Paragons of Ether

by Ryan Muree

  “You want it?” he asked with a smug grin, passing her a piece of it.

  She smiled, reaching out for it, but then stopped.

  No.

  She pushed past him. “I don’t like that shit.”

  “I know. That’s why it’s funny.” He returned it to the shelf and followed her to the grimoires. “See, we get each other.”

  Four rows of books lined the wall. Some were thick, some were thin. The thinner ones were considerably cheaper, not that she understood their currency beyond lower numbers being cheap and higher numbers being expensive.

  Jahree rubbed his chin. “They’re spiking the prices.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “And they’re running low.”

  She looked back at the wall. The space wasn’t small by any means, and it had four very full rows of empty grimoires. “Looks like they have enough to me.”

  He shook his head. “This whole half of the store should be filled with them. Spines out, instead of the covers. The prices are high, too—”

  “It’s the war,” the shop owner returned, moving some curly gray locks out of her face and dusting her hands on her apron. “The rations are so deep.”

  Jahree nodded.

  “We hear there’s going to be another announcement about it,” the woman continued. “We think the king has allowed the release of some stored grimoires for emergencies. We’ve seen pallets move through the city almost daily, and they’re shaped perfectly for grimoires. It’ll bring relief to everyone when they do announce it.” She smiled, but there was worry carved in her wrinkles.

  “We’ll just take a couple.” Jahree grabbed the thickest grimoires on the shelf and handed over a few tokens to the woman. “Have a great day.”

  “You, too,” the woman said to them as they turned for the exit.

  “You all are entirely too nice to one another,” Clove whispered to him.

  He laughed and opened the door. “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it means. We’re not as bad as you think we are, but we’re definitely not nice like this.”

  He passed her one of the grimoires, the weight of it unexpected.

  “Getting fuel in Ingini would have been a lot harder than that, too,” she added.

  They walked back to the airship and found Mack in the center of the floor with the maps all around him.

  “Find something?” Jahree asked.

  “We know where all the guards are in Halunder,” Mack said.

  Jahree and Clove nodded.

  “And we all agreed that it’s a tad too much for a training facility.”

  Jahree nodded again. “I trained there like the other Zephyrs, and it never had guards like that when I was there. They had a few posted for regular security, but it was nothing like what we’ve seen. Then again, that was years ago.”

  “So, we still agree there has to be something in Halunder.”

  Clove crossed her arms. “Yes, but that’s the point. When we went on that fake tour, we didn’t see anything suspicious. Not even a questionable door.”

  “Right.” Mack shifted some of the maps and blueprints around. “Trent wouldn’t have made up Halunder for nothing. It has stories for a reason.”

  Jahree shrugged. “Maybe, but the REV could be selling those conspiracy theories to the Ingini for who knows why.”

  But Clove understood what Mack was meaning. Why do that? Why lie? Trent hadn’t been lying. Even if the REV were sharing these stories, who would lie to them?

  “What would lying about it get them?” Clove asked.

  “Nothing, I guess.” Jahree scratched the side of his head. “Maybe it gets them to attack Halunder?”

  “That doesn’t make sense, though.” Clove sat the grimoire in her seat and leaned against the back of the chair. “Halunder is too far inland.”

  “I think,” Mack said, tapping the map, “they’re taking them in another way.”

  Clove looked at Jahree and then back to Mack.

  “I think,” Mack continued, “if there is a prisoner camp, Halunder is too specific of a detail to be completely made up. I’m wondering if they’re being hidden.”

  “And where has been the problem,” Jahree said.

  Mack’s finger skimmed the paper. “These lines are for water? Or sewage or something?”

  Jahree knelt and scanned where Mack was gesturing. “Yeah, I would think so.”

  “They all stop here. In this line.”

  Clove squinted her eyes at the map. “So?”

  “So, something’s in the way,” Mack said. “Why add extra pipe and go around the whole complex like this when it’s always easier to go straight in.”

