by Will Wight
She stood with poise as the back wall fell away, revealing an endless void swirling with colorless lights.
A voice slithered out of the dark, whispering directly into her ear. “Jyrine. The Heart has been found.”
Relief drew a smile on her face. “That’s wonderful news! We’re on schedule, then?”
“We have gathered our forces. We must secure the Heart before the Blackwatch can bind it to one of their choosing.”
“Surely that won’t be difficult. They don’t have a candidate ready, do they?”
The voice hissed, an invisible messenger conveying the irritation of the Sleepless cabal on the other end. “The candidate has already arrived. We do not have as much time as we wanted—the Guild Head is on her way.”
The Head of the Blackwatch, Jerri was sure. Bliss. She’d heard of the woman from both Calder and the Sleepless, and they all made that particular Guild Head sound terrifying. If her presence alone was enough to force the cabal’s long-laid plans off schedule, then she must be frightening indeed.
Jerri coughed politely. “I hate to ask, since I know you’re on a schedule, but when can I expect to be removed from here? I can’t be sure how long the Consultants will keep me alive.”
She had expected to die long before this point, truth be told. She only wished they would give her Vessel back before they killed her, so that she could make a fight of it.
A dozen distant whistles sounded from the void, and an icy wind swirled out. She wondered if that signified debate among the men and women at the far end.
“You must continue to wait,” the voice whispered at last. “We will soon have a powerful piece on the island. If you continue to survive, it will see to your freedom. And to your continued service.”
Elders and their servants could often have strange notions of time. “How soon, exactly, could I expect—”
“Soon,” the voice hissed, as the void began to shrink. “Soon...soon.”
The stone wall reappeared, rimed with frost. The quicklamp’s light penetrated the corners of her cell unobstructed.
She heaved a deep breath, collapsing back down onto the mattress. She rubbed her eyes, fighting back sudden tears.
Calder was on Nakothi’s island with the Heart, she knew it. He was on that island and in danger, without her to protect him. If he only realized how many threats she had destroyed over the years, without him ever knowing...
Now he was out there alone, unprotected. He would die thinking that she betrayed him.
And, more than likely, she would die in here without a soul to mourn her. The Empire would continue on its course of destruction. Her family would never see her body.
It was certainly enough to cry about, but she forced the tears back. Weeping never saved anyone.
And she had a job to do.
She closed her eyes, seeking her Vessel out once more. One of these days, someone would make a mistake and carry her earring closer. When they did, she’d burn her way out of this cell and teach the Consultants why they should never have captured her alive.
From the next cell, Lucan cleared his throat. “Can I speak now?”
“You’re safe,” she called back. If the Sleepless had known that someone was close enough to overhear their message, they would have undoubtedly sent an Elderspawn killer to eliminate the witness. It was fortunate for Lucan that he’d listened to her advice.
“What was that?” he asked, sounding fascinated rather than repelled.
She was only too happy to explain.
CHAPTER TEN
No, I will not teach you Awakening. However, I will explain the essential concept in order to satisfy your curiosity.
When you Awaken an object, you bring to that object a measure of awareness. Of ‘life,’ so to speak, though an inanimate object cannot move around like you or I do.
-Artur Belfry, Imperial Witness
Taken from a letter to his pupil, Calder Marten (fourteen years of age)
Twelve years ago
In the weeks that followed his meeting with Bliss, Calder came to a new understanding of Reading, of carpentry, and of the Blackwatch.
For one thing, he learned that none of the older Watchmen seemed at all inclined to teach him about the Guild or explain anything. At all.
“You either know what it’s like to face down an Elder, or you don’t,” his mother explained to him. “If you don’t, then nothing they teach you is going to prepare you. If you do, then nothing they teach you will tell you anything new.”
“And I don’t,” Calder said.
“No, you confronted Bliss and her Spear of Tharlos. They all know that, so they know you’re one of us.”
“They could try acting like it,” Calder grumbled.
But each morning, as he worked on The Testament, Calder understood that he had crossed some invisible line without realizing it. The men in black coats talked openly around him, making jokes about Crawlers or Children of Nakothi. He didn’t know what they were talking about, but that didn’t matter: they were talking, and he had never heard those terms as an outsider. The fact that they spoke so freely around him was itself evidence that he was trusted.
After he realized that, he noticed other things.
They were obviously used to the whims of their Guild Head. Normally the Guild required an application and interview process, but Calder learned that Bliss was prone to circumvent or overrule that procedure as it suited her. It was little more than a formality, now, and the Watchmen all reacted the same to his appointment. Upon learning that a fourteen-year-old boy had been elected to their Guild as a Reader, each and every member replied simply, ‘Welcome to the Blackwatch.’
One week, every day, a different Watchman would walk up to him and hand him a foot-long iron spike, then walk away without a word. He hung them from loops inside his coat that seemed to be made for that exact purpose, though no one would tell them what the nails themselves were for. At the end of the week, his mother presented him with the seventh and final nail.
