Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains Read online

  Arvis…blah!

  Hearing his father’s name spoken from the lips of this mesmerizing woman slammed shut the door on any emotions he might have felt, and instead locked them firmly in the dusty basement where they belonged. What a fool he was for thinking he could’ve made an emotional connection with some female street urchin. Insurgent or not, she was just another lowborn in sooty makeup, and; as his grandmother would have reminded him if she was still alive; too far beneath his station to ever matter. He brushed Abigail aside, leaving her concerns unanswered, so that he could drift away from the packed tavern like the ghost she accused him of being.

  In a trance of dejection, Drish took to the barren streets, shambling through a raging blizzard, until he ended up back at the door to his townhouse on Cooper Street.

  Chapter 4

  Safely tucked inside the warmth of his home, Drish tried to go to sleep, knowing the morning hours would arrive soon enough, but every time he tried to lie down a restlessness took hold. What will the morning bring? He’d be expected to report to work in the morning, but if Domaire was right, an arrest squad would be there waiting for him. However, if he failed to go to work at all, he would receive a truancy mark and probably lose his position; and how would it be viewed? Running might only prove his guilt to those that would condemn him. With hopeless dread, Drish realized he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, and wrestling over that dilemma stole any sleep that might have come. He left his bed early on and took to pacing his flat instead, until song birds chirped and the rising sun painted the sky outside his bay windows in shades of pink. Drish was surprised that the elemental fury of the blizzard had abated to a lingering squall of flakes whirling over a still city, but the damage it had wrought was done, and the world laid smothered beneath a blanket of ice and snow.

  Drish thought about his father, how he had been so concerned about all the others on the list, but had ignored his own son’s plight. Now, more than ever, Drish realized he was on his own. He couldn’t count on his father—not that he really ever had—nor did he want to. Growing up, Arvis was absent most of the time anyway, and it was his grandmother who swooped in to mother his fledgling, noble sensibilities. As to why his father was never around, even in the blissful days of the Unity, was a topic never discussed, but the sting remained, and fed the pain of the ex-noble’s convictions. He knew he was going to have to take care of himself if he wanted to escape this situation, and so Drish began to formulate a plan that would best free him from this nightmare.

  Extremes came to mind, like suicide, but the noble didn’t have a gun or poison, and when he held a blade to his wrist it seemed laughable to think of slashing his own flesh. Death was precisely what he was trying to avoid, and he quickly abandoned any thoughts of self-inflicted murder. So that left escape, but how? Run, but where would he run to—and how would he run there? Would the insurgency help him? Thinking of asking those thugs for help was akin to asking his father for help though, and somehow that seemed worse than death.

  So there he was, left without any tangible plan. If only Domaire had never shown him the accursed list in the first place, at least then, when the authorities came to arrest him, they would see sheer ignorance staring back at them. Befuddlement in that degree would’ve been proof enough of Drish’s innocence, but Domaire had robbed him even of that. If the Empire were to question him they’d surely discover he was lying. So then what? He could tell them he knew about the list… that his inclusion on it was a simple mistake. Then again, that would bring up the question of how he came to know about it in the first place, and then that would implicate Domaire. That was the last thing he wanted? Or was it? The last thing Drish actually wanted was to be executed, or imprisoned, so in that respect, he didn’t really care one damn bit about Domaire’s fate.

  Suddenly it dawned on him how he would escape this terrible injustice. It was laughably childish; he would use the unflinching truth to vindicate himself. It didn’t matter who he destroyed doing it; it was their own fault anyway. He was simply in the eye of a great storm of conspiracies and crimes perpetrated by those around him. He owed those involved nothing; and if anything, they owed him, for dragging him down into their nightmare world of violence and intrigue.

  Drish sat at his office desk, with the large bay window to his back, and as the sun rose over the rows of townhouses and snow-swept streets, he set pen to paper. The noble’s mind was blank at first, but as the sun’s warmth gently caressed his shoulders the words began to take form.

