The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  “See, that’s your problem,” Ridley tut-tutted as Trig grazed his thumb across the crisp paper edges with relish. “You’re not invincible, Hannick my boy. You ought to stop gambling like you are.”

  “Let’s see. That’s twenty flat and fifty round, to cover your last two loans. That leaves…” Trig flapped a sad, single bill in Hannick’s face like a flag. “Your change, my prince.”

  Smiling coldly, Hannick caught the bill and slapped it down on the bar to pay for his drink. “Well, that about cleans me out, doesn’t it?”

  The twins laughed and tipped invisible hats to him as they backed away. After they had gone, Reece eyed Hannick until the prince felt his stare and looked at him. To his confusion, Hannick burst out in laughter and rolled his grey eyes skyward.

  “Don’t look so appalled, Reece. Those winnings were just pocket money. I always planned on using them to fund my hobby.”

  “Gambling.”

  “Please. You say it like I’ve been playing cricket with babies.”

  Hitching his shoulders uncomfortably, Reece frowned, trying to get a read on his irritation. It wasn’t the gambling that bothered him. He’d routinely enjoyed Dormitory Linus’s poker nights at The Owl and even gone wild and gambled off the meager change in his sock drawer once or twice. But seeing a bundle of money like Hannick’s casually pass hand to hand—like pocket money—made him think of the Rice family in their cramped row house in Caldonia, with its peeling wallpaper, crooked shutters, and leaky pipes. It left a sour taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with the burnthroat.

  Hannick, who had been gulping his second drink down to its dregs, suddenly choked in alarm, coughing into his hand. “Ah. Time to go. My fiancé is here.”

  Now it was Reece’s turn to choke. As Hannick sounded the retreat, he stumbled to his feet, looking every which way for this fiancé he’d never heard so much as a complaint about. “You’re engaged?”

  “Well. Betrothed.” Like a bird in enemy territory, Hannick stretched his neck and peered about, scouting, and then ducked back down again with a knife-edge grin. “But nothing’s final until the altar. If I’m going to have to sell my prize stallion, then I’m going to win as many races with it while I still can. You see what I’m saying?”

  Reece did. He thought it was sisquicks.

  Hannick either ignored or chose not to see his uncertain squint as he waved for Reece to follow him out the back rotary door. Reece was too glad for an excuse to escape the hot, congested lounge not to obey. Plus, out in the open, he could broach the matter of the anai without fear of being overheard by some fan who would regurgitate the gossip into the first willing ear.

  “Where to now?” Hannick wondered, enthusiastically pushing his way out into the open with Reece a little less enthusiastically in tow. A long and low fountain chattered against the corridor’s baseboard, lining their walk with silver light. “We could hit the main ring. See the docks. I’d like to tour your ship, actually. What?” he abruptly demanded. Finally, he’d noticed Reece’s hesitation, and he didn’t look best pleased at having his bubble burst.

  Sighing, Reece grimaced down at his feet with his hands on his hips. He’d rehearsed this a good dozen times in his head, but no matter how many times he practiced it, it just wouldn’t stop sounding like he was trying to get The Aurelia freed up for a speedy departure. Probably because he was. “Look, Hannick—”

  His eyes slid past Hannick’s annoyed expression, focusing instead on the end of the corridor, where Scarlet was waving, trying to subtly get his attention. He nodded at Hannick to curtly inform her he was busy. She actually bared her teeth at him in frustration.

  Lately, Reece felt like the air around his crew was laced with gas, and each of his words were little crackling sparks threatening to catch fire. The thing with Po was only partly to blame. He’d been politely avoiding her like his life depended on it, and still, she found ways of putting him off-balance. He felt awful for talking to her the way he had in the lounge, but he’d just been at a limit when she’d come in, with everyone pushing and prodding him and trying to get him to see reason where there wasn’t any. They acted as though these four days would upset the balance of the entire Epimetheus galaxy!

  Realizing he was scowling down the corridor, Reece jerked his chin at Scarlet in a not now fashion. Scarlet growled—he could hear it faintly under the babbling fountain—and grabbed at something out of sight. A second later, she hauled a red-faced Gideon around the corner by his elbow, and Reece stopped trying to be subtle at all.

