YAN

  YANICK DID NOT LOOK toward the harbour. Didn’t want to. Above all, he didn’t want to see her.

  Sienna had come, along with Jarl Breivik and the others, to see him off before departure. The priest anointed him for good fortune; drew a protective rune on his forehead with the fresh blood of a slain raven.

  Ari wasn’t with them. But he had kept his word. He met Yanick at dawn. In fact, he was the one who came to wake him. And Yanick needed waking.

  His head still throbbed with pain. Now, when he’s been standing aboard the ship.

  The spiteful little spirit, Untrum, tormented him, feeding on the breath of stale beer. Not even a hearty breakfast chased down with a pint of thick milk had managed to banish it. Yanick clung to the hope that the sea wind would finish the job, because he could no longer bear the ache. He just wanted to leave this place. The farther, the better.

  Shame had come again. Once more, he felt he had betrayed Amaia. He had hurt her.

  Even though she remained far away, beyond the sea, beyond the continent, beyond yet another sea that separated him from new lands, he knew that she felt the pain he had caused.

  Enough, hissed Untrum, stinging him with another pulse of pain. She hurt you more.

  It was true. The two scars Yanick carried were memories of Amaia. The first one on the palm of left hand. A knife wound from that night on the farm, when Rayla forced him to choose.

  The second — on his side, beneath his ribs. The same knife. Different day.

  And his right arm. The one that broke in several places when they fell from the cliff. When Amaia pushed him from it.

  Weeks later, it still hadn’t fully healed. It still whispered with pain every now and then, still remembered.

  He could move his fingers, but the strength they once held was gone.

  Time will bring relief. Time will heal, the village herbalist assured.

  She gave him jars of ointment and clean bandages, showed him how to use them in a most efficient way, so they would last longer. There was nothing more that could be done.

  The voices of those gathered on the pier drowned in the sound of crashing waves, in the song of the wind, in the shouts of the crew raising the sail.

  They were leaving the bay behind, setting out for open sea.

  ***

  “MY NAME IS LUC,” Ari said.

  “Luc?” Yanick raised an eyebrow. “Unusual name. I thought you were from here. From the North. You look the part.”

  “No. I am not from here.”

  “Where from then?”

  Yanick bit the inside of his cheek. That was already too much. He’d been granted two answers. Ari should’ve stopped at one. Not Ari, Luc.

  But Ari - Luc kept going anyway.

  “My parents wanted to name me Lucifer,” he said, casually, like he was stating the weather. “It’s not a name people tend to like. Not there, not where I came from. Even though it means ‘bringer of light.’”

  “In what language?” The words slipped out of Yanick’s mouth before he could stop them. Question number three.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Luc didn’t seem to notice. Or didn’t care. Perhaps he had decided how much to tell before he opened his mouth.

  “A very old one,” he said. “Dead, now. Like the people who spoke it. Like their stories, gods, songs. My parents were among the last who still remembered. Who were given the task to preserve it.”

  Yanick nodded slowly, though he did not understand much. That little trickster, Untrum, had been doing his job well. Headache and clouded mind were the fruits of that work.

  “Like you do with Ari,” Yanick murmured, trying hard to think straight.

  Luc gave him a look. Not angry. Just sharp.

  “Someone has to. The new ones are coming. Always. With new truths, new gods, new systems. They call themselves the Faithful. They burn what’s left and build on the ashes. And then they ask us to forget. But gods aren’t just belief. They’re language. Identity. Memory. And if you don’t feed memory, it starves. It rots. And when it rots, so do we.”

  A pause. Then, quieter:

  “History’s written by the victors. One great leader once said.”

  Yanick almost asked another question. He could feel it rising in his throat. But the cook walked in before it could leave his lips. She set down a plate of food that smelled better than anything had in weeks. Eggs, crusty bread, cheese.

  He didn’t thank her, just dove in like a starved animal. He’d never experienced being bothered by Untrum personally, he’d always been too young, and always hated the smell of alcohol, but he heard others talking about various remedies for that little spirit’s mischieves. One of them supposed to be a solid breakfast.

  Luc spoke again once the cook left. His tone had shifted again, soft now, like a story told in the dark.

