by Will Wight
The meeting with the Imperialist Guilds was in a week’s time. Both sides had agreed that it should take place as soon as possible, though that presented unique security challenges.
On behalf of the Independent Guilds, the Luminian Order was providing open security while the Consultants provided security from the shadows.
On the Imperialist side, the Imperial Guard would be performing their usual duties as open security while the Champion’s Guild provided security that was even more open.
It was a logistical nightmare, and these two were responsible for organizing it. Subject to the approval of the Regents and the Architect’s Council, of course. Shera would have pitied them, but it was finally their turn to learn what it was like to work with multiple Guilds breathing down their necks.
Meia sighed and pushed herself away from the desk, turning in her chair to look fully at Shera. “We have made some progress. Everyone agrees that we can’t have you all in one room. That would be at least sixteen Imperial leaders, twelve or more of whom are Soulbound.”
That had been the obvious problem. If all the Guild Heads, Calder Marten, and the Regents had all shared a room with the Witnesses as arbitrators, the room would be packed with volatile Soulbound. If it came to blows, there would be a bloodbath.
And if, by some horrible twist of fate, the Great Elders managed to strike at that time, they could kill every major leader in the Empire in one stroke.
That was an unacceptable risk, and Shera was glad that the Imperialists had seen as much before everyone sent a proxy.
Darius picked up the conversation. “They have agreed to three representatives apiece, not counting the neutral Witnesses. For us, that means one Regent and the leaders of the two most prominent Guilds.”
“So Nathanael Bareius and me,” Shera said. At least she wouldn’t be the weakest person in the room; Bareius famously relied on weapons and bodyguards. He was not a Soulbound. At least so far as the Consultant’s Guild had been able to determine.
“What about their side?” she asked.
“Take a guess,” Meia said sourly.
“Calder will insist on being there.” His ego wouldn’t permit anything less, and the Guild Heads pulling his strings would be forced to allow it. Unless they wanted to publicly admit that he was nothing more than a mask they wore. “As for his Guild Heads…”
He would need people who represented influential Guilds, were popular, and might protect him against Estyr Six. That left his options very limited. Cheska Bennett was Soulbound to her ship, which would do her no good in a tower inside the landlocked Imperial Palace, and Bliss was notoriously unreliable.
“…General Teach and Baldezar Kern,” Shera said. It wasn’t so much a guess as the only viable option.
Either of them could crumple her into a ball with one hand and swallow her whole.
Meia frowned at the model. “If everything goes up in flames, we need to get you and Bareius out. There are four exits, and I don’t like any of them.”
Shera was familiar with the Rose Tower. Not only had she practically grown up in the Imperial Palace, there had been a replica of the historic tower in the Consultants’ Garden.
“East window,” she said. The stairs down would be blocked, the west window led deeper into the Imperial Palace, but the east window was positioned next to the outer wall of the Palace Complex. “We secure an escape route at the bottom. If the worst happens, I grab Bareius and jump out.”
Meia gripped a wooden block until Shera could hear it splintering. “That’s the only theory we have, but what good does it do us? If Teach draws her sword, either Estyr stops it or you’re already dead. You won’t have the chance to jump.”
She carefully set the broken block down onto the table and took a steady breath. “I would like to go with you.”
“I wish you could,” Darius said. “I’m worried she’s going to snap and lunge at Calder Marten with her knife out.”
Meia gave him a look that was equal parts shocked and angry, but Shera thought it was a fair concern.
“If it makes you feel better, I don’t often snap and murder Guild Heads,” Shera said. “Only the once.”
Darius’ shadowed face tilted downwards, and she got the impression he was scanning her for weapons. “You haven’t freed Syphren yet, I see.”
The Regents had promised to take a look at Shera’s Vessel, but they hadn’t had time to stay and examine it after their meeting. Jorin would be the best one to give her advice anyway, they’d said.
Until then, she would rely only on Bastion.
