Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  The mechanics screamed and scrambled as the white being reappeared, bobbing in midair beneath where the pipes twisted together into one enormous gasline. They fled down a hatch and left Reece dragging himself backward till his hands touched the wooden safety rail hedging the observation deck. Only a few dainty shafts of wood divided him from a deadly drop into the ballroom below, and despite the much more pressing matter of the alien set on murdering him, his stomach hardened queasily when he glanced down and saw Hayden and Nivy looking small enough to fit into a matchbox together.

  He looked up just as The Kreft shot at him like a flaming cannonball, and rolled, flinching as the rail to his left exploded into splinters. His eyes unwillingly locked onto the telltale oil slick trickling through the broken gap in the safety rail. Little crumbs of refuse—bits of wood, some shattered glass—were sliding across the floor within the slick, as if resisting some distant magnet. He’d eat a hob if he hadn’t just discovered how the Streams out in space were made.

  Reece shook himself. No time for lollygagging. He could study the Streams later, provided he didn’t die a slow, painful, and by all means very premature death.

  Hissing laughter gave him a split second’s warning; he dove, barely dodging The Kreft as it zoomed past him, a white bolt of power, energy, and heat. If he hadn’t moved, he would have been catapulted out into the night. It was kill or be killed, now.

  Which begged the question…could Eldritch be killed?

  Hayden panted, his heart squeezed in his chest. Up above, on an observation balcony jutting out over the ballroom, Reece was fighting a losing battle. His only strength was in his ability to dart in and out of The Kreft’s reckless line of fire; attacking was completely out of the question. He had no weapons, no clue of how to fight back. He was dying.

  “What do we do, Nivy? What do we do?” Hayden moaned.

  She spared him a glance before jogging towards where the weird undulating haze left behind by The Kreft dipped down and grazed the marble floor. Hayden bemusedly started after her, then stopped to uncertainly adjust his bifocals. There was rubble floating in the haze. Drifting along on an invisible current, spinning lazily up after Eldritch.

  Nivy’s earlier words snapped together in Hayden’s head; he felt like the click should have been audible. He could suddenly see it all clearly in his head: The Kreft exploring the Epimetheus, setting up their occupation, their vaporous bodies leaving great streaks in the black Voice of Space. A captain would have accidentally happened into one of the streaks and found his ship caught up in a current that sped it across the great gaps of nothingness between planets in weeks and days that should have been months or even years.

  “How would you destroy a Stream?”

  Hayden hurried to Nivy, and before common sense could catch up to him, thrust his arm into the Stream up to his armpit. He felt a tug on his hand, and a second later, began sliding. Upward. With a gasp, he kicked, but his toes were already the only part of his foot touching the marble, and even though he could feel his arm, he could hardly wriggle it. It was as though he had gotten the arm shut in a translocator door and was being hauled up after it.

  Something pummeled into him from behind; arms wrapped around his waist, pulling so hard a seam on his shirt gave a woeful crack. The force of the tackle yanked him out of the Stream’s grip, and he fell, skidding on a jacket that had been dropped amongst the litter on the ballroom floor.

  Giving Nivy a grateful nod—he couldn’t have formed two coherent words just then, not with his breath caught in his throat as it was—Hayden looked down at his feet and the abandoned dress jacket twisted beneath them. Something glinted on one of the splayed sleeves—a pair of flight wings. Reece’s. He scooped it up. The fabric was wet, bloody.

  Clutching the jacket in fisted fingers, Hayden looked around at Nivy. She was taking aim with the Veritas’s weapon—or trying to. The gun was held steady in her hands, but she kept shifting it fluidly, as if trying to aim at a fly. Up above, Eldritch was zipping back and forth across Reece’s defenses like a horse repeatedly trampling an animal on the ground, never more than a blurry smudge of white light. Hayden might not know one end of a gun from the other, but he had to believe getting a clean shot off on Eldritch would be next to impossible while he was moving that fast. Nivy’s face, furious and desperate at the same time, confirmed as much. There had to be another way.

  How would you destroy a Stream?

  “Nivy, the bullet! Of course!” Hayden exclaimed. “You were right! We can use the Streams against Eldritch—they all lead to him, right? Don’t they?”

