Page 35 of Storm Front
“Technically? No. It’s only that if you don’t have something of your own, you may not remember that what you do matters. If you found a companion, that’s great. Just remember that you’ll share your divinity with them, and there’s no breaking the bond until you take—well, yourself, I guess, across the river.”
Azaiah nodded. He’d known his tenure as Death would be long, and he didn’t mind that. But he did not want to corrupt the world, send Avarice back to the thing he’d been in a much smaller well, drown the art his sister loved, kill the people who made the wars that sustained his brother Ares.
“If the end ever does come,” he said carefully. “The true end, I mean. The one only I could bring, if I were corrupted. What would be left?”
“You and Leviathan,” Avarice said. “Or maybe just him. I don’t know. You aren’t Death for creatures and plants, or else you wouldn’t have time to find bottles full of glass or fuck pretty soldiers or come visit your favorite brother. I saidbrother,not sibling, so don’t throw fire-eyes at me, all right? Anyway, yeah, it’d probably be the end of you, too. That’d leave Leviathan swimming alone in a world full of nothing but the sea, and I guess he’d be all right with that, but I’d like a bit of an early warning if that’s where you’re going.”
“I don’t want to do that,” Azaiah said. “I only thought I wasn’t supposed to want anything.”
“You were human, Azaiah. Maybe your godhood burns desire out of you, eventually—but that’s the problem. It can’t, with you. You have to stay human enough to let some of them keep breathing. You’re boring me. Are you done with the questions?”
There was something… aching, and almost sad, in Avarice’s voice. But Azaiah knew there was nothing he could do for his brother whose essence was hunger, greed, desire that could never be sated. He could not even leave this realm of water and debris and worthless treasure, and Azaiah knew he must hate that, hate being bound to humanity’s careless, cruel whims. Azaiah experienced the better side of humans, the kind, compassionate side of men like Nyx. All Avarice ever saw was their shadow.
“I will ask him to be my companion,” Azaiah said. “It would be pleasant to walk with someone, I think. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’ve never wanted that.”
“Yes, yes, winter flower. You’ve always been soagreeable. Very well, take your lover and make your bond—has anyone even told you how?”
“No,” Azaiah said. “They haven’t.”
“Pallas didn’t? Too busy staring for hours at a fucking bowl of fruit or a half-dressed man holding a weasel, was she?”
“I did not see any weasels, no.”
A pause, and then a sigh. “Why is Death so fucking literal? You take him somewhere that matters to you. All he has to do is say he will be yours, but there is… more to it. A ceremony, but you can decide what it is. In fact, no one but youcandecide. Pallas will probably paint her beloved in a field wearing a goat’s head, andthat is also a metaphor, Brother.”
For what? Azaiah did not ask. Avarice could be quite loquacious when he had an audience. “All right. I won’t bring a goat.”
“I hate when I don’t know if you’re joking. But yes, yes. You’ll know what to do.” Avarice shifted as if he were thinking. “I would have expected Pallas to tell you this, if she thinks she’s theexpert. I’ll ask Somnus about it, if he visits me sometime soon. If not, I’ll ask Leviathan. We don’t want her being corrupted, though it’s not the same deluge of death as it is if you are.”
“What does happen? If she’s corrupted,” Azaiah asked, thinking back to the curtains, the crying painters, the weaver with her threads cut and discarded, loom barren. That melody with its discordant, ugly notes.
“Desire, corrupted, becomes Greed. War becomes… fuck, let’s not think about it. Dreams become nightmares, or the opposite of sleep, which isn’t sleep at all. You become the End instead of the Current. And Art, when corrupted, becomes decay. Decay makes people depressed, and depressed people don’t throw me trinkets and ask for things, because they don’t want anything more than they have, and that’ll annoy me. So.”
Azaiah got to his feet, crossed to the throne, and leaned in to press a kiss to the bones that made up Avarice’s face. “Thank you. You’ve told me more than anyone else.” He knew how to appeal to his brother’s sense of importance, if nothing else.
“Like I said, Azaiah. You’d drown in a storm looking up at the rain, because you forgot to close your mouth while gaping at howprettyit is.We want you to have your man and not the rain, so. Go do whatever you’re doing, and bring him by sometime.”
“Of course.” Azaiah smiled, putting his hand on Avarice’s bony shoulder. “Be well, Avarice. I will return soon.”
“Bring me another gift, when you do. Maybe a cape, or some kind of shroud,” Avarice demanded.
Azaiah smiled, nodded, and turned to go. “I’m not sure you’ll like him, my soldier. He may be a bit too, ah. Stoic, for you. But he has some nice things. A pretty tunic. A belt with an insignia made of gold.”
“Tease. All right. Well, best of luck to you. If you do decide to weep tears of disinterest and flood the world, at least let me know. I might like to come up and see that, if the end of the world allowed me to leave this place. It might be worth it.”
Azaiah made a note to check on his brother more often, or have Leviathan do it. There was an odd, wistful tone in Avarice’s voice that made him uneasy, like the tattered curtains and discordant melody in Pallas’s temple.
There was nothing for it. Azaiah would make his offer to Nyx, and if it was refused… he would have to put the pieces of his heart away, broken as it would be like Avarice’s bottle of sea glass. But as he returned to his home on the shore of the river of souls, he was hopeful that perhaps it would work out, and Nyx would choose to walk with him and keep the rain at bay.
ChapterEight
Nyx was getting dressed for the wedding when War came for him.
He saw Ares behind his reflection in the mirror, slipping through the door in their nondescript uniform. Their hair was braided like that of the other soldiers standing at attention in the palace halls, and they grinned at Nyx as they collapsed into one of the ornamental chairs in the dressing room.
Nyx turned, still buttoning his jacket. “No.”
“Aren’t you welcoming.” Ares slung their legs over the arm of the chair like a child who hadn’t been taught how to behave properly around expensive furniture.
