Of Killers and Kings

by Will Wight

The Elder bound to the bottom of The Testament loomed over Shera, dripping water onto her like rain, and for one instant she thought it was going to tear her apart.

  Instead, it clapped a massive palm down onto Kelarac.

  Shera was almost jostled loose, but her most notable emotion was irritation. Obviously slapping the Great Elder wasn’t going to work.

  Sure enough, it didn’t.

  Kelarac detonated the creature’s hand in a burst of green flame, sending it stumbling backwards and screaming. Once again, Shera had to grip more tightly to the railing to avoid spilling into the sea; her fingers and forearms were beginning to burn.

  Finally, Shera was positioned behind Kelarac.

  He stood over a screaming Calder, burning plates of the Emperor’s armor off one at a time. As each plate fell to the ground, Calder’s cries grew more agonized.

  Slowly, patiently, Shera thickened Bastion’s Veil.

  Kelarac’s attention was still on Calder.

  He pried the Emperor’s helmet from Calder and tossed it aside. Shera couldn’t see the expression on the possessed Jyrine’s face, but Calder glared up through a mask of tears.

  “I will see you dead,” Calder spat.

  Under the cover of mist, Shera hauled herself up and onto the deck.

  “I will look on your body and I will laugh,” Calder continued. He sounded like a man venting a lifetime of resentment all at once. “I will laugh because you could have escaped your prison, but you decided to stay and die among your toys.”

  Safe meant stealthy, and stealthy meant slow.

  Shera crept up on the Great Elder one step at a time.

  Kelarac laughed physically this time, a mangled fusion of his voice and Jyrine’s. “You think you will be the one to bring me to my end, fallen King?”

  Shera loved it when the target was talking. It meant they were paying attention to someone else.

  This time, she would do what she should have done the first time she’d met Jyrine Marten.

  A broad smile bloomed on Calder’s face.

  “Not me,” he said.

  He knows I’m here, Shera realized.

  Suddenly desperate, she pulled Syphren and plunged it into Kelarac’s heart from behind.

  Please, let me not be too late, not too late…

  Raw power surged through Shera like a river forced through the mouth of a bottle.

  She wasn’t too late.

  Syphren feasted, drawing power until Shera felt she couldn’t take any more…and then he drew still more, packing her to bursting. She thought her skin might pop with the pressure from inside.

  When she hit her actual limit, there was still power left over. She was horrified for an instant, thinking that Kelarac might crawl away.

  But that energy turned on its origin, devouring Kelarac from the inside.

  As Shera had learned long ago, Syphren was invested to turn defenses against themselves. The more powerful the defenses, the harder the blow.

  The Great Elder didn’t get a chance to cry out, or protest, or strike back.

  Kelarac died in a pillar of green light. Every part of him, and of Jyrine, dissolved.

  Or…maybe not all of him.

  She wasn’t sure how to name what she felt. It was like an instinct, a thought, a dream. But she felt as though the bonfire had been snuffed at once, leaving a cloud of sparks behind.

  Shera’s vision cleared and she saw Calder on the deck beneath her. Wounded, exhausted, burned all over, with his remaining clothes stuck to him mostly by dried blood, he looked up to her.

  She could only speak through clenched teeth. Her entire body trembled.

  “Why did you have to warn him?” she forced out.

  “If he had turned to look at you, I would have done something,” he said confidently.

  “What?”

  “…something.”

  By his expression, he seemed to think that was an adequate answer.

  Shera thought back to their first time meeting on The Testament. She thought back to it often, especially after Lucan’s death. Now, though she bristled with power that begged for release, she felt as though she had to say something.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She almost choked on the words.

  Calder had been a reckless, selfish idiot a thousand times, and his actions had put the entire Empire in danger.

  But if Shera had succeeded in her contract—or even if she’d killed Jyrine—none of this would have happened.

  “For what?” Calder asked. He looked suspicious rather than confused.

