Kingdoms of Ether (Kingdoms of Ether Series Book 1)

by Ryan Muree

  They followed, but Emeryss couldn’t shake the heady feeling. Grier had done all that for her, despite his fears.

  “So, I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’re all rare Casters,” Adalai said with a smile. Her hair bounced as she walked. It had a way of making her look taller than she was.

  Emeryss forced her focus onto Adalai. “Are all the units, the other teams, special like you all?”

  Adalai tilted her head back and forth as if balancing the answer. “I guess, but we’re technically the best skilled. We’re nineteen and zero.”

  They came around the corridor toward the platform lift.

  “Is that a score? Or code for something?” Emeryss asked.

  “Nineteen missions, zero failures.”

  She didn’t know if that was a lot or a big deal, but Adalai’s posture said it was. “If you’re so successful, does that mean you’re assigned to do really special, dangerous missions?”

  Adalai’s shoulders drooped. “General Orr is very protective of us. When it matters, he’ll assign us to something big. That’s why we’re holding out for Advisor O’Brecht’s wedding. Nailing Ingini spies at a wedding?” She whistled. “The best kind of fun in a terrible event. But he doesn’t want us out risking our lives over silly things. Like Sonora. She is the most skilled waves Caster ever. She’s the nicest of the bunch, too. You need help, and I’m not around—ask her.”

  The three of them stepped onto the creaky platform, and Adalai pushed the green button on a small panel.

  “And why are you called the Zephyrs?” Emeryss asked.

  “After the cloud spirits or mythical creature things, I guess?”

  When the platform stopped at the next level down, she and Grier followed Adalai around another corridor surrounded by glass. The endless sky like the sea was so breathtaking that she let out a soft chuckle. “We’re flying so fast. This is amazing.”

  Grier was silent.

  They passed into the darker end of the hall where, instead of glass, there were doors.

  Adalai put Tidbits on her shoulder and knocked on one before opening it. She stopped at the entrance and poked her head in. “Sonora? You here?”

  Covering nearly every surface, bundles of wires were mixed in with weird fabrics wound lengthwise. But they weren’t just sitting places, they stretched up like bird necks cawing in the morning and hovered there. Cup after cup of varying amounts of water and sand had been placed on multiple surfaces between the strings of wires and cloths. They, too, stretched up into the air as if all were being pinched upward. They all vibrated slightly.

  In the middle of it all, Sonora sat wearing a bright green tank-top and black baggy pants. Several little containers of scissors and glues were at her feet. Regular-looking books were sprawled across her lap with stacks of pictures and paper. Her gaze lifted to them, and she smiled.

  Adalai gestured to them with her head. “I was giving them a tour and officially introducing them. Emeryss and Grier, this is Sonora, the waves Caster.” She looked to Sonora again. “I thought you might be practicing.”

  She shrugged and mouthed, “Sort of. Nice to meet you all.” Then she went right back to pasting pieces of paper into the book.

  “What is she doing?” Grier asked.

  I’m scrapbooking.

  Sonora’s voice had come suddenly but gently into Emeryss’s head. She looked first at Grier, who seemed just as confused.

  Adalai shut the door and led them back toward the platform.

  “That’s remarkable.” Grier rubbed his jaw. “She can just talk in your head?”

  “She can talk really softly and amplify it for anyone to hear.” Adalai pushed another button on the ship’s lift panel, and the platform lowered another level. “She can also hear everything really well. She’s married to Kayson, by the way.”

  “Kayson—the tall, skinny guy with glasses?” Emeryss asked. “The healer, right?”

  Adalai snorted. “He’s a jerk sometimes, and healing’s not that special, but he’s really good. Like really good.”

  They exited the platform and moved through a familiar, dark lower-level without windows. Around the bend, it opened into a domed cavernous space of metal grating and beams like being swallowed by a mechanical greatfish.

  “This is the cargo hold as you know,” Adalai said, arms wide.

  Vaughn placed a clipboard on a nearby table and jogged over to them.

  “Vaughn, Emeryss and Grier. Emeryss and Grier, Vaughn.”

