by Will Wight
As soon as the door closed behind them, Shera palmed a spade. The triangular blade was weighted for throwing, and she could sink it into the mannequin’s throat nine times out of ten at this distance.
But she stopped herself, reaching for a normal dagger instead.
This throw wouldn’t be precise, and she could only make it sixty percent of the time. She tried anyway; holding it by the tips of her fingers and stretching her arm all the way back to get as much leverage as possible. It would have worked much better if she could stand up, as the dagger scraped the ceiling and she couldn’t get her whole body behind the move, but she hurled the dagger.
Luck was with her, as the blade sank point-first into the dummy’s straw chin.
Shera didn’t know what signal the Masons were waiting for, but she expected that Ayana would alert them in seconds. Just in time, she curled back up.
The two guards kicked open the door, leveling their model pistols at the window. When they saw no one, they hesitated. One of them laughed, and the other made an appreciative noise.
Shera suspected that real guards wouldn’t have reacted quite so pleasantly.
This time, they both moved to the window, throwing open the latch. Both of them leaned out, one looking down the wall, the other looking up. A sense of quiet relief crept through Shera: she had considered climbing up the wall and hiding on the roof to avoid the guards’ search. Now she knew that wouldn’t have worked.
Silently, she slipped down the opposite side of the wardrobe and through the door the guards had left cracked.
From her earlier studies, Shera was somewhat familiar with the layout of this tower. Outside the main bedroom there was a single landing, and then a staircase that crawled back and forth down all five stories. Now that she was past the guards, she simply had to make it down the stairs before they thought to check.
She was one floor down when she found out why Ayana had punished her earlier answer. There were not two guards.
There were four.
Another pair of guards stood on the landing below, clearly assigned to watch the stairs. One of them looked bored, as though he had expected to see her here. The other grinned and opened his mouth to say something.
Shera couldn’t use real knives on these guards. Not only were they Consultants themselves, but a Gardener was expected to ‘prune’ only the necessary branches. If she made a habit of killing unrelated people, they would never let her off the Island.
But she did have an answer. Just because she had forgotten the alchemist’s glue, that didn’t mean she had forgotten alchemy entirely.
Shera withdrew a cloth pouch from her back pocket, tossing it at the laughing guard.
He slapped it out of the air with the butt of his pistol, never losing his smile. Any trained Consultant would be able to deflect that.
Which Shera had counted on.
The impact against the pouch shook loose a cloud of powder that blew into his face. He fell like a demolished building.
His bored friend hesitated for a moment, surprise flashing onto his expression. Shera took that instant to kick the back of the bored guard’s knees, knocking him down to her level.
He recovered himself before his knees hit the floor, bringing up his fake pistol. This prop, used for training, would fire rubber balls. They wouldn’t kill, but they would hurt. And more importantly, the discharge of a firearm would create enough noise to disqualify her from this exercise.
Shera leapt onto his back, wrapping an elbow around his throat and hooking her leg under his arm, forcing it out until the arm was fully extended. With the tip of her shoe, she pushed on his fingers, trying to keep him from pulling the trigger while she squeezed the air from his lungs.
He struggled silently for a moment. Silently, but not helplessly: he still outweighed her twice over, and her entire body was screaming with the effort of fighting against his physical strength.
At last, he tapped her arm twice with his free hand. She released him instantly, and he folded onto the ground. Somehow he managed not to cough, even with his bruised throat, which spoke volumes for the discipline of the Masons. By tapping out, he had agreed to stay silent and pretend to be dead for the duration of the exercise.
Shera half-expected another pair of guards on the ground floor, but she had no pouches of nightbloom powder left. She would have only improvisation to defend her from these.
But the ground floor was clear. Only a minute after leaving the bedroom at the top, she exited the ground floor.
Across the gravel lane, Meia stood with her arms crossed, wearing an expression of eternal stubbornness. Likely she was upset that Shera had cleared the assignment while she hadn’t, but Shera would worry about that later. Ayana was the one who counted, and she stood with no expression, scraping her iron fingernails together.
Shera stood, waiting.
After a drawn-out moment of silence, Ayana blew her whistle again. The assignment was over.
Shera’s whole body loosened, and she heaved a huge breath. Finally she let herself feel the exertion—the strain from climbing up the tower by her fingertips, wrestling a Mason who outweighed her by a hundred pounds, holding herself absolutely still as they checked the bedroom. Her body sang with aches and tight muscles.
She didn’t know why Meia seemed to enjoy it. Work was too much work.
Meia looked over at Ayana. “Gardener? Did she pass?”
“...She did,” Ayana admitted. Her nails struck sparks from one another.
After learning under Ayana for the better part of two years, Shera had the woman figured out. She wanted to give a compliment for the successful assignment, but she was reluctant to reward laziness with praise.
Fortunately, Shera didn’t care. Laziness was its own reward.
She hopped back onto her hammock and closed her eyes.
Ayana drove an iron fingernail into Shera’s side, deep enough to draw blood. “No sleep. It’s Lucan’s turn.”
