by Will Wight
Judging by the look she was giving Zhen, Shera almost expected her to stick her tongue out.
“That’s amazing,” Shera said without enthusiasm. “You know, that meat looks like it’s done. Do you want me to check?”
Zhen had already begun scooping the food into bowls. “I want you to eat quietly, while my former student and I have a nice talk.”
That was an order she could follow. Before he had finished the sentence, Shera grabbed the bowl and started shoveling meat into her mouth.
“...after that, since Kerian seems to think you can handle it, I’d like you to help me with some business of my own,” Zhen went on. “There’s a little mess I was cleaning up before you decided to visit.”
Shera hurriedly swallowed the last bite of her pork. “I’m not very good at cleaning.” She nodded to the pan. “I can have more of that, right?”
Zhen turned to Kerian, who had pulled her own silverware out of her satchel. She was cutting each piece of meat into delicate pieces before placing them one by one into her mouth. The book lay open on the table in front of her, and her eyes never left its pages. “After Shera helps you clean up, I’ll tell you where I found her.”
The old man grumbled something into his moustache, but he did give Shera another helping. In Shera’s estimation, he could complain all he wanted, so long as he kept cooking.
~~~
When Shera had first seen Zhen’s gray building, the headquarters of the Masons, she had guessed that it was three stories. She’d been wrong.
It was much taller than that.
After breakfast, they descended down into the basement, which resembled nothing so much as a theater’s closet. Maxwell had once ordered Shera to pick up a package from under the seats in a theater, but she had gotten lost. As she’d wandered the complex wondering if she had enough time to catch a nap, she’d come across their costumes: racks and racks of dresses, sailor’s jackets, shapeless coats of brown sackcloth, and anything the actors needed to transform themselves into any given profession or station.
This basement put that collection to shame. It was a single room that seemed bigger than the house above it, and each rack seemed dedicated to a single article of clothing. Rather than one row of dresses, there was a whole roomful of them, and each rack held a single color in a dozen subtly different styles. Each item bore a tag with the same handwriting she’d seen on the hat: ‘Older woman, age sixty or greater, pale skin, heavier than average—middle fashion, Izyria. Will seem outlandish.’
Shera stopped, assuming that they were going to pick out an outfit for her, but Zhen kept going.
“Keep walking, young lady,” he said. “We’ve further to go yet.”
At his signal, Kerian reached down and pressed a hand to the polished wooden floor. A trap door popped open, invisible a moment before.
She leaned over the opening, her braids dangling over the darkness. “Stairs? Are you getting soft?”
Zhen poked himself in the middle. “Feel for yourself. I had these installed five years ago, when I found that a ladder was beneath my lofty station.”
“Broke on you, did it?”
“Like a matchstick.”
The sub-basement was lined in blocks of rough stone instead of wood, and it was filled with crates. When Shera asked what was in them, Zhen replied, “The remains of little girls who asked that question.”
She opened a crate herself when he wasn’t looking, but it was filled with nothing more interesting than a bunch of papers. Nothing worth getting upset about, if you asked her.
The next basement down looked like the remains she’d seen of the Imperial Coliseum. Crumbling pillars holding up arches of stone. Four over-sized coffins, intricately carved with the images of four different Kameira, lay arranged in a cross in the center of the room.
Zhen strode past them, stepping over yet another trap door in the floor and over to a rather ordinary door in the wall. He threw the bolt and stepped back, gesturing them through.
“As long as you’re sure,” he said.
Kerian shook her head, braids swinging. “It no longer matters if I’m sure, but if she is.”
Inside the door, a man was strapped to a chair.
His hair hung in long, dirty strands down to his untrimmed beard. Sweat and grime clung to every bit of his skin, and his eyes were wrapped in a ragged blindfold. His hands had been twisted behind him and bound to the back of the chair.
Shera recognized the sight from Maxwell’s house. He had used similar punishments on those he called ‘insubordinate’ or ‘unruly.’ Unlike the children in Maxwell’s house, though, this man wasn’t gagged.
