by Will Wight
That reminded Calder of a question. “Excuse me, Watchman, but who exactly is your commander?”
A woman in a black coat spoke up. “This outpost is commanded by Alsa Grayweather, Captain Marten.”
Calder wondered if he could make it back up the ramp before they caught him.
~~~
Alsa looked much the same as when Calder had last seen her: poised and controlled, with a spotless uniform, her hair combed absolutely straight and falling down her back. She might have worn a pinch more gray in her hair, perhaps a few more wrinkles, another dueling scar or two. But it had been over a year since he’d spoken with his mother; part of him had expected to be facing a stranger.
He stood before her in her own tent, as she sat back on a folding camp chair much like the ones Calder kept aboard his ship. She looked him up and down, sipping tea.
“Where’s Shuffles?” she asked at last.
“It mostly sleeps during the day. I thought it would be safer if I left it aboard the ship for now. Besides, it will follow me if it wants to.”
He forced a laugh, but she kept surveying him as though she expected to fit him for a new coat afterward.
“All right then,” she said. “Now where’s Jerri?”
The question caught him like a slap. He should have expected it, but he’d been trying to avoid thinking of his wife for so long, he hadn’t prepared himself.
“I hope to find out soon,” he said.
She put her teacup down on its saucer, a little too forcefully. “She ran off?”
Calder would never get away without telling his mother the story, so he sat down on the edge of Alsa’s cot. “We were attacked. Naberius says it was a Consultant...”
He initially planned to tell her only the most relevant details, but she asked enough questions that she soon pulled the full story out of him. When he finished, she was squeezing her teacup in both hands so hard that he expected it to shatter.
“‘That which sleeps will soon wake,’” she repeated, disgusted. “You know what it means, I assume?”
Calder nodded, anger warring with worry. He wanted to shout at Jerri and make her feel the full force of his betrayal...but in order to do that, he had to get her back.
Alsa looked as though she were ready to kick her desk over. “And I didn’t see it years ago. We had our suspicions of her father, years ago, but I never...” She shook her head to clear it. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine how you must feel.”
Calder decided to change the subject before he broke down entirely. He and his mother had never had the sort of relationship where he cried and told her all about his feelings. No reason to start melting now.
“Something of a coincidence, isn’t it? Running into you here. I was afraid it would be Bliss.”
“Oh, she’s coming,” Alsa said in a dry tone, causing Calder’s heart to sink even further into his stomach. “And what makes you think this is a coincidence? I’m the one who told Naberius to hire you in the first place.”
In Calder’s mind, his whole voyage suddenly took on an entirely new meaning. If Alsa was the one arranging everything, then she must have a reason. This whole time he had assumed it was his own Guild Head, who was...significantly less reliable.
“I assumed it was Cheska who got me the job,” he said. “She was the one who put me in touch with the passenger, and negotiated terms...”
Alsa grimaced in distaste, taking another sip of tea. “For the time being, Cheska and I have found ourselves working together. You can imagine my delight.”
Calder sat quietly for a moment, putting the pieces together. Cheska Bennett, Head of the Navigator’s Guild, wouldn’t be involved in anything that didn’t involve the entire Guild. Or the possibility of her walking away ridiculously enriched. He assumed Naberius was working on behalf of the Witnesses, and if his mother was here with a contingent of Watchmen, that meant at least three Imperial Guilds officially represented.
What’s more, Alsa Grayweather was the right hand of the Blackwatch Guild, second only to the Guild Head herself. If Alsa and Bliss were involved...
Then he remembered something Cheska had burned on the inside of his hold weeks before. “Not just for you, but for the Empire. And the Emperor.”
“Mother,” Calder said seriously, “what is Naberius looking for?”
Alsa leaned back in her chair. “Eternal life.”
Calder waited for more, but it seemed she wanted him to ask questions. “That’s very dramatic, but I was hoping for a more literal answer.”
“This island, as you may have noticed, is not normal.” His mother stomped the ground, which slapped as though she’d kicked someone in the ribs. “According to our records, it began as the land where Nakothi’s corpse fell when she was defeated by the Emperor and Estyr Six. The Dead Mother’s body landed here, after her death throes shattered the land around her.
“Over the past few years, the island has disappeared. In a way, it’s like Nakothi is swallowing up the land around her, remaking it into a new body.”
Calder shivered, gently pulling his heels off the ground and resting them against the legs of the bed. It was one thing knowing that an Elder had made the island look and feel like flesh: you had to expect such things, if you wanted to sail the Aion. But actually standing on the corpse of a Great Elder...
“So the Emperor left an artifact here?”
“Something like that. You see, after the Emperor’s death, many things that were once mysterious became clear. For instance, we found the secret to his immortality for the past fifteen hundred years.” She gestured to her neck, as though to an invisible noose. “He always wore a silver chain around his neck. You may remember it.”
Every detail of that scene was seared into Calder’s memory. A chain looped around the Emperor’s neck, bright against his dark skin, whatever pendant it carried disappearing into his robes. “I do.”
