by Will Wight
And Jerri finally recognized the woman’s voice: Shera. He was talking to the would-be assassin who had taken Jerri here in the first place.
She pressed herself even harder against the back wall. As much as the Heart’s presence frightened her, the idea of Shera remembering her scared her even more. What if Shera had only let her live this long as an oversight? And now, on the eve of Jerri’s escape, the woman had finally remembered?
Jerri clutched the iron band so hard that it stabbed into the flesh of her palm. As she’d suspected, the metal had warmed up after an hour or two, and ever since it was safe to touch Jerri had worn it against her skin. She was terrified to lose it, worried that she would miss her opportunity.
Scared that she might not get to fight for her freedom.
It was strange, she thought. She was looking forward to the fight itself more than to the freedom. What did that say about her?
That I’ve been locked up in here for too long, probably.
A figure in black moved outside the bars of Jerri’s cell, and Shera stepped up, watching Jerri curiously.
The terror gripped Jerri’s heart in panic. Would it be right now? Would Shera correct her mistake here?
She clutched the metal band even tighter, such that she was afraid she might draw blood. The Heart’s power had remained steady, so there was no signal, but she could try using the Elder artifact anyway. Maybe it would still work, and free her, even though it would likely anger the Sleepless.
If Shera entered, she would try it. What did she have to lose?
But the Consultant didn’t say anything. She simply stood there, watching.
After a few awkward moments, Jerri forced herself to her feet, slipping the iron band onto her left wrist and casually holding the arm behind her back. The artifact was a little loose to be worn as jewelry, but hopefully Shera wasn’t here for a detailed inspection.
With her other hand, Jerri combed her hair back as though that were the most important thing on her mind. It may have been too late to start playing the cool, unemotional prisoner after she had cringed and shrunk against the wall the second Shera showed up, but every bit of poise would help.
“Shera, isn’t it? May I help you with something?”
Shera was silent for another second before she spoke. “Why do what you’re doing? What is the point?”
Far from sounding cold and collected, she sounded...weary. That surprised Jerri even more than the assassin showing up in the first place. Every other time the two of them had spoken, the other woman had sounded as though she had a jagged black rock where her heart should be.
“I’m stuck in a cell, sleeping twelve hours a day,” Jyrine responded. “Just trying to while away idle hours, I suppose. Not much point to it.”
Shera sagged forward, resting her forehead against the bars. “I don’t want to do this. Elders and the Emperor and living forever...any of it. I just...well, that’s the way it is. So I at least want to know why. What are you doing this for? What’s the point?”
Jerri studied her for a moment. Shera looked as though she hadn’t slept for a week, and she spoke like someone about to die.
This was the ideal moment to offer hope.
“Humans are fundamentally selfish, aren’t we?” Jerri said. “No matter what else we do, when it comes down to a moment for action, we will always act for ourselves and those closest to us. We spend our whole lives worshiping one person.”
Shera didn’t react. She didn’t leave or argue, either, which Jerri took as a good sign.
“And where has that gotten us? Everyone agrees that it would be better if we were more charitable, more virtuous, simply nicer to our fellow man. But we don’t change. We advance, we make discoveries, but the basic nature of humanity remains the same throughout the centuries.”
Jerri held up one finger. “There is only one kind of truly selfless act. And that is anything done in the service of humanity as a whole. For all humankind. For everyone, present and future, whether or not we ever see a benefit for ourselves.”
Forcing herself to maintain a calm facade, Jerri stepped forward and gripped the bars, holding herself face-to-face with the woman who had taken her captive.
“The Sleepless do not worship Elders. We’re not a cult. Nor do we capture and examine them ourselves, like the Blackwatch do. Our goal is to communicate with the Great Elders, to establish a common understanding so that we can benefit from just the tiniest fraction of their wisdom. Not for ourselves, you understand. For all of mankind.”
Jerri finished the speech with a smile. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
Shera leaned back from the bars. She loosened her arms, rolling her neck, rubbing her shoulder, as though she had just woken up.
And after a few seconds, she spoke.
“So you’re idiots. Thanks. That tells me what I wanted to know.”
With her right hand, the Consultant reached behind her back and pulled out one of her bronze blades. Jerri stepped back, gripping the icy band of iron. Her palms were wet and clammy, and her breath was coming fast. Would she be able to complete the summons before Shera opened the door and used the knife? Would the call even work without the right timing?
But Shera didn’t open the door. Her gaze lingered on Jerri for another instant before she moved off down the hall, toward Lucan’s cell.
She had only taken one step when she stopped, going down into a crouch.
Lucan’s voice drifted from next door. “Who are you?” he asked someone Jerri couldn’t see. “What are you doing here?”
And another voice, a familiar voice, echoed through the stone hallways.
“On your knees,” Calder said.
~~~
Calder had rehearsed his next confrontation with Shera, but it didn’t go as well as he’d hoped.
When he and his Consultant escorts had turned the corner in the dungeon and seen Shera in the hallway, he had an instant of pure joy. He was still wearing the Emperor’s crown, after all, so he ordered her down on her knees.
