Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Wren looked at Tycho again and saw him staring at her. “It’s all right, I’m just talking to… you know, her.”

  He nodded. “Well, I guess we should be getting back to the cistern to tell the Duchess what’s going on out here.”

  Across the courtyard, a couple of the Hellan guards emerged from the shadows with ropes and shovels. The sounds of the bombs falling and exploding echoed across the city.

  “More hiding?” Wren took a few steps toward the distant airships. “More of this? More things burning and people screaming?”

  Tycho followed her. “I’m afraid so.”

  “And all because you have a church and they have a temple?” Wren sighed.

  It’s all so stupid. It’s not over gold or food, or even revenge. They’re killing each other over the gods, as though the gods could be made or unmade by a sword or a fire.

  Whatever exists in paradise or the nine hells won’t change just because a different person sits on the throne of Constantia.

  And meanwhile, people are dying.

  Soldiers.

  Fishwives.

  Children.

  She kept walking across the courtyard past the broken columns and burnt timbers and shattered windows. “I have a better idea. Come on.”

  They walked together through the ruins of the palace and out into the wide snowy park beyond. She glanced at him, and he smiled at her, and she could tell he wanted to say something, but he didn’t, and she didn’t ask what was on his mind. Eventually they reached the sea wall, which had been teeming with young soldiers and younger marines just a few hours earlier and now were bare and silent. They climbed the iron stairwell in the north watch tower and stepped out onto the platform high above the water and looked out across the channel at the burning homes of Stamballa and the burning homes of Constantia.

  They look exactly the same, don’t they?

  Wren pushed her glasses up her nose. “We need to make the airships go away. And then make the warships go away.”

  Tycho laughed. “Yes, that would be nice.”

  “Then I’ll make them go away.” Wren placed her hands on the cold stones of the wall in front of her.

  It’s still the middle of the afternoon, still too warm. But Yaga could gather the aether in the daylight, and the valas taught me to pull it from the earth. It should be enough.

  “Wait, what are you going to do?” Tycho put his hand on hers. “You said you can only move aether, and souls. You can’t move ships.”

  “No, I can’t. But there are people in those ships, aren’t there?” Wren nodded up at the flying behemoths. “Remember how I pushed Omar and the marines across the water, and they pulled their boats with them? Well, this is exactly the same. Only bigger.”

  “Wren, you don’t have to do this. In fact, I don’t want you to do this,” Tycho said. “This war has been going on for years, and this siege is just one more battle. There’ll be more. More people will die. It’s the way of things, I guess. But it’s not your responsibility. It’s not your fight. And there’s no need for you to dirty your hands with it.”

  “I know it’s not my fight,” she said softly. “It’s my choice. Now get behind me. I don’t want to pull your soul out of your body by accident. You’d die, and I’d be sad. So get down.”

  He squeezed her hand and then moved around behind her.

  Wren took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began to spin her soul. It was even easier than the last time, and the shivers quickly gave way to gooseflesh, and then the pulsating waves of heat racing round her body. The silver bracelets on her wrists buzzed and hummed against her skin. She opened her eyes and watched the wisps of aether flying up out of the ground, swirling up through the wall and into the air above her.

  I’ll need a lot. More than before. A lot more. Those ships are awfully far away.

  She stood very still, enjoying the rippling sensations running up and down her legs and across her breasts and throat and face as her whirlwind of aether grew ever taller around her. And then a very different sort of heat and shiver ran through her hips, and she smiled.

  Wren raised her hands and pulled the aether down between her resonating bracelets, pulling the cold mist in, grasping it tightly, and holding it in front of her where she could watch it fly around and around in a blinding sphere of white and silver light.

  “Get down, Ty, and stay down.”

  She ripped her hands apart, tearing the sphere out into two endlessly long whips of aether that spiraled out and out into the northern sky, reaching across the vast empty air for the airship above the harbor of Constantia.

  When the aether whips struck the distant souls of the men and women aboard the ship, Wren felt the aether shudder in her hands, and she began to pull. She pulled, not with her arms, but with her whirling soul, reeling the aether back in toward herself, and dragging the four souls of the airship crew down, down, down toward the black waves of the Bosporus, and with those souls, came the airship itself.

  The crew must be crushed against the floor and walls. If I pull too hard, I’ll crush the life from them, but if I take too long, they’ll die all the same, only slower.

  The flying machine moved slowly at first, and then faster, gradually gaining speed as it sank down toward the earth, and just as the cabin reached the surface of the water, the edge of the huge balloon touched the edge of a jagged broken wall along the harbor, and the balloon tore open. It ripped apart and quickly began to deform, collapsing in upon itself and dropping the cabin into the water, and Wren released her grip on the souls of the crew and drew her aether back into the sphere between her hands.

  “My God,” Tycho whispered.

  “Shhh.”

  Wren threw her arms out a second time, casting her aether whips across the sea and seized the crews of the other two airships high above Stamballa, and she pulled them down, one with each hand. They came down faster than the first one had, and they came together just above the water, their balloons scraping and rubbing against each other until some bolt or buckle snagged the fabric and tore them open, spilling their gas upward into the sky and dropping the cabins into the sea.

