by Will Wight
Outside, something popped like a gunshot.
Instantly, all three Gardeners-in-training were pressed against the side of the window, weapons in hand.
“Where’s the shooter?” Lucan asked.
“Didn’t sound like a musket,” Meia replied. She edged around, so that one eye could peek out of the window. “I don’t see…wait a second.”
Five more pops sounded from outside, and Shera slowly slid up until she could see out of the window. She caught a glimpse, prepared to duck back down instantly to avoid fire, but what she saw froze her in place.
A dark-skinned man had entered the garden, dressed in a tent’s worth of flame-colored cloth. A woman in red-and-black armor strode along behind him, head swiveling for any sign of danger, the hilt of a sword poking up over her shoulder. Another woman followed her, and though it was hard to tell from this distance, Shera thought it might have been Kerian.
Wherever the man stepped, there was a deafening pop, and a floor tile appeared under his feet. He walked at a casual pace, headed straight for them, and behind him stretched a tiled path that hadn’t existed a moment before.
“That’s not possible,” Lucan whispered. “He’s Awakening the gravel.”
Amid a shower of pops like an army’s worth of gunfire, the brightly dressed man strode toward him. As he approached, the tower began to shiver.
Not just the tower.
Every single building in the Garden began to shiver.
The whole vast chamber quaked, as though a giant strode the Gray Island above. Something high-pitched burrowed into Shera’s ears, as if every stone in the tower were shrieking at once.
Then he reached the bottom of the tower, five stories beneath their window, and he stopped moving.
At that exact instant, the island froze.
He turned his black eyes to the window, and Shera saw that his head was completely hairless.
“Jump,” he commanded, and the sheer force of his voice told Shera that he was to be obeyed.
Meia leaped first, and as she fell, he whipped out one of his voluminous orange sleeves. It billowed forward like a ship’s sail caught in the wind, spreading beneath her.
The sleeve caught the girl gently, as though she had fallen into a bundle of a thousand silk blankets. She rolled out onto her feet, but immediately lowered herself to her knees.
“Light and life,” Lucan whispered. “That’s the Emperor.”
Shera had started to figure that out herself.
Lucan jumped next, and was caught in the same manner as Meia. But Shera hesitated. She was supposed to obey this man, she knew, but she didn’t quite trust him.
He looked up at her, waiting. He didn’t repeat his order.
Shera tightened her gloves, swung one leg over the windowsill, and began to climb down.
Kerian’s voice came from below. “She has certain difficulties, as I expressed before. I can assure you, this won’t—”
The tower shook once more, like a struck bell.
Shera’s fingers slipped, and she found herself staring up at a flat gray ceiling as she tumbled down the last few stories.
And landed in a soft orange cloud. The Emperor released her, spilling her to the ground.
One corner of his mouth rose into a smile. “Lesson one: do what I tell you. You’ll end up doing it, one way or another. You might as well take it easy on yourself.”
Meia and Lucan both shot looks at her from their knees. Lucan looked ashamed and concerned, but Meia seemed like she was trying to suppress laughter.
Shera stood up. “How can we help you, sir?”
She looked over at Kerian proudly. See that? I can treat a client with respect! But for some reason, Kerian was covering her face with a trembling hand.
The armored woman behind the Emperor hadn’t stopped looking around from empty window to empty window.
The Emperor chuckled, smoothing his sleeves, which had returned to their normal size. “I’ll have an assignment for you in a few years. But before you can help me, you’ll need to start training.”
“So that we can better serve you, we receive training every day,” Shera said.
The Emperor’s smile widened. “No, you don’t.” He turned back to Kerian. “They’re exactly what I need. I will take them.”
Kerian bowed, showing a look of pure relief. “I’ll have them loaded onto a ship at once.”
“No rush. I don’t need them until next week. And get them their shears,” he added, as if the idea had occurred to him. “I assure you, they’ll earn it.”
“As you wish.”
“We won’t be here anymore?” Shera asked. It didn’t mean much to her, she just wanted to know.
The Emperor turned his smile on her, and the motion of his head set the silver chain around his neck to ringing. “From here on out, you’ll be learning from me.”
The other two were visibly overcome by awe, shocked at the idea that they would be taught by the Emperor himself.
Shera was less impressed. No matter what everyone said, the Emperor looked like a regular man. Like anybody else. Outside his fancy clothes, he wouldn’t be out of place on the streets of the Capital.
And she couldn’t help but wonder…
Why us?
CHAPTER TEN
At times, the Captain manipulates the yard or the planks of the deck as though they are extensions of his own body. He seems to communicate with the ship, and he claims that the ship communicates back.
Granted, the Captain’s mind is Elder-touched, and he has lived a long life, scarred by grief. His stories could be lies brought on by sea madness.
But it is my belief that he is Soulbound to his ship, which is his Vessel. This could be the secret to the Navigator’s mastery of the Aion Sea.
Further study needed.
-Report from a Mason undercover in the Navigator’s Guild
(Excerpt stored in the Consultant’s Guild archives)
“The full team,” Meia explained, “consists of thirty-three Shepherds, fourteen combat-trained Masons, a dozen sailor Masons to crew the ship, and us. Every one of us armed for battle. We’re taking ten muskets, twenty pistols, and plenty of spare powder and ammunition, in addition to our normal weapons.”
