Of Dawn and Darkness

CHAPTER TWELVE

Calder lounged in a copper bathtub filled to bursting with noxious green sludge. Pain slid away from his wounds and muscles loosened as the alchemical substance healed damage he didn’t even know he’d taken. Every breath burned the inside of his nose and made his eyes water, but the alchemists had insisted he breathe it in; even the fumes of this concoction played a vital role in his recovery.

He might have enjoyed it, if he wasn’t using all of his attention to pretend that Jarelys Teach wasn’t standing right next to him.

“We have been given some time. The Head of the Blackwatch reports that the damage to the sky shouldn’t be visible for another two or three days, which gives us at least two days to craft an official response. We would like to have you use the Optasia immediately, but it’s being inspected for damage by as many trustworthy experts as we could scrape up.”

Calder had wondered. After the fight that had activated the Emperor’s throne, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the device was warped into scrap metal. “I could check it myself, if you’re worried about confidentiality.”

“Not Readers,” Jarelys said sharply. She had been carrying a bundle of letters, which crumpled in her grip. “You activate the Optasia by Reading it, so we’re forced to rely on ordinary alchemists, engineers, and historians. It’s slow going.”

It had never occurred to Calder to imagine how difficult it would be to investigate the history of an object without Reading. How would you even do it? Look for minute clues, he supposed, like the archived accounts of those who assembled the Optasia’s network, maybe examine the structure of the throne for scuffs and scrapes. It sounded tedious.

“As for your attacker…” Her voice grew grim, and she shifted position on her stool as though she suspected an assassin to be sneaking past her at that moment. “We have confirmed that he was a Champion. As far as we can tell, he was in good standing with the Guild, though records have been spotty at best.”

“Arrange a meeting with the Head of the Champion’s Guild,” Calder ordered. “He can answer for the actions of his men.”

Teach’s cold eyes slid over to him, disapproval written on her face. He slipped deeper into the opaque green fluid. He knew he shouldn’t have used that tone with her, but if he was ever going to start being Emperor, shouldn’t it be now?

With anyone else, he could have faked the authority and confidence he needed. He wasn’t shy by nature, and taking command was largely a matter of self-assurance. But Teach was the woman who had killed his father.

No matter how he tried, he couldn’t even make himself believe she would follow his orders.

She didn’t release him from her icy gaze as she spoke. “As it happens, I have already arranged for a meeting with Baldesar Kern in a few days. It will be your first unofficial business as Imperial Steward.”

Just hearing his newfound title pleased him, even if it wasn’t quite as impressive as “Emperor.” He’d get there.

“Thank you, General Teach.” Should he still address her by title, or should he be calling her Jarelys, to emphasize his new social standing? He’d have to decide later.

She stood. “I must plan your security for the next week, but I have guards posted outside of every window and the door. They will respond if you need anything.”

“I’m certain I’ll survive my bath without assistance.” The alchemists had prescribed a full morning of soaking in the tub, which he had already suffered since dawn.

Before leaving the room, Teach paused as though she’d forgotten something. “The Emperor never had a moment of privacy. Get used to it now.”

Calder winced as she left. He had thought he’d covered up his discomfort nicely, but it seemed she’d noticed nonetheless.

“You kept sliding in deeper,” Meia said. “It gives you away. If you wanted her to think you were comfortable, you should have feigned sleep.”

Calder froze, very carefully not sliding any deeper into the sludge. His brief, panicked reaction was to scream for the Imperial Guards, but he stopped himself just in time. He’d decided to trust Meia, if only because she’d saved his life. Hopefully, if he showed her enough trust, she wouldn’t kill him.

But how many people were going to barge in on his medical bath?

“Did Teach know you were here?”

She walked around in front of the tub, taking the Guild Head’s stool. Meia was dressed all in black, as always, with black cloth covering her mouth and nose. She didn’t look at Calder as she spoke, her eyes flicking from entrance to entrance as though she expected another Champion to come barging through. “I’m afraid that she wouldn’t welcome me back. She might not kill me if she recognized me, but she would likely have me detained.”

She had said something about growing up in the Imperial Palace. He hadn’t pried into it at the time, but now he was much more interested.

“Why would she recognize you?” Calder asked carefully.

