by Will Wight
The assassin choked and struggled in Shera's grip, clearly fighting the paralyzing alchemy. He spat, as though trying to push a word out against the fallen leaves that stuck to his lips, and Shera rolled him aside to help him speak.
His eyes met hers. He wasn't capable of much expression in his condition, but his eyes twitched a little wider.
He choked out one word: “Shera?”
She stared at him a moment longer before the final piece clicked into position.
She knew him.
~~~
Shera never enjoyed her visits to the Council chambers. She only stopped by when the High Councilors wanted to brief her personally on a mission, and assignments like that tended to require entirely too much work. This last one, for example, had ended with her knifing a colossal Elder and then losing consciousness.
To be called in for a second such meeting only a few weeks later boded nothing good. At least there was a reason for it this time: the entire Council of Architects was in session.
As were most rooms in the Gray Island, the Council chamber was underground, its floor polished smoother than a dance floor, its walls a series of shadowed alcoves. The ceiling was a rough collection of rocks and loose soil, with pale tree roots dangling down like the grasping tentacles of a thousand subterranean Elders. Tiny quicklamps dangled from the tips of the roots, their steady light ranging from pure white to yellow to deep orange. In total, the glow resembled the hue of a campfire, and went a long way toward keeping the inhabitants of the chamber in shadow.
And this time, there were inhabitants. Unlike the other orders of Am'haranai, the Architects largely stayed on the island. Therefore, there were over a hundred of them here, each in a shadowed alcove cut into the wall. Even on Shera's induction into the Gardeners, she hadn't seen this room so heavily occupied. Every nook seemed to be inhabited by a shifting shadow, all whispering to one another, until the chamber sounded as though it played host to ten dozen chatting ghosts.
Only three Architects remained visible: the High Councilors. They stood around a table that seemed made of chalk, a white column that ended at waist height.
Kerian, formerly head of the Gardeners, tilted her chin back to address the room. Even before she began to speak, the whispers cut off.
“Earlier this evening, a high-priority client under our protection was assaulted. Unsurprisingly, the attempt on his life was thwarted and the assailant captured, though the client remains in the care of our medical alchemists.”
A man spoke up from his alcove. “Was no one protecting him?”
His voice issued from the darkness, and it was difficult to pinpoint which of the shadows had spoken. In theory, this was the purpose of the room's construction. Each of the Architects could speak their opinion honestly, protected by anonymity.
In practice, it was easy to tell who spoke just by listening. She knew exactly who it was. Or she would, if she'd spent enough time around the Architects to learn any of their names. She recognized his voice, at least.
“The client in question was indeed escorted by one of our number,” Kerian said. “She is with us now, to help illuminate a matter I will come to presently. If you will please allow me to continue.”
“She's still alive? A Consultant should give her life to protect the client!”
Kerian smiled slightly, which meant her patience was at its end. That was a very particular smile that meant she was imagining knifing someone.
“You may take that up with her yourself, if you feel so strongly,” Kerian said, waving to Shera. “May I present Shera of the Gardeners.”
Shera stood up from the empty alcove in which she'd rested, walking over to the center of the room. She looked roughly in the direction of the complaining man's nook and rested her hand on Syphren's hilt.
He cleared his throat, and one of the shadows shifted nervously. Shera fixed on that one. “No, that's...ah, please continue, High Councilor.”
“Thank you.”
Kerian continued without offering Shera a chair. None of the High Councilors sat, which she supposed meant she was supposed to stand as well. But that alcove had been surprisingly comfortable. Maybe no one would notice if she headed back over there...
“We have the assassin in custody now, where he will be questioned shortly. But what we've found already is disturbing enough. He has never been admitted into the Guild, but he shows signs of Consultant training.”
The whispers grew once again.
“Moreover, Gardener Shera provided some insight into his identity. Thanks to her information, we were able to identify him as one Jeralt Herris, son of a banker and a musician in the Capital. He no longer answers to that name, however. He answers only to Benji.”
Whispers shrank and died.
“Alone, his new name means nothing. That it sounds like a traditional Consultant name could be nothing more than a coincidence. But Shera has information that leads us to suspect something more. Shera.”
Kerian nodded to her, so she took the cue.
“Until I was ten years old, I was held by a revolutionary named Rudeus Maxwell,” Shera said. “In the news-sheets, I think he was called the Gladstone Kidnapper. This would be about fifteen years ago. Maxwell kidnapped children from a local park and trained them into killers. Benji was one of them.”
It should be 'trained us' into killers, she supposed, but she never credited Maxwell with that. He had taught her some useful tricks, but it was the Gardeners who had made her into a killer.
Kerian took over again. “Maxwell's plan was ended when the parents of the missing children hired us. I led the mission myself, where we recovered most of the survivors. As a direct result of our actions that day, Maxwell himself was killed.”
All true, technically.
“The children were then returned to their parents, or—in cases where living family could not be found—were given over to the Luminian Order as orphans. When Shera revealed Benji's identity to us, we checked the Miners' records for all forty-eight individuals in question.”
