Of Sea and Shadow (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 1)

by Will Wight

  Calder sprinted down the last flight of steps. It was obvious that Urzaia wasn’t listening, so he’d have to put himself in danger to catch the man’s attention.

  The stairs landed him at the top edge of the arena’s seats. This whole side rumbled ominously, webbed with cracks in the stone benches. Urzaia and his opponent clashed at the opposite side of the arena, black hatchets and bronze knives moving in a blur that Calder couldn’t track.

  The Handmaiden’s howl seemed to come from all around them, and Calder threw away the last remnants of his restraint. It’s too late to be careful now.

  He ran down the crumbling arena benches. When the stone shifted under his weight, seemingly ready to give way at any second, he didn’t slow down. He ran faster.

  More than once, he’d thought of leaving Urzaia here. If anyone could make his way out of a war zone, it would be the Izyrian gladiator. But abandoning a crewmate here would make him no better than…

  …no better than Jerri, he’d almost thought. Jerri, whom he was about to abandon to her death.

  “Fine, fine, I’ll save her,” he said to no one in particular. “Leave me alone already.”

  “ALONE,” Shuffles chuckled. He seemed to enjoy this headlong flight down a crumbling staircase, flaring his wings to catch the wind.

  “You can shut up,” Calder muttered, leaping the last few steps, which had been shattered to jagged pieces. He landed in what was left of the arena’s sand, crouched amid the debris of what had once been obstacles for gladiators here.

  Close up, the destruction was even more impressive. Broken planks of wood lay propped against chunks of stone all around him, looking like a small town after a tornado. Each strike of Urzaia’s hatchet against the Consultant’s knife was louder than gunfire, and dust settled from the distant ceiling like wood smoke in reverse.

  “Urzaia! Come with me!”

  The Consultant planted a kick in Urzaia’s armored stomach, doubling him over, and then slashed at his neck. For an instant Calder thought she had actually cut his head off, but Urzaia reacted too quickly, tossing himself down the stairs. He tumbled down every stone bench on the way down, landing with his back on a boulder.

  The blond Consultant advanced on her opponent and Calder pulled his pistol almost on instinct, running forward to help his friend.

  At that moment, another figure in black rushed across the arena, a bronze knife in her right hand. Her black hair blew behind her, exposing her face.

  Shera.

  Calder adjusted his aim and fired.

  Shera ducked and rolled, and his bullet did nothing but kick up sand. But she turned to face him, knife out.

  He holstered his gun and readied Kelarac’s blade.

  The two of them froze for a long second, facing each other. Calder stood with one foot forward, cutlass in hand, the Emperor’s crown on his head and an Elderspawn on his shoulder; Shera crouched low with a bronze-bladed knife in her right hand and a tiny silver throwing blade in her left. Streams of dust drifted between them.

  Her dark eyes were cold, empty, inhuman. Even the Lyathatan had more passion in his expression than she did. It was the face of a woman who would kill him without hesitation and sleep soundly afterward.

  She started this.

  If it weren’t for this Consultant, he would have completed his assignment for Naberius and sailed away ten thousand goldmarks richer. She was the one who had taken Jerri, who had taken the Heart of Nakothi, who had drawn him all the way here.

  He couldn’t let her leave.

  The wound she’d left in his left shin was still bandaged. He didn’t think of the injury much, as it didn’t slow him from walking around, but it began to throb now. If it slowed him even a step in this fight, Shera would see him dead.

  The stillness was broken by Shuffles, who started to laugh. Its laughter was deep, dark, and ominous: the laugh of a triumphant villain at the end of a play. And it started quiet but grew in volume until he was cackling even louder than the wails of the Handmaiden overhead.

  “KILL,” Shuffles shouted, and flapped its way off of Calder’s shoulder.

  It served as a bell, signaling the start of the fight. Shera flicked her left hand forward, launching the steel blade at his face. He jerked to one side in time, turning the motion into a sidestep and then an advance, driving the edge of his blade down at her face.

