by Will Wight
When he finished his speech, Andel tipped his hat. “It’s in my own best interests to see to the success of this ship, after all.”
Calder took what felt like his first full breath of air all day. The relief made him feel ten pounds lighter; he even smiled at the man in white. “Well done, Andel. I may have spoken too hastily with you earlier. Welcome aboard my ship.”
Andel ran his hand along the railing and held it up, as though inspecting his fingers for dust. “Until your debt is cleared, Mister Marten, this is my ship.”
~~~
Calder and Jerri spent the rest of the day preparing for their new life, under the direction of Andel Petronus. For one thing, they needed to retrieve clothing and personal effects from their family homes.
Alsa Grayweather, Calder’s mother, was not in residence. The servants let Calder into the house, but they only had a vague idea what had happened to her, and the rumors were sending them into a panic. Calder had to convince one valet that he hadn’t escaped from the Imperial Palace, as the man worried that Calder was on the run from the law.
He left his mother’s home with a trunk of clothes in one hand and a shrouded birdcage in the other. The staff was only too eager to be rid of that.
The fate of his mother chewed at him, burdening him even more than his own future. He was sure she wouldn’t be held legally complicit in his actions, as she was a Guild member in good standing, but he still didn’t know what the Emperor would actually do to her.
But she wasn’t at home. He needed to ask Andel; maybe he would know something.
Calder pushed through the crowd leading up to the harbor, Candle Bay stretching out behind The Testament like a deep green field. On the left shore, a pile of rubble spilled onto the rocks, as though an avalanche had swallowed up a hospital. Crews of workers scurried like beetles over the debris.
He tore his eyes away from the remnants of the Candle Bay Imperial Prison and back to his ship. Then he had to check the name on the hull, to be sure it actually was his ship.
There was a huge cage sitting on the deck, and two men standing around it.
Calder walked up the extra-wide, reinforced ramp that they must have built for the sole purpose of carrying the cage onboard. He supposed they had wheeled it up, considering the cage was big enough to hold a pair of grown lions. Its bars were rough steel, and its base and roof were both made of close-fitting planks of thick wood. No one would be strong enough to carry it.
Then again, if anyone could do so, it would be these two.
One of the men was sun-tanned and weathered as though he had spent his life aboard a ship, his dark hair worked into a hundred tiny braids. His right eye was covered by a rough leather eyepatch, and he carried a hammer at his belt.
At first glance, it looked like a craftsman’s claw hammer, but it caught Calder’s eye. He peered at it for a moment before he noticed the details that didn’t quite fit: the metal was smooth, not nocked as a used hammer would have been, and the handle almost seemed to crawl with twisting shadows. When he recognized the flow of Intent, his eyes widened.
The boy’s only friend is the hammer. When he sleeps, the hammer is clutched in his fist. When he is attacked—and he is always attacked—the hammer defends him. He smashes legs, arms, skulls with the hammer until it feels natural, until the crunch of shattered bones is the music of his life. A Kameira looms large among its victims, a slithering creature of liquid and shadow, but somehow it’s not just a victim…it’s one with the hammer, part of it, merged together…
Calder blinked his eyes free of the vision. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d just witnessed the intentional creation of an Awakened weapon. And, very possibly, a Soulbound.
The one-eyed man saw Calder looking at the hammer and grinned. He ran a thumb down the head of the hammer, preening.
His partner was utterly pale, as though he’d never spent a day outside, and had his hair cut short. This man didn’t carry a weapon, but he had a broad shield strapped to his back. Calder didn’t bother to focus on it; he could feel the Intent bound in the object clearly enough that he didn’t need a closer look. Another Awakened weapon.
Both men bulged with muscle. Once, Calder had gone to see what the news-sheets called a “spectacle,” a live performance with trained animals and talented performers with rare skills. A strongman had twisted an iron bar into a knot with nothing more than his bare hands, though Calder had suspected that someone had invested the bar beforehand.
