Paragons of Ether

by Ryan Muree

  Lower Aurelis — Revel

  Adalai had gotten dressed, washed her face, and changed her hair to dark brown.

  Cayn sat on the windowsill and slipped on his boots. “Still no word on Clove. No one’s seen her, which is odd, because that’s more reassuring than if they had, you know?”

  He hadn’t stopped talking about Clove since he’d come to share Adalai’s hideaway in the little broken building.

  “It means,” he continued, “that she hasn’t been captured. If she’s not anywhere, she’s still in hiding and hasn’t been caught, right?”

  Or it meant that her dead body was in a ditch somewhere and no one knew about it.

  “Doesn’t it make you glad?” he asked.

  Adalai turned from the cracked mirror on the wall. “You seem to forget that I held her captive and she’s threatened to kill me if she sees me again. I’ve mentioned that to you like four times already.”

  “Yeah, but, that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You wait. It’s just a matter of time before you’re walking out that window away from me or wanting to kill me, too.”

  Cayn shrugged. “You’re too hard on yourself. Everyone does stupid shit. You made a mistake, but you’re doing the right thing, now.”

  She hesitated. “You don’t know how much she hates me.”

  Cayn shrugged and checked the ether-ammo in his new guns from the REV. He’d said they weren’t the best he’d used, but it was better than nothing. “You think she’d really do it? Clove’s tough, but she’s not malicious.”

  Oh, he’d be surprised. After what had happened, she wouldn’t put it past Clove. She respected Clove’s promise to kill her, and he hadn’t seen the look in her eyes when she held the gun to her head.

  “We weren’t exactly friends,” Adalai added.

  “No.” Cayn laughed. “You’re too much alike.”

  And that was enough of that. “Ready to go steal some grimoires from the RCA?”

  Cayn stood and rubbed his hands together. “Ready as ever.”

  She’d spent one week figuring out which rotation of the grimoire delivery schedule the vault would be in. It’d given plenty of time to learn her team’s strength and weaknesses, and to meet the five REV from the southern division.

  She took Cayn’s arm, Blinked them down to the street, and headed for Koy’s little apartment.

  Cayn knocked on the door a specific number of times, and Koy popped his head out from a window above them. “We’re ready,” Cayn called up.

  Koy dropped a device from the window, and Cayn caught it. It was a knock-off Messenger. It would record whatever they saw on the mission, so they could use it to get new members.

  It’d been her idea. People wanted to know the truth, and they deserved it. She’d always believed that; she’d just listened to the wrong truths.

  She and Cayn headed to the transport depot, caught a shuttle airship to the west side of the city, and made for the manufacturing district.

  Where Ethrecity was all cloudscrapers and cement, Aurelis buildings were more fortified than tall, and they carried architecture from when they were first built. Sharp lines, round towers, spear-pointed roofs. Some of the buildings had stormstone glass doors, but most didn’t. A lot were open-air and meant to look inviting.

  The vault hiding the grimoires wouldn’t be, however. It was deep underground with one tunnel in and out in a straight vertical drop. There’d be no getting inside without being in the RCA, being a Stadhold grimoire shipper, or physically jumping down a thirteen-hundred-foot drop. That’s why she’d be stealing a Stadhold delivery ship to get inside.

  They moved to the broadcast building, the tallest building in the flight path of the Stadhold delivery route to the vault, where a sound Caster from the REV’s southern division had conveniently been placed on transfer.

  “Everyone in position?” she asked aloud.

  South Five are in position, the sound Caster replied in her head.

  Adalai nodded to Cayn, and he broke off to meet one of the other REV members in her team, one of the North Four near the vault. They’d be lookouts. They’d be the ones to alert Adalai if the RCA had caught on to what they were doing. And if they did it right, no one would notice them until it was too late.

  Adalai met with another North Four member—an older air Caster who wouldn’t share his name.

