Of Shadow and Sea (The Elder Empire: Shadow Book 1)

by Will Wight

  Meia didn’t bother to swing; she leaped from one tree to another, landing with perfect balance. “We’re not a single Empire anymore, though,” she said. “We’ve already divided into regions, under the four Regents. And even the Guilds have started to work against each other.”

  “The Guilds were always unsteady allies at best,” Shera said, stepping straight from one branch onto another. “But I take your point.”

  The Luminian Order and the Blackwatch had always stayed at each other’s throats, and the Greenwardens sabotaged the Kameira hunting parties of the Champions and Imperial Guards whenever they could. But the Consultants attacking a Blackwatch operation, or acting directly against a Navigator on an officially sanctioned mission...that would never have happened even a year ago.

  Only one thing bound the Guilds together: a mutual dedication to the Empire. And now those bonds were fraying.

  Meia swung from a higher layer of branches over to another tree using nothing but her arms. When she reached Shera, she simply hung there, leaving her feet dangling.

  Shera watched her with no small degree of jealousy. If she could climb trees like a monkey, she could nap anywhere. No one would ever find her.

  “It doesn’t have to be so bad,” Meia said. “All of the regions can govern each other. The Izyrians rule the Izyrians, the Erinin rule over Erin, the Heartlanders rule the Heartland. It can be a noble goal.”

  Shera considered that for a moment, as a hidden Shepherd tossed the Heart to Meia. She caught it between her feet without looking.

  “I’ll grant you that the Regents didn’t want to replace the Emperor,” Shera said. “If they think the world can survive with a dozen little Empires, I believe them.”

  Meia released the branch with one hand, reaching down to grab the Heart, and then swung one-handed to the next tree. “It’s not only that. If we don’t have a single Emperor, we don’t have a single weak point. The Emperor was so concerned about his own sanity because, if Nakothi corrupted him, she effectively controlled the whole world.”

  “Yes, but instead of one weak point, now we have four.” Shera slid over and around a branch, following Meia. “If any one of the Regents are corrupted, that’s a quarter of the Empire under the rule of one of the Elders.”

  “Not everyone,” Meia said, grimacing and holding the Heart at arm’s length. “Maybe the world can be like...like the Guilds. Everyone deals with their own problems unless something threatens everyone, and then we all come together.”

  It sounded good, but Shera couldn’t help but think that a world without the Empire would be far too chaotic. What would keep the bigger regions from taking over the smaller ones? Who would force the different regions to help each other, in the event of a global emergency?

  “Is that what your mother said?” Shera asked, taking the Heart from Meia.

  Give your body to me, and I will grant you the gift of glorious purpose, Nakothi whispered.

  Meia did a backflip from a lower branch to a higher one. Now she’s showing off.

  “My mother isn’t concerned about the fate of the Empire. She’s only thinking about our Guild. She wants the Empire to dissolve because that would be more profitable for us.”

  “It would be,” Shera allowed. If they threw away everything the Emperor stood for.

  Shera pulled her arm back, ready to toss the Heart to one of the Shepherds, when a whistle cut through the forest. Instantly the black-clad Shepherds dropped from the canopy all around her, climbing down so quickly she almost thought they had fallen.

  Meia actually did allow herself to fall, landing on her hands and springing up to her feet.

  Shera clambered carefully down the tree, moving from limb to limb. “Are you trying to mock me, or do you want to make me feel slow?”

  “I’m enjoying myself,” Meia said. “I thought you would approve.”

  Shera joined her a moment later, following the Shepherds to the source of the alarm: Kerian, standing outside the forest, a silver whistle dangling from her lips.

  Shera and Meia walked up to her, pushing through the crowd of Shepherds. It had been almost two full days since Lucan first proposed running the Heart around the Island. He had inspected Nakothi’s Heart two more times in that period, and each time he invested its cloth wrappings. Its song had indeed grown weaker over the past two days.

  Soon, he said, the wrappings would hold enough of Nakothi’s power that they could safely place it in a box to have its Intent drained. The other Readers among the Architects were already working on such a box.

