by Ryan Muree
“RCA!” someone screamed. “The RCA are here! Get out!”
Cecillius started to scream to get the RCA’s attention, and the REV member holding the Messenger lifted his ether-gun to Cecillius’s head.
She whimpered and pled with him to spare her.
The pulse of light was quick, and as she slumped over in her chair, lifeless, Ednor gripped his chest, gasped for air, and seized until he, too, sat lifeless beside her.
“Well, that was convenient,” one REV member said.
“We’re going to be in deep shit! We weren’t supposed to kill them.”
“Enough. Let’s go!”
They took off for the back of the manor, and Cayn followed through the office, out the back door, and into the gardens.
RCA had the place surrounded, moving in to take down the REV. Bolts of lightning, streams of fire, giant beasts trampling through the gardens.
Cayn dove around the center fountain, narrowly avoiding a block of stone being blown from the main building.
He panted with his head down.
If he had a gun, he’d be a lot safer. Maybe not against flying stone chunks, but against the RCA.
There were orders shouted, but none of it was discernible. Were they friend or foe?
He looked for a clearing in the fire and raced for the bushes on the outer edges of the property.
Something stung him in his thigh, his arm, in his back—over and over.
He kept running despite his legs growing heavier and the stings burning him from the inside out.
It was as if he’d been set on fire, but he couldn’t stop. He wasn’t out of the grounds yet, and he had to reach Aurelis.
Where was Aurelis? Left or right?
The words for what he was looking for evaporated from his mind.
Clove.
His body broke through the bushes. He knew that much but couldn’t feel the scratches of the limbs against him. Like he wasn’t within himself.
He collapsed near a street.
It wasn’t his body anymore. He had only made it this far on pure adrenaline. His arms and legs didn’t want to move. His neck ached so badly, up into his skull, he couldn’t lift his own head.
Clove.
At least if she’d died in the crash, he’d be able to see her again.
I’m sorry, Clove.
Chapter 6
Neeria — Revel
Emeryss struggled to find her footing on the floating dock, but her body would remember.
Her father was already in his fishing boat—the Sea Surge—ordering the other men to grab the extra ropes and buckets. “Come on,” he waved at her. “I need you to open the pens.”
She stepped across the short, foot-width bridge to the deck of the boat and opened the hatch in the floor. It was caked over with years of salt, but she turned the knob just how she’d been trained from little up to lift it properly.
She climbed down the ladder into the pens, her palms prickled on the crusted rungs. Cranking the barnacled vents at the perfect angle took effort her muscles had forgotten.
Once the vents were open, the chilled seawater flooded in until it was knee-high. Her teeth chattered as she turned the vents closed again. Fresh ocean water would keep their catch alive longer.
“All right,” her father yelled. “All feet upstairs.”
She climbed out of the pens, the seawater freezing her to her bones, and shut the latch.
“I’m surprised you remembered how to do it,” her father said with a smile.
She grinned back. “Kinda hard to forget something you’ve done a million times.”
He shrugged. “You had to be told to do it, and you did it slower than before.”
Ouch. Though, he was never one to hide his criticisms.
“But at least you remembered how. That makes me feel better.” He walked past her and gestured to the guys at the propeller wheel to get the boat out into the Endov Sea.
Unlike Revel with fancy Caster ships, Neeria still used the old propeller wheels turned by hand. It took two guys to move a boat this size, and it was a position often fought over. It meant strength and trust.
“Did you think I would forget everything I’d learned here?” she asked him.
He nodded, the wind blowing his wispy hair. “You’ve not lost all of your Neerian. That always makes me feel better.”
That had been his concern? How could she be anything but Neerian? The world wanted to remind her so often, and he was afraid she’d lost that part of her? “I’m still me.”
“We’ll see.”
They pulled the nets that had been placed out a couple of days prior. They measured the catch, and the sea spiders big enough for eating were tossed in the water-flooded pens below deck.
Her fingers bled from their burs. Her arms ached from the nets catching. She’d even gotten her feet tangled in a few—a rookie mistake. Her shoulders, her back, even her stomach, burned from overuse.
Her father eyed her every time she rubbed something on her body, but she quickly got back to work.
Hours went by, and she could barely feel the bottoms of her feet they hurt so much. She’d eventually found her balance on the turbulent, early winter sea, but her muscles hadn’t hurt like this in years.
When they headed for the last pick-up, she fell back onto a stool near the side of the ship.
“You’re weak,” her father said behind her.
She rolled her eyes. Everything on her body yearned to give up. Everything cried for her to fall down and sleep right in the sloshing seawater at her feet. “Just at this,” she admitted.
“You’re much weaker,” he grunted as he sat down on the stool across from her.
The wind whipped their dark hair. His was salt-and-pepper colored, and his tighter curls only came down to his neck. He had bits of salt and sand in it. Probably permanently. The scar on his chin from an accident several years before had paled considerably but was missing hair on an otherwise stubbly face.