  ‘To whom it may concern’, he scrawled as the morning brightened from pink to orange, and from there on out both the light and his words only grew bolder. He wrote slowly and deliberately at first, and then at a rapid pace as his hands sought to keep up with his internal monologue. The words flowed so easily that Drish knew he was doing the right thing. He explained his choice to take the Oath of Allegiance; the falling out with his father over the matter; his employment at the compound when he’d proved his worth; his father’s release and how it only renewed tensions; and finally, how he’d given his father an allowance as a means to separate their lives. Drish had no idea that the money was going to the insurgency.

  Very soon the rising sun became a blazing strip of righteous light, caught between the misty horizon and the overhanging blanket of platinum clouds. Drish wrote his manifesto with furious abandon. Everything he knew, or suspected he knew, came spilling out over the page, and very soon he was giving a firsthand account of Domaire’s betrayal, adding how he’d seen the list, and could prove it with details: ‘The parchment is crumbled along the top, and there is a crease down the middle where it was folded.’ He went on to add how it tore on the corner when he took it from the liaison clerk, and how the last letter of his own name had been double-tapped by the typist’s typewriter; all of it damning for those he implicated. As added proof of his loyalty, Drish included possessing knowledge of where a resistance cell could be located, and would readily give it up in exchange for immunity. He ended with:

  It is with all my heart that I support the Iron Empire, and though I know that my implication in these most sinister events negates any sympathies, I dearly hope that an understanding can be reached; so that I can live in loyal harmony with the Empire for the rest of my days as I swore when I took the Oath.

  With unwavering loyalty,

  Drish La

  A sharp pounding at the door stopped him before he could finish signing his name, and the quill tumbled from his hand.

  The Empire has come for me. Outside the sun had disappeared above the clouds, turning the city gray with dead light. Cold terror coursed through Drish’s delicate constitution so fast that when he stood up he swooned, his vision blacked out, and he vomited over his desk. Another round of hammering rocked the downstairs door on its hinges and the terrified noble looked around desperately as drool hung from his chin. But for what… he didn’t know; maybe just something to hold on to.

  The note… the note. He turned his gaze on the confession, finding its left corner soaking in putrid bile, but he swiped it up regardless. It was his only lifeline and he clutched it tight to his chest; feeling his heart pounding through it. That’s when Drish heard his downstairs door being kicked in. Boots stormed in through the foyer soon after, and then came pounding up the wooden staircase leading to the second floor, where Drish leaned, quaking, against his desk. There were too many footfalls to count, it sounded like they’d sent an entire platoon to arrest him. It seemed excessive, until he remembered he was a wanted terrorist. They might even shoot him outright if he wasn’t careful, and so he preventively dropped to his knees, and held up his hands in surrender.

  He never expected there to be laughing when they arrived.

  At some point Drish had closed his eyes, squeezing them so tightly they hurt, but when he heard the gruff laughter rolling around him he reluctantly opened them; first one, and then both. Arrayed throughout the room wasn’t a squad of imperials, like he’d expected, but instead a
foul smelling lot of what could only be described as savage bandits. Amongst their numbers was no sign of a single Hierarch soldier, just an endless hodgepodge of filthy Candarans in greasy leather jackets and patch-work pants. Drish couldn’t even begin to describe the disarray of style in which these scofflaws had adorned themselves; stripes, polka-dots, and plaid patterns (tartans of Glenfindale-make by the looks of them), and all atrociously mismatched. Several of these men had hair as long as women, a few had it cropped close to the skull, and one brute in particular; the size of a bull, and with a face scarred beyond recognition; didn’t have a strand to be seen anywhere on his waxy, riveted skin.

  Drish quaked in terror. “If you’ve come to rob me, what you see is all that I have. Please…just take it and go.” Another wave of gruff laughter rippled through the trespassers, but all Drish could see were the weapons they carried. Some tried to conceal their guns and sabers beneath the folds of their coats and jackets, while others didn’t bother with such a formality in the least.

  “Oh, we ain’t here to rob you,” offered a trim and wolfish looking man, leaning against Drish’s antique bureau with nonchalant indifference. The sharp-toothed outlaw appeared to hold more interest in picking at the grime under his thumbnail then the whole crazy affair playing out in Larken’s study.