“I said nothing,” he croaked. “Nothing! Get a Reader! Test me!”
Stepping inside, Shera first checked his bonds. His wrists and ankles were secure, and the chair held firm at each joint. The Consultants had done a much better job than Maxwell had ever bothered with—Shera had escaped her first and only such punishment by disassembling her chair.
She looked back to Zhen. “Why is he being punished?”
The old instructor raised his shaggy eyebrows and nodded to Kerian, who gave a pleased smile without looking up from her novel.
“How did you know he was being punished?”
The prisoner gave out a choking sound halfway between a sob and the sputters of a drowning man. “I’ve done nothing! Committed no crime! Let me stand trial, I beg you, and I will prove my innocence!”
Zhen spoke over him. “This man has betrayed our order, leaking a client’s secrets to his enemies. We cannot turn him over to the Imperial Courts, or we would be forced to disclose confidential details about assignments in progress. If we keep him here, he will waste away and die for want of attention. What, then, should we do with him?”
Shera had finished pacing a full circle around the prisoner’s chair. She hadn’t noticed any hidden weapons, or any weak spots in the rope. “You’re sure he’s an enemy?”
The prisoner had begun to cry behind his blindfold, making wordless sounds of pleading.
“One can never be completely sure,” Zhen said. “But he was caught in the act.”
That was good enough for Shera.
In one motion, she pulled her stolen knife from its sheath and plunged it into the prisoner’s ragged shirt.
She’d meant to drive the blade up under his ribs and into the heart, as Maxwell had taught her, but she had barely touched skin before the prisoner slipped through his bonds as though they’d dissolved. He slapped the flat of the blade away, though he was working without leverage and from an awkward angle.
“Wait a moment,” he said, his voice much clearer than before. “Shera. This was just—”
Shera seized his wrist, pushing it up against his body so he couldn’t get any space. He would be three or four times stronger than she was, and more than twice as heavy, so she had to keep him from standing up. Using her whole body weight, she shoved against his ribs.
The chair pitched backwards, sending him sprawling.
He shouted as he fell, but she’d wrested control of her knife back, and she stabbed down into his chest. The knife scraped against bone, and he screamed as blood leaked onto his shirt, but her blow had been turned. It wouldn’t be lethal.
Shera struck again, quick as a scorpion. If he had escaped his bonds, he could escape. If he escaped, then Kerian and Zhen would be in danger. She had to take care of him now.
Her second blow never landed.
A pair of arms grabbed her under the armpits and lifted her into the air. She kept struggling, trying to get back onto her feet, focused on nothing beyond putting her knife back into the enemy’s heart.
Twin points of a mustache tickled the back of her neck as Zhen grumbled. “Settle…stop that! Settle down!”
Kerian knelt beside the prisoner, pulling a roll of bandages out of her leather satchel and wrapping them around his ribs with practiced skill.
The prisoner flailed around on the ground, teeth gritted against the pa
in. With one hand he clawed at his beard, finally pulling it away and tossing it across the room. A false beard, then. A costume.
“Oh, Dead Mother,” he swore. “Dead Mother take me, it hurts.”
“Never thought I’d hear a former Watchman call out for Nakothi,” Kerian said drily. Her hands never stopped spinning bandages. “Especially not over something so small. When was the last time you got stabbed?”
The prisoner laughed weakly, showing a gap where one of his upper canine teeth was missing. “Winter of eleven ninety-two. Crawler sighting. It was dark, one of the others mistook me for Elderspawn. Said he thought my spear looked like a tentacle.”
“That’s enough out of you,” Zhen said. “Save your biography for the Witnesses.” Gently, he lowered Shera to the ground, but he kept a hand on her shoulder. As if he expected her to run off and try to stab the man again.
Which meant the man wasn’t an enemy. She should have seen it coming. If he had been a real prisoner, they wouldn’t have left him to a girl they didn’t know.
