Kingdoms of Ether (Kingdoms of Ether Series Book 1)

by Ryan Muree

  The slightly hunched, older woman grimaced at the young man with white hair. “You made that bet, Vaughn. You and Tully.”

  Vaughn winced, while a small, young girl wilted in the corner.

  “I mean…” Vaughn said, “we took a bet on her taking some books, but not a whole freaking Scribe. General Orr will have our heads. No—her head! I’m not taking the fall for this.”

  “Even just stealing grimoires is a great crime,” Grier reminded them. “They’re distributed fairly for a reason—”

  All of them groaned at him.

  “You’re not gaining any favor with this group with that claim,” the old woman said and turned to Adalai.

  “Urla, I didn’t kidnap anyone,” Adalai said to her and then looked to the man in glasses. “Kayson, that tart-hole over there stabbed me in the arm. Could you ask me how I’m doing and maybe take care of this before accusing me of something I didn’t do?”

  Kayson shrugged. “Why should I heal you when you’re risking our jobs?”

  “So, none of you were part of her crime?” Grier asked.

  “Of course not.” Vaughn stood taller despite coming no higher than Grier’s shoulder. “We aren’t stupid. We’re professionals. We were picking up approved crates from the library’s depository for our next assignment. But this…”

  Urla shifted her stick from one arm to the other and held out her free hand to shake Emeryss’s. Her wrinkles had wrinkles, but her cheeks had a warmth to them even in the blue ether-light. Her silver hair was braided neatly at the back of her neck, resembling the goddess statues in Neeria. “Dear, tell us your name. Tell us the truth.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m Emeryss. This is Grier, and I asked Adalai to let me come.”

  Grier pointed at Adalai. “Only after she’d—”

  “No, Grier.” Her eyelids fell. “I asked her back in the library. I asked her at the window before we jumped out.”

  “See?” Adalai said. “I was going to leave her there. No harm done—”

  “No harm done?” Grier’s voice thundered inside the cargo hold. “You have the entire library on alert. A Scribe was taken—”

  “Grier!” Emeryss shouted. He hadn’t understood when she’d said she couldn’t take the library’s excuses anymore, and he wasn’t listening now. “I left! I chose to leave! They rejected my leave request again—”

  “And we’ve been through this. They have their reasons, Emeryss, but they’re good damn reasons. We need to go back, now.” He turned toward Urla and Kayson. “All of you will be brought in and questioned because of your squadmate’s actions. Take us back. Don’t make this worse.”

  Kayson, the healer, lit a thin stick of swampgrass he’d stuck between his lips. He couldn’t have been over thirty years old, but the weary bags under his eyes aged him. “Sonora, tell Jahree to turn us around.” His chin lifted as if he spoke to the metal ceiling.

  “No, Sonora!” Adalai blurted toward the ceiling. They had to be speaking to someone somewhere else on the airship. A sound Caster most likely. “Why should we turn around? You heard her, didn’t you? I didn’t kidnap her. She told you herself. She wants to come. They can’t enslave her.”

  “This is bigger than you think, Adalai.” Kayson leaned against a metal beam. “This isn’t some stupid academy prank. The Keeper is right. Stadhold is going to lose their minds over this—”

  “I’ll claim I stowed away,” Emeryss said. “I’ll claim that I saw your ship and jumped on to leave. It’s technically true. Just please don’t take me back.”

  Kayson shook his head. “Our safety is at risk just by you being on board. Not to mention the political ramifications of this.”

  “Dear,” Urla said to Emeryss. “He’s right. You need to go back before—”

  The ship lurched forward in a jolt. Everyone held on to the walls and looked at one another.

  “They’re here,” Kayson said, as the entire crew scrambled together into the ship. “You’re in deep shit, Ada.”

  “I stole a few books, but I didn’t kidnap her!”

  Emeryss followed the crew of Casters with Grier right behind her. They tore through corridor after corridor, up several flights in a stairwell, and out into a narrow hall that led onto the bridge of the airship. There were wide, bright windows, lit up panels on all three sides, and extra seats for the team to sit in.

