“Ah, very good,” Eldritch praised, not at all thrown by the interruption. He lifted the bejeweled hand and twisted the ring’s gem like a dial so that it gave off a whistling white noise like a wireless trying to tune in to a station.
Liem looked duly mortified. He gave the cufflinks a wide berth as he nervously took a seat.
“As I was saying,” Eldritch continued after he’d switched off the receiver ring. “Nivy’s collar was my very quandary. Nine years ago, an escape capsule identical to hers crashed on Atlas…as you are well aware, I know. But I wonder, did you make the connection that Liem himself witnessed the crash?”
Eldritch waited for a long moment for Reece to reply. Finally, Reece nodded, his stare still divided between his stepbrother and Nivy.
“Very good. Liem, perhaps you would like to…?”
Paling visibly, Liem shook his head. “I’d rather—”
“Tell him, Liem,” Eldritch purred. “It is only fair he should know the full truth, for what you have done to him. It is a tenuous balance The Kreft always observe in dealing with our enemies. Your brother has earned the right to hear how you have bested him. You are showing your superiority in telling him.”
Swallowing silently, Liem nodded. He raised his eyes and stared at a spot over Reece’s head.
“It was the year you came to The Aurelian Academy. The escape capsule disrupted the bus-ships’ engines as it passed in close proximity to them—The Academy almost suffered several crashes. As it was, my bus-ship was knocked so off course that we landed in the Atlasian Wilds and had to be retrieved by automobile. The students explored the area while waiting on our transportation. I wandered and stumbled upon a crater in the woods.”
Liem glanced at Eldritch, who nodded encouragingly, still stroking Nivy’s necklace. Nivy was maintaining an aloof posture, standing stiffly with her hands in fists at her sides.
“It all happened so quickly,” Liem went on, picking up speed. “The capsule opened, and a…a man came out of it. He saw me, and I was so frightened I started to run, but he followed me. Chased me back into the woods. Then The Veritas came out of nowhere…they took him to the ground. He didn’t even cry out as they beat him.”
Nivy shut her eyes, and Reece felt his insides lurch for her. He wondered for the first time if that person in the capsule had been someone of special significance to her.
“I thought my presence had escaped The Veritas’ notice, but I was wrong. They came and found me at The Owl and…” Liem trailed off, mouth opening and closing without sound.
Eldritch swooped around Nivy and knelt beside Reece, still smiling. “The Kreft offered him a future. We made a deal, him and I, a pact.” He popped his P loudly.
It was enough to turn Reece’s stomach. He glared at Liem, watching him squirm. “Coward. What did you have to gain?” he demanded. “You’re the bleeding Palatine First. You were going to be duke! Why—” He choked as Eldritch elbowed him in the chest, and coughing, doubled over.
“Come, you’re cleverer than that, Reece. Did you really think I would be king over this self-important planet?”
Wheezing and clutching his chest, Reece lifted his head.
It is the control The Kreft want, not the power of one planet. The control. The duke’s words. And then the Vee’s: They are artists at manipulation, thriving in the shadows of ambiguity. Reece had assumed Eldritch would set himself up a throne after the duke’s assassination, installing The Veritas’ new order of justice in exchange for their loyalty to The Kreft. He’d been wrong. That had never been Eldritch’s plan. Eldritch, who intimidated Parliament from the wings, pulling political strings from the shadows. By putting a king of his choice on the throne, he could fashion The Kreft another puppet. And if that king was someone who had been heir to Honora anyways, well, that just guaranteed the approval of the Honoran people.
This way both The Kreft and Liem got what they wanted. The Kreft the control, Liem the spotlight.
“You see it now, don’t you?” Eldritch stood and sauntered in a circle around Reece. “Yes. I offered Liem the throne I planned to instate. There were stipulations, of course, but he was amenable. “You see, the survivor of that first crash wore a collar just like Nivy’s, so I could not force him to tell me anything, even by torture—which I still tried, of course. That’s what killed him, in the end. But he likely wouldn’t have broken even if he had been allowed to speak. The Heron have a regrettable inclination for secrecy.”
