by Will Wight
Wait, that’s not right.
But she didn’t correct herself. She punched the Navigator’s wrist, opening his grip. The Heart of Nakothi fell out.
She snatched it from the air and left, objective complete. Meia was still grappling with Urzaia, though the two of them were on their feet.
“Meia!” Shera called, running. “We’re leaving!”
Instantly, Meia flowed out of the battle, pulling a cardboard tube from her belt and tearing it open with her teeth. She tossed the alchemical charge to the ground, and the two Consultants ran.
Behind them, the crater filled with smoke.
~~~
The closer they got to the ship, the fewer Children they saw. Shera and Meia supported one another, each injured, which surprised Shera more than anything else. She hadn’t thought any wound could slow Meia for long.
One injury in particular seemed to bother her: a bite mark on her forearm, bleeding freely. The wound was now surrounded by dark blue scales, which Shera recognized as Meia’s way of accelerating healing.
“It’s not healing?” Shera asked, gesturing to the wound.
Meia shook her head, expression grim. “Not like it should. He bit me, and it’s not healing. I wish I knew what his Vessel was.”
Shera flashed back to the golden hide tied around the man’s arm. “Isn’t it a Sandborn Hydra? That would explain the strength, and the way he jumps.”
Meia waved her wounded arm. “No Hydra does this.”
“Just sleep it off on the ship,” Shera advised. “We won’t see him again.”
She hoped.
The Heart of Nakothi pulsed in her belt-pouch, laughing with the same distant malice as her left-hand shear.
“Quiet,” Shera muttered, slapping the pocket.
Meia looked vaguely confused.
“Nakothi,” Shera explained.
The other woman looked even more confused than before.
When they finally reached Bastion’s Shadow, a cluster of Architects surrounded them as soon as they reached the beach. Two lifted Meia away from Shera, and three forced Shera to lie back onto a stretcher.
“How many did we lose?” Meia asked, turning to the captain. He shook his head.
“We only have twenty-four here, counting you. Still waiting for the others.”
Meia gestured around her, issuing instructions to defend them as they waited, in case the Children attacked again. But Shera was distracted.
Twenty-four out of sixty-one. Heavy losses for the Consultants, even for a mission as important as this one.
She should probably be grieved at the loss of life—Lucan would have been, she was sure. Even Meia might feel that way. But all she felt was relief.
Now she could get rid of this Heart, and clear the Dead Mother out of her life once and for all. If she was allowed, she would stab straight through the Heart right now…but that would kill both her and Meia. She had no choice but to take it back to the Gray Island, where its deadly power could be restrained.
From her pocket, Nakothi laughed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Thirteen Years Ago
For the first time, Shera stood before the full Council of Architects.
To her, the pale tree roots plunging through the ceiling looked like hands of bone, the tiny quicklamps dangling like suspended stars. The shadowed alcoves in which the bulk of the Councilors sat gave them black hoods, making her feel even more alone. Kerian would be in there, somewhere, but Shera couldn’t pick her out from the overlapping folds of black.
Many of the Architects she had never met; some she had never even seen. Of the three Architects of the High Council, those who sat in the open around their short white column, she only recognized one: Yala the High Mason. Her long hair was equally blond and gray, and she had pulled it back into a single braid.
She greatly resembled her daughter, if Meia had spent twenty years drying in the sun. Yala was a legend among the Consultants for her exploits infiltrating the Izyrians and single-handedly stopping a rebellion. Rumor had her sneaking behind enemy lines, killing a Champion in his sleep, and then holding the rebel leaders hostage until they agreed to disband.
Shera only knew her as stern, disapproving, and entirely boring.
Her table, on the other hand, was fascinating.
This stubby column around which the three High Councilors sat looked like a big, round lump of chalk. But when one of the Councilors sketched something with their finger on the table, it lit up, like he was leaving a trail of glowing yellow paint behind.
