Of Sea and Shadow (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 1) (30 page)

Having said her piece, Petal scurried off.

The Gray Island.
It was impressive, he had to admit. Not the most intimidating supernatural sight he’d seen on this sea, but certainly worth the visit.

Now what is it for, I wonder?
The Consultants obviously weren’t trying to hide the island’s location: they would invite anyone with enough marks to their island any time of year. Some chapter houses handed out free maps. So what did all that mist actually accomplish?

He was still at the wheel when he saw Naberius’ eyes snap open, staring straight at the Gray Island. The Witness shot to his feet, lunging in that direction.

Calder hopped off the stern deck and made his way over, reaching out a hand to Read the Chronicler. As soon as he sensed the cold, clammy influence on the man, he moved his hand back.

“That song!” Naberius cried. “Do you hear the song?”

No doubt. Naberius sensed the Heart of the Dead Mother.

“All hands on deck!” Calder shouted.

Andel spoke up from the nearby folding table, where he was idly shuffling cards. “We’re all here, sir.”

“What have I told you about shouting, Andel?”

“That you like it.”

“That’s right. Don’t take that from me.” The others gathered around Andel. Foster hopped down from the mast, Petal scurried up and sat on a crate nearby, and a distracted-looking Urzaia looked toward the horizon and fiddled with his hatchet.

“Where is she?” Calder asked.

Urzaia pointed straight to the island.

Naturally.

Andel clapped his hands together. “All right, everyone, let the twenty-third official crew meeting begin.”

Calder sighed, pulling up a folding camp chair to the table. “I was hoping we could talk off the record, Andel.”

“Rejected,” Andel said. “Foster, take notes.”

Foster grumbled under his breath as he switched out his shooting-glasses for reading-glasses. Petal handed him a pen and a sheet of paper.

“Please describe the situation for the record, Captain.”

Calder couldn’t see why they didn’t just talk about it. He never consulted these logs for anything. But Andel enjoyed the formality, and it wasn’t worth fighting about.

“Naberius has sensed the Heart. It’s clearly in
that
direction, which is the approximate location of the Consultants’ Gray Island. And now Urzaia feels the blond Consultant, Shera’s partner, in that location. Isn’t that right, Urzaia?”

He drew in a deep breath through his nose. “I can almost smell her from here.”

Petal shivered and edged away from him.

“So—” Andel began, but Foster stopped him.

“Give me a second. I’m not a Chronicler, I can’t write that fast. I don’t see why we can’t get Naberius to take notes.”

“Really?” Andel said. “You really can’t see why?”

Foster grumbled for a few more seconds until he finally caught up to the conversation.

Andel waited for his nod to continue. “We’re in deep water here. This affects everyone, so we’d like to hear everyone’s opinion. Petal?”

As much as Calder hated to take the time it took to consult the crowd, he had to admit that his Quartermaster was right. Landing on the Gray Island would affect everyone on the ship, for better or worse, and it would be best if everyone was willing to walk forward with their eyes wide open.

He instantly decided to act as though he had been onboard with the idea from the beginning.

Petal cleared her throat, fiddling with a bottled potion and peering out from under her hair. “Well...I think we should...at least try to get the Heart. Ourselves. The Consultants will destroy it, right? That’s...probably not good. I want there to be an Emperor. But I don’t want it to be Naberius, so...”

She shrunk into herself, apparently finished.

Calder was proud of her. That was the longest string of concurrent sentences he’d heard out of her this year.

“Well said, Petal.”

Andel pointed to Urzaia, who shrugged.

“The Consultant women owe me a fight. I will be collecting. That is all.”

“Simple,” Calder said. “Effective. Easy to remember. I like that philosophy.”

When Foster had finally finished writing, Andel turned to him. “And what do you think, Foster?”

Dalton Foster raised shaggy eyebrows. “Me? I think we should let the Consultants destroy the thing. It hasn’t done us any good in the past.”

“If they actually will,” Calder pointed out. It still seemed strange to him that the Consultants would go through such efforts to
retrieve
the Heart if they simply meant to destroy it when they got it back home.

