Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2) Read online

  Only four robed figures were gathered around the green fire now. They had started with five.

  Jerri found herself wondering whether the others had seen the same things she had. She was willing to bet that they were allowed to see the giant worm’s face.

  The four remaining leaders of the cabal gathered themselves, each composed and kneeling before the fire. One of the men spoke up. “Great Ones, show us our guide.”

  From the center of the flames, a jewel rose up, flashing with light. It was an emerald, shining like a star as it hovered in the air above their heads. They whispered to each other in excitement, clapping one another on the shoulder as they watched it. Jerri’s father was ecstatic, his grin as wide as she’d ever seen it, eyes fixed on the gem.

  It hung there for five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. After twenty minutes of silence and green light, the circle of adults began to shift uneasily on their knees.

  “Should we…should we take it?” an old woman asked.

  Five more minutes passed before anyone tried it. Jerri’s father rose slowly to his feet, reaching a hand out for the jewel. It didn’t fly away and it didn’t slap his hand down, so Jerri was sure he’d grab it.

  Then the emerald became a stream of light, flashing away. In an instant, it appeared in front of Jyrine’s face.

  She jerked back in shock, almost knocking over her chair. If this was some kind of an attack, she had no idea what to do about it.

  That whispering voice from the void returned, and though it sounded quiet, it swallowed the room. “You look back. She looks forward. She will guide you into the future.”

  The trinket fell as though a string had been cut, falling into Jerri’s lap. It was so hot that it felt like it would burn her even through her skirt.

  “Bind this to her soul,” the voice said, and then a soft wind filled the chamber. As the wind left, the fire died.

  The adults murmured to one another, glancing at her in confusion. Only her father seemed like he was on the verge of laughter. After another hour of discussion, during which Jerri fiddled with her gem and snacked on the food from the service table, the old men and women began to file out.

  One by one, the three strangers put a hand on her shoulder and said words of farewell. She didn’t entirely understand what had happened today, but she knew enough to mind her manners, and she responded to each one.

  Her father was last. He knelt in front of her, gathering her hand up in both of his. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded impatiently. “Of course I am. But what happened?” She had waited over an hour to find out, and with curiosity burning a hole in her, it had felt like three days.

  He patted her hand gently. “It will take a long time to explain, but I’ll do the best I can. The most I can say is that you’re going to be very important someday, Jerri. Very, very important.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  When Calder climbed up the ladder and onto The Testament’s deck, no one stood at the wheel. Andel was nowhere to be seen, and a pile of ropes sat at the base of the mast.

  Foster hurried up to him, blood running down into his beard from a split lip. The gunner spoke only two words:

  “She’s loose.”

  Then the darkness of Urg’naut himself descended over Calder’s vision, and something slammed into his back with the force of a stallion’s kick. He buckled and fell, his belly pressed against smooth, seamless wood. His spine felt as though someone had run a carriage into it, and trying to catch a breath felt like inhaling a lung full of needles. The recent injury to his shoulder screamed, and he had unhealed bruises over practically every inch of his body.

  His sense of time had shattered, so he didn’t know how long it took him to return to coherent thought. Only a handful of seconds, most likely, but it felt longer. With his brain returned to its proper position, he understood his situation in full clarity.

  Someone was sitting on him. Someone with an arm wrapped around his eyes and a cold point of metal against the back of his neck.

  He left his mouth to steer itself, hoping to say something witty, but all that came out was a sort of muffled grunt. The assassin on his neck sensed this and shifted her weight slightly, enough to allow him to breathe without unfortunate pain in his chest.

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” the Consultant said, from her position on his back. “I can’t allow you to call on your Vessel, or I might have to kill you before we’ve had a chance to talk. Please understand.”

  If I have to be assassinated on my own deck, at least she’s polite about it, he thought. Out loud, he said, “Quite understandable.” His voice came out as an animal noise, closer to the squeal of a pig than to human speech.

