Of Killers and Kings

by Will Wight

  She had finished climbing onto the roof outside when a knock sounded on the door. Shera slipped out of view of the window while Kerian readied herself for a visitor, straightening her hair and her dress. When Shera flattened herself against the tiles, she heard Kerian’s shoes padding across the floor.

  A moment later, the door clicked open.

  “I beg your pardon, High Councilor, but I haven’t been able to find the Guild Head.”

  Darius Allbright’s voice.

  Shera began to quietly slide away. She had nothing against Darius, but he brought work for the Guild Head, and she had just finished shedding those responsibilities.

  “Of course, Knight-Adjunct. Shera, could you come here for a moment?”

  Shera slid away faster.

  “You said I could call for you whenever I wished.”

  I should never have said that, Shera thought.

  A moment later, she reluctantly climbed back through the window.

  The Luminian looked surprised to see her crawling in from the roof. At least, she assumed it was surprise that made his head draw back. His expression was, as always, covered by the impenetrable shadow beneath his hood.

  “Hello, Shera. I hope I’m not disturbing anything…important.”

  “You are. Critical Guild business. So please don’t bother me unless it’s absolutely vital.”

  He held up an envelope. “I’m afraid it may be.”

  Shera yearned to lunge for him with her knife, but she jerked her left hand up when she realized that desire didn’t come from her.

  Syphren wanted a meal.

  “We’ve lost contact with our units around Urg’naut’s tomb,” Darius went on. “The few Watchmen I’ve been able to track down said that the Blackwatch have had similar trouble with other tombs. Typically, our Guilds cooperated to maintain security on the Great Elders, but the Guild War has…strained that relationship.”

  Kerian nodded along with his words. “Is this a request to reestablish communication with the Elder tombs?”

  “It is.”

  Shera pointed to Kerian. “Then you’re talking to the right person. This isn’t public knowledge yet, but I have resigned my position.”

  The darkness inside Darius’ hood shifted to regard Shera. “I understand. It can be hard to find a second of rest when everyone looks to you for an answer.

  “It really is.” Shera had never liked Darius more than she did in that moment.

  “I’ve watched my grandfather struggle under the title of Guild Head all my life. I wish you the best, and I’ll direct my inquiries to the Council from here on.”

  He bowed in her directly.

  This could not have gone any better.

  Suddenly in a more pleasant mood, Shera climbed out of the window again. Darius had reacted so well, she felt somehow that she ought to respond in kind. From the other side of the window, she crouched down and looked back at him. “What about you?” she asked.

  Kerian looked to her in surprise, but Shera continued. “What’s going to happen to you if the Great Elders rise?”

  In the past, he had described what it was like seeing through the darkness on his face. He stared always into the void in which the Elders lived.

  “I’m…not sure.” He raised one hand as though to touch his face, but soon put it down. “I will pray for strength, but who is proud enough to think they have the will to match a Great Elder?”

  Shera remembered the Emperor’s body shuddering as she plunged her knife into his heart.

  There was one responsibility she still had, Guild Head or not.

  “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “If a Great Elder takes over your body, I’ll kill you myself.”

  That should put him at ease.

  Feeling satisfied, she went back to her room to nap.

  Norian was a guard who worked in the Imperial Palace, not an Imperial Guard.

  He had to explain the difference annoyingly often. He still regularly had to face comments like “But you look human to me!” or “Why don’t you have a tail?”

  Whenever anybody bothered to ask him, Norian would honestly say that he had never dreamed of joining the Guard. Far from it. He had wanted the honor of defending the Empire without any parts of his body being replaced.

  He’d worked in the Palace since before the Long Mourning, and he worked there now. Imperialist or Independent, he didn’t care. He wasn’t a Guild man. He just kept the prisoners.

  And he was the first to notice that one of them had gone missing.

  When he first came on the empty cell, he didn’t sound the alarm immediately. The Steward had demanded this prisoner many times, so it wasn’t unusual for her to be gone. The other guards were supposed to report to him first, but he had just begun his shift, and sometimes the Steward called for her at inconvenient times.

  Until he remembered that the Steward was gone.

  Had Regent Jorin called for her, then?

  Stifling a rising sense of doom, he rushed for the book in which they wrote down all prisoner transfers.

  The Consultant Meia had been the last person to speak with the prisoner, and she had left alone afterwards. The prisoner had been reported in her cell at lights out.

  Somehow, she had slipped away unnoticed since then.

  Norian seized the Awakened bell, the one he had never hoped to use. He picked it up and shook it with all his strength, and the ring of the bell echoed throughout the entire Palace undiminished.

  Jyrine Tessella Marten had escaped.

  Urg’naut’s tomb was a castle.

  It had been a fortification raised during the Elder War, and the place where the greatest warriors of humanity had trapped the Great Elder before Loreli landed a fatal blow.

  The Creeping Shadow was trapped by a network of lights, mirrors, lenses, and shining Awakened objects so that not a single corner of the entire castle remained in darkness at any time of year.

  Unlike most of the other Great Elder tombs, these defenses were focused inward. Urg’naut did not deal with cultists. He had no material body from which anyone could steal a powerful piece. There was virtually no reason for anyone to break in.