Meia’s eyes blinked orange for a fraction of a second, and just as he was starting to wonder if he was in danger, she answered. “This pertains to the security of the Imperial Palace, not to the Guild, so I suppose you’re authorized to know. You would find out eventually. Either Teach would tell you, or someone else would get around to it.”

Calder leaned forward, intrigued. “Don’t worry. I won’t repeat anything you say outside this room.”

“If the information was so sensitive that it couldn’t be leaked, I wouldn’t tell you,” she said, so matter-of-factly that it was a little insulting. “When I was young, I was assigned to the Emperor’s security detail. We were a discreet unit protecting the Emperor from behind, just as the Imperial Guards protected him from the front.”

Three figures in black had once tackled him during his audience with the Emperor. He had barely given them any thought at the time, but one had been a blond girl about his age.

“So we’d met before the dead island.” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but the memory of his father’s execution dredged up a world of pain. If Meia hadn’t held him back, he would have lunged at the Emperor. Maybe Calder would have gotten his revenge.

No, I would have been torn to pieces. From a certain point of view, Meia had unintentionally saved his life back then.

“We had.”

“How many of you were there?” He’d seen three, but as far as he knew, there could have been a thousand young Consultants-in-training defending the Emperor in the shadows.

“Three. Myself, Lucan, and Shera.”

Shera. The woman who had haunted him for months, who had directly or indirectly turned his life inside-out. If his Guilds won the current dispute, established him as the Emperor, and returned the Consultants to the fold, then Shera might be compelled to protect his life. He found some irony in that.

Another memory returned, more recent: on the Gray Island, as the ground crumbled far above them, three Consultants fought him. The battle that had ended in Urzaia’s death. Meia, Shera, and one other: a Heartlander man dressed identically to the other two, except for the addition of black gloves. Lucan. The man who had been imprisoned in the Gray Island next to his wife.

“You three have made it a habit to get in my way.”

Meia waited silently, undisturbed.

This isn’t the way, he reminded himself. I need her on my side. He reached out a hand, shaking it free of green goop, and patted Meia on the knee. “Never mind. I appreciate that you’re here, working with me. I know that you’ve always acted with loyalty to your Guild and to the Empire, and I’m certain that we’ll continue to work more closely in the future.”

He was proud of that little speech, but Meia’s eyebrows raised. “I’ve already sent my report to the Architects. If they order me away, I’ll disappear.”

“Or you could join the crew of The Testament. I’ve registered you with the Guild as an honorary crew member.” That was a lie, but he could make it the truth if she agreed. “When the Empire is whole again, you’ll be on the side of the Emperor, defending the world from Elders.”

He thought he saw the hint of a smile under her black veil, but it could have been wishful thinking. “The Empire will never be whole.”

“How can you be sure?”

Her voice was suddenly sad, almost wistful. “Because the Consultants aren’t holding it together. If we’ve given up, everyone should.”

The words sent a shiver down his back in spite of the warm alchemical slop. Those were the words of someone who hadn’t wanted to give up on the Empire…but who had been convinced that it was absolutely, irrevocably dead.

What did she know that he didn’t?

“Besides,” she continued, “We’ve fought against the Elders for years.”

He was glad for another topic, and this allowed him to ask something that had fired his curiosity. “Speaking of which, how did you escape from Nakothi’s Handmaiden?” He’d been sure the Consultants would only be able to distract it while he left on The Testament, but they’d apparently banished the Elder entirely.

“We killed it.”

Calder let the silence stretch, waiting for the inevitable correction or qualification that was sure to follow. Even for the Blackwatch or the Luminian Order, it wasn’t so easy to kill an Elder. Lesser Elderspawn were one thing; they were effectively the small, defenseless animals of the Elder world. But a Handmaiden was intelligent, vicious, and had lived for thousands of years. Even Kelarac had warned Calder not to use his Awakened blade against these servants of Nakothi. But the Consultants had managed it?

“How?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“The Consultant’s Guild manages each client’s issues with utmost efficiency,” she recited. “In the event that the client is threatened while under the protection of the Guild, that threat will be removed.”

The legendary Consultant secrecy. If he was honest with himself, he should admit that he was lucky to get even as much information as he had. But he decided to push for a little more. “Was it Shera?”

“It was the Consultant’s Guild.”