Eldritch’s eyes suddenly flashed, and his smile became a wicked leer. “They condition themselves to withstand torture. The collaring of their spies is an added precaution against The Kreft. They’ve become nearly impossible to break.” Following Reece’s train of thought, the headmaster held up a finger. “You are wondering, I take it, about the Spinner I used on you. The answer is simple.” Despite Reece’s noise of warning, Nivy stood still and let Eldritch gently press the golden bug to her temple. It refused to attach, falling to the floor. “Kreft automata doesn’t work on The Heron. Not since their rebellion infiltrated our science facilities some two centuries ago and discovered how to make their bodies immune to the three basic elements of our technology. An unfortunate gain for them, one that tipped the scales in the war.”
Reece didn’t think the answer was simple at all, but he held his questions at bay, in part because he was still feeling the repercussions of the elbow’s impact with his sternum. Clutching his chest with one hand, he stood, teetering slightly on unwilling legs.
“What did you…want from the survivor?”
“The same thing I want from Nivy.” Eldritch suddenly thrust Nivy forward, sending her sprawling face-down on the carpet. “And what your memories, Mr. Sheppard, will now help me get.”
From beneath his jacket, Eldritch pulled out a sleek silver gun: the lightning weapon of The Veritas. He took aim, and before Reece could do more than shout, fired.
The blue fizzing projectile hit Nivy squarely in the back as she was rising to her knees.
She cried out.
Reece dove forward, bent on tackling Eldritch. In the time it took him to take one step, The Veritas were on him. He hissed as they twisted his arms and forced him onto his toes.
“Electrical pulses disrupt the collar’s mechanism,” Eldritch said calmly, studying the gun as Nivy trembled on the floor beneath him. “I noticed this in your memories of your daytrip to The Tholos Stone…ah, what you would call the Veritas’ base of operations. Nivy?”
Nivy’s watering eyes rolled up and glared daggers at Eldritch.
“Come now, girl, don’t try to be noble. Speak.”
There was a pause. Reece thought he could hear the muscles in his arms straining to hold his joints in place.
Nivy abruptly twisted around and looked up at him. “Reece, listen to me, The Kreft, they’re not human! They—” She cut off with a gag, lifting a hand to her throat.
Her voice was different than Reece had always imagined it. Low, with a lilting accent. Her words ended on the up, as if she was asking a question. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the voice, but it made him feel like he knew her that much less.
Tut-tutting, Eldritch gestured for the Veritas to sit Reece down next to his white-faced stepbrother. Not human? Reece had little trouble believing it. There was something eerie about Eldritch—something more than just his Vee-like strength and oily smile. Teeth grit, Reece glared at The Kreft. What was he?
“I recognized Nivy’s escape capsule as it came through Atlas’s atmosphere,” Eldritch explained, gesturing unhurriedly. “My first thought, understandably, was to take her and torture her like the last Heron who came to Honora. But she would most certainly have a collar like her predecessor. How was I to learn her very valuable secrets? The Heron and The Kreft have been at odds for millennia, Reece. They are the very reason we were drawn to Epimetheus, following rumors of a great weapon they had at their disposal. A weapon, we thought, that would lend itself to our ambitions in conquering the known galaxies.
“That’s why you’re building Honora’s armies,” Reece realized. His voice sounded rusty. “For your war. In case The Heron bring out this thing…whatever it is.”
Eldritch continued pacing languidly across the bridge, shaking his head. “Why, that’s not it at all. How much more satisfying—how much more justified!—for The Kreft to use The Heron’s own weapon to destroy them. Then we shall have come full circle and ended the war as it should have ended long ago. There is a rightness in it, is there not? We simply must find where their foolish ancestors hid the weapon before they do. Mmm. But you are right about one thing. The final battle is coming. It is time for Epimetheus to be subdued, time for The Kreft to finish what we began. We cannot leave until Epimetheus is ours, Reece. It is…how would you say…a part of our peculiar genetic code.” He smiled unpleasantly. “There is a saying, among Kreft. To conquer in life is life to be conquered.”
