Architects of Ether

by Ryan Muree

  She shook her head. “No idea.”

  “I’ve got one.” His lingering stare suggested she should have known why, but it was ridiculous. She and Mack were neighbors, friends—sure—but…

  She scoffed at him. “Stop it.”

  “I’m serious. You know damn well the idiot is in love with you and always has been. But I should say he’s in love with old Clove, not this new money-chasing Clove.” He grinned with an ornerier smile.

  New Clove was too busy trying to eke out a living. New Clove was alone in the world and still hadn’t found her brother. She didn’t have time for romance or relationships, or anything else fluffy and extra.

  Nothing long term at least. Nothing Mack ever wanted.

  She glanced back at the grating hiding the Revelians.

  Falling in love were things afforded to the comfortable, the privileged few. The rest made do with what they could get. They pretended to have time for love, all the while conveniently forgetting it was really for survival. War made it worse.

  The UA returned with hoses and hooked them up to Pigyll’s fuel line. She turned on the pump. “I don’t need much. Just enough to get to Gruskul. I’ll refuel there.”

  She’d noted all those barrels of fuel she’d picked up in Luckless were gone. Sure, the dorky Revelian who’d managed to manifest materials from ether had fixed her ship, but he’d somehow lost her extra ether-fuel to run it. Moron.

  “We’ll give you a little then,” he said, patting her on the shoulder.

  She took a deep breath as silently as possible and glanced at the false wall. She couldn’t see the others between the metal, but they were there. The tension at the back of her neck wouldn’t let her forget.

  The sane part of her wanted to keep up the charade to get Cayn back.

  But another part of her toyed with the idea of blurting out the truth as quickly as she could and telling Lark the Revelians were hiding right behind that wall. She might get her freedom, but if Jahree was even the slightest bit honest and Cayn was still alive somewhere in Revel, then Jahree was her best shot at rescuing him.

  Several minutes passed before Lark’s team waved her on and said she had enough to make it to Gruskul.

  He hugged her again. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You, too.” She walked him off the edge of the cargo hold and into the sand. The waves crashed quietly, and the southern mountains of Stadhold were glistening blue in the starlight.

  “Thanks,” she said, meaning it.

  “No problem, but next time, just call us. We’re not too far away. We can come and rescue you any time you need.” He grinned and nudged her shoulder. “Do me a favor as a thank you?”

  She looked up at him.

  “Give him a chance.”

  “Give who a chance?”

  “You know who. Give him a chance. He’s not like me. He’s actually one of the good ones.” Lark smirked.

  She lowered her chin and toed the sand with her boot. It was never about Mack being one of the good ones. She couldn’t give him a commitment, and she couldn’t face the chance of losing another family member.

  “He’s never told you this, and if you tell him I told you, I’ll have to kill you.”

  She wouldn’t let him get the chance, but she smiled anyway.

  “When your parents died, and our dad died, Mack kinda latched onto the idea that you two would need each other to make it through. He’s always looked out for you, you know. He loves you.”

  They’d relied on each other a lot those days. Those days were rough and painful. Being with him took the edge off. It still didn’t change things though. Especially not the fact they wanted very different things—she wanted the house in Nilkham, and he wanted to lose his mind in the ether mines. They were friends, and they had great memories, but that was it.

  That’s all it could ever be. Compromises couldn’t be made in all relationships.

  Survival hinged on more than just wanting to help each other out, and since the war had started with Revel, survival would be harder. She couldn’t rely on him, or anyone, to help her out with just love alone, and she couldn’t risk losing someone else.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” she lied.

  He headed off for his ship. “Get this thing in the air and out of here.”

  She waved him on before walking back up the ramp and into the cargo hold.

  Adalai and the rest of the Revelians had come out from the wall and had waited for her back inside, but Adalai was the one with her arms crossed and eyes glaring again.

  This bitch seriously had it coming.

  “What was that?” Adalai barked.

  “What was what?”

  “I already told you, Adalai.” Sonora took a seat and buckled herself in. “It was fine. She didn’t tell him anything.”

  “Still, she seemed real cozy with him. She could turn her back on us at any moment—”

  For crying out loud. “Surprisingly enough,” Clove said, “we, Ingini, have friends and family. We have relationships. We’re not animals. We’re not monsters—”

  Adalai scoffed. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking your people are in any way this side of normal. Using an ether-laser on an entire city just to start a war is a great way of showing how normal you aren’t.”

  Clove stepped up to her, her small chest inches from Adalai’s. If she could bore holes through Adalai’s head with her stare, she would have. Was that a Caster ability? It needed to be, and there was something shitty about not being able to cast and defend herself. The gun felt heavier against her side.

  “It’s so convenient,” Clove said, “that you forget all the terrible things your people have done to my ancestors. Cut us off from food, water, resources, grimoires, ether… just so you can keep your precious kings in power.”

  “Then don’t go murdering Casters—”

  Clove brushed past her for the pilot’s chair. She’d heard enough. There was no arguing with someone so ingrained in their own delusions.

  Jahree took the copilot’s seat, and when she eyed him, he dipped his head and smiled. “Mind if I sit here and learn from you?”

