Paragons of Ether

by Ryan Muree

“You are,” he said, gazing up at her. “And I’m a little sad that we’re only just getting to know each other. Maybe I was a little jealous of Mack, but only because he’d gotten to know you longer.”

  “You mean screw me longer?”

  Jahree laughed. “I’d like to think it’s more than that.” His lips softened, his features smoothed. “I can’t help wanting more of you, and I know when this is over and you find Cayn, that that’s it—”

  “Are you changing our agreement?” she said, sitting up.

  “No, not at all. But, I’m allowed to be disappointed that the agreement will be over then, right?”

  She blinked a few times and nodded.

  Lust. That’s all it was. That’s all it needed to be.

  That’s all she needed.

  She slid down and off of him, finding her underwear, pants, and top before Mack came back and found them naked in the middle of the ship. She tossed Jahree his shirt and pants they’d hastily thrown to the side the minute Mack had stepped out.

  It had been like that for weeks. Stolen seconds. Stolen minutes.

  They were like teens, and it was just lust. It was because they couldn’t be open about it. It felt more intense because they had to hide it. That’s all.

  Jahree dressed quickly and got back to his pilot’s chair. “Speaking of which.”

  Mack passed in front of the airship and made for the cargo hold, carrying five cooked fish.

  Clove met him near the back. “You already cooked them?”

  He stopped. “Figured we all needed the break. Just got it done there to save the mess.” He looked up in her direction, but not at her.

  He was avoiding eye contact. He wasn’t stupid. He was nice. Too nice. And she wished he would get good and pissed at her over it and confront her, so she could get it out in the open and apologize.

  But he didn’t say a word. He merely handed a fish to her, two fish to Jahree, and went to his seat to eat his own.

  She sat back in her chair and watched him.

  What did he think of her?

  Probably the worst things imaginable. And they wouldn’t be entirely false.

  Was he mad? Truly mad?

  She was. She was furious with herself.

  It was her life, her choice, and she’d told him all that, but she hadn’t wanted to hurt him like this.

  That wasn’t who she was.

  And Jahree…

  His silver ether ran over the controls, opening the vents to the airship. “Any chance you can fill those two grimoires with some fire and water sigils?” he called back to her.

  She nodded absently and picked them up from beside his chair.

  If she was honest with herself, she and Jahree had been toeing the line for a while, and this last conversation was proof of that. He’d claimed he wasn’t interested in changing the agreement between them, but his actions said otherwise. The lines between his words and his hopeful eyes, they said something different.

  Pushing the envelope, she couldn’t help that she had started to feel things, too.

  Tiny things, probably lust-related, but they were there.

  She liked his company more than just a friend.

  He was helpful, he was encouraging, and he was more than capable.

  And that was a dangerous road to go down.

  “Loutan—here we come!” Jahree lifted the airship into the sky and drove them toward their next lead.

  Clove dropped the rest of her breakfast in a nearly-full receptacle next to her seat as Jahree landed them outside of the RCA facility in Loutan.

  “I really don’t want to infiltrate another RCA building,” she said. “It took forever to figure out how to get into Halunder.”

  She’d been clutching and opening the paper with Cayn’s name so many times, it was starting to tear at the edges.

  “Actually,” Jahree said, “I know this place better than Halunder.”

  “And?” Mack asked.

  “And I know where the employees go on break.”

  Mack turned and looked at Clove. His eyebrows were drawn in together, his lips were thin and curved down.

  “I can get the employees to do our dirty work,” Jahree clarified.

  “And what makes you think they’ll help you?” Mack asked.

  Jahree grabbed the grimoires Clove had just filled and held them up. “Free sigils. Everyone, especially these days, wants free sigils.”

  Once the cargo hold doors were open, Jahree stepped out and waved Clove on to join him. “Mack, stay behind and watch the ship.”

  Mack got ready to argue, but she urged him back with a wave of her hand. “It’s okay. We’re not going inside, and I want you safe.”

  “I want you safe,” he countered.

  “We’ll be right back,” she said.

  He ran his hands through his hair and mumbled to himself.

  She wanted the quick walk to the facility to talk to Jahree anyway. Mostly to clarify things between them, and that she couldn’t start feeling anything for him because that’s not what she wanted.

  “Mack’s pissed,” Jahree mumbled as they walked away.

  “He doesn’t like being left behind,” she said.

  “No, he knows.” Jahree looked over at her. “I told you so.”

  She exhaled loudly.

  “Ah well, it is what it is…”

  “It’s not that simple,” she said.

  “It never is.”

  They moved through some grasses and between bushes up to a large stone building with several windows and terraces.

  “This looks like apartments,” she said.

  He squinted toward the top. “It’s where they develop—err, well, I guess steal and study your tech.”

  “And they take breaks?”

  “Don’t your people take breaks while they work?”

  She scoffed. “Used to. No one has time for that anymore. We’re expected to work straight through most days.”

  He held up his hands and gestured to the green rolling hills dotted with small towns and cities around them. “One more reason Revel is better than Ingini.”

  She shoved him playfully, and they continued on toward the facility.

  Maybe she shouldn’t do that.