  Nivy nodded and gave up on the silver gun, tossing it down. She reached a hand into her dress and plumbed out Gideon’s proffered bullet, showing it to Hayden on the flat of her sweating hand.

  “Crack it open. We need the burstpowder that’s inside.” Hayden winced as wild laughter and a shout of pain echoed down to them, one after the other. Hold on, Reece! “I saw fire in the oil lamps of the servants’ corridors—I’ll grab one!”

  He left Nivy trying to pry open the bullet with her fingernails and dashed away, bringing the jacket without meaning to. His hands simply wouldn’t unclench.

  He wheeled around a corner, heading for the distant orange glow he had noticed in passing on his and Nivy’s mad run to reach Reece. If he could get that fire and set it to the bullet’s burstpowder within the Stream, the resulting explosion should carry to Eldritch, and at the very least…

  Wringing the jacket in his fists, Hayden grit his teeth and bore down on the solitary lantern hanging from a hook on the wall with his heart drumrolling in his chest. He reached the lantern out of breath, fumbled trying to lower it from the wall. The hot glass nudged his arm as it swung, smarting, and he jumped and gasped. Reece and Gideon never looked as clumsy as Hayden felt when they were doing something this important.

  Footsteps. Behind him.

  Spinning, holding up his only defense—the lantern creaking on its iron handle—Hayden shouted, “Who’s there?” He cleared his throat as his voice cracked and raised the lantern a little higher, throwing back the creeping shadows.

  Someone was there…he could feel them. There was no reason it shouldn’t be one of the duke’s guests, though most of them had been herded into windowless safety corridors by sentries trying to restore order. But he sensed…no, that was silly. It wasn’t possible to tell someone meant you harm without even seeing their face.

  Gulping down his terror, Hayden stepped forward, then immediately spasmed to a stop. He was looking at a dead man.

  Liem stood blocking the hallway before him, a golden mask propped on the back of his brown hair, his upper lip crusted with dry blood. He looked furious. Calm, unarmed, but furious.

  “Liem!” Hayden choked. “What are you—how are you—”

  Liem’s lip curled. He spoke quietly, in a whisper like the rustling of fire. “I sacrifice everything. And then this.”

  “I—I’m afraid I don’t—”

  “Why couldn’t Reece leave it alone? Eldritch wanted him involved…wanted to use him…but I knew he’d find a way to use us using him! I knew it!”

  Backing away from Liem, who looked disconcertingly like a wilder version of his brother in the dark, Hayden stammered, “Liem, it’s not too late…we can save Reece…we can stop this….”

  “Stop it?” Liem began prowling forward. “Stop it? Don’t you get it? I can save Honora! I can fix her! I can make her better!” Suddenly, he snarled. “But what would you know of that? You’re one of them.”

  “Them?”

  “A Westerner.”

  “But—”

  “Westerners, Pantedans, they’re all the same! They don’t belong! Honora could be powerful, rich!” Liem laughed scornfully. “Instead, she’s like the purebred wolfdog whose owners let her mix with mutts…producing bad blood, wild, untamable pups who will suck her dry. We have to start fresh, start over. With a king who will do things right. And a justice system to drive the scourge away.” />
  Hayden wanted to run, but something kept him from turning his back, be it habits leftover from Reece and Gideon’s example, or just a strain of common sense he hadn’t tapped before. Never turn your back on an attacker.

  “Do you realize who you sound like?” Hayden asked as he continued walking backward. If he could just back up far enough, he’d reach the crossroad of the corridors. Putting a turn between him and Liem should give him a few seconds’ head start. Then he would run. “That’s what the Veritas believe! But Eldritch created them, Liem—he gave them that idea so he could manipulate them! What you believe is a lie! Just another mechanism to get The Kreft more power!”

  “Shut up!” Liem screamed, his dark eyes bulging. He came at Hayden with his hands raised, as if to strangle him, and that’s when Hayden saw. The eyes. They weren’t dark…they were black. And his skin, it was more than just pale—it was the sickly, wan yellow of an addict.

  Stumbling backward, Hayden gasped, “How long? How long have you been on the serum?”