  “For failing to kill Naberius Clayborn.”

  Like an old man, Calder pushed himself to his feet. Shera could have helped him, but she felt as though her first step would launch her a mile into the sky. It was all she could do to contain Kelarac’s energy while standing still.

  “I’m sorry I let Lucan die,” he said, and Shera was unprepared to hear Lucan’s name from him. It stirred up emotions that she had to shove down again.

  “I didn’t want that to happen,” he continued.

  The only one who could pay that debt had just burned along with Kelarac…and more importantly, Shera didn’t want to think about it anymore. She was starting to smell every individual Elderspawn on the deck and her ears were picking up the creaking of each splinter on the ship.

  Her focus wouldn’t last for long.

  “That account is settled,” she said aloud, hoping he would drop it.

  Green light crackled in the clouds overhead. Shera felt something respond inside her, and she quickly scanned the sky to search for Kelarac’s return.

  But no, it was just the remainder of his power dissipating. She was on edge for nothing.

  She spent a small fraction of her power dismissing Bastion’s Veil. The mist forcibly cleared at once, allowing the rest of the humans to see that the battle was won.

  Even those who couldn’t tell that Kelarac had been beaten could guess the rest. Bodies and burning ships were scattered over the ocean, and the air was filled with the sounds of the dying. But there were no powerful Elders left. Even most of the Elderspawn had fled.

  The Regents still flew in the skies and the four guardian statues were gone. A ragged cheer went up from all around them, drowning out the screams.

  Shera returned her gaze to the sky.

  The battle overhead had ended.

  No incomprehensible force clashed in the void any longer. The colored spots had also vanished from the void; now the slices of sky drifted in pure, endless darkness blacker than the darkest night.

  So this is it, Shera thought. We can win every battle and still lose.

  “Urg’naut won,” she said out loud.

  She didn’t expect that to sound as hopeless as it did. They had done everything right and still lost, in the end.

  It had all been for nothing.

  She would have to apologize to the rest of the Consultants…and then go find a place to nap. When the end of the world came, it would find her sleeping.

  “No,” Calder said, “he lost.” Shera turned back to him. Did Calder know something she didn’t?

  “And now it’s over anyway,” he finished.

  Shera was about to ask what he meant when she heard a new sound drift through the air. A sound that, once again, she picked up with her mind more than her ears.

  Come, my children…come to me…rise once more and taste perfection.

  The Elderspawn pieces and human bodies began to stir. They lurched across the deck toward one another, stitching themselves together. Shera saw a human hand attached to the end of a worm body.

  It only took a flick of Shera’s finger to tear Nakothi’s power from them, leaving hazy green orbs hovering in a constellation over the deck. Even Syphren didn’t give her any urge to consume it; she felt like a snake who had swallowed an entire deer, and even her Vessel’s appetite was sated.

  But using just that little bit of energy made the rest surge up until she felt as though she
would burst with power from every inch of her body. It was all she could do to force it back down.

  “Thank you,” Calder said roughly.

  She responded through a jaw that felt locked in place. “Don’t…thank me…yet…”

  Shera no longer needed her spyglass to see a huge, bloated corpse wading through the ocean that only rose to its hips. The body’s flesh was tinged green-and-gray, its chest pried open to expose gruesome innards, ribs grasping outward like claws.

  The dead island had risen.

  No…Nakothi’s body.

  Was this Kelarac’s last attempt at revenge? Had Nakothi awakened naturally? Were all the Great Elders awake?

  Whatever the reason, the fact remained that they had barely defeated one Great Elder. Now they were facing a second.

  Calder watched the Dead Mother walk as well. “Can you help with her?” he asked.

  Shera couldn’t speak, but the energy she’d taken from Kelarac had to go somewhere. She didn’t know if she could take Nakothi down, but she would try.

  Stiffly, she nodded.

  “Then I think…” He looked up, and Shera saw on his face the resolve to die. “…I think there’s one last thing I can do.”

