Of Kings and Killers Read online

  Calder missed Kern and Teach more than he’d thought possible.

  “What are you doing, Bliss?” Calder asked.

  “Cockroaches,” she whispered.

  “Did you see a roach?” The outer Palace by the walls was filled with shops and ordinary people, but this was the main Palace complex. It was kept fastidiously clean, alchemically sprayed against pests daily, and most of the walls were invested against intrusion even by insects. He had never seen a bug of any description here.

  Bliss’ eyes didn’t stop moving. “I dreamed I did.”

  Calder wondered why he had invited her to this meeting.

  The conversation would have been more productive with just him and Cheska, and he pulled up a chair beside the Head Navigator, propping up his feet on the table beside hers.

  He looked over at Cheska, but she was lost in her own thoughts. “How bad is it?” he asked.

  She let out a breath. “Good news first: Loreli snuck off somewhere, reports suggest Izyria, and it seems like Estyr really did die of her wounds. None of our agents in Rainworth have reported seeing her or hearing anything from her all week.”

  “No bad news could possibly crumple my confidence after hearing that,” Calder said, dry. “Continue.”

  “The end of the good news is that we gave it an honest run. The bad news is that we lost.”

  A servant slipped into the room and lit the fireplace with alchemical accelerant and a match. In moments, flames danced over the logs.

  Calder watched the fire grow. “Could be worse. It could be raining.”

  Rain had pattered constantly on the roof for the last hour. Outside, thunder rolled.

  Cheska didn’t laugh, but some of the distant horror in her face retreated. She kicked his booted foot. “I’m serious. If we can’t win, the best thing we can do for the Empire is to give in and leave ourselves to the mercy of the Regents.”

  “What about you, Bliss? What do you think?”

  Bliss had hammered a second sword into the wall, climbing even higher. “Every Elder we’ve ever examined or conversed with has desired the fall of the Empire. Every prophecy concerns a step toward human disunity and the breaking of civilization. I do not want anything that Nakothi wants.”

  The obvious question hung in the air between the three of them, resonating with the crackling off the flames, until Calder brought it to life. “Then what do we do?”

  “Win.”

  “Thank you for your contribution, Bliss.”

  Bliss glared at him. “Don’t talk to me as though I am a child.” She was currently curled up against the corner of the ceiling. “I mean what I said. This game between the Guilds is not worth playing if it hands the victory to the Elders, but we need the authority of the crown to force the governors to spend resources keeping the Great Elders sealed. Most of them see it as Guild business and no immediate threat, so the security on the Great Elders has never been weaker. We must put an end to the Independents, and as quickly as possible.”

  “Are the Regents not aware of that? They know more about what it takes to oppose the Great Elders than anyone.”

  “I believe that the Regents trust in their own power and the power of the Emperor, but nothing else. They see us as sheep in need of protection.” At the moment, Bliss looked more like a bat than a sheep. “If they were interested in explaining themselves to us and how their methods would protect us from the Great Elders, I would listen, but they are not. So we must defeat them.”

  Cheska threw her head back against her chair. “How? If we knew how to win, we’d have done it already.”

  “We need another Reader on our side who understands our full capabilities and can operate on the level of the Regents.” She looked to Calder. “Wouldn’t that be your responsibility?”

  Calder coughed. “I appreciate your estimation of my abilities, but—”

  “No, wait!” Cheska shot bolt upright. “You have the greatest Reading teacher in all of history! Light and life, I’ve been so focused on what everyone says: never Read anything the Emperor touched. I’ve ignored it as a resource. You have a window into the mind of the Emperor!”

  “No,” Calder said.

  Both Guild Heads stared at him.

  “I’m here because I don’t want to be him. If that’s what it’s going to take, you’ll need someone else.”

  There was a long pause before Cheska said “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  She held out a hand.

  Calder didn’t always carry around the Emperor’s crown, but he had been meeting with alchemists and strangers earlier. He trusted its power to defend him against anyone with sinister designs.

  Carefully, he pulled it out and held it over Cheska’s palm.

  She jerked the hand back on instinct, but he kept the crown out. Gingerly, she reached back out…then shuddered and withdrew her hand.

  “All right,” she said. “I get it.”

  Calder wordlessly pocketed the crown.

  Bliss suddenly stuck her head between them from behind the couch. Both of them flinched; the swords she had been standing on just a moment before were still driven into the wall. “I do not get it. It is only polite for you to explain yourselves.”

  “There’s…too much Intent,” Cheska said. “I can feel it from here. If I dove in, I don’t know if I’d be the one coming out, or if it would be some copy of him in my body.”

  Calder searched his pockets for a loose piece of lint, which he balled up and tossed into the flames. “So that leaves us with the question: how do we win?”

  Cheska groaned. “The Farstriders’ report will bury us.”

  “But we know it’s coming,” Calder countered. “We can get out ahead of it.”

  Bliss nodded along with his words, still uncomfortably close. “Yes, and also I can help you use the Optasia.”

  Calder turned until he was nose-to-nose with Bliss. She was pretty, in an otherworldly way, with flawless skin and wide, clear eyes. Which made the close contact all the more uncomfortable.