  “You think the prisoners are underground?” Clove asked.

  Mack nodded.

  Jahree sat back on his knees. “Okay, but it could be something wrong with the land underneath. Something in the terrain that didn’t allow them to build the pipes there.”

  Mack turned the map around a couple times. “There’s nothing around Halunder except for the small town, a few shops, and a landing zone. I think there’s something there underground. A structure. Maybe a cave—”

  “A cave.” Clove squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her head. “A cave. An ether mine?”

  Jahree looked up at her. “We don’t mine ether—”

  “No, I know,” Clove said, “but when we were in Gruskul Mines, Emeryss asked something. She asked if there are places where the ethereal realm touches our world and forms cave systems for us to mine in, then wouldn’t that mean there should be some in Revel.”

  Mack and Jahree looked back at the map.

  “There has to be some in Revel. Statistically, right?” she asked.

  Jahree shrugged. “If there is a cave system, they could move the prisoners underground without Revelians knowing what they’re doing. Just like you guys move supplies and illegal goods through your mines.”

  Mack shuffled through map after map, turning them in several directions. “If there’s a cave system underneath Halunder, there’s an outside entrance. A natural entrance, a rock outcropping to the southeast—”

  “How would you know that?” Jahree asked.

  Mack looked over at him. “Live around ether mines your whole life and you notice patterns. My dad used to say that when the ether and the earth touched each other, the force was so great it uprooted the earth. It created pockets—the cave systems—and outcroppings of rocks would be the sign of the beginning of the fold. He used to point them out to me when I was little. It’s how the first Ingineers found the ether mines.”

  He’d rearranged a map of Halunder, dragging his finger across the paper until he found a small cluster southeast of the facility.

  Clove knelt beside them. “Is that it?”

  Jahree bent forward. “It could be anything.”

  “We need to go see,” Mack said.

  Jahree looked to Clove, and she nodded.

  It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes later, and they were landing near the point on the map.

  They stepped out of the cargo hold and onto a bed of soft, damp, green grass. A small hill spotted with white rock sat before them. It looked perfectly normal save for the solid boulder wall in front of it.

  “That’s weird to everyone else, right?” Clove asked.

  Jahree lifted his hands, and the wind whipped around them. “There’s definitely something off here.”

  Clove could feel it, too. The ether, maybe? But it didn’t have the same smell, and it didn’t carry the same voices she was used to hearing.

  “The air currents…” Jahree said. “There are air currents moving between the rocks. There’s something behind it.”

  Mack ran his hands along the boulders.

  “What’s wrong?” Clove asked.

  “They can’t be moving people in if the boulders are in the way,” he replied.

  “Or they’re not moving people underground,” she said, “and we got it wrong again.”
>
  Mack’s hands stretched around another rock and stopped.

  The rock wall suddenly hissed open, revealing a small, dark tunnel on the other side.

  “There was a lever,” he said.

  She stared down the gaping hole.

  Jahree looked to Clove. “You ready to go inside another ether cave?”

  No, but it was for Cayn. He could be trapped in there. He could be tortured, hurt, and dying. She could be mere feet away from him.

  She steeled herself. “Yes.”

  Chapter 5

  Advisor Ednor’s manor — Revel

  Cayn rolled over the sheets, bare ass up to the world. The air felt nice.

  “Dress, Cayn.” Lady Cecillius tossed him his uniform. “This is no time to sleep.”

  His “uniform” was a short flap of canvas barely covering anything below the waist. The rest of him had been ordered nude and ready to address her or her husband’s whims at a moment’s notice.

  He was exhausted; his new prosthetic arm specifically. Mostly healed, it ached from time to time, especially when he’d been overworked, not that Lady Cecillius and Master Ednor cared. For an elderly couple, they’d demanded a century’s worth of sexual favors.

