The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  Her brow furrowed, Nivy leaned back and stared into the darkness beyond Reece. She rubbed her fingertips together, almost as if planning how to make them make words.

  “If I had to guess,” Reece continued more quietly, “I'd say it was because of their weapon. The weapon The Kreft thought had been destroyed at the beginning of the war. Am I close?”

  Nivy paused, then looked at him and tilted her hand back and forth. Sort of. She seemed troubled, thoughtful.

  But then, if anything was worth being troubled about, it was this. Reece, with the help the duke had generously given in the spirit of father-son bonding, had managed to piece together the broken history of Honora—weeding out the bits fed to them by Eldritch and The Kreft—and most of the broader, vaguer past of the Epimetheus galaxy. Honoran history books would still need correcting, but that was a job better left to someone who liked history and books. Or anyone besides Reece.

  The Kreft were a race of marauders and conquerors. More than five hundred years ago, they'd set their sights on the Epimetheus, following rumors of a great weapon kept by The Heron, a people who lived in the secluded cluster of arctic planets known as The Ice Ring. The Kreft and The Heron fought for nigh on fifty years before The Heron began to lose their footing. Their final stroke against The Kreft had been to destroy their weapon and send two ships of refugees across the galaxy and to safety.

  The refugees had landed on what was then a rural, insignificant planet…Honora. The refugee Heron were assimilated seamlessly into the population, and their airships became a symbol of unity between the people, the capstone of the new civilization. A hundred years later, no one knew who had Heron blood and who didn't, and when The Kreft sent spies to take root on Honora, they believed as the people did…that this was the way it had always been.

  Thanks to Nivy, Reece had been able to mostly fill the gaps in his father's research. He knew The Heron's weapon had been on a planet named Icarus, and that Icarus was now the largest Kreft outpost in the Epimetheus. Three-fourths of The Heron people lived in slavery in The Ice Ring, while the other twenty-five percent remained hidden on scattered moons and in tiny, unsuspicious towns. Nivy was one of the Underground's most beloved children. She had been sent to retrieve The Aurelia.

  Aurelia wasn't like her brother Aurelius; she hadn't been just a passenger ship. Nivy wasn't sure how, and Reece didn't have a clue, but somehow, Aurelia was the key to finding the weapon The Heron had never truly destroyed, and maybe even tipping the scales in the Epimetheus's favor.

  Struggling to put gestures to her thoughts, Nivy pointed to herself. The Heron. She mimicked shooting guns, fighting, explosions. War. The Heron's war.

  “Do you believe that?”

  Nivy was one of the strongest people he'd ever met—she'd even let herself be collared with that band that kept her from speaking in case she was ever taken captive—but she wasn't hard, at least not like he'd first thought. She did what she had to, but he didn't believe for a second she would refuse her people help out of pride.

  Nivy studied him for a moment, her face unreadable. Then she shook her head and pointed directly down at the ground, a gestured he'd weeded the meaning out of before. Now. Not now. Not anymore.

  An alarmed shout echoed up from below; something banged, and glass crunched. His hand jolting to the hob tucked inside his jacket, Reece leaned out from the lantern and glared into the dark. The lights below had gone out.

  “Nivy,” he hissed.

  She nodded and blew out their lantern.

  After a few moments of scuffling and grunting, someone struck a flint and relit one of the lanterns on the crates.

  “It's alright,” Mordecai called, picking up the lantern and holding it at a level with his mustached face. “You can come on down. Just a little scuffle, is all.”

  “What happened?” Reece asked as he and Nivy rattled down the winding stairs, following the light as Mordecai sparked more lanterns back to life. Two had tipped and lay in puddles of dark oil on their sides. Agnes had her arm around Po's shoulders—they were sitting together on the crate behind Mordecai—and Tilden, Gus, and Gideon were clustered around a kneeling Hayden and a spread-eagle, unconscious Owon.

  “Just what I said would,” Gideon growled over his shoulder, hands on his double-barreled revolver. “He made a move. Almost got out the hatch.”

  Reece kept his hand on his hob as he approached and knelt beside Hayden, who looked frustrated.

  “I don't blame him,” Hayden said quietly. “He's never left alone. He hasn't seen daylight in a month. And you have a tendency to treat him like a rabid nightcat.”

