The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  Gideon’s bad feelin’ gnawed on his gut like a rodent as they started on the new leg’a their tour. It was strange, but none’a the others seemed to notice the bad vibes rollin’ off’a Hannick like a stench…except for Scarlet. Her green eyes were narrowed on the prince’s back like she was tryin’ to glare her way to the heart’a him without holdin’ out much hope for her destination.

  True to his word, the prince picked up the tour where his sister had left off, only he narrated their walk with zing, told them who they should talk to about trades, where they could go to take the ferry to Oceanus’s other cities, what piers to avoid unless they were lookin’ to gamble. He laughed when Scarlet asked him about his father and said, “Honestly, I barely know him, Love. He’s too busy having everyone else train me to take his place someday to so much as learn my middle name.” Gideon noted Reece’s sideways glance with unease. The last thing he wanted was the cap’n feelin’ akin to someone who was rotten at first glance.

  Hannick led them up a set’a crystal stairs and into a lavish corridor sittin’ on the ledge’a a great ocean gully. The golden archways to their left faced a rounded wall’a glass so clean, Gideon mightn’t have even seen it if not for the flamin’ torch mounted between the archways bouncin’ shapes off it. He supposed the illusion was supposed to be fancy, but he kind’a just felt like he was in an oblong fishbowl.

  “The best view city wide,” Hannick boasted with a regal sweep’a his arm. He watched as Po stepped right up to the glass, looked at the sheer drop into the dark gully practically between her feet, and gasped. “That’s the Fossel Ravine, where hunters go for the best seamie pelts around.”

  “What’s a seamie?” Po wondered, her breath foggin’ the glass.

  Mordecai stepped up next to her with his moustache quiverin’, and after a moment, pointed. “There. Watch that little alcove.” Everyone, not just Po, obeyed in silence. Hannick sneaked a searchin’ look at Mordecai, then turned the same one on Gideon, who glared in challenge. All he got for his effort was another one’a those sly smiles that could’a meant anythin’ so long as it wasn’t pleasant.

  He knew when the seamie had shown his face by Po’s overjoyed squeal. Despite not wantin’ to take his eyes off’a Hannick for a second, he glanced out the window. The seamie turned out to be a seahorse. A genuine seahorse, not one’a those fishhook-shaped ones, but a four-legged critter about the size of a small dog with a white mane and tail that flowed like liquid. The gills down either side’a its archin’ neck undulated as it galloped underwater, its saucer-like hooves made fuzzy by green algae.

  “People kill those?” Po exclaimed, horrified. Gideon half expected her to press her face up against the glass, and he wouldn’t blame her if she did. The thing was cute as a button. Well…that’s what she prolly thought, at least.

  “Not always. Sometimes they simply catch them, train them up as pets.” Hannick shrugged with a bored glance at the seamie gallopin’ off into the dark. “Technically, killing them is illegal, but there are always poachers. Do you not have poachers on Honora?” He asked that last with a smirk, not quite mockin’, but certainly not serious.

  “‘Course we got poachers,” Gideon snapped. Po looked more surprised by his interference than Hannick’s dig, and that only made him tetchier still. “They just don’t waste their time on the pretty things when there are nightcats and the like to deal in.”

  With another smirk, Hannick turned towards the archways. “Spoken like a true poacher.”

  Before Gideon could draw his revolver (for the record, he hadn’t been plannin’ on shootin’ the prince so much as beatin’ him silly with it), Mordecai put a firm hand on his arm and held him back to let the others pass them by. Gideon strained, but his grandfather’s sinewy hand kept him at bay like it had been forged’a steel. Only when Nivy had frog-marched Owon through the archway and left them good and truly alone did he ease up.

  “Easy, boy,” he cautioned. “Won’t be doin’ us any favors by bludgeonin’ the king’s son before we can even restock.”

  Gideon glared balefully after the others. “You think we’re doin’ ourselves any favors by puttin’ up with the likes’a him?”

  “Don’t know if he’s as bad as all that,” Mordecai said slowly and thoughtfully, and Gideon thought he was pickin’ his words one at a time so as to not let anythin’ slip out unbidden.

  There was so much more he could’ve said but didn’t, and Gideon could see it all stirrin’ like a storm in his bright blue eyes that at times like these could’a easily been Gideon’s da’s. He hardly ever let the crazy scroll back so there was just him left, the lean, hardened Handler who’d lost nearly everythin’ and preferred to keep the pain’a it spooled in a tight knot and shoved outta sight. Gideon trusted that Handler more than he trusted the cracked old man with twinklin’ eyes, maybe because he saw more’a himself in him and felt less alone for the company.

  Too soon, Mordecai drew the safe cocoon’a insanity back around him, and Gideon felt doors slam between them, doors that were never locked but never fully open either. “We best be hurryin’,” he said, clappin’ Gideon on the shoulder on his way to the archway. “They might’a left one’a them fruit baskets on our pillows. Seems their style, don’t it?”