Shera squirmed away from the pain, but she didn’t leave the hammock. She could watch well enough from there. “Is Lucan coming?” she asked. “I thought it was Reader training today.”
Lucan hopped down from the roof of a nearby hut, sending up a burst of gravel as he landed. “Everything is Reader training, from the right perspective,” he said. “And how will I ever accomplish anything with my life if I don’t know how to murder Imperial citizens in their homes?”
“You think you will accomplish something?” Ayana asked softly. “Only the client matters. Now, up the tower. Harvest the target. Do not let yourself be restrained.”
Lucan rubbed his gloved hands together as if excited. “So, who’s the target?”
Ayana blew her whistle.
The boy didn’t move.
Lucan was darker than either Meia or Shera; not the pure black skin of a full-blooded Heartlander, but dark enough that he could pass for Kerian’s little brother, or a respectable citizen of the Capital. More importantly, he was a little older, and he had spent more of his life outside the Island.
He had learned to ask questions.
Meia never second-guessed her instructions; she had been raised on the Gray Island, and believed in the Consultants completely. Shera simply didn’t care. But Lucan thought too much, and those thoughts bled out into questions.
Kerian said he would make the Council of Architects one day, if his mentor didn’t kill him first.
Ayana flicked a hand in Lucan’s direction. His smile never faltered, not even when a line of red appeared on his cheek.
“The whistle means you start,” she whispered.
Lucan spread his hands helplessly. “I’d like to, but I know nothing about my target.”
“He is at the top of this tower.” She blew the whistle again.
“Who is the client? What has the target done to him? What defenses does he have around him? Why does he deserve death, and not some lesser punishment?”
Ayana flicked sparks at him. “Unnecessary answers. Begin
climbing, or I will find a new Reader.”
It was a bluff. If it were so easy to find Readers Lucan’s age, she would have killed and replaced him years ago. But Shera still gripped her knife. She didn’t intend to lose another friend.
The most likely result of Shera and Lucan attacking Ayana together was a pair of corpses lying on the gravel, and Ayana’s not among them. But Shera wouldn’t sit idly by and let Lucan get killed.
…If it came to that, which she doubted.
Lucan pulled one glove off and waggled his fingers in demonstration. “With my Reading, I’d be able to determine all those answers with a touch.”
“The Emperor himself couldn’t—” Ayana began, but Lucan hurriedly corrected himself.
“Some of those answers,” he allowed. “But since I can’t Read a fake target through a fake home, you’ll have to tell me yourself.”
Ayana’s pale pink eyes stared out from her colorless face. Slowly she ran one iron nail over another.
“He is a smuggler,” she said at last. “He transports illegal alchemy from the dump stations behind the Capital’s Kanatalia chapter house, making a fortune on unregulated alchemist-grade materials. Over the past six months, his products have blown up a warehouse, poisoned an Imperial Guard, granted a burglar unnatural strength and the ability to breathe underwater, and intoxicated hundreds of street addicts seeking a cheaper alternative to Anthem. Our client is Nathanael Bareius, Guild Head of Kanatalia, who has offered us a fortune to eradicate the source of these leaks.”
That was more words in a row than Shera usually heard from her mentor in an entire day. She didn’t sound like she was making this up, either; usually their fictional training scenarios were much simpler.
“Is that…a real assignment, Gardener?” Meia asked hesitantly. “I only ask…I mean, it sounded as if…”
“The target is correct,” Ayana went on, still addressing Lucan. “Wiser minds than yours have determined his guilt. With your questions, you suggest that you are better able to decide the course of this Guild than the entire Council of Architects. If you cannot trust the Council to make decisions for you, then you have come to the wrong place.”
By the end of that speech, Ayana’s dry voice sounded as if it had been scraped raw. Meia and Shera only watched, unable to say a word. Even Lucan seemed frozen.
Ayana blew the whistle a third time. This time, Lucan sprang into action.
By walking straight up the side of the tower.
This was flashy, even for Lucan, but he must have wanted to seem as competent as possible after questioning the assignment. Shera was no Reader, but she could guess what he had done, and it was as impressive as anything she’d ever seen. He would have to invest Intent into his boots, enhancing their ability to grip a surface until they could even support him on the side of a wall.
That would require boots with some sort of significance; maybe they had been worn by an ancient Consultant with some great skill at climbing, or assembled by a genius cobbler. Maybe the Emperor had kept them in his closet for a while. Then Lucan would need a personal connection to the boots—he had likely worn them for weeks, in preparation for a test like this.
Then he would need the focus and strength to Read the boots fully, to invest enough Intent to bring out their full potential. Shera had seen him convulse from the aftermath of a Reading before, and she didn’t think he could handle making something like this.
His training as a Reader must have progressed faster than she’d thought.
Lucan strolled up the side of the tower, only stumbling once on a loose brick. When he reached the window, he pressed his hand against it, and the latch loosened itself.
He hopped inside, where Shera lost vision of him for a second. But only for a second, because an instant later, he was walking back down the wall. The window shut itself behind him.
“The target?” Ayana asked.
Lucan stepped onto the ground and shrugged, as if it were not worth mentioning. “I invested the blankets on his bed so that they clung to him and shut out all air. He would have suffocated in minutes.”
