She smiled, adding a twisted irony to her next words. “I’m here to help you save the world.”
Calder glanced around at the tight walls, the low-slung cot. “From a hole?”
“From anywhere I can. I was told that I’d be able to put you on the throne if I followed along, and I see the wisdom in it now.”
Put you on the throne. Even now, she claimed she was trying to help him. “I’ve done it without you. I’m on the throne, Jerri.”
“But you haven’t used it yet,” she said quietly. “If you really want to be the Emperor, you need the Optasia. It’s the only way humanity can speak to them.”
A chill crawled up his arms. “What are you talking about?”
“What do you think?” Jerri leaned back against the wall, folding her arms, the way she always did when she lectured. “We need someone who can deal with the Great Elders on their terms, to represent all of mankind. The old Emperor refused to do that, but a new one, one whose reign was already arranged by the Great Ones…”
Calder stiffened. His reign had been arranged?
“Leave me alone with the prisoner,” he said.
The man with the scorpion tail shook his head firmly. “We have strict orders—”
Calder met his eyes. “Now you have new ones.”
Maybe it was the clothes, the ancient fashion that only the Emperor had maintained. Maybe it was the actual authority in Calder’s newfound title, or his own projected confidence.
Whatever it was, the Guards left.
“The Great Elders did not arrange for me to be here,” he said, giving into his anger even further now that the Guards had left. “They may have foreseen it, but they are not the reason I’m standing here today.”
Jerri’s mouth hung open, and she looked at him in a mixture of disbelief and disgust, as though he’d just announced that he was absolutely convinced the earth was flat. “How did you free your father from prison? With the Lyathatan, sent by Kelarac. Before that, how did your mother gain the support she did in the Guilds? She worked in the Blackwatch for years. Fighting Elders. Even your family’s reputation is built on the Elders. Even the fights that drove your parents apart, all the Elders. You think the Great Ones had nothing to do with that?”
That was entirely different—they had been fighting the Elders, not accepting their help—but before Calder could protest, Jerri went on. “Most of your Navigator work had to do with the Elders. An Elder is pulling your ship, and another one sits on your shoulder. How did you survive the fight on the Gray Island? Kelarac stepped in, once again. Leaving aside the fact that the whole reason you were there was because of a fight to inherit Nakothi’s power.”
“I was there because of you,” Calder insisted, but he could feel his self-righteous footing crack. “And how did you know about Kelarac?”
“And how did you know you were going to be the Emperor one day?” she asked, ignoring him. “How did the entire crew believe in you so much that they were willing to defy the Empire? You’ve been dancing to an Elder tune for half your life.”
Calder’s anger didn’t fade, but he shut his mouth.
Jerri’s voice softened as she went on. “I’m not accusing you, Calder. It would be an accusation coming from anyone else, but not from me. You of all people should understand that we can borrow the powers of Elders. It can be a good thing! They can be our partners, not our parasites.”
He had to admit that, of all the people he knew who were not Elder-worshiping cultists, he’d relied on Elder powers the most. They worked to his benefit every time, and always for prices he could afford to pay. They were alien, menacing, and heartless, but most of them hadn’t seemed to mean him any specific harm.
The thought didn’t reassure him. It chilled him down to his bones.
Is this how the Sleepless make their recruits?
It had begun when he was a child, receiving Shuffles as a pet. Hearing his mother talk about Elderspawn in the same way you’d talk about wild lions; something to be respected, certainly, even feared in a healthy way. Even, perhaps, admired.
Somewhere along the way, he’d begun thinking of the Great Elders differently. Maybe some, like Urg’naut and Nakothi, were actively evil. Most weren’t. They were simply alien, and indescribably powerful.
That was the crack in his defenses. That was where he’d gone wrong.
And he’d listened to Ach’magut.
Even now, he didn’t think the Overseer had been wrong. It was impossible to imagine that any predictions of Ach’magut could be incorrect to the slightest degree; the Great Elder had spoken directly to him, and its words carried the weight of inescapable destiny.
But just because it was the truth didn’t mean the Elder was being honest. Of course it wasn’t. It was telling him the truth for its own complex, intricate reasons.
In his own way, he’d been trusting Elders all along.
Jerri watched him come to this realization, and her face softened in sympathy. “It’s true, Calder. The sooner you accept that, the happier we can be.”
We.
“If you still don’t believe me, use the Optasia. Check for yourself. The Great Ones set up your attack so that it would scar the sky. Very soon, it will stretch and crack, opening a tunnel between our world and those beyond. That is when we will need a representative, Calder. Someone who can speak for us all.”
The air over the Imperial Palace had been fuzzy and indistinct after the attack on the Optasia, though he’d heard it was only visible from the Imperial Palace. “General Teach says we have two or three days before that happens.”
She laughed. “Significantly less than that.”
“The Optasia might be damaged.” He felt like a child, throwing up excuses to avoid a chore.
“A Great One intervened personally in this matter. He wouldn’t leave the throne in a state where it couldn’t be used.”
“The last time I came face-to-face with an Elder, it was Nakothi’s Handmaiden. She almost killed us both.” Technically, the last time was his dream of Kelarac, but he could only hope that Jerri didn’t know anything about that.
Jerri stepped closer to him. “Nakothi is…not the Great Elder you want to negotiate with. She’s far beyond us, of course, and I’m certain that we could improve the world with her wisdom. But she’s mad. Her Handmaiden was there to kill us all, and we’re only lucky that it withdrew before it hunted us down and finished its task.”
So Jerri thought it had fled. Maybe she was right. “The Consultants say they killed it.”
“Did they? Are you sure they weren’t lying to you? Trying to make themselves look better.”
He wouldn’t be surprised if Meia had lied, but then again… “She seemed fairly certain. And I suspect Shera was involved.”
She was even closer now, and they were talking normally before he’d realized it. Close, intimate, friendly, the way they’d spoken ten thousand times. “Shera? How?”
Intentionally, Calder took two steps back toward the entrance. “She’s a Soulbound now.”
Jerri noticed what he’d done, and a flash of hurt crossed her face. She opened her mouth, and he could practically see the insult forming.
The door opened and a Guard stuck his head in. “Sir, we need you to see this. There’s something…”
The floor, the walls, the entire building shook like a struck drum. The air seemed to buzz around him, and Calder and Jerri both staggered for balance. Without another word, Calder left.