Architects of Ether

by Ryan Muree

Clove shouted something at Jahree that caused Sonora to pause before nodding. Jahree then pulled them higher in altitude.

  He swallowed despite his mouth growing drier by the second. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any of this. His eyes found Emeryss’s. “We’re going to—”

  She shook her head. “Hopefully not, but if we do—”

  Clove shouted something again, and the ship dropped out, sending his stomach into his throat.

  He grabbed Emeryss and pulled her in. She wrapped her arms around him, too.

  “I love you, Grier.”

  His heart broke into pieces. This was a stupidly dangerous thing to do, and he’d gone right along with it. All she wanted was to go home and see her family, and he’d asked her to go along with him, to support him.

  “Stop and look at me.” She pulled him to look her in the eye again.

  If this was his final chance to say something… “I love you too, Emeryss. I always have, and never anyone else.”

  The dark walls of the rift valley cleared the window ahead of them. There was nothing but the bare beach and ocean as far as they could see on either side. All that was left was the crashing part.

  They held each other as the rest of the crew held on as well.

  Fresh alarms at a different pitch echoed through the bridge. They were too close to the ground. It was warning them to pull up. This was it.

  Clove was still shouting instructions to Jahree, who didn’t seem too bothered by it.

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t care about any of it anymore. He nuzzled the top of Emeryss’s head, taking in the scent of her hair, the scent of paper, ink, memories of late mornings and even later nights.

  The Zephyr jerked with a deafening crunch, shaking and creaking, and jarring them in their seats. It slid out and out into the glistening ocean. As it shook and broke apart, metal denting in around them, it barely slowed.

  A wave crashed over the bridge, and everything stopped. Ocean water bubbled up the side, and the Zephyr began falling again.

  Chapter 6

  Ingini-Stadhold Coast

  Adalai recoiled at an ache in her shoulder but managed to undo the straps of her seatbelt.

  “Are we alive?” Mykel shouted, though his voice had cracked.

  Moans and groans echoed through the still-creaking bridge as the remaining few lights blinked out, casting them in darkness save for the fading sunlight reflecting off the ocean.

  “We’re sinking. We need to get out!” Jahree sloshed through the water. “Everyone out now!”

  Seawater wasn’t just pooling into the airship, it was flooding through the metal panels of the hull, seeping in through the seams and the bolts. The Zephyr wasn’t built to float.

  “I can Blink us all out,” Adalai said.

  “All of us? At once?” Mykel asked.

  Jahree and Sonora jumped onto a dashboard panel to reach the escape hatch.

  “Let’s not risk it. Follow emergency protocols, and your Blinking can be a backup,” Jahree said.

  Backup? She wasn’t backup. They were ridiculous.

  Emeryss whispered something to herself, and a beam of light blossomed in her hand.

  The water was already shin deep and freezing.

  Adalai gripped Clove by the arm and pulled her out of her seat. “You alive?”

  “Disappointed?” she grumbled back.

  A little.

  But she wouldn’t let her out of her sight.

  Vaughn climbed through the hatch first. He helped Sonora and Urla up and out after him. Jahree went next, taking Clove from Adalai and lifting her out. Emeryss and Grier went next.

  The cold sea water bit at Adalai’s hips and thighs.

  Mykel looked at her. “Ready?”

  “Go.” She gestured toward the hatch. “I’m the leader. I’m the last to get out.”

  He jumped up, and Jahree and Grier caught him to pull him the rest of the way out of the Zephyr.

  “Come on!” Grier called down to her. “It’s going under, and it’ll pull us, too.”

  She Blinked to the roof and scanned the shoreline. They were far from the beach. They’d have to swim. Several had already swum away from the Zephyr, but Clove was struggling, gasping and thrashing around.

  Emeryss swam toward her, talking and calming her down. She instructed her on how to hold on to her and Jahree, so she’d feel more comfortable with them swimming her onto the shore.