  The airship banked right, and Emeryss grabbed hold of the nearest railing for stability. Grier was beside her.

  The ship rattled until it seemed to correct itself.

  “Are they shooting at us?” Vaughn shouted, stepping up to the giant window ahead of them.

  In front of a panel stretched the entire width of the ship, two men sat and worked the controls of the airship furiously. One moved his fingers around a topographic map of what she could only assume was the land they were flying over.

  The pilot had sweat dripping down his forehead. His hands were splayed across his own panel where silvery tendrils of ether left his fingers and went into the controls. With it, he could manipulate the air density through the fans and vents of the ship. “That is a yes. Get in your seats!”

  “They’re shooting us down from the sky?” Vaughn jumped into a seat beside the young girl and latched his buckle.

  “They don’t know we’re innocent.” A middle-aged woman with black hair in long ringlets and a cleft chin swiveled in her chair toward Emeryss. Her eyebrows lifted as if she pitied her.

  “Some of us aren’t innocent.” Kayson slid into the chair nearest her and side-eyed Adalai through his glasses.

  “Oh, stuff it in your tart-hole.” Adalai took a seat behind a small panel with buttons and lights. “I stole books, yes. But she came willingly.”

  Kayson crammed his spent swampgrass into a container. “Well, she needs to go back—”

  The ship lurched again, the metal rattling violently.

  Emeryss and Grier had found a bench behind another panel to cling to. “I already told Adalai I’d scribe as payment. I’ll scribe for everyone, but please don’t make me go back.”

  The ship tilted and bobbed as it tore through the night sky. Clouds were a nauseating blur in the front window; the horizon was missing.

  “Can someone please make a decision before we get shot out of the sky?” the pilot shouted.

  “Keep going,” Adalai yelled at him.

  The ship banked hard left, followed by a sharp drop in altitude.

  Emeryss squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the panel. The fact Stadhold was working so hard, willing to shoot down an RCA ship and risk the treaty to get her back… It was unthinkable.

  “Emeryss.” Grier was beside her, bracing himself against her. “Look at everything around you. It’s putting everyone at risk. Your leaving is putting us in danger—”

  “Am I? Or is Stadhold overreacting?” As soon as the ship righted itself again, Emeryss adjusted her hold and took a breath.

  “You think they’re overreacting?” He was angry, but there was more to it. Disappointment, maybe.

  The ship shook and descended again. A few of them screamed, and Emeryss held on so tight her fingers ached.

  “They are going to take us down,” the pilot barked. “Urla, what are we doing?”

  “Shoot back?” Adalai asked.

  “No!” Kayson shouted.

  Emeryss spun to Grier. “Why would they shoot at us if they think I was kidnapped and on board?”

  The tension in Grier’s face fell. “I don’t know. Maybe they don’t know we’re on board. For all they know, a Scribe is missing, and this RCA ship is leaving and now running away.”

  “So, this is normal? They shoot allied Revelian airships out of the sky?”

  The airship rolled right.

  His eyes gave away the true answer. No. None of this was normal. This was an overreaction. Stadhold was neutral in the war between Ingini and Revel. It was only because of the Ingini’s past transgressions of genocide that Stadhold agreed to withhold all grimo
ires and education from Ingini’s Casters and Scribes. But that was it. This was a brash act for Stadhold, especially against Revel.

  “How are they shooting at us?” she demanded.

  Adalai and some of her crew eyed Grier, waiting for an answer.

  “They’d have Keepers on board, and some Keepers have ranged weapons.”

  “But how were they able to follow us?”

  His gaze fell to the brightly lit panel. “Avrist, probably. He can find you. Emeryss, just make them turn around.”

  “They have to be using Keeper weapons because they hit and dissipate on impact,” the woman beside Kayson said. Her wrist had faint yellow markings. She must have been Sonora, the one using sound to sense and communicate.

  Grier shook his head. “This will only get worse—”

  “How?” Emeryss demanded.

  “If we shoot back, we’re all dead.”

