Being friends with someone like Reece sometimes occasioned the kind of adventure Hayden would rather read about. This time, Reece had it in his head they should sneak aboard The Aurelia…with her sitting square in the middle of The Aurelian Academy’s Museum of Antiquities! It wasn’t that Hayden didn’t think they might find something of value aboard the ship—there was no denying that her emblem did seem to be showing itself in conspicuous places—but the fact remained. In real life, villains were smart enough not to leave a trail, and protagonists were smart enough not to follow them if they did.
The end of holiday came too quickly. Hayden had only gotten through half of his library when he’d wanted to review all of it, and it wasn’t till his second to last day on Honora that he realized he’d been badly neglecting Sophie.
His little sister tapped on his open bedroom door as he pinched a test tube between his gloved thumb and forefinger and lowered it into a tarnished stand already holding three seemingly empty tubes. One of them actually held a gas, if a gas that was a fairly common household commodity. Coal gas.
“Hmm?” he said idly. “What is it Soph?”
“Do you want to go for frozen dairy in the city? I’ve saved up, I could buy us a trolley ride in, wouldn’t that be fun? Hayden? Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“Just a minute. I’m almost…blast!” Hayden leaned up off his rusted old desk and glowered at the tube filled partway with dark metallic flecks. “I must have miscalculated. I’ve done this a thousand times!”
Walking in her birdlike way around the room, her hands behind her back, Sophie said, “Maybe you need a break. Did you hear what I said? Do you want to go for frozen dairy?”
But Hayden was still staring at the tube, the thought of frozen dairy not breeching the buildup of numbers he had bubbling in his head. What had he done wrong? The triphospherine should have started to take on a telling blue tint…but it looked rather green.
Making an exasperated noise, Sophie moved in on the desk, bent over to examine Hayden’s array of beakers, and carelessly snatched up the triphospherine in her bare fist, studying it. Hayden yelped and gently prized apart her fingers to take it back.
“Sophie!”
“What?”
After the tube was returned to its safe and proper place, Hayden scolded, “Never do that! Ever! Do you realize what that is?”
Sophie gave him a wry look as she dusted the lap of her blue skirts. “Triphospherine?”
“I…yes, but do you know what it is is? Triphospherine is the base component in burstpowder!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be playing with it, then.”
“I’m not playing with it, Soph. I’m doing homework, and—look, that’s not the point. See this?” Hayden pointed carefully at the clear but not empty beaker. “That’s coal gas. Very flammable. If you’d spilled one…if there had been a leak in either…if—”
Sophie suddenly snorted. “If I know both those things are mostly harmless on their own, then you certainly should.”
Drawing a shaky breath, Hayden lowered his face into his hand and rubbed his forehead. “I wouldn’t say harmless...”
“Burstpowder doesn’t just explode randomly, Hayden. That’s why guns that use burstpowder have a flint, and burstpowder shells have a trigger.”
“Remind me not to let you alone with Gideon anymore,” Hayden chuckled despite himself.
Shrugging, Sophie perched herself on his windowsill and cocked her head to the side. “What’s your homework?”
“It’s actually quite interesting. You and Gideon would both enjoy it,” he said dryly. “It has to do with how triphospherine can cause explosions in The Voice of Space where most projectile bombs fail to because of the oxidant it contains. It doesn’t require outside oxygen to create fire.”
Sophie looked at him for a minute, computing what he said, and then laughed and kicked her feet. “Oh, Hayden, you’re such a brain. Can we please go for frozen dairy now? I don’t have to work today, and it’s so sunny out.” She rolled down her bottom lip in a pathetic pout.
Hayden couldn’t help but laugh, though it felt rather weak. Frozen dairy. Something cold to jam up all the worries in his brain.
They did ride the trolley into the city, but Hayden paid for it and told Sophie to keep her savings for the Mead Moon Festival. They left behind the identical row houses with their chipped paintjobs and chugged in the steam-powered boxcar into the eastern end of the Honoran capital, Caldonia. The houses here were still packed together, leaving only narrow alleys between them, but they were wealthy, huge, with steepled roofs and elaborate trimmings often painted in a spectrum of clashing colors.
