by Will Wight
He gestured to the side, where an Architect in a flowing black dress bowed before her. “There’s a messenger here for you.”
“I come from the High Council,” the woman said, without rising from her bow. “They would like to see Gardener Shera.”
Shera wolfed down the rest of her food and slid the bowl through the bars to Lucan.
“Hold that for me until I come back,” she said.
Hansin stepped toward her. “I have to inspect every delivery to the prisoner.”
“Come back tonight,” Lucan said. “I want to know what the Council said.”
She nodded.
“The prisoner can only receive one visit per day!”
Lucan frowned at the tiny, barred window in the door. “I can’t kiss you through these.”
“It’s okay,” Shera said. “I’ll pick the lock later.”
Hansin groaned.
Lucan did stick one hand through the bars, and she gripped it. “I love you,” he said firmly.
Shera cleared her throat and looked around. “There are…other people…here.”
He raised his voice. “I love you!” he shouted. He turned to Hansin, pointing back to Shera. “I love her.”
“I heard you,” the guard said wearily.
Shera stiffened, afraid to turn around, but she quickly murmured back. “…I love you too.”
She hurried away, keeping her head ducked so the Council’s messenger couldn’t see her bright red face. When they were far enough away, the other woman laughed. “Ah, young romance.”
Shera blushed further.
“What are you, thirteen? Fourteen? I’ve got a little sister who blushes when she holds hands with a boy. She turns twelve this winter.”
“I will kill you.”
~~~
The High Council, for once, was not meeting in the underground Council chamber. Instead, they brought Shera to one of the largest conference rooms in the Island chapter house, reserved for meeting with the wealthiest clients.
The room was situated on the third floor of the chapter house, and surrounded on all sides by windows. Normally this would only allow the dubious view of Bastion’s Veil and the rough, natural charm of the island’s landscape. But now that the Veil had vanished, the conference table was bathed in the light of the setting sun.
Five thick-padded chairs sat around the table in the center of the massive room, but only two of the seats were filled. Kerian—swathed in even more bandages than Shera herself—and Yala sat at the table, directly across from one another.
Without waiting for permission, Shera took the chair next to Kerian.
Yala glared at her. “My daughter left me locked in a closet for a full day. Where is she?”
Shera fought back the smile brought on by that wonderful mental image and answered the question honestly. “I don’t know. I only woke up three hours ago.”
She turned to Kerian, who was rubbing at her bandaged wrist. “Bastion’s Veil?” Shera asked.
“Emergency protocol,” Kerian responded. “Sweeps all lesser Elderspawn off the Island. I had to wait until the Handmaiden was gone, so thank you for that.”
Shera gestured to Kerian’s injuries. “Sorry about your…body.”
“We have some talented healers among the Architects,” Kerian said. “Most of my injuries are minor.”
She shifted her leg as she spoke, which was bound in a splint.
Most of her injuries.
Shera winced. “Your leg?”
Kerian looked at Yala and forcibly changed the subject. “I think this is the appropriate time to clarify some misunderstandings, don’t you, Yala?”
The blond Councilor nodded, but she didn’t look happy about it.
“Very good. Shera, what is the purpose of this Guild?”
Shera looked from one High Councilor to another, caught off-guard by the apparent change of subject. “To serve our clients as we serve the Empire.” It was an easy question to answer; any Consultant would have answered the same.
Yala leaned closer, eyes hard. “What Empire?”
Shera recalled her conversation with Meia a few days before. If she remembered correctly, Yala thought the Consultants would be better off without an Empire.
She sagged back into her chair, tired. She wanted to go back to sleep, not debate political philosophy with her superiors.
“I worked with the Emperor,” Shera said wearily. “I knew him as well as anybody did. He would tell us that the Empire is made up of people, first and foremost. As long as those people still exist, we should serve them as best we can.”
“Well said,” Kerian responded. “And we agree. We simply doubt that raising another Emperor is the best way to serve the Imperial citizens.”
