by Ryan Muree
Worn was staring straight at her.
She lifted her chin.
“Last one,” Koy called, tossing the final die into the air.
It rose between them and fell onto the crate.
She hadn’t needed to even move or wave her hand, or even touch the die anymore.
Glamour.
The die landed with a one facing up, and she smirked.
Some of the crowd cheered, some stuffed their hands in their pockets and gave over their winnings to other onlookers.
She slid the tokens off the crate and into her hand.
Poor Worn looked as if he might cry. “Ah, come on, Adalai. Sherl is going to kill me. I can’t be losing that many tokens in five games.”
He whined like an oversized child, and his wife would most definitely kill him for losing that many tokens in any number of games.
“I’ll help you out, then.” Adalai grabbed the largest token between two fingers and tossed it at Worn’s chest. “A full roast. A good one. Not too tough, but not too much fat either. I’ll be by later to pick it up.”
Heavy clomping echoed up from the main street. Two great mawks with glistening red and gold plumage pulled a gold cart with four RCA members announcing, “Curfew in thirty minutes. Be in your homes. Be safe.”
More like: Be in your homes or be arrested.
The crowd scrambled out of the alley. Worn picked up the token she’d thrown at him and pushed off the crate to leave in a hurry, too. She didn’t need to run from the RCA. They might have instituted curfews, grimoire rations, and a whole list of other rules, but as long as she stayed out of sight, she’d be fine.
Grimoire tokens deep in her pockets, she slipped into the shadows and headed down the south alley toward Glint Street.
Lower Aurelis wasn’t as nice as Proper. It didn’t have the fancy filigree over the signage or perfectly painted doors. But on its worst days, it was still a hundred times better than any city in Ingini. It had smooth stone for the streets with huge ether-stone buildings and banners draped between them to block out too much sun. Some of the buildings had been made out of pale sunstone, others with soft skystone.
The difference was that Proper didn’t have the riff-raff and the open markets in the streets like Lower. It didn’t have alleys to do shady, seedy things. No, all the questionable acts of Aurelis Proper were done indoors, where advisors and nobles lived.
“You gonna tell me how you did it?” Koy popped up beside her.
She jumped and grabbed her chest. “What the shit, Koy! Don’t do that.”
He smirked. “You’re slower.”
“What?”
“Old days, you would have pulled a dagger on me in an instant. Now, you jump back and complain. You got soft.”
Koy had been a friend when they were kids. Nowadays, he was living with a girl on top of his parents’ old shoe shop and still playing back-alley games if the tokens were good.
“Apparently not.” She patted her side pocket and Blinked up to the half-broken ladder on the edge of a crumbling five-story building.
“Yeah, and I’m going to figure out how you did it,” he called up to her.
“I played fair and square,”—if practicing basic casting without needed grimoires counted as fair and square.
She climbed the rungs of the ladder, stopped at the third-floor window, and slid it open.
The building had been marked for repair for several months, but with the war, it left this floor inaccessible by stairs or lift—secluded just for her.
She straddled the ledge and looked down at Koy. “Hey, any news for me?”
He shrugged his small shoulders. He still looked like a boy in many ways despite being in his mid-twenties. “General Orr is on a rampage for the Ingini.”
“I knew that.”
“You still have to tell me the rest of that story.”
“No, I don’t.”
“And the RCA Ethereal Series is coming up, but they’re thinking about canceling the competition with all the fighting and stuff.”
A lump formed in the back of her throat. It had been a knee-jerk reaction, recalling a time when she’d had great plans of conquering the competition, leading the Zephyrs to victory, and gaining favor with the king.
“Why would I care about that?” she asked.
He shrugged again. “Because you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Nope. Not anymore.” She swung her leg over the windowsill to leave him behind on the street below.
“Also, they’re doing a hit tonight, I think.”
They? The REV? She poked her head back out. “Hit what?”
He looked up and down the street before whispering up to her, “A big shot. An advisor.”
“Which one?”
“Ednor. He’s back from his third trip to the palace, and he’s about to announce more grimoire rations.”
“More?”
He nodded. “It’s getting bad. The messages keep claiming we need to be tighter and less careless with our rations, but how can we be careless when we don’t even have enough to live?”
“They’re lying, Koy. There are plenty of grimoires.”
“Yeah, in Stadhold.”
“No, here.”
“Okay, and it’s why the REV exists—to stop this shit.”
She shrugged. “Sure, Koy.”
“Really! The REV are moving in. Things are in motion. The REV are legit.”
Things. He meant a revolution. He meant the REV thought they could take on the entire RCA and Aurelis, which was ridiculous. And there was no way the REV could do that. No matter how powerful or sneaky they thought they had gotten.
“A revolution isn’t going to change or solve anything,” she said.
He adjusted his cap. “I dunno. Maybe. Just come to a REV meeting with me, please?”
She waved him off and headed inside.
“Wait, Adalai!”
She stuck her head back out and sighed.
