Kingdoms of Ether (Kingdoms of Ether Series Book 1)

by Ryan Muree

  They needed this deal. All she wanted was Boss Trent to give her a chance. She’d never met the guy. Never even heard of him before speaking to Ollie’s friend with the rich grandson. But money was money. And the ether mines weren’t worth the money. The fumes, the hallucinations. It fried the brain, broke people down. Some men went straight-up crazy in those tunnels. Some became addicted and threatened to blow the place up, so they could keep it all to themselves. The five o’clock to five o’clock grind in the black caves meant clocking in and out like a machine. It meant never seeing the skies again. It meant no future.

  They needed this deal.

  “You sure Old Man Ollie was right about this?” Cayn whispered.

  The condition of the hangar wasn’t that surprising, actually. Lots of bosses let their hangars go. Pretty headquarters didn’t make you money; they had to be functional. Only Kimpert worried about the aesthetics.

  She pulled up her sleeves, then tugged them back down. “He’s either running out of money, and he can’t afford to keep this place up, or he’s so busy making money that he couldn’t care less.”

  Cayn nodded.

  Finally, reaching the very back of the hangar, the hallway opened wider and led to another opening with arched metal beams. Trent’s “office” was a secondary hangar in the back with a full machine shop. No guards posted, no patrol, he had zero protection from thugs, customers, or Ethrecity executives. He either didn’t care, or his business kept them away all on its own. She hoped the former.

  A wail echoed out of Trent’s office.

  They sped up and poked their heads inside.

  Wide and tall enough to fit two airships, Trent’s office was bathed in a blanket of warmth from a machine-grade furnace in the corner. Anvils, buffing wheels, pokers. It was like a forge, but an ancient one from before conveyor belts and ether had made all of these things simpler. And the furnace was running. Bright, red-hot coals burned in the bottom of it.

  They walked in and another wail made them jump.

  Trent passed into view from behind massive unused machine parts twice his size. And he wasn’t small. He was as tall as Cayn, maybe taller, and his body was like two men shoved together side-by-side. His upper torso was a little bigger than his lower, but all of him looked strong enough.

  He wiped his hands on a rag and smiled. “I told you, Lyle, I’m not into excuses.”

  They slowed their pace after passing yet another machine part and finding a topless man strapped to an anvil. His face was pressed against the flat metal surface, while another man, twice Trent’s size, dangled a dagger over the tied man’s head.

  Clove froze. Cayn did, too, but rested his hand on his gun.

  “May I help you?” Trent asked with greasy arms spread wide and ether stains down the front of his orange shirt. He rested against a desk sitting out in the middle of the hangar. His brown hair was long and tied back in a bun, and his wide jaw was clenched. He was younger than Branson by a decade, probably, but had a straighter, crueler cut to his chin and forehead.

  “Uh, we can come back if this is a bad time,” Clove said, immediately regretting everything that had led to this moment.

  Trent smirked. “Nonsense. Bongo, continue.”

  His assistant, Bongo, was a contender for one of Branson’s crew—mouth-breather, sloping forehead, overly sweaty, hairy. He bent over the man strapped to the anvil and dug the edge of his blade across the man’s face, peeling back the skin as he went. Lyle screamed and squirmed.

  “Shit,” Cayn muttered.

  Clove retracted a little.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Trent said. “We always make sure they live.” Trent clapped his hands. “I bet I could guess what you’re here for. You heard from some guy in the mines that his brother got a shipping route from me to bring bombs to the border, and now he’s rich, balls deep in women and ethyrol, and you want a piece of the pie, right?”

  Lyle kept screaming his head off and bleeding out onto the cement floor while Bongo continued cutting. Sometimes it was slivers from Lyle’s arms, sometimes his face, sometimes his back—always just skin.

  “Uh.” Clove blinked and tried to focus solely on Trent. She’d heard of bosses like him, and no wonder he didn’t need guards posted at his doors. “Something like that.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to say no, but little girls like you have no business getting into this.” Trent came around the side of his desk, plopped down in his chair, and propped his feet up on top.