Even that strongman would have fled from these two. They looked like they would have an easier time tearing another man’s arm off than shaking his hand.
The one-eyed man stuck a hand out. Calder didn’t hesitate before dropping his trunk of clothes and taking the hand; he was afraid that the man might take any reluctance as an insult.
“You must be the young Navigator,” the man said, and broadened his grin. “Word is, you broke out of an Imperial prison and walked away with a brand-new ship.”
Calder did his best to match the man’s smile. “I wasn’t breaking myself out.”
He laughed like Calder had told a joke. “Well met, Navigator. We’ll get along, I can tell. You can call me Nine.”
Calder turned his attention to the man with the shield. “And you, sir?”
The pale man didn’t seem to notice that Calder had spoken. He kept his eyes on the cage.
“You’ll have to forgive Eight,” Nine said. “He’s picky.”
Eight didn’t clarify.
“Eight and Nine,” Calder said. “There aren’t seven more of you, are there?”
Nine chucked easily and rapped his knuckles on the bars. “We’re not supposed to use our real names on this trip. Not sure what the point is. You may have noticed that we have a little trouble blending in.”
It had been a busy, even catastrophic few days. That was how Calder justified it. There was no other explanation for why he hadn’t noticed the gold crest that each man wore pinned on his shirt.
A small, golden pin marked with the image of a crown.
The Golden Crown: symbol of the Champion’s Guild.
Calder couldn’t stop his eyes from widening. How had he not noticed before? There were a pair of Champions on his deck. Real, living, Imperial Champions.
On his ship.
No Guild had made more of an impact on Imperial history than the Champions. All the ancient writers spoke of them. Loreli, the original strategist: “If you may hire a Champion or persuade one to your cause, then victory is certain. Otherwise, heed my teaching.”
Heliora, the Witness who chronicled the Kings’ War: “I stood motionless from sunrise to sunset, watching the armies clash, recording every maneuver and every feint of one general against another. Then the Champions arrived, and I left, for the battle was over.”
Sadesthenes, the great historian and philosopher: “If all men were Champions, there would be no war, for such a conflict would be too great and terrible to consider.”
Nazin, the hero of A Tragedy of Sand and Tears: “I am not a Champion, my love. I am but a man.”
Everyone knew about Soulbound. They were impressive and even somewhat mystical beings, but as a Reader, Calder understood them. The birth of a Soulbound was simply one phenomenon of Reading and Intent, something that the Magisters were still studying to this day. They already understood how it worked, and someday they would understand why.
But Champions were not just Soulbound. They were the superhuman products of a secret process, trained from birth and raised to be unstoppable in battle. They were invincible warriors, the stuff of legends, the kinds of people who could tear giant Kameira apart with their bare hands and laugh while doing it.
And now, two of them were standing on his ship.
Calder couldn’t seem to fit his bulging eyes back into his skull. He tried to speak, but his mind had frozen.
Nine either didn’t notice his distress or didn’t care. He looked aside from Calder, where Andel was climbing out of the hold. The Hea
rtlander man’s white suit was still pristine, somehow.
“The Captain has arrived, Pilgrim,” Nine called. “Make ready to sail.”
Andel didn’t bother to look at the Champion. “I’m not a Luminian Pilgrim any longer. And we’re still awaiting one more. A young lady.”
Nine gave a low whistle and nudged Calder with his elbow.
Calder felt the Champion was misunderstanding something, but he couldn’t find the words to explain.
Eight didn’t react to anything, keeping his pale arms folded and his eyes locked on the cage. For the first time, Calder noticed the man behind the bars.
He was obviously a prisoner, manacled to a set of chains that were themselves bolted to the cage floor. He was naked but for a cloth tied around his waist, and built along the same lines as the two Champions; he looked as if he could uproot stone pillars with nothing more than the strength of his arms. Blond hair fell, loose and ragged, to frame his face, and his ribs were mottled with fresh bruises.
