“Oh, aye, my ma gave it to me,” the man said, stuffing his hands into his own pockets. “Name’s Taliesin.”
“No, it isn’t.” Glaive turned the man around by the shoulder, guiding him to the door.
“Pretty sure it’s the name my parents chose, aye?”
“Yeah, but you aren’t using it. You’re a Misthotos now, or you will be.” Glaive nodded to the woman at the desk and pushed Taliesin into the hall. The central hub of the Misthotoi was a complex network of tunnels and chambers that had started out as an alcove in the side of a mountain, where Glaive and a few mercenaries he’d met on the road liked to get drunk. It had its own rules now, a governing body, and a reputation in the neighboring countries. And Glaive was still there, slipping in and out like a shadow.
“So I’m supposed to pick a new name?” Taliesin asked. “You’re saying Glaive ain’t yours?”
“Who the fuck names their son Glaive?”
Taliesin smiled, clearly unmoved by the dominance in Glaive’s voice, which meant he was probably a dom himself. Good. The last apprentice had kept dropping to his knees every time Glaive so much as coughed.
“Pick something soon, or we’ll pick for you. For now, I’ll call you… Red.”
“Because of the hair?”
Because naming apprentices after colors meant he could forget them faster, but Glaive wasn’t going to get into that. He just grunted, and Red raced after him, clutching a bag on a strap wrapped around his chest.
“I heard you’re a big deal here,” he said as Glaive navigated the tunnels. Red had the brogue of a Thalassan, all right, and he kept hesitating as he spoke, like he was trying to translate from Morrey first.
“I’m just old,” Glaive said. “That’s all.”
“They said you take on all the messy jobs. They said someone stabbed you in the gut, once, and the sword came out red-hot, like your body was a forge. I don’t believe that part, obviously, but that means you’ve done some shit, yeah?”
Glaive turned to look at the human puppy hopping at his heels. He remembered that day. Someone had gotten the better of him—a thief who didn’t want to be dragged back to the family he’d stolen from—and he’d felt his stomach rupturing as the blade sank in, seen the horrified look on the thief’s face as the sword started to burn his fingers.
It had been Death’s hand, of course. A boon from a heartless god, keeping Glaive alive like a cat toying with an insect. Glaive would live as long as he needed to, until he could finally prove to Azaiah that he’d waited long enough. Until he could find him, grab him, and shake him until he stopped fucking falling apart. Until then, Death kept a tenuous grasp on Glaive’s soul, and no mortal could kill him.
“No one will ever believe you,” he’d told the sobbing thief as his skin knit together with fresh scar tissue. But clearly, the story had gotten out. Now, he looked at Red and shrugged a shoulder. “Mercenaries tell plenty of stories. Did they tell you how I can’t keep an apprentice more than two weeks? You know why?”
Red shrugged like it didn’t matter. Glaive wondered how long it would take before the lad went howling home to his ma. “You take the jobs that require, uh, special tools?”
“Special tools means torture,” Glaive said. “I don’t get those jobs all the time, but often enough. It means a slow death. A painful one. But it’s death at the end, always. If you want to be the kind of mercenary who saves wayward children and brings criminals to justice, you’re better off with Flèche or Mace.”
Red looked, for a second, like he was considering it. Then he squared his shoulders. “I’m not afraid of death, sir.”
Glaive grunted and kept walking, letting the puppy scramble after him. “Depending on which one you get, you should be.”
“Which one?” Red nearly tripped down the steps to the entrance, wide eyes fixed on Glaive. “Isn’t there just the Gentle Boatman?”
“That’s what you’re calling him, these days?” Glaive’s heart ached at the thought. Maybe people in Thalassa got to see him. Azaiah. Death as he was meant to be, a friendly face on a boat, guiding lost sailors to the other shore. Glaive hadn’t seenhimin so long that his legs felt weak when he stepped outside and looked to the sky. But the only clouds scuttling across the sunset were stray, skinny little things, and Glaive let out a heavy sigh. The beads that wrapped around his wrist—one for each job he’d completed as a Misthotos—felt impossibly heavy, and he touched the first three he’d put on his bracelet, the ones Death gave him so long ago.
“Beautiful day, though,” Red said.
Glaive gave him a wary look. The chatty apprentices never lasted long. “You ready for a hunt?”
At least the man knew how to walk. Glaive had covered the mountains more times than he could count, and while they largely remained the same, signs of human progress were slowly appearing. Trees as old as Glaive went down to make room for little cabins and carriage roads. There were bucolic villages in fields he’d have sworn were empty just a few years before, accents shifting, borders moving, monarchs and archmages squabbling for power. One day, maybe there wouldn’t be much forest left. Or maybe it would all be flooded, drowned by the rain.
He wondered whether Death would keep him alive for that, suffering the proof of his final failure.
“Who’s our target?” Red asked after a few minutes of blessed silence. “And aren’t you supposed to be teaching me things?”
“I am. I’m teaching you how to be quiet.”
Red laughed. “Even my ma couldn’t teach me that.”
“Well, I’m not your ma. Go climb that tree, tell me if you see any animal tracks leading west.”