  Gid was soaked but not dripping, as if he’d been walking in his clothes a while and had had time to air out. His hair was starting to dry, sticking up in curled horns in places.

  “Go on without me,” Reece muttered to Hannick, who was starting to look worried that Reece had lost it. And who was to say he hadn’t?

  Pressing past the prince, Reece marched down the corridor, following Scarlet and Gideon around the corner just in time to see Gid tug his arm free so he could fold it with his other over his chest, sulking. To Reece’s dismay, Po was there too, though she kept her back to him so he couldn’t see her face. He didn’t need to. She radiated hurt like a photon globe. That left Scarlet the only one willing to look at him.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, braving her glare.

  “Po and I ran into Gideon on our way back to our chambers.” Glancing around, Scarlet pursed her lips. “We shouldn’t speak of this here.”

  That bad? Reece almost said. He looked left and right, and then pointed at a vacant shop, some sort of gadget emporium that had been closed for business. Its glass door swung open. Not only because there nothing left to steal—judging by the view through its storefront window—but because Neserus had a commendably low theft rate. It was apparently hard to be a criminal in an underwater city where most everyone knew your name.

  Inside the store, Reece turned to survey Gideon, wet and brooding, Scarlet, hovering and uptight, and Po, who lingered near the door, clasping the doorknob behind her back in both hands. The shop’s marble floors rippled with light from the corridor fountain; its skeletal white shelves seemed to glow.

  “Is someone going to tell me what happened?” he asked.

  Scarlet folded her hands in front of her skirts like she was giving a prepared speech. “As I was saying, Po and I encountered Gideon on our walk back to the chambers. He was wet as he is now, and coming from the direction of…of the Lecroux fil Antiquana.” She gave Reece a meaningful look, but he just blinked at her. He hadn’t had a lesson in Northern since his last tutor had confessed to Abigail he’d have better luck teaching a pigeon to dance. With an impatient huff, Scarlet explained, “The antiquities hall where the anai are kept, Reece!”

  Reece let out a long breath before turning to Gideon, but even then, he had trouble finding his calm. “What did you do?” he asked, deadpan and glad, because the alternative would not have been pretty.

  Gid snorted. “Why don’t you just ask where I put it? That’s what you’re really thinkin’, isn’t it? That I stole that bleedin’…whatever?”

  “Did you?”

  “Wanna search me?”

  “What will I find?”

  “Nothin’. But then, if I was smart, I would’a stowed it, right? That’s what Pryor thinks.”

  “Well. If you were smart, yeah.”

  Alright, the insult hadn’t been strictly necessary. But it was nonetheless satisfying to watch it process on Gid’s face. His blue eyes flashed like Leto’s colored lightning as he smiled wolfishly and took a challenging step in Reece’s direction.

  “Stop it!” Scarlet snapped, stepping in between them and putting a hand on either of their chests. Her blonde hair whipped side to side as she looked sharply back and forth between them. “Po, find Mordecai.” Po nodded timidly in the corner of Reece’s vision, then disappeared. “Now,” Scarlet continued sternly, “Reece. Think about it. Talfryn said the king is off-world. Who do you think authorized your expulsion from the tour
nament? Who had something to gain from you not having a chance to win? We’re being set up! We—”

  “You ought’a listen to her, Cap,” Gideon interrupted. “I’d hate to have to muss up those princely features’a yours. Hannick might not wanna go on play dates with you anymore.”

  “Gideon!” Scarlet scolded, but Reece barely heard her; the angry buzz in his ears was too loud. Then Gideon caught her wrist and neatly spun her out of the way, and the two of them surged forward till they were face to face and in friendly firing range.

  “Where were you?” Reece barked.

  Gideon glared defiantly down at him, a silent but nonetheless vicious challenge. “You gonna try to bully it outta me now?”

  “I shouldn’t have to, Gid!”

  “And I shouldn’t have to tell you where I was!” Gideon shouted, and shoved Reece so hard in the chest, he flew backward and crashed into an empty shelf.

