Will Wight - Of Dawn and Darkness

As they got closer and the noise died away, Calder shouted back to him. “Urzaia. How would you like a job? I could use a ship’s guard?”

The Woodsman made a show of thinking about it for a few seconds, even as he ran. There was a thin sheen of sweat and blood on his skin, but he wasn’t even close to running out of breath. Champions are just…unfair.

“Guard is boring,” he said at last. “But I am a very good cook.”

The Emperor’s armor was white and smooth, so that it looked like Calder’s chest and limbs were protected by giant eggshells. The plates were joined by chain at the joints, and the entire suit was invested to weigh practically nothing, so at times Calder forgot he was wearing it.

He extended his senses down into The Testament, steering his ship after the Navigator fleet that carried the army of the Imperialist Guilds. Navigator ships stretched out over the oceans for miles to his left and right, covering the shallow Aion in colored sails and Imperial banners. But every time Calder Read his ship, he had to forcibly ignore his armor. The Emperor had left a mountain of Intent in the suit; this was the same armor he’d worn in the Elder War. As a result, Calder almost lost himself in the armor’s depths each time he Read.

It was an inconvenience, and one that he was quickly growing sick of. But since he suspected the armor was impenetrable, he would manage. He could withstand a little inconvenience for the sake of invincibility.

The armor was one of the treasures he’d taken from the Emperor’s armory, over a week ago now. It was the primary reason that General Teach had allowed him to lead the assault on the Gray Island.

Although “lead” was perhaps too strong of a word. The Testament was lagging behind the rest of the fleet as the Consultants’ island loomed in the distance. The Lyathatan drifted along sluggishly beneath him, barely keeping up with the ship instead of pulling it forward.

That was one of Teach’s requirements. She’d made him promise to stay in the back, as far from danger as reasonably possible.

Even if he wasn’t technically in charge of his own mission, at least he looked like an Emperor. Between his armor, the Awakened sword on his hip, the golden crown on his head, and the Imperial flag he was flying, he struck an impressive figure.

The Gray Island, on the other hand, wasn’t living up to its name. Rather than the towering wall of fog that he’d seen on his last visit, the island was only a little hazy. That meant something significant, he was sure, but he had no idea what. It could mean that the Consultants had abandoned their headquarters, or that they needed to see clearly to aim their cannons. Maybe they’d decided to surrender.

A harsh cry, like the dying of a violin, sounded from high overhead. A brown lizard twice the size of a horse began to descend on his ship, flapping wings like an oversized bat. Through Kelarac’s mark on his arm, Calder sent his Intent down and into the ship, ordering the Lyathatan to a halt.

Minutes later, The Testament finally settled, and the Kameira—a replacement for Teach’s dead Windwatcher—came to land on the deck. Jarelys Teach leaped off its back, saluting when she saw Calder.

Secretly, it alarmed him every time she did that. Some part of him felt like the Emperor was standing just behind him.

“We have a problem,” she said, and immediately Calder’s crew gathered to listen. Foster leaned on a cannon as though he weren’t paying attention, though Andel walked up boldly. Even Petal peeked her head up from below deck, staring from a nest of her frizzy hair.

At first, Calder glanced around for Jerri and Urzaia before he remembered the truth. It hurt like a fishbone stuck in his throat.

There were too few of them left.

“The Consultants have a visitor,” Teach said, as she handed the winged lizard’s reins to Andel. “The Regent of the South.”

Calder’s blood chilled. Jorin Maze-walker, who some texts called Curse-breaker, didn’t show up in war stories as often as his companions Estyr Six and Loreli. Instead, he had left his marks in other fields: architecture, exploration, cartography, linguistics, and the advancement of Reading as a discipline. He wasn’t credited with the founding of the Magister’s Guild, but his philosophies were instrumental in its creation.

The legends didn’t say much about his combat potential, but he had lived through the Elder War. He couldn’t be easy to kill. More importantly, he would have been one of the strongest Readers of his day, carrying invested weapons with thousands of years of Intent.

“You saw him from the air?” Calder had been on the Gray Island not long ago, and the place was a maze. If she’d spotted him from the back of her Kameira, she’d gotten lucky.

Teach shook her head. “I only had to get close enough. Tyrfang recognizes its creator.”

Its creator? That confirmed one of Calder’s worst fears about the man. If Jorin had been the one to Awaken Tyrfang in the first place, he would understand everything about it. He’d have some way of matching Teach in battle. “I guess we should count ourselves lucky it wasn’t Estyr Six.”

Teach neither agreed nor disagreed. “I don’t know Jorin personally, though I’ve met him briefly twice. If he’s not quite Estyr Six or the Emperor, he’s still on their level. I wouldn’t like our odds if we were ambushing him in his sleep, and he’s hardly sleeping.”

Calder’s breathing quickened. Only a moment ago, it had seemed like the ships were barely crawling toward the Gray Island, but now he felt like everyone else in the fleet was speeding toward their doom. “What are our options?”

“We have to go after him immediately,” Teach responded. She reached into a saddlebag, strapped to the side of her mount, and pulled out a black-and-red helmet that matched her armor. As far as he could remember, he’d never seen her with her head covered before. “I can only stall him on my own, but together, we have a chance of removing him.”

“Together? Me and you?” Calder was flattered that she thought him capable of fighting alongside her, but the sudden surge in confidence seemed out of place.

From underneath her newly donned helmet, Teach gave him a look that told him to stop being an idiot. “Not me and you. Me and her .”

She pointed behind him.

Without much surprise, Calder turned around to see Bliss standing there. Her Blackwatch coat reached down to the deck, and her pale hair blew behind her in the ocean breeze. She stood perfectly straight, her face serious. “Hello, Calder Marten. You should pay closer attention to your surroundings.”

“Hello, Bliss. I don’t see how that would help.”

The Head of the Blackwatch would likely have spent ten minutes telling him about all the reasons he should pay more attention, but Teach was kind enough to cut her off. “Bliss, can you back me up? If we can remove Jorin immediately, we’ll have practically disarmed the Guild.”

While that wasn’t true from Calder’s perspective, he could see how it might seem so for Teach. The Consultants didn’t have a Guild Head; without Jorin, there was no one else who could fight on the same level as Bliss or the General.

An uncomfortable memory surfaced from a week or two before. Somehow, a Consultant Soulbound and her partner had managed to kill Mekendi Maxeus. He’d been a Guild Head, a powerful Magister, awake and alert. If they could kill him, why couldn’t they do it again?