Saebrya

Ryan shivered despite the trash she’d piled around him.

Still, it was a joy to see.

Shivering, at least, was better than not breathing. Off and on for the last two days, Ryan’s chest had simply stopped moving, and Saebrya had been filled with a horrible dread that ate its way to her core. During those moments, the only thing that kept her from sinking to the ground in grief was the fact that the sipper hadn’t released its hold. It wouldn’t stay attached if he was dead.

“You’re killing him,” she told the sipper.

The black eyes watched her. Laughed at her. Dared her to do something about it.

Saebrya lunged up and kicked the thing in the face, as hard as she could. Ryan gasped and shuddered from the impact, and Saebrya recoiled, terrified that she’d killed him.

He took another shuddering breath.

“You’re killing him!” she screamed at the sipper, balling her fists. “Doesn’t that matter to you?! You kill him and he’ll stop making stuff for you to eat. You don’t kill the chicken if you want the eggs. Please.”

The sipper watched her. Swallow after swallow of silver ether pulsed down its throat. Saebrya was pretty sure it had gotten bigger in the time it had been attached to her friend.

Saebrya leaned close, until she was all but touching one big black eye. “You’re so dead,” she whispered to it, trembling.

The sipper’s eyes followed her, but it continued to feed. Ryan’s breath came in a thin rattle from his open mouth.

Staring into the sipper’s eyes, Saebrya stood. All her fear of the Aulds had disintegrated, leaving frigid rage in its place. “Dead,” she bit out. Then, swiveling, she hurled herself down the alley, away from Ryan, toward the Aulds.

One of them was going to help her.

Perhaps they sensed the change in her demeanor, or perhaps she was walking too fast to give them any other choice, but the street thugs and travelers that had normally kicked or cursed her in passing now got out of her way. Saebrya ignored them altogether, her eyes focused on the gleaming golden tip of the tower visible just over the tops of the dilapidated houses.

She pushed her way down strange streets and alleyways, not allowing fear to take hold as she worked her way deeper into the city. The Spyre emerged eventually, gleaming green and gold in the midday sun.

Saebrya paused, breathless, upon her first true glimpse of it. She stood at the base of a ring of emerald-green towers, staring up at the delicate tendrils of balconies and trellises hanging between them. Dribbling from every window was a stream of ether, mixed and metallic, its color infusing the stone until the towers themselves seemed to glow. The golden rooftops alone were enough to fill the coffers of an entire country.

Then she saw the sippers.

Like a corpse festooned in vermin, the entire Spyre crawled. Sippers great and small congregated around the doors and windows, the small ones sipping the ether that spilled out, the big ones eating the rest. Clinging to the walls and rooftops, the Spyre was matted with them, the biggest ones almost as large as the sipper draining the life from Ryan’s breast, their coiled forms wrapped around the tower bases, their groping mouths sucking at doors or windows.

Saebrya took a steadying breath and lowered her gaze back to the road that led into the Spyre. Ahead, it forked, splitting so that a smaller road dirt road wound around the back of the Spyre while the larger, cobbled road led directly from the mouth of the Spyre to the city proper.

Seeing the big Unmade guarding the main gate and the bejeweled and wealthy patrons that passed between them—all of them ahorse—Saebrya decided to try her chances with the smaller road.

The dirt path curved around the edge of the Spyre’s outer wall, bending here and there to meet the wall at a small service door set into the stone. From them, dozens of plain-clothed commoners, many of whom wore the bright colors and insignia of a specific Auld, came and went carrying food, supplies, and laundry.

Saebrya walked until she found a door that was less used than the others, partially hidden by a well and a roofed horse post. She sat down by the well, out of sight of the main road, to wait.

After nearly an hour, a little boy passed her with an armful of onions. When she rose from her spot, he gave her a startled look. His face was lean and expressive, with big brown eyes. His hands were wrapped in swaths of silver ether, though he dribbled no ether of his own.

“You lost?” the boy asked, blinking up at her.

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“I need to get into the Spyre,” Saebrya said to him. “To meet with Auld Rhydderch.”

“You’re an Auldin, then?” the boy asked.

“No.”

Immediately, the curiosity in his face shut off as if it had never been. “No barrens allowed inside the Spyre unless it’s staff or a guest of an Auld.” He turned to go.

Saebrya grabbed his hand. Under her grip, the silver glove slipped off and burst into a thousand tiny silver droplets that spattered the ground between them. The boy’s armload of onions unbalanced and he let out a dismayed cry as they tumbled to the path.

“I need to speak with Auld Rhydderch,” Saebrya said, still holding his hand.

Glaring at her, the boy jerked his fingers free. In silence, he bent and began collecting his onions. “You do that again and I’m calling the Unmade.” Once he had them repiled in his scrawny arms, he cast her one last glare and continued toward the service door.

Upon his approach, a pool of silver ether began to leech out of the soil at his feet, coalescing and rising around him, encasing him in a tube.

When the boy reached out and touched the door’s entrance with the hand whose ethereal glove had been shed, however, the silver tube crashed down upon him, cinching him tight.