Shera narrowed her eyes, looking from Kerian to Yala. Both of them were fixed on her, judging her reaction.
We agree. We doubt.
“You agree with her,” Shera said to Kerian. “You think the Empire is dead.”
That explained why, despite their obvious dislike of one another, Kerian and Yala were always working together. For all their friction, they were on the same side.
It took her a moment to wrap her brain around the idea.
Kerian raised a hand to the scar on her forehead, speaking softly. “Think about it, Shera. You knew the Emperor. Do you think we could ever raise anyone like him?”
Absolutely not.
“Maybe Estyr Six, or one of the other Regents,” she suggested. They weren’t immortal, not in the same way that the Emperor was, but they had helped found the Empire. Surely they wouldn’t want to see it break into pieces.
“We offered,” Kerian said.
“You should remember,” Yala added drily. “You were there.”
“And as you know better than most,” Kerian continued, “the Elders seek to corrupt leaders first. They want one point of vulnerability for the human race, one person that they can control, and thereby control all the rest. We’re not leaving people undefended. We’re trusting the world to govern itself.”
Shera had only met with the Regents once, and spoken face-to-face with Estyr Six herself. The current Regent of the North was the Emperor’s first companion, and the woman the Emperor had spoken of most fondly. She was a legend.
“You have grown beyond an Empire,” she’d said. “Let us see how the world handles its first taste of freedom.”
After that, the Regents had split the world into four. They’d made it clear that the arrangement was temporary, but Shera had always assumed that meant a return to one Empire.
Now she heard the words for what they truly meant.
Slowly, she nodded. “What about the other Guilds?”
Yala barked a laugh, and Kerian looked to the conference room doors. “That’s why we’ve invited you here,” she began, when the doors burst open.
The third and final High Councilor, Tyril, strode into the room. He looked nothing like a farmer this time, having traded in his raggedy, faded blacks for a crisp suit of fine black fabric. His hair and beard were trimmed, and he moved with a vigor that he had always lacked in their previous meetings.
He looked like a different man—like a successful banker instead of a vagabond.
And he was not alone.
His companion was at least twenty years younger than Tyril, perhaps slightly younger than Kerian. His hair was solid black, like the thick rims of his spectacles, and he wore a gray suit and coat that looked as though they had been polished. A man in the exact same suit entered behind him, so subtly that Shera almost didn’t notice him. He stood unobtrusively in the corner, a writing-board under his arm.
The newcomer spread his arms and smiled. “Ladies! Pleased to meet you at last. My name is Nathanael Bareius.”
Yala rose smoothly to her feet, and Kerian struggled to follow. Shera remained seated. She hurt too much to bother.
Not even for the Head of the Alchemist’s Guild, and the richest man in the world.
“Sit, sit!”
he declared, sliding into his own seat. “It seems like the situation here got a little dicey, if you don’t mind me saying it, so I thought I’d personally check on my investment. No disrespect intended.”
“None taken,” Kerian said. “You have every right to be concerned. Before we get started, is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable? Refreshment, perhaps?”
He rubbed his palms together quickly, as if in anticipation. “Not necessary at all! My only refreshment is the meat of commerce, the cooling draught of a new deal. Isn’t that right, Furman?”
The man in the corner spoke without looking up from his writing-board. “That’s right, sir.”
“You see? If I could get a fruit tea, though, that would be splendid.”
Yala gestured to one of the Mason servants hiding nearby.
“So, first things first. What happened to the Heart? And Naberius Clayborn as well, I suppose.”
Kerian opened a file on the table, though she didn’t glance at it. “Our Readers confirmed that the Heart disappeared on the Island. It did not leave, and so we conclude that it must have been destroyed. We—”
Bareius threw up his hands. “Excellent! That’s all I needed to know. If it’s gone, it’s gone. Do keep your Readers looking for it just in case, though, hmm?”
