by Will Wight
“I’ve got time, Foster. I’ll settle into it.”
The gunner barked a laugh and swung the cannon-brush around to point into Calder’s face. “All right, when you find a solution to the Great Elders tearing the sky in half, you send for me.”
Calder’s eyes moved against his will to seek out the black crack in the morning sky.
Foster chuckled. “Good luck.”
When Calder returned to the Imperial Palace, General Teach and Baldezar Kern were waiting for him at the gate.
The Head of the Imperial Guard stood scowling with her arms crossed, her freshly polished red-and-black armor gleaming in the noonday sun. The Champion held a wooden rocking-horse under one arm and a crumpled paper sack in the other hand.
“You’ve been informed that the Independents agreed to our meeting?” Teach asked briskly.
“Of course. I was told last night.”
A messenger had awakened him after midnight and delivered him the letter accepting the peace accords, which had been sealed by all the Independent Guild Heads and two of the three Regents, penned by the hand of a Witness. It was as official as anything could be.
The meeting was to take place in two weeks, which the fastest either side could reasonably make it. They both wanted to resolve the Guild conflict as quickly as possible before any more of the Empire crumbled around them.
“Good,” Teach said. “That leaves us to determine the specifics of the meeting.”
He noticed they weren’t letting him any farther into the Palace.
“What specifics?” Calder asked, walking forward to see if Teach would let him by.
She didn’t. She’d cornered him here, and she wasn’t about to let him out of whatever lecture she had prepared.
“Attendance and location.” She held out a small piece of paper. “The Guild Heads have met, and this is what we decided.”
Calder eyed Kern before taking the paper. He didn’t see why the Head Champion needed to be here, especially as the man seemed fully concentrated on not shattering the rocking-horse between his elbow and ribs.
The paper was divided in two. Across the top were written the names Azea and Calazan Farstrider. Twin heads of the Witness Guild.
On the left were the names of all three Regents and the Heads of the four Independent Guilds: the alchemists, Consultants, Greenwardens, and Luminian Order.
The right side bore the names of the Imperialist Guild Heads, with a circled question mark next to the Magisters. The Magister’s Guild hadn’t appointed a new Head since the death of Mekendi Maxeus, and it was Calder’s personal opinion that they were waiting to see how the conflict between Guilds was resolved before doing so.
He didn’t see his own name on this list.
Before diving into that, though, he turned to Kern. “What’s in the bag, Guild Head?”
He wanted to call the man “Baldezar,” just to establish his authority and shorten the distance between them, but there was probably a better place to start flexing his muscles than with a man who had singlehandedly sunk an entire fleet of rebel ships.
“Chocolate biscuits,” Kern said seriously. “I don’t get to this side of the city often, and there’s a bakery on Peregrine and Gazrial that serves my wife’s favorite.” He hefted his other arm, indicating the rocking-horse. “This is a present for my son Torrence. He collects them.”
“And how are you involved in this?” Calder asked, gesturing with the list of names. “Did you have something you wished to speak with me about, or did Teach feel she needed backup?”
He had hoped a joke would lighten the mood, but General Teach’s scowl deepened.
Kern seemed perfectly placid, but Calder expected he would show no more expression if a sudden gunfight erupted around him. “I happened to be leaving, but I knew what news she was delivering to you. I wanted to see your reaction.”
Wonderful, Calder thought. I was hoping for more pressure.
Despite what the news-sheets printed and what Calder conveyed to the Independents, the Champion’s Guild was not fully behind him. To hear Kern tell it, there was no single voice representing the Champion’s Guild.
Their members had largely dispersed, their organization a shadow of what it once was. They had graduated only one generation of Champions since the Emperor’s death.
The technicality of their joining the Imperialist cause was the only thing that had prevented them from announcing the dissolution of the Guild. One thin thread holding them together.
Though if they were recruiting alchemists like Petal, Calder hoped that meant good news. Both for the Champions as a whole and for their support of his authority.
In any case, he had to keep Kern’s respect.
Calder handed the paper back to Teach. “That’s a volatile room full of powerful people. We can’t avoid inviting any of them because we need their support, but with all three Regents in one room, they have us outnumbered and outgunned. It’s a security nightmare. We announce that I’ll be going, but it’s only for the public. We send a double instead, which they will allow because they don’t care about meeting the real me, and which we can afford because we don’t actually need my input. Is that correct?”
“Believe it or not, my primary concern is your security,” Teach said, and she sounded surprisingly honest. “Even meeting in a prepared, reinforced room in our own territory, there are no measures we could take to protect a single individual from so many powerful Soulbound.”
“If that room blows up, my survival will mean nothing.”
If every Guild Head who supported him died at once, even if none of the enemy survived, he would have no backing. He certainly would rule no longer, and probably wouldn’t live out the afternoon.
“We’re working on that. We suspect Bareius of the alchemists will send a proxy anyway, and we can argue that Cheska is away on a delivery or Bliss is hiding in a closet somewhere. Your mother can represent the Blackwatch, and the other Navigators will trip over each other for a chance to speak for their Guild.”