  He’d been in the RCA as a pilot for advisors a long time ago. Today, he was disgusted with how things were going and joined the REV to fix it.

  Together, he and Adalai entered the broadcast building and ascended the staircase to the Receiving floor.

  “I’ve got the air Caster with me. We’re on our way up. Ground is getting in position. Are the other North Four in position?” she asked low.

  The other two should have been waiting at the landing zone—a field north of the city. Nestled between some highwood trees and hills, it’d serve their purpose for getting much-needed grimoires, crippling the RCA, and proving to the people that the REV were serious.

  There was a pause before the sound Caster returned, North Four are in position.

  She missed Sonora. Sonora was faster and could put them all together, so they didn’t have to use the Caster as a translator. She wished she had Jahree and Vaughn, too. Vaughn could make this go faster, and she trusted Jahree to fly them out of anything. But thanks to her, those days were gone.

  “We’re here,” Adalai whispered.

  Suddenly, the door to the broadcast room opened, and a mousy girl with green eyes and red hair greeted them. Adalai and the air Caster entered behind her, passing several offices of people for the far end of the floor.

  A smug coworker asked what the girl was doing.

  “They're friends. I’m giving a tour of my new job,” the girl said, smiling ear to ear as pleasant as she could be.

  It sounded believable, and the air Caster and Adalai smiled together and gave a little wave.

  “How pathetic is it to be excited about a tour of a broadcast building?” Adalai whispered.

  “About as pathetic and boring as working here,” the air Caster mumbled.

  They snickered, and the girl looked back and scowled.

  Across the floor and through another exit, they entered the final staircase for the top.

  “The window’s here,” the sound Caster said. “Be careful.”

  Adalai nodded, and the girl pulled out the stormstone on a window overlooking the city below.

  The vault was west. The Stadhold delivery airship carrying this week’s supply of grimoires would be coming from the east. The South Five were positioned on the east side of the capital, waiting to spot the airship and alert the sound Caster once they saw it.

  The air Caster climbed onto the ledge of the window, grabbed the ladder on the side, and started climbing for the roof of the broadcast building. Adalai followed.

  It wasn’t nearly as tall as that building in Ethrecity had been, but it still wasn’t pleasant, and what she was about to do wasn’t any better.

  She and the air Caster finagled their way to the top, where there was barely enough room for them to stand together, and held on to the security railing maintenance crews used for safety.

  “You know this is crazy, right?” the air Caster asked her.

  “Yup,” she said, watching the skies.

  “We’re the ones who die if you get this wrong.”

  “Yup.”

  “When I joined the REV, I didn’t have a death wish. Do you have a death wish?” he asked.

  “Sorta.” She grinned at him, and he swallowed and looked away. “Did you know Ingini have cloudscrapers five times as high as this?”

  The air Caster looked at her again. “How would you know that? And why would that make me feel better?”

  She shrugged. It was just conversation.

  Stadhold ship spotted, the sound Caster told her. It’s alone. Looks like the RCA aren’t escorting it in.

  Good. She took the air Caster’s arm. �
�Get ready.”

  The airship was tiny on the horizon, but it was coming in fast.

  She’d been inside a Stadholden airship before. She just had to recall it with incredible detail, time it perfectly, and not think of the million ways this could go wrong.

  “Here it comes.”

  The sound of the incoming airship was growing louder. It’d pass straight over them on its way to the vault. This was the highest point to reach the ship from.

  “Here we go!” she warned.

  Right as the airship approached, she Blinked straight up once, twice, three times, through screaming wind and air vents.

  The fourth time was into the belly of the airship.

  They landed with a thump on the metal floor of the cargo hold, gasping for air.

  The air Caster flopped over onto his back, wiping his mouth and eyes. “That was insane,” he panted. “I never want to do that again.”

  She smiled. “We made it. We’re inside.”

  Got it, the sound Caster replied.

  They looked around them and found several rows of crates stacked on top of each other, but it wasn’t nearly the capacity of the cargo hold. This was even less than normal.