  Again Wren gathered the aether back between her hands, and again she felt her hips shudder and her knees wobble as the whirling of her soul set her whole body to tingling.

  “Ty?” she said softly. “Show me which are the Turkish warships, and which are the Hellans, and which are the fishing boats.”

  “Sure, sure.” Tycho leapt up and moved to the edge of the wall a few paces away, and he began pointing. “There and there, those are the Turks. And there and there, and back there, are ours, and just about everything up that way are the commercial ships.”

  “Thank you. Now get down again.”

  He dropped back down behind her. “So you’re going to sink the Turks?”

  “No. I’m sending them home. I’m sending all the warships home.”

  “What do you mean, home? And what do you mean, all?”

  Wren drew in a deep breath and hurled out her aether lines for the third time, but instead of a whip in each hand she hurled a slender white wire from each finger tip, half to the south and half to the north, and she seized the crews of all the Turkish ships and all the Hellan ships. There were hundreds of souls packed into the warships, and as she grabbed hold of them she could feel all of their little bodies fly across their tiny wood and steel rooms and flatten against the walls as she hauled the ships from their anchorages.

  The huge warships groaned and popped and creaked, and then they began to move. They dragged their anchors, grinding slowly through the waves, heaving up and down against the pull of the aether, but they did move and then began to move faster. Tiny rippling wakes formed around their armored hulls, and then those wakes rose higher and foamed white and green as the massive warships surged through the Strait faster and faster, and when they were all whistling through the spray, nearly skipping over the waves, Wren twisted her hands and turned them all aside.

 
The Turks bore off toward the docks of Stamballa as she let them go, and their tremendous momentum carried them on, crashing through the cold black waters and then crashing up onto into the wooden piers and stone quays of the Turkish city. The ironclads slashed inland like a dozen enormous hatchets slicing into the shore and grinding up higher and higher, crushing the docks and sea walls and houses and roads, until they finally shrieked to a halt, all leaning at sharp angles on their exposed hulls above the high tide line.

  At the same time, the Hellan destroyers were surging straight into the Seraglio Point and the gunboats smashed up on the pebbled beach one after the other, sliding up side by side and crashing into the sterns of their sisters and nosing all the way up to the sea wall just below Wren’s feet. The wooden ships crackled and splintered and burst and shrieked as their hulls scraped up on the land and a huge wave swept up out of their wake and crashed against the wall, sending a curtain of freezing white spray high into the air.

  And then it was over.

  Wren stood very still as the last wisps of aether flew off into the sky and vanished from her fingertips, but her soul was still whirling and her skin was still tingling. She ran her tongue across her lips and said breathlessly, “It’s done.”

  Tycho stood up and stared down at the ruined Hellan fleet at the base of the wall below them, and then across the sea to the ruined Eranian fleet, and then to floating wreckage of the airships out in the middle of the Strait. As he stood there, one of the Mazigh pilots emerged from an airship cabin, pointed a gun into the air, and let a bright red flare shoot up into the sky above the water.

  The bright red star shot upward into the colorless cloud of gas from the crashed balloons and a brilliant golden fireball erupted across the sky, rolling about in a cloud of smoke, and then vanished from sight.

  Tycho nodded. “I don’t know if it’s over, but it’s definitely going to be very quiet out there for a long time.”

  “Good.” Wren took a step toward him. It was her first attempt at moving her feet since she began to summon the aether, and her legs shook beneath her, sending her stumbling into Tycho. They fell together to the floor, and he held her to his chest, and they laughed.

  “Good catch,” she said.

  His hand was cupping her breast, and he moved it. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not.” She pressed her mouth to his and sought out every corner of his mouth with her tongue. Her hips pressed against his, and her jaw trembled, making her gasp. Her thighs were still pulsing with heat, still throbbing with tiny thrusts almost entirely on her own. And she felt Tycho quickening against her shaking skirts. She smiled, her lips still grazing his. “Don’t move.”

  “Wait,” he whispered. “I don’t know if… I’m ready.”

  “Neither do I.” She smiled. “Let’s find out.”

  In half a moment she had his trousers around his knees and her skirts up around her waist and she plunged down onto his warm flesh and felt them suddenly become a single, shivering, thrusting body. She clenched him between her thighs and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek to his, feeling his hot breath on her neck as she rolled her hips over his again, and again, shaking and gasping in silent ecstasy.

  Chapter 28

  When it was over, Wren lay on her back staring up at the sky, listening to the sea and the birds. She floated inside her body as her soul finally stopped whirling about, leaving her feeling infinitely still and solid and real.

  She kissed Tycho, and he kissed her, and they watched the clouds drift overhead.

  “The sailors will be coming off the ships soon,” he whispered.

  “We should probably get up,” she whispered back.

  They both sighed and groaned and sat up, and then moved apart to stand up and fix their clothing. Wren felt a last lingering tingle in her veins, down in her legs and back, and it slowly faded as she stood there, looking out over the city.

  “What would you like to do next?” she asked.

