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

by Will Wight

  Shera had to think of Lucan to avoid killing this man.

  Once again, she set off on the Waverider. This time, the front of her body was frozen with ocean spray while her back cooked in the sunlight. The sun was fading into late afternoon before the Gray Island came into view, Bastion’s Veil stretching from sea to sky like a vast pillar of cloud supporting the heavens.

  By the time she staggered onto the dock, made it to her room, and changed into a fresh set of clothes, night had fallen again.

  She made it to the Council room around midnight.

  The home of the Council of Architects waited underground, as did most facilities on the Gray Island. The ceiling was nothing more than densely packed soil, with white tree roots sticking down like frozen lightning bolts. Shera suspected that they used Reading or alchemy to keep the ceiling in one piece—they couldn’t have chunks of dirt raining down on a Council meeting.

  Tiny quicklamps, each perhaps an inch around, hung like fruit from the branches; each of the lights was a subtly different color, ranging from white to orange. In total, they lit the chamber like a dim, pale flame, leaving the alcoves in shadow.

  In fact, there were three tiers of such alcoves, each concealing an Architect’s seat. Most Council Architects deliberated in shadow, voicing their opinions from a pretense of anonymity.

  The three High Council members were the only ones who sat out in the open, around a waist-high white column that served them as a table. They were the voice of the Am’haranai, the leaders of the Consultant’s Guild.

  And tonight, two out of three were waiting for her.

  Kerian sat to one side, a Heartlander woman with a faded scar down the center of her face. She wore her hair in a hundred tiny braids, as usual, but it always startled Shera to see that some of those braids had started to turn gray. The former Gardener sat with her leather satchel in her lap, shuffling through various items as though searching for a reason to keep her eyes off her counterpart.

  Yala, meanwhile, leaned with both her hands on the white table. Where her palms met the table’s surface, the stone glowed bright yellow.

  “…this is not about your personal feelings,” Yala said to Kerian. “Nor mine, for that matter. This is about minimizing risk. Sneak in, sabotage the Blackwatch, leave. If possible, reclaim the Heart ourselves. Once we’ve done that, we hold all the cards.”

  Shera hadn’t made a sound, and in fact had barely set foot into the chamber at all, but Yala threw a hand up for silence. Whatever Shera thought of her now, the woman had once been a legend among the Masons, and she was keenly aware of her surroundings at all times.

  Yala was tall and straight-backed, with long gray hair that still had a measure of blond. Her wrinkled skin was tanned and somewhat cracked, as though she’d spent years shriveling in the desert. Her whole aspect gave off a somewhat weathered appearance, like a traveler who wandered from battlefield to battlefield her whole life.

  As Shera understood it, that was more or less the truth.

  Kerian acknowledged Shera with a brief nod and the shadow of a smile, but she quickly moved her eyes back to Yala. “A single Gardener assignment could make that operation much safer. Harvest the target, remove any witnesses. They only have one suitable candidate. If he’s dead, they’re back to the beginning.”

  “Carry out both operations simultaneously, then.”

  “Sabotaging the Blackwatch will require at least a week of preparation, and cooperation from all the orders. It’s a full-scale Guild action. Killing a Witness requires a team. We send Shera with a couple of Shepherds and a Reader or two, and we have them rendezvous with some Masons on the dock. They can leave tonight.”

  Yala tapped her finger on the table, leaving a shining yellow spot each time. After a moment, she beckoned Shera forward.

  Shera walked around until she was equidistant from both Architects, and then she bowed at the waist. “Kerian, Yala. I heard you have an assignment for me.”

  Kerian spoke before Yala got a chance. “In fact, we’ve had a fairly important client make a specific request. It’s directly relevant to your personal history, so we had you brought in.”

  Directly relevant to her personal history. That could only mean it was related to the Emperor in some way.

  She’d hoped her connection to the Emperor had ended five years ago.

  “Have you spoken with Lucan?” she asked. He was never allowed off the Island, so it should have been easier for them to consult him than to summon her from an active assignment.

