Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  “I’m a politician,” Scarlet reminded him, playful but grave at the same time. “I feel the waves that humans make on the order of Parliament very distinctly. And there are waves.”

  “With who?”

  “Everyone. Something is going to happen.”

  “You’re sounding a smidgen superstitious, Ms. Ashdown.” Finally looking away from the window, Reece faced Scarlet in the seat. “What do you know about Eldritch?”

  “The headmaster? Well, he’s very involved in Parliament.”

  “Well, he’s employed by them, right? So—”

  “This is different. He has…a presence. I’ve seen it in my clinicals in The Guild House. He is a powerful man, there can be no doubt there. Why?”

  Shaking his head, Reece looked back out the window. The white fog of Atlas was parting over the Pegasus, lighting their tiny cabin with misty light. Scarlet made a displeased noise and returned to her seat to replace her hat on her head.

  “Reece, you know you can trust me, don’t you?” she said softly as she rearranged the delicate netting on the front of her hat. “I hope eight years have given our relationship some semblance of a friendship.”

  Arching an eyebrow, Reece took his turn studying Scarlet—in a completely platonic way, of course. She seemed sincere enough, holding her golden clutch in both hands and frowning worriedly at him. It made him smile, because if there was one thing that could be said about Scarlet Ashdown, it was that she didn’t beg anyone’s approval that wasn’t a superior. So he guessed he was that. Very satisfying.

  “I trust you,” he reassured her, and she smiled back, thankfully not in that feminine wiles kind of way. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then if I asked you to keep an eye on Eldritch?”

  “You would have to tell me what for, of course,” Scarlet reasoned, gesturing, and paused as the captain of Galatia announced their forthcoming landing on The Owl’s aerodome. They had passed from the black of space through the atmospheric fog and were now drifting down through fair blue skies. “In a show of good faith.”

  Reece took his time stretching, standing, and gathering his bags and Scarlet’s from the compartment nets overhead. He felt her condition hanging in the air between them, and her growing curiosity, helped on by his hesitance.

  “The less you know, the safer you’ll be.” His answer seemed to amuse her, because she laughed and drew out her tassled fan, sweeping it before her face in full renewal of her flirtatious ways. Reece dropped her suitcase with a scowl. “I’m serious, Scarlet!”

  “Oh, I know. It’s just so dear, how protective you are of your friends. I’m quite flattered.”

  Reece stared after her as she glided from the cabin. The girl was totally numptified. With a sigh, he caught up the handle of her suitcase and trundled along after her.

  “This is a terrible idea,” Hayden moaned, sitting with his elbows on his knees on the pedestrian walkway in front of the Handcraft Center. Reece looked up from lacing his boots. “We’re going to get expelled. I can’t get expelled, I just can’t!”

  “Get a grip, Hayden. You’re our resident genius; we need you to get us into the museum without setting off any pesky alarms.”

  Hayden didn’t reply, but kept up a steady stream of anxious mutters.

  The campus was otherwise quiet. Classes resumed tomorrow, which meant students were either tucking in early or spending their last night of freedom carousing in Praxis. Not that it could be called exactly early anymore, Reece thought as he flipped open his pocket watch and counted the numerals on its pearly face. It was almost fog hour, so the lampposts and their orange halos of light were muted and misty. The perfect night for a caper.

  Across the brick road from them was The Aurelian Academy’s Museum of Antiquities, a massive dome made entirely of glass except for where rods of thick brown steel separated panes. All that glass was going to be tricky. Reece could see the exhibits, shelves, and displays of books, guns, automata, and antiques from here.

  “I can’t believe you told Scarlet to watch Eldritch,” Hayden said suddenly. Under his knit grey cap, he was frowning deeply.

  Reece leaned back on his palms, stretching his legs out over the brick road. “She’ll be fine. She’s a politician. She’s good at slinking around and being a double agent.”

  “Liem was a politician too. And Scarlet isn’t that kind of politician. She’s a diplomat.”

  “Oh, buck up. Aren’t you the least bit excited about this?”

  “Can one be excited about one’s professional demise?”