  Jahree trusted her. He’d listened to her in the valley, he’d given her credit at the beach, he’d trusted her to get them out of the patrol’s search.

  Yes, she would trust him, too, despite being Revelian.

  Jahree, Grier, Emeryss, Sonora, even Vaughn and Mykel, had made helping them easier. Adalai was lucky to have them, to have so many people to help her and support her.

  Clove only ever had Cayn.

  Well, and according to Lark, she had him and Mack, too.

  And Scuffle.

  Maybe she had more than she’d thought.

  Maybe Mack… No, she had more than she thought, but it was all merely out of convenience. It wasn’t love, it wasn’t genuine care. They probably felt sorry for her, or Cayn told them to look out for her.

  She turned the ignition, and Pigyll purred to life, sounding even better than before. She glanced back, and everyone was in their seats.

  “We’ll need to stop outside of Gruskul to sleep and prep, right, Adalai?” Sonora twisted in her seat to look at her staring down the front window from the farthest spot in the back.

  Adalai nodded.

  Clove lifted Pigyll into the air and led them into Ingini.

  Emeryss poked her head out of the cargo hold of the quiet ship.

  “I’m over here,” Adalai said quietly.

  Neither one of them could sleep, and under the cover of darkness off the path of any nosy Ingini, it seemed like a good time as any to get some training in.

  Adalai was sitting on a small rock off to the side and had turned her hair to a violet-blue. Under the sliver of moonlight, it looked purely ethereal.

  “Ready?” Emeryss asked her.

  Adalai pulled her sleeve up and checked her wrist. “372 Blinks.”

  It’s how they were keeping track of her progress. If she could cast Blink without the number on
her wrist decreasing, then she had successfully cast without a grimoire.

  “Okay, go ahead and get started,” she told her.

  Adalai folded her legs and took a deep breath.

  “Close your eyes. Remember, you’ve seen this place before. You see it every time you Blink.”

  “I only see darkness when I Blink.”

  “Because you’re only there for a split second. If you could stay there longer, you’d see the colors fade in and out. Visualize that now. Visualize Blinking.”

  Adalai disappeared and reappeared a few feet in front of her, colliding with Emeryss.

  “Ow! Don’t actually do it, just think about doing it.” She stepped aside.

  “I can’t help it,” Adalai said. “I think it, and it happens. That’s why I’m so quick. Do you know how long it took me to cast this quickly? Years. Now, you’re wanting me to slow it down.”

  Emeryss shook her head. “No, I don’t. I want you to think about what that world looks like without actually Blinking.”

  Adalai inhaled and exhaled more slowly. “Okay. 371 Blinks. Eyes closed, all I see is nothing. Everything’s dark.”

  “Everything has ether in it. The grass, the sky, the waves, the people. They have auras of ether around them, running through them. It connects to everything else.”

  Adalai’s jaw and facial muscles finally relaxed.

  “Visualize me standing here in the dark. Look at the grass beneath my boots in your mind, look at the rock you’re sitting on, look at every little bush or stick and see the ether in it.”

  Adalai inhaled. “It should look like ink?”

  “Yes, like a drop of ink in water.”

  “Okay, but I still think I’m pretending to see it, not actually seeing it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s a start.”

  Adalai made a face with her eyes closed, and Emeryss smiled. Adalai despised not being good at something instantly, but she’d get better, and if any Caster could figure out how to cast without a grimoire, it’d be Adalai by sheer stubborn determination.

  “Now, hold your hand out,” Emeryss told her.

  “Like in my mind or for real?”

  “Both.”

  She shot out her right hand.

  “Relax. You’re not trying to strangle the ether. Trust me, I tried.”

  Adalai’s shoulders drooped, and her arm hung limply in the air.

  “Now, watch the ether slide around your hand, up your arm. Watch it fan out and move between and around your fingertips.”

  “Yeah, it’s totally not doing that,” Adalai said.

  “It’s in your mind. It does it if you want it to do it.”

  Adalai huffed and held her arm there. “Okay.”

  “Now, using your finger make the symbol for Blink in the air with the ether.”

  “Am I seriously just trying to fingerpaint with ether? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Try it,” Emeryss urged.

  Adalai’s middle finger moved in a pattern on the air.

  “Visualize the ether in your mind as you do it. Visualize the pattern.”

  “I’m trying,” she mumbled.

  Nothing was happening in the real world, but that was okay for now.

  “Have you got it finished? Can you see it on the air in front of you?”

  She nodded, eyes still closed. “Yeah. Do I poke it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sure? You don’t know?”

  Emeryss shrugged even though Adalai couldn’t see her. “This is already different from how it works for me, but I don’t see why not? Just poke it and see what happens.”

  Adalai muttered something under her breath, but her finger never moved. “There. Nothing happened.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You poked it?”

  “Yes, I poked it.”

  “You didn’t poke it in the real world.”

  “I swear—” Adalai forced a deep breath and made her finger poke the air. “Nothing happened.”

  “Well, try something else…”

  Adalai opened one eye. “Was I this vague with you?”