Seeing him like this was like seeing him as she always had. A part of the sea. A piece of her she’d never forget. Though, these days his eyes looked deeper set in his face. He was thinner, wrinklier than she remembered. Maybe just older.
She evaluated the fresh blisters on her palms.
He looked out across the sea. “I don’t mean in your body. You’ve been gone for years. A weaker body is expected. I mean here.” He pointed to his chest.
“My heart?”
He nodded. “You’ve been keeping things from us, Emmy. From your sisters and brothers, from your mother, from the oracle, and from me.”
She clicked her tongue and fussed with her gauzy shorts. The wind was getting colder as the sun was getting lower, and she had bumps all along her legs from it.
“Face the deep,” he said. “It’s always there.”
She half-laughed. “You always have some sea analogy.”
“So?” He propped a sun-tanned arm on the side of the boat.
“So, I don’t know if all of life can be summed up by living on the sea.”
“The sea is life. Life is the sea. They are one and the same.”
She shook her head. “The sea loves? The sea loses loved ones? The sea tells lies?”
He huffed.
“Life is more complex than the sea.”
“People are more complex than the sea, but that is not always a good thing. The sea reminds us of what matters.” He scratched the side of his face where his graying stubble was thickest. “You’ve become weak, and I raised you stronger than that.”
A piece of her sparked at his words. It was a blip of static electricity in her spirit to fight back. This is what she’d come home to? A cold mother. A lukewarm father. “I’m stronger than you think.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Well, so am I.” He rubbed his bare kneecaps. “You think I can’t handle what you’ve come to say? You think I’m not strong enough to withstand your truth? We’re some of the strongest
Neerians here.”
She shook her head again. He’d didn’t get it. “It’s not the same—”
“It is the same.” His voice was gruff. If he was a sea oracle, the waves would bend to his confidence alone. The man was as yielding as a ridgeback which was to say not at all. “Strength is strength. Either your mind, or your body, or your heart knows it best, but strength is strength. Tell me to my face you think I’m too weak to hear your truth.”
She wouldn’t dare.
“Truths are like the undertow, Emeryss. It’s out there, always.” He pointed to the sea beside them. “Better to know how to get through it than trying to avoid it.”
He wanted truths?
What was so wrong about telling him some truths? Why had she been avoiding it? Well, she hadn’t wanted questions for one. No, that wasn’t right. She hadn’t wanted to be doubted.
Telling the truth meant the possibility of being told she’d done the wrong thing. That they’d tell her she had to go back to Stadhold and face consequences, that she’d been a murderer, not a soldier, that she’d gone against their wishes and didn’t want her home anymore.
“If I tell you…”
His lips were a thin line.
“If I tell you, I think you’ll tell me to leave.”
“Why? This is your home. Are you Neerian or not?”
“Because of what I’ve done. It puts everyone in danger—”
“Our lives are always in danger. Living is dangerous. That’s how the sea works.”
She inhaled. Could all of life be summarized by how they lived with the sea? Was it possible to understand everything by means of understanding one thing?
“I’m not a Scribe anymore.” She glared at him, watching for the slightest reaction, but his green eyes with golden flecks didn’t even flinch. “I can’t Scribe anymore.”
“Good. You can go back to being a true Neerian again.”
She dug deep, finding the will to cross him. “I’m not a Scribe anymore because I’m a Caster now.”
His pupils dilated a little, and he huffed. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s not. I figured out how to do it. It’s possible I’m the first person to have ever done it, and I’m proud of it. I love it—”
He grumbled, “No, you’re Neerian.”
“Why can’t I be both?”
“You know how I feel about Casters, Emeryss.”
She’d heard it all before from him. Casters wanted everything easy. Casters got stuff handed to them. They didn’t know real work.
His views weren’t entirely false, but it wasn’t so bitterly true either.
His chest lifted, his shoulders went rigid. He was posturing, challenging her to fight back.
It was like Tully on the Zephyr, lifting her chest and putting her arms on her hips to look bigger than she was.
“What happened to you?” she muttered.
He narrowed his glare at her.
“You’re just like them,” she said. “I was spoken down to and mistreated for years at the library because I was Neerian. They didn’t respect what it took to live a life without ether. But now, you’re just as guilty, and that’s probably why I didn’t want to tell you. You don’t understand them, and everything to you has to be measured by how much someone knows about the sea or they’re useless. I’m a Caster now, and I’m not useless. I’m not lazy—”
He waved her off and moved to leave her there.
His dismissiveness rubbed her insides raw. He had no idea what she’d been through, what she’d done.
“When I was put on that airship with Avrist to leave here, he said I was no longer Neerian.”
Her father spun. It was easy to imagine the rage boiling up through the tense muscles in his arms and neck.
“I told him he was wrong,” she said. “I told him I was both. I stood day after day, watching the sunsets and saying my prayers. I never lost who I was, but I was able to change what I can do. Can you not see the difference?”
His chest heaved as he fumed silently.
He wanted truths? Fine.
