Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2) (21 page)

“I was there because of
you
,” Calder insisted, but he could feel his self-righteous footing crack. “And how did you know about Kelarac?”

“And how did you know you were going to be the Emperor one day?” she asked, ignoring him. “How did the entire crew believe in you
so much
that they were willing to defy the Empire? You’ve been dancing to an Elder tune for half your life.”

Calder’s anger didn’t fade, but he shut his mouth.

Jerri’s voice softened as she went on. “I’m not accusing you, Calder. It would be an accusation coming from anyone else, but not from me. You of all people should understand that we
can
borrow the powers of Elders. It can be a good thing! They can be our partners, not our parasites.”

He had to admit that, of all the people he knew who were not Elder-worshiping cultists, he’d relied on Elder powers the most. They worked to his benefit every time, and always for prices he could afford to pay. They were alien, menacing, and heartless, but most of them hadn’t seemed to mean him any specific harm.

The thought didn’t reassure him. It chilled him down to his bones.

Is this how the Sleepless make their recruits?

It had begun when he was a child, receiving Shuffles as a pet. Hearing his mother talk about Elderspawn in the same way you’d talk about wild lions; something to be respected, certainly, even feared in a healthy way. Even, perhaps, admired.

Somewhere along the way, he’d begun thinking of the Great Elders differently. Maybe some, like Urg’naut and Nakothi, were actively evil. Most weren’t. They were simply alien, and indescribably powerful.

That was the crack in his defenses. That was where he’d gone wrong.

And he’d listened to Ach’magut.

Even now, he didn’t think the Overseer had been
wrong
. It was impossible to imagine that any predictions of Ach’magut could be incorrect to the slightest degree; the Great Elder had spoken directly to him, and its words carried the weight of inescapable destiny.

But just because it was the truth didn’t mean the Elder was being honest. Of course it wasn’t. It was telling him the truth for its own complex, intricate reasons.

In his own way, he’d been trusting Elders all along.

Jerri watched him come to this realization, and her face softened in sympathy. “It’s true, Calder. The sooner you accept that, the happier we can be.”

We.

“If you still don’t believe me, use the Optasia. Check for yourself. The Great Ones set up your attack so that it would scar the sky. Very soon, it will stretch and crack, opening a tunnel between our world and those beyond. That is when we will
need
a representative, Calder. Someone who can speak for us all.”

The air over the Imperial Palace had been fuzzy and indistinct after the attack on the Optasia, though he’d heard it was only visible from the Imperial Palace. “General Teach says we have two or three days before that happens.”

She laughed. “Significantly less than that.”

“The Optasia might be damaged.” He felt like a child, throwing up excuses to avoid a chore.

“A Great One intervened personally in this matter. He wouldn’t leave the throne in a state where it couldn’t be used.”

“The
last
time I came face-to-face with an Elder, it was Nakothi’s Handmaiden. She almost killed us both.” Technically, the last time was his dream of Kelarac, but he could only hope that Jerri didn’t know anything about that.

Jerri stepped closer to him. “Nakothi is...not the Great Elder you want to negotiate with. She’s far beyond us, of course, and I’m certain that we could improve the world with her wisdom. But she’s mad. Her Handmaiden was there to kill us all, and we’re only lucky that it withdrew before it hunted us down and finished its task.”

So Jerri thought it had fled. Maybe she was right. “The Consultants say they killed it.”

“Did they? Are you sure they weren’t lying to you? Trying to make themselves look better.”

He wouldn’t be surprised if Meia
had
lied, but then again... “She seemed fairly certain. And I suspect Shera was involved.”

She was even closer now, and they were talking normally before he’d realized it. Close, intimate, friendly, the way they’d spoken ten thousand times. “Shera? How?”

Intentionally, Calder took two steps back toward the entrance. “She’s a Soulbound now.”

Jerri noticed what he’d done, and a flash of hurt crossed her face. She opened her mouth, and he could practically see the insult forming.

The door opened and a Guard stuck his head in. “Sir, we need you to see this. There’s something...”

