The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  When he checked his watch, it was eighteen hundred on the nose. He happily dropped the watch into his chest pocket and started setting the autopilot before he noticed Nivy grimacing like she had a stomach ache as she stared out the canopy window.

  “Hey. What's wrong? Really?”

  Sighing, she shook her head dismissively, and at once stood and turned to go before he could pester her more. Reece followed slowly, scrutinizing the back of her head. Nivy had always kept her share of secrets from him; he’d had to learn to be alright with that. But since the night of the masquerade…since they’d faced down Eldritch together…well, if she told anyone anything, it was Reece. What was troubling her?

  Regardless of whatever was troubling her, by the time they reached the hall to the galley, he had to jog to keep up with her eager march after the full, lusty smells of their holiday dinner. The photon lights along the corridor had been dimmed, and music from Po's wireless trickled out into the dimness, strings and horns and a low, rich voice singing about crackling fires. And suddenly, Reece and Nivy were in a race to reach the galley, and the food, first. Reece let her win. By a hair.

  “Good Sterlin' Eve!” Po cried, waving with a giant oven mitt as she leaned up from setting a steaming bowl of greens on the table. For the first time Reece had seen, she was wearing her white-blonde hair loose around her waist. It was held back from her startlingly clean, freckled face with a red band.

  “Good Sterling Eve!” Hayden and Scarlet, who were already seated on the other side of the table, echoed in greeting. Their cleanness (and Scarlet's prettiness; apparently she hadn't completely purged her wardrobe, because her dress was vivid green and white) made Reece feel like spitting in his hand and combing down his hair, but one look at Gideon and Mordecai, coming in from the galley with armloads of dishes, made him feel right at home…and even a little clean, himself.

  Hurrying to a chair, Nivy sat down and leaned her nose out over the table, inhaling with her eyes closed. Shadows from the streamers Po and Gideon had successfully hung in a canopy over the entire ceiling crisscrossed her contented face.

  “Good Sterling Eve,” Reece agreed as he sat. “What is this? It smells amazing.”

  “Ain't nothin' special,” Mordecai chuckled, gingerly setting down a lidded platter. “Afraid anythin' would smell good after the mud we've been eatin'.” Nevertheless, he looked pleased with his work, setting his fists on his hips and smiling down at the platter like a proud father.

  “Cap'n?”

  “Ow!” Nivy had slapped Reece's hand down from reaching to pick at a piece of steaming bread. Rubbing his hand sourly, he looked over at Po, who was exchanging significant looks with the others. “What?”

  “Um. We agreed that maybe, seein' as you're, you know, the cap'n and all…” Biting back a grin, she brought a floppy green something out from behind her back. “You ought’a be the one who gets to wear the Sterlin' Cap.”

  Reece groaned. The one tradition he could have hoped had been left behind. “Who brought that?” In the same beat, he said, “No. Mordecai should wear it. He's the closest thing we have to a patron.”

  “But we voted, Reece,” Scarlet said, her eyes twinkling at the long-tailed hat held reverently across Po's hands. Beside her, Hayden was staring intently at a speck on the table, apparently using all his concentration not to burst out laughing.

  “I didn't get a vote! No. No! I'm not wearing it!”

  The others raised their voices, but it was Gid, arriving with the last steaming tin plate balanced on his callused fingertips, who surprisingly waved them down. “Lay off. If he don't wanna wear the bleedin' thing, he don't wanna wear it. Give it here.” Po meekly handed it over so he could put it away. Only on his way to the coat tree in the corner, he calmly unfolded it and not-so-mercifully thrust it down over Reece's head till it covered his eyes and nose. The crew cheered. Traitorous cretins.

  Maybe Mordecai was right, and the food only tasted so good because it had been so long now since they'd eaten anything with real flavor, but Reece would have sworn it was the best spread he'd ever seen, let alone tasted. Greens beans, sauced potatoes, moist dumplings, beef. It was impressive they found room for talking between the considerable face-stuffing that was underway, but as they ate, they told stories that made them think of other stories that made them think of other stories, until slowly, as the food dwindled, so did the talking, into a warm, comfortable quietness. Even wearing the ridiculous hat of the Sterling Patron, Reece felt full and happy, ready for bed. But the girls, at least, had different ideas.