  Laughing, Reece tousled Hayden’s hair, unseating his hat, and spotted Gideon jogging up the street towards them. He was wearing a black jacket like Reece’s and Hayden’s, only the sleeves of his were rolled up to his elbows, showing skin as pale as the fog rolling into town.

  “Ready to earn your stripes?” Gideon said to Hayden, grinning as he wrapped an arm around his head and mussed up the hair that had already been made a sight by Reece.

  Hayden unhappily squirmed out of the headlock. “No.”

  “Sure you are,” Reece tried telling him, putting a hand on one of his shoulders and leading him across the road, towards the museum. “You’ve got the makings of a great delinquent.”

  Gideon grabbed Hayden’s other shoulder so they could drive him on together. “You’re a regular ole’ hoodlum.”

  Hayden groaned.

  As they walked across the museum’s lawn, Gideon outlined his inspection of the building. Glass all the way around, but one of the maintenance doors was steel. Locked with a robust iron padlock, which he could take care of, and sealed with a seven digit security code for Hayden to crack. They could belly crawl to The Aurelia to keep out of sight and stand under the shadow of her left wing while Reece did his part jimmying their way into her cargo bay.

  A few moments later Reece was sliding on his belly across the cold marble of the museum floor, looking up at The Aurelia, his stomach leaping. He used to visit the museum every day and sit on the bench over by the refreshment dispenser bar just to watch her be. She was the first Honoran airship, the mother ship that all others had been crafted after. After generations of aviation advancement, most ships had lost the look of her and her brother Aurelius. They’d gained curve and color, had steel and iron incorporated into their bodies, acquired propellers or lost their wings. Aurelia was a real airship, a classic. Her name (the first A of which had the circle and wings around it) was actually hand painted on her wooden hull.

  “You gonna sit there droolin’, Lover Boy, or are we gonna work this job?” Gideon whispered as he pulled himself soundlessly over the floor. Hayden slipped after him, his clothes squeaking comically against the marble.

  Smirking in spite of himself, Reece followed, scanning the lobby of the museum. There was a circular guest desk off to one side of Aurelia, festooned with banners advertising two tours, one by a live guide, one by a projected actor who would pretend to lead the tour from a cockpit so guests would feel as if they were being flown around the museum. Reece’s second favorite exhibit was on the level underground. It was called Food from Epimetheus, and offered sample delicacies from all over the galaxy. The people on planet Oceanus had a kind of edible rock that was surprisingly delectable when smothered in tartar sauce.

  Gideon and Hayden stopped beneath Aurelia’s wing, taking care to hold close to her side even though they could see that outside, fog hour had struck. Everything was white beyond the glass walls, as if they were sinking in an ocean of milk.

  “Alright, girl, talk to me,” Reece said quietly as he stood and pressed his hands to the warm belly of the wooden hull. He knew from studying Aurelia in his History of Aviation class that she had a round hatch on her underside that lowered down on hydraulic legs for easy cargo pickup, but exterior cargo bay controls hadn’t been incorporated into ships until the last two hundred years, so that was a no go. Her cockpit would have a ladder tray, but that would require climbing on top of the ship. Th
e back exit hatch had probably been locked down tight at her decommissioning. That left…

  Groping under the ship, Reece slid his hands along the lip of a panel, found a handhold, and curled his fingers around it.

  “Mind your feet,” he warned his friends, and pulled back on the handle. With a gasp of compressed air, a hatch dropped open. A mechanic or pirate’s best friend—the gut engine nook.

  Reece dropped to his knees, crawling. There were rungs in the dropped hatch, a good two dozen leading up into Aurelia’s mighty engine, The Afterquin. The only one of its kind. From down below, it looked like a series of fans strung together by hollow tubes and chunks of misshapen metal. But up at that twenty-fifth rung, the Afterquin was a steel jungle.

  Reece stepped off the ladder at the tenth rung, into a squeezed aisle leading into what he believed would be the cargo bay, the hub that all the other corridors of the ship joined onto. He hoped Hayden was ready for a long night on his feet. Aurelia wasn’t a quarter as big as her brother Aurelius—he had had the capacity to carry over a thousand passengers—but she still had a lot of nooks and crannies to comb through.

