Of Sea and Shadow (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 1)

by Will Wight

  More importantly, the noise had given the rest of the crew precious seconds to emerge. Foster called out behind him, and Andel’s boots pounded across the deck as he ran over. He thought he even heard Urzaia groaning, but he didn’t have the space to turn around and check. A little closer, and he’d have skewered this murderer through the heart. Then he’d dive into the bay, save Jerri before she drowned...

  His mind had already moved on without him when the woman batted his blade aside, brought her hand up, and jabbed a needle into his upper arm.

  Calder fought on for a moment more, but the strength trickled away from his arm, and she simply stepped past him.

  He spun, and the motion was almost enough to send him tumbling to the deck. He grabbed at a nearby railing for support, leaning against it as he watched the rest of the fight unfold.

  Andel, still impeccably dressed in a full white suit and hat, fired his pistol point-blank at the assassin.

  Got her! Calder silently screamed, but the bullet tore out a crater in the wood of the deck, and the woman in black kicked in Andel’s knees. How had she gotten away? It was impossible. Purely impossible.

  Urzaia had indeed recovered from whatever the woman had done to him, rising up to his full height and looming like an enraged bear. He took a black hatchet in either hand and roared, charging with the force of a warhorse. The entire ship seemed to shake under his weight.

  The killer didn’t wait around. She turned and ran the opposite direction, toward the bow of the ship.

  No. She’s not running. Calder tried to shout a warning to his crew, but a strange warmth was spreading through his veins, and he was finding it harder and harder to stay conscious. Speaking seemed beyond him.

  But he still clearly saw that she wasn’t trying to get away—she was trying to get to her real target.

  Naberius.

  The man stood in the shadow of the mast, wrapped in a blanket, holding pistols in both hands. With the blinding white of his grin, and his dark hair blowing behind him, he looked more and more like an actor in a heroic play.

  The assassin charged him, but he didn’t even raise his gun. He only raised his eyes: up to the sails looming over his head.

  “Too late,” he said.

  Then Tristania fell from the mast. Her coat settled around her as she landed, her bandages glowing in the white light. A dark whip unfurled from her fist, curling around her feet.

  She cracked the whip once, and the woman in black hurled herself to one side.

  An instant later, Calder understood why.

  The tip of the whip was pointed like an arrowhead. In the air, where the point of the whip struck, a pale light exploded in a crackle of lightning.

  He had seen explosions like that before, if he could only remember...

  A memory drifted up, of a Stormwing gliding over choppy waves, snapping its tail to create bright explosions. For some reason, he couldn’t seem to connect that thought to anything else.

  Naberius’ voice drifted over to Calder. He was speaking to the killer in black. “I can promise you safe conduct if you are willing to have a civilized discussion. Whatever your contract is, I can beat it.”

  Calder could only see the black-clad woman from the back, but she was slowly reaching one hand behind her back to grab something from her belt. A hilt. A second knife.

  Once more, he tried to call a warning.

  This time, he fell onto his stomach. Shadows swallowed him.

