With the sailors rushing about making preparations for what was predicted by the sky—red sky at morning, sailors take warning—Azaiah leaned over the edge and stared into the clear waters, seeking the shadow of Leviathan’s vast wings. If he was here, perhaps Azaiah could ask him about the rain, about appearing in the field of mud with every soldier dead around him.
“Be careful,” a gruff voice said, and Azaiah felt himself pulled back from the railing. “Ain’t got time to come after you, if’n you fall overboard, you hear?”
Azaiah turned, unsure what to say or why this particular man could see him at all.
The sailor’s eyes narrowed at Azaiah’s silence. “Who are you, sailor? Don’t remember seeing you around, last port of call.”
Azaiah was not a gifted liar. “No one.”I am no one. I am everyone. I am you. I am all.
The sailor stared at him. Then he glanced around, blinking, and ran a hand through his hair. He made a quick sign against ill omens, then another. “Seeing fucking ghosts, I guess,” the man said and went back to whatever he was doing with the rigging.
Azaiah must have appeared briefly and vanished again. Interesting. He went walking around the ship, and sure enough, the sailor from earlier wasn’t the only one who could see him. But these sailors didn’t speak to him. Instead, one startled so hard they dropped the rope they were tying around a post to hold something—the mechanics of ships more intricate than his own simple boat were a mystery to Azaiah—and another scrambled backward on the deck, warning him away with a sign meant to banish evil spirits.
Which Azaiah was not, of course, but he did not take it to heart. He went belowdecks when the day turned warmer and the sky grew heavy with clouds. The sailors continued doing what they could to ready the ship for the coming storm. Azaiah wondered whether they were all meant for his boat and felt a slight chill at the thought of it happening again—but this wasn’t the same as a battlefield. It wouldn’t be the first ship to be taken by the sea, all the lives onboard lost to the indifferent ocean that cared not for the storms that swept across it.
You sail here only at my pleasure, and my pleasure is fickle indeed.
There was still no sign of Leviathan, though Azaiah could feel he was nearby. Perhaps visiting Avarice in his well, as the two had always been quite close.
The storm hit at midday, though it was hardly a storm at first. So deceptive was it, in fact, that many of the sailors gave up their cards and their mugs of ale to go above and see if perhaps the sky had been wrong. They thought maybe it was a false alarm, that the storm had blown elsewhere or was something they could easily navigate. Not all warnings brought destruction, that was true.
A woman in the corner listened as the captain bellowed to “stay alert,”which, by the way the sailors were eyeing the kegs of beer, seemed unlikely at best. Azaiah knew when she spotted him. She jumped, spilling ale down the front of her vest and flapping a hand at the sailor who laughed at her.
“Had more wind than this when Cook makes them beans he likes,” the sailor joked. “Eh, Natty, can’t tell me you’re scared of this breeze?”
“We’re all going to die,” said the aforementioned Natty, still staring at Azaiah. “Death is here.Right here. Can’t you see him?” She pointed to where Azaiah was sitting, curled up like a cat on an empty hammock in the corner by a pile of crates. “He’s waiting!”
“For what?” The sailor jeered. “This ain’t a paper boat, Natty my girl. It’s a proper ship, real steady-like.”
“Don’t tease her,” another sailor said, leaning in and whacking the sailor teasing Natty across the back of the head. “You know we all got scared of morning cloudfire when we was new to it.”
“It’s not that,” Natty whispered. She was white-faced with fear. “How can you notseehim? He’s over there! Sitting in the corner! What else does Death have to do but wait?”
Azaiah thought of Nyx and sighed. A lot, as it happened, but people were wrong about him all the time. But he rose, watching as she squeaked like a startled cat and scrambled to her feet. Azaiah moved silently to the doorway and the stairs that led up. He didn’t know if anyone else could see him, but even if it was only her, there was no reason to ruin these last precious moments with her fellow crew before the storm came. He could feel it on the horizon, growing closer—Leviathan had left Avarice’s well and was headed with purpose toward the doomed ship.
Let her enjoy the time she had left, as much as she could. He did not know whether he would take her spirit with him to his boat, but even if she lived, the next few hours would not be pleasant. Perhaps less so for those who survived than those who perished. The dead would go gently into the river, but the living often thrashed in the waves of the storm long after they were pulled free. Somnus and Ares, when they were of a mind to, could send dreams that left the tormented feeling as if they were back there, drowning again and again, hoping against hope for something, someone, to show mercy.
The wind had picked up, though the horizon still showed nothing but gray clouds and filtered sunlight. Azaiah went to the railing again, and ah, there—in the distance, likely visible to no one but him—was the dark shape of his brother moving in his dragon form toward the boat.
“Who are you?”
Azaiah turned to see the sailor, Natty, grabbing at her hair and staring at him with wide, terrified eyes. She looked like she came from Mislia, with her silver-blond hair and the violet eyes of their healer-folk, and he recalled that her people were regarded as exemplary sailors.
“You can see me,” Azaiah said. “Interesting.”
“The cook saw you,” she said. “And the navigator. I think a few others. I heard the rigger, earlier: he told the bos’n not to look to the west or you’d be there. They won’t ask you to go. But I will.” She lifted her hands, and her eyes began to glow.
Azaiah smiled. He was touched, in a way, that she was trying to use her healer’s gift on him. “Sailor. There is no spell to heal me, and you have nothing to fear from my being here. I simply go where I am called.”
The glow left her eyes, and she began to cry. “I don’t want to die.”
“Most of you don’t,” Azaiah said softly. “But I promise you that I will take you gently where you are meant to go. It isn’t an end, sailor. It is merely something new.”
Behind him, the storm rumbled, soft and distant.
“I’ll save who I can,” she said grimly. “I won’t let you have them all.”
“I hope that you do,” Azaiah told her. “I like people. I like your songs, your ships, the games you play. It isn’t hatred or cruelty that gave me my scythe, Natalia of the Misli. It was my kindness. The Reaper, they call me in your land, yes?”
