Of Shadow and Sea (The Elder Empire: Shadow Book 1)

by Will Wight

  That would not have ended well for him. The Emperor had signed the release—Baldezar Kern, Head of the Champion’s Guild, was taking the field. The South Sea Revolutionary Army would be little more than splinters and twisted iron by the end of the month.

  But it seems there’s no escaping fate. Dead here, dead on a distant battlefield—Maxwell would never have made it into next week, no matter his choices.

  Kerian made a note in the margins of her ledger: Have someone Read his belongings. She needed to know if he was imitating the Gardeners out of coincidence, obsession, or some secret knowledge.

  If Rudeus Maxwell had been connected to the Consultants, then the Guild would have to answer some uncomfortable questions. As the Guild Representative for this chapter house, it would be up to Kerian to answer those questions.

  “No family name?” Kerian asked, returning to her inquiries.

  Shera shook her head.

  Only Consultants, born on the Gray Island, had no family name. Kerian took a closer look at the girl. Black eyes, black hair down to the shoulders, pale skin…she was the typical breed of the Capital streets. Most of the Aurelian Capital’s more dignified citizens had dark Heartlander skin, like Kerian herself, but the peasants came from a hundred mixed breeds.

  Shera might have had an Izyrian ancestor, probably several from Erin, and maybe a dozen other mingled bloodlines. Without a full name, it would be hard to place her.

  “Maxwell called you Shera,” Kerian said. “What did your mother call you?”

  Shera had finished her almonds, and was now staring intently at the sandwich crumbs on her plate. “Not much.”

  “Where is she now?” Kerian asked.

  “Dead, probably,” the girl said casually, placing a crumb of bread on her tongue.

  Her voice sent a chill tickling down Kerian’s spine. No one so young should be so cavalier about death. She even spoke like a Gardener. “Why do you say that?”

  “Maxwell said that’s what happens to Anthem addicts.”

  Whatever other lies the Gladstone Kidnapper may have told his victims, in this one case, he’d spoken the truth. If Shera’s mother had been addicted to Anthem before the abduction, she would likely have died in two or three years. Shera could have been gone for as many as six.

  “What about any other family? Do you remember anything?”

  Shera reluctantly placed the empty plate back on the desk. “No brothers, no sisters. I may have had a father once, but I think he went away.”

  She didn’t seem concerned about her fate. Instead, she craned her neck to see over the desk as if she expected to find another pork sandwich lurking in the shadows.

  Next to ‘Family Status,’ Kerian noted, ‘likely deceased.’

  She hesitated before asking the next question. This was the important one, the reason why she had left Shera for last, after all the other children had been returned to their parents or to the care of the Empire.

  “Do you know what happened to Mr. Maxwell?” Kerian asked.

  All the other children had responded the same way to this question: they had shifted uneasily in their seat and pretended to know nothing. Some of them had glanced at Shera, but none had said a word.

  Shera looked Kerian in the eyes as she answered. “I killed him,” she said.

  Kerian tapped her pen against the ledger, next to the words ‘Relevant Testimony.’

  “Why?” she asked.

  “He shot a friend of mine,” Shera said. “We were only supposed to kill people who deserved it. I thought he deserved it.”

  In her mind’s eye, Kerian saw the dead girl with the bullet-wound and the blue ribbon. “How did you feel, once you killed him?”

  Shera’s eyebrows furrowed. “Hungry. I hadn’t had dinner yet.”

  Kerian rubbed the scar on her forehead, a nervous habit. She’d earned that scar when a client turned on her with his saber in lieu of payment, slicing her face straight down the middle from hairline to the tip of her jaw. She had overlooked his past as a professional duelist.

  In other words, she’d earned the scar for being careless.

  The Consultant placed her pen on the desk. “Shera. Do you have anywhere else you can go?”

  “I’ll find someplace. Do you have another sandwich?”

  “No brothers or sisters? No relatives of any kind?”

