Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2)

by Will Wight

  And among the Guilds, favors from the Navigators were prime quality. Navigators were required for any business on, in, or through the Aion Sea, so space on a Navigator’s vessel—at least, on the vessel of any Navigator not currently shackled by an Imperial debt—was worth an appropriate pile of gold. If Calder owed Lampson a favor, the alchemist could exchange it for rare Kameira corpses from Aion islands, for a free delivery to Izyria, or even for passage to virtually any coastal city in the Empire. It was practically a priceless coin, and one that Calder didn’t spend lightly. If he’d had any silvermarks to spare, he would have begun by negotiating a price.

  But Andel kept a miser’s grip on the purse-strings, and anything that trickled to Calder was soaked up by the normal expense of a Navigator mission or by his endless debt.

  It was a good deal for Lampson, which was why Calder didn’t entirely expect the man’s suddenly slumped shoulders or his dejected sigh. “I might have known. Well, I’m not your man, Captain. Try the next one of my colleagues who takes a visit to the dump.”

  Calder glanced around, half-expecting to see some reason for the man’s sudden refusal. Maybe an Imperial Guard watching from the end of the alley, or the Kanatalia Guild Head on a sudden inspection. “I’m sure you’re aware, the service of a Navigator can be very valuable.”

  “Sure, yes. But there’s two problems with that. First, you’re too young to be a Navigator Captain.”

  Calder reached beneath his coat and into his jacket to withdraw his Guild crest, but Lampson held up a hand to stop him. “I don’t doubt you’re a member of the Guild, because you wouldn’t come this far without some kind of proof, but there’s no way in the Emperor’s good name that they’ve given you your own ship. So what good is your favor to me? That’s one problem, and the second is that you’re a Navigator.”

  He spread his hands helplessly. “I’ve heard too many stories to trust Navigators in the bright light of day. And here you are in Urg’naut’s shadow, lurking in an alley to ambush me. I don’t think your captain knows anything about this, and I think once he does, you’ll already have a ship full of munitions for free.”

  Despite his every effort, Calder had misplaced his business smile. “I’d be happy to draft up a contract, if you’d like.”

  “I’m sure, but who would we get to enforce such a contract? This isn’t exactly a Guild-approved transaction. They’ll let me go my way as long as they don’t get involved, but if I have to have a Guild representative to witness a contract, they’ll want to know everything’s fair. All the more so if we hire a Witness. And if we don’t go that far, well, who’s going to defend my rights if you decide to drop anchor on the back end of Vandenyas?”

  Calder did his best to salvage the situation, but it was clear that this ship had sunk. That was one prospect down, and Lampson would likely tell the guards to check more carefully behind the workshop tomorrow. But there were other workshops in the Capital, and he wasn’t willing to give up yet.

  He’d crawl through freezing alleys every night, if it meant keeping his promise to Urzaia Woodsman.

  Lampson finally escaped his grasp, slamming and bolting the door behind him as he returned to the workshop. Which left Calder standing in the wind next to a box of alchemical garbage.

  Five years in a Guild, and look how glamorous his life had become.

  Metallic thunder rolled out, like someone drumming on a steel can. At first he thought it was coming from inside the workshop, but he still reacted to the noise by glancing around the alley.

  So he saw a dark, ragged shape clambering over the giant metal box toward him. It was a shadow surrounded by enough torn edges to completely obscure its shape, so in the split second he saw it, Calder jumped like he’d seen an Elderspawn wildcat.

  His body was shocked into motion with a lightning bolt of panic, and he scrambled to pull his cutlass from its sheath. He had it in his hand, his training keeping the tip steady even though his hand felt like it was shaking, even as he cursed his own instincts. He should have gone for his gun. Why hadn’t he? Basic sword training from his father, advanced instruction from his mother, solo dueling drills on the deck of The Testament, and it all added up to him relying on a length of mundane metal instead of the miracle of modern weapons technology he kept inside his coat.