With a sudden twitch, Eldritch raised his arm and shot Nivy again, so that she crumpled in a shivering heap at his feet. Reece lurched out of his chair, and when Liem caught him by the sleeve, elbowed him as hard in the nose as he could. The crunching crack implied a satisfyingly messy break.
“I sent Liem to Nivy, after her landing,” Eldritch continued calmly, with only a disdainful smile for Reece and Liem’s scuffle. “She was unconscious when he found her, so he took her back to Emathia. When she woke, he tried to offer himself as a friend, someone she could trust. He kept her safe at Emathia under the guise of being his fiancé. In time, I planned on learning her secrets using Liem as a filter. Only she didn’t trust him.
“I knew at this point of your spying, Reece; I had your gun, proof of your eavesdropping at the crash site. How interesting, I thought. Reece Sheppard, the younger, rebellious brother, infamous for his choice in inferior friends. I suddenly knew that where Liem had failed with Nivy, you could succeed. You were known and even popular for collecting friends no one else would claim.
“How true you were to your reputation! That day you came to Emathia and met Nivy, I had already laid plans to have her passed to you. The duke was showing suspicion regarding Liem’s involvement, so having Liem fake his own kidnapping served a dual purpose. He could wait in the shadows while The Kreft prepared his throne, meanwhile passing Nivy to you, who had promised she would be looked after. Only Nivy also had her suspicions about Liem—so when she realized he had been taken, she ran. It nearly ruined everything.
“Then,” Eldritch sighed almost nostalgically, “by marvelous chance, you met up again on Aurelia. And I began to listen, very carefully, for Nivy opening up to you. You carried the cufflinks nearly everywhere with you—they worked better than I could have dreamed. It was imperative I obtain the information Nivy was hiding within her person. If anyone knew the location of The Heron’s weapon, she would.
“I only had three clues to work with.” Eldritch counted them out on his long fingers. “One, the ancient manuscript that the first Heron spy had brought with him to Honora, which The Kreft have never been able to translate. Two, Nivy’s gun, a broken antique that I knew from an informant had always been carefully guarded by The Heron underground. Three, the fact that both Heron spies had come to Honora. Why?
“I allowed the book to fall into your hands, Reece, so Nivy would find it. I thought perhaps she might be able to translate it. I had no other leads. I had the gun taken from your Pan friend on the road, but it seemed a useless relic, and revealed nothing. But I knew it was important, because twice Nivy brought it up with you, wanting to know what had become of it.”
Suddenly, Eldritch reached inside his dark coat and pulled out Nivy’s strange gun. In the bright light of the bridge, Reece could see how closely its design imitated Aurelia’s. Sleek and classic and one of a kind. In Eldritch’s large hand, its bizarre shape looked more than ever like a skeleton key.
“The most important information I have obtained using Nivy’s trust of you,” Eldritch lovingly ran a single finger down the gun’s slender barrel, “lies in the fact Aurelia and Aurelius apparently once belonged to The Heron. We never knew. The two airships were sent out from The Ice Ring before the war was over, before we had fully assimilated ourselves into the Epimetheus’s populace. We had always assumed, along with the Honorans, that the two airships belonged to their history. And this curious gun…how would your friend the Pan say it? ‘A dead ringer for Aurelia’s design’?
“Here is what I am going to do, Reece.” Eldritch finally turned and faced Reece, stowing Nivy’s gun in favor of the small silver pistol of The Veritas’s. Nivy braced herself on the floor. “I myself have an engagement to keep. The skywaltz will not begin until I take my place among the dancers, and the duke cannot die until the skywaltz begins. So I must go, and leave you to do my work for me.”
