by Will Wight
Before she even hit the floor, she spun and threw the two spades left in her hand. The man behind her was young, and his eyes widened in surprise as twin blades sank into his neck.
Two dead, two injured, and two…
The other two men, a tattooed Izyrian redhead and a fat man that looked like a banker, stood with mouths open. They were still hesitating.
“Come on!” the Heartlander roared through a mouthful of blood. “Let’s get this—”
She drove a pair of needles into his stomach, and he folded over.
The thin man didn’t speak, just drove his club down at her. She raised her left hand, caught the club on her forearm, and felt her bone break. Didn’t matter; he’d lost.
With her right hand, she threw a spade into his eye. He sank to his knees, screaming.
The other two still hadn’t moved.
The Izyrian glanced at the Emperor as if for instruction. The father of the Empire stood with his hands folded together, patient as a stained-glass picture in a Luminian cathedral.
The fat man raised his hands, sweating. “Hey, I’m only in for tax evasion, you hear me? Taxes. I’ll serve my years, no problem.”
Shera was already behind the Izyrian, looping her silk belt around his throat. He struggled and gasped and clutched behind him, tearing out handfuls of Shera’s hair.
She didn’t let up.
There are men who stick it out until the job’s done, and then there are dead men. Another of Maxwell’s.
Shera waited for a full count of thirty after the Izyrian went quiet before she let his body slump to the floor.
The fat man knelt at the Emperor’s feet, pleading. When he got no response, he heaved himself up and bolted for the courtyard door.
Shera pulled her last remaining spade and launched it smoothly overhand. It glittered like a shooting star as it flew through the air and landed in the fat man’s calf. He shouted and pitched over.
The thin man was still screaming, clawing at his ruined eye.
The Emperor walked over to him, placing one finger directly on his forehead. The thin man quieted, then slumped down onto the floor. Dead or asleep, Shera didn’t care; either way he was quiet.
For a moment, the Emperor was too.
Then he said, “I expected you to get three. Maybe four.”
Shera shrugged. Her hands were sticky with blood, and she hoped he would give her a chance to wash off.
“I am not often impressed.”
With the danger past, the ice inside Shera had started to thaw. Hesitantly, she asked, “So…does that mean I get the day off?”
The chain around the Emperor’s neck tinkled like a bell as he shifted position, tucking his hands into brightly colored pockets. “How do you feel?”
“Tired,” she said, but she knew what he meant. After a moment she added, “Lucan would not have liked this.”
“Does he disapprove of executing criminals?”
Shera struggled to put Lucan’s thoughts into words, because she didn’t fully understand them herself. “He knows it’s necessary, sometimes. But he doesn’t believe one person is worth more than another.”
The Emperor gestured toward the Imperial Guards who had been waiting against the wall. They hurried forward, scooping up bodies. Servants in livery of red, blue, and gold appeared as if out of nowhere, calmly mopping up blood.
“What do you believe?” the Emperor asked.
Shera glanced at the Heartlander’s body, his body locked into early rigor mortis by the effects of her poison. An Imperial Guard who had traded in his arms for muscular reptilian replacements grabbed the body in one claw, stuffing the former prisoner into a bag.
“I didn’t need them,” Shera said at last.
The Emperor’s smile gleamed. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Great Elders might be strange, and hideous, and not at all polite, but they do follow certain rules. They use their powers through containers, not directly. They all act according to some kind of purpose, even if it’s a horrible one. They are very focused.
Come to think of it, that sounds just like our Intent. How odd. I always thought only humans could use Intent.
Oh yes, and most Elders do want to see us dead. That’s true.
-Bliss, Head of the Blackwatch Guild
(Excerpt stored in the Consultant’s Guild archives)
The Gray Island looked like a stretch of untamed wilderness, but Meia and Yala knew where to find the hidden trails, tunnels, and clearings that made travel quicker than walking down a paved street in the Capital.
Meia walked a little behind and to the side of her mother, keeping her senses sharp. She could hear a mouse in the grass at fifty yards, but she’d learned not to underestimate Yala. The woman was a legend among the Masons for a reason.
Even though, for the last couple of years, she’d been acting more like a madwoman than a Consultant.
“You lost control today,” Yala noted, not bothering to look around and meet her daughter’s eyes.
She was looking for a fight, and parts of Meia wanted to take her up on that offer. The Shadeshifter urged her to prowl closer and finish off Yala while she was vulnerable. The Nightwyrm hissed at the perceived challenge, demanding that she meet the challenge head-on.
But Meia kept them both at bay and responded, “With due respect, Mother, you started it.”
Yala made a noncommittal sound and walked a few more steps before she said, “You’ve started calling me ‘mother’ again.”
Meia hadn’t noticed. As a young girl, Meia had been taught to stop addressing Yala in such a familiar manner. “Now that you have begun your Consultant training, I am no longer your only family,” Yala had told her. “The entire Guild is your family now. You should address me with respect, and I will treat you no differently than the other trainees.”
At the time, Meia had accepted the instruction without complaint. Yala was treating her strictly, but only because she had high expectations. Only because she wanted Meia to be the best.
