“I’m sensing something from here,” Calder said. “I’m sensing danger, and a foolish risk that we don’t need to take. If it helps you, sir, I’d be happy to swear in the Emperor’s name that you overturned every rock in the town before leaving baffled.”
Jerri frowned at him. “We can’t just leave after coming all this way. The town is empty, so we can surely spare an hour or two to explore.”
“I’m sure it’s uninhabited,” Calder said. “I’m not at all certain it’s empty.”
Andel scanned the shore from beneath his white hat, expression unreadable as usual. “This may surprise you, Mr. Marten, but I agree with the lady. All of us can go ashore together, as there’s no chance of the ship drifting and no one could steal her. It’s five o’clock now. If we leave before sunset, I don’t anticipate too much risk.”
Jerri held out a hand toward Andel, as though presenting him. “I’m seeing you in an entirely new light, Andel.”
If the two of them had not read Valette’s journal, Calder would have understood. Even he would have been tempted to investigate the empty town, if he didn’t know there was a Great Elder underneath it. How could they have forgotten that?
“Tell me, what do we stand to gain from this risk?” Calder asked. “Because we have enough of a report to send to the Blackwatch. ‘The town is empty, it seemed abandoned, and we thought it too dangerous to travel further.’ Sounds reasonable to me.”
Andel turned to him, face as clear as ever. “We won’t gain anything. But the citizens of the Empire trust the Guilds to prevent things like this from happening. If we can learn anything here that prevents Elderspawn from emptying another village, that’s worth some risk.”
Mr. Valette nodded approvingly at Andel’s words, his expression as close to smiling as Calder had ever seen it.
He could sense when he was beaten. Especially when he knew they were right. The smart thing to do from their own perspective was to leave, sail away and never look back. But something had happened to these people, and he had the chance to find out what. His mother risked her life for that every day.
Jerri slapped the side of the longboat. “Lower the boat, Mr. Marten. We’re going ashore.”
Another quote floated to mind, from the journals of Estyr Six: “If you’re not giving the orders, you’re not the one in charge.”
Calder sighed. “Yes, Captain.”
The air swirls with Intent, so thick that Calder could swear he’s standing in a Capital crowd. Curiosity, terror, greed, and a strange, burning hunger blend and drift together so that Calder can scarcely tell one emotion from the other. There’s something strange about it, something that violates common sense; it feels as though the people of this town were passionate about research. Too much so. It’s like a thousand people were so desperate for answers that their hearts might burst…
Calder took his hand from the beam of the house. He tried to shake away the lingering impressions hanging like cobwebs inside his mind; a thirst for knowledge, an inquisitive spirit desperate to be satisfied.
Jerri leaned over with her hands behind her back, smiling like a delighted child. “Well? Any gruesome deaths in the dockside house?”
He would have suspected that the unquenchable curiosity belonged to Jerri, if he didn’t know better. She was entirely too enthusiastic about their trip to an abandoned, Elder-haunted village. “Nothing from the house,” he said. That wasn’t unusual; the structure of a house would usually contain, at most, the skills and memories of the carpenter who constructed it. “Everything I could read came from the air, which is unusual enough. Intent seeps into objects like a dye and stains them, it doesn’t hang around like a fog. Except here.”
It was hard to explain to someone who had never experienced a Reading, like explaining a chorus to a man who had never heard music.
Jerri lifted her eyebrows. “Any visions? Any idea what happened?”
“No visions, which is strange on its own. Normally I have to sort through pictures and impressions, but this was pure emotion. Like it pooled here.”
She thumbed her earring, looking thoughtful. “What emotions?”
“Someone here, or everyone here, very much wanted answers to all their questions. But it was more than curiosity, it was…greed, it was hunger. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear these people all stabbed each other over a riddle.”
“Ach’magut,” she said.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Ach’magut, the Overseer, was said to feast on the collected knowledge of humanity. Calder hadn’t been a Watchman long, but he’d learned that much. He hadn’t, unfortunately, learned where the Great Elder was buried.
Though circumstances now suggested that he was right under their feet.
Valette came walking out of a nearby home, carrying his travel-case in one hand like an itinerant alchemist. “Not what I expected,” he said. “Whatever happened here, I thought it was sudden, but the evidence suggested these people packed up and left. There are no meals on the tables, no clothes strewn on the floor. Everything is tucked away so neatly I would almost expect that the town itself is a fake.”
Andel followed the Watchman, keeping a pistol leveled on the surrounding streets. Shadows lengthened as the sun fell, and Andel was doing his best to keep a weapon on every patch of darkness at once.
“It’s not a fake,” Calder said. “They’ve left their Intent on everything.”
Valette snorted. “Then they left of their own volition. No one made them sort their candlesticks in the middle of a kidnapping.”
Calder still couldn’t sweep the feeling of deadly curiosity from his head. The memory ate through his thoughts like acid. “I suspect their volition itself may have been compromised. What Elder do you know that feeds on knowledge and understanding?”
The Watchman gave him a sharp look. “You found something, I see.”
“Enough to know we should be out of here before dark.”
“I have what I need to bring back to my Guild Head,” Valette said after a moment’s hesitation. “Not what I’d hoped, but she’ll be able to make something of this. I will need to take a full report from each of you.”
Andel shoved his pistol into his belt and took off running.
Jerri’s head jerked around, but she didn’t move. Without stopping to think, Calder ran after him. He didn’t know what had happened to the townsfolk of Silverreach…but he knew what it felt like, and that was almost as bad. If the same insane hunger had seized Andel, the man could easily be running to his death.
But in a second, even before Calder could catch him, Andel stopped. He was dragging someone out of a nearby doorway, someone that Calder had never seen. A boy, maybe a little older than ten, with hair like seaweed and several missing teeth. He was dressed like a Capital chimney-sweep, in ragged clothes covered in dust and dark stains, and he fought Andel as though he thought the former Pilgrim planned on feeding him to Urg’naut.
He did not scream.
“Let me go,” the boy whispered. “I’m not going to make it!”
Andel’s grip on his collar didn’t falter. “Make it where?” In answer, the boy struggled harder.
With a sigh, Andel pulled the boy around and pushed his wrists together. “Well, if you don’t have any information, then I guess I’ll have to bind you and leave you in the street. We’ll see if a night out in the open makes you more eager to answer any questions.”
The boy frantically jerked away, trying to escape, but Andel made no move to actually tie his hands together. “Keep your voice down!” the boy hissed, and Calder could hear unshed tears. “The spiders are going to come back.”