Paragons of Ether

by Ryan Muree

  More people muttered in agreement.

  “We need more members,” another said louder.

  “We’re always searching for more people,” Worn said. “But until we can find a way to reach out to the enslaved Ingini, we’ll have to rely on our undercover REV teams to try to convince them.”

  Koy was nudging Cayn in the shoulder, urging him to stand up and talk.

  Cayn cursed and shook his head.

  “Why not?” Koy said.

  “I’ll help because I need the help finding my sister, Clove, but I’m not broadcasting who I am to everyone here,” Cayn whispered loudly to him.

  Adalai’s heart fell. Hot hol-shitting jelts.

  “Then you’re going to have to meet with one of the other leaders after the meeting,” Koy said to him.

  Cayn nodded, and Adalai sank in her seat.

  How was this guy Clove’s brother?

  Now, she’d definitely have to tell him and help him.

  “Moving on,” Worn added. “The other division in southern Aurelis is wanting to make a bigger move. So, we have two major choices to consider: enslaved Ingini or grimoire rations. Clearly the focus should be on one of those things. Any opinions?”

  “We’re doing the best we can, but it’s not enough. We need resources,” another person said.

  “But those people are stuck in those homes being mistreated,” someone said to Adalai’s left. “We can’t ask them to stay any longer than they have.”

  “I wish we could organize ourselves to do both at the same time,” Worn said, “but it’s just not possible. We’re spread too thin as it is.”

  “I had a few friends that were willing to join, but they decided not to after Ednor’s murder,” someone called out from the right.

  Several hoods nodded in agreement.

  Worn sighed. “That was not part of the plan, and those members who were part of that have been given different jobs in the REV.”

  “Different jobs?” A woman in front of Adalai stood up. “They should be removed from REV completely and tried for murder. We’re not the RCA. We must be better than them.”

  “Yes,” Worn said, hands raised. “But if we did that, they could leak our meeting places, our numbers, our undercover members. We can’t afford to risk that.”

  That was smart. Worn was a lot smarter than she’d given him credit for.

  Sadly, everything they said was smart. But with any organization, there was no controlling everything everyone does.

  “So, what’s the plan?” another asked.

  “The southern division is leaning towards a grimoire grab from the RCA’s vault,” Worn said.

  Many people shuffled in their seats and murmured their fear for doing it.

  Worn shifted his weight. “I know it’s risky—”

  “How many are we sending?” someone asked.

  Worn scratched the side of his face. “The southern division wants us to do it since we’re closer. They’re willing to send five.”

  “Five?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  Shocks and gasps went around the room.

  “Five people aren’t enough!” another one said.

  That was definitely true.

  The vault they were speaking of was west of Aurelis, where the Stadhold shipments came in every week. They’d be locked in crates and sent down below for security. There was no getting those grimoires without a team of at least fifty.

  “I think we can figure it out,” Worn said.

  They wouldn’t, because they didn’t know the route times yet. That’d take weeks to acquire.

  “Figure it out? When?” A man on the far side of the room huffed loudly.

  “Yes,” Worn said. “It’ll take us a while to gather information on how best to go about it…”

  “Adalai,” Koy whispered, nudging her. “Tell them.”

  “Tell them what?” she whispered back.

  “You know about this place, don’t you?”

  She stayed silent.

  “Can we do it, or is it suicide?” Koy asked.

  Suicide. They didn’t have the people or the knowledge.

  “If you don’t speak up,” Koy said, “you’ll regret it. You’ll always know you could have helped but didn’t.”

  Yeah, she heard him. Shit. Shit… jelted shit.

  “I think,” Worn said, “we can do it with a team of ten—five from the southern division and five from ours. The team will gather information on the location, break into the vault, grab some crates, and get out. Any volunteers?”

  A few lifted their hands volunteering their dumb lives to die in a poorly planned mission.

  Adalai groaned to herself and finally stood after too much nudging from Koy.