  The wind was punched out of his lungs on impact, but Reece didn’t need them fully functioning, at least for this. He charged Gideon as Scarlet cried out for them to stop and plunged a shoulder into his gut, tackling him to the ground with a growl.

  At first, he stupidly thought the ground trembling had something to do with his and Gideon’s combined weights hitting the floor at breakneck speeds. But then, as he freed an arm to try to wrangle Gid into a choke, it shook again—a quick jerk, and then silence.

  “Shh!” he shushed Gid, leaning up. Gideon paused, panting, and cocked his head.

  The shop tried to turn upside-down with the next blast. Gideon and Reece were thrown, tossed across the room towards Scarlet, who was leveled by the window splitting into puzzle pieces that splashed into shattered glass all around her. Shelves teetered and crashed thunderously together. A waterline burst in the corridor. Then everything went still. That’s when the screaming started.

  Reece groaningly rolled over onto his stomach, blinking wetness out of his eyes. The ruptured fountain was misting in through the ruined store window, spritzing him and his friends where they lay battered and confused but all things considered, alright.

  As Scarlet leaned upright with a tremulous breath, she whispered, “What was that?”

  “An attack.” Gideon looked straight at Reece, picking flecks of glass out of the heels of his red-stippled hands. The electricity in his eyes wasn’t anger, anymore. It was alarm, simple but urgent.

  Swallowing painfully, Reece nodded, rose to his knees, and managed to stand. On his feet, he was finally able to push past the imagery around him—the cracked walls, the puddles of glass, the leaking water trickling down runnels in the lopsided marble—and come to terms with what it all added up to. Dizzy, he planted a hand against the bare bones remains of the glass door and belatedly realized that the wetness in his eye was too warm to be water. He absently scrubbed the blood away.

  “The Kreft,” he said softly. For a horrible moment, he was too overwhelmed to remember what he was supposed to do now. Doing anything suddenly felt like more than he could handle, but it also felt like nothing he could do would really be enough. He put a hand to his head and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to concentrate past the pounding in his skull that sounded like war drums. “We need to round up the others.”

  “They’ll head for Aurelia.” He opened his eyes and looked at Scarlet as she rose unsteadily. Another ominous tremor rattled the tower, and Gideon had to catch her by the elbow as she almost toppled again. “We have to run, Reece. Just like on Atlas. We can try to draw The Kreft away from the city and the planet, or we can stay here and let them find the ship. We have to run. For everyone’s sake.”

  Reece felt himself nodding. “You two head for Aurelia. I’ll check the chambers, in case anyone thought to meet there instead. No matter who’s on board…if I’m not there and they get close, you take the ship and go.”

  “That’s a stupid plan,” Gideon said flatly.

  “Very,” agreed Scarlet. “I’m going with you.”

  “Same here.”

  “No,” Reece said evenly, straightening. His head was thankfully clearing, though he kind of preferred the dreamy haze of head trauma. It had kept back the fear he now felt crawling up his throat. “Gid, you can pilot the ship in an emergency. Someone who can fly needs to be on post, and we don’t know where Nivy is.” As Gid stubbornly opened his mouth, he ordered firmly, “Go. I’m not arguing with you anymore.”

  After a beat, Gideon haltingly nodded and hopped out the broken window, leaving Scarlet and Reece to pick their way out over the jagged ledge alone.

  The assault seemed to follow them as they sprinted down corridors and up stairs, backtracking as often as not when a passageway was clogged with rubble or sealed off to prevent further flooding. In the near distance, an alarm started keening sharply, making Reece’s head feel like it was going to burst apart like the shop window. They encountered panicked pub-goers moving together like startled flocks of birds, and medics pushing the wounded towards makeshift shelters on hovering gurneys. The air was cold, too cold, and everything was soiled, wet, and sticky. For the first time since setting foot in the city, Reece was really aware of all the water overhead; the weight of it seemed to loom like a shadow and a threat more than the ships that were doing the actually attacking.

  Rumors chased them just as doggedly. They said that this pier hadn’t been directly hit. It was the north pier and the docks that were under attack; the eastern pier was just feeling the percussions. But the north pier was where the guest chambers were housed. So Reece refused to believe it. His friends could be up there.

