by Will Wight
He hesitated after that line, and Shera suspected he didn't appreciate his new assignment as much as he pretended to. He might enjoy having something to occupy his time, but there was something about his position that disturbed him. Maybe it had to do with the looks that passing Pilgrims hurled his way, or maybe it related more to those three child-sized coffins in his cart.
Finally, they reached the polished double doors that led into the base of the tower. A smaller entrance around the side was for servants, Shera was sure, along with whomever maintained the giant quicklamp at the top.
“Please allow me to start things off with my grandfather,” Darius said. “I have a few issues that we need to discuss, and we can get to our Guild business when he's in the right frame of mind.” Then he opened the doors.
Jameson Allbright, Head of the Luminian Order, was sitting cross-legged four feet off the ground.
He had pure white hair and a long beard, with white-and-red robes of such elaborate cut that Shera imagined it took a team of servants two hours to assemble them on his body. He sat cross-legged with his eyes closed, slowly rotating in place as he levitated.
“Welcome, visitors. Please excuse my appearance for another moment, as I search the city for some elusive answers.”
“No need,” Shera said immediately, before Darius could begin speaking. “We require a look at your personnel records from five years ago. Point us in that direction, and we'll be on our way.”
Darius bowed his hood, speaking through a sigh of exasperation. “Grandfather, allow me to introduce Shera and Ayana, both of the Consultant's Guild.”
Jameson opened one eye. “Oh really? I'd wondered when the Architects would come knocking at my door.” He began revolving as he sank closer and closer to the floor.
“Not Architects,” Ayana said.
Shera rested a hand on her shear to emphasize the point, though she felt more like sinking into sleep than murdering someone. Of course, that was almost always the case.
Jameson winced, opening both eyes as he reached the carpet. “Ah. I see. That's quite a pointed message, isn't it?”
Shera drummed fingers on the hilt of her shear. “It's not a message. We’re here to do our jobs.”
Darius' shadowed eyes moved between Shera and his grandfather. “I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with Consultant parlance.”
“It's very simple,” Shera said. “The Architects design the plans, the Masons lay the foundation, the Shepherds watch the flock, and Gardeners remove the weeds.”
Darius scratched the back of his neck with one hand. “You know, I'm still not familiar with—”
His grandfather interrupted him. “They remove threats to their Guild, son. As you do for us, though I'm certain they operate on another level entirely.”
So that's what a Knight-Adjunct is. Shera didn't think she'd ever heard of the position before meeting Darius, and now she knew why.
Most Guilds had someone in charge of executions, though it varied on a case-by-case basis. In the Blackwatch, it was usually the Guild Head herself. The Consultants had the Gardeners, and the Champions had every single member of their Guild. Evidently, in the Luminian Order, the disposal orders came to the Knight-Adjunct.
The faceless executioner of a merciful clerical order. The idea appealed to Shera's sense of irony. Even the Luminians had to deal with the muck of the real world, it seemed.
Darius nodded. “Yes, I'd assumed it was something along those lines. It was all I could do to stop them from killing the Imperial Guards positioned outside.”
Jameson paused in the middle of pushing himself to his feet. “That sounds like something I could stand to hear a little more about.”
The Knight-Adjunct moved to his grandfather, gently helping him up. “Four Guards, stationed outside the walls to make trouble. They were stopping entrants and questioning them, looking for members of the Order. When they found me, they tried to start a fight. Our new friends here tried to end it.”
Jameson looked straight at Shera with bright, piercing eyes. “But they survived? All the Guards walked away?”
“They did,” Shera responded.
The Guild Head let out a sigh, reaching out and seizing a tight fitting cap of red-and-white. He pulled it down over his bald spot, smoothing out the fabric to make sure it fit properly. “That's a relief. Everything we've done could have been unmade in an instant.”
Ayana was examining a map on the wall at the side of the room. It displayed the whole Aurelian continent, with the Capital an ornate star in the northeast. Other major cities were indicated in black.
And it was covered in pins of the Guild crests. Some in gold, to represent allies, and enemies in silver.
She tapped one of the pins with the knifepoint of her fingernail. “Battle map?”
“I'm afraid so,” Jameson said, moving over to the map. “What you see here mark the points of control for the various Guilds involved in our...unfortunate little conflict. The Guilds have been maneuvering for control since the Emperor died, but tensions have escalated every year since then. I'm not sure how much of it you've experienced, out on the Gray Island, but next to the Capital we've been sitting in an oven.”
“Haven’t you heard? The Consultants know everything.” Shera meant to say it with a sense of irony, but Jameson winced before covering it up.
“I understand. I didn't mean to question your capabilities.”
In fact, Shera had spent most of the last two years in the Capital, but had only been aware of a large-scale conflict between the Guilds for a week now. A month, if she counted her actions against the Navigators, but she hadn't thought those were a precursor to war.
Her head was spinning, which made her eyelids grow heavy. She was sure it would all seem clearer after a nap.
Jameson waved at the map, indicating some pattern that he saw. “As you can see, the Imperialists are drawing up their forces surrounding the Capital.”
