Of Kings and Killers Read online

  There was one commonality in all of those scenarios: they all held the potential for a fight.

  Petal had proven herself reliable in combat before, but she hated it. Calder tried to respect her wishes whenever possible. He really did need Foster on the cannons, just in case, and Jerri…enthusiastic as she was, and as much as she enjoyed the thrill of danger, she was hopeless with a sword. Adequate with a firearm, but nothing more.

  And he couldn’t bear to risk her.

  Shuffles fluttered up to the deck, saw what was happening, and laughed. Then it lumbered back down below, presumably to go back to sleep.

  Calder chose to take that as a good omen.

  With the crew assigned, Calder marched over to help Urzaia with the longboat, only to find Jerri standing between him and the cook. Her earrings flashed emerald in the sunlight, seeming to blaze with green fire, and her eyes flickered with fire of their own.

  “I’m not staying on the ship,” she declared.

  “Sorry, Jerri, I’m too busy to talk. I’m helping Urzaia with the boat.”

  She shot a skeptical glance at the Champion, who was lifting a longboat one-handed without use of the ropes.

  Urzaia shot her a beaming gap-tooth smile. “Do not worry, Jyrine! I can handle this myself.”

  Calder wondered if he could get away with docking Urzaia’s pay.

  “I know we’ll be in danger, but I accept the risks,” Jerri went on.

  Calder weighed his options and decided to appeal to the gravity of the situation. “I will not increase risk for the rest of the crew. Taking along someone who cannot hold her weight in battle puts us all in danger.”

  Her face contorted as she wrestled with herself, trying to come up with an argument against her uselessness in combat.

  Andel stepped up to Calder’s side, adjusting his white hat. “I agree with the captain, Miss Tessella. You won’t be of any help to us, so it would make no sense to take you along. My apologies.”

  She glared at him, jaw tightening as she searched for something to say.

  Calder was about to apologize and promise to make it up to her on his return when Urzaia called out. “I will look out for her, Captain!”

  Jerri looked as though the sun had risen again.

  Calder turned to Urzaia, who was holding the longboat by its prow one-handed, lowering it down long-ways into the water. “You think she should come ashore with us, Urzaia?”

  Carefully, the Champion continued lowering the boat, leaning over the railing to get it closer to the water before he let it fall with a loud splash.

  “She wants to, yes? Then let her come! It could be an adventure, and there might be no bloodshed at all. Either way, she will have fun, I think.”

  Jerri ran over to him, and without a word, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek.

  Calder tried and failed to find a further objection.

  With Urzaia looking out for her, she’d be as safe as she would if she remained on the ship. Maybe safer, depending on what they found. Besides, he wasn’t certain they were running into danger.

  “Fine with me,” he said at last. “But let’s not waste any more daylight. Lower the ladder, Urzaia.”

  If not for their prior experience with roaming islands, they would have beached their longboat right next to The Reliable.

  One end of the island would be the ‘mouth.’ If the island had tried to swallow the ship and failed for some reason, then landing close to The Reliable would have been like tickling the lips of a sleeping predator.

  It would have been easier to walk along the beach, but Calder wanted to avoid as little contact with the sand as possible.

  There wasn’t supposed to be a beach.

  Instead, they marched through the jungle, keeping the beach in sight and taking the long way to the crashed Navigator ship.

  The beach was thin, which was only unusual in that roaming islands usually didn’t have beaches at all, but the vegetation was so thick that it was difficult for them to push through.

  Well, difficult for all of them except Urzaia.

  They adapted by following the Champion, who swept through the bushes and low trees as though through a curtain and left a carpet of mashed undergrowth in his wake.

  Only a few yards into the strangely thick jungle, with Urzaia leading and Andel guarding the rear, they came to a halt. Urzaia raised one hand, signaling a halt, and drew in a long breath through his nose.

  “What’s wrong?” Calder asked in a low voice.

  “I cannot be sure,” Urzaia said. “There is something…” He sniffed the air again. “…something strange about the air. But I have never been here before, so it could be that I am not familiar with the local flowers, yes?” He chuckled to himself and continued pushing on, casually snapping a leg-thick tree in half.

  Calder kept his senses sharp. If their Champion thought there was something off about the smell of the jungle, then Calder took that seriously.

  He himself didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary—he caught the salt of the sea, the pungent sweet scent of crushed greenery, and the natural scents of turned earth and fresh water. But then, he didn’t have the nose of a bloodhound or whatever strange Kameira had donated its sensory gifts to Urzaia.

  He did, however, have one sense that Urzaia didn’t.

  Calder seized a broken stem of a leafy bush that had broken in their passage, Reading it.

  As expected, he picked up nothing useful, tossing the green stick aside. Plants didn’t store Intent unless a person used them for something.

  When the plant failed him, he opened himself to Reading the ambient Intent of their surroundings. Once again, he knew it was a long shot, and once again he missed the shot.

  He felt nothing but a sense of life, of desire to survive, of undirected hunger and energy. Exactly what he would expect from a jungle, and as weak as he would expect from a place uninhabited by humans.