  The girl looked back at her, eyes flat and dead. “Why?”

  Kerian tore the page out of her ledger, folding it in half, and then in half once more. The Council of Architects might not appreciate this, but Kerian herself would have a seat on the Council soon. And technically speaking, she already had the authority. Even if no one expected her to exercise it.

  “Shera, I think you should come with me. I believe I can find you a place to stay.”

  The girl tilted her head in curiosity. “Am I going to live with you?”

  “Something like that,” Kerian said. She pulled a match from her desk, flicking it to life against the striker. She lifted the paper, letting the flame catch the folded corner and spread like spilled water. Kerian tossed the paper to the ground, watching as the only record of Shera’s existence burned to ash.

  “Tell me, have you ever been on a ship?”

  ~~~

  Shera woke up lying on a nest of empty bags and coiled rope. A woman stood over her: brown skin, black hair in a hundred tiny braids, and a white scar passing down the center of her face.

  Kerian, she remembered. The Consultant.

  The slick wooden floor and the salty tang in the air reminded her that they were riding in the belly of a ship. On their way out of the Capital, the place she’d lived her entire life, and toward a place that Kerian called the Gray Island.

  And none of that mattered quite so much as getting back to sleep.

  She’d adapt to the Island in the same way that she’d adapted to the city.

  “You can put that away,” Kerian said. “Or you can try to use it, and I’ll put it away myself.”

  Put what away? Shera wondered. Then she glanced down at herself.

  She was holding a small knife, pointing it straight at Kerian. Maxwell had taught her never to sleep without a weapon, and punctuated that lesson by ambushing his trainees in their sleep. If you weren’t alert, you never woke up at all. Shera had never gotten a satisfying nap with Maxwell around.

  She didn’t think she’d see any tests like that from Kerian, but it never hurt to be prepared. Now that Kerian was awake and aware of the knife, it wouldn’t even work.

  Shera slipped the weapon back into her belt, then tucked her shirt around the hilt to keep it hidden. The sailors up on deck shouted to one another, their boots pounding above Shera’s head.

  “Does that mean we’re here?”

  “We’re docking now,” Kerian answered. “We’ll be prepared to disembark shortly.”

  Shera dropped back down and crawled into her nest. “Okay, then. Wake me when we’re ready.”

  From a leather bag hanging at her side, the Consultant produced an egg. She began to peel bits of the shell away, revealing its white, hard-boiled flesh.

  Shera’s stomach rumbled, and she sat back up.

  Kerian took a quick bite of her egg. The pale scar on her lips twisted as she chewed.

  Before Maxwell took her in, Shera had survived for a while as a beggar on the streets. She found that people were prone to feed children that looked helpless, so she put on the most pitiable look she could muster.

  The Consultant didn’t look moved. She stared at Shera coldly for a full minute, slowly finishing her boiled egg.

  That was why Mari had always played the Bait. Shera didn’t look…vulnerable.

  Then, without a word, Kerian conjured up another egg and tossed it underhand.

  Shera snatched it out of the air, tearing the shell away and cramming the egg into her mouth. Experience had taught her that any food she had worth eating was food others found worth stealing. It was best to get rid of it as fast as possible, and
then enjoy the memory.

  When Shera finished the egg, Kerian pulled a set of folded black clothes out of her bag. “If you want to be a Consultant, you should look the part.”

  The pants and matching shirt were smaller versions of what Kerian was wearing: plain, unadorned black. But they were clean and smooth against her skin, so the outfit was better than anything else Shera had ever worn.

  “Am I going to be a Consultant, then?” Shera asked, as she pulled on her new shirt.

  “There are many different kinds of Consultants,” Kerian replied.

  When Shera had finished dressing, she started to slide her knife into her new waistband. Kerian stopped her by reaching into her leather bag and withdrawing a small sheath.

  “From this point forward, the Consultants will provide maintenance for your equipment,” Kerian said. “Especially your weapons.”

