Maledictus Aether (25 page)

My companion finds me in my
quarters well into the night, carrying two steaming mugs of tea
that he sets down on my desk. I’m looking at the blueprints once
more, wondering if there is something I missed, a crucial element
that I have forgotten.

The man watches me a moment
before he takes the schematics and rolls it up, slipping it from
under my nose and ignoring my protests. When it is rolled up he
points it at me, almost as if brandishing a rapier.

“You have done all that you can
for now, Kennedy,” he states briskly, frowning, “and fussing over
them will not change that. I have been passive about your lack of
sleep in the last months, but I honestly have reached my limits;
so, I forbid you from looking at these another moment.”

I look at him, arching an
unimpressed eyebrow, and he hits the top of my head with the
rolled-up parchment.

“I’m not even messing around, so don’t give me that look.”
Setting the paper on my desk, he walks around until he stands
beside me, grabbing me by my bicep and pulling me all the way to
the couch despite my protests, and pulls me down beside him. “When
is the last time you properly relaxed? You have been working
yourself to the bone for the last three months.”

I sigh, defeated, and almost as
soon as I let my posture relax I feel the tiredness in my bones,
the exhaustion gripping my spirit, and I lie back against the
couch, sort of in the crook of his arm, and tip my head back until
it hits his arm just above the elbow.

My eyes close of their own
accord, and this time my sigh is one of relief. He chuckles lightly
beside me, muttering something under his breath.

“You are only human, Kennedy,”
he reminds me, and I nod lightly.

“I forget that myself,
sometimes,” I admit to him, relishing the warmth that his right
side offers my chilled, inhuman skin. “Sometimes I forget that I am
still human. It is nice to be reminded.”

Again he laughs, and I let my
head fall to the side, exhaustion rending my entire body compliant
and numb – in a good sense. I can smell leather and tea, stronger
here with my nose pressed against his shoulder.

If he is uncomfortable, the man
does not mention it. Instead, his right hand presses against my
hair, fingers running through the strands lightly.

For a long time, neither of us speaks. He allows me this
moment to take a breath and to take comfort in the company he
offers me, and like some greedy child I take it all and then some,
offering none in return. I know I should feel guilty about that,
but I do not.

“I have a request,” he whispers after some time, pulling me
from the arms of sleep. I move my head slightly upwards to show him
I am listening, so as he takes a breath I can hear in my left ear,
he continues. “If I die, however I may, on any wretched land, my
only wish is that you scatter my ashes across the skies as you sail
upon them; I want to fly with the wind one last time.”

Opening my eyes despite the
tiredness in my bones, I look to my friend. So many questions run
through my head at once, but the one that comes out is:

“Why are you telling me
this?”

The older man licks his lips
uneasily as he looks away, probably trying to figure out how to
best answer my query. I remain patient, settling a little more
comfortably on the couch with my feet against my thighs as they lie
sideways, my knees towards him, and my hands gripping the robe he’s
covered his nightclothes with loosely. Lucian, after an
indeterminable amount of time, answers me at last.

“You should know,” he says,
frowning as if not satisfied with this response. I admit, neither
am I. “I suppose… you deserve to know, should I die. I have a
feeling you would blame yourself for it.”

He looks at me, an eyebrow
arching and daring me to defy this statement, but I do not. I
believe it to be true as well.

I have known him for half a
year already, and I know enough to know that he has become
important to me. Very much so, in fact.

“So your answer is to request I
foresee your funeral?” I ask incredulously, and he laughs uneasily
in response. “Pardon me, but if I may, that is… I do not know how I
would manage to do such a thing, honestly. Not sanely,
anyways.”

A thought occurs to me, and I
look up at him, lifting my head from his arm.

“Why
would
you inform me of this wish?” I
prompt, frowning. “This is something you write in your will, or
tell your family or beloved at the very least. If I recall
correctly, I am neither your family nor your beloved.”

There’s a suspicion trying to
grow in my mind, but before I can chase it and grasp at it, it
eludes me.

His fingers have fallen from my
hair to my shoulder, and the man sighs as he glances down to his
other hand on his thigh.

“You
are
important to me, though,” he
counters, evading the question. I notice this, and take note of it.
“For that reason, I thought that you should know; besides, I no
longer have contact with my family.”

Also evading the second part.
The suspicion is back, a little more discernable, but once more my
mind refuses to yield.

“Then would you not write this
in your will?” I question, and he shrugs.

“Honestly, that would be the
only thing I would write on that blasted paper,” he sighs, shaking
his head. “Forget I asked.”

For some reason, that simple
brush-off of the subject makes my stomach hollow out. I sigh as
well, lowering my head back to his shoulder and closing my eyes,
frowning.

The scent of leather and Earl
Grey, and something else, I realise. Something distinctly him.

Home
.

“If that is what you wish,” I
say quietly, the darkness behind my lids yielding nothing in the
way he looks at me. I focus instead on that smell, as if by paying
enough attention to it I will forever imprint it in my senses, “I
will do it. It is the least I can do, considering…”

Oh. So that’s it.

I am tempted to push away from
the man and flee to my chambers, to be with myself, for perhaps the
first time since I have ever met him. Multiple reactions and
emotions make my body tense, the suspicion finally gracing my
presence, but I will myself to relax. To stop thinking.

At least for now.

“Considering what?” he prompts,
and I shake my head, the exhaustion in my limbs threatening to pull
me to sleep once more, what with the warmth and comfort I have
found here.

“Never mind,” I sigh, fingers
lightly trailing through my hair again. The motion tugs at my
consciousness, the dredges of sleep I have been ignoring coming
back as I somewhat unwillingly relax into his touch. The safety and
the comfort reminding me of the way I used to feel before the
taunting and jeering broke my child-like spirit. How I felt before
I realised my mother was seeing another man, despite the façade of
being in mourning for my father.