“When the Imperial Guard discovered the Emperor’s body, they found a cage suspended from that chain. And inside the cage, a gray heart, roughly the size of your fist. It had been pierced through, in the same stroke that took the Emperor’s life.” She shuddered at the memory. “They brought it back to me for examination as soon as it became clear what it was: the Heart of Nakothi, the Dead Mother.”
Calder began to laugh.
At last. At last, years after the man’s death, he finally discovered that the man hadn’t been the spotless avatar of all the goodness in the world. No, he was a parasite, clinging to an Elder’s heart to preserve his own life.
The Luminians had suggested for centuries that the Emperor lived on because of his spotless virtue and insurmountable will. Everyone in the world believed it.
Well, Calder had seen into the man’s mind before. He’d known that the Emperor was anything but pure goodness and light. Still, this...this was the ultimate justification.
His laughter died down as Alsa sipped her tea, watching him. He finally wiped tears from his eyes and caught his breath again. “Oh, you have no idea how good it is to hear that. Everybody worshiped him, and here we find out that he was little more than an Elder himself.”
“I’m glad you’re in such a good humor about it,” Alsa said, “because we need him back.”
Calder glanced over his shoulder in a sudden panic, as though he expected to see the resurrected Emperor behind him. “You can’t bring him back to life! Can you?”
Alsa snorted. “If we could, he wouldn’t have needed to live forever in the first place. He could have waited to die, and then have us resurrect him. No, what we need is a new Emperor.”
It was faint, but Calder caught the scent of opportunity here. If they were seeking to raise a second Emperor, then this could be the chance he’d waited years to seize. The chance to change the Empire once and for all.
But he had to play the safe hand, slowly gathering as much information as he could. “Why so?”
“It’s becoming clear that the Empire cannot survive without an Emperor
,” Alsa said grimly. “The Regents are doing what they can, but it’s the nature of humanity to divide. If this continues for too many more years, we will have four separate kingdoms instead of one united Empire.”
Sadesthenes once said, “As it is in the hearts of men to seek authority, the path to unity can only end in one Empire.” Calder understood the concept, though privately he didn’t see the problem with having four separate empires. People already referred to the different regions separately—Izyrians considered themselves separate from the Erinin, who competed for status with Heartlanders. What would it matter if the different regions governed themselves, and then came together for the common good?
Either way, that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.
“That’s all well and good, Mother, but what are we looking for on this island?”
She raised her eyebrows, as though surprised he hadn’t figured it out yet. “Another Heart of Nakothi. We can’t very well raise a mortal man Emperor, can we?”
Disgust washed through Calder like a tide. “You want to bind someone else to the heart of a Great Elder? You? You’re Blackwatch!”
Alsa’s eyes hardened. “And this is exactly what the Blackwatch was founded to do. Turn the powers of the Elders to the good of humanity. You’d know that, if you—”
She was interrupted by a voice calling her name from the front of the tent. She pushed her way out, and Calder followed her.
It was the old man from earlier, still wearing his long black coat. He bowed slightly when he saw Alsa. “We’ve secured another possible candidate, Commander. Naberius wishes to have you inspect it yourself.”
Alsa patted the side of her coat, where Calder knew seven Awakened iron spikes rested. “Guide me,” she ordered, and the Watchman set off without hesitation.
With nothing else to do, Calder followed.
~~~
Jyrine Tessella Marten lay back on the mattress in her cell. Her imagination had failed her, in this case—the ominous mystery around the Consultants made her think that they would simply torture her and drop her body into the ocean.
They had actually treated her quite well, for a prisoner. Her cell was five yards by five, which was noticeably bigger than the cabin on The Testament. The mattress they gave her was thin but relatively comfortable, far from the pile of filthy straw she’d expected. They fed her twice a day, and the room was even lit by the even, warm light of a quicklamp. It was placed high out of her reach, true, but it banished the shadows far better than a candle.
She had requested two books so far, by leaning against her bars and shouting. She never saw a guard, but the books appeared in her cell within a few hours.
Say what you will about the Consultants, they know how to run a comfortable prison.
She only had one complaint about her cell: it could be easier to escape.
They had covered her head in a hood when they took her here, but they didn’t bother to hide the fact that they were taking her underground. There were no windows she could conveniently slip through, no guards to bribe. She had faked illness a few days before, and found a bottle of medicine delivered with her next meal.
As she did at least once every day, she closed her eyes and stretched her mind out for her Vessel. The earring was somewhere on the island, she was sure, but not close enough for her to call its power. She kept trying, stretching her mind out for the power that she felt she could almost touch.
Maybe Calder could get something out of this sensation. Some vision or clue as to the Vessel’s location. But Jerri was no Reader, and she eventually lost focus.
“They’ll have your Vessel sealed,” a voice called from down the hall. “The Architects aren’t foolish enough to let a Soulbound keep her powers.”
Jerri scrambled out of her cot, moving to the wall of bars that separated her from the hallway. “Is that what happened to you?”
It was a rare chance to get to know her neighbor. She intended to take advantage of it.
A smile infected his voice. “Perhaps. I’m not sure I should give too much information to the enemy.”
