The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  The engine room felt abandoned. That was the first thing Gideon noticed, and it was all wrong. Usually, Po made this place homey and warm. The engine kept the ship runnin’, but Po, she gave it a purpose. Maybe the Afterquin, for all she was just a machine, wasn’t abandoned so much as she was lost. She wouldn’t be the only one.

  Gideon looked around as he slowly wandered the metal jungle, tryin’ to walk off some’a his agitation. Every hangin’ photon lamp and smallest candle was lit, but instead’a makin’ the room warmer, the light just lit up its emptiness, so it felt vast and old. He cautiously peered around the foldin’ screen wallin’ in Po’s room, but the cubby hole was empty. Her bed had been stripped’a its blankets. She’d been sleepin’ on Scarlet’s floor, he knew, but she wouldn’t be there just now.

  Frownin’, he leaned a shoulder against the wall and listened to the quiet lyin’ under the sighs’a the Afterquin. It took him a minute, but he eventually picked out a single squeak’a rubber sole chaffin’ against metal. There was nothin’ for it but to go lookin’ for the little red boot that would’a made that sound, and the mechanic wearin’ it. He hadn’t figured out what he planned on doin’ that would be at all better than anythin’ Reece could manage with his bleedin’ charms, but Reece had guessed right on one thing…Gideon wanted to be here.

  He stopped at the foot of a ladder and looked up. This was just one’a the many buildin’ into the greater web’a the Afterquin, but it was the only one with access to the little nook formed by a corner’a the cargo bay cuttin’ into the taller room, a ten by ten square’a flat, metal rooftop. Graspin’ the cold rungs, he slowly climbed and stopped when his head topped the roof.

  Po sat with her back to him, cocooned in her colorful bed quilt, her red boots—the ones that had taken him bleedin’ ages to pick out—tipped over behind her. He hesitated, then made a point’a cloppin’ up the rest’a the rungs heavily, so she would hear him comin’. She still jumped and clutched her blanket tight around her shoulders, lookin’ back at him with wide eyes.

  “Oh,” she said quietly, relaxin’. “Hey.”

  He grunted in greetin’, duckin’ beneath an intersectin’ ladder to squat beside her. A tin can stuffed with parchment had tipped over and rolled into one’a her bare feet. He righted the can and asked, “What are you doin’?”

  Lookin’ sheepish, Po shrugged. “Tryin’ to start a fire. It’s cold in here, don’t you think?”

  Doin’ a double take, Gideon blinked at the can, stirrin’ its contents with a finger. Nothin’ but some already charred paper and a few used-up matches. “You need kindlin’.”

  With a snort, Po looked away, sittin’ her chin on her shoulder. “Seems I can’t do anythin’ right.”

  That brought Gideon up short for a minute. “Didn’t say that,” he grumbled.

  She glanced at him. “Didn’t have to.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. Then, sniffin’, Po shifted in her quilt. It slipped off one’a her arms and drooped dejectedly, kind’a like her shoulders. Gideon had seen people in the Caldonian slums carry themselves straighter than Po was now. She wasn’t just sad; she was defeated before the fight had even really started.

  “Cap’n needs you to take a look at the processors,” he said, feelin’ suddenly cross again, because he sounded like Reece’s bleedin’ errand boy, and that wasn’t why he’d come.

  “They’re broken.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s why he wants you to fix ‘em.”

  “I tried, but they’re broke, Gid.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  That, at least, startled Po outta her sluggish daze. He flushed as she looked at him with a puzzled frown but held her eye until her curiosity broke the silence. “Why?”

  Gideon felt weirdly light—like gravity had suddenly shifted and he was gonna lift off. His hand flinched. He stilled it. Then, before he could get a proper rein on it, it reached and tucked Po’s quilt carefully back into place. “Because it ain’t my name.”

  “Reece calls you it,” Po pointed out without seemin’ to have noticed what he’d done.

  Even now, the girl’s eyes still lit at the mention’a the cap’n. It was a sad sorta light, a dyin’ ember, damp and weak, but it hadn’t faded yet. Gideon didn’t know that it ever would entirely, no matter how many ways Reece proved he was human like the rest’a them. “Yeah, but Reece ain’t exactly—”

  “I’m sorry about Mordecai,” she blurted, and he stared.