  “You can?”

  “They’re not actively watching us at the moment. After the battle in the Imperial Palace, all the Great Elders that we can track have split their attention. So I can help guard you.”

  She put a hand on either side of his face, and for a second he wondered if she was going to kiss him. But her expression remained perfectly serious, and her hands were firm; she was preventing him from looking away.

  “You will have a short amount of time. And if the Elders notice you, they will destroy your mind and I will destroy your body. Are you willing to try?”

  It seemed that all of Calder’s options involved the risk of his mind being destroyed. “I don’t see us beating Jorin without rolling the dice.”

  Bliss nodded, but she didn’t release him. She studied his face inch by inch, as though committing it to memory.

  “Um…Bliss…”

  “You have freckles. They’re very faint. I’ve never noticed them before.”

  Cheska leaned in beside her. She took a sip from a glass of red wine that Calder hadn’t noticed a servant bring. “Huh. So he does. You look good with a beard, by the way.”

  Calder looked from one woman to another. “What’s…happening here?”

  “We’re having a conversation,” Bliss said gravely.

  Cheska pulled back and ruffled his hair. “Wishful thinking won’t get you anywhere, Captain.”

  After chasing the Imperial Guard out of the Emperor’s quarters, Bliss began nailing wide silver rings into the walls around the Optasia with her Blackwatch spikes.

  Calder touched one of the rings, spinning it around the spike. He hesitated to Read it himself, standing so close to the Optasia. “What do the rings do?”

  “Silver rings were traditionally used to ward off Elderspawn,” Bliss said, hammering in another spike. “They had no effect until they were used in that manner. The collected Intent to repel Elders is what made them function.”

  She stood on the tips
of her toes, trying to reach the frame over the secret door that held the Optasia, until Calder took the hammer and spike from her and did it himself. He looped the silver ring over it afterwards.

  “These rings were part of a set that dates back almost five hundred years,” Bliss continued. “Do not steal them.”

  “Why would I steal them?” Calder asked, wondering how much they would be worth.

  “Because they are very valuable. Don’t do it.”

  Calder looked over the vaguely chair-shaped cage of steel bars and wires that was the Optasia. “They’re most valuable to me here.”

  “That is true,” Bliss agreed. “I do not know how effective these will be. And it is always possible that the Great Elders have deceived me, and that they are in fact watching this place closely. I do not feel an Elder presence now, but they can be deceptive.”

  “I’ll keep it brief. Focused.”

  “Good, because I can only help you start using it without breaking your brain. If the Great Elders felt your mind on them, they will focus all their attention on slipping inside your flesh, and I will have to kill you.”

  She spoke matter-of-factly, as she always had, but it made him curious.

  “Would you regret that? If you had to kill me?”

  She considered, her brows furrowing briefly. “…I would regret that. Alsa Grayweather would be hurt. And…it is hard to say for certain, but I believe I would be hurt too.”

  That was surprisingly touching.

  “I’m glad, Bliss. I thought we’d gotten closer over the last few years.”

  “We have.” Suddenly, her look became stern. “So now, if you make me kill you, you will have inflicted emotional injury on me.”

  “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  All seven nails were in place, pinning seven silver rings. The Blackwatch spikes and these rings were some of the most powerful Elder countermeasures in the world, and Bliss was standing over him to protect him from attack…and to protect everyone else from him in case those countermeasures failed. He was as ready as he could be.

  And yet he hesitated. He shifted in place, watching the Emperor’s throne, searching for a way out.

  “The wise man does not hesitate when faced with necessity,” Sadesthenes said. There was nothing to do but dive in.

  He pushed his body to move before his fear could stop him, sliding into the steel cage. It was not just a seat, but it supported every part of his body; there were bars positioned under both his arms and his legs and even a loop where his neck was supposed to rest.

  The unfathomable Intent of the ancient, world-bending tool pressed against his mind, straining his ability to resist.

  The throne was set somewhat lower than the rest of the room, making it easier to climb in, so he found that he was looking out on the Emperor’s ruined bedroom with Bliss looking down on him. Her hands were folded in front of him, and she gave him a smile of what was no doubt meant to be encouragement.

  “Do not worry,” she said. “It is very possible that you will survive.”

  Rather than responding, Calder released the restraints and opened his Reader’s senses.

  It was like leaping into a rushing river.

  He wasn’t Reading the throne itself, he realized immediately; the Optasia was taking his Intent and distributing it all throughout the world.

  There was too much.

  Far too much.