“That hardly sounds fair. You know about my Vessel. I think I should know at least something about you.”
Her neighbor went silent, and Jyrine assumed he’d given up on her. He seemed like the curious sort, to a certain degree; he would toss her a question every day or two, maybe make a comment, but he stopped responding anytime she tried to make it a real conversation.
This time, though, he’d responded. That had to be a chance.
“My name is Lucan,” he said at last. “And yours?”
Jerri clung to the hope of interaction, as though merely speaking with another human being would see her free from this cell. “Jyrine.”
“Jyrine. Hmm...are you from Vandenyas, Jyrine?”
“That’s an astute guess, Lucan. And you...Erinin?”
He sounded amused. “Not exactly. I hear you tried to betray us to the Elders.”
This time, it was Jerri’s turn to go silent. How had he known that? Was she actually speaking to a guard, and this was the Consultant idea of an interrogation?
No, the guards didn’t speak to her. And she’d heard Lucan moving around in his cell the past three weeks or so. Unless a Consultant was willing to stay in prison for two dozen nights in order to ask her a handful of questions, he had to be a genuine prisoner.
He must have overheard pieces of her initial interrogation, when they stuffed her in here. They’d asked normal things, mostly—who she was, what was her connection to the Sleepless, did she have any hidden powers.
So Lucan knew who she was; that could work to her advantage. She could use this opportunity to clear up some misconceptions.
“Not a betrayal, no,” she said. “The Elders aren’t our enemies. They’re strange and eternal. Some say they have knowledge beyond the stars, and they certainly have powers beyond anything we humans can control. Shouldn’t we learn to live alongside them, instead of fearing them as we do?”
Jerri hated having nothing more than his voice to go by—she longed to see his face, to judge how he was taking her speech.
“But the Elders enslaved our species, long ago,” Lucan said. “Do you propose another age of worldwide slavery?”
At least he sounded curious. Unlikely though it might be, perhaps she could make an ally.
“Not at all! When the Elders kept us as slaves, we were primitives. Savages. We initially fought them with tools of bone and rock, and it wasn’t until the war had gone on for years that the Emperor discovered bronze tools. How could the Great Elders, with their millennia of wisdom, work with a race like that? They had no choice but to keep us as slaves, as we use animals for their strength.”
It felt good to have a conversation with someone that would actually listen to her, like stretching muscles long dormant. She had once held high hopes for Calder, since he lived alongside creatures like Shuffles and the Lyathatan, but he proved even more stubborn in his fear of Elders than most. Maybe if she’d tried to persuade him earlier, shown him everything she’d learned…
Well, if she survived these prisons, she would teach him the truth. Everything she’d done would directly benefit him, after all.
Lucan mused audibly from the other cell. “Hmmm. So you suggest that, in modern times, we’re advanced enough to strike a bargain with the Elders.”
He understood! “Exactly! In effect, we do it already. The Blackwatch learns more about Elder biology every day, and the Navigators need Elderspawn guides to cross the Aion. Even the Emperor...” Jerri caught herself. She wasn’t supposed to know about the Emperor’s immortality.
She recovered quickly. “...approved of such research. There’s room enough in this world for humans and Elders both. Folk belief indicates that the Elders want nothing more than destruction, but that’s clearly untrue. When they were in charge, they didn’t destroy! They built a great civilization! They didn’t even eliminate humanity, though they must have been tempted.”
Her neighbor was silent for a minute or two. She thought she heard the scratch of a pen against paper. “I have always questioned the ancient accounts of the Elders,” he said at last.
“And for good reason! Practically the only details we have of the Great Elders come from their greatest opponent!”
More pen scratching. “You’re not a Reader, are you, Jyrine?”
How had he known that? “I don’t see how that’s relevant to the subject at hand.”
“Hmmm. I’m sure you don’t.”
Then he was quiet, and none of her questions could coax him back into a discussion.
She sat on her mattress, leaning the back of her head against the stone wall. Idly she twisted the end of her braid in her hands—she kept braiding her hair because she had nothing better to do with her time. The invisible guards had even provided a comb after she called for one.
What do I have to do to convince someone? The conversation with Lucan had gone well, she thought, but the hatred of the Elders ran deep throughout the whole Empire. What would it take to break through almost two millennia of indoctrination?
She still remembered herself as a little girl, terrified as she followed her father to a secret meeting. She’d stared into an endless void as her father and a cabal of other men and women communicated with another power—ancient, wise, and palpably strange.
Jerri shivered. She almost felt as though she could feel that dry cold of another world here, in her cell. And it seemed that the light of the quicklamp didn’t reach quite as far as it used to. She turned around. Were those shadows gathering against the wall?
“Lucan!” she shouted. “For your own safety, do not make a sound!”
He didn’t respond, which she decided to take as agreement.
Jerri stood, her back to the bars, facing the darkening end of her cell. Cold snatched at her skin as she straightened her hair and brushed out her clothes, making herself presentable. They had given her a red shirt and pants, obviously modeled on the uniforms of Imperial prisoners, but Jerri happened to think the color flattered her.