  Had Grier told them what Revel was up to with giving grimoires to Ingini? Of course, he did. But was this their form of retaliation? Were they thinning out their deliveries in protest?

  She patted the air Caster on the shoulder. “Let’s go and get this over with. We have five minutes.”

  She’d missed this.

  She’d miss the thrill of the unknown and the excitement of outthinking her opponent.

  The air Caster finally stood, and they made their way through the cargo hold to the front. One Keeper stood guard behind a pilot and a copilot.

  The air Caster nodded to her, and she Dispersed into a pink cloud. He threaded silver tendrils of ether through the air, and the two pilots slumped over their controls while the Keeper collapsed in a heap of shiny metal.

  Adalai reformed and moved the copilot out of his seat, propping him up carefully against the wall. She set the pilot with him and Blinked the Keeper to the wall. He was too damn heavy to drag.

  Meanwhile, the air Caster had already taken control of the ship.

  “We’ve got it,” she announced. “The ship is ours.”

  North Four are in position. Nothing is alerted. Landing zone is clear.

  “Here we go,” the air Caster said, opening and shutting the vents to start landing it inside the vault.

  The vault was a perfect black square with green plains around it. There were a few small outer buildings, but the bulk of the facility was underground. It’d always been there, as long as she could remember, and now, it occurred to her that someone in Ingini had gotten the same idea for hiding the Goliath.

  No. Someone in Revel had told them to do it.

  Orr had told them.

  The black square split down the middle and opened two wide doors into the earth. The air Caster hovered the ship for a second until it was clear for him to lower them into the vault.

  Adalai took several deep breaths. In and out. Easy.

  North four says they have eyes on you, and it’s still all clear on the outside, the sound Caster said.

  Good.

  The airship went dark as it descended down the hole.

  “Remember,” she whispered, “don’t land it. Just high enough for me to Blink out and back in.”

  He nodded, his hands trembling at the controls. “How do you have so much ether to Blink as often as you want?”

  “If we survive this, I’ll tell you.”

  They continued their slow descent into the vault, the window in front of them still solid black.

  “You’re doing great,” she told him. Something she’d never mentioned to Jahree but should have.

  Finally, three blinding lights lit up the vault and its contents. Crates and crates of grimoires stretched possibly all the way back to Aurelis, sitting there never being used, never seeing the light of day.

  The air Caster gasped. “Look at all of them.”

  It was easily a million grimoires. Wasted hours of scribing. Wasted struggles to survive. Her stealing a few pallets of grimoires would be pointless if the RCA had this many.

  “Mission change,” Adalai said. “We’ll just keep the grimoires on this ship. It should be enough for us. I’ll drop off the pilots and the Keeper, and I'll grab live footage of this vault instead.”

  “Are you sure?” the air Caster asked.

  She pulled out the Messenger Cayn had passed to her and fixed it to the front of her jacket. “Dead sure.”

  He stopped the airship a few feet above the ground and clicked the control to open the cargo hold.

  Adalai pulled up her hood, willed her ethereal mask on, and turned on the Messenger. “This is the REV,” she whispered to it, “and I’m filming the inside of the grimoire vault owned by the RCA. We’ve highjacked a shipment from Stadhold to get inside.”

  The message is broadcasting, the sound Caster told her in her ear.

  As the cargo hold door came down, the expanse of pallets and crates of grimoires spread out before her.

  “We can’t stay for long, but this is why the grimoire rations are a lie,” she told the people. “They have plenty for all of us. They’re hoarding them here, keeping us weak and under their control, trying to convince us that Ingini are the bad guys. They’re stealing from us. These are our grimoires.” She turned the camera toward her masked face. “We’re taking them back.”

  A few RCA guards walking the perimeter pointed toward their ship and shouted for the alarms and security. She cut the Messenger off and grabbed the Stadhold pilots and Keeper. “Reverse the vents! Get ready to leave!”