For most of her life, Meia had been in the habit of calling her mother by title. So when had she stopped?
“I suppose I realized that I don’t have to do what you tell me anymore,” Meia said. “I apologize if that seems rude.”
Yala took her eyes from the rocky path and shot her a reproachful look. “You do have to do what I tell you. I outrank you.”
“Once, I heard a Mason addressing the Council of Architects. She made the case that authority, among the Consultants, was not a matter of enforcing rank but of earning respect. We are not an army, we are a family.”
That Mason had, of course, been Yala.
“I was young then,” Yala said.
“That’s a coincidence. I’m young now.”
Yala gave a single, dry laugh. “You sound like your friend.”
That did sound more like something Shera would say. Which reminded Meia of a more important topic.
“Mother. I asked you this before, but you chose not to answer me. I’d like an answer now.”
Yala let out a heavy breath. Likely she could predict the question.
“What problem do you have with Shera? She’s done more service to this Guild than almost anyone.” Certainly more than I have, she thought, but she wouldn’t admit that aloud.
Meia’s mother thought for a moment as she walked down a seemingly natural staircase made of an oak tree’s roots. “Service to this Guild...I wonder if you mean that, Meia.”
Yala turned, walking backwards down the steps. She ticked off points on her fingers as she spoke, spearing Meia with her eyes. “She has always been defiant. Lazy. More inclined to work by herself than with a team. She served the Emperor well, I’ll grant you, but she started working against the Guild the instant she returned.”
Meia had missed most of the ensuing conflict between Shera and the High Councilors; she had seen only the end, when Shera woke the four Imperial heroes who had
risen to become the Regents.
“As I understand it,” Meia said, “she was working to keep the Empire together.”
“Exactly,” Yala said, turning around to walk straight again.
She didn’t explain any further.
Stubbornness kept Meia’s mouth shut. Yala obviously wanted her to ask further questions, and was stringing her along like a puppet. It was little moves like this, the tiny manipulations, that had finally woken Meia to her mother’s true nature.
She just liked being in control.
After a moment, Yala continued as though she’d never paused. Silently, Meia celebrated a small victory. “The two years after the Emperor’s death were the most profitable period for the Consultants in living memory. Perhaps the best ever.”
Meia remembered. For most of her life, the Gardeners had worked in secret, and then the Emperor fell. Everyone in the world had wanted to hire assassins, and the Consultants had amassed a dizzying fortune in the first year alone. Eliminating rebels, silencing rivals, putting down would-be Emperors...it was the only time in Meia’s life when she had a backlog of assignments.
The world had quieted since then, in no small thanks to the four Regents.
“She was trying to hold the Empire together,” Meia said. “Surely we should reward her for that. We’re taught to value the Empire above everything.”
“We value the client above everything,” Yala corrected. “And for over a thousand years, our client has been the Emperor. When he died, that contract was invalidated.”
It made a cold, mercenary sort of sense. The Consultants could make far more money in a world without an Empire than with one. The only reason they had stayed in line so long was because of their ingrained commitment to their contract.
But they were getting away from the topic.
“We’re speaking of Shera, not of the Empire.”
“Shera turned her blade against us and worked against the best interests of the Guild. By rights, we should have executed her.”
Except they couldn’t. The Regents, having woken from a centuries-long sleep, had come to Shera’s defense.
Forcefully.
“You can’t, Mother. So you might as well learn to get along with her.”
“I will not compromise with a traitor,” Yala said firmly.
So be it. If that was how she wanted to play this game, Meia was holding a card up her sleeve.
“Speaking of treachery, what were you planning to do with the Heart?”
Yala snorted, but she replied quickly, proving that she had anticipated the question. “What do they plan on doing with it? I’ll tell you: they plan to waste it. That power could be ours; we could even lend it to clients. The Emperor used the Heart of Nakothi for centuries with no ill effects, so why can’t we?”
Meia stepped forward and seized her mother by the shoulder, turning her around roughly. She might have used a little too much force, but she didn’t waste any thought on it. She pointed straight at Yala.
Meia’s eyes tingled, telling her that they’d changed.
“Let me tell you one thing, High Councilor Yala. You speak of ‘ill effects’ lightly, as though the Emperor had managed to stave off the symptoms of some disease. I lived in the Imperial Palace for years. I stood as close to the Emperor as I stand to you now, and I saw the effects of Nakothi’s Heart. He fought madness every day. That he lasted an hour without going insane was a testament to his incredible willpower, much less over a millennium.”
Meia took a deep breath. “It’s true, I knew the Emperor for several years before I noticed anything was wrong. But once he told us the truth, I watched him, and I realized he never went an instant without wrestling Nakothi for control. And I guarantee you that he would tell us to destroy it now. Tell me, Mother, do you know better than your Emperor?”
Yala leaned closer, ignoring her daughter’s tight grip on her shoulder, paying no attention to Meia’s predatory glare. She spoke quietly but firmly, with all the authority of the High Council of Architects. “The Emperor is dead,” she said. “And so is the Empire.”
They didn’t speak until they reached Meia’s room, where she locked her mother in the closet.
