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

by Will Wight

  It was no use. Even the alchemists administering antidote to her didn’t pay her sounds any attention. She had to assume that the Shepherd in her cabin knew a drop point for the Heart; if all he had to do was take it to someone else onboard, or drop it into the Aion, then he had every chance of succeeding.

  Without looking behind her, Meia pointed over her shoulder with the tip of her knife. “There should be someone sneaking into my cabin behind me. Someone catch him and tie him up. Thank you.”

  She turned to Shera and winked. “I can hear everything that happens on the ship.”

  A young Mason cleared his throat from behind her. “Uh...everything, Gardener?”

  Meia looked at him with flat, disgusted eyes. “Everything.”

  He snuck off and hid behind a barrel.

  ~~~

  A few hours later, they arrived at the Gray Island. On sight of the tall wall of mist, Shera felt no relief. Instead, her gut tightened.

  Here we go, she thought. As though the real mission had just begun.

  Yala waited in the hidden bay with an ornate chest in her arms, surrounded by three Architects.

  It was easy to tell Architects apart from the other orders. Masons were usually dressed in the outfit of their chosen profession, Shepherds wore soft black clothing with strips of dark cloth masking their mouths, and Gardeners dressed like Shepherds but carried a pair of shears. Architects, in the same vein, wore black without the mask. But their blacks were different from those worn by Shepherds and Gardeners: fashionable, refined, expensive. One Architect’s shirt had a row of gold buttons up the side, and another wore a black skirt instead of the usual tight cloth pants.

  Each of them also carried the tools of their specialty, worn like badges of honor. Architects could be trained in alchemy, Reading, or leadership, and the three with Yala all carried miscellaneous junk strapped to them—tweezers dangling from a wrist strap, a coin hanging like amulet, a length of chain worn as a belt, a pair of scissors sheathed on the waist like a duelist’s sword. They were all Readers, then, carrying invested items around with them as signs of their skill.

  Shera carried the Heart down to Yala in a sack that was itself wrapped in a cloth and strapped with a leather belt. She had to ignore the song of the Heart even now: Your old self can die, and your new soul will be reborn. Take me. Let me guide you.

  Yala’s face was tight, as though she knew her time was short. She stepped forward, opening the chest. “Hurry, give me the Heart.”

  Shera hesitated.

  “The longer we wait, Gardener, the more time Nakothi has to work on us all.”

  That was true, but...

  Where were the other two High Councilors?

  Standing in the bay, holding the Heart, Shera asked, “Where’s Kerian?”

  Yala’s hands remained steady on the box, and her expression didn’t change, but Shera knew she was preparing for trouble. “High Councilors Kerian and Tyril are waiting for us in the Council chambers.”

  “Great,” Shera said, holding out an empty hand. “Hand me the box. We’ll take it together.”

  Consultants stayed frozen all around Shera, but the tension was rising palpably, like a bowstring slowly drawing back.

  “Why don’t you trust me, Shera?” Yala asked softly.

  Shera thought of Lucan, locked behind bars because he’d learned secrets of the original Am’haranai. Secrets that generations of Councilors had tried to keep buried. She thought of the Regents, who would have slept forever because Yala wanted the Empire to stay in anarchy after the Emperor’s death.

  Chaos was good for business.

  But she didn’t say any of that. She tilted her head to the side as though confused. “Don’t you need me? I thought I was the only one on this Island capable of destroying a Great Elder.” She hefted the packaged Heart. “Even a piece of one. The whole point of this was to destroy the Heart.”

  Yala stretched her fingers as if she itched to draw a knife. “We have developed some new techniques and resources that we think are very promising.”

  Shera’s heart fell into her stomach. The woman was throwing up a smokescreen, and not even a good one. She had no intention of destroying the Heart.

  “Light and life,” Shera muttered. “I thought I was being paranoid. If you’re not going to help me destroy the Heart, what are you going to do with it?”

  “That’s my concern, Gardener.”

  “The Emperor would have said it was my concern.”

  “And look what happened to him.”

  Shera lowered the Heart to her side. It would have been easier to hand it over, but the Emperor would have never forgiven her.

  “The Great Elders will do anything to be free again,” the Emperor had said. “Don’t give them that. Don’t give them anything. You cannot let them win.”

  Those were some of the last words he’d ever said to her. She’d seen what Nakothi could do to him, and she’d seen what the Heart had done to the Consultants on Bastion’s Shadow with only two days of exposure.

