Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  “Yes, Gideon?” Hayden asked in a longsuffering voice.

  Gid growlingly thrust his hand back at Hayden. “You’ve ruined it. It’s awkward, now.”

  This time, Reece intercepted the pass-off, grabbing at the flash of silver and pulling it to himself before either of them was the wiser. His face went slack with shock as he realized what he was holding.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” he asked, voice deadpan. He turned the silver badge over as gingerly as if he were handling the tiny wings of a real owl. These weren’t a captain’s first feathers…these were flight wings, real flight wings.

  Chuckling, Hayden reassured him, “No, they’re real. It seems Eldritch really was behind you being failed. The judges were quick to revoke their ruling once they realized he was…gone. And if they hadn’t done it, The Guild House would have.”

  Reece continued to stare with open mouth and glazed eyes. He was still stuck on the fact he was even holding a pair of captain’s wings, never mind that they were actually his.

  “Er,” Hayden continued uncertainly, looking for help from Gideon, who shrugged, “they wanted to present it to you in the hospital…bring in members of Parliament—”

  “No,” Reece finally managed, sounding hoarse. “This is better. This is much better.”

  With clumsy fingers, he tried pinning the wings to his jacket above his slinged arm, feeling weirdly nervous, as if there was a chance the wings might not fit. Hayden helpfully took the wings and fixed them on in silence. Then he backed away, and he and Gideon just stared at Reece, waiting for Reece didn’t know what.

  He had expected to feel different, but not like this. Dainty though the wings were, the left side of his jacket felt distinctly heavier of a sudden. They weighed on him to the point he thought he must be standing lopsided. He sighed heavily and rubbed a hand through his hair.

  As he resituated his crutches, Hayden asked, “What’s wrong, Reece? The wings—”

  “It’s not the wings. And it’s not any of this.” Reece gestured limply at the site of the funeral. For something to do with his hands—though he could conceivably keep scratching his head for all eternity, what with everything he had to think about—he crouched and picked an acorn out of its small crater in the snow, examining it, but at the same time, seeing through it. “It’s just that I feel…I don’t know…like we’ve lost.”

  Hayden blinked. “Lost?” he repeated at the same time Gideon grumbled, “Losin’ looks strangely like winnin’.”

  Reece stood. “I feel like it’s just us who care. All the rest of the world goes on—all the rest of the Epimetheus—and it’s just us, here.” He wound back his arm and launched the acorn out of sight, wishing it would take all his bleeding troubles with it. His exhaustion seemed to have opened a kind of shambling floodgate inside of him. “I feel off, inside. I did everything I meant to, but it’s just not enough. And I think I know why. I think it’s because I know what I’m supposed to do, only I don’t know how to do it. I have to fight The Kreft,” he said in answer to his friends’ blank looks. “I can’t not, now that I know what I know. But how can I do that? How can one person do that?”

  “One person?” Gideon said wryly, scratching his cheek.

  “Me.”

  For a monosyllable, it came out awfully harsh, but Gid just raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. And Hayden was actually smiling, if in an sympathetic way that made Reece grind his teeth. They just didn’t get it. Maybe if he tallied how many times they’d nearly died and put the parchment right up to their noses…no, probably not even then.

  Still smiling kindly, Hayden put a hand on Reece’s shoulder. “It’s okay to ask for help sometimes, Reece.”

  Reece blinked. That was almost word-for-word what Hugh had said…right before he’d gotten kidnapped. The irony would have had him in stitches if it didn’t sting as much as a slap in the face. His most helpful assets—his friends—were also his biggest liabilities. Because if anything happened to them…especially on his watch…it’d leave the kind of mark on him that never rubbed off. He’d gotten a taste of that on The Jester.

  But…wasn’t that the point? Hayden—what a shock—was right. Flight wings or no flight wings, he wasn’t much of a captain without a crew he could trust…a crew he would fight for. It was time to come to terms with what that meant.

  They’d been silent for quite a while, Reece realized in surprise as he squinted around. The white sky had darkened to a cloudy slate. Warm golden light from the mansion’s windows made patchwork on the snow, and the oil lamps across the grounds had been lit, but the bluish dark was too heavy to be lifted much.