Calder gestured to the cage. “This is the package you wish delivered to Izyria?”
Nine cackled, slapping the bars with the flat of his hand. “Hear that? You’re a package now. Special delivery to the Izyrian arenas. You’re going home!”
The prisoner didn’t respond. He simply smiled through the veil of his hair. His teeth were white and flawless.
Eight stayed quiet, watching as though he intended to stay in that position until the ship sank or the world ended, but Nine frowned for the first time. He slapped at the side of the cage. “Hey! Answer me. Do you hear me, Urzaia?”
The prisoner looked up, smile unbroken. “It will be good to see my home again.”
He turned to Calder, his gaze making the young man shift uneasily. What does he want? He has to know I can’t set him free.
Urzaia met Calder’s eyes and winked.
CHAPTER SIX
Without the Guilds, the Aurelian Empire as we know it could not exist.
—Estyr Six
~~~
Calder had wondered how they would approach the Capital without inviting a greeting from the harbor-guns; after all, they were being led by a completely visible Lyathatan. If the Elder submerged itself, it would have to drop The Eternal, which would immediately sink. And thereby negate the entire reason for bringing it all this way in the first place. If it stayed above the waves, they’d cause a riot as soon as they passed within sight of shore.
Fortunately, Cheska had the answer. She wasn’t quite back to her usual self—understandable, since she’d lost half her crew and half her ship in the mysterious attack from the Optasia, but she’d tied her hair back and found an impossibly tall hat. With that on her head, she’d taken charge, flying flags and flashing patterns with a hooded quicklamp at all hours of the day and night.
Finally, after a cannon barrage in a coded rhythm, her signals reached the right ears. Only a day out from the Capital, a Navigator’s ship sailed into view, flags raised to indicate their assistance.
Though Calder had never seen the ship before, he found it easy to identify as belonging to the Guild. It had two masts and no sails, only two pairs of giant bat wings that spread wide enough to catch the wind. A pair of painted eyes graced the stern, so realistic that they seemed to follow Calder wherever he moved. It took a long conversation with Bliss to convince him that the eyes were actually painted, and not some bizarre Elder transplant.
With the combined effort of all the Readers on all three crews, they were able to rig up a contraption to let them haul The Eternal into harbor without the Lyathatan’s assistance. It required every fishing-net and spare foot of line that Calder could draw out of storage, but they eventually had a gigantic net strung between both functional ships. The hastily-invested net, supported from beneath by a hidden Lyathatan, would drag the ruined ship over the water and safely to the dock.
To prevent The Eternal from twisting over and dragging everyone to a watery grave, supporting lines bound virtually every part to every other part—the wreck to both ships, the net to the wreckage, and every piece of the demolished ship to itself.
Together they looked like a floating shantytown, but Calder’s Reading revealed the Intent to be surprisingly solid. Despite its appearance, everything should hold together.
Light and life, he hoped so. He would hate to sail into the Capital looking this ridiculous for no reason.
Cheska joined him at the wheel as he pretended to steer his ship toward Candle Bay. In reality, the Lyathatan and his Intent were doing most of the work, but he felt more in control with his hands on the wheel.
Captain Cheska Bennett looked almost exactly as she had the week before. Her pants were covered with patches of different colors, her jacket had been tailored to fit a man twice her size, and her hair billowed out behind her as she’d tied it without bothering to comb it. She could have hidden a pet dog under her hat, and she kept one hand resting on her cutlass as though she meant to draw at the slightest provocation.
Only in the smallest, most important ways was she different. She didn’t wear a smile when she thought no one was looking, she moved more carefully, and she waited before beginning the conversation. Usually, she treated every exchange like a competition.
“Guild Head,” Calder said, when the silence had become too much.