  “We’ve met already,” Vaughn said, pointing at Grier.

  Emeryss didn’t know much about airships, and she wasn’t a soldier, but if they were on an assignment to send supplies and this was the cargo hold, then where was the cargo to help the people?

  “I thought you were picking up crates from the library?” Grier asked.

  Vaughn crossed his arms and smiled. “You mean you don’t see them? They’re right there.”

  But they weren’t. There was nothing there but tape marking out squares on the ground.

  Vaughn reached over to a counter, grabbed something too small to see from where they were standing, and held up one fingertip in front of her face. He put a piece of magnifying stormstone in front of it.

  “What do you see?” he asked her.

  Emeryss bent forward to peer through the piece and squinted. On the tip of his finger was a tiny wooden crate. “Are you serious?”

  “I told you I shrank the Zephyr. Why is this so surprising?”

  She looked around at the vast cargo hold and the prospect of several crates too small to see.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What if we step on them?”

  His eyebrows narrowed. “Don’t get any ideas, Emeryss. Just stay on this side of the white tape. I’ll expand the crates after we land. If I did it now, well—”

  “The ship would fall from the sky under the weight, and Jahree would be pissed.” Adalai walked on and waved them back toward the platform. “Jahree, the pilot, of course.”

  “You going up to the bridge?” Vaughn set the minuscule crate on the floor, supposedly, and then dusted his hands off. “I’ll join you.”

  The platform slowly climbed several levels until they reached the top. Tidbits, who’d been quietly perched on Adalai’s shoulder, hopped down and scurried around the corner into bridge.

  Back in the familiar blue-tinted all-metal bridge and its wide panoramic front window gazing out across the horizon, they took in its exquisite sleekness in the light. At the front, Jahree sat in a wide, high-back chair, alongside his flying partner with the map. Tidbits crawled over to him.

  Urla, the old woman with a cane, was seated along the wall, while Kayson read some panel next to her.

  The little girl in an RCA uniform from the night before hopped down from her seat and ran up to Grier. “You’re big and strong, mister. Tell me more about your rules.” The girl had taken his hand and pressed herself against his side, blinking her big eyelashes up at him.

  Grier did a double-take and pulled his hand back.

  The little girl, still clinging to Grier’s side, giggled. “You’re so funny, Mister Keeper. Want to play?”

  Emeryss had an older sister, and five younger sisters and brothers. Things with Ingini were definitely tough if Revel had begun letting children into their army.

  “What’s your name?” Emeryss asked, hoping to show the girl she could trust her.

  “I’m Tully.”

  Hadn’t Urla said that Vaughn and Tully made bets against Adalai stealing grimoires? Tully couldn’t have been more than eight years old, and she’d dared Adalai to steal? “Are you tagging along with your big sister Adalai? Or your dad Kayson?”

  The little girl wrinkled her nose. “No. I want to slaughter the Ingini and make them pay with their suffering.”

  Emeryss jerked back as Grier quickly retracted his arm.

  “Tully, cut it out,” Adalai bit. “She’s a time Caster. She’s not even a kid. We don’t even know how old she actually i
s.”

  Tully glowered at Adalai as a rush of white brilliant ether swirled around her feet all the way up her body. She took the shape of an adult woman in her late twenties, wearing a form-fitting Zephyr uniform, and laughed at them. “Look at their faces. They look so stupid.”

  Not stupid. Grier looked like he’d just witnessed someone turned inside out.

  “Ignore her. Everyone else does.” Adalai pointed to Urla. “Urla, you know. She’s an energy Caster. An electrical kind of thing, except it makes her super quick to react, too.” Adalai Blinked from where they stood and reappeared next to Urla with a small dagger against her neck.

  Urla had instantly pinched the blade aimed between her two fingers and shifted herself enough so that Adalai’s dagger didn’t impale her. Urla yawned.

  Adalai smiled and slid her knife into a pocket in her pants. They walked on down the few stairs toward the pilot. “Last but not least, Jahree, our pilot, and his all too willing partner in crime, Mykel.”

