Ether-Touched (The Breaking Stone Trilogy Book 1)

by L. M. Coulson

  Flinx couldn’t even return the sentiment. She stood, half bewildered and half stunned, and turned for the door. She felt Lorist Vicmon’s eyes on her back as she retreated from his office, wondering offhandedly if he were laughing at her.

  The corridors were beginning to fill—well, as filled as they ever got, which wasn’t much—as Flinx floated through the halls of the library. She had no real destination in mind, as she’d expected to spend the rest of the day in celebratory meetings with the rest of the lorists, as other new lorists did. Now that she’d been thrust mercilessly back into the unwanted confines of her normal life—a life she’d been so sure she was leaving behind—she felt paradoxically aimless.

  There were things to do, of course. She had a daily schedule that she liked to keep. But now, after that . . . that jest of an interview, Flinx felt as though she were an undersized fish thrown back overboard—a thousand miles away from where she’d been caught.

  Sure, it wasn’t common for a librarian of her age to become a lorist—or rather, to even apply for such a position. The thesis alone normally took at least a decade to complete, with rare exceptions like Otger, who was a chronic plagiarizer, and Flinx, who was gifted with a sun-crowned Mark. She’d only worked on hers for half that.

  Perhaps she simply hadn’t established herself in the scholarly community well enough yet. It was true that she didn’t attend the weekend socials or the holiday banquets; not because she was shy or unwanted, but because she’d been working on a goddess-damned thesis every spare moment she had.

  Flinx let out a breath, allowing her feet to steer her in the direction of her office. Well, if she had to wait a few more days, so be it. Once Vicmon and the other lorists read her work, they’d see just how hard she’d labored and just how important her research was. She’d put five years into that manuscript. She could wait another week.

  Flinx’s office was in the basement, along with all the other librarians who’d been unlucky in the office lottery. Otger had gotten an upper-floor office and had spent an entire week rubbing it in the faces of Flinx and the others from their graduating class who’d been relegated below ground. Flinx didn’t really mind. Sure, she missed the sun sometimes and it got awfully cold in the winter—none of the basement offices had hearths—but it was hers.

  She’d never had a place of her own before—even her room in the dormitory was shared with three other women. But her office had its own key, with no other copy except ones she could choose to make, and it felt much more like home to her than any other place she’d occupied. Sometimes she slept at her desk, arms crossed over a pillow of parchment, the soothing scent of old paper whispering to her a lullaby.

  She wore the key on a cord around her neck; she lifted it over her head and turned the bolt without a thought, opening the door to a small, dim space enclosed by stone walls and freshly swept flagstones.

  Only to find it already occupied.

  Flinx jumped, giving a shallow gasp, her hand moving to her chest as if she might physically restrain her racing heart. There, hovering over her desk, picking through the various sheaves of paper littered across the worn surface, was a muscular, blue-haired woman she’d not seen in months. The top strokes of a tattoo were just visible over the curve of the woman’s left shoulder, poking out from beneath that black leather cuirass she always wore.

  “So,” Flinx said, hastily closing the door behind her, “you’re not dead, after all.”

  The intruder merely lifted her gaze to Flinx’s, entirely nonplussed. The cool, steely grey of her eyes was as sharp as the prick of a stiletto. “The research you’ve been doing for me,” she said without salutation, “I’ve come to collect it.”

  Flinx knew better than to expect small talk from a Shadowheart. But she was still smarting from her meeting with the presiding lorist and wasn’t in the mood to deal with a woman who could give Otger a run for his money on lack of civility.

  “It’s a good thing I’m so vastly underpaid,” Flinx snapped, striding over to snatch the paper out of Vylaena Azrel’s hand and set it back on its appropriate pile, “or else I’d not even consider helping you.”

  One corner of Vylaena’s mouth twisted upward and—as if reminded—she pulled a small leather coin purse from some hidden pocket. Flinx accepted it, peeling apart the strings to peer inside at a modest pile of gold. Goddesses. If only the library paid half as well . . .