“My turn,” Andel said, folding his arms. “I think we’re in way over our heads.”

Foster scribbled his words on the paper. “Good. That means we’re in our home port.”

“I also think that it will take more than the usual amount of effort to get any pay out of this.”

That was a good point. Of course, they still had Naberius. Maybe they could arrange some kind of a ransom...and then escape, alive, to spend it. That was the trick.

“However,” Andel went on, “I do think we need to make it onto the island. We’re in too deep to back out now, and I know we’d all like to settle once and for all what happened to Jyrine.”

Calder had been trying to avoid thinking of Jerri ever since the Gray Island appeared in the distance, though it was all but impossible. His wife could be on
that
island. Or perhaps her corpse was buried there.

Either way, he needed to find out.

He realized that the others were staring at him, and picked up the discussion. “I don’t trust Naberius. I don’t trust his sponsors. And I certainly don’t trust the Consultants. If it weren’t for Jerri, I would want to sail as far away from this island as possible and never look back. But if there’s even a chance she’s alive...”

The others didn’t even move, waiting for him to finish.

“...I’ve got to know. But I
would
like to escape the island and get home alive. For that purpose, I believe the Heart is indispensable.” He turned his gaze to Naberius. “We need something to trade for our freedom, and I don’t think anything less than the Heart of Nakothi will keep us out of the gallows.”

Everyone remained silent. Andel returned to shuffling his cards, which he often did simply to keep his hands occupied.

After a few moments, Andel fanned out a hand of cards, watching Calder over the tops. “It seems to me that we need advice.”

“That’s why I keep you around,” Calder said.

“You might say that we need someone to
consult.”

I’m an idiot
. A new possibility opened up before him—he’d been overthinking everything. “I’m a little ashamed that I didn’t think of that before.” He hopped up from the table and hurried back to the stern deck, already adjusting the ship’s position with his Intent.

Foster muttered to himself as he wrote. “Captain...jumps...to a conclusion. There. Meeting adjourned.”

“One second, sir,” Andel said. “As soon as we set foot on the island, we’ll be in their hands. What do we have to deal with an army of Consultants?”

Calder stopped, spinning to grin at his Quartermaster. “Nothing! If they decide to kill us, they’ll kill us. There comes a time when you must play the odds, Mister Petronus.”

Andel cleared his throat and stared pointedly at the door to Calder’s cabin. “If only we had some sort of device that would protect us from hundreds of Guild members. Hundreds of
loyal Imperial citizens
that are sworn to protect and obey.”

Calder realized what the Quartermaster was getting at, and his smile slipped. He had intended to save that for a distant, ideal future. He had begun to think, recently, that he would never open the lockbox again.

He steeled himself. As the Izyrian strategist Yenzir once said,
“The winner is the one who first recognizes that the time for a battle has come.”

“If this doesn’t work,” Calder said, “you do realize that we’re even more likely to be killed.”

“But if it does work, then this could be the endgame.” Andel gestured to the cabin. “Go get it, Captain. Then let’s hire a Consultant.”

Calder pushed his way into the cabin, opening the drawer beside his bunk. He withdrew a small silver key, invested with his Intent. If anyone other than him picked up the key, they would feel a crippling pain in their hand.

He grabbed the key, reached under his bunk, and pulled out the lockbox. He kept it chained to the bottom of the bunk so it didn’t slide around, but he had enough slack to insert the key.

If Jerri was still alive, she had better appreciate this.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

I hear that you have Awakened your mother’s stand-mirror.

Upon hearing of its effects, I urged her to have the device melted down, and to hire a Luminian Pilgrim to cleanse its remnants.

Let me emphasize once again the dangers of Awakening, as clearly my previous correspondence was not effective.

Hypothetically, let us say that you tried to Awaken a mirror that once—unbeknownst to you—hung in the dungeon of a notorious murderer. Every day, his victims looked into the mirror and wished to be saved. Would it not be likely that the mirror would save a measure of their desperate Intent? And, when Awakened, that very mirror might even cry out for salvation. Why, it might do anything to be free, including distorting the minds and senses of those nearby.