  “Months, now. In just a few more, I’ll have…I will become…” Liem paused and gave his head a shake, as if he were confused. “I had to do it. It was the only way to beat him.”

  Three more steps. Two. Hayden gripped the lantern harder, the metal handle imprinting in his skin. “Eldritch?”

  Something in the pale face snapped. “Reece.”

  Liem attacked.

  Shouting, Hayden dove to the right and tripped into the intersecting hallway, Liem’s hands brushing the back of his shirt. Hugging the lantern to his chest so that the heat soaked through to his skin, he ran, refusing to look back. If Liem really was becoming a Vee, he was doomed.

  By all rights, that thought should have had him slowing down, giving up. It didn’t. He ran faster than he ever had before, not because he was brave…because he was afraid.

  The hallway walls flew away as he sprinted out into the ballroom. It looked as he had left it not five minutes ago: Reece was still alive, fighting Eldritch up above, and Nivy was kneeling by the Stream, transferring a teaspoon’s worth of burstpowder from the bullet to her hand. She looked over her shoulder at him as he gasped her name, and her eyes widened in alarm. For the first time, Hayden chanced a backward glance. He wished he hadn’t.

  Liem was there, not an arm’s length behind him, and if he had been frightening in the dark, in the moonlight, he was terrifying. Screaming so that blue veins stood out along his neck, Liem leaped and seized Hayden, pinioning his arms to his sides. Hayden smashed onto his stomach as his bifocals flew from his face and landed chattering against the marble. His ankle wrenched the wrong way beneath him, throbbing.

  The lantern fell beside them and shattered; the fire went out with a feeble hiss. Dead.

  In a streak of howling wind, Eldritch rushed over Reece, cackling. Something cracked against Reece’s forehead, and he flew onto his back, blinking white lights out of his watering eyes.

  His body clung to the serum for consciousness as one at a time, his small aches cluttered the front of his brain. His shoulder, his side, his head, plus a half a dozen bruises and the pain behind the effort of just keeping his eyes open. And there was the worry to contend with. He was starting to think he might die, and that his last act would be standing here like a useless lump while Eldritch ground him into dust.

  He groaningly rolled onto his stomach, dragged himself up to his knees. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the white glow approaching, and braced himself for another impact. He was surprised when The Kreft pulled up short to hover over him, a sparkling web of flowing mist, like a nebula.

  “Are you finished, Reece Sheppard?” that haunting voice sounded amused.

  Reece tried to turn, but all he could manage was a breathless roll that put him on his back, staring up at stars, clouds, and The Jester’s monolithic balloon. Though his ears felt full of liquid, they caught a muffled shout, and he turned his face to the side to look back over the edge of the observation deck. Dollhouse-sized figures were fighting in the ballroom below, Nivy, Hayden, and…Liem?

  “They will not best him,” The Kreft said thoughtfully, as if following Reece’s bleary gaze. “Your brother has done much growing, these years he’s been in my service. I doubt you will recognize him at all in another year.” Reece glanced up at Eldritch, who chuckled. “Forgive me, I have misspoken. No, Reece, you will not be here in another year, and neither will your friends. But perhaps I shall be merciful. Perhaps I shall let you pick one to save. Hayden, perhaps? He would make a fine addition to The Veritas. Yes.”

  Reece laughed and went up to one elbow, though the laugh burned in his throat and his arm shook treacherously. “Hayden? Right. Not that this is news, but I think you’re a few personnel short of a full crew.”

  “And I think you underestimate your Hayden Rice. I could make him into a fine tool. A fine tool.”

  What was going on down in the ballroom? Reece risked another backward glance and licked sweat off his lip. Nivy and Liem were fighting fist and foot—Liem was an impossible blur, gracefully dodging Nivy’s punches and kicks—and Hayden was kneeling with a broken lantern next to one of The Kreft’s Streams…though there really was only one, wasn’t there? Sinuous and wandering, the Stream started where Eldritch had first left his human body, and ended where he floated above Reece in a cloud of brilliant light.

  “What is he doing?” Eldritch suddenly said, voice sharp.