  She slapped the blade aside with her own, pulling a needle from her belt and stepping in close, reaching up to his neck. Calder had fallen for that before, so he was prepared this time.

  He moved in closer, slamming his elbow into her face.

  The Consultant’s nose split with a crunch and she staggered back, the hand with the needle wavering. He advanced again, driving the point of his sword at her midsection.

  This time, she ducked impossibly low, reversing a grip on her knife as though she meant to drive it through his foot. He shifted his weight, sliding his boot sideways across the sand, and then slammed the hilt of his sword down on the back of her neck.

  At least, he tried to. She rolled to one side, slashing at his wounded leg with her blade as she passed.

  It was only a shallow cut, he knew—the bandage from the last injury would slow her knife a little. But it still sent a flare of pain rising from his ankle to his hip as the new wound crossed the old, and he limped backwards in panic, instinctively trying to put as much distance between himself and his enemy as possible.

  Her hand moved down to the pouch on her left thigh, pulling out another triangular blade of silver metal.

  “Stop where you are!” Calder ordered, feeding his Intent into the crown on his head.

  She didn’t stop, no more than she had in the tunnel. But she did hesitate.

  And that gave Calder enough time to lunge behind a broken wooden shed, breaking her line of sight. Crashes of thunder all around him said that Urzaia and his opponent were still in combat, and the bundle of malice and insanity that was Nakothi’s Handmaiden stood directly above them now. The longer he stalled, the more likely someone or something else would interfere.

  He sensed a mindless hunger approaching from behind him, and he realized that something was galloping toward them at great speed.

  Shera didn’t come around the side of the half-destroyed shed, as he’d hoped. She vaulted up to the top of it, leaping from the shed to a nearby chunk of arena stone when the shed almost instantly collapsed. A blade flashed from her hand, and he tried to deflect it with his sword.

  It was only partially successful. The tiny dagger bounced off the flat of his sword, sending up sparks, and embedded itself an inch into his chest, below his right shoulder.

  Pain traveled from his ribs all the way to his elbow, and he gritted his teeth to keep from screaming. He jerked the knife out, letting it fall to the ground—there was no way he could keep fighting with it stuck inside. But now his left leg and his right arm both felt as though they’d been filled with red-hot rocks.

  Blood ran down in a fan from Shera’s nose, but otherwise she moved as though she were completely unharmed. If she kept this up, she would kill him with a thousand tiny cuts.

  At this rate, he wouldn’t be able to win this fight on his own. He would have to get someone to fight for him.

  He cast his mind out through Kelarac’s mark, latching on to the nearest source of mindless bloodlust. There were a surprising number of Nakothi’s children down here in the broken arena—they kept their distance out of fear, and the Handmaiden’s lingering restraint.

  Using his Intent as a lure, he dragged one of the creatures closer.

  Shera crouched warily on a boulder-sized chunk of the arena, and he limped to one side, forcing her to keep her eyes on him.

  In reality, he wanted to keep her eyes off the monster approaching from behind.

  Shera realized what he was doing only at the last second, as the shadow of a headless, pale-skinned, shaved gorilla lunged up from behind her. She spun, bringing her bronze knife up in one hand and a poisone
d needle in the other.

  The Child of Nakothi’s descending fist caught her on the shoulder, sending her tumbling off the rock and to the ground.

  Calder couldn’t let the creature run free, so he stepped up and ran it through with his cutlass, withdrawing the blade in a spray of milky white blood.

  There was no point in investing an Awakened blade—it wouldn’t hold the Intent. But habit made him chant silently, Death to the deathless.

  Still eerily quiet, the gorilla collapsed and dissolved into a pile of white.

  Only an instant had passed, so Shera was still twitching and groaning on the ground, her hand grasping at the hilt of her knife. He stood over her, reversed his sword, and drove it down.

  A black-clad foot touched his stomach, surprisingly gentle.

  The blond Consultant stared at him from a foot away, hair blowing loose. Her eyes were bright orange, her pupils vertical slits. She held a bronze blade reversed in each fist, and her face was covered in slashes and scrapes.

