Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  Here was in a place no civilized man dared walked, but lining the backstreets, Drish found the cracked and frosted windows filled with inviting light and warmth all the same, enticing him to knock on the weathered doors and seek shelter, but his relentless feet carried him on instead. Fortunately, the streets tonight were blissfully free of the sort of riff-raff that typically inhabited the ghetto. The cold and the wet had driven all them into their hovels, which was good. The nobleman was loath to think what an encounter with a lowborn slum-dweller might be like in his state.

  His rage carried him through the cold for several more kilometers, but as Drish reached the two-story ramshackle structure that was supposed to be a tavern, the cold had mercilessly sucked most of that anger out of him. Now Drish simply felt cold, dejected, and tired beyond all measure. He was unsure of the hour, but he knew it had to be long after midnight, and the morning was probably only a few hours off. Regardless, even from the street he could hear the tavern alive with people and music. It actually made him hopeful. Perhaps the snitches were wrong about his father after all, this tavern didn’t sound like a place where clandestine acts of terrorism were planned. It just sounded like a place where the lowborn of King’s Isle went to drown out the sorrows of their meaningless lives.

  Drish thought about turning back right then, but he shivered violently in the cold. The temperature had been steadily dropping over the course of the night and the slush was fast becoming ice.

  Resigned and eager for a moment’s warmth, Drish made his way through the front door, determined to stay only long enough to drive the numbness from his limbs. As for his father, he remained undecided on whether he wanted to hunt down the man and confront him, or wait until morning when he came shambling home.

  Once inside, Drish stowed the bottle under his armpit as he plunged into a world of heavy pipe smoke, riotous ragtime music, relentless laughing, clinking glasses, and the pungent reek of cheap booze. He had to pick his way carefully through the crowds of stumbling drunks lining the hallway. Most eyed him suspiciously as he passed, and it was with a great sense of relief that Drish left the entrance behind, to find himself in a small chamber, where everyone’s collective attention was focused on the bar set against the back wall, and not on him. Each man and woman present seemed to be yelling and waving their hands, desperately vying for the barkeep’s divided attention. So Drish moved unnoticed deeper into the den of vice, following a set of broad steps down into a main gathering area, forming the hub to a much greater series of chambers—a catacomb cast in brick. It amazed the young noble how big this building actually was, and how many people were packed into it. But the crush of humanity also made the low ceilings feel even lower, and the cramped space even more cramped.

  This was simply not the sort of place Drish would ever have gone under normal circumstances. It was too raw, and the aristocrat felt a panic grip his chest. He wouldn’t be able to handle this place and its chaotic environment much longer. Even if his father was here, he could never hope to find him in the sea of restless movement; the thunderous noise and the relentless beat of the band’s music. The filth around him was proof positive that his father was too far gone to be reasoned with anyway.

  Forget a noble, not even a simple, decent man would ever venture into this waste willingly, and certainly not night after night.

  “You here to party?” yelled a wisp of a woman in pancake makeup, and suddenly she had her spinally arms draped loosely over Drish’s shoulders. The layered skirts she wore hung ragged, looking both cheap and faded, and as she pulled herself up uncomfortably close to him, the smell of mothballs gaged his senses. “You’re real cute, you know, well-dressed for a man in a tavern such as this.”

  Drish tried to pull away from her even as she spilled herself over him, putting her bright red lips so close that he could feel her breath tickling the hairs on his neck. He expected it to smell of cheap tobacco and pungent booze, but found it sweet instead…like strawberries.

  “What brings you here?” She teased a finger along his collar and batted her long eyelashes.

  “Nothing, listen, madam, I’m more than all set,” he stated, lifting his arm to pull her off, but as he did so the bottle of Coronation Wine went tumbling free. The thud of it hitting the floor was lost in the wash of noise thrumming around them, yet both were aware of its fall. Simultaneously Drish and the golden-haired tavern trollop bent down to retrieve it, but the smaller woman was quicker. In a flash of frills and lace, she’d folded herself in half and snatched up the bottle within her dainty hands.

  “What’s this,” she teased, pulling the bottle close to the revealing cleave of her bosom.

  “Just a bottle of wine, miss,” he said, trying not to look. “Now if you’d be so kind as to as to give it back.”

  But she just teased him a bit more, holding it out for him to take, and then quickly pulling it away when he reached out. The game elicited a playful giggle from the woman. Drish, however, did not find it amusing in the least, and after the third failed attempt felt his temper flare to the point of full-blown rage.

  “Oh, don’t be so sour,” the irritating girl eventually relented with a smirk, but before she was to hand it back, she turned the bottle over to have a look. “What’s the big deal about this any…” her voice trailed off as her eyes narrowed over the bottle’s label, and then her girlish demeanor washed away in an instant. “Follow me,” she ordered sternly, leaving little room for argument, and before Drish could get a word in edgewise, she began to walk off with the bottle still in her possession.