  But now Kerian was here, stopping them on their rounds. It could only mean that something had gone wrong.

  “What happened, Councilor?” Meia asked.

  “Two Waveriders came back to the docks a moment ago,” Kerian said.

  Shera interrupted, “I can’t leave the Island. I have to stay here. I can’t go back to the Capital.” The past few weeks had already exhausted her, and her left shoulder still throbbed despite the attentions of the alchemists. If she had to get back on a Waverider on top of everything else, she couldn’t promise that she wouldn’t stab the Kameira in the back when they were halfway across the ocean.

  Meia, Kerian, and the surrounding Shepherds all gave her odd looks, but Kerian went on. “I’m not sure why you would need to go back to the Capital, but you can relax. We need you both here. Our scouts in the Aion have reported a Navigator’s ship headed this direction. The Testament.”

  Calder Marten’s ship. Part of Shera had expected this, but she had hoped that she’d seen the last of that crew.

  “Sink it,” Shera said. “Bring the cannons on the docks. Send the scouts back out with alchemical charges. Whatever you do, don’t let that ship make land.”

  She didn’t look forward to facing Calder’s captive Elderspawn in battle, but more than that, he had both a former Champion and Naberius Clayborn on his ship. The Consultants couldn’t afford to let them make landfall, not with the Heart still exposed.

  Kerian returned her whistle to the satchel hanging from her shoulder. “Our assignment has nothing to do with Calder Marten, or even Naberius Clayborn. We have to prevent the Heart from being used to raise another Emperor. How we accomplish that goal is irrelevant, so long as we do.”

  “The Champion will be coming for me,” Meia said confidently. “He will want to finish our fight.”

  “That’s good information,” Shera responded. “We’ll ambush him and shoot him to death at a hundred yards.”

  Meia rolled her eyes, a gesture that Shera remembered well from their childhood. Not fondly. “You think that will work? That wouldn’t stop me. No, if I can isolate their best fighter and keep him from helping the rest of the crew, that can only be an advantage for us.”

  Kerian made a delicate noise in her throat. “I never mentioned fighting anyone. I’m taking a team to meet with him as soon as he gets here, which should be early tomorrow.”

  “You want to meet with him?”

  “Despite everything, Shera, we are still Consultants. If he wants a consultation, I’m not going to turn him down. His money spends as well as everyone else’s, and we might even be able to come to a peaceful agreement. We do have his wife.”

  That made sense to Shera. If Kerian could find a way to use Jyrine to get Calder under control, then that could only be an advantage.

  “I came to warn you,” Kerian continued. “I want you to be prepared when he gets here, in case we...fail to reach a mutually beneficial conclusion. And Lucan should be prepared as well. I don’t like leaving the Heart unsecured if Naberius Clayborn will be coming here. There must be a reason the Blackwatch chose him to bond with the Heart of Nakothi.”

  Shera remembered Naberius from their fight on the dead island: hair ragged, suit torn, smiling insanely as he clutched the Heart to his chest. She wasn’t as concerned about Naberius as she was about his Silent One. Tristania still had her bulletproof coat and her Stormwing tail Vessel, so that was another Soulbound that someone wo
uld have to fight, in addition to Urzaia Woodsman.

  “Maybe we can throw the Heart into the sea,” Shera said, only half-joking. “Then it’s Kelarac’s problem, not ours.”

  Kerian looked her straight in the eyes. “Do you want Kelarac to have control of Nakothi’s Heart? Because I have no doubt that he’d take it gladly.”

  Shera winced. She’d mentioned Kelarac in the hypothetical sense—whenever you lost anything in the ocean, you said that ‘Kelarac had it now.’ She hadn’t ever imagined the Soul Collector literally collecting objects of power.

  It was a disturbing thought.

  “We’ll do our duty, Councilor,” Meia responded, in Shera’s silence.

  “I’m sure you will. I’ll be handling Calder Marten myself, so if anything goes wrong, I expect I’ll have him and his crew killed. But as you know, I like to be prepared.”

