Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  It was odd, talkin’ (in a manner, anyhow) with someone who didn’t know about Panteda and the Eudoran Civil War. Sometimes that was all Gideon felt his life was about, the war. First half had been about survivin’ it while it swallowed his family and left him and Mordecai alone. The second half was about livin’ on Honora and tryin’ to forget it had ever happened. Either way, it all came back to the war. Kinda felt like he’d never stop runnin’ from it.

  Risin’ to her knees on the cot, Nivy pointed at the paintin’, then spread her hands in a graceful kind’a way.

  “Yeah. It was nice,” Gideon said, watchin’ her carefully as he stacked the dishes against the wall. He’d move them later.

  For a long moment, they stared at each other, not talkin’, and not just because Nivy couldn’t. Then Gideon lamely nodded at the the paintin’.

  “The place you’re from. It anythin’ like that?”

  She was like a wild animal retreatin’ into its cave when someone got too close. Shuttin’ out his words, Nivy rolled up in the heavy quilt on the cot and turned away.

  “Fine,” Gideon growled in her direction as he pressed his back into the couch’s uneven cushions. “Hope you like the cot. It’s like sleepin’ on plywood.”

  Gideon expected Reece first thing in the mornin’. Could hardly wait for him to come, actually, because Reece was good at makin’ things unawkward, at sayin’ all the right things at the right time and makin’ people laugh. Gideon didn’t care about bein’ bad at that, but the quiet between him and Nivy was an uncomfortable sort.

  “Sit here,” Gideon instructed as he upended an empty barrel in the corner of a dim upstairs workshop, the smallish one away from the other gunsmiths’. It was past time to start the day, and Reece still hadn’t shown up. “Don’t talk, don’t touch nothin’, and don’t get in the way.”

  Nivy lifted herself onto the barrel and folded her legs beneath her. He grabbed his weldin’ helmet and sat it on his head, but before lowerin’ its screen, put on a pair’a leather gloves with just the fingertips cut outta them, because his were all calluses anyways.

  Mordecai strolled into the workshop, wearin’ a leather tabard with a tool belt and smokin’ a cigar. His wavy white hair was pulled in a tight tail away from his brass weldin’ goggles. “Don’t you let him talk to you like that, Nivy Girl. If he gets your goat, you clock him one, alright? Split his face clean open, if you like.”

  “This is a job, old man,” Gideon told his grandfather as he opened one’a the many drawers built into the cave-like walls’a the workshop and pulled out the gun he’d left half finished before holiday. “Quit bein’ so nice. I’ve gotta class tonight. I won’t be here to make sure she doesn’t kill you.”

  “Kill me?” Mordecai twirled his cigar between his lips as he picked up a thermal torch and spun its dial to adjust the heat settin’s. “Wha’dya do to him, Nivy? He seems to think you’ve got some kind’a problem with shootin’ folk.”

  She kept her face guarded, but Gideon thought he saw her wince a little before the shield went up.

  Mordecai gazed at her through his goggles. “Well, now. That’s interestin’. You ain’t denyin’ nothin’. I’ve gotta bit’a problem with it myself, truth be told. Once shot six men in one day. Over a llama. Not physically over a llama, you understand. Just because’a it. Anyhow—”

  Forcin’ Mordecai and Nivy outta his thoughts, Gideon turned his unfinished artwork over in his hands a few times, to refamiliarize himself with its weight. “I need a couple more grams’a scrap metal,” he realized aloud. He frowned over at Mordecai and pointed a finger. “Watch her. No more flirtin’.”

  Downstairs, he grabbed a couple’a hard steel pegs picked up at the locomotive tracks, bounced them on his palm calculatingly, and then slipped them into the front pocket’a his lap apron. He couldn’t’a been there more than five minutes when Reece and Hayden stumbled in the shop’s front door, pantin’ and lookin’ like they’d run all the way from The Owl.

  “Somethin’ wrong?” Gideon asked, reachin’ without thinkin’ for his revolver. A habit from Handling since he was eight years old. Back then, he hadn’t used a revolver—he couldn’t’ve, not with little kid arms and hands. He’d forged this revolver when he was fourteen, and it’d taken every bit’a two years to work up the forearm strength and dexterity to wield it like he could now.

  Reece glanced at Hayden, who had doubled over and put his hands on his knees. “We’ve been drafted.”