  She flipped him over without allowing him to respond, knocking his wounded shoulder and the back of his head on the deck again. He scrambled for his bearings, staring up at the stretched, green-veined skin of his sails—translucent in the sunlight—that loomed above him. Before he gathered himself again, she had her knee pressed to the base of his throat and the tip of a bronze-bladed dagger under his chin.

  “My name is Meia, Captain Marten,” she said. “We’re going to renegotiate the course of this ship.” Her voice was businesslike and professional, but her eyes were the vertical-slitted orange of a draconic Kameira. They had been blue only days before, when he’d fought her in the crumbling corridor of a Gray Island prison. Her blond hair hung loose, though short enough that it stayed out of her eyes, and she wore tight clothes of unrelieved black. One bronze knife was entirely too close for comfort, pushing as it was against his skin, and she held the other reversed in her left hand. Free for use, he supposed.

  “I remembered your name, Meia,” he said, and his voice came out reasonably human this time.

  “You should, since you abducted me. That’s a new crime for you, isn’t it?”

  “As the offender, yes. I’ve been the victim of abductions, however temporary, more times than I would like to admit.”

  “That should give you some sympathy for my position.” The cold edge of bronze pressed harder under his chin, and he couldn’t ignore the Intent that leaked out from the weapon.

  The man begs for mercy, but mercy is not called for, so the blade draws his blood.

  Agitated and drunk, the soldiers attack, but they do not know their opponent. The blade draws their blood.

  The child of death and unnatural life lets out a howl, shrieking as it wraps its fleshy tentacles around the woman’s leg. Bronze flashes, and the blade draws its blood.

  Over and over, Calder Read the history of violence. The visions came with the weight of endlessness, as though he could dig forever and always unearth some older death at the end of this assassin’s blade. Intent and significance hung heavy in the bronze, such that it took everything he had to shut them out.

  So heavy that the weapon almost seemed to have a mind of its own. It wasn’t Awakened, he would have sensed that, but it was only one technicality away. He was afraid he might Awaken it with a stray thought.

  Awakening would change the physical shape of the blade, likely resulting in his throat slit. As that was the exact situation he was currently endeavoring to avoid, he corralled his mind as tightly as possible.

  “...for the Island,” Meia finished, waiting on his response.

  The Reading hadn’t taken long, relatively speaking, but long enough that he’d missed whatever the Consultant had tried to say. He gave her a smile before realizing that even that much movement brought a flare of pain from the dagger’s tip. He gave up smiling.

  “I apologize, Consultant Meia, I was distracted by your weapon. Would you mind repeating that? Please?” He had no choice but to pray to the Unknown God that she found it easier to persuade him than to throw his body overboard. She could sail the ship, with enough motivation. As long as the Lyathatan beneath the ship remained quiet, The Testament would function as well as anything else on the water. It would be a bit undermanned, but he was certain Meia would find her way around that minor obs
tacle.

  Her hand on the knife flexed, muscles unnaturally bulging and shifting. Veins stood out blue against her pale skin, and her nails extended half an inch. Orange eyes flared.

  But she gathered herself with a visible effort, and no strain or anger dyed her voice when she spoke. “This ship will return to the Gray Island immediately, where you will deposit me and surrender yourselves to the Consultant’s Guild. You will not be killed, nor even harmed, only detained and questioned. Gently. You will remain a prisoner, but a safe one, if you cooperate now and set course for the Island.”

  “Attractive,” Calder said. “I can see what happens if I don’t oblige.” He could feel blood leaking out around her weapon’s tip.

  “I’d prefer it if you did.”

  “Very well. I give you my word of honor that I will sail back to the Gray Island without resistance. Furthermore, I will not harm you, and I will remand myself into the custody of the Consultant Architects upon our arrival.”

  Meia withdrew her dagger, and her eyes faded to blue. It was a disturbing sight. She let up pressure on his chest, leaving only a throbbing ache, and stood. “You’ve made things much easier for all of us, Captain Marten. It would have been a waste to kill you when you can make the journey so much faster.”