Think like them, and they can never outwit you. That was what Maxwell had told her, and it had certainly proved true on the night she killed him.
Shera had forgotten to think like Kerian, and now Kerian had tricked her. Zhen had even fed her breakfast! But now they worked together to play her like a whistle.
Slowly, and with evident pain, Zhen lowered himself to his knees. He looked deep into her eyes, searching for something.
She glared back, embarrassed and betrayed. “He was your friend. Why did you make me stab him?”
Zhen reached out both hands, gently taking her knife from her. He rubbed the blade along his apron, leaving smears of red behind. “There is something broken in you, even more than in the rest of us. You have been shattered, melted down, and reforged into a lost and broken image of the one who made you.”
He stared at her a little longer, then turned to Kerian. “Ten out of ten. You have my signature. Let us take her to the Garden.”
CHAPTER SIX
Everyone uses their Intent subconsciously, but Readers are capable of consciously observing and manipulating the Intent stored in objects. This makes Readers better at crafting tools, investigating crimes, creating weapons, enacting subtle sabotage, and manipulating the information received by other Readers.
Yet, for some reason, none of our highest-trained operatives are Readers. We should remedy this lack immediately.
-Confidential correspondence, presumably related to the founding of the Gardeners.
(Excerpt stored in the Consultant’s Guild archives)
The high-status prison, like almost everything else on the Gray Island, was hidden.
In the middle of the forest, Shera made her way to a familiar clearing. Amidst the grass, flowers, and scattered rocks, she found a trap door disguised as a flat, smooth stone. It lifted with surprising ease, revealing a staircase leading down.
She walked down the stairs and into the labyrinth at the heart of the Island. The foundations were laid by Jorin Maze-walker himself over a thousand years ago, and this tunnel was only the outer branch of a subterranean prison that stretched for miles. The cells here, bigger and closer to the entrance than the others, were used to house the most important of the Consultant Guild’s guests.
As a rule, the Guild had very few prisoners; most cells had gone unused for decades. This wing had only one inmate, and he was perfectly happy where he was. So security was somewhat lacking, by Consultant standards.
Once inside the concealed trap door, Shera only had to pass a single guard—an old friend named Hansin, who had spent twenty years as an undercover Mason guarding the Imperial Palace. She’d come this way many times, and she gave Hansin a cheery wave as she walked up to his door.
The Mason stiffened visibly.
She held up a covered wooden bowl, opening it so that he could see the rice and vegetables within. “Here for lunch today, Hansin.”
He shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable. Hansin wore a Consultant’s blacks—unusual for a Mason, who usually went undercover in whatever uniform their cover required. But his time as a guard was evident in his choice of equipment. He wore a black-dyed chain vest over his shirt, a dull helmet on his head, and carried a sword.
“We don’t allow visitors without an appointment, Shera, you know that.”
Shera frowned as though confused. “I didn’t make an appointment last time.”
“Last time you drugged me and stole my keys.”
She brightened. “Should we do it that way, then?”
Hansin passed a hand over his eyes. “Dead Mother take you, Shera. Dead Mother take you.” He unlocked the door.
Shera clapped him on the shoulder. “You shouldn’t talk about Nakothi so much. She might hear you.”
She was only half joking.
Lucan’s cell was only a step or two from the door, embedded on the wall to her left. He had no privacy, concealed as he was only by a network of invested steel bars, but other than that minor inconvenience, his cell seemed rather comfortable.
He had a bookshelf and a blanket, a table and chair, and a second quicklamp to brighten up the gloom of his confinement. Several sets of clothes hung in a half-open wardrobe against the far wall, and he’d pasted an old, yellowed world map above it.
But Shera wasn’t here for all that. After weeks apart, she was finally here to see Lucan.