  “We have another volunteer?” Worn asked her.

  “No,” she cut.

  Worn’s eye peeked out from under his hood. He’d probably recognized her voice, but not the mask. “No?”

  “No, because you will all die,” she said. “You need fifty people, at least, to take on the location you’re talking about.”

  “I think we can do it,” someone argued. “We can fight.”

  “It’s not about fighting,” Adalai said. “This place was designed to be difficult to get into and easy to defend.”

  “How do you know about this?” someone asked from the side.

  Several murmurs went around the room.

  She pulled back her hood but left her mask in place. “I was in the RCA.”

  Several members leaned into one another mumbling and talking. They were probably trying to figure out who she was.

  “Then how can we trust you?”

  “Who brought her?”

  Koy jumped up. “I did. And she left the RCA because of what they were doing, and because they left her to die.”

  The crowd quieted.

  As uncomfortable as it was having someone else air out her worst memories for her, the crowd was at least more willing to listen.

  “I already know the route, the layout of the vault, and the RCA troops there,” she said. “It’d only take me a week to get the route times.”

  “You’re willing to share that with us?” Worn asked.

  She nodded. “But only if we do it without killing any RCA. You can’t have what happened to Ednor and his wife happen again.”

  A few people in the front row grunted their disagreement.

  “It’s not like they’re thinking about us when they kill!” someone shouted.

  “Yeah, they’re killing and enslaving people. You said it—”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to be like that,” the woman from earlier said. “We can be better than them.”

  “And,” Adalai said, “you’ll get more support. People will join if they can see you’re doing the right thing. They’ll… follow you anywhere. Do the wrong thing… and they’ll turn and leave you. The REV won’t get anything accomplished.”

  Silence settled among them.

  “Do we even need grimoires? Really?” someone else asked. He looked sort of like the carpenter at the end of Glint street. “I thought we had some saved up.”

  “We do,” Worn said. “But it’s always good to have more, especially if we want to get more members.”

  “Still—”

  Adalai cleared her throat. “Even if you didn’t need them, it would hurt the RCA. Without their stores of grimoires, they can’t fight back as readily, and Stadhold isn’t going to give them any more than necessary.”

  “Would you be willing to lead the group?” Worn asked her.

  She’d venture he wouldn’t have offered that to just any newcomer, but if he’d recognized her voice like she thought he had, then it would explain the trust. He knew what she’d been through. All of the street shops knew what she’d been through, thanks to Koy.

  Tell one guy one story after a bit too much ethyrol, and he’s telling everyone all of her damn business.

  “We don’t really have anyone else as knowledgeable
about this as you,” Worn added.

  She quickly calculated how dumb it would be to agree, how dumb all of this was. But she couldn’t say no. She couldn’t let them walk off and die. And she wanted this to end. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

  “All I can get you is ten people,” he said.

  Yeah, that was the scary part, but she could make it work. It wouldn’t be easy, but she could figure it out.

  “I’ve done worse with less,” she admitted.

  The meeting went on to discuss a few more administrative things before it was over.

  Worn had quickly gathered their volunteers for her mission, gave the code for the next meeting location, and everyone took turns leaving in random numbers so as not to attract attention from the RCA patrols.

  Koy was speaking with Worn quietly when she approached Cayn.

  “For someone reluctant to go to one meeting, you’re now running a whole mission for them?” he asked.

  She sighed through her mask. “Tell me about it. It happens to me, though. Kinda used to it. Also, Koy wouldn’t stop elbowing me.”

  “You, too?” he laughed. “I was talking to the leader over there for a second, and he thinks he can get me an idea of who’s undercover, so I can reach out to see if my sister’s being kept anywhere.”

  Adalai took the biggest breath she’d ever needed to take. “About that… I think I know… your sister.”

  His eyes narrowed under his hood. “You do? How?”

