he attempted, but she cut him off again.
“There is only one thing I do care about, and if you lie to me, I’m going to feed you to Kelarac one squirming piece at a time.” She skewered him with her gaze, locking his eyes in place. “Are you being straight with me about Tommison?”
He had expected this suspicion, he just hadn’t expected her to ask him so directly.
If he was in her place, he would have been suspicious too; Calder walked away with his crew intact while Tommison and his crew all died under mysterious Elder-related circumstances.
And Calder had a Champion. If any ship in the Guild fleet was going to be able to get away with murder, it would be his.
In his mind, Cheska’s priorities did her credit.
She had some flaws as a Guild Head, but she always put her people first.
He dropped his guard, hoping that she could sense his sincerity. “I don’t know how we made it out and they didn’t. I don’t know how we made it out at all.”
Once again, she stared at him until he thought she might be examining the back of his skull for clues. He hoped she saw his guilt and his worry there.
She finally relaxed, giving him a look of shared pain and squeezing his arm. “Sorry about that. I just…I have to ask, you know? It’s hard watching people go.”
A knot had formed in Calder’s throat, so he only nodded.
Varia returned soon after, adjusting her gloves and looking sour. “He’s clean,” Cheska’s quartermaster said. “We disposed of the body. It was a mess. If it wasn’t Elder work, there’s no telling it now.”
“Hear that, Captain Marten? You check out. Clean as a whistle.”
Calder wasn’t surprised. He’d strapped the chest containing the crown to the Lyathatan’s manacles.
No Reader in their right mind would examine those closely.
No Reader but him.
“I am pleased to hear that my record is as clean as my conscience.”
Cheska snorted. “I do wish I knew who’d walked off with my prize,” she said, giving him an overly obvious wink that Varia immediately noticed. “I’d put in a bid myself. I do have quite a collection already, you know.”
Chapter Sixteen
While the captain steers the ship, the crew steers the captain.
—Navigator’s Guild saying
present day
Petal’s time in the Champion’s Guild had wreaked havoc on her nerves.
She had only been on the job a few days before they started finding Champions dead all over the Capital. She had even been part of the team of alchemists and surgeons that had examined the bodies after death, which had been both fascinating and morbid.
Every Champion was a treasure trove of alchemical knowledge and discovery, but she also hated cutting human corpses apart.
And now she had been instructed to stay inside the building the Guild was renting because there was something going on outside. She and the other alchemists were gathered around the entry room, which looked something like a waiting room from another Guild’s chapter house.
They could have gone back to their individual bedrooms, but none had wanted to be alone.
The other six talked with each other, trading jokes and news and speculation on what was going on outside. Petal didn’t say anything, but she curled up in a fluffy chair and listened.
The chatter soothed her; it made her feel like she was back home on the ship.
There were only two Champions left in the area, and they had gone to protect Calder, so only the support staff were left here. Seven alchemists and a handful of servants. There had been some guards at first, but they had been drafted elsewhere days ago.
It was only weak, ordinary people here. Now that something was going on outside, she wished at least one of the Champions had stayed.
Petal glanced behind her chair, where she saw the only person in this makeshift chapter house more nervous than Petal herself: a little girl with red hair and a dress with such a high collar that she could hide behind it like a mask.
Lotta was the twelve-year-old daughter of one of the administrators here, and she peeked out from behind a corner to watch the others talk.
The girl wanted to take comfort from the talk of the adults, but she was too afraid to come closer. Petal understood.
She rose from the chair—nobody said a word to her—and walked across the room toward Lotta. The girl flinched back but didn’t run away; Petal had spent the time to make friends with her already.
Petal knelt down, smiling gently at Lotta.