by Ryan Muree
“But to pretend, right? You’re not an actual Ingineer?” Emeryss asked.
Lana shook her head.
“Did they work?”
Lana shrugged. “Probably not, but it felt like sometimes they did.”
They either did or they didn’t.
“How is that possible?” she asked.
Lana signed, “I once scribed a sigil that would make my mother not ask me to do the dishes anymore. She never asked me again. My oldest sister had a bully in school. I scribed a sigil that she had a big old golem protecting her, and the bully should be afraid of it. The other little girl left her alone. They worked.”
“But how?” Emeryss asked.
Clove rolled her neck on her shoulders. “No offense, Lana, but I think that sounds more like a coincidence than anything.”
Lana shook her head and signed, “If you think about it, it should work the same. They’re just symbols. They don’t really mean anything. A circle here, a square here, a dot there. We accept what they do, and we’ve learned to read them. I had over forty sigils created and memorized. I knew what they all meant and what they’d create even if I couldn’t get them all to work. It was the point. Understanding ether was a tool.”
A tool. There it was again.
Emeryss didn’t need a page of m’ralli paper to scribe. She didn’t need a grimoire to be a Caster.
She looked at Clove. “So, Lana’s saying that we don’t need to find the Teleport ether or even ask for it, it’s just there and it’s what we make it? That seems incredibly dangerous if that’s how it worked.”
Lana tucked her chin in, confusion written across her eyes and thin lips. “Why?”
“Because Scribes would be incredibly powerful,” Emeryss replied. “Not only able to access ether like that and bring it into reality, but to manifest whatever they want.”
“How do you know you’re not already doing that?” Lana asked with a smug grin.
Emeryss looked to Clove and back to Lana. “Because I hear whispers.”
“I do, too,” Clove said, nodding.
“How do you know,” Lana said, hands and fingers moving rapidly, “that it’s not just you projecting what you want?”
Emeryss took a deep breath and swallowed. “I don’t know that.”
Hoots and hollers came from the pasture behind them, and they turned to find Grier finally riding an apterick, though the apterick was running extremely fast.
Jahree and Mack had left him to his success and joined them.
“You should try it,” Lana said.
“I don’t know if that’s something we can afford to try right now,” Clove replied.
“Try what?” Mack asked.
Emeryss turned to Jahree. “Lana’s saying that when she was inventing sigils when she was younger, that though not all of them worked, some did, and she’d just made them up.”
Jahree tilted his head. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Believing is key,” Lana signed. “That’s the whole point. You believe in the Goddess of Death since you’re Neerian?”
Emeryss nodded.
“Have you met her? Do you know she’s real?”
Emeryss shook her head. “No, but I feel like I know she’s real. We have histories and stories passed down through generations.”
“That’s enough to tell you she’s real, and you believe she comes and carries the dead to the otherworld. Maybe believing is all we need. Maybe the whispers aren’t the ether. Maybe the whispers are you.” Her index finger was jutted out in Emeryss’s direction.
Emeryss looked to Clove. “But then how could I read everyone else’s sigils? How are we all coming up with the same thing that we all understand when we see an illusion sigil or an air sigil?”
Jahree shrugged. “Maybe it’s something collective. You say you see ether everywhere when you go in your trance. Maybe it’s just something we all know and understand subconsciously? Maybe someone decided it at first and the information spread.” He scratched his cheek. “This is getting deep. Will it help us figure out the Teleport?”
“I’m trying.” Clove took a deep breath. “Let me try again.”
She closed her eyes with a piece of paper in one hand and a stick-pen in the other. The paper sat effortlessly in her palm. It barely fluttered, even with very little supporting it.
“Teleport,” she whispered to herself. “Teleport.”
“Tell the plane what you want. Not us,” Emeryss encouraged. “Visualize it in your mind.”
Lana nodded to her.
“Visualize what you think the sigil would look like if it were to Teleport something somewhere,” Emeryss added with Lana’s urging.
Clove’s hands worked the sigil at great speed. Arcs, swirls, dots. It was gorgeous. It was definitely closer to Teleport, but the hashes on the sides were different, stroked harsher and more commanding like she’d interfered in the middle of a choreographed dance with her own steps.
Emeryss looked at Lana, and Lana smiled.
Anything was possible?
If Scribes could produce any sigil, if Scribes could make anything from ether, they’d be extremely dangerous.
Grier’s hollering at the apterick to go easy on him echoed behind her.
Grier. Keepers.
Keep-ers.
Scribes would be extremely dangerous to those in power and in control. But if the Scribes never found out, if they never knew, then they could be kept away in a little box from the world, never let out, never allowed to reach their full potential, serving a life sentence to others.
Clove gasped and blinked her eyelashes repeatedly. “This is it. This is it. I know it.” She handed over the paper to Emeryss and Jahree. The sigil glittered in perfect magenta script.
“It looks like Teleport to me,” Emeryss said.
Clove breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.
“Now, let’s test the coordinates.” Emeryss slipped into her trance, the world clouding over with a colorful inky haze. Ether was in all of them, moving through the clouds above their heads and the grasses at their feet. The paper pulsed with ether.
