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.
When the world shook, Jerri recognized it for what it was: the plan of the Great Elders coming to fruition. The sky had cracked, and with it, the first gateway had opened between their world and…whatever else was out there. Future generations would celebrate this day as a holiday; she should be filled with joy at her part in this momentous occasion.
Instead, she felt only frustration and anger. If the barrier had to crack, why did it have to be now? She was so close to persuading Calder, she could feel it. Even though he insisted on ignoring her, even though he was driving her insane with his refusal to listen to sense, she had still almost gotten through to him.
Now, though…now he would be listening to the Blackwatch’s version of events instead of hers. She’d wasted her last, best chance to get through to him. Victory or not, she felt like screaming.
It was only after the first few seconds that she realized something was wrong.
The city had shaken with the force of the Great Elders’ will. Perhaps the entire planet had. But that had died away in moments as the world stabilized. All this, Kelarac had led her to expect.
But in the corner of her cell, the shaking continued. The air trembled, a heat haze buzzing like a hummingbird’s wing.
When the indistinct blur had reached a fever pitch, when the blur turned from dim color to absolute darkness, the Soul Collector stepped out from the void.
This time, he was not quite as human. His dark skin had the pattern of scales, his golden jewelry splattered against him as though it had been melted into patches. His clothes flickered and faded, as though they were on the verge of vanishing at any second, and the body beneath them was distinctly unnatural. It was a coil of shadows upon shadows with the occasional outline of a waving fin. Like a school of a thousand fish all feeding on each other at once.
She looked away from the eye-wrenching sight before she grew seasick. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help the excitement growing inside her.
Unless she missed her guess, the Great Elder was upset. He had no reason to be so angry with her, and besides, she was fully within his control. Which meant that something else had happened…something important.
Maybe Jerri would get to help.
She had dropped to her knees as soon as Kelarac revealed himself, and he looked down on her with his steel blindfold bolted to his face. Only the blindfold remained as clear and distinct as ever, as though that was the only part of him that was real.
“The Killer survived,” he said, and it was only half a question.
“I’m sorry, Great One. Who?” Was he talking about the Champion that had tried to kill Calder?
“The Killer. Your husband said her name: Shera. The latest of the Am’haranai.”
Shera? What did the Soul Collector want with a Consultant assassin? “Calder says she survived. I haven’t seen her since before the island collapsed.” She snuck a glance up at Kelarac’s face, but it was so distorted that she learned nothing. It looked like his cheeks had been stretched into a mask that was now stapled onto something else’s head.
“When he mentioned her, I checked Bastion’s island. She did survive. She was not meant to.”
He flitted from one corner of the cell to another, moving with the grace of a spider. In someone else, she would have called it nervous pacing. “The Killer had one part to play, and she played it. Five years ago. She was supposed to die in obscurity, as she was born.”
“Would you like me to kill her?” Jerri asked, suppressing her delight. If the Great Elders tasked her with killing Shera, she would go about her task with glee. The assassin had thrown her over the side of her own ship.
Kelarac froze. “Kill her? You would kill her? A woman who has bound her soul to an ancient weapon forged in the powers of the Emperor? A woman who destroyed a Handmaiden, drawing its essence inside her? Shera has made of herself a bridge between the Emperor’s power and ours.”
Something was wrong here beyond the obvious. The way Kelarac said it made Shera sound terrifying, but really, what she’d done wasn’t terribly unusual. Even Jerri’s Vessel contained a hybrid power of Kameira and Elder. “Pardon me, Great One. But what makes her more dangerous than any other Soulbound?”
Kelarac loomed over her, a mass of gold-flecked shadows that flickered and squirmed in the overshadowed light. “Her place,” he said, and as he spoke she felt the echo of significance in the word. As though he referred to a force as broad as the universe itself.
“She should not have survived. It was impossible for her to die before her role had been fulfilled, but afterwards it should have been impossible for her to live.” He looked down on Jerri, and seemed to consider his next words.
“You have chemical projectile weapons. Guns. When a bullet is loaded, it has not yet been born. It is born with the pull of a trigger. It lives only for a flash of light…and then it ends. The Killer was supposed to reach her end.”
Jerri was beginning to see the problem. For whatever reason, the Great Elders had actually…made a mistake.
“Our plan, the vision we have for your world, ended with your kind in harmony with ours,” Kelarac went on. “Now, every action the Killer takes is a disruption of that plan. She is what Ach’magut might call a deviation, but I am neither Ach’magut nor Tharlos. I do not enjoy deviating from perfection. More importantly to you, my plan saw Calder Marten ruling as King of this world. Now, our plan has changed.”
Jerri’s excitement turned to fear. If the Great Elders were changing their minds, or if their minds had been changed for them, then all the promises they’d made…everything she had come to expect…
Her entire life could have been for nothing.
The outline of Kelarac’s body stretched, as though something within was bulging and trying to escape. “The last time our plans diverged this wildly, my brothers and sisters went to war. Engrave that into your heart, human. Another all-out war between the Elders with humanity at the center. You will be ground to paste.”
“Let me out,” Jerri said, desperate to find some hope. “Give me my Vessel, and I’ll kill her myself.”
Kelarac extended a hand, which for one mind-twisting instant seemed to have hundreds of fingers all overlapping each other. He reached into distorted space and pulled forth an emerald earring. “The deviation will be solved by greater minds than yours. You are in the proper place, for now, and you will play your role. There is only one thing that you can do for the greater good: you must not let the Killer meet the King.”
He threw her earring over to her and, with a pop that left her ears ringing, abruptly vanished.
Jerri remained sitting on the floor of her cell—her second cell in as many weeks—trying in vain to catch her breath. She clutched her Vessel in a tight fist, relishing the feeling of being whole and powerful once more, but her mind was consumed by an overriding conviction.
I have to save Calder.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When the Shades of Urg’naut take a city, it vanishes entirely. When the Children of Nakothi take a city, it is defiled. When Ach’magut’s Inquisitors take a city, it is depopulated.