“You want me to drink with you?” she asked. “I don’t know how I feel about you being alone, right now.”
“I need a moment alone, I think, but thank you.” Nyx reached for the cork. “Maybe I’ll join you later. When I’ve remembered him for a minute.”
Nadia grimaced and lay a hand on his shoulder. “I understand. I’ll walk you home.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Tyr would have.” Nadia squeezed his shoulder and turned away, disappearing around the wine racks.
Nyx sighed. Thunder rumbled through the bar, and wind shook the shutters on the walls. It was fitting, he thought, that the sky would darken when Tyr was gone.
He poured himself a glass of wine, trying to imagine what Tyr would do, in his stead. But he couldn’t. He could only think of the shroud, the mourners with their wailing and false tears, Lamont’s cutting tone. Some said that spirits lingered after death, but he didn’t think Tyr would want to. He’d want to see what happened next.
If anything did happen next. If the gods did more than simply fuck with their followers, seeding chaos while humanity struggled to pick up the pieces. He sipped his drink, then looked up as a shadow passed over the bottles on the other side of the rack.
“I might need more time than that, Nadia,” he said.
But it wasn’t Nadia who stepped around the wall of wine bottles. It was a man. He was beautiful, with long, silvery hair and high cheekbones, and he was wearing black and dark gray, his sleeves wide enough to almost hide his elegant hands. He seemed to be in his twenties, but when he met Nyx’s gaze, Nyx felt too young, a fumbling boy in the armor of a man.
“This is a private table,” Nyx said, and the man smiled.
“Yes, I know.” He pulled up a chair, and Nyx spotted a Winter board tucked under his arm. He and Tyr used to play Winter—it was an old game, played with glass beads moved around a board, with cards determining where the beads would go. The man unfolded the board. “But you called for me, so I came.”
“I didn’t call for anyone.”
“You didn’t have to ask for me by name.” The man sat down. There was another peal of thunder, and the window shutters banged against the wall, making people in the main barroom curse. “But it’s curious. You revered me, earlier, when your prince crossed the river, and then later you said… what were the words?Death doesn’t deserve respect.”
Nyx’s blood turned to ice. The man on the other side of the table was still smiling, quietly laying out the Winter board as though they were old friends playing a simple game at the end of a long day. “Who are you?Whatare you?”
“You’ve encountered me many times, Nyx.” The man pulled a deck of glossy black cards from his pocket and shuffled them. “On the battlefield. Afterward, in the tents where the wounded are taken, when you held their hands and felt their heartbeats fade. In the burial mounds, with the one you loved. But you’ve never seen me. Not until now.” He pushed the deck of cards toward Nyx and flipped one over. It featured a grinning skeleton draped in black robes, lying on a bed of crimson flowers. The word beneath it was written in gold ink that glimmered in the dim light.
“Death,” Nyx read, and he looked up into the smiling face of the creature watching him from across the table.
Death nodded, and thunder made the glasses behind the bar tremble. “Yes. But you may call me Azaiah.”
* * *
The man on the other side of the table was a soldier, and there was nothing all that remarkable about him.
He had short hair, shaved on one side in the way of soldiers, dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, and broad shoulders. There was a sliver of a scar on his left cheek, a few on his arms, and Azaiah was certain Nyx’s armor concealed many more. As Azaiah dealt the cards, he studied the young man. He was staring at Azaiah with a mix of fear and anger, body poised and tense as if awaiting a call to war.
“For someone who courts me so sweetly, you seem afraid,” Azaiah said, picking up his cards.
“You’re not wanted here,” Nyx said, his own cards untouched on the table.
Azaiah shrugged. “I’m hardly ever wanted. I don’t take it personally. I’m only here for a game, Nyx. Nothing else.”
“Good.” Nyx picked up his cards with seeming reluctance. “I’ve given you enough.” His harsh voice rang with dominance, which did little to Azaiah, whose submission was tied up in the mortality he’d long ago shed.
“Yes,” Azaiah agreed, studying his cards. A passable hand. He’d played more games of this than he could count, and he very rarely lost. But it did happen. “You have. All of you do. All of you give me everything, in the end. Would you like to go first?”
“Go—gowherefirst?” Nyx demanded.
Azaiah smiled. “The game, Nyx.”
Nyx scowled, which made his sharp features harsher, but that was all right. He wasn’t a beauty such as Azaiah’s sister Pallas would paint, or to whom poets would write verse, but he was handsome and brave, and Azaiah knew him to be a good man. The bright beacon of his soul had been enough to call to Azaiah, who thought he might induct this Nyx into his service as a ferryman, once Nyx had time to heal after Tyr’s death. He had many who helped guide souls to his boat on the river, especially on the battlefield.
“Do I get something if I win?” Nyx crossed his arms over his chest, and Azaiah could see the scars crisscrossing his skin, standing out in stark relief on his muscles.
