by Ryan Muree
He’s afraid of something. Just like his fear of heights, saying he needed more time was like another step back from the window.
Adalai and Vaughn Blinked back with a few grimoires in each of their hands. “Back!”
Emeryss steeled her nerves and accepted another book.
Defeated by every grimoire open around her on the path, she groaned.
It didn’t matter the kind of grimoire or the page. She’d chosen the hardest and the easiest of them all, from training grimoires to the specialty books Adalai had stolen from the drawing room. Every single one had ended in the same result—tickling, tingling, a pressure building in her chest so great it nearly knocked her out, and then a pain in the center of her palm until she couldn’t take it.
She’d even checked her wrist for something to appear. Nothing.
She wiped the sweat from her neck and adjusted her grandmother’s silver hair-clip. She was tired, thirsty, hungry… over it. She was over it.
And to make it worse, they were all standing there staring at her, waiting for what was slowly feeling impossible. Her eyes watered.
Grier knelt beside her and handed her a small square piece of white cloth. “Why don’t we take a break?”
She took it and wiped her forehead free of her damp waves. “I can’t do it,” she whispered.
“Well, in all fairness,” he announced, standing back, “when I was learning how to be a Keeper, I had actual trainers. Not observers.”
Adalai made a face at him. “We had to see what she could do. We had to find anything and everything that was possible, first.”
“And you’ve seen that,” he bit.
Emeryss turned to Urla looking down at her from the bench. “What am I doing wrong?”
Urla hobbled up and scooted the fire grimoire back in front of her. “I told you. It’s your thinking. You’re fighting something we can’t see,” she said.
Fighting what, though? Fighting the ether? She was begging for it to comply. It was like she was missing something, some sort of connection.
“Urla.” She pointed to Urla’s walking stick. “Do you need that to cast?”
Urla shook her head. “No, because I am the tool.”
A tool? “Why in the world would you want to be a tool?”
“I’m an instrument for ether to flow through. I don’t need the stick; it and I are one, and it is an extension of me. Grier would understand this best. His weapons are not just things; they’re extensions of him.”
Emeryss looked at the center of her palm. She hadn’t needed the quill to scribe for that boy in Delour, either. The quill wasn’t special. It was just an extension of her.
Vaughn twirled a leaf between his fingers. “Are you thinking like a Scribe?”
“No, Vaughn, that defeats the purpose.”
Adalai stretched and turned her face toward the sky. “It goes back to my Sigilist idea—half-Scribe, half-Caster. Scribing has been part of you your whole life, right?”
No.
Maybe…
“But I had to be trained to use it,” she said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Adalai said. “All Caster children have to be trained, too. Before that, we know ether, how it feels, it’s absence. Did you?”
Before she’d left Neeria, she’d known ether. Her world had only become empty of ether after the sea oracle. Before then, she’d seen the strands swirling in the depths of the oceans on fishing trips with her father. She’d seen it blossom and puff up in the clouds when the storms rolled in. She’d seen it undulate and heard it whisper in her dreams.
“Yes, I knew ether.”
“So, maybe go back to remembering that?”
“To be a Caster,” Urla added, “to be an instrument of ether, means that ether is not just another world you travel to. We never see what you see scribing. We never experience it, and yet, we can tell it how to move, how to bend.”
Adalai gestured to her. “What if you have to think like a Scribe to cast?”
Vaughn rolled his eyes. “I know I asked first, but I was pointing out that it wouldn’t work. Are you saying I could scribe if I thought like a Caster?”
Mykel yawned and stretched back over a small mound of grass. “You have to know how to read and write first.”
“Asshole, I can read and write.” Vaughn chucked a small pebble at Mykel’s stomach. It glowed orange and enlarged to a decent size rock just before its impact. Mykel grunted, picked it up, turned it into a shiny metal, and threw it back at Vaughn. Vaughn caught it and admired the surface.