Syphren’s absence was at the same time a relief and an itch she couldn’t scratch. On the one hand, she didn’t have its power around in case she needed it, and that made her feel vulnerable. On the other hand, she didn’t have to deal with its constant homicidal urges. Bastion was much easier.
“Not yet, but I’m looking to have it unsealed before the meeting.” If she was going to be trapped in a small room with the Head of the Champion’s Guild, she wanted to be able to defend herself as effectively as possible.
“It…might be better if you didn’t,” Darius suggested.
She shrugged. “There’s no point in worrying until we get the nail out.”
Once again, she wished she could read his face as he slowly nodded.
Meia turned her attention back to the tower. “Here are our advantages: Shera’s capabilities are unknown to the enemy. As far as we’re aware, they don’t even know about Bastion. Second, Bareius will surely go into this with some alchemical weapons hidden on him. Third, Estyr Six is an unstoppable one-woman army.”
“On the darker side,” Darius said, “if Teach and Kern come to blows with Estyr, the entire tower’s coming down. Everyone else will die. And Calder will be armed with the weapons of the Emperor himself, may his soul fly free.”
The solution was so clear that Shera was sure they had considered it already, but she had to put it forward nonetheless.
“We have to get everyone to disarm.”
Neither of them liked that.
“A Soulbound disarming is not like a soldier checking his gun at the door,” Darius said. “You’re leaving part of yourself outside. We can’t be certain anyone will agree to that.”
“You’ll be helpless.” Meia’s tone suggested that her mind was made up.
Darius continued. “Bareius probably won’t disarm no matter what he says, and Estyr…will she let herself be that vulnerable? Even in the art, she always has her Hydra skulls.”
“Teach and Kern are almost as dangerous without their Vessels. That’s why you need me there. In a mundane fight, I can keep them off you.”
Those weren’t arguments about the viability of the plan, Shera noted. They were objections about its difficulty.
“At least if they do come to blows, the tower won’t collapse around me. And you will have a better chance at positioning a team around the base of the eastern window.”
They continued objecting for another two solid minutes, but finally Shera cut them off. Her newfound authority had to be good for something besides disrupting her sleep schedule.
“Everybody disarms. Put together a proposal and send it to the Regents first and then the Imperialists. If we can’t convince them, then that’s that, but I think they’d love to reduce the chance this whole meeting blows up.”
Darius rubbed his neck. “We have boxes that can be used to seal Vessels. For the sake of fairness, we can work on new ones, collaborating with the Magisters and the Witnesses. That way no one should be able to pull a trick on the Vessels themselves.”
They all three watched the model tower as though they expected it to crumble at any second.
“I don’t like this,” Meia said at last.
Darius’ head moved up the wall, and up, as though he tracked something with his eyes that no one else could see. “The shadows stir…” he said distantly. “The Great Elders are planning something. They have a hand in this, and I don’t know if we’re pl
aying into it or against it.”
That was exactly Shera’s concern, and hearing the words coming from someone with a void-shrouded face only made them more ominous.
“I have enough to worry about without the Elders,” Meia said. “If Calder brings some kind of protection, even if he wears the Emperor’s old clothes, then Shera will be the most vulnerable person in the room.”
Shera sighed, wishing she were tucked away in a soft, dark, warm corner somewhere. “The Guild won’t fall apart if I’m gone. If the only thing we’re risking is my life, that’s a cheap bet.”
Meia looked up at her, confusion and hurt plain on her face. “How many friends do you think I have left?”
No more than I do, Shera thought. And I’m afraid we’re about to lose some more.
But she didn’t say it.
On the morning of the meeting with the Imperialists, Shera was woken early by a knifepoint in the ribs.
She was tempted to take the cut and roll over anyway.
Ayana’s harsh, rasping voice was miserable to hear first thing in the morning. “Get up, Guild Head.”