  “Did everyone bring something?” Scarlet asked as she presented them with the empty rucksack that was their makeshift Patron's bag. Usually, the Patron's bag was something fancy, velvet or silk in silver or gold. Apparently their resources had only stretched so far.

  “Yeah. But I still don't get the point'a it,” Gid complained, rooting around in his trouser pockets. His hand came up with a clean white sock with something weighing down its toe. As he passed it off to Scarlet, she carefully placed it in the bottom of the bag, on top of the plain box she'd already contributed.

  “Well, we all put in something of our own,” she explained overly slowly, as if to a child. He scowled. “Then we draw from the bag and keep what we get. Everyone gives up something for someone else.”

  “Yeah, I know what we do. I just don't get the point. It's not like we're actually gonna get somethin' we like.”

  Holding up a tin bound in more strips of red and green, Po said cheerfully, “Well, someone ought’a like mine.” She shot Gideon a pointed look, making him smirk, and stood, picking up the plate that she'd been gradually loading with leftovers.

  “Where are you going?” Reece asked over the rim of his raised cup.

  She hesitated, glancing at the winding iron stairs. “Just takin' Owon some food.”

  Reece very nearly sprayed his cider everywhere—which would have been a real waste, because it was good stuff. He uneasily eyed the railing of the loft and thought he heard a low, raspy chuckle. “He's up there?”

  “Well, yeah, where did you think he was?” Po rolled her eyes and started for the stairs. Gideon rose to escort her, one hand resting on his revolver as his other snatched up a dumpling, which promptly disappeared into his mouth.

  Floating out in space, Reece was tempted to say. At least, that's what he'd been hoping. “It's just creepy.”

  His mouth still full of dumpling, Gid mumbled, “He don't eat, you know.”

  “That doesn't mean we can't be nice.” Meeting everyone's incredulous looks, Po tossed her hair and started climbing the stairs. “It's Sterlin' Eve, you guys. What would the Patron say if he were here?”

  “'What's that creepy bald guy doing up in the loft'?” Reece ventured. He gave the tasseled tail of his hat an irritable tug. “Can I put this in the bag?”

  “No,” at least three voices said. He sighed.

  When Po and Gideon returned from upstairs—Po sighing sadly as she set the plate of rejected food on the counter—Scarlet gave the contents of the bag a quick jumble, and passed it to Hayden to do the honors.

  “Alright, here I go,” he said, grinning self-consciously as his hand fumbled around in the belly of the bag. He pulled out a nondescript rectangle wrapped in coarse brown paper. “Okay. This doesn't look so bad. It's a…oh.” He blinked, and showed them all what he'd plucked from the wrappings. “It's a fountain pen. A really nice fountain pen. Who…?”

  Reece pointed a thumb at himself.

  “Thanks. It's great. Actually…I used to have one just like this…”

  “So, Nivy's turn, then,” Reece interrupted, taking the rucksack and plopping it in Nivy's lap.

  Nivy ended up drawing Mordecai's gift—a long-stemmed wooden pipe, the edges of its tub charred and well-used. Then it was Reece's turn, and he ended up with what had undoubtedly been Scarlet's donation to the pool, a soft silver pin in the shape of a swan. He pinned it to his hat to dress it up a little; the others laughed. Mordecai
got a physics book from Hayden, Scarlet conveniently drew the white gloves Nivy had worn to the masquerade at Emathia, and Po got Gideon's small flip-knife…which Gid took back just long enough to break the strips from around her tin. Po was right; her gift took the prize. She'd actually baked sweet chocolate biscuits and frosted them white.

  After the gift giving, Mordecai did a retelling of the Sterling Patron's story, wearing Reece's hat and speaking in a low, eerie voice as he stood on his chair and narrated. After a great deal of badgering, Hayden got out the uncanny Lousbard the Pirate imitation he used to use to scare Sophie and had them all in stitches in short order.

  And then…the dancing. It started with Mordecai and Po waltzing around the table as Scarlet turned up the wireless; it ended with Hayden, Reece, and Gideon competing to see who could to the Jolly Man's Jig the fastest, and Hayden almost falling flat on his face. In between, Reece danced a few times with each of the girls, though, as he'd never had the chance to discover at the masquerade…Nivy had no idea what she was doing. It was a good thing his boots were stout, because she seemed to think stomping on them really hard might help her on her way to learning the Cakewalk.

