by Wight, Will
It was impressive, certainly. But her attention was taken from the architecture to a scene on the road. The traffic had begun to dam up, as something blocked the people's way into the citadel. Voices were raised, and among them the Knight-Adjunct they'd met earlier. Darius Allbright.
Without a word, Shera and Ayana split up in different directions, heading for their destination separately. If one of them were caught or needed to intervene, at least they wouldn't be captured together.
After only a few seconds of walking, Shera saw the problem. It was worse than she'd imagined.
Four Imperial Guards stood in front of the gates, barring access to the Luminians.
Three of the Guards were men with exactly the same modification: one arm replaced by the green, pebbly limb of a Kameira lizard. As Shera understood it, Guards rarely stationed two people with identical enhancements together. There would be some reason for it this time, but she didn't understand the Guild well enough to speculate.
The fourth member was a blond woman that reminded Shera of Meia for one very simple reason: her eyes were orange and vertically slitted. They looked just like Meia's eyes when she lost control.
The woman was engaged in a conversation with Darius, while the men behind her addressed the crowd, pushing the bystanders back. Most seemed only too happy to leave before they were touched by a lizard's claw.
Very soon, Shera stood with the few people who had lingered to watch, with Ayana standing on her own far away. She looked...more disturbing than usual.
Ayana had strong opinions about the Imperial Guard.
“...returning home, as you can see!” Darius said cheerfully, from within his hood. “Out on a routine mission, you see, providing help to the helpless. If you would allow me to continue to my home, I'd be most grateful. I'm exhausted.”
“Our Guild maintains this road, and as such, we have to make sure that security stays tight. For your own safety.” The Guard leader picked through his cart, holding up a child-sized coffin. “The Order is involved in some grim business, it seems.”
A few members of the crowd murmured at the sight.
“Grim indeed. We had to investigate a family of Elder-touched children, and we worried that they might not survive their affliction. Fortunately, we were able to restore them to health with no complications.”
Darius spoke quickly and easily, and the sparse remaining crowd didn't seem hostile. There were certainly too many witnesses around for a real ambush, so Shera considered it likely that the Imperial Guard would ask a few more questions and let them pass.
Absently, she rested her hand on Syphren's hilt, and its consciousness burned awareness into her thoughts: They're coming back.
Sure enough, the three male Guards were regrouping around their commander, one flexing his lizard's arm as though he prepared to use it. Their red-and-black uniforms looked especially intimidating in a group.
The Pilgrim with Darius shrank back behind the cart.
“We're aware that the Luminian Order does not support the right of the Guilds to choose a new Emperor,” the Guard said, her eyes on Darius. “What about you, Knight-Adjunct? Do you support the Empire?”
Darius leaned one elbow against the cart, shaking it and startling his Pilgrim. “Surely there are more options than those two. Myself, I'm convinced that we can all still reach some kind of compromise. A few months of hostile posturing doesn't outweigh two thousand years of cooperation.”
Syphren's thoughts didn't translate well into words, but Shera got the sense of a hungry man licking his lips. The lead Imperial Guard emanated a strange energy, as did her subordinates to a lesser degree. And Darius...if her Vessel wasn't wrapped in Jorin's binding cloth, Shera wasn't sure she could hold back from knifing the Luminian in the back.
She clamped down on the feelings and focused on the conversation. The bandages weren't working, not like they should. It had only been two days since Jorin invested them, and she already felt like they needed replaced. At this rate, she had to control the impulses herself.
But part of her was convinced to take the easiest course: kill the Guards, drain them of energy, and move on.
The Guard's orange eyes flicked up to Darius' head and to the bystanders. Her gaze froze on Shera for just an instant before moving on, sparking excitement from Syphren. Hostile interest meant a possible fight.
“I'm certain we will come to an understanding,” the Guard said. “I apologize to you and your Guild for detaining you. Before you continue on your way, I was wondering if you would do us the courtesy of lowering your hood.”