She copied every crass stroke and uneven line just as Clove had made it. The sigil hovered on the air, and when it was complete, she touched it…
Blackness.
She closed her eyes and opened them. She was back in the airship beside Kimpert.
Kimpert wheeled back and screamed at her sudden arrival.
She’d done it. Clove had finally done it.
Chapter 32
Pigyll — Ingini
Grier sat on the edge of the bunk and rubbed the sigils on the skin beneath his bracer. The muscles in his forearms, thighs, and ass hurt from riding aptericks all day. They hurt in a new way that training with weapons for years hadn’t accomplished.
Jahree was flying Pigyll as fast as he could back to Sufford, where Adalai and the others were supposed to meet them, hopefully with a day to spare before the launch.
But it wasn’t the burn of tired muscles or the tight deadline that bothered him.
Sure, they’d be arriving just before the launch, but if they could pull this off, he’d have so much information to report to Stadhold, so many truths that needed to be said and discovered.
Maybe he didn’t need to fear what he’d say to the Librarian and his mother. Maybe they needed to fear what he was going to ask.
“What are you thinking about?” Emeryss sat next to him on the bunk, her sweet m’ralli scent following her.
Clove propped herself against the wall across from them.
Emeryss had done the unthinkable. She’d been a Scribe and had become a Caster. A Caster who didn’t need grimoires. She’d proved ether was in everything, everywhere, and had started training Adalai on how to do it, too.
Clove had taught herself to scribe, and with Emeryss’s help had learned to change sigils.
“Nothing is what it seems.” He looked into Emeryss’s golden eyes, sparkling at him with a soft smil
e.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, everything. I mean Ingini wasn’t as bad as we thought. Revel wasn’t as good as we thought. Stadhold has to have their hands in it, and they need to tell the whole truth about… everything.”
“You said you want to go back and figure out their role and what they need to do moving forward.” Emeryss took his hand. “That’s a good idea.”
“It’s not just that.” He gestured at Clove. “Lana taught you that the sigils don’t even really matter. You’re breaking the rules and laws to ether, and you don’t understand how big of a deal that is.”
Clove shrugged. “I’m new to it. So, to be honest, I didn’t even know the rules existed.”
“It’s probably why she took to it so quickly,” Emeryss said. “But yes, Grier, I understand the ramifications of everything we’ve achieved. You said it makes you excited to see what the countries are capable of—”
“It does, but…” He took a deep breath. She didn’t get it. She didn’t understand what it meant—what it could mean—for him. “All Keepers are told that we can only have seven sigils on our bodies. We’re told by the Sigilists branding us that more than that would put too much strain on us.”
Emeryss rested her warm shoulder against his. “You’re not believing that anymore.”
“Why should I?”
“Have you seen this done before? Have you seen Sigilists brand more than seven sigils on a Keeper and it ended badly?” she asked.
Of course, he hadn’t. He’d just believed it, accepted it, took it as truth. “I’m not sure of anything. You broke the ‘rules,’ and it’s uncovered so many more possibilities for everyone… for me.”
She leaned in. “Why does that sound like it upsets you? Doesn’t that excite you?”
“It’s too many things to face at once.”
The idea that he could be more, a better Keeper—no, a stronger soldier for Stadhold—did excite him. It was all he wanted to get him a better chance at serving on the High Council. But it was a lot to take in with endless possibilities.
“If I can have more sigils, then I can have more weapons. Or is it just weapons? Can I be a Caster, too? And why? Why lie to us? Why keep it from us?”
“You said yourself before we left for Ingini that it’s not safe that anyone know I can cast without grimoires because of power. People want power.” Emeryss placed her hand on his thigh, the warmth and love radiating through. “Lana said the whispers I hear might be myself telling me the sigils. And at this point, who knows? But even if it is too much to face, we have to push forward and find the truth.”
“I agree, but what are you going to do with it?” he asked, finding those golden orbs shining up at him again.
She shrugged. “I guess I’m going to try to invent new sigils? I don’t know. But I think it’s smart to test your limits, too. We all need to.”
He wanted to. “I need the Sigilist to try to put another brand on me.”
“Where is this Sigilist?” Clove asked.
“Stadhold,” he said. “We have two. One’s very old, and the other isn’t old enough to take over.”
“So, not anything you can try right now?” she asked.
Grier glanced up at Clove.
She shook her head. “I don’t like that look.”
“You’re a Scribe,” he said. She could do it, technically. His gaze sought Emeryss. She’d know what he was thinking.
Emeryss looked back and forth between them, eyes widening. “The medium doesn’t matter.”
“What are you looking at me for?” Clove asked.
“You can be a Sigilist,” Emeryss said. “Because the medium doesn’t matter. You could be a Caster one day like me, but that took insane practice and I nearly killed myself—”
“No, you did kill yourself,” Grier corrected. “But a Sigilist…”
Clove shook her head. “Still not following.”
“A Sigilist is a Scribe, but on skin,” Emeryss said. “You’d be scribing on his skin.”
“What?” She waved them off. “Look, I’m still not sure I like Revelians, but I’ve actually come around to most of you in this group, and I’m not too keen on carving sigils into your arms. It sounds torturous.”