  After the Jolly Man's Jig had worn him down, Reece sat on the back of a chair and contently propped his chin on his fist to watch the others. Po finished a dance with Gideon and stumbled over to sit on the table beside him, her face flushed.

  “Nice work,” he congratulated her. “This was a good idea.”

  She breathlessly pushed her white hair back from her face, beaming at the others. “You think so?”

  Reece nodded. “I’d call The Aurelia's first Sterling Eve a success, Head Mechanic Trimble.”

  They watched in amused silence as Mordecai tried to teach Hayden and Nivy what he called a Pantedan Clap Dance, and Gideon guffawed and accused him of doing it all wrong. Reece didn't know if there was a right way to execute a dance that seemed to involve clapping your hands to your feet while you hopped.

  “Hey, Cap'n?” Po asked over the noise of Hayden realizing there actually was no such thing as a Clap Dance. “There was kinda…kinda somethin' else I wanted to ask you. Well, kinda somethin' I wanted to do, I guess.”

  “I told you, Po.” Reece laughed as Scarlet gave an unladylike exclamation at Gideon and Hayden's spontaneous wrestling match nearly plowing her into the wall. “I trust you. Whatever you want to do, just do it. His leg, Hayden, his leg! Don't let him—” Hayden squeaked as he went to the floor under a cackling Gideon.

  “Alright,” Po said in a small voice.

  When Reece turned to look at her, it was an effort not to let out an unbecoming squeak of his own. Her nose was so close to his, he probably could have counted its each and every freckle. He wondered in a blind panic if maybe he'd missed one of Mordecai's holly traps, because why the bleeding bogrosh would Po ever, ever be looking at him like she was—

  Suddenly, a few things that probably should have made sense to him before…did.

  He abruptly leaned so far back from Po's approaching face that his chair went up to its hind legs, teetered, and then toppled him backward to the floor. At the exact same moment, the ship gave an unsettled rumble, rattling the dishes on the table.

  “What was that?” Reece's voice cracked as he staggered to his feet like a drunk. He shot a frenzied look at Po, but he could only see the tip of her bright red nose, as the rest of her face was curtained by her hair as she bent over to tie a conveniently-undone bootlace. The others were all staring at him, frozen in the midst of their last actions.

  “A hiccup?” Hayden suggested. His voice was slightly strained; Gideon belatedly remembered to let him out of his headlock.

  “No,” Po said from behind her hair. “That wasn't the Afterquin. It came from outside the ship.”

  The others looked at Reece again, and he realized they were waiting on him to take charge. “Uh,” he blinked hard a few times and then made himself look away from Po, “right. It could've been a small asteroid hitting the hull. I'll go check the green.” He thought he might be compulsively twitching as he walked towards the door.

  The view from the bridge hadn't changed since Reece had left it, although Oceanus had grown significantly in size. He frowned out the canopy window and swung into his chair, bowing his head over the green graph radar. There would've been readings if they'd encountered another physical object; a gravity assessment, damage report, and change-of-course projection. But according to the green…their bump in the night had never even happened. He ran a hand over his jaw, thoughtful. Then he switched the radar from the readings screen to a heat-sense view.

  There was a ship directly behind them.

  Reece stared unblinkingly at the blip on the radar as it closed in on them, a thousand things speeding through his head, but none of them sticking long enough for him to latch on to. He almost managed his second undignified tumble from his chair in less than ten minutes as the com box gave a sharp beet. The speaker crackled, and then a voice came through, “Fae vous vene dans lamité?”

  Blowing out an obnoxious breath of relief, Reece slumped back in his chair. They were speaking Northern, the ancient dialect Plain Speak had replaced on most modern planets. The people of Oceanus, however, considered the use of Northern a sort of art form, and learned it as their second language. He'd just been formally greeted by an Oceanun ship, unless The Kreft had suddenly found their manners.

  “Fae vous vene dans lamité?” the voice came again, a woman's voice, friendly, if nervous.

  “Is someone speaking Northern?” Hayden asked with interest as he and Gideon came onto the bridge, Gideon with his hand rooting around in Po's tin of biscuits.

  “Yeah. Oceanuns.” Reece stretched back his arm, passing the com box. “Talk to them.”