“Here’s the truth, Father.” She rose to meet his stare. “I’ve done more in the last few months than I’d ever accomplished here. I’ve saved people. I’ve killed people to save people…”
He inhaled, and his eyebrows lowered. It was his angry face, not out of disappointment, but out of fear. Did he fear for her or was he afraid of her?
“I was imprisoned in Stadhold,” she continued. “I tried to get away, and they tried killing me to keep me there…”
He blinked repeatedly and finally looked into her eyes.
“I fought. I survived. And between all that, I fell in love with an amazing man who fought at my side for my freedom. All for me to come home and feel like who I am is not good enough so long as I’m a Caster.”
His features softened only a little. “It’s a terrible route, Emeryss.” He wagged his finger at her. “Look what becoming a Caster has already made you do. Because you did those things does not make you stronger.”
“No, because I died I’m stronger for it.”
His mouth closed abruptly.
“I died. I ran away from the library, I worked so damn hard with all of your sea analogies and fishing stories in my head to keep me grounded in who I really was that I died trying to become a Caster. And really nice people, including the man I love, brought me back. They saved my life.”
He lifted his chin an inch.
“I learned to cast without grimoires,” she continued. “Something no one else has ever done before, and something the RCA would want to take me away and use me for. And I kept it hidden until I used it against the Ingini in the Battle of Marana.”
His eyes widened.
“I reflected the laser against the cannon. I destroyed it and stopped the fight, and then I rode straight into Ingini, and fought and killed those who threatened my life and the life of innocents. I watched as Revelians slaughtered friends, all to come back here and be told by you that I’m not strong anymore because I can’t hold a rope properly or because I’m a Caster. As if what I do is all I am!” She was shouting.
The other crew curled away from them.
Her father’s rough edges dissolved and were replaced by a wide smile. He pulled her in for a hug. “There you are, my strong Emmy. I’m so happy to see you again.”
The smell of the sea on him washed over her. Tears were at the corners of her eyes.
He pulled back, taking her face in his calloused and nicked hands. “Welcome back, Emmy. Welcome back.” He kissed her forehead and hugged her again. “When you tell your mother all this, show her this. Show her your best self, and everything will be back to normal.”
“Were you testing me?” she mumbled into his shoulder.
He pulled back. “No. Never. But I will be the first to admit when I’m wrong. Of course, you’d be the first Neerian Caster to actually work—”
“They work, too—”
He waved that point away. “Fine. If you say so.”
Was it that easy to fix things with him? He’d just accepted her that quickly? “I don’t understand…”
He held her chin in his hand. “I never cared what you do as long as you stay Neerian in your heart and spirit. As long as you are your best you. You have been silent for two months. I thought you lost your spirit. Never be too afraid of the undertow, Emmy, that you never swim. You are stronger than it. Go through it. Always.”
When they arrived back at the docks, night had fallen, torches had been lit, and the town’s tables had been set out. It was customary that the last night of the harvest be a feast together as one big family. It was in memory for ancient years past when it was one of the last meals before a harsh winter. The other fishers brought their day’s catch, and her father unloaded mounds of sea spiders for cracking and boiling in a soup.
Her mother and Issolia were waiting for them at the shore. Issolia looked like she’d regressed about twenty years in age—hands behind her
back, eyebrows lifted in concern as if she’d broken their mother’s favorite skinning knife.
“What’s wrong?” Emeryss asked, finding the slow rocking of the dock much easier to handle than before.
“Is the man coming here?” her mother asked.
“Which man?” Emeryss asked, but she should have known.
Issolia mouthed “Sorry” to her.
Grier.
Through it, her father had said.
She searched for the words, the ones that made her sound her age and not like the whining daughter her mother thought most of her children were. “No, I don’t think so,” Emeryss said.
“No?” Her mother’s left eyebrow lifted. “Is this Grier too good for us?”
“I don’t know.” Emeryss straightened. “He was supposed to come, but maybe he got held up. Maybe he had other responsibilities. Maybe he didn’t love me as much as I thought.”
Issolia whispered, “Emmy, don’t say that—”
“If it’s true, it’s true,” her mother said.
Her chest burned. Mother wasn’t wrong, and crying about him again and to their mother definitely wouldn’t help things. Adalai might have had some wisdom with her rule about sob stories not saving anyone.
Her father walked over, kissed her mother on the side of the head, and gestured at Emeryss. “Tell her.”
“Tell me, what?” Her mother narrowed her glare. “What else haven’t you told me?”
Emeryss sighed and repeated everything she’d told her father. Her mother, however, didn’t move to hug her or even scold her. She did nothing. Her expression was blank.
“I need time to think this through,” her mother said.
“Think through what? You can’t change what’s happened,” Emeryss told her. “You can’t change me.”
Her father stood beaming. “See? Strong again. This is Emmy.”
Her mother, however, might have grown nightmarish horns and red eyes right there if it were possible. She wasn’t nearly as pleased as her father had been.
“I didn’t want to bring it here—”
“But you did,” her mother cut. “You brought this back to Neeria. You’ve put us in danger.”
Her father tsked. “Essna, life is danger—”