  The air Caster followed her orders.

  She Blinked the Stadhold crew out of the ship and onto the floor and Blinked back up into the ship before the cargo hold door shut.

  The airship shook.

  “They’re casting at us,” the air Caster screamed.

  “Just take us up! Now!”

  He pulled them up in a straight vertical, as quickly as the airship could handle.

  A beeping alarm echoed through the dark hole as they ascended.

  “They’re going to shut the doors on us!”

  “Keep going!” Adalai said. “Don’t slow down.”

  The air Caster shook, gripping the controls with his silver ether.

  The airship rattled, groaned…

  RCA are on the move at the top level. North four have taken out a few trying to get into RCA airships.

  The RCA would try to shoot them down.

  “Do you remember your combat training?” she asked the air Caster.

  His fingers shook. “It was a long time ago—”

  She would deal with it, then. “Just keep going!”

  They watched out the front window as sunlight beamed in. Nearly out of the vault, the airship whined and thudded as something heavy slammed against both sides of the ship.

  Adalai nearly fell over, gripping the chair for support as the airship whipped out of the vault’s grasp and higher into the air.

  The air Caster steered the ship around at a sharp angle.

  “Don’t take it straight to the landing zone,” she ordered. “Take it up into the cover of the clouds.”

  He did as he was told, but the hull of the airship was vibrating.

  She knelt and poured her pink ether into the ship.

  Glamour.

  It reshaped itself into the frame and body of an RCA ship.

  The air Caster took an indirect path toward their predetermined landing zone, and when the radar and navigation systems said they were in the clear, Adalai released the Glamour and fell exhausted to the ground.

  “You did it,” the air Caster said over his shoulder to her.

  “We did it,” she panted.

  Cilla — Revel

  Grier stared out at the green plains and pink sunset ahead of the Fegrin.
<
br />   They were headed to the next city on the map, the next set of tortured children needing to be rescued.

  They’d gotten the kids from Khendell onto a transport ship for Stadhold, where Jgenult promised she would care for them and search for their families. Urla had stayed behind after Khendell, helping the library get transport ships to him and back to Stadhold to carry any future kids out.

  “We’ll be in Cilla in a few hours,” Lawrence announced.

  Grier headed to the cargo hold.

  Twenty-five kids were in Cilla. Twenty-five untrained kids tortured into scribing for Orr. His nerves were on edge. It took effort to relax his fists these days.

  He passed Dova curled up in her seat and staring at nothing. He’d tried to talk to her about it, but she’d not been able to say much.

  She probably felt horrible, and really, she shouldn’t. She hadn’t known, but that was the danger in doing things without thinking for herself. It was as likely true that those kids were in danger from Ingini, but Orr was a bigger threat, and she hadn’t known that.

  He stepped down the stairs to the platform looking into the empty cargo hold and sat in the dark silence.

  Twenty-five kids would fit, but it’d be tight.

  Goddess help them, at least they’d be out of that nightmare.

  Kylah took a seat beside him and sighed, resting her arms on her knees. “So, are we going to talk about the fact you can cast?”

  No.

  “And that Urla looked like she wasn’t surprised by it…” Kylah continued.

  He couldn’t blame her for asking, but she was prying into something she needed to leave alone. “Kylah—”

  “Maybe you don’t want to talk about it, but I feel like, at least, as a partner in this mission, you should tell me any other things you can do? Or, you know, other secrets you’re keeping from Stadhold…”

  He grunted as he rose to get some space from her. “You don’t need to worry about it. They’re not secrets. I mean… I’m not telling anyone official, but the Sigilist knows about it. It was an experiment.”

  She looked at her own fingers and back at him. “It worked?”

  Yes, it’d worked and opened a million doors. He’d barely had a chance to process what it meant. What more could he add? What more could he do? What would a Keeper army with all these Caster sigils be able to achieve?