  He didn’t want to talk about this, and no matter what she or Reece or anyone thought, he didn’t need to. He’d had people die on him before. In fact, before Reece and Aitch came along, that’s all anyone he cared about ever did…die. It had been war then, and it was war now. So Mordecai was dead. So the gun shop would be a little quieter now, if ever he got back to it. What did they all expect him to do, sit and cry, throw a tantrum? None’a that was gonna bring Mordecai back. It wasn’t gonna fix what happened. It was just gonna leave the wound open, raw, and bleedin’ rather than lettin’ it cauterize. If they would just let that happen, if ever he got hit there again, he’d be hardened to it. That’s how Mordecai had survived The Eudoran War, and it was how Gideon meant to survive this one.

  Huffin’, Gideon dusted his hands and stood. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “No, I mean…” Scramblin’ upright in her blanket, Po said in a breathless rush, “I’m sorry he…what happened, that was my fault. And I’m sorry. If I had just been…been better, faster maybe, I could’a…I could’a…”

  “What?” Gideon snapped. “What could you’a done? Held back all that water? Stopped The Kreft attackin’?”

  “No! But maybe it…would’ve been me, instead.”

  She jumped as Gideon turned and took a quick step to loom over her, but just then, he didn’t care whether he scared her or not. Even Reece, for all he had the brain of a goose sometimes, was smarter than that. “Don’t you think like that. That wouldn’t have fixed nothin’. In the end, someone still would’a been dead.”

  “Gideon—”

  “Why are people always tryin’ to fix things can’t be fixed? What’s talkin’ gonna change? Mordecai’s dead, and wishin’ it had been you instead does nothin’ but make you feel bleedin’ useless.”

  Voice hitchin’, Po burst out, “That ain’t true!” She tried to push past Gideon, but he barred her way with an arm, corrallin’ her back around to face him. She shuddered at the touch. That made two things Reece had been right about. Gideon wasn’t a careful enough person to be entrusted with Po.

  “You think it ain’t?” he demanded. “What, does hidin’ down here regrettin’ everythin’ make you feel better? Is that why you’re lettin’ the Afterquin go to pieces? Why you can’t even sleep alone anymore? Hasn’t brought Mordecai back, has it?”

  “Stop!” Po cried, angry, but chokin’ on a sob Gideon felt deep in his chest. She tried to shove his arm away, but he held it taut, and the fact she didn’t just run away from it made him think maybe she wanted to hear this. It wouldn’t make sense to someone who hadn’t felt a lot’a hurt, but Gideon at least understood what it was like to need to feel anger to forget all the rest. Anger had a scourin’ affect. It cleaned up after itself, burned away the stragglin’ threads’a other feelin’s that snagged, ripped, unraveled. “Stop sayin’ that!”

  “What? That he’s dead? He is. You want me to pretend he’s not? Would that make you feel better?”

  “I—no! But you don’t gotta be so cruel about it!”

  “This ain’t cruel, it’s the truth. If anyone knows he’s dead, I do.” Turnin’ to go, Gideon said, “Cap’n needs those processors workin’.”

  “I know what you’re doin’!” She shouted at his back as he reached the ladder. Pausin’ with a hand on a rung, he peered back with a flat expression that dirt near slipped when he saw her tremblin’ pathetically in her quilt, her hair fallin' outta her braid, her freckles shinin’ under a sheen’a tears. “I ain’t the one hidin’ anythin’…y
ou are! And it don’t make you strong,” she went on, quiet, fierce, watchin’ him warily approach again. “It makes you a coward.”

  Gideon tried not to let that crush him. It’s what he wanted, after all…for her to break. Not the way she’d already been broken. He was here to set the bone, to see it healed up properly so she wouldn’t be walkin’ with a limp forever. She might kick and scream now, when the pain made her see double, but someday, she’d thank him for it. And even if she didn’t—even if she hated him forever like she hated him right now—well, he couldn’t let her scar like the rest’a them had. Good things like Po didn’t happen often enough; they ought’a be taken care of, when they did.

  He took a deep breath as she held her ground with her white-knuckled fingers clutchin’ her blanket. “If I’m a coward, what does that make you? ‘Least I went back for him.” She stared dead-ahead like stabbed person, not breathin’. “Is that what you wanted me to say? You want me to blame you? You want me to yell at you for givin’ up on him?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I didn’t give up on him!”

