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

  He lived long enough to back up a few steps, and then he asked the important question. “Where’s my wife?”

  She swept a kick at his ankles, and he jumped. Somehow he managed to prick her just above the hip with the point of his sword as he dodged her strike, which filled him with confidence. Bold now, he stepped up and kicked her in the ribs. “Where is my wife?”

  The Consultant took the kick with a grunt, then took advantage of his proximity to drive a knife into his leg. He jerked back quick enough to avoid a crippling strike, but she still sliced across his shin.

  The pain flashed through his whole leg as though a shark had taken a bite from his limb, and he screamed. Form forgotten, he slashed blindly with his cutlass, trying to score a cut wherever he could.

  She stood just outside the reach of his blade, crouching, her left hand behind her back as though she was hiding something from him.

  He gritted his teeth against the pain, holding his sword up to defend. If she threw something, he would have just enough time to knock it out of the air and catch her as she tried to move closer. This was his chance, and he couldn’t let pain slow him down.

  He would take this Consultant back to the ship, even if he had to sew her back together.

  As Children of Nakothi howled and screeched around them, she stayed in the same pose. Was she waiting for something? He couldn’t afford to move first—if he misstepped on his injured leg, she’d see him dead.

  With one smooth motion, she pulled her hand back out, and Calder realized he hadn’t seen her second bronze blade. Now she held one in each hand, but his situation hadn’t changed. He still needed to wait…

  There was something wrong with the second knife.

  The pain in his leg didn’t matter—it was a shallow wound, only skin deep, though it hurt like fire. Even Jerri didn’t matter, for the moment, and the lethal threat of this assassin fled from his mind. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes from that battered bronze blade.

  “What is that?” he asked, horrified. The weapon pressed on his senses from here, and he’d only seen a handful of items in his life with that much raw Intent.

  An Imperial artifact? Surely not. An ordinary object touched by the Emperor escaped the Imperial Guard here and there, but they would never have missed a weapon.

  But he knew he couldn’t let that blade touch him.

  Shera rushed him, leading with the ordinary knife in her right hand. He slapped it aside with the flat of his sword, eyes still on her left hand. Calder focused his Intent on his cutlass, chanting in his mind to focus his power.

  Protect me. You can hold. You’re steel, solid steel, and you are an impenetrable barrier that will shield me from harm.

  She swept in, driving her left-hand blade in an arc that would take him across the stomach. He shoved his sword in the way, focusing all his Intent on knocking her weapon aside.

  The bronze knife met his steel, hit with an impact that shook him like a sail in high wind, and then sheared right through. The top half of his blade tumbled off, glowing orange at the severed end.

  He hadn’t thought to dodge—he was only lucky that his cutlass had knocked her blow enough out of the way that he wasn’t eviscerated. As it was, he lost only a corner of his coat.

  Instead of backing off, the assassin stepped closer, until she was all but pressed against him. Face-to-face, Shera looked him in the eyes and spoke.

  “She’s dead,” she said.

  His breath left him.

  Then she struck him in the wrist. A shot of pain shattered his arm, and his hand spasmed open. The Heart of Nakothi fell out.

  She snatched it from the air and spun away, heading back to her comrade.

  Calder wanted to follow, but...he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He let the pain of his wounds swallow him, let it burn until he sank to his knees. Hideous creatures born of bone and flesh loped closer, now that the Consultant was gone, hissing at the scent of his blood.

  He wasn’t sure he cared.

  Then his vision was swallowed up by smoke, and panic returned. There was something about losing his sight that struck something primal inside him, making him react even through the listless haze of depression. A pale-skinned hand reached out of the black cloud surrounding him, and he slashed it, running blindly in the other direction. A bone claw swept out, reaching for his legs, and he managed to stagger away.

  The cloud of smoke cleared surprisingly quickly, and the Consultants were missing.

  Just gone. As though they’d never been there.