The floor, the walls, the entire building shook like a struck drum. The air seemed to buzz around him, and Calder and Jerri both staggered for balance. Without another word, Calder left.

~~~

When the world shook, Jerri recognized it for what it was: the plan of the Great Elders coming to fruition. The sky had cracked, and with it, the first gateway had opened between their world and...whatever else was out there. Future generations would celebrate this day as a holiday; she should be filled with joy at her part in this momentous occasion.

Instead, she felt only frustration and anger. If the barrier had to crack, why did it have to be
now
? She was so close to persuading Calder, she could feel it. Even though he insisted on ignoring her, even though he was driving her insane with his refusal to listen to sense, she had still almost gotten through to him.

Now, though...now he would be listening to the Blackwatch’s version of events instead of hers. She’d wasted her last, best chance to get through to him. Victory or not, she felt like screaming.

It was only after the first few seconds that she realized something was wrong.

The city had shaken with the force of the Great Elders’ will. Perhaps the entire planet had. But that had died away in moments as the world stabilized. All this, Kelarac had led her to expect.

But in the corner of her cell, the shaking continued. The air trembled, a heat haze buzzing like a hummingbird’s wing.

When the indistinct blur had reached a fever pitch, when the blur turned from dim color to absolute darkness, the Soul Collector stepped out from the void.

This time, he was not quite as human. His dark skin had the pattern of scales, his golden jewelry splattered against him as though it had been melted into patches. His clothes flickered and faded, as though they were on the verge of vanishing at any second, and the body beneath them was distinctly unnatural. It was a coil of shadows upon shadows with the occasional outline of a waving fin. Like a school of a thousand fish all feeding on each other at once.

She looked away from the eye-wrenching sight before she grew seasick. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help the excitement growing inside her.

Unless she missed her guess, the Great Elder was
upset
. He had no reason to be so angry with her, and besides, she was fully within his control. Which meant that something else had happened...something important.

Maybe Jerri would get to help.

She had dropped to her knees as soon as Kelarac revealed himself, and he looked down on her with his steel blindfold bolted to his face. Only the blindfold remained as clear and distinct as ever, as though that was the only part of him that was
real
.

“The Killer survived,” he said, and it was only half a question.

“I’m sorry, Great One. Who?” Was he talking about the Champion that had tried to kill Calder?

“
The
Killer. Your husband said her name: Shera. The latest of the Am’haranai.”

Shera?
What did the Soul Collector want with a Consultant assassin? “Calder says she survived. I haven’t seen her since before the island collapsed.” She snuck a glance up at Kelarac’s face, but it was so distorted that she learned nothing. It looked like his cheeks had been stretched into a mask that was now stapled onto something else’s head.

“When he mentioned her, I checked Bastion’s island. She did survive. She was not meant to.”

He flitted from one corner of the cell to another, moving with the grace of a spider. In someone else, she would have called it nervous pacing. “The Killer had
one
part to play, and she played it. Five years ago. She was supposed to die in obscurity, as she was born.”

“Would you like me to kill her?” Jerri asked, suppressing her delight. If the Great Elders tasked her with killing Shera, she would go about her task with glee. The assassin had thrown her over the side of her own ship.

Kelarac froze. “Kill her? You would kill her? A woman who has bound her soul to an ancient weapon forged in the powers of the Emperor? A woman who destroyed a Handmaiden, drawing its essence inside her? Shera has made of herself a bridge between the Emperor’s power and ours.”

Something was wrong here beyond the obvious. The way Kelarac said it made Shera sound terrifying, but really, what she’d done wasn’t terribly unusual. Even Jerri’s Vessel contained a hybrid power of Kameira and Elder. “Pardon me, Great One. But what makes her more dangerous than any other Soulbound?”

Kelarac loomed over her, a mass of gold-flecked shadows that flickered and squirmed in the overshadowed light. “Her
place
,” he said, and as he spoke she felt the echo of significance in the word. As though he referred to a force as broad as the universe itself.

“She should not have survived. It was impossible for her to die before her role had been fulfilled, but afterwards it should have been impossible for her to
live
.” He looked down on Jerri, and seemed to consider his next words.

“You have chemical projectile weapons. Guns. When a bullet is loaded, it has not yet been born. It is born with the pull of a trigger. It lives only for a flash of light...and then it ends. The Killer was supposed to reach her end.”

Jerri was beginning to see the problem. For whatever reason, the Great Elders had actually…made a mistake.

“Our plan, the vision we have for your world, ended with your kind in harmony with ours,” Kelarac went on. “Now, every action the Killer takes is a disruption of that plan. She is what Ach’magut might call a
deviation
, but I am neither Ach’magut nor Tharlos. I do not enjoy deviating from perfection. More importantly to you, my plan saw Calder Marten ruling as King of this world. Now, our plan has changed.”

Jerri’s excitement turned to fear. If the Great Elders were changing their minds, or if their minds had been changed for them, then all the promises they’d made...everything she had come to expect...

Her entire life could have been for nothing.

The outline of Kelarac’s body stretched, as though something within was bulging and trying to escape. “The last time our plans diverged this wildly, my brothers and sisters went to war. Engrave that into your heart, human. Another all-out war between the Elders with humanity at the center. You will be ground to
paste
.”

“Let me out,” Jerri said, desperate to find some hope. “Give me my Vessel, and I’ll kill her myself.”

Kelarac extended a hand, which for one mind-twisting instant seemed to have hundreds of fingers all overlapping each other. He reached into distorted space and pulled forth an emerald earring. “The deviation will be solved by greater minds than yours. You are in the proper place, for now, and you will play your role. There is only one thing that you can do for the greater good: you must not let the Killer meet the King.”

He threw her earring over to her and, with a pop that left her ears ringing, abruptly vanished.

Jerri remained sitting on the floor of her cell—her second cell in as many weeks—trying in vain to catch her breath. She clutched her Vessel in a tight fist, relishing the feeling of being whole and powerful once more, but her mind was consumed by an overriding conviction.

I have to save Calder.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When the Shades of Urg’naut take a city, it vanishes entirely. When the Children of Nakothi take a city, it is defiled. When Ach’magut’s Inquisitors take a city, it is depopulated.

—From the original Blackwatch
Bestiary of Elders

