Of Killers and Kings

by Will Wight

  It was sweeping toward Calder Marten.

  Seeing his tiny form stand before Jorin’s power was like seeing a minnow about to get snapped up by a shark.

  Before it struck Calder Marten, Teach threw herself in front, her own sword bare.

  Then they were both swallowed.

  In that split second, Shera made her decision.

  “Exit, Meia. Go.”

  She poured everything into Bastion.

  Blue-tinged silver fog exploded from her, swallowing the streets of the Imperial Palace. The shouts of fighters and moans of the dying were suddenly muted.

  Dizziness from the fading potion was making her thoughts heavy, but she clutched at the power of her Vessel to keep her focused. She was still unfamiliar with this power, but she knew Bastion’s Veil had another function. One that the High Council had used for the island’s security on a number of occasions.

  Her attempts to use this power had given her vague and uncontrolled results, but she needed it now.

  With all the will she could muster, she threw her sight into Bastion’s Veil.

  It was like trying to look through a thousand eyes at once, all clouded by fog. She was blinded by light, shadow, indistinct blurs of motion, and it only made her dizziness and disorientation worse.

  Calm, Bastion told her. Look for those who need protection.

  With that soothing voice drifting through her like a cool breeze, she took a breath and calmed down.

  She quickly found her Consultants. Ayana’s talons were slick with blood, but she had her palms pressed to a dying Greenwarden’s midsection. With a twist of her thoughts, Shera lightened Bastion’s Veil between them and the nearest tunnel exit. To them, the mist would have retreated, leaving a kind of hallway through the gray.

  She repeated the process with Kerian, who was returning from a tunnel to find other allies, and Yala, who stood with a bloodstained sword in either hand and a room full of dead or dying Blackwatch around her.

  She directed others she didn’t know, but every additional tunnel she created made it harder, like each was another brick she had to carry at once. Distantly, she was aware that her knees were beginning to buckle and that she was swaying on her feet. There may have been blood coming from her nose.

  It was hard to focus on anyone who wasn’t a Consultant through the eyes of the Veil, but the Consultants had already been in position to guide the others. They led pockets of other Independents through the mist, slipping into false grates or cellar doors that had been marked in advance.

  Just when she was about to drop her vision, Shera noticed an exception in Bastion’s focus: Jorin stood out clearly.

  He was using his blade to ward off the Blackwatch Guild Head, Bliss, as a group of Luminians hurried behind him to their designated exit.

  And if Jorin was easy to spot…

  She cast her thoughts in the direction where Estyr had gone.

  The Regent was far away, at the very edge of the silvery mist, but Shera found her. Or what had once been her.

  She lay in a bloody pile, one half of her body mangled and burned. She was soaked in blood, her limbs crumpled in angles that no living person could achieve.

  Shera’s throat clenched until icy practicality washed away the horror.

  It wasn’t the gore; she’d seen worse without flinching.

  The most powerful person left in the world was dead.

  She had to fight back thoughts of how hard that would make their upcoming battles, or how doomed they were when the Great Elders rose. No, she had to focus on what was real.

  Then the pile of charred flesh took in a shallow, rattling breath.

  Shera slipped out of the vision, reality crashing back over her, and she stumbled and almost fell. Meia caught her. When had Meia come back?

  “Estyr,” Shera said. “Follow me.”

  Without the last dregs of the Champion potion flowing through her, Shera wouldn’t have been able to stumble down the street after Meia. She would have collapsed. Using Bastion so heavily and so quickly had exhausted her, and her body was starting to ache with the penalty of straining itself beyond her human limits.

  But she squeezed the last of the alchemical power, pushing herself to jog on legs that were growing numb.

  When she led Meia to the edge of the fog and into the half-collapsed house that held Estyr Six, she heard Meia gasp.

  Well, that was the rational reaction.

  “Shera, we have to leave.” Meia put a hand on Shera’s elbow, urging her to turn around.