  Gideon dropped his hand. “What?”

  “Battle drafted. Recruited into the Honoran military by lottery.”

  “But…there ain’t no war goin’ on…”

  Interruptin’ him with an impatient gesture, Reece started for the staircase, towin’ the gaspin’ Hayden along behind him. “Forget that. Both of us drafted, on the same day? Not only that, but on the day after we broke into Aurelia and kidnapped Nivy?”

  Mouth twistin’ around a grimace, Gideon grunted, “Guess that does seem a bit much. You think someone wants you outta their way?” His grip tightened on the steel pikes just thinkin’ about it, and his steps fell heavy on the stairs he marched up behind his friends.

  “Reece…” Hayden panted, “Reece i-isn’t even s-supposed to get drafted. He’s exempt. Palatine…Second.”

  “Which means someone inside Parliament set me up. I’m thinking Eldritch.” Reece paused at the top’a the stairs, briefly listenin’ to the metallic grindin’ of Mordecai’s tools. “Where’s Nivy?”

  Gideon started to answer when he felt a flicker’a somethin’ inside’a him. “Hold up. Why didn’t I get drafted?”

  “You can’t be,” Hayden explained. He’d replaced last night’s busted bifocals with another one’a his hand-me-down pairs. This one had thick, square red rims that were too wide for his face. “Aliens are prohibited from serving either voluntarily or involuntarily. No exceptions.”

  “So—”

  “So Eldritch will find some other way of making sure you butt out of his business.” Reece looked from doorway to doorway, eyes narrowed. “Nivy?”

  Frownin’, Gideon jabbed his thumb towards the workshop where by the sound’a it, Mordecai was still whettin’ somethin’ down. Reece pushed past him, rollin’ up the sleeves’a his jacket as he went.

  “Wait,” Hayden held Gideon back with a hand. “Gideon, you’ve got to talk sense into him.”

  “Huh? What about?”

  Hayden glanced over his shoulder to make sure Reece had gone and couldn’t hear what he was sayin’. “Reece is glad he got drafted.”

  Gideon squinted after Reece. “Don’t seem like it.”

  “Well, he’s not happy about being set up, but he’d never be allowed in the military under other conditions. He can fly in the military. Pilot a ship without being captain.”

  “So why do I need to talk him outta it? You know how he feels about flyin’.”

  Sighin’, Hayden rubbed his tired eyes, which were red-rimmed even without his bifocals. “It’s my belief,” he began in his textbook voice, “that Reece and I were drafted so that we will be out of the way permanently.”

  “You mean…dead?”

  “What better way to get us killed and have no one to blame for it?”

  Gideon thought for a moment. “Cattle stampede?”

  “That was a hypothetical question.”

  “Just sayin’. There are other ways.”

  Raised voices from inside the workshop brought the two’a them back to attention. Gideon picked up his feet and jogged through the door, hand diggin’ for his revolver and bringin’ it up in a taut arm.

  Reece and Mordecai were havin’ a standoff, Mordecai separatin’ a very displeased lookin’ Reece from a calm-as-ever Nivy, who had risen from her barrel and was standin’ with her hands in fists at her sides.

  “I’m not going to hurt her!” Reece said in an exasperated voice a key short of a shout.

  Mordecai puffed out his mustaches. “Then you shouldn’t tell her you’re gonn
a. I’ll not abide empty threats in my house. If you’re gonna make threats, they should at least hold some water.”

  Reece threw out his hands with a growl. “I don’t have time for this. I hired you to protect Nivy for me, not from me.”

  “You didn’t ever sign the contract.”

  “What contract?”

  “Why, the one I’m gonna go write up right now. About not threatenin’ pretty girls under my roof and raisin’ your voice above polite decibels.”

  “Mordecai—”

  “Bird-on-a-stick?”

  “What?”

  “It’s what I’m callin’ my new recipe. I’m gonna go make some.” Mordecai chuckled at Reece’s nonplussed expression, winked at Nivy, and waltzed outta the room to the tune’a his own whistle.

  “Wow,” Reece muttered. “I’d forgotten how completely crazy he is.”

  Gideon shrugged. Mordecai wasn’t half as crazy as he made himself look—he just liked throwin’ people, puttin’ them off balance until he could get a handle on them.

