Every conversation with Bliss was an exercise in not taking offense. Calder happened to think he was doing quite well so far.
“We need eyes,” the Guild Head continued from within her box. “Through the Optasia, even when the Emperor couldn’t confront a threat directly, he could tell us what was happening with any of the Great Elders at any time. On our own, we can’t keep track of it all. And you’ll be able to send messages to our agents anywhere in the world. We’ll deal with all the real threats, as long as you keep us informed.”
That made a certain amount of sense. And he supposed he should be grateful; if the Guild Heads hadn’t needed someone to bear the risk of sitting on the throne, they would never have allowed him the chance to act as Emperor. The chance he’d always wanted. The chance he’d been promised.
Bliss spoke again, and this time her voice was coming from a different cask, this time on his left. He didn’t question it, just shifted his position so he was facing the Guild Head’s new container. “And, of course, the others want a figurehead to keep the people happy. A puppet. A pretty doll to put on parade so that the children feel protected.”
Now he was sure Bliss was trying something. “Are you insulting me on purpose?”
She popped up from the inside of the cask, a coil of rope on her head. “That’s ridiculous.”
He still had the Emperor’s crown, and the candles of the Witness in charge of Imperial finance. Access to power and funds both. But then, the Guild Heads could have any team of Readers unlock the secrets in Naberius’ wax-sealed memories, and Teach could take the crown from him without much trouble.
His only asset, it seemed, was being disposable.
He could use that.
“So when we reach the Capital, what’s the plan? You clear the way to the Optasia, and I sit on it, and everything’s better again?”
“That depends on one very troubling factor,” Bliss said, staring off into the horizon.
“What’s that?”
“Who’s using it now?”
Jerri’s hand hovered inches away from the throbbing gray-green flesh that walled her inside the room. The bulbous meat that enveloped the walls would have been disgusting, if she hadn’t been trained to look past its appearance and into what it represented: an advance in knowledge and technology so complete that humans might never understand it.
Besides the Elders, who had the power to instantly grow a life—real, living flesh—and bend it to their will? Even the Emperor couldn’t do that. The Elders controlled life and death, memory and knowledge, space and time. The merest fraction of their expertise would improve the lives of people all over the Empire.
Put that way, it was hard to understand why anyone didn’t want to learn from the Elders. Distasteful as they might seem, they embodied the clearest road into the future.
But thoughts of the distant future would only distract her for so long when she was more concerned with today.
“How long must I wait?” Jerri asked.
The room’s only other occupant, a dark-skinned Heartlander man who might have been a native of the Capital, sat on the corner of the Emperor’s bed. A softly glowing bulb, dangling from the new-grown flesh overhead, cast shadows on his face. Jewels gleamed at his neck, on his fingers, in his ears, in his hair—it seemed that he had crammed gold and gems anywhere he could fit them. Only his eyes were plain and unadorned, covered as they were by a steel blindfold that seemed to have been bolted to his face.
She’d seen other Elder cults who believed in mutilating their bodies, demonstrating their dedication to the Great Ones, but no one else had gone so far as to blind themselves. Especially not to these gruesome extremes. It looked as though he’d driven steel screws straight into his own eyes.
But he smiled broadly at her question. “If you wish to learn from the Elders, patience is the first and most valuable skill. There are beings who will not begin a conversation without observing the other party for at least a year, and whose names take a man’s lifetime to properly pronounce.”
This was another characteristic of the absurdly devout: they always pretended to know more than they did. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“To understand the answer, you must first understand the question.”
Fury flowed into her from the Vessel on her ear, and both earrings lit up. One shone with the power of unreleased flame, and the other restricted that power, protecting her from its corrosion. To some degree.
Green fire played around her fingers, and she examined her fingertips as though searching for the proper words. “I owe a debt to the Great One who freed me from captivity, not to you. I owe you nothing. I do not know you, nor do I know what I’m doing here, and until I do I’m afraid I can’t cooperate. If it is your job to guide me, as you claim, then I suggest you start doing so. Otherwise…well, I am a Soulbound. And you’re not.”
That was an assumption on her part, but a good one. She wasn’t a Reader, so she couldn’t sense if one of the man’s rings or necklaces might secretly be his Soulbound Vessel, but she doubted it. The Sleepless had only one true combat-capable Soulbound in their membership, and the cabal valued her highly because of it. He may have been a mercenary Soulbound hired by the cult for this one task, but then he wouldn’t have been so secretive about the nature of that task. Besides, only a true fanatical believer would blind himself.
The man stroked his thin beard like a sage in thought. “By definition, I cannot be a Soulbound. One requires something to bind, after all.”
Before Jerri could think too hard about that statement, the room shook. The flesh of the walls quivered, and the living light flickered. “That one was closer,” she said.
“Closer,” her companion agreed, “but they are not yet striking at the heart. It’s merely a flesh wound, as they say.” He smiled to himself, revealing two teeth capped in gold.
It had been perhaps three days since Jerri had been stuck in this room, though it was hard to tell the exact time without access to natural light. She remained surrounded by skin and muscle as though she’d been swallowed by a great Elder whale, food oozing through disgusting openings at regular intervals. Her transmission through the void had taken her directly here, and she’d waited in the dimness for instructions. In vain, so far.
Yesterday, the blind man had appeared next to her, presumably through a void transmission similar to her own.
It was he who explained exactly where they were: the center of the Imperial Palace, inside the Emperor’s personal rooms.
That knowledge had distracted Jerri for hours, as she explored the suite of flesh-covered rooms in a new light. This was the bed where the Emperor had slept. Those paintings were favored by the Emperor. The decorative swords on the wall, if they had ever been used by the Emperor in self-defense, would count as some of the greatest weapons in history. She wished Calder was here, so that he could appreciate the rich stores of Intent that no doubt lingered in this room.
As always when she thought of Calder, pain and sickness and anger rolled through her. She had handled him badly, she knew. Almost as badly as she ever could have. The assassin Shera had shown up at the worst possible time, before any of her plans had borne fruit. When Jerri finally saw Calder again, she had been forced to act out her duty as a member of the Sleepless. She could hardly have made a worse impression.
But still, he had abandoned her in a cell. Her own husband. It hurt.
Make him listen, her Vessel demanded, indistinguishable from her own thoughts. He cannot stop you.