by Will Wight
Tharlos was getting far too predictable. He always wanted everything to change. So boring.
So what if he turned all shoes into ducks? If shoes were constantly turning into other things, then it wouldn’t be anything special when they eventually started quacking. No one would even notice.
Change was only interesting when everything normally stayed the same, and Tharlos could never understand that. That’s why he would never beat her.
The image struck her again, of people walking around with ducks strapped to their feet, and she almost giggled. She thought about giggling. She imagined herself letting loose a nice, girlish giggle, and that was just as good as the real thing.
A gust of wind picked up the end of her white-blond hair, drawing it behind her like a streamer, and it took her a few seconds to understand why that was odd.
There’s not supposed to be any wind in a greenhouse, she reminded herself. Wait. Is there? No, definitely not.
She smacked the Spear of Tharlos through her coat. It must have been up to its tricks again, making her see things that weren’t actually happening, but for once the Spear felt quiet.
So she was sensing something herself, and this was her unconscious mind’s way of warning her consciousness. Or was it?
She didn’t know, but she hopped down into the tree nonetheless, swinging down from branch to branch until she could drop to the soil. Something was coming, and she’d rather face it up close. It might be interesting.
The doors swung open, and a pair of Watchmen walked in, escorting Alsa Grayweather.
They didn’t look happy about it, but neither of them appeared quite so miserable as Alsa. Her face was gray, her hands tied in front of her, and her eyes were red and puffy. That meant that she had been crying. Or that she hadn’t gotten much sleep. Or that someone had sprayed an irritant in her eyes. Or she had imbibed any number of alchemical substances, both harmful and recreational.
After a moment’s consideration, Bliss decided that weeping or exhaustion were the two most likely possibilities.
“Are you under arrest, Alsa?” Bliss asked, before one of the other Watchmen could say something useless.
Alsa tried to speak, cleared her throat, and tried again. “My son had his trial this morning. As a result, my former husband was executed, Calder was exiled to the Aion under the supervision of the Navigators, and I was…remanded to your custody.”
Bliss tried to fit Alsa’s story together with her memories, but found too many pieces missing. “A trial? Calder Marten? What did he do?”
Alsa’s eyes widened. An expression of surprise, or shock, or fear, or anger. Probably surprise. “I’m sorry, Guild Head, I thought you would have been informed.”
One of the Watchmen stepped forward. “Guild Head, we’ve left several—”
She stared at him until he fell silent.
“He broke his father out of prison,” Alsa said wearily. “In the process, he stole the ship we were preparing for the Navigator’s Guild, binding himself to it as his Vessel. And the prison itself sustained irreparable damage. Many of the prisoners have not been recovered.”
“Which prison?” Bliss asked.
From what Bliss had observed of typical conversation, her question must have seemed out of context, but Alsa answered immediately. “Candle Bay Imperial Prison.”
That was why Bliss liked Alsa. No matter what else changed, Alsa Grayweather still did what she was supposed to.
“Candle Bay Imperial Prison,” Bliss repeated. She knew the place.
She knew what happened there.
Kanatalia, the Guild of Alchemists, performed experiments on the inmates of many Imperial prisons, especially those who had committed higher crimes. They would attempt to increase docility, prevent a return to prior behavior, and generally improve the prisoners by means of altering their bodies and minds.
By means of poking and prodding. By means of needles, and potions that burn, and tools that cut memories like paper. They’ll take their subjects apart, stick them back together, and then cut them apart again. Over and over.
Bliss had been born in just such a facility.
She hadn’t said anything in a long time, so Alsa spoke to fill the silence. “That’s right, Guild Head.”
“Candle Bay Imperial Prison,” Bliss said again, but this time she finished the thought, “belongs at the bottom of the ocean.”
Bliss grabbed the chains between Alsa’s manacled hands and let a trickle of her power change them. It was such a simple change that it took no effort; after all, there was no real difference between manacles locked and unlocked.