  Oh, she loved being told what she could and couldn’t do. And by love, she really wanted to rip his eyeballs out for it. She straightened herself and ground her teeth. “I assure you, I can handle it.”

  “Handle it?” He snickered, pulled out a pencil from behind his ear, and tapped it on his desk with the rhythm of his speech. “No, sweetie, this is the real shit. This is front-lines, organs blowing off, men pissing themselves to death. This is war.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and the bile still threatening to come up. “I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t already know the obvious.”

  He narrowed his stare. “You the pilot? You got a ship? I don’t finance the impossible.”

  She squinted at him in return.

  “Okay, well, you need at least two gunners.”

  “I’m better than two,” Cayn said.

  Trent giggled a high-pitched, off-putting laugh. “Sure, you are.”

  In one fluid moment, Cayn pulled his gun, shot the pencil from Trent’s hand with a blip of blue light, and holstered it before Trent had time to react.

  Bongo had stopped to watch, and Trent sat, gaping in his chair. Even Lyle had stopped screaming.

  After several seconds of silence, Trent broke out laughing, practically hysterical. “You two are cute. You must be pretty damn desperate. What are you? Newlyweds looking to get out of the mines and start a real, honest-to-Goddess family?”

  “We’re siblings,” Clove corrected.

  Trent lifted his hands. “Whatever. Look, your guns need to be a lot bigger than that little thing, and your targets aren’t harmless pencils. They’re ships with gunners more skilled than your skinny brother.”

  They didn’t have anything like that on Pigyll for defense. It was just a fast ship, she was just good at piloting, and Cayn was just her muscle when trades got dangerous. Maybe they weren’t prepared for this.

  “I just had a pilot die.” After a long pause of Trent chewing on the smoking end of his pencil, he finally stood and crossed his arms. “Well, you won’t get rich. Not at first. Did they tell you I do a trial run?”

  He was considering giving them a chance. Clove squirmed a little and lifted her chin. “No.”

  Trent wiped the corners of his mouth with his dirty fingers. “Well, I’ll give you a couple small shipments. It’ll be to a few cities near the border, but not the hardest places. How much were you getting before?”

  Shit. She never disclosed her amount before hearing what the new job paid first. He could undercut her, hard. “Thirty percent,” she lied.

  He laughed and shook his head. “No, you weren’t. No one’s that good. But I’ll bite. Thirty percent for your first three shipments with me.”

  She slowly dropped her arms to her side. Thirty percent was huge. “With fuel and any repairs to my airship if something happens.”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  Sure? Why wasn’t he more protective of his profits? Was he making so much money that he didn’t care? She licked her lips. “And half of it up front.”

  “You don’t trust me. That’s cute.” He smiled. “Half up front with the rest and a bonus five percent when you land.”

  “Holy shit,” Cayn said under his breath.

  Trent frowned and stood. “If you have enough balls—excuse me.” He gestured at Clove. “Guts, then we could make a lot of money together. You prove yourselves with these first few runs, you’ll get the harder jobs—the wealthier jobs. I have a lot of potential high-end clients that want
my services, and it pays very well. General Orr himself will be shining your boots, your gun, whatever you want if you play it right.”

  “What’s the catch?” Clove slid her hands to her hips.

  He took his time approaching her until his face was inches from hers. He stank of ether-fuel and musk, reminiscent of every tired body in the mines. His brown eyes had specks of amber in them, and his nose was crooked enough that it was obvious it had been adjusted multiple times.

  “The catch is,” he said barely above a whisper, “you take the bonus five percent and spend it on real guns. No guns, no more orders.”

  “Anything else?”

  He eyed her up and down. “If you lose my investment, I take my share… from your skin.” He reached out for her chin. She jerked it away. “I won’t tie you to an anvil and leave you to Bongo. No, I’ll hang you from my crane and peel back that precious skin of yours from head to toe myself.”