“Please? Just one. I promise it’s not what you think. It’s regular people like you and me. They discuss what’s happening up in Proper, they mention plans for the bigger organization. We’re small pieces all trying to make it work.”
“And I’ve told you before, there’s a mole in the palace. Nothing will stop this unless you get the mole.”
“Exactly!” He held up his hands to her. “They won’t believe me if I tell them that. They want proof. You have tons of proof. All your stories, what you saw over there—”
“And I regret telling you any of it.”
“They need to hear this stuff. It will help them.”
That side of her that wanted to help, to do something, it was gone. Lost in the flames and ash of her recurring nightmares—screams, cries, and the sound of a cocked ether-gun aimed at her forehead.
She shivered. “No. And if the REV need me to gain any traction in a revolution, they’re not strong enough to begin with. Night, Koy.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and sauntered off down the street toward his home.
She slid the window closed, locked it with a pin, and faced her shitty apartment.
Rickety floorboards. Uneven walls with peeling wallpaper. She’d put a heap of pillows in the corner as a bed at least, and she had a lamp she could light with some matches like the old days. Other than that, the floor was strewn with messages about the war, the RCA, and the crews fighting along the border for the safety of Revel.
She walked over them as she crossed the room, dumped out her pocket of tokens into a jar, and flopped back on the pillows.
A few empty boxes of puffed snacks lay nearby.
Tidbits flourished to life beside her and rummaged through the wrappers, licking anything she could find.
“I’m hungry, too, Tidbits.”
The tulisan trilled at her.
“Yeah, I know. But we’ll eat soon. I made money today.”
The illusionary creature chirped.
“Enough. More than enough.” Sh
e drew in a deep breath and stared at the dark holes in the ceiling.
So, things were in motion? The REV had guys on the inside everywhere, according to Koy. The palace, all the advisors, some of the contractors, too. The REV claimed they were looking out for the little guy, watching over them.
They were playing with fire—Orr’s fire—and it burned too deep and too hot to overcome.
But Ednor. Advisor Ednor wasn’t a terrible start, really. He and his weird wife were old, easy to take and manipulate—probably. If they couldn’t get Ednor under their grasp, then they couldn’t do anything.
She looked at Tidbits and back at her meager jar of grimoire tokens.
Could the REV surprise the advisor and the RCA? Were they fast enough? Did they have the Casters to pull it off?
She bit her lip.
They wouldn’t need to kill Ednor. Just take him and his wife hostage, destroy a couple of rooms in his manor. It’d be easy.
She stood up and Glamoured her hair black. “Come on, Tidbits. We’re leaving.”
The creature chirped again and lumbered over to her.
“I’m bored. I want to know if they can pull this off. I’m not getting involved, I promise.”
Tidbits dissolved into pink ether, and Adalai made for the window again.
She could just watch. She could stay invisible or hide in the shadows and Blink out if it got too crazy.
Chapter 4
Near Halunder — Revel
Clove fidgeted with the hem of her new shirt, trying to ignore the buzzing in her chest. She hadn’t gotten used to wearing regular clothes like a normal person. It had been the mining suit for that little while with the Zephyrs and flight suits for months before that.
But it wasn’t the clothes bothering her.
Jahree had stepped out to visit a little shop, leaving her and Mack alone in the airship. The tension from their silence had only gotten thicker in the last several weeks.
She glanced over at him.
He sat in one of the passenger seats of Jahree’s ship, staring ahead at nothing in particular. Finally, he inhaled and leaned his right elbow on the arm of the chair. “I think we could get farther if it was just you and me.”
He’d been hinting at it for days, irritated they hadn’t even found the prisoner camp. They’d checked Halunder and the surrounding areas. They’d asked locals and old friends of Jahree. It’d turned up nothing.
“He knows this place—”
“Right, and I think he’s stringing you along.” His olive eyes under thick, dark eyebrows met hers. “There’s no way he knows exactly where Cayn could be—”
“Of course, not—”
“Then, he could be anywhere.” He leaned forward. “We could wander around asking people questions.”
“No, Mack. He promised to help. He wants to help. We need it. Having him is infinitely easier than us wandering around.”
But she suspected Mack’s irritation with Jahree wasn’t about finding Cayn at all. The buzzing in her heart told her it wasn’t.
She and Jahree had kept to their agreement—friends with benefits only. Nothing more. It would eventually end when they went their own ways, or when the war was over. But if Mack had realized or suspected they were involved with one another, then he most likely didn’t understand how easy it was going to be for them to break it off and go back to their old lives.
A part of her wanted it out in the open. Yes, I’m screwing Jahree! And so, what? Over and done with. If he’d been holding back opinions of it, it was best he got them off his chest, so they could move on.
Then again, it wasn’t any of his business. If anything, it was none of his business because she and Jahree weren’t in a relationship, and neither was she with Mack. She owed him no explanation, and she’d already told him the truth in the barn all those nights ago. Nothing had changed since then.
Of course, it was awkward with all three of them on this airship together. Still, she wasn’t letting Mack stay behind in Ingini without her. He’d join the UA, especially now with Lark gone. He’d get himself killed, and if she’d lost Cayn, then she wasn’t losing Mack, too.
