Of Sea and Shadow (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 1) Page 10

  Calder thought about it for a moment. “That would make sense, I suppose. Wormclouds. The Worm Lord. But I thought Kthanikahr’s tomb was in northern Izyria. Thirteen.”

  “Sixteen. And how should I know where the Great Elders died? If only there were a member of the Blackwatch around, so that we could ask him.”

  Calder gestured to his own expression. “I may be smiling, but don’t think that means you’re funny.”

  Petal perked up. “I can make it so that you laugh...instead...”

  “No thank you, Petal, the smiling is quite enough for now.”

  Naberius kicked a worm off the barrel, but at least he hadn’t shot anyone yet. “So these worms are...harmless?”

  “Oh no, not at all,” Calder answered. “They have a poisonous bite that increases your body temperature. The infected, without exception, hurl themselves into the sea within minutes.”

  The Chronicler glanced up nervously. “Does that help?”

  Calder let his awareness drift down through the ship, along the chains that bound the Lyathatan, until he was Reading the awareness of the Elderspawn itself.

  Glowing worms swirl in the water, moving in a swarm. Each individual has a row of razor-sharp teeth in its circular mouth, and their hunger presses against the Lyathatan’s skin like volcanic heat. Any one of them is thicker than the mast of the ship above, and long enough to wrap the Lyathatan completely in its coils.

  There are hundreds in the water.

  The Lyathatan bares its own teeth, opening its spirit. Let these lesser worms, these pathetic parasites born in a world of weakness, feel its contempt. Let them feel the malice, the hunger, the hatred of centuries. They may be able to shred humans to pieces, but there’s no advantage in that. One might as well brag about swatting fleas, or crushing blades of grass.

  The worms are all but mindless, knowing nothing but the need to feed.

  They still know enough to keep their distance, waiting for prey to fall outside of the Lyathatan’s reach.

  “No,” Calder said at last. “It doesn’t help.”

  Naberius was obviously confused, but Andel took over. “We have an accomplished alchemist onboard, with an antidote prepared. There is a gap of several minutes between when you are stung and when you start trying to throw yourself overboard. And the worms themselves are slow, stupid, and easy to kill.”

  “EASY TO KILL,” Shuffles chuckled. It swooped down on a worm, scooping the treat up with its tentacles and returning to a perch where it could enjoy its snack.

  “Twenty-six!” Urzaia yelled. “Do not worry, Naberius. There are worse dangers than these in the Aion Sea. This is simply a fun game.”

  Naberius recovered his composure and hopped off his cask, crushing a worm beneath him. “In that case, thirty-one.”

  Petal pointed a finger at him, accusing. “Cheater!”

  He shrugged. “She’s my Silent One. Surely our scores should count together.”

  “From terrified to cheating in five seconds,” Andel said. “You adapt quickly, Chronicler.”

  “I realized that you were right. Mild peril like this should not shake my composure. Particularly not considering what lies ahead.”

  Calder looked up, mentally ordering his Vessel to sweep a handful of worms away from him with a length of rope. “Now, there’s an interesting subject. What does lie ahead, Naberius?”

  Naberius stayed silent for a few seconds, the odd worm still falling to the deck behind him, and then nodded. “We’re close enough that I believe it’s safe to tell you. We travel to the island where Nakothi herself was buried. The island was warped by her influence, until it resembles little more than a corpse itself. I have only visited the place once in person, but we were set upon by...monstrosities.” He shuddered, though Calder was sure he had faked the gesture. “Children of the Dead Mother. Hideous beasts that haunt my nightmares even now.

  “Mark my words. What we see on the island will make this ‘worm cloud’ seem like a pleasant spring rain. You will all earn your fees then.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Certain objects share the mysterious powers of Elders or Kameira. These are usually made from remnants of the creature’s body—a sword made from a Nightwyrm’s claw, for instance, or a pendant made from Lyathatan scales. These items have mysterious and anomalous effects, and should be treated with caution.

