Ach’magut. The Great Elder and his prophecy.
Or his plan.
“Tell me now,” Calder said, and he hadn’t realized how hungry he was for this. “Tell me the truth.”
She flinched and looked away from his eyes, but with a deep breath for courage, she dove in. “My father brought me to the Sleepless when I was a girl. They’re not what you think. At least, not the smart ones. There are some who worship or sell themselves blindly to the Elders, and they usually get what they deserve.
“But as a whole, what the Sleepless do is exactly what the Blackwatch does. What the Navigators do. What we do.” She leaned forward, speaking earnestly. “My father was a Watchman himself, and he didn’t lose his sanity. He realized that we shouldn’t just be studying Elders, we should be learning from them. They’ve lived for thousands of years, and they have knowledge from worlds beyond this one. Truths we could never hope to learn ourselves.”
Her rational, convincing tone made her message all the more disturbing to Calder. “I’ve heard this before.”
“But you haven’t listened.” Her eyes were intense, but not angry. As intelligent and passionate as he’d ever seen them. “They do share truths with us, Calder. Techniques that work. How do you imagine I got away from the Gray Island when the Handmaiden attacked? I called messengers, and they carried me through their void to the Capital. It’s a two-day journey, and I made it in minutes.”
She stood up from her chair, pacing as furiously as she could with bound ankles. “They teach us summoning rituals for Elderspawn. You know what that means? It’s the same as ‘summoning’ a dog. You need the creature’s name, some bait—like food or a toy—and you use the right tone. That’s it. How do you think you ended up with Shuffles?”
That sounded so logical that it disturbed him. He had an Elder chained to his ship. He’d bartered with Kelarac for the sword he wore. Ach’magut had predicted him standing in this place, wearing a crown. He had used Kelarac’s mark on his arm to Read, predict, and destroy a small army of Elderspawn.
The Emperor himself had used one of Nakothi’s hearts to stay alive. It was a guiding principle of the Blackwatch that the Elders had to be studied if they were to be opposed.
He had already benefited from several face-to-face deals with intelligent Elders. Why not more?
But he was still sure that she had tried to bait him into killing himself. “What about the Optasia?” he asked.
The Emperor’s true throne was a device to amplify Reading, to send it out all over the world. Jerri had attempted to convince him to use it to converse with the Great Elders, but everyone else—Calder himself included—was certain that doing so would destroy his mind. Even the Emperor had refused to use it in his final years because the danger was so great.
Jerri paused in her pacing. She looked away from him and bit her lip. “That…may have been a mistake.”
“What was a mistake? You asking me to use it? Me not listening to you? You killing that Consultant?”
“The entire purpose of making you the Emperor was to give us someone who could negotiate directly with the Great Elders, so when he told me you were supposed to use the throne, it made sense to me.”
“He?”
“The man with the steel blindfold.”
She met his eyes, and Calder knew they were both thinking the same name. Kelarac.
Calder had dealt with the Soul Collector several times before, so he couldn’t hold that against her. But he had never fooled himself that Kelarac was on his side. If anything, the Great Elder wanted to own him.
“What else did he tell you?”
“That our real enemy is Shera of the Consultants.” She said it immediately, and with such conviction that Calder wondered if she had planned to lead the conversation here the entire time.
“I believe him,” she continued. “But not just him. The Sleepless have certain predictions from Ach’magut, and even a few notes from other sources. They call her the Killer.”
She had started twisting the end of her hair with her bound hands, as though nervously trying to work it into a braid. “Calder…she’s supposed to be dead.”
The door cracked open, and the tusked Guard from earlier poked her head in. She was trying to subtly remind him that he had more meetings on his schedule than just this one.
He stood, straightening his sheathed sword. As he focused on it, he felt the Intent of his armor pressing in on him, trying to overwhelm him with its strength. It surprised him with its strength; he hadn’t made a conscious attempt to Read the armor. It was as though the Emperor’s Intent was trying to push its way into him anyway.
He managed to force it away, but the brief mental struggle helped distract him from his confusion.
Jerri had noticed that she’d gone as far as she could. She released her hair, her eyes dead and her shoulders slumped.
She looked so defeated.
Before he realized what was happening, he’d rested a hand on her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll call you again.”
He almost kissed her head out of habit, but the pain of betrayal held him back. Still, that much physical contact was too much from the Imperial Guard, who marched into the room and grabbed her from Calder.
He stepped back and let them bring her back to the dungeon. He hadn’t forgotten everything she’d done; if she really was in the right, she wouldn’t have lied to him for years.
But when she was being escorted out of the room, she glanced back over her shoulder and he saw a faint, desperate hope in her eyes.
He was glad to see it.
Chapter Two
four years ago
Petal settled into the rafters, plugging her nose against the thick dust so she didn’t sneeze.
Her arms and legs ached from the effort of climbing up here. She was no natural climber—the most athletic thing she usually did was climbing up on top of the stool nailed to the deck of her cabin in The Testament. Sometimes she lifted beakers.
Today, she had brewed up an adhesive web that would allow her to climb as quickly as a spider when combined with specially treated gloves. It was a standard alchemical recipe for certain professions, but her limbs still had to hold her weight.
So she sat on the rafters, arms and legs still burning from exertion as she waited for the residue on the walls to dissolve. Most people wouldn’t be paying attention to the support beams or rafters of the old classroom, but if anyone were to notice, it would be these people.
Patiently, Petal settled in to wait.
She guessed it had been two hours or so when the professor finally entered the classroom. He was a sleepy-looking young man with a floppy wool hat and spectacles that took up his entire face. He arrived early, settling notes on a podium and setting up a collapsible table to hold some alchemical gear. Clearly, he was preparing for some kind of a demonstration.
She pulled out the tiny spyglass she had borrowed from Captain Calder. He only knew that she was doing alchemical research and had been happy to contribute to her efforts.
So long as he got his spyglass back unaltered.
Petal had been a little offended by that assumption, not that she had said so out loud. If she treated the spyglass, it would be to make it more effective. Some glass cleaner or…or, wait, there were Kameira with incredible eyesight. Surely there would have to be some kind of extract that would allow you to borrow their sight through glass. Maybe if it could be Awakened…