By contrast, Bliss grew cold, her entire demeanor freezing over. “That’s a very rude thing to say. It suggests that I am an object, which I do not appreciate.”
Meia spent a long moment struggling, clearly trying to find the right words. “This is a waste of time for both of us,” she said at last. “I need transportation back to the Gray Island. Give me control of this ship for two days, and we can go our separate ways.”
Bliss squinted at Meia. “You’re suggesting that you will kill Calder Marten if I don’t comply. You could, I suppose. It would take me an instant to reach you, and he’s very close. You could step on his neck from there, or drive your dagger into his brain, or tear his head off, or kick him and break his spine, or crush his skull, or poison him, or constrict his windpipe…”
Calder wasn’t sure what Bliss intended, but he wished he could move enough to ask her to stop.
“Those are all options,” Meia agreed.
“That would be inconvenient for me,” Bliss allowed. “And I suspect Calder Marten wouldn’t like it very much either. Where would we find another Emperor at this hour?”
Meia went very still, and Calder would have groaned if he had any control over his voice. The last thing he needed was for Bliss to give the Consultants another reason to kill him.
“You want him to sit on the throne?”
Bliss nodded once, very precisely. “Well put. Yes, that’s exactly what we want him to do.”
The Consultant’s eyes flickered from Bliss to Calder, and Calder strained to move. He could practically hear Meia trying to decide if it would be worthwhile to assassinate him, even with the Guild Head there. Bliss’ litany rolled through his head, taunting him with all the ways he could die: crushed skull, collapsed throat, severed head, pierced brain…
With all his willpower focused on his body, Calder managed to lurch a few degrees to the side. He heaved himself over until most of his weight rested on his injured shoulder, sending lightning lancing through his arm and his entire chest. Perfect. Now I’ll be in even more pain before she kills me.
From his new perspective, he couldn’t see Bliss at all. Meia’s black shoe rested close to his head, and Andel stood at the other end of the ship, cradling the food and wine in his arms. He had stayed completely silent during the entire exchange, Calder noted, but at least he had the decency to look concerned. Foster was nowhere to be seen, but he hadn’t challenged Meia either. Surely he should have been able to line up a shot by now.
The rest of Calder’s view was taken up by the green-black of the deck and a stretch of bright, rolling ocean. The red outline of The Eternal bobbed like a toy in a bathtub as it headed toward him, which was almost a relief; Cheska Bennett would arrive just in time to leave him a stirring eulogy.
He left those thoughts behind, searching for some way out before the Consultant’s blade descended on his neck. He wasn’t dead yet, so there had to be some options.
Focusing his awareness, he prepared to Read the ship. Any unnatural movement would surely alert Meia, so he had to be careful…
At that moment, his new point of view proved to be an advantage. Just as he started to send his Intent down into The Testament, he caught a glimpse of motion around The Eternal. He moved his eyes up, concentrating on the crimson ship.
The Guild Head’s flagship was a deep blood-red, and made of seamless wood just as Calder’s own Vessel. Its sails were a bright red as well, and alchemical flames trailed along the bottom of the hull as the ship set the ocean alight wherever it sailed.
But as Calder stared, that spot of scarlet began to twist, warped as though by heat. The air shifted in a visible spiral, forming into a bubble of distorted space that engulfed half the ship.
This was the Aion Sea, where the bizarre was more commonplace than the natural, but still…Calder had never seen anything like this. Was this an attack, or some strange attempt on Cheska’s part to rescue him?
He got his answer an instant later, when the bubble popped, tearing The Eternal in half.
The bow stayed entirely intact, but the stern vanished in a spray of debris. Not an explosion but a dismantling, like the twisting bubble had taken the vessel apart piece by piece.
The sound reached Calder’s ears a second later, like a cannon-shot. Deceptively slowly, The Eternal filled with water, its mast tilting backwards like a felled tree. Its nose twisted up, angling toward the sky.
Then he heard the screams.
CHAPTER THREE
Jyrine Tessella whispered her secrets into the fire, and madness answered.
“Where are his bonds?” a voice croaked from the flickering shadows. The steady chirp of the insects outside went utterly silent in the presence of that voice, and the cave dropped a few degrees.
“We have taken The Testament,” Jerri responded. “Calder has been released unharmed, and soon we will return to the ship.”
She wanted to say that the Emperor had spared him from execution, but mentioning the Emperor was tricky business when you used Elderspawn as your messengers. They knew the Emperor well enough to fear even his name.
Emerald flames blazed, illuminating the smooth dome of stone wrinkled with crystal. It looked as though some ancient traveler had polished the inside of a natural rock formation, painting lines of quartz on the ceiling like a road map.
In the influence of the voice and the flames, those crystals seemed to slither.
“Can you capture the Lyathatan?” the voice asked, creaking like the mast of a ship in high wind.
“No need. Calder works for us. He works with us, though he doesn’t know it.”
The fire bunched in on itself, like a man folding his arms to think. “Explain.”
She was delighted to. “He carries with him a Bellowing Horror, a spawn of Othaghor that often declares death. But he doesn’t fear it. He treats it as a beloved pet.”
A short, stubby little creature, like a foot-tall fat man with a pair of undersized bat’s wings. Its eyes were orbs of pure black hate, its mouth masked behind writhing tentacles, and it spoke with the voice of doom itself. They called it Shuffles.
“He is hunted by the Blackwatch, just as we are. He was exiled from their number for consorting with Elders.” He was removed from the Guild as part of an Imperial decree, owing to his attempt to rescue his father. The attempt that had resulted in almost two dozen deaths, and his expulsion had nothing to do with ‘consorting with Elders.’ Phrasing it this way would be more persuasive.
The men and women on the other end of the flame murmured thoughtfully among themselves, and the Elderspawn translated it as the babble of madmen, trickling from the fire like drool from the lips of an imbecile.
Impatience took root inside her, and her Soulbound Vessel started up again.
They don’t believe you, it said, hot with rage. They will never believe you. But you’re stronger than they are. You don’t need them. You can burn them. Burn it, melt it, turn it all to slag!
Her mind filled with visions of acid-green flame, consuming the stone walls of the cave, leaving nothing more than a pool of molten rock behind her. It would help nothing, wouldn’t even touch the cabal, but her body ached for the destruction. Her Awakened earring, bearing the mated power of a Kameira and a notorious Elder, crooned in her ear. Its match, hanging from her other ear, was silent. It was invested only as protection, a false duplicate meant to counter and contain the power in her real Vessel.