  Great, now what, thought Drish, does she think I stole it from the bar? He was tempted to just let her walk off and be done with it. After all, not more than an hour ago he was prepared to drink it out of spite, and now having his father’s prized possession guzzled down by some cheap harlot for a single night of intoxication seemed similarly fitting. But then she turned, and urged him to join her. Something in the young woman’s saffron-colored eyes said it all, and suddenly there was something beautiful and strong in her features, as though the makeup was but a mask, and it was enough for him to follow.

  The woman took him on a spirited path, deep into the tavern’s revelry, through rooms of different décor and different temperament. In the beginning they were designed simply for raucous drinking, and then for dancing; until the moods turned somber and the rooms held games of billiards and darts. After that they passed through semi-private salons, rooms meant for philosophical discussions, but an eerily calm held sway. The people sat in silence and watched as Drish passed; a dark interest haunting their shadowy eyes, until finally the bar trollop ended her journey at the threshold to a red door set in rock. They had to be in the very foundations of the building at that point…that is, if they were still in the same building.

  “Stay right here,” said the girl softly, “And don’t move. For your own safety. Do. Not. Move.” Her doleful eyes glanced behind Drish, and when he turned, it was to find four grim-faced brutes, standing with thick arms folded over broad chests, and blocking the way back.

  “No,” he said lamentably, “I don’t think I will…”

  With the girl gone, the chamber took on a sinister feel and Drish swallowed hard. The men standing around him said nothing; their threatening eyes never wavering; their stern demeanors never relaxing; the muscles on their arms remaining coiled in anticipation; but in anticipation of what, Drish Larken couldn’t be certain. Only the tension remained definitive, filling the room until it turned so thick as to become suffocating, and the noble had just about lost his nerves to stand when the bar harlot finally reappeared, sweeping into the room in a cloud of floral scents and powdery makeup.

  “Alright, come with me, Drish,” she said to the noble’s relief, that is, until he took note of the use of his name. The aristocrat’s breath caught in his throat.

  “My name,” he gasped out, “how do you know my name,” he managed through a fit of coughing and sputtering

  “Just come on.�
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  Drish should have known that the woman was with the insurgency. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he found his father standing in what looked like a brick wine cellar either. Despite what reason should have already explained in Drish’s mind, he was still astonished when his father looked up at him from a broad table, and calmly stated for his son’s benefit, “Welcome to the Ascellan Resistance.”

  But Drish’s astonishment quickly turned to anger. From the looks of the setup around his father, Arvis looked to be the damned mastermind of the entire King’s Isle insurgency. Laid out at his fingertips was a map of the whole isle, and over it was riddled dozens of tiny, place-holding tokens, though it was the bottle of Coronation Wine displayed prominently at the table’s center that commanded the most attention. Regardless, Drish snapped his eyes up to confront his father, but the flag tacked to the rock wall behind him halted his words. The young noble had seen this emblem a thousand times growing up, and though he may have felt a pride at seeing it at one time, now it brought a sickening dread.

  Drish actually gasped aloud. It was the flag of the Unified Kingdoms of Ascella, with its segmented red griffon poised upon a field of gold. He was sure the Empire had burned every last one of them, and best if they had. It had become the very embodiment of the senseless patriotism that had turned King’s Isle on its head. Even now it seemed to glow in the light of its own malice; obstinate as ever despite the tattered nature of the cloth—nay, each burn and bullet hole only seemed to enhance its defiance. It was almost a perfect representation of the man standing under it, broken and marred, and yet still unshaken, still unforgiving, and still accusing Drish of disloyalty and treason.

  “Thanks Abigail,” stated Arvis calmly as he smoothed the gray scruff of his beard. The facial hair helped hide the immobile and waxy flesh from where the stroke had paralyzed his left side. “I think we can take it from here. I’d like to talk to my son alone if you’d be so kind.”

  “You bet, Arvis,” the scantily-dressed girl replied cordially, even adding a curtsy that revealed a bit more than was acceptable for a lady. As she turned, she flashed Drish a kind look that took him off guard.

  In the dingy light of a single greasy arc-bulb—under the relentless gaze of the flag—the collaborator expected a look of accusation from the perfect curves of this lowborn girl’s face; one that said collaborator aloud; one that said traitor; but there was no such look. He couldn’t even be sure what she had intended with that expression of hers, but its result was undeniable. He felt a strange sort of stirring from within, and whether that was simply carnal lust or something more profound, he was at a loss to explain.

  “Something tells me you didn’t come here to join the Resistance, son,” Arvis’s voice dragged him back to the present. “So you mind explaining to me what you’re doing carting around my bottle of wine?”

  Drish didn’t remember his father sounding so lucid. There was certainly an underlying difficulty to his speech, and the left side of his body remained limp and immovable, but he also looked stronger than he remembered, and a lot more coherent. It left Drish wondering just how long it had been since he and his father had last spoken. Usually, when the young accountant left for work in the mornings, the elder Larken was asleep in the servant’s room just off the kitchen (on those days that Arvis was actually home), presumably shaking off the effects of a hangover. And then most nights when Drish returned from the compound, his father was already gone, and the money left on the dining room table replaced with a note saying he was at the tavern. Up until tonight it all seemed so simple, but in this dank wine cellar, surrounded by the remnants of the old kingdom, it was anything but.