  “There’s a legend about Lucifer,” he said. “The rebel who wanted to open people’s eyes. Show them the truth. The one their rulers tried to hide.”

  Yanick spoke with his mouth full, chewing on the words as much as the bread.

  “What truth? And which rulers you’re talking about?”

  Luc’s voice hardened again. In an instant. His face also changed.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “Eat. You need to be at the harbour soon. Someone will escort you.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?” he grinned. “Everything is about me.”

  ***

  THE SHIP DIDN’T DOCK, because there was no dock. Just a smear of land on the horizon, as if someone forgot to finish the painting. They shoved Yanick into a rowboat with a brick-wall-of-a-man, some sailor too big for his shirt and too grumpy for conversation. He didn’t event try to hide the despise he had for the task given to him, and maybe for Yanick too.

  Yanick had no doubt that if his arm hadn’t been busted, they’d have made him row alone. He was just extra weight now. Luggage with opinions.

  The sailor rowed like the demons were chasing him. Fog thickened, spilled in over the sea like soup boiling over. At some point, the giant elbowed Yanick and banged his oar on the water floor to show him how shallow it was. He pointed. It meant: Get out. Walk.

  So Yanick did.

  Waded into the water, cold up to his waist, the kind of cold that grabs your guts and twists. He hoisted the satchel of supplies over his head and staggered forward. Every step was a gamble, stones slick like oiled glass, the kind of terrain built for ankle snaps and regret.

  The rowboat drifted off behind him, sailor already erasing Yanick from his day.

  By the time he hit the shore, the fog lifted like someone pulled open a curtain. Sun climbed high. The rocks ahead cradled a small hollow, and in that hollow, a fire burned. Low and steady. And beside it, wrapped in a cloak of fur, a man.

  A man who turned out to be exactly who Ari said he would be.

  “I’m Azrael,” the man said, standing, offering a hand.

  “Yanick,” he replied. Then, correcting himself, “I mean, Yan.”

  Azrael noticed the bandaged hand. Flinched, but didn’t leave it hanging. Grasped it gently, gave it a soft shake, maybe even to soft.

  “Took me a while too,” Azrael said. “Getting used to the new name. Come on. Warm yourself before we start moving.”

  “What was the old one?” Yanick asked.

  “Arisgeir,” Azrael said. “Means ‘God’s spear.’ Not that far off.”

  “And the new one?”

  “Azrael. ‘He whom God has helped.’”

  “One of those old languages?”

  Azrael nodded.

  Yanick stared at the fire. “Sometimes I think he’s making it all up.”

  “You mean Ari? The god?”

  Yanick didn’t answer. Azrael looked down.

  “I never met him,” he admitted. “I only got orders from his messenger. Even this one, coming to meet you. But I know you saw him. I believe I’ll see him too, when he returns. With his army. With all the people of the North behind him.”

  They sat by the fire. Yanick stretched his legs, let the heat lick into his damp bones. The ache in his fingers retreated. His chest softened. The kind of warmth that feels like you’re being forgiven for something.

  And that Yanick needed. Forgiveness. For what he has done and for what he was about to do. For Ari. For his god.

  Azrael watched him, eyes burning brighter than the flames.

  “Tell me… what’s he like?” he spoke the question carefully, as if asking for the very secrets of this world.

  Yanick stared into the coals.

  What was Ari like?

  Ari wasn’t a god. He was a warlord. Just like Nemeth. Just like every man who climbed a rock, raised his voice, and called it prophecy. Yanick’s mother once said the same thing, talking about Nemeth — how he spun stories of gods and glory, sent men like Erick Yohanson, Yanick’s own father, to kill and be killed. And Luc, or Ari, or whoever he was now, was no different. He dressed the part. Played the mystery. Gathered yes-men like medals on a coat. But here, on this empty beach, under this real sun, with no choir behind him and no throne, he wasn’t godly.

  He was a man. A lucky man. A man who got out of prison because someone named Yanick Erickson helped him. Someone he made call himself Yan.

  Untrum wasn’t in his head anymore. Not a whisper. Not a wince. Yanick had never felt this clear. Not ever.

  This isn’t my name, he thought.

  “He’s truly divine,” he said.