  With a huff’a laugh that felt dry in his mouth, Gideon followed his grandfather.

  XVII

  Fairy Lights

  It was like being at the Adams’ house for holiday, when mother’s parents and great aunts and uncles and father and his few surviving relatives would all gather for festivities and then argue until the sun came up. Only this time, instead of playing peacemaker for crotchety old people he barely knew, Hayden was hearing out his closest friends and trying to be the voice of reason in a swelling tide of tension.

  It was Scarlet who had started it all, surprisingly. The moment Hannick had left them to get settled into the guest suite, she had hurried to the beautiful oak door and pressed her ear to it while the others had looked on in wonder. After a moment, she spun, her eyes hard on Reece, and declared, “I don’t trust him.”

  From there, it had been one long, bumpy downhill tumble with Hayden scraping at ledges and scrambling for footholds. He and Po sat at the foot of one of the broad but peculiarly low beds, a gauzy green canopy framing them and occasionally getting in Hayden’s way of watching the argument as it escalated to an all-out battle of the wills. Scarlet paced agitatedly before Reece, and the fact he was reclining in a nest-like wooden chair with his feet propped comfortably on a tasseled footstool seemed to be adding to her ire.

  “You’re not taking me seriously,” she accused.

  Reece combed his fingers tiredly back through his hair so it stood on end. “I’m trying, Scarlet. I’m just finding blindly trusting in your woman’s intuition a little-”

  “You’re supposed to trust me!” Scarlet seethed. “We shouldn’t be here, Reece. We shouldn’t be idle.”

  “You were all for making diplomatic connections on Oceanus yesterday. And the day before. And this morning, come to think on it.”

  Since Hayden thought Scarlet might maul Reece if he said one more thing in that cool, calm way he tended to affect when he was most in danger of losing his calm, he shooed the canopy back and leaned forward to contribute. “But Scarlet’s not the only one who’s unsettled, Reece.”

  “You think we should go too?”

  Hayden spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t know what I think. To be honest, Hannick didn’t really strike me either way. But Gideon doesn’t like him.”

  “Yeah, well, there are precious few people Gid does like, and most of them are in this room.”

  From his place against the wall, Gideon shrugged unapologetically, staring at his feet. “He gives me a bad feelin’. Somethin’ about him is off.”

  “Off,” Reece repeated. “As in…Kreft off?”

  The suite went silent. Next to Hayden, Po’s fingers curled tightly in the legs of her trousers, her knuckles white. His heart squeez
ed uneasily. Just the name was enough to stifle any feelings of hopefulness that might have otherwise survived the fight.

  Shifting against the curtained wall as if he had a bad itch, Gideon mumbled, “No. Not like that. I can’t put my finger on it, Cap. It just is what it is.”

  After a moment of looking at him thoughtfully, Reece nodded. “Nivy?”

  Nivy, who had been keeping Owon holed up in the head off the corridor connecting the two halves of the great suite, ducked into the room with her eyebrows raised in question.

  “What do you think? Stay, or go?”

  Nivy’s answer was easy and immediate, given with a shrug that said, What else would we do? She pointed downward and nodded once. Stay. Hayden found himself agreeing. Whatever Scarlet and Gideon thought, Hayden hadn’t noticed anything amiss about Hannick. Actually, he had reminded him of Reece. Reece wasn’t without his faults and for the last ten days Hayden had had to remind himself of that every time a nasty little part of him had wanted to feel wronged by what had happened on Leto, but he still trusted him. After all, the plan on Leto had worked, hadn’t it? Hayden’s ignorance had helped save the day.

  There went that voice again, prickling and sour. He swallowed as if he could taste it in his throat and looked down at his lap as the debate went on.

  “What about you, Po?” Reece asked.

  Po hesitated, then confessed, “He seemed alright to me. I don’t know what everybody’s so riled up about.”

  “Thank you!” Reece exclaimed. “My thoughts exactly!”

  Without looking up, Hayden could tell an awkward moment was passing over his head from the thickness of the silence alone. His curiosity got the best of him; he peeked up at Po’s face in interest. It was cherry red as she glanced shyly at Reece, who was looking as if someone had put a spider down his back, antsy and discomfited. Hayden resisted the urge to drop his face in his hands with a sigh. Things had been complicated enough aboard The Aurelia of late without all…that coming into it.

  Clearing his throat, Reece turned to find Mordecai where the old Pan was sitting in rare silence in the corner. Mordecai went on running his thumbnail over the barrel of his revolver, his blue eyes turned down and thoughtful as they followed the motion of his gnarled hand.

  Reece prompted, “Mordecai?”

