Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2) (20 page)

She walked around in front of the tub, taking the Guild Head’s stool. Meia was dressed all in black, as always, with black cloth covering her mouth and nose. She didn’t look at Calder as she spoke, her eyes flicking from entrance to entrance as though she expected another Champion to come barging through. “I’m afraid that she wouldn’t welcome me back. She might not kill me if she recognized me, but she would likely have me detained.”

She
had
said something about growing up in the Imperial Palace. He hadn’t pried into it at the time, but now he was much more interested.

 
“Why would she recognize you?” Calder asked carefully.

Meia’s eyes blinked orange for a fraction of a second, and just as he was starting to wonder if he was in danger, she answered. “This pertains to the security of the Imperial Palace, not to the Guild, so I suppose you’re authorized to know. You would find out eventually. Either Teach would tell you, or someone else would get around to it.”

Calder leaned forward, intrigued. “Don’t worry. I won’t repeat anything you say outside this room.”

“If the information was so sensitive that it couldn’t be leaked, I wouldn’t tell you,” she said, so matter-of-factly that it was a little insulting. “When I was young, I was assigned to the Emperor’s security detail. We were a discreet unit protecting the Emperor from behind, just as the Imperial Guards protected him from the front.”

Three figures in black had once tackled him during his audience with the Emperor. He had barely given them any thought at the time, but one had been a blond girl about his age.

“So we’d met before the dead island.” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but the memory of his father’s execution dredged up a world of pain. If Meia hadn’t held him back, he would have lunged at the Emperor. Maybe Calder would have gotten his revenge.

No, I would have been torn to pieces.
From a certain point of view, Meia had unintentionally saved his life back then.

“We had.”

“How many of you were there?” He’d seen three, but as far as he knew, there could have been a thousand young Consultants-in-training defending the Emperor in the shadows.

“Three. Myself, Lucan, and Shera.”

Shera.
The woman who had haunted him for months, who had directly or indirectly turned his life inside-out. If his Guilds won the current dispute, established him as the Emperor, and returned the Consultants to the fold, then Shera might be compelled to protect his life. He found some irony in that.

Another memory returned, more recent: on the Gray Island, as the ground crumbled far above them, three Consultants fought him. The battle that had ended in Urzaia’s death. Meia, Shera, and one other: a Heartlander man dressed identically to the other two, except for the addition of black gloves. Lucan. The man who had been imprisoned in the Gray Island next to his wife.

“You three have made it a habit to get in my way.”

Meia waited silently, undisturbed.

This isn’t the way,
he reminded himself.
I need her on my side.
He reached out a hand, shaking it free of green goop, and patted Meia on the knee. “Never mind. I appreciate that you’re here, working with me. I know that you’ve always acted with loyalty to your Guild and to the Empire, and I’m certain that we’ll continue to work more closely in the future.”

He was proud of that little speech, but Meia’s eyebrows raised. “I’ve already sent my report to the Architects. If they order me away, I’ll disappear.”

“
Or
you could join the crew of
The Testament.
I’ve registered you with the Guild as an honorary crew member.” That was a lie, but he could make it the truth if she agreed. “When the Empire is whole again, you’ll be on the side of the Emperor, defending the world from Elders.”

He thought he saw the hint of a smile under her black veil, but it could have been wishful thinking. “The Empire will never be whole.”

“How can you be sure?”

Her voice was suddenly sad, almost wistful. “Because the Consultants aren’t holding it together. If we’ve given up, everyone should.”

The words sent a shiver down his back in spite of the warm alchemical slop. Those were the words of someone who hadn’t wanted to give up on the Empire...but who had been convinced that it was absolutely, irrevocably dead.

What did she know that he didn’t?

“Besides,” she continued, “We’ve fought against the Elders for years.”

He was glad for another topic, and this allowed him to ask something that had fired his curiosity. “Speaking of which, how did you escape from Nakothi’s Handmaiden?” He’d been sure the Consultants would only be able to distract it while he left on
The Testament,
but they’d apparently banished the Elder entirely.