Calder wouldn’t be able to represent the crown. He wouldn’t even be allowed to represent his own Guild.
He would sit on the sidelines, waiting for decisions to be made without him.
Kern watched him, gazing his reaction. Calder sensed no malice in him, only a steady practicality; if he didn’t like Calder’s decisions, he would stop following. Simple as that.
And while Kern claimed to only represent himself and half a dozen other Champions who had decided personally to join their Guild Head, Calder knew there was more to it.
For one thing, Calder couldn’t afford to lose even the few Champions he actually had. Even one walking away would be a grievous loss.
But he also knew that half the value of having the Champion’s Guild behind him was that the public saw the Champions behind him. So long as Kern stood with him, he would still have that.
What kind of decision would Baldezar Kern respect?
A bold one. And one that he made wholeheartedly, with the good of the Empire in the front of his thoughts.
“You’re right,” Calder said, and Teach looked at him suspiciously.
As well she should, because Calder followed up with, “So why protect me at all?”
Teach reacted as though he’d asked her why the ocean was blue. “That is my job.”
“If the Regents attack us, we lose,” Calder said. “That’s the end of it. Whether I’m there or not, whether we can fight them off or not, we’re done. The best-case scenario is that you all defeat them, but we will lose people even in that case. We would move forward severely weakened and unable to trust half the Guilds.”
Kern spoke quietly. “We would be fighting to survive and retreat, not to win.”
“Even so, we have to extend them some trust. What better trust than me, there, in person, with no armor or weapons?”
Estyr Six could find and kill him even if he hid in a bunker halfway through the earth, so why hide?
Teach gritted h
er teeth. “That seems needlessly foolish.”
“You all wouldn’t have had this conversation if you needed me. Let’s use the fact that I’m useless.” He gestured to himself. “What are we risking here?”
The meeting itself was a powder-keg, but there was no alternative if they wanted peace. They would have to take every precaution. But his presence shouldn’t increase the risk at all.
Teach let out such a long, slow breath that Calder hesitated to call it a sigh. “Cheska said you would do this.”
Calder raised his eyebrows. Had he become so predictable? “She said I would do what?”
“Get involved.”
Calder smiled with as much charm as he could muster. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“We can insist on weapons and Vessels being left outside,” Kern said. “Though that’s dependent on the Regents allowing it. They may consider it rude. And even without her Vessel, Estyr is—”
The rocking-horse under his arm snapped in two.
Kern’s shoulders slumped.
“I’ll have a courier deliver another horse to your home,” Calder said. “General, thank you for keeping me informed. You have two weeks to make attacking us as unappealing as possible. I have every faith in you.”
Teach gave a little bow, but her eye twitched as she did.
Calder stared into the Optasia, and it felt like the Emperor’s throne stared back into him.
The device was built into a hidden nook in the wall of the Emperor’s personal chambers. Calder had his own rooms—in fact, he had to register with the Imperial Guard even to visit this wing of the Palace—but they had allowed him a supervised visit with the throne.
The Optasia didn’t look like a throne in the traditional sense; it was more like a nest of steel bars and wires twisted into a shape vaguely resembling a chair inside a cage. The last time he’d seen the device, it had just been freed from a mass of Elder-grown flesh.
The room around him showed evidence of its transformation and the battle afterwards. Seemingly random chunks of the wall had been torn out, as though something had taken bites out of the wood and plaster. He knew those were the parts that had turned to meat and skin and been gouged away afterwards.
The massive bed that had once dominated the room had been moved out, though it had remained completely intact. Apparently the Emperor’s desire for a safe, peaceful sleep had invested it with enough Intent that the bed could weather an all-out Elder attack.
Maybe Calder should attend the meeting with the Independents with the Emperor’s pillows strapped to his chest.
The paintings that had once hung on the walls had been thoroughly destroyed, and the armor and weapons that had been mounted in the room had been removed. The floor creaked under him, half of the planks having been replaced, and the entire room carried the fading stink of rotting meat.
The Optasia itself had been covered by a newly added mesh of barbed wire that was both invested to wound intruders and treated with alchemy that would incapacitate anyone who touched it. A yellow rope was stretched across the room to keep visitors at a safe distance…not that there were many visitors.
Calder extended one bare hand over the rope, toward the throne.
Past the Intent of the protective fence, Calder could feel the Intent of the Optasia waiting there, coiled like a predator nesting in its den. It didn’t seem too dangerous. Maybe he and the Magisters could work out some kind of protection…
As he was thinking, he felt a sensation as though a closed eye had suddenly opened.
Calder fell to his knees behind the yellow rope, retching and trying not to vomit. It was like he’d called up all his worst memories at once. His father’s execution, Jerri’s betrayal, Urzaia’s death…the Optasia had balled them all up and slugged him with them like a fist.
But just the feelings, not the memories themselves. That was somewhat strange. Reading usually evoked some kind of image, but this time it was a knot of horror and revulsion with nothing attached to it.