  “I need those magic fingers to work later,” she said with a smile. She sat nude at her vanity, pinning her auburn-dyed hair up in places.

  They’d teased he might actually be a charm Caster, using ether to ease their old muscles with excitement and pleasure. He smiled at the thought of making more money in Ingini if he were secretly a Caster.

  “Is the Master going somewhere tonight?” he asked.

  Julian, their chef, had told him weeks ago that the REV were ready to strike this place. They wanted to kidnap the couple, burn the building to the ground, set the workers free.

  He wasn’t sure how many working there had been Ingini captured in Halunder like him, and no one dared to bring it up. Being put to work in a manor was better than being tortured. Maybe most of them were everyday Revelians and he was the only Ingini. Either way, they were all more slaves than employees.

  “Ednor is making an announcement. He’ll have a hundred Messengers on him. It’s very important.”

  A public event, then.

  She smoothed a few locks of hair into place and began applying makeup to her cheeks and lips. “Once the curfew starts, he’ll be calling for the cease of all unnecessary grimoires.”

  “There aren’t enough?” he asked.

  She smiled at him in the reflection of her mirror. “Now, don’t you worry, my dear. We’ll make sure Ednor and I have plenty of grimoires, so we can keep our little games going.”

  He forced a smile in return.

  So, there were enough grimoires for recreational use for the wealthy but not for the average Revelian to live on.

  Before, he wouldn’t have cared, all things considered. But it was akin to CEOs in Ingini hoarding all the money for themselves and handing out painfully small portions to their workers. “Making a living” was always a misnomer.

  “Ednor just wants to make sure that all the grimoire creation in Stadhold goes toward the cause. Simple elemental ether needs to be purely for the RCA to keep us safe.”

  “And what will those people do?”

  “Which people, dear?” She picked up jeweled pieces and placed them on her ears and around her neck.

  “The people who won’t be getting grimoires anymore?”

  She clicked her tongue. “Well, they should have been saving them up this whole time. I mean, they’ve been practically handed everything they’ve gotten. Can’t fight a war without grimoires, and they knew this was coming. If they were careless to waste their sigils on frivolous things, well then, we just can’t help them, can we? Can you get my dress for me, dear?”

  He’d heard the same spiel in Ingini, and it was misplaced with the assumption that everyone had grimoires—or money—to save.

  Cayn pulled himself over the silken sheets to the edge of the bed, attached the loincloth around his waist, and grabbed a lavender sequined dress from her closet.

  She put on the dress and turned her bare back to him. “Zip me up, will you? Slowly.”

  Cayn quietly sighed at the back of her head and zipped her dress as slowly as he dared.

  She exhaled and patted him on the cheek. “Such a good boy. Mommy will reward you later, love.”

  He nodded. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to.

  The first time he didn’t agree to what she’d said, he’d ended up strapped to a wall naked while she practiced prodding, scraping, and burning him. He liked crazy shit as much as the next sexually-inclined person, but there was no fun in being tortured against his will.

  When she shuffled out of the room, he fell back on the sheets with a groan.

  “Psst.” Julian poked his head around the back corner of Cecillius’s room. “Is the coast clear?”

  Cayn made sure he was properly covered. “If it wasn’t, you’d be caught, you idiot.”

  Julian still had his damp chef’s towel tucked in his belt loop under his gut. “It’s tonight.”

  “What’s tonight?”

  “The hit. It’s about to happen.”

  Cayn looked at the clock on the wall. “He goes on the Messengers in fifteen minutes.”

  Julian nodded. “Exactly.”

  They were going to make a damn public spectacle about it?

  “When shit goes down, run,” Julian said. “There are groups in Lower Aurelis that can help you. Set up shelter maybe. Something like that.”

  “Where will you go?” he asked.

  “I’ve got transport back to Cilla. I have to work with the group out there.”

  “Can’t I come with you?” Cayn asked.

  “Don’t you want to get home?”