  “You’re a wanted woman, I hear,” Flinx said, tucking the bag of lynd into her skirt pocket. She made her way around the desk to one of the many bookshelves that lined the room, reaching for a thick, worn volume bound in dark green leather. Perhaps it was courting danger to speak with a Shadowheart so bluntly, but Flinx refused to be cautiously polite simply because the threat of retaliation demanded it. The presiding lorist was one matter . . . a curious mercenary in her territory was another.

  “I didn’t think you librarians looked up from your books long enough to gossip,” Vylaena replied, leaning against the obnoxious support pillar that cut through the center of the room—another drawback of having a basement office.

  “I’m a scholar, not a hermit,” Flinx replied. She carried her selected volume to the desk and set it atop the mess of papers. “Though the way Lorist Rynley’s been working me, I might as well be.” Flinx flipped through the yellowed pages of the ancient tome, careful not to tear the fragile parchment.

  “What have you heard?” the mercenary asked her.

  Flinx glanced up. “That you’ve gone and slaughtered an entire caravan of merchants traveling from Galiff. With no motive to speak of.” She returned her gaze to the book. “But then again, you’re Shadowheart. You need no reason other than to prove your mettle.”

  “You don’t believe it, though.”

  Flinx frowned, avoiding Vylaena’s sharp gaze. The woman always seemed to know what was running through Flinx’s head, even without asking. They said the sun-crowned scholars had hard gazes to hold—too full of cleverness, too sentient for a mortal creature—but Flinx had never seen a scholar with eyes like Vylaena’s.

  “I think you’re a practical person,” Flinx finally replied, “and practical people don’t go on murderous rampages just to fill a slow afternoon. Besides,” she continued, flipping through the pages, “I overheard two lorists talking about how the king already caught the men responsible. The Guard was tipped off just in time to catch the guilty parties as they went to collect their bounty for the atrocity. Word is they were offered five thousand lynd for the job. Can you imagine?”

  “Six thousand,” Vylaena corrected.

  Flinx glanced up, her eyes narrowing.

  “What else did you overhear?” Vylaena pressed, before Flinx could prod further.

  “That wights have been spotted along the Etherway. Guard’s been hunting them, but it’ll take time to clear them all out. My bet is they’ll tire of the task long before completing it.” She shrugged. “Otherwise, little else. Lorist Rynley caught me lingering in the stacks and about ran me through with his pen.”

  Amusement brightened Vylaena’s eyes. “So. What do you have for me?”

  Flinx flipped a few more pages and then found the entry she’d been searching for. She scooped the tome back up in her arms and ran a loving finger over the careful, looping letters. “This Empire-era literature is positively fascinating. I found several legends pertaining to your Curse, and they’re quite illuminating. You know who Emperor Tygnon was, yes?”

  “He led the Iedan Empire.”

  Flinx inclined her head. “And he was a brilliant strategist. He united all fourteen kingdoms of the Second Age. After his death, and the fall of the Empire, the kingdoms of Aethryl split into the six realms we know today. But we’re less concerned with his military and political prowess. What’s important is that Emperor Tygnon was ether-touched.”

  Vylaena’s mouth twitched into an almost imperceptible frown.

  “He was brilliant,” Flinx pressed. “There have been none to rival him since—and that’s
probably by design. It was he who created the Breaking Stone. He is the source of your troubles.”

  “The Breaking Stone,” the mercenary echoed, as if tasting the word on the tip of her tongue. “That’s some sort of ether-forged relic?”

  Flinx nodded. Where to start? “Most people misunderstand ether,” she explained. “They ignore it until it’s useful to them, and even then they attach to it false assumptions and superstitious codes. Ether-forged relics?” She grunted. “More assumptions.”

  “Ether is raw potential,” Vylaena said in a firm tone, though noticeably quieter than before.

  “Yes,” Flinx replied, surprised that a woman who held such a brutish occupation could so perfectly sum up the substance in only a few words. Many lorists would be at a loss to do the same.

  “Ether is possibility without shape, fate without form,” Flinx continued. “What the ether-touched can make with this energy is essentially infinite, confined only by their imagination, their skill, and the potency of the ether itself.”