  “I don't recall you feelin' quite so sentimental when he tried to kill you.” Gideon paused. “Either time he tried to kill you.” He crouched, joining Reece and Hayden, his nostril curling as he glowered at the Vee. “Honestly, Cap'n, I don't get why we don't just kill him.”

  Hayden made a noise that sounded surprisingly close to a hiss, and Reece held up a hand to cut him short. Lately, if he let them, his friends seemed able to make an argument out of what color the sky was. Gideon had always been skilled at picking fights out of thin air, but it was odd for Hayden to succumb to the temptation. It showed how on edge the lot of them were, that the best of them was worn to the point of petty squabbling.

  “Because it'd be killing for killing's sake, now,” Reece explained. “We can't let him go until we leave Honora…he knows too much. But I can't condone killing him because we've let him hear too much. We'll knock him out and drop him in Praxis and be on our way. Whatever harm he might be able to do now will count for nothing once we're gone.”

  Gideon shook his head unhappily. “It don't make sense, Cap'n. You can give the Vee a name and try to reason with him, but if you ever turned your back on him, he'd stake you in a second.”

  “I never said I was turning my back on him.”

  “As good as.”

  The two of them stood, eyeing each other. Gideon was the taller of the two by a hand (and Mordecai still called him the runt of the litter; Pantedans were from big-boned stock), but he never used his size to bully his friends. Usually.

  “What if the Vee goes lookin' for Aitch, once we're gone?” Gideon demanded. He pulled off his cap, revealing short black hair in sweat-matted waves, and balled it up in his fist. “Or Sophie? Hugh, the Trimbles, your da…they'll all be left behind. Why shouldn't it go after them? They had a roundabout hand in all this, same as us.”

  “Don't try to force my hand here,” Reece said, taking a step forward. “I refuse to do what The Kreft would and kill someone just to cover up my tracks.”

  “It's a bleedin' Vee!” Gideon threw up his hands and turned his back on Reece, fuming. “I know what this is about. It's about Liem.”

  The cargo bay, the very night, seemed to draw a sharp breath. Reece felt a twinge in his chest and barely stopped himself from rubbing at the invisible wound that would always be a scar. Even now, he wasn't sure what he felt more: hate, because Liem had betrayed him, or hurt, because Liem had betrayed him. What he felt didn't change why he felt it. Liem had turned on him, left him for dead. He'd been in on the plot to assassinate the duke, his own father. There was no reason Reece shouldn't feel hate more than anything.

  But it was hard to hate the dead.

  “Gideon…” Hayden warned, concerned.

  “No,” Reece snapped. “Let him say it. What's this got to do with Liem? Enlighten me.”

  Gideon tipped his head back and let out a breath that feathered in the cold night air. He turned stiffly. “You keep hopin' someone who went as bad as Liem did can find some kind'a redemption. You're givin' the Vee the second chance you never got to give Liem. But the reason you’re doin’ it don't change the fact that some people only get one chance.”

  Reece didn't shout; he didn't even raise his voice. Because those words, wrong though they were, were like the eerie echo of his conscience telling him the same thing. “Take a walk, Gid,” he said firmly.

  Gideon br
istled. “I—”

  “I said take a walk.”

  After a pause, Gideon slammed his cap back down over his hair, stabbed his revolver through the loop on his belt, and slid down the hatch-ladder into the lobby. His footsteps faded as he stomped away from the ship.

  The hold was heavy with the awkwardness that always follows an argument. Reece turned to face the rest of the crew, who were scattered across the dim cargo bay, clearly trying to blend into the walls, and smiled wearily. They relaxed.

  “The boy's killed a lot'a Vees,” Mordecai said in his quiet, grizzled voice. He stared at the hatch with glazed eyes, as if seeing some ghost of his past. “Think it's easier for him to believe there weren't anythin' good in them. That they couldn't'a been saved.”

  Slowly, Reece nodded. He'd killed Vees too. Thinking of them as real people was by no means comfortable. “I'll talk to him. Keep working on the auxiliary lighting…let's try to get it done by midnight.”