  Shera couldn’t take any further chances.

  The Readers shifted behind Yala, moving their hands to what Shera assumed were weapons.

  The High Councilor raised her voice. “Please take the package from Gardener Shera and escort her to prison. She can share a cell with her lover.”

  No one moved. The moment creaked like a thin layer of ice.

  “Just take me to Kerian,” Shera said. “Don’t do this again.” Her emotions had already started to freeze over. There was no way she’d be able to get out of this without killing a fellow Guild member.

  Which was exactly what had gotten her assigned to a chapter house in the first place. Yala had backed Shera into a corner, forced her to choose between the security of the Empire and fighting other Consultants.

  Today, Shera would choose the same as she had then.

  Before Yala could take the initiative, or the Readers could work something out to stop her, Shera attacked. She sidestepped the closest of Yala’s pet Architects, ducked another, and had her bronze blade out and moving for Yala’s throat before the High Councilor could defend herself. Shera had no intention of killing the woman, but if she could get a blade to Yala’s throat, maybe the others would back off.

  But as quick as Shera had been, Meia was faster.

  In the split second it took Shera to act, Meia landed between her mother and Shera. She caught Shera’s wrist in an alchemically strengthened hand, holding off the attack without effort.

  Meia turned to Shera with eyes like a dragon’s, snarling. Before she could say a word, her mother interrupted her by flicking a knife at Shera’s chest.

  No doubt Yala hoped to kill Shera while her daughter’s attention was distracted, but Meia was far too fast.

  With a snapping motion like a rattlesnake taking a mouse, Meia caught the knife in her teeth. She ground her jaws together, rending steel with the audible shriek of tearing metal. Shredded bits of the knife plinked to the ground.

  Light and life, that was impressive. Shera would never have wanted to endure what the alchemists had put Meia through, but they had produced results.

  “Everybody settle down,” Meia growled, her voice overshadowed as though she were speaking in two voices at once. “We can still—”

  One of Yala’s Readers, taking advantage of the opening, whipped a length of spiked chain at Shera. She ducked her head out of the way, but her wrist was still held in Meia’s iron grip. There was no way she could tear her way free, and the chain was still headed for her chest. She had no doubt that each was packed with lethal Intent. One hit, even from such a small weapon, could potentially splatter her like a ripe fruit.

  Meia released Shera’s wrist and stepped in between her and the descending chain.

  The spike weapon struck with the sound of a war-drum, far deeper than it should have been able to produce, and Meia’s back practically exploded. Blood and shreds of black cloth burst into the air.

  Meia screamed, her e
yes blazing orange. She spun around, revealing a back that had been laid open to the bone. Shera took one careful step back.

  Blue scales had already started gathering around the wound, and the flesh was knitting itself together, as Shera had expected. She’d seen Meia recover from worse.

  But that Reader was in trouble.

  Meia tore the chain from the man’s grip, ignoring the blood that flowed down her fist, and tossed it aside. Clumps of soil exploded away from the iron links as it landed.

  The Architect’s eyes widened, and he fumbled at his belt for another tool, but Meia’s hand blurred. With a crunch, his nose broke.

  “I asked you,” she punched him again, “to please,” she kicked him in the shin, snapping bone, “settle down!”

  In the end, her voice rose to a shriek, and she was beating into the man with her fists as he lay helpless on the ground.

  Nobody moved to help him. Even Yala looked away, disgusted. The other two Architects had bolted as soon as she punched their comrade the first time, which Shera thought displayed unusual wisdom. They hadn’t stopped yet.

  It was Shera who finally put an end to it, placing her hand on Meia’s shoulder. “Personally, I don’t care if you beat him to death,” she said. “But Lucan would. And I think you would.”

  Meia stopped with her fist raised over the man’s bloody face, eyes blazing orange. Her shirt still hung in dark tatters from her shoulders, but her body was already healed.

  She stepped away shakily, legs unsteady. She didn’t look at Shera or Yala as she spoke.

  “This issue should be resolved between the High Council of Architects,” she said quietly. “We will go find High Councilors Kerian and Tyril, and they will decide what is to be done with the Heart. Until that point, you will both remain in my care.”

  “You don’t have the authority for that, Gardener,” Yala reminded her, seemingly unimpressed.

  Meia looked at her. Her eyes still hadn’t reverted to their human blue.

  All she said was, “Lead the way. Or will I have to carry you?”