  “Then why is he dead?”

  Po sniffled, lips tremblin’. They were nearly finished…just a clean snap away. “I hate you, Gideon Creed.”

  “Say it again,” he dared her in a growl.

  “I hate you. I h-hate you.” Her face crumpled; she broke down. With an oath, he grabbed her wrist and yanked her into him. She fought him for a second, fists thumpin’ his chest, but he barely felt them, and he wasn’t sure if it was because she was so weak, or if he was just too numb. “I hate you,” she repeated, her assault on him slowin’. “I wish it had been you instead’a him!”

  His arms tightened around her as she finally sagged in his arms, spent, her head against his shoulder and her hands bunched under her chin. His jaw ached, his eyes prickled, and it wasn’t because’a what Po said, because if he knew her at all, he knew in no time she’d be horrified at the things she’d said out of a need to blame somethin’ on someone other than herself.

  He could be that for her, if nothin’ else. He could give her someone to hate, if it made her feel somethin’ besides hopeless. She wasn’t the only one in the engine room who hated him and wished more than anythin’ he’d been strong enough or fast enough to get to Mordecai in time. He guessed that made one last thing Reece had been right about.

  The Afterquin thrummed and purred, the only other sound beside Po’s quiet sobs.

  “Yeah,” he whispered hoarsely, puttin’ his cheek down atop’a her head. “Me too.”

  XXIV

  We’re All Crazies Here

  “We have no vacancies. And we haven’t the space to let wanderers idle in the common room.”

  “I can pay you for standing space—we just need to get in out of the cold for a little while. One of our crew is injured.”

  “This is an inn, not a hospital.”

  “Alright then. Could you direct us towards an inn that wants to be a hospital for a criminally large sum of money?”

  The bony Ismaran innkeeper finally hesitated, and Gideon eased up on his revolver, sneakin’ his hand back out from under his jacket. Reece finally had the miserly woman in a place she’d at least be willin’ to haggle from; now it was just a matter’a smooth-talkin’ her down, though Reece might just skip that part. They didn’t have a lot’a time to waste on bein’ stingy.

  This sure would’a been easier if Nivy Girl hadn’t gone all mysterious and insisted on breakin’ off on her own before meetin’ them here. She couldn’t have gone far. The village’a Ketswitch was a small, grey, stragglin’ thing, cupped in a valley between two ice-capped mountains curled over like breakin’ waves. From the mouth’a the cave where Reece had tucked The Aurelia away, the town had looked like a toy, somethin’ a big foot was gonna come down on and scatter. Its squat stone cottages with their frosted shingles and chimneys seemed to huddle against the wicked wind, crowded and closed-off. Muddied snow stained everythin’ from darkened store windows to weathered street signs to the creaky wheels’a wagons bravin’ the cold. No automobiles here, or ships for that matter. Nivy had promised this was their best bet for connectin’ with The Heron rebels, but dirt if it didn’t feel like The Aurelia had fallen back in time. The stone inn was easily the biggest buildin’ around, and it was all’a three stories.

  Po shook wildly in the corner’a Gideon’s eye as Reece and the innkeeper talked figures. She pawed at her scarf awkwardly, tryin’ to tug it up with mittens that were bulky from all the socks she’d layered underneath. Gideon was no stranger to snow, but it wasn’t just snowy and cold here…it was icy and piercin’. The wind cut through clothes like a blade while the ice stiffened already-achin’ muscles. Old wounds suddenly throbbed. The nearer the grey, cloudy dusk came, the more miserable it got. It was a kinda miserable Gideon had only heard about in Mordecai’s war stories.

  At that thought, a different, indefinable part’a him throbbed like a phantom limb. Except he couldn’t look down and see the stump’a what he’d lost.

  Still watchin’ Po, he tugged off his black wool cap, shook it out, and pushed it on down over her head so he could just barely see her eyes.

  “Your e-ears are gonna fall off,” she threatened, or tried.

  Rumplin’ his flattened hair, Gideon grumbled, “I’ll let you know if it looks like a possibility.” She ignored him, reachin’ to pull off the hat anyways until he growled, “You’d take it if it was Reece’s.”