“As Head of the Consultant’s Guild, I hereby order you to come back at dawn.” The Independents had taken over and fortified a hotel on the outskirts of the Capital. It would only take an hour to reach the Rose Tower, and the meeting wasn’t until nine o’clock. There was plenty of time.
Ayana jabbed her again with the six-inch knife blades that grew from her hands in the place of fingernails. “You have a meeting with Nathanael Bareius. He hasn’t slept at all.”
As always, Ayana looked like a vengeful ghost, with her long white hair, her baleful stare, and her iron claws. To complete the nightmarish picture, she was here to wake Shera up.
Shera grumbled, slowly pushing herself to the edge of the mattress. “He uses the most powerful stimulants known to alchemy.” She doubted the Head of the Alchemist’s Guild relied on anything so mundane as coffee.
“Are you getting up? I have to get back out there. Your little Gardeners are trying to start a war with his assistants.”
Shera groaned and flopped out of bed. The imitation Gardeners that Maxwell had trained and the Magisters had stolen stuck to Shera like a second skin since she’d brought them into battle on the Gray Island. They seemed to think she’d adopted them, and now that she’d been elevated to Guild Head, they practically worshiped her.
“Weren’t we going to scare them off with some real training?” Shera stumbled over to the bathroom. This was one of the most expensive hotels in the Capital, complete with heated water on command. There was a hot shower inside the room, which was alone worth the price it commanded per night.
She pulled the chain, opening the channel to the hot water, and clumsily peeled off her nightgown without bothering to close the door.
Back in the other room, Ayana stabbed a fruit from a bowl with one of her finger-blades. “They love the training. They’re not good at it, but they’re happy to do it and ask for more. That’s more than I could say for some real Gardeners.” She took a quick bite of fruit. “Speaking of Gardeners, most of them know that it’s common courtesy to wait until your guests have left before you disrobe.”
The water was only lukewarm, but Shera dunked her head in. “You’re not my guest,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the water. “And it would be very courteous of you to leave.”
“I’ll come back in ten minutes to check on you,” Ayana warned. “Assuming I can keep your baby Gardeners from killing any alchemists.”
After the older Gardener left, Shera tried to relax in the warming water, but Ayana’s words kept rattling around her head.
If her adopted pseudo-Gardeners really were trying to start a fight with Bareius’ people on the morning of the negotiations…
Shera marched downstairs only five minutes later, wearing her hooded gray suit as Mistress of the Mists and with her hair still wet from the rushed shower.
She found, in the opulent lobby of this luxury hotel, a standoff between her allies.
Nathanael Bareius, a bookish man with slicked-back hair and thick-rimmed glasses, wore a silver suit that looked as though it had been polished clean. He stood rubbing his hands, watching the situation with what Shera might call glee.
A man stood behind him in the exact same outfit, down to the glasses, but while the appearance made Bareius stand out, it seemed to have the opposite effect on this man. He faded into the background as though he had been camouflaged to match the wallpaper.
They stood behind a line of young alchemists, who were distinct in their standard alchemical uniform of bulging glass goggles and stained leather aprons. Even many of the Consultant Architects who specialized in alchemy wore the same equipment over the black clothes that represented their Guild.
The alchemists were blazing like lit powder, shouting and brandishing weapons. Some of the tools were obviously dangerous, like the modified pistols with ominously smoking bottles built into them. Others were less threatening to the eye, waxed paper tubes or glass vials that the alchemists waved as though about to pour them into other containers.
On the opposite side of the lobby, as though separated by a mutually agreed boundary, stood Shera’s imitation Gardeners. There were only twelve of them left after the events of the Gray Island, but they still outnumbered the alchemists.
They wore black relieved only here and there by spots of dark gray, enough like real Gardeners. Some of them had large knives strapped to their belts in emulation of true shears. However, unlike real Gardeners, they were shouting back and waving their knives in the air.