“That’s very reassuring,” Shera said. “But where are we going?”
Meia had led her around to the northeastern side of the island, down a narrow, twisting staircase that Shera never knew existed.
That wasn’t a surprise, in itself—everything on the Island was disguised, secret, or hidden. There were probably so many hidden locations on the Gray Island that Shera would never have time to visit them all in her whole lifetime. The surprise was that this staircase went all the way down to the water. As far as Shera knew, the only way onto or off of the Island was the main dock to the west. Everything else was covered in high, jagged rocks.
But these stairs were leading down to the water. What’s more, everyone else was already down there, prepared to leave. It was enough to pique Shera’s curiosity.
Her imagination supplied her with a picture of a hidden bay filled with hundreds of happy, splashing Waveriders, prepared to take them on a long journey.
If that was what Meia had in mind, Shera might well stay here and recover. Even Nakothi’s Heart wasn’t worth enduring more days on those horrible creatures. She would be sincerely tempted to drown herself halfway to the destination.
“I’m sure you remember the last person to try and mine for a Heart of Nakothi,” Meia said.
Shera did. The Emperor had killed the man personally, leaving him to be torn apart by Elderspawn.
“The Blackwatch found that island, “ Meia went on. “Some of our Masons in their Guild got back to us and gave us the heading. We’re going to meet up with them and determine the extent of their operation. If they’ve found a Heart, we’ll take it. If they haven’t, we’ll slow them down a little. And if we have to, we’re prepared to kill them all.”
Shera couldn’t co
nceal her surprise. “We’re risking a Guild War?”
“War?” Meia asked, feigning shock. “A detachment of the Blackwatch were killed by an Elder attack. It’s not so rare, in the Empire’s history. We don’t expect it to come to that, but we’re prepared.”
That brought up another question. “How are we going to get there?”
A third voice cut her off, and Yala appeared, standing on the stairs with her arms crossed as though she’d been waiting for them.
Meia stood straight. “High Councilor Yala,” she said to her mother.
“Gardener Meia. Have you sworn Gardener Shera to secrecy?”
In an unusual display of uncertainty, Meia hesitated. “I’m sorry, Councilor, I...found that redundant.”
“Hm.” Yala turned her cold gaze to Shera. “Our means of transportation must remain secret. We have sworn every member of this operation to secrecy, including myself, and I don’t mean to leave you out. You cannot reveal what we are about to show you to anyone, inside the Guild or out of it. This is a true Guild secret.”
The High Councilor stood with the aspect of a judge, tossing out every word with the gravity of a collapsing tombstone.
Shera stared, wondering if this was Yala’s version of a joke. “Do you realize how many Guild secrets I know? For years, my existence was a Guild secret. Lucan was arrested for telling me Guild secrets. Nine out of ten missions I performed in the field were off-record assignments for the Emperor himself. I know more Guild secrets than you do.”
Meia’s eyes had gone wider with every word, and Yala’s face was flushed with anger, but Shera only felt puzzled. Surely she’d proven her ability to keep a secret by now.
“Gardener Shera, in the name of the Am’haranai, I call upon you to swear your secrecy on the mists and on your name as a member of this Guild!”
“I swear, I swear,” Shera said, sighing.
“Next time, do that the first time I ask it of you.”
Shera pinched the bridge of her nose. Next time someone wanted to execute her, maybe she should let them.
Only a few yards later, Shera saw the secret that Yala wanted to keep so badly.
She had to admit, it was probably worth the extra security.
In a secret bay, surrounded by rocks on three sides and Bastion’s Veil on the fourth, floated a pitch-black ship. Shera was no judge of ships, but it looked three or four times larger than Calder Marten’s The Testament.
On the hull, white letters declared the ship’s name: Bastion’s Shadow.
“Who named it?” Shera asked.
“I did,” Yala said haughtily.
Shera actually liked the name, but Kelarac take her if she was going to say so now.
The fact that the Consultants owned a ship wasn’t news—the Guild owned fleets of ships, spread out all over the Empire on various business. But keeping this one on the Island, in secrecy, and deploying it now...all the facts suggested one conclusion.
“I assume it’s a Navigator ship,” Shera said. That meant they weren’t risking a war with one Guild, but with two. The Navigators protected their secrets more closely than the Champions.
“As close as we could make it,” Meia responded. “It’s been in development for years, with our Masons in the Navigator’s Guild providing the secrets. As we suspected, each Navigator is indeed a Soulbound, bound to the ship, but it took us so long to figure out how they do that. Not only do you have to Awaken the entire ship, which is an impressive undertaking in itself, but parts of an Elder must be built into the ship itself. Without the powers of an Elder or a Kameira, it can’t become a Vessel.”
Shera didn’t know much about Reading, but it sounded complicated. “Then why did you use an Elder? Why not a Kameira?” There were only a few thousand registered Soulbound in the whole world, and ninety percent of them used the powers of Kameira in their Vessels. Soulbound who used Elder powers tended to go insane in days.