  The cargo bay looked like the drawings he’d seen in his schoolbooks, if dustier. It had been more than two hundred years since Aurelia had been flight-worthy, and she’d never been opened to public tour, for fear some fanatic might try to break off a part of her to take back to his ship. That’s what The Aurelius had been for, to gut and dissemble and incorporate into thousands of other ships. Aurelia had been preserved for all of history, and was missing only six or seven of her key components.

  “It’s so dark,” Hayden whispered, standing next to Reece and looking worriedly around the cargo bay. Bridges of mesh steel, wood, and chains crisscrossed overhead, pathways connecting halls on one side of the ship to halls on the other. “Can we turn on some of her auxiliary lighting?”

  Reece held up his photon wand, waving its bright yellow beam around. “That’s what these are for. Besides, I doubt we could even get her auxiliary systems online. It’d take a dump load of power to wake this baby up.” He tossed the wand to Hayden, who fumbled to catch it. “You can stick with me. We’ll search the starboard halls. Gid, you take port.”

  “What’re we lookin’ for, again?”

  “Signs of someone being here recently. Anything related to Liem or Eldritch. Just keep your eyes peeled.”

  Gideon split off from Reece and Hayden, sauntering down a black hallway, twirling his photon wand around his wrist. Reece thought they should start at the top corridors and work their way down. Get those old steel bridges out of the way while Hayden still had some resolve left.

  There were no decorations left on the corridors’ walls, though Reece had seen drawings of a time when paintings and tapestries had made the brass and wooden halls almost homey. Now they felt like dark tunnels, narrow, constricting. Reece loved it. He could see crewmembers running up and down the halls to get to their posts, could imagine feeling the soft vibrations of the Afterquin running through the floor beneath his boots.

  “The dust on the floor,” Hayden said suddenly. “It’s undisturbed. Nobody’s been this way, not recently.”

  “Mmhm.”

  “So shouldn’t we try another hall?”

  “This one leads to the bridge.”

  “But if no one’s been here—”

  “There are multiple corridors connecting to the bridge. They could’ve come another way.” Reece quickened his step, swinging his photon wand. The bridge. How many times had he wondered what it would be like to stand at The Aurelia’s helm?

  Hayden kept pace with him, frowning. “I thought we came here to look for clues.”

  “What? We are! I just figure, as long as we’re here, why not enjoy the experience?” When that made Hayden frown deeper still, Reece sighed. “Oh, come on, Hayden. It’s The Aurelia. When will we ever get the chance to see her like this again?”

  Hayden slowly nodded, but he didn’t look best pleased.

  The bridge was a step down from their corridor, alone on the level between the upper and lower halls. The narrow stairway leading down to it felt isolated despite its arched ceiling being a clear heavy glass looking out into what should have been open space. Reece descended the stairs with a knot of excitement in his stomach and a pinch of guilt in his chest because of it. Hayden was right. He should be looking for something to help Liem. Not fantasizing about piloting Aurelia into dangerous, unexplored Streams.

  Stepping onto the bridge, they paused and looked around. It was spacious enough in whole for a working crew of four or five, but there was only room for two at the helm, for the captain and his first mate. Two ancient leather chairs, some of their padding tufting through their fabric, faced the canopy window crossing the front of the bridge like a visor. Before the chairs was the flightpanel and its levers, buttons, gauges, pedals, and pumps; separating them was the extension of panel displaying the green graph radar. An old-fashioned speaker com dangled from its curly wire over the helm.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind them, shaking Reece out of a kind of blissful trance.

  Hayden patted his shoulder. “That’ll be Gideon. I’ll get him.” He turned and left Reece staring sheepishly at the flightpanel.

  Clearing his throat, Reece spun one of the leather chairs about to face him, sat down, and let it swing back into position. Sighing contently, he let his hands wander from the yoke to the flightpanel, feeling the raised edges of worn buttons, the cool metal grooves of levers. There was a smallish hole behind the yoke he wasn’t sure the purpose of—unless it had once held some non-essential part that had gotten auctioned off, a pressure-ometer or a gauge.

