Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  “Agreed.”

  “Agreed.”

  Hayden blocked their cool voices out as best he could as he turned and faced his father with Sophie. Up close, he could see purple bruises flowering up the side of Hugh’s face; his bifocals’ left lens had a crack down its middle.

  “Are you both okay?” From behind him came sounds of rustling movement and the hatch closing with a clank and a hiss.

  “We’re alive, in any case,” Hugh said, sounding exhausted. “Sit down next to the fire, Hayden, we need to start warming you up. And take off your jacket.”

  Hayden did as he was told, though he already felt better. He could tell the boiler room was actually quite hot—there were beads of sweat on his father’s forehead—and a soothing heat had been spreading inside him like a warm cough syrup since he’d first seen Sophie and Hugh’s whole albeit slightly worse-for-wear faces.

  As he self-consciously peeled off his wet undershirt and allowed Sophie to spread it out before the hearth, Po timidly sat down beside him, and Gideon, his balance impaired by his wrists being locked together at the small of his back, more or less fell down beside her, muttering mutinously.

  “What now?” Sophie asked, turning Hayden’s shirt like a hotcake.

  “What now, indeed?” Hugh ominously shook his head. Sighing, he eased his face into his hands. “This is my fault. I should have protected you from this. All of you. I saw the signs…I knew Reece was digging too deep…if only…”

  Gideon, having a private wrestling match with the irons behind his back, grunted exasperatedly, “Can’t see how you can blame yourself. You’re prolly the only one who didn’t have a hand in this.”

  Pushing a white strand of hair behind her ear—her braid had a distinctly mussed look about it now—Po said, “But Reece…he’s out there all alone now…

  “He ain’t alone,” Gideon snapped, and Po jumped, not knowing what Hayden did, that Gideon was frustrated with the cuffs, not her. “He’s got Nivy, don’t he?”

  “He could have an army of you, Gideon, and it wouldn’t make a difference. You saw the Vees. There are at least twice that many on this ship, along with Eldritch himself,” Hugh said grimly. “Hayden, you’re still shaking. Wrap in this blanket, here.”

  Hayden was preoccupied, staring into the guttering fire with his mind someplace else. Only when his father shook the blanket at the edge of his vision did he raise a hand to accept it. “Do you know about The Kreft?” he asked suddenly.

  Hugh looked startled. “What—”

  “You do,” Hayden realized as he lifted his eyes from the fire. Gideon was still twisting his hands into grotesque shapes, trying to slip them out of their cuffs, but he was listening, same as Po and Soph, whose expressions of wide-eyed curiosity were almost identical. “How did you find out about them?”

  Hugh grudgingly sighed, then staried long and hard in the direction of the hatch, where Hayden could only assume two Vees were standing—it was too dark beyond the ring of firelight to know for sure. He pulled the blanket tight around his arms, hording his warmth.

  “I didn’t know for sure until I overheard Reece and the duke’s discussion in the ancestral library. I had only suspicions before then. The headmaster’s personnel file being personally detained by the duke made me curious. You heard that Ms. Ashdown and I tried to requisition it?”

  Hayden nodded.

  “Yesterday afternoon, the duke had me in his office for a debriefing on some cuts that are being made to the library’s funding. While I was there, the duke was called out and I…” Hugh looked ashamed.

  Gideon had stopped tangling with his irons. “You got into his desk, didn’t you?” He grinned wolfishly at Hayden. “Knew you had to get your unruly streak from somewhere, Aitch.”

  “Yes, well,” Father didn’t seem to like that, “Eldritch’s file revealed that he had no history on Honora prior to his promotion to headmaster. He clearly wasn’t Honoran born. And there was something else in the file. Here I thought the duke had been guarding Eldritch’s secret by keeping his file locked away…but he’d really been guarding a secret of his own. He’s done meticulous research into The Kreft’s activities in the Epimetheus Galaxy, cross-referenced and mapped every major political move, every suspicious disaster, every civil war…he even traced The Kreft back to L.F. 709. I think he must have been trying to find their weakness. The man is a genius.”

  “That’s what Reece wanted to do,” Gideon said to Hayden. “That day we went back to The Owl. He wanted to go the library and do that kinda research. He must’a been thinkin’ the same thing.”

