Of Sea and Shadow (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 1) (16 page)

Jerri clung to the hope of interaction, as though merely speaking with another human being would see her free from this cell. “Jyrine.”

“Jyrine. Hmm...are you from Vandenyas, Jyrine?”

“That’s an astute guess, Lucan. And you...Erinin?”

He sounded amused. “Not exactly. I hear you tried to betray us to the Elders.”

This time, it was Jerri’s turn to go silent. How had he known that? Was she actually speaking to a guard, and this was the Consultant idea of an interrogation?

No, the guards didn’t speak to her. And she’d heard Lucan moving around in his cell the past three weeks or so. Unless a Consultant was willing to stay in prison for two dozen nights in order to ask her a handful of questions, he had to be a genuine prisoner.

He must have overheard pieces of her initial interrogation, when they stuffed her in here. They’d asked normal things, mostly—who she was, what was her connection to the Sleepless, did she have any hidden powers.

So Lucan knew who she was; that could work to her advantage. She could use this opportunity to clear up some misconceptions.

“Not a betrayal, no,” she said. “The Elders aren’t our enemies. They’re strange and eternal. Some say they have knowledge beyond the stars, and they certainly have powers beyond anything we humans can control. Shouldn’t we learn to live alongside them, instead of fearing them as we do?”

Jerri hated having nothing more than his voice to go by—she longed to see his face, to judge how he was taking her speech.

“But the Elders enslaved our species, long ago,” Lucan said. “Do you propose another age of worldwide slavery?”

 
At least he sounded curious. Unlikely though it might be, perhaps she could make an ally.

“Not at all! When the Elders kept us as slaves, we were primitives. Savages. We initially fought them with tools of bone and rock, and it wasn’t until the war had gone on for years that the Emperor discovered bronze tools. How could the Great Elders, with their millennia of wisdom, work with a race like that? They had no
choice
but to keep us as slaves, as we use animals for their strength.”

It felt good to have a conversation with someone that would actually listen to her, like stretching muscles long dormant. She had once held high hopes for Calder, since he lived alongside creatures like Shuffles and the Lyathatan, but he proved even more stubborn in his fear of Elders than most. Maybe if she’d tried to persuade him earlier, shown him everything she’d learned…

Well, if she survived these prisons, she would teach him the truth. Everything she’d done would directly benefit him, after all.

Lucan mused audibly from the other cell. “Hmmm. So you suggest that, in modern times, we’re advanced enough to strike a bargain with the Elders.”

He understood! “
Exactly!
In effect, we do it already. The Blackwatch learns more about Elder biology every day, and the Navigators need Elderspawn guides to cross the Aion. Even the Emperor...” Jerri caught herself. She wasn’t supposed to know about the Emperor’s immortality.

She recovered quickly. “...approved of such research. There’s room enough in this world for humans and Elders both. Folk belief indicates that the Elders want nothing more than destruction, but that’s clearly untrue. When they were in charge, they didn’t destroy! They built a great civilization! They didn’t even eliminate humanity, though they must have been tempted.”

Her neighbor was silent for a minute or two. She thought she heard the scratch of a pen against paper. “I have always questioned the ancient accounts of the Elders,” he said at last.

“And for good reason! Practically the only details we have of the Great Elders come from their greatest opponent!”

More pen scratching. “You’re not a Reader, are you, Jyrine?”

How had he known that? “I don’t see how that’s relevant to the subject at hand.”

“Hmmm. I’m sure you don’t.”

Then he was quiet, and none of her questions could coax him back into a discussion.

She sat on her mattress, leaning the back of her head against the stone wall. Idly she twisted the end of her braid in her hands—she kept braiding her hair because she had nothing better to do with her time. The invisible guards had even provided a comb after she called for one.

What do I have to do to convince someone?
The conversation with Lucan had gone well, she thought, but the hatred of the Elders ran deep throughout the whole Empire. What would it take to break through almost two millennia of indoctrination?