Since here, in a half-embrace with another man, I feel more
at home than I have in a long, long time.

At exactly nine thirty, father, Lucian and I are at the
helm, Angelo in the
Atlas
hovering some
ten thousand feet in the air and awaiting the go-ahead. Half the
crew is with him and the other half is with us, as according to my
father it takes a small army to fly the
Alitis
. One man
cannot hope to keep her aloft for very long.

I hold my hand over the lever
that will guide the power throughout the ship, and I glance to my
companion, who nods with a wry smile, and my father, who looks
rather anxious; steeling myself, I pull down the lever and pray to
Aebra that our luck holds true.

Lights flicker on over our heads, as do the ones on the
control panels all along the helm in this tower. The men and women
seated here get to work as my father instructed, levelling pressure
levels and checking gauges, redirecting power and checking the
status of the airship. Once the all-clear is given, I take a deep
breath and push a new lever, powering the engines.

The air around us begins to hum, and the crew along the
control panels start redirecting to the thrusters, where shortly
thereafter the ship shudders, but despite all that the ship lifts,
forcing me to grab onto the helm in order to keep her steady, and
Lucian mans the controls for the angle and altitude, allowing the
ship to gradually rise up until we are level with the
Atlas
.

As instructed, Angelo rises higher with my ship and we
follow after him, reaching the twenty-thousand foot mark and
hovering there. Then, the signal is given to him to throw the
landing gear onto Tier and the crew boards the
Alitis
,
where the course is set for Aeon.

When my Sailing Master takes
the helm and I walk out to the main deck, just below the docking
bay, my legs give out on me and Lucian catches me only just. Father
looks at us both as I start laughing breathlessly, looking to my
companion with nothing short of joy written on my face.

“We did it,” I state
breathlessly, and I see the smile split his face in two. “Lucian,
we did it! Tier is…”

“I know,” he laughs shakily,
and I notice my father shake his head lightly, laughing to himself,
but once more it is as if he does not exist. The Irishman helps me
up – he seems to be doing that a lot recently – and we exchange
ecstatic grins, looking at one-another.

Father clears his throat after a moment, and I tear my eyes
away from the blue ones I’d been looking at to turn my attention to
my father.

“I hate to break this wonderful
moment between the newlyweds,” he starts, and even though I know he
is teasing it still makes the blood rush to my face and a protest
leave my lips, “but what is the next step?”

“We go to Aeon,” I begin,
brushing away my irritation and ignoring Lucian’s light laugh near
my ear, “and we gather an armada of our own. Then, we bring the
fight to the Fleet and make them pay for all they’ve done to
us.”

It takes us one week to fly to Aeon, usually a two-week
trip, and during this time my father teaches me all about Tier and
its many weapons. How the engines recycle
Aether between one-another, and that the fuel only
needs to be renewed perhaps once every six months. How the Bolt
cannons along the sides work, and as he shows me how the weaponry
works he also teaches other men and women how they work, to then be
our line of defence. With Aeon in sight he brings us to the other
parts of the helm, the lower levels of the tower that we had yet to
visit, and shows us why Tier is nicknamed the way it has
been.

The docks are alight with activity as Angelo lets the ship
hover some distance away from Aeon, where a handful of us take
the
Atlas
to the docking bay and disembark. I’ve left
Lucian in charge aboard the
Alitis
, my father
trailing behind me and a handful of other of my most trusted
crewmembers. Men and women flock the area as we throw the gangplank
and step onto the docks, my father looking very anxious about being
here.

I am just glad to be out of
that heavy coat and back in my familiar tailcoat. I brush past a
gathering of men and women, looking for one person in particular
and straining my neck to catch sight of the Captain.

When I find him, I grab my
father’s arm and drag him over, ignoring his protests and the faces
of those who recognise the man I tow along. The questions pounding
at my skull in a relentless rhythm.

Their reunion is short-lived
and full of one-sided questions that everyone wants to hear the
answers to, but Cephas refuses to part with them surrounded by so
many people. As he speaks, I can see the faces of those looking at
him change expression, and I finally understand what my father was
to them.

He was a man who was fearless,
who never wavered and stood firmly on both his feet. He guided
people and offered them Elysium aboard his ship, fought the Fleet
to his dying breath, and died a martyr. A legend.

Now they see the shell of that
man; an older man, more reserved and far less outgoing, anxious and
uneasy. How time has chipped away at that god-like figure they had
painted him into being. Now, they see the flesh-and-blood and the
truth. A traitor.

Their faces go from awe to
acceptance, bitter regret, for more nostalgic days. Their hero,
their god-like saviour, now just a man.

A man with a son who has done
the impossible thrice over.

I see it coming, and without
fail everyone looks at me, even my father and Captain Davis, and
the man in question puts a hand on my shoulder and states how I
seem to be some gift from the gods themselves, but I shake my head
and push his hand away.

I do not want to hear any of
that. I do not want to be called a gift from the gods; I am just a
man with a bit of luck and a penchant for the impossible.

I care not if I am blessed by
these gods or damned by them; all I know is that I have goals I
want to see come to pass, and I will stop at nothing to obtain
them. It is not luck, but determination.

After explaining my request to
the Captain, he nods his assent and assures me that he will gather
all the hands he can and send for others all across the world, and
we will bright the battle to the Fleet in two months’ time, at the
latest. I nod, excusing myself and calling my crew back to the
ship, leaving my father to play catch up with his old friends.

Once back aboard the
Alitis
, I breathe a
sigh of relief and set out to find a place to think. Someplace
where I will not be bothered.