  She snarled at him and completed her kick, launching him backwards.

  The world blurred around him as he tumbled backwards. He had the presence of mind left to release his sword, as he’d been taught. If you fell, you didn’t want to be clutching a bare blade, or you were likely to slit your own throat.

  He slammed against stone, pain crashing through every one of his bones as though he’d been tossed out of a second-story window and landed in the courtyard. His back arched in agony and he gasped helplessly for breath. The crown flew off his head, rolling like a gold coin in front of his eyes until it came spinning to a halt a second later.

  A roaring voice filled the underground arena. “Captain!” Urzaia shouted.

  It took all of Calder’s strength to turn his head.

  The Izyrian’s tied-back hair had come loose, blowing around his head like a storm. Blood streamed down his face like a mask, and a huge red gash in his side wept freely, but he still gritted his jaw, baring his missing teeth. His black hatchets came down on the blond Consultant like hammers of judgment.

  She raised both of the knives to defend herself, but he pounded on her defense relentlessly, knocking one blade out of her hand. Seeing the instant of weakness, he shouted again, driving his second hatchet down and into her shoulder.

  The sheer force knocked her to her knees, a spray of blood arching up into the air.

  And something changed.

  Calder sensed it as soon as it happened. Something he had seen in his Reading before, something ravenous and powerful, something newborn…a weapon entered the arena.

  Lucan wore different clothes than he had when Calder had last seen him, sitting in his cell: a seamless black outfit and black cloth half-mask, identical to Shera and her partner. He ran into sight, carrying a bronze blade in his left hand.

  His right went to a package at his belt and unfolded something shining a bright green.

  Calder raised a shaking hand as if to stop it, but he was too far away and too weak.

  “Shera!” Lucan shouted, just as Calder called out: “Urzaia!”

  The gladiator kicked his blond opponent away, readying his hatchet and turning to face this new threat.

  Behind him, a black-gloved hand reached out and snatched the green knife from midair.

  “Behind you!” Calder screamed, struggling to his feet.

  Urzaia spun instantly, leading with his hatchet, swinging with enough force to crash through an oak tree.

  But Shera ducked his strike, stood up, and drove her newly Awakened blade into his chest.

  Wisps of blazing green shot out from the shining knife, wrapping around Urzaia’s body. Lights played like ball lightning around the gold hide wrapped around his upper arm—his Vessel. The source of his power.

  Like a toppling statue, Urzaia fell over backwards. His hatchets fell from limp hands.

  Shera held on to the grip of her knife, letting the momentum of Urzaia’s body pull the blade free. In only an instant, the blood on the blade disappeared, absorbed into the knife.

  Calder could have been imagining it, but he thought he heard the weapon sigh contentedly.

  He scrambled in the dust with both hands, cramming the crown back onto his head and scooping up his blade. But now he stood facing three Consultants: a young, half-Heartlander man pulling off his gloves; a blond warrior who had stood face-to-face with Urzaia—she was injured and on her knees, but he had no doubt she could still overpower him; and Shera. She clutched her old bronze knife in her right hand and her Awakened emerald blade in her left.

  They’d killed Urzaia. His anger, and his frustration at his own helplessness, kept him standing before them. He raised his sword. “Let’s get to it, then,” he said.

  Then the Handmaiden of Nakothi tore off the roof.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘Kameira’ is a tricky term. We use it to refer to any creature not of human or Elder origin that can manipulate the world in seemingly supernatural ways. The legendary Cloudseeker Hydra, according to ancient accounts, could levitate itself through the skies and uproot trees without touching them.

  How? Are the Kameira powers over nature related in some way to human Intent, or do they have more in common with the strange abilities of the Elders? More importantly, what precisely are the Kameira themselves?

  Our Guild has recently confirmed what naturalists have long suspected: that different species of Kameira are no more related to one another than a fox is related to a bird. How, then, do we account for their miraculous powers?