  However, when such objects are Awakened, a mysterious phenomenon can be observed.

  Under specific conditions, a human being can be bound to these powerful objects during the Awakening procedure. Afterwards, that person can draw on that item as a source of power.

  We call such people Soulbound, and such objects Vessels.

  I believe that somewhere in this process lies the key to traveling the Aion Sea.

  -From the research journal of the first Navigator

  Twelve years ago

  Calder had been living with his mother for more than a year now, and for most of that time she had worked on some secret project.

  His questions, aimed both at his tutors and at Alsa herself, revealed very little.

  “It’s a secret project,” his mother told him. “If I told you the details, it wouldn’t be very secret, would it?”

  Artur was even less forthcoming. “As you know, the Emperor formed the Blackwatch to turn the power of the Elders against them. Such knowledge is known to drive strong men insane. I would think three times before asking too many questions, and then three times again.”

  Vorus, of course, said nothing at all.

  He’d gotten most of his information from the odd comment his mother left lying behind her as she went to work.

  “Bring me my jacket, would you? The breeze off the bay is biting.”

  “Don’t head down to the harbor today, Calder. It’s supposed to be dangerous.”

  “Whichever Guild you choose, make sure it’s not the Navigators. They’re con men at best, pirates at worst.”

  The facts came in dribbles, months apart, but Calder and Jyrine kept their ears sharpened to catch each one.

  Today, they had finally decided to do some hands-on investigation.

  It was an unseasonably cold day in autumn, which gave them an excuse to wear hoods and heavy coats. Even if Alsa did spot them hovering around her workplace, she shouldn’t be able to see much of their faces.

  Calder, after a moment’s hesitation, even belted a sword around his waist. There were so many around the Grayweather house that his mother would never notice a single one missing, and it was currently fashionable for men to wear blades in public. It made men who had grown up in the peaceful Capital look like they could handle themselves in a fight, and a swordsman could never cause too much trouble with all the Imperial troops carrying pistols.

  The sword would make him look older, so no one would think to find a fourteen-year-old inside his hood. Besides, his mother had been training him. If they were caught, he might be able to fight his way free.

  They snuck out of the house on the pretense of buying books down in the city, giving Artur and Vorus time to relax.

  Of course, the tutors were under the impression that the children would be chaperoned by Alsa, and Alsa that they were still under the care of their tutors. That lie had taken a tricky bit of coordination, but between them, they’d managed it.

  So it was that Calder found himself walking down the streets of the Capital toward the Candle Bay harbor, Jyrine on his arm and a sword at his belt.

  He couldn’t recall anything better happening to him in his entire life.

  Jyrine’s grip tightened on his arm as the harbor came into view. “Look at that,” she whispered, pointing.

  She didn’t need to point—there was only one thing of interest happening in the harbor. A wooden scaffold covered most of the horizon, blocking off more than its share of the harbor. All the other ships were shoved off to one side, almost hull-to-hull with one another.

  The scaffolding was so thick that it might as well have been a woode
n wall between them and the water. Here and there he caught glimpses of rope lines, a stretch of mast, a few yards of sail.

  “Are they building a ship?” Jyrine asked.

  Calder stared at the scaffolding as though he could will it to disappear. “That must be a disguise. My mother hates the water. And she’s certainly not a shipwright.”

  “But what else could they possibly be doing?”

  Left with no other obvious alternative, the two of them kept walking closer and closer to the harbor. The Capital was vast, and Calder had never visited this particular harbor before. He had traveled to the Imperial prison several times, but that building was all the way across Candle Bay. This side of the bay was a total mystery to him.

  Workers crawled all over the wooden frame, some shirtless and banging away with hammers, others wearing leather harnesses and dangling from climbing-ropes. A man who looked like a Magister stood on the dock, shouting something and waving a reddish staff over his head with both hands.

  Jyrine squeezed his arm again. “Are you willing to get in trouble?”