  The soldiers of the castle spent their time making sure that the defenses held and that nothing made its way out.

  The Shades of Urg’naut were difficult to spot and to track, and only the Guilds or powerful Soulbound could destroy them once they escaped. Crafting Elderspawn seemed to be the only way the Creeping Shadow could influence the world, besides occasionally speaking into dreams or causing bouts of despair.

  This was therefore the one tomb that was not primarily run by Guild members.

  They had contacts among the Luminian Order and the Blackwatch, of course, both of whom usually performed monthly inspections. But the defenders were primarily an order of dedicated servants, living like monks in the castle and caring for the vast network of lights.

  When Jyrine stepped through the void portal, she gave them a chance to run.

  She gave them another chance after using her green flame to cut a hole in the castle wall, breaking the chains of light binding the greatest shadow.

  This time, some of them did.

  The rest ran after she finished drilling enough holes in the walls that the roof collapsed, sending tons of stone and masonry tumbling into a circle of endless darkness.

  With half the castle in ruins, she had expected Urg’naut to billow out in a wave of shadow. Kelarac had assured her that she would not be harmed, but she knew that Urg’naut was considered an impossible Elder to negotiate with.

  He desired only the end of all things.

  Not even maniacs actually wanted oblivion. She would never have considered waking him up…but they had left her no choice. She had to free the Great Elders so they could escape the world, leaving her with their knowledge and power.

  If only Calder had done as she wished while he had the chance. Then everyone could have gotten what they wanted.

  When the new worl
d was born, they would see she was right.

  When only silence and dust remained in the newly ruined castle, she finally threw in the object she had carried here. The gift Kelarac had given her, whose song had remained happy and muted in the back of her thoughts all the way here.

  A Heart of Nakothi.

  The gray-green mass of flesh flew into the darkness and passed from sight.

  Or perhaps the shadow consumed it.

  A breeze caressed her cheek, whispering into her ear.

  “Deliver a message for me, High Priestess of the Void.”

  The voice sounded exactly as she had imagined a shadow might sound: like the scrape of insect wings and the scuttling of spider’s legs.

  Jyrine shivered in fear. But it was exciting fear, thrilling fear, the sort that made you want more.

  The sort that helped distract her from the implications of what she was doing. What he would do, when he was free.

  She went down on one knee. “I live to serve.”

  “Tell Kelarac that I will stop the outsider once I find a vessel. But until then, I will pursue my purpose.”

  “…your purpose?”

  The wind hissed in impatience. “Deliver the message. He will know.”

  She bowed her head more deeply. “I will.”

  “And to you, I must apologize.”

  She resisted the urge to look up and see who was speaking. She knew she wouldn’t see anything, but this was not like what any of the reports suggested it was like to deal with Urg’naut.

  Was this an imposter?

  “I cannot bring you to oblivion.” The voice sounded truly regretful. “You must suffer the pain of existence for a short time longer…”

  A shadow passed under her feet, as if she were on the ocean and a whale had swum beneath her, and then the darkness left the castle. It was hard to see exactly what had changed in the ruins, but moonlight now played naturally over the stones.

  Jyrine straightened, the thrill of danger deepening into something less pleasant.

  Now the Guilds would fall. The Regents would fall. The Great Elders would destroy the old order so that they could leave this world behind and move on to greater things.

  And she would inherit their legacy.

  If only everyone had listened to her, this could have been easier.

  With the emerald embedded in her forehead shining, she strode back through the void portal.

  Back to Kelarac.

  Chapter Twenty

  two years ago

  The High Councilors officially met with the four Regents standing on the stone pier just inside of Bastion’s Veil. The Consultants had proposed hosting the Regents in luxury, but Estyr Six had staunchly refused.

  None of the four of them could wait to leave.

  Now they met with the three leaders of the Consultant’s Guild…along with Shera and Lucan.

  Shera still wasn’t quite sure what she was doing there.

  She was grateful to be anywhere. The last thing she remembered was taking several bullets and making a last-ditch gambit to wake the Regents.

  At least that had worked out.

  The Regents had traded the white robes from their imprisonment for their original clothing, and Shera was somehow surprised to see how much they resembled their portraits. From tall Estyr with the skulls whirling around her blonde hair to squat Alagaeus with his emerald-topped staff, they looked like they had stepped out of a history book.

  Tyril, the High Shepherd, smoothed his hair back and bowed to Estyr. “Lord and Lady Regents, let me first say what an honor it is to serve you. As you have expressed the urgency of your business, I will be brief: we three have agreed that the Consultant’s Guild would support any one of you to the position of Emperor or…Empress.”

  He very clearly locked eyes with Estyr, which made Alagaeus scowl.

  However, Estyr clearly shook her head. “There was only one Emperor.”

  Beside Shera, Lucan seemed startled. Kerian didn’t visibly react, but Yala looked like someone had stabbed her in the gut.

  If she kept pushing her luck, soon someone would. Shera didn’t forget that she had been shot on Yala’s orders.

