Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2) (29 page)

“Stop the Elders. They’re the highest priority for all of us. The Imperialists can’t keep an Emperor on the throne if he’s constantly under threat of Elder possession, and the Independents can’t successfully establish a new world order if they’re only serving the world up to the Elders piece by piece. We should be working together, not against each other.”

Not precisely how Calder would have said it, but it was a good answer. If she believed it, and he thought she did, then she should keep working with him. He just had to phrase it the right way…

“Did the Architects order you to do this?” Lucan asked.

Meia’s answering pause didn’t make her following words sound very persuasive. “They would.”

Nonetheless, Lucan seemed pleased. “Maybe they would.” He turned to Calder. “Captain, I’m still here because I agree with Meia. Whatever else we do, the Guilds can’t dance to an Elder’s tune.”

You’ve been dancing to an Elder tune for half your life.
Jerri’s words. Now suddenly, disturbingly, echoed. He had some soul-searching to do later, but for now, he needed Lucan and Meia both on his side. “That’s well said, and your loyalty to the Empire is why I kept you here, Consultant Lucan. Anyone who can look past our current Guild rivalry is someone I can work with. And your personal knowledge of the Optasia will come in handy for our next guest.”

Calder waved to the Guard captain, indicating that she should bring Jerri forward.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

Calder cleared his throat and made his intentions more obvious. “Could you bring the next guest in, please?”

Her orange eyes moved around, like she was looking for the next guest somewhere in the room. “I wasn’t aware we had another guest, sir.”

She was excellent at her job, Calder was sure, but she wasn’t a member of his crew. They hadn’t worked together long enough to read each other’s minds. “My wife, Captain.”

She looked as though he’d asked her to haul in the garbage, but she did bow and leave.

Calder turned back to Lucan, who looked somewhat amused. “That would have worked better if I hadn’t been forced to explain. More dramatic.”

“Are you still in frequent contact with the Sleepless, Captain Marten?”

More than I want to be.
He turned to face the door, prepared for his wife’s arrival. “Too frequent, Consultant Lucan.”

When the door opened, the captain brought Jerri into the room.

She looked much as Calder had last seen her, messy and unkempt in her secondhand prisoner’s uniform, though she seemed angrier. She probably hadn’t appreciated it when he’d walked out on her, even though the sky was literally cracking apart. She was shackled with enough chains to restrain an Imperial Guard, and Calder almost had them removed before he reconsidered the anger in her eyes.
No. Let her wear them.

“You just drag me out of my hole whenever you wish, now?” she asked.

Calder gave a flippant response, knowing it would annoy her. “That’s one of the perks of being Emperor. I get to drag whomever I like wherever I like.”

Jerri barked out a sound too ugly to be a laugh. “You’re not the Emperor, but you
could
be, if you would just
listen
to me!”

The same argument as before, but more heated. Well, so be it. He had temper enough to match both of them today, after knowing she’d tried to trick him into killing himself on the Optasia. “In point of fact, that’s exactly why I’ve brought you here. I’m going to ask you a question, and I’d be very interested in listening to the answer.”

He gestured to the Optasia, which sat alone and almost forgotten in the corner of the room. “What exactly should I do with this, Jerri?”

“It’s a relic of the Emperor,” Jerri answered, in a tone that suggested he was an idiot. “You sit in it.”

“And then what will happen to me?”

“Calder, I’m not a Reader.”

“No, you’re a
Soulbound.
”
Something else you lied to me about.
“But I have every faith in your ability to answer the question.”

She sighed, as though giving into a child’s demands. “As I understand it, the device will expand your awareness. Thanks to a network of relays, you’ll be able to Read practically anything on the planet from this spot.”

Almost word-for-word how Lucan had explained it. So she understood the Optasia perfectly. “Including the Great Elders,” he prompted, waiting for her to admit it.

“Of
course
including the Great Elders. That’s the whole point. This is the only way for you to understand them, and to negotiate with them on an equal level. With you on the throne, humanity will finally have someone to speak to the Elders on our behalf. You’ll have a seat among the immortals, Calder. It’s something we all desperately need.”