  Jahree was younger in the morning light than Emeryss had thought. He was tall and trim with dark-brown eyes, and long dark hair tied back in pieces. His eyes had a deep focus on the horizon as his fingers ran over the etchings and rounded orbs on the dashboard in front of him. “Hey.”

  The other young man, Mykel, was a little taller than Vaughn but with short dark hair, and was busy fighting off Tidbits clawing at something in his hands. “Adalai, get this rat off me,” he whined.

  She crossed her arms. “Then share.”

  “I don’t want to. It’s my breakfast.” Mykel told Tidbits multiple times no, but she ignored him and reached out for the food in his hand. “Why am I even talking to this thing? It’s from your imagination, Adalai. Cut it out.”

  Adalai smiled and snapped her fingers. Tidbits dissolved, and Mykel adjusted the two panels of his overlay down the front of his uniform.

  “Mykel,” Adalai said, “is a matter Caster, like Vaughn. Except he can determine the composition of anything he touches, and then rearrange the matter into different shapes. Basically, he repairs things on the ship.”

  “And,” Mykel said, lifting an index finger, “Jahree and I have every market memorized. We get the best deal on anything we buy—”

  “And make the most money on anything we sell,” Jahree finished.

  Adalai shrugged. “They’re all right, but that’s it. You’ve officially met everyone.”

  It wasn’t lost on Emeryss how incredibly fortunate she was to find a crew of rare Casters for the RCA. All of this amazing talent and skill at her fingertips was her true destiny. It would give her the connections she’d need to change her life forever. She could feel it, and she couldn’t wait.

  Adalai pointed to the front window. “And in that direction will be Delour.”

  Emeryss gazed out. It was still just a sea of clouds at the moment, but it wasn’t the library, at least, and soon after Delour, it’d be Neeria. Home.

  “We’ll be in Delour tomorrow morning.” Adalai turned to her. “Ready to try casting?”

  Yes. She was more than ready.

  Chapter 10

  Observation deck — Zephyr Airship

  Emeryss blinked away the pain behind her eyes and wiped her brow. The small strands of her hair were crimping into tighter curls on either side of her head. Sweat dripped from them.

  Had it been hours? Or minutes? She’d lost count, but she still hadn’t pulled the ether off the page from a grimoire Adalai had lent her.

  “Again,” Adalai ordered.

  On the small observation deck of the Zephyr, the white stone paths wound through neatly edged grasses and well-manicured shrubs. Pink-purple flowers and succulents in all shapes and sizes dotted dark, fertile soil beds. The stormstone dome above amplified the heat and morning light beaming in, and beyond it were clouds in every direction. It was a stark difference from the cold, metal interior.

  Above and behind the observation deck was a window to some other deck of the airship. Tully stood looking out at her from it.

  “What’s up there?” Emeryss asked.

  Adalai, Sonora, and Grier twisted to see where she was pointing.

  “The rec room,” Adalai said. “There are small games to play or lounge chairs to relax in. Morale boosting stuff for long trips. Come on, don’t drag this out.”

  Emeryss gritted her teeth and adjusted her arm. The illusion grimoire grew heavier by the minute.

  “Palm gently against the page,” Adalai instructed for the twentieth time. “Once you feel the tickle, pull it up right away, but not too fast. It’s safe to assume you’ve gone fishing, right?”

  Emeryss glared at her.

  “Okay, dumb question, but it’s like fishing. Pull too fast, and it snaps back to the page. Pull too slow, and you’ll never get the sigil off.”

  She tried again like she had every day at the library, commanding it to go into her hand.

  Nothing.

  “Again!” Adalai said.

  She did—again and again and again. Twice the page corner lifted, but never the sigil.

  When she looked at Grier to accuse him of causing the page to lift, he held up both hands in surrender. “Not me this time.”

  “You’re not going to cast without pulling the sigil up,” Adalai droned on. “You have got to figure that part out.”

  But the longer she went on trying, the harder it got. The book got heavier, the low and slow thumping across her temples got louder and harder, and her ears started to ring.