  The hatch in the darkness suddenly burst open with a resounding crash. Po spun and crawled backward; Hayden unthinkingly shrunk back until his father put a hand on his back to keep him from scrambling into the fire. Gideon remained the only one in the foreground, and even he had jumped at the sound.

  As if rising up out of murky waters, the colors and outlines of a tall, thin figure surfaced out of the darkness. Charles Eldritch stopped just beyond the edge of light, so that his sunken cheeks and deep eyes gathered shadows beneath them.

  “Well,” he said simply. “Well.” His hands behind his back, he began circling their little area, his dark eyes contemplating each of them in turn. He was dressed as he had been at the crater on Atlas: all in black, from his silk neck scarf to the gloves stretched tight over his skeletal hands. “Are we all acquainted, then? Mr. Rice and I know each other from The Guild House, of course. And your daughter, Sophie…forgive me, but she looks just like Juliet. Sophie…”

  Sophie cringed as Eldritch crouched down beside her. Folded up as he was, Eldritch looked to Hayden like a bat hiding his height in his wings.

  “I knew your mother, did you know that? Yes, she was a student at The Aurelian Academy, much like your brother is now, near the start of my term as headmaster. She was such a beauty. Boys used to memorize her schedule just to watch her walk—” he mimed walking with two of his fingers, “—from one class to another. Mmm.”

  There was a meaningful pause, and Hayden’s stomach boiled with anger, hating the fondly reminiscent expression on Eldritch’s face.

  Licking his lips, Eldritch looked at Gideon, who returned the stare with a soundless snarl, and seemed to deem him unworthy of comment. He passed over the Pantedan and turned his attention to Po instead. He gazed at her for a moment and then suddenly stood and pointed. “This one.”

  A Vee appeared at his side and reached for Po with traces of eagerness on his wan face.

  “No!” Hugh said loudly as the Vee’s hands closed around Po’s forearms. Po seemed to have fallen into a terrified sort of trance, her brown eyes fixed wide and unblinking, her mouth a little O. “Headmaster, please—”

  Eldritch held up a hand, and the Vee straightened, releasing Po. “Yes, Mr. Rice? Would you rather I take Sophie? Either will serve my purpose well. I merely need someone whose screams Mr. Sheppard would be loath to ignore. You may choose.”

  Hugh drew Sophie closer into his side, whitening. “I—there’s no reason to—”

  Eldritch smiled unpleasantly. The ground, the walls, the hearth—everything gave a terrific lurch, and Hayden had to stamp down his hands to stop himself sliding. A steady vibration rumbled through the wood under his skin while nearby, a whine started out low and then gradually grew to a high beyond hearing. A familiar and not altogether agreeable jolt in the bottom of Hayden’s stomach told him that the heliocraft was taking off for the skywaltz.

  “I have an appointment to keep,” Eldritch said, as if the ship’s movement had reminded him. Hayden felt sick, and not airsick, either, as the headmaster’s eyes travelled from Po to Sophie and back again. “Ah, it is like choosing between two beautiful flowers…the choice doesn’t matter, in the end. The frost has no favorites when it comes time to turn that which was once beautiful…” He swept the back of his hand over Po’s cheek, so that she came out of her trance with a shudder and turned her flushed face away. “…into thistles and weeds.”<
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  Hayden was not the only one who jumped when Eldritch suddenly clapped his hands together and smiled. “I believe I will take Sophie, after all. Bring her to me on the bridge.”

  “No!” Hayden cried as Sophie gave a dry sob into Father’s coat.

  But Eldritch had already turned and dissolved back into darkness, leaving the Vee to turn his attention onto Sophie. He started to extricate the weeping girl from Hugh’s arms without a glimmer of guilt in his black eyes, and shameless anger and hate reared in Hayden to the point he was surprised there wasn’t steam coming from his still sodden trousers from all the heat in him rising to the surface.

  Behind the Vee’s legs, Gideon was staring at Hayden with the sort of fevered concentration Nivy showed when she wanted to be understood. He made a little jerking motion with his chin. Hayden nodded.

  Dropping onto his back from his kneeling position, Gideon kicked with all his might, his feet connecting with the small of the Vee’s back. Hayden dove forward and braced himself, and the stumbling Vee kneed into him and took flight, tumbling over into the hearth.