Once again, she was trying to convince him he would be saving the world. Not handing his body over as a husk for the Elders. Finally, he’d caught her in an outright lie. He turned to Lucan.

“We’ve heard from the crazed Elder cultist, and now let’s hear from a neutral party. Jerri, Lucan here is a Consultant who came here to sabotage the Optasia. He Read the throne for himself, and instead of leaving, he stayed here to warn me.”

“And you call him a neutral party?” Jerri asked, but quickly latched on to a different detail. She turned away from Calder to Lucan. “Consultant Lucan, did you say?”

“Jyrine,” Lucan said, shocking Calder. “I’m glad you made it out alive.”

Of course. They were practically cellmates.
Next door in the Consultant dungeon, they must have gotten to know each other. For an instant, a suspicion bloomed: if they knew each other already, how could he possibly trust anything Lucan said? Maybe he was Sleepless himself.

But if this was all part of their plan, they would have concealed their connection. He would never have found out. In fact, this could be an advantage: if Jerri knew Lucan, then she knew he was a Reader. She’d know he was telling the truth.

“Lucan, what would happen to me if I tried to use the Optasia?”

The Consultant didn’t hesitate. “You would go insane in minutes. Perhaps seconds. The Great Elders would core you like an apple and put whatever they wanted in your place.” No member of the Sleepless would warn him like this; they would leave him to walk blindly into danger.

“That’s some compelling imagery,” Calder said. “Jerri, your rebuttal?”