  Hayden hesitantly took the com as Gideon plopped down sideways in the navigator's chair, chewing loudly. “It's been months since I've worked on my Northern. I'm sure I'm-” He broke off as the woman's voice patiently repeated the question a third time, and quickly cleared his throat, lifting the com box. “Yes, eh, journes! Nous d'Honora venes danen lamité. Nous soitous vouser…autoradans?” He winced, hitching up his spectacles with a finger, probably scolding himself for mispronouncing his gibberish.

  The woman replied, sounding relieved, “Vous tes bienvenu, lamis veux.” She and Hayden went on to have a brief exchange while Reece tried to remember enough of his few Northern lessons to work out what they were saying, and Gideon continued munching on his biscuits, looking bored. After a few moments of this, Hayden actually laughed, looking sheepish as he said in Plain Speak, “It wasn't my foremost area of study, I'm afraid.”

  “You did better than most,” the woman said graciously. Gideon and Reece both perked up with interest. There was something so magnetic about the Oceanun accent. No one Reece had heard try to impersonate it ever properly nailed the rich, flowery thickness of it. It sounded like it was sticking in the woman's throat even as it flowed.

  Hayden clicked off the com box. “Reece, she wants to know if we'll accept an escort through the atmosphere.”

  Reece's eyes thoughtfully watched the little blip on the green, then darted back to Oceanus, swelling across the canopy window. He wasn't surprised by the request. Even Honora had a policy regarding unidentified ships breaking atmosphere too near the city. Usually an “honor guard” of Dryads was sent up, conveniently armed to the teeth. It made him wonder what sort of Oceanun technology was locked on Aurelia at this very moment, weighing the old-fashioned ship in its sights.

  “Tell her we'd be honored. Make it good.”

  XVI

  The Land of No Princesses

  Oceanus was bright, clean, and colorful where Leto had been all dark faded colors and stuffy closed quarters. Gideon knew it was a relief for the rest’a the crew, but he personally preferred the dim grunginess’a Leto over the pristine cleanness’a Oceanus’s capital city, which Scarlet called Neserus. Sure it was pretty, but it made him feel like he had at the masquerade a few
months back, when he’d been surrounded by lords and ladies with his face caulked with dirt and blood. Stared at and unwelcome.

  The surface’a the planet was nothin’ but wrinkled, endless blue-green water. From the canopy window’a the bridge, all he’d been able to see’a Neserus was the tips’a its tallest spires, pokin’ up outta the waves likes reeds stuck in the mud. He almost took them for huts with their spindly roofs and round portal windows; it wasn’t hard to imagine someone openin’ a door and walkin’ out across the water from hut to hut as if that was the city. He was glad he didn’t say anythin’ about it when Reece took the Aurelia down closer to the water and pointed at the hazy shape’a the actual city hulkin’ in the depths’a the ocean like a many-legged creature.

  Instructions in that thick Oceanun accent came over the com for Reece to make for the western towers and wait. When he complied and hovered Aurelia over the water there so it rolled back in ruffles, a thin, pearly bubble’a energy clapped neatly about the ship, and cuppin’ it, started easin’ down into the water. Reece set the controls to autopilot while Aitch fidgeted nervously and Gideon glared through the foggy bubble, watchin’ the ocean lap and swirl against its boundaries as the ship was swallowed by the waves.

  Through the crystal clear water, they could see the city taperin’ off into the distance in all directions, crawlin’ over shelves and down into basins, marked by bright white lights in round windows and fluted towers like porcelain or glass. Honestly, the thing just looked breakable to Gideon. The bubble, which he could now see was bein’ directed by three beetle-like ships with claws that pulsed white energy, weaved between skinny shinin’ towers that a strong sneeze might’a been enough to splinter. Didn’t seem like a great design for an underwater city, but no one was askin’ his opinion.

  The bubble came to rest in a square corral’a docks bobbin’ where they were tethered to the pebbled floor’a the city. Squintin’, Gideon could just make out another layer’a pearly energy archin’ over them, which explained why the half dozen men walkin’ towards Aurelia weren’t drownin’. Not that that put him at ease. The Oceanuns glarin’ up at Aurelia didn’t look like a welcome committee so much as an armed guard meanin’ to chase them back into space. They were all tall and broad, at least compared to Honorans, with shaggy to long hair in shades’a red and orange and unwieldy-lookin’ clubs weighin’ down their belts. They weren’t carryin’ that he could see, but then, they could be hidin’ their guns in their loose, flowy, by all means ridiculous-lookin’ clothes that came in the colors’a the sea, blue, grey, green, and purple.