  “We have,” Yala said, firmly taking the reins of the conversation back from Kerian. “He gave us what insight he could, and we are grateful. But he made it clear that you had more experience with the object in question than he did.”

  In its sheath, the bronze shear on her left—the blade she never drew—began to buzz. It was in her imagination, she was sure, but she still placed a hand on the hilt to keep it quiet.

  “What object is that?” she asked.

  “The Heart of Nakothi,” Kerian said quietly.

  An image swarmed Shera’s mind: a gray heart with veins of green, still pumping sludge. An island made from the corpse of a Great Elder, ribs standing high like towers, guarded by the living dead.

  In the distance, Shera thought she heard a woman’s crazed laughter.

  “That’s not possible,” Shera said firmly. “The Heart was destroyed when the Emperor died.”

  “One was,” Yala corrected. “As I believe the Emperor taught you, the Dead Mother once had many hearts. You may remember that others have searched for them in the past.”

  Shera remembered cutting through members of a crazed cult. She remembered the Emperor putting their leader to sleep, so he couldn’t defend himself as he was torn apart by creatures of living death.

  She tried to think about that night as little as possible.

  Kerian picked up the explanation. “The Blackwatch Guild has been searching Nakothi’s corpse for another heart. We believe they’ve found one.”

  “We’ve been tasked to stop them,” Yala said. “I don’t have to tell you how important it is that we keep the Blackwatch from bonding with the Heart.”

  Shera’s mind was spinning, but she managed to nod her head.

  “In approximately ten days, we will be raiding the Blackwatch with all the force we can muster. Kill the Watchmen if we have to, and take the Heart if we can.”

  “To destroy it,” Kerian added pointedly, looking at Yala.

  Yala’s mouth tightened, but she nodded. “Yes. To destroy it.”

  More than anything, Shera wanted this nightmare to end so she could get back to her dreamless sleep.

  “I can kill the Heart,” she said. Laughter seeped from her left-hand blade like escaping smoke. “But I can’t do it myself. I need someone to contain it, or…”

  “We’re aware of all that,” Kerian said smoothly. “And when the time comes, we will focus on bringing the Heart back here. There are many facilities on the Island where we can destroy it safely.” She withdrew a pair of tiny scissors from her satchel and began trimming her nails. “We still have at least ten days before that point, however, and I feel that it would be foolish to waste that time.”

  Yala tapped her fingers on the table, leaving trails of yellow light. “The only waste is spending unnecessary resources on an action that will soon be made redundant.”

  Shera pried her thoughts away from Nakothi’s Heart and started putting the pieces of their conversation together. Kerian wanted someone killed now, and Yala thought they should ignore the potential target until the Guild’s main operation.

  “Who do we need to kill?” Shera asked.

  Yala turned an angry glare on her, but Kerian simply pulled a file from her satchel and placed it on the table. On the top was written the name ‘Naberius Clayborn’, above a stamped crest—the Quill and Candle, symbol of the Guild of Witnesses.

  The table outlined the file in a soft yellow glow.

  “Who is he?”
Shera asked, flipping through the file.

  “A Chronicler, working for the Witnesses,” Kerian answered. “He was assigned to the Imperial Palace for many of the same years you were. I thought you might know him.”

  The memory surfaced, murky and dim. Naberius was a handsome man with long, dark curls who dressed as though he might have to star in a play at any given moment. He had something to do with finances, so Shera rarely interacted with him. She mostly recalled him thanks to his companion: a mute woman who walked around covered in bandages. She had quite the distinctive appearance, even for the Imperial Palace.

  “I wasn’t there to make friends,” Shera said. “Is he the one who found out about the Heart?”

  It made as much sense as anything else. Chroniclers were talented Readers by definition, so he had plenty of opportunity to uncover secrets of the Empire while working in the Imperial Palace. Including the existence of Nakothi’s Heart.

  “Not quite,” Kerian said. “They want him to bond with it.”

