Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains (4 page)

His rage carried him through the cold for
several more kilometers, but as Drish reached the two-story
ramshackle structure that was supposed to be a tavern, the cold had
mercilessly sucked most of that anger out of him. Now Drish simply
felt cold, dejected, and tired beyond all measure. He was unsure of
the hour, but he knew it had to be long after midnight, and the
morning was probably only a few hours off. Regardless, even from
the street he could hear the tavern alive with people and music. It
actually made him hopeful. Perhaps the snitches were wrong about
his father after all, this tavern didn’t sound like a place where
clandestine acts of terrorism were planned. It just sounded like a
place where the lowborn of King’s Isle went to drown out the
sorrows of their meaningless lives.

Drish thought about turning back right then,
but he shivered violently in the cold. The temperature had been
steadily dropping over the course of the night and the slush was
fast becoming ice.

Resigned and eager for a moment’s warmth,
Drish made his way through the front door, determined to stay only
long enough to drive the numbness from his limbs. As for his
father, he remained undecided on whether he wanted to hunt down the
man and confront him, or wait until morning when he came shambling
home.

Once inside, Drish stowed the bottle under
his armpit as he plunged into a world of heavy pipe smoke, riotous
ragtime music, relentless laughing, clinking glasses, and the
pungent reek of cheap booze. He had to pick his way carefully
through the crowds of stumbling drunks lining the hallway. Most
eyed him suspiciously as he passed, and it was with a great sense
of relief that Drish left the entrance behind, to find himself in a
small chamber, where everyone’s collective attention was focused on
the bar set against the back wall, and not on him. Each man and
woman present seemed to be yelling and waving their hands,
desperately vying for the barkeep’s divided attention. So Drish
moved unnoticed deeper into the den of vice, following a set of
broad steps down into a main gathering area, forming the hub to a
much greater series of chambers—a catacomb cast in brick. It amazed
the young noble how big this building actually was, and how many
people were packed into it. But the crush of humanity also made the
low ceilings feel even lower, and the cramped space even more
cramped.

This was simply not the sort of place Drish
would ever have gone under normal circumstances. It was too raw,
and the aristocrat felt a panic grip his chest. He wouldn’t be able
to handle this place and its chaotic environment much longer. Even
if his father was here, he could never hope to find him in the sea
of restless movement; the thunderous noise and the relentless beat
of the band’s music. The filth around him was proof positive that
his father was too far gone to be reasoned with anyway.

Forget a noble, not even a simple, decent
man would ever venture into this waste willingly, and certainly not
night after night.

“You here to party?” yelled a wisp of a
woman in pancake makeup, and suddenly she had her spinally arms
draped loosely over Drish’s shoulders. The layered skirts she wore
hung ragged, looking both cheap and faded, and as she pulled
herself up uncomfortably close to him, the smell of mothballs gaged
his senses. “You’re real cute, you know, well-dressed for a man in
a tavern such as this.”

Drish tried to pull away from her even as
she spilled herself over him, putting her bright red lips so close
that he could feel her breath tickling the hairs on his neck. He
expected it to smell of cheap tobacco and pungent booze, but found
it sweet instead…like strawberries.

“What brings you here?” She teased a finger
along his collar and batted her long eyelashes.

“Nothing, listen, madam, I’m more than all
set,” he stated, lifting his arm to pull her off, but as he did so
the bottle of Coronation Wine went tumbling free. The thud of it
hitting the floor was lost in the wash of noise thrumming around
them, yet both were aware of its fall. Simultaneously Drish and the
golden-haired tavern trollop bent down to retrieve it, but the
smaller woman was quicker. In a flash of frills and lace, she’d
folded herself in half and snatched up the bottle within her dainty
hands.

“What’s this,” she teased, pulling the
bottle close to the revealing cleave of her bosom.

“Just a bottle of wine, miss,” he said,
trying not to look. “Now if you’d be so kind as to as to give it
back.”

