For one wild moment, Azaiah thought it was over.
He felt the pull of a soul that needed to be taken, and with it, the resonance that said Nyx was near.
Hope rushed through Azaiah when he heard the sky rumble above him without the rain that meant he would soon fade, being replaced by his dark self. He saw Death in the waters of rivers and lakes as he walked, heard a whisper of a laugh when he came back to himself standing in a field of mud and ruin. He knew that being divided into two separate beings—the one they called Gentle Boatman, and hisother,the merciless rain that cared not for what his storm would destroy—Azaiah understood that splitting his godhood and his humanity should not happen, but he wanted to believe that, one day, Nyx would return. And then they could be companions at last; Azaiah’s disparate, fractured self would come back together, and Nyx could lay his weapons down.
But it wasn’t Nyx Azaiah found when he appeared, but Glaive—and it wasn’t his deed that had summoned Azaiah. It was the apprentice who was learning the mercenary trade, the man named Taliesin, whom Glaive calledRed. He’d killed someone, and he was digging a grave, shaking and pale-faced, too much white in his eyes as the spade disappeared over and over into the earth.
“Put a flower in the grave,” Glaive said. He wasn’t looking at the young man but staring off into the distance, at the sky and the low, ominous rumble of thunder.
Azaiah trembled as he watched, aching for Glaive to turn around—no, forNyxto turn around—and see him. But instead, it was Red. He squinted as if trying to make out Azaiah’s shape in the dark of the woods. But all he said was, “That seems a little, hmm. Not like you.”
“Ain’t for me,” Glaive said, voice rough. “It’s for him. That’s how they honor death, where he’s from.”
“How d’you know that?”
Glaive was quiet. “I know where he’s from, that’s all. You do this job long enough, you learn.” There it was: a flicker of the soul that had once brought Azaiah to him, in a tavern on a street now buried under sand.
The sky rumbled again as the young mercenary found a flower and put it in the grave he’d dug for the man he’d killed. Azaiah watched, sensing something familiar in this tall, red-haired Thalassan. Maybe he’d known someone from his family, or maybe he simply recognized compassion when he saw it.
Azaiah stepped back into the shadows, the shade of the man who’d lost his life in this glade of trees following him silently. When Azaiah returned to the clearing, he did not see Glaive, only the mercenary he was training. He was standing alone, drinking water out of a hide pouch, sipping it carefully as if he’d recently been sick. He was also looking at something he’d pulled out of his shirt, a talisman on a thin leather thong.
Azaiah couldn’t see the details, but he knew what it was. One of his talismans, the kind they used in the villages up near the eastern seas. Where he’d once met a cheerful fisherman who’d offered him a fish. The man standing in the spill of cold moonlight—yes, this man was similar, affable and good-hearted and chasing death like it was an adventure. This man—Taliesin—had a bright flame of a soul, and perhaps the talisman meant he was to be a ferryman. But Azaiah sensed some other purpose, some other task to which he was set, and did not come near him.
But he saw him again, not long after that. In another clearing, this time in the wilds of Staria, the flat expanse of farmland that used to be battlefields and where they now grew wheat. Staria, united finally under a king, had different sorts of turmoil, the kind that involved his brother Arwyn rather than War. Red had killed someone, a clean arrow that sent the soul to Azaiah with only a brief flash of pain. The spirit wasn’t any trouble, and when Azaiah saw him safely across the river, he went back to see what Red would do.
He dug a grave, as he always did, and Azaiah heard him call out, “Hey, Glaive, what do they do to honor the dead in… whatever village this poor bastard was from?”
“He was a thief from Duciel,” Glaive answered, and as always, Azaiah’s entire beingachedat the sound of his voice. “So I don’t know. Did you get the ring and the property deed the client wanted?”
“Yeah, this isn’t my first day, you know,” Red said, his cheerfulness only a little forced. “It’s at least my, what, fourth? Fifth?”
“Feels like a lot longer,” Glaive said, but there was something in his voice that sounded more like the Nyx Azaiah knew, the Nyx he longed for, the Nyx he kept hoping to find.
Red laughed, but his expression went serious again when he looked down at the grave. He was handsome, with his long red braids pulled atop his head, in trousers with a colorful sash for a belt, blues and greens that put Azaiah in mind of the warm seas off Diabolos more than the cold, storm-tossed waters near Taliesin’s home. Gruff as Glaive could be, it didn’t seem to bother Red at all. If Taliesin of Thalassa werea sea, he was more the easy, warm southern waters where Arwyn’s Well had been, once, than the waves where Leviathan lurked, dangerous and deadly.
“Well, I guess I’ll… Flowers work for most people.” Red went down on his haunches. He tore some wildflowers and tossed them in, cleared his throat, and whispered softly, “Sorry. I hope it didn’t hurt too much.” With that, he stood and started filling in the grave.
Azaiah took a step forward, and then another. Red was humming as he worked, the sun beginning to set, turning the sky red and orange like fire. But as Azaiah moved closer, Red paused, going still as a deer that knows there’s a wolf in the woods. He fumbled for his pendant, and Azaiah saw him scanning the distance. His eyes didn’t linger—meaning he couldn’t see Azaiah—but Red surprised him by saying, “I’m trying to find you. I hope it’s working.”
Azaiah wondered whether this friendly, kind man was seeking him or his dark mirror that wanted nothing but to take, toend. He could feel the edges of it pressing against him, rain threatening to pour from the clouds. The sky rumbled, and Red glanced up, still holding his pendant in one hand, leaning against the shovel with the other.
“Is that you?” Red asked. “If it is, could you at least tell me what I’m supposed to do?”
“I wish I knew,” Azaiah said, but of course, Red did not hear him. Glaive was finishing whatever he was doing and was coming to check on Red. And when Azaiah saw him, the rains would come, and with them theother, and Azaiah would fall away into the dark like the spirits he carried beyond.
Red sighed, shrugged, and slipped his pendant under his shirt again. “Tell me when you’re ready, I guess. But, like, next time, maybe put a clue on the back? Aoifie, her pendant was a mug of ale. Come of age and drink at the bar, that’s easy enough. Me? Death. Somehow I don’t think you mean I should drink myself into the grave, but let me know, yeah?”
Azaiah smiled. He did not see such an inglorious end for this young man, but he could be wrong. Red was a new soul; he knew that much. Perhaps a distant relation of the man Azaiah once met on the shores of Thalassa, but not the same. Red’s soul shone, though, and it waswarmthe way Nyx’s had been warm, once.
He was not the man Azaiah had felt could be his successor, though that didn’t mean Taliesincouldn’tbe, if Azaiah thought him better suited to the task. But somehow he didn’t think it was in Taliesin’s nature to be a guide to the dead, as much as a guide for theliving. A light to follow in the dark, a fire to warm those who were cold.
You will find Death in your own way, I think.Azaiah watched as Taliesin turned to go back to the fire where Glaive waited; Glaive, whose soul once burned white-hot but who was now nothing but embers, threatening to turn to ash.
Maybe being around this bright new soul was what Glaive needed. Maybe Red’s pure, vivid nature would burn the chill from Glaive, remind him of the man he’d once been. Or maybe Glaive would push him away, finally let the last remnants of his soul’s fire go dark, and Death would be there for him when Azaiah could not. Azaiah would come back to himself to find Nyx’s fire gone from the world, and then Azaiah would have no reason to stay.
Good,a voice murmured in the back of his mind.I’ve been waiting.
The sky rumbled. Azaiah turned to go as the rain began to fall. A light drizzle, a warning of the storm to come.
