Kingdoms of Ether (Kingdoms of Ether Series Book 1)

by Ryan Muree

  Adalai’s response had been too quick, earning Urla’s knowing glare.

  “He’s really okay with us carrying a Scribe to Marana? It could be extremely dangerous just being there,” Sonora said.

  “Or might not be. It might be nothing,” Vaughn said. “I hope it’s not nothing.”

  “That’s a good point. What if something goes wrong?” Grier asked.

  Tully leaned back and sighed. “You’re already there to protect her, stupid.”

  Adalai shrugged. “Worst-case scenario, I don’t think anyone here would be opposed to you lending a hand and bashing in some Ingini.”

  Vaughn’s face lit up. “That would be awesome to see.”

  “I meant about Orr agreeing to send her to Neeria instead of Stadhold.” Urla wouldn’t let up.

  Adalai swallowed hard and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “He… was concerned when I told him that she was being held prisoner. He doesn’t approve of that unless you’re an enemy, and to him, she’s not Ingini. So, he wouldn’t stand in the way of where she was originally headed. He didn’t want to get in the middle of Stadhold’s problems—”

  “But he’s doing exactly that,” Kayson said. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  Urla squinted at her.

  This was a mess. She had almost no practice lying. Usually, she was getting dirty looks for telling the truth. She’d have to tell Sonora privately, so she could then share it with the others. But she’d have to hope they didn’t spill it to Emeryss before they arrive—specifically Tully just to be a tart-hole and Vaughn just by being Vaughn.

  No, it was only a few days. It was better she held on to the truth herself. She had to make the plan sound okay for a few days, and when she was on Orr’s escort, it’d be too late for the truth to matter.

  “It’ll be fine,” Adalai said. “We just need to do what we’re told. We have no other choice.” She wiped her palms on her pant leg and exhaled sharply. “Emeryss, since we have almost a week until you leave, I’ll train you the whole time, extra hours and everything. We all can.”

  Emeryss smiled thinly.

  “You can.” Tully stood to leave. “The rest of us shouldn’t waste our time. We have real jobs to prepare for, including absorbing sigils from more grimoires we’re owed.” She turned toward Adalai with her small round head and child-like features. She had done it on purpose. It was harder to scream and yell and threaten to kill someone when they were pretending to be a little kid. “You can’t make someone into something they’re not… or something they’ll never be.” Tully walked out of the bridge.

  Spirits, I hate her.

  “If I’m going home, you can visit me whenever you want to give me extra lessons,” Emeryss said.

  The others started to leave the bridge, as well. Though Urla stayed behind, staring her down. She ignored her. Urla would learn the truth eventually, and then she’d understand why Adalai couldn’t say it right then.

  “It’s not the best plan I’ve heard from Orr, but it’s smarter than her staying, I guess,” Vaughn said before turning out.

  Emeryss stepped up. “He’s right, and I’m sorry, Adalai, if I don’t look thrilled. I’m grateful, but I’m nervous. I’m excited, really. You guys have done so much for me already. Thank you.”

  Adalai nodded half-heartedly.

  Could she let Emeryss leave on a different transport out, and just tell Orr that she’d run away on her own? Orr had said they’d be grounded and pulled in if Emeryss wasn’t on his ship—but he didn’t mean literally his ship, right? He could have meant that she had to be out of there and no longer their liability. So…

  Her heart raced a little faster. She knew what he’d meant. He was pretty forgiving when it came to her, but even thinking about going against this was too much. She had to put Emeryss on his airship. She had to tell Emeryss its destination was Neeria instead of the imprisonment and punishment she’d run from. She had to do this to save herself.

  “Is that okay, Adalai?” Emeryss asked.

  “Huh?” She refocused.

  “I asked if you want to get started practicing now?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

  Casting might help her feel better about her insides squeezing so tightly they might strangle her.

  Chapter 16

  Tier 2 — Luckless — Ingini

  Clove exhaled loudly. “Well, we landed at least.”