  Reece cast The Kreft a quick look. It was impossible to pull emotion out of its faceless white mass, but by the way The Kreft’s misty tentacles were twisting and jerking, he thought it was agitated. He looked back at the miniature Hayden. He held something in each of his hands, too small to make out from afar, and was jerkily rubbing them together. If Reece had to guess, he’d say his friend was trying to start a fire.

  “No…” Eldritch hissed. The Kreft began to threateningly swell, its white limbs flailing like angry serpents. “No!”

  Reece wrung everything he had left inside of him so one last drop of adrenaline hit his nerves and sent them up in flames. He bolted upright.

  “Hayden!” he screamed raggedly over the banister. “Hayden—do it! Do it now!”

  Behind him, Eldritch roared wordlessly—a sound like thunder, rumbling deep in Reece’s chest. Reece spun, and despite himself, gaped. Eldritch was taller than two men stacked one on top of the other, and he was still shooting up like a weed, gathering himself to charge, to put a stop to Hayden’s efforts…to put a stop to Hayden. For a second, Reece hesitated. And then he figured…Eldritch wasn’t getting any smaller.

  With a breaking shout, he leaped at Eldritch and groped for some kind of handhold amidst the coiling tendrils of white. He immediately found a solid core to the mass, and he felt the groove of muscles, and a thick skin like rubber, but skin all the same. He hadn’t noticed during his pummeling, but he should have guessed as much from when The Kreft had first rocketed him up here…the light and the mist weren’t Eldritch’s body, not anymore than Reece’s fingernails or hair were his. This was Eldritch’s body.

  Reece sensed rather than saw an arm coming forth from the mist. Something like what he imagined a hand with no fingers might feel like wrapped itself around his right bicep; a second later, a second alien hand gripped his left. He tried to pull away, writhing. This time when The Kreft laughed, it sounded like the entire planet should be crumbling apart, the laughter was so loud, so deep. The fingerless hands tugged Reece’s arms in opposite directions so that his feet bounced like they were attached to a clothesline that had been pulled taut.

  He began to lose consciousness.

  He was here again. Watching while his friends fought for him, waiting for one of them to die because there was nothing he could do. Full of knowledge, full of facts…useless. Hayden’s hands trembled on the lantern, and he cursed down at the flint, the wick, the oil, and the damp burstpowder taken from Gideon’s single bullet. Useless.

  Reece’s echoing scream made his stomach whither up, and he j
erked his face towards the ceiling, glaring through his cracked lenses. The brilliance of The Kreft, grown to the size of a small house, gobbled up Reece, hid him from sight. But the screams said enough.

  Nivy was fighting Liem. She had saved him. Dived in and drawn Liem to herself. Hayden had heard him break two of her fingers with a kick—heard the snap, not Nivy. She hadn’t made a sound. Which made it that much worse.

  Again, Reece screamed, and it propelled Hayden to his feet. He had to do something—anything! The burstpowder had failed, but he couldn’t just sit there, wishing it to catch fire. He would help Reece…climb every last stair to the observation deck on his sprained ankle if that’s what it took!

  A voice surprised him—Nivy’s. “Hayden!”

  Hayden instinctively turned and grunted as a sideways boot thumped into his gut, bending him backward. He fell sliding on the marble. Liem, holding a lightning cap weapon just like a real Vee, towered over him with an insane grin. Clucking his tongue, he lowered the gun, and as Hayden wriggled on his back, trying to get away, fired.

  Electric jitters raced from Hayden’s good ankle up to the middle of his thigh, and his leg went as dead as a tree stump. At least it didn’t hurt, Hayden thought absurdly. His pain tolerance was a joke. He could never take what Reece or even what Nivy, crawling towards him, dragging legs as dead as his own, had taken. He wasn’t like them. He shouldn’t have ever pretended he was.

  “Liem! Enough!” Nivy growled. She rolled, dodging the blue electric fizz Liem shot casually her way, but came up from the dodge with difficulty.

  As Hayden continued sliding himself back towards the Stream, his elbow slipped on something. He gazed down at it blankly. Reece’s jacket, flight wings still attached, curled, disheveled, around his arm. Without knowing what for, he picked it up and squeezed it to his chest. If he thought seeing something of his brother’s would pull Liem up short, even for a second, he was wrong.