For the first time, Shera felt a little in awe of Lucan. Walking up walls? Suffocating people with a touch? Opening windows that latched themselves back? That was the sort of Reading she expected from a Magister, not from a thirteen-year-old Gardener apprentice.
Meia looked as though someone had stolen her favorite toy. Shera could understand: the girl was used to thinking of Shera as her rival, and Lucan as the Reader who completed their team. If he could perform apparent miracles, then how could she ever compete?
After a few seconds with nothing to say, Ayana blew her whistle.
“Clean all of this up,” the mentor said. “I expect everything spotless in two hours.”
Without another word, she walked away.
~~~
Kerian waited by the subterranean gates to the Garden, expecting Ayana at any moment. Ever since her promotion to the Council, she had met with the Gardener mentor at least once a day. Those three would make up the entire next generation of Gardeners, and it was important to the Guild that they reach their full potential.
There was another reason, one that only the Council knew: the three Gardeners-in-training had already been requested by a client. And this one would not be kept waiting.
Ayana pushed her way out of the Garden, looking as usual like a black-clad ghost with razor-sharp fingernails. She didn’t stop to greet Kerian, she kept walking and Kerian fell in beside her.
That wasn’t exactly appropriate for Kerian’s station, but it was acceptable enough between two old friends.
“How is our little flock?” Kerian asked, as always.
“If we could get them to follow orders, they could harvest the Emperor himself.”
That was not a joke Ayana would have made to anyone. Some would have turned her in for treason, even though the statement was patently ridiculous. You couldn’t kill the Emperor any more than you could kill the sun.
Ordinarily, Kerian would have laughed. This time, considering the news she was about to deliver, her friend’s remark struck a little too close to home.
She cleared her throat. “I’m pleased that you would say that. In point of fact, we’ve received a visitor.”
Ayana scratched herself absently. “Who?”
“The client.”
“Which one?”
Kerian reached into her satchel, pulling out a copper half-mark coin. She flipped it to Ayana, who plucked it out of the air with the tips of two metallic fingernails. The coin landed with the Emperor facing Ayana.
“The client,” Kerian said.
Ayana froze. “He’s here?”
“The Council is assembling on the docks.”
The mentor clashed her nails together, faster and faster. It was an old nervous habit, one that had the added benefit of frightening strangers. “Will he want to see them?”
“I have no doubt that he will,” Kerian said. She could think of nothing else that would bring him here.
The Emperor had never needed to visit before.
“They’re not ready,” Ayana said. She turned back to the Garden, as if she thought she could prepare her students in the minutes before the Emperor’s arrival.
Carefully, Kerian caught her friend’s wrist. Seizing Ayana’s arm was a risky proposition; as a trained Gardener and a born Imperial Guard, she reacted to danger without thinking. More than one person had startled her and ended up missing an eye or several cups of blood.
This time, Ayana simply took the hint and stopped walking.
“You assured me they were ready,” Kerian reminded her. “Besides, who can know what the Emperor wants from them? Perhaps you’ve done an excellent job.”
“Meia is stubborn and her ego is fragile. Shera is lazy and unpredictable. Lucan asks too many questions. They will insult the Emperor in person, and he will be displeased with us.”
Kerian placed a hand on Ayana’s back, guiding her down the hall. “I
have no doubt that he can handle it, whatever the situation. Don’t worry; I won’t tell him what you said about having him assassinated. He’d probably understand, I’m sure he’s faced assassins before.”
She would have paid a thousand goldmarks to have an artist capture a picture of Ayana’s expression in that moment. She actually laughed out loud.
Ayana slashed her in the arm, drawing blood, but the pain was more than worth it.
~~~
The Kameira winging its way toward the Gray Island was called a Windwatcher, and it was a work of living art. Its wings were at least forty yards from tip to tip, and each feather glistened in the sunlight as if they had trapped the shards of a shattered rainbow. Its beak was like spun glass, and its eyes glowed like stars in the distance.
Kerian watched it glide over the vast blue expanse of the Aion, fear and awe warring inside her, making her feel like a little girl again. It wasn’t the Kameira that overwhelmed her, though it was an impressive sight. She’d heard that Windwatchers had gone extinct centuries ago.
It was the bird’s passengers that had her in a sweat. The same passengers that had caused two hundred Consultants—including the entire Council of Architects—to gather on the dock outside Bastion’s Veil, dressed in black silks, kneeling as though they never meant to move. The ancient wall of gray mist spun behind them, forming a backdrop for their panorama.
She expected the Windwatcher to alight on the end of the dock, but it simply dipped down, its golden talons clenching. It let out a single ringing note with all the subtle variance of a chorus.
And two figures leaped off the Kameira’s back.
The first to land was a woman in full, heavy armor covered in red and black plates. She looked like a Luminian Knight in dyed armor, but this metal had never been dyed or painted. The Consultants had learned the truth years ago: the armor was forged from alchemical alloys and Awakened by Magisters that specialized in the working of steel. Legend said that this woman could take a cannonball to the gut without flinching a hair.