Of Sea and Shadow (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 1) Read online

  Foster always kept the secrets of his firearms close to the vest, but Andel made a mental note to confront him about this. If he had weapons that could fire several times in combat without reloading, the crew needed them.

  A shadow darkened the front of the tent.

  With his left hand, Andel grasped the White Sun pendant. With his right, he steadied the Watchman’s stolen saber.

  A bone-white claw, like a giant crab’s, slashed the front of the tent open. It peered in, and its face...Andel shuddered and had to force himself not to look away. Its whole head was a writhing mass of flesh-stalks, each capped by a disgustingly human-looking eye.

  He focused on his sword. The hilt shook ever so slightly against the blade, and the weapon was a little heavy on the back-end. Something manufactured for battle, not crafted by an expert.

  It would have to do. Andel would fight this disgusting crab-thing with a broken bottle, if he had to.

  The Consultant stepped up beside him, a knife in one hand and a clutch of needles in the other. From the man’s expression, Andel knew that they were both prepared to die.

  Then a woman shouted, and the bone claw fell to the ground, leaking cloudy white blood.

  The Child of Nakothi screamed like a man being tortured, falling back and flailing with its second, smaller claw. Andel could only get a glimpse of its opponent through the slash in the tent—the figure moved in a streak of black clothes, gleaming bronze, and blond hair. The two of them moved past, and Andel had to watch the rest of the fight in the shadows they cast against the tent. The woman’s silhouette passed through the dark mass that must have been the bone crab.

  Another scream of torment, and then the creature gurgled into silence. A small river of milky blood trickled under the tent.

  The wounded Consultant shivered, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “Gardeners at last,” he said, his voice shaky. “Thank—”

  A blond-haired blur ran into the tent, and before Andel knew what was happening, a clawed hand rushed at his eyes. He brought his sword up on pure instinct, but the blade was slapped aside, and he found his throat in a crushing grip.

  He fell back against something hard, maybe a table, that gouged into his spine. It was a welcome distraction from his throat, which felt as though she had tightened a noose around his whole neck.

  “Wait!” the wounded Consultant yelled, moving forward. “He’s not—”

  He was cut off again as the pressure released from Andel’s throat. Andel collapsed to his knees, coughing and desperately trying to seize a breath. He forced himself up, raising his saber. He had to fight, to do something; his attacker was moving toward Foster and Petal.

  In the second it took to get his eyes on the scene, she was already done. She held Foster’s musket in her left hand and Petal’s hair in her right, and she was dragging the girl away from a case of glass bottles that the Alchemist strained and struggled to reach.

  That was the first time Andel got a clear look at his attacker.

  She was younger than he would have thought. Not yet twenty-five, he would guess. Her hair was bright blond, and cut short enough that it wouldn’t fall into her eyes as she fought. She’d pulled black cloth over her mouth, and a pair of hilts stuck out from behind her lower back.

  Her whole body was sheathed in black except her hands, which...Andel squinted, looking closer. Her left hand seemed to be clawed and blue-tinged, stretched slightly bigger than normal. Now that he thought of it, her pupils had the vertical slits of a lizard.

  An Imperial Guard, perhaps?

  All of that went through his mind as he placed his sword on the table behind him, raising his empty hands. “You really think we should be fighting each other right now?” he asked.

  “You didn’t do much fighting.” She hefted Petal by the hair, and the alchemist whimpered.

  The male Consultant limped up to her, hands spread. “Gardener. These are not our enemies. They allowed me to surrender when I was beaten, and they fought with me against the Dead Mother’s Children.”

  The Gardener surveyed the room, her gaze lingering on the shattered skeleton-bird and the imp impaled on Andel’s saber. “Looks like you didn’t do much fighting either, Shepherd.”

  Without a word, she released Petal’s hair and tossed Foster’s musket back. He caught it with a squawk and began muttering to himself, fussing over the gun as though she’d tossed his infant.

  The Gardener flexed her hand and the short claws withdrew, the blue tint fading back to the normal hue of healthy skin. Even her pupils had returned to a human shape. She started to walk out of the tent.