Darius didn't look like a man who had been maneuvered into a corner. He still relaxed against the cart, gesturing to his own head. “That would be disturbing at best, as my face was lost. Taken in a battle against Urg'naut. It's my own scar, of sorts.”
Shera had to admire his approach. A warning would rob his appearance of its impact, and he was taking the initiative to make sure the witnesses saw it as a battle-wound earned fighting the forces of evil.
“An honest man doesn’t know how to play a crowd.” Maxwell’s words, though she wasn’t sure if they applied here.
The Guard was not deterred. She raised her voice. “Are you saying you have an Elder's face?”
“No, ma'am,” Darius replied. He lowered his hood. “I have no face at all.”
Indeed, it looked like he was telling the truth. When he pulled his cowl away, the shadow stayed in place. Where he should have eyes, nose, and a mouth was nothing more than a flat plane of darkness. It looked as though someone had cut the front quarter of his head off with an axe, replacing it with a layer of solid black.
Everyone reacted differently. Some screamed, a few turned away, some stared with sick fascination. For an instant, Shera lost herself in a memory of a giant Elder with everything horrible in the world on its neck. Its head almost looked blank, because her mind couldn't process the sight of butchery, refuse, and disease all at once. In a way, this felt similar, because there was something inherently disturbing about there being no face where everything in her experience taught her it should be there. In a right, reasonable, logical universe, he should have a face.
She'd expected something like this under his hood, but the reality of it still hit her like a slap.
“Elderspawn! Seize him for questioning!” The Guard leader's voice shook, and her orange eyes were still wide, but her lizard-armed men stepped forward.
Darius settled his hood back over his hood. “Why in the Emperor's name would you question an Elderspawn? Only the Blackwatch care about capturing Elders, and even they aren't fools enough to ask for answers. If you really thought I was an Elder, you should be calling for knights of the Order.”
One of the men tried to grab Darius' arm, but Darius had taken a seemingly incidental step to one side, pulling his sword from its sheath as though he meant to demonstrate swordplay to a class of students. He tapped his blade against his own shoulder. “I see what you were trying to do, but there are enough witnesses here to swear that you started the fight. At this point, I'm defending myself.”
The orange-eyed woman deliberated, but one of her fellow Guards took the decision out of her hands. As he pushed the scattered bystanders aside to get to Darius, he made the mistake of shoving Ayana.
Born to Imperial Guard parents, Ayana had been abandoned and left in the care of the Gray Island. While she rarely spoke of it, Shera had gathered that her opinion of the Guard was not high.
As she proved when she drove her claws into the man's enhanced arm. Her left hand was only a beat behind, driving up into his chest, but somehow Darius got there in a blink, slapping claws away with the flat of his sword.
“He needs medical treatment!” Darius called. “Our Pilgrims can—”
From behind, it looked as though Darius had just swung his blade at a Guard. Another advanced, clutching at Darius' face with a reptilian talon. He ducked, shoving the man back with his shoulder.
And Syphren's glee, his deligh
t at the prospect of the fight, became too much for Shera to restrain. She snatched it from its wrappings, laughing as she advanced with her dagger raised to plunge at the Guard leader's back.
Darius shouted a warning and the woman spun around, her orange eyes locked on Shera. She grabbed Shera's wrists, and with first contact it was obvious that the Guard was stronger. She forced the Consultant's arms out and apart, raising a leg to kick Shera away.
But Syphren was whispering in her mind now, and the Guard's skin was touching hers. She inhaled with her newfound power, and tiny sparks of green light drew up out of the woman's skin and drifted over to her, like spectral wisps. She practically tingled with anticipation, yearning for the power it could give her...
A blade flashed silver in the sunlight, headed for her arms, and she jumped backwards. Syphren snarled in unsatisfied frustration, and Shera glared up at her attacker.
Darius stood over her, sword in one hand, face a black void in the center of his hood. “Please don't. This is more complicated than you know.”
The Guard captain drew her own sword, shorter than the Knight-Adjunct's, driving it at his back. He stepped away without looking, leveling the point of his sword at Ayana, who was about to slash another Guard's throat.
