by Wight, Will
And all the simplest physical changes involved destruction.
The door shredded itself to splinters, its Intent attacking its physical form. One second the wood stood solid, the next it was a pile of sawdust. Three short bars and a lock clinked down to the ground.
“I've got a present for you, Shera. We're getting out of here.”
He broke into a jog, unwilling to linger around the scene of an incapacitated guard and a destroyed cell door, his eyes fixed on the treeline. Hansin would take an hour or so to wake and another hour to complete his report, by which time Lucan and Shera could have snared a couple of Waveriders. He’d almost reached the trees before he realized Shera wasn't following him.
Far from looking pleased, as he expected, she stood with her mouth slightly open, eyes flicking over his face as though searching for an explanation. “Can we...talk first?” she asked.
He gestured behind him. “I just destroyed the door, so I’d prefer it if we talked second.”
Shera dropped her covered bowl, grabbing Hansin under the armpits and dragging him across the sawdust threshold and into Lucan's cell. The guard stirred and moaned as she pulled him backwards, his eyelids half-fluttering.
Lucan walked back to the doorway, heart still hammering in the thrill of escape. If Shera wanted to talk, it should be important, but she was standing in his open cell. He had always said how easy it would be to escape, but there was a difference between walking out the door with no one around and fighting through the entire Guild.
Well, the High Council couldn't afford to kill either of them yet, and they hadn't seriously injured any Guild members. They could still talk their way out of this.
But he wasn't sure why they couldn't leave.
“Did you change your mind? Now?” He couldn't believe it. Every time she came to see him, she dropped not-so-subtle hints about escape. It was practically all she talked about.
Shera rested her hand on the grip of her right-hand shear. She gripped her left hand in a fist rather than resting it on Syphren, which caught his eye. The knife's influence on her might be growing, even through its newly refreshed wrappings.
“I have orders from the High Council,” she said, looking into his eyes with pleading. Pleading. It was a strange expression on her. “One of the Regents has been killed, and Jorin would have been too.”
“Which Regent?” Lucan asked automatically. If it was Alagaeus, the Izyrians could revolt. If it was Loreli, that could actually work in the Consultants' favor. With no Regent in the Heartlands, the Capital would soon be an island in a sea of anarchy. Difficult for the enemy to reestablish Imperial rule in the midst of chaos. If it was Estyr Six...
No, of course it wasn't Estyr. If the legends were true, as they likely were, she should be harder to kill than the Emperor himself.
“Alagaeus. But that doesn't matter.”
Lucan begged to differ, but instead of asking the questions that burned inside him, he stayed silent. Shera was obviously working up to something.
“I captured Jorin's attacker. I knew him. He—we—trained under Maxwell.”
Now the situation spun out to form an entirely different landscape, unfolding like a map. New questions replaced the old, new connections were born, and he itched to fill a journal page with information about Maxwell. Any answers Shera could give him would help him put the picture together.
But this wasn’t the time, and he focused on the moment at hand. “What about the others?”
“Gone. The Luminians lost them...” she hesitated, then added, “on the night the Emperor died.”
Lucan walked over to his cot in a haze, almost tripping on Hansin's unconscious body, and sat heavily on the bed. His mind spun, but one thing rose to the front of his chaotic thoughts. “So now you can't leave.”
Shera stepped past Hansin's legs to sit on the cot, leaning against Lucan's shoulder. “I'm supposed to lead the team heading for the Luminian Order. I can't let someone else do it. I...feel responsible for this, if that makes any sense.”
“Of course it does,” Lucan said. “Anyone would.” Whatever else Shera lacked, she'd always had her own peculiar sense of responsibility. And while she would shirk a job at the slightest excuse, she never left one half-done.
Something in her told him there was more, something in her body language or the subtle Intent that radiated from her like a fog of nascent emotion.
“How does that make you feel?” he asked, a little hesitant. That normally wasn't a question a Reader of his skill needed to ask. If their subject felt anything strongly enough to affect their Intent, he could pick up on it instantly, especially this close. Shera had always been difficult to Read.
“Guilty,” she said, surprising him further. Not only had she actually answered him, rather than using a joke to dodge, but the answer itself was a shock. He'd once asked her if she felt guilty for pushing a woman out a window, and she hadn't remembered doing it. He would have been less surprised to hear that she could breathe underwater.
“I feel responsible for the others,” she went on. “I left them, and I never thought to check up. Maybe if I had, I could have helped them. Taken them with me. Or I could have killed them before they got in too much trouble.”
Privately, Lucan was glad that she had never checked on Maxwell's other victims.
“I had to kill the Emperor. I don’t regret it, but now I feel guilty for it anyway.” She turned to him, looking lost. “What's wrong with me?”
When he looked into her eyes, his chest hurt so bad that he had to turn his face away. He put an arm around her shoulders instead, squeezing her close. “Nothing's wrong with you.” If he believed it, did it count as a lie? “Most people would feel that way. That's called a conscience, and it's very normal. I'm a little relieved you have one.”
“If I'd known, I would have had it removed years ago.”