  Maybe they should take a break from messing around so much.

  Maybe it’d give her perspective. Maybe it’d give him perspective.

  Jahree waved her down to a crouch, and she followed closely behind him to the backside of the facility. He passed her the grimoires and led the way around a chained-in area with waste containers. A couple of people were standing around talking and smoking swampgrass.

  When one stomped his out and went back inside the building, Jahree approached the other man left behind.

  He was thin, bald, middle-aged probably, but with grumpy eyebrows. He looked like he had nothing to lose.

  Perfect for making a deal.

  “Hey,” Jahree said.

  The man looked surprised and taken back by some random stranger approaching him. “Whoa…”

  Clove stayed behind Jahree.

  “Hey, we’re just here to ask for a favor—”

  “I don’t have any tokens to spare, man. Sorry, I can’t help you.” The man turned to leave, but Jahree lifted his arms and revealed his silver sigils on his wrist. “I’ve got plenty. I’m not begging for handouts.”

  The man turned back and squinted at him.

  “I need information. I can pay for it.”

  The man chewed on his lip for a moment and dropped his hand from the door handle. “What kind of information?”

  Jahree smiled. “We’re looking for someone who was brought here. We need to know if they’re still here and who bought them.”

  “Bought ‘em?” The man rubbed his chin. “A prisoner?”

  “An Ingini.”

  The man eyed them and moved toward the door again. He wasn’t buying it, and if he was, Jahree was making him too nervous.

  “We’re undercover RCA,” C
love whispered. “We’re tracking him down because he knows too much, and in the wrong hands, he’d be pretty dangerous.”

  Jahree looked back at her and caught on. “You didn’t have to tell him so soon.”

  “He wasn’t believing you,” she said.

  The man watching their conversation slowly nodded. “Why not go through the proper channels?”

  Jahree put his hands on his hips. “I can’t explain everything to you, man, but you know the REV are infiltrating the advisors, right? You heard the news. Can’t trust a lot of people in the RCA nowadays.”

  The man nodded.

  “Show him,” Jahree said to Clove.

  She pulled out the two grimoires she’d just filled and flipped through the pages.

  “Brand new. Every page filled. They could be yours for just a little bit of information,” Jahree said.

  The man’s eyes focused on the pages, hungering to hold them. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

  “We’re looking for a prisoner brought here from Halunder,” Jahree said. “He would have been wounded but bought and paid for.”

  The man’s eyes were still on the grimoires. “We take in prisoners sometimes, but we fix them up. If they’re important enough, they got some of the best treatment. And trust me, they need it coming out of Halunder.”

  Shit.

  Trent had said Bongo was shipped back to Ingini a complete mess from Halunder.

  Please don’t let Cayn be like Bongo.

  “Well, we’re looking for someone by the name of Cayn. He’s—” Jahree motioned for Clove to fill in the rest.

  “Oh, he’s uh… he’s tall. Maybe a little bit taller than him.” She pointed to Jahree. “He’s slender and has dark hair. He would have been in an airship crash when they picked him up.”

  The man shook his head and licked his lips. “I can look up his file—”

  “Yes!” Jahree said.

  “But I’m going to need something first. What sigils do you have there?”

  Clove held them up. “Fire and water.”

  The man immediately started rolling up his sleeves. “Lemme get a fire, just one, to know you’re good for it, and I’ll go get the file.”

  She looked at Jahree, and when he nodded, she held the book up for the man and opened it.

  He kept licking his lips, flipping page after page, until settling on some simple Flares. Palm to page, he closed his eyes, and soon after, he was pulling his hand with the sigil.

  After it was sucked into his hand, the man exhaled loudly and smiled. “Man…”

  He reached to flip another page, and Clove slammed the book shut on him.

  “Those rations are pretty rough, aren’t they?” Jahree whispered in his ear. “If you want the whole book, then get us the information.”

  The man nodded and scurried back inside his building.

  “We just wait?” Clove asked quietly.

  “Wait and pray to your Goddess he doesn’t bring friends to take us out and grab the books anyway.”

  She laughed. “That’s what they’d do to us in Ingini.”

  He laughed, too. “That’s probably where I got that from.”

  Shortly after, the man had come back alone and with several papers in his hand. “Found him. Now, hand the books over.”

  Jahree yanked the pages from him and searched through them. “He was given an arm?”

  Clove swallowed. “A whole arm?”

  The man nodded. “One of the best, too. Top tech. He was bought by an advisor, though, so that explains it.”

  “Which one?” Jahree was still filtering through what he’d been given.

  “Ednor.”

  Jahree looked up. “The one that was just attacked?”

  Clove handed over the books to the man. “So, he survived Halunder? He was okay?”

  The man nodded and laughed. “More than okay. I remember him. He was quite cocky, but once they got the arm on him, he shut up and his owners came back for him right on time. Not sure what they wanted some Ingini with a fake arm for, but they were pretty excited about it.”

  “And now they’re dead.” Jahree looked at Clove.

  “That doesn’t mean he is,” the man said, fanning through the pages of his new grimoires gleefully. “Several escaped in the raid. Aurelis’s RCA unit is still lookin’ for all of them.”