  Suddenly, Hayden shouted, “Reece!” and then cut off with a grunt. Something crashed against a wall with a thud, and it sounded suspiciously like a body. Reece regretfully stood and grabbed the ALP hidden under his jacket. Hayden had probably just tripped, but a little extra caution never hurt.

  “What’s—” Reece started, jogging up the stairs. He was interrupted by a flash of shadow swinging down from the ceiling, and the hard sole of a boot smacking his hand, knocking his aim askew. He made a noise of surprise as the shadow kicked again and this time sent the ALP flying down the corridor, past where Hayden was trying to stand, holding his broken bifocals in one hand and his photon wand in another.

  When the shadow swung again, this time with an arm, Reece ducked and brought up his fists, ready. Hayden switched the photon wand on; a beam of light lit up the shadow from behind. Reece gaped. At Nivy, and at her gun, a strange foreign model that was currently held level with his forehead.

  “See, Hayden?” he said quietly, and turned his fists into hands raised in surrender. “I knew we’d find something if we came here.”

  Nivy looked starved, the hollows of her cheeks deep, her lips chapped, her dark hair a matted mess in a tail on the back of her head. She stiffly gestured with her gun for Hayden to join Reece at the stairwell, which he did blinking and tripping without his bifocals. If she felt sorry for him, that didn’t stop her from cocking the hammer of her gun with a menacing click and nodding for them to step down onto the bridge. Guiding Hayden by the elbow, Reece obeyed.

  “Where did you go?” he asked as they stopped with their backs to the flightpanel. “Why did you run?”

  Nivy raised her eyebrows and wagged the gun a little, and somehow Reece knew what she meant. She had the gun. He shouldn’t be asking questions.

  “So you’re going to shoot us like you shot those sentries in Caldonia.”

  “Reece,” Hayden whispered, “maybe you shouldn’t—”

  “What?” Reece glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “She won’t shoot. Gid would hear, and then she’d have nowhere to run.” He looked back at Nivy, hardening his gaze so there’d be no question as to his not backing down. “What do you know about Liem?”

  Nivy tightened her jaw, gun unwavering.

  “He wanted me to protect you, you know, if he was taken. H
e said neither of you had anywhere else to go.”

  Though Nivy didn’t seem at all surprised by this, it made her look at Reece anew, with a gaze almost…sympathetic? Fine. He could use that.

  “Do you know if my brother’s alive? Is there any getting him back?”

  Finally, Nivy responded. A small, stiff shrug. Reece swallowed, finding his mouth dry, and lowered his hands slightly, testing the waters. She eyed him warily.

  “Does this have to do with the capsule that landed here three weeks ago?”

  Nivy smiled a grim smile and shook her head, but Reece didn’t think it was in answer. It was more the kind of gesture a person made when they couldn’t believe you weren’t seeing the obvious.

  “Do you know what was in that capsule?”

  She looked right at him then, and lowered the gun to her side. Her blue eyes burned upon his face, and he felt a sort of gravity come over him, as if she was forcing something heavy on him with that gaze, something he should understand but couldn’t quite see. He opened and then closed his mouth. He wanted to shout, “What?”

  “We…we thought the capsule might be some kind of escape pod,” Hayden bravely ventured. “Is it?” Something danced in Nivy’s hard eyes. Affirmation. “So it carried a person?” He suddenly gasped, and Reece looked at him sharply. “Wait…were you in the capsule?”

  Reece’s stupefied choking noise sounded like a stepped-on crow.

  Just then, Gideon lunged out of the stairwell behind Nivy, his revolver held in two hands and aimed at the back of her head. “Drop it!” he growled, standing in the deep stance of a Handler, legs spread, body facing sideways. “Drop it now!”

  Reece opened his mouth to tell Gideon to stand down and swallowed his words as Nivy sprang into action, spinning and lifting her gun in the space of a blink. She and Gideon stared one another down like a pair of wolfdogs fighting for territory, each sizing the other up, neither blinking.

  “Wait! Gid, lower your gun.”

  “Not likely, Cap’n.”