But he could see that his wife’s mind was elsewhere.
 

~~~

As soon as she heard the Consultant’s name, Jerri recalled a vivid memory. Crouched in her cold cell on the Gray Island, she listened as Lucan spoke to his ally. To Shera.

She almost shivered at the unnatural timing of this ‘coincidence.’ Kelarac was controlling the game now, and he had placed her within reach of Shera’s allies. “Lucan,” she said. “The Consultant named Shera visited you while you were in prison. Do you know her well?”

Lucan’s response was absolutely calm. “We’ve worked together.”

That was confirmation enough for Jerri. She turned to his blond partner. Meia? Maia? Something like that. “How about you? Do you know Shera?”

“I don’t believe I’m required to answer you, madam,” Meia said, but Jerri knew the truth. Kelarac had delivered two of Shera’s closest allies into her hands.

She nodded, turning back to Calder. “You’ve met Shera before. She’s tried to kill both of us. She
did
kill Urzaia. Would you trust her companions?”

“Consultant Shera and I have a separate account to balance,” Calder said. “If I refused to do business with any Guild whose members have attempted to execute me in the past, I’d be working alone. Or maybe with the Greenwardens,” he added.

He was being intentionally obstinate; ignoring her logic and making a point to say the opposite of whatever she did. In other circumstances, she could try and get him alone, make him engage her argument.

But she had to take this opportunity, whatever it cost her.
You must not let the Killer meet the King.

“I’ve been warned about Shera quite recently,” Jerri said, hoping he would sense sincerity in her Intent. “However little you know of her, let me assure you: she is the greatest threat to you and to the future of humanity, not any Guild.”

Calder’s brow furrowed, and his hand began crawling for his pistol. “
Recently?
Who warned you, Jerri?”

“She’s your enemy, Calder, whether you believe it or not,” Jerri said. She was close to him now, the Guards closing in on her from every direction. “And whether you
like
it or not, I’m still your ally.”

She spun to face Meia, drawing power from her earring. The Vessel, the source of her power, delivered to her by Kelarac himself.

There were two targets here, two allies of the Killer, but she knew she would only get one shot. And if she could eliminate only one target, she’d prefer to remove Meia; the blond Consultant was a stranger, while Lucan had listened to her stories while they were both captives of his Guild. If she had to kill one and spare the other, she would prefer it if Lucan walked away.

“Stop her!” Calder shouted, drawing his sword instead of his gun. The Guards shoved her to the ground, but she had already released a shot of green flame. It blasted over Calder’s shoulder, tearing through the air with palpable hunger.

Meia stood with orange eyes wide, staring at her approaching death. In the instant before the blast struck, Jerri knew she had succeeded. Meia couldn’t escape.

Calder twisted, trying to get his orange-spotted blade between Meia and the fire, but he was too slow. He couldn’t stop it.

But Lucan threw out a hand.

Meia collapsed as though weighted down, like every inch of her clothing was suddenly anchored to the floor. Jerri’s attack tore through the wall of the Emperor’s room, leaving a smoldering hole the size of a bullet.

I’ve failed.
The Guards piled on top of her, practically smothering her with their weight, and she knew she had only seconds before they pried her earring away. She couldn’t even see Meia, so her only option was to burn her way free of the Guards if she wanted to try again.

Her Vessel raged inside her, begging her to incinerate the bodies in her way, but she forced it down. Calder would never trust her again

“Her earring!” Calder shouted. “The earring is the Vessel!”

She was surrounded in a cage of limbs, both human and otherwise. The Kameira enhancements of the Imperial Guards blocked her in a menagerie of tentacles, talons, claws, and scales. But through the chaos, she caught a glimpse of another face; pressed, like hers, against the floor.

Lucan’s dark skin was a shade too pale, and his eyelids fluttered as though he hovered on the verge of passing out, but he looked as though he recognized her. And Jerri saw Kelarac’s will.

She wished it didn’t have to be Lucan, but this was one last Elder-sent chance to remove one of Shera’s greatest allies. The moment was here, she had her earring, and she didn’t even have to kill anyone else. Truly, the Great Elders had set the stage.

Though she knew Lucan wouldn’t hear her over the chaos, she felt she had to say something. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Her Vessel wasn’t sorry. It crowed triumph.

Calder shouted louder, reaching closer, trying to grab her ear.

A wave of dry heat blasted up as a single bolt of green flame flashed out from Jerri’s hand. It drilled into Lucan’s stomach.

The Guards saw the flash of light on her face, tearing out the earring and leaving a bloody hole in her ear. But it was too late. Jerri let them drag her off back to her cell, knowing that her task was over. She had already won.

Lucan was dead.

The Guards were still shackling her to the walls, growling threats about her execution, when Calder marched in. He still held his sword, as though he’d forgotten its existence, and he stared at her in undisguised horror.

Even now, that still hurt.

“Why?” Calder asked. “Why him?”

Jerri spoke simply, knowing he would recognize honesty. “That might be the last chance I get to strike a blow against Shera. I had to make it count.”

“Because
she’s
the greatest threat.” He pointed to Jerri with the tip of his sword. “Who told you that, Jerri?”

“Who do you think?”

He nodded as though she’d confirmed his every suspicion, then gestured to the Guard nearest the door. An instant later the door slammed shut, leaving Jerri once again in darkness.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Six years ago

No two Kanatalia workshops look the same—just in the Capital, Calder had seen some covered in quicklamps like trees with glowing fruit, some with huge glass tanks on the roof, and others that were built like round domes instead of square boxes. He supposed it had to do with the types of experiments they ran in there, but no one got inside a workshop without strict Guild approval.

They didn’t look alike, but they all smelled identical. It was what he imagined acid would smell like, mixed liberally with soap and something coppery. His imagination told him it must be blood, and his logic told him it was probably copper.

But just in case the alchemists needed to top off their blood-tank today, he tried to stay inconspicuous as he lurked behind their workshop. He wanted to catch one alchemist alone, not a group of guards changing shifts.

On every other side of the building except this one, the workshop had ten yards or so of clearance. Here, in the back, it was little more than an alley: a few feet of street separating a back exit and the brick wall of a cannery. An aluminum box the size of a carriage took up the entire space, and the copper-acid-soap smell wafted most strongly from that direction. It made Calder’s hours of waiting all the more unpleasant, but it also took up every inch of space between the alchemical workshop and the cannery. It was wedged in so tightly that the mice had to scamper over the top of the box to get past.

Which meant that Calder only had to huddle next to the metal box when the guards came by. They would unshutter their quicklamp, shine a quick flash of light down the alley to make sure the box was still intact and unopened, and walk away.