  Adalai snorted. “Listen to this guy. As if I didn’t escape him once.”

  “You apparently had help,” he shouted over the ship’s incessant rattling. “And this is what we’re trained to do. We’re trained to counter Casters.”

  “Guys! An answer! Now!” the pilot shouted again.

  “Can’t Sonora tell them that we have their Scribe and to stop shooting at us?” Vaughn asked.

  The ship rolled left and rose higher. Emeryss gritted her teeth, her sweating palms slipped from the sleek panel.

  “Turn around!” Grier commanded.

  “No!” Emeryss turned to Adalai. “There’s not another way to escape this just for now?”

  All of their eyes turned to Vaughn.

  The pilot’s hands trembled at the panel.

  Urla nodded. “Do it, Vaughn.”

  Vaughn, with his shock-white hair and green eyes, slapped his hands against the side of the ship. Amber ether leaked out of his fingertips and into the walls. It wound its way around everything—them, the controls, the panels, the metal grating beneath their feet, the dark-gray metal ceiling. He squeezed his hands together, and the world felt heavier, grander, more overwhelming. All the turbulence stopped, the ship leveled out, and the pilots relaxed at their controls. Everyone collectively caught their breath and sat back.

  “You’re a matter Caster,” Emeryss said to Vaughn. “What did you just do?”

  He spun in his seat and smiled. “Shrunk us. We’re about the size of a etherfly. They can’t see us, and we’re too small to detect. Once we’re all clear, I’ll make us normal again.”

  Rare. Incredibly rare. She’d only seen a handful of books on this kind of matter control in her four years at the library. And Adalai, an extremely skilled illusionist, was teamed with a well-trained air Caster pilot and a well-tuned sound waves Caster. These weren’t typical RCA members with basic elemental abilities.

  Grier pushed off from the panel and stormed toward the exit from the bridge.

  “Where are you going?” Emeryss called to him as she rose from the bench, too.

  He stopped, put his hands on his hips, and turned back. His eyes had lost all semblance of friendship and familiarity from their time working together.

  “You’re running away like a child.” His jaw was set.

  Her eyes burned, wanting to tear up, but she gave him her own glare instead. “I know how this looks to the library. I know this wasn’t ideal, but what was I supposed to do? I tried to handle it the right way. I asked to leave multiple times. They were keeping me there against my will. When you’re not allowed to leave to see your home, your friends, your family for years, I call that being a prisoner.”

  Grier let out a puff of air. He might not have agreed with how she got out, but he usually saw reason when it came to their ridiculous rules, even if he followed every one. Then again, she’d liked to think she’d known him well, and now, it seemed maybe she didn’t know him at all.

  “It’s more than a rejected vacation request.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “You think the Librarian is thinking of my safety. I know for a fact Avrist is telling her what to decide about my leave requests, and Avrist despises me. He despises Neeria—”

  “You think he did it because you’re Neerian?” He squinted at her. “No one cares about that—”

  “You don’t care about that, but you’ve not heard how he talks to me.”

  “Okay, so he’s not the nicest person in the world, but he’s not prejudiced enough to keep you prisoner.”

  She scoffed. “Not the nicest? He tried to shoot me out of the air with you and a whole crew of RCA members!”

  “They were breaking the law—several laws!”

  “And? His answer was to kill us all?” Her voice, her words, had gotten so loud she was shouting. Her whole chest heaved with the strength and anger and frustration she’d had locked up inside since wanting to shatter the bookshelves in the drawing room.

  Grier’s chest rose and fell, too. “They were flying the ship away from him. What else was he supposed to do, Emeryss?”

  “How about not try to kill the Scribe that he pretends to worry for her safety so much that he never lets her go home?”

  He blinked once and dropped his glare from her. He knew she was right. He had to, or he didn’t know what to think. Either way, his refusal to believe her on this hurt just as much as Avrist’s sneers at her rejected leave request.

  “It will always be dangerous for me to go home, Grier. They will never let me go—”

  “That’s not true.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  He sighed and shook his head.