“She has an Awakened weapon now, and she didn’t before. She might even be a Soulbound.” With each word, he stared at Meia’s face, gauging her reaction. “Did she destroy the Handmaiden?”

Meia might as well have been filling out paperwork back at the Guild. “The Consultants have resources beyond what you know.”

“This is a matter of my personal security,” he stressed. “Shera has tried to kill me…what, three or four times now?”

“No, she hasn’t.”

At last, a personal response. Calder leaped on it. “What do you mean by that?”

“If her primary assignment had been to kill you, you would be dead.”

Now that he thought about it, Shera had been trying to accomplish something else each time she’d attacked him. Assassinating Naberius, securing the Heart, stopping Urzaia. But the fact remained that she had attempted to kill him, secondary though it may have been.

“But I have to be in danger now. Your Guild is working against me; wouldn’t it be in Shera’s best interests to have me removed? The more I know about her, the safer I am.”

Meia flexed one hand, claws extending and retracting from her nails. He tried not to be intimidated by that. “I have no information from the Architects regarding you personally, so this is only my opinion. But I don’t believe you are in direct danger from us at this time.”

Of all the things she could have said on the topic, this surprised him the most. He’d thought she was working outside the interests of her Guild to support him, out of her lingering loyalty to the Empire. Not against her Guild, of course, but at least independent from it. He’d been sure that the Consultants as a whole would gladly murder him given the chance. “Why not? You’re Independents, against the Emperor, and I’m the Emperor.”

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “No,” she said. “You’re not.”

Freed from the alchemical bath, Calder had his wounds wrapped in fresh bandages. His leg still ached and his shoulder was sore, but for the first time in days he could actually fight if he needed to. It was a reassuring feeling.

Palace servants dressed him in clothes that suited the Emperor: layers of blue from navy to aquamarine, draped around his body like a series of tents had artfully collapsed. He bore them with dignity as the Imperial Guard escorted him through the halls, though he felt like he stepped on his own hem every four or five yards. It was like learning to wear a dress.

More than anything, he focused on the clothes to distract himself from his destination. “The educated man faces his problems, he does not turn his back.” Sadesthenes, though his wisdom was an unwelcome reminder just then.

The Guards led Calder past another courtyard, through a checkpoint complete with a pair of Witnesses, and into a building that outwardly looked little different from all the others in the palace complex. The walls were white, the tiled roof red, and Imperial Guards stood at every entrance. The differences were minor, but significant: there were no windows here, and the doors were heavy barred steel.

The Palace dungeon.

It’s not underground, he thought. Is it still a dungeon? If it mattered, someone would correct him eventually.

The dungeon was fully occupied, and he could vaguely hear them behind their sealed doors, but not one of them could see out. So he passed through the hallways without incident, until his Guards stopped him at one particular door. A woman with eyes all over her arms twisted the key, and two Guards with combat-ready adaptations—one with a scorpion’s giant tail, the other with savage claws on his hands—leaped inside. They scanned the room thoroughly and searched the prisoner before declaring it safe.

Only then did Calder step inside to see his wife.

Both times he’d spoken to Jerri since she’d left his ship, she’d been in a different prison. There was surely some sort of poetic justice in that fact, but it brought him no joy. Her hair was loose and messy, and they’d changed her last prisoner’s outfit for a new one. This one was a dingy red compared to the last, with patches at the knees and loose threads on the sleeves. Strange, that the Consultant’s Guild would dress its prisoners better than the Imperial Palace.

Otherwise, she was every inch the Jerri he’d known his whole life. Her dusky skin, the tattoo climbing from her left ankle up the side of her neck, even the way she brightened briefly when she caught sight of his face. Her eagerness to see him stabbed him through the heart, and the knife twisted when she lost that joy an instant later, lifting her chin and drawing up her shoulders to address him firmly.

“I’m pleased you weren’t hurt, Calder,” she said, professionally distant.

The Imperial Guards had retreated, giving them the illusion of a private space without actually allowing the prisoner any room to try anything.

“I was. The alchemists said that if I hadn’t gotten treatment immediately, I would have suffered internal damage from your attack on the Optasia. And the Champion would have torn me apart. Was he one of yours?”

Calder doubted it—the Independent Guilds had plenty of money to hire the Champions, so they were the likely culprits. But her expression would tell him what he needed to know.