  “She’s alive,” Shera said, “but I understand the confusion.”

  Meia looked over Estyr’s body, pity in her orange eyes. “Even if she is…”

  Shera slammed her shear back into its sheath and walked over to the scorched pile of Regent. With strength beyond what she thought she should have left, she knelt and scooped Estyr up. She tried not to pay attention to how shallow and weak Estyr’s breaths were…or to the little pieces of the woman that remained behind on the floor.

  She was still breathing. If anyone could recover from this, it was the first Champion. And if anyone would know how to restore her, it was Jorin Curse-breaker.

  From beneath the debris, Meia produced a dusty rug. She snapped it once against the wall, then gently took Estyr from Shera, wrapping her in the rug.

  That was for the best, as Shera almost staggered and planted her face in the ground just from losing the extra weight.

  “I don’t think she’ll even make it back to the tunnel,” Meia said quietly.

  “We’ll see.”

  Bastion’s Veil had begun to clear, no longer supported by Shera’s power, and they had almost reached the closest secure tunnel when Shera realized the lack of cover would be a problem.

  All of the Independent Guilds had already retreated. They were alone.

  Facing an angry, and bloody, army of Blackwatch, Magisters, Imperial Guards, and a few sticky and poisoned Champions.

  Bliss of the Blackwatch stood at their head, staring down at her enemy.

  Not Shera.

  One man had not yet retreated. He’d kept his hood up but lost the cello case, replacing his blindfold with his pair of shadeglasses. Jorin held his sword reversed and driven into the ground, both hands on its pommel, and stone melted and ran away from the blade in sick black rivulets.

  Shera hurried toward him while Meia sprinted. A few muskets spun her way.

  Jorin’s hands tightened on the hilt of his weapon. “Which man of you is hungry for the grave?” he asked.

  No one fired.

  When Shera and Meia made it into the tunnels, Consultants and alchemists crashed over them in a wave of support. Estyr was taken from Meia, though they had to explain who she was.

  Instantly, an alchemist tried to push a syringe of shining pink fluid into her. Shera caught his wrist.

  “Regenerative elixir,” he explained. “This is ten times the dose I’d give a dying elephant, but if she can handle it, it will stabilize her.”

  Shera released him, and he plunged it into what might have been Estyr’s thigh.

  Wagons waited in the tunnel, ready to carry the Independents to rally points all over the Capital, where a dozen other preparations had been made for their retreat. Shera settled into the back of a cart next to Estyr, shivering and dizziness overcoming her.

  Despite her best efforts, they had been driven off once more. It was the Gray Island all over again.

  Except…

  The identical faces of the Farstrider sisters peeked over the side of the wagon. Two sets of eyes inspected her, taking in her condition, and she was sure they were memorizing the details to relive later.

  “You will tell everyone what happened here today, won’t you?” Shera asked them.

  The Witnesses were their only hope from the events of today. If word spread that Calder Marten had been accused of consorting with Kelarac by one of the Regents, he would never be allowed to remain in power. Even those who supported him would come
under scrutiny.

  Together, the two sisters nodded.

  Chapter Eight

  three years ago

  “It’s taking me far too long,” Lucan said, trudging up a grassy hill. “There’s too much history, and too little of it is helpful.”

  Shera was never the best source of sympathy. “Then quit,” she said. Her left arm was linked in his right, and she held a pear in her other hand. She bit into the fruit, punctuating her statement with a crunch.

  The second anniversary of the Emperor’s death was approaching, and the world had settled into an uneasy peace. The violent chaos that had enveloped the Heartlands was gone, leaving an unsteady equilibrium.

  But that didn’t mean things had gotten better.

  Regions, families, and Guilds had begun pulling apart, slowly stretching themselves away from one another, pulling at the seams that tied the world together. The Consultants had almost doubled in size over the last two years, some of their chapter houses in Izyria or Erin now rivaling their Capital chapters in size.

