The words sent a shiver down his back in spite of the warm alchemical slop. Those were the words of someone who hadn’t wanted to give up on the Empire…but who had been convinced that it was absolutely, irrevocably dead.
What did she know that he didn’t?
“Besides,” she continued, “We’ve fought against the Elders for years.”
He was glad for another topic, and this allowed him to ask something that had fired his curiosity. “Speaking of which, how did you escape from Nakothi’s Handmaiden?” He’d been sure the Consultants would only be able to distract it while he left on The Testament, but they’d apparently banished the Elder entirely.
“We killed it.”
Calder let the silence stretch, waiting for the inevitable correction or qualification that was sure to follow. Even for the Blackwatch or the Luminian Order, it wasn’t so easy to kill an Elder. Lesser Elderspawn were one thing; they were effectively the small, defenseless animals of the Elder world. But a Handmaiden was intelligent, vicious, and had lived for thousands of years. Even Kelarac had warned Calder not to use his Awakened blade against these servants of Nakothi. But the Consultants had managed it?
“How?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“The Consultant’s Guild manages each client’s issues with utmost efficiency,” she recited. “In the event that the client is threatened while under the protection of the Guild, that threat will be removed.”
The legendary Consultant secrecy. If he was honest with himself, he should admit that he was lucky to get even as much information as he had. But he decided to push for a little more. “Was it Shera?”
“It was the Consultant’s Guild.”
“She has an Awakened weapon now, and she didn’t before. She might even be a Soulbound.” With each word, he stared at Meia’s face, gauging her reaction. “Did she destroy the Handmaiden?”
Meia might as well have been filling out paperwork back at the Guild. “The Consultants have resources beyond what you know.”
“This is a matter of my personal security,” he stressed. “Shera has tried to kill me…what, three or four times now?”
“No, she hasn’t.”
At last, a personal response. Calder leaped on it. “What do you mean by that?”
“If her primary assignment had been to kill you, you would be dead.”
Now that he thought about it, Shera had been trying to accomplish something else each time she’d attacked him. Assassinating Naberius, securing the Heart, stopping Urzaia. But the fact remained that she had attempted to kill him, secondary though it may have been.
“But I have to be in danger now. Your Guild is working against me; wouldn’t it be in Shera’s best interests to have me removed? The more I know about her, the safer I am.”
Meia flexed one hand, claws extending and retracting from her nails. He tried not to be intimidated by that. “I have no information from the Architects regarding you personally, so this is only my opinion. But I don’t believe you are in direct danger from us at this time.”
Of all the things she could have said on the topic, this surprised him the most. He’d thought she was working outside the interests of her Guild to support him, out of her lingering loyalty to the Empire. Not against her Guild, of course, but at least independent from it. He’d been sure that the Consultants as a whole would gladly murder him given the chance. “Why not? You’re Independents, against the Emperor, and I’m the Emperor.”
She placed a hand on his shoulder. “No,” she said. “You’re not.”
Freed from the alchemical bath, Calder had his wounds wrapped in fresh bandages. His leg still ached and his shoulder was sore, but for the first time in days he could actually fight if he needed to. It was a reassuring feeling.
Palace servants dressed him in clothes that suited the Emperor: layers of blue from navy to aquamarine, draped around his body like a series of tents had artfully collapsed. He bore them with dignity as the Imperial Guard escorted him through the halls, though he felt like he stepped on his own hem every four or five yards. It was like learning to wear a dress.
More than anything, he focused on the clothes to distract himself from his destination. “The educated man faces his problems, he does not turn his back.” Sadesthenes, though his wisdom was an unwelcome reminder just then.
The Guards led Calder past another courtyard, through a checkpoint complete with a pair of Witnesses, and into a building that outwardly looked little different from all the others in the palace complex. The walls were white, the tiled roof red, and Imperial Guards stood at every entrance. The differences were minor, but significant: there were no windows here, and the doors were heavy barred steel.
The Palace dungeon.
It’s not underground, he thought. Is it still a dungeon? If it mattered, someone would correct him eventually.
The dungeon was fully occupied, and he could vaguely hear them behind their sealed doors, but not one of them could see out. So he passed through the hallways without incident, until his Guards stopped him at one particular door. A woman with eyes all over her arms twisted the key, and two Guards with combat-ready adaptations—one with a scorpion’s giant tail, the other with savage claws on his hands—leaped inside. They scanned the room thoroughly and searched the prisoner before declaring it safe.
Only then did Calder step inside to see his wife.
Both times he’d spoken to Jerri since she’d left his ship, she’d been in a different prison. There was surely some sort of poetic justice in that fact, but it brought him no joy. Her hair was loose and messy, and they’d changed her last prisoner’s outfit for a new one. This one was a dingy red compared to the last, with patches at the knees and loose threads on the sleeves. Strange, that the Consultant’s Guild would dress its prisoners better than the Imperial Palace.
Otherwise, she was every inch the Jerri he’d known his whole life. Her dusky skin, the tattoo climbing from her left ankle up the side of her neck, even the way she brightened briefly when she caught sight of his face. Her eagerness to see him stabbed him through the heart, and the knife twisted when she lost that joy an instant later, lifting her chin and drawing up her shoulders to address him firmly.
“I’m pleased you weren’t hurt, Calder,” she said, professionally distant.
The Imperial Guards had retreated, giving them the illusion of a private space without actually allowing the prisoner any room to try anything.
“I was. The alchemists said that if I hadn’t gotten treatment immediately, I would have suffered internal damage from your attack on the Optasia. And the Champion would have torn me apart. Was he one of yours?”
Calder doubted it—the Independent Guilds had plenty of money to hire the Champions, so they were the likely culprits. But her expression would tell him what he needed to know.
Her eyes widened. “We’re not trying to kill you, Calder. I didn’t even know you would be there at the Optasia, and the Champion…I had nothing to do with that. Nothing.”
Under normal circumstances, she would have made a joke about him surviving a Champion’s attack. She clearly wanted him to believe her.
And he did. No matter how many times she’d lied to him over the years, he believed her now.
“Then what are you doing here, Jerri?” His guilt at leaving her behind on the Gray Island had hardly faded, even though he’d known she had most likely survived, and now here she was in another cell.