  Since Dalton Foster had joined his crew, the man had done a complete upgrade on the ship’s small armory. If Calder ever decided to sell his sidearm, he could somewhat accurately bill it as a ‘Dalton Foster original,’ which he estimated would increase the value by at least a hundred goldmarks. But here, when he might actually need the carefully crafted weapon of a master gunsmith, he’d drawn his sword instead.

  All this self-recrimination flitted through his mind in the beat of a hummingbird’s wing, while the creature of hazy darkness came to perch on the edge of the alchemists’ dump.

  Tilting its head, it spoke.

  “Um...hello,” it said.

  She said. Judging by the voice alone, she sounded like a little girl.

  A younger Calder would have immediately sheathed his sword for fear of scaring her, but he’d spent the past five years sailing the Aion Sea and most of the preceding two in the Blackwatch. He had enough experience with Elders to know that they could imitate human voices better than human shapes.

  “Hello,” he said, cautiously. Whether it was an Elderspawn monstrosity in that shadow or a girl in a stiff and ragged cloak, a greeting couldn’t hurt.

  “I’m not...” she kept speaking, but her voice dropped too low for him to hear it. “...okay?” she finished.

  Calder peered closer into the shadows. Now that he was paying attention, he could read the darkness to some degree—the storm of chaos around her head was just hair, frizzy and wild as though it had never been combed. The shroud on her body meant she was wrapped in clothes too big for her, and her face...as he looked, he could see that her pale skin had been smudged with grime.

  So one of the residents of this street had come to sleep here after all. He felt a surge of guilt, and finally sheathed his sword. It was pitiful enough that a little girl should have to spend the night in an alley behind an alchemical workshop; he didn’t have to threaten her as well.

  And if she was an Elderspawn who had perfected her disguise to this degree, then as the great strategist Loreli had once said, “Sometimes one is simply beaten.”

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, holding his hands out to demonstrate that he’d left his weapon behind. Very slowly, he rummaged around in his coat pockets. He hadn’t taken a billfold with him, having not expected a cash transaction tonight, but he should have something. He came up a few seconds later with four crumpled marks, six copper bits, and a tired silvermark. He presented them to her in both palms, as though offering seed to a sparrow. “I’m afraid this is all I have on me.” A sudden idea struck him, and he added, “Though if you need a place to stay tonight, I have a ship in the harbor. We’re anchored through morning.”

  The girl’s entire outline shook briefly as she shivered. “Ah. That’s not. I have...” She held up a wine bottle and shook it. The liquid within sloshed, and as it did, it glowed a pale orange.

  He was no alchemist, but he suspected that wasn’t actually wine.

  “You needed.” She didn’t finish the sentence, but instead made an explosion noise and moved her hands apart, demonstrating a blast.

  Calder eyed the bottle. “That’s not going to explode, is it?”

  She shook her head vigorously, and then jerked her head at the big metal box beneath her. Reaching her hand down, she gave the side a slap.

  Just as before, the top lifted with a steady hiss, this time carrying her along with it.

  “Look,” she said, now from overhead.

  With a hesitant glance up at the lid—if he leaned in to look and the top crashed back into place, he was afraid it would smash his head like a grape—he peeked inside.

  It wasn’t the dump he’d expected. Only one corner was walled of
f to contain garbage, with about the same capacity as a trash-bin. The shattered remnants of Lampson’s cylinder lay in that section, liquid pooling at the bottom but not spreading to the rest of the box. The six-legged cat was nowhere to be seen.

  Outside of that partition, the space looked like a miniature alchemist’s workshop.

  Rows of colorful potions were displayed on a short rack against the far wall, and a pair of goggles sat next to a pair of gloves on a folded apron next to them. A stack of books bore titles like, Effusions of the Various Kameira in the Southwest and A Lexicon of Philters, while a miniature table and stool dominated the remainder of the floor. The table was covered in notes, diagrams, and sketches, while the stool was padded with a small cushion. A half-eaten sandwich rested on a plate.

  Of all the things Calder had imagined might be inside the mysterious metal box, he had never considered this.

