“You’ll weep again, when you can,” Azaiah said into Nyx’s hair. “It will become easier. But you do this because you loved him, and that is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“So this is what you do,” Nyx said, clinging to the being that had taken the man he loved. “You comfort people, after.”
“No.” Azaiah’s voice was soft. “I have not done this before, with the living.”
Nyx pulled away, and Azaiah reached out to brush his cheek with a thumb. Nyx didn’t flinch from his touch. “Why me?”
Azaiah gathered up the cards. “That’s a good question. Perhaps I can answer it one day.”
“You’ll come back?” Nyx sat on his heels while Azaiah fastidiously put away the board.
“Would you want me to?” Azaiah looked at Nyx, and for the first time, Nyx thought he saw a flicker of the human man Azaiah might have been. There was something hopeful in his expression, something vulnerable. Like he expected Nyx to say no.
“We haven’t finished our game,” Nyx said, finally. “It’d be rude, I think, not to return.”
Azaiah hesitated. He seemed almost surprised. “Oh. Yes. I suppose we haven’t.”
Nyx wondered how many other people had played Winter with Death. “I’ll be deployed for a while. Our orders are to go to the Needle soon. They grow flowers there. Some people say they’re beautiful.”
“They are.” Azaiah stood, the Winter board under his arm. “Perhaps I’ll find you there.”
Then Azaiah was gone, and Nyx sat in his empty tent for a long while, listening to the thunder fade. When he stepped outside again, the sky was clear and full of stars. He took a shaky breath.
“Nyx!”
He turned. Estrid’s lady, Mirine, was running toward him. She skidded to attention a few feet away and rushed through the least respectful salute in the empire’s history, but Nyx didn’t mind. She was about as irreverent as they came. “We’re having trouble with the new recruits’ tents again.”
Nyx almost asked her to speak to the commander, then sighed. Lamont would probably just brush her aside. Still… “You went to the prince?”
“Yeah, went to one prince, he said deal with it, so I came to the only other prince around. Can you fix this?” She sighed. “It’s a disaster.”
Nyx clapped her shoulder. “It always is. Let’s go, soldier.”
She grinned at him, and Nyx followed her down the line of tents. There would be other time, as Azaiah said, for mourning. If he could find it.
Maybe, when he went to the Needle, where the tulips were only just starting to blossom, he would see Azaiah again. And maybe that wouldn’t be so terrible.
* * *
It took some time to get to his sister’s temple in Kallistos.
Azaiah walked, because it could be difficult to convince animals to tolerate him, even in a cart. And he never liked being carried about on a litter by people. It seemed wrong to make himself more of a burden to humanity than he already was. So he walked, and along the way he found tiny towns and villages, small groups of bandits and soldiers who’d deserted looking for a way home—or a new home altogether.
He mostly passed by people engaged in the mundane aspects of their daily lives: hanging washing, tilling fields, building homes, gathering crops and herding animals. Some few saw him and waved as if he were any other traveler out on the road. Most didn’t notice him, though, and some noticed and perhaps knew him for what he was. Those people would make a sign to ward him away before hurrying into their homes, barring doors and shutters in case he took it upon himself to come inside.
He did not. Azaiah made his way up the coast, past the small fishing villages that dotted the landscape. He stopped to watch a group of fishermen, the kind who took spears and waxed slivers of wood out into the waters, cheering and diving deep into the waves to bring back fish. This was one of the most dangerous jobs in all of Iperios, but the people who did it were always smiling, and it seemed they enjoyed the rush of swimming in storm-tossed waters.
There was a fisherman sitting astride his swimming board, laughing, the sun shining off his dark red hair and turning it nearly purple. Azaiah studied him, trying to decide whether he found this strapping young man as handsome as a certain soldier. As he considered it, the man on the board turned his head, and to Azaiah’s surprise, noticed him standing on the beach.
The fisherman waved.
Azaiah, somewhat thrown, stood still and waited, unable to make himself wave back. He watched as the fisherman swam ashore, dragging his board behind him with one hand, his spear and a net full of fish slung over the other. He was naked, as these fishermen usually were, and his body was tan, lean from spending so much time in the water, his hair dripping onto a broad, handsome face.
Attractive, yes. But he wasn’t Nyx.
“Hello there, stranger,” the man said in a lilting accent. “Haven’t seen you here before, eh? Here for the fish, are you? The day’s too nice to catch much, but if you’re hungry, I’ll share one of mine.”
Long ago, when the first of these wave-jumping fishermen came to Thalassa from Katoikos, they would make offerings to Azaiah after a successful swim. Each would take a slice from the best fish of their catch, and they’d combine them in a pot so it would simmer into a stock. Then, before they went out again, they’d drink the stock from steaming mugs, as if it would lend them some protection. Over time, the practice had changed to making the stock from fish heads and bones, and the offerings were for Azaiah’s brother Leviathan, Lord of the Deep and the disasters that waited there.