  Reece tipped his head towards the house. “Hungry?” he asked his friends. His stomach tried to answer by giving an enthusiastic growl.

  “To be honest,” Hayden began as he gazed at the mansion windows, rippling with the silhouettes of mingling guests, “I do have a hankering for food that hasn’t been deep fried in burnthroat or impaled on a stick.”

  With a wolfish grin, Gideon nudged Reece and muttered, “Guess it’s a required taste.”

  “Think you mean acquired, Gid.”

  Gideon shrugged, undaunted, and as he started for the mansion, rearranged his holster so that his revolver was situated front and center, for all the Easterner guests to see. Maybe this evening would end on a high note after all—Gid could clear a buffet line almost as fast as he could draw his gun.

  As they trudged through the snow, a weird peace stole over Reece. He really shouldn’t even be alive right now, so he wasn’t going to take even this bitterly cold night that he had a feeling would be another long one for granted. Besides….the food smelled awfully good.

  This wasn’t the end. He knew the truth about Liem, Eldritch was gone, the duke was safe, but it wasn’t the end. It was just a new beginning. It felt oddly like starting over.

  “Reece, you know…about what you said…”

  Reece glanced at Hayden, eyebrows raised. His friend’s bespectacled face, washed in the orange tones of the mansion’s cast light, looked sheepish.

  “I was thinking…even if it is just us…” Hayden smiled feebly. “Well, I’d think that was quite enough for The Kreft to be getting along with.”

  At that, Reece couldn’t help but smile.

  “Dirt straight.”

  DON’T MISS THE NEXT ADDITION TO THE ARCHIVES:

  VOLUME TWO

  AIRSHIP AURELIA

  Coming March 5, 2013

  The Aurelian Archives Vol. II:

  Airship Aurelia

  I

  The Unwilling Veterans of the Emathia Tea Party

  It was winter.

  The Estate at Emathia, home to the Grand Duke of planet Honora, sat alone on a country lane a short automobile drive outside the planet's capital. The estate's rolling grounds were covered in several inches of wet, sticky snow, and the brick-laid drive leading up to the mansion had great heaps of the stuff piled on its edges, heaps that leaned against the trunks of the tall oak trees flanking the drive. Though bright against the colorless landscape, the green and yellow carriage trundling down the drive, its horses' hooves clopping in slush, faded into the background as it squeaked to a stop before Duke Thaddeus Sheppard's mansion.

  The mansion was a flinch-worthy teal, roofed with red and white shingles laid in patterns of swirls. Icicles clung precariously to the edges of the three balconies looking out over the grounds while smoke drifted out of the mansion's almost sinister-looking, too-tall chimneys. Someone who hadn't seen inside the mansion might actually think the colors and the icicles and the cheerful chimney smoke quite quaint.

  Scarlet Ashdown had never considered Emathia quaint. Not even as a little girl, all those times her mother had brought her to the estate for tea meetings and recitals before the duchess. She had been awed—cowed, really—by the enormity of it. Frightened by what even then she understood as the strange, double-faced nature of nobility. One might be quaint and pretty on the outside, but on the inside, there had t
o be composure, order, steadiness. No compromise.

  The inside of the mansion was dark and handsome. A chandelier of red and black stained glass provided the entrance hall with an atmospheric glow, but most of the real lighting came by way of the gaping hearth beyond the duchess's grand piano. The mansion was eerily quiet; sitting in the tearoom off the entrance hall, Scarlet could hear both the crackling of the fire and the tick of ice against the tearoom window.

  Despite the silence, the mansion was not empty. There were, in fact, seven people in the tearoom alone. Looking over the rim of her teacup as she sipped, Scarlet studied her company with a practiced eye. Her mother sat by her elbow, her tea untouched. Mother's hands tended to shake, and she would never draw attention to herself by rattling her cup in its saucer—that wasn't her way. She'd rather blend into the walls and listen. A job not easily done, when you were the kind of beautiful that made men sit up and pay attention. Scarlet had inherited her mother's deep golden hair, almond-shaped hazel eyes, and svelte figure, but when Rowena Ashdown was around, she felt faded and bland.