It was a half hour ride into the heart of Caldonia, where the buildings all loomed, dark and uniform in brick and black glass. The birds perched on their ledges wouldn’t have looked real if it weren’t for the twitching of their heads that gave them away as they watched the traffic below for signs of littered food. Screaming black owls pressed wing to wing with spotted owls and tiny yapping owlets, snowy owls with their draping wings, and the terrible king grey owls, with their flat black faces and perpetually surprised eyes, all used to the tumult of the city and the ships whizzing by over the buildings’ peaks.
And there were so many ships, ships Hayden couldn’t name but Reece could’ve recited the engine type and model number for without looking twice. They were mostly small, zippy vessels, but there were a few that had to be Kraken class because of their size. They looked like huge wooden sea ships floating on the clouds, with house-sized hot air balloons suspended above them. Those were the heliocrafts, luxury cruisers, another indulgence of the rich.
There were also automobiles bumbling along the roads, boxy and much less graceful than their cousins in the sky. Bims growled as their drivers tried to maneuver them through the holiday traffic, but there were horse-drawn buggies to be managed as well, and horses never took kindly to the loud rumbling of a bim.
All along the streets, people milled in their fine or else not-so-fine city wear. Milling among the downtown folk, the Westerners in their grungy work clothes and sleeveless undershirts all looked as if they’d been coated in ash, because the downtowners’ clothes were as colorful as their houses. The ladies carried parasols and wore pillbox hats with little veils, and a lot of the men had handlebar mustaches or overly wide sideburns that came all the way down to their chins.
“Can we walk by Victoria’s Hat Menagerie?” Sophie begged Hayden as he deposited a copper cog into the automated expense till on the side of the trolley. The coin clanked to the bottom of the till.
“Must we?” Hayden pretended to moan as he led her away from the trolley, which started to scoot along again after spraying them with the cold mist of its pipes.
“Please? It’s just beside the dairy stand.”
“I suppose we could walk by it,” Hayden teased, “so long as you don’t make me walk through it…” He trailed off, pausing on the busy pedestrian walkway, as he saw her.
His first glimpse was so brief, he wasn’t sure it was really her, but when he pushed up onto his toes and looked out over the shoppers jostling about him, there couldn’t be any doubt. Nivy was barreling towards him, wearing the same clothes she had when they’d met, though she didn’t fill them out nearly at all now, she’d gotten so thin. Her hair was in a tail on the back of her head that kept whipping her hardened face as she sprinted right through the middle of the crowd, determined to outrun her pursuers.
“Nivy?” Hayden choked, and barely yanked a confused and startled Sophie out of the charging girl’s way. Nivy hurtled past, ignoring or not seeing him. The three sentries doggedly tailing her with their ALPs drawn were huffing and puffing when they passed Hayden a second later.
Sophie tugged on Hayden’s sleeve. “Do you know her?”
Hayden gaped down the street, watching Nivy disappear around an alley corner, little more than a blur of black clothing.
“I…Soph, do you feel like running? Just a little? To see wh
ere she goes?”
With a grin, Sophie plucked up her skirt in two handfuls and started the pursuit, Hayden jumping to follow and probably having a harder time breathing besides.
Sophie led the chase hard down East Capitol Street, then turned into the mouth of the alleyway where Nivy and the sentries had disappeared. It was empty save for disposal bins and a few stray dogs that were yapping at each other’s heels, but it broke off at a sharp right angle, and Hayden could hear the echo of the sentries shouting, “Halt! You are bound by law to halt!”
“Come on!” Sophie panted and veered around the bend in the alley despite Hayden’s breathless, “Soph, wait!”
Hayden turned the corner and skidded to a gasping stop, heart flying into his throat. The alley was a dead-end. Nivy was gone, but the sentries, hard-faced men in grey uniforms, remained, and Sophie had run right into their midst before she’d pulled herself to a stop.
“What’s this now?” one of the sentries growled, frowning at Sophie. “You spying on us, girl?”