  “No!” Urzaia roared, slamming his hatchet into a bone-crab so hard that the giant creature tumbled head-over-shell for yards until it cracked into the wall. “Not again! Not again!”

  Another tear opened up in the flesh at Urzaia’s feet, and another spine-like centipede crawled out. He crushed it under the heel of one boot without seeming to notice.

  Calder hadn’t noticed during the fight, but now he finally realized: the Children of the Dead Mother had never stopped appearing. More and more crawled out of the sewer-sized tunnels in the crater, swarming closer to the humans.

  A contingent of Blackwatch slid down the crater walls, many of them clutching black spikes in either hand. When an Elderspawn made contact with the Awakened iron, they fell to the ground in piles of limp bone and flesh.

  His mother had told him once that it took seven spikes to immobilize an Elderspawn, but a single blow seemed to take care of these creatures well enough. Though the Watchmen hadn’t been much use against the Consultants, this was the fight they’d been trained for: men and women in black coats against the spawn of the Elders, no weapons forbidden, no quarter given.

  Calder moved to his mother. She had taken command back, as soon as the smoke cleared. “Retreat!” she called. “Back to shelter!”

  He was about to follow her orders when a hand seized his injured leg and he shouted again, lifting his other foot to kick at whatever creature had grabbed him.

  It was Naberius. Instead of panicked he looked desperate, as though someone had taken his child from his arms.

  “Where is it?” he pleaded. “Do you have it?”

  Calder tried to think of some excuse, but he was far too tired. “She has it, Naberius. She’s gone.”

  The Chronicler’s wail sounded like a man on the verge of tears.

  Alsa grabbed her son by the shoulder, moving him toward the rope. “I’ll have two men take him out.” He looked around and saw that two black-coated Watchmen were already carrying Tristania between them, her own bloodstained coat dragging behind.

  “I talked to her, Mother,” Calder said listlessly. “She said Jerri’s dead.”

  Alsa Grayweather shook him, her saber gripped tight in her other hand. “This is not the time for this, Calder. We have to move.”

  She was right, and he knew it.