  Her skin crawled as the trails of stolen airships, sputtering engines, and reckless airbikes littered the sky. She’d nearly hit two on the descent. They’d been sure to let her know by screaming and pounding on her windshield like animals.

  “I don’t hate this place as much as you do,” Cayn said from the seat beside her. “The shopping is good. Did I ever tell you about the time I came with Marika to pick up—?”

  “Two cans of ether-fuel and a heli-awl. Yes, and I still don’t know what a heli-awl is—”

  He opened his mouth.

  “—and I still don’t care.”

  After two knocks on the side wall, she hopped up to greet the flight controller. She popped open the latch, and the cargo hold’s doors hissed open.

  “Airship identification number,” a bald man ordered with a tinge of annoyance. He was in a dingy flight suit with stains and frayed hems. His clipboard had to be a hundred years old—his nibbled down pencil certainly was. He wouldn’t have looked like the flight controller if it wasn’t for the patch on his chest saying so. He was probably the most official, legal thing in Luckless.

  Clove rattled off Pigyll’s identification code, her name, Cayn’s name, and their purpose. “I’m looking for a Crund-nut?”

  The man adjusted his small round glasses but squinted at her anyway. “It’s pronounced Kroo-nu. And that’s me.”

  Cayn sauntered up beside her.

  They shared a quick, tense glance before she turned back to Crundnut. “I’m from Trent—”

  The flight controller rushed forward, nearly in her face. “Shut your damn mouth,” he spat under his breath. After looking over both shoulders at no one in particular behind him, he leaned in. “Next time, add a T—for Trent—at the end of your ship’s identification number.” His breath smelled like ether-fuel.

  She fought back gagging. “Got it.”

  “You got the order, too?” he whispered.

  She pulled the slip from her pocket and handed it over.

  He scanned it, then her, and sneered. “This is a fake.”

  “What?”

  “It’s fake. He doesn’t pay this much to his top pilots, and you’re a damned meat-stick—not even baked.”

  “Baked?” Cayn crossed his arms.

  “Seasoned, cooked.” Crundnut rolled his eyes. “Experienced?”

  That was beside the point. She couldn’t give a damn how experienced these guys thought she was. It wasn’t a fake, and that was a hundred times more important.

  “It’s close, but it’s not real. Try again with someone dumber than me.” He went to hand it back to her, but she refused.

  “It’s not a fake. Look again.” She pointed at the paper.

  “I don’t have time for this, kid.”

  “I came straight here from Trent in his hangar while he had an enormous henchman skin a man alive. I’m not returning to him until I’ve dropped this off, get paid the rest of my money, and finish my trial runs.”

  He evaluated her with shifting, beady eyes.

  “Look again. It’s real.”

  He scanned the order again. “And I’m telling you, this looks like his normal slips, but it can’t be. It’s too much money. He wouldn’t have risked this on you.”

  “You sure about that?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, unless you’ve got something he needs—” He paused. “He let you watch his partner skin a guy?”

  His partner? Bongo was hardly a partner. More like a lackey. “Yeah, they were skinning a guy named Lyle.”

  Crundnut scrunched his shoulders to his ears and made a
face like drinking sour apterick milk. “Lyle. Damn. I knew he’d get screwed. All right, I’ll get you your money.” He walked out of the cargo hold, whistled and waved his hands at someone, and came back to them. “If he let you watch Lyle get skinned, then I believe you. But I stand by the fact you still have something he wants.”

  She shivered. He’d better meant good business because that’s all she was willing to give him.

  Three men walked in with special carts to lift and move the crates off Pigyll.

  “And the money?” Cayn reminded Crundnut.

  “Ah!” He lifted his left finger—it had been cut off at the last knuckle—and pulled out a slip of paper with the other. He scribbled on it with his shriveled-up pencil, tore off the corner, and handed it over. “Go there.”

  She looked at the paper, unable to read his bird-scratch handwriting. “What’s this?”