“Are you going to the ethereal plane when you try?” Urla asked Emeryss.
“No. I was closing my eyes and trying to feel it.”
“Try it,” Adalai said. “I bet I’m right.”
She closed her eyes and sank into the feeling that the world had layers.
It pulled, and she tumbled forward in her mind, following the tug. It led her to the same vibrant expanse she found whenever she’d scribed. Ether floated and stretched into pools with whispers.
The fire grimoire she’d started with was in her lap. The page was open, and the scarlet letters sparkled and stretched to lift off the page and go back into the ethereal realm.
She slammed her palm down to keep the sigil in place. That’s not what they were supposed to do. She was supposed to be taking it up. She wasn’t there to scribe.
Please, she told the ether, please.
The ethereal sigil strained against her, thinning into finger-like strands. It wanted out from under her, it wanted free. It trembled as if she were choking it.
Please, stay still.
But it fought harder, shaking and pushing against the palm of her hand. The whispers grew louder and louder until a ringing echoed around her.
She let out a sob as the glittering sigil thrummed, sputtered, and sparked against her. “Please, just go into my hand!” she shouted.
The whispers stopped, and an eerie silence settled. The ether around her and in the distance stopped moving, too. The sigil popped, crackled, and then burst with a brilliant red light.
She gasped and fell back, tumbling through space and time. Crying out, it felt as if she were falling. There was no stone beneath her or beside her. There was no up or down, but she was falling somehow. Drowning.
She reached up—the only direction she thought was up—and panted for more air. Nothing. Everything stopped again. She was in total darkness.
“Emeryss? Emeryss?” Grier. His voice had cut through like he was shouting from offshore. It was there, but faint and far.
“Can you hear me?”
His voice was getting closer. The other voices were muffled, groggy, still far away.
“Get Kayson,” one said.
“Shit. Are you serious?” another had shouted.
“Emeryss, open your eyes,” Grier’s voice urged her.
And then there was air—fresh, sweet air. She gulped and choked. Her eyes burned, but she blinked them open. Everything was out of focus and hazy. She clawed at the solid form that was like a wall beside her. She grasped it to sit up but couldn’t. She didn’t have the strength yet.
“Stay still for just a second,” Grier said. Soft. Gentle. He was right next to her, holding her against him protectively.
“Grier, now!” Adalai commanded.
“Give her a second,” he shouted back.
“Did it work?” Emeryss asked. It had been absolutely terrible, but the ether had responded to her. It had done something. She had manipulated ether, but had it manifested in the real world?
When she was finally able to blink her eyes clear, Grier’s were right there under thick, worried eyebrows. His messy blond hair dipped down.
“Emeryss, can you see me?” he asked.
The rest of the crew were running back inside the ship, waving at them to hurry up and get inside, too. Something was wrong.
She swallowed. “Did I do it? What’s wrong? Did I hurt the ship?”
Grier helped her to stand. “Co
me on, we have to hurry inside.”
The fans and vents whirred to life. The Zephyr was taking off.
“What did I do, Grier?” Her vision blurred again as a pain arced behind her eyes. She gripped his arm for stability.
He stopped to hold her through the pain. “Are you okay?”
She breathed through it, letting the brief headache pass. “What did I do, Grier?”
His lips were a fine thin line. “You made five little Sparks come out of your fingers. It burnt the page.” He held up a limp little piece of scrap paper where five fingerprints were seared into it. But the sigil was no longer shimmering or red. It was black and skinny like a corpse—the skeleton of ether on a page.
She shuddered. “Five Sparks?”
“Five Sparks,” he said. “Adalai said something similar happened to her when she was a kid. So maybe that’s something.”
That didn’t explain the Zephyr’s crew hurrying to take off. She hadn’t caused something to go wrong with just five little Sparks.
“And Avrist is on to us,” Grier added.
She held his forearm for support as they passed through the double doors into the corridor. “Avrist? He’s here?”