  Shera and Meia bowed as Kerian walked away, taking a couple of Shepherds with her to prepare for the next morning’s mission. After a moment of quiet, the two Gardeners and the remainder of the Shepherds returned to the trees, spreading Nakothi’s influence as widely as possible.

  When she took the Heart to Lucan that evening, she would tell him what was coming. Maybe he could speed up the process, and she was worried for nothing.

  But if not, he might be able to give her another weapon.

  ~~~

  “I need at least three days,” Lucan said, grimacing at the Heart. “That’s pushing it. For tomorrow morning...I can reinforce the investment that the wrappings already have, but the Intent degrades too quickly. I’m effectively starting over each time. And I guarantee you the Architects haven’t finished their box yet.”

  They hadn’t; Shera had checked before coming here.

  He picked up a wooden box of his own—the same one Yala had used when she tried to take the Heart from Shera in the bay. “I tried making one myself, but again, it will take at least three or four more days. At its current level, the Heart will eat through this Intent in minutes.”

  “Do what you can,” she said. Hesitantly, she placed her hand on her shear’s hilt. She hadn’t noticed before, but the voice of the knife in her mind was becoming stronger. And more distinct from Nakothi. The laughter, the whispers—they didn’t sound feminine anymore. They sounded richer, deeper. Less like Nakothi, and more like the Emperor.

  She wasn’t sure why, and it was beginning to disturb her.

  With one quick motion, she pulled the bronze blade out of its sheath and tossed it into Lucan’s cell. “What can you do with that?”

  He gave her an odd look. Lucan had invested her shears many times over the years, bringing out their power, preparing them to be Awakened. But he had never taken the final step. Awakening was a permanent process. It would make the blade more powerful, but less predictable, and there was no going back.

  “Are you...asking me to Awaken it?”

  She remained silent, unsure. They had refrained from Awakening the blade up to this point for good reasons. She had enough problems with the corrupt Intent in the knife without making it stronger. For all she knew, Awakening it would bring out powers like the Heart’s.

  On the other hand, she was sick of being outmatched.

  Her first night on The Testament, Jyrine Tessella Marten had taken her by surprise and almost gotten the better of her. Shera had fought the rest of the crew, but it was all she could do to escape with her life. On Nakothi’s island, once again, she had almost been overwhelmed by the combination of Urzaia and the Children of the Dead Mother. And then two days past, the dead Consultants that had risen in the crypt might have easily killed her if they hadn’t been so focused on the Heart.

  And now everything was coming to a head. Even the Sleepless were planning something, and they expected the Heart to get stronger, not weaker.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally. “But you don’t have time to finish sealing the Heart, and I need an edge. Something else. If I keep fighting like this, eventually I’m going to...lose.”

  She had almost said “die,” but she remembered to hold back at the last second.

  Lucan picked up the shear reverently in both hands and placed it on his desk, next to Nakothi’s Heart. Then he walked over to the bars, reaching out and holding her by the shoulders.

  “Go back to the Capital, Shera,” he said quietly. “It’s getting so dangerous that you can’t stay. Do it now. Jorin will know what to do with the Heart.”

  “Jorin’s coming here?” That could change everything. The Regent of the South, Jorin Curse-breaker, was coming to deal with the problem personally. In that case, maybe Shera didn’t need to be here after all.

  “I suggested that they send word to him as soon as you told me his box was broken,” Lucan responded. “It will take him at least a week to get here, no matter how fast he travels, but he should be on his way.”

  Shera considered it, but eventually she shook her head. “I can’t. I might be needed today.”

  His grip on her shoulders tightened. “Shera, I know you want to stay, but I’m not sure you should.” He jerked his head toward the Heart. “It wants you here. That’s more than enough reason for you to leave.”

  It would be easy to give in, to let someone else take care of the problem. She was sorely tempted.

  “I’m afraid to do anything else,” he went on. “Nakothi obviously has a plan. We should wait for Jorin.”