  “Follow me if you want to fight Elderspawn,” she said. “But I will not hesitate to kill you if necessary. Please keep that in mind.”

  Foster moved his musket as though he meant to turn it on her, and she appeared in front of him, gripping the end of his gun.

  “That means you too, sir,” she said.

  Sir? Andel thought. A bellow cut through the sounds of battle, like an enraged bull. His gaze met Foster’s.

  “Urzaia,” Petal whispered.

  The Gardener’s blond head snapped around at the sound of the name. “Your Soulbound?”

  The Consultants knew about their crew. Andel supposed it wasn’t so surprising—supposedly, the Consultants knew everything. But it still disturbed him to think that killers like these knew every detail of their combat capabilities.

  So he decided to use a little truth to his advantage.

  He smiled, just a little, and tipped his hat to her. “Our Champion.”

  Her eyes widened, and he was treated to a clear view as the pupils snapped from round to a vertical line.

  Then she was gone, the tent flap swinging in the wake of her exit.

  “What are you doing telling her that?” Foster grumbled. “And you, girl, saying Urzaia’s name.”

  Petal muttered to herself, hiding in a veil of frizzy hair.

  “They know everything anyway,” Andel said. “Might as well scare them a little.” He hefted his sword again.

  “Now let’s go see if we can save the captain.”

  ~~~

  When Shera struck Tristania’s coat-shrouded back, she hit with more force than any of the musket-shots. She led with the blade of her bronze knife, striking the fabric with her weapon’s tip.

  The bullets had done nothing, but this blade must have been invested with more Intent than Calder could imagine: it tore through the cloth, instantly drawing blood. The force drove the Silent One forward, knocking her over Naberius, sending her sprawling on the ground.

  The Chronicler staggered to his feet, clutching the Heart of Nakothi, but Calder could only hope the man stayed alive long enough to be saved. He was too busy running back to the edge of the crater, looking for the knotted rope.

  The Elderspawn didn’t let him get far.

  Something like a severed spine on a centipede’s legs slithered up to him, and he ducked as he ran, slashing it in half with his cutlass. Death to the deathless, he chanted silently, letting his Intent flow down into the blade. It wouldn’t help too much against the Children of the Dead Mother, not unless he continued investing it for weeks, but any tiny advantage would help when he was forced to fight the living dead blade-to-bone.

  The spine centipede shriveled and died when he slashed it in half, so maybe it worked.

  A headless, hairless, heavily-muscled gorilla loped up to him, loping forward on pale-skinned knuckles. Calder raised his shaking cutlass.

  “Urzaia!” he shouted.

  The gorilla got closer.

  “Now, Urzaia!”

  He got a glimpse of tanned skin as Urzaia launched himself over the edge of the crater, a black hatchet in each hand and blond hair streaming behind him. He landed in a spray of fluid from the ground, only feet from Shera.

  Urzaia had never taken his eyes from his prey. Admirable, in other circumstances, but this left Calder to fight a charging dead gorilla with nothing more than a flimsy
piece of metal.

  Light and life preserve me.

  The expression had never been more appropriate.

  The headless gorilla reached him, eerily silent. It raised a fist to slam his head down into his shoulders. Calder tried for a smooth, agile dodge, but he was afraid that he simply lurched out of the way. The fist struck him like a sack full of hammer-heads, sending a shock of bone-crunching pain up his left arm and sending him staggering a few steps to his right.

  He still managed to keep his cutlass up, slashing the creature across the chest. Milky white fluid crept down its flesh in a line.

  Other than that, it didn’t react at all. It simply turned and charged him again.

  As he ducked under a clumsy punch aiming for his head, slipping past the gorilla’s blue-white body, he reflected on how frustrating it was to fight a headless opponent. He had never before realized just how grateful he was for the enemy’s reactions: grunting in pain to let him know that he’d scored a point, panting when they were tired, screaming when they were scared, generally exchanging banter in the middle of a fight.

  Engaging a mute enemy was just...unsatisfying. Not to mention terrifying, since a single connected blow meant that his bones would be nothing but powder.