  He had discovered thousands of minor Guild secrets, but still nothing explaining the actions of the Architects. He was starting to lean on the simplest, easiest explanation: they had wanted the Emperor out of the way because chaos was good for business.

  He could believe it of Yala, at least. Kerian had worshiped the Emperor as much as anyone, but who knew what might have changed for her after his death?

  They must have known of some time limit, some plan that the Emperor had meant to implement before his death. They wouldn’t have rushed Shera unless they thought they had a clear deadline, and he was convinced it had to do with the connection between the Mistress of the Mists and the Regents.

  But he was tired.

  Tired of asking the same question with no answers and tired in the usual sense. He’d been worked as hard as any Gardener over the last two years, then spent most of his free time on this personal research project.

  Shera had pushed him to quit at every opportunity, and Meia had such faith in the Council of Architects that he couldn’t share his quest with her. Which had led to something of a rift between the three of them that he hoped the truth could mend.

  Lucan spoke again as they approached the gray wall of Bastion’s Veil. “Doesn’t it bother you, not knowing?”

  “Nope,” Shera said around a mouthful of pear. She swallowed and continued. “I wish we knew, but we don’t, and that’s how it is. They had plenty of possible reasons. Maybe they thought that he needed to be harvested before he could go mad.”

  “What if he had a contingency plan they didn’t like?” They’d had this conversation before, but he rarely pushed her for her full opinion.

  She shrugged the shoulder that rested against him. “We’ll never know.”

  “What if we did?”

  “Then we’d take his plan and make it happen.”

  That stunned him enough that he was silent for almost a minute as they approached the mist-gray house that blended into the veil. Mason Zhen’s home.

  Shera finished her pear and tossed the core down onto the grass. “Why are you so shocked?”

  Lucan knew Shera better than anyone, but he couldn’t keep a grip on her moral standards. “I…would have thought you wouldn’t care about carrying out a dead man’s last wishes.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Not anyone’s. His. If it turns out you’re right, and he had a plan that the High Council knew about and didn’t approve of, then it’s a question of who I trust more: him or them. And that’s no contest.”

  It was simple, when she put it like that. But after so long looking for an answer, Lucan had questioned himself from every angle.

  He expected to find that the High Councilors had a selfish motivation and the Emperor an altruistic one, but he had considered the fact that he might be wrong. Maybe the Emperor had been secretly moved by Nakothi’s influence and the Architects had found him out.

  It wasn’t a question he could answer until he knew the truth.

  The gray door of Zhen’s house slid opened, revealing the elderly Mason scowling at them. The years had weathered him, and he was fatter and more wrinkled than ever, the points of his now-white mustache hanging down past his chin. The chef’s apron he wore was spotless, and he glared at the pair of Gardeners.

  “Late!” he bellowed. “What virtue has a Gardener with no sense of timing? One out of ten. I expected better from you…and did you leave rotting fruit on my front lawn?”

  Shera separated herself from Lucan, patting the Mason on the shoulder as she slipped past him and into the house. “Sorry,” she said. “Do I smell caramel?”

  “Dessert is taken after the meal!”

  Zhen’s complaints made Lucan feel more at home.

  After dinner, Shera tossed herself onto a nearby couch, leaving Lucan and Zhen seated at the table. The old Mason cracked open a window and lit a pipe with a match, quickly puffing out smoke.

  Leaving Lucan with the opportunity he had been hoping for.

  “I’m afraid we’re not just here to relax,” Lucan said. “We thought you could help us with some business.”

  Zhen’s bushy white eyebrows shot up. “The Guild isn’t keeping you busy enough already?”

  Lucan tried to laugh, but it came out more as a sigh.

  He could feel the exhaustion, mental and physical, lurking just beneath the surface. If he dipped even a finger in, it would devour him.

  “Just a private interest. I’ve been looking for some Guild history I can’t find in the archives, so I thought I might find it in the tunnels.”