Her eyes widened. “We’re not trying to kill you, Calder. I didn’t even know you would be there at the Optasia, and the Champion…I had nothing to do with that. Nothing.”

Under normal circumstances, she would have made a joke about him surviving a Champion’s attack. She clearly wanted him to believe her.

And he did. No matter how many times she’d lied to him over the years, he believed her now.

“Then what are you doing here, Jerri?” His guilt at leaving her behind on the Gray Island had hardly faded, even though he’d known she had most likely survived, and now here she was in another cell.

She smiled, adding a twisted irony to her next words. “I’m here to help you save the world.”

Calder glanced around at the tight walls, the low-slung cot. “From a hole?”

“From anywhere I can. I was told that I’d be able to put you on the throne if I followed along, and I see the wisdom in it now.”

Put you on the throne. Even now, she claimed she was trying to help him. “I’ve done it without you. I’m on the throne, Jerri.”

“But you haven’t used it yet,” she said quietly. “If you really want to be the Emperor, you need the Optasia. It’s the only way humanity can speak to them.”

A chill crawled up his arms. “What are you talking about?”

“What do you think?” Jerri leaned back against the wall, folding her arms, the way she always did when she lectured. “We need someone who can deal with the Great Elders on their terms, to represent all of mankind. The old Emperor refused to do that, but a new one, one whose reign was already arranged by the Great Ones…”

Calder stiffened. His reign had been arranged?

“Leave me alone with the prisoner,” he said.

The man with the scorpion tail shook his head firmly. “We have strict orders—”

Calder met his eyes. “Now you have new ones.”

Maybe it was the clothes, the ancient fashion that only the Emperor had maintained. Maybe it was the actual authority in Calder’s newfound title, or his own projected confidence.

Whatever it was, the Guards left.

“The Great Elders did not arrange for me to be here,” he said, giving into his anger even further now that the Guards had left. “They may have foreseen it, but they are not the reason I’m standing here today.”

Jerri’s mouth hung open, and she looked at him in a mixture of disbelief and disgust, as though he’d just announced that he was absolutely convinced the earth was flat. “How did you free your father from prison? With the Lyathatan, sent by Kelarac. Before that, how did your mother gain the support she did in the Guilds? She worked in the Blackwatch for years. Fighting Elders. Even your family’s reputation is built on the Elders. Even the fights that drove your parents apart, all the Elders. You think the Great Ones had nothing to do with that?”

That was entirely different—they had been fighting the Elders, not accepting their help—but before Calder could protest, Jerri went on. “Most of your Navigator work had to do with the Elders. An Elder is pulling your ship, and another one sits on your shoulder. How did you survive the fight on the Gray Island? Kelarac stepped in, once again. Leaving aside the fact that the whole reason you were there was because of a fight to inherit Nakothi’s power.”

“I was there because of you,” Calder insisted, but he could feel his self-righteous footing crack. “And how did you know about Kelarac?”

“And how did you know you were going to be the Emperor one day?” she asked, ignoring him. “How did the entire crew believe in you so much that they were willing to defy the Empire? You’ve been dancing to an Elder tune for half your life.”

Calder’s anger didn’t fade, but he shut his mouth.

Jerri’s voice softened as she went on. “I’m not accusing you, Calder. It would be an accusation coming from anyone else, but not from me. You of all people should understand that we can borrow the powers of Elders. It can be a good thing! They can be our partners, not our parasites.”

He had to admit that, of all the people he knew who were not Elder-worshiping cultists, he’d relied on Elder powers the most. They worked to his benefit every time, and always for prices he could afford to pay. They were alien, menacing, and heartless, but most of them hadn’t seemed to mean him any specific harm.

The thought didn’t reassure him. It chilled him down to his bones.

Is this how the Sleepless make their recruits?

It had begun when he was a child, receiving Shuffles as a pet. Hearing his mother talk about Elderspawn in the same way you’d talk about wild lions; something to be respected, certainly, even feared in a healthy way. Even, perhaps, admired.

Somewhere along the way, he’d begun thinking of the Great Elders differently. Maybe some, like Urg’naut and Nakothi, were actively evil. Most weren’t. They were simply alien, and indescribably powerful.

That was the crack in his defenses. That was where he’d gone wrong.