  So he moved.

  ~~~

  It turns out the Blackwatch did have a shelter worth the name—almost a fort, it had been constructed in obvious haste by lashing thousands of logs together for walls, fences, and supports. With his leg and other, lesser wounds bandaged, Calder sat in a creaking chair next to a table piled high with weapons.

  Watchmen bustled here and there, and his crew gathered around him. They were all relatively unharmed, he was glad to see. Andel had a new sword that didn’t quite fit in his sheath, and his white suit bore a few new stains. Petal shivered more than usual, clutching a case of potions to her chest. Foster grumbled as he peered through his reading-glasses, inspecting the barrel of a musket.

  Urzaia sat with his back to a wall, eyes closed, breathing deep and even. His hatchets were bare on his lap, and Calder hadn’t gathered the courage to speak to him yet. No one had; even the Watchmen avoided him.

  Outside the shelter, a thousand inhuman voices raised in a chorus of howls. The walls shuddered constantly under the force of so many blows, as though they suffered through an earthquake.

  They didn’t have long. Calder didn’t know much
about the Children of Nakothi specifically, but he knew that The Testament couldn’t hold everyone on the island. And the ship was their only chance of escaping with their lives.

  Alsa pushed hair out of her eyes, addressing the whole assembly. “We don’t have long. We do have allies, and they should be coming to reinforce us soon...but if they’re not here in a matter of minutes, nothing of us will remain to reinforce. I have never seen such a gathering of Elderspawn at one time.”

  “That which sleeps,” one Watchman muttered, before the woman beside him elbowed him in the ribs.

  Alsa glanced at him but didn’t make a comment. “We cannot defend this location for long, but most of the Children seem to be gathered here. If we gather everything we can and punch through their formation at a single location, we should be able to make it down the beach to The Testament. Calder, can the Lyathatan help us?”

  The Elderspawn that pulled his ship was notoriously unwilling to fight unless something specifically disturbed its rest. He had already begged it to fight the Stormwing scarcely a month past, and to a creature that existed on the scale of eons, a month may as well have been five minutes ago.

  “I’ll make sure of it,” he said, projecting confidence. He wasn’t sure he could do it, but if need be, he would appeal to the Lyathatan’s master. He shuddered to think what such a meeting would cost him, but surely not as much as his life. Anything short of that was a bargain, at this point.

  She nodded sharply. “Then that settles it. We need to gather—”

  Naberius strode into the room, his Silent One limping along at his side. His suit was still as stained and ruined as ever, but he must have found time to comb his hair, because his dark locks tumbled down to his shoulders. Once more, he had the look of a battered hero who had survived a terrible battle.

  But Calder remembered the Chronicler’s face as he’d begged for the Heart. He remembered, and clutched the grip of his pistol.

  But Naberius seemed in control of himself this time, waiting to be seated until Tristania pulled out a chair for him. She slid it under the table after he sat, like one of his mother’s servants back in the Grayweather house. Once he was seated properly, she lifted the case of polished wood from back on the ship, placing it gently on the table.

  Naberius flipped the latches and pulled open the lid.

  Inside, in settings of velvet, sat eight white candles. Seven of them were whole and pristine, the eighth burned halfway down.

  At last he spoke, his voice as cool and composed as ever. “What are our chances of making it out of this enclosure and all the way to the ship, do you think?”

  From Alsa’s expression, Calder thought she would rather punch the Witness than answer him, but her words were polite. “Some of us will certainly make it. Some certainly will not.”

  He nodded as though that were the answer he expected, his hand hovering over the various candles like a produce merchant selecting the ripest fruit. “With those odds in mind, I believe I may have a solution.”

  Some of the Watchmen around him froze. Calder hadn’t realized they were paying such close attention, but it seemed the entire room held its breath in anticipation of his solution. Outside, the Children howled like a foul wind.

  “Explain if you will, Witness,” Alsa said in a tight voice.

  “As you know, I served for many years in the Imperial Palace. My primary duties involved finances, but living around the Emperor, you find yourself exposed to certain truths. Especially as a Reader. There were techniques he designed that worked against the spawn of certain Great Elders, and failed against others.”

  Naberius finally seized on one of the whole candles, though it seemed outwardly the same as all the others. Calder knew that wasn’t the case—he would have memories stored in that wax, weeks or even months of experience, waiting to be released until the candle was lit.

  But he closed his eyes as he gripped the candle, tilting his head with the air of a man savoring a sensation. Calder thought he understood. Even if he could not relive his memories perfectly without burning the candles, the man was still a Reader, and the memory storage was essentially a function of human Intent. He would be able to Read certain details with a touch.

  The Chronicler spoke as if from the depths of a dream. “In my contact with the Heart of Nakothi, I saw some...missing pieces. At last, I understood the nature of the Children. I should be able to speak their language, if you will.”