  His attention turned back to the desk. With the lid closed, even someone six inches shorter than Calder would have to work with their neck bent. Calder himself would have had to lie halfway over the table, if he were seated on the stool. It would be worse than working in a closet.

  He glanced up at the girl, and this close, he could tell that the complex alchemical scent was coming from her, not from her lab. He could also see her face in much more detail, and she was looking at him with a childlike expression of apprehension. Waiting for his opinion.

  “Are you an alchemist?” he asked as steadily as he could.

  She smiled a little, nodded, then reconsidered. After another few seconds, she shook her head. “Not Guild,” she whispered. “I was an apprentice.”

  He wouldn’t ordinarily ask for the personal history of this strange back-alley alchemist, but she’d already shown him her home. He could use a few more details. “What happened?”

  She fidgeted, avoiding his gaze. “Delivery to the palace. I messed it up. Imperial Guard didn’t want me...” she trailed off again before picking the sentence back up. “...back here. The alchemists let me use what they don’t need.”

  Calder still wasn’t sure how she’d ended up in a sealed mechanical box, but he could piece the rest of the story together well enough. She’d continued her alchemical studies, obviously, but she couldn’t work for the Guild if the Imperial Guards were after her. He couldn’t imagine how she did any business in the Capital at all, in a situation like that.

  “...quicklamps?” she asked. He missed the first half of the question.

  “Do I have quicklamps? Yes, on the ship.” Quicklamps were effectively glass jars of glowing liquid, and they could be brightened or dimmed to almost nothing by adjusting an alchemical valve. They were much safer than traditional lanterns on a ship, for two reasons: first, quicklamp glass was tempered by alchemists, and could withstand impact that most lanterns could not. Second, quicklamp fluid on its own was difficult to ignite and put out very little heat. So no one could be burned by a quicklamp, and if it did break, it wouldn’t light the ship on fire. There would just be some luminescent paint on the boards for a while. It would only go up in flames if they were struck by lightning or attacked by some sort of fire-breathing Kameira—a dropped match wouldn’t do it—and in those cases, the ship was in danger anyway.

  You could buy fifty lanterns, a cask of oil, and a crate of candles for the price of one quicklamp, but no solution was perfect.

  “Fuse?” she asked. “Powder? Alphidalious extract? Black amber resin?”

  “Fuses and powder, but extract...can you spell that for me?”

  She shrugged and slid off the lid of her box, slipping inside with the fluid motion of a stage performer. “Okay. I have it. With all that, I can make a bomb.”

  Calder had been waiting at the bottom of a cold, black hole, and now he was watching a rope ladder slowly drift down from the heavens. “You’re willing to make explosives for me?”

  By this time, she was scuttling around her little cabin, packing everything she could into a cloth pack. She carefully slipped a pack of sealed tubes into a pocket, buttoned the pocket shut, and looked up at him. “Favor,” she said firmly.

  So she’d heard him already, and she was ready to take the deal. He would have preferred a skilled Guild alchemist, but anyone who would work without deepening his debt was a miracle to him. “Of course, yes! I’ll have a contract drafted up, if you like.”

  She pushed a book into her pack before looking back up at him. “Take me with you.”

  He hesitated. Except in the unbelievably unlikely coincidence that she wanted to go to the city of Axciss in Izyria, anywhere he could take her would be out of the way. “I have urgent business in Izyria,” he said. “I need to put your explosives to work. But if it’s somewhere close...where would you like to go?”

  “Somewhere,” she whispered, then shook her head as though correcting herself. “Anywhere.”

  She hugged her pack to her chest, looking at him like she expected him to object.

  On the contrary, while it was out of his expectations, this was better than he could have hoped. He could take her, she could do her alchemist’s work on the journey, thus saving them time in the Capital. And then he could dump her in Axciss and be done.

  Well, maybe not in Axciss. There would be a hunt for unregistered alchemists in Axciss after an explosion at the arena. Somewhere else on the Izyrian coast, then.