Everyone in the hallway knelt on command, with a few notable exceptions. Calder himself remained standing, of course, as did Andel and Foster. The man in the cell to the left, some half-Heartlander man with a cell full of books, remained seated normally. And Shera stayed where she was, balanced on the balls of her feet with a knife in her right hand.
“Shera, I order you to put down the knife,” Calder said.
It might have been his imagination, but he thought he saw her hand tremble. She didn’t release the knife, though.
“There, you see?” Foster said. “That’s what I expected it to do. This absolute command thing is unnatural. It shouldn’t work so well.”
“Where did you get that?” Shera asked. Her voice had gone cold, and her eyes locked on his head.
Before he could answer, he was drawn to his left. To the cell in which the Heartlander man sat on a cot. He hadn’t noticed before, preoccupied as he was with Shera, but there was something in that cell.
It wants Calder dead. It wants to use his body as raw materials, to build him up into a monstrous slave. It wants to tear apart and remake him. It wants…
Calder tore his mind away, trying not to look at the box in that man’s hands. Though he was in a cage, he held the source of that malicious Intent.
The Heart of Nakothi had only grown stronger since Calder had last seen it. Now he was even more resolved to keep it away from anyone who wanted to use it—at this rate, no one would be able to resist Nakothi’s will for long.
The man in the prison held up the box in one hand. “What do you intend to do with this?” he asked.
Calder started to answer, but the other man didn’t wait.
He lobbed the box out between the bars.
Shera was there, snatching the box out of the air, and before Calder reacted, she had vanished into the shadows deeper in the tunnel.
“Get Shera, bring me the box,” he ordered.
Instantly, all the Consultants vanis
hed down the tunnel after her.
Calder stepped up to the bars, flanked by Andel and Foster. “And who might you be, sir?”
The prisoner leaned back against the wall, pulling a glove on. “You can call me Lucan. You’re Calder Marten, I presume.”
“It seems I’m famous. You asked me a question a moment ago, and I thought I’d hear your answer first: what do you intend to do with the Heart?”
“An answer for an answer. You tell me where you got the crown, and I will tell you about the Heart.”
Sounded fair. Calder could give him just enough details to keep him interested, without giving him the actual truth. He couldn’t tell a stranger the full story, after all. There was too much to incriminate him.
But a woman called out from farther down the tunnel. “Calder? Are you there?”
Behind him, Andel drew in a sharp breath, and Foster muttered something unkind. Calder barely heard them. He drifted past Lucan’s cell to a second. This one was identical in construction if not in contents: one wall of bars with a door, three stone walls and a dirt floor, a cot and a small table visible from the hall. Lucan’s had overflowed with books, papers, and extra small possessions, as though he had been living there for years and had slowly made the place his own. By comparison, this cell was bare, stark.
And Jerri was in it.
She wore the standard red shirt and pants provided to Imperial prisoners—the same clothes Calder’s father had worn, the last time he’d seen the man. Seeing the clothes on Jerri felt like a scene out of a nightmare. Her hair was messy and unbraided, as though she’d just woken up, and she hurriedly brushed her fingers through it when she saw him.
Other than that, she was in better condition than he’d hoped. Unbroken skin. No wounds. No signs of deprivation or abuse. They must have questioned her, surely, but no one had forced any answers out of her.
Good. So she was in perfect condition to answer him.
Or she would be, if he could figure out what to say. Every question died on his tongue: Why didn’t you tell me? When did you become a Soulbound? If I get you out of here, will you tell me everything?
In the silence, Andel took over. “Jyrine. You’re looking better than I expected.”
“Andel. You look exactly the same. Foster, I see you’re still alive.”
Foster barked a laugh, but otherwise he kept silent. No doubt waiting for Calder to take the lead.
“I’m trying to decide whether I should take you with me, or just leave you here,” Calder said at last.
Andel and Foster must have taken that as their cue to exit. One of them moved down the tunnel and into the shadows, and the other back up by Lucan’s cell. Presumably they were doing it to keep watch, but Calder knew they were trying to give him some space to talk.
Calder watched Jerri as she switched expressions between pleading, angry, proud, and troubled in the space of an instant. She was trying to decide which face to show him. Trying to decide which emotion she felt the strongest, maybe.
Finally, she settled on tired. “I would very much like to get out of here.”
“Good. Then you can answer my questions, and perhaps we can leave together. How long have you been a Soulbound?”
Her eyes fixed on the wall behind him. “Virtually my entire life. My father made me help slaughter an Elder-tainted baby Kameira when I was little more than four years old. Its alchemically preserved heart became the jewel in one of the earrings. The other is a copy. I wore those earrings for years before I had enough of a bond to Awaken them.”
That was more or less what he’d expected, though it still burned him worse than he’d thought to be hearing a new story out of a woman he’d known for more than ten years. A woman who knew everything about him.
He stopped himself before he went too far down that path and left her here out of spite. “And the…cult.”
“It’s not a cult. My father was one of the Sleepless leaders. He had to leave the Blackwatch because some of his fellow Guild members were getting too suspicious. We think he was eventually killed on a mission in the Aion, but we don’t know for sure.”