  She blushed and dropped her hand and gaze at the same time. It might’a been a low blow, but they both knew it was true. It was time the girl stopped coastin’ in the clouds. Reece, the bleedin’ numpty, had well enough said she shouldn’t be holdin’ out hope for him, and what was she doin’ now that they were finally back on speakin’ terms (thanks to Gideon persuadin’ her to forgive him, he ought’a add)? The same thing she’d been doin’ for months now. Followin’ Reece around like a lost gursa. The best thing she could do for herself now was quit with the tunnel vision.

  He’d tried to help her with that some. At the very least, he’d given her someone to complain about by never lettin’ her alone with the Afterquin these last few days. She could say what she liked, but he knew she was glad for the company, the stories and the occasional laugh he won outta her, impressin’ even himself. Most’a the time, she just quietly fiddled with the engine while Gideon worked on his guns or tried to look busy even if he was bored half to death, but there was somethin’ good even in the quiet—like it was actually the sound’a healin’, of ligaments and sinew pullin’ agonizingly back together. Truth was, Po…she just gave him a sense’a purpose, and he could do with one’a those right now.

  “Look,” Reece tried with the innkeeper again, huffin’. His breath had long since stopped cloudin’ in the cold, and if his teeth didn’t chatter as much as Po’s, well, it was probably because they were as tired as the rest’a him looked. “You’re not listening. There are six of us altogether. We—”

  “Six?” the Ismaran woman choked, scandalized.

  “Including our injured friend.”

  “Well, then we certainly don’t have the room! And where is this…injured friend?” The innkeeper peered between the three’a them suspiciously, like maybe they were hidin’ Aitch under their coats. But Nivy had thought it’d be a good idea for him to hang back on Aurelia with Scarlet rather than drag his foot around while she tried to get in touch with her people, and after feelin’ the cold for himself, Gideon had to admit Aitch was better off. “No, nevermind. I can’t take you, and that’s that. You ought to be getting along, now. There’s a curfew, you know.”

  Gideon’s gaze sharpened as the innkeeper’s eyes darted ever so briefly to the side. At the same time, a floorboard creaked about where she was lookin’. She wasn’t alone.

  Reece noticed too; his brown eyes narrowed, and he nodded thoughtfully. Ever since arrivin’ in The Ice Ring late last night, he’d been takin’ Nivy’s every tip to heart, and The Crazy had been very clear about k
eepin’ their eyes open for anythin’ fishy. In The Ice Ring, even a backwater little village like Ketswitch was Kreft territory, and these people, right down to the crabby innkeeper, were their slaves. Some’a them worked by day and rebelled by night, but a lot more’a them had had the will to fight bred outta them.

  The Ice Ring itself was nothin’ like Gideon had expected. For starters, there was only one planet, Icarus, an arctic rock with twelve snowy moons revolvin’ around it like a tight belt. Every kind’a ship bussed back and forth between them, outdated war crafts, foreign explorers, ferries haulin’ scrap metal, and then the hulkin’ Kreft vessels themselves, projectin’ a grim, stoic order onto everythin’. Comin’ outta the Rhea and into The Ice Ring had been like steppin’ off a train and into the busiest station he’d ever seen.

  They’d slipped into the hustle and bustle to let it camouflage them, but it had nonetheless been a tense couple’a hours, tryin’ to skirt The Kreft’s main outpost to get to Ismara, the seventh moon in the ring. Thankfully, there had been some kinda disturbance about the same time they pulled in, and most’a The Kreft ships had been headin’ the other direction in a birdlike formation. Nivy hadn’t looked too thrilled about that, but then, so many Kreft headin’ one way all at once couldn’t be good. The crew had laid low in the caves with Aurelia overnight, just to make sure they weren’t bein’ trailed, but that was as long as Reece had been willin’ to wait with Aitch’s health on the line.

  Now he was bein’ made to wait again, and the effort’a bein’ polite was obviously takin’ its toll. Gideon felt a bit’a Reece recklessness comin’ on, just like old times. He supposed that was good. The old times had been…easier.

  “Oh, one more thing,” Reece snapped his fingers and called the instant before the innkeeper could shut her door. She eyed him out the crack like she couldn’t believe his nerve. “You don’t happen to know a Nivy Noemie, do you?”

  The woman’s gaunt face instantly went blank. Gideon shifted and fingered his gun again as she ducked her head inside to whisper to the someone behind the door.