Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  The little golden bell over the shop door tinkled, announcing new customers. Hayden grimaced. More girls come to make him squirm, he shouldn’t wonder.

  “Welcome, welcome!” the Madame sang, bustling across the store. “What can I—oh my.”

  The steps on the floor were heavy and clodding, not like a woman’s. Hayden started to curiously lift himself to see over the back of the couch, but Gideon caught his shoulder and forced him to stay down. He gave his chin the slightest of shakes.

  A deep, hollow voice—like wind blowing through bare trees, somber and wintry—said, “Gideon Creed?”

  Gideon stood, leaving Hayden doubled over on the couch, hidden. Hayden’s heart increased its tempo. The girls across the room were clinging to each other’s arms with faces as pale as the lace they’d let fall to the ground. Then Hayden saw the mirror behind them.

  The men stood in identical poses, shoulders squared, hands clasped before them, their sickly white skin bright against the black of their jumpsuits. Both had shaved heads and sharply-boned faces, temples that jutted out just a little too far, eye sockets like caverns, hiding eyes with pupils so dilated they seemed mostly black. That was from the serum they lived on. A steroid treatment replacing the need for vitamins, protein, calcium, food and water. It turned them into wraiths, the addiction for the serum, in exchange for the tools they needed to do their job. Strength, speed, stealth. Hearsay had it that it also gave them an unnatural proclivity for hurting things, but then, that was part of their job as well.

  On the right lapel of their black jumpsuits, the letter V was embroidered in scarlet thread. The Veritas. Truth seekers.

  Hayden couldn’t see himself in the mirror, because Gideon was standing between him and his reflection, but he was sure he looked as ill as he suddenly felt.

  Gideon didn’t answer to his name, just frowned a little deeper and folded his arms over his chest. In the mirror, Madame Maraux was trying to fix some extra tea for her distinguished guests, and her hands were rattling the porcelain.

  One of the Veritas flowed gracefully forward, discernable from the other only by the shape of his nose, bowed like a beak.

  “You are a Pan, are you not? Yes. Most cases of treason involve Pantedans. Disloyalty to the Honora. The very hand that feeds them.”

  “Mr. Creed.” The other Vee had a silky tenor voice that made the hairs on Hayden’s arms try to stand. “We are going to recite our terms as granted by Parliament. Please understand. If at any time you wish to interrupt us, you abandon your right to hear what we are and are not allowed to do to you to ascertain the truth.” Gideon said nothing. “Very well. We are The Veritas, appointed by Parliament to seek out the truth, to discern evidence without need of a jury, to determine sentencing as is due the party at question. In the course of questioning you may or may not be burned, cut, shocked by means of artificial photon pulse, struck repeatedly, subjected to extreme temperatures and conditions—”

  “Extreme temperatures? You mean like hot and cold?” Gideon asked, mocking.

  Madame Maraux stole the chance to jostle her female customers into a back room and out of sight.

  “Yes.”

  “Kinda weird.”

  Hayden tried thinking like Reece, but that made it impossible to devise a plan that didn’t count on violence, law-breaking, cunning, and a fair bit of luck. Gideon had told him to stay down. It was the best plan he had, for now.

  “We’ve broken Pans before. When the frost builds on their cheeks and they begin to lose fingers, they wonder how many fingers they can make do with, and by the third finger, they’re broken.”

  “The eyes always yield the quickest results,” the Vee with the bird’s nose added. Neither of them sounded angry, amused, or even eager. Their voices didn’t go up and down, and the eyes hidden in the hollows of their faces held no expression. “Pans are always so proud of their eyes. They set them apart from the Honorans. Threaten to take those away, and—”

  “We must not get carried away prematurely,” silk-voice purred, making a peaceful gesture with two fingers. “This does not have to be your fate, Gideon Creed.”

  Gideon snorted; his eyes flickered, briefly, down towards Hayden. His hand was sliding slowly down his arm, towards the back of his hip and his hidden sheath. Customers weren’t allowed to carry guns on the premises, but knives…

  Across the room, Nivy pushed through her dressing stall curtain, holding The Madame’s clothes in a ball at arms’ length, her face disgusted. When she saw The Veritas, a curtain of ice seemed to fall over the room. She froze, Gideon froze, the Vees froze. Hayden was the only one who moved, triumphantly throwing himself to his feet with a surge of courage. The Veritas, whether because they were preoccupied with Nivy or because they had always known he was there, paid no attention to him.