  He danced another round with the monstrous gorilla, trying to ignore the screams around him as the Blackwatch fought their own creatures, and the sounds of battle from within the pit. He left a scratch on the monster’s back just as a deafening roar sounded from inside the crater.

  Urzaia has some impressive lungs, he thought. Maybe I should promote him. Andel couldn’t yell that loud if he tried.

  He yearned to go down there, but only his own quick movements and the gorilla’s clumsy attacks had kept him alive this long. If he turned his back, the monster would pull his arms from their sockets and beat him to death with them.

  A streak of black passed by, and he caught a glimpse of blond hair. Then a gout of white blood sprayed from the gorilla-creature right where its head should have been, splattering on his clothes. He staggered back, more from the stench than the surprise. The blood smelled like spoiled sausages and putrid cheese, like carrion and burned hair. The faint smell followed each of the Children like a miasma, but now it was coming from his clothes.

  He dry-heaved and tore his jacket off at the same time, more frightened of the smell than of the gorilla’s flailing fists.

  Only when he could breathe again did he take a look at the monster, which lay dying on the flesh of the ground.

  A Consultant stood with her back to him, blond hair cut short. She held a bronze knife in one hand, and her other flexed open and closed in a vaguely disquieting manner.

  “Thanks,” he panted, as soon as he caught his breath.

  She half-turned to look at him. “You’re quite welcome.”

  Then she vaulted into the crater just as Urzaia had done, landing with her knees bent.

  That’s just not fair. Why could everyone do that but him? He scrambled closer to the rope before another dead monster could interrupt him.

  Urzaia needed his help. And unless he was very much mistaken, there were now two Consultant assassins down there.

  Not to mention his mother.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Calder fell from the rope into the bottom of the flesh crater, and instantly had to fight for his life.

  A blue-skinned imp the size of a child hissed at him when he landed, scrambling toward him on all fours and opening its mouth wide. He jerked back, knocked off-guard by its sudden assault. Why did it seem like all these frightening monsters were so fast? Probability alone suggested that some of them should be slow, or maybe peaceful. But this imp snarled at him, flailing in a storm of claws and teeth, clambering to reach him.

  He held the creature at bay with his sword, trying to shove his blade down the thing’s throat, but it caught the steel of his cutlass in its teeth. He had to use both hands to lift the whole ensemble—sword and Elderspawn together—and slam it against the wall until the point of his blade stuck out the back of the monster’s head.

  Only then, panting, could he turn back to the real fight.

  Tristania huddled against the nearby wall of the crater, bleeding, occasionally flicking her explosive whip at the Children of Nakothi that surrounded her. Each time she did, a white light detonated at the point of impact, and they were blown back in a spray of bone fragments and pale blood. The wrappings near the back of her ribs were soaked with red, but he supposed that was the advantage of wearing bandages everywhere: she had simply tied a few strips of cloth a little tighter to bind the wounds.

  Naberius lay nearby on his stomach, holding the Heart of Nakothi in one hand and trying to crawl away. After only an instant, Calder saw the inch of steel sticking out of his left calf—it looked as though he’d tried to run, only to have one of the Consultants stop him with a thrown blade. His dark blue suit was filthy with stains, and his hair—for once—was no longer perfect. Finally, he didn’t look like a figure that had stepped out of a portrait.

  Alsa Grayweather had a long cut on the side of her cheek, but she fought against the Children with her back to the crater. She must have been out of ammunition, because she fought with her musket in both hands like a club; in the first instant, he saw her knock a shambling corpse to one side with the butt of the gun, drive an iron spike through the head of a hairless dog, and then turn back to the corpse only to kick its knees out from under it.

  He moved toward his mother for the same reason that the Children of Nakothi were focused on her: because the other three fighters were far too terrifying.

