Aetherbound

by E. K. Johnston

  Anyway.

  There was a king. His kingdom wasn’t very large, and there were other kings close by who were more powerful than he was, but generally speaking, he was doing okay. This was the time when kings were also farmers, expected to lead by example and tend their own lands. This king’s lands were fertile, and he and his people tilled the soil and grew crops enough to see them through the winter.* It wasn’t a particularly glorious experience, but it was a good one.

  Tragedy came to the king’s household. His family were taken from him—battle and sickness and old age—and then he was alone. He was stricken with an injury that made it very difficult for him to leave his tower. No longer could he follow the plough or thresh the grain. He couldn’t bind the sheaves or carry the bales. He couldn’t fix a fence or pick up a new lamb or drive the cattle into the barn.

  All he could do was fish.

  Fishing, as you know, is an industry to build an empire on, but that is the fishing of huge vessels and vast nets. Fishing can fail, of which you are also aware, when the shoals are scraped too thin. That is the collapse of empires, and a kingdom, especially a small one, is even more vulnerable to change. It is the work of hundreds of people, not one king on the bank of a quiet river.

  At first, healers were brought in to make the king well again. They looked at his wound and applied their poultices and herbs, but none of them were successful. The wound did not worsen, but neither did it improve. The king struggled up and down the stairs, but still went every day to the river: It was the only way he knew of that he could help keep his people fed.

  Then surgeons were brought in to make the king feel well again. They took his blood* and cleaned the edges of the wound with sharp blades or with hot metal. They bathed the wound with alcohol. The king bit into a leather belt to keep from screaming, but his wound did not improve. The castle grew dusty and damp since he couldn’t fix the windows, but still every day he went to the river: There were hungry mouths in his kitchens and in his stables, and he had no way to give them grain.

  At last, a priest was brought in to make the king feel well again.

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” the priest said. “Unless you have particular feelings about your soul?”

  “I think I’m good,” said the king, “though if you have any other suggestions, I would appreciate them.”

  The priest thought about it for a few minutes.

  “My lord,” he said. “I will put out a holy writ, calling all the knights in the neighbouring lands to ride out in search of something that will help you. At least that will keep everyone busy.”

  “What will I offer as a reward?” the king asked. “My coffers are emptying quickly, and I have no family left to marry off.”

  “We will cross that bridge,” said the priest, “when we get to it.”

  The years rolled on. The knights came and went, eyes shining with bright ideas and new hopes. Nothing worked, but several valuable trade agreements were agreed to and a new way of smelting iron was discovered in the process, so it wasn’t entirely without result. Still the king lumbered from his bed to his spot on the riverbank, even when the fish stopped coming. His castle fell into disrepair and his people began to leave. He didn’t stop them.

  A young knight came one day with nothing. He hadn’t been on a quest at all yet. He’d only heard that this was a good place to get inspiration. He sat by the king’s side on the riverbank and listened to the stories of the days before, when the king had been able to plough and plant, and the lands had flourished.

  “What if,” said the young knight one afternoon, “I drove the plough?”

  No one had ever offered that before. It had been years, but the king still remembered how to hitch up the oxen. He told the young knight how, leaning on a crutch the knight had made for him. It took forever, but they both enjoyed the work. The field wasn’t large, but it would grow enough grain for the people who were left.

  “What if,” said the young knight a few days later, “your room was at the bottom of the tower, not the top?”

  It had never occurred to the king that moving his room downstairs would help, but of course it did. Now that he no longer had to go up and down several times a day, he had more energy. His leg hurt less in the evenings and he slept better. He could walk far enough to reach the fishing hole, and not wait for smaller fish in the shallows.

  “What if,” said the young knight after a month had passed, “I stay, and you teach me everything you know?”

  And the king had an heir and the heir had a quest and the little kingdom thrived.

  Sometimes, it’s a matter of asking the right question.

  17.

  A WEEK AFTER NED left, Fisher asked Pendt if she wanted to move out of the apartment. The question caught her completely off guard. She thought that things had been going well.

  “I suppose I could,” she said. “If there’s a space for me to go. I don’t need a lot. Am I allowed to take the possessions I’ve acquired with me?”

  Fisher gaped at her.

  “No, Pendt, that isn’t the way I meant it,” he said. “I would never send you off now that I’ve got what I need. That’s terrible. And those things are yours. And even if they weren’t, Ned left you an account. And—”

  “I understand,” Pendt said before he could get too hysterical. “I also understand that you might not like living with a relative stranger. I can go if you truly want to be alone.”

  This really wasn’t going the way Fisher meant it to. He was trying to be nice. It was hard to be nice to Pendt. Not because she was difficult or surly, but because she was so bad at putting herself first.

  “Look,” he said. “Let me start over. Without taking my feelings into account, and without considering the well-being of the station: Do you want to live in your own apartment?”

  It took Pendt a while to answer. She chewed thoughtfully on a piece of purple melon. He could almost see her weighing all the options and then trying not to weigh all the options.