  Gideon was sitting with his elbows on his knees on the bench facing the dome and the opaque fog, fiddling with the green military ribbon he sometimes wore on his jacket. Reece sat down beside him and stretched out his legs with a groan. He waited.

  “Sorry,” Gideon grunted finally, folding his big hand over the ribbon and stuffing it into his pocket.

  “Don't lose sleep over it.”

  “Can't lose something you don't have.”

  Reece looked at him questioningly, head tipped.

  Gideon shrugged. The harsh white light of the fog threw sharp shadows across his angular face. “Haven't slept well lately. Thinkin' too much about the mission.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “Dunno. I just have a feelin' about it. Sometimes…” He hesitated, voice trailing off, and made a face. “You really ask Po to come along?”

  Guessing what was coming, Reece simply nodded.

  Gideon thoughtfully scrubbed his chin, making a scratching sound. “Think that's a good idea? You could'a asked one of her brothers.”

  “And chance them knifing me in the back while I sleep?”

  “I just don't think she knows what she's gettin' herself into.”

  Reece closed his eyes for a second. The cold air prickled his skin like tiny pincers, cheerful voices drifted from Aurelia, singing a carol, and the mist continued flowing over the domed museum like a river of milk. Outside, an unsuspecting planet and her three moons slept.

  And somewhere in the galaxy, The Kreft were prowling, waiting.

  “Sometimes,” Reece said, “I worry none of us really do.”

  III

  Reece Sheppard, Captain Umbrella

  The week sped by, as weeks had a bad habit of doing lately. Time tended to move faster or slower depending on what you didn't want it to do. It was an underappreciated science.

  Hayden dressed in front of the four-paneled mirror in his and Reece's suite, tucking in his shirt with undue concentration. Dawn's cold purple light checkered the floor and crawled slowly across Reece's lumpy bed. One of Reece's bare legs was sticking out of the pile of his blankets as though bodiless.

  Any day now, Po would deem Aurelia flight ready, and then Hayden's friends would be gone. He tried not to think about that much, instead focusing on his schoolwork, blotting out his emotions with harmless, risk-free, painless numbers. He would miss them, that was all. His friends.

  Sighing, he dropped his hands from fiddling with his collar and looked down at his scuffed shoes. Once, his wants had been the simplest things to compute. He wanted to help people. He wanted to provide for his family. He wanted to be happy. The first two things should have been the means for the last—but they weren't enough anymore. What did that make him?

  In the mirror, Reece stirred and groaned.

  “It's nearly seven,” Hayden told him, turning his head. “What time are we meeting the others at the Dryad?”

  Reece rose to his elbows and looked around blearily. “Fifteen minutes ago.”

  Sighing, Hayden walked to Reece's wardrobe and pulled out a fresh black uniform, throwing it at him. “You need to start winding your watch. It's not fair to make the others wait.”

  “I usually depend on my internal clock, but lately, it's only been so-so reliable. It was probably damaged when I was stabbed at the masquerade. You've seen my scar.”

  “Yes. Several times, in fact.”

  “I never really notice it anymore. Sure, it still twinges now and again, but I try not to make a fuss about it. Even if I am more or less maimed.” Reece grunted, trying to dress without getting out of bed but only succeeding in tangling himself in his blankets. Eyeing Hayden, he added, “You could have woken me.”

  “I was getting breakfast.”

  Smiling, Hayden picked up a plate from his desk and pulled back the cloth napkin covering it. He steered the plate under Reece's nose, letting the smell of biscuits and sausage links waft behind. Reece's eyebrows climbed up his forehead, and he sprang out of bed, spry and shirtless, not seeming at all bothered by the thin white scar on his left side.

  He made a grab for the plate, but Hayden held the bartering chip behind his back. “We'll eat on the way. Come on. Shirt on.”

  Nivy, Gideon, and Po were waiting beside The Owl's reedy lake. Hayden couldn't help but marvel at how healthy Nivy looked in the wan daylight as she watched Gideon juggle for Po. Her confinement to Mordecai and Gideon's house in Praxis had turned into a permanent living arrangement, and living off of Mordecai's robust cooking had done her good. Her color looked better, her long straight hair was clean and brushed, and she was just skinny now, rather than bony. Mordecai, generous host that he was (generous, Hayden reminded himself, because he had recently come by way of some black market Glaucan beans that he'd pawned for twice their value) had bought her a few changes of clothes after the Pantedan fashion. She now wore a pair of baggy brown trousers that tied above her boots and a hip-length, flaring black coat.