  Shera looked more closely at the file.

  If he managed to take the Heart as his Soulbound Vessel, then Naberius would become a Soulbound. Not only that, but he’d be able to call on Nakothi’s power himself. There was only one reason why the Blackwatch would allow that.

  “They want to name him the next Emperor,” Shera muttered. Her head spun—this discussion was progressing far too quickly. She very much wanted a chair.

  Except in certain special circumstances, the High Councilors stood, so there were no chairs around their table. The only seats in the room were the stone benches in the Architects’ alcoves, and those were built into the wall.

  Come to think of it, Kerian was seated on a folding chair. She’d always had a knack for packing the best gear.

  Kerian swiped her nail file against the table, idly sketching in lines of yellow light. “We believe so. In that case, it would be prudent if he were pruned. As quickly and quietly as possible.”

  “You’re presuming failure,” Yala countered. “If we succeed in our attack on the Blackwatch, then we will have control of the Heart. Naberius Clayborn will cease to matter, and it’s not worth the effort to send a team.”

  “Since when do we bet everything we have on a single play?”

  “We have no one to spare, Kerian. Let’s say we kill Naberius and lose those Shepherds and Masons you mentioned earlier. Now we’ve weakened our forces against the Blackwatch for the sake of killing one man. It’s simply not worth it!”

  Shera was getting sick of standing there, saying nothing, waiting for them to come to a conclusion. If they didn’t want to hear her opinion, they shouldn’t have called her.

  Worse, they were wasting time. She could be sleeping.

  “If we’ve got the chance to kill Clayborn, let’s take it.” Shera snapped the file closed. “I’ll lead the team. If it gets dangerous, we’ll withdraw. No losses.”

  Kerian gestured to Shera, palm-up, as though presenting her. “There, you see?”

  Yala’s hands trembled and she closed her eyes, like she had to restrain herself from attacking them physically.

  Shera wished she’d try it. She had no chance against one Gardener, let alone two.

  “We have. No one. To spare,” Yala repeated. Then a smile crawled onto her lips as though she’d thought of something. “Actually, I believe we do have one extra person on hand.”

  She turned to Shera. “Would you like to attempt this assignment alone?”

  Kerian started to interrupt, but Shera responded too quickly. “I’ll do it.”

  What was the problem? She’d taken more dangerous assignments many times. Killing a Chronicler wouldn’t take longer than a single night, even if she did have to fight a Silent One.

  Kerian rose from her chair, and for a moment, Shera was reminded why she had risen to command the Guild’s order of assassins. Her eyes hardened to chips of stone, and she straightened her back, delivering commands like the Emperor himself.

  “I’ve grown tired of your attempts to downsize my staff, Councilor Yala,” Kerian said coldly. “Shera is a valuable asset to us, and her loyalty to the Guild is beyond question.”

  Yala didn’t back down; she sputtered in laughter. “Loyalty? She’s a criminal. She turned her blade against her brothers and sisters. If circumstances were different, I’d send a Gardener after her myself.”

  Shera felt her heart freezing, and she forced the cold back. The last thing she needed was to kill a High Councilor.

  Especially when she was right.

  “We won’t have this argument again,” Kerian declared. “And we won’t send Shera to her death.”

  Shera cleared her throat, hesitant to speak into the tense atmosphere. “They’re Witnesses. What’s so dangerous about them?”

  Without looking, Kerian reached into her satchel.

  “Not them. Clayborn has hired a Navigator to sail him and his partner out to Nakothi’s island, where he will rendezvous with the Blackwatch and retrieve the Heart. If you want to kill Naberius Clayborn, you will likely do so on this man’s ship.”

  Another file spun out onto the table, glowing yellow. This one read, ‘Calder Marten.’

  “Twenty-six years old, former Blackwatch, once indicted for the destruction of an entire Imperial Prison. His father was executed for the theft of Imperial artifacts, and his mother is a commander in the Blackwatch Guild, nominally under the supervision of the Guild Head. He’s another old friend of yours, though I doubt you’d remember.”