  In fact, from the time they pulled the longboat ashore to the moment they reached The Reliable, they saw nothing but bugs. They heard the buzz of insect wings and the chirps of distant birds, and here and there something tiny rustled the undergrowth nearby, but they didn’t see anything.

  Even Urzaia lost his cautious edge, talking more and more loudly and trading jokes with Jerri. Who was in a fantastic mood.

  For once, Calder was more in line with Andel. He and the former Pilgrim had grown more sober with every step they took. Now Calder was walking with his cutlass out while Andel kept one hand on his pistol and one on his White Sun medallion.

  Calder didn’t need to exchange words with his quartermaster to know they were thinking the same thing. The quieter the jungle seemed, the less they trusted it.

  Abruptly, the greenery broke in favor of a curved wall of pink-and-cream shell. They had been navigating based on the general shape of the island and glimpses of the ship through the trees, but Calder had misjudged how close they were to their destination.

  After coming up to the ship, Urzaia tossed a hook up to the lip of shell that served as railing. He climbed up hand-over-hand, glanced over the deck to make sure there was nothing hostile or hungry aboard, then called Jerri to come up next.

  She gripped the rope with both hands, holding on as the Champion effortlessly hauled her aboard.

  He pulled Andel and Calder along next, and in a matter of moments, all four of them were aboard The Reliable.

  Immediately, Calder noticed a few discrepancies.

  For one thing, when he sliced at one of the nearby vines holding on to the tilted deck, it parted easily. It didn’t hiss and strike back at him like a snake, nor did it suddenly come to life and try to wrap around his ankle.

  “This,” he said, “is just a vine.”

  Andel pulled his pistol, though Calder didn’t see why this being an ordinary vine put them in any immediate danger. It was merely suspicious.

  Urzaia peered closer at one of the vines. “Yes, that is strange. One of the hungry islands would
only pretend to have vines. Maybe it comes to life when the time is right?”

  Calder had seen stranger things. There was a rumor of an island that only existed in the light of the full moon. But he didn’t consider that the most likely explanation.

  “I don’t think this is a roaming island at all. I think someone raised this island and brought it to life for the explicit purpose of trapping this ship.”

  He traded grim looks with Andel. Urzaia nodded and casually pulled out one of his hatchets. Jerri looked astonished.

  “Who do you think raised an entire island?” she asked. “Do you think it was one of the…”

  She didn’t even mention the Great Elders by title, which Calder thought was only prudent. Naming them directly would have been foolish—there were all sorts of superstitions about Elder names, most of which had been disproved by the Blackwatch, but the circumstances merited some extra caution.

  “It’s impossible to guess,” Calder said. “Anyone in the world could be after this cargo, and far too many powerful Soulbound are capable of raising an island from bare sea.”

  Andel knelt and ran his fingers along the deck. “Spilled powder.”

  Urzaia checked a nearby crate. “Empty. And the lid…cracked. They packed themselves in a hurry.”

  Since there was only one possible course of action, Calder’s orders came easily.

  They stuck together as four and explored the ship.

  As they searched, evidence mounted that the crew had been able to make a coordinated escape. Personal chests had been thrown open and emptied, the containers abandoned. Most of the food was missing, the rest tossed overboard or left to spoil. All the quicklamps had been taken away or switched off.

  Finally, the safe in the captain’s quarters had been opened and left empty. Either the crew had abandoned ship with plenty of time to pack or the ship had been systematically robbed.

  “So they left,” Calder said at last. “Where did they go?”

  Andel peered through the trees using his own spyglass, surveying the horizon. “I can’t speak for them, but if I were in their situation, I’d have gone to that watchtower.”

  Calder took a look himself. Sure enough, over the green horizon of the island, a crenellated tower of yellowish stone scraped the sky.

  He handed the spyglass to Jerri, who took it eagerly.

  “You don’t need this, do you, Urzaia?” Calder asked.

  The Champion’s blue eyes were fixed on the undergrowth, tracking something that Calder couldn’t see.

  “…Urzaia?”

  Sudden as a striking snake, Urzaia hurled his hatchet.

  The dark gray weapon spun end-over-end, slamming into a tree with a thunderclap so loud that it sent a distant flock of birds fluttering into the sky. He sprung after it, clearing the tilted deck with a mighty leap and landing dozens of yards away in a spray of sand.

  “Am I the only one who lives in constant jealousy of him?” Calder asked.

  The other two shook their heads.

  A moment later, Urzaia emerged from the woods, holding his hatchet away from his body with one hand.

  Something wriggled on the end of it.

  It was the size of a large dog, but flattened like a centipede, with at least a dozen webbed amphibian legs. It had bright green skin across its whole length, and three yellow eyes bugged out of either side of its head. At the end of its body waved a long red-tipped stinger.

  The hatchet’s blade had blown a huge hole in its midsection, but it still writhed in death, whipping its stinger in the air, gnashing jaws that looked like a cross between a fish’s teeth and a spider’s mandibles.

  Calder’s breath caught. He didn’t need his Reader’s senses to know that this creature was wrong, twisted, the creation of a distant world.

  “Othaghor,” Urzaia announced.

  The spawn of the Hordefather were here, on the islands. So the Great Elders were involved after all.