  Adalai fumed. Why work so hard to make her feel comfortable? Why work so hard to help her at all? Let her drown if she couldn’t swim. The Ingini were the reason they were in this mess. It cost them their ship and nearly their lives. She was tired of every last one of the Ingini. Tired of their worthless murdering and victimhood attitudes.

  The Zephyr groaned and popped beneath her.

  “Get away from the ship, Adalai!” Grier shouted from ahead.

  Sonora and Urla had already made it back to the shoreline and stood soaking wet in their flight suits.

  She Blinked forward off the ship, and then again and again, until she caught up to Jahree and Clove. She grabbed Clove’s arm and continued Blinking until she’d reached land practically dry.

  Clove screamed the whole way until Adalai dumped her onto the sand.

  Jahree and the others came running up and panting beside them. “Adalai, stop!”

  How dare he. She jutted a hand out toward Clove. “She is the problem! Her people are the problem. She used to be one of those shipping vessels that just tried to shoot us down. They almost killed us, and you’re telling me to stop?”

  “But we got away,” Vaughn said. “And she didn’t do it.”

  “We are at war. She is the enemy. She is the prisoner. Stop acting like she’s your friend and that we need to worry about her. We are using her. That’s what we do in a war against people who assassinate Casters and annihilate cities of civilians.”

  Clove stood, still coughing up sea water with sand stuck in her wet hair and clothes.

  “She actually saved us, Adalai,” Jahree said. “There were traps in the ravine, breaking apart the rocks as we went through. She was telling me how to navigate through it. She’s the only reason we made it to the beach alive.” Jahree was still panting.

  Grier stepped up, catching his breath. “We don’t have time for this. Aren’t there two other ships coming after us right now?”

  “Yes,” Sonora said. “Those ships will be here any second.”

  “We need to hide,” Jahree said.

  “What’s your plan, Ada?” Urla asked.

  “Just make us invisible, Adalai,” Vaughn said.

  She couldn’t. She could do herself easily enough, but even when she’d bent light around her and Emeryss back when they were trying to escape the library the first night they’d met, it had been extremely difficult. An invisible barrier for all of them would be impossible.

  She shook her head. “It’s not meant for that type of thing.” But if they needed to hide, they’d hide in plain sight. “Vaughn, do you still have the other airship?”

  He pulled out a metal case from his pocket, pried it open, and lifted a tiny grain-sized airship on the tip of his finger. “Yup. Mykel fixed it earlier.”

  “Hurry and enlarge it,” Adalai said. “Then we get in and wait. If they come looking for us, we’ll ambush them.”

  Without another word, Vaughn rested the tiny airship on the sand. “Stand back, people. Stand far back.”

  His amber-colored ether wound its way over the sand and around the airship until the vehicle had grown back to its original size.

  Vaughn had said Mykel had fixed it, but to her, the airship looked like hol-shit—a useless pile of junk. How did it even stay together? Where was the aerodynamics?

  Clove looked like she could cry from happiness.

  “I changed the inside,” Mykel said. “To fit us.”

  They all ran inside the cargo hold where ten bunks were lined up along both sides of the corridor leading to the bridge.

/>   “It’s bigger,” Clove said.

  Mykel nodded.

  On the bridge, the pilot and copilot’s chair sat before a dashboard half the size of the Zephyr’s. But there were eight additional seats behind them. It had been smart planning on his part. She’d have to tell him so.

  The metal still had a disgusting green tint, like everything Ingini—polluted, rotted, trash. Not to mention it was a terrible shape. All round and inefficient. It was an eyesore.

  “They’re here,” Sonora announced.

  Two patrol ships, visible only by their running lights, rounded the corner of the ravine and scanned up the beach.

  “They won’t all get out and search. Their pilots will stay onboard,” Clove whispered, as they all watched through the windows of the airship.

  “So?” Adalai bit.

  “So, once you ambush the ones searching the wreck, the pilots will alert the UA, and there will be a swarm of airships here. The nearest base isn’t that far.”

  Shit. And Clove sounded so pleased with herself, too.

  “Then you die with us,” Adalai said. “They won’t know you’re Ingini when you’re in with a group of Revelians. I’ll make sure of that.”