“I…no…just…that lady…” Opening and closing her mouth, Sophie took a step back and helplessly looked over her shoulder at Hayden, who hurried forward.
“No, she’s not,” he insisted quickly, still breathing hard. He put his arms around Sophie from behind, pulling her into him. “We were just playing a game. We didn’t mean to disrupt…er, whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Conducting a chase is what,” the sentry said gruffly. He glared out from under the black visor of his hat at Hayden. “You following that ‘lady’ too, boy? Care to tell me what for? Seen her before, have you?”
Lie! Hayden felt himself going white in the face, and he gripped his hands together in front of Sophie to hide their fidgeting. “No, never. It was just…just a game.”
The sentry suspiciously pulled off his cap to reveal a receding yellow hairline and tucked it under his arm. He held out a flat palm to one of his companions, who dug into a pouch on his black utility belt and pulled out a tiny—and so all the more terrible—syringe. Sophie trembled under Hayden’s hands, and he tucked her behind him.
“Then you won’t mind if we administer a quick compulsor, do you?” Seeing Hayden’s expression, the sentry said sternly, “It’s perfectly legal, son, The Veritas use them all the time. It won’t hurt in the least. Just a prick in the arm. Of course, if you’re lying,” he flicked the liquid capsule with his forefinger, “we might have to change our methods.”
“I—” Hayden gulped. “I might have been—that is, if you’ll just let my sister go back and tell my parents, I’m sure they—”
“Alright,” the leader sentry allowed, waving a hand. Hayden felt his knees rattle together. He hadn’t expected that to be alright at all. “Have her go on then. Like I said,” another flick, “perfectly legal.”
Thinking frantically, Hayden turned and put his hands on Sophie’s shoulders. “Soph, go wait for me at the dairy stand. Everything will be alright.”
“Hayden,” she whispered, white-faced, “remember what Father always says about not crossing the city sentries? What if…what if they…”
Hayden forced a laugh and was afraid it sounded rather…hysterical. “Don’t be silly, Soph. I’m just going to speak with them. Go on, here, take some cogs and order for us, I’ll be there in no time.”
“Promise?”
“Sure. Absolutely. Just go.”
Hayden felt lightheaded as Sophie ran away, throwing uncertain glances over her shoulder as she went. He could feel the sentries moving in behind him, their hulking forms crowding him against the wall. What would they do to him when they found out he had lied?
“Go ahead and roll up your sleeve, son,” the head sentry said, smiling a hardly friendly smile.
He had mentioned The Veritas. When it came out out Hayden had lied, would he be given to a Vee for questioning? One of the sentries caught him under the arm as his knees buckled and held him in place as the head sentry aimed the serum over his forearm and then slid it into his largest vein. It was a second before the strange compulsion to talk struck him.
“Now,” the blond sentry leaned in close to Hayden, handing the empty syringe to one of his cohorts. Still smiling, he grabbed Hayden’s jaw and squeezed till Hayden could feel his teeth cutting into his cheeks. “Were you following us?”
“Yesh.” Hayden shook his head, tried to free his mouth.
“Why?”
“Nivy.”
“The girl?”
Hayden nodded, sighing with relief when the sentry released his face. Then the man grabbed a fistful of his shirt and slid him up the wall till his toes swayed over the ground, kicking but not touching. One of the other sentries looked on with amusement while the third stood at the bottom of the alley. Keeping watch, Hayden realized as he coughed. Because the compulsor might be legal, but this was something else entirely.
The sentry began, “Where did she—”, but stopped and dropped Hayden in a gagging heap when the man standing guard let out a strangled cry.
Hayden massaged his throat and pushed his eyes open even though they wanted to stay closed. Even that took him so long that by the time he’d managed it, two of the sentries were already sprawled on their stomachs, and the third, the leader, was fighting not to be shoved stomach-first up against the brick wall by a very put-out looking Gideon.
“Total breech of conduct! Interference with the law! Assaulting a sentry!” the man roared and then grunted when Gideon flattened his face against the wall.
“Don’t rightly care,” Gideon growled and drew back a fist.