He was getting closer to the answers he really wanted and feared, as though he were circling the edges of a hungry whirlpool. “And what did they have you do?”
“Practically nothing. We were barely in contact.”
Calder reached through the bars. It was hard to Read a living human being, as their Intent shifted so quickly, but he should be able to learn something about her motivations. More importantly, he’d be able to hear a lie before it formed.
She recoiled as though he’d extended a weapon.
“Tell me the truth, Jerri.”
She hesitated, looking around for a way out. After a few seconds of stalling, she hesitantly clasped his hand.
From here, he could Read her current Intent. She was frightened, focused on escape, tired, and surprisingly…overjoyed to see him again. When he felt that, he almost decided to forgive her then and there.
But there was more. She also felt an old, worn guilt, and something else. She was focused on hiding something here, now. Something that she desperately hoped he didn’t notice.
“My mother was worthless after my father disappeared,” she went on. “The Sleepless raised me. They saw to my training and to my education. When I was old enough, they started sending me places.”
“Where?” he asked, though he thought he knew.
“Alsa Grayweather’s home. They wanted me to study with the Blackwatch.”
Her Intent was pure, straightforward. At the moment, she intended nothing but the truth.
He closed his eyes against the seething anger. So everything, from the first day, had been engineered.
Andel warned me, he reminded himself. ‘You don’t really know her,’ he said. ‘Don’t marry her.’ I told him he didn’t know what he was talking about.
Yet another time he’d gotten himself into trouble by ignoring Andel’s advice.
“You have to understand, Calder. We’re not trying to ‘destroy the world,’ or whatever the Emperor told everyone. The Elders have so much wisdom to share, so much power. If we can establish a working relationship with them, like you have with Shuffles and the Lyathatan, then we can’t even imagine everything we could learn! This world is only—”
It was too painful to listen to her. She actually believed everything she was saying. So he cut her off with another question.
“What was the next assignment?”
For a moment she intended to refuse him an answer, simply out of irritated anger. But then she smoothed it out and looked at him openly. “They wanted me to help you break your father out of prison.”
True.
“But it wasn’t just them. I—”
“And The Testament? Was that their idea?”
She hesitated, but he felt the truth. “They wanted the ship out of Blackwatch hands. I said we could steal it.”
Calder remembered Jerri pushing for him to steal The Testament. He had wanted to try breaking his father out without the ship, but it had been Jerri who talked him into the theft in the first place. He’d thought it was because she wanted a more exciting story.
Now he knew.
She rushed to explain. “They wanted to take it from you, but I wouldn’t tell them where we were. And when they found out you’d made a bargain with Kelarac, they worshiped you. Someone with a link to a Bellowing Horror, a Lyathatan, and the Soul Collector himself? They couldn’t have begged for anyone more perfect. Some of them wanted to make you Emperor, Calder.”
He found himself squeezing her hand painfully hard before he realized it. So he’d made an Elder cult happy, had he?
“Did they ask you to marry me?” he asked, finally.
She hesitated. “I wanted to,” she said.
Her Intent was off. Not entirely straight. It was true, but missing details.
“Did they ask?”
“…yes. They wanted me to, but only so I could teach you, so I cou
ld show you the truth. They hated the Emperor too, and they wanted you to get the crown!”
He had released her already, and started walking out. “Foster, Andel,” he called.
They hurried behind him, neither of them saying a word.
“Don’t leave me here!” Jerri shouted.
He stopped in his tracks for a second, letting everything he wanted to say run through his head in an incomprehensible jumble.
Finally, he just left.
~~~
Jerri fought back the tears, not for her own sake, but because she didn’t want Lucan to hear her crying. It was a strange sort of vanity, and she knew it didn’t make any sense—he had just heard their whole discussion, after all. And they were both prisoners. But she couldn’t bear the thought that he, a stranger, would listen to her weeping in her cell.
There was one good thing that had come of Calder’s visit, she reminded herself. He had been so focused on his questions, and on their relationship, that he hadn’t even noticed her poorly fitting alien bracelet.
The iron band didn’t even feel strange anymore, but she was confident that if Calder had Read it, he would have known far more about its purpose than she did. And he would have likely interfered, somehow.
Not that she would have particularly minded. She was beginning to realize that doing what the Sleepless told her to do typically ended with her in a more miserable situation than before.
Jerri gripped the metal. She had to break out of here before The Testament left the island. If she forced her way onboard, she was sure that she could explain herself. She had done everything with pure motives, after all. Calder couldn’t deny that.
She looked forward to seeing him realize that she was in the right all along, and that he had actually abandoned her, not the other way around. No matter how it had turned out, she was still glad that the truth was out there after so many years. She didn’t need to hide anymore—she could openly persuade him to her cause.
But part of her just wanted him to forget everything. Wanted to forget everything herself, so that the two of them could live as Navigators and let the Elders do whatever they wanted.
She shook herself back to reality. No matter how it turned out, she had to break out of here before Calder’s ship left the dock.