And he’d listened to Ach’magut.

Even now, he didn’t think the Overseer had been wrong. It was impossible to imagine that any predictions of Ach’magut could be incorrect to the slightest degree; the Great Elder had spoken directly to him, and its words carried the weight of inescapable destiny.

But just because it was the truth didn’t mean the Elder was being honest. Of course it wasn’t. It was telling him the truth for its own complex, intricate reasons.

In his own way, he’d been trusting Elders all along.

Jerri watched him come to this realization, and her face softened in sympathy. “It’s true, Calder. The sooner you accept that, the happier we can be.”

We.

“If you still don’t believe me, use the Optasia. Check for yourself. The Great Ones set up your attack so that it would scar the sky. Very soon, it will stretch and crack, opening a tunnel between our world and those beyond. That is when we will need a representative, Calder. Someone who can speak for us all.”

The air over the Imperial Palace had been fuzzy and indistinct after the attack on the Optasia, though he’d heard it was only visible from the Imperial Palace. “General Teach says we have two or three days before that happens.”

She laughed. “Significantly less than that.”

“The Optasia might be damaged.” He felt like a child, throwing up excuses to avoid a chore.

“A Great One intervened personally in this matter. He wouldn’t leave the throne in a state where it couldn’t be used.”

“The last time I came face-to-face with an Elder, it was Nakothi’s Handmaiden. She almost killed us both.” Technically, the last time was his dream of Kelarac, but he could only hope that Jerri didn’t know anything about that.

Jerri stepped closer to him. “Nakothi is…not the Great Elder you want to negotiate with. She’s far beyond us, of course, and I’m certain that we could improve the world with her wisdom. But she’s mad. Her Handmaiden was there to kill us all, and we’re only lucky that it withdrew before it hunted us down and finished its task.”

So Jerri thought it had fled. Maybe she was right. “The Consultants say they killed it.”

“Did they? Are you sure they weren’t lying to you? Trying to make themselves look better.”

He wouldn’t be surprised if Meia had lied, but then again… “She seemed fairly certain. And I suspect Shera was involved.”

She was even closer now, and they were talking normally before he’d realized it. Close, intimate, friendly, the way they’d spoken ten thousand times. “Shera? How?”

Intentionally, Calder took two steps back toward the entrance. “She’s a Soulbound now.”

Jerri noticed what he’d done, and a flash of hurt crossed her face. She opened her mouth, and he could practically see the insult forming.

The door opened and a Guard stuck his head in. “Sir, we need you to see this. There’s something…”

The floor, the walls, the entire building shook like a struck drum. The air seemed to buzz around him, and Calder and Jerri both staggered for balance. Without another word, Calder left.

When the world shook, Jerri recognized it for what it was: the plan of the Great Elders coming to fruition. The sky had cracked, and with it, the first gateway had opened between their world and…whatever else was out there. Future generations would celebrate this day as a holiday; she should be filled with joy at her part in this momentous occasion.

Instead, she felt only frustration and anger. If the barrier had to crack, why did it have to be now? She was so close to persuading Calder, she could feel it. Even though he insisted on ignoring her, even though he was driving her insane with his refusal to listen to sense, she had still almost gotten through to him.

Now, though…now he would be listening to the Blackwatch’s version of events instead of hers. She’d wasted her last, best chance to get through to him. Victory or not, she felt like screaming.

It was only after the first few seconds that she realized something was wrong.

The city had shaken with the force of the Great Elders’ will. Perhaps the entire planet had. But that had died away in moments as the world stabilized. All this, Kelarac had led her to expect.

But in the corner of her cell, the shaking continued. The air trembled, a heat haze buzzing like a hummingbird’s wing.

When the indistinct blur had reached a fever pitch, when the blur turned from dim color to absolute darkness, the Soul Collector stepped out from the void.

This time, he was not quite as human. His dark skin had the pattern of scales, his golden jewelry splattered against him as though it had been melted into patches. His clothes flickered and faded, as though they were on the verge of vanishing at any second, and the body beneath them was distinctly unnatural. It was a coil of shadows upon shadows with the occasional outline of a waving fin. Like a school of a thousand fish all feeding on each other at once.

She looked away from the eye-wrenching sight before she grew seasick. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help the excitement growing inside her.