  His last thought was an image of Jerri, kicking and panicking as she slowly drowned in an icy sea.

  ~~~

  Calder woke in his own bed, with golden morning sunlight flowing in from the porthole. His arm ached from strain, and his cheeks and ribs had several bruises from where he’d collapsed, but he ignored his body’s distress as he jumped out of the bunk.

  He didn’t see Jerri, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t retrieved her. It didn’t mean they’d left her to drown.

  Staggering over to the wall, he slammed the door open. The sails billowed away from him, the greenish skin of their canvas pregnant with wind. Urzaia sat on an upturned crate, running a cloth over one of his hatchets, an uncharacteristically grim expression on his scarred face. Andel shouted an order to Foster, who manned the wheel. He had his shooting glasses on, squinting at the horizon through his mane of gray hair. Naberius and Tristania stood over a folding travel table, discussing something on a map.

  “Jerri?” Calder croaked out.

  They all turned to look at him.

  He walked forward, keeping an eye out for his wife. “Jerri?” he asked again. No one answered him. He spun, looking up onto the stern deck. Last time he’d seen her...

  She was locked in combat, green flame in each hand. She’d been lying to him for years. She’d betrayed him.

  “Where did she go?” Calder demanded.

  Andel took his hat off, holding it against his chest.

  Well, if they weren’t going to answer him, he’d figure out the truth for himself. He leaned forward and gripped a rail, Reading the ship.

  Calder focuses his Intent, trying to get one hinge to stick on the doorframe with nothing more than the power of his will. The ship needs to think of itself as one piece, or this project would never work...

  Not that. Something more recent.

  He gives another mental order to the Lyathatan, directing the ship forward. The ship needs to move faster if they want to catch the Stormwing in time, and he’s sure not going to waste so much money on a failed venture...

  His grip tightened on the railing. No, nothing to do with him. Jerri. He was looking for Jerri.

  Andel called his name, walking toward him, but he ignored it.

  She focuses on the stern deck under her feet. This is the ground she has to defend. Her husband sleeps beneath her, and there’s a killer on the ship. She brings up her power, willing herself to be silent, mentally urging Calder to keep sleeping. There are so many reasons she needs to stop this Consultant here, before the assassin can accomplish her goal. The Sleepless have demanded it...

  Calder jerked his hand away from the polished wood as though it burned, and Andel clapped him on the shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Calder,” the Quartermaster said in a low voice. “The attacker got away. We spent all night searching the bay, but we didn’t find any trace. Of anyone. We had to sail away the old-fashioned way before they tried again.”

  Calder met Andel’s eyes. The other man’s face, always so serious, now looked as though it belonged on a cemetery statue. “Who was it?”

  Naberius strode over to answer that. “A Consultant by the name of Shera.”

  Stepping away from Andel, Calder moved to regard the Witness. “How do you know that?”

  “I saw her many times in the Imperial Palace. She was one of the Emperor’s personal assassins. A trained, deadly killer. We’re lucky that any of us escaped with our lives.”

  His anger boiled, demanding release, demanding that he blame Naberius for something, that he pin this on the Chronicler somehow. But that would not satisfy him.

  Only one thing would.

  “You know her. Where will she take my wife?”

  Naberius exchanged looks with Andel. “She’s a murderer, Captain Marten. She does not take prisoners.”

  Calder envisioned grabbing Naberius by his lapels—his suit was a bright purple, today—and hurling the man bodily into the Aion Sea. The Testament groaned around him, ropes lifting into the air as though they were prepared to hurl the Witness into the ocean on Calder’s behalf. Tristania stepped forward, one hand reaching into her coat.

  He calmed himself. “Anger is a cruel thief,” Sadesthenes said. “It gives one the illusion of focus, while stealing away the real thing.”

  “This assassin. Shera. She didn’t stab Jerri, just...pushed her overboard.” He forced himself to speak rationally. “That would indicate, to me, that my wife could be alive. Somewhere.”

  Naberius folded his hands and tapped his thumbs
together, thinking. “They would only keep her if she knew something they wanted, and even then…” He hesitated. “Even then, she would not live long. Can you think of anything she might have known that they would consider valuable?”

  That which sleeps will soon wake.

  “No. No, she didn’t know anything.”

