out of her, but he hoped the Guards were only rattled. He had grown to think of Bliss as quirky and strange, but dangerous only to her enemies. If it turned out she used her power to blithely harm the innocent, he couldn’t trust her.
In the meantime, he continued walking down the hallway. “Well, thank you for not whisking me away. What would you like to talk about?”
Though she was a head shorter than him, Bliss matched his pace precisely. “It is not a conversation for pleasure. I am here to deliver you a message in advance.”
“In advance of what?”
She blinked at him. “The message.”
“Very well,” Calder said, as though she had made complete sense.
“In a few hours, you will be delivered a message telling you that the Independent Guild Heads would like to request a smaller meeting. Only three in attendance on either side. They propose sending Shera of the Consultant’s Guild, the Regent Estyr Six, and Nathanael Bareius of Kanatalia.”
As usual, she scowled when she mentioned the Head of the Alchemist’s Guild.
“That would solve one of our problems,” Calder said. It still didn’t address the issue of Estyr being an unstoppable force of nature all on her own, but at least they wouldn’t have to face her and her two companions at once.
“Furthermore, they will suggest that the known Soulbound among you leave your Vessels in secure storage outside the venue.”
Better and better. Though Calder was a Soulbound, he couldn’t bring The Testament into a meeting room anyway, and disarming would reduce the advantage the Independents had over them. More importantly, the proposal spoke to a willingness to talk rather than fight, which Calder deeply appreciated.
“Teach is going to throw a party.” Calder glanced sidelong at Bliss, whose brow was still furrowed. “So why did you tell me alone, secretly, and ahead of the messenger’s actual arrival?”
He didn’t even wonder how she’d known the contents of the message before it had arrived.
“Because I don’t like it.”
Bliss stopped halfway down the hallway to examine herself in a mirror, staring into it as though she’d never seen her reflection before.
Halfway down the hall, there came a loud thump as one of Calder’s Imperial Guards reappeared in the exact place where he’d vanished. The man was soaking wet and half his uniform had been torn off and wrapped around his head.
Calder pointed to him. “Will he be all right?”
“Disorientation is a common side effect of sudden, unexplained travel, but subjects usually shake it off in a matter of hours.” Her eyes in the mirror found his. “More importantly, I don’t trust this meeting. The Great Elders are involved in this somehow, and I don’t know how, and that makes me uneasy. I don’t want to be uneasy. I want to be eased.”
“If it worries you so much, you can be one of the three we send to the meeting.” Though now that he thought of it, Bliss’ presence might make things worse.
“Nonsense. No one trusts the Blackwatch, and I am notoriously unpredictable. The Navigators are similarly disreputable and Cheska is not capable of defending herself from a Consultant Gardener. It will be you, Jarelys Teach, and Baldezar Kern. You are expendable and the nominal head of our faction, and the other two represent respectable Guilds and can defend themselves.”
Bliss poked her reflection with one finger.
Once again, Calder was confused by what Bliss understood clearly and what mystified her. “That seems very logical.”
Bliss turned to stare at him even as another Imperial Guard reappeared behind her, brandishing a golden candlestick in the lobster claw he had instead of a hand.
“It is logical,” Bliss agreed. “And I don’t trust it.”
Chapter Four
Some say the Emperor’s crown wasn’t always gold.
In the oldest artwork, he wears a crown of bronze. The commonly accepted explanation is that he replaced that crown with a new, more valuable metal to represent a new age of the Empire.
But over the years, some scholars have suspected that there may not be two crowns at all.
They suggest that the bronze crown slowly turned to gold because the Emperor wore it.
—Myths and Legends of Imperial History, Volume Two
three years ago
Calder was met on the dock by a tall, tanned woman dressed head-to-toe in orange feathers. She looked down on him with an expression of cold superiority.
“Captain Marten, the Guild Head requires your presence at the chapter house immediately.”
Calder coughed out a cloud of ash.
This woman, Varia Selethir, was Cheska Bennett’s quartermaster. She had made it clear many times that she had no respect