“Of course,” Yala said sourly.
A Mason clad in an apron slid a porcelain cup of reddish tea onto the table.
Shera’s mind finally caught up to the reality. This was the client, the one who had hired them to seek the Heart in the first place. She had known the Guild wouldn’t do anything so expensive without a client backing it, but she had never considered the client’s identity. She simply hadn’t thought of it.
“Naberius Clayborn was recovered by the Navigator Captain Calder Marten,” Kerian went on. She turned a page in her file, though Shera was fairly certain that the file was completely unrelated. “We assume that the Captain will take him back to his sponsors as soon as possible.”
Bareius raised his tea. “Not a problem! He was irrelevant anyway, I only wanted to know. We’ve made progress here, certainly progress. Not as much as I’d like, sure, but we’ve gained valuable information. You’ll be paid immediately.”
Shera spoke up. “I’m sorry to interrupt, uh…Mister Bareius, but I was wondering—”
He slammed his teacup down onto its saucer. “Speak up, then! Wondering doesn’t do anybody any good. Only questions do! Speak your mind, and don’t hold back!”
So much for her attempt to respect the client. She went on bluntly. “I was wondering how much we’re making. We’ve practically gone to war with two Guilds. How could that possibly be worth it?”
Yala glared at her, and Kerian rubbed her forehead as though she had a headache.
Bareius sputtered in laughter. “Two? Furman, the bag.”
A second later, his servant—Furman—placed a velvet bag into the alchemist’s open palm. Bareius upended the bag, spilling four silver coins onto the table.
He snagged one before it rolled off the edge. “My alchemists are accepted absolutely everywhere,” he said. “As a result, I am able to get a fairly accurate sense of the workings in most Guilds. Based on my own information, and what you all have brought me, this is what I’ve been able to piece together.”
Bareius held out the first silver coin to Shera. It was stamped with a symbol: a ship’s wheel with a single eye in the center. The crest of the Navigator’s Guild.
He slapped the Navigator coin down onto the table in front of him. “Cheska Bennett isn’t unreasonable, but for now, she’s firmly against us. She has invested too much in a second Emperor to back out now.” Next to that coin he placed another, this one marked with the Elder Eyes—the crest of the Blackwatch. “The Watchmen, we believe, are set on producing a series of disposable Emperors. When one is corrupted by the Elders, they will simply replace him.”
He lined the other two coins up with the first two, forming a line. This pair bore the Open Book of the Magister’s Guild and the Aurelian Shield of the Imperial Guard, respectively.
“The Imperial Guard, you see, has no reason to exist without the Emperor. Will they join us? Absolutely not. They’re a relic of the past, I’m afraid. The Magisters…to be quite frank with you, I don’t know why the Magisters want an Emperor at all. Maxeus has always been an enigma to me.”
Bareius gestured to the line of four coins. “These represent the Guilds most committed to returning an Emperor to the empty throne. Those who hold on to the archaic notion of one global Empire.”
His eyeglasses gleamed in the setting sun as he leaned toward Shera. “I would call them the enemy.”
He held out his hand, and Furman placed a second bag onto his palm. These coins were gold, and he lined them up quickly, with no explanation. The White Sun of the Luminian Order, the Emerald of the Greenwardens, the Bottled Flame of Kanatalia…and the Gardening Shears of the Consultants.
“These,” he said proudly, “stand for those of us who seek to progress beyond the Empire of the past, free of Imperial restrictions. Three days past, I received confirmation that the Greenwardens will no longer allow enemy Guild members into their territories. And the Luminian Order has begun reinforcing their own borders.”
He indicated the coins, lined up opposite one another like game pieces, four gold and four silver. “My friends, we have gone beyond threatening two Guilds. Our course is well and truly set. This will be a full-scale Guild War, the likes of which the Empire has never seen.”
He grinned over his tea, a child delighted by a new game. “I, for one, can’t wait.”