  Of all the people gathered, Foster was the one to speak up, though he kept his eyes on the gun in his hands. “If there’s a point in there, Chronicler, you’d best get to it. I don’t fancy meeting the Emperor again so soon.”

  Naberius shot a glance to Calder, and anger flashed across his countenance. “This would be so much easier if I had the Heart, but I’ll work with what I have. The Children understand only death and rebirth. They want, they need, they crave to introduce the living to the sort of deadly remaking that they’ve already experienced. And they will only go away...” he placed the candle back in its housing and shut the case. “...if they believe they have succeeded. I can deceive them.”

  The room was silent for a moment before Alsa spat out, “What does that mean, Naberius?”

  He offered her a dazzling smile that seemed completely out of sync with the scene around him. “That I will handle it. Tristania.”

  The Silent One took his case of candles, and Naberius rose from his seat. Without another word, the two of them walked toward the wall. Tristania’s hair stuck out from her bandages, and her shredded and bloodied coat drifted along behind. Both of them walk with a limp, reaching out and steadying the other as they walked. Calder hadn’t seen it before, but even Naberius’ wound had been treated, his calf wrapped with a white bandage. As they limped away, blood soaked through the cloth.

  Andel adjusted his hat and deliberately turned away from the two Witnesses. “They’re dead,” he said. “What’s the real plan?”

  Alsa nodded and looked up at the surrounding Watchman. “Everyone gather as many weapons as you can. Mobile wounded support one another. Keep the injured to the center, with the crew of The Testament. If you’re in fighting condition, you’re on the outside. We’re going out the gate in five minutes, so be with us or stay and face Nakothi in person.”

  A few of the Blackwatch raised their iron nails in a sort of salute and hurried off to carry out her orders.

  For his part, Calder kept watching the Witnesses. He had no reason to trust Naberius, but the man did seem confident about his solution. And no one knew better than Calder the sorts of desperate plans you could come up with after Reading a bit of obscure information.

  The Chronicler was speaking with his Silent One as they walked. Tristania turned as though surprised, and for the first time Calder saw her speak. At least, the bandages around her lips moved. They were too far away for him to hear, and he found himself unconsciously following, using an unloaded musket as a crutch.

  He couldn’t deny a certain curiosity; if Naberius really knew some piece of Reading that could keep an army of Elderspawn from their gates, then that was something Calder wanted to learn. And he found himself wondering what Tristania would sound like. There was something enticing about hearing the voice of someone who never spoke.

  On this side of the log wall, someone had set up a set of rickety stairs scarcely better than a ladder, leading up to a platform. The Blackwatch would have used this short tower to see over the wall, keeping a lookout when the island seemed too quiet. Tristania and Naberius helped each other up the steps now, limping pathetically until they reached the top.

  Calder stood at the bottom, eyeing the stairs.

  There is no way I’m doing that, he thought. Walking out here on a slashed leg was one thing, but he wasn’t about to attempt stairs.

  Naberius leaned over the side, and Tristania joined him, looking down at the Children of Nakothi below. The wall shook with the impact of dead fists, claws and fingers and other, stranger appendages reaching throu
gh the gaps in the logs. Calder took one prudent step back.

  The Chronicler said something, and Tristania laughed.

  This time, Calder heard it. Her voice was high, clear, surprisingly young, and weary. As though she laughed because she was too tired to do anything else.

  While the Silent One still leaned over the wall, Naberius pulled out one of his Dalton Foster original pistols. He pressed the barrel to the back of Tristania’s head.

  She turned slowly, not alarmed, and Calder shouted a startled warning. His hand scrambled to his own pistol, but he got tangled in the musket he was using for a crutch. He had some vague thought of shooting Naberius before he could pull the trigger.

  But he was too late.

  The shot was swallowed up in the din the Children caused, no louder than their screams. Tristania’s body shuddered and slumped against the wall.

  Naberius stood there for a moment, the palms of his hands pressing against her shoulders. Calder couldn’t exactly see what he was doing, but he could feel the flow of great Intent even at this distance.

  Then Naberius reached down, grabbing his Silent One by the legs, and flipping her body over the wall.

  The Children of the Dead Mother went silent.

  Finally, Calder leveled his pistol, pointing straight at the back of Naberius’ blue suit. “Throw your weapons down!” he demanded, his voice harsh in his own ears.

  Back in the main shelter, the Blackwatch had raised a cheer. They would have heard the monsters growing silent.

  With his back still turned, Naberius raised both hands. “I’m no threat to you, Captain. I just saved your life.”

  Calder couldn’t find the words to name the questions that ran through his head, the pain he felt for a silent woman he barely knew. All he said was, “Why?”

  Naberius slowly turned, his face a mask. “We still have a job to do.”

  “Why her?”

  The Chronicler frowned. “Would you have followed me up here? Trusted my word when I told you to look down?”