Calder struck with the cutlass once, and an Inquisitor’s head slid off. Twice, and a crack appeared in the exoskeleton of the second. Though their heads held most of their eyes, they had at least a few sets covering every angle, and both struck at Calder as though they could see perfectly well—even the headless one.
But the young Navigator slid to the side, out of the doorway, and his blade flashed twice more. Chunks of Elder flesh fell to the floor in pools of inky purple blood, and the Inquisitors collapsed.
Then red blood sprayed against the walls.
One robed body fell down, two, three, and Calder lowered his cutlass. His chest heaved as he panted, though Andel still heard nothing over the bright ringing in his ears. Calder said something, gesturing to the dropped weapons, and then jogged away down the hall.
Before this moment, Andel hadn’t realized that he had never seen Calder fight. Calder had mentioned something about his mother training him as a duelist, and Andel had taken it as a joke.
He looked at Duster, whose mouth was slightly open as though he couldn’t figure out what to say. One of the cylinders blazed in his right hand, its paper fuse lit, and he absently extinguished the flame between two of his fingers.
Duster raised his eyebrows in a question to Andel, and Andel could only shrug. Then they remembered themselves and ran out.
Calder stood at the end of the hallway, facing an old man with a bayonet-fixed musket. The old man was visibly furious, his face red and his teeth bared in a snarl, as he thrust the bayonet toward Calder like a spear. Andel saw the problem immediately: Calder couldn’t swing his sword to parry in the close confines of a hall, and couldn’t get close enough to lunge under the superior range of the bayonet.
As Andel got closer, he simply lifted his empty pistol.
The old man jerked back at the sight of the gun, and Calder found his moment. The sword licked in, sliced the inside of the man’s arm, and slipped out. He grabbed Calder on his way down, forcing the Navigator to waste time peeling him off.
Andel walked by them. He might have helped, but Calder could handle it.
Past Calder, Andel glanced to the right. Everything was as they’d left it there: door open, the little boy hunched in the corner, the four men in varying states of consciousness around the walls. So he looked to the left, where a locked door stood between him and the captive women.
It didn’t take long to find a key; as luck would have it, the ring was tied to the belt of the old man clinging to Calder’s shoulders. Andel delicately reached through Calder’s straining arms to the old man’s waist, snatching the keys and leaving.
As he did, Calder shouted something that Andel had no hope of catching. If his ears weren’t ringing, he could have recognized a plea for help, but alas. He had no way of knowing what the boy wanted.
He turned back to the women’s door—there were only three keys on the ring, so it took five seconds to figure out which was appropriate.
When the door swung open, he saw five women, just as he’d expected. But not in the way he’d expected them.
Jyrine knelt before them, arms spread. They crouched on the floor before her, nodding or weeping or both, and a strange green light filled the room like an echo of a quicklamp. Jyrine’s head snapped around at the sound of the door opening, the light cutting off and her last words unfinished. Of course he’d caught none of it, but Andel would have given a hundred silvermarks to hear exactly what those words had been.
Maybe being in the headquarters of an Elder cult had gotten to him, but the scene before him looked exactly like the early stages of an initiation dedicated to Elder worship. He’d seen scenes like this before, in the Luminian Order; usually he’d kick the door down at about this point in the ritual, after which the room devolved into utter chaos.
Jyrine’s eyes flashed with anger and irritation before snapping into a mask of happiness and relief. Tears even welled in her eyes, and she rushed up to him, saying something with a smile on her face.
Andel took a half-step back. It was how fast she’d covered herself, more than anything else, that told him something was actually wrong here. Only madmen or actors went from rage to tears of joy in a half-second.
But there were more important matters at the moment. He took his eyes off of Jyrine, waving to the others, leading them into the hallway. They hopped along after him until he used his stolen blade to cut free their hands and feet.
Calder had already gathered the men, and Duster was hurling fire at another Inquisitor who rushed down the hall toward them. Their crowd ran along together in a harrowing escape through the night-shrouded streets of Silverreach.
Swallowed up in their race for life, Andel pushed Jyrine to the back of his mind. He had worse to worry about, and he forgot what he’d seen.
For a while.
Thirteen people piled on The Testament and left Silverreach behind. To the sound of Elderspawn screeching impotently on the shore, Calder guided the ship out to sea.
Hours later, surrounded by black ocean, he sent his Intent down through his ship and urged the Lyathatan to stop. The monster halted its advance, the chains on its wrists tugging the human passengers to a comparatively gentle rest.
Nine of the ten passengers they’d picked up in town were asleep. Some of them rested in the spare cabins below his feet, others in his own cabin under the stern deck. The Testament had plenty of space for passengers and cargo both, and was intended to sail with a larger crew than this one. Though Calder could essentially operate the entire vessel alone, through his bond of Intent, there were a thousand tasks that no one could handle on their own. Magical powers aside.
They were anchored at the border of the zone most people called the ‘deep Aion,’ as opposed to the ‘shallow Aion.’ Here, they were unlikely to run into any of the unnatural hazards or monsters that plagued the deeps. Especially not with a giant pet Elderspawn of their own standing guard beneath.
Navigators had a different term for this area at the heart of the world: the Aion Sea. The shallows weren’t the true ocean, with its unknowable terrors. They were something else entirely, something for lesser sailors.
Usually, Calder would have no problem setting the Lyathatan to anchor them even in the hazardous depths of the sea. The anger of their Elder or the agony of the ship itself would wake him if they were in danger.
But tonight, the perils of the Aion Sea loomed over him like a dark wave. His hands shook on the wheel, and his knees begged him to collapse onto the deck. If he did, he wasn’t sure whether he would fall asleep as soon as his kneecaps hit wood or if he’d simply melt into tears.
The danger of Silverreach had come too close, and more than that, it was too personal. They’d grabbed him, taken his weapons, kept his crew. Locked Jerri away, where he had no idea what would happen to her. They’d threatened him with Elderspawn, and beneath it all, the oppressive presence of Ach’magut lurked as though he could split the earth at any second. Until they were two hours out of Silverreach, he’d still felt that silver tingle in his spine like he was being chased. He was having a hard time scrubbing the inhuman shrieks of the Inquisitors from his ears.
It was good that the fear didn’t overcome him in combat; it never had. He felt clear and clean when facing danger, as though he could see farther and faster than normal. But afterwards, when he had a chance to think, the razor’s edge he’d been walking finally sliced him.
He held himself together by sheer force of will, staring blankly into the night and trying not to think about what might have happened if they hadn’t escaped. As he did, a bat-winged shape fluttered out of the darkness and a heavy weight landed on his shoulder.