She still remembered herself as a little girl, terrified as she followed her father to a secret meeting. She’d stared into an endless void as her father and a cabal of other men and women communicated with another power—ancient, wise, and palpably
strange
.
 

Jerri shivered. She almost felt as though she could feel that dry cold of another world here, in her cell. And it seemed that the light of the quicklamp didn’t reach quite as far as it used to. She turned around. Were those shadows gathering against the wall?

“Lucan!” she shouted. “For your own safety, do not make a sound!”

He didn’t respond, which she decided to take as agreement.

Jerri stood, her back to the bars, facing the darkening end of her cell. Cold snatched at her skin as she straightened her hair and brushed out her clothes, making herself presentable. They had given her a red shirt and pants, obviously modeled on the uniforms of Imperial prisoners, but Jerri happened to think the color flattered her.

She stood with poise as the back wall fell away, revealing an endless void swirling with colorless lights.

A voice slithered out of the dark, whispering directly into her ear. “Jyrine. The Heart has been found.”

Relief drew a smile on her face. “That’s wonderful news! We’re on schedule, then?”

“We have gathered our forces. We must secure the Heart before the Blackwatch can bind it to one of their choosing.”

“Surely that won’t be difficult. They don’t have a candidate ready, do they?”

The voice hissed, an invisible messenger conveying the irritation of the Sleepless cabal on the other end. “The candidate has already arrived. We do not have as much time as we wanted—the Guild Head is on her way.”

The Head of the Blackwatch, Jerri was sure. Bliss. She’d heard of the woman from both Calder and the Sleepless, and they all made that particular Guild Head sound terrifying. If her presence alone was enough to force the cabal’s long-laid plans off schedule, then she must be frightening indeed.

Jerri coughed politely. “I hate to ask, since I know you’re on a schedule, but when can I expect to be removed from here? I can’t be sure how long the Consultants will keep me alive.”

She had expected to die long before this point, truth be told. She only wished they would give her Vessel back before they killed her, so that she could make a fight of it.

A dozen distant whistles sounded from the void, and an icy wind swirled out. She wondered if that signified debate among the men and women at the far end.

“You must continue to wait,” the voice whispered at last. “We will soon have a powerful piece on the island. If you continue to survive, it will see to your freedom. And to your continued service.”

Elders and their servants could often have strange notions of time. “How soon, exactly, could I expect—”

“Soon,” the voice hissed, as the void began to shrink. “Soon...
soon
.”

The stone wall reappeared, rimed with frost. The quicklamp’s light penetrated the corners of her cell unobstructed.

She heaved a deep breath, collapsing back down onto the mattress. She rubbed her eyes, fighting back sudden tears.

Calder was on Nakothi’s island with the Heart, she knew it. He was on that island and in danger, without her to protect him. If he only realized how many threats she had destroyed over the years, without him ever knowing...

Now he was out there alone, unprotected. He would die thinking that she betrayed him.

And, more than likely, she would die in here without a soul to mourn her. The Empire would continue on its course of destruction. Her family would never see her body.

It was certainly enough to cry about, but she forced the tears back. Weeping never saved anyone.

And she had a job to do.

She closed her eyes, seeking her Vessel out once more. One of these days, someone would make a mistake and carry her earring closer. When they did, she’d burn her way out of this cell and teach the Consultants why they should never have captured her alive.

From the next cell, Lucan cleared his throat. “Can I speak now?”

“You’re safe,” she called back. If the Sleepless had known that someone was close enough to overhear their message, they would have undoubtedly sent an Elderspawn killer to eliminate the witness. It was fortunate for Lucan that he’d listened to her advice.

“What
was
that?” he asked, sounding fascinated rather than repelled.

She was only too happy to explain.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

No, I will not teach you Awakening. However, I will explain the essential concept in order to satisfy your curiosity.

When you Awaken an object, you bring to that object a measure of awareness. Of ‘life,’ so to speak, though an inanimate object cannot move around like you or I do.