  Hugh, Sophie, and Po leaped out of the way with cries of alarm as the Vee flailed around in the flames. A high keening cut the air—all the small hairs on Hayden’s arms stood on end, every last one of his goosebumps aroused by the scream that was terribly and unquestionably human.

  The second Vee erupted out of the darkness, a strange silver-antennaed gun in his hand…there was a sizzling noise, like bacon cooking in a pan…a blue streak shot out of the gun and as Hayden tried to dive out of its way, struck his leg. He felt a burst of tingling in his knee before it became as unresponsive as the leg of a stranger.

  As the Vee leaped over the handcuffed Gideon, Gideon pounced, his hands miraculously unbound, and roped his arms around his white neck, wrestling him to the ground. Hayden’s attention zoomed from the tussle to the Vee with the half-charred face, who had pantingly dragged himself out of the fireplace. There were still-smoldering ashes clinging to his black jumpsuit, though parts of it had been entirely peeled away by the flames to show scraps of white skin covered in blisters and black, bleeding sores.

  Hugh tackled the Vee around the middle and rolled him away from Hayden; the Vee screamed in agony, a scream that Hayden knew would call in the others posted outside the door.

  “Po! Po, seal the door!”

  Scrambling, her boots sliding and screeching over the wooden floor, Po threw herself towards the hatch as the burned Vee screamed and wailed, pinned by Hugh to the blood-smeared ground.

  “Shut him up!” Gideon growled through gritted teeth, pulling the flat of his forearm up against the throat of the Vee he had from behind. The Vee’s eyes kept rolling back into his head as he dithered between consciousness and the alternative.

  Looking disgusted with himself, Hugh covered the Vee’s mouth with a hand. “H-Hayden—”

  Hayden crawled to his aide, dragging his still-tingling leg. The sores, the blisters, the blood, none of it bothered him—he’d seen burn victims before during his practicals at The Owl—but he couldn’t stand the thought that he had done this, even to a Vee. The hate and anger had all trickled out of him and left him with a feeling of blank shock. He pressed steady fingers to the side of the Vee’s throat and held them there until the Vee stopped fighting and appeared to fall asleep before their eyes.

  It had fallen quiet in the boiler room, so that the crackling fire sounded loud. Gideon leaned up from laying the other seemingly sleeping Vee on his stomach, breathing heavily through his nose. Hugh folded Sophie, who was rocking back and forth with her glazed eyes staring over the tops of her knees, into his chest and murmured gently into her hair, which he stroked with a trembling hand.

  A thump that sounded twice as loud as it should have made Hayden’s hands slip as he gently inspected the Vee’s burns.

  “They’re tryin’ to get in,” Po’s voice called nervously. She reappeared, twisting her hands over her stomach. “I sealed it and locked it as many ways as I knew how…it should hold, at least until they get a thermal torch on it.”

  Gideon, Hayden noticed, was handling the Vee’s silver lightning gun with the hand still trailing his irons. His other hand he held away from himself, his thumb jutting out at a crooked angle. Dislocated.

  “How well do you know this place?” he asked Po as he let Hayden examine the displacement of his thumb.

  “What, The Jester?” Po sounded surprised. “I ain’t never been aboard her, but she must be about the same as any heliocraft fitted with a Quadrant 7. You know, back pipings and about four boiler rooms like this one to generate heat enough for the balloon.” She nodded vaguely upward.

  Another time, the faces Gideon was making as Hayden realigned his thumb would have been comical.”Is there another way outta here?”

  Po looked around for a minute and jumped when another thump sounded behind her. “Just the pipes. They’ll all have ladders runnin’ up them, for maintenance.”

  “That’s where we’ll go then, Aitch,” Gideon said, and Hayden looked up with raised eyebrows. “What, you fancy waitin’ around for the Vees to bust in the door and Reece get himself killed? You and me’ll shimmy up the pipes, circle back behind the Vees and hit them with this—” he waved the silver gun, “and then while you get Soph and your da into hidin’, I’ll run and help Reece.”

  Something seemed suspect about that plan, Hayden thought as he chewed his lip and with a final, capable twist, returned the thumb to its place. Po confirmed this as she sat down by Gideon and stared intently into his face.

  “The Jester’s airborne now, you can’t get up those pipes! The air that goes through there is hot enough to flay a flea off a rat’s back…if you got caught in the draft…”

  “So turn it off.”