  ~~~

  As Shera had expected, Kerian and Tyril were not in the Council chamber, as Yala had claimed. When they arrived, there were a number of Architects gathered around, waiting for Yala.

  When Yala marched in, she quickly announced that Meia and Shera should be detained for crimes against the Guild.

  The two Gardeners drew shears. Those few Architects who didn’t recognize them personally recognized their weapons, and no one attacked. None of the Architects looked at Yala; a few of them coughed nervously.

  “I think I know where they are,” Shera said at last. “Follow me.”

  Shera had taken a powerful piece of a Great Elder back to the Island before. On that occasion, they had brought the object to a single, ancient site, where its power could be safely dispersed.

  The site itself was hidden, but the entrance was well-known to all Consultants: Zhen’s House of the Masons.

  ~~~

  Once Shera reached the edge of the island, she wandered around staring at Bastion’s Veil before she finally spotted the camouflaged gray house. She hadn’t brought the correct key this time—she had never expected to need it—so Meia kicked the door in.

  Zhen wouldn’t like that, but they were in a hurry.

  Several floors down through a series of hidden trap doors, the three of them came to the room Shera remembered: it looked like the basement of a Luminian cathedral. The doors were all arches of interlocking stone, and the walls were carved with Kameira reliefs. Statues of knights lined the walls, and in the center waited a box of thick stone.

  That box, as they had explained to her last time, was made to weaken objects of malicious origin. Jorin Maze-walker had designed it to break curses and draw the power from Elder artifacts so that they could be safely handled.

  Sure enough, Zhen and Kerian stood waiting with the third and final High Councilor: Tyril. He lay sprawled against a nearby wall, snoring soundly, with a rolled-up blanket propped under his head. He had risen from the Shepherds, and he looked like he actually spent his time in the wild, caring for sheep: his gray beard was long and wild, spilling over his chest, and he wore dark rags instead of an actual set of blacks. He was almost painfully thin, but he looked as though he had walked a hundred miles to get here.

  He always looked that way.

  “It is about time,” Zhen huffed, blowing out his moustache. “What took you so long, Yala?”

  Yala looked back at the two Gardeners without saying a word.

  “We have reason to believe that my mother was trying to take the Heart for her own purposes,” Meia said, voice controlled.

  “What reason?” Kerian asked coolly.

  She was keeping herself under control, but Shera knew she would be pleased. Any chance to get rid of Yala would make Kerian’s life easier.

  Yala jerked her head in Shera’s direction. “This one didn’t want to let the Heart out of her sight. She asked to accompany me back, and I refused her. Then she attempted to kill me.”

  Kerian turned to Shera, who nodded.

  “That sounds about right,” Shera said.

  Zhen stroked his moustache thoughtfully. “Hmmm. The explanation is too practiced, and she even shifts the blame so that we will overlook the obvious holes in her argument. Two out of ten. I taught you to lie better than that, Yala. I am shocked and, frankly, disappointed that you couldn’t do any better.”

  “I don’t need to prepare a lie,” Yala said, back straight. “I had not stepped outside my Guild-given authority. I need no explanation.”

  “Not until you never brought us the Heart,” Kerian said. “What would you have told us then, I wonder?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she responded. “She was the only one who broke Guild law. Once again.”

  Shera had slept through most of her last trial, and she was fully prepared to sleep through another.