  Shera took the sheath and slipped her knife inside. It was a perfect fit. But she had only had the knife for two days; she’d stolen it from a sailor when they first set foot on the ship.

  “How did you know?” Shera asked, impressed.

  Kerian smiled, the scar on her lips shifting. “I take pride in my ability to anticipate a client’s needs.”

  “Am I a client?” She had begun to think she was more like an apprentice than a customer.

  “You’re a little girl who costs me far too much money to feed,” Kerian said promptly. “We’ll have to see if you can provide a valuable return on my investment.”

  Struck by an impulse, Shera decided to test the limits of the Consultant’s preparation. “Speaking of money, I’ll need some.”

  “Check your pockets.”

  A little doubtful, Shera reached into her pockets. She had seen “magicians” on the streets of the Capital, claiming they could perform feats of entertaining magic for hire. From what she’d seen, they had used no powers greater than their own quick fingers. But there was no way Kerian could have slipped anything into Shera’s pockets without alerting her, and she would feel the weight of any coins.

  “There’s…” nothing, Shera started to say, but she stopped when her left hand ran into a firm spot sewn into the inside. After a little maneuvering, she finally found the entrance to the hidden pocket.

  She pulled out a small patch of neatly folded gray bills with the Emperor’s face printed on one side. Shera had never used paper currency before, but she knew money when she saw it.

  “Five silvermarks,” Kerian said. “Not that you’ll get much chance to spend it on the Island.”

  In addition to the money in the hidden pouch, there was a handkerchief in the back pocket, and she thought she felt hidden pockets in her sleeves. For storing knives, she guessed.

  She was starting to like the Consultant’s Guild already.

  A gruff man’s voice called from above, “We’re…ah, that is, we’ve arrived, Consultant.”

  Shera still had vague ideas about returning to her nest and napping, but Kerian led her forward with a firm hand on her back. With regret, Shera gave up her ambitions of sleep and looked toward the future.

  She had never traveled by ship, but she’d always heard of ships pulling up to the docks. She imagined a long, rickety wooden dock made of slatted boards, with the boat tied to a post at the end by a coarse rope.

  The reality was far stranger.

  Instead of wood, the dock was made of seamless gray stone, and it was wider than most major highways back home in the Capital. Three wagons, or a ship on wheels, could drive down the center of this dock with room to spare. Lampposts stood every few yards, made of what seemed to be the same stone and carrying blue quicklamps that lit the ocean like melon-sized moons.

  The ship bobbed up and down with the waves, but it stayed locked about ten feet from the stone, as though it was moored with lines of steel. Shera saw nothing. Maybe Consultants tied their ships with invisible ropes.

  But all of those details she noticed with only part of her mind. Most of her attention was taken up by the vast gray wall that swallowed the world.

  Behind the ship, a blue sky stretched off into miles of ocean. In front of it, there was no sky. No land. Nothing but a towering wall of fog that stretched from the surface of the sea to the clouds above.

  The fog swirled and billowed, like fog often did on a winter morning, but it never moved any closer to the ship. It stayed in line as though held back by a glass barrier.

  “Welcome to the Gray Island,” Kerian said, watching Shera for a reaction.

  “There’s land in there, right?” Shera asked.

  “There is.”

  “Oh, good.” Shera walked down a wooden ramp to the dock. The wall of fog was impressive and a little frightening, but she’d started to imagine that Consultants all lived in houses of mist and smoke. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to walk on an island made entirely of gray clouds.

  As long as it was nothing more than a foggy island, she knew she’d be fine.

  A pair of sailors carried a polished chest down the ramp before them, hauling it onto the dock. They must have been here before, because they didn’t pause at the sight of the fog wall. The pair pushed through it without hesitation.

  As soon as they hit the fog, they vanished.

  Shera couldn’t even see the dock past the billowing gray. Only the quicklamps shone through, a string of blue pearls drifting off into smoky oblivion.