But she just teased him a bit more, holding
it out for him to take, and then quickly pulling it away when he
reached out. The game elicited a playful giggle from the woman.
Drish, however, did not find it amusing in the least, and after the
third failed attempt felt his temper flare to the point of
full-blown rage.

“Oh, don’t be so sour,” the irritating girl
eventually relented with a smirk, but before she was to hand it
back, she turned the bottle over to have a look. “What’s the big
deal about this any…” her voice trailed off as her eyes narrowed
over the bottle’s label, and then her girlish demeanor washed away
in an instant. “Follow me,” she ordered sternly, leaving little
room for argument, and before Drish could get a word in edgewise,
she began to walk off with the bottle still in her possession.

Great, now what,
thought Drish,
does she think I stole it from the bar?
He was tempted to
just let her walk off and be done with it. After all, not more than
an hour ago he was prepared to drink it out of spite, and now
having his father’s prized possession guzzled down by some cheap
harlot for a single night of intoxication seemed similarly fitting.
But then she turned, and urged him to join her. Something in the
young woman’s saffron-colored eyes said it all, and suddenly there
was something beautiful and strong in her features, as though the
makeup was but a mask, and it was enough for him to follow.

The woman took him on a spirited path, deep
into the tavern’s revelry, through rooms of different décor and
different temperament. In the beginning they were designed simply
for raucous drinking, and then for dancing; until the moods turned
somber and the rooms held games of billiards and darts. After that
they passed through semi-private salons, rooms meant for
philosophical discussions, but an eerily calm held sway. The people
sat in silence and watched as Drish passed; a dark interest
haunting their shadowy eyes, until finally the bar trollop ended
her journey at the threshold to a red door set in rock. They had to
be in the very foundations of the building at that point…that is,
if they were still in the same building.

“Stay right here,” said the girl softly,
“And don’t move. For your own safety. Do. Not. Move.” Her doleful
eyes glanced behind Drish, and when he turned, it was to find four
grim-faced brutes, standing with thick arms folded over broad
chests, and blocking the way back.

“No,” he said lamentably, “I don’t think I
will…”

With the girl gone, the chamber took on a
sinister feel and Drish swallowed hard. The men standing around him
said nothing; their threatening eyes never wavering; their stern
demeanors never relaxing; the muscles on their arms remaining
coiled in anticipation; but in anticipation of what, Drish Larken
couldn’t be certain. Only the tension remained definitive, filling
the room until it turned so thick as to become suffocating, and the
noble had just about lost his nerves to stand when the bar harlot
finally reappeared, sweeping into the room in a cloud of floral
scents and powdery makeup.

“Alright, come with me, Drish,” she said to
the noble’s relief, that is, until he took note of the use of his
name. The aristocrat’s breath caught in his throat.

“My name,” he gasped out, “how do you know
my name,” he managed through a fit of coughing and sputtering

“Just come on.”

Drish should have known that the woman was
with the insurgency. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he found
his father standing in what looked like a brick wine cellar either.
Despite what reason
should
have already explained in Drish’s
mind, he was still astonished when his father looked up at him from
a broad table, and calmly stated for his son’s benefit, “Welcome to
the Ascellan Resistance.”

But Drish’s astonishment quickly turned to
anger. From the looks of the setup around his father, Arvis looked
to be the damned mastermind of the entire King’s Isle insurgency.
Laid out at his fingertips was a map of the whole isle, and over it
was riddled dozens of tiny, place-holding tokens, though it was the
bottle of Coronation Wine displayed prominently at the table’s
center that commanded the most attention. Regardless, Drish snapped
his eyes up to confront his father, but the flag tacked to the rock
wall behind him halted his words. The young noble had seen this
emblem a thousand times growing up, and though he may have felt a
pride at seeing it at one time, now it brought a sickening
dread.