  “I’m certain we can find you somewhere. My...a woman of my close acquaintance is from Vandenyas.” At this point, he wasn’t sure how to describe his relationship with Jerri, so he skipped past it. “We can set you up there, where it’s warm, after we’re done in Izyria. Unless you’d prefer—”

  She cut him off by spearing him with her eyes. This was the most resolute he’d seen her, and suddenly she looked years older. “Take me with you. On your ship. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  That should have required a little more deliberation, and he certainly should consult with his crew. Jerri might enjoy having another woman onboard, or she might not. And Andel wouldn’t appreciate having to spread their already-meager income around further. He was already being surprisingly agreeable about this daring plan to rescue Urzaia, considering that a daring rescue plan is what had led to Calder’s debt to the throne in the first place. Foster...Foster would grumble about anything, but he was actually the least likely to raise a real objection.

  But the one asking him was a young girl dressed in rags who was forced to practice alchemy in what amounted to a giant garbage bin. Sympathy made the decision for him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked softly.

  “Petal.”

  There was one other thing he had to know, just to make sure he didn’t add kidnapping and endangerment of a child to his growing list of Imperial crimes. “And how old are you, Petal?”

  She cast her gaze down to the street as though embarrassed. “Twenty-three,” she said.

  Calder stared at her. Light and life. She was older than he was.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  From the moment Guild Head Kern joined the battle, our troops were no longer required. I would call the destruction ‘absolute.’

  —From the official report of the South Sea Rebellion

  ~~~

  In the last week, Calder had spent more time in carriages than in the entire rest of his life combined. They weren’t nearly as comfortable as he thought they should be.

  He paused with his pen halfway to the page, looking to Andel. “How do you say, ‘I’m sorry my wife killed your assassin?’”

  “Not like that.”

  Calder, Andel, and General Teach were all riding together, and even though this carriage had been constructed to the Emperor’s specifications, it was still crowded with that much armor. Teach took up more space than Calder and Andel combined, her armor filling the space with the smell of iron and oil.

  These two were not the first people he’d ask for advice regarding a diplomatic letter, but they were all he had. He’d wanted a Consultant’s touch, but
Meia was gone. The medical alchemists in charge of her care had come in to an empty bed, and the Imperial Guards outside the doors never saw a thing. A thorough search of the Imperial Palace afterward had revealed no trace of her. Once again, Meia had disappeared.

  Though if she chose to pop up in the middle of this very carriage, he still wouldn’t be entirely surprised.

  “An official apology would be a mistake,” Teach put in. She was watching the streets through a crack in the window, presumably looking for threats, but she had enough spare attention to criticize his letter. “It implies that you are in some way responsible. You can express your condolences, since you did not officially execute the Consultant, but it might ring hollow. Given that we’re preparing to attack their headquarters.”

  That the Imperialist Guilds were gathering for an attack was common knowledge, even if their target was a secret. A secret to most, at any rate. Calder was certain that the Consultants would know exactly what they were planning, and would be coming up with some way to counter them.

  “I’m still not certain I want to attack the Consultant’s Guild,” Calder said, though it was mostly an empty protest. The Navigators were recalling to the Capital and stocking up on supplies, the Imperial Guards had begun training for naval warfare, and the Magisters were bringing up what weapons they could. The Witnesses had published an article in the news-sheets exonerating the Imperialist Guilds for “any attacks they may conduct in the pursuit of justice.” The tide was going out, and Calder could see it.

  But he couldn’t fight the feeling that he was playing straight into someone else’s hands.

  Teach didn’t respond to his words, but she shook her head faintly as she kept watch out the window. Andel was the one to speak up, and surprisingly, he did so without a trace of mockery. “You should recognize when a battle is lost, Captain.”

  “If the battle’s already lost, I can’t imagine why we’re still sending our troops.”

  Andel didn’t rise to the bait. “Not that battle. Yours. The Guilds are moving out, and your only hope of maintaining your position is to move with them.”