Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  He went down to his knees silently, his brain wiped utterly blank by the hard shock of pain.

  Eldritch knelt down beside him, making a quiet, shushing sound as Reece groaned. “Reece, the problem is…you’re just like The Heron. Fighting a losing battle.” Blinking heavily, Reece raised his head by a fraction and met Eldritch’s dark eyes. “If The Heron would just stop fighting, if they could just accept us as their betters—their gods—we would never have to kill again. The war would be over. And yet, they persist. And so we keep killing.”

  Sighing, Eldritch reached and laid a hand on top of Reece’s head, like a fond grandfather. “I’m going to kill you now, Reece.”

  He slid the hand down to Reece’s shoulder, and squeezed. Reece screamed.

  .

  Nivy Noemie heard Reece cry out. She kept running.

  This wasn’t the first time she had heard someone being tortured, and as long as her people rebelled, she doubted it would be the last. That knowledge didn’t make things any better. It didn’t soften the sound of Reece’s pain; it didn’t deaden her emotions.

  It just made her run faster.

  Reece’s parents, the duke and duchess, didn’t recognize the scream, but then, they didn’t know what to listen for. How did Nivy get here? Her mission had been simple. Retrieve The Aurelia. Recover Tolen’s stolen book. There had always been a chance The Kreft would find her, as they’d found Tolen eight years ago. There had always been a chance that like Tolen, she’d never return to The Ice Ring, to the planet Ismara, her home.

  The one thing she hadn’t counted on was friends.

  Nivy continued herding the duke and his wife at gunpoint, driving them up to the bridge with the silver weapon of the creatures known at The Veritas. Another clever invention of The Kreft: a people who shared their proclivity for hurting things.

  “Eldritch sent you, I take it?” the duke said calmly, studying Nivy over his shoulder. His eyes were the color of his son’s, but hard like she had only seen Reece’s once. “I have to admit,” the duke went on as he ushered his confused, white-faced wife onto the bridge with a gentle hand. “I had expected someone more—” He stepped through the door after Abigail and stopped to stare at the curious crowd that had gathered tonight mainly because of him.

  The girl called Po was arguing with Gideon at the flightpanel, waving a wrench and rattling on in airship jargon. Hayden and his sister and father were sitting along the back wall, huddled together, a family that made Nivy desperately homesick. Someone had thought to remove the Vees’ bodies. Good.

  “What the bleeding bogrosh is this?” the duchess shrilly demanded, recognizing Reece’s friends.

  Everyone looked over at her, except for Gideon, who cursed as the splintered chandelier overhead went out with a spark and pulled the bridge into the moonlit darkness that had already taken the rest of the ship.

  Nivy shoved Abigail aside, ignoring her indignant gasp, and crossed the bridge to Hayden. He stood.

  “Where’s Reece?” he asked, eying the duke and duchess uncertainly.

  As always, Nivy’s body tried to respond to her brain’s subconscious messages; it tried to open her mouth, tried to draw the breath to speak, even though she didn’t mean to. But when asked a forward question, her brain felt the natural inclination to answer, and that’s what her body prepared itself to do. The Band constricted around her throat and sent a faint, tickling electric shockwave through her nerves, immobilizing her larynx. She was used to the sensation.

  Suddenly, Abigail gasped theatrically and pointed. “You! I do know you! You’re the mute girl from Emathia…Liem’s fiancé!”

  “What the blazes are you talking about, woman?” the duke rumbled.

  Nivy ignored them both, her eyes on Hayden. How could she explain in gestures what she needed him to do? The person he knew as Eldritch—though Nivy knew him by another name—wasn’t just an alien…he was Kreft. As long as Eldritch held to his human body, and as long as Reece really had taken The Veritas’s serum as she’d suspected he would, then Reece had a chance. The second Eldritch decided to stop playing games…he was dead.

  Making up her mind, Nivy thrust her silver gun into Hayden’s hand, startling him. He took a step backward, staring at the weapon without comprehending. Gritting her teeth, Nivy pointed at the gun, then pointed at herself. Shoot me.

  “What?” Hayden exclaimed. Looking horrified, he tried to hand her back the weapon. “No!”

  Nivy pushed his hand away and gestured again, angrily. Come on, Hayden!