  “I…” Truth, Adalai. “I captured her and her airship, Pigyll, after you all crashed in Revel.”

  His eyes widened. “Are you serious—”

  “We never found you, but we captured her. I kept her on my airship because she had information the RCA could use.”

  He licked his lips, shifted his weight, and leaned in. “Clove? A young woman named Clove? In-in a pilot suit, and uh… she has a ponytail with brown hair, kind of messy… She went by Clove?”

  Adalai nodded. “She’s been looking for her brother, Cayn.”

  Cayn exhaled loudly, relief visibly washing over him as he ran his hand across his face. “Shit, are you serious? She-she’s alive? Really? Where is she? What happened? How’d you get separated?”

  “I wanted to use her… to find out how Ingini was getting grimoires. They were on her ship.”

  Cayn’s eyebrows narrowed. “Grimoires? They were bombs—”

  “Trust me, we’ve gone rounds about this. They were grimoires, and she helped us. We went into the mines, we went into Ethrecity, we met Mack—”

  “Holy shit. Holy shit, you’re telling the truth…” His eyes lit up, and he put both hands on her shoulders. “Where is she now? Is she back home?”

  “No, she’s here somewhere in Revel.”

  “Why? Where?”

  “I don’t know, but she’s looking for you,” Adalai whispered and checked around them for Koy. “And you probably need to know that she threatened to kill me the next time she saw me.”

  He laughed once, then again loudly. “That’s definitely Clove.” He was smiling a wide toothy grin. “You don’t understand what you’ve done for me. You’ve told me she’s okay. You’ve told me she’s alive.”

  “Well, last I saw her…”

  “You have no idea what this means to me.”

  “I have to warn you, though,” she whispered. “It’s going to be hard finding her. She’ll be pretending she’s Revelian, because she’ll be captured if they find out she’s Ingini, just like you were. If she hasn’t been already.”

  “Is she alone?”

  Adalai shook her head. “No, she has Mack and one of my former crew members.”

  Cayn straightened. “You help me get to her, and I’ll do whatever you need.”

  She was just going to do it to rectify what she’d done to Clove. She hadn’t meant he had to do anything in return. But if he was offering… “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll go with you and help out however I can—”

  “You can’t cast.”

  “So? I can shoot. You got any ether-guns?”

  “Ether-guns?” Koy had walked up behind them. “The REV have some. They’ll get you set up. You ready do this, Adalai?”

  No.

  But she couldn’t stay back and do nothing while others tried to fix things and died for it.

  Chapter 15

  Khendell — Revel

  Grier adjusted his new black jacket over his bracer. It was crisp leather, and with his matching pants and dark m’ralli shirt underneath, Lawrence had said he looked every part a matter or fire Caster.

  Kylah had changed into something similar with a jacket to hide her bracer, too. Dova had found a simple red skirt with a matching top. And Lawrence had modified his raclar with a new belt, new pants, and some boots instead of slippers.

  “We all look great,” Kylah said. “If we weren’t trying to find stolen children, I’d say we should all go out.”

  Grier thudded his knuckle against the iron stem of the lamppost. Now, they just had to wait for Urla—

  “Not bad. You look good.” Urla appeared beside him.

  Dova jumped and covered her mouth.

  “An energy Caster,” Kylah said. “Nice.”

  Urla was wearing a black skirt and an equally short black top. Her hands, fingers, and wrists were covered in silver jewelry, and she’d styled her white hair to be shiny and curly.

  “When you said don’t look like us…” Grier started, but Urla was eying Kylah. “Should we get going?”

  He walked in the direction he thought they should be heading. Anything to keep Urla from asking about Emeryss.

  Urla quickly turned her stare on him before leading them across the darkened street toward the inner sections of Khendell.

  “Why do you need to go in with us?” he asked.

  “Have you not heard how bad things have gotten? Curfews? Refusal of grimoires to entire classes of Casters? It’s bad, Grier.”