“Imperialists,” Ayana repeated. “An interesting label.”
“It's the phrase the news-sheets have for them. They have characterized us as the Independents and the enemy as the Imperialists, and I'm not sure which of us got the better deal. Anyway, the situation is much the same all around the world: they're gathering strength, trying to spread the word to the common people about the new Emperor.”
Darius interrupted to make a point, sitting on the Guild Head's desk with his legs crossed and arms folded. “It's our biggest advantage, besides the obscene wealth of the Alchemist's Guild. They need popular approval, while we don't. The world will settle into new regions on its own.”
“Precisely,” Jameson agreed, rubbing his hands together. “Please don't sit on my desk, it was built eight hundred years ago by Ulovi the Second.”
“I know,” Darius said. “He loved to sit on it.”
“If I may continue...We will win over time. Especially with the guidance of the Regents on our side. We want this state of affairs to continue for as long as possible. Which is why they have been provoking us with these stunts.”
That explains it, she thought. That’s why they’re really targeting the Regents.
It was clear why the Imperialist Guilds would want to remove their biggest opponents, but she’d wondered why they were willing to risk open war. This filled in the gap.
Assassins targeting the four Regents would do nothing but destabilize the friendly Guilds—the Independent Guilds—and force them to act. It might even goad the surviving Regents into action.
Shera almost spoke, but Ayana caught her eye and remained silent. She had come to the same conclusion, Shera was sure.
Perhaps the Luminians knew, or perhaps they weren't used to considering the ramifications of assassination. Either way, Shera wasn't about to put a new thought into their heads. Especially not before the mission was complete.
“There has been no blood drawn so far, at least none that can be proven. If we start the fight, and they can even fabricate evidence, it's to their advantage. No
t only will they have popular opinion on their side, but they'll have a case to win over the two neutral Guilds.”
Darius took over again, his dark hood moving between Shera and Ayana. “The Witnesses will thoroughly investigate any such claims, and if they find we have indeed wronged the Imperialists, they will likely side against us. But we're far more worried about the Champions. Even if only a handful of Champions joins their cause, we might not be able to handle them.”
Shera prepared the best professional response she could manage. “The Consultants are a part of this conflict, and you can be assured that we will provide appropriate support at the nearest juncture.” She was actually pleased with herself; that sounded just like something Kerian would say. “But you have to understand, we are on a mission. We're investigating the assassination of one Regent and the attempted assassination of another.”
“Alagaeus was killed recently, Grandfather,” Darius said, watching the old man's face for a reaction.
Jameson rubbed a hand over his wrinkled face, looking even older in an instant. “Officially, Alagaeus is still alive and recovering. Regent Loreli has not permitted me to say anything to contradict that point, even in private. But you must understand that I have shown you these things for a reason.”
He hobbled over to his desk, reaching into a drawer and removing a single sheet of paper. He spread it on the desktop, revealing an artist's sketch of a mansion.
“When the Emperor died, we stopped receiving Imperial funds for the orphans under our care. We continued to do so, of course, but the Long Mourning took its toll on us. The increase in Elder attacks alone...anyway, I'm making excuses, and I don't mean to. When these nineteen left, we simply didn't have the resources to look for them. But we didn't forget them. We tracked them down, years later, and we found out where the young men and women had found residence.”
He tapped his finger on the paper. Darius groaned.
“The home of one Mekendi Maxeus, Head of the Magister’s Guild.”
CHAPTER NINE
Yes, I know the Emperor’s name, the name he took for himself after escaping the Elders. I believe I’m the only one who does. Jorin, Alagaeus, and Loreli didn’t join us until later, after he had already begun calling himself the Emperor.
No, I don’t know his birth name, and there’s a very simple reason why.
He didn’t have one.
—Estyr Six
~~~
Eighteen hundred years ago
The human crawled through the tunnel, feeling his way along in the almost-perfect darkness. His hands and knees were gouged by the bones and jagged rocks blanketing the path, and he was sure he was bleeding from a hundred cuts. Nakothi’s Children could follow him no matter how far he crawled, if they had a cause to do so.
He had to make sure they never noticed him missing.
He reached out every few seconds to feel his way forward. Any of these skulls could contain a corpse-born Child, which would kill him before he had a chance to defend himself. He had a sharpened bone stuck into the back of his pants, a makeshift dagger, but that was only useful if he ran into other slaves.
His extended fingertips hit metal. A door.
The human ran both hands over it, eagerly. It gleamed faint hues of bronze or copper in the light that filtered down here, and it fit snug against the tunnel’s walls. That meant it was Elder work, not slaves. All quality craftsmanship came from them. And the door was only big enough for the human to crawl through, which was another clue. A man would have made the door tall enough to walk through, but this passage was meant to permit the passage of messengers. Not workers.
But why would they build a door inside a tunnel? He had never built anything significant for Nakothi, despite having lived since birth under her authority, but it made sense that there would be a door on either end. Not one in the middle.
Maybe this is the border, he reasoned. Or maybe…
Tentatively, he extended his left hand. He didn’t have to explore the wall for long before he found a second door. A few more moments of curiosity revealed a door on his right, as well.