  Grier walked up and gently touched her elbow. “Hey, I think it’s time for a break, don’t you?”

  She blew stray strands of her hair out of her eyes. “I got it to bubble up last time. Did you see it?”

  “It did something, but this is too much—”

  “I’m tougher than you think.”

  “I know how tough you are, but everyone has a breaking point.”

  A cackle of laughter behind Sonora captured Emeryss’s focus. It was Tully—middle-aged with a speckling of gray through her hair. In one hand she carried a grimoire while her other hand was at her hip. She stared Emeryss down with cold eyes.

  “If you’ve come down to be a bitch, you can leave,” Adalai barked. “Or at least go back up to the rec room so we don’t have to see you.”

  Instead of doing what Adalai said, she sat on a nearby bench and crossed her long legs. “This is more fun. I’ve never seen someone beat herself up trying to pull a sigil from a page before.”

  Grier stepped in front of Emeryss protectively and faced Tully. “Watch it.”

  Tully laughed louder.

  Emeryss stepped out in front of him. “I can speak for myself.”

  Whether she liked Tully or not, Tully was part of the Zephyrs, and she was not. Getting along with everyone would be paramount to gaining as much knowledge and practice as possible before she was home. She wasn’t there to make enemies with people who were able to help her.

  “I have a long way to go, but I’m trying,” she told Tully.

  Tully nodded and bobbed her crossed-over foot. “I’m sure you are. Carry on.”

  Sonora leaned in to get Emeryss’s attention. “Take a deep breath, Emeryss. The ether is there on the page, but not permanently. Try to imagine that it’s actually floating above it.”

  Emeryss closed her eyes, relaxed her shoulders and jaw, breathed in through her nose and out through her nostrils evenly, and hovered her palm above the page—not too high but not too low.

  Grier shifted his weight and stifled a cough.

  Their eyes were on her, waiting for something to happen. She could feel them.

  Tully snickered.

  I’m just trying too hard. Deep breath. Calm sea.

  Actually, she was trying the hardest she ever had. She could do this. She had to do this. She’d risked everything for this chance. It was possibly the only one she’d ever get.

  Sweat beaded on the back of her neck. She relaxed her shoulders and her jaw again, breathed in and out, in a
nd out—

  What if we meet with Avrist, and he gives me everything I want?

  Grier cleared his throat twice.

  Avrist couldn’t give her everything she wanted, but he could give her nearly everything as Grier had said.

  What if he agreed to give her nothing? What if he laughed at her and had them arrested on the spot? She’d never get out of Stadhold again. What if he agreed on different conditions? What if he told her requests could only be agreed upon if they returned to speak with the Librarian?

  Her heart thumped a little harder. The thought of speaking with the Librarian about her demands was almost too much, and her knees wobbled.

  “Emeryss…” Adalai said. “Concentrate.”

  How could she concentrate with so much on the line? Grier was refusing to leave without her, Adalai and Sonora were spending their free time helping her, the Zephyrs were taking a huge risk in harboring her…

  And she wasn’t making any progress. Not really.

  What if the sea oracle had been right? What if they all had been, and she barely knew her own spirit? What if she was wrong about what she felt and what she thought she knew about herself?

  “Emeryss, what’s wrong?” Adalai asked.

  She opened her eyes. “What if wanting this isn’t enough?”

  “You’re practicing with skilled Casters,” Adalai said. “I wouldn’t say you’re just wanting it.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I’ll learn it eventually. I’ve been trying every day, doing this exact practice. When I was young, our sea oracle predicted my destiny was to be a Scribe and nothing more.”

  Adalai shrugged. “In my experience, those people are after money, preying on the weak.”

  “She’s a well-respected spiritualist in Neeria. She does it for free.”

  “So?”

  “I didn’t want to believe her, then, but what if she’s right?”

  Adalai shrugged. “She’s not. No one’s in charge of your destiny but you. I changed mine, and I would be dead by now if I hadn’t.”

  She swallowed and looked at Grier. “And what if Avrist is lying?”