The boy gasped and dropped his onions again.

Saebrya walked up to him, eying the way the silver flowed around him from a point in the ground like an exposed artery.

“Don’t come any closer!” the boy cried. “It’ll just trap you, too. It’s a Ganlin smart spell. Please get help.”

Saebrya looked down, noticing the way the ground at her feet was beginning to pool and coalesce with more silver. She looked back at the boy. “I need to speak to Auld Rhydderch. If I get you help, will you promise to take me to him?”

But the boy was beginning to panic. He twisted and writhed in the pulsing silver arteries that bound him, hyperventilating. The silver lines simply constricted under his struggles, holding him even tighter.

When eventually he quieted, Saebrya repeated her question.

The boy was in tears. “The Ganlins are all away at the Hall. The Vethyles can’t undo the function of a smart enchantment. Not even Rhydderch. I’m gonna be here forever!”

“Boy,” Saebrya said, “If I can get you help, will you promise to help me find Rhydderch?”

“Yes,” he said, “But—”

Saebrya kicked the artery that held him apart where it exited the ground. Her boot became drenched with silver ether as it spattered everything around them, dribbling back into the pool drifting at her feet.

The boy blinked, then straightened. “Oh,” he said, grunting. “Looks like it recognized me, after all.”

“I need to find Auld Rhydderch,” Saebrya said.

“Shove off, country-girl.” He haughtily began picking up his onions again. Saebrya stepped back, trailing footprints of silver ether as she backed out of range of the shimmering pool.

The boy again touched the door with his ungloved hand, and once more, the pool at his feet coalesced into silvery veins, encapsulating him.

Sweaty fear broke out on the boy’s face as his onions rolled away from him, bruised and dirt-covered. Saebrya glanced around to make sure they had no witnesses, then approached again. “I’m going to release you again,” Saebrya said. “And this time, I want you to take me to Rhydderch. Deal?”

The boy’s eyes showed whites all around. “You’re a Ganlin?”

“Promise me. Otherwise I’ll leave you here and find someone else.”

The boy nodded quickly. “I know where his room is. I take him wine, sometimes.”

Saebrya severed the flow of ether with her foot, and once more, the silvery stuff collapsed around him in little droplets, leaking from his skin like he were an Auld himself.

Once more, the boy bent down to pick up his onions.

“I won’t save you a third time,” Saebrya warned.

When the boy looked back at her, though, his haughtiness was gone, replaced with wariness. “If I go back inside without these, the cooks will kill me.”

Saebrya nodded, but when he reached out to touch the glowing silver latch, she caught his hand. “Let me do that.”

The boy, staring at her fearfully, pulled his hand away from the door.

Saebrya swiped at the haze of ether on the door handle and it lost its form immediately, like a chunk of ice exposed to great heat. The dribbles leaked down the door in an amorphorous trickle, rejoining the pool where they stood. Saebrya stepped back, out of the pool. “Now try.”

The boy reached out and put his hand on the latch.

The pool of ether remained stagnant at his feet.

Swallowing, he pushed the door open and stepped inside. Saebrya followed him to the brink and warily scanned the frame for any other ethereal shapes. She brushed away three more before she stepped inside.

When she didn’t keel over dead, the boy’s gaze suddenly took on a look of awe.

“Rhydderch,” she reminded him.

The boy seemingly shook himself and glanced down the hall behind him. “Okay. Uh. Let me drop these off in the kitchens, okay?” He started moving, the stink of onions trailing him.

Saebrya grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back. Into his startled—and clearly terrified—face she said, “I only want to speak with Rhydderch. You tell anyone I’m here…”

“I won’t,” the boy assured her. “I don’t care about Aulds’ business. I’ll take you there. Cook just needs her onions…”

Saebrya released him. “Let’s go,” she whispered. “Make it fast. Ryan is dying.”

The boy gave her an odd look, then scurried on ahead. For several minutes, she followed him through the winding maze, her skin crawling at the number of sippers in the place. She had to constantly watch her feet to keep from stepping on them.

Then, as they were turning a corner, Saebrya realized that the smells of cooking food were getting less strong. She glanced at her feet. Even the sippers were fewer. Her eyes narrowed. He was taking her deeper into an unused portion of the Spyre.

“Stop,” she said.

The boy dropped his onions and bolted.

Saebrya tried to catch him, but had to slow, afraid of stepping on a spined sipper in the chase. Then, alone with the sippers, Saebrya realized that very soon, the boy was going to bring guards, possibly even the hideous man-beasts that guarded every official gate in the city.

At that thought, she quickly hurried deeper into the Spyre, found a crossways, noticed the sippers still scuttling frantically where the boy had disturbed them, and took the opposite passage. She continued down several sets of stairs, throwing off etheric veins that tried to net her, and ducked into an abandoned room, brushing the ether off of the door and locking it behind her.

As she closed her eyes to wait, she thought of Ryan, struggling for his life in the back of an alley.

She wondered if he was still breathing.

She turned, desperate to drag that image away from her mind. Immediately, she gasped.

The room behind her was filled with treasure...