It wouldn’t keep Yala forever, but it should at least slow her down—the door was reinforced with steel, the hinges invested to stay closed except in the presence of the key.
If Meia was lucky, it might hold Yala all night.
~~~
Perhaps because the Heart hadn’t had long to work, none of the dead were twisted into the deformed shapes that the Children of Nakothi usually shared. The bodies were not skeletons, as they had been dried and alchemically preserved centuries before; rather, they were stretched, desiccated husks with skin the color of sand, lurching out of their graves and through the wall with weapons in hand.
At the founding of their Guild, Am’haranai had been buried with their blacks and weapons. It was supposed to be a sign of respect.
It now meant that Shera’s dead opponents wore faded gray outfits and carried blades of rusty steel. If they were shambling and uncoordinated, as she thought centuries-old corpses should be, then they wouldn’t have been a problem.
Unfortunately, Nakothi’s power compensated them for what they’d lost. One ancient Consultant leaped, kicking off a nearby wall, and backflipped behind Kerian before sweeping his bony foot at her ankles. She managed to dodge, focusing on another opponent, but it was discouraging to watch. The enemy had three times their number, and twice their physical abilities.
The living had one advantage, though: they had the Heart.
Shera gripped Nakothi’s Heart in her left hand, slashing dusty throats with the bronze blade in her right. The resurrected Consultants weren’t interested in slaughter, not like the Children of Nakothi they’d encountered back on the dead island. They were consumed by the Heart, and only the Heart.
As a result, the living had clustered themselves around Shera.
Tyril drove the butt of his knife down on a brown, withered skull. The bone cracked and Nakothi’s Child sank to the floor, still quivering with life not quite extinguished. Zhen drove his knives into two dead men at the same time, which did very little good. Shera could have told him not to bother; she had started off throwing spades, but had quickly given up. They did even less good than she expected, as the steel blades simply stuck out from dead flesh like splinters. The Children didn’t even hesitate.
Her shear, on the other hand, actually did some damage.
Decapitation didn’t work; the bodies would keep shambling forward, and sometimes the skull would hop forward on its own and try to bite nearby ankles. But breaking bones did. Destroying the skull could cause an entire body to lose its animation, and shattering a major bone in an arm or a leg would render that limb useless.
The invested shears that Shera and Kerian used were very effective, driving straight through bone with no effort. If only their opponents weren’t so fast. Or so determined.
One bony arm thrust between Tyril and Zhen, clawing at Shera’s arm, trying to knock the Heart out of her grip. She reacted by breaking its arm, but a second enemy leaped up and landed on her shoulders.
Why is he so light? she wondered. It was strange that his weight, of all things, caught her attention.
He leaned down, looking her in the face. Empty eye sockets stared at her above a faded black half-mask.
Then he drove a blade at her arm.
She brought her opposite hand up to stop the strike, but the knife still penetrated half an inch into her skin. She ground her teeth and pushed against the attack, pressing her strength against his, but the dead Consultant was even stronger than she’d expected. She pushed his arm to the side, away from the Heart, dragging the tip of the blade through the meat of her shoulder inch by excruciating inch. Finally, his knife left her flesh, and she tossed him off her shoulders.
He landed on Tyril, who shouted in surprise before stabbing wildly above him.
Shera took the second to a
ssess her left arm. Blood flowed down in a steady stream, and she almost didn’t have the strength to grip the Heart. She certainly wouldn’t be able to use the arm in a fight, and if the knife had struck any deeper, the pain might have kept her from fighting at all.
Another dead Consultant leaped over Kerian while another crouched and drove its knife at her calves. In a single motion, she stepped over the strike while ducking under the one above, making it look effortless. Like the next step in the same dance, Kerian reached up with one hand and down with the other, slicing both skulls in half.
Dry skin and bones clattered to the ground around her, and her braids whipped at the air as she turned to Shera.
“We have to move the Heart to a safer location,” Kerian said calmly.
Shera agreed. Kerian seemed perfectly at home, but Zhen and Tyril were having a worse time than either of the Gardeners. Slashes and cuts, most shallow, stood out all over their bodies, and Zhen was wheezing, gripping his one remaining knife. A dead Consultant struck at Tyril with powerful blows in quick succession, each of which he turned with his oversized blade. If the Children of Nakothi had possessed the intelligence they had in life, the live Consultants would have died in seconds, but these corpses moved with a singular purpose; as soon as Tyril stumbled back under the attack, the Child moved its empty eyes to Shera, refocusing on the Heart. It moved toward her, and Tyril and Zhen together severed its spine.
The room was empty of whole bodies, now: only pieces crawled toward the circle of living Consultants. They started to move toward the stairs.
Then two more corpses, even older and in worse state than the ones before, pushed through the remnants of the broken walls. If the Children kept coming, then the living had no chance.
“Run,” Shera suggested. They did, shambling awkwardly in formation to keep Shera and the Heart defended from all sides. The group started to shuffle down the hall, between the statues of the knights that guarded the passageway in.
Sing, sing, sing with me and be reborn! the Heart declared.
And then the stone knights began to crack.