Maledictus Aether (22 page)

“I suppose it does sound rather far-fetched,” he admits,
nodding, and I reach the door we have yet to go through. “Well,
there are a lot of supplies in here for maintenance, at least.
Might be easier than we thought to fix her.”

“Provided we figure out what’s wrong with her engines,” I
shoot back, sighing as I open the door. I continue looking over my
shoulder at him as I cross the threshold to the deeper reaches of
the cargo bay. “I have never seen engines so bloody…”

As I turn my head to look into the room, my words fall off
my tongue and are forgotten. I hear Lucian call my name, faintly,
but I don’t answer. The door’s knob falls from my hand and the
wooden door swings open, hitting the wall with a
thud
, and the reflection in the room looks just as
startled.

Pale blond hair, umber eyes,
sun-kissed skin; a ski-sloped nose, almond-shaped eyes, sharp
cheekbones and full lips, a strong jaw. Ears a little large.

Left hand – skin and bones, not
metal and steam – hovering over the wooden corner of a crate.

“What did you-” Lucian walks up
to stand behind me, and when his eyes find the same thing mine has,
his own words fail him. Instead, he finishes with: “bloody hell,
I’m dead aren’t I?”

I would have laughed if it
wasn’t for my throat closing in on me, and the reflection moves.
When it moves independently the emotions surge, the floodgates
released, and I lunge.

“Kennedy!”

Ignoring my companion I lunge
for the man still standing immobile, a scream tearing itself from
my lips as I swing at him with my left hand, hitting him right
under the jaw and forcing him to stagger. Strong arms – familiar
ones – grab me by my own and hold me, but the moment of anger has
faded, leaving a bitter hatred in its place and forcing my blood to
run quickly through my veins and my breath to come in short gasps
of the cold air.

The man and I look at each other, not speaking a word – and
from this distance I can see the marks of time on his face, lines
along the corners of his eyes and down his cheeks, as well as on
his forehead. Not a lot, but enough. I can also see a scar
stretching from the top of his left eyelid to his jaw, and the
colour of his left eye is a little bit murky, even paler than the
other.

He’s blind from his left side.
An old injury, or a battle, perhaps.

Then, the man speaks.

“Isaac,” he breathes, the voice
low and deep. It sends a jolt up my spine with the way it sounds so
familiar yet so foreign, and I grit my teeth, lunging forward
again. Lucian holds me back, pulling me against him as much as he
can.

“His name is Kennedy,” my
friend offers, a lot more calm than I am – though his voice is full
of the shocked disbelief I feel. “Cephas Kennedy Watkins II.”

Something clouds over the man’s
face at the sound of my name, and I stop fighting against my
restraints and instead lean back into the hold, biting my lower lip
as I tilt my head down to where our feet are over the metal floor.
My breath and heartbeat are a staccato in my ears, a relentless
song.

“How…?” I choke, and I
shamefully start to shake. There is just so many emotions running
through me at once, overwhelming me. Hatred, anger, grief, guilt,
sorrow, relief, admiration, love… I feel as if I am coming undone
at the seams. “Why did you…?”

If Lucian was not holding me up, I would have fallen to my
knees. I force myself to look up into the man’s eyes – my
father
– despite the salt water shamefully staining my
skin.

“You were alive all this time?” I question, the words a
shout in the silence. My voice cracks, but I continue regardless. I
need to get it out, let the anger and the grief and the hatred pour
out of me before they consume me. “I don’t know or care how, but
you left me with that lying, cheating
whore
or a
mother without any sort of clue as to who you were? All I had were
books and stories! I thought you were dead
all this time
,
and you couldn’t even bother to say hello? I don’t care if you were
wanted for whatever reason – I’m your
son
!

“Do you have any
idea
what it was like
growing up without a father?
Do you
?” I scream,
and I can hear Lucian whisper my name calmly near my ear, and I
shake my head, swallowing back the lump in my throat. “All the
hatred and the fighting, I was nothing. I was treated like a
vagrant!
I’m your son!
All that talk in your letters about
me being your greatest treasure, and you couldn’t even try to take
me away, help me grow, be a
father
to me? I am
your son; my appearance, if not my blood, is proof of that. Does
that mean
nothing
to you?”