  Before she stepped into the fog, Shera glanced up at the sunny sky. She gulped in the sight like a swimmer catching a huge breath of air. Who knew when she would be able to see the sun again?

  Then, following Kerian, she stepped through the fog.

  There came a flash of instant cold, like a cool, moist breeze, and her sight was swallowed up in endless gray.

  Two steps later, she was through. Behind her, a featureless wall of gray fog blocked off any view of the ship.

  “It’s not very thick, is it?” she observed.

  Kerian adjusted her leather satchel so that the strap sat more comfortably on her shoulder. “Most clients are not…professionally composed at their first sight of Bastion’s Veil.”

  “Is that what you call it?” Shera glanced back again. “It’s only fog.”

  The Consultant rubbed at the line of scar tissue running down her forehead. “You don’t show your reactions. That’s not as useful as you might think; it unnerves potential clients.”

  Shera had never given much thought to her expression one way or the other. What did it matter whether she smiled or frowned or gasped at the right time?

  “An appropriate response is always more effective than no response at all. Laugh when you want to appear at ease, grimace when you want to appear reluctant, speak directly when you want them to trust you. When you want to seem mysterious, simply don’t appear at all.” Kerian glanced down at her. “You’ll learn all this. But here’s a current example: you pulled a knife on me earlier, and yet you’ve said nothing about it.”

  That caught Shera off-guard. What was she supposed to say?

  Kerian saw her dilemma and rescued her. “Just so you know, most people will expect you to apologize for pulling a knife on them.”

  Shera frowned. “But I didn’t even use it.”

  The Consultant took a careful look in Shera’s eyes, then placed a hand on her shoulder. “With that attitude, you’ll go far in this Guild. Now come along, we have an appointment to keep. And a Consultant never misses her appointments.”

  What attitude? Shera wondered, but she scurried to keep up with Kerian. The woman was walking up a set of white steps carved into a grassy hill.

  At the top, the home of the Consultants waited.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kameira have lived on this planet for as long as humanity can remember, and perhaps longer than the Elders. They take the shape of animals—birds, fish, serpents, and furred beasts of all description.

  But as different as they are, all Kameira share one common trait: a seemingly miraculous ability to control the wor
ld around them.

  Kameira of the sea, like Waveriders or Deepstriders, possess the innate ability to command the motion of water in specific ways. Kameira of the sky, especially those in the shape of birds or winged serpents, manipulate air or gravity. Kameira of the forests can sometimes manipulate trees or lesser beasts.

  If this is a function of Intent, such as we humans possess, then the implications are troubling. What separates men from Kameira if not our Intent? What does that imply about Soulbound and their Vessels?

  -From the manifesto of the original Greenwardens

  (Excerpt stored in the Consultant’s Guild archives)

  When the Emperor was alive, there had been no “street gangs” worth the name. Shera had been born in the underside of the Capital, and had spent years afterwards cleaning up the trash of the city under Maxwell. At the time, there had been nothing like criminals banding together, or organized crime, or anything that could be called a “gang” in more than the loosest sense.

  Then came the riots that had almost torn the city apart.

  Five years ago, when the Emperor had been murdered, much of the Empire had gone on just as before. The Emperor couldn’t rule the whole world by himself, after all; he had to leave almost everything to the trusted delegates among his appointed governors and the ten Imperial Guilds. So for most places on the planet, the Emperor’s death had changed very little.

  But in the Capital, fires had followed news of the Emperor’s death by less than an hour. It was the closest look into pure chaos that Shera had ever had: people hanging themselves in the streets, shopkeepers looting their own businesses, ordinary men and women banding together to set fire to anything in reach.

  The Imperial Guard and the troops had worked together to restore order. They had even hired the Consultant’s Guild to help, though Shera had been otherwise occupied for most of that operation. They had stitched the Capital together into working form.