  We’re being very polite to each other for a couple of liars, Calder thought. For one thing, he harbored no illusions about what would happen to him if he returned to the headquarters of the Consultant’s Guild. He’d just launched an attack on their Island, during which—due to no fault of his—most of the landscape was destroyed. On top of that, a Consultant assassin had pursued him for the last several months. He couldn’t imagine they would let an outstanding contract go, if only for the pride of their Guild.

  Meia was certainly lying about his treatment...which was just as well, because he had no intentions of returning.

  Foster and his bloody beard stumbled over, watching the retreating Consultant’s back carefully. “She’s a polite one, but you shouldn’t take her lightly. Play it quiet for now.”

  “Where’s Andel?” Calder asked.

  “Play it quiet for now,” Foster insisted. “You’re ignoring me, and that makes me edgy.”

  Calder sat up glanced over the deck. No one but Foster and the Consultant. “Is he okay?”

  “You’re still ignoring me, and I’m starting to sweat. I’m thinking you’re going to try something, Captain, which would be a bad idea. Captain. Captain.”

  With a wince, Calder hauled himself to his feet. He knew it was going to hurt, and it did—a lance of pain shot up from his bandaged leg. As he climbed to a standing position, he shot his Intent down into the ship.

  The ship has only a dim sense of who travels within it, besides the Soulbound, who flares like a beacon in The Testament’s awareness. Two ordinary humans walk on the deck, near the Soulbound captain. Two more ride below. The smaller one is tucked away in the corner of a passenger cabin, while the larger waits in the hold.

  “Why is he in the hold?” Calder asked.

  “He, uh...” Foster squinted in the distance and scratched his gray-bearded chin, avoiding Calder’s gaze. “He thought the Consultant might be hungry.”

  Calder braced himself against the mast as though trying to push it over. He’d lost Urzaia and Jerri both—the second memory burned hot—and now what crew remained had given in to the demands of an enemy. Petal he could understand; she was crouched in her room, distracting herself with alchemy. He’d expect nothing less. But Foster would oppose anyone given the slightest excuse. And Andel? Calder would have thought the Quartermaster would go to his grave before he surrendered.

  Meia had retreated to a polite distance, keeping her eyes on the sea, and it occurred to Calder that she was being respectful. Giving the Captain a moment with his crew member. An assassin should know better than to lower her guard.

  “...you’ve got that look, Calder, and it’s not going to lead us anywhere wise. You hearing me?”

  Calder focused once again on the Intent bound into his ship, the power that fused each dark green board together into a smooth whole. His mind slid down below the hull, to the bolts that anchored the first links of two ancient chains.

  The chains were invested to restrain an Elder, to restrict its powers and bend them to the will of the ship’s captain. They connected to a pair of manacles, which wrapped around a monster’s wrists.

  With a thought, Calder ordered the Lyathatan to rise.

  Next to the ship, the water darkened and swelled. A head the size of a longboat crested the waves, its deep blue scales glistening in the sun. Six black eyes emerged in two rows of three, gills on its neck flapping in the air. It opened a shark’s mouth and hissed, revealing endless legions of jagged teeth. Webbed spines flared up on its back. Its torso was like a man’s, covered in the pale skin of a fish’s belly, and its muscular arms ended in taloned hands.

  The sea was more than deep enough to submerge the Lyathatan completely, but it stood as though the waves were only waist-high. Calder had never clearly seen its legs, but from what he’d glimpsed, they looked like a combination of human legs and a pair of fish tails. Like some sort of bizarre, Elder-spawned echo of a mermaid.

  Meia had begun to turn as soon as the ocean surface bulged, but Calder’s mind was already in the ship. It was easier than flipping a finger to wrap her in the ship’s lines, binding her while the Lyathatan made its entrance.

  The ropes lasted exactly no time at all, as two bronze blades flashed. For a heartbeat he couldn’t believe it, even as he watched shredded pieces of rope float down. Her knives had been sheathed, and she’d been facing the other direction. She couldn’t have sensed the ropes coming. It wasn’t possible, even for a Reader.