  Andel stared straight at Calder, but Calder forced himself not to meet the man’s eyes. He knew. Andel had never quite trusted Jerri. For a good reason, as it turned out.

  Naberius walked back over to his folding table, placing a compass next to the map. “The Consultants do not admit defeat,” he said, looming over the map. “They will not stop until they have fulfilled their assignment, whether that’s to see me dead or to sink this ship. We should press on.”

  Calder walked up to the wheel of his ship, nudging Foster away. The older man grumbled about it, but he stepped back. “I seem to recall that the headquarters of the Consultants is somewhere off the coast. Does anyone know where?”

  The ship went quiet, but for the creak of boards, the slap of ocean against hull, and the distant clink of chains.

  His anger boiled up again, and Calder pulled out his pistol, rapping the butt against the wood of the ship like a judge’s gavel. “Well?”

  “It’s called the Gray Island,” Andel finally said. “It’s north and east.” He stood with his arms crossed, and he obviously didn’t approve. Otherwise, he would have made a joke.

  Good thing Calder didn’t care.

  He turned the ship, keeping the rising sun slightly to starboard. The Chronicler protested as soon as the ship shifted beneath him.

  “This is not the way! I assure you, this will not locate your wife.”

  “I’m sorry, Mister Clayborn, but there will be a slight delay before we reach your destination.” And if he didn’t like it, Calder could always feed him to the Lyathatan.

  Naberius stepped up, beneath the wheel on the lower deck, so that Calder had no choice but to see him. The passenger’s handsome face was the very picture of earnest openness.

  “I sympathize entirely with your feelings. More than you realize. But the Gray Island is so named because it is shrouded in an impenetrable wall of mist year-round. More, the place is flush with tricks and deceptions. A perfectly sound-looking house could stand over a bottomless pit, so that you fall inside as soon as you take a step in the door. A field that seems empty could in fact contain traps of deadly poison. Not to mention that the island is crawling with Consultants. Even if it were empty of all human life, you could search the place for your entire life and never find where they keep their prisoners.”

  That speech had the distinct tune of exaggeration, to Calder’s ear. There was no such thing as a bottomless pit, for one. Besides, he was a Reader. He’d find his wife if he had to walk barefoot across every inch of the island, sensing his surroundings with each step.

  Naberius is a Reader, too, he reminded himself. If he says it’s impossible…

  The Chronicler took a step closer. “But it’s not hopeless. I told you that I knew this Consultant, Shera. She is among the best in the Guild: if they’ve sent her once, they’ll send her after us again. She knows she can’t catch us at sea without a Navigator’s ship, so she’ll be moving to head us off. Which means your best chance of capturing her, and finding out what happened to Jyrine, is to keep moving forward.”

  Calder gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white. He wanted nothing more than to march straight into the Consultant headquarters, tear the walls down, and take his wife back.

  But he’d tried tactics like that before. They…hadn’t worked out.

  “While the wise man listens to his advisors, the fool listens to his emotions.” Sadesthenes again. Sometimes Calder hated the man.

  “What are we looking for, Naberius?” he asked at last. “What treasure is worth this?”

  The Chronicler spread his hands. “The greatest treasure the Emperor ever owned. The one thing that he never entrusted to another, in his almost two millennia of life.”

  “And that is?”

  Naberius said nothing.

  “Have it your way,” Calder snarled. “What’s the heading?”

  Naberius didn’t acknowledge his victory. He bowed and ran back to his map, looking between that and his compass.

  Andel would be praying at this point, but Calder simply focused his Intent. Maybe it would change something.

  Please, he silently begged. Don’t let me be too late.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Yes, everyone invests objects with their Intent. It can’t be avoided. If you’re human and you use a tool, you will invest it.

  Readers have a few inherent advantages in this process, it’s true; most importantly, they can sense what changes they make and alter their Intent appropriately.

  No, Readers are not more intelligent or attractive than anyone else. I should think you would be aware of that by now. Please stop asking.

  -Artur Belfry, Imperial Witness

  Taken from a letter to his pupil, Calder Marten (thirteen years of age).

  Thirteen years ago

  Lying on his bed, shortly after dawn, Calder rolled the Emperor’s key between his fingers and thought.