“Who’s being tortured?” Mack walked up beside Clove.
“They want me to scribe on Grier’s skin.”
Mack glanced over at Grier’s exposed arm and smirked. “Go for it. Most it would do is hurt. I’m sure he can take it.”
“I can,” he said. He’d been beaten in training, cut and bruised. Branding was painful, but a few little scratches wouldn’t be that bad. It wouldn’t be too much for him. He’d make sure of it.
“You should be honored,” Emeryss said to Clove sarcastically. “He wouldn’t even let me try to be a Sigilist on him.”
“That was before,” he defended. Before he knew there were truths to be learned. He held out his arm. “Please, Clove. I need to know. Just your being able to do it would tell me the Sigilist lied.”
Emeryss placed a hand on his shoulder. “It doesn’t mean the Sigilist lied. It just means someone lied, and maybe to them.”
“No way.” Clove shook her head. “What if I royally screw up how your other sigils work or your ability to be a Keeper at all? What if I kill you? Then Emeryss and Jahree and Adalai will all kill me. No way.”
“I don’t believe that’s how it works,” he said. “I’m not changing what I am, I’m just adding to it.”
“Still,” Emeryss said, “she has a point. I lost my ability to scribe, technically.”
“And you became something better, something more,” Grier said.
“We’re about to go take out the biggest ship in Ingini,” Clove said. “Can we really afford you being possibly dead?”
He glared at her. “I’m not going to die, and besides, you’re the star of the show. I can’t get into the hangar like Adalai can. I can’t switch the sigils in the dashboards. This is all you.”
She exhaled through her nose forcefully.
She was considering it.
“Look, we’ve got a few more hours to Sufford,” he continued. “Then it’s back to Revel, and we go our separate ways. I may never get another chance like this.” He was strong enough, he just needed her to try. “Emeryss faced her truths and came out better for it. I can, too.”
Mack nodded. “I think you should do it, Clove. I mean, he’s practically begging.”
Clove shrugged and shook her head, hands up in the air. “I don’t even know how it’s done.”
“I’ll walk you through it,” Grier said.
“You can do it, Clove,” Emeryss added.
Clove looked to Mack one more time. He nodded her on, and she groaned with an eye roll. “This is insane. Fine. What do I need?”
“A knife.”
Mack pulled out a device from his back pocket that folded out into a longer blade. “Here.”
“Is that Scuffle’s?” Clove asked.
Mack shrugged. “I figured I might need it to kill these guys if they double-crossed us.”
She yanked the small blade from his hand. “What do I do? Do I just start carving?”
Grier rolled his sleeve farther up his arm. “No, I need to decide where first.”
“Not on your arm?” Emeryss asked.
“If I’m going to report the grimoires and everything to Stadhold, I don’t exactly want them to notice it. My mother included.” He hated how that sounded and ignored Mack’s mocking huff. “Not at first, at least.”
“Your stomach? Your back?” Mack offered.
“It needs to be somewhere I can access it, and ideally in the middle of a fight,” he said. “Something I can see and reach to activate.”
“But not on your arm?” Clove asked.
“What about your finger? Like the tip of your finger or something,” Emeryss offered.
He looked at his palm and his fingertips. It could work. At worst it would look like a smudge. It’d be
accessible during a fight, and it was easily visible to him. “Put it on my shield arm.” He held out his left hand to Clove.
“Which finger?” she asked, still refusing to take his hand.
“My middle one. It’s the easiest to grab with my other hand,” he said.
“You think you’d activate it the same way as the others?” Emeryss asked.
He shrugged. He didn’t know, but he’d face that issue when it came. First, he needed to be branded to see if he could handle it. That was the first obstacle. “I’ll figure that out next.”
Clove shook her head. “This is so stupid. Do I just carve something in it?”
He needed something useful. If it did work, he’d want it to help him be better, stronger than the other Keepers.
“Another weapon?” Emeryss suggested.
He shook his head. “A Caster sigil.”
Emeryss’s eyes grew wide. “That’s a huge leap.”
“I’m just wanting to see if I can handle it, and Caster sigils are all Clove has practiced. I have to try.”
“So, which one?” Mack asked.
“I wouldn’t waste it,” Emeryss said. “Pick something you’d actually want in case it works.”
Clove scoffed. “I’m fairly certain it won’t.”
The sigil needed to be something that would set him apart. Something to get around the field quickly. He wasn’t trained in long-range weapons, and he was best up close. Some way to get up close quickly wouldn’t be bad.
“Blink?” he asked.
Emeryss shook her head. “Adalai is used to it, but everyone knows how jarring it is. I imagine not knowing precisely how you’re going to land when you get out of the Blink isn’t helpful in melee combat, and Ingini are probably trained on where to look for the Blink’s destination like you are.”
Then something to slow things down.
“Urla’s Burst,” he said.
Clove and Mack wore blank expressions, but Emeryss nodded with her dark eyebrows raised. “That could work. She moves quickly and claims it looks like everything else is moving slow.”
“That way I can predict how everyone moves before they do it. I can be faster than them, reach them before they realize I’m there. Urla’s Burst. That’s it.”