An alchemist creation? It had to be. But was it an ancient relic of the early Empire, or a modern device from Kanatalia?
Yala leaned her elbows on the table, leaving spots of shining yellow. “Shera. We have brought you here, before the entire ruling body of this Guild, because the Emperor requires your service. But he needs a full Gardener, not a girl who can throw a knife.”
Shera stared at the Councilor to Yala’s left, who was doodling a knot on the table in front of him. Somehow, he was able to erase his old sketches and create new ones. How was he doing that?
Yala slapped the table, delivering a yellow handprint. “Shera! This is a grave matter. The Emperor finds you necessary, and we obey him in all things, but I will not permit anyone to call themselves a member of this Guild when they are not.”
It doesn’t matter what I call myself, Shera thought. The Emperor didn’t ask for a Gardener, he asked for me.
But it seemed to matter to Yala, so Shera simply nodded.
“Will you, under the sun and moon and in service to the eternal Empire, swear yourself to the Guild of Am’haranai? Or will you depart now, to live a life of exile and never to return to this island?”
That had the sound of ritual to it, but it made Shera crack a smile. At last, she was sure she had caught Yala in a joke.
“So if I don’t swear, I can leave?”
Yala’s face reddened in what Shera would swear was fury, but she jerked her head once. “The Guild has properties all over the Empire. You would not be allowed out of a supervised community, to ensure that you don’t spread Consultant secrets, but you will not be harmed. We do not coerce anyone to join us, girl.”
Shera managed not to laugh. She pointed to a door at the corner. “I’d walk out that door, then?”
One of the High Councilors nodded.
Lowering herself to one knee, Shera pulled a spade out of the pouch at her side. Instead of throwing it, she slid it flat across the floor. It slipped straight under the door, and through to the other side.
There came a clink, clink, clink as the blade struck the sides on its way down, and then—about six seconds later—a clatter as it struck the bottom of the pit on the other side of the door.
The High Councilors sat in frozen silence.
She was vaguely insulted that they had tried to lie to her. They should have told her to join or die. She never had any intention of leaving, and she hadn’t expected they’d let her leave with the information she’d gathered.
Besides, she could feel the cool draft from the door all the way over here. It clearly didn’t lead out, where the air was warm and wet.
“I’m not a Mason or a Miner,” Shera said. “I’m a Gardener. I know how this Guild works.”
From behind the High Councilors, among the ranks of the other Architects, Kerian laughed like a little girl.
Yala twitched and almost turned back, but she caught herself and kept her gaze fixed on Shera. “Yes. Well. We still expect you to swear.”
Shera shrugged. “No problems here.”
Kerian was still snorting out laughter.
Finally, Yala reached down and pulled out something that quieted Kerian’s laughter and caused Shera to lean forward and pay attention. It was a glass box, perhaps two feet on one side and a single foot on the other, filled with rolling blue fog. It was as though Yala had managed to bottle a cloud.
“Place your hand on the box,” Yala instructed, and this time, S
hera obeyed without a word.
As she laid her palm flat on the cool glass of the box, the cloud surged up toward her flesh. The glass grew colder and colder, as though it were ice water instead of fog on the other side.
“Bastion was one of the founding members of our order,” Yala said. “He was also a Soulbound of great renown, and the one who raised the Veil around this island. This was once his Vessel.”
The cloud surged and rolled inside the box, as if hungry.
“On penalty of death or madness, repeat after me. Repeat only what I say, and know that the power of the Veil will hold you to this oath.”
Shera waited in silence.
“I will protect the Am’haranai, its goals, and my brothers and sisters within it. I will never falter, nor betray my allegiance, nor work by action or inaction to undermine those I serve. I will work for the good of my clients to the best of my ability.”
She repeated every word as Yala spoke them.
“Finally, I bind my will and my loyalty to the mists, never to be revoked.”