  “Nivy, I’m not shooting you!” Hayden shouted, dropping the gun, kicking it across the bridge, and holding up his hands in surrender.

  Nivy squeezed her eyes shut. Hayden had a good heart. But sometimes the smartest, bravest thing to do was the ugly something nobody else would.

  The gun had skipped against the carpet and landed next to Gideon’s chair. He glanced at it, bent over with one hand still gripping the yoke, and picked it up. Looking back at her, he raised the gun. She nodded even as Hayden shouted, “Don’t!”

  The buzzing blue projectile hit her cleanly on her left calf, and she buckled as what felt like a hundred spiders fled over her leg, leaving numbness in their wake. Hayden caught her around the waist, yelling something indistinct at Gideon, who had already returned to piloting the dying heliocraft.

  “Hayden,” Nivy choked. Hayden dropped her in his shock, and she tottered but mostly caught herself on her good leg. “Reece needs us. He made me bring his parents. He’s fighting Eldritch. I need your help.” She tried to be succinct, but found the words irritatingly inadequate. There was so much they didn’t know! “How would you destroy a Stream?”

  Hayden gawked at her, speechless.

  “Hayden!”

  He started. “A Stream? Why?”

  “Just tell me! How would you destroy a Stream?”

  “I…I don’t know. They’re a natural phe—”

  “No, Hayden!” Nivy wanted to shake him. She could feel The Band creeping back to life, pressing against each of her words. “They’re a thing of The Kreft—please, you have to think!”

  “Triphospherine,” a quiet voice chirped from behind. Nivy and Hayden both spun—Nivy a little unsteadily—to face his little sister, who was sitting on her knees in her chair, looking nervous. “Triphospherine, Hayden. Remember?”

  Hayden’s expression brightened, and he began clicking his fingers feverishly, pacing in a tight circle. “Right, of course! The Streams are in space, so there’d be no oxygen to feed a fire or an explosion…unless the explosion came by way of an internal oxidant, like triphospherine has…”

  “What’s triphospherine?” Nivy asked.

  Of all people, Gideon answered, speaking loudly to be heard over the mutinous rumble of The Jester. “Burstpowder.” He spared a hand and dug into his front pocket, then chucked something over his shoulder that pinged against the wall by Nivy. She stooped and picked up the rounded sliver of silver between two fingers. A bullet.

  “Come with me,” Nivy ordered Hayden, down to her final seconds of speech. “Gideon, keep them—” she nodded at the duke and duchess as they simultaneously opened their mouths, “here, and don’t—”

  The Band squeezed angrily, and Nivy’s voice cut out with a croak.

  XXIV

  The Kreft

  Reece landed in a limp, sprawling roll, unsure which part of his body to hold—the pain was coming from the general vicinity of everywhere, and the intensity of it was starting to take an edge over the serum. Eldritch could kick like a Freherian boar in the marsh season.

  Panting, he pulled his knees up underneath him, every little jerk of his bad shoulder threatening to pull him under. He didn’t know if Eldritch would kill him if he fell unconscious, but he would certainly kill the duke. Probably Nivy, too.

  Eldritch landed beside him—The Kreft had a way of leaping about, exuberant in the throes of knocking Reece senseless. “I see why Liem hates you so. So full of character. Even if he had bec
ome duke, people would never stopped comparing you two and reaching the obvious conclusion. You are the better brother.”

  “True that may be,” Reece stood, wobbled, and then straightened, “but I notice he’s the one you want on your throne.”

  “Naturally. We need a puppet, not a rebel.” Eldritch smoothly ducked Reece’s punch and came up behind him, his mouth at Reece’s ear. “Though, just between you and me, I really don’t plan on keeping him that terribly long.” With a cackle, he swept Reece’s leg, caught him by the jacket as he fell, and mightily heaved him into the air.

  Reece landed with a shout on the rotating dais in the middle of the ballroom, his hands streaking through a thin layer of snow. It was just the chance he had been waiting for. Fumbling, he slid a hand into his waistcoat and pulled out the second bottle of serum. This time, he didn’t hesitate. He choked it back without gulping, letting it gloop disgustingly down his throat. The explosion was…milder this time. Like he’d sprinkled gas on the fire that was already there. He could still feel the break in his shoulder; his awareness of it was just suddenly less distinct.