  She shivered but straightened her spine. He thought he had her figured out. He thought he could threaten her. Sure, there was a man right next to them suffering from exactly what Trent just threatened, but he didn’t know what she could do. She and Cayn weren’t to be underestimated.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  If he was willing to put his money where his mouth was, she had to be willing to try. And if he laid a finger on her, Cayn would blow his head off. “Deal.”

  Without breaking eye contact, he dug into his pocket and produced a slip of paper wrapped around several bills. Not coins—bills. He grabbed her hand, turned it over, and slapped the paper and money into her palm. “Your first order: pick up the crates from that address and deliver them to Luckless.” He walked off to lean against his desk.

  Luckless? Luckless was a slum, an entire city that rivaled the grime and impoverished nightmare that was Dimmur. It was filled with thieves, murderers, rapists. If it wasn’t the worst side of Ingini, it was at the very least the armpit. Luckless was a lawless, hopeless wasteland where the last bit of humanity had rotted and died. Her other shipping bosses had her avoid Luckless because it was such a risk. Before now, losing the shipment was the least of her problems. Losing airships, losing money, losing life—much more common.

  She bit the inside of her cheek. “Luckless?”

  “Yep. Luckless. Got a problem—”

  “Nope,” she said, perhaps a little too quickly.

  “When you get there, they’ll direct you to an agent of mine. He’ll have the rest of your money and the order for the next run. You can get decent guns there in their market.” He crossed his arms and smiled at her. “I hope you don’t screw it up, but then again, I’m kinda looking forward to it if you do.”

  Before she lost the nerve to turn it down, before she threw the order and all that money at him and told him to suck the end of an ether-fuel hose, she spun and walked out of the hangar as casually as she could.

  “Are you sure about this?” Cayn whispered at her heels.

  “No.”

  “We shouldn’t do this, right? This sounds really, really bad, Clove.”

  “I know.”

  They turned corner after corner. She wanted to get back on Pigyll, back in the pilot’s seat where she felt safest.

  “Clove—”

  “Cayn!” She spun on him. “I know. Okay? I know. This is really screwed up, and I don’t want to die or have my skin peeled off, but we’re not going back to the mines! I can fly. You can shoot. We can do this, okay?”

  He nodded in agreement, but his wrinkled forehead said otherwise.

  Chapter 14

  Spare cabin — Zephyr Airship

  Grier rubbed his face for the hundredth time as he slumped on the edge of his bunk. The stubble on his face was annoying, the blue light was annoying, the cold metal floor was annoying. Everything was annoying. A constant irritation buzzed in his upper chest.

  Training hadn’t helped. Showering hadn’t helped. Cleaning his armor hadn’t helped. Furiously washing his clothes in the sink hadn’t helped.

  He’d run through everything that had gone wrong a million times, but none of it was the source of his frustration, and there was nothing left to beat himself up over. He’d already tortured himself over letting the Glamour fade. It wasn’t Adalai’s fault it didn’t last long, and it wasn’t Kayson’s fault for needing that sigil to save that boy. He wouldn’t have done anything differently in that regard.

  He’d already resolved the fact that he would give his life to protect Emeryss no matter what came for her, especially now that he’d most likely brought the world down on her. But Urla’s plan to wait for word from General Orr was the most logical at the moment, and then they could decide what they’d do after.

  But he was still annoyed, still buzzing from his chest to his hands.

  If Emeryss was a prisoner, then that made him the jailer. Not a protector, not honorable, but her enemy. And why? He didn’t feel that way. Jailers didn’t risk their lives for their prisoners. It hadn’t made sense, but it hadn’t quite left him either. Still, that wasn’t the source of his annoyance. It was something else.

  It wasn’t because he already knew he’d have to talk with Lerissa. She’d most likely tell him to return immediately with Emeryss—regardless of what Emeryss wanted—and she would challenge his ability to keep his oath if it meant letting his Scribe traverse a country on the brink of war. She wouldn’t see reason, just like Avrist.

  A rumble moved through his chest, and he jumped up to pace a tight circle beside the sink.

  Avrist.