  “Take it to the Casher.” He walked out of the cargo hold and glanced back. “As soon as you do, get this ship out of here before we strip it.”

  “I hate Luckless,” she grumbled loud enough for Cayn to hear.

  Cayn smiled. “I think it’s kinda fun. Much better than your new boss, and you wanted to live dangerously. Crumb-nuts just gave you a little taste.”

  She chuckled and smacked him on the arm. “Let’s go get rich.”

  “After you.”

  Clove wasn’t interested in sight-seeing or browsing the cluttered dirt streets of Luckless’s half-constructed city.

  At one point in its past, the city had attempted to create cloud-scraping buildings like in Ethrecity. They’d had the funds, they’d just lacked the vision and the management. It left half-built eye-sores and crumbling streets, and they’d never cared enough to fix it.

  Like its cramped streets and mismatched offices with jagged walls, everything about Luckless was a gamble.

  No, being in its airspace was a gamble, being on foot was idiotic, and looking for a banker after parking your perfectly good airship in one of its hangars was damn near suicide.

  She’d stuffed the new order in her pocket and kept her right hand securely at her hip next to it. Every second spent on the streets increased the risk of getting scammed, mugged, or worse.

  “I think it was this way.” Cayn led them around another corner.

  He was trying his best to remember, but they’d been walking around the same square three times. Her skin was starting to crawl with the eyes of the locals on her every move.

  Like fish upstream, she and Cayn struggled against all the bodies moving through the center of the city. Gritty, smelly, and gripping a bottle of ethyrol in at least one hand, the outliers propping up the orange-brick walls stared them down. Clove was starting to recognize them as they went around and around, and that was bad news. If she was able to remember them, then they were definitely recognizing her. It was asking for trouble.

  “Cayn, can we please figure this out soon?”

  He scratched his chin where the scruffy stubble was getting darker. “Yeah, I think I was right the first time.”

  He’d said that twice already, but she followed him down an alley anyway.

  Dark and damp, the walls of the buildings on either side were built so lopsided, the one on the left was bracing up the other and completely blocking out the light from the sky.

  Cayn walked up to a single window with a green neon sign above it, and a rotund man with a mustache with half-moon eyes glared back at them.

  “We’re looking for the Casher?” Cayn asked.

  The man coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “All right. How much?”

  Cayn looked back at Clove, so she pulled Crundnut’s slip from her pocket.

  “I’m not taking written bets.” The man waved them off. “The races today aren’t a big pot. We’ll open bets for the weekend tomorrow.”

  Clove’s shoulders drooped. This wasn’t where they were supposed to be. They’d have to ask someone, give a little more away, or they’d never find who they were searching for. She shrugged at Cayn. “We don’t really have a choice.”

  Cayn leaned a little more into the man’s window. “I don’t think you understood me. We’re looking for the Casher. We have an order from the hangar—”

  The man coughed and pounded the counter. “Dumb ass, I’m the Casher. I take bets. You’re looking for the Cacher.”

  Cayn blinked his blue eyes. “I don’t—”

  “Cache… as in hidden goods. He’s around the corner.” The man’s sausage fingers pointed to the end of the alley and then slammed a metal grate down.

  Cayn jerked his fingers back before they were cut off. Without missing a beat, he smiled at her. “Ready?”

  She sighed, and they headed down the alley toward the Cacher.

  “You think that Crumb-nuts did it on purpose?” Cayn adjusted his jacket.

  “Probably.” She surveyed the buildings left and right.

  With no empty space, every spot that could be made into a business had been. They’d even passed a woman handing steaming buns out of an arm-width door. Her entire storefront had been a hole big enough for her tray, one oversized bun drizzled in sweet syrup, and her arm. Maybe the size of her window was intentional.

  “You think it reduces the chances of her being robbed?” Cayn asked.

  In Luckless? Probably not.

  At the end of the street, they’d found the right window with a similarly shaped man and a similar expression.

  “The Cacher?” Cayn asked him.

  The man nodded and held his hand out.