  Clove’s heart threatened to explode. He was okay. He was alive and well, capable of being himself even to his captors, but he’d moved again. “So, you think he’s in Aurelis?”

  The man went inside, leaving them alone again.

  Jahree started back for the airship. “He’s probably there. I mean, there’s a good chance he is, but it’s going to be hard to find him. Aurelis is huge. At least we know who he was with, and if we know that, then others might be able to help us find him.”

  “What if he left Aurelis? He could have disguised himself and got out. He could be back in Ingini already.”

  Jahree rubbed his chin. “It’s doubtful. The attack just happened. He wouldn’t have had time to make it that far, and it’s not like there are routine airships to Ingini. He’d have to make several stops, leaving a trail for us to follow. We’ll check Aurelis first and keep following the leads, right?”

  She nodded.

  If she were honest, it was a little discouraging. She would chase any lead to where Cayn could be, but she couldn’t ignore how close they’d always been to reaching him. It felt like they were just missing him every time and he was just out of her reach.

  Jahree put his arm around her, but she pulled away. “I don’t think—”

  “I was just putting my arm around you.”

  “I know, but Mack… I don’t want to do this to him.”

  Jahree raised his hands. “Or is it something else?”

  Something else. Something they shouldn’t be discussing. Something that shouldn’t need discussing. She just wanted to get back to the airship and start their search in Aurelis.

  She’d deal with whatever was going on with Jahree later.

  Chapter 17

  Endov Sea — North Revel

  Emeryss leaned against the edge of the boat and chewed on a piece of dried fish.

  The sun was setting straight ahead of them, and the wind was biting a bit harder. They’d been at sea all day, the lull of the ocean waves slow and steady, and there were no clouds on the horizon in either direction. It was both isolating and humbling.

  Her mother was staring up at the small sail being pushed by Emeryss’s Gust. They’d made it most of the day turning the wheel by hand before Emeryss had given in.

  “I don’t understand,” her mother said. “You’re just sitting there eating. How do you keep it pushing?”

  “It’s a big gust,” Emeryss said, swallowing the piece of meat in her mouth. “It just keeps going for a while. I have to redo it every so often.”

  Her mother put her hands on her hips and looked back at her. “Your eyes are still funny.”

  “I’m still seeing ether. I have to see it to use it.”

  “You’re going to get stuck like that.”

  Emeryss nodded. “Yes, I will.”

  Her mother groaned a little as she sat on the other end of the boat, back against the side. “You know this for sure? I was only trying to do the mother thing about funny faces.”

  Emeryss licked the leftover salt from her lips and wiped her mouth with her hand. “All Scribes go blind.”

  “You’re not a Scribe.”

  She took a sip of fresh water from her pouch. “But I have to look at ether like a Scribe does. So, maybe one day I will.”

  Her mother was finally quiet, running her fingers through her own hair and braiding it.

  Emeryss used to watch her mother brush her hair and sing to herself while Emeryss was supposed to be asleep. She’d wondered if her mother was a nice girl, a sweet daughter, a caring wife. Maybe it was only after children she’d become this hard, rugged, no-nonsense kind of woman. Otherwise, how
did she ever get their father to stay with her?

  She wouldn’t ask her though. Whatever they had, however it worked, it’d worked. Which was more than she could say for her and Grier.

  Maybe after all this…

  Maybe after they reached the island, spoke to the Goddess, and stopped the RCA, she’d go back to Stadhold just to see him, just to ask him why.

  The boat had coasted to a lull.

  Emeryss pulled the wind into the sails and got them moving at a decent speed again.

  “You really think the Goddess will help us?” her mother asked.

  “I hope so,” Emeryss said. “Otherwise, we’re doomed.”

  She had to believe the Goddess would do something. The Goddess had saved the world before, and she could do it again.

  “I don’t think we’re doomed,” her mother said.

  Of course, she didn’t. If Emeryss had said they weren’t doomed, her mother would have said they were.

  “You don’t think the oracle knows what she’s talking about?” Emeryss asked.

  If she didn’t agree with Emeryss, then it was only right to tell her she didn’t believe their spiritual leader.

  “Not all the time.”

  Emeryss eyed her. That was a first, and oddly, not wholly unsurprising.

  “Look, there!” Her mother pointed out at sea behind her. “They’re here.”

  Under the setting sun, a pod of ridgeback crested the ocean’s surface for air, making their way to their breeding grounds in western waters.

  Emeryss propped her chin on the side, admiring how they dove and came up in a predictable pattern, singing to one another as they went. When she’d left Stadhold, she wanted to be like a ridgeback. She wished to carve out the oceans, make a difference, be different.

  “I love hunting them,” her mother whispered. “I love the thrill of the challenge, the fear and the rush when you snag them.”

  Emeryss curled her shoulders and sank back down in her spot. “We should sleep.”

  “You sleep. I’ll turn the wheel if we slow down.”

  She wasn’t going to argue with her anymore. If her mother wanted to turn the wheel all night, that was her choice. She wasn’t the enemy. The Goddess wasn’t going to fix whatever relationship they had.

  It was time to focus on what actually mattered—pleading their case to the Goddess.