  “The girl,” one Vee said, lips parting with a hiss. He started to reach into his black jumpsuit.

  Gideon’s knife flew like a sleek silver bird. The Vee’s face contorted with a grimace, but he didn’t yell or jerk as the knife burrowed into his wrist, merely reached with his other hand and wrenched it free. Nivy’s reaction was as instantaneous as Gideon’s had been. Lunging forward, she thrust the tangled dresses into The Veritas’ faces, blinding them with layers of cotton and silk.

  “Aitch!” Gideon bellowed as he stamped a hand on the back of the couch and vaulted over it. “Get clear!” One of the Vee’s faces peeked out from the fabric, and he threw a fist into it with a grunt of surprise for just how hard the face hit his hand.

  Fumbling, caught between wanting to obey and wanting to help, Hayden grabbed for Nivy, pleading, “Come on, Nivy!”

  Nivy’s bony wrist slipped out from between his fingers as if oiled. Her hand closed on his sleeve, yanked it till he jerked about, and then shoved him from behind, sending him a few tumbling paces towards the door and safety. As if she was going to stay and fight while he went and hid with Madame Maraux and her girls!

  With a shout of willpower, Hayden picked up the unwieldy wrought candlestick sitting on Maraux’s counter. He could do this. All it took was a tap on the temple…or the mandibular nerve….

  He turned. Gideon was fighting Beak-Nose, holding his own. If by a hairsbreadth. Hayden cringed as the Vee caught Gideon by the jacket and heaved him off his feet, landing him with a creak and a thud on a wooden countertop. Gideon rolled from the counter and came up with a stool, which exploded into splinters against the Vee’s guard a second later.

  Where Gideon’s strength was in his raw power, Nivy’s was in her speed. As long as she couldn’t be caught, she couldn’t be touched. Her Vee flailed, batting open space with arm and leg trying to catch her as she ducked and dove and skipped.

  Hayden’s candlestick pulled down on his hands heavily. His eyes twitched as he tried to decide, Gideon or Nivy, Gideon or Nivy. It was Nivy’s Vee who made the decision for him as his arm struck like a snake through her defenses and landed a fist in her side. Nivy spilt onto the floor with her face screwed up in pain.

  Gathering himself, Hayden gave a shout and charged the Vee. There was a flash of movement, and then a strange pressure on his throat. He dropped his candlestick to clutch the arm connected to the Vee who was choking him. Oh, bloody—

  “Hayden Rice,” Silk-Voice sighed. “There are questions we could ask of you as well. But I think you would be too easily broken.”

  Hayden shuddered as his body begged for air he couldn’t give, and for the first time, he saw a Vee smile, a curve of white lips that narrowed the eyes.

  “Mmm, Hayden Rice,” he said thoughtfully, and to Hayden’s wonder, eased up on his grip so Hayden could draw a wheezy breath. Not half a second later, the Vee had pulled out a small silver pistol and placed its barrel firm against his heart. “You will come with us. To make everything less painful for your family. Because you don’t want to hurt anyone, do you? You don’t like hurting people. We’re not like you, Hayden—we will hurt them. Understand. Sophie is just another child to us.�
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  Sophie. Gasping and groaning as air scraped down his battered windpipe, Hayden forced his head to nod. Satisfied, the Vee, holding him by the arm to ensure he didn’t run, turned and brought his ALP up to a level with Gideon, who had the bird-nosed Vee pinned to the wall. Hayden’s Vee adjusted his aim for a nonfatal shot and closed one eye.

  A gunshot snapped, filled the air with a smell like hot metal. The Vee on Hayden’s arm staggered uncertainly. Another snap, and he dropped to his knees, releasing Hayden. One more snap. He rocked and then fell to his face, blood leaking out about him.

  Reece rushed into the room, face drawn of color, his old hob raised in both hands. “Hayden?”

  “F-fine,” Hayden reassured him, backing away from the dead Vee until his knees involuntarily folded and he collapsed onto the couch.

