Zaifyr felt as if he was drowning.
He knew that he was not. He could no longer take a breath, could no longer use his lungs, but that did not stop the sensation. He felt the pressure within his chest as if it was real, as if it rose and fell with a breath he no longer took. It was, he decided, as if the ocean had lodged its tides and swells within his lungs and cursed him to feel its every change. At its worst, he would taste blood in the back of his throat, and with that blood he would taste salt, as well. It was when he experienced all three that he struggled the most, because it was then that the memories of his body would return most strongly. He had to remind himself that they were an echo of what had once been real. They were simply memories of his self, of his long, long life, before it had ended. Before Leviathan’s Blood took what had been, ultimately, his mortal form.
He remembered little of what had happened before or after he hit the ocean. His last memory was of his decision not to kill his sister, Aelyn. But in the aftermath, there was an emptiness defined by the ocean’s breath inside him, a chill in his very soul that he could not escape. The phantom sensations of his body were made worse by the sight of his physical body, which he saw first upon returning to awareness. He floated before him, his bones bent at odd angles, his clothes torn, his charms broken, his flesh ripped. It was nothing like the time he had awoken in Mireea and stared down at his body.
Then, Zaifyr had been alive, his soul anchored in the spirits of other dead men and women. A line had eventually developed between him and his body, as if it was the chain of an anchor that he could use to mark the way back to the surface. His real danger had been when he used the cord to return to his body. The dead around him had also seen it as a way for them to return to flesh, and they had threatened to swarm him. Now, the dead simply ignored him and focused on their own remains, lost in their own confusion.
Death had not welcomed Zaifyr any differently to any other man or woman. Like them, he felt confused, prone to moments of panic, sadness and anger. Unlike them, his sensations were also coupled with a sense of failure. He had been unable to help the dead. He had been unable to free them from the torture that they, and now he, endured. Whenever Zaifyr felt that, he felt a strong sense of injustice. The God of Death’s power was within him . . . but, no matter how much he wanted to shout that, or argue it, he felt another part of him say that for all his power he had just been another mortal. He could not help himself and he could not help the dead around him. Why, then, should death be any different for him?
It shouldn’t, of course.
It was after one such conversation with himself that the Captain of Wayfair, Lor Jix, appeared before him.
Zaifyr did not know how long had passed before the ancient dead found him. Nor did he know where the haunted captain had been. Time revealed itself poorly within the depths of the black ocean, but he suspected that Jix had waited and watched him until his mental state was better. Of course, it may have also been that, after Se’Saera had been named, a terrible event had befallen Lor Jix and his crew, which was why they had disappeared in the battle on Nale, just as the new god had as well.
‘No,’ the ancient dead said in his awful, waterlogged voice when Zaifyr asked. ‘It is as I said to you: I am bound differently now.’
They talked without words, without mouths moving. ‘How so?’ he asked.
‘Come with me.’ Jix looked the same in death as he had in life: a bald, bearded man with one eye a solid colour, wearing tattered pants and a jacket. With his thick hand, he beckoned to Zaifyr. ‘Let us leave here. I will show you.’
He was strangely horrified at the prospect. ‘I can’t leave my body.’
‘Do not be like them, godling,’ Jix said harshly. ‘Do not disrespect your heritage.’
The ancient dead moved away from Zaifyr, his body caught halfway between swimming and walking, his actions suggesting that for all his disgust, he could not leave his mortal remains behind easily, either. Where is your body kept? Zaifyr asked himself. In the wreckage of Wayfair, he was sure. In that broken ship on the floor of Leviathan’s Blood, safely locked in a coffin where both the lock and the hinges had rusted shut so solidly that no creature could break either open. But yet, as Zaifyr pushed away from his body with a backward glance, he felt a tremendous urge to return to it, as if something quite real bound him to it. Instead, he made his way after Lor Jix.
The Captain of Wayfair made his way out of Leviathan’s Blood in silence. He ignored any attempt Zaifyr made to speak to him, even after they emerged from the water, like two survivors of a wreck.
The coast that the two strode upon was defined by greys and whites and chaos. There was a camp on the edges of Yeflam, and for a moment, Zaifyr could not understand why it was there. He thought he was in a different time and a different place – a place in the far, far future, or one in the very past, after the War of the Gods – until he turned and saw the wreckage of Yeflam.
Eidan had caused that, he reminded himself. Eidan had broken the pylon that held Nale and, in doing so, had destroyed the balance of the Floating Cities. His confusion gave way to a sense of relief. Only a short amount of time had passed.
Zaifyr followed Lor Jix through the camp. The Captain of Wayfair did not pause, did not talk or show any interest in what was around him. He strode through colourless fires and grey-skinned men and women. For his part, Zaifyr wondered if his brothers were in the camp. And Ayae? But Lor Jix gave him no time to stop.
Instead, the ancient dead led him beyond the camp and into the Mountains of Ger. Once they left the camp, Zaifyr asked again where they were going, and again, Jix ignored him.
The road they followed led up into Mireea and, soon, the ruined city appeared, defined in the greys and whites of the colourless daylight world Zaifyr inhabited. Its buildings were broken and sunken, and the roads – the once-renowned cobbled roads – were shattered, but it was not this that unsettled Zaifyr. No, the growing sense of apprehension that emerged within him came from the haunts on the walls of the city, in the ruined buildings, broken wooden walls and gaps in the roads. There were hundreds. Each of them watched him, as no other dead had, and each of them, he realized, was armed. They had swords and shields, and they looked, he thought, very much like an army.
Jix led him to the centre of Mireea, to where the markets were once held. It was there that two spirits waited.
The first was Queila Meina, the Captain of Steel, who had died fighting the two Keepers, Fo and Bau. She looked much as she had in life, tall, with short, dark hair and, as on the few times Zaifyr had seen her, she wore leather armour and a long sword at her side. She did not carry a shield like the other dead, but upon seeing her, Zaifyr was reminded of how the shields the haunts carried were similar to those that the mercenary group Steel had used to much success, and he found that his apprehension gave way to a stronger sense of disquiet. It was an unease that grew when Meina turned to him and inclined her head slightly, as if greeting a commander, or a lord, and in doing so revealed the second figure in the square.
The Wanderer.