  “Look at my sorry crew,” Reece said, fork poised to stab the last of his sausage. The others glanced up, Gideon's juggled rocks falling and riddling the snow at his feet with holes. “Lounging around when there's work to be done.”

  Po sniffed the air. Hayden noticed she was wearing a new pair of boots. It was hard not to; they were the same poppy shade of red as the wool coat she was wearing over her jumpsuit. “Biscuits, Cap'n?”

  “I'm a man of simple needs. Come on, let's get to the docks. Raft is expecting us.”

  “Why isn't Mordecai coming?” Hayden asked as the two groups melded and began circling the frozen lake. On the far shore, a pair of skinny-legged gursa were nosing a pock in the ice while a class of bundled-up students studied them under the supervision of Tutor Watsby, the Animalogy instructor.

  “He's watching Owon,” Reece said, careful to use the Vee's nickname. “We don't need him along, now that we're done bargaining. Gid wanted to take his turn going planetside anyways—he hasn't seen the others in a while.”

  The others being the rest of the Pantedan refugees, most of whom lived in Caldonia. Gideon and Mordecai knew almost all of them, which had made finding a place to have covert dealings—that is, a place to buy and pack months' worth of supplies without attracting notice—as easy as picking up bread at the market. Reece and Mordecai had spent their last three days off in a refurbished warehouse behind the lumber houses of Caldonia, working with Raft, a Pan with resources of no mean size who they were paying to organize their purchases. Hayden would rather avoid him. He'd rather avoid most Pans, come to think on it.

  This was the last time they'd be visiting the warehouse. The goods had already been stowed neatly on The Aurelia—cans of broth, dehydrated meat and gruel, a dozen casks of clean water, medical supplies, photon wands with back-up charges, blankets, and enough guns and ammunition to outfit a small army. Reece's wardrobe back at The Owl was mostly empty; he'd had his clothes packed for days now. Nothing was going to delay them once Po finished her tweaks on the Afterquin.

  Except for maybe a short goodbye, if
Hayden was lucky.

  Despite the nippy weather, Caldonia was crawling with people. Even the muddy back roads the crew took to the warehouse were bogged, both with Easterners—who usually stuck to the nicer end of the city and dressed in suits and high-necked dresses—and the Westerners, their opposites. The only reason the different classes blended in the streets was the looming holidays and the selection of shops Caldonia alone offered. Sweet emporiums, clothing stores, antique book corners, art and automata galleries…

  Reece led the crew past all of these, maneuvering between ladies with parasols and bulging gift bags and grubby-faced Westerners smoking cigars on corners. He hung a left down an alley dripping with clotheslines, heading towards the lumber houses, where the air around the yard stacked with logs, planks, and crates was dusted with equal amounts of snow and sawdust. The workers in the yard—most of which had dark hair and the telltale white Pantedan skin—waved to Gideon and whistled at Po and Nivy. Po smiled shyly; Nivy merely looked curious.

  The warehouse itself was a plain brick building with black smokestacks and boarded-up windows. Raft met them at the scrolling door where wares would have once been unloaded from the beds of wagons. He was built like the smokestacks above, tall and as solid a block of cement. His black hair was short like Gideon's, but he wore a straggly goatee braided at his chin and was missing an eye, or so his black patch suggested. It could just be putting on intimidating airs, Hayden supposed.

  “Get in, then,” Raft said gruffly, jerking his head. “You're lettin' in a draft, and we've a fire goin'.”

  Hayden stepped up onto the elevated hardwood floor of the warehouse, holding his satchel, and winced. His broken ankle had been out of its straightener for more than a month now; it shouldn't still be bothering him. Sighing, he shifted his weight and looked around.

  The interior walls of this part of the building had been knocked down so the room sprawled like a king-sized lounge. There were two hearths on opposite walls, one for cooking, one for comfort. The collection of battered armchairs and couches clustered around the latter was occupied by a group of Pans who looked openly hostile until Gideon stepped up after Hayden and nodded to them.