I have never cried.

Not when I was thrown to the ground and dirt was ground
into my face, not when blows came at me the way a hurricane comes
at a city, not when the words hurt so much I wanted to scream. Not
when the dirty stares from others in church burned into my skin,
when the whispers from
dignified
men and
women reached my ears as they criticized my father. When my mother
met with that swine when they believed I was away or occupied, and
the things I heard as a result. When those around me started
whispering about this scandal, this rumour, that I had to pretend
wasn’t real.

When I woke up in the
infirmary, light-headed with the loss of blood and informed that my
legs and arm were all gone, that I needed surgery. When I was going
through rehab, the pain of the surgery itself.

“I have spent twenty-two years
chasing a shadow,” I choke, my head falling back down. My knees
finally surrender and Lucian grunts as he negotiates this added
weight, holding me up. “The least you could have done is let me
know you were alive.”

Unable to hold my weight, my
companion carefully helps me to my knees, holding me up by my
shoulders as he kneels beside me. I hear an aged and heavy sigh
above us, and then father kneels in front of us before reaching for
my hands, hesitating only slightly as he notices the left one, and
grasps them both in his until I glance up at last.

“I had to exile myself,” he whispers, and there’s such a
shamed, saddened look on his face that my anger fades little by
little. His eyes flicker between Lucian and I, and then he focuses
on me again. “There is a very long story attached to that, rest
assured, and I will tell it to you should you wish for me to. Just
know that, no matter what, son; you have always been my treasure
even if I could not meet you before today. I am sorry I could not
be the father you needed, and I gave you the mother you did not. I
will always hate myself for both of these.”

After a few moments, I nod
numbly, my stomach hollowing out and my throat still constricted,
but marginally less. So I nod again, looking to my friend on my
right; he cocks his head to the side slightly, offering me a small
smile that I manage to return.

“We will head back to the
Atlas
,” I tell him,
and the dark-haired Irishman nods once, making father look at him
curiously as he releases my hands. “There, the three of us will sit
in my quarters and talk; I’ll have Cain prepare a room for my
father.”

“Want me to go find them?” he
questions, and I shake my head.

“Let them finish their
investigation and report back to the helm at the appointed time.
For now,” here I pause, looking sideways to my father, “the two of
us have a different priority.”

“Is that alright with you,
sir?” Lucian asks, turning his blue-eyed attention to my father. I
do so in turn, and the man who looks uncannily similar to me nods
after a moment. “Alright then, Kennedy; can you walk?”

I brush off his concern, gladly
taking his offered assistance in pulling myself to my feet.

“I don’t think anything’s
broken,” I remark, pressing my hands to the knees of my
prosthetics. “I just felt… light-headed. There should be no
damage.”

Father stands as I do a quick
damage report of my legs, looking at the two of us curiously. When
I straighten and rub at my cheeks to rid them of the evidence, he
speaks.

“What is your name, young man?” he questions, and Lucian
snaps his head in his direction, frowning. I look to my friend, and
he answers.

“Lucian, sir,” he replies,
“Lucian Rawston.” Father’s face lights up in recognition, and he
nods in affirmation.

“Call me Cephas.”

After the commotion that was
bringing my father aboard my ship and my crew firing questions one
after the other, disbelieving it even though we’ve already done the
impossible twice already, and how Aebra must hold me in high
regards indeed. We took a quick detour to fetch a creature further
in Tier, a bird that makes a vulture look as friendly as a common
housecat.

It is perhaps the size of a hawk yet looks similar to a
cardinal, but its facial features give it a really cruel look
indeed, and as it yawned and flapped its wings lazily I noted the
sharp row of teeth set into its beak. The long, sharp claws go
without saying.

Father declared its name to be
Thain.