  His father’s unapologetic reception proved too much.

  “This is how you repay my kindness,” snarled Drish, firing off the first salvo of what was sure to become a heated argument. “You take my money and you funnel it to the insurgency. Do you have any idea the harm you’ve done to me?”

  “Hold on now, how do you know that,” muttered Arvis as he snatched up the bottle. Confusion muddled his expression and revealed the extent to which the stroke had distorted his face’s ability to move correctly. He looked ghoulish and sinister because of it.

  “Domaire,” replied Drish through clenched teeth.

  “Domaire? I haven’t seen him in ages, how would he know?”

  Drish felt the rage boiling within, but he knew he needed to get out the details before it was too late. “Domaire’s the clerk at the Ethnic Liaison Office—they handle issues between the Interior Security Bur—”

  “I know what the damn Liaison Office is—but a snitch… Domaire’s a snitch,” the pain could clearly be heard in Arvis’s slurred speech, but Drish didn’t care. In fact, it made him all the more furious that being a ‘snitch’ was the one thing his father seemed to take away first from all this. “I never would have…”

  “You should be glad, father,” Drish let his temper rage, “because he intercepted a list bound for the imperials with your name on it. It’s an arrest list of suspected insurgents! Domaire probably saved your accursed life tonight—at least for a few more days anyway!”

  Concern galvanized the insurgent leader into motion, and he dragged the left half of his body around the table to be closer to his son. “A list? Drish, who else is on that list?”

  “I am, father! I’m on that damn list….as a suspected financier. They think I’ve been intentionally funneling money to the terrorists.”

  “This is important, son, who else is on that list!”

  “Damn it, Arvis, can’t you think about me, and what you’ve done to my life because of all this? How am I going to explain this away?”

  Arvis slammed his fist down on the table, setting the coronation bottle to rocking side to side. “Can’t you stop thinking about only yourself for one damn moment, Drish? People are in danger, very important people!”

  That was it, it was clear Arvis felt more for his riffraff ‘resistance fighters’ than for his own son. The sting of it was more unbearable than the day they’d fought over signing the Oath; after Arvis had refused, and Drish accused him of trying to destroy everything they had.

  “There are more important things in this world than our damned wealth and nobility,” Arvis roared back that day three years ago. “I’ll not take the Oath.”

  But Drish wasn’t done either. He wasn’t about to rollover and let his father destroy their family’s legacy. His grandmother would never have allowed such a travesty to occur under her watch, and neither could he. “Then I’ll do it…in your stead, father!”

  “You’d do that? You’d sell yourself to the Empire? You’re a coward, and no son of mine, you traitor.” And then Arvis stormed from their city-manor a few kilometers north of the Palace.

  Drish would end up taking the Oath only a few hours later, but it would not save his family’s lands, titles, or wealth. He wasn’t the Baron Larken after all, Arvis was.

  It was a year before Drish saw his father again, and only in brief when he’d ventured from the refugee camps in Brasstown to the stockades in Throne to see if the rumors were true, that Arvis had been arrested for sedition. He almost didn’t go and see the man, but sentimentality won out, and he relented; a decision he would quickly come to regret. Even covered in filth and chained to a stone wall, Arvis had the audacity to lecture his son on loyalty and staying true to the UKA, even in tough times. And it seemed nothing had changed since; a year in prison, the stroke, a year spent sheltered under Drish’s roof; nothing had changed the man’s conviction. Arvis was just as stubborn as ever.

  “So this is how it’s to be, two strangers who just happen to share the same last name,” croaked Drish resentfully, and he turned his back to his father. There were more words that came from Arvis’s lips but his embittered son had stopped listening. Instead, he blew through the doorway, seeming to float down the corridor, while vaguely wondering if the insurgent fighters would kill him for uncovering their secret headquarters. It didn�
��t seem to matter if they did. Drish was going to be a dead man anyway when the Empire came for him.

  “Drish, wait,” it was the harlot—or insurgent—he actually wasn’t sure what she was anymore. He wasn’t sure about anything. It wouldn’t surprise him if she was to be his assassin. Is that why she’s here now? Is she the one who will silence me? But she wasn’t there to silence him at all.

  “Are you leaving already?” She said, blocked his way with her small frame.

  The noble only grunted a reply. There simply wasn’t any words for what he was feeling, and he was loath to try and sort it out with this garishly-dressed circus clown. He tried to step around her instead, but she placed a hand lightly on his chest. It was almost caressing in its touch.

  “You look awful, are you okay? What’s going on?” Abigail probed his face until he was forced to meet her gaze.

  Is that concern glistening in her eyes? It had been so long since someone had shown him anything but contempt; or at best indifference; that he found it difficult to suppress the rusty emotions that were beginning to stir within his heart. It was like these emotions were desperately trying to break free, gearing up as if to make a connection with the fingertips pressed to his chest. Suddenly he found himself wanting to share everything with her.

  “Talk to me, Larken, is something going on? You look ghosted. Does this have something to do with Arvis?”