  The Emperor places his hand in the lock, twisting it, ignoring the pleas from the family within. ‘We’re innocent!’ they say. ‘Have mercy!’ they plead. But they’re not innocent, and so he leaves them to die.

  With most objects, Reading took an intentional effort of will. He had to focus on the sensations he was picking up in the wood, on the Intent embedded within the physical structure of each object. If it had ever been made or used by a human being, for any purpose, it retained some of that Intent, whether a rock on the roadside or an Imperial soldier’s spear.

  Sometimes, it would take hours of focus to Read that Intent; to be able to enhance the remnants of human will into a physical effect. But with something the Emperor had used, for years, it took a substantial effort to not Read it.

  He twists the key, but the dungeon lock sticks. It’s old, though not nearly as old as the Emperor himself, and choked with rust. But he doesn’t feel the resistance before his desire to have the door open, his wish to get this business done quickly, invests the key with enough Intent to spring the lock open.

  ‘Kelarac will take your soul,’ the woman growls, showing off her rotten teeth. ‘Nakothi and Othaghor will share your body between them! That which sleeps will soon wake!’

  If she weren’t Soulbound, he would kill her now. But her powers might be useful in the future, so he twists the key again, willing it to seal the door. The lock snaps shut without a hitch.

  If it had come from anyone except the Emperor, the vision would never have held so much detail.

  Genuine Imperial artifacts—tools used by the Emperor in his everyday life, and thus harboring a measure of his limitless Intent—were not rare, but any Reader wanted them. A cloth used by the Emperor to dry his sweat could be a more powerful object than an Awakened weapon produced by a lesser Reader.

  In the search for such artifacts, Calder had often followed trails of debris that the Emperor had incidentally brushed. A cobblestone on which he’d stepped, a sign he’d pushed past on a crowded street. With anyone else, such brief and accidental contact would leave no residue, but this was the Emperor. Anything he did left his surroundings more significant than before.

  Thus armed with a library of glimpses, whispers, and half-visions of the Emperor, Calder had assembled something like a picture of the man. He was confident that he knew the Emperor as well as anyone else outside the Imperial Court.

  And he was becoming convinced: the man was a monster.

  He unlocks the dungeon, wishing he could leave this task to someone else. But this prison alone, of all the prisons in the world, he has to maintain personally. This is where he keeps people who have found his secrets.

  Those who pass this door only do so once.

  Calder didn’t know how the key to
the Emperor’s personal dungeon had fallen outside the Imperial Court; usually, the Emperor would destroy anything that might harbor such sensitive Intent. Rojric, guided by his son, had picked it up from a dredger along with a bucketful of other junk.

  If the Emperor learned of this key, he might even consider it dangerous. Having Read it might be even more of a crime than Rojric’s.

  He indulged himself in a brief fantasy of blackmailing the Emperor into commuting his father’s sentence, but he quickly brought himself back on track. The Emperor would simply have them both killed.

  That was the most frightening thing he’d learned from handling the key—the Emperor was capable of anything. And in a prison run by him, no inmates survived.

  So what about Calder’s father, locked in Candle Bay Imperial Prison? He was convicted of a crime against the Emperor’s person, after all, though ‘attempted purchase of an Imperial possession’ was among the least of the crimes in that category.

  Would the Emperor find out about Rojric? If he did, Calder was certain that his father would die in that cell. Perhaps it would take a few decades, but the Emperor was not the kind of man who tolerated personal insults.

  Calder would have to do something.

  Alsa knocked twice, sharply, and then entered without waiting. Hurriedly, Calder stuffed the key into the invested shirt pocket that had become its permanent home.

  “Up!” she declared, throwing the curtains wide. “Your tutors arrive today.”

  He scrambled out of bed, eager to see the Guildsman she’d hired. “Tutors? I thought there was to be only one.”

  “In a sense, there is. I’ve retained the services of a pair of Witnesses. They’ve worked with the Blackwatch before, and they were looking for a seasonal job over the next four or five years.”

  She began plucking clothes out of his wardrobe, laying them out on the bed while he waited awkwardly nearby.

  “Isn’t that what the servants are for?” he asked at last.