  “For now, we’ll divide the world into four, as we have done before under the Emperor’s direction,” she continued. “You’ve grown beyond an Empire. Let’s see how the world handles its first taste of freedom.”

  Judging by Loreli’s melancholy expression and Jorin’s heavy sigh, they did not expect this to go well.

  Shera focused on the words “for now.”

  To her, it sounded like the Regents meant to proceed as they had in the past and see how it worked before appointing a new Emperor.

  That seemed reasonable.

  Personally, she wondered more about her own future in the Consultant’s Guild than the future of the Empire. Kerian would do what she could to protect Shera and Lucan, but the second the Regents left, Shera’s fate would be…uncertain.

  And so she wondered again why she was here. She would have greatly preferred to have been left alone.

  Then she and Lucan could have prepared to run.

  Finally, Estyr turned to Shera. “Now, what are you going to do with these two?”

  Yala stiffened, but Lucan let out a breath of relief.

  Shera thought it was too early to be relieved. She thought Estyr would be a friendly voice here, but who knew what an ancient Champion would do?

  “They broke the laws of the Guild,” Yala said defiantly. “They will be executed.”

  “No.”

  After Estyr’s one word, silence reigned for a breath.

  Yala bristled, stepping up to one of the Regents. “On what authority do you interfere with the Consultants? You’re not the Empress. If you want to rule, then rule. If you don’t, then we’ll make our own decisions. Don’t like it? Kill us.”

  Tyril and Kerian both took steps away from Yala.

  Estyr crooked a smile, the skulls around her head spinning faster, but Jorin stepped up and looked to everyone involved. Though it was still the gray light of predawn, he wore his trademark black-tinted shadeglasses.

  “My, you’re a jumped-up little lion, aren’t you? Let me try to point a question squarely at the heart of it: which laws did they break, exactly?”

  Yala began listing immediately. “Assault of fellow Guild members, destruction of Guild property, divulgence of Council secrets, trespassing, and defiance of Council orders. The cumulative punishment of which is execution.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Estyr said.

  Yala had turned red with fury. “And I ask again, on whose—”

  “Whose authority do you think I need?”

  Shera, for one, couldn’t wait to see Yala launched to the moon.

  Jorin made a pacifying gesture to Estyr. “Let’s…rein in our horses before they run off, shall we? High Mason, Estyr happens to be correct. Guild crimes committed in the process of executing an Imperial order don’t hold ink. This pair can’t be charged for anything they did to free us.”

  Alagaeus sneered, grinding his staff against the dock. “Consider yourself fortunate we’re having mercy on you.”

  “Divulging Guild secrets, then,” Yala said. “His research began years ago. It’s still within the power of the High Council to execute Consultants who intentionally seek out Guild secrets and reveal them. Even to other Consultants.”

  Shera’s hands slipped back to her shears.

  That was an execution order directed squarely at Lucan.

  “…which applies only to the buck over there,” Jorin pointed out, nodding to Lucan. “And unless the law has slipped and slid for more than a mile since my last fresh-air trip, then the minimum punishment is a lifetime of shallow imprisonment.”

  Estyr looked to Tyril and Kerian. “Well, High Council? Execution or imprisonment?”

  Her hard stare made it clear which they should choose.

  “There’s actually a rainbow of other options between those two,” Jorin began,
but Estyr hushed him with a gesture.

  Kerian responded easily: “As High Gardener, I would be delighted to accept a minimal punishment.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of executing such a talented Gardener!” Tyril said. “Wouldn’t dream of it!” Shera suspected he would start eating his shoes right there if Estyr asked him to.

  “Fine.” Estyr locked eyes with Yala. “You get to hide behind Guild law once. If I find that you have gone outside the law, even an inch, then it will no longer protect you. Do you understand?”

  Yala nodded tightly.

  Shera knew what Estyr was getting at. The day after the Regents left, Yala would have started arranging an “accident” for Lucan and Shera. Estyr was warning her not to try it.

  That was good enough for Shera, too.

  Shallow imprisonment meant that Lucan would be held in the nicest cells. The ones closest to the surface. He would even be allowed on limited missions, if the Council issued special permission.

  Shera would have him out before sunset.

  Sure, that might put them at odds with the Guild. But she was willing to—

  Estyr cut off her thoughts by turning to her. “I want to hear what these two think. Get out of here.”

  Yala started to protest, but Kerian and Tyril physically dragged her off.

  Which left Shera and Lucan in the company of the four Regents.

  If she hadn’t been so used to the presence of the Emperor and General Teach, Shera might have been intimidated.

  “Thanks,” Shera said as soon as the High Councilors were far enough away. “She was definitely going to kill us.”

  Estyr looked taken aback for a moment, then she grinned. “Yeah, I didn’t need any special powers to read that one.”

  “Will you be all right?” Loreli asked Lucan.

  The Luminian Regent had said very little. She seemed distracted, and if Shera wasn’t mistaken, she looked almost on the verge of tears.

  Well, she was supposed to be the Emperor’s daughter. Shera had never been sure if that was an honorary title or if her father was literally the Emperor, but either way they had to have been close.