  Eldritch regarded Reece with interest as he stood and made a show of dusting his hands. “A rebel indeed! You are a laudable opponent, Mr. Sheppard. If it’s any consolation, I will mourn for you after I kill you.”

  “It is, a little,” Reece said, backing up on the dais as Eldritch bounded up to him. He tested the serum’s strength by tentatively touching his bad shoulder and finding the bulge of his bone making a tent beneath his skin. It throbbed dully, but was nothing he couldn’t ignore. Almost like a splinter.

  Eldritch charged, aiming for a collision course with Reece. Grunting, Reece sidestepped, latched onto the headmaster’s forearm, and used his momentum against him, swinging him in an arch and letting go. Eldritch landed within a foot of the stage’s edge and spun on his ankle as Reece picked up an orchestra chair and swung. The chair exploded against Eldritch’s hasty block, powdering the air with chips of wood, sending vibrations down Reece’s arms.

  “A fair try,” Eldritch tsked as he began to dust off his jacket, “but—”

  His head snapped backward as Reece’s punch landed dead center of his face. Shouting, Reece plunged his good shoulder into Eldritch’s chest, and they toppled off the stage together, tangled.

  They rolled, scrambling, out of their landing. Wary of Eldritch’s Kreft speed, Reece dove to the side and snatched up a leg of the broken chair, wielding it like a club as he turned and slid on the shavings of shattered goblets. Then he froze, his stomach clenching, and stared.

  Eldritch stood not four feet in front of him, gazing down at the long dagger of glass jutting from his chest in disbelief. The shard of broken glass had impaled him just below the heart; it glinted in the moonlight like the fang of some terrible serpent.

  Reece lowered his club-arm, and Eldritch looked up. There was something new in his expression as he panted and stared at Reece, something that roused goosebumps on Reece’s arms and twisted his insides with dread…hate.

  Suddenly, Eldritch drew himself up to his full height, screamed a terrible, dual-toned scream, and attacked. And Reece realized too late…Eldritch’s wound should have been seeping blood. There was none.

  With a shout of alarm, Reece swung the club. It cracked into two against The Kreft’s left side, but Eldritch kept on coming, the shard of glass poking grotesquely from his ribs. Eldritch hit him once, twice, three times in the face before he managed to duck out of range, his nose streaming blood into his mouth. Before, Reece had known Eldritch was only really toying with him, and that he simply meant to kill him eventually. Now, for the first time, he was fighting for his life.

  Screaming again, Eldritch leaped at Reece with his fingers drawn into claws, and even as Reece dodged, caught him by the sleeve of his jacket. Reece cursed and by sheer luck, ducked and twisted out of the coat sleeves in one quick movement. He brought his leg around in a kick that buckled Eldritch’s knee, then spun with his elbow. Eldritch anticipated the move. Hissing, he pushed Reece’s elbow past him, roped his arms around him from behind, and yanked. Reece fell backward into him. The dagger of glass sticking like a spear out of Eldritch’s ribs pushed along his side, but he only felt warmth, sticky wetness, not pain.

  His head and heart pounding together, Reece stomped and dragged his heel down Eldritch’s shin, at the same time throwing his weight to the right. Eldritch’s grip around his middle broke. In an instant of blind impulse, Reece grabbed the dagger of glass like a handle, its edges digging into his palms, and pulled.

  After a second of resistance, the glass ripped from one side of Eldritch’s chest to the other in one quick, zipping movement. Eldritch and Reece fell apart from each other, Reece unintentionally dropping to his knees, Eldritch tipping over like a felled tree, landing with a smack on the marble floor.

  There was a long moment of silence. Reece remained on his knees, staring blankly, cupping the tear on his side. The Jester groaned like a creature in pain and jumped, tipping over an orchestra chair that had been balanced precariously on the edge of the stage. The clap of wood on marble startled Reece fully awake, and he stood, putting up one tired knee at a time.

  Eldritch was breathing.

  Reece hesitated, then walked forward. “Get up,” he ordered the body at his feet, voice ragged. The slit he’d opened in Eldritch’s chest gaped up at him bloodlessly. “No more games, Eldritch. Get up.”