She finally leaned her head against his chest, and he simply sat like that for a while, his thoughts whirling. He allowed himself to forget about the shattered door and unconscious guard, though it was a headache waiting to happen.
A few half-trained killers had managed to assassinate Regent Alagaeus? He couldn’t believe it. They shouldn’t have the skill, and they certainly shouldn’t have the resources.
Shera spoke without lifting her head. “I can't believe you're finally willing to get out of here.”
“I knew you'd wear me down eventually.” He didn’t feel like telling her that she had convinced him, in a way.
On top of the other reasons—the fate of the Empire and Shera’s newfound importance—her physical condition worried him. The burst of energy she'd absorbed from the Elders had rendered her unconscious, but it had also rejuvenated her body in record time. After less than a week of rest, she didn’t show so much as a hitch in her step. She seemed to be back in prime health.
Which troubled him more than anything else. If Syphren's powers healed her, that meant they were affecting her physically. Who knew what other changes it was making?
And there was the matter of her not touching it. Even now, she was holding her arm up against her chest so it didn't brush against the shear's hilt. What was it doing to her mind?
Those questions had added up to one inescapable conclusion in Lucan's mind: she needed a Reader to help her through this time. She needed him. A Soulbound's first few months were critical, especially when the Vessel harnessed Elder power. That usually meant permanent insanity or death.
He had to help her, and he couldn't do it from in here. That was the biggest force urging him to leave.
So of course she was determined to stay.
“You could come with me,” Shera suggested, leaning back to look at him.
“On an official Consultant mission?” The High Council would only have to tell the Luminians about an escaped prisoner, and he would have knights dog-piling on top of him in seconds. He might be able to knock down a building, given enough time, but there was only so much he could do against sheer forc
e of arms.
“Then get out of here now. I'll go on the mission, and say I had nothing to do with your escape.”
“You think they'd believe that?” Yala would sooner accept that the Emperor had risen from the grave and was asking for a cup of tea.
Shera stared at him, and suddenly she looked a bit more like her normal dead-eyed self. “Why should I care what they believe?”
That was true. She was a Soulbound now; the Guild couldn't afford to lose her. If his memory served, they only had three combat-capable Soulbound in the Guild, and two of them were on semi-permanent assignment. The High Council would consider her worth more than the rest of the Gardeners combined.
So she would have to stay, at least through this mission. And if he wanted to help her, it would be best if he stayed here.
He just wished he’d known that before he destroyed the door.
He squeezed her shoulder again and released her, dragging Hansin back outside. “Do what you have to,” he said. “I'm with you.”
“You're staying here?”
He shoved Hansin outside. “It's the easiest way to stick together. What's going to be harder is finding a way to rebuild this door.”
She glanced around and moved up on her tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. “I believe in you.”
Lucan frowned down at the pile of sawdust. “I'm not sure you should. This is even harder than it looks.”
~~~
An hour later, Hansin awoke with a splitting headache. He groaned as he pushed against the wall, lurching to his feet. He checked his armor—all in place—and his sword. Still there. His wallet was in his pocket, his knives still tucked into his boots.
Not a robbery, then. But in the Emperor's name, he still couldn't remember what had happened to him.
The thought and the surroundings triggered a memory: the door dissolving, Shera's hand flicking up to his neck, a sharp pain. They had dragged him...
The prisoner had escaped!
He spun around, hand flying to his sword, only to see the door standing strong and whole, flush with the stone around it. With the air of a man in a dream, he reached out and jiggled the lock.
Solid. No one had tampered with it.
The door looked a little odd, now that he noticed. He leaned closer, squinting. The pattern of the wood seemed…wrong. The grain of the boards flowed sideways instead of up and down, even in little swirls or aborted half-shapes. Some of the spots were in the wrong places, too, as though someone had taken a fake door and painted it to look like a wooden one. Badly.
He rapped on the door. It still sounded like solid wood. And before a few days ago, he’d been guarding a different cell. This door was new to him; he might not have remembered it correctly.
But his neck hurt. He glanced through the bars, and Lucan looked up. The Heartlander man seemed healthy and lively enough, and he even adopted an expression of concern when he saw his guard.
“You're awake! I'm sorry about earlier. Shera was too rough on you today. I asked her to stop, and she assures me that she will be gentler next time.”
Next time. If Shera wasn't a Gardener, and if she didn't scare him senseless, he'd take steps to see that there was no next time. Whether that meant going to the Council or bringing some friends along, he wasn't someone to take a beating lying down.
But she was a Gardener, and she did terrify him, so he simply hoped she'd take it easy on him.
Hansin grunted his agreement, rubbed at his stinging neck, and returned to his post.
Even if it took half his pay, he had to get off lunch duty.
CHAPTER FIVE
Nine years ago
“Get up!” the Emperor barked. “And for the love of the light, coordinate.”
Shera pushed her shaking hands against the cool tiles of the tower. Wind whipped through the columns around her; they were a hundred feet off the ground, on the edge of the Imperial Palace, in a broad courtyard with no walls. One move too far, and even the Emperor couldn’t save them.