  Lucious Tobin, a big boy with a ruddy complexion and receding yellow hair, was sitting on a dark green sofa between his much smaller parents, who were reading different copies of the same book, neither acknowledging the other. Scarlet called Lucious a boy, but at twenty, he was actually a few months her elder. Noticing her glance, Lucious leaned up out of his slouch and grinned. Scarlet's eyes continued to pass over him. No matter his age, Lucious really was still just a boy. Most men were.

  The tearoom had its own fireplace, one with a large sculpted mantle curling like antlers. A deep-chested man stood before it, his hands clasped behind his back as he studied the black and white photographs hung over the mantle.

  "Where is he?" he asked without turning. Duke Thaddeus Sheppard had a voice like dark chocolate, smooth and deep and rich.

  "I told him noon," the duchess, Abigail, said. She sat in a high-backed leather chair by the tearoom's bay window, her golden dress catching the sheen of the firelight. The dress was the latest in fashion, tight at the hips, flaring at the knees, complete with a high-waisted jacket and black silk gloves. Scarlet's dress was cut similarly, but it was a conservative blue.

  "You should have told him eleven," the duke rumbled, sounding amused. "That way he would have been on time."

  Abigail sniffed disdainfully.

  An ominous roar that began in the distance and gradually grew loud enough to rumble the floor beneath Scarlet's ankle-high boots warned them he had arrived. With a snort, the duke turned to face the mantle again, shaking his balding head. The roar died out, footsteps stamped up the mansion's front stairs, and the front door banged open.

  A moment later, Reece Sheppard, heir to Honora's dukeship and Scarlet's friend for going on nine years, skidded into the tearoom, leaving streaks of melting snow on the polished wood floors.

  "Sorry," Reece said loudly, breathless. His brown hair was windblown and messy, parted by a pair of riding goggles he seemed to have forgotten about, and though he'd obviously tried to dress for the occasion, wearing a half-decent suit…he'd missed a button on his jacket, and done up the rest crookedly to compensate for it.

  Scarlet inwardly sighed, wanting very badly to put her face in her hand. After all the notice his recent heroics had earned him, he was still Reece, through and through. She supposed she was glad for that.

  "Sit," the duke instructed calmly.

  Reece looked around, panting, and unsurprisingly picked the empty chair beside Mrs. Tobin rather than the one by his thunder-faced mother. The Tobins had both put away their books in favor of studying him with the same expression of bland curiosity they had worn while reading.

  "Sorry," Reece repeated, addressing the room at large. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting." His dark brown eyes twinkled at Scarlet's flat stare, and she rolled her eyes at him.

  "Didn't you?" Abigail said hotly. "It's nearly one o'clock, Reece Benjamin."

  "That late already?"

  Abigail simply glared at him till he felt the top of his head, discovered his goggles, and tugged them off with a sheepish smile.

  "Abigail," the duke said, "go and tell the servants we're ready to move into the banquet hall for lunch." Turning to fully face the room—impressive in his dark military suit—the duke leveled Reece with a wry stare. "Finally."

  Today was a revisiting of old days, when Abigail had held banquets in the hopes of sophisticating her unruly son. Lucious and Scarlet were two of the banquets' veterans—both children of politicians, both destined for parliament. Scarlet was due to finish her education at the prestigious Aurelian Academy in a matter of weeks and, right on schedule, begin her tenure as Junior Ambassador overseeing relations with the people of Zenovia. Lucious had already begun his work as an intern at The Guild House.

  Reece, still so much like the boy who had snuck out of his mother's banquets in favor of running unchecked and barefoot through the countryside, was going to be an airship captain. He had never retaken the career aptitude test he had failed some four months ago, but, questionable circumstances notwithstanding, he had saved the lives of every important member of Parliament by steering their crashing heliocraft to safety.

  As Scarlet drifted behind her mother and the Tobins, Reece fell back to join her, redoing the buttons on his jacket.

  "Almost like old times, isn't it?"

  "Yes," Scarlet said, arching an eyebrow. "Except you have your shoes on, and you aren't hiding your Westerner comrades under the table."

  "They don't fit anymore."