The cuffs clicked open, and the mass of metal fell to the ground.
One of her escorts sighed. “Guild Head, we were ordered by the Emperor himself to keep her in Guild custody. That means we have to move her to a secure facility. We only need your signature.”
Bliss so rarely felt anything like anger, but something inside her had been scraped raw, thinking of Kanatalia and their experiments.
It had put her into what Nathanael Bareius would have called a mood.
She unfastened two of the silver buttons holding her coat together, reaching inside. Her fingers closed on ancient bone.
She pulled the Spear of Tharlos from its resting place.
Foot after foot of old, yellowed bone came out of her coat, until it became clear that the spear was longer than her pocket could have possibly contained. Until it was longer than she was tall. It rushed out of her coat almost without her guidance, leaping into the air, where it spun in a quick circle before she reached up and caught it.
The ancient Spear stood six feet tall, with a straight shaft that flattened into a sharp, spade-like blade at the top. The weapon had been carved in the Elder Days, by one of the Emperor’s companions, from the corpse of Tharlos, the Formless Legion.
It took all of Bliss’ willpower to keep the weapon from driving everyone else insane.
Even with her restraint, the plants in the greenhouse twisted and danced, as though driven by a thousand shifting winds. Her coat flapped in a wind that didn’t exist, her hair blowing in the opposite direction. One of the Watchmen shielded his eyes, shouting as though the sight of the bone burned him, and the other covered his ears.
Alsa shook like a sail in high wind, but she kept her eyes fixed on Bliss.
“As the Head of the Blackwatch, I hereby decree that Alsa Grayweather is under my personal supervision,” Bliss said. “If you would like to protest, file a complaint.”
The two members of her Guild staggered away, leaving their captive behind.
The power of Tharlos wriggled under Bliss’ skin, trying to change her, but she liked things the way they were. She turned to Alsa. “Do you think they’ll really file a complaint?”
Alsa struggled to speak. “No,” she said at last. “No, I don’t think they will.”
“Good. I don’t like paperwork.”
Bliss turned and examined the bone spear, struck with a new problem. Now that she had given the Spear a taste of freedom, it would be all the more reluctant to go back to sleep. Maybe she should have let it consume the other two Watchmen; they had annoyed her anyway.
She pulled the butt of the Spear off the ground, walking over to the leafless tree at the center of the greenhouse. Alsa followed, though it must have been difficult for her to push against the power of Tharlos.
“The Spear is restless,” Bliss explained. “I must feed it to calm it down.”
She leveled the Spear of Tharlos, driving its bone point deep into the trunk of the tree.
The tree shook like a struck drum. Bliss turned and walked away, pinching Alsa’s wrist between two fingers as she did and dragging the taller woman along with her.
“We should stand back.”
When they were far enough away, Bliss turned to watch the show. The bark was already shot through with pale purple flesh like cracks in a window. Flesh spread through the tree, bringing wood to life. The lowest branch drooped like
a melting candle as it changed from a stiff bough to a limb of skin and flesh.
Soon, all the branches were purple-white tentacles, flailing in the air like a squid trying to escape a trap. The trunk was a solid, bulbous mass of throbbing flesh, firmly rooted in the ground by its own sticky weight.
Bliss clapped quietly, politely, like an audience member at the opera. There was no better show than watching reality change before her eyes.
When she stepped up to the newborn creature’s trunk to retrieve her Spear, the waving tentacles parted to let her pass. She pulled the sharpened bone out, leaving not even a wound behind.
The Spear of Tharlos sat easy in her hand, warm and sated. It wasn’t difficult to compress it down to the size of a thighbone and tuck the weapon back into her coat.
Alsa Grayweather stood staring at the tentacle-tree, but something about her expression was off. Perhaps she didn’t seem disgusted enough, or she didn’t show much emotion at all. Either way, it was not the expression that Bliss had come to expect from someone witnessing the Spear’s effects.