  Kerian waved a hand. “Meia, take her away. Keep her confined somewhere until we can determine what she was planning. Until then, the Heart takes priority.”

  Meia bowed and left, pulling her mother along behind her.

  Strangely, Yala didn’t protest. She left without another word.

  “Does it bother anybody else that she didn’t argue more?” Shera asked.

  “She seemed distracted,” Zhen said. “The girl I knew could have spun a better lie than that on the day she came to me. Do you think she knows something we do not?”

  Kerian heaved the heavy lid off the stone box, letting it crash to the ground with a thud. Tyril didn’t even stop snoring. “Knowing Yala, she is looking forward to the next step of her plan. We can’t do anything to her within the scope of our authority, and she knows that. As she said, she didn’t defend herself because she doesn’t need to.”

  “That’s no excuse for letting herself get soft,” Zhen said.

  “You’re one to talk,” Kerian said, poking him in the gut. “And speaking of soft...”

  She pulled a spade out from her own pouch, hefted the blade in her hand for a moment, and then hurled it at the sleeping Shepherd.

  In the middle of a snore, Tyril rolled out of the way and snapped his hand up. He caught the spade between two fingers.

  A second later, he blinked his eyes open. “Did you have to, Kerian?” he asked, voice mournful. “There are much gentler ways of waking me. A kiss, perhaps.”

  Kerian produced another gleaming silver knife, and he raised his hands in surrender.

  Shera couldn’t help regarding him with a little awe. She had somewhat ignored Tyril for most of her life: Kerian and Yala were much more impressive, in her opinion. Tyril had never had much of an impact on anything, as far as she could tell.

  But a man who could sleep that soundly and still catch a knife in midair? That man was worthy of her respect.

  He stared owlishly around, yawning. “Is Yala here yet?”

  Everyone ignored him. Shera stepped up, raising the makeshift sack she�
�d fashioned to carry the Heart. She had focused on ignoring its song, but it was still there, like a steady whisper in the back of her mind.

  “The road to perfection is through death. You can do nothing as you are: soft, weak, fragile. Only death is strong, only death is real, only death lasts forever—”

  The song cut off as Shera dropped the whole sack into the box and Zhen slid the lid back on top.

  A buzzing, grinding noise sounded from the box, so subtle that Shera wasn’t certain she was hearing it with her ears. Perhaps it was something like Nakothi’s song, and it played straight into her mind.

  “How long did it take last time?” Zhen asked.

  “Not long,” Shera responded. “So I’m going to catch a nap. Wake me when I’m needed.”

  “Hear hear,” Tyril echoed, returning to his pillow.

  “I’d still like to hear what you have to say about Yala,” Kerian said pointedly.

  “We’ll have plenty of time when I wake up,” Shera responded. She was more than ready for this whole misadventure to end. Once the Heart was destroyed, she could go back to her quiet space behind a desk in the Capital’s chapter house, and others could clean up.

  She curled up on the dusty ground like a child, resting her head on her folded arms. There was still plenty to worry about—for one, her left-hand blade was always whispering to her in Nakothi’s malicious voice, and that was after only one taste of the Great Elder’s blood. How strong would it grow after a second helping? The Blackwatch would be calling for the death of the Consultants now, and Shera got the feeling that she hadn’t seen the last of Calder Marten or his crew.

  Naberius Clayborn certainly wouldn’t give up on the Heart unless he knew it was destroyed, not after the covetous way he’d cradled it to his chest. He looked at Nakothi’s Heart like a starving man facing the first morsel of food he’d seen in months.

  There were still plenty of loose threads to snip.

  But not for Shera. She’d be gone.