  Smirking, Scarlet turned into the candlelit banquet hall, where a large round table was already laid with sparking crystal dishes. Despite the early hour, the light falling in through the tall windows lining the hall was blue and gloomy. Scarlet wasn't much anticipating the return carriage drive to Caldonia.

  "Horrid weather, what?" Lucious commented, tucking a napkin into the front of his shirt. "All that ice…but say, Reece, you came here on a bimotor, didn't you? I thought I recognized all that dreadful rumbling."

  Nodding as he pulled out a chair for Scarlet—he remembered at least that much from the old days—Reece glanced out the window and grimaced. "The bim does alright in the ice. It's the Dryad I'm worried about. Dryads don't do well in this kind of weather. The ice gets into their compressors, and then they produce too much steam."

  "Well, I won't pretend to know how that all works." Lucious lifted his goblet to shoulder height and held it there till a servant in white bustled over to fill it, looking a little harried. "But, you know, I find bimotors simply fascinating. Sort of rugged, aren't they? A real return to man's roots."

  "Be quiet and drink your wine, Lucious," Mr. Tobin grumbled. He was a cantankerous old man, respected greatly in The Guild House, avoided everywhere else. "You sound like a buffoon."

  "Hush, darling," Mrs. Tobin tut-tutted, glancing embarrassedly at the duke and Abigail, who were joining them at the table. "This isn't The Guild House."

  "For which I am shamelessly grateful," the duke spoke up, smiling as he sat. Duke Sheppard had seemed almost a different man, these last few weeks. Still hard, still stately, still intimidating—but he smiled more, and when Reece was around, the man could be almost…impish.

  Something had changed between the father and son. Scarlet had witnessed their relationship in its prime, before Reece had started at The Aurelian Academy and had still silently humored his parents' vision for his future. Even then, it had felt…strained. Reece and the duke had even gone through a two year stint when they hadn’t spoken at all. That stint had been miraculously broken by the events of a month ago. Events that Scarlet still didn't fully understand.

  The first course of lunch arrived. She idly tossed her salad with her fork, watching and listening.

  "So, young Mr. Sheppard," Mr. Tobin said, pausing to wash down his salad with a generous gulp of wine. "You've gotten your wings. When do you expect assignment?"

  Reece twiddled his fork. He wasn't ea
ting, either. "I can't officially take a crew of my own until I finish school. So it'll be a few more weeks, at least, until I hear from the Regulatory Air Assignment Patrol."

  Lucious made a fascinated noise through a mouthful of food and raised a hand as if to hold his place in the order of conversation. "You know, Reece, The Patrol work out of The Guild House. I could stop by their offices and see if I couldn't find out what's coming to you. A little favor for an old friend."

  "Thanks, Lu," Reece said with a crooked smile. "But don't trouble yourself. I'm qualified to fly in the Streams now, so that's likely where I'll be headed."

  "The Streams, eh?" Mr. Tobin squinted at Reece. "I thought it wasn't till a captain's second promotion that he qualified for the Streams."

  When Reece merely shrugged and continuing raking through his salad, Mr. Tobin turned to the duke, who had been silently working away at his lunch. This seemed to be the chance Mr. Tobin had been waiting for.

  "Your boy must have really outdone himself at that masquerade. I wasn't there, myself, but I have the missus's firsthand account. And the wireless reports have been talking of little else for the last month. I've even seen his face on the evening papers."

  "How utterly disconcerting," Reece muttered so only Scarlet could hear. She shot him a look.

  "Yes," Lucious spoke up quickly, "it was just dreadful, but you know, rather exciting."

  "Pah, you don't know what you're talking about. You were as drunk as a bleeding Westerner," Mr. Tobin snapped at his son, who flushed. Tobin nodded his head apologetically to the duke and Abigail and loaded another forkful of salad before continuing. "An assassination plot...hatched by the headmaster of The Aurelian Academy himself! Can't imagine you knew it was coming, Thaddeus, but you have to admit, it was a mighty bit of luck that landed Reece of all people with the chance to stop Eldritch's Vee before it got a shot off on you."

  "Very lucky," the duke agreed, nodding. His dark eyes and stern expression betrayed nothing, but in Scarlet's studies, even that meant something.