  As he spoke, she thought she could detect the mere fraction of a whisper, like a quiet breath blowing across dust.

  …wait…

  Shera moved her eyes between her shear, sitting on Lucan’s desk, and the Heart. A moment later, the sound came again.

  Wait…

  Her blade and Nakothi’s Heart were whispering in unison.

  Shera backed up from Lucan, breaking his grip, scanning his eyes for any hint of madness. “We have to do something. The entire island is in danger.” She started walking away, muttering more for her benefit than his. “We can’t wait for Jorin to save us.”

  By the time the Regent got here, she had the suspicion he’d find them already dead. Dead, but not still.

  Without knowing why, she found herself standing outside the cell next door, looking in on Jyrine Tessella Marten.

  The woman looked worse than Shera had remembered. That should be typical for someone who had remained a captive for a month, but she didn’t look weak or malnourished. She looked terrified, yet determined to fight to the bitter end.

  She crouched against the back wall of her cell, with her knees drawn to her chest until most of what Shera could see was her red prison uniform. Jyrine’s hair was tangled and frizzy, and she was clutching something tightly in her hands. A White Sun, perhaps? Shera had seen Luminians clinging that fiercely to symbols of their religion.

  But this girl was a member of the Sleepless cult. An Elder worshiper. Maybe it was a symbol of Othaghor or Kthanikahr. In that case, Shera should probably take it from her, but she didn’t have the energy.

  Jyrine rose somewhat stiffly to her feet, slipping the Elder symbol around her arm like a bracelet and holding it behind her back as if to hide it. Her naturally tan skin was slightly pale, and the top symbols of her tattoos peeked out of her collar at the side of her neck.

  With her right hand, Jyrine began to rake her fingers through her tangled hair. “Shera, isn’t it?” she asked. “May I help you with something?”

  She didn’t sound like a woman who had been cowering in terror against the back of her cell five seconds before, but Shera attributed that to her acting skills.

  Then again, Shera wasn’t sure how to answer the woman’s question.

  What did she want to know? Why was Shera even talking to her?

  Because I don’t know what else to do. If the Sleepless were planning something, there was no way Jyrine would tell her, and she didn’t have the energy for torture.

  Then again, Lucan had said she was surprisingly open. Maybe they could have an honest discussion.


  “Why do what you’re doing?” she asked. “What is the point?”

  Jyrine seemed surprised, but she covered it well. “I’m stuck in a cell, sleeping twelve hours a day. Just trying to while away idle hours, I suppose. Not much point to it.”

  Light and life, that sounds nice.

  Shera sagged forward, resting her forehead against the bars. “I don’t want to do this. Elders and the Emperor and living forever…any of it. I just…” She found herself talking, spewing her life out to this stranger, and she put a stop to it. “Well, that’s the way it is. So I at least want to know why. What are you doing this for? What’s the point?”

  There had to be a reason that the Sleepless worshiped Elders, or even a goal the Elders worked toward. Maybe if Shera knew what it was, she could find the energy to oppose it.

  “Humans are fundamentally selfish, aren’t we?” Jyrine said. “No matter what else we do, when it comes down to a moment for action, we will always act for ourselves and those closest to us. We spend our whole lives worshiping one person.”

  She was growing more animated, more excited, as though she’d waited for weeks to deliver this speech.

  Shera said nothing, letting the cultist go on.

  “And where has that gotten us?” Jyrine continued. “Everyone agrees that it would be better if we were more charitable, more virtuous, simply nicer to our fellow man. But we don’t change. We advance, we make discoveries, but the basic nature of humanity remains the same throughout the centuries.”

  She held up a single finger. “There is only one kind of truly selfless act. And that is anything done in the service of humanity as a whole. For all mankind. For anyone, present and future, whether or not we ever see a benefit for ourselves.”

  It all sounded good up to this point. Idyllic and a little naïve, sure, but good. The sort of utopian ideal that the Emperor had once held.

  It sounded too good, actually, which meant that the bait was planted and Jyrine was about to set the hook. Sure enough, she stepped forward and gripped the bars, looking at Shera from inches away with a face filled with rapture.