  Clove swallowed and passed the slip to him. While cracking her knuckles, she chewed the inside of her lip. If he accused this one of being a fake, as Crundnut had, they were screwed. He’d taken their only slip of paper, and she’d bet he wouldn’t give it back.

  Please, don’t make this difficult.

  The man huffed in amusement, reached over to the side, and produced a dark brown envelope. “Your instructions for your next drop.”

  Clove exhaled, and Cayn looked back and sneaked a smile to her.

  “It’s due in forty-eight hours,” the man said.

  “Forty-eight hours?” Clove exclaimed. Was there no break in between? How would they buy guns fast enough and get them installed in time? And what about rest? “What about flight regulations? I’ve been flying for two days straight.”

  The man reached to take the envelope back.

  Cayn yanked it first before the man could. “Do you want to be strung up and skinned?” he asked her.

  “I was kinda hoping you’d just shoot him in the head…”

  “You agreed. The money is good. We have this. We’ll get what we need and deliver it. We’ll be okay.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “Okay. All right.”

  Cayn slipped the envelope inside his jacket.

  The man then undid a latch on a small chamber to his right, twisted some knob back and forth, opened three more doors, and handed over a small black bag through his window.

  It looked to have some weight to it. Coins? Or rolled bills?

  Rolled bills would be insane. She almost got giddy over the possibility of rolled bills in that bag.

  Please. Please.

  “You’ll have to take your airship to the other hangar on the west side for your pickup. Trent doesn’t trust the same flight controller to monitor what comes and what goes out.”

  Cayn snatched up the black bag. “Understood. Thank you, sir.”

  The man didn’t respond.

  “Can you give us directions to the market?”

  He pointed back down the alley from where they’d come. That wasn’t a good sign, but it didn’t matter. They’d gotten paid. They’d gotten their next order. Their money was good anywhere.

  She took the black bag, her fingers feeling around it before she stuffed it in her flight suit. Her heart wanted to leap from her chest. Not coins. Three perfectly rolled bands of bills. She’d felt them. Three. Not one, but three.

&nbs
p; Three thousand bills. It’d been eons since either of them had seen anything like it—and definitely not as much.

  Cayn whistled. “You ready to spend it on Pigyll?”

  She smiled. “Yes, but—”

  A man crashed into her shoulder, knocking her to the ground and ripping the bag of money from inside her suit. He darted on down the street.

  “Shit, Cayn!” She jumped up and tore off down the alley after the thief. He wasn’t much taller than her, wasn’t much bigger, either. His black jacket flapped behind him under a shock of neon-orange hair.

  “Cayn! Shoot him!” she called back.

  The thief tossed crates and trash from the alley behind him to slow her down. She wasn’t that fast, she wasn’t even that agile, but she wasn’t letting him get away with all of her money. She leaped and slid around the fallen items.

  “Cayn!” she screamed back at him. “Come on!”

  If he was stuck worrying about making love instead of war at a time like this, she’d kick him in the ass.

  The thief leaped on top of a dumpster and took hold of a rusted ladder a foot above his head.

  She slid to the dumpster, not tall enough to make the leap to the ladder. She’d never catch him now.

  He was like a chardle from old kid stories, scaling the ladder, leaping from crumbling balcony to balcony. She tried to catch her breath and hide the burning at the corner of her eyes.

  Man, she hated Luckless. So much money gone, and she should have known this would happen, too. If Cayn would have just shot his damn weapon, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

  It was her fault, too. They’d gotten the wrong place, initially, and had stood there too long. They’d probably been followed and watched the second they’d walked into the city.

  Cayn lifted his arm, gun in hand. He’d popped up the sight, and the ether whirled to life in its canisters.

  She squinted back up at the thief’s final stretch to the roof of the building. “Cayn, it’s too late.”

  Cayn pulled the trigger anyway, and bright blue ether shot out toward his target with a slight thump as it exited the gun.

  The thief stopped, fell back, and bounced between metal stairs and bars all the way down until his body hit the ground with a crunch.