  Vylaena had not yet moved; she still leaned cross-armed against the pillar. Her quiet patience sent Flinx’s spine crawling; she felt like a mouse skittering beneath the watchful eye of a bored cat.

  “The rogue ether you find around here is weak stuff,” Flinx continued, licking her lips. “It’s been used before—sometimes several times—or it’s been so long in this realm that it’s lost its former strength.”

  “The ether-touched can enter the Ether and siphon raw material from there,” Vylaena pointed out.

  “It’s true that some can, but few take that risk. Ether is potential—and so it is temperamental, prone to change on a whim. An entire realm of it? Even more so. An ether-touched’s intentions, emotions, thoughts—these can influence ether in ways one does not always intend. It’s a dangerous business, to be ether-touched. To hold raw possibility in your hands and attempt to wrestle it into a definitive shape.”

  “This Stone—it wasn’t made of leftover ether, I gather?”

  Flinx shook her head. “Emperor Tygnon was an intelligent, talented ether-touched. He could move easily between this world and the Ether, and he had the strength of will and mind to siphon his own material. And so he forged the Stone from the most potent of ether—making it long lasting and powerful. It could very well still stand today, hundreds of years later.”

  Flinx took a breath. “I knew your Curse had something to do with the Breaking Stone. You read things now and then, especially when your area of expertise is etherlore. But the stories were all conflicting. This book”—she held her tome a little higher—“holds an actual firsthand account of a man who was there when Tygnon used the Stone. I’d never have found it except that . . .”

  Finding the book had been so serendipitous it had to have been Asta’s will. She’d struggled for so long, searching for details of the Shadowheart Curse, finding little more than rumor and postulation. Speaking of it—even writing of it—appeared to have been taboo at the time the Curse was unleashed. Moreover, the fall of the Iedan Empire had ushered in a period of fear of etherlore in Enserion, and any books that contained even the word ether were burned. Now, centuries later, any witnesses to the event had long since perished.

  When Prince Eyren had appeared in the library, escorted by Lorist Rynley and with no guards in sight, Flinx had been intrigued. What was the Prince doing poking around the dusty royal archives, when his father had never so much as laid a foot on the front steps? She’d followed them—at a safe distance, of course—and had been entirely taken aback when they’d entered a door hidden behind a trick bookshelf. She’d returned later, after the other librarians were asleep, and had found a small, narrow room full of ancient, pre-Imperial books—including a few tomes on etherlore, the Marked, and the goddesses. The kind of stuff she drooled over but, following the Code of Study, was rarely permitted to touch.

  Vylaena shifted slightly, breaking Flinx from her thoughts and betraying the impatience hidden behind the mercenary’s masked features. “What was the Stone’s purpose?” Vylaena asked. “What did he do with it?”

  Flinx licked her lips. “Perhaps the worst of his many atrocities. Emperor Tygnon used the Breaking Stone to torture Ikna.”

  Vylaena’s hand fluttered to the dagger at her hip for a brief, terror-inducing moment before she carefully folded it over her arm again. “What do you mean?” she said, her voice low and even, a threat layered beneath each word. “Why?”

  Flinx swallowed. “That’s the problem—I don’t know for certain. Someone took the pages.”

  “What?”

  “The pages,” Flinx repeated, holding out the tome so Vylaena could see, “are missing. Someone tore them out.”

  Vylaena took a step forward, leaning over the proffered book to look for herself. She met Flinx’s gaze and frowned. “I thought you librarians ripped the arms off anyone caught vandalizing your precious books.”

  Humor tempered the steel of Vylaena’s tone, so Flinx forced herself to relax. “Yes, but the key word there is caught.” She paused. “There’s more, though. I just couldn’t risk taking more than one book back to my office.”

  “Tell me.”

  Flinx nodded, snapping the tome shut and placing it back on its shelf.

  “The Shadowheart aided Tygnon in his conquests of the fourteen nations,” she began. “Not the only group to do so, certainly, but the most loyal—the most . . . passionate.” She gave Vylaena an apologetic smile. “Even then they were renowned for their ability to fight—some say they bred for it, spending generations cultivating a race who could rival the sun-crowned warriors.”