“I’ll have you incarcerated in the deepest brigs in the city, Pan! On the planet!”
Managing to get to his feet, however unsteady, Hayden stumbled across the alley. “Wait, you can’t!”
Gideon looked over his shoulder, fist still pulled up to his ear. “Ain’t a time to be forgivin’, Aitch. These dimridge got no right to be pummelin’ anybody, and dirt if I’m gonna let them pummel on you. Now get goin’. Sophie’s waitin’ for you on the road.”
Hayden froze, examining Gideon’s grim face. “What…what are you going to do?”
Gideon smirked, but the smirk turned into a snarl when the sentry squirmed and called him a filthy name. “I’m gonna make them forget.”
A zap of a gunshot echoed through the alley, and Hayden ducked what would have been a second too late to cover his head with a shout. Even Gideon jumped, shoving his hand behind his belt for his revolver. As for the sentry…he was slumping down the brick wall, leaving a paint stroke of blood behind him. Dead.
“What the—” Gideon started, swinging around with his revolver lifted.
Zap, zap, two more shots burrowed into the bodies of the downed sentries. Hayden dove for them, turning them over, but they were already dead, shot through the heart.
Gideon’s revolver clicked as he found the shooter and set his sights on her. Hayden watched the exchange in a daze, unknowingly clutching the bloody front of one of the dead men’s uniforms, perhaps trying to wring some life out of it. Gideon with his revolver and Nivy with her stolen ALP stared at one another, Nivy looking down at him from the roof of the building at the head of the alley. She looked resigned. Gideon looked thoughtful.
“Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!” Hayden pleaded. “No one else should die here!”
Not even a murderer. Nivy had killed these men. Shot them when they couldn’t defend themselves!
Gideon’s gun stayed level. “I wasn’t goin’ to,” he said in a low voice.
Nivy must have heard him, because in one swift motion, she let the gun swing down on her finger and then dropped it into the alley, where it shattered. Then she was gone. Just a blur of black clothing.
IX
Babysitter for Hire, Must be Good with Guns
Reece sat stiffly across from Scarlet Ashdown, who stared at him with a smile that would’ve frightened a Freherian boar. This was the price he paid for leaving Honora before the duke arrived. He couldn’t use t
he family’s Dryad to get back to Atlas, not if he wasn’t willing to wait around to greet his father when he landed. But even in her fury at his “gall” (her word, not his), Abigail still didn’t want Reece riding the bus-ship back to The Owl, not after Liem’s disappearance. So here he was. Hitching a ride with the graceful, breathtaking, totally unattainable ship of the Ashdown’s, Pegasus class.
“Why am I not surprised at this, Reece? You running away before you have to face the duke,” Scarlet said, crossing her legs. Her golden hair was bright against her red dress.
Reece frowned and looked out Galatia’s window and into the soft blackness of space. His fingers toyed restlessly with the cufflinks in the bottom of his coat pocket. Liem’s. “It’s not running away. It’s avoiding.”
“He’s not all that bad, you know. He has quite the sense of humor.”
“Thank you. I love hearing about how other people know him better than I do.”
“And yet you run from him.”
“Avoid, Scarlet, avoid him.”
Reece kept his gaze strained on the window and the streaking stars in the very far distance. If Gideon hadn’t been able to pick up Nivy’s trail from the alley in Caldonia, he certainly wouldn’t be able to, but he still felt like he should be there, trying to keep his promise to Liem. Trying to get some answers. Nivy had killed sentries to keep her secrets. Doing so had confirmed her deep involvement in Reece’s budding conspiracy theory.
At this rate, he’d be as numpty as paranoid old Mordecai before long.
“Something is going on, isn’t it?”
Reece looked up. Scarlet had removed her sequined hat so that her hazel eyes could probe without obstruction. Her face was solemn.
“What makes you think that?”
Pausing, Scarlet stood, crossed the aisle, and sat next to Reece on the long leather seat so that their elbows brushed. Reece pushed himself closer to the window, but there was no escaping the smell of her, like roses.
Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) Page 8