  “Nivy,” Reece began, becomin’ stern again as he scanned the girl up and down. She’d changed back into her old clothes this mornin’, and if they still looked a little tatty after bein’ washed, well, at least they were mostly clean. “No more games. No more running. I need to know what you know.”

  Unrollin’ her fists, Nivy turned about and started idly lookin’ over the messy tables framin’ the room, now and again pausin’ to pick up some spare part and turn it around in the light with a kinda offhand fascination. Gideon could hear Reece grindin’ his teeth.

  Hayden shot him an anxious look, but he waved it off with his gun. Reece had this under control. If he didn’t, he would’a turned to Gideon and asked for assistance. Nothin’ much. Just a little muscle flexin’ to remind the girl he was there and had a gift with breakin’ stuff.

  “I said I wasn’t going to hurt you, and I won’t. But I can turn you in to Eldritch.”

  Nivy froze with a punch held between her thumb and finger. Her hair swayed against her back as she turned to face Reece and his frown with one’a her own.

  “Liem was keeping you away from him. You give me some answers, and I’ll do the same. I swear, whatever reason you want to stay out of the headmaster’s hands, I’ll protect you, even help you. All I want is to know what’s going on. And how Liem is involved.”

  Sighin’ silently, Nivy frowned down at her hands. Seemed to be gatherin’ herself up to do somethin’ she didn’t want to do. Lookin’ embarrassed, she touched her throat with her hand, tapped it, and shook her head.

  “Well, you can write, can’t you?” Reece said, already reachin’ into his jacket to pull outta small journal, one’a the old fashioned kinds with real carbon paper. He stopped in the act’a retrievin’ a pen when Nivy, blushin’, shook her head. “You can’t write?”

  “But you can read?” Hayden ventured hopefully.

  Nivy’s mouth twisted sideways, and she shrugged one shoulder.

  “Not really?” Hayden interpreted for her. “Well, that’s problematic. Why can’t you read? Didn’t anyone ever teach you?” Not bein’ able to read was to Hayden what not bein’ able to breathe prolly was to a normal person. “No?”

  “Hayden,” Reece sneaked in smoothly. He and Gideon shared a smirk. “You should teach her.”

  “Well…maybe I will!” Hayden announced, nobly puffin’ out his chest. “Nivy, I’m going to teach you to write, read, and—”

  “That’s all she needs to know. I just need information from her.” The cap’n added with finality, “However she can give it to me.”

  And that was that.

  Because their classes had been in the mornin’, Hayden and Reece stayed through the afternoon. Gideon was able to finish up his commissioned gun while Hayden worked at gettin’ Nivy to understand the Epimetheus alphabet, which she picked it up right quick after her first few fails at drawin’ letters. Always, Gideon watched her closely, not entirely bought by her and Reece’s deal. Aside from not bein’ able to talk, she seemed close to normal. But Gideon was short’a forgettin’ how quick she’d been to put bullets in those sentries in Caldonia.

  Afternoon passed, and the rain from yesterday came again for dinner. Which was Mordecai’s exotic bird-on-a-stick recipe, washed down with burnthroat. Mordecai regaled Reece and Hayden with stories from Panteda that they’d already heard ten times, and they humored him, laughin’ in all the right places and askin’ things like how he’d gotten away with what he’d gotten away with and how somebody had replied to somethin’ witty he’d said. Nivy listened, but she didn’t laugh, just quietly cleaned her plate and then practiced sketchin’ letters on her napkin.

  When the cuckoo clock on the wall let out a hoot, Gideon gratefully rose from the kitchen table and grabbed his ridin’ coat from its peg on the wall. Time for his Advanced Artisan Weaponry class.

  “We’ll save you some dessert,” Mordecai offered as he struck a match on the table and lit up his cigar. “I call it ‘bird in a cake’. Or ‘cake on a stick’, whichever you like.”

  Gideon chuckled as he shoved his arms through his coat, mostly at Nivy’s dismayed expression. “Don’t bother. It’s gonna be a late night. You stayin’ here?” he asked Reece and Hayden, who looked at each other and shrugged.

  Hayden helpfully started stackin’ everyone’s plates. “We might as well. Nivy and I are almost halfway through the alphabet. We’re making good progress.”

  “Then we’re staying,” Reece announced. “How soon till she starts writing words?”

  Nivy carefully scratched somethin’ on her napkin, then less carefully wadded it up and chucked it at him. He caught it before it smacked his forehead and curiously opened it. Then he laughed.