  “In the tunnels. You might as well try and find one rat in the Capital, but I’m happy to give you the tour again. Haven’t taken you down there in years, so far as I can recall.”

  “I’d be grateful,” Lucan said, rubbing at his head.

  “If that’s the most convincing you can be, you need to train with me again. What is it you’re looking for?”

  “I don’t even know anymore,” Lucan said, and it was only half a dodge. “Just trying to put some pieces together for an old mission.”

  Light snoring drifted over from the couch.

  Zhen narrowed his eyes, examining Lucan for a long moment. “Usually, when we bury something, it’s best not to dig it up again.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m close to packing up my shovel.”

  Zhen grunted and led Lucan over to the trap door concealed beneath an elaborate rug. “Well, whatever I can do for the Gardeners.”

  Down in Zhen’s basement, they walked past rows and rows of costumes tagged and organized according to size, region, and style.

  Now that Lucan knew what he was looking for, he could spot young Masons trying to hide as they passed through. They worked full-time to keep these clothes organized, and they were supposed to remain invisible to visitors as part of their training.

  “Four out of ten, Kanai,” Zhen called, and one of the shadows flinched. “Remember the angle between the target and yourself.”

  The sub-basement, walled in stone, was the beginning of the proper tunnels. Crates waited here, filled with papers that hadn’t been sorted into the archives yet. Not all reports made their way here first, only those of dubious origin.

  “I don’t suppose you would let me have a glance into one of these,” Lucan said.

  “You come back with permission from enough Architects, and you can drown yourself in ink.”

  More than likely, it wouldn’t be worth gaining permission. As the papers hadn’t been sorted yet, any given crate could contain anything from the deepest secrets of the Champions to the current market price of wheat on the Vandenyan coast.

  But when Lucan expected Zhen to pull aside the next trap door and descend lower, he noticed that there was now another rug where the next descent used to be. Zhen walked past it, pulling out a ring of keys to open the ordinary door at the end of the document room.

  “I thought we were headed deeper into the tunnels,” Lucan said.

>   Zhen blew out the ends of his mustache. “We are, boy, we are. Just have to take the long way ‘round, now that the Architects have decided they don’t want to take it easy on my knees.”

  The door swung open as Zhen unlocked it, blowing in the salty ocean breeze and the cool scent of Bastion’s Veil. The door was wide, and a ramp led down to the hidden cove into which the documents had been delivered.

  But Zhen’s mention of the Architects caught Lucan’s attention, so he walked back to the rug over the trap door. Kneeling, he placed three fingers on the thick strands.

  “Do you have time for this?” the Mason asked before the Reader’s trance took over.

  She has a few extra skeins of yarn left over from the winter. Might as well make another rug, maybe earn a few marks…

  Not the Intent he was looking for. He pushed past it.

  “Be warm,” an unknown voice begs the blanket, bundled tight inside it. “Please keep me warm, just for one night.”

  Not it.

  An idle, disinterested hand pulls the rug out of a selection of many. This will do. The brief contact leaves only a fleeting whisper of Intent, easily brushed away.

  Lucan started to pull his hand away when he recognized the sense of the next vision.

  “Hide the trap door,” Zhen thinks briefly, but he doesn’t fully care if the rug does its job or not. He’s doing this to placate the Architects.

  The room beneath is almost never used, and no one has ever been down here without his permission. His Intent to hide the entrance is weak…much stronger is his desire to stay out of trouble with the Council of Architects.

  What sleeps in the lower room has stayed asleep for hundreds of years.

  Lucan broke contact with the rug, looking up to see Zhen looking impatient.

  “What’s sleeping down there?” Lucan asked.

  “Take it up with the Architects. Are we going deeper, or do you want to admire my rug collection?”

  Lucan tossed the rug aside, revealing the boards nailed across the trap door. He pulled out one of his bronze shears and looked to Zhen. “I’m going to open this.”