“Not yet. Sonora heard a Stadhold airship. I’m the one who told them to get the Zephyr out of here before he shows up.” He led her around the hall toward the platform.
“You don’t want to see if we can negotiate—?”
“The Zephyrs have to get to the wedding on time. They’d lose half a day if we stopped, and I don’t want them put out any more than they’ve been—”
“Grier, it’s my problem—”
“It’s my responsibility, too. Those were my Keeper brothers that went after you, blindly following that madman’s orders to charge you with their weapons. He’s not willing to talk. He’s already proven that. We’ll let the Zephyrs get to the wedding and take the escort ship out like planned.”
She swallowed and pulled away from him to stand on her own wobbly feet as he punched the panel for the lift to rise up slowly. She cleared her throat. “When I tried it, what did you see?”
He gently shook his head. “Horror. You were horrified. I’ve never seen you so scared. And hurt. You started to cry. I thought it was hurting you, but you wouldn’t come back. Urla thought it might be dangerous to stop you.”
The platform jolted to a stop, but he didn’t move from it.
“And then…” he whispered, looking at nothing in particular, “you crumpled, and you were flailing on the floor and choking on air. You looked like you were drowning. Where were you in your head?” His eyes found hers, eyebrows pulled in.
“The ethereal plane, where I’d always been, but…” Had the whispers kicked her out? Or had she fallen out herself? “It was like drowning but in ether. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see which way was up. It was like an undertow had grabbed me.”
His facial features softened.
“But I did it? I really casted something?”
He gave a partial nod. “I guess… Technically.”
Her heart soared. She’d casted. Technically. It’d taken its toll on her, but she’d done it. She’d done something. She was closer than ever to getting it right. She could feel it. Her destiny was changing.
The Zephyr banked left with an explosive force that threw them against the wall beside them. Her shoulder and side collided against the cold metal, but Grier was there beside her, releasing his shield to protect their heads if anything fell. The sound had been louder than anything she’d heard that first night running from Avrist.
The Zephyr twisted again, shaking violently before slowing.
“He’s here,” she breathed.
That Stadhold ship has done something to the Zephyr. Meet us in the cargo hold, Sonora told them.
She and Grier ran for the stairwell to join the others.
Chapter 18
Cargo hold — Zephyr Airship
Grier leaped down several stairs at a time. The ether-lights above were blinking red in alarm as the metal walls rattled.
He was certain Avrist had found them and caught up. His demands for an explanation from Lerissa over the last few days had gone unanswered. Stadhold was pushing it. If the public knew, they’d be outraged. This wasn’t what they stood for.
He made for the last set of stairs to the bottom level and reached back a sweaty hand for Emeryss again. Her own sheen of sweat from trying to cast had become droplets down her temples and neck. After what he’d just seen, after what she’d just been through, she didn’t deserve to be hunted down like this.
The Zephyr swayed, making their descent through the stairwell annoyingly difficult. Every bank and roll had him wishing he’d left on his armor instead of settling for his flimsy flight suit.
“What are we going to be able to do from the cargo hold?” she shouted.
He wasn’t sure.
They burst through the stairwell doors into the dark, red-blinking corridor before the cargo hold.
The Zephyr rolled right and pitched up.
Emeryss screamed, grabbing some railing along the wall.
He grabbed hold, as well, wrapping an arm around her waist and cradling her against him. When the ship righted itself, his back slammed into the metal grating with their weight. The biting sting and sudden lack of air made him grunt.
“I’m sorry!” She pulled away to get her own footing, but he was scrambling up, too. “Are you okay?”
He’d be fine. It was nothing. Bruises were nothing, and he’d had the wind knocked out of him a thousand times before. “Come on.”
They ran through the doors of the cargo hold into a roar of buffeting wind.