  “It’s not as easy as turnin’ it off!” Po looked upset. “That air is keepin’ The Jester airborne. If you cut off that feed, the balloon—” She quailed beneath the Gideon’s glare.

  Intervening, Hayden suggested, “Maybe you could shut down just one pipe?”

  Tilting her chin and staring thoughtfully into space, Po murmured, “I guess I could tamper with the gauges and change the timin’ on the heat discharges…it’d prolly give you a five minute window to get up to the next level and get clear.”

  Hugh spoke up for the first time, his voice slightly muffled in Sophie’s hair. Sophie still hadn’t surfaced from his jacket. “Hayden, I want you to stay here.”

  “What?” Hayden looked over at his father, his eyebrows drawn together. “But Gideon—”

  “I think Gideon’s proven himself capable,” Hugh said dryly, clearing his throat. He raised his chin over Sophie’s blonde hair, and Hayden saw the kind of sternness in his face that meant Hayden wouldn’t be getting his way no matter how he hemmed and hawed. “And besides, your leg won’t be ready to climb anything for some minutes yet. Gideon?”

  Gideon shrugged one shoulder as if he couldn’t see how it mattered either way.

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” Hayden stiffly insisted.

  Po had been staring at her lap, concentrating on her fidgeting hands, but now she suddenly stood. “I could go,” she offered a little apprehensively. “In fact, I think I should. I’m used to climbin’ through engines. You might need a guide to get outta the Quadrant. And if he wakes up…” she jerked her head without looking at the unconscious Vee Hayden had been tending, “…you’ll need to put him under again, Hayden.”

  Gideon and Hayden stared at each other for a moment. Unable to find an argument, Hayden finally, unwillingly, nodded. Useless, again.

  “Just take care’a your family,” Po said gently as she led Gideon off into shadow, clinging to the wrench she had procured from an old toolbox in the corner of the boiler room.

  Hayden watched them go and felt the fight fizzle out of him; his shoulders slumped, and he looked glumly over at his father and Sophie to find their eyes on him.

  “They’ll be alright,” Sophie peeped as she eased her
self out of the protective cage of Hugh’s arms and took one of Hayden’s hands in both of hers. Hayden gave her warm hands a squeeze as if trying to press more certainty into her words.

  In the darkness, the hatch continued to thump.

  Po weaved confidently between boilers and cylinders, keepin’ just barely in sight, her shape a blur through the sticky steam shootin’ in continuous jets from trappin’s around the room. Much as Gideon was glad’a somethin’ useful to do, of bein’ able to put a plan into action, he had his misgivin’s, largely owin’ to Po. His parents were prolly rollin’ in their graves, seein’ him draggin’ a girl into this sorta danger. Though it really felt like Po was doin’ the draggin’.

  “Here!” Po had stopped at the very back’a the deceivingly large boiler room.

  Two steps in front’a her, the floor dropped down into a deep basin. At the bottom’a the basin was a mammoth black pipe mouth, gapin’ wide, lookin’ hazy in the heat it was puttin’ out. Above the basin were three smaller pipes. Laced together like a braid, they spiraled up through the ceilin’ and outta sight. It wasn’t hard for Gideon to think’a the big pipe as a mouth, and the other three as a set’a panpipes that were waitin’ to be blown on to make a sound.

  Po scooted closer to the edge’a the basin and put her hands on her knees to look down into it. She had to wipe sweat from her forehead before she straightened again not five seconds later.

  “This is gonna be tricky.”

  “Can you do it?”

  In answer, Po circled the basin and went to the metal power box built into the snakin’ tubes that hid the walls. She pried it open and started tinkerin’, mutterin’ too quietly for Gideon to make out any particular words, her hands flutterin’ over the box controls.

  A few moments later, she scurried back around the basin to the sound of a fan powerin’ down, a little too close to the edge for his peace’a mind. Flinchin’, he grabbed her arm and yanked her a few steps to the left. She hardly seemed to notice.

  “That wasn’t so bad. I programmed a release’a cool air to flush all the heat outta the pipe so’s we don’t scald ourselves.” She thrust a pair’a thick mechanical gloves at his chest. “Expect we’ll still need these—the metal is likely to be a little toasty.”