At this point, Kerian revealed and unfolded a yellowed piece of paper. “Of the twenty-nine children in the care of their parents, five have been confirmed with their families in the past year. Two are dead, both under quite ordinary conditions. Three reside in various Imperial Prisons. Six have successfully started families of their own. The remaining thirteen are missing.”
Shera wondered if they counted her among the rescued children at all, or if she was officially one of those considered missing.
“Of the nineteen we remanded to the Luminians, we cannot account for a single one.”
One of the Architects voiced a protest. “The Pilgrims would never lose a bunch of children. They should have been safer with the Order than with their own families.”
For the first time, High Councilor Yala spoke up. “They were,” she said. “Until the Emperor's death.”
Shera rarely lost herself to guilt—she rarely felt guilty for anything at all. If she did something, she had a reason, and she couldn’t change the past with regret. But this time, her collar felt like it had tightened around her neck, and her shroud of black cloth smothered her nose and mouth.
Until the Emperor’s death.
It was her fault.
Yala's pale hair was equal parts blond and gray, and had been tied back for the meeting. She wore a small smile on her weathered face. Shera was shocked she had been quiet so long. Normally, Yala would never have allowed Kerian to control the proceedings.
As for Tyril, the third and final High Councilor, Shera suspected he was asleep on his feet.
Yala folded her hands in front of her and addressed the room. “Ultimately, the fault lies with whomever or whatever killed the Emperor.”
Officially, the Emperor had given his life to protect the world from an unprecedented Elder assault. Unofficially, Yala knew exactly who had driven a knife into his heart. Though she didn't take her eyes away from the shadow-shrouded Architects, she was talking to Shera alo
ne.
“But that does not excuse the Luminian Order from responsibility. If the enemy is raising a gang of children into a lesser copy of the Gardeners, then the problem falls to the Luminians to solve.”
One of the Architects spoke. “The Luminians are allied to us. If war should break out between the Guilds, we would need to retain their support.”
Several voices echoed their agreement.
Yala raised a hand for calm. “There is no need for the current conflict between Guilds to escalate into a war. If matters continue as they are, the Empire will fall apart with no assistance from us. The Imperialist Guilds have selected a replacement for the Emperor, and I assure you, he is entirely unsuited to long-term rule.”
Shera remembered four silver coins laid out on a table in front of her. The Magisters, the Imperial Guard, the Blackwatch, and the Navigators. They wanted to raise another Emperor, and so they were enemies.
But when had they selected another surrogate Emperor? Surely Naberius Clayborn hadn't survived the battle on the Gray Island. Had he?
Kerian took over the conversation, so smoothly that Shera knew she and Yala had rehearsed this. “The Luminians are surrounded by hostile forces on the mainland, and as their allies, it falls upon us to support them. But they also remain responsible for the creation of a band of assassins in the hands of the Imperialists. The High Council is unanimous in proposing that we send a team to the Luminian Order, to assist and guide them in uprooting these assassins.”
So subtly Shera almost didn't catch it, Yala elbowed Tyril in the ribs. He snorted awake. “Unanimous!” he shouted immediately. Yala nodded along.
Seconds later, Tyril was quietly snoring again. Shera had never admired anyone so much.
“A proposal of this magnitude would require acting against the Imperialist Guilds directly,” Kerian went on. “Therefore, the operation would have to be meticulously thorough, and should be carried out with absolute secrecy to avoid risking open war. We hereby ask the Architects at large to vote. Should a team of Gardeners go to aid the Luminian Order, yay or nay?”
A team of Gardeners. Yala was looking straight at her, lips once again in a tight line, and Shera got the feeling she knew which team the High Council planned to send.
The Architects began voicing their agreement, but Shera walked out before the votes were counted.
She already knew how it would turn out.
~~~
Lucan had once been held underground, in the network of tunnels that laced the foundation of the Gray Island. In the Elder attack, the tunnels collapsed, and he had been moved outside.
The door of his cell was set in the base of a cliff, and he looked out on the world through a face-sized hole set with iron bars. He liked the view, and the fresh air, but it had rained the day before yesterday. Raindrops blew inside, almost ruining one of the pages of his journal. At least the light was better out here. With Bastion's Veil gone, though temporarily, the sunlight let him read without wasting quicklamp fuel or straining his eyes.
Today he wasn’t reading, though. He was Reading.
The collection of sharp rocks and broken seashells is more than just a pile of junk. He has saved them desperately, carrying them from the wreckage of his previous cell, hoarding them as they blow in on the wind. Now he practices with them every day as the guard changes, and every night when they think him asleep. He considers them his secret weapons, and so they have become more than what they once were. After months of being thrown by a Gardener, they are stronger, sharper, deadlier. They're practically spades.
He threw one of the seashells, embedding it into the soft wood of the door, hardly making a sound, and he pulled it free. At last, it was ready.
He tucked the shells and splintered rocks into a bag he'd made from torn corners of his bedsheets, then tied the whole onto his belt. He might not have time to find his real weapons, but at least he'd have something.