Bliss took that to mean that something else was troubling her.
Probably her son’s trial, she reasoned. That event must have caused a good deal of stress.
“What will you do with me now, Guild Head?” Alsa asked, still looking at the tree. “The others were telling the truth. The Emperor did order me confined.”
Certainly, Bliss did not want to oppose the Emperor. She knew, better than most, how powerful he really was.
But Bliss was not weak herself. Her experience suggested that the Emperor would likely overlook anything she chose to do, as long as Alsa didn’t make any more trouble. “You’ll stay with me, under my personal supervision. You will be very secure. And you may be able to help me with some investigations of my own.”
She had started to hear some disturbing rumors.
Navigators and their passengers had spotted Children of Nakothi swimming around the Aion. The island over the Dead Mother’s corpse was shaking, sending unseasonable waves into even the shallower islands. And more than a few sailors had reported contact with Kelarac, the Soul Collector.
Even more disturbing than the rumors were the silences. If Nakothi and Kelarac were stirring, then the other Great Elders should be as well. But from the tombs of Kthanikahr, the desert temple of Othaghor, and the ruined city over Urg’naut’s corpse, she heard nothing. Not a whisper.
Bliss had always found stillness more disturbing than screams.
But those were longer concerns. In the short-term, Bliss knew that she would feel better if she could just get Alsa to relax.
Exercise was supposed to alleviate stress, but Alsa would probably not enjoy a fencing match in her current state. Alcohol relieved stress in some, but seemed to increase it in others. Bliss couldn’t take the risk. That left, to Bliss’ knowledge, only companionship and sugary foods.
Bliss took Alsa’s hand in her own and proposed a solution. “Let’s go buy some pie from a restaurant. It is my turn to make the purchase.” That was only fair. “Tell me, do they accept gold coins?”
Alsa’s demeanor was already more pleasant, which pleased Bliss. She had done something good today, after all.
“Yes, Guild Head. I expect they will.”
~~~
Present Day
The Eternal was waiting for them only a day’s trip out from the Gray Island.
Calder saw the red sails and bright alchemical flames on the ocean long before the ship actually hailed him. There was no point running; they had surely been spotted, and whenever Jarelys Teach returned on her Kameira bird, she would be able to overtake The Testament no matter where he ran. So he had no choice but to confront the Guild Heads dead-on.
Which left him with several hours between spotting The Eternal and reaching her. He stared out over the port railing, thinking. He was in no hurry, so he left Dalton Foster at the wheel, pulled forward by nothing more than the power of the wind.
Andel joined him, leaning white-clad elbows on the edge. “I’m sorry we didn’t get her back.”
The words threatened to cut a bundle of emotion free, but Calder choked it back. “I had my chance, and I left her there.”
“You went back.”
“Didn’t matter much in the end, don’t you think?”
The quartermaster rubbed his silver pendant. “I think…I think we don’t know yet.”
Calder eyed him. “Don’t know what?”
“Many things. For instance,” Alder turned around, leaning back against the railing and staring at the center of the deck. “What are we going to do about him?”
The first of their prisoners knelt tied to the mast, still wearing his torn red suit. Naberius had spent an hour of the first night screaming about what he was going to do with their parts once he’d killed them, how they would be more useful after they died.
After that hour, Calder had stuffed a foot of rope into his mouth. Now he mostly grunted and spat.
“That’s a good question,” Calder said. He walked over to Naberius, pulling the wet length of rope out of the man’s mouth. “What do you think, Naberius? What should we do with you?”
The former Chronicler coughed and swallowed for a few seconds, working enough moisture into his mouth to speak. At last, he said, “Beg me for forgiveness.”
As expected. A week before, Naberius would have been cunning enough to at least lie to his captors in the hope of freedom. The Heart had taken even that shred of sanity from him, leaving him lost in delusion.
But Calder was sure of one thing. “They’re not crowning that Emperor.”