“No one says ‘for the love of the light’ anymore, sir,” Jarelys Teach said. The Head of the Imperial Guard, in her distinct red-and-black armor, leaned against a column to watch. Her hair was cut close to her scalp, and her blue eyes broke from the fight every few seconds to scan the perimeter for threats. Even though they were high above the Capital with only one staircase for access, she watched the empty spaces between columns as if she expected an assassin to fly in.
“Ah, I see. What do they say now?” the Emperor asked.
“Among my soldiers, ‘light and life’ is fairly common.”
“A classic.”
“I thought you’d like that. Sometimes they liked to swear by one Elder’s name or another, typically Kelarac or Nakothi.”
The Emperor walked over to Lucan, who lay limp on the ground. He nudged the boy with the toe of his shoe. “I prefer ‘light and life,’ thank you.”
“Of course.”
Shera managed to pull her shears back up from where they’d fallen after the Emperor had kicked her over. She was still trying to get a full breath when she stood, holding a bronze blade in each hand. She panted, mouth wide. Strands of her black hair were falling into her eyes, but she couldn’t spare the attention to brush them aside.
Lucan lay nearby, one of his blades still sheathed. A wool mask was half-pulled over his head, where the impact to his chin had torn it away. Shera wasn’t sure what the mask was invested to do, but she understood it had something to do with hostile Intent. It hadn’t stopped a punch to the face, she knew that. Sand poured from one of his pouches, and a spindle of wire had come unspooled. Tools of his Reading, useless before the Emperor.
Meia twitched as though she were having a fit, clutching at her head with fingers that periodically sprouted claws, then withdrew them. Her blond hair was matted with blood, and her hunched shoulders writhed under her blacks like a dozen rats wrestling on her skin. Her legs kicked out spasmodically in random directions, and from her mouth issued a series of clicks and grunts that sounded more animal than human.
So, of the three of them, it looked like Shera was in the best shape. No matter that she could still only take half a breath, and she felt as though the tower squirmed like a dying man.
She turned to face the Emperor, shears ready.
He stood unarmed and unconcerned, hands clasped in front of him. His skin was darker than Lucan’s, his face absolutely hairless. He wore enough fabric to clothe three lesser men, intricate layers of pristine cloth in shades of green and blue, the colors of the Aion Sea. A silver chain hung down from his neck, vanishing into the folds of his clothes.
His dark eyes were empty as he looked Shera up and down. He didn’t move.
And Yala wants me to catch him off guard? The thought was wry, but Shera pushed it down before he picked up on it with the unparalleled power of his Intent.
“Shera,” the Emperor said.
Shera drew herself up straight, suddenly afraid he’d already seen into her mind. “Yes?”
Before she realized it, the Emperor had thrown himself toward her, a blur of blue and green. She jabbed her blade forward, but his hand slammed into her wrist, knocking it aside. As she brought the second shear up, he got a hand around her throat.
She froze.
He looked down into her eyes, face absolutely calm. “You should do better than that. If I lose myself to Nakothi—when I do, I should say—you must anticipate me. Deceive me. Outmaneuver me.”
Shera dropped down to sit on a tower, back against one of the pillars.
“This is a bold new strategy,” the Emperor said.
“There's nothing I can do alone to beat you. If I really had to kill you, I'd run and wait for a better time.”
The Emperor dropped his hands to his sides, and his sleeves whipped like flags in the wind. “To withdraw during battle sets a dangerous precedent. There are some fights from which you cannot retreat.”
Meia hauled herself up with her hand on a nearby pillar. S
he tried to speak, but it came out as more of a snarl.
Shera pointed to her. “If we keep this up, someone's going to get hurt. And it won't be you.”
The Emperor looked through Meia, scowling. He had grown less and less patient in recent months, though by his own calculations, he should still have twenty years left before he was taken by insanity. Maybe twenty years felt like tomorrow, compared to almost two millennia.
Meia arched her back and bent her knees, coiling herself like a spring. But she didn't leap at the Emperor.
Instead, roaring, she launched at Shera. Both of her hands were tipped in claws, and she covered the distance with blinding speed.
Shera stepped aside from the first rush, driving two needles into the side of Meia's neck. The alchemical poison on a needle was typically enough to subdue a grown man, so two would be a lethal dose. Usually. But Shera knew from experience that Meia's modifications made her frustrating to poison.
Meia's limbs twisted like a heat-warped corpse. She lurched in Shera's direction, but Shera had already walked away.
A second later, Meia hit the floor.
“See?” Shera said. “Hurt.”
The Emperor waved a hand in her direction. “Understood. Take an hour to pull your teammates together, then meet me back here. We have no more time.”
Obediently, Shera returned to her seat against another pillar. Her eyelids drifted closed. Maybe she could work in a quick nap.
She heard the Emperor address General Teach. “Open the door. I'll see them now.”
As one would expect, there were many demands on the Emperor's time. Whenever he spent an afternoon with Shera and her team, he was ignoring dozens of petitioners convinced that only the Emperor could solve their problems. Some of them really were urgent. He let Imperial citizens die while he trained them.
Which showed how important Shera's mission was, in his eyes.
Teach opened the door and called down the stairs. There came a rushed acknowledgement from the Imperial Guard stationed at the base, and the sound of feet on the steps.