The bird and the lizard now stand on my desk, carefully
seizing each other up before deeming that the other is not a threat
as of yet and dutifully ignoring each other; Thain starts preening
his feathers and Orin curls up to sleep on a pile of papers,
ignoring us all as I pass out mugs of tea, then sitting down across
from my father. Lucian sits beside me, ankle on his thigh as he
cradles his mug and watches the shadow of the past sitting across
from us himself as he takes a drink of the liquid, sighing in
relief.

For a few minutes there’s
silence as we each savour the hot drink after the brisk cold
outside, Earl Grey making the air around us smell as sharply as the
leaves themselves do. Then I hold mine firmly in my hands, looking
to the dark orange, even near black, liquid between my hands.

“I should not even be alive,” I say, breaking the silence,
and look up to the man whose name I hold. Father blinks at me
curiously, and I continue. “I was fixing the clockwork system of an
automaton that had broken down; I was sixteen at the time, and had
joined the Forces not long before. A prodigy, they called me, but
all the credit to my education goes to your notebooks and journals
that had been at my disposal at home as a child. Ever since I was
little, I’ve poured into your life’s work to be as close to you as
I could.”

Pausing for a moment, I take a
sip and keep my eyes on the man who sired me.

“There was a fault, and as I was beneath the automaton
working on it the machine broke –
exploded
would be a
good term to use, however – and tore both my legs and my left arm
to ribbons. They had to amputate all three limbs.” Sighing, I press
my free hand to my new heart and frown at the memory of Lucian’s
face when I requested he perform surgery on me. “It also destroyed
my heart. They had a mechanical one implanted and gave me these
limbs – well, an older version anyways. I built these ones
myself.”

The man chuckles lightly, and I
look up at him in surprise.

“Sorry,” he muses merrily, one
eye closed as he laughs, “it’s just that fixing things that are
never broken is sort of the family trade, so to speak. My father,
my grandfather, and so on, all did the same. Our family has always
been known as radical thinkers, always making good things
better.”

Cephas leans back on the couch
he occupies, sighing.

“I learned what I know from my
father, and he through his, and so on and so forth. Engineering has
been a trade of ours for generations, and becomes more and more
impressive with each generation. Those books were mostly penned by
those before me, and those who came after simply added or refined
certain aspects.” Offering me a smile, he continues. “I am glad
that these priceless tomes have helped you achieve whatever goals
you have set out for yourself, son.”

Nodding curtly, I take a drink
of my tea and burn my tongue a little with how fast I drink it.
Wincing, I reign in on my anger again and take a deep breath
through my nose, addressing my father once I trust myself well
enough to speak.

“I want to know what happened,”
I tell him, and Lucian sets his empty mug down on the table before
he leans his arms back on the couch’s backrest. I settle more
comfortably against it, the sole of his boot brushing lightly
against my left knee. “What happened to Tier, and the day you were
supposed to be executed.”

Cephas sighs, nodding.

“Fair enough,” he admits,
rubbing the bridge of his nose before looking at the two of us. “I
owe you this much, if not more, for everything I have done. I
simply wish that you will learn to forgive me in time.”

“We shall see,” I shoot back,
and he nods, taking a deep breath.

Setting his mug down on the
table, he leans forward in his seat and presses his elbows on his
knees. Then, he begins.

“Only a few of us were given the truth about what was going
to happen to Tier,” he begins, closing his eyes and leaning his
chin on his fingers. As if reliving this memory. “Among those were
my grandfather and I, and if I recall your grandfather was there as
well, if not your father, Lucian. All of the descendants of the
first families, those of us who were there to build and launch the
ship, were called. The Watkins were in charge of schematics and
building the machinery, as well as be the engineers; the Rawstons
were in charge of metalworking, building the ships and maintenance
work, as well as artillery and weaponry. The Andrews were the
pilots, and mostly dealt with flying the ship itself and taking
charge of the people; this is why that, wherever you have gone and
followed the trail I left for you, there remained design
schematics.