  “Is this really the man we’re here to get?” questioned the brute with the mangled face. Drish could hardly stand to look at him. Whatever ruin had occurred had laid claim to the brigand’s nose, lips, and even his eyelids, leaving him staring out through two patches of puckered flesh shrunken around a pair of goggles screwed directly into his head. Within the puss-yellow fluid sloshing around behind the adornment’s glass, the brute’s eyeballs seemed to float freely…or at least that’s how Drish imagined it.

  After a moment it was plainly clear they weren’t here to rob him. “I…are you…with the Bureau,” dared the noble in a stammer.

  “Snitches? No we’re not snitches, so count yourself lucky there, Mr. Larken,” offered a tall black-skinned Candaran, whose heavily-tattooed flesh looked as tough as leather and pulled taunt over ropes of lean muscle. Though he looked to be the oldest man present, with black hair peppering to gray, he seemed somehow hardier than the rest.

  A marauding kill squad then? Drish quaked in his despair, flinching violently as the men shuffled in around him. Would all these jangling buckles and chains; the flex and groan of leather; the hard boots scraping over his wooden floor; would these be his last memories of a cold, cruel world? The accountant tried to keep tabs on those that circled around him; the black man, the scarred brute…but he lost track in the shuffle of bodies. A seemingly endless procession crowded into his small study, their reek filling the room and turning his already weakened stomach into a whirlwind. He felt drool fill his mouth, and knew he was on the verge of throwing up again.

  Then all seemed to suddenly go still and silent, and the men stopped moving. A moment passed, and then Drish’s attention was grabbed by the lone clopping of boots. He turned just as a man took center-stage over him; and what an imposing man it was. Tall of stature and broadly built, this newcomer wore a tricorne hat, fashioned from dark and greasy leather. Draped over his frame was a long fur coat…a coat that looked to have been pulled directly from a dead and rotting shaghund, while peering out from just above the rim of its scraggily collar, hawk-yellow eyes locked on the captive noble.

  This marauder nodded his apparent satisfaction. “Good,” the voice rumbled through the floorboards, and he turned to an oily scallywag following closely behind him. This attendant was easily a head shorter than his master, even though he already stood hunched under the pressing weight of some mechanical apparatus. Strapped to his back, it looked rather like a turtle-shell, made of metal and transistors, and bristling with antennas. The face of the man beneath it looked pale and pained, and despite the cold breezing in through the townhouse’s open door downstairs, he was sweating profusely.

  “How much time do we got, Lance,” asked the outlaw. His voice muffled by the collar.

  The pained underling maneuvered awkwardly under the apparatus’s weight, to wrap an arm up around the side to twist a series of dials. Drish heard the tell-tale squeal of a radio crackling out from the rubberized earphones, which hung clamped against the black curtain of this villain’s mangy hair.

  “Imperials have gone radio-silent, Cap-i-tain,” he replied, his voice flowing like oil over gravel, “I’ll try the other frequencies, but I’d say we don’t have much more than a couple minutes before they make their move now—best estimate given standard imperial procedure.”

  This man, known as Cap-i-tain, parted open his coat to scratch at the early growth of a patchy red beard. “Understood,” he said before focusing his attention back on the aristocrat groveling at his boots. “Let’s make this quick then, shall we, Mr. Larken?” he said freely. “You know why I’m here?”

  But Drish found it impossible to look up or to answer. Instead he just stared straight ahead in fear, and that’s when he caught sight of a flash of familiar red through the part in the man’s fur coat. It gave him pause. More accurately, the fabric beneath the fur was the color of ox-blood; the shade unmistakable. The uniform of a Royal Air Navy officer. Drish had seen its like enough times in his life to be certain. Finally, the fearful noble worked up the courage to look the man in the face. There was a familiarity to be found in the features…Drish knew this man.

  “Bar Bazzon,” the noble muttered in disbelief.

  To which the disguised, ex-naval officer responder with a slanted smirk, “Well, I wondered if you’d remember me.”