  Urzaia laughed as he fought, black hatchet in each hand. The gold hide wrapped around his arm gleamed in the sun, and his leather breastplate hung from one severed strap. He slammed one hatchet down and the blond Consultant caught the blow on her two crossed bronze knives. Her arms looked blue, almost the same hue as these dead creatures, and muscles shifted strangely beneath the skin. But she managed to hold off Urzaia’s impossible strength.

  Behind him, Shera flicked a blade at Urzaia’s back, then turned to drive her bronze knife through one of the Children. Without looking, the Izyrian gladiator reached back and swatted the blade out of the air with his second hatchet.

  The blonde saw another of those headless gorillas loping for her, and she leaped onto its shoulders, using it as a footstool to flip over Urzaia and drive her pair of bronze knives down toward his neck.

  Urzaia dropped his hatchets, grabbing her by the wrists and moving as if to slam her down onto the ground, but she twisted somehow until she was sitting on his shoulders, legs wrapped around his neck in a stranglehold. Shera moved to drive a knife into his back, but he spun and caught her arm, hurling her into the wall. Then he fell over backwards like a toppling tree, slamming the blond Consultant into the ground. The Children of the Dead Mother, sensing vulnerability, swarmed around them.

  Calder had to trust Urzaia to handle that fight, because there wasn’t much he could do to help.

  He hurried over to his mother, trying not to think about his growing shame and irritation. He rarely felt weak—even though he knew Urzaia was a Soulbound and an experienced fighter, the difference between them never seemed so stark. Calder was Soulbound himself, after all, and when he stood on The Testament, none of his crew could match his power. But seeing Urzaia here, off the ship, made him feel ordinary and useless.

  As he ran past Naberius, still scrambling to crawl away, he had a sudden thought that made him stop in his tracks. “Do not let yourself be distracted by violence. Battle is a game men play to reach an objective, but the battle itself does not matter. Only the objective matters.” Not Sadesthenes; one of the classical strategists. Loreli, maybe.

  He dropped to his knees in front of Naberius and grabbed the Heart of Nakothi.

  The Witness resisted—perhaps he didn’t trust Calder, or perhaps he had been fighting to hold on to the Heart for so long that he couldn’t comprehend releasing it to anyone. The organ
squirted gray-green blood over their hands, but neither man let go.

  “Naberius!” Calder yelled, trying to shock the man back to his senses. “Let go! I’m trying to help! If I can get it back to the ship, the Consultants might follow me.”

  The Chronicler snarled until his face twisted. If he hadn’t known better, Calder might not have recognized the man. “It’s mine!”

  What was this? Was this the real Naberius, or had attempting to Read the Elder artifact done something to his mind? Calder had grown up on stories of Readers being driven insane by accidentally contacting the Elder powers, and he’d seen the results of such insanity firsthand. If this was Elder madness, then Calder had little chance of ever seeing his fee.

  The thought put him in a bad enough mood that he acted on his first instinct: he punched Naberius in the nose.

  Not too hard, but enough to startle the man into releasing the Heart. Calder ran away, ignoring Naberius and his rage, running back to the rope. If he could make it to The Testament, then maybe he could hold off the Consultants himself. He had no doubt that the Lyathatan would be more than a match for the Children of the Dead Mother.

  He wasn’t making an intentional effort to Read anything, but some hunch made him turn and raise his cutlass. It saved his life.

  Shera’s bronze blade scraped along the edge of his cutlass, raising sparks.

  A sort of manic cheer rose up in Calder, and he lifted the Heart. “How about a trade?”

  She pulled a two-inch blade from a pouch on her thigh, throwing it at him sidearm. At this distance he couldn’t even try to knock it away with his sword, but he jerked to one side, catching it on the thick fabric of his coat. It still hit him with more force than he’d expected, but he managed to avoid having an artery opened, so he wasn’t complaining.

  Then Shera was on him, and he fought for his life.

  Not for the first time, he regretted not taking the time to reload his pistol. Her eyes were dead over her black half-mask, bronze blade striking like lightning. Only fear and desperation made him fast enough to meet her strikes, and he kept back-stepping, trying to get far enough that his extra reach with the sword would matter. But if he put too much distance between them, then she would have free reign with her throwing blades.