  He should have known.

  Chapter Eight

  Reading the Emperor’s Intent is an exercise in folly.

  Many Readers have touched lesser Imperial Relics. A doorknob he opened, perhaps. A pair of his socks that escaped incineration.

  I myself had the privilege of Reading the crown itself, with his permission. I came away with an even deeper respect for the skill, wisdom, and power of the original Reader.

  But I would not do so again.

  Each time you Read the Emperor’s Intent, you are toying with a force that is stronger than you are. You are petting a sleeping tiger.

  If you do so enough, one day that tiger will wake.

  —Head of the Magister’s Guild, Mekendi Maxeus

  (Seven years before his death)

  present day

  Another freelance alchemist strode out of Teach’s recovery room, looking confident.

  Calder had learned that such confidence meant nothing.

  This man wore a mask with a long beak that had been painted with green and purple symbols of no meaning Calder could determine. Sprigs of holly hung from the mask, and vials filled with brightly colored fluids clinked together with his every step.

  Calder had learned that, when the Guild exiled alchemists, it wasn’t necessarily for their lack of skill. It usually had to do with personality.

  “My infusion will have twice the efficacy when it is inhaled in her sleep,” the alchemist said, his voice somewhat muffled by the bulky mask. “While nothing is certain, I am confident enough to say that she should be on her feet and speaking by no later than noon tomorrow.”

  Calder gestured for a servant to pay the man. The alchemist accepted the thick stack of silvermarks with a deep bow and scurried away as though Calder would change his mind.

  “Generosity costs nothing.” It was a strange saying, often repeated by philosophers. Calder considered it a sort of riddle.

  By definition, generosity cost something.

  Even so, he could afford to be generous here. If Teach survived her wounds, that would be worth more than a ship full of goldmarks.

  He needed her.

  The Watchman doctor stepped up after the alchemist had left. Calder had forgotten the woman’s name, but he still trusted the opinion she whispered into his ear. “If he developed this cure on ordinary people, it will almost certainly not be effective here. Her biology is unique, and it seems to change every hour.”

  The Capital had no shortage of medical alchemists, even with the Guild on the side of the Independents. And of course it had doctors, surgeons, healers, and researchers aplenty.

  They had stitched up Jarelys Teach’s wounds within hours, removed debris from her skin before it scarred, and administered healing agents. Even after all that treatment, she had looked like a corpse left to dry in the desert.

  It was only when he turned to the experienced doctors of the Imperial Guard and the Watchmen that he had found useful professional opinions. They were used to dealing with patients that had unusual or illogical biology, and they confirmed that the Guild Head’s heart was responding strangely to the dark Intent that had afflicted her.

  Would she wake up? In time, she would. Even the freelance alchemists and scam artists agreed on that.

  But when she did, would she still be her? No one was certain.

  “I’m going to see her,” Calder said, and no one stopped him.

  The air stank of harsh alchemical solutions and rotting fruit, presumably because of the device in the corner that spritzed a green cloud into the air every few seconds. That would be the beak-masked alchemist’s treatment, and Calder stayed far enough away from it to avoid taking in a lungful of gas.

  At some point over the last week, Teach had stopped looking like a dried husk. Either someone’s treatment had helped or it was simply the broth she was force-fed twice a day.

  But she no longer looked like herself.

  Her skin was mottled dark and light, which might not have been unusual, except the light and shadow seemed to be arranged in a patte
rn. As though color had been painted into her skin. The lightest patches had a lavender tinge, while the darker spots could be called purple.

  Her ears had grown long, thin, and swept-back, and her hair had started to grow back—after the initial half-inch of blonde, it was growing glacial blue.

  Her constitution was based on the Bonereaver heart with which she had replaced her own. According to the medical alchemists, the heart was taking over the rest of her body in an attempt to keep her alive.

  Day by day, the pattern on her skin became sharper, less blurred, and she began to breathe more heavily, even shifting around in the bed.

  It was clear that she was transforming. She might wake up enhanced, stronger than before, but Calder didn’t trust any transformation that was triggered by a clash of destructive Intent and a Kameira’s heart.

  The sooner Teach woke, the better.

  The irony of it all was that the Independents could have easily treated her. One and all, the experts had recommended contacting Luminian Pilgrims for their healing powers, the Consultants for their vast store of strange knowledge, Kanatalia for the best medical alchemists in the world, or the Greenwardens for their Kameira expertise. Some had even suggested begging Jorin Curse-breaker to intervene.

  If I could do that, she wouldn’t be in this position to begin with.

  He left before he breathed in too much of the strange alchemy, where he found two Imperial Guards waiting for him.

  He knew where they were bringing him without having to ask. It was almost time for his meeting with the Guild Heads.

  That would be a lonely affair.

  Cheska Bennett waited in one of the Imperial Palace’s comfortable sitting-rooms, her bare feet propped up on a footstool. Her hair was wet and she wore a fluffy white bathrobe, but she didn’t look refreshed. She stared ahead, haunted.

  Bliss didn’t look much better. She had stabbed a decorative sword into the wall and was now crouched on the flat of the blade, scanning the floor as though there were something dangerous there.