  The obelisks wait on the Erinin plains for millennia, massive slabs of stone. They are excavated by human slaves working for Othaghor, their Intent seeping into the stone as they beg it to protect them, plead for their work to save them from the whips of their overseers. But there is Othaghor’s Intent too, filtered through his human slaves, and there is the aggregated Intent of the thousands of visitors who visit this place and wonder—

  Now the home of a carpenter in Vandenyas, his carefully crafted pieces set out on display, who had once visited the obelisks of Erin and wondered where they had come from. This table is made to stay strong and sturdy, to last for years if not decades, to bring the home of the customer together, but there is also the Intent of the boards and the lumberjack who cut them—

  Lumberjacks. A lumberjack in Dylia prides himself on cleaving through trees in one swing of the axe he inherited from his father. An engineer outside of the Capital designs a machine that would make lumberjacks obsolete. An obscure sect in the jungles of northern Izyria worships lumberjacks, considering it a revered profession, as only the worthy could be selected to end the long lives of trees—

  Calder pulled himself out of the flow for a moment, catching a glimpse of Bliss and the world around him, gasping for air and for stability. Each of his stray thoughts directed the Optasia, filling him with far more information than he could ever sort or contain.

  He had to focus.

  Rainworth. Under different names, the town stands for fifteen hundred years, since the establishment of the Capital as the center of the Empire. In one age, it is a center of Heartland art and culture. In another, a shelter for refugees. Then it is a haven for businesses that cannot quite make it in the Capital, and then and then and then…

  Focus.

  Shera. Jorin. Bareius.

  The Optasia drowned him in knowledge, far too much for him to sort, but he found them.

  The Independents were in Rainworth, and they were making moves of their own.

  He continued absorbing information, some as relevant as the current general attitude of the Consultant’s Guild and others as irrelevant as the ambitions of the man who had laid the tiles of the Rainworth Imperial Library.

  He could have sat there, drinking in the endless stream of information, but he only had so much time.

  There was something else I was supposed to be looking for. Something more important…

  In the constant deluge, it was hard to keep his own memories straight.

  Oh right, the crack in the sky.

  With no further encouragement, his vision reversed until he stared into the sky.

  Through the lens of the Emperor’s throne, there was no crack in the sky. No one could call that hideous wound, that shadow-bleeding gash in all of reality, a mere crack.

  It was like the top half of the world had been rent open by a great sword, leaving a slash. He stared into the void from which the Elders had sprung, a deep darkness with distant lights like stars of every color. They wavered slightly as he watched, as though he saw them from underwater or they vibrated in place.

  With his senses magnified, he could sense that each one of those colored points was the focus of unimaginable Intent, and if he only reached out, he could taste that Intent for himself. He yearned to do so, craved to sample them, as though those points of colored light held heavenly flavors that he’d never imagined.

  But they were too far…and there was someone standing between him and those false stars.

  A human figure dressed in black floated in the void, highlighted by a hazy blue light. As Calder watched, he got the distinct sense that this stranger watched him in return.

  The Optasia could stretch far enough to reach that unknown person, but it didn’t do so on its own. The network of devices that magnified Intent were all earthbound, so looking into that void would be straining it beyond its original purpose. And how long might it take? The Great Elders could notice him at any second.

  But Calder couldn’t waste this opportunity. He would gaze into the void, but he would do so carefully—

  The Emperor’s throne picked up on his decision, but not on the word carefully.

  Calder instantly regretted his thoughts as he rushed into the void, the darkness swallowing his awareness whole.

  Chapter Nine

  three years ago

  “Let’s go!” Jerri rushed to the edge of the conch-shell ship. “We have to make it to the tower.”

  Calder looked past the dense trees of the nameless island in the Aion Sea. The sun was already almost touching the ocean.

&n
bsp; “We don’t have much time until dark. If we get caught by a swarm of Othaghor’s spawn in the dark, we’re done.”

  Urzaia was still standing on the beach below, and he whipped his hatchet once. The green creature of the Hordefather was launched from his blade, its body slapping against the sand. A dozen frog-like legs twitched into the ground, its crimson stinger flailing, blue blood leaking.

  “They haven’t bothered us until now,” Andel noted. “That means they’re directed by a greater intelligence. I would guess they are waiting for us to join up with the other crew, if indeed the others survived. They mean to trap us here once we get deeper into the island.”

  Jerri spread her hands. “How could you possibly know that? Maybe that thing is the only one on the island!”

  “It is not the only one,” Urzaia responded, looking deeper into the trees. “It is only the one I caught. I have seen others, and I smell even more.”

  Calder looked to the tower, mind working. If the crew of The Reliable was alive and in the tower, it might be worthwhile to reach the tower and join forces, even if there were Elderspawn waiting to encircle them. He had contingencies in place for this, and they would have more options once they joined forces.

  He didn’t want to leave a fellow Navigator to the mercies of Elderspawn, and he certainly didn’t want to leave the Emperor’s crown to a Great Elder.

  On the other hand, walking into an Elder trap on the cusp of sunset was the definition of suicide.

  “Urzaia,” Calder asked, “how fast could we reach the tower?”

  “If we hurry, we can beat the sun. But we will not make it there and back.”

  That settled it in Calder’s mind. “We wait for dawn,” he said. “It’s too risky. We don’t even know…”

  A flag rose into the air from the tower. At that distance, obscured by leaves, Calder couldn’t make it out clearly. But he knew what was on it.

  The Navigator’s Wheel.

  “…okay, they are alive,” Calder said. “But they’re going to have to wait until dawn. They’ve made it until now, they’ll make it a few more hours.”