  The Kreft remained flat on his back on the floor, almost like he’d been laid in an invisible coffin. Reece took another wary step in and leaned over him. As he did, Eldritch’s eyes sprang open, but there was something wrong with them...they stared without seeing, blank, deadpan… and a bright white sheen was coating them, like a film of opaque tears. Reece squinted. The same whiteness, only in mist form, was gathering behind Eldritch’s lips, swirling agitatedly. Despite himself, he began walking backward, raising a hand against the swelling brilliance of the mist.

  Charles Eldritch’s body suddenly arched onto its heels as if an invisible string was being pulled violently through its chest. The gracefully-swirling mist began climbing out of its mouth, its eyes, its nose and ears, moving not like a weather pattern, but like a creature, like a thing with a will. It squeezed itself out of the headmaster’s orifices and stretched limbs of shimmering mist, its insubstantial bulk growing in size till it loomed like a ghostly, faceless giant.

  And then the featureless mass of white spoke in the deeper of the two voices that earlier had come from Eldritch’s one body. Rasping and cold, the voice prickled the little hairs on the back of Reece’s neck. Through the serum’s muffling touch on his senses, he felt a spike of panic.

  “Reece, listen to me, The Kreft, they’re not human!”

  “Oh, to touch again…to feel…to stretch…” the voice scratched as the white thing continued amassing itself over Eldritch’s limp body.

  “What are you?” Reece mouthed.

  The thing somehow heard his whisper, and though it had no detectable face, it moved in a way that suggested it had turned to look at him. The mist had a multihued sheen, like the colors sitting stagnant on an oil slick.

  “I am Kreft,” the voice intoned, its white body undulating.

  His heart thumping like a trapped bird against his ribcage, Reece said, “A parasite?”

  He jumped as the creature cried out, “A parasite!” and then laughed. “We need not your weak human shells to live! We, who alone can survive The Voice of Space! We, the conquerors of the known galaxies!” The creature seemed to regard the discarded human body at its feet with disdain. “Long has it been since I’ve shed that human hide. Not since my last body was rendered unwearable. I had almost grown accustomed to human flesh. I had forgotten…yes, I had forgotten…”

  The thing gave an impression of turning sharply, of looking into the distance, and Reece couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder. His heart missed a beat.

  Nivy and Hayden had burst into the dark ballroom, a
nd were standing at the edge of the marble with shocked faces that were washed out by the pulsing light of the thing.

  The creature that was Eldritch began to laugh, a rumbling, throaty chuckle that turned into a mad roar. Then, with a flash as quick and startling as lightning, it vanished. Reece’s hair blew back from his face as something immense and invisible rushed by him.

  Across the room, Nivy and Hayden started tentatively towards the place where Reece stood alone.

  “No! Stay back!” he shouted at them, spinning. He viewed them through a curtain of oily haze, a trail that had been left by The Kreft’s wraithlike body.

  They waited, rooted to the ground, looking around in the dark. A wall of wind blasted by Reece again, howling. He tried following it with his serum-improved eyes, but there was only darkness, darkness and that strange, oily sheen…

  He paused to look again at the sheen hanging in the air, so familiar. Suddenly, he knew what it was and where he’d seen it before. In school…in books…in a painting in Emathia’s library tower…

  His eyes raced across the ballroom, picking out the mysterious floating trail. He found its origin point, its head, and determined that that was where—or what—Eldritch was.

  It was coming straight at him, like a locomotive with its breaks out.

  “Look out!” Hayden cried.

  The Kreft reappeared out of the trail like a blinding, hurtling comet and pummeled into Reece, lifting him from his feet. Its white substance streamed around him as the marble ballroom floor dropped away and he soared twenty, thirty, sixty feet up into the air, splayed over the strangely solid surface of the glowing mass, the wind crushing his back.

  It deposited him on the observation deck astern of the ship, where several mechanics had been moderating the flow of coal gas rising through the massive pipes at the corners of The Jester. Reece landed on his back, coughing. The three pipes joined together beneath the open belly of the heliocraft’s balloon, and even this far beneath them, he could smell their fumes, feel their heat. An anchor to the real world. This night was beginning to feel like one long, bad dream.