  “They’re hitting the docks,” Scarlet panted as she tried to keep up with him. “You think they’re trying to destroy Aurelia?”

  Reece cursed as they careened around a corner only to meet another wall of caved-in wreckage. Water was hissing and spitting like a geyser from its cracks. He turned on his heel and bolted back the other way. “Seems like it.” He blessed Pryor’s piggish insistence that Aurelia be removed from the public docks and kept somewhere she could be observed at all times: the king’s very own exclusive cluster of docks, in the tip of the southern hangar.

  “But I thought they wanted her whole?”

  Reece didn’t answer. As he and Scarlet raced along parallel to a windowed wall that had somehow survived without so much as a crack, he craned his neck and peered up at the surface. It was still night; the black ships, if they were even out there, were camouflaged by a thousand feet of water and the black sky beyond.

  Something zipped past them on the other side of the window, a vast shape in the murky water. It was too fast and rigid to be organic, but he’d never seen a ship move like that out of space. The hairs on his arms stood on end as it doubled back and zipped by again, as if it was stalking him personally, watching him. That’s all it did. Watch. As if sensing his curiosity, it fled back into darker waters, trailing streamers of bubbles.

  Scarlet yanked on his arm as he started to slow, mystified. Their footsteps pattered in an inch of water. “Come on, Reece! We’re almost—” Suddenly, she started pulling his arm the other way, trying to stop him as they hurtled towards the foot of the stairway they’d been hoping would finally get them into the north pier.

  The stairway was an impassable waterfall.

  For a moment, he stared at the gushing spring, trying to make sense of what it meant. With a sudden, waking jerk, he started pacing, glaring at it, furious with it, with himself. As he prowled past Scarlet, she sniffled and covered her mouth with a hand.

  “Reece,” she whispered.

  “No!” he snapped.

  “They could be back at the ship.”

  They could be. Or they could be up the flooded stairs and drowned under a ton of water, or crushed under a fallen pillar. They could be trapped, hurt, alone, counting on him. He couldn’t risk turning his back on this corridor if there was even the slightest chance of that, because Scarlet didn’t need to say it for him to hear it…this was his fault. He’d kept them here too long. He’d bee
n wrong, and he had known all the time he’d been wrong; he just hadn’t wanted to accept it. No one, dead, alive, or injured in the city could be feeling worse than he felt upon realizing that.

  Caught between despair and wanting to scream at something, Reece looked back at Scarlet…pale, distraught, soaked up past her knees and shivering, and still, for better or worse, his responsibility. If he focused on that, he might be able to keep himself sane long enough to get the two of them out of here. He grabbed her hand.

  “We can cut through the fencing hall and have a straight shot at the southern pier,” he explained as he started running. She took a shaky breath but nodded, her icy fingers tightening around his.

  After a few nearly disastrous shortcuts, they made it to the fencing hall and found it whole and empty. Reece had thought it might have been converted into another shelter, but he’d forgotten about its huge dome of glass staring up into the underbelly of the ocean. It didn’t make for much of a shelter when its ceiling could at any moment vaporize and fill the room with water faster than a soup bowl. He and Scarlet paused just inside the hall, breathing hard, and stared uneasily up at the dome as reverberations in the deep made the door bang shut behind them.

  They weren’t the only ones who jumped. On the other side of the fencing strip, Hannick abruptly stood and spun in alarm. He relaxed when he saw it was just them, but only marginally.

  “Reece!” he exclaimed. He nudged something under the bench with his foot before jogging towards them. “You’re alive! I thought when I heard…the north pier…”

  Reece’s heart seemed to flinch. “We’re on our way to Aurelia,” he got out. Scarlet slid past him and hurried towards the changing room, maybe to see if anyone was inside. “I don’t have time to explain, but we have to get her out of here.”

  “You mean you know who’s attacking?”

  “We think.” It suddenly occurred to Reece why he was so surprised to see Hannick here, of all places. He was prince of a city that was being pummeled into the ocean floor, and he was laying low in the fencing hall? “What are you doing here, Hannick? Where are your counter measures? What about those defense jets you showed me? Shouldn’t you requesting relief from Lumiel, or something?”