“We killed it.”

Calder let the silence stretch, waiting for the inevitable correction or qualification that was sure to follow. Even for the Blackwatch or the Luminian Order, it wasn’t so easy to kill an Elder. Lesser Elderspawn were one thing; they were effectively the small, defenseless animals of the Elder world. But a Handmaiden was intelligent, vicious, and had lived for thousands of years. Even Kelarac had warned Calder not to use his Awakened blade against these servants of Nakothi. But the Consultants had managed it?

“How?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“The Consultant’s Guild manages each client’s issues with utmost efficiency,” she recited. “In the event that the client is threatened while under the protection of the Guild, that threat will be removed.”

The legendary Consultant secrecy. If he was honest with himself, he should admit that he was lucky to get even as much information as he had. But he decided to push for a little more. “Was it Shera?”

“It was the Consultant’s Guild.”

“She has an Awakened weapon now, and she didn’t before. She might even be a Soulbound.” With each word, he stared at Meia’s face, gauging her reaction. “Did she destroy the Handmaiden?”

Meia might as well have been filling out paperwork back at the Guild. “The Consultants have resources beyond what you know.”

“This is a matter of my personal security,” he stressed. “Shera has tried to kill me...what, three or four times now?”

“No, she hasn’t.”

At last, a personal response. Calder leaped on it. “What do you mean by that?”

“If her primary assignment had been to kill you, you would be dead.”

Now that he thought about it, Shera had been trying to accomplish something else each time she’d attacked him. Assassinating Naberius, securing the Heart, stopping Urzaia. But the fact remained that she
had
attempted to kill him, secondary though it may have been.

“But I have to be in danger now. Your Guild is working against me; wouldn’t it be in Shera’s best interests to have me removed? The more I know about her, the safer I am.”

Meia flexed one hand, claws extending and retracting from her nails. He tried not to be intimidated by that. “I have no information from the Architects regarding you personally, so this is only my opinion. But I don’t believe you are in direct danger from us at this time.”

Of all the things she could have said on the topic, this surprised him the most. He’d thought she was working outside the interests of her Guild to support him, out of her lingering loyalty to the Empire. Not
against
her Guild, of course, but at least independent from it. He’d been sure that the Consultants as a whole would gladly murder him given the chance. “Why not? You’re Independents, against the Emperor, and I’m the Emperor.”