Ayana was whispering into the ear of one of the baby Gardeners, Tobin, and from Shera’s angle at the top of the stairs, she could see that an iron fingernail was driven into the man’s side.
Shera wouldn’t have been able to guess what the conflict was about for a thousand goldmarks, but she could easily tell why Ayana couldn’t defuse it. Between her appearance and her voice, Ayana looked and sounded like the ghost of a woman who had died after slitting the throats of everyone in her family.
If Ayana tried to address everyone, the alchemists were more likely to react out of fear than comfort.
So Shera stepped up and tapped Bastion’s power.
The shear leaped to obey, disturbed as it was by combat. It wanted only peace, a wish that Shera could fully understand at the moment. If there were peace, she could go back to sleep.
Clouds of silver-blue mist bloomed around Shera, tumbling down the stairs and crashing like a wave into the pseudo-Gardeners.
She didn’t send enough of Bastion’s Veil to hide anyone from view, but she didn’t need to. The shouting stopped instantly.
Shera kept her voice icy and spoke from beneath her hood, playing the part of the Mistress of the Mists. “Explain.”
One of the aspiring Consultants dashed up the stairs toward her, trying to explain directly, but Bareius shouted up.
“My apologies, Shera, my apologies! I’m afraid I wished to come knock on your door, to see if we could have a private word between one Guild Head and another, and your underlings were understandably very concerned for your safety. My young recruits were themselves perhaps a little too hot-headed and as you can see…the result was quite embarrassing, I’m sorry. I’m certain it would never have gone any further, though. I abhor violence.”
Behind him, his assistant quickly hid a look of astonishment.
“He said he was going to meet with you if he had to blow your door down,” Benji—one of her false Gardeners—muttered from one stair beneath her.
“I believe he would,” Shera responded under her breath. She had only met with Bareius personally once, but she got the impression of a man who was used to getting everything he wanted immediately. As expected of the richest man in the world.
Louder, she said, “I’m here now. Would you like to talk?”
“More than anything, my dear, more than anything! Furman, clear out a room for us!”
&nbs
p; His assistant bowed and pointed toward a tall, ornately decorated door at the side of the lobby. “Already done, sir.”
Shera walked downstairs, following Bareius and Furman into the room at the side, which was devoid of furniture as well as people. She waved down Benji and the others when they looked like they would follow her.
The real Consultants were already in position.
She doubted anyone else had noticed, but Ayana had vanished in the fog, and Shera was certain that the former Gardener instructor had slipped out the door and was lurking outside one of the meeting-room windows.
The door shut, leaving Shera with a preening Bareius. And Furman. He seemed to count no more than Bareius’ shadow did.
Away from the others, Shera put on a show of relaxing. She had behaved without respect around the Guild Head before, and he might notice a discrepancy in character.
Inwardly, she didn’t relax at all.
“It’s too early for this,” she grumbled.
“Oh, but how could anyone sleep at a time like this? I did grab an hour here and there, but I was almost too excited to do so. Furman! Hand me the jar!”
The assistant instantly produced something that looked like a tiny jam jar filled with a viscous red liquid. Bareius pinched it between two fingers, holding it up proudly for Shera’s examination.
“This,” he said, “is our security measure.”
He knew she didn’t know what it was, and he was clearly going to explain, so she asked a different question than the one he was fishing for.
“Why show it to me? Security measures are best kept a secret.”
He laughed as though she had made a joke, and Furman chuckled uncomfortably behind him. “You and I will be the only ordinary mortals in this meeting, won’t we? I have prepared this countermeasure for the two of us, in the unfortunate instance that events turn to violence, and I would never think of dosing you with something without your knowledge. I couldn’t think of a way to do so anyway.”
He gestured with the tiny jar. “This is what’s known as a broad-spectrum augmentation elixir. It requires rare and expensive ingredients, is extraordinarily difficult to produce, and these two doses that I have brought with me today are the only successful results from a batch of two hundred. But I think today’s events are of sufficient import, no?”