For the first time, Shera hesitated. That sounded less like a Guild membership ritual and more like a binding magical contract. She didn’t want some box controlling her mind for the rest of her life because she had mindlessly repeated a few words as a twelve-year-old.
But the glass grew colder and colder under her palm, until it felt like a layer of knife points. At last, she repeated the words.
The fog flowed out to fill the whole container once again, and her hand warmed. She pulled it away with a profound relief.
Yala’s face was just as tight and pinched as ever, and she stowed the box of fog as though nothing had happened. “Now, though your training is incomplete, you may call yourself a Consultant and a Gardener. We can only trust that the Emperor, in his unending wisdom, will see to your education even better than we can.”
She gestured to the High Councilor next to her, who pulled out a black cloth belt set with two heavy sheaths. He pushed the belt across the table toward Shera, leaving a trail of yellow light behind.
“If you are to serve us as a Gardener, you will need your shears.”
Shera grabbed the thick bundle in both hands. It smelled heavily of leather and oil, covering a coppery metallic tang. It was heavy enough that she could barely carry it in one hand, and while it was clearly designed to hold the knives at the small of her back, she would have to tie the belt as tight as it would go to get it around her waist. Hopefully, she would grow into it.
She tugged on one leather-wrapped handle, revealing a blade of ancient bronze.
The hilt was a little too big for her hand, the blade almost as long as her forearm. She wouldn’t doubt it if they told her the knife was a thousand years old: it bore enough nicks and scratches that she couldn’t see a single spot of unmarred metal. Beyond that, it simply felt old.
Shera was no Reader; like all Consultants, she had been tested immediately upon her arrival, and the old crone who tested her had cackled after fifteen seconds of testing. “I’ve seen squirrels with more aptitude,” she’d said. “This girl wouldn’t know an Imperial relic from a shovel if the Emperor himself shoved it into her mouth.”
But you didn’t have to be Lucan to feel the weight of Intent in this blade. It rested in her hand, quivering almost palpably with the hunger of ten thousand kills. When she slid it back into the sheath, it pulled itself inside as though guided by a magnet.
“Those blades have been handed down an unbroken line of assassins since before any Am’haranai first called herself a Gardener,” Yala said. “Let them guide you in your service to the Emperor.”
With a feeling of great ceremony, Shera tied the belt around her waist. The excess fabric fell down almost to her knees, and the blades felt likely to pull her over backwards.
But for the first time, she actually felt like a Gardener.
“Congratulations,” Yala said, in a tone like the splat of cold porridge. “Now get out of here. We have two more of these today.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The captain of Bastion’s Shadow had more skill than Shera would have expected. With a stiff tailwind and a few bold navigational choices, he had them back to the Gray Island in record time. Only two days after they left the corpse of Nakothi, the ship slid through Bastion’s Veil and into the hidden bay.
Over the course of their two-day voyage, no less than three Consultants had tried to steal the Heart.
The first night, a young woman—a member of the crew, and a Mason-in-training—had slipped a few drops of sedative into Shera and Meia’s stew, then snuck into the cabin where the Gardeners were supposed to be sleeping.
Unfortunately for her, Meia had tried the food first. The poison had no effect on her, and she was able to warn Shera. Together, the two Gardeners watched the young Mason head straight to the locked chest where they kept the Heart. She looked neither left nor right, as though she had been drawn straight to the power of the Dead Mother.
It wasn’t the girl’s fault, Shera knew. Nakothi’s song, resonating between the Heart and her left-hand knife, woke Shera at all hours of the night. Even dead, the Great Elder possessed a will that few humans could resist.
Shera still beat the girl and left her dangling upside-down in the rigging for a few hours. Possessed or not, she’d tampered with Shera’s dinner and forced her to stay awake watching for an intruder. For the sake of food and sleep, she deserved to be punished.
The second attempt came from a pair of Shepherds.