Of course, we are speaking in the hypothetical sense.

-Artur Belfry, Imperial Witness

 
Taken from a letter to his pupil, two months after the previous message was delivered.

Eleven years ago

“It’s supposed to be a ship for the Navigators,” Calder explained. “We’re going to summon some sort of Elder creature from the Aion, and it will guide the crew across the sea. With an Elder chained to the ship, the other Elderspawn won’t bother them, and they’ll be able to make the voyage in half the time. That’s the idea, anyway.”

Jyrine chewed on the end of her pen. “But will it sail?”

“It doesn’t
matter
if it will sail. We won’t be onboard! We can’t crew a ship with two people.”

“Three, once we have your father.”

“Oh, I forgot! Three is precisely the number we need. I’ll pilot, you navigate, and my father can
man the rest of the ship
.”

Jerri threw the pen at him. It bounced off his head, and hurt far more than he felt was fair. Calder yelped, and something moved around them.

They froze. Jerri threw her scarf over the tiny quicklamp on the center of the table.

They were holed up in the Grayweather house library, under cover of night. Jyrine had returned to her family hours before, but snuck her way back to plan what she called their ‘clandestine operation.’

She and Calder sat on opposite ends of a small table, papers stacked in neat piles on its surface. Shadows smothered the rest of the room, leaving them in a pool of yellow light...at least, when their quicklamp was shining. Smothered by Jerri’s scarf, the illumination cast them in dull orange weaker than a candle-flame.

They froze just long enough to make sure that no one had cracked the door to the library, and then Jyrine pulled the scarf back and they both sat down.

Calder continued as if nothing had happened. “I’m sorry, but it really wouldn’t work. They’ve prepared most of the ship, because it’s supposed to go on display next week, but there aren’t even any sails.”

He had been sure they would add sails by now. He was no shipwright, but surely if the rest of the ship’s frame was ready to display they could tack up some sails.

“Maybe it doesn’t need sails!” Jerry said, undeterred. “If this Elderspawn is supposed to pull
The Testament,
then why would it require sails?”

Calder had been the one to invest the mast so that it properly flexed against the tug of a full sail. But there was an even better reason why Jerri’s plan wouldn’t work.

“They haven’t summoned it yet,” he said. “There’s been an issue with the tidal forces, or something.” He’d heard the other Watchmen discussing it just that morning, in worried tones. The specific creature they sought hadn’t wandered close enough to shore by now, which probably meant it had fallen under the purview of a Great Elder. And no one wanted to risk incurring the wrath of a Great Elder, even one that had remained dead for over a thousand years. So far.

He shook his head, clearing it. Why were they even talking about the ship? “Anyway, that’s enough about the ship. The ship won’t work. There is no ship.”

Jerri worked her jaws as though chewing on something, but she ultimately calmed herself by rubbing a thumb over the tattoos on the back of her left hand. “That leaves my other plan, then.”

She reached into the stack of papers and pulled one out, seemingly at random.

Across the top of the page, in block letters, she’d printed the name of this plan:

OPERATION “JYRINE DOES CALDER’S JOB FOR HIM”

--Jyrine disguises herself in Calder’s Blackwatch uniform.

--Using her superior skills of thespianism and persuasion, Jyrine convinces the staff of an Elder-related emergency.

--She will follow this supposed Elderspawn to the very door of Rojric Marten’s cell, thus insisting that it needs to be opened.

--(Remember, Calder, there will not actually be an Elderspawn present. Do not be afraid, as Jyrine will protect you.)

--With her authority as the Blackwatch, she will take Rojric into custody, suspecting that the Elders have corrupted him.

--Should the guards resist, Jyrine will subdue them with her legendary combat prowess.

--When she returns with Rojric Marten in tow, Calder will bow before her, kissing her feet and singing her praises to the heavens, as she rightly deserves.

At the bottom of the paper, she had signed her name with far more loops and flourishes than were strictly necessary.

“I tried to boil the steps down to their essence, for simplicity’s sake,” Jerri said, with a completely straight face. “There are some issues unaccounted for, but a good plan must allow for freedom of improvisation.”