  Tycho laughed. “I don’t know. I suppose we should go tell someone that the war has been indefinitely postponed.”

  “Let’s.”

  They climbed down the stairs in the watch tower and headed back across the park, and then through the broken palace and through the quiet city streets to the gates of the cistern. Everything after that was a blur of faces and the same conversation, over and over. Tycho would tell someone what had happened, and they would run off to tell someone else. Soldiers spilled up out of the little mausoleum, followed by squinty-eyed clerks and weary servants, and the calm Duchess and the haggard Italian.

  Tycho did most of the talking, and Wren was happy to let him answer the questions, over and over. What happened, and when, and who, and on and on it went. She let her thoughts wander off to other things, to images of them both lying on the wall, breathless.

  I wonder if we can do that again.

  Soon.

  As the afternoon became evening, things began to happen more quickly. Soldiers and sailors began patrolling the shores and streets, though they found the city quiet enough. The Duchess moved her army of clerks and papers into the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, where the priests graciously found rooms for most of the staff to sleep and work.

  The priests also produced a small feast of roast lamb and red wine for their guests, and Wren found herself sitting in a corner with a warm belly full of food and her brains floating gently in alcohol as she watched Tycho on the far side of the crowded room doing very boring things with men in uniforms and piles of papers. She played with the ring on her finger, wondering what sort of talks she might have in the days to come with the ghosts of the valas, and the ancient witch Yaga. She also played with her bracelets, wondering what else she might one day learn to do with them and the aether they commanded.

  “Wren?”

  She looked up as Omar sat down across from her with a glass of wine in his hand.

  “Hello, old timer.”

  He nodded and forced a smile. “I see you’ve been busy saving the world without me.”

  She smiled. “I learned from the best.”

  “Hm.” He sipped his wine. “You learned from your valas, and I suspect you even learned a thing or two from Yaga in your brief time together. I…” He sighed and sipped his wine.

  “Everything all right?”

  “No, not really,” he said.

  “You didn’t find Nadira?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, and then looked away. “No, and I doubt I’ll ever see her again.”

  She sipped her wine. It tasted awful but she liked the warmth in her belly and the tingle in her fingers. Her gaze wandered over to Tycho again.

  He has the most intense eyes.

  “Do you want to stay here?”

  Wren blinked and looked at Omar. He slouched in his chair, his head resting on his hand as he leaned over the table and stared down into his glass.

  “Maybe. For a while,” she said. “I don’t know. Why?”

  The Aegyptian shrugged.

  “Aren’t we still going to Alexandria?”

  “I do need to go back,” Omar said. “Eventually. Things to do. Loose ends to tie up. Mistakes to correct. Sins to atone for.” He drank.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” He looked up at her. “Wren, you’re a very impressive young woman and I imagine you will have a very remarkable life, wherever you go or whatever you do. But there’s little need for you to follow me around anymore. You don’t need a teacher. Anything you need, you’ll find in that ring or you’ll figure out for yourself.”

  Wren sat very still.

  He’s never been like this before. These last few days, something has changed in him. Something very deep, very important.

  She cleared her throat. “I won’t ask what exactly happened to you out there. Nadira. Koschei. That’s your past, and your business, and I know it’s probably very complicated and painful, and I’m sorry about that. But I thought we were going t
o solve all the mysteries of the universe together, and open the gates of paradise, and meet the gods. You’ve been doing this for, well, a very long time, and I wanted to be a part of that. I still do. Don’t you?”

  Omar shook his head, his eyes gazing darkly into hers. “Wren, I stumbled into your country and caused a plague that nearly wiped out an entire people, and the best cure I could invent left you all deformed for life.”

  She reached up and plucked lightly at one of her tall furry ears. The sensation sent a shiver down her scalp, and she smiled. “But isn’t the point that you saved us?”

  “No.” He sipped his wine. “Five hundred years ago in Rus, I made a woman and her son immortal because I thought they were good people, and would make the world a better place. And that mother went mad with grief and raised the dead from their graves, and that son became a bloodthirsty butcher. And now Nadira’s gone, too. And you don’t even want to know about Lilith.”

  Wren frowned. “You may have a played a part in all these things, but you’re not responsible for other people. Koschei killed those people, not you. Yaga lost control, not you.”

  “But I made them!” Omar squinted up at the stained glass window on the far wall. “I made all of them. If it weren’t for my damned pride, none of this would have happened. Not here, not in Ysland. How many people would be alive today if it weren’t for me?”

  “Maybe you did make mistakes, but you didn’t engineer these things. You certainly didn’t want them to happen. Yes, you made some people immortal, to help you. Don’t you see? That was humility, not vanity or pride. You knew you needed help on this search of yours, that you needed other people to uncover new truths and build a better world,” Wren said. “Those are all good things.”

  “What better world? What have I actually accomplished? In four and a half thousand years, what have I done?” He shook his head. “Science? I didn’t invent the steam engine, or electricity, or flying machines. The Mazighs did that all on their own. Exploration? The Espani discovered the New World, two entire continents! And they did it with some of the worst sailing ships in the Middle Sea, too.”