  “Yeah. But do you have any word yet?”

  Julian looked out the window. “No one in the REV knows of a Clove, bud. Sorry.”

  “What about from Barren Ranch or Dimmur? Any word?”

  “Your letters were returned. Undeliverable. It’s like she disappeared.”

  That hit like a ton of bricks. She’d disappeared, or she’d died? He swallowed the rolling bile in his empty stomach.

  “Look, man, I’m sure she’s out there. Just do what you can to make it back to Ingini, and I’m sure you’ll find her.” Julian checked the clock again.

  “How can I get to Ingini through Aurelis?” he asked.

  Julian looked over his shoulder and leaned in. “There are transports out of Aurelis all the time to the other cities and then to the border. That’d be the easiest way.” Julian handed him a piece of paper. “If someone ever asks you about the weather in the otherworld, say this.” He pointed to the paper.

  Cayn unrolled it and read the scrawl: Rainy.

  “All right, I have to go.” Julian headed toward the back door. “Remember, as soon as you see or hear something, get out.”

  After he disappeared around the corner, Cayn made for the master’s room.

  Clove was fine. Clove would’ve survived anything. She’d survived the airship crash if he did. She could survive Revel. She was still alive. His eyes burned.

  It was possible she was still recovering somewhere in a hospital, and that’s why no one had found her. Or she could be stuck in Revel as some poor slave to a wealthy family, too.

  He shook that image off. He didn’t want to think what they’d do to her after what he’d endured. He needed to find clothes and get out as Julian had said.

  “Clothes. Clothes. Clothes.” He dove into the master’s closet, tore out gaudy suit after suit, found some pants and a button-up shirt, and threw them on.

  The pants were too loose on his narrow hips, so he grabbed a matching belt and cinched it tight.

  A deafening explosion rocked the seams of the building.

  Books and trinkets fell off the master’s fireplace mantle. Screams echoed through the corridors of the manor.

  He scrambled to latch the be
lt buckle, buttoned up his shirt, found a pair of boots but no socks, and tore down the halls.

  REV poured into the building, shattering windows and doors. They had ether-guns and hands ready with red ether poised to attack.

  He put his hands up. “I’m not one of them.”

  Julian turned the corner with an ether-gun in his hand. “He’s good. Let him go.”

  The REV moved aside for him, as the house quaked with another explosion.

  Through the darkened windows and lace curtains, Cayn could see reporters running and screaming as fire engulfed the house.

  Three REV shoved a bloodied Cecillius and a startled Ednor across his path and into one of the sitting rooms. Cornered by fire and pandemonium, Cayn pressed himself against the wall.

  “Guard them!” one REV shouted to the other.

  The manor was in chaos. Fire licked the front of the building while glass and debris littered the hallways. Laundry workers, dishwashers, gardeners—everyone went running, grabbing everything they could as they ran out of the back doors. The REV were in black gear. Well-equipped, well-prepared, they moved with a purpose.

  A REV member holding an ether-gun to Ednor’s head shoved a piece of paper into the old man’s hand and held up a portable Messenger. “Read it!”

  Ednor clasped his chest with one hand and shakily took the paper with the other.

  Cecillius looked just as stunned but had blood dribbling out of a gash on her temple.

  “I-I—”

  “Read it,” the REV demanded.

  “I-I-I am Advisor Ednor. My manor has been overtaken by the REV. This is not a w-w-warning, b-bu-but a promise. King Fhaddwick’s decisions a-a-nd General Orr’s actions against the Ingini are war crimes. W-w-we do not seek war, but peace. W-we seek the freedom of Ingini slaves and dissolution of the true traitors of Revel—the r-rulers, the leaders. We have been s-starving long enough for f-food, for ether, for justice. T-t-the…”

  “Read it!”

  Cecillius shook.

  “The REV promises more uprisings until justice is served,” Ednor concluded.

  Another crash rang out, and parts of the wall burst open.