by Will Wight
Until the Emperor had decided that this presented a unique opportunity for his three personal Gardeners.
That was why Shera lay, cramped and shivering, in a trunk behind a mad alchemist. She had no idea where Lucan and Meia had ended up, but they were supposed to provide a distraction. And they were eight minutes late.
Worst of all, it was so cold and uncomfortable inside this trunk that she couldn’t even sleep.
Gently, softly, it began to rain.
Shera cursed the Emperor to an eternity devoured by crabs in Kelarac’s dungeon. She cursed Meia to be devoured by Urg’naut, and Kerian—who had allowed this to happen—to Nakothi’s tender attentions.
And Lucan…
Well, she could forgive Lucan. Assuming he hadn’t already gotten himself killed.
She felt a squirm of worry when she thought about Lucan, far greater than when she considered the others. Meia would survive, of that she had no doubt. Meia would survive anything out of sheer stubbornness. But Lucan? What would happen to Lucan without Shera around to protect him?
A metal grate burst open a few yards down the wall, and Crane leveled his copper staff.
Lucan pushed his head out, his dark skin smeared with some luminous orange fluid. He looked uncomfortable, but at least he was alive.
Blue-white sparks whirled from the tip of Crane’s staff, crashing into Lucan. At the last second, he raised a wooden shield.
The sparks fizzed against the wood and vanished.
The shield was a device that Lucan had fashioned minutes before they entered the castle, out of spare wood and strips of leather. It would protect him from Albadol Crane’s harmful Intent, he claimed.
Then Crane lowered his staff and raised a pistol.
Lucan dropped back down the grate as the pistol jerked back, sending up a crack and a puff of gun smoke. The bullet struck sparks from the stone next to the grate.
Crane tossed the empty pistol down—he would have no time to reload—and fumbled for a flask at his belt.
Meia vaulted over the far side of the wall like an acrobat, blond hair flipping in the dark. The heel of her descending foot caught Crane on the wrist, sending the vial crashing to the stone. It broke open and sizzled, raising a cloud of caustic-smelling smoke inches from Shera’s hiding place.
She drove a punch at Crane’s chest, but he cackled and spread his arms wide.
The whole castle shook. Shera rattled in her wooden cage like a coin in a bottle. The grate over Lucan’s head crashed down, and Meia tumbled three steps backwards.
“This is my castle, worms!” Albadol Crane declared. “But while you’re here, why don’t I give you the tour?”
That was when Shera jumped out of the chest and cut his throat.
She used both her shears at the same time, just to be sure.
The alchemist choked and spewed blood over the stones at his feet, pitching forward. Meia gave him a little extra shove, and he flopped straight over the wall. Shera leaned forward.
He slammed limply into the ground, his alchemical lantern shattering in a pool of luminescent fluid.
“That wasn’t so hard,” Shera said. Then her leg muscles screamed at her, and she doubled over. “Ow, cramp…cramp…”
Meia glared at her, and that was when Shera noticed that her left arm was hanging at her side, mangled and useless.
“What happened to you?”
“Guard dogs,” Meia snapped. “Kameira hybrids. They didn’t die until I cut their hearts out of their chests.”
“That explains why you’re late.” She turned to Lucan. “What about you?”
Lucan scraped some of the glowing orange goo off his face with a look of disgust, flinging it to the ground. “This was one of a pair of potions that were supposed to react together and cook me alive. If I hadn’t Read the device first, they would both have gotten me.”
Shera waved a hand over the wall. “I noticed you didn’t stop to question him. How’s your conscience?”
“Clean as a Pilgrim’s hands,” he said at once. “I did some Reading on the way up here. You have no idea what experiments he did in this castle. I can hear their screams from every brick in this place.”
A weight Shera didn’t know she’d been carrying eased.
Lucan approves...I’m glad.
Too often, when she killed people, she had to hear him wondering aloud if they had a brother, a lover, a wife, a mother. This time, they had simply rid the world of one more monster.
The three Gardeners stood on the wall, waiting.
Technically, this was the conclusion of their first official assignment as a team. They had done odd tasks for the Emperor individually and together, but they were usually mediocre jobs designed to hone one particular skill or another. This was the first official Guild mission they’d taken, and they walked away more or less unscathed.
“Did this seem a little easy to you?” Shera asked hesitantly.
Lucan scraped away more gel. “More risk than usual.” Then he shrugged. “But not much. After all those lessons, I expected something more exciting.”
Meia uncorked a bottle of dark blue fluid and drained it to the dregs, letting out a small sigh when she’d finished. “It looks like blueberries. It smells like blueberries. So why doesn’t it taste like blueberries?”
Of its own accord, her shoulder shifted in its socket with a sickening crunch. Her wounds crawled together, sprouting dark blue scales where they joined.
“We got the job done,” Meia said at last. “But yes, I did expect a little more of a challenge.”
Shera looked away from Meia’s writhing arm, vaguely nauseated. “Do you have to keep drinking those?”
“Until I stop growing. At least for the next two or three years, it’s monthly checkups and lots and lots of potions.” She grimaced and shattered the empty bottle on the castle wall. “So who’s going to take care of the castle?”