Unless she missed her guess, the Great Elder was upset. He had no reason to be so angry with her, and besides, she was fully within his control. Which meant that something else had happened…something important.

Maybe Jerri would get to help.

She had dropped to her knees as soon as Kelarac revealed himself, and he looked down on her with his steel blindfold bolted to his face. Only the blindfold remained as clear and distinct as ever, as though that was the only part of him that was real.

“The Killer survived,” he said, and it was only half a question.

“I’m sorry, Great One. Who?” Was he talking about the Champion that had tried to kill Calder?

“The Killer. Your husband said her name: Shera. The latest of the Am’haranai.”

Shera? What did the Soul Collector want with a Consultant assassin? “Calder says she survived. I haven’t seen her since before the island collapsed.” She snuck a glance up at Kelarac’s face, but it was so distorted that she learned nothing. It looked like his cheeks had been stretched into a mask that was now stapled onto something else’s head.

“When he mentioned her, I checked Bastion’s island. She did survive. She was not meant to.”

He flitted from one corner of the cell to another, moving with the grace of a spider. In someone else, she would have called it nervous pacing. “The Killer had one part to play, and she played it. Five years ago. She was supposed to die in obscurity, as she was born.”

“Would you like me to kill her?” Jerri asked, suppressing her delight. If the Great Elders tasked her with killing Shera, she would go about her task with glee. The assassin had thrown her over the side of her own ship.

Kelarac froze. “Kill her? You would kill her? A woman who has bound her soul to an ancient weapon forged in the powers of the Emperor? A woman who destroyed a Handmaiden, drawing its essence inside her? Shera has made of herself a bridge between the Emperor’s power and ours.”

Something was wrong here beyond the obvious. The way Kelarac said it made Shera sound terrifying, but really, what she’d done wasn’t terribly unusual. Even Jerri’s Vessel contained a hybrid power of Kameira and Elder. “Pardon me, Great One. But what makes her more dangerous than any other Soulbound?”

Kelarac loomed over her, a mass of gold-flecked shadows that flickered and squirmed in the overshadowed light. “Her place,” he said, and as he spoke she felt the echo of significance in the word. As though he referred to a force as broad as the universe itself.

“She should not have survived. It was impossible for her to die before her role had been fulfilled, but afterwards it should have been impossible for her to live.” He looked down on Jerri, and seemed to consider his next words.

“You have chemical projectile weapons. Guns. When a bullet is loaded, it has not yet been born. It is born with the pull of a trigger. It lives only for a flash of light…and then it ends. The Killer was supposed to reach her end.”

Jerri was beginning to see the problem. For whatever reason, the Great Elders had actually…made a mistake.

“Our plan, the vision we have for your world, ended with your kind in harmony with ours,” Kelarac went on. “Now, every action the Killer takes is a disruption of that plan. She is what Ach’magut might call a deviation, but I am neither Ach’magut nor Tharlos. I do not enjoy deviating from perfection. More importantly to you, my plan saw Calder Marten ruling as King of this world. Now, our plan has changed.”

Jerri’s excitement turned to fear. If the Great Elders were changing their minds, or if their minds had been changed for them, then all the promises they’d made…everything she had come to expect…

Her entire life could have been for nothing.

The outline of Kelarac’s body stretched, as though something within was bulging and trying to escape. “The last time our plans diverged this wildly, my brothers and sisters went to war. Engrave that into your heart, human. Another all-out war between the Elders with humanity at the center. You will be ground to paste.”

“Let me out,” Jerri said, desperate to find some hope. “Give me my Vessel, and I’ll kill her myself.”

Kelarac extended a hand, which for one mind-twisting instant seemed to have hundreds of fingers all overlapping each other. He reached into distorted space and pulled forth an emerald earring. “The deviation will be solved by greater minds than yours. You are in the proper place, for now, and you will play your role. There is only one thing that you can do for the greater good: you must not let the Killer meet the King.”

He threw her earring over to her and, with a pop that left her ears ringing, abruptly vanished.

Jerri remained sitting on the floor of her cell—her second cell in as many weeks—trying in vain to catch her breath. She clutched her Vessel in a tight fist, relishing the feeling of being whole and powerful once more, but her mind was consumed by an overriding conviction.

I have to save Calder.