  She didn’t, but she flipped idly through the file. The rough sketch of Calder didn’t raise any memories, although one of the notes mentioned that he was of Izyrian heritage, with red hair. That tugged at something in her memory, but nothing she could drudge up.

  Yala picked up the conversation. “Putting together information from the Shepherds and Masons in the area, we project that Clayborn will make contact with Marten in sixty to seventy-two hours from this point. If you did choose to go after him, this would be the best time. He’ll be on the ship, which means immobile and isolated, and he won’t have reached the deep Aion where we effectively can’t touch him.”

  Kerian raised a hand to stop her. “Take a look at his crew, Shera.”

  Shera did, flipping to the appropriate point in the file, and she couldn’t stop her eyebrows from climbing into her hair. “Light and life. He’s got a Champion onboard?”

  “You see now why this task requires a full team.”

  That she did. But at the same time…

  Shera gathered up the two files. “It takes about a day to reach the harbor from this point. That leaves me with one day to spare. May I have twenty-four hours to think about it?”

  Yala smiled, but Kerian’s expression hardened even further. “Think about what?” she said. “There’s no decision to make here.”

  The other High Councilor ignored her, looking directly to Shera. “It would be childish of us to invite you here and then ignore your opinion.”

  “We will not—”

  Shera interrupted her by slapping the files against the table. “Kerian. Trust me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Without another word, Shera walked out of the Council chamber and all the way to her room.

  Where, at last, she slept.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Fifteen years ago

  The beds on the Gray Island were spectacular, but on her first night there, Shera still couldn’t get any sleep. It was a criminal waste, to her mind: she finally had a comfortable place to rest, but it wasn’t doing her any good.

  Thanks to Maxwell’s attacks, she’d been conditioned to wake and respond at even the slightest sounds. The creaking of a board would send her rolling out of her sheets and reaching for a knife, and the sound of a door slamming was enough to make her scurry for cover. She could only catch up on her sleep when she was secure and alone, in a place no one could find her.

  Here, the story was different. Far from hearing too many noises, she heard too few. T
he entire island seemed poised to strike, coiled like a snake. She never woke to a creaking board, or a footstep, or the sound of a fist on a door. Silence reigned over the nights of the Gray Island, and it kept her wide-eyed.

  Somehow, the absolute quiet felt more threatening than Maxwell’s thundering footsteps as he approached, sword in hand. Even the distant surf felt distant, muted, washed-out.

  Shera had spent all her life in the greatest city in the world—the Capital of the Aurelian Empire. The Emperor himself lived there, in his palace that accounted for a fifth of the city’s legendary size. Even in the small hours of the morning, the streets screamed. In the Capital, silence was a myth.

  Her old home never slept, but it seemed that this new one never woke.

  When Kerian slipped in through Shera’s door at dawn, it was almost a relief. Finally, she would have an excuse to be awake.

  As always, Kerian wore unrelieved black and carried her leather satchel. Shera had half-expected her to wear something more casual at home, but she was beginning to believe that Consultants never relaxed.

  “Good morning,” Kerian said, showing no surprise at finding Shera awake and alert. “I hope the accommodations lived up to your expectations.”

  “It was too quiet,” Shera said.

  The Consultant adjusted the strap of her leather satchel. “Silence is a gift,” Kerian said. “You don’t get to enjoy it as often as you might think. Now, it’s time for you to dress. I’ve made you an appointment.”

  “For what?”

  Kerian pulled a mirror out of her satchel and began smoothing back the thousand tiny braids of her hair. “It’s a job application, of sorts. We’ll find a place for you on the Island, there’s no need to worry about that. But some positions are more...rewarding than others.” She ran a finger down the pale scar of her otherwise dark face.

  For a few seconds, Shera wondered about the scar and Kerian’s position among the Consultants, but then a more urgent issue pressed its way to the front of her mind.