Shera raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t place the charges?”
“Yes she did,” Lucan said, intervening before Meia could snap back. “But this place is defended against alchemical charges. He’s invested every inch of the stone, and even some of the moisture in the air, to deaden explosions. I don’t know how he got the pistol to work anywhere on the grounds.”
Shera checked the shears in their sheaths, touched the pouch of spades, and adjusted the needles strapped to her belt. All secure.
“Your turn, then,” she said. She gave him a smile. “See you down below.”
He returned the smile, even as he stripped off his gloves and knelt to press his palms against the castle.
Meia and Shera hopped over the side of the wall.
Shera had to descend the old-fashioned way; digging for grooves in the stone with the tips of her gloved fingers and pressing flat-soled slippers against the wall. Like her shears, they were invested with generations of Gardener Intent, and they would never slip or slide on uneven terrain. But that didn’t make climbing down any less painful.
By contrast, Meia jumped straight down. She threw one hand out for balance when she hit the grass, her knees slightly bent, but her whole body was alchemically reinforced. Sometimes Shera envied her that.
Sometimes.
By the time she reached Meia at the bottom, Shera’s arms and legs were screaming at her. She rubbed at her wrist as she walked away from the castle and into the shadow of the surrounding woods. Meia walked at her side, keeping pace as blue scales flaked off her wounded arm.
Behind them, the castle started to shake.
“He could have taken this assignment alone,” Shera commented. “Just brought the whole castle down from the very beginning.”
Meia rolled her eyes. “Any of us could have. In, kill the alchemist, out. This was to test how we work as a team.”
“We couldn’t have brought down the castle. Not without alchemical charges.”
“Yes, and I hear he walks on clouds, and sings with the voice of an angel!”
Shera’s face grew
hot.
“Hey, you see him special. Your heart’s in your eyes. You’re stitching your names together on a pillow.” Meia clapped Shera on the back with her unwounded arm. “That’s fine! I don’t care. But don’t let it affect your appraisal of the situation at hand.”
A rumble grew like distant thunder as pieces of the castle fell to the ground.
Shera cleared her throat, cheeks still burning. “We could have done it without his help.”
When Meia walked under the shadow of a tree, she was almost invisible except for her hair. “I do agree with what you said. For an assignment given to us by the Emperor himself, this did seem too simple. But he is the Emperor, and his reasons are not for us to know.” Instinctively, they both stuck to the dark.
Behind them, a deafening roar shook the night as the castle collapsed.
Shera couldn’t help herself. “You have to admit, that was impressive.”
~~~
The Emperor sat in front of the three of them, for once wearing something simple: a plain white robe with a sash thrown around it. Evidently he had been sleeping when they arrived in the city, though he was awake and alert and holding a cup of tea when they finally reached him.
“How did you defeat the homunculi?” the Emperor asked curiously. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”
Shera exchanged glances with the other two. “The what?”
He waved a hand. “Perhaps you have another word for them. In this case, Crane was building ten-foot monstrosities out of human parts he grew in his lab. They were infused with all the alchemy at his command, wearing invested armor. You saw nothing of them? There should have been a dozen or more.”
“I cut his throat,” Shera said. “Then Meia pushed him over a wall, and Lucan brought down the castle.”
Delicately, the Emperor sipped his tea. “Well, that’s a disappointment. I should have sent only one of you.”
Shera looked triumphantly at Meia, who very carefully did not meet her eyes.
“Nonetheless, I am glad you’ve returned. Something significant has happened. It has left me quite disturbed, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
He sipped some more tea.
“What’s happened to you?” Shera asked in mock horror. “You’re a wreck!”
The Emperor nodded to her as if to concede a point, unaware of the irony. “I do apologize for that. But there are certain issues that I can’t address myself. And I can’t trust the details to anyone else, not even to General Teach herself.”
All three of their spines straightened, and Shera’s gaze locked onto the Emperor. Despite his casual tone, this meant matters were deadly serious. If she even thought about telling anyone outside this room, the Emperor could Read it and have her executed on the spot.
A bead of sweat rolled down her temple. Now that the idea had occurred to her, she couldn’t help but think of it.
The Emperor swirled the tea in his cup, thinking. “What do you know about Nakothi, the Dead Mother?”
Shera’s flesh seemed to crawl at the very mention of the name, and she thought she heard whispers coming from somewhere nearby.
“Only what everyone knows,” Lucan said.
“Pardon me if I am somewhat unfamiliar with what everyone knows,” the Emperor said drily. “I was the one who drove the spear into Nakothi’s heart, before her death-throes leveled a continent and created the Aion Sea.”
The impact of what he was saying struck Shera like a cannonball. Seeing the Emperor like this, in a night-robe and holding a cup of tea, made him look so human. She often forgot that he was the Emperor. There was only one man with actual living memories of the Great Elders, and he was sitting in this room.
Lucan bowed deeply, genuine regret in his voice. “I apologize, my Emperor. I spoke carelessly.”