The two High Councilors were silent, looking to Shera. They had already known all this, she realized. This whole presentation was for Shera’s sake.
Bareius noticed her staring at his coins. “You like these? Had ‘em made special. I’ll get you a set. Furman, make a note.”
“This seems like…a lot of work,” Shera said honestly.
The alchemist’s expression firmed, “I wish there were another choice,” he said, in a surprisingly sincere tone. “Sadly, other avenues are closed to us. Perhaps we’ve been headed for this ever since the Emperor died.”
He certainly didn’t mean that as a jab at Shera, but she heard it as one. No matter what she did, she always created more work for herself.
She needed a nap.
“From what I’ve heard, Shera, you’re going to be very important in your Guild from now on. You worked for the Emperor personally, and now they say you’re a Soulbound. Killing one of Nakothi’s Handmaidens, how does that feel?” With a visible gesture, he pushed the question aside. “Never mind. I invited you here today because I need to know. Can I count on your support?”
Shera looked from Yala, who seemed irritated, to Tyril—napping in his chair—to Kerian. Her mentor smiled a little, in what she thought was sympathy.
In the end, there was only one answer she could give.
“Ask me in the morning,” she said, and left the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ten Years Ago
When Shera returned to her room on the Gray Island, Kerian was waiting for her.
In spite of herself, Shera groaned. Not only was Kerian possibly the last person she wanted to talk to at that exact moment, the woman was sitting on her bed. After the night she’d had, Shera would have murdered someone for a full eight hours of sleep.
Shera let the door close behind her, peeling off her knife-belt. “Please move.”
Kerian folded her hands in her lap, leaning back against the headboard. “I need to speak with you, and I suspect you may try to sleep before I get the chance. I’m here to remove temptation from your path.”
“Then the joke’s on you. I can sleep on the floor.”
“Did he take you to Nakothi?”
Shera’s breath caught. “I think that’s confidential.”
The older Consultant sighed, rubbing the scar that split her face in two. “There’s usually one
Consultant or another around the Emperor, either working for him or defending him. Over the years, we’ve pieced enough together.”
There was a chair against the wall, but Shera felt too tired even to walk that far. She simply collapsed onto the wooden floor. “He had a mission for us. We had to stop someone from doing something, and I’m still not completely sure what.”
Kerian nodded. “And is the former Watchman buried at sea?”
Shera didn’t even pretend surprise at Kerian’s knowledge. “Worse. The Emperor put him to sleep and left him there.”
“That seems needlessly cruel. Tie a cannonball to his ankles and push him overboard. It’s simple, humane, and it removes questions.”
Shera wasn’t entirely sure that Lucan would call drowning someone ‘humane,’ but she couldn’t care less what happened to the Blackwatch traitor.
Finally, Kerian stood up from the bed. Shera drifted up as though pulled to her pillow by invisible strings, but the older woman put a hand on her shoulder. With the other, she reached into her satchel.
“I think I might be able to fill in some of those blanks.” From within the leather satchel, she pulled forth a sheaf of paper, bound in string. “Removed from the Miners’ archives, with the blessing of the Council.
“The Watchman and his crew were headed to that island to harvest a heart from Nakothi’s corpse, in the hopes of attaining eternal life. I’m sure the Emperor told you that much. What he didn’t tell you was why.”
She tossed the bundle of papers onto the bed. “Some light reading for you, whenever you wake up. It pertains to a group of men and women who call themselves ‘The Sleepless.’ Their goals, their methods, everything we’ve gathered about them for the past few centuries.”
Shera picked up the papers and moved them off the bed. “I look forward to that. In the morning.”
“That which sleeps will soon wake,” Kerian said.
Shera froze.
“It’s their motto,” she continued. “According to them, the Great Elders are not dead. They are merely sleeping, and soon they will rise to reclaim the world that was once theirs.”
“Is that true?” Shera asked, her mind filled with a wind that whispered of rebirth.