Elder Intent. It was seeping through the Optasia like an overflowing sewer.
Calder waved off the Imperial Guards who tried to help him to his feet, standing on his own, mastering his breath. So the throne was still unusable. That was good to confirm.
Still, it left him without a card he’d hoped to play. The meeting with the Independent leaders was only a week away, and if he could use the Optasia, he would have been able to contribute even if the Regents did attack.
Brooding, he left the Emperor’s quarters.
He missed it when the first two of his guards vanished.
The third got out a soft yelp that caused him to turn around. He found himself staring into the wide, panicked eyes of his one remaining Imperial Guard.
As Calder whirled to meet a threat, the Guard began to shout an alarm.
Half a second after opening his mouth, the man vanished.
Calder opened his Reader’s senses, stretching out for Intent. He certainly felt something distorted in the halls, something that didn’t belong, but he couldn’t pin it down. As though the Intent changed from second to second.
The problem was, this was a straight hallway. There were doors on either side, but he would have heard them open and close. He looked to his left and saw no one.
To his right, nothing.
When he turned back to his left again, Bliss was tucking a long stretch of bone back into her coat.
“I would like to speak with you privately,” she said, buttoning her coat closed and patting it carefully.
“What happened to my guards?”
“They are unharmed. Physically. But they are also…” She cocked her head. “…somewhere else.”
He knew that was the best explanation he would get out of her, but he hoped the Guards were only rattled. He had grown to think of Bliss as quirky and strange, but dangerous only to her enemies. If it turned out she used her power to blithely harm the innocent, he couldn’t trust her.
In the meantime, he continued walking down the hallway. “Well, thank you for not whisking me away. What would you like to talk about?”
Though she was a head shorter than him, Bliss matched his pace precisely. “It is not a conversation for pleasure. I am here to deliver you a message in advance.”
“In advance of what?”
She blinked at him. “The message.”
“Very well,” Calder said, as though she had made complete sense.
“In a few hours, you will be delivered a message telling you that the Independent Guild Heads would like to request a smaller meeting. Only three in attendance on either side. They propose sending Shera of the Consultant’s Guild, the Regent Estyr Six, and Nathanael Bareius of Kanatalia.”
As usual, she scowled when she mentioned the Head of the Alchemist’s Guild.
“That would solve one of our problems,” Calder said. It still didn’t address the issue of Estyr being an unstoppable force of nature all on her own, but at least they wouldn’t have to face her and her two companions at once.
“Furthermore, they will suggest that the known Soulbound among you leave your Vessels in secure storage outside the venue.”
Better and better. Though Calder was a Soulbound, he couldn’t bring The Testament into a meeting room anyway, and disarming would reduce the advantage the Independents had over them. More importantly, the proposal spoke to a willingness to talk rather than fight, which Calder deeply appreciated.
“Teach is going to throw a party.” Calder glanced sidelong at Bliss, whose brow was still furrowed. “So why did you tell me alone, secretly, and ahead of the messenger’s actual arrival?”
He didn’t even wonder how she’d known the contents of the message before it had arrived.
“Because I don’t like it.”
Bliss stopped halfway down the hallway to examine herself in a mirror, staring into it as though she’d never seen her reflection before.
Halfway down the hall, there came a loud thump as one of Calder’s I
mperial Guards reappeared in the exact place where he’d vanished. The man was soaking wet and half his uniform had been torn off and wrapped around his head.
Calder pointed to him. “Will he be all right?”
“Disorientation is a common side effect of sudden, unexplained travel, but subjects usually shake it off in a matter of hours.” Her eyes in the mirror found his. “More importantly, I don’t trust this meeting. The Great Elders are involved in this somehow, and I don’t know how, and that makes me uneasy. I don’t want to be uneasy. I want to be eased.”
“If it worries you so much, you can be one of the three we send to the meeting.” Though now that he thought of it, Bliss’ presence might make things worse.
“Nonsense. No one trusts the Blackwatch, and I am notoriously unpredictable. The Navigators are similarly disreputable and Cheska is not capable of defending herself from a Consultant Gardener. It will be you, Jarelys Teach, and Baldezar Kern. You are expendable and the nominal head of our faction, and the other two represent respectable Guilds and can defend themselves.”
Bliss poked her reflection with one finger.
Once again, Calder was confused by what Bliss understood clearly and what mystified her. “That seems very logical.”
Bliss turned to stare at him even as another Imperial Guard reappeared behind her, brandishing a golden candlestick in the lobster claw he had instead of a hand.
“It is logical,” Bliss agreed. “And I don’t trust it.”
Chapter Four
Some say the Emperor’s crown wasn’t always gold.
In the oldest artwork, he wears a crown of bronze. The commonly accepted explanation is that he replaced that crown with a new, more valuable metal to represent a new age of the Empire.
But over the years, some scholars have suspected that there may not be two crowns at all.
They suggest that the bronze crown slowly turned to gold because the Emperor wore it.