The cargo door had been busted through to the outside. The metal around the enormous hole was twisted at odd angles in a large circular shape, and beyond the hole was a Stadhold airship on their tail. Keepers were seated in the partial-glass cages on either side of the ship’s bridge, shield-arms out and aiming at the Zephyr.
“Is that your Avrist guy?” Mykel shouted over the near-deafening rush of air. His hands were splayed on the part of the cargo door that wasn’t blown apart, letting his golden ether weave new metal to close the hole. But it was massive, at least two bodies wide. It’d take him forever to seal it shut.
Grier squinted. He could barely make out a beige raclar or maybe it was white? It had to be Avrist. It was a Stadhold ship, and he’d been the only one to try to kill them before. “I think so.”
“How did they hit us?” Emeryss yelled with pieces of her hair whipping around her face.
Sonora shook her head. We were up top, but the sound of whatever hit us was so bad, we had to come see.
“What about Vaughn shrinking us again?” Emeryss asked Kayson.
“He’s run out, so he Blinked to your room with Adalai looking for the grimoire you were working on. He’ll still have to absorb the sigil,” he shouted.
Emeryss turned to Sonora. “Tell him it’s under the fire grimoire. Just off the sink.” She turned back to Mykel and Kayson. “Can we hold on while he absorbs it?”
Grier would venture to guess the ship wouldn’t survive another hit like the last one. They’d been lucky it only hit the back door. A hit to any vital part of the ship would have already sent them crashing.
“Can’t you do something?” Tully smacked him on the arm. She was maybe in her early twenties and looking more annoyed than ever.
He looked back at the Keepers. There was no fighting Avrist like this. Grier didn’t have ranged weapons, and Avrist clearly had the advantage.
Inky ether swirled in the Keepers’ hands, the shape of which unclear.
He reached for Emeryss. “Everyone needs to get back! We need to get out of the hold where it’s safer—”
Two metal bolts shot through the cargo hold on either side of the door. The bolts barbed out, anchoring themselves in the wall, and yanked the airship back.
Everyone flailed and tumbled. Emeryss latched on to some metal grating with on
e hand and him with the other before she fell farther forward. His fingers gripped a metal beam in the floor and held enough for both of them.
The others had grabbed the railing and beams, too, but Mykel was struggling near the ruined cargo door. Kayson and Sonora inched their way to him, holding him by his RCA suit so he wouldn’t fall out of the hole he’d been trying to seal.
Jahree got the ship stabilized again, and they all stood cautiously.
The weapons that had been shot at the Zephyr weren’t bolts. They were like harpoons with tethers attached to both anchors now plunged into the metal of the cargo hold.
He urged Emeryss and the others to take a few steps deeper in.
“They’re going to shoot us down,” Emeryss shouted to him.
They weren’t trying to shoot them down. If they couldn’t get Emeryss and him, they’d take the whole ship in.
“They’re trying to pull us in.”
“They can’t. That’s stupid,” Tully said. “We’re bigger.”
They could outlast them though. Stadhold ships were known for efficiency, traveling long distances to deliver grimoires across Revel. RCA ships were built for combat, for agility. Avrist could force Jahree to use all of his ether before Avrist’s pilots ever came close to running out. “They’re trying to burn through Jahree’s ether.”
All of their eyes met his as they considered what he’d said. There was nothing more to do. They were stuck.
Kayson looked to Sonora. “Is Vaughn done yet?”
Sonora’s eyes glazed over as she lifted her chin to the ceiling. Several seconds passed as the vents and fans of the Zephyr ground against the drag of an extra ship. “He’s started absorbing it.”
“We have to get those anchors out,” Emeryss shouted.
“Be my guest,” Tully yelled back.
Grier ran his thumb down the length of his forearm, blossoming his translucent grimoire to life and pulling out a two-handed ax. “I’ll cut us free.”
Emeryss reached for him. “Be careful, Grier.”
The ship lurched again as Avrist had his Keepers ratchet them back. Grier had to cut the tethers, or the ship would give in that much sooner.