He had the dusky skin of a half-blooded Heartlander, and he’d let his hair grow out a little longer since his confinement. He was still clean-shaven, though, which meant they allowed him a razor, and he still wore his old pair of invested black gloves. They were meant to keep him from Reading everything significant that he touched, to allow him a somewhat normal life not plagued by constant visions. Most Readers could get along without any such barriers.
But Lucan had received personal training from the Emperor. His skills came with certain drawbacks.
As she entered, he was lying back on his cot reading a book, but as soon as she stepped into view he sprang up, grinning.
“Shera! Light and life, that’s a surprise. What brings you home so soon?”
Lucan stepped up to the bars and she followed suit, nerves blooming in her stomach. There was no reason for it, but she always felt that way after too long apart from him. Had he changed? Had she? For some reason, part of her always expected something terrible to happen every time they met.
And yet, it rarely did.
She moved close to the bars and hesitated, unsure if she should kiss him or not. Was that appropriate? Should they talk first? Maybe she should wait.
Lucan, apparently, had no such hesitation. He reached through the bars, pulled her close, and kissed her.
A moment later, Shera broke contact, stepping back and blushing thoroughly.
Which only made him laugh.
“It hasn’t even been a month since I’ve seen you, and suddenly you’re fourteen again.”
She gave him a wry look. “I don’t get much practice these days. Maybe if you were out here, with me…”
He sighed and rested his forehead against the bars. “I wish I could be.”
“You could be. It wouldn’t even be hard. We can break you out right now.”
She put her hand on her left-hand shear. She hadn’t used that blade in years, but if it meant breaking Lucan free, she’d do it in a heartbeat.
“I don’t stay here because I can’t leave, Shera. You know that. I stay here because I can’t go anywhere else.”
Shera’s old frustration simmered up to the surface, woken again by the same argument. On one level, he was right. The Consultants would not let him go after the High Council had sentenced him to life imprisonment. Even if they got him off the Island—which, between the two of them, they could probably manage—the Guild would hunt him for the rest of his life. Yala would finally have an excuse to execute Shera.
The Am’haranai had eyes and ears in every corner of the Aurelian Empire. They’d never escape,
not for long.
That was the truth, as Lucan saw it.
As Shera saw it, Kelarac could take the souls of everyone on the Council, and Othaghor could have their bodies. If Lucan would accept it, she would have started killing Architects one by one until they let him go. Starting with Yala. And if they sent people afterwards, well, her shears didn’t run out of ammunition. She would kill anyone they sent until they couldn’t afford to send any more.
But Lucan would never accept it. He couldn’t live like that. And Meia…Meia could go either way. If she sided with Shera, then they had a good chance of escaping and opposing the entire Guild. If she sided against her—as she very well might, since the plan involved killing Meia’s mother—then that was at least one assassin that Shera couldn’t beat in a fair fight.
Sometimes, Shera was willing to risk it. Once, she had even watched Yala for a day and a night, tracking the woman’s movements, preparing.
As usual, it was the thought of Lucan that stopped her. He might even fight against her, if it came to that.
But the alternative was him in a cage.
She sat down, slumping with her back against the bars, and began to eat her lunch. After a moment, Lucan slid down on the other side, resting the back of his head against hers.
“You have more stuff this time,” Shera pointed out, deliberately changing the subject to something innocent. “I thought they took it away after three days, or something.”
“They used to switch out all my possessions every three days.” Lucan was a Reader, which meant he could sense and manipulate the Intent embedded in objects. A Reader of his strength and skill could have turned a folded paper into a hacksaw or bent the bars like rubber, given enough time. “I finally convinced the Reader that oversaw the inspections that I wasn’t going anywhere.”
Shera sensed a story. “Oh? How did you do that?”
“When he came to inspect the cell, I disarmed him, tied him up, left the cell, and locked it with his own keys. Then I walked back in, untied him, and gave him his keys back.” He laughed a little. “Since then, he sticks his hand in every week or so, to make sure I’m not brewing a curse. Or a bomb, maybe.”