  Something about that phrase stuck in Shera’s mind, and she repeated it. “One…last…thing…”

  A new voice, a man’s, cut in as though she’d been talking with him all along. “Well, it doesn’t have to be your last.”

  The speaker was a Heartlander man with clothes of loose golden silk that resembled the Emperor’s. He wore rings on each finger, necklaces around his neck…and a steel blindfold bolted to his eyes.

  Calder walked past the man without seeing. The Testament lurched forward, pulled forward by the Elder creature below the ocean’s surface.

  No one saw the man in gold but her.

  Shera wanted to call out, but suddenly the energy inside her surged and her jaw locked shut again.

  The man shaded his eyes with one hand and peered at the giant corpse shambling closer. The Navigator fleet formed up again…though it was smaller now, and its crews were haggard and missing positions.

  “It looks like you could use some help.” Kelarac’s smile gleamed. “Why don’t we make a deal?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The quality of mercy is among the rarest of virtues, and rarest of all in killers and kings.

  —Sadesthenes

  present day

  The power in Shera’s jaw released…in fact, the tension throughout her entire body lessened, as though the Great Elder’s power inside her was being suppressed. Even her twin Vessels seemed more distant, muted.

  Naturally, the moment her hand was free, Shera attacked.

  Syphren passed through Kelarac’s smile as though he didn’t exist.

  Which, of course, he didn’t. He couldn’t. She’d killed him.

  “Killed is such a…human word,” Kelarac said. “Granted, I do have to play by human rules when I’m in one of your bodies. But you didn’t just kill me, did you? You absorbed me. You swallowed a very, very small piece of me. And the largest trees can grow from the smallest seeds.”

  Shera sheathed Syphren and marched toward Calder. She could get him to kill her.

  But he was facing away from her. Her body spasmed again, out of her control…and then a swarm of purple butterflies scooped her up and began carrying her back to Bastion’s Shadow.

  Kelarac patted her on the shoulder, drifting along beside her. “It was an honorable try. Now, since we’re limited on time, let me present my offer as clearly as I can: I want you to put me into an object and throw me into the ocean. I will be no threat to you; it will take me centuries to return to what I was. Then I’d like you to leave.”

  Shera struggled against her own body. She didn’t want to throw herself into the ocean while carrying Kelarac, but the deck of Bastion’s Shadow grew closer, and she wasn’t about to put her Guildmates in danger.

  “Leave,” he continued. “Just go home. Let Nakothi take a host—no one you know, I’m sure—and rise up to do battle with our Outsider friend.” Kelarac laced fingers behind his head and looked upward. “Otherwise, he’ll kill us all.”

  Shera was lowered to the ship, surrounded by Consultants, faces she knew.

  “I would be a fool to believe any word from you,” she said aloud.

  Kelarac faced her earnestly. “If you know anything about me, you know I keep my deals. Did I attack Beldin after they sunk their bronze statues down to me? Did I revoke Calder Marten’s gifts even as he turned them against me? I did not. I am the Soul Collector, and I cannot act against my nature.”

  “Then you have more to gain than to lose.”

  Benji peered down at Shera. “Shera? Are you talking to me?”

  “Of course I have more to gain,” Kelarac scoffed. “I would be a fool to negotiate from any other position. This is my one chance to live again. The Outsider plans to blow up this entire prison-world so long as our kind burns with it. You are just the…insects nesting in the jail.”

  What he was saying felt true. And even the Emperor had never said that Kelarac reneged on his deals.

  “Set me free and go home. Let the Regents live or die against Nakothi on their own; give her a fighting chance to beat the Outsider and save us all.”

  Shera looked around at the Consultants staring at her in concern. “You want me to abandon them?”

  “Medic!” Benji called.

  “Take them with you!” Kelarac waved a beringed finger. “What fun is being alone? Anyone who matters to you, take them. I can give you protections far greater than Bastion’s Veil. You can live out the rest of your days in a paradise.”