Andel walked over, circling the bound Witness like a shark circling prey. “I would hope not.”
“Trust me. I have the crown.”
“It will do nothing for you,” Naberius spat. “I will be remade. And you will be remade. The Empire will be torn to pieces, and from those remnants I will create a masterpiece…”
He kept on mumbling to himself as Andel dropped to his heels in front of the man, looking him in the eye.
“Tell me, Naberius,” Andel said. “Is there any part of you left? Anything that does not bow to the Dead Mother?”
The Chronicler’s raving didn’t even slow. “…death is not the end, life is the end. We are all children, waiting to return to the mother.”
Andel nodded, as if Naberius had said something completely reasonable. “I see. If we left you on an island, what would you do?”
What was the point of this test? Naberius was clearly not in his right mind. He would give nothing but nonsensical answers, and surely Andel had to see that.
But, trusting his second-in-command, Calder said nothing.
Naberius grinned. “I would call to the Dead Mother for claws and wings. And I would fly to you. And I would tear out your heart.”
Then he spat in Andel’s face.
Andel’s expression didn’t change. He nodded again, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand.
“There’s no cure for what ails him,” Calder said at last. They could hand him over to Cheska; she would make sure that Naberius got back to his family. Or to a mental facility equipped to deal with him. Or an abandoned island; Calder wasn’t particularly bothered.
Evidently, Andel disagreed.
“There’s one,” he said.
Then he pulled out his pistol and shot Naberius in the forehead.
The shot floated over the deck like a ghost, and the Chronicler’s body slowly slid sideways. Andel gripped the man by his suit, heaving him up and carrying him to the railing. A second later, a splash indicated that Naberius had made his way to the Aion.
Calder’s shock made him feel like he was the one who had just taken a bullet to the head. He’d seen men die before, but he didn’t…execute people. And for Andel, of all people, to have done it…he was having trouble adjusting his thoughts.
“Too many chances we couldn’t take,” Andel explained, wiping down his gun with a handkerchief before he tossed t
he weapon up to the gunner. “Reload that for me, Foster.”
Dalton Foster desperately snatched the gun out of the air. “Don’t go throwing guns around! Loaded or unloaded, I don’t care, don’t do it.” He glanced over at Calder, then added, “But good job with the dead weight. Would’ve saved us some trouble to put a bullet in his crown three weeks ago.”
Calder didn’t bother to respond. He had more important things to deal with—he was the one who had to explain to the Guild Heads what had happened to Naberius, not Foster. And he would have to do it today, which meant he had to wear that same itchy jacket again.
He lifted the dark blue jacket, staring at it. It was rough, tight, and it looked just as uncomfortable as it felt.
Seized by a sudden inspiration, he opened the porthole and shoved the jacket out.
Naberius was dead, and Calder couldn’t tell if he felt more disturbed or relieved. They had a Consultant prisoner in the hold, they still hadn’t gotten Jerri back, and Urzaia was gone. His crew was down to Andel, Foster, Petal, and himself. Even with his control over the Vessel, he was shorthanded.
It was time to stop holding his cards back, and put everything on the table.
~~~
He marched into the main room of The Eternal without a jacket, carrying with him a wooden case and an all-but-empty sack. The bandages over his chest would be visible through the shirt, and he still walked with a limp, but he thought the injuries made him look rugged and battle-scarred.
The only wound he wanted to hide was Kelarac’s burn on his right arm, which was covered by his sleeve. No telling how Bliss would react to that.
General Teach sat at the far end of the table, her red-and-black-plated arms crossed. She had returned only minutes after he’d set foot on deck, and it had taken all of his and Captain Bennett’s combined persuasive power to prevent her from killing him on the spot.
Cheska Bennett was no longer dressed for a ball: her hair was tied back with a bandana, she wore clothes almost identical to Calder’s own, and she leaned back against the wall, propping her boots up on the table. She faced Calder wearing a cocky grin, evidently more amused by his actions than upset.