  He started to tip The Testament even as the Lyathatan reached out, but it was too late; Meia had already reached him. One bronze knife sliced his belt, which slid to the deck, carrying with it the sword he’d tried to draw. It was an Awakened blade, granted to him as part of a deal with a Great Elder, but it did him precisely as much good as a bent wooden stick. Her other knife was back in its sheath, but just as he noticed, he realized that her empty hand was coming up to his throat anyway.

  Not empty. The sunlight glinted off a needle pinched between her fingers.

  Calder winced at the pain in his neck as she struck like a scorpion. He’d been poisoned by one of these needles before, so he knew exactly what to expect.

  Only two seconds later, he collapsed. Every one of his injuries burst to life again. The agony swallowed him, but at least he had one thing to look forward to: soon, he would pass out.

  From his angle lying on his side, he could just see the Lyathatan’s chest and elbow, but he still felt its Intent. It had stopped as soon as he was incapacitated, and Calder wasn’t sure whether that came from concern for his well-being or a cruel sense of humor.

  A strange Intent crawled up the chains. In addition to the Elder’s usual distant calculations and slow rage, it was now feeling something new. Something almost like...amusement.

  The Lyathatan opened its mouth, though Calder could only see its lower jaw, and let out a hissing laugh.

  Even the Elders were laughing at him.

  Foster knelt by Calder’s side and rapped him on the forehead. “Well, that was the most stupid thing I’ve ever seen you do. And that’s a prestigious record, I don’t say it lightly. She fought Urzaia, you’re not going to catch her off guard.”

  You could have reminded me sixty seconds ago, Calder thought, but nothing made it out of his paralyzed mouth.

  Andel emerged from below deck, climbing out with a bottle of wine in one hand and a basket in the other. “The bread is relatively fresh, and we have some seasoned fish and olives to go with it. I’m not quite sure about the wine, with Petal...ah, I see the Captain is here.”

  Meia sighed. “He tried to set his Elderspawn on me. Evidently he mistook my mercy for idiocy.”

  “The Captain’s inadequacies aside, we’re
about to have a problem.” Andel turned to the Lyathatan, which spat out laughter even as it slowly descended into the ocean, its six black eyes trained on Calder. If the Elderspawn weren’t completely capable of destroying this ship and everyone on it, Calder would have sought revenge for this humiliation.

  Come to think of it, why did he have to witness this scene at all? Why was he still conscious?

  “The Eternal will have seen that,” Andel continued. “They’re only minutes out. We intended to follow them to the Capital, but now that they’ve seen something’s wrong, I’m sure they will send someone over.”

  Meia’s soft footsteps padded past Calder’s ears as she stepped over his head. “So the Elderspawn was a signal. Nice try, but if Shera were in my position, she would have killed the captain immediately. He’s lucky to be alive.”

  Calder hadn’t thought of using the Lyathatan as a signal, but he appreciated the results. When he discussed this with Andel in the future, he would pretend this was his plan all along.

  The Consultant leaned over, pulling Calder’s spyglass from inside his jacket. She turned to the railing, and metal scraped as the spyglass slid open. She must be inspecting Cheska Bennett’s ship. “Who’s onboard?” Meia asked.

  “Three Guild Heads,” Andel answered grimly, and the assassin let out an involuntary growl. An actual growl, as though Calder was lying at the feet of a massive hunting dog.

  She didn’t give any sign that she’d done anything out of the ordinary, but Calder wished he could exchange glances with Andel and Foster. “How long before they get over here?”

  “Not long,” Bliss said.

  Calder’s hopes soared.

  The Head of the Blackwatch Guild slid into his view—actually slid, skating over the portion of the deck that had been splashed in the wake of the Lyathatan’s rise. He hadn’t seen her arrive on the ship, but that was no surprise. He doubted he would have seen anything even if he could still turn his head.