Of Sea and Shadow (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 1) Read Free

crossed The Testament from stem to stern, and bright enough to drown out the illumination of the thunderlights.
    Calder heaved a sigh and let his whole weight rest against the wheel. “Foster, get Petal and Urzaia up here. We need to preserve as much as possible.”
    Foster marched down the ladder. “Petal! Woodsman! Get your buckets and get on deck before I make you bleed!”
    Shuffles chuckled in Calder’s ear, tentacles waving. “BLEEEED.”
    Calder ignored it. The Bellowing Horror liked to imitate the most disturbing words it heard, but the creature was entirely harmless. He’d begun to treat the thing like a parrot. Ship captains were supposed to have parrots.
    It didn’t look like they’d get the full payoff they’d hoped for, but they could probably retain sixty or seventy percent of the Stormwing’s luminescent liquid. Two-thirds of a fortune was still a fortune; the Alchemist’s Guild would pay in hundreds of goldmarks for vials of this fluid.
    He grinned, settling his hat back on his head, and bowed in the Lyathatan’s direction.
    The giant was slowly settling beneath the waves, hissing as it disappeared under the water.
    Disconcerting and reassuring at the same time. As Sadesthenes said, “The worst enemies make the best allies.”
    Calder wasn’t sure he could count the Lyathatan as an ally, exactly, but certainly as an asset. It had agreed to serve him for a short time, but ‘a short time’ to the ancient Elderspawn could extend into the lives of Calder’s grandchildren.
    He turned the wheel, sending his Intent down, and the Lyathatan obediently dragged the ship along. Away from the flashes of lightning. After weeks of chasing this Kameira, they could finally leave storms behind them, and Calder had never before looked so forward to sunshine.
    Boots pounded back up the ladder, and Urzaia Woodsman appeared, a bucket dangling from each of his huge hands. He gave his gap-toothed smile when he emerged, staring up into the rain with his one remaining eye. “I never get tired of the rain. No matter how often I feel it, you hear me?”
    “Well, I’ve felt it too often,” Calder called down. “We’re heading out to smoother seas.”
    “That is a shame. The monsters here are much bigger.”
    Petal slid out behind Urzaia without a word, her frizzy hair hiding her face. She sank onto the deck beside the severed Stormwing spine, crooning as she milked glowing liquid into her bucket.
    Calder didn’t bother saying anything. When the ship’s alchemist was lost in her own world, nothing so mundane as human speech would get her attention.
    The next person onto the deck was a surprise: his wife, Jyrine Tessella Marten.
    Jerri wore a bright green raincoat that matched her emerald earrings. Bracelets flashed on her wrists as she hurriedly pulled her hair back, tucking it under her waterproof hood. She wore a wide, eager smile that instantly worried him.
    It had taken him days of pleading to get her to stay below during the confrontation with the Kameira. There was nothing she could do to help, and the more people they had on deck, the greater the risk. She had finally agreed, but she wasn’t happy about it.
    If she thought there was something in the hold more interesting than two giant monsters fighting, he needed to see it.
    She rushed up to him, pecking him on the cheek and wrapping him in tanned arms.
    Alarm bells sounded in his head.
    “You would not believe what I found down in the hold!” Her eyes sparkled as though she had heard wonderful news.
    Calder leaned back, examining her expression from arm’s length. “What did you find?”
    She pulled on his wrist, tugging him away from the wheel. “You’ll have to come see!”
    The last time she’d had a surprise for him, it had ended up being a clawed Elderspawn that he’d been forced to nail to the inside of the hull. “Should I bring my pistol?”
    “Only if you plan on shooting Andel, which I would wholeheartedly support. It’s not a monster