The Emperor waved a hand impatiently, but when Lucan went on, it was with a formal tone. “I know that Nakothi was one of the last of the Great Elders to rule before you united humanity. She ruled the domain of birth and death, and often tried to combine the two. The Luminians exterminated the last of the Dead Mother’s cults almost two hundred years ago. Some say that it is Nakothi’s touch that causes stillbirths, and when a corpse seems more healthy than it was in life, it is burned to prevent Nakothi from claiming it as a vessel.”
Meia piped up. “Highness! I’ve heard that Nakothi waits at the bottom of the Aion, alongside Kelarac.”
The Emperor looked up sharply. “One day we will have a longer conversation regarding where you heard that rumor. Nonetheless, there is much you don’t know. And much to cover.”
He glanced to the door, and presumably he did something with his Intent, because a pair of servants instantly pushed the door open. “Three chairs,” he said.
They returned in seconds, and the three young Gardeners sat.
“I was born in Nakothi’s territory,” the Emperor said. “She ruled over what we now call the Heartlands, the birthplace of humanity. She had little use for living humans, so we scrabbled out our lives as best we could. What she did need were human corpses. By the thousands.
“She reforged them, you see. Stitched them together, brain and body, remade them into monsters. Her Handmaidens called it rebirthing.”
For a moment, the Emperor’s face hardened with a hatred that predated the civilized world.
“When I learned I could sense the memories and potential in objects, the first thing I did was to leave Nakothi’s lands, into the halls of Ach’magut. I wandered for years, seeking out others like me.
“When I next returned to Nakothi, I had an army behind me.”
He stared into his cup, lost in memories. After almost two full minutes, he shook himself loose. Then he met each of their eyes in turn, staring at them with a gaze ancient and dark.
“Everything I have told you up to this point is historical fact. It’s nothing you couldn’t have pieced together with a visit to the Consultants’ archives. What I will tell you now is a secret that I haven’t told another living soul in centuries.”
He held the teacup on his palm, and it began to shiver. After a moment, little white specks peeled away and drifted off on the wind. More and more specks joined them, until the teacup—and the tea inside it—dried up and crumbled away to ash.
Shera found the display unusually disturbing.
“This information is vital not only to the security of the Empire, but to my personal survival. I know you are all aware of this, so I have never emphasized it before, but I tell you now: if I even suspect you have leaked this story without my express authorization, I will kill you. I will have those who heard the story executed. I will print an official refutation in all Imperial news outlets, and I will put on a public display to shame and discredit your claims. Your names will be stricken from the record of Imperial citizens, and from the very stones I will strip all memory of your existence.”
The sheer severity of the threat moved beyond intimidating and into the realm of absurdity, such that Shera was tempted to laugh. Why would they tell anyone?
But when the Emperor was so solemn, the very room exuded the air of an executioner’s chamber. Shera found her muscles frozen, the mirth strangled in her chest.
Almost as one, all three of them nodded.
The aura of the room relaxed, and the Emperor dipped a hand into the front of his robes. He gripped a fistful of the silver chain he always wore around his neck and hauled it up.
On the end was a pewter shell, about the size of a big man’s fist.
Gripping it gently in both hands, the Emperor pressed down on either side. It popped open like a locket.
Revealing a sickly, gray-green, still-beating heart.
“This,” the Emperor said, “is a Heart of Nakothi. This is how I live forever.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Investing Intent is a natural process, and one that we are learning to control. We believe Readers are the key to humanity’s advancement. But in spite of everything we’ve learned, we still
know next to nothing about the process we call Awakening. I will summarize our knowledge as best I can.
First, we know that Readers can Awaken objects, transforming their physical appearance and granting them increased powers.
Second, we know that Awakened items seemed to have a degree of awareness, the strength and nature of which are related to that object’s original Intent.
Finally, we know that Awakened objects can no longer be invested further, or Awakened again.
However, we still do not have an answer to that most critical question: What effects do the Awakened have upon us?
-From an ancient research journal in the Magister’s Guild
(Excerpt stored in the Consultant’s Guild archives)
“My mother believes that the Empire is already dead,” Meia said, tossing Shera the Heart.
Shera sat down on a tree branch, idly passing Nakothi’s Heart from hand to hand. She’d wrapped it in invested cloth and stuffed the whole bundle in a sack, but it did nothing to quiet Nakothi’s song.
You are cold, the Heart crooned. You are weak, you are sick. Let me make you strong, let me take away your pain...
“I’m not even sure what that would mean,” Shera said, ignoring the Dead Mother’s voice. “The people of the Empire are still here. The Guilds are still holding together. Just because we don’t have an Emperor doesn’t mean that everything ended.”
Shera tossed the Heart blindly to one side, and a Shepherd’s black-clad arm reached out and snagged it out of the air. Now that her right hand was free, she swung from her branch to the next tree.
This forest was one part of the Shepherds’ training course, and the trees were intentionally crammed close together, almost trunk-to-trunk. The idea was to get young Shepherds used to climbing over irregular surfaces, looking for the best vantage points. Meia had been the one to suggest it as an ideal place to take the Heart, to spread its influence around. As long as it didn’t stay in one location for too long, the Heart of Nakothi wouldn’t have a chance to corrupt its surroundings. In theory.