So, not a single door halfway through a hall. A dead end, surrounded by three doors.
One of these would be designed for Nakothi to exchange ambassadors with the territory of her neighbor. That would be the tunnel he needed. The other two must lead elsewhere in Nakothi’s land. It might even loop back around to the corpse pits. Which he’d just escaped.
His breath came in quick gasps, as though the air in the tunnel had vanished. He couldn’t go back. If he had to shovel more severed limbs and offal into the pits, as he’d done almost every day for his whole life, he would eventually break. His soul would die, as had happened to so many before him. At least once a day, another worker would toss himself onto the pile of bodies, hoping to break his neck on impact. The human had grown numb to it.
That was what scared him. If he died on the inside, the Dead Mother would truly have won.
He calmed himself, shoving the terror off to the edges of his mind. There had to be something more than this. There were six other Great Elders, according to the old legends; any one of them had to be better than Nakothi. He couldn’t imagine worse.
So, firmly clutching thoughts of escape, he pressed both of his bleeding hands to the door. He felt its cool metal.
Then he felt more.
He got the fleeting impression of something alien and predatory, like the shadow of a shark passing underneath him. The Elderspawn who had created the door. The human ignored that sensation, waiting until his senses brought him something new.
An hour passed, but he didn’t remove his hands. He’d learned not to force this process, but to let the visions come as they would. More shadows passed through the door, though they were weaker impressions than the first, as though they’d only brushed against the bronze. Above all, he caught a sense of anticipation. Of hunger.
He peeled his palms away; his shallow cuts had partially dried to the metal, sticking his hands to the door.
This door led to the feeding pit, he was certain. Children of Nakothi passed this way every day, ready for a meal. He was fortunate no one had come up to him so far. If a hungry Elderspawn ran into him on the way to feed, his hand-made knife would not protect him.
The fear returned, images of the corpse pit filled his mind, and his heart stuttered in his chest. An Elder could come through the tunnel at any second, and he still had two more doors to check.
He’d have to be quick.
He pushed against the bronze to his left, mentally urging the door to yield its secrets faster.
Instantly, he felt the difference.
Nakothi’s signature was an insatiable hunger paired with the putrid stench of death; all of her Children were different shades of the same color. But he got no sense of death here. Hunger, yes. But another kind.
After a few minutes of examination, the human pinpointed the emotion: it was the feel of curiosity unsatisfied. Exactly what he felt when he thought of the world beyond Nakothi’s reach, of the burning questions haunting him. How were these doors made? What weapons did the Elders keep for themselves? Could he find them, and if so, could he use them?
He burned for answers…and so did the thing that had made this door.
That settled it for him. It wasn’t Nakothi. The Dead Mother had a touch of dreadful creativity, as she created her Children, but not a speck of curiosity. This door was built by a creature of a foreign order.
The human hauled the door open and crawled through.
Instead of a rough round tunnel scattered with rocks and bones, this tunnel was perfectly square, with polished walls and a clean floor. The ceiling was high enough that the human could stand to a crouch, walking hunched over. It was a relief to his scraped knees and bleeding forearms.
The space was lit by sticky, uneven bags fixed to the right-hand wall every so often. They looked like egg sacks, lit from within by a faint blue glow. Opposite each of these lights was a bronze p
anel on the opposite wall, carved with letters.
The first time he ran into one, the human ran his hand along the panel, feeling the words. They meant nothing to him; he couldn’t read. Rumor suggested the Elder language would drive him mad anyway. Or maybe he had to be mad to learn it.
He learned nothing new from the panel, and he passed all the rest without a look.
He walked until his feet screamed in pain and his back ached. Every few minutes, he’d encounter a branching tunnel, but he ignored those.
Any direction was better than backwards, so he might as well continue forward. At least this way he’d know how to return, if he found himself cornered.
He’d walked for so long that when something passed in front of a light up ahead, blacking it out for a moment, his first reaction was relief. If someone was coming from that direction, then there must be something there. He wasn’t walking for nothing. The tunnel’s end might be close.
Then the fear hit him, and he froze. The shifting, skittering movement of the shadow didn’t belong on an animal. It was an Elderspawn coming toward him. Of its own accord, his hand drifted behind him and gripped the end of his bone dagger.
Everything in his life as an Elder’s slave told him to flee. He couldn’t hope to fight. Only running and hiding could save him now. But the same fire that had driven him to run away blazed up inside him, pulling his weapon into his hand, steadying his feet.
The Elders should fear me now!
It was ridiculous, even childish thought. The Great Elders couldn’t be opposed; fighting them was like throwing stones at the wind, or tackling the side of a mountain.
Ridiculous or not, he’d die trying to make it a reality. And maybe he’d get a chance to spit in Nakothi’s eye on his way into the corpse pit.
At the moment, it looked like he would be headed there sooner than he’d planned.
The 'spider' moved from the shadows into the light of the nearest glow-sac, and he finally saw it clearly. The creature looked less like anything natural, now that he got a good look. It stood as high as his waist on its ten legs, its hairy body a purple so dark that it looked black.