  It was easy to see how Drish hadn’t at first. A lot had changed in the past three years, and the man before him was barely recognizable. But beyond the outfit; the shag-coat covering his uniform, the tricorne hat hiding the wild red mane of his hair, and the unkempt beard that masked most of his face; those hawk-yellow eyes remained the same. Unmistakable. Though stress, it seemed, had erased the boyish vigor that once filled them with hope and optimism, and in the flesh surrounding them lingered stern lines and brooding shadows; marks indicative of a man experiencing hard-times; and Drish began to suspect that the outwards changes were a reflection of the internal struggles of a plagued soul.

  “How could I forget,” stated Drish thickly. By comparison, Domaire had been an easy name to forget versus this ghost from his past. No, Bar and Drish’s last encounter had been too memorable to ever forget. This interloper was at least partially to blame for Drish’s falling out with Arvis. “You’re the bastard who convinced my father to bankrupt our family…trying to restore that battle-gutted strata-frigate of yours?”

  Bar Bazzon’s rueful grin soured to a frown. “Well, I see you’re just as agreeable as ever,” and while Drish climbed to his feet, the former captain clomped his way over to the bay window.

  “Just what the hell are you doing here…?” asked the noble, “I thought you fled with the remnants of the royal navy after the Siege of Throne?”

  Bar turned from an afternoon darkened by clouds. “Did,” he said with a curt nod, “but we’ve since joined up with the Guild.”

  The Guild… Pirates? You’re telling me you’ve joined up with that band of lawless cutthroats? You’ve got to be kidding me! I knew you a man of questionable heritage and honor, Bar, but that…”

  “Gods…” Bar gasped in exasperations, “throwing out insults before you’ve even offered me a well-deserved thanks for coming to your rescue. You definitely haven’t changed one bit, have you?”

  “Rescue?” snapped Drish, at first confused by the word, but that old sickness growing in his stomach explained it all just the same. “Rescue, no…there must be a misunderstanding here. If it’s my father you’re looking for, Bar, you’ve come to the wrong place. He isn’t here, he’s back—”

  Captain Bazzon raised a fingerless glove to stop the aristocrat midsentence, “No, you misunderstand.” He finished with a dirty finger pointed at Drish.
r />   “Yeah, Drish, we’re here for you, under your father’s orders,” finished explaining an unseen woman, and from between the ranks of the rogues appeared a young woman. She was dressed just as scandalous as the rest; beneath her dusty trail-blazer coat, the girl wore a leather corset of all things, a yellow halter-top, and evergreen slacks striped with white. Over her shoulder she’d roguishly tossed back an indigo scarf, and topping the braids of her winter-blonde hair was a black top hat that matched her knee-high boots, both in color and buckled adornments.

  “And you are?” barked the aristocrat testily. He disliked the way the six men surrounding him were glowering like buffoons. He was tired of all these people meddling in his affairs, especially when it was neither appreciated nor wanted. He had figured out his plan of action, and the means to salvage the rest of his life, and these brigands were going to ruin everything if the Empire showed up and found them here.

  “It’s Abigail,” the girl stately plainly, as though that were a name that meant anything to Drish at all. “Abigail Fellkirk.”

  “Abi—” he was in the process of shrugging away this nonsense, when he stopped. Of course. It was the same tawdry girl from the tavern, and he felt his heart lurch with conflicting emotions. He remembered the way her eyes had glistened with empathy just a few brief hours ago; and the way she dashed his ego just as quickly when she’d uttered his father’s name. “Abigail, yes, it’s just…I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Yeah, without the hideous makeup.” She smiled back lightly.

  Drish discovered he was glad she was free of it as well, finding her actually quite lovely in the plain; the light chestnut hue to her naked face nearly flawless. “That, by the way,” she added, “was your father’s bright idea of going unnoticed…but we can talk all about that later; after you’re safe.” She reached out and grabbed hold of his hand.

  Drish was surprised. He expected her hands to be soft, but they were anything but. Instead they were calloused and held an undeniable strength.