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “No,” she said. “You’re not.”

~~~

Freed from the alchemical bath, Calder had his wounds wrapped in fresh bandages. His leg still ached and his shoulder was sore, but for the first time in days he could actually fight if he needed to. It was a reassuring feeling.

Palace servants dressed him in clothes that suited the Emperor: layers of blue from navy to aquamarine, draped around his body like a series of tents had artfully collapsed. He bore them with dignity as the Imperial Guard escorted him through the halls, though he felt like he stepped on his own hem every four or five yards. It was like learning to wear a dress.

More than anything, he focused on the clothes to distract himself from his destination.
“The educated man faces his problems, he does not turn his back.”
Sadesthenes, though his wisdom was an unwelcome reminder just then.

The Guards led Calder past another courtyard, through a checkpoint complete with a pair of Witnesses, and into a building that outwardly looked little different from all the others in the palace complex. The walls were white, the tiled roof red, and Imperial Guards stood at every entrance. The differences were minor, but significant: there were no windows here, and the doors were heavy barred steel.

The Palace dungeon.

It’s not underground,
he thought.
Is it still a dungeon?
If it mattered, someone would correct him eventually.

The dungeon was fully occupied, and he could vaguely hear them behind their sealed doors, but not one of them could see out. So he passed through the hallways without incident, until his Guards stopped him at one particular door. A woman with eyes all over her arms twisted the key, and two Guards with combat-ready adaptations—one with a scorpion’s giant tail, the other with savage claws on his hands—leaped inside. They scanned the room thoroughly and searched the prisoner before declaring it safe.

Only then did Calder step inside to see his wife.

Both times he’d spoken to Jerri since she’d left his ship, she’d been in a different prison. There was surely some sort of poetic justice in that fact, but it brought him no joy. Her hair was loose and messy, and they’d changed her last prisoner’s outfit for a new one. This one was a dingy red compared to the last, with patches at the knees and loose threads on the sleeves. Strange, that the Consultant’s Guild would dress its prisoners better than the Imperial Palace.

Otherwise, she was every inch the Jerri he’d known his whole life. Her dusky skin, the tattoo climbing from her left ankle up the side of her neck, even the way she brightened briefly when she caught sight of his face. Her eagerness to see him stabbed him through the heart, and the knife twisted when she lost that joy an instant later, lifting her chin and drawing up her shoulders to address him firmly.

“I’m pleased you weren’t hurt, Calder,” she said, professionally distant.

The Imperial Guards had retreated, giving them the illusion of a private space without actually allowing the prisoner any room to try anything.

“I was. The alchemists said that if I hadn’t gotten treatment immediately, I would have suffered internal damage from your attack on the Optasia. And the Champion would have torn me apart. Was he one of yours?”

Calder doubted it—the Independent Guilds had plenty of money to hire the Champions, so they were the likely culprits. But her expression would tell him what he needed to know.

Her eyes widened. “We’re not trying to
kill
you, Calder. I didn’t even know you would be there at the Optasia, and the Champion...I had nothing to do with that. Nothing.”

Under normal circumstances, she would have made a joke about him surviving a Champion’s attack. She clearly wanted him to believe her.

And he did. No matter how many times she’d lied to him over the years, he believed her now.

“Then what are you doing here, Jerri?” His guilt at leaving her behind on the Gray Island had hardly faded, even though he’d known she had most likely survived, and now here she was in another cell.

She smiled, adding a twisted irony to her next words. “I’m here to help you save the world.”

Calder glanced around at the tight walls, the low-slung cot. “From a hole?”

“From anywhere I can. I was told that I’d be able to put you on the throne if I followed along, and I see the wisdom in it now.”

Put you on the throne.
Even now, she claimed she was trying to help him. “I’ve done it without you. I’m
on
the throne, Jerri.”

“But you haven’t used it yet,” she said quietly. “If you really want to be the Emperor, you need the Optasia. It’s the only way humanity can speak to them.”

A chill crawled up his arms. “What are you talking about?”

“What do you think?” Jerri leaned back against the wall, folding her arms, the way she always did when she lectured. “We need someone who can deal with the Great Elders on
their
terms, to represent all of mankind. The old Emperor refused to do that, but a
new
one, one whose reign was already arranged by the Great Ones...”

Calder stiffened. His reign had been arranged?

“Leave me alone with the prisoner,” he said.

The man with the scorpion tail shook his head firmly. “We have strict orders—”

Calder met his eyes. “Now you have new ones.”

Maybe it was the clothes, the ancient fashion that only the Emperor had maintained. Maybe it was the actual authority in Calder’s newfound title, or his own projected confidence.

Whatever it was, the Guards left.

“The Great Elders did not
arrange
for me to be here,” he said, giving into his anger even further now that the Guards had left. “They may have foreseen it, but they are
not
the reason I’m standing here today.”

Jerri’s mouth hung open, and she looked at him in a mixture of disbelief and disgust, as though he’d just announced that he was absolutely convinced the earth was flat. “How did you free your father from prison? With the Lyathatan, sent by Kelarac. Before that, how did your mother gain the support she did in the Guilds? She worked in the Blackwatch for
years
. Fighting Elders. Even your family’s reputation is built on the Elders. Even the fights that drove your parents apart, all the Elders. You think the Great Ones had nothing to do with that?”

That was entirely different—they had been
fighting
the Elders, not accepting their help—but before Calder could protest, Jerri went on. “Most of your Navigator work had to do with the Elders. An Elder is pulling your ship, and another one sits on your shoulder. How did you survive the fight on the Gray Island? Kelarac stepped in, once again. Leaving aside the fact that the whole reason you were
there
was because of a fight to inherit Nakothi’s power.”