“The captain doesn’t guide the ship through the Aion,” Yala put in. “The ship guides the captain. That was the breakthrough: if we used parts of Elderspawn in the ship’s construction, it could guide us around the hazards of the deep Aion.”
“Almost fifty people died before we figured that out,” Meia said.
For a second, Shera almost asked what Elder parts they’d used in the ship’s construction. Then she noticed the crow’s nest at the top of the mast.
Instead of an open basket, it looked more like a solid, closed room. Was someone supposed to sit inside that? How would they see out?
The ‘room’ opened, and Shera saw that it wasn’t a crow’s nest at all.
It was a giant eye.
The eye was solid black, with a golden iris and a narrow pupil. It looked around as if searching for something, blinked a few times, and then settled back to sleep. Now that she looked closer, she could see dark veins standing out on the outside of the “crow’s nest,” blending organically with the mast.
The Testament had disturbed her at the time, and she couldn’t understand how the crew sailed around knowing that there was an Elder giant chained beneath their feet. Now she found herself wishing for their problem. At least their ship couldn’t watch them sleep. As far as she knew.
“We’ve spent everything we can spare on this operation,” Yala said. “Bring us back a Heart.”
Shera met her eyes, paying close attention to the Councilor’s reaction. “Just be ready to contain it when we return,” Shera said. “I don’t want to destroy it on my own.”
Because it would kill me, she thought.
Yala nodded expressionlessly and walked down the rest of the stairs. She moved in a stately and dignified manner, but she still outpaced Shera and Meia, putting distance between them quickly.
There was something strange going on there. Yala had been reluctant to even speak of the Heart’s destruction, and she seemed more interested in getting it back to the Gray Island than about what they would do once it arrived.
If she didn’t plan to destroy the Heart, what did she want to do with it?
Meia would grow suspicious if she stayed silent, so Shera continued with her questions. “How long will the journey take?”
“There’s a Deepstrider migration across the coast,” Meia said, jumping the last few stairs and leading the way to the ship. Shera followed, with less enthusiasm. “We’ve prepared countermeasures for that. And Lhirin Island has drifted west, but we don’t have time to sail around it, so we’ll have to fight our way through. All in all...five, six days.”
Shera didn’t like the sound of the Deepstrider migration. She’d seen Deepstriders before: huge, blue-scaled leviathans with mouths like dragons.
“When you say a Deepstrider migration, that makes me picture hundreds of hungry Deepstriders swimming under the ship.”
“I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard that’s what it’s like.”
They had reached the base of Bastion’s Shadow, and Shera found herself staring up at the closed eye on top of the mast. She’d never been too comfortable with Elders—not that anybody was—and her life’s experience had done nothing but reinforce that fear.
“I see,” Shera said.
Meia put a hand on her shoulder. “Think of it this way. One way or another, we’ll be done with Nakothi’s Heart by the end of this mission. Either we’ll have taken it back here to be destroyed, or we’ll be dead.”
Strangely enough, that did make Shera feel better.
~~~
The Deepstrider migration was worse than Shera had imagined.
It was like they were sailing over an underwater river of a thousand sapphire-scaled, serpentine dragons, all of them thrashing and fighting and mating under the surface. The water swirled with whirlpools and clashing currents stirred up by the Kameira’s conflicting water-controlling powers, and the surf chopped with white-capped waves.
The ship spun like a leaf in a storm, and Shera had her first experience with seasickness. Worse were Meia’s “countermeasures”: four Shep
herds standing at the four corners of the ship, blowing whistles made of blue scales.
Whistles.
She’d seen one of them in use before, and those whistles were Awakened tools made to control Deepstriders. It was true that none of the Kameira had torn their ship apart. Yet. But it was no comfort to know that nothing more than a musical instrument stood between her and the mouths of a thousand hungry monsters.
What if one of them fell overboard? Would three be enough to protect the entire ship?
Shera spent the entire afternoon in a state of nausea and agitation before she finally gave up and fell asleep.
A day later, she caught sight of Lhirin Island.
“Ordinarily, Navigators would sail days out of their way to avoid Lhirin,” explained the Mason acting as captain. “It’s one of the ‘floating islands’ of the Aion, which means that it moves. Hunts, really.”
The island looked more like a five-mile stretch of wet purple strings than a landmass, with black trees sticking up in the shape of jagged thorns. A flock of birds swirled around the island like a black halo.
“Hunts, you say?” Shera repeated. Then she noticed that the island was, slowly but surely, growing larger.
“Oho! Looks like it’s caught our scent.” The captain laughed, turning the wheel away from the pursuing island. “I don’t know how it works, to tell you the truth, but Lhirin Island seems to hunt ships. Back in the early days of the Empire, it killed a lot of the first Navigators before they figured out how to deal with it.”
“And how do you deal with it?” Shera asked. The island had sprouted several long, purple feelers that slapped at the surface of the water closer and closer to Bastion’s Shadow.
“You avoid it, usually,” he said. “But we didn’t have time to do that this time, so we made some bait.”
“Bait.”
As she watched, three black-clad Shepherds pushed a crate off the ship’s stern. It bobbed in their wake, drifting closer to the living island.