“Calder.” The pause stretched longer, and for the first time, Calder got the uncomfortable impression that she didn’t know what to say. “I’ll be able to fix her, given time. If it takes half a forest’s worth of time and I have to go in debt to an alchemist, I’ll get it done.”
“You won’t shake the Reader’s burn for months.” It was an observation that meant nothing, a non-statement, simply to give her time to say whatever she needed to say.
“She’s worth it. I called her eternal for a reason, and I won’t give up on her until we both go down to Kelarac.” Even when talking about the Emperor and the future of the Empire, Cheska had never looked so serious.
He gave her a grin she was supposed to share. “I wouldn’t recognize you if you gave up. You wouldn’t be the Head of the Navigator’s Guild, that’s for certain.”
“I was out during the crash, you know. Hit my head or took too much of a shock when The Eternal was ripped apart, I don’t know. But when I woke up, all I could think was, ‘I lost my ship. I lost my ship. What kind of a captain loses her ship?’
“Then I saw your monster, and he had it. You kept it safe for me. That’s...that was more than I expected. More than I had any right to expect.”
Cheska was uncharacteristically somber, so he matched her tone. “I can only imagine what it would be like. If it was The Testament, I couldn’t have left it there. How could I do less for you?”
She moved so that her hat shaded her face. Which, given that the hat was bigger than her head, didn’t take much. “Just wanted you to know that I appreciate what you did. It’ll take a while to get back up and running, but once we are...well, you just let me know what you need. I wouldn’t be on the water if it weren’t for you.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said. She would feel more comfortable if she owed him.
She thumped him on the back with a fist, a little harder than necessary. “Keep it up, and I might decide you’re not such a bad fit for the job.” When he realized what she meant, he smiled all the way into Candle Bay.
Then they went ashore, and his pleasant mood stayed behind.
They were ambushed almost as soon as their feet hit dry land. Not because of anything he’d done, but because of his companions: three Guild Heads would certainly make a stir in the Capital. Cheska and Teach were swallowed up by a crowd of citizens pleading, demanding, or explaining one thing or another. Calder couldn’t understand what they were so excited about, but he took the opportunity to gather his crew. “A forgotten man is invisible,” as Loreli once put it. With the people focused on the Guild Heads, he brought Andel, Foster, and even Petal together and started uphill toward the Imperial Palace. Whatever
was going on, he didn’t want to lose track of the crew.
He’d only taken a few steps when he noticed the one Guild Head who wasn’t surrounded by a flock of petitioners. Bliss stood in the middle of the pack, frowning at a brown leaf she pinched between two fingers. People avoided her as though someone had traced an invisible ten-foot barrier around her.
Calder broke that barrier as if he hadn’t noticed, though his crew stayed back with the crowd. Cowards or sages, he wasn’t sure which.
“I’m needed urgently at the palace,” Bliss said, in a voice that was anything but urgent. “But I need the Imperial Guard to admit me, which requires Jarelys Teach. And Teach is being distracted. Should I remove the distractions, so that she can focus on the greater good?” Her black coat wriggled, and she slid a hand closer to the buttons.
He spoke as quickly as he could, hoping to stop her from reaching inside. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary, Guild Head. I’m sure she’ll be along in a moment. Ah, people seem excited, don’t they? What do you think has them so agitated?” With each word, he kept his eyes on her hand.
When her attention returned to the autumn leaf, he let out a breath of relief.
“We’ve lost control of the Imperial Palace,” she said. “These people don’t know it, because the Imperial Guards will have locked it all down, but they know the gates to the palace are locked. The last time that happened was the first night of the Long Mourning, when Elderspawn rose all over the world. I was very busy.”
“We all were,” Calder said dryly. So that was what drove them to ambush the first Guild Heads they saw? Worries born of bad memories? They were right to worry, if tonight was going to be anything like that night five years ago. He wasn’t in the Capital on the day of the Emperor’s death, but he’d lived through the aftermath. And he’d seen the results of a global Elder uprising.