  -Tomas Stillwell, Head of the Greenwarden’s Guild

  Eleven years ago

  By the time Calder pulled on his Blackwatch cloak and staggered up to the deck, Jerri was already lying in a heap. A Kameira, a vast bird with rainbow-bright wings, circled the sun in the skies over the mast.

  Calder ran over to Jyrine’s body, pressing his hand to her neck and ignoring the searing pain in his head as he Read her. He let out a breath when he realized that she was completely unharmed.

  Then that struck him as strange.

  If she was completely unharmed, why was she lying unconscious on the deck?

  Booted feet clanked closer to him, and he looked up to see the stranger on his ship. She towered over him, a tall woman in full black-and-red plated armor. The crest on her breastplate almost made him sick: a shield bearing the sun-and-moon emblem of the Empire.

  The Imperial Guard. They’d found him, even here.

  Her blond hair was cut close to her skull, her blue eyes cold. A leather-wrapped sword hilt looked over her right shoulder, and as soon as he noticed the weapon, a falling star struck Calder’s skull. He screamed with the pain, clutching his head with both hands.

  That weapon was older than the Empire, older than the Emperor, perhaps as old as the monster pulling this ship. And it killed. He could pilot The Testament through the oceans of blood that blade had spilled.

  No, the blade hadn’t just taken lives. It was a taker of lives. That was its essence, its sole Intent. And if Calder had sensed that from this distance, without touching its hilt, and while trying not to Read...

  He was surprised the sword hadn’t killed them all simply by being so close.

  The armored woman spoke with the voice of an executioner. “By order of the Emperor, I have come to retrieve the criminal Calder Marten, who stands accused of destroying an Imperial prison, conspiring to set free a prisoner, and stealing a ship that is the rightful property of the Blackwatch Guild.”

  Having recited her piece, she leaned forward and grabbed Calder, dragging him up by the wrist as if he were a child. “Come with me.”

  Calder’s throat was rough, but there was one thing on his mind even more important than his impending arrest. “What is that thing on your back?”

  “What, you’ve never seen a sword before?”

  She whistled and the Kameira landed gracefully on the deck, dipping its swanlike neck in a bow. Calder couldn’t help but be impressed: through his bond wi
th the ship, he could feel that its talons hadn’t even gouged the wood.

  Rojric hurried up the ladder to the deck, anger and fear radiating from his every movement. “Stop! I’m the one you want.”

  The woman glared at him. Calder felt a force pass by him, the shadow of something huge and unseen, and his father collapsed.

  “No,” she said. “You’re not.”

  She bundled Calder under one arm, tossing him onto the bird’s back. It was surprisingly soft, cushioned by a thick layer of glimmering feathers. The woman followed him, sliding easily onto a perch at the base of the Kameira’s neck and gently patting the creature’s feathers.

  With a trill of birdsong, the bird soared from the deck into the air.

  Calder watched The Testament fall away beneath him, surrounded by the vast blue of the ocean.

  At last he struggled, though not very hard. A fall from this height would break his bones to gravel. “You can’t just leave them there! They can’t steer the ship!”

  “A crew will be along shortly to retrieve The Testament and remove its passengers.”

  Calder glanced around and saw that she was right: a loose half-circle of ships drifted toward his, all flying Imperial flags.

  He should have been afraid. He shouldn’t have been able to think through his terror and anger and guilt.

  But all he felt was his splitting headache.

  “Who are you?” he asked, weakly. “Where are you taking me?”

  The woman didn’t turn around. “I am Jarelys Teach, General of the Empire and Head of the Imperial Guard. I’m taking you to your trial.”

  ~~~

  When Calder had pictured his trial, he’d never imagined the Emperor would be there.

  The Imperial Palace was an order of magnitude more splendid than anything he’d ever seen or imagined in his life. He couldn’t price the smallest floor tile, and each panel of wood in the walls must have been worth a hundred goldmarks. Here, in the center of the Imperial Palace, they had taken him to some sort of audience hall.