Reece watched, confused, as Eldritch sat the lightning gun down a short distance from Nivy, who stared at it longingly.
“Sophie Rice will be here any moment now. I am going to have The Veritas begin torturing her in slow increments, and you will watch.”
Reece couldn’t do anything but stare blankly at the gun, a feel of nausea churning in the pit of his stomach.
“And when you cannot take the girl’s screams any longer—for she will not die quickly, Reece, I promise you that—you will pick up this gun, and you will question Nivy for me, and you will not stop until you think I might be satisfied. And if I am not…” Eldritch stooped, putting his long nose right up to Reece’s, and Reece heard again that strange duality in his voice as he said, “I will bring up Sophie’s brother, and I will bring up the Pan, and I will bring up the little mechanic girl, and they will all suffer. Acutely.”
Straightening, dusting the front of his jacket primly, Eldritch beckoned to Liem. “Come, Liem—you will not want to see this side of your brother, I think.”
Without a backward glance, The Kreft glided from the room, and Liem, still clasping his bloody face, stumbled after him. His eyes met Reece’s for a split second, and they looked…sorry was too strong a word. They looked unhappy. He didn’t like what was being forced on Reece, but he was above helping.
Reece knew this much. Liem may not be sorry now, but he was going to be. That side of Reece Eldritch had mentioned? Liem was going to see it.
After a moment of fuming, Reece looked up at the Vee beside him and nodded. The Vee let him slide from the chair onto the floor and crawl to the silver gun. The Veritas closed in around him, too many in number to take with one little lightning cap gun. He let the gun lay on the floor, ignoring it for the time being, though it might come in useful later. Instead, he reached for Nivy.
She shrunk back from him, pulling her knees up to her chest. For the first time in a while, he could imagine her as a wild creature, something untamed. She thought he was going to turn the gun on her; so did The Veritas. Maybe anyone would think that. But it hadn’t crossed his mind.
“Nivy,” he said quietly. “We’re running out of time…both of us.”
Looking out from between two lengths of dark hair, Nivy’s face, her expression of stunned betrayal, cleared. She shakily rose to her knees, The Veritas crowding her too now, making a tight circle around her and Reece and the silver gun. Reece could feel their eagerness. If he failed to shoot Nivy, they could lay hands on Sophie. Either way, as spectators or participants, they won. Reece’s hate gave him steady nerves and a clarity of mind. Everything Eldritch had told him could be dealt with later over a cup of chocolate tea and one of Sophie’s biscuits. He
smiled.
Sitting knee to knee with Nivy, he stared hard into her eyes, trying to will his thoughts on her, to use her skill against her. Her eyes frantically scanned his face and blinked blankly. Sighing, he nodded sideways at the innocent burstpowder marble sitting on the red carpet a foot behind the nearest Vee.
He was thinking the two of them would count down together and act as one, but as soon as Nivy saw the marble, she sprang into action without him. Falling onto her side, she brought her leg around in an angular kick that cracked the Vee’s knee. The Vee didn’t cry out, but he did stumble backward, grunting.
The instant before the Vee’s heel crushed the marble, Reece threw himself onto Nivy and buried her head under his arm, closing his eyes.
And then the air exploded, torn asunder.
XXIII
Well Met, Mr. Sheppard
Reece rolled, blown by the force of the explosion, rubble, dust, and torn carpet raining down on him. For a minute, everything was chaos. His ears were humming, his heartbeat too loud in his head. Something was beeping over and over, annoyingly insistent, and there were loud, angry voices, and deep footsteps drumming on the carpet. He cracked an eyelid.
He was staring into the pale, lifeless face of a Vee. The Vee’s black eyes were wide open but unfocused. Blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth to the carpet, where it was camouflaged.
Lifting his head, Reece counted three more downed Vees, their bodies thrown to awkward angles on the floor. It was lucky they had been packed so closely together—they’d made themselves a wall separating Reece and Nivy from the explosion, likely saving their lives.
Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) Page 32
