Page 51 of Storm Front

“Who are you talking to, Natty? We have to—”

“Watch out!”

The ship rose up and dove sharply down in waters suddenly made a tempest, and only Azaiah managed to keep his feet, the others stumbling and slipping on the wet wood of the deck. There was a shout as a rope came undone and a mast went swinging from one side to the other, and Azaiah’s breath caught as he saw who was standing in its path, having just pushed herself to her feet. The impact would kill her, or the water below would. Either way, it did not seem as if the Mislian would survive.

Except that the sailor who had teased her belowdecks roared something unintelligible and flung himself toward her, trying to knock her out of the way. He managed to shove her just in time, and the swinging mast hit him—right in the head, killing him instantly, his body crumpling and sliding into the water for the sharks.

“Fuck,” his ghost said, standing next to Azaiah. “Uh. Sorry. I should… say something else. But I was really… I wanted to see if I could kneel for her, later. I was drinking to get up my nerve. I thought it’d make her like me, you know, if I saved her.”

So many complexities, so many variables, so many things dependent on the choices mortals made. Azaiah held out his hand. “She will remember you. In Mislia, where she will go when she survives this storm, she will have a child. And she will name him after you, and the name will continue in her line.”

“Yeah? Well. Great. I guess having a line of little Solases out there is okay, but I really wanted to kneel for her. Are there pretty girls to kneel for, where you’re taking me, Lord of Storms?”

Azaiah smiled. “For you, Solas, indeed there are.”

He took Solas to the boat, and as Leviathan swam and swished his tail and flared his massive wings, he took many more. When the ship was finally scattered, its broken pieces swallowed by the sucking whirlpool, only six sailors remained alive. One of them was Natty, who used her healing magic until she was exhausted, lying on her back in the one surviving lifeboat and staring up at the sky, weeping silently. When Azaiah’s boat sailed past, she lifted her head… and then raised a hand, a silent greeting.

Azaiah lifted his own in return.

As he turned the boat toward a distant shore and the river beyond it, he felt the soft kiss of rain on his face. The sky was clear, and there was no sign of his brother swimming under the waves… so maybe it was merely rain, the kind that came after vicious storms, cleansing and cool rather than driving and harsh. But if he listened carefully, if he blocked out the sounds of the sailors in the boat singing their songs and waiting for their next, final voyage… he thought he heard, very faintly, the distant rumble of thunder in a sky gone red like fire.

ChapterEleven

Every soldier in the imperial army had a ritual they performed when the time came to leave the capital. Some burned incense in shrines wedged into the city walls. Some wrote short, simple letters, to be opened by their loved ones if they returned on their shield. Others spat in their hands and ground dirt from the city into their armor—old witch magic, they said, to remind them why they were fighting—and others still cut their hair, laughing with their comrades in the barracks and tents.

Everyone knew Nyx’s ritual. As they passed the burial mounds where Tyr and the old emperor lay, Nyx removed the useless silk sash marking him as Lamont’s general, folded it, and let it fall in the grass. The soldiers around him grinned and looked away, and Estrid sauntered over to bump his shoulder.

“General, looks like you lost your sash again.”

“Shame,” Nyx said, stone-faced. “You know how chaotic war can be, Captain. It must have been an accident.”

Estrid cheerfully kicked at the silk as she fell back into line, and Nyx allowed himself a private smile. It died as soon as he saw the white horse at the head of his troops and Nadia twisted in the saddle to look his way. She was dressed in ceremonial armor, with a silver crown pinned in her hair, and Andor sat sidesaddle in front of her, looking over the marching soldiers.

She’d insisted on riding with them for the first day, and Nyx couldn’t convince her otherwise. Kelta was practically skipping along in her new uniform, grinning at the other pages and jumping at the chance to run messages down the ranks. She didn’t seem to notice the wariness in her mother’s gaze, the tight line of Nadia’s mouth every time she saw Kelta racing by.

Nyx approached Nadia’s horse just as Kelta came running up, and he lunged forward as Andor leaned over to take something out of his sister’s hands. Nadia grabbed her son before he could fall, and he and Kelta grinned at each other as he cradled whatever it was to his chest.

“Uncle!” Kelta whirled around when she saw Nyx, then blushed. “I mean General!”

A nearby archer laughed softly, and Nyx suppressed a smile. “At ease, soldier. But good girl, Kelta, for remembering my rank.”

“It’s not Kelta anymore,” she said. The words spilled out of her in a burst. “The other pages are calling me Kel. They say it’s a nickname.”

Nyx hesitated, glancing at Nadia. Kelta and Andor were rather isolated in the palace. They made friends among noble children, in a way, but they tended to keep to themselves, with Andor following along as Kelta’s little shadow. “All right,” he said. “Kel.”

“Some of the soldiers aren’t marching in time,” Andor said, pointing when Nyx gave him a curious look. “Is that normal?”

“March long enough in the sun and you might step out of time, too.”

Andor didn’t seem to like that answer, because he fell silent, staring at the soldiers once more. Nadia sighed and wrapped an arm around his chest.

“My influence, I’m afraid. I’ve been filling their heads with stories of war since they were babes. Maybe they’d be better behaved if I told them stories about, oh, going to bed on time, or doing your own math work instead of letting your brother swap pages—”

“That only happened once!” Kel and Andor said it at the same time, and Nadia laughed. It was a tense laugh, too restrained to be genuine, but it was as close as she was likely to get.

When they approached the creek where they tended to camp on their first night, Nyx gave the signal to stop, and pages started running about, making marks for the lines of tents. Kel took off before Nyx could stop her, and Nyx whistled sharply. Estrid caught his gesture and moved closer to Kel, keeping an eye on her while she grabbed another page and ran for the end of the line. Nadia met his gaze and nodded, quiet approval, before Nyx helped Andor down from the horse.

It took too long, according to Andor, for the lines of tents to go up, but Nyx doubted his soldiers could have done it any quicker with an empress in tow. Even if she did erect her own tent next to Nyx’s, joking with Andor while he watched from a low stool. He was having trouble breathing and had to keep pressing a pouch given to him by one of the witches to his mouth, holding it there until his limbs stopped trembling.

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