  The shop was mangled. The bottles of perfume shelved against the wall where Gideon was holding Beak-Nose were shattered, filling the room with the reek of lilac and peppermint. Madame Maraux’s counter had a crack down its middle from Gideon’s weight being dropped on it, and her stool was nothing more than two legs and some unidentifiable shards. Thin streams of blood were dribbling down Gideon’s forearms. Yesterday’s injuries had broken open.

  Stepping over a dented hat, Reece crouched down to feel for the Vee’s pulse. His fingers came away red. The doctor in Hayden felt a deep, cold horror, looking at the body. Everything else he was remembered what the Vee had said about Sophie and wanted to hate them all, and for a while, he let himself, blankly watching the way the swinging photon chandelier overhead made ruby jewels out of the blood on the floor.

  Reece and Gideon’s words suddenly came to him, subdued.

  “What about this one?”

  “Let’s take him to Mordecai’s—put the questioner to the question. Scarlet thinks the Veritas answer to Eldritch. He probably sent them after you. They were probably the ones on the road loast night.”

  “Makes sense. They seemed downright surprised to see the girl though.”

  Reece glanced at Nivy, who was massaging her side and staring at the dead Vee with her eyebrows drawn together. “They recognized her?”

  “Seals the deal, don’t it? If they were Eldritch’s hands, they’d be on the lookout for her.”

  Reece was silent a moment; there was a scuffling as the Vee against the wall squirmed and tried to speak.

  “Mordecai’s,” Reece repeated, voice hard. “We can’t let him go back to Eldritch with what he knows.”

  “You think Parliament is gonna overlook a couple’a their truth seekers goin’ missin’? Or one of them turnin’ up dead? We’ve got four witnesses who knew the Vee’s were lookin’ for me.”

  “If I’m right,” Reece said as he stiffly tucked his hob behind his belt, “Parliament knew nothing about today’s little rendezvous. This is all Eldritch. Let Eldritch deal with it.”

  Hayden came out of his reverie, and didn’t like what he saw around him, the bodies, the chaos, the faces of his friends, Gideon’s, focused and intense, Reece’s, quietly outraged, his brown eyes unforgiving. Inside, he felt empty, like if he swallowed a coin, it would bounce to the bottom of his stomach.

  A hand stole into his and held to it tightly before he could register the feeling of soft cold skin and too-skinny fingers. Nivy looked over at him, eyebrows tilted to make her expression inquisitive. Too taken aback to do more than nod that he was alright, Hayden let her pull him out of the shop after Reece, Gideon, and the captured Vee, wondering when along the way Nivy had decided to become his friend.

  Evening at Mordecai’s was a sober affair. Last night, he and his grandson and his grandson’s friends had sat around his table and laughed at stories and shared bird-on-a-stick. Today was a bim crash and a Veritas attack later, and tonight they ate dinner in silent shifts, with Mordecai, Reece, or Gideon always off watching the Vee that was locked in Mordecai’s storage room.

  Hayden stirred his limp green vegetables in circles on his plate as Gideon left and Reece took his place at the table. All day it had been the same. Hayden had had two late classes to attend, and had suffered through them, biting his nails and watching the slow circuit of his pocket watch’s hands. He’d been so preoccupied with imaginings of Vees coming for his friends or visiting Father and Sophie on Honora, he’d actually drawn a blank when Tutor Macintosh had asked him to determine the kinetic energy of an electron with a wavelength of 2m.

  Across the table, Reece served himself a cold slab of buttered pork, cutting into it with a vengeance. Mordecai was at the foot of the table, making mellow hooting sounds over the mouth of his burnthroat bottle while Nivy looked on in interest.

  “Here,” Reece suddenly said, and slapped a thin wad of shields down on the table, rattling the silverware. “For the job, Mordecai.”

  “You mean the job you just hired me for a day ago?” Mordecai pulled the money towards him and glanced his thumb across its edges. “Sittin’ around doin’ nothin’ pays pretty good nowadays.”

  “It’s not just for putting up Nivy. It’s for letting us keep that lunatic in your basement.”

  “You think he’s a lunatic?” Hayden asked.

  Reece snorted to himself and gestured with his carving knife. “They’re all lunatics. It’s a wonder Parliament ever agreed to put them to use.”