  “There are two L’s in troll, and no E. I commend the endeavor, though.”

  Gideon left them like that, closin’ the hatch door behind him, glad to shut out the voices for the calmer sound’a rain hissin’ down outside.

  The rain became a full-fledged storm in a matter’a minutes, drenchin’ him as he rode in the murky light back to The Owl. He glared through his steamy goggles. Life had been more or less simple before the capsule and Nivy and Liem had fogged things up. He wanted to go back to makin’ guns and goin’ on heists with Mordecai. Least that kind’a danger was familiar. This kind just weren’t right.

  The headlights came outta nowhere, dull yellow photon bulbs fixed to the fronts’a bims like his. He made room on the road, but as the five riders passed him in a blur, they still nearly crowded him into the ditch. Growlin’, he veered back into the middle’a the road before he could get whacked outta his seat by a branch.

  His back tire suddenly started swervin’, draggin’ noisily. Deflatin’. Usin’ his front brakes, he tried to slow the bim before it could hurl him off, but he’d been goin’ fast, and the brakes screamed in protest, handlebars rumblin’ under his gloved hands.

  The bim jerked to the left, hard, and he flew off to the right, into the grassy ditch that helped break his fall. He rolled out his momentum, gruntin’ when he slammed to a stop with his arms tangled up under his back. Groanin’, he tested his legs. Nothin’ was broke, but his forearms were skinned practically bare.

  On the road above him, the five other motorists pulled up to a stop. At first he thought they were comin’ to help. Then he saw one’a them climbin’ off his bim, reachin’ behind his back, and his Handler instincts sent a jolt through his muscles. He rolled outta the way’a the shockgun pellets that exploded in the damp soil beside him and deftly whipped out his revolver. He managed to pump out two rounds that dropped two’a the strangers like sacks’a coal before somethin’ like a hot knife sliced open his eyebrow, sendin’ him reelin’. A bullet, skimmin’ his forehead.

  Turnin’ up outta his stagger into the second’a the four Handling stances, Gideon held down one’a the revolver’s three triggers and twitched his wrist three times. The barrel swung up and over on its ball with a click-bang, click-bang, click-ban
g. With blood streamin’ in his eyes, only one’a the shots was deadly; the other two were just cripplin’. But he was standin’, and they weren’t. That’s all that mattered.

  Except he was startin’ to think the graze over his eyebrow wasn’t just a graze, because he didn’t get two steps before he started seein’ white spots and hearin’ his loud and raspy breathin’ inside his head. His legs bowed inward, and he collapsed, joinin’ the others on the ground.

  XI

  Round One, Eldritch Trumps Reece

  “Is he going to be alright, Hayden?”

  “I—”

  “‘Course he is. He’s a Creed. We got skulls like bleedin’ batterin’ rams.”

  “Even so—”

  “I mean bleedin’ figuratively of course, not literally. Though he is still bleedin’ a lot, ain’t he?”

  “Mordecai,” Hayden said firmly, leaning up from over Gideon with a roll of gauze in one hand. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave so I can concentrate. Please. If you go down to the smoking lounge, my father and Sophie would be happy to make you some tea.”

  Reece speechlessly shook his head as Mordecai, grumbling to himself, turned from the suite, taking the musty aroma of tobacco along with him. With him no longer clogging the doorway, Nivy was able to slip in from the corridor. Her eyes fell on the makeshift work table that Gideon was sprawled limply across, as pale as the sheet beneath him.

  “If Mr. Rice and Sophie hadn’t spotted Gideon’s bim on their way into Praxis, he could have died,” Reece told her severely, tapping his fingertips on his folded arms. “Someone tried to kill him.”

  Without looking away from the table and Gideon, Nivy spread her hands as if at a loss.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Reece returned his attention to Hayden, who was stitching Gideon’s torn eyebrow back together with swift and smooth precision. “Can you tell what happened?”

  Sighing, Hayden paused to massage the small of his back. “Well, for starters, he crashed his bim and landed on his arms.” He gently lifted Gideon’s arm and studied the shredded skin stuck to it. “Father said the bim’s back tire was blown out. Shot. He couldn’t whether that was on purpose, or if they had been aiming for his back and missed. Can you help me roll him over? It shouldn’t wake him, he’s pretty sedated.”