Every member of the Blackwatch stopped what they were doing, gathered around, and applauded. Then they dispersed back to their jobs.
“And that’s as much ceremony as we see in the Blackwatch,” Alsa said. “Sad, really. I hear that in Kanatalia, the alchemists throw a party every time one of them completes an experiment.”
Calder held open his coat, revealing the seven nails. “I’m honored, really, but what do these do? They’re obviously invested, but I can’t tell how.”
He didn’t pick up on visions from the nails, exactly, more like a deep ocean of purpose, focused to some Intent he couldn’t fathom.
“Oh, they’re not complicated. Stick all seven of them into a Lesser Elder, all over its body, and it will stay bound and paralyzed.”
He glanced down at the nails. “Do I have to get them in the brain?”
Alsa touched her own set of nails through her coat. “Tradition says head, heart, spine, and all four limbs. But some Elderspawn don’t have heads, hearts, a spine, or limbs, so you try and do your best.”
“I see. Why all the secrecy, then?”
“We’re not supposed to speak to the initiate about the nails before he has all seven, but I almost warned you. I wouldn’t Read them too deeply, if I were you. And for light and life, don’t try to Awaken one.”
“Why not?” Calder asked, suddenly desperately curious to find out what would happen.
“Because they were already Awakened, long ago. Normally if you try to Awaken something twice, nothing happens. In this case, there have been...other effects. Don’t try it.”
Alsa shivered, and Calder swore never to try it. Not until he knew more details, anyway.
As he warmed up to the Blackwatch, he learned more than he had ever wanted to about The Testament. And about using Reading as a construction technique.
For one thing, it was harder than he had ever imagined.
With most objects, you simply willed it to perform better at its given task, and th
e object absorbed that Intent and got better. A knife invested to cut meat would slice through a steak as if through butter, and glass invested to prevent shattering might survive a hailstorm. It was a very simple and straightforward process, though only Readers could tell what change their Intent really made without careful experimentation: most people invested their Intent into objects blindly. Calder couldn’t understand that—it was like learning that most people painted without ever having seen a single color.
But the ship was an entirely different beast. Each board, nail, rope, and knot had to be invested for a specific purpose. And he couldn’t focus on one purpose at a time, either; he had to take into account the Intent and significance bound into the entire ship.
So he started off by investing a nail binding two boards together, fine. Then he invested the two boards for strength, which made them too rigid and brittle. The nail driving them together wouldn’t break, because of his Intent, but neither did the boards bend. Given a single tap, the whole thing exploded into splinters.
Next, he tried investing the boards for durability rather than strength. It took hours of focus and all his mental energy, but he eventually got them how he wanted them. However, he ended up with a pair of boards that would bend like rubber without breaking. Anyone who stepped on them would sink inches down into the deck.
When he finally gave up, Alsa showed him how it was done: you had to invest the two boards and the nail together, as a whole, as well as separately. It required him to focus his Intent three ways at once, which gave him such a headache that he was useless for almost two days afterward.
He returned to work with a renewed vigor. Now he could finally understand why Alsa could do so quickly what took him hours—if he practiced like this all day, he would be more skilled than a Magister by the time he’d finished the ship.
Then he saw the suicides, and they woke him as if from a dream.
He was moving his way down the railing of The Testament, laying his Intent into every inch of the starboard rail. He needed to focus, but he didn’t necessarily need to see what he was doing, so he often found his eyes wandering up to the west side of the harbor.
To Candle Bay Imperial Prison.
Somewhere up there, his father was locked in a cell. He imagined the prison cells as dank and lined with stone, but he didn’t know for sure. He’d never been able to visit.
For eighteen months now, the receptionist had turned him away.
“I’m sorry, that prisoner is under delicate medical care.”
“That prisoner is being held in special confinement today.”
“That prisoner is under disciplinary review, and cannot receive visitors at this time.”
At first he’d tried every week, then every month, and now he was considering sending a strongly worded letter to the Candle Bay warden. From the deck of The Testament, he glared up at the distant windows, imagining he could see his father’s red hair within.
Then one of the windows slid open, and a woman crawled out headfirst.
At this distance, she looked like a stick-figure more than a woman, but the sight was enough to destroy his concentration and ruin his Reading. What was she doing? Was she trying to climb down the wall and escape?
His questions were answered a moment later when she plunged headfirst, landing among the rocks below.
Calder’s involuntary shout startled the nearby workers and Watchmen, who all turned to look at him.
He pointed straight at the prison. “That woman jumped!”
And then a second figure crawled out the same figure, falling to his death on the rocks.
A murmur went up among the workers, and there was a general shaking of heads. “Bad business,” someone said, but then they all went back to work.
When a third and a fourth prisoner jumped out the window, Calder rushed around the deck looking for someone to help. He finally found a grizzled old Watchman sitting on a barrel, munching on a sandwich.
“Four people have jumped from that window in the last thirty seconds,” Calder said, trying to sound calm. He pointed as another man fell. “Five, now.”