  “Do you want to live alone?” she finally answered with a question. “My only experience living by myself involved a closet with very poor air circulation. I knew that I’d have nicer accommodations here, but honestly, you are a good person to live with.”

  “I’ve never lived by myself,” Fisher said. “This was my family’s home, and then it was where Ned and I stayed. I hadn’t thought about what being here by myself might be like.”

  There were already two areas of the apartment Fisher didn’t go into. Pendt had never seen the suite his parents lived in, nor had she been through the doors of the office where his parents worked when they weren’t in operations. Fisher did his work on the large table in the dining area, since the two of them ate in the galley. Now that she thought about it, Pendt didn’t think Fisher had been into Ned’s room since he left. If she moved out, he’d just haunt the lounge.

  “Be selfish,” she reminded him.

  “I don’t want to live by myself.” He smiled at her.

  “Neither do I,” Pendt said.

  “All right,” Fisher said.

  So they continued. Fisher slowly coaxed Pendt into leaving a few of her belongings strewn around the lounge, and Pendt implemented a cleaning schedule that Fisher was forced to admit did make the apartment a nicer place to stay.

  Work piled up for both of them. Though Pendt spent most of her time in hydroponics, she had to be available at any moment to go to operations and turn on the Net or the Well. Every time, there was a whisper of fear that she wouldn’t be able to do it, but every time, she did. Brannick Station lived. The air circulated and the gravity worked and the lights pushed back the dark of space.

  Fisher’s duties were increased now that Ned was gone, which he had expected, and people came to him for all sorts of advice, which he had not. He knew that Ned had often been approached by station inhabitants—he’d stood t
o the side often enough while it happened—but he wasn’t prepared for the sheer number of people he now spoke with every day. It was exhausting.

  Pendt noticed. He had dark circles around his eyes, and he started drinking two cups of stimulant in the morning instead of just one.

  “I think you should teach me how to run the station,” Pendt said one evening. She was sitting at the table in the dining area with a strawberry plant, trying to see if she could get it to flower on command without ruining its internal workings. Fisher sat at the other end of the table with several datapads and a star chart spread out around him.

  “What?” Fisher said. “I’m sorry, I was doing a calculation.”

  “I think you should teach me how to run the station,” Pendt repeated. “Or at least how to help you. My work in hydroponics is mostly experimental, and I enjoy it, but I could spend half the time there and get just as much done. You need me.”

  “Are you sure?” Fisher asked. “You’re already on call for operations at any moment.”

  “You’re on call for the entire station,” Pendt pointed out. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’ve decided you’re the Brannick now, and you are. Ned always had you to help him out, and your parents had each other.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Fisher said. “But you’re right. And it would be nice to have some help. But it doesn’t have to be you. You’re happy.”

  “I am,” Pendt said. “But I live here, and someday I’ll have this baby, and I want to know what we’re all getting into.”

  Fisher considered it. It would be straightforward enough to get himself an assistant. Dulcie could help him find one, he was sure. But Pendt was already here, and he already liked her, and she was offering. It made a lot of sense.

  “All right,” he said. “Honestly, I think the station residents will be happy to see more of you. It’s nice to know that there’s a gene-mage overseeing your food, but they’re used to seeing the Brannicks pretty frequently. They’ll probably mob you once they realize you’re accessible.”

  “I don’t mind,” Pendt said. “It’ll take some getting used to. It’s hard to explain. I’ve always had a job, Fisher. Since I was five years old, I was expected to earn every breath I took, and that was all it got me: oxygen and just enough calories to grow. It’s nice to be—”

  “Appreciated?” Fisher said.

  “See, I didn’t even know the word for that,” Pendt said. She did of course, but she didn’t mind when Fisher interrupted her. It was how she knew they understood each other.

  “I’ll teach you how to spell it,” Fisher said, and Pendt laughed with him.

  The next day, they entered operations together. Pendt drew a few speculative looks; everyone knew the schedule was clear until the afternoon, but no one said anything. She and Fisher went into the office that Fisher and Ned used to work out of, and she began to learn. By lunchtime, she was thoroughly overwhelmed and equally determined. By the end of the dayshift, she had more or less memorized the procedures for unloading ore ships, which wasn’t a bad start.

  Pendt became a regular feature in operations. The other operators soon started bringing questions to her if Fisher was busy. She couldn’t always answer them, but her honesty and her willingness to learn made her very approachable, and everyone was charmed.

  The colonnade was another place Pendt began to frequent. The food shops and restaurants were already familiar with her because of her work in hydroponics, but now she talked with all the shopkeepers and store owners. She learned the ins and outs of the gossip chain. Dr. Morunt often joined her for lunch, and the two of them would talk about æther, but never family. It was pleasant.

  And the people loved her, which was the strangest thing. They would say hello in the morning when she walked past. A café owner would have a flavour of juice she hadn’t tried yet and press it into her hand when she was on her way to operations. A parent would thank her for increasing the grain yield. A worker would wish her a good shift.