“Stop!” he shouted, and this time his voice rang with command.
Ayana didn't stop, but she didn't kill her victim instantly either. She placed a knife-edged blade on either side of the man's neck. “Why?”
Inwardly, Shera agreed with her partner. The Guards had attacked first, had even set up an ambush in public. If they were that stupid, they deserved their fate.
Besides, she longed to absorb their power like a drunkard longed for the bottle. They'd given her the perfect excuse.
She wrestled Syphren down, trying to gain control of her own soul, as Darius kept talking. “We can all—” and here he looked at the Guard captain, making sure she was included— “walk away from this peacefully. No blood shed, no harm given. If we kill them here, we'd be starting a Guild war in truth.”
“Only if there are witnesses,” Ayana said, her voice barely above a whisper. Those lingering members of the crowd who had stayed close enough to hear now ran back down the road.
“There will be at least one witness,” Darius said simply. “I would be complicit, and I would immediately report myself to the Guild Head.”
Ayana scraped her nails together, and Shera knew her well enough to recognize what she was thinking. She was deciding whether she should attack anyway.
Shera wrapped the last loop of cloth around her Vessel, almost sighing in relief as Syphren quieted. Now she could hear her own thoughts. “I thought we were already heading into a war.” That was how the Head of the Alchemist's Guild had explained it to her, not long ago.
Darius shook his head, moving his attention between Ayana and the Imperial Guard. “They're the ones who need a war, not us. The Empire is falling apart as it is, and the Regents...the Regents aren't interested in unifying. In a few years, the Empire will be gone, even if the name remains. Time is on our side. Their only hope is to provoke a conflict somewhere they can win, which I suspect is one reason they were out here today.”
He hesitated after mentioning the Regents, as though he'd just remembered what Shera said about Alagaeus' death.
The Imperial Guard captain's orange eyes narrowed, but she gestured to her men. They limped over to her, one man pulling himself off the ground. “My Guild Head will hear about this.”
Darius waved. “Good-bye, and thank you for visiting the Luminian Order! May the blessings of the Unknown God be upon you.”
Without a word, the Guard turned and left.
~~~
The first thing Shera felt upon passing through the gates of Hightower was a sense of surpassing peace and wellness in her soul. She distrusted it immediately.
“What is this?” Ayana whispered. Her hands were concealed inside a bag once again, but she looked ready to draw.
“Ah, my apologies,” Darius said, huffing under the weight of his cart. “I forgot to warn you. Hightower was built as a sanctuary for refugees fleeing from an Elder attack. Over the years, people have come here seeking protection from all manner of threat, both real and imaginary. That sort of Intent tends to sink in, and the effect draws in still more people, who reinforce the feeling. It's a fascinating cycle.” His Pilgrim nodded along, looking around proudly.
Shera could feel her paranoia seeping away like blood from a wound. It looked like a small city inside the gates, with Pilgrims shopping at fish-carts and hawkers shouting from windowsills. But every person in sight seemed just as relaxed as she felt. A grimy little boy in a loincloth ran up to a well-dressed man, patting his belt. When the man turned around, the boy reached up and handed him a coin he'd dropped.
In a bizarre way, it was similar to the influence Syphren had over her. She clenched her jaw, firming her resolve to stand against feelings not her own. But it was much easier to resist bloodthirst than a pervasive sense of well-being. A man in a black coat walked within arm's reach of her, and she didn't even have the sense to put a hand on her dagger.
He passed by without incident, and she failed to watch him go.
“I think I'm starting to feel sick,” Ayana said. She pulled out her bladed hand, pressing her palm against her forehead, but she earned nothing more than a few idle glances.
Darius took a deep breath through his nonexistent nose. “Good to be home, isn't it?”
Shera thought of the Capital, with its incessant noise and bustle. Then the Gray Island, with its layers of mystery, danger, and secrets piled upon secrets.
“Home is the place where you're most vulnerable,” Maxwell had once taught her. On the Island, she was always aware of that.