  They hadn’t discussed the plan this far, but there was only one thing they could possibly do. He gave her a grin. “You go left, I’ll go right.”

  Without the slightest hesitation, Jyrine split off to the left, stuffing her hands into her coat pockets and walking down to the dock. Calder moved to the right, doing the same.

  There was a reason they had chosen to wear coats of solid, unrelieved black.

  The Blackwatch stood around the dock at the base of the scaffolding, but not standing guard. They probably didn’t need to—one could easily tell a Watchman by their black uniforms, and most people avoided the Blackwatch at all costs. They were supposed to have power over Elders, and no one wanted to risk that fate. Unsavory rumors suggested that, if you interfered with a Watchman in the course of her duties, you might find yourself face-to-face with the faceless.

  All of which worked to Calder’s advantage.

  A knot of black-clad men and women stood around a makeshift table of stacked crates, arguing over what looked like a map.

  “We need more iron,” one of the women said.

  “More iron? What, for ballast? Why should we keep building a trap if we can’t catch anything?”

  “We never will, if we don’t get another Reader.”

  “Are the bindings in place?”

  “That’s Grayweather’s area, but good luck finding her.”

  Calder’s ears perked up at the mention of his mother, but he didn’t show any reaction. He walked past the cluster of Watchmen, armed with confidence and a black coat. One of the men nodded to him as passed, and Calder nodded back.

  Heart hammering, he ducked under the lowest wooden beam forming the box around the dock. No one tried to stop him. No one even seemed to notice.

  Once he was past the scaffolding, he saw what his mother had been working on for the better part of the past year.

  The ship had a hull built of smooth wood, of a green so dark that it was almost black. There were no sails, leaving the mast sticking up like a tree with no leaves. Workmen bustled around the ship’s deck, nailing planks down or moving brushes over the railing. Shimmering gold leaf on the side of the hull proudly announced the vessel’s name: The Testament.

  But the most unusual aspect of the ship’s construction lay on the docks.

  A pair of shackles, big enough to wrap around a whole house, sat unlatched on the docks. Each shackle was bolted to an enormous chain, which slithered down the dock and vanished under the water, terminating at some point under the ship.

  Far from enlightening him, the sight raised a forest of new questions. What was the point of dragging two enormous chains behind the ship? Wouldn’t they anchor it in place? Were the shackles supposed to lock on to the ocean floor, or were they meant to hold something? A pair of Kameira, perhaps?

  He had a sudden vision of this ship being pulled by two great sea serpents, the shackles wrapped around their necks like collars, and the idea seized his imagination. Perhaps there were no sails because this ship didn’t need sails: it would move across the Aion Sea solely under the propulsion of its captive beasts.

  But it didn’t explain the greatest mystery.

  Why does a ship like this need Blackwatch help?

  He stood gazing at the vessel for a moment longer, hoping that Jyrine had managed to make it in here undetected, when he felt a metal point sticking through his coat on the back of his neck.

  An unfamiliar woman’s voice spoke from behind him. “You’re carrying steel. You know how to use it?”

  “Let me draw it, and I’ll show you,” he said, his mouth moving on its own.

  The woman laughed and pulled the point away from his neck. “It’s a duel, then!”

  Calder turned, drawing his saber.

  Behind him, holding a curved saber almost identical to his own, stood a woman who looked nothing at all like a Watchman. She wore no black, for one thing: a bright blue vest over a loose white shirt, a checkered scarf, and gray pants covered in more patches than original fabric. Her long hair, which she wore tied back, was the exact same shade of red as Calder’s.

  When she saw him, her face fell, and she lowered her blade. “Elder’s bones,” she spat. “I’m not picking on a boy. Get out of here, kid, before I put you in the water.”

  Calder pushed back his hood, then raised the point of his own saber. “You have beautiful hair.”

  Then he lunged, intending to prick her in the shoulder. That would teach her to underestimate an armed opponent.