The quicklamp is a courtesy provided to the higher-level criminals, and as the most dangerous item allowed into Lucan's cell, it is closely inspected. The glass housing of the lantern itself is examined for cracks, the fluid measured to ensure the prisoner can't build up a stockpile of flammable alchemy, and the housing checked for weakness. They can't have a criminal tearing a quicklamp out of the wall and using it as a weapon.
It passes inspection because it is meant to. Its housing will weaken only to Lucan's hand, tearing as soon as he pulls on it. To anyone else, it is solid iron.
Lucan was least certain of the investment in the quicklamp. He'd only been in this cell for a matter of days, after all, so he hadn't been left with much time to work his Intent. And all the time he'd put into his previous lamp was wasted when that cell collapsed.
Only today was he confident that the quicklamp would really come free when he grabbed it, which meant that he was ready to escape.
He'd resisted the idea for years out of his attachment to the Consultant's Guild. If he gave into Shera's temptation and left his imprisonment, he'd be declaring himself an enemy of the entire Guild. Besides, he'd always harbored a dream of steering the Consultants from within. He couldn't do that if he abandoned them. He'd only kept a collection of invested items in the unlikely event that he ever changed his mind, and needed to leave quickly.
All that changed when the Handmaiden attacked.
Lucan had returned obediently to his cell afterward, thus cementing his reputation as a model, cooperative prisoner. His guards had relaxed noticeably; he'd only had one inspection of his belongings in the past week, and it was quick and cursory. A glance around, and the Architect had left satisfied.
But discontent gnawed at him every day since the battle with the Elderspawn. Shera had become a Soulbound that day, thanks to him. A Great Elder had moved openly for the first time in five years, and the Heart of Nakothi had vanished. The Empire was on the verge of crumbling, and he was one of the few people with the power to help guide the future. How could he help from inside a cell? It was becoming clear that he couldn't.
Now, all he needed was Shera.
A commotion just outside caught his ear, and he hurriedly secured the bag of seashell “spades” on his belt, moving to the door.
“Not you,” his guard groaned. “Please come back later, I'm begging you.”
“Here for lunch, Hansin!” Shera said cheerfully.
“I'm not supposed to let you by anymore, Shera. Yala's orders.”
Lucan peered out the bars and saw the exact scene he'd expected: Shera holding a wooden bowl, with a fake smile on her face, facing down the guard. Hansin was a Mason who had spent years working as a real guard, so he wore an armored uniform and carried a sword on one hip and a pistol on the other.
Even his back looked tense as he faced down Shera, for which Lucan didn't blame him. Shera had once drugged the man for refusing her a visit.
When Shera didn't say anything, Hansin spoke again. “My shift is over in an hour, come back and take it up with my replacement.”
She frowned, puzzled. “But I want to see him now.”
The guard rubbed his forehead. “Do you know what kind of position you're putting me in? If Yala finds out I've let you through again, she'll think I'm doing it on purpose. She already made it clear that she nghuuuuhhh....”
The last word came out as a fading grunt as Hansin collapsed, an alchemical needle in his neck.
Shera walked over to Lucan's door without looking back. “Yala will know he didn't let me through willingly.”
Lucan gazed at the guard's unconscious body a little regretfully. Hansin wasn't an unkind guard, he just had the misfortune to be assigned lunchtime duty. Shera preferred not to eat lunch alone. “You didn't have to do that. We're not in a tunnel anymore, it's not like he can actually stop you.”
Shera shrugged. “He might have objected when you opened the door.”
She rapped her knuckles on the wooden door impatiently.
Lucan glanced behind him, at the quicklamp still secure on the wa
ll. He wasn't quite mentally prepared, but the timing wouldn't get any better. His invested items were ready, he was going to open the door for Shera anyway, and the guard was already unconscious...
Holding up a hand to signal Shera to wait, Lucan gathered everything else he thought he would need. Mostly, that meant the other few scraps he'd managed to invest over the past few days: a sheet that could be rolled into a climbing-rope, a long splinter of varnished wood to serve as a dagger, a paper packet of blinding sand. All of it went into his pillowcase, followed by his journal, his pen, and as much blank paper as he could carry.
When he was finally prepared, he placed his ungloved hand on the door.
This wall is carved out by Jorin Maze-walker himself using acids and alchemical explosives, then filled with the Intent to contain dangerous forces. The door is installed later, much later, and the carpenter who built it is worried that he'll be executed for working too slowly. The door is fitted against the stone, and the jailer hopes that the future prisoners will rot in here...
As the Reading flowed through his mind, as much intuition as vision, Lucan kept careful stock of the Intent. The door was meant to be built quickly, to stay flush with the stone, and to complement the Intent of the surrounding cell. The original jailer invested the door to keep one specific prisoner out of his sight, and since then, the cell had barely been used. Only a few prisoners had invested it, mostly leaning on it and longing for freedom.
Lucan seized that Intent, pouring in his own power and focus, using it to convince the door that it should be open.
What better way to keep me out of sight than to open and let me go? I will leave, and the cell will be empty. Nothing to see, nothing to upset the jailer. That should satisfy the prisoners' desire for freedom, Lucan's own intention to see Shera, and even the cell's mission to contain dangerous forces. If the cell was empty, there was nothing to contain. Its purpose was fulfilled.