  At first, she hardly knew how to react. She was thanked more times in a single morning’s walk to work than she had been in her entire life. She’d never had this sort of power before—she’d barely had any power at all—and she found that she liked it. It wasn’t like being the captain, where everyone relied on her whims and wishes. It was like being part of a crew, a real one . . . or a family. This was what it was supposed to be like. Mutual, genuine, caring, and real. She loved every single minute.

  Her favourite time of the day was still the evening, when she and Fisher were home in the apartment, sitting in the lounge. She would read or watch him play a game, or they would talk about something she’d observed during the day. It wasn’t exactly an idle time; Pendt often found her brain made connections during those quieter moments that had eluded her in the bustle of the day, but it was peaceful. With her feet up and a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Pendt was comfortable. She liked comfort quite a lot.

  Fisher sighed and put the game controller down.

  “Are you tired?” Pendt asked. It was still early.

  “No,” he said. “This game is really better with two people.”

  Pendt had tried playing, but she didn’t entirely grasp the difference between moving in real life and moving in the game and, as a result, just dragged Fisher down with her. He was patient, but it was hardly relaxing for either of them. He was used to playing with his brother.

  “I know this is going to sound strange, but I think it must be kind of nice to miss your brother,” she said. “I certainly don’t miss any of mine.”

  “He’s always talked about leaving,” Fisher said. “And I always knew he’d find a way to. I even wanted it, because I knew I’d get to run the station if he left. But I didn’t imagine this part. The part where he was just gone.”

  “I’m sure he feels the same way,” Pendt said.

  “Do you think we’ll hear from him?” Fisher asked.

  Pendt considered her answer. She had learned how station communications worked, but she knew that Fisher meant a more personal message. It was unlikely that Ned would be able to tell them anything detailed, but she suspected Fisher would appreciate literally anything his brother were to send.

  “He might,” she said. “When it’s safe for him to do so.”

  They heard astonishingly little about the rebellion. It was nothing but rumours and stories, supplemented by the occasional ship that came out to Brannick Station for supplies. The bulk of the fighting was based out of the stations that were closer to the Hegemony’s base in the Stavenger solar system. There wasn’t much in the way of reliable news. Most of what they heard came thirdhand through merchants, who reported that prices on Katla were high, indicating an influx of people. They didn’t know where Ned had been sent, and none of the news was specific enough for them to make even a general guess about where he was or what he was doing.

  “What are you reading?” Fisher changed the subject.

  “Just a story,” Pendt said. “It’s about a girl who finds out she’s the descendant of a powerful warrior and has to find the others in her group to fight injustice.”

  “One of Ned’s?” Fisher asked.

  “Yes,” Pendt said. “He told me I could use his library if I wanted. I don’t touch anything else in the room.”

  “It’s all right,” Fisher said. “We both live here. Maybe I should start acting like it.”

  He looked at the mess of datapads and half-empty cups on the table in the dining area. He could use the office. Maybe leave the door open, but still.

  “It would be nice to have that table available,” Pendt said. “Not that I plan to have any parties, but it’s the perfect size for the control group of the plants I’m experimenting on right now.”

  “I’d hate to get in the way of science,” Fisher said. “Will you help me move tomorrow?”

  “
Of course,” Pendt said. “But you have to wash the dishes.”

  “Done,” Fisher said.

  It was a new system, and they were still figuring it out, but they were going to make it work.

  18.

  THE BEST THING ABOUT Brannick Station, after being treated like a human being and having the availability of food, was time. The station clock ran the same number of hours as the Harland did, so there was literally no more time in the day, but Pendt felt every minute like it was new. She had places to be and she went to them, but there was none of the malaise that had dogged her in the galley or inertia that kept her from resting in the brig. Even her boredom was her own.

  Not that Pendt was bored. She followed Dr. Morunt’s advice and took to daily walks around the station. She learned the patterns of the ore processors and the dockhands. She watched the shop owners and food-service workers. They seemed happy enough, which was new for her, but she supposed that it might be because they were both paid a good wage and protected by a guild. While in no hurry to return to food service herself, Pendt could understand the joy in watching other people eat if you weren’t hungry yourself. She liked cooking—Fisher told her that she was really “assembling,” but she ignored him—and she was coming to understand the artistry of it.

  Pendt imagined that the doctor intended her to stick to the colonnade and operations, but she ranged farther than that in an effort to get to know her new home. Parts of the Harland had been shut to her, and parts of Brannick were too, but they were mostly other families’ apartments and private spaces. There was no public area that she was barred from.

  So she walked. She covered every inch of the original station cylinder, the colonnade, and the docking ports. From that original construction, Brannick Station grew like two branches of a tree. One arm of the station housed her beloved hydroponics and other systems that kept the station livable, as well as all of the ore processing. Ships brought ore to Brannick from other places besides Alterra. The Harland’s run was the longest and slowest, and there were newer ships to make the other runs. Here, it was refined into solid burning fuel or smelted down for the raw materials that could make metal parts. The slag was dumped, which Pendt found absolutely enthralling. She was unaccustomed to waste.