It was the middle of the next day, and Bastion’s Shadow sped through a field of debris floating in the middle of the air. Chunks of bricks and masonry drifted against gravity, as though a giant had shredded a vast tower to pieces and then left floating in the wind. One corner of a wall spun slowly in place, revealing a strange clock-face almost as big as the deck on which they stood. Shera would have said it was the remnant of a clocktower, but each of the six hands pointed to a strange symbol instead of a number.
Though the clock was separated from any machinery that would keep it working, its hands ticked as they slowly advanced.
The spiral of debris stretched above them into the clouds, and beneath them until the depths of the Aion swallowed the sight. Shera leaned over the railing, looking down to watch something that looked like a finned tiger weaving its way between the submerged wreckage.
The captain took Bastion’s Shadow around the obstacles at reckless speed, rushing by the severed half of a hovering cottage and squeezing between a spinning weathervane bigger than their mast. The black-and-gold eye on their crow’s nest remained wide, gaze flicking between each new piece of gravity-defying masonry.
Come to think of it, the captain must be a Soulbound. If what Meia and Yala had explained to her was true, he could only pilot this well because of his connection to the ship, and the ship’s connection to the Sea. The thought seemed strange for reasons Shera couldn’t name. Somehow, the captain didn’t seem important enough for a Soulbound Vessel—as though he was an actor cast to fill the role of a sailor, not a significant man in his own right.
Masons were trained their whole lives to fill a role. Maybe Mason training made one inconspicuous even when they performed great deeds.
At the thought, Shera turned to look at the captain.
And she saw a black glove before it clapped over her mouth, and the needle before it pressed into her neck.
The deck was packed with Consultants, but no one was looking. Every eye was locked on the spectacle of floating ruins around them. As far as assassinations in the middle of the day went, the Shepherd had chosen his moment well.
But his attempt had failed as soon as Shera saw him.
She had only a second or two before the poison started to interfere with her physical reactions, so she took advantage of that time. She stomped his foot at the base of the ankle, following it up with a quick punch into the solar plexus and the heel of her hand into his nose.
When her muscles locked up and she p
itched over, the Shepherd was staggering and clutching a nose that bled through his black mask.
Meia had him facedown against the deck half a second later, her shear pressed against the base of his neck.
“What was your objective, sir?” Meia asked calmly. Two alchemy-trained Architects had rushed over to Shera, and one of them was calling for an antidote.
The Shepherd seemed to have trouble explaining. “I...just...it all must change. We all have to be different. It’s not good...it has to change.”
Meia sighed and pricked him with a non-lethal needle of her own. She raised her voice to address the entire crew. “Pay attention, everyone. If you hear a mysterious voice whispering to you in your head, giving you instructions, don’t listen to it. I’m shocked that I have to tell you this.”
The ship was filled with embarrassed silence, and Shera was sure that more than a few had already considered following Nakothi’s whispered instructions.
That was more disturbing than her current paralysis. How close had they come to a full-scale revolt orchestrated by a Great Elder? Was there any way to transport the Heart without giving Nakothi a chance to infest the minds of good men and women?
She wanted to put one of her shears straight through the Heart…but she knew what would happen. The Emperor had warned her. Nakothi’s powers would be released, all at once, and everyone in range would be killed and reborn as Children of the Dead Mother. The Heart, like any powerful remnant of a Great Elder, had to be contained and weakened before it could safely be destroyed. Though she was still tempted.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a figure in black sneaking into her cabin.
She couldn’t move her head, but she finally understood the plan. One Shepherd attacks her, drawing attention, and his partner sneaks in and secures the Heart. It was a better idea than she expected from people following the whispered instructions of a dead Elder.
And it still had a chance of working. She couldn’t move.
Shera whimpered impotently, trying to force out a warning. Her body wouldn’t listen to her, her arms hung limp and useless, and her voice came out as the incoherent grunt of an animal. She choked back her frustration, trying again to attract someone, anyone who would look where she was looking...