  “They barely did,” Hayden recalled. “The vote almost didn’t pass. There were worries about the science of the serum…the ethics of it.”

  “But it did pass. Because Eldritch has Parliament under his thumb.” Reece shook his head scornfully. He’d told them about Eldritch being an alien, but none of them were sure how that figured into his goings on. “I bet if you checked the transcript from the Guild meeting where The Veritas were voted in, you’d find that it was his proposal to begin with. I wonder if that’s how the rumors started…about the Vees being used by certain members of Parliament to bully Westerners…to torture them…”

  “Supposing Eldritch came here thirty-five years ago and created The Veritas. Why would he do that?” Hayden rubbed his temples. “Why would an alien spy do that? The Veritas are terrible, I realize that, but they don’t weaken Parliament…they reinforce it.” Seeing Reece’s look, he added, “I hate their methods too, Reece, but they do what they were made to do. They keep the Honoran people suppressed. Crime is practically nonexistent. Regular Honoran sentries couldn’t guarantee that.”

  “So Eldritch is just protecting Honora from itself? He doesn’t really seem the humanitarian type.”

  “No, but don’t you see? The crime rate is so low because The Veritas frighten people. They’re the most dangerous tool Eldritch could have at his disposal. The Vees have power over the people, and Eldritch has power over them. So I don’t think Eldritch is a spy, not unless this is all some complicated plan to prepare Honora for a quiet invasion. He’s certainly doing more than just gathering intelligence.”

  Reece folded his arms over his chest and looked down with a frown. “Honora doesn’t have the kind of enemies who would do that.” He abruptly glanced up at Nivy, who had been staring at a spot on her plate. “Not that we know of.”

  Nivy raised her eyes, and they stared at each other with a kind of grim understanding. Slowly, Nivy nodded. Hayden thought he knew what about.

  “The Kreft?” he guessed quietly, and they both looked at him. “I have a hard time understanding why a people we’ve never even heard of would single out Honora. Orpheus is wealthier. Oceanus has more advanced automata. What does Honora have that Eldritch’s people could possibly want badly enough to manipulate the political environment for thirty-five years?”

  Reece looked again to Nivy, but she just spread her hands helplessly and shook her head, as lost as they were. “They don’t want Aurelia? That’s what brought you here.” She shook her head again, but more uncertainly, and with a thoughtful, even worried frown.

  “That doesn’t fit. Eldritch could have taken Aurelia any time. And what about the war?” Hayden went on. His brain was wh
irring like a datascope, sifting through facts faster than he could compute. “What about Parliament boosting Honora’s armies?”

  “You’re right. Eldritch and The Kreft wouldn’t build up Honora’s armies if they were planning to invade. That’s being done for something else. But what?”

  For a second, Hayden could have sworn Nivy had been about to say something. But when she saw him staring at her, she lowered her eyes to her lap and clenched her hands tightly together, as if forbidding herself from hand-talk.

  Mordecai, who Hayden had completely forgotten was at the table, quietly mused, “Always knew the establishment couldn’t be trusted. Crooked is as crooked does.”

  Their conversation dropped out, leaving only the sounds of Reece’s fork ticking against his plate and Mordecai’s resumed jug playing to take the edge off the silence.

  For the sake of having something to do, Hayden began clearing the table around Nivy, Reece, and Mordecai. He used the quiet to replay the conversation he’d had with Sophie over Mordecai’s log interface.

  “Hayden! How’s school? How’s Reece?”

  “Fine…they’re all fine. We’re fine. How…how are you?”

  “Good! Guess what? You’ll never guess. I found an owlet with a broken wing behind the house today and I’m fixing it a splint. Um. I borrowed some of your supplies. I hope that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine, Soph, but listen. Are you home alone?”

  “Yup. Father’s working late again.”

  “Why don’t you go to the Adams’ for the night? Take the trolley. Use the money hidden in the hollow leg of my bed. I’ll send Father a log and tell him.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I really need to watch Ben. That’s the owlet. I named him Benjamin.”

  “So take him with you. Charity keeps an owl, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’d really like you to, Soph. It would make me feel better.”

  “Why? What’s wrong? You sound…are you sick?”