  “Here’s an idea,” Adalai called out from her chair. Kayson had his hand around her arm, where green ether left his fingers and entered her skin. “What if the Keeper just goes home? We’ll open the cargo hold—”

  “Ada…” Urla rubbed her forehead.

  “He can materialize something to float down on,” she continued with a grin, “a flying weapon or something, and look, you’ll be back home.”

  “What are we going to do, though?” Vaughn asked. “We can’t help her, right? I mean, I’m all for bending the rules a bit, but I don’t want to go to prison.”

  “She came to us,” Adalai said. “She stowed away. Right?”

  Emeryss nodded.

  “And right now,” Adalai continued, “they don’t even know for sure she’s on this airship. If they used this Avrist guy to find her, then he’d have to admit he tried to kill her. Fat chance of that happening. I say, if anyone asks, we pretend she’s not on here with us.”

  “They saw you!” Grier shouted.

  “No, they saw someone like me in the library, but they never saw my face.”

  “They are not that stupid,” Grier said.

  Adalai raised her eyebrows. “I mean, there were three Keepers protecting that room. Three. So, not the brightest.”

  “So, you’re suggesting we pretend it didn’t happen?” Urla asked. Her hands rested neatly over her gnarled and polished walking stick.

  “I suggest,” Vaughn said, eyes focused on Adalai, “that we don’t let the idiot who got us into this mess decide.”

  Urla raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you want to explain Emeryss to General Orr?”

  Vaughn swallowed and sank back down into his seat.

  Kayson shook his head. “Well, we’re not a taxi. We can’t take her to Neeria. We have things to do with deadlines.”

  Emeryss nodded. She’d admit she hadn’t thought the whole thing through, but it was a chance she couldn’t pass up. “I understand, and I didn’t expect that. Can you drop me off at your next stop, then?”

  “I can’t believe this,” Grier muttered.

  “That’s not a good idea, either,” said Urla. “Our next stop won’t have anything going out.”

  Where was their next stop to not have any transports out?

  Adalai folded her hands together across her narrow lap. “So, we answer directly to General Orr, and most of the time the missions are pretty boring and uneventful—”

>   “Not if we can get that wedding assignment.” The copilot spun the map he’d been looking at.

  Adalai’s entire team mumbled in agreement.

  “That’s true,” she added. “O’Brecht, one of the king’s advisors, is getting married again. He’ll need all the security Revel can give him. All the units are waiting to hear who gets assigned to go. We’re hoping it’s us, but that’s beside the point.”

  Emeryss nodded. She might not welcome the thought of facing Ingini’s ether-tech, but she understood wanting to defend Revel.

  Adalai cracked her knuckles. “So, the problem is that our next assignment is in Delour. It’s not really safe for you there. We’re delivering aide and making the RCA’s presence look strong because they were just attacked by the Ingini. The only transports able to get in and out would be going to Aurelis for supplies.”

  Aurelis? Well, that was at least west and closer to home. “I guess I can find transport out of Aurelis to take me near the northern ridge to Neeria—”

  “You can’t be serious,” Grier mumbled.

  “Or…” Adalai held up a finger and smiled.

  Sonora shook her head. “Ada, I know what you’re thinking.”

  “We dress you up like you’re one of us, you help give people food and water with us in Delour, and then after, we take you home.”

  That sounded much better than hitchhiking out of Aurelis.

  Emeryss glanced at Grier, but his focus had shifted to the metal grating under his boots. “That’s probably better anyway, because I think the library would search for me in Neeria first and…” She swallowed. “My people don’t need Stadhold showing up with their Keepers making a big deal out of my escape. I think it’ll kill my mother.”

  Grier kept his chin to his chest. “All those times you talked about family, tradition, honor—”

  “Yes,” Emeryss said.

  “You think your family will be proud to hear about this?”

  Adalai snorted. “Assuming they find out. The Great Library got bested by one illusionist. They’re not telling a soul what happened until they get her back.”

  “How do you know that?” Emeryss asked.

  “That’s how the library and Stadhold operates. Everyone knows that.”