feet.
    She fought me like ten wildcats, teeth and nails, kicking and biting silently as I clamped my arms around her. A dozen times she slipped through them, a dozen times I captured her again, both of us smothered in blood. My shoulder was sheared, her mouth split, hanks of our hair blew away in the rising wind. This was no rape, nor did I intend that it be; this was a simple contest of strength, man against woman, the New Religion against the Old. It ended as all such contests must: with man the victor.
    We fell to the rock with an impact that knocked the breath out of her. Her body pinned beneath me and her shoulders held down, I looked into her face.
    ‘You are done fighting. I have conquered you.’
    Her lips trembled, she turned her head to one side. ‘You are he. I knew it the moment you came into the sanctuary. When I was sworn to his service, the God told me that a man would come out of the sea, a man of the sky who would dispel the sea from my mind and make me his Queen.’ She sighed. ‘So be it.’
    I installed Thetis in Iolkos as my Queen with honour and pomp. Within our first year together she became pregnant, the final joy of our union. We were happy, never more so than during those long moons waiting for our son. Neither of us dreamed of a girl.
    My own nurse, Aresune, was appointed chief midwife, so when Thetis began her labour I found myself utterly powerless; the old crone exercised her authority and banished me to the other end of my palace. For one full circuit of Phoibos’s chariot I sat alone, ignoring the servants who begged me to eat or drink, waiting, waiting… Until in the night marches Aresune came to find me. She had not bothered to change out of her birthing robe, its front smeared with blood, just stood huddled within it all withered and bent, her seamed face webbed with pain. So sunken