The old man shook his head, letting out a sigh. “Bad business, that is. Bad business.” He took another bite of his sandwich. “That’s an Imperial Prison, isn’t it?”
“Candle Bay Imperial Prison.”
He kept shaking his head, brushing crumbs from his mustache. “I wouldn’t even keep an Elder locked up in an Imperial Prison. Not in the Capital, at any rate. Emperor only knows what they do to the prisoners in there.”
Calder had no doubt that the Emperor did know.
~~~
Back at home, in the Grayweather library, Calder recounted his story to Jyrine. With many whispers and glances over his shoulder, he told her about the Candle Bay suicides, about the receptionist never letting him see his father, and how he was almost sure that his father’s cell was overlooking the bay.
Jyrine looked over at their chaperone, Vorus, who was silently reading The Adventures of Soulbound Silas.
“You know what you need to do,” she whispered back. “You have to rescue him.”
It wasn’t a new idea, of course. He had pondered and toyed with the idea of breaking his father free since the night Rojric was taken. Once every few weeks, he’d take out the Emperor’s key and roll it between his fingers, silently promising himself that his father wouldn’t have to tolerate prison much longer.
But between his studies with Jyrine, his job working on The Testament, and his sudden appointment to a Guild he’d known almost nothing about...well, life had gotten in the way. It was easy to tell himself that he’d use his invested key to free his father like some hero, but it was quite another thing to give up his comfortable routine and put in the long, hard, boring work. What door would he even unlock? How would he get his father out of an unlatched cell unseen?
All that had changed when he witnessed the bodies on the stones of Candle Bay. Who knew what cruel experiments that Emperor was running on his father?
He couldn’t tell Jyrine too much, though. He had to seem reluctant, as if he’d be giving this project a few more weeks of thought. “I don’t know anything about the prison’s layout. Maybe if they would let me in...”
“You’re a Watchman now, aren’t you? Why don’t you, you know—” She waved her hands in the air, vaguely. “—tell them it’s a Blackwatch issue. What will they know?”
Calder had considered it. There were only two problems with that plan.
“First of all, the receptionist knows what I look like. I’ve been trying to see my father almost since he was locked up. Second, even if I could walk straight in the door with a Blackwatch badge on, they’re not about to let me walk out with a prisoner.”
Jyrine nodded sagely. “I know what you need.”
In spite of himself, Calder was intrigued. Jyrine often came up with unexpected bits of knowledge; he wouldn’t have been surprised if she knew the exact right procedure for a jailbreak.
“A partner,” she whispered. “A confidante. You need me.”
Calder looked at her, in her turquoise sitting-dress and matching earrings, with her excited smile, and he almost couldn’t resist the urge to let her help with the plan. He needed more help, after all, and this was a chance to work on a project together. A secret project.
But this wasn’t a game. Failure would see them locked up in Candle Bay alongside his father, at the best. At worst, they could be killed in the attempt. Or...
An image came to his mind of Bliss, pushing a shard of bone back into her black coat. He didn’t know how she’d react to hearing that one of her newest Watchmen had been arrested trying to break his father out of prison, but he couldn’t imagine that she’d take it well. She might even take punishment into her own hands.
He’d rather face Imperial justice.
“I do need you,” Calder said. “I can’t plan something like this on my own. I need someone to help me gather information, to plot the escape, and to cover
for me with Mother. But when it comes to the actual operation, it’s better if I go by myself.”
He pulled a line from a play he’d recently seen. “There are some things that a man has to do for himself,” he said solemnly.
Jyrine was quiet for a few seconds, staring at the back of her tattooed hand. “I don’t think my father’s dead. They say he is. But he came to me one night and said that he’d be going away on important work. And he told me that, no matter what I was told, he absolutely wasn’t dead.”
Her eyes rose, meeting his. “Three days later, the Blackwatch came to my door and told me he had been killed in the line of duty. That the means of his death was confidential. I don’t know what happened, or if he’s alive, or if he knew he was about to die and he told me so that I wouldn’t worry. But at this point, if I had any idea where he was, I’d go find him.”
And Calder had no idea how to respond. He sat looking into her eyes for far too long.
She finally broke the contact by tossing her braid back behind her shoulder. “And don’t give me that, ‘A man has to do things for himself’ line. I watched that play with you, remember.”
At this point, he didn’t know how to refuse her. He felt that he was teetering on a cliff, with the safety of home behind him and a deep unknown ahead. Until this point, his plans had remained firmly in the realm of fantasy. But if he told her he was going to free his father, he had the uncomfortable feeling she’d hold him to it.
With a deep breath, Calder took a step into the unknown.
“Let’s go for it, Jyrine.”
Her eyes sparkled, and she clapped him on the shoulder. “Jerri. That’s what my family calls me. Anyone who lets me in on their prison break conspiracies gets to call me Jerri.”
In the corner, Vorus slapped his book down on the table.
He glared at them over his glasses, raising a finger to the front of his scarf. “Sssssshhh!”
For the moment, Jerri and Calder returned to their studies.
CHAPTER ELEVEN