  They’d heard. The Messengers were lit up daily with information about the grimoire rations and shortages. The recent announcement about cutting off supply to basic elemental Casters so the grimoires could go to the troops against Ingini had made quite a wave, especially after the REV attack.

  Extra units, like Kylah’s, had been assigned to protect the borders of Stadhold against Revel, as civilian Revelians grew more desperate for grimoires. Seemed some conspiracy theorists had been convinced that Stadhold was keeping supplies from them.

  “I know about the stiffer rations,” he said, “but I was asking why you need to go with us to get into Nighmore. Why can’t we go in like regular people?”

  “Nighmore used to be a REV meet-up.” Urla trotted behind a building and put herself in its shadow.

  “REV?” Grier whispered after her. He caught up beside her as the others kept close. “Are you serious? How do you know this?”

  They slid around the corner of a building, backs against the wall.

  “My daughter was in the REV, as was my son-in-law.” She’d said it like he should have known that, like it was common knowledge that a former member of the RCA had family in the REV. “If the Revolutionaries were still in control of Nighmore, I could be even more help, but most of the REV left for Aurelis.”

  “You never told me about your daughter being in the REV.” Come to think of it… “I never even knew you had a daughter and grandkids.”

  “So?” she whispered, peering around another corner.

  “So, why not? All that time—”

  She put a finger up against her lips, and he fell silent.

  “Who is she?” Dova had asked Kylah as they both pressed their backs against a brick wall for cover.

  Kylah shrugged.

  They waited for a couple to walk by before Urla urged them forward and down the street between more buildings.

  “Most of the REV aren’t here anymore,” Urla continued. “But some are. Not everyone can quit their families and sacrifice their lives to taking down a government. The Ni
ghmore still has some flunkies of the old REV. The new owners are very picky about who gets in.”

  “And you know these members?” Grier questioned.

  Urla didn’t respond. Instead, she moved down the final street, cut through an alley adjacent to the Nighmore bar, and knocked on a metal door. “Sometimes you ask too many questions, Grier.”

  The rusted metal door had a cut-out for someone to look through. It slid open, and two green eyes belonging to a large face peered back.

  “Walter? Is it you?” Urla asked.

  The green eyes didn’t respond.

  “Come on, Walter. You know it’s me. I have friends with me. They wanna get inside,” she said.

  Nothing.

  “Fine.” Urla clicked her tongue and sighed. “Rev up or die.”

  The metal piece slid closed, the door unlatched, and a giant man in a pressed black suit opened the door for her. “Urla, I can’t let you in without the code. Why make me wait? Were you just testing me?”

  “Those days are over.”

  “I don’t care. Still means something to me. Tells me who I can trust.”

  “Well, you can trust me.” Urla leaned in. “My people here, they want to see the back. Get us in, we’ll be real good, and you can pretend you never saw us.” Urla had put her hand on his forearm.

  “You know I can’t just do that. It’s not the same anymore. You know the Magnate—”

  “How are your kids?” she asked. “Daisy, too? How’s your mother-in-law? Did she get her foot fixed?”

  Walter shrugged one shoulder and smiled. “Things are good. Things are better. She’s coming around. But, Urla, just because we know each other doesn’t mean I can do favors for you.” Walter ran his thick hand through his thinning, dark hair. Blue sigils were on the inside of his wrist. A water Caster.

  A basic elemental Caster that had probably seen his fair share of grimoire rations.

  Grier dug in his pocket for some grimoire tokens and placed them in his hand. “Please? We just want to look around.”

  Walter’s eyes focused on the pieces in his palm. He sniffled and nodded, checking down the alley before motioning them inside. “Just be careful and quiet. Don’t go near the VIP lounge. Magnate’s up there. He’ll have your head for snooping around.”

  “We won’t get caught.” Urla patted him on the chest. “Thanks, Walter. If you need more help with your mother-in-law, come let me know.”