  Emeryss crossed her arms. “Close your eyes, and yes, very. You were worse.”

  Adalai closed her eye again and swatted at the invisible sigil. She tried jabbing at it with the heel of her palm and slicing through it.

  “Is it still there?” Emeryss asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Grab it, then.”

  Adalai stretched her arm out farther and gripped the sigil Emeryss couldn’t see.

  Adalai’s body flickered.

  Emeryss gasped.

  “What? What happened? What did I do?” She opened her eyes and peered around. “Wait, I’m in the same spot.”

  “But you flickered!”

  “I flickered? What in hol-shit does that mean?”

  “You flickered, like a light, like way shorter than a Blink but close.”

  “I did?”

  She nodded at her.

  Adalai held up her wrist. “371 Blinks! I didn’t lose any ether from doing it!”

  Emeryss smiled at her. “This is great! This is actual progress!”

  “Yeah, but I get it now. It frustrated you to have to calm down and breathe to cast, and doing that every time is not realistic. I can’t go into my head like this in the middle of a fight.”

  “No, but you’ll get faster, and it’ll come easier. I promise.”

  Adalai nodded, but her smile had faded. “It’s not enough. I need to be the…”

  “What?”

  Adalai grumbled. “I need to be the best. It’s the only way. If I don’t have answers, if I don’t have a way to be better than everyone else, then…”

  “He’ll still care about you,” Emeryss said. “General Orr doesn’t look out for you just because you’re a good soldier. Not after all this time.”

  Adalai looked away from her.

  “And your learning how to cast without grimoires isn’t the reason we’re over here, and we don’t need you to do it to save our skins.”

  Adalai shook her head slowly. “Still…”

  It was too important to her. And maybe coming from nothing was the reason she felt she couldn’t lose everything again.

  “We’ll find those grimoires. We’ll figure out how they’re getting over here, and we’ll do it because you’re a great leader. We’re doing the right thing. But…”

  Adalai looked up at her. “But?”

  “Try to remember that your crew is here with you, risking their lives as much as you are. They want to give input to help out. It helps them feel included.”

  Adalai rolled her eyes.

  “When the Neerian elders wanted to build an extension to the port we already have, there was a lot of arguing. Some harvesters didn’t want it because they felt it would encroach into areas we needed to grow seagrass. Others wanted it because it meant larger fishing vessels to get more fish from deeper waters. It was a huge mess.”

  “So, the elders just decided, right?”

  “They both wanted the same thing—to provide more food for our people. So, the elders let both sides be part of the negotiations. It gave them a reason to care about the result. More people volunteered to design and build than any communal space we’d ever had.”

  “But I bet it took longer…”

  Emeryss nodded. “It did. It took forever, but it was important. On the little, not-so-important things, the elders decided, and the people trusted it. It’s a balance, I think. You have to remember that the Zephyrs are here because they want to help their country, too, but they’re here because they want to help you. You’ve convinced them they need to be here to do this. Don’t forget that.”

  “The Zephyrs, I trust. It’s Clove I don’t.”

  And that made sense. Clove really had very little reason to stand by and go along with their plans, other than the promise to help her find her brother.

  Adalai’s eyebrows lowered.
“I think she’ll run, turn us in, ruin everything.”

  “And she might,” Emeryss said. “We’ll deal with that if it happens, but for now, trust the Zephyrs. Trust your crew.”

  Chapter 8

  Gruskul Mines — Ingini

  Adalai silently fumed in her chair.

  She hadn’t gotten much sleep. They’d stopped somewhere off the beach and into a sparse clump of trees and rocks for cover for the night. While she wanted to use Vaughn’s shrinking to make them less noticeable, they’d agreed he should save his ether for emergencies. Mykel had lots of material to copy and hide the ship, and the rest of the group was happy with it.

  That’s not what had kept her up, however. She had been almost certain that Clove would make a run for it. And she hadn’t.

  It appeared she might actually have a spirit in that body, who genuinely wished to see her brother again.

  Good. Made things easier for them. And even if Clove ran, she’d seen enough already to confirm they could handle the Ingini.

  All that said, today they’d get answers. The news coming out of Revel just before they’d left had gotten worse by the minute. Orr promising retaliation. Tighter rations on grimoires.

  She and the others were doing what they could. The intelligence they would pick up on this side of the border would help relieve the war. Whoever was letting grimoires get through would be unforgivable.

  She glanced over at Grier and almost wished for his sake that it was the REV.

  “Remember,” she said, “Vaughn, Mykel, Jahree, and Urla are staying with the airship. Me, Emeryss, Grier, Clove, and Sonora are going to the mine. As soon as we’re cleared, or we find anything, Sonora will contact you and give you our location.”

  Vaughn shook his head. “What a bunch of hol-shit.”

  “Are you still whining about not being allowed to walk into the enemy’s ether mines?”

  “Yes,” Vaughn said. “I can help. My skills are useful. What if you find tons of crates of grimoires? I can shrink them down and bring them back for you.”

  “Everyone on the team is useful, you jelt. You wouldn’t be on the team if you weren’t useful in some way. Still, sneaking in five people is hard enough.”