~~~

Nine years ago

Jerri was less than impressed with these Sleepless acolytes.

The group of robed men and women wearing the Open Eye medallions had dragged her crew through the streets of Silverreach, shoving them into a hollowed-out house that stank of fish. They acted like a gang of base kidnappers, and didn’t even
try
to persuade the prisoners to their cause.

It would be hard to do, she had to admit, given that they were taking prisoners. But she wouldn’t have made that mistake. She would have greeted any newcomers warmly, like guests, showing them that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Then again, there
was
something to be afraid of.

While the Sleepless were still pushing the crew of
The Testament
into the house, the spider-like Inquisitors caught up. They slid through the doorway, in the middle of the crowd of humans, and even the Elder cultists shied back. Jerri couldn’t help a surge of contempt; she hadn’t backed up a step.

The two Inquisitors circled Mr. Valette, making noises like the rapid click of a dozen knitting needles. The Watchman’s captor stumbled away, leaving the man in the black coat to the Inquisitors.

To his credit, Valette didn’t shy away. He held himself straight, chin up, and slid a black iron spike out of one pocket.

Jerri admired him. He stood against the Elders as an equal, unbowing. These acolytes could learn a thing or two from him about proper conduct.

At the sight of the Awakened nail, the Inquisitors got excited, waving their limbs and stalk-eyes and frantically circling him. He moved to keep both in view, but he wasn’t fast enough.

One spider-leg flashed out, too quick to follow, and a spot of red bloomed on his calf. He cried out and fell to one knee, striking out with his spike. The second Inquisitor dodged, seizing his weapon between two surprisingly delicate limbs. Its partner seized Mr. Valette under the shoulders.