Here, you would just...relax. It was unnatural.
As they approached the Luminian cathedral in the center of the citadel, Darius began explaining its history, but Shera was more interested in its layout. The columns that supported the entrance were carved with reliefs of famous historical heroes, including Loreli. The woman wore full armor but no helmet, braids falling behind her as she stared off at some unseen threat. She held her sword ready in both hands.
The sculptor had no doubt imagined Loreli centuries dead. Shera wondered if Regent Loreli had visited here since her awakening.
Two panes of multicolored stained glass rested to either side of the entrance, both showing the Emperor: one depicted him banishing an indistinct mass of squirming darkness meant to represent the Elders, and the other showed him handing a bright light to a kneeling man in white. The founding of the Luminian Order, she guessed.
Above the arched entrance, in another pane of stained glass, shone the symbol of their Guild: the White Sun.
Despite the atmosphere of safety and security, Shera couldn't help but be reminded of their own chapter house on the Gray Island. It was designed to put clients at ease, while the real business of the Consultants was conducted in secret beneath their feet.
Where did the Luminians do their work?
Darius left his cart by the door, stopping to stretch his sore shoulders. His Pilgrim, who had stayed with him until this point, silently scurried away. “I'll have you shown to your rooms first. We won't be able to meet with the Guild Head until he returns, and I plan on making the most of that opportunity to—”
He was interrupted by the arrival of another Pilgrim, a young woman, who glanced furtively into his hood before glancing away.
Shera was relieved to see that it was, in fact, possible to feel threatened even under the Luminian aura of reassurance. Maybe she would get used to it in time. Until then, she had barely even noticed the Pilgrim's approach, nor considered the fact that the woman might be carrying weapons under her robes, or in her copy of Meditations. This was like a poison-induced hallucination. Even Syphren tossed and turned, squirming irritably. In a manner of speaking.
“Excuse my haste, Knight-Adjunct, but your grandfather wishes to see yo
u immediately. He's in the tower.”
Darius hung his shadowed head in exhaustion. “Thank you, Pilgrim. My guests and I will be along shortly.”
The white-robed young woman bowed and scurried away.
“Grandfather?” Shera asked automatically, then nearly slapped herself. Of course. Darius Allbright, grandson of distinguished Head of the Luminian Order, Jameson Allbright. If she'd spent more time studying the file on the Luminians, she would have seen that. “Never mind. I understand.”
The thought would have brought on more irritation, but she was too busy noticing how beautiful the flower garden was beneath the stained glass, and how the cathedral’s majesty brought with it a sense of security. It was how she imagined it must feel to be a child standing in the shadow of a parent.
This place was going to drive her crazy faster than a pack of Elders.
“My grandfather and I always got on well,” Darius said, guiding them smoothly through the polished and gilded halls of the cathedral. Even as addled as she was by the peaceful atmosphere, Shera didn't miss how the white-robed Pilgrims and red-liveried servants ducked out of the Knight-Adjunct's way. Some even looked disgusted, as though they'd spit at his feet if they dared. Only the passing knights, distinguished by the weapons they wore, nodded to Darius with any degree of respect.
Interesting. Not many people trusted the man without a face, it seemed.
Darius treated it all as normal, brushing through the halls at speed. “I was being groomed for the Headship myself, in fact, before the incident with my face. Would have been the first Guild Head raised from the knights in three hundred years, but what good is a headless leader?”
He chuckled, though they didn’t join him. “That's one positive outcome, at least. I never wanted to be the Head. Too much interaction with the other Guilds, not enough real action. And thanks to my grandfather, who kept me around instead of having me executed as Elder-touched, I was able to stay in the field.”
He hesitated after that line, and Shera suspected he didn't appreciate his new assignment as much as he pretended to. He might enjoy having something to occupy his time, but there was something about his position that disturbed him. Maybe it had to do with the looks that passing Pilgrims hurled his way, or maybe it related more to those three child-sized coffins in his cart.