  Mykel and Jahree were whispering in the corner.

  “What?” she ordered. “What is it?”

  Mykel cracked his knuckles as the searchlights swung closer. “Maybe we don’t ambush them, then. I can create a false wall. Nothing fancy, but we can hide behind it.”

  Adalai scoffed. “This hulking pile of junk on a beach will still get crews down here to search. They’ll probably order it towed off.” She turned to Clove, and Clove actually nodded.

  “Then have Clove sit out,” Jahree suggested.

  “What?” Adalai hissed.

  Mykel began working with the metal already.

  “Let her be the one that’s visible,” Jahree said. “She can talk to them, tell them there’s nothing to worry about—”

  “Are you kidding?” she blurted.

  Even Clove laughed. “Yeah, you think I’m stupid?”

  “She’ll send them on us before you know it,” Adalai said. “We’ll be dead. We’ll be the ones that are ambushed.”

  “Give her a chance.” Jahree’s dark eyes fell on Clove’s, and she shrunk back. “She wants to find her brother. Help us get through all this, and I will keep my promise.”

  “You have to stop her from killing me first.” Clove eyed Adalai.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  “Deal.” Jahree glared at Adalai. “And Adalai won’t kill you because she needs to find those crates and help her country, right?”

  He was being an ass, talking to her like a child. He had a point, he always did, but the fact remained that the alternative wasn’t too smart either. His blind trust could ruin everything or worse.

  “You will get us killed, Jahree,” Adalai said.

  Two beams of light fell onto the ship. Why couldn’t anything go as planned?

  “We don’t have time for this,” Urla pressed, watching Mykel work his ether-weaving.

  “Fine,” Adalai snapped. “But if she sells us out, I’m killing her first.”

  Mykel was halfway through extending a part of the wall. It wasn’t perfectly smooth or solid. Instead, he’d mirrored a pattern with thick grating. They wouldn’t be seen, and it would take less material and time to cast into place—another smart choice.

  “Go ahead and get behind it,” he said.

  Everyone took their places, wedging between the actual wall to Clove’s airship and the new wall he’d made. If he’d done it well enough, the inside would look like a shallower version of itself.

  “They’ve landed,” Sonora whispered. “Four are coming.”

  They all squeezed in tighter, leaving Clove, the Ingini grimoire shipper, free on the other side of the fake wall. It burned Adalai so much it made her want to crawl out of her skin with fury.

  Clove walked up to her old pilot’s chair and sat at the navigation panel.

  Every hair on the back of Adalai’s head stood on end.

  Clove wouldn’t get the chance to screw up or even find her brother. If she ruined this for them, Adalai would kill her first.

  Chapter 7

  Pigyll 2.0 — Ingini

  Clove’s fingers ran over the cool metallic buttons and knobs on Pigyll’s pilot panel.

  She wiped a tear.

  Having Pigyll, her baby, again was almost surreal. So many times, in the last couple of weeks, she’d expected she was never seeing the light of day out of that stupid cargo hold, or she’d thought she would be dead by the next morning. She’d never imagined being back in Ingini with the real possibility of finding her brother again. She’d thought she’d lost everything forever.

  Her fingers found the ignition switch on the side of the dashboard and a panel underneath it. Its cover was ajar. At a weird angle, it was like someone meant it to be open. With her back to the crew still hidden behind the grated metal wall, she pried open the panel with a fingernail and peered in.

  Cayn’s spare ether-gun sat inside. It was the one she’d been searching for when she’d crashed, the one she’d intended to use on Jahree and Mykel when they’d found her. Cayn had put it right next to her seat the whole time. Her heart warmed at his gesture, and relief washed over her.

  Thank you, Cayn.

  She wasn’t a deeply spiritual person, but this… This was like a spirit-damned sign from him, and it meant she could handle this. She’d get her freedom, use Jahree to find her brother, and kill Adalai. Shoot her cold and dead, exactly what she deserved. Adalai thought she was better than the Ingini, better than generations of hard work and dedication. She had another thing coming, and Clove would teach her that lesson the hard way.

