Chapter 1085: 1084: The Man On The Water

For a heartbeat, the eastern sea was quiet.

Then the walls erupted.

"HALDIS!"

A soldier on the eastern battlements shouted it first, with his spear raised over his head. The man beside him joined in. Then the whole wall.

"HALDIS! HALDIS! HALDIS!"

The chant rolled along The Wall and spread into the harbor. Sailors on the docks took it up. Even the crews loading Hell Stones into the bronze towers paused to bang their crates against the stone in rhythm.

Simon glanced at Veyra.

She rolled her eyes.

"She’s become something of a celebrity," Veyra said. "Children in the lower terraces play at being her. She hates it though."

"She doesn’t look like she hates it."

Out over the water, Haldis hadn’t even turned toward the walls. She was watching the churning patch of steam where the Leviathan had fallen.

"That’s how she hates it," Veyra said.

Near the gap in The Wall, Seraya raised her hand. Her silver crescents flared back to life around her.

"Don’t stand there gawking!" Her voice cut through the chanting. "They’re shaken! Push them back and kill them while they’re scattered!"

The Garrun roared beside her, lifting his heavy blade.

Along the walls, other commanders took up the call. Flying squads poured back out through the openings. The bronze towers swung their barrels toward the tide and fired again.

FWOOOM!

Golden beams tore into the beasts that had frozen in fear when the Leviathan fell.

Off to the north, Rasken slammed his fist into a kraken arm, then paused to look over at Torvek, who had just crushed three eels with a single sweep of his legs.

"Did you see that?" Rasken shouted. "She cut its wing off. Its wing!"

"I saw."

"She’s a monster."

Torvek wiped blood from beneath his nose and stared toward the siren.

"She always has been."

The kraken’s arm came at Rasken again. He grinned and caught it.

Torvek turned and charged back into the wall of beasts guarding the siren.

Simon watched them for a while, then turned to Veyra.

"Is it safe for you to be here?"

She raised a brow.

"The west," Simon said. "You left it to come watch me. Haldis left the north. Rasken and Torvek are both buried in this fight."

He looked toward the far side of the island, where The Wall curved out of sight.

"You said it yourself in the Watch Hall. If this is a distraction, the real attack could come from anywhere."

For a moment, Veyra didn’t answer.

Then she smiled.

"My people are watching the west. They know what to look for." She tapped her temple. "If anything so much as sneezes near my side of The Wall, I’ll know. And I can be there in a breath."

"And the north?"

"Haldis has her own arrangements." Veyra shrugged. "She’s been doing this longer than you’ve been a member of the Abyss, Blackmoon."

It was a reasonable answer.

Simon still didn’t like it.

He studied her face. She looked calm. Too calm, perhaps, for someone whose assigned city had just been struck by a Supreme Catastrophe Beast. And she hadn’t once looked toward the west since arriving.

She’d been looking at him.

He said nothing more.

Instead, he turned back to the sea and let his perception spread outward again.

’Where are you?’

Four Daemonic beasts, and not one of them had come here on its own. Someone had dragged that Leviathan up from the deep. Someone had been holding the siren’s leash for two years.

And the members of The Dominion… Were they out there too? Watching from the mist? Waiting for the protectors to tire?

He found nothing.

Only beasts. Only rage and hunger and fear.

Then a sigh drifted across the sea.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It reached every ear at once, soft and weary, like someone sitting next to them.

"How disappointing."

The chanting on the walls faltered.

"All that fire," the voice continued, "and it couldn’t even kill one tortoise without me holding its hand."

Soldiers looked at one another. Seraya’s head snapped toward the sea.

"That woman really is a monster."

Simon found him.

Not with his perception. With his eyes.

A man was walking on the water.

He came out of the drifting steam near where the Leviathan had fallen, strolling as if he were crossing a garden path. Where his bare feet touched the surface, the sea didn’t ripple. It simply held him.

He was tall and thin, wrapped in a long coat the color of wet slate. A smooth, pale mask covered his face, shaped like the skull of some long-snouted fish. Narrow eye holes. No mouth.

Beasts that had been fleeing a moment ago went still as he passed. A crab the size of a house lowered itself into the water until only its eyes showed, like a dog pressing its belly to the floor.

Simon reached for him with his perception again.

Nothing.

The man was standing right there, and Simon couldn’t feel him at all.

That made him to frown deeply, and he realized who this man was.

The beast tamer.

The man stopped beside the churning water. The Leviathan’s head surfaced, its jaw cracked, steam pouring from the stump where its wing had been. It made a low, wet sound. Almost a whimper.

The man reached out and laid his palm against its snout.

"Hush," he said.

Light spread from his hand.

It wasn’t bright. It was a deep, murky green, the color of water at the bottom of the sea. It seeped into the Leviathan’s scales like ink spreading through cloth, crawling along its jaw, down its neck, across its body.

The cracked scales along its jaw began to move.

They pulled back together with small, grinding clicks, the gaps between them sealing shut. The fire glowing through the cracks faded to a calm, steady ember.

Then the stump began to grow.

Bone pushed out of the wound first, long white spines unfolding like the branches of a tree. Sinew crept along them, thick and red, knotting itself into place. Then the membrane came, spreading between the spines in thin, wet sheets, darkening as it stretched.

In less than a minute, the Leviathan had two wings again.

On the walls, nobody was chanting anymore.

The man patted the beast’s snout once, the way someone might pat a horse. Then he stepped onto its head and sat down between its horns.

The Leviathan rose.

Its new wing beat alongside the old one, and the hot wind rolled across the sea again. It climbed higher and higher until it hung in the sky above Haldis, its rider sitting calmly on its head.

The man looked down at her.

"Haldis," he said, and his voice carried the same way as before. "Two years, and you’re still standing in my sea."

He tilted his masked head.

"Let’s fix that."

The Leviathan’s throat began to glow.

Simon’s whole body tensed as he perceived the increased danger from the Leviathan.

It was like the presence of the tamer had strengthened the Leviathan.

Fearless kept his mind steady, but it couldn’t stop his instincts from screaming.

He reached for the space between himself and Haldis, and attempted to teleport.

A hand closed around his arm.

Simon stopped.

Veyra’s fingers were slender but her grip was like iron. He couldn’t pull free without tearing his arm out of its socket.

"Don’t," she said.

"She’s alone against that thing and the one riding it."

"Haldis can take care of herself." Veyra smiled. "You shouldn’t be worried about her, Blackmoon."

Her grip tightened.

"You should be worried about yourself."

Simon turned his head slowly and looked at her with cold, sharp, and narrowed eyes.

"What’s going on?"

Veyra leaned closer. Close enough that he could see the green of her eyes darken, the pupils narrowing.

She breathed in, slow and deep, as though savoring a scent.

"Tell me something," she said softly.

"Why do you smell like my little brother’s blood?"

Her smile widened.

"And why can I still hear him cursing your name?"