  “Some things don’t change.”

  Flinx paused. She knew as little as anyone about the ways of the Shadowheart. Other than the occasional harrowing tale heard by tavern fire, she was woefully ignorant—a sore point for a woman who had devoted her life to learning.

  “They killed thousands for him,” she continued. “Whole cities were lost—whole kingdoms. And when Tygnon used the Breaking Stone, they stood at his side and watched him defile a goddess.”

  “I see,” Vylaena replied, all humor gone.

  “Even without those pages, you can guess what happened. Ikna must’ve been furious at the Shadowheart, who’d helped carry out Tygnon’s monstrosities against her. So . . . she cursed them.”

  “Of course.” Vylaena was so still she might’ve been an extension of the pillar upon which she leaned.

  Flinx paused, thinking. “But I . . . I still can’t figure out how to lift it. Nothing I’ve read leaves any clues. If Ikna left some path to redemption, I’ve yet to uncover it.”

  “You’ll continue to look?”

  “So long as you supply the lynd.”

  Flinx should’ve let the matter lie—especially with the thunderheads roiling in the blue-haired mercenary’s eyes—but she couldn’t help herself. “If you’re so keen on answers,” she added, “why not have a Speaking done at the temple? The goddesses love the opportunity to commune with their mortal charges.”

  Vylaena scowled, making Flinx flinch. “A fact I know far too well,” she spat. “Ikna and I . . . have history.”

  Flinx watched as Vylaena rounded the desk and stalked past her. “Is that common, among the Shadowheart?” the librarian pressed.

  Vylaena stopped, pausing with her nose to the door. “No,” she murmured to the wood grain. “Just me.”

  Before Flinx could reply, the woman had slipped into the hall and was gone.

  7 | The Job

  The worst part about being wanted by the Royal Guard was not that Vylaena was forced to travel at night or clamor across rooftops instead of roadways, but the fact that she was unable to visit the city lyndkeepers.

  Her trip to the library had cleaned her out, though the knowledge she’d bought had been worth it. She’d happily pay her weight in gold to that overeager librarian if she could only find a way to get rid of her Curse.

  Vylaena didn’t normally carry much coin—she’d done enough
plundering in her life to know how easy it was to steal a purse or find a hidden cache—and so her remaining accessible lynd consisted of a few tarnished silver pieces she’d left in a hollowed-out book in her apartment. Unable to retrieve funds from her city account, Vylaena needed to come up with some lynd—and quickly—or else join the starving beggars that trawled the streets.

  She, at least, had another option, though she was less than pleased to see Skin’s triumphant grin when she returned to the Deeps that night—Vylaena was not eager to take up the sort of job that was likely waiting for her.

  She leaned against the bar—arms crossed, lips tight, scowl on full display—as Skin made his way toward her. The swordsmen sitting at her sides gave her a wide berth, feeling the animosity radiating from her like the heat of a crackling bonfire.

  “Knew you’d be back,” Skin said, grinning at her. He cleaned a chipped pint glass with a ragged towel and stared her down with his good eye. “Short on lynd, are you?”

  “I blame you entirely,” Vylaena growled. Several nearby patrons glanced at her face, then her hair, and retreated to safer seats on the main floor.

  Skin shrugged. “It’s my job to dole out contracts to my mercs, sweetheart, and you knew the risks when you signed up.”

  “Well then,” Vylaena snapped, “tell me what you’ve got.”

  Skin set the glass down on the counter and tapped his fingers on the stained wood. “You’re in luck. Got a client here right now—and the job shouldn’t offend that bewildering newfound conscience of yours. Courier work. Straightforward message delivery.”

  “Why hasn’t it been snapped up already, an easy job like that?”

  “He’s paying in credit. And he’s a new face, so there’s no guarantee he’s good for it.”

  Vylaena pursed her lips, but her anger had faded. Courier contracts rarely turned out as easy as Skin made them sound, but at least it was generally clean work—little danger, slim chance she’d need to hurt someone.

  Taking a job without a guarantee of payment was risky, even if she needed the lynd. She had to make sure this was worth it.