  First, she had to convince this patrol she was safe and trustworthy and that she hadn’t sneaked through the Ingini-Stadhold border with a crew of Revelians.

  Voices echoed outside of the ship, calling out for any survivors. She slipped the gun through a loop on the inside of her jumper and pulled up her front zipper a little higher. Her jumper was baggy enough that neither the UA nor her Revelian captors should have noticed it there. Hopefully.

  She hopped out of the seat and met two beams of light and four faces of UA members. Their black jumpers had bright silver clasps. Their uniforms had been trimmed in silver, and their dark hoods were drawn up over their heads—border patrol. They stared at her.

  She blinked and held up her hand to block the light.

  “Identification,” one ordered.

  “Shipping pilot out of Ethrecity.” She swallowed, recalling Pigyll’s identification number for them.

  “You’ve landed in an active area outside Fort Wretched,” one said, clearly pissed.

  “I-I’m out of fuel,” she lied.

  “How did you make it all the way out here, then?” another asked.

  “I, uh…” She squinted in the light and stepped closer, feeling the eyes of the Revelians staring at her through the grate. “I had just finished making a delivery from Fort Wretched when I saw a ship fly by. It nearly took me out, but it crashed into the ocean.”

  “Is that why you’re wet?” the first man asked, aiming the beam of light in his hands at her legs and back up to her eyes.

  She couldn’t make out any of their faces, so she turned her head, peering through the fingers in her lifted hand. “I went to see who it was, but it was too late.”

  “Good thing,” another said, stepping forward. “It was a Revelian ship. We’d followed it through the valley.” This young man was tall with a slightly crooked nose. He had familiar olive eyes under thick dark eyelashes. His skin, even in the ether-generated light, was tan and youthful. He was strong, wide, tall—just like Mack.

  “Lark?” she asked. “Is that you?”

  A grin spread across his thin lips as her identity must have dawned on him. “Clove? Little fiery, baby Clove? Are you shitting me?”

  Mack’s older brother walked
up and wrapped two big arms around her, and she reciprocated.

  Back when they were all in Dimmur, she would have told him to get lost. Before, she would have punched him in the gut for even touching her. He’d tried several times when they were growing up. But it’d been too long, at least a decade, since she’d seen him last, and this time was different.

  She took an easy breath and pulled away. If the idiots behind the wall got any bad ideas about her and him, however, they’d come out half-cocked, and everyone would die.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

  “Uh, I kinda got into a situation running crates into the bases…” she whispered. “The money is really good, though.” At least it was until everything went to shit, but hopefully, it helped sell the story.

  He nodded.

  “Mack didn’t tell me you’d joined up with the UA.”

  He waved the rest of his team on. “It’s good, guys. I got this.”

  “We have to get her deeper inland and out of the valley—”

  “I know her, and she’s not trouble,” Lark said. “Go get the damn hoses, and we’ll lend her some fuel.” He turned back to Clove and leaned in to whisper. “Of course, my little brother wouldn’t tell you I joined the UA. I swear he’d tattoo Mines or Die on his ass if I let him.”

  She laughed. It felt good. Seeing someone she knew, someone who’d cared about her when she thought she was never getting out of that cage.

  “Where’s Cayn?”

  The air caught in her lungs. Tears almost came forth and gave her away. “Back in…” He’s not dead. He’s not dead. “Back in Fort Damned. I left him there.”

  “Really? You two were never apart.”

  She nodded and swallowed the sobs and tears creeping up. “He, uh, found an officer he liked and asked for a short vacation.”

  Lark shook his head and laughed. “Why am I not surprised? Has Mack gotten in contact with you?”

  “Not since I’d left.” She was eager to move the conversation to a different topic.

  Lark sighed. “Last I checked, he was still refusing to move out of Dimmur.” He eyed her carefully. “I’ve offered him money, a place to live topside, a better job, and he’s adamant about staying in Dimmur. Any clue why he’d want to stay down there?”