  The gall… Scribe of her tribe, the fear of the PR fallout if she’d gotten hurt on Avrist’s watch. No regard for whether she got hurt, only worried how it would look on him. He could have punched Avrist for that alone. But where Avrist was selfish, and he could kick himself in his own ass for not seeing it sooner, Lerissa didn’t worry about Emeryss’s safety either. Not really.

  Lerissa.

  If Grier was honest with himself, Lerissa only worried about his future. Granted, it was her job, but she wanted Emeryss home at the library for his advancement and nothing else. He knew… he knew she wanted Emeryss away from him, ultimately. Was this how she’d do it? By approving Avrist to use whatever means necessary against Emeryss? That would be crazy, and yet… She’d hinted before that Emeryss was a threat to his future. She’d been nervous about their being assigned to each other from the beginning.

  It was shortly after he’d graduated from training, his final sigil still stinging fresh under his bracer. He’d been called into Librarian Jgenult’s office. Jgenult had her black and white hair tied neatly in a bun, and she stood behind an expansive, lacquered highwood desk with her hands clasped in front of her raclar. Captain Lerissa was in full uniform beside her.

  They’d recently assigned him to Emeryss, no more than a week prior, and they’d asked him if he was yet comfortable accompanying her for a home visit to Neeria.

  He groaned into his hands at the memory.

  He’d told the Librarian he wasn’t. To go that far across the country with a life solely reliant on him so soon… He’d been nervous, and the Librarian had understood and said it would be okay. They could postpone it for another time. She could go home in a few months. And then Lerissa had tried to negotiate he be given a different Scribe to protect altogether. The Librarian had laughed at her, told her that her fears were ridiculous, that Grier wouldn’t risk his future over a girl.

  Had Emeryss been refused a trip home for an entire year because of him? Had Lerissa and Avrist been convincing the Librarian not to let Emeryss go home because Lerissa was afraid it would only make Emeryss and him closer? He knocked his forehead against the metal wall beside him and sighed.

  It was stupid for that to be the reason, stupid for Lerissa to worry, because nothing would ever come of it. The commanders would match him up with a favorable lineage, a match he wouldn’t get much of a say in. And as much as the Keeper marriage process bothered him, Avrist, Lerissa, and his future weren’t th
e things annoying him—Emeryss was.

  Rather his feelings for Emeryss were annoying him.

  The line he’d drawn in the sand to keep his feelings locked tight from her was not just because of the Stadhold rule for disallowing Keeper and Scribe non-professional relationships. It wasn’t because his future couldn’t include her, either. Sure, those things made it easier when he told himself not to feel more for her, and it was even reinforced in his mind when he saw firsthand that his feelings might have caused him to act selfishly when Adalai offered to take Emeryss to the ship the first time.

  No, he’d drawn that line to keep himself from breaking. Because what good was something if there wasn’t even the prospect of forever. If he gave in, if he lost to that hunger of his, and then lost her, it’d break him.

  He gripped his chest. He was annoyed with himself…

  He was aggravated because he couldn’t stop thinking about Emeryss’s hug. The line between them was dissolving, at least for him, and his feelings were seeping through.

  His heart twisted remembering her hug and how perfectly she fit against him.

  A hug!

  A non-important, proper hug had him questioning every decision he ever made about not showing her how he felt.

  How stupid is that?

  The longer he spent away from the library, the more time he spent with Emeryss, it was becoming harder to keep those feelings locked in.

  Even if he gave in, broke the rules, told Emeryss how he’d fought showing his feelings for her for a year, Lerissa’s fears wouldn’t come true. He wouldn’t let go of everything he’d worked for to lose everything in his future. But he also couldn’t deny that the rules were becoming harder to follow. And why was he the only one held to them? Lerissa clearly didn’t, and neither did Avrist. Even letting Adalai take Emeryss back to the ship without him was, in a way, bending his own rules…

  No, he didn’t want to throw everything away. It was just harder to hide what he felt, and he was tired of fighting it.

  But what were his options? To continue on like this? Always annoyed with himself for feeling something he couldn’t help? For caring more than he was supposed to? For falling for her…