-Artur Belfry, Imperial Witness

 
Taken from a letter to his pupil, Calder Marten (fourteen years of age)

Twelve years ago

In the weeks that followed his meeting with Bliss, Calder came to a new understanding of Reading, of carpentry, and of the Blackwatch.

For one thing, he learned that none of the older Watchmen seemed at all inclined to teach him about the Guild or explain anything. At all.

“You either know what it’s like to face down an Elder, or you don’t,” his mother explained to him. “If you don’t, then nothing they teach you is going to prepare you. If you do, then nothing they teach you will tell you anything new.”

“And I don’t,” Calder said.

“No, you confronted Bliss and her Spear of Tharlos. They all know that, so they know you’re one of us.”

“They could try acting like it,” Calder grumbled.

But each morning, as he worked on
The Testament,
Calder understood that he had crossed some invisible line without realizing it. The men in black coats talked openly around him, making jokes about Crawlers or Children of Nakothi. He didn’t know what they were talking about, but that didn’t matter: they
were
talking, and he had never heard those terms as an outsider. The fact that they spoke so freely around him was itself evidence that he was trusted.

After he realized that, he noticed other things.

They were obviously used to the whims of their Guild Head. Normally the Guild required an application and interview process, but Calder learned that Bliss was prone to circumvent or overrule that procedure as it suited her. It was little more than a formality, now, and the Watchmen all reacted the same to his appointment. Upon learning that a fourteen-year-old boy had been elected to their Guild as a Reader, each and every member replied simply, ‘Welcome to the Blackwatch.’

One week, every day, a different Watchman would walk up to him and hand him a foot-long iron spike, then walk away without a word. He hung them from loops inside his coat that seemed to be made for that exact purpose, though no one would tell them what the nails themselves were for. At the end of the week, his mother presented him with the seventh and final nail.

Every member of the Blackwatch stopped what they were doing, gathered around, and applauded. Then they dispersed back to their jobs.

“And that’s as much ceremony as we see in the Blackwatch,” Alsa said. “Sad, really. I hear that in Kanatalia, the alchemists throw a party every time one of them completes an experiment.”

Calder held open his coat, revealing the seven nails. “I’m honored, really, but what do these
do?
They’re obviously invested, but I can’t tell how.”

He didn’t pick up on visions from the nails, exactly, more like a deep ocean of purpose, focused to some Intent he couldn’t fathom.

“Oh, they’re not complicated. Stick all seven of them into a Lesser Elder, all over its body, and it will stay bound and paralyzed.”

He glanced down at the nails. “Do I have to get them in the brain?”

Alsa touched her own set of nails through her coat. “Tradition says head, heart, spine, and all four limbs. But some Elderspawn don’t have heads, hearts, a spine, or limbs, so you try and do your best.”

“I see. Why all the secrecy, then?”

“We’re not supposed to speak to the initiate about the nails before he has all seven, but I almost warned you. I wouldn’t Read them too deeply, if I were you. And for light and life, don’t try to Awaken one.”

“Why not?” Calder asked, suddenly desperately curious to find out what would happen.

“Because they were already Awakened, long ago. Normally if you try to Awaken something twice, nothing happens. In this case, there have been...other effects. Don’t try it.”

Alsa shivered, and Calder swore never to try it. Not until he knew more details, anyway.

As he warmed up to the Blackwatch, he learned more than he had ever wanted to about
The Testament.
And about using Reading as a construction technique.

For one thing, it was harder than he had ever imagined.

With most objects, you simply willed it to perform better at its given task, and the object absorbed that Intent and got better. A knife invested to cut meat would slice through a steak as if through butter, and glass invested to prevent shattering might survive a hailstorm. It was a very simple and straightforward process, though only Readers could tell what change their Intent really made without careful experimentation: most people invested their Intent into objects blindly. Calder couldn’t understand that—it was like learning that most people painted without ever having seen a single color.

But the ship was an entirely different beast. Each board, nail, rope, and knot had to be invested for a specific purpose. And he couldn’t focus on one purpose at a time, either; he had to take into account the Intent and significance bound into the entire ship.