  She slapped his blade away with hers, now grinning. “I could say the same to you.” She stepped forward, testing him with a short strike.

  Calder managed to turn it away. The woman was much, much faster than he’d expected. He needed to keep her talking. “What’s your name, young lady?”

  Her eyebrows rose even as she cut off a slice of his coat sleeve. “Young lady? Kelarac’s balls, boy, I’ve got ten years on you at least.”

  He feinted for her neck, and then ducked low, aiming for her leg. Her arm seemed to move independently of her body, turning his blade away without her reacting at all.

  “I’m Calder,” he panted, already losing his breath.

  “Cheska Bennett. Member of the proud Guild of Navigators, and recently made captain of The Eternal.” She didn’t bother going on the offensive, waiting for him to take the initiative.

  “Calder Marten.” He took advantage of the space to give his breath to return.

  A workman tried to edge his way around Cheska, but she pushed him off the dock without looking. “Who taught you to fence, your kid sister?”

  “His mother, actually,” Alsa Grayweather said, peeling off her gloves as she hopped down from the ship.

  Calder hurriedly shoved his sword back down into its sheath, though Cheska glanced from one of them to the other. “Your son? Really? But he seems like so much fun.”

  “He takes after his father,” Alsa said flatly, resting her hand on the hilt of her own sword. On her, it didn’t look like a fashion statement. “I’m trying to teach him to act like an adult. By, for instance, not dueling strangers in public for no reason.”

  Cheska finally slid her blade away, still grinning. “Aw, don’t be like that. I caught somebody sneaking in, and I was having a little fun with him before I sent him away. Seems like you’ve been slacking on the fencing lessons, though.”

  Alsa’s grip tightened on her sword. “Would you like one of your own, then?”

  The Navigator Captain backed away, hands empty and raised. “You’re a hothead, Grayweather. One day, that temper of yours’ll get somebody killed. See you again, Calder.”

  With a cheery wave, she walked off.

  Behind her, a grumbling workman hauled himself out of Candle Bay.

  “Navigators,” Alsa spat. She turned to Calder, seemingly just as angry. “I’ll have you know that I caught Jyrine myself, and I have sent her straight back home. What do you su
ggest I do with you?”

  Calder looked up hopefully. “Give me a job?”

  ~~~

  Calder knew that, if he approached this situation carefully, he would end up locked at home under strict guard, with most of his privileges suspended.

  So he decided to plunge recklessly forward.

  “Surely there’s something I can do to help,” he said to his mother. She had escorted him some distance away from the harbor, and now the two of them sat at a small table in the shelter of a tea-shop.

  Alsa pinched the bridge of her nose. “This is Guild business, Calder. Certainly, we can always use more Readers, but we haven’t fallen so low as to recruit...men as young as yourself.”

  She sounded certain, but Calder had seen the way her eyes drooped and her shoulders fell when she came home, sometimes late at night. They were working her ragged, which meant they didn’t have many Readers to choose from. Why not Calder?

  And if he was working on their special project, his mother couldn’t punish him for sneaking around.

  “It looked to me like you can use every hand you can get. How many other Readers do they have working here?”

  “The Guild is spread very thin lately. We were expected to have three more, but...”

  A thought struck Calder that had never occurred to him before. “Are you the only Reader on this project?”

  Loose strands of Alsa’s hair fell over her eyes as she slumped over the table. “Two others, to begin with. First one was called off, and then the other, and they kept promising—”

  The fatigue blew away from Alsa like a hat in the wind, and she stood up, stock-still. All the other voices in the shop drifted off into silence.

  Not knowing what else to do, Calder stood up too.

  “Guild Head,” Alsa snapped, bowing crisply at the waist.

  A young woman stood on the inside of the shop door as it closed behind her. Her long hair, which almost brushed the floor, was a shade of blond so white as to be almost silver. The color probably came straight from an alchemist’s bottle. She wore only a long black coat that covered her entirely from the neck down, with a line of silver buttons fastening down the front.