“Finding my brother—”
“And what if we don’t? What happens then?” His hollow stare cut her. “What happens if you find out he’s died?”
She swallowed. “Then, I face that—”
“Will you? Because it’s been months now, and we can’t even find the prisoner camp.”
“We’ve searched all over Halunder, and—”
“And the most we’ve gotten is a guard schedule.” He took her hands in his. “I know this is hard, but this time I’m here. We can face it together, but…”
“But?”
“But, it feels like you’re dragging your feet, and Jahree is, too.”
Dragging her feet? Why would she be dragging her feet to find her brother? That didn’t make any sense.
He moved a section of her hair from her face that had fallen. “You’re afraid to open the door.”
“What?” She pulled away.
“You’re on one side of the door, Clove. On the other side of it is the truth. Once you open it, you know the truth. You’ve got all the answers, and you have to face them. But right now, the door is closed.”
“Okay. I get that.”
“The truth is whatever you want it to be because you’re too scared to open the door. Anything is possible. Cayn alive. Cayn dead.”
And once she opened the door, she’d know. Bile rose in the back of her throat.
Maybe she was dragging her feet. Maybe she didn’t want to go and find out her brother was never in Halunder or that the prisoner camp in Halunder was never real. If he was dead—
She sniffled.
The last time she faced that possibility, she was in Ingini on the cold bathroom floor of her empty home.
Mack moved like he might hug her but stopped short. “I say we go back to Halunder and search one more time. Really look and get in. Sneak in and out. That sort of thing.”
It would be too difficult. He knew that. “Jahree said—”
Mack scoffed and shook his head. “Either Jahree has no idea what he’s doing or he’s making this last longer—”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know, Clove. Why would he?” He glared at her.
Mack was never stupid, but she wanted him to be wrong.
He cleared his throat. “As someone who just recently lost their last remaining family member, I’ll give you one piece of advice: rip the bandage off, Clove.”
Her eyes watered. “I know—”
Mack shrugged a shoulder. “Then, I suggest we stop screwing around and do something about this.”
“Do something about what?” Jahree had entered through the back of the airship. She quickly wiped her eyes as he looked from Mack to her. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Mack’s, uh, just frustrated that it’s taken us two months to get what little information we have.”
Jahree set the few bags of supplies down and jumped into the pilot’s seat, spinning it around to face them. “Tell me about it. I feel like we’re missing something obvious.”
The bags he’d set down were fairly light. “Only two grimoires?” she asked.
Jahree nodded and started up the airship. “That shop was too small. Too rationed. I need to stop off at a slightly larger store, maybe one with some pre-recycled books. Then you can Scribe for me, and we’ll be good to go for another round at Halunder.”
Mack bent over his seat and grabbed the maps they’d acquired.
They’d been pouring over them for hours already, so he was most likely just looking for a reason to ignore them.
And it made sense.
They were like family, like siblings.
He saw her as more.
If he knew about her deal with Jahree, then it couldn’t have been easy, and she didn’t blame him.
Maybe he needed distance from her. Maybe bringing him along was th
e wrong thing to do… for him.
Maybe she was being selfish.
Jahree had flown them to a larger town with a bigger supply store. “Okay, I’ll go in and check for grimoires—”
“I’ll go with you,” Clove offered, standing already.
Jahree looked at Mack and then to her. “Mack, you okay staying here with the ship?”
Mack hadn’t glanced up from the maps when he said, “Sure.”
Jahree gestured to the back of the airship. “Ladies first.”
She rolled her eyes, and they stepped out into the afternoon sun.
Revel was clean and bright and brilliantly warm at just the right times.
She hated how right Jahree had been about the differences between Revel and Ingini, but it was the truth. Revel was gorgeous.
And damn it if that didn’t infuriate her.
They headed down the landing zone for a small store just off the strip.
“This is bigger than the other shop?” she asked.
“Sadly, yes.” Jahree nudged her shoulder with his own. “You okay?”
She held her breath. “Mack knows.”
He paused for a second and then nodded.
“He doesn’t understand,” she continued.
“People rarely do.”
“It’s probably making it worse that I chose to come with you.”
He held open the store’s door for her. “You have to live your life your way, Clove. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“Good morning,” chimed two voices from deeper in the store.
“Morning,” Jahree replied. “You have pre-recycled grimoires for sale?”
“We do,” an older woman said, smiling and pointing toward the back. “Can you reach them?”
He smiled. “I’ll do just fine.”
All this politeness. Sugary sweet. Customer service. Clove almost missed arguing with shop owners underground in Luckless or the crude way Branson did business in his swamp hangar.
She followed Jahree past aisles of trinkets and other useless items people filled their homes with or gave as gifts. There were shoes, clothes, hats. Anything last minute travelers might think they need before heading out.
“Look at this.” Jahree picked up a trinket as they passed.
It was heart-shaped but split in two, intended for one person to keep one half and give the other. When stuck together, it read: You fill my heart.