  That was a vague, flimsy promise, and it didn’t move Shera, but she did catch another mistake he’d made. “So everyone else suffers as the Great Elders roam free?”

  Kelarac sighed. “I could tell you that only Nakothi is free for now, and she roused herself too early, so without a host she will not remain free for long. I could assure you that her goal is not to rule but to escape. Both are true. But I have a better question: what do you care? What use are strangers to you?”

  A memory played before her, dredged up from her past without her consent.

  Maxwell’s blood spraying out from her knife.

  Her own thoughts: I have no use for you.

  A pair of Consultants pulled her to her feet, dragging her into the cabin for medical inspection, and Kelarac kept pace. “You see things clearly, Shera. You don’t assign value to things that are valueless. They have called you broken, but I would say you are repaired.”

  The Emperor had died the same way Maxwell had. His own words to her: “I need you to be ruthless.”

  And she was. More ruthless than even he had expected.

  “You’ve fought over and over again for someone else’s vision, assuming they can see where you are blind. The truth is the opposite!”

  Shera was sat gently in a chair, and Architects busied around her as Kelarac knelt before her. “Be cold, Shera. Make the rational decision. Denying my words because I am an Elder? That is stubbornness based on fear. You know I’m not lying. Preserve yourself and everyone you care about—anyone you like—and leave. Stop risking yourselves for people you don’t know.”

  Shera looked through a lens of ice and saw the situation as it truly was.

  First, she knew that she was negotiating with a manipulative Great Elder who had nothing in mind but his own interests. He had no intention of helping her unless it furthered his own interests.

  On the other hand, what was her plan? Stay here and fight Great Elders until the human forces were ground down to nothing? That wasn’t viable.

  Even if Kelarac was lying about this Outsider poised to destroy an entire world, Shera knew what the outcome of facing Nakothi would be…and there could be more Great Elders awake as well.

  Ayana had already been wasted on this attempt. How many more could she waste? Kerian? Meia?

  It wasn
’t even the job of the Consultants to fight Elders.

  They could duck out of the fighting temporarily, at least. Assess the situation. If it looked like the Regents would win easily, they could move in and support the other forces of the Empire. And if it looked like there was no hope, the Consultants could cut their losses and survive to fight another day.

  She was starting to see a certain logic to it.

  Shera rose from her chair. “Sorry, I hit my head. I’m fine now. I need to get back out there.”

  One of the Architects that she recognized as a Reader looked at her in fear. “Guild Head, there’s…something wrong with your Intent. There’s so much…”

  “An effect of my Vessel. If I don’t vent some of this excess power, I could very well explode.”

  That got them out of her way.

  Shera marched out of the room and toward the Captain of Bastion’s Shadow. All the other ships were locked in battle against the dead while the Regents had begun striking Nakothi. The closer the Dead Mother was, the more powerful her Children would become, and the dead would only join her ranks.

  Her path was clear.

  Kelarac’s blindfold gleamed. “What a fortunate accident you turned out to be, Shera. We saw you coming. Ach’magut’s prophecy called you ‘the Killer,’ did you know that? The one who could strike down the Emperor because she had no heart.”

  Wordlessly, Shera borrowed a gun from a Shepherd.

  She opened her mouth and stuck the barrel inside.

  Kelarac’s words made complete sense to her, which meant she was compromised. He had even told her that his power now lived only in her.

  She’d said it to the Imperialists already: “If a Great Elder wants me, kill me.”

  As Kelarac had said, she’d always weighed lives without being overly influenced by her own feelings. Why should her own life be any different?

  Before she pulled the trigger, an orange eye flared into existence in front of Kelarac.

  Meia fell from above, landing with knees crouched and one hand on the deck. She slowly unfurled, her own eyes blazing with rage.

  At Kelarac.

  “Get out of her head,” she snarled. Her claws swept through the space where Kelarac stood…and he vanished.