Drish actually gasped aloud. It was the flag
of the Unified Kingdoms of Ascella, with its segmented red griffon
poised upon a field of gold. He was sure the Empire had burned
every last one of them, and best if they had. It had become the
very embodiment of the senseless patriotism that had turned King’s
Isle on its head. Even now it seemed to glow in the light of its
own malice; obstinate as ever despite the tattered nature of the
cloth—nay, each burn and bullet hole only seemed to enhance its
defiance. It was almost a perfect representation of the man
standing under it, broken and marred, and yet still unshaken, still
unforgiving, and still accusing Drish of disloyalty and
treason.

“Thanks Abigail,” stated Arvis calmly as he
smoothed the gray scruff of his beard. The facial hair helped hide
the immobile and waxy flesh from where the stroke had paralyzed his
left side. “I think we can take it from here. I’d like to talk to
my son alone if you’d be so kind.”

“You bet, Arvis,” the scantily-dressed girl
replied cordially, even adding a curtsy that revealed a bit more
than was acceptable for a lady. As she turned, she flashed Drish a
kind look that took him off guard.

In the dingy light of a single greasy
arc-bulb—under the relentless gaze of the flag—the collaborator
expected a look of accusation from the perfect curves of this
lowborn girl’s face; one that said
collaborator
aloud; one
that said
traitor
; but there was no such look. He couldn’t
even be sure what she had intended with that expression of hers,
but its result was undeniable. He felt a strange sort of stirring
from within, and whether that was simply carnal lust or something
more profound, he was at a loss to explain.

“Something tells me you didn’t come here to
join the Resistance, son,” Arvis’s voice dragged him back to the
present. “So you mind explaining to me what you’re doing carting
around
my
bottle of wine?”

Drish didn’t remember his father sounding so
lucid. There was certainly an underlying difficulty to his speech,
and the left side of his body remained limp and immovable, but he
also looked stronger than he remembered, and a lot more coherent.
It left Drish wondering just how long it had been since he and his
father had last spoken. Usually, when the young accountant left for
work in the mornings, the elder Larken was asleep in the servant’s
room just off the kitchen (on those days that Arvis was actually
home), presumably shaking off the effects of a hangover. And then
most nights when Drish returned from the compound, his father was
already gone, and the money left on the dining room table replaced
with a note saying he was at the tavern. Up until tonight it all
seemed so simple, but in this dank wine cellar, surrounded by the
remnants of the old kingdom, it was anything but.

His father’s unapologetic reception proved
too much.

“This is how you repay my kindness,” snarled
Drish, firing off the first salvo of what was sure to become a
heated argument. “You take my money and you funnel it to the
insurgency. Do you have any idea the harm you’ve done to me?”

“Hold on now, how do you know that,”
muttered Arvis as he snatched up the bottle. Confusion muddled his
expression and revealed the extent to which the stroke had
distorted his face’s ability to move correctly. He looked ghoulish
and sinister because of it.

“Domaire,” replied Drish through clenched
teeth.

“Domaire? I haven’t seen him in ages, how
would he know?”

Drish felt the rage boiling within, but he
knew he needed to get out the details before it was too late.
“Domaire’s the clerk at the Ethnic Liaison Office—they handle
issues between the Interior Security Bur—”

“I know what the damn Liaison Office is—but
a snitch… Domaire’s a snitch,” the pain could clearly be heard in
Arvis’s slurred speech, but Drish didn’t care. In fact, it made him
all the more furious that being a ‘snitch’ was the one thing his
father seemed to take away first from all this. “I never would
have…”

“You should be glad, father,” Drish let his
temper rage, “because he intercepted a list bound for the imperials
with
your
name on it. It’s an arrest list of suspected
insurgents! Domaire probably saved your accursed life tonight—at
least for a few more days anyway!”

Concern galvanized the insurgent leader into
motion, and he dragged the left half of his body around the table
to be closer to his son. “A list? Drish, who else is on that
list?”

“I am, father! I’m on that damn list….as a
suspected financier. They think I’ve been intentionally funneling
money to the terrorists.”

“This is important, son, who else is on that
list!”

“Damn it, Arvis, can’t you think about me,
and what you’ve done to my life because of all this? How am I going
to explain
this
away?”