  Mordecai glanced up and for a moment looked so much like Gideon on a bad day, the rest of the crew was struck silent. It wasn’t often Mordecai’s age took precedence over Reece’s rank, but there was something foreboding and almost parental about the way he drew in a long, unhappy breath through his nostrils and gave a single hard nod of resignation. “Just think we ought’a be careful,” he said simply. “Oceanus is a heckuva a lot prettier than Leto, but that might just be because they’re sweepin’ all the dirt under the rug.”

  The way Hayden saw it, he wasn’t being adventurous so much as investigative as he slipped out of the guest chambers, set on seeing as much of the city as he could with the few precious hours he had. Despite Scarlet and Gideon’s premonitions, he simply couldn’t miss the chance to get a firsthand glimpse of real Oceanun automata, which he’d had a fascination with ever since he’d studied it in his Foreign Social Applications class. For the moment, his eagerness was compensating for his tiredness and keeping him from passing out cold like Po and Mordecai already had. He hurried down the corridor and away from the sounds of Gideon arguing with Nivy about just locking Owon in the head so they could both sleep, never mind taking shifts.

  He hadn’t a clue where to start his self-led tour, so for a while, he just wandered, peeking around corners and through open doors and trying not to gawk at every new corridor. Each new angle of the sun changed the underwater lighting drastically, so by the time it was early afternoon, the tapered towers of the city glared with silver linings. Everywhere Hayden went, that heavy, salty smell followed him, warm and damp but not at all bad.

  Leto City and Neserus were as different as night and day, and it wasn’t just the planet, but the people. The Oceanuns were wealthy, well-fed, and at least on the surface, happy. Instead of feeling good about that, as Hayden ambled through the market, which was enclosed in glass like a terrarium, he frowned to himself, thinking of the muddy troughs that passed for Letoian roads, the shriveled fruit and tatty clothes and unloved books. Here, the wheeled carts parked under colorful canopies were packed edge to edge with frivolous goodies and pretties that would have made Sophie ooh and ah and poutingly beg for a little pocket money. He missed that silly pout of hers.

  He quickly managed to get absurdly lost. The carts and aproned tables were set up like a maze, and the press of people was loud and confusing. He had to cling to his bifocals to keep them from slipping as he was jostled past tanks of stinking fish, booths of baubles, and even a small recreation circle in the middle of the madness where men and women lounged on benches or dipped their feet in a green pool that bubbled and steamed. Just as Hayden was starting to get nervous, someone caught the nook of his arm. Thinking of pick-pockets, he started, never mind that he didn’t have anything in his pockets worth picking.

  To his chagrin, it was just Talfryn easing him towards an exit.

  “I thought you were all sleeping,” she remarked as she drew him into the doorway and stopped to let him sheepishly catch his breath. “I went by your quarters and the big fellow answered the door in a temper and told me to come back in a few hours.”

  “Oh no. I’m sorry. Gideon…takes a while to warm up to people.” Suddenly aware of how disheveled he must look, Hayden gestured out at the market. “Is it…is it always like that?” When Talfryn looked away, he frantically dusted down the front of his shirt with one hand and tried to tuck in its tails with the other.

  “Yes, but honestly, the market is more a social sphere than anything. Nowhere else in the city can hold so many at once.” Hayden went abruptly still as she returned her green-blue eyes to his face. She smiled cautiously. “Would you like to walk?”

  Hayden didn’t trust himself not to choke on his tongue if he tried talking, so he nodded and followed her dumbly as she started down the corridor at a jaunty pace.

  Talfryn didn’t seem at all put off by his quietness. In fact, she often had her own quiet lapses. When she wasn’t pointing something out or introducing him to someone they encountered on their walk, she strolled in silence, gazing around at her city thoughtfully. Hayden had thought she meant to take him for another tour, but maybe when she’d asked him on a walk…she had asked him on a walk. The notion made him feel even more awkward and inept.

  “Are you alright?” she asked curiously. “You seem…jumpy.”

  “I don’t—I’m not—” Swallowing, Hayden squeaked in a voice that would shame him to his grave, “I’ve never met a princess before.”

  Talfryn blinked and then blushed till her hair and her cheeks were approximately the same shade. “Oh, I’m not a princess. Surely Hannick told you that?”

  “But if your father is the king, and your brother is the prince—”

  “Then I am the Under Delegate,” Talfryn insisted, pausing in front of a window. “Believe me, Hayden, I’ve read all the stories. I know what the tales say a princess is supposed to be. I have never been it. I didn’t think Honora had them?”

  Hayden admitted, “We don’t. But we don’t have kings, either. At least, not anymore.” A thought occurred to him, and he made a surprised noise and looked at her, for a moment forgetting to feel self-conscious. “So is your mother not the queen, then?”

  Talfryn snickered, leaning over to confide in him, “Someone has to be the Over Delegate, Hayden. I’m surprised you don’t know more of this. You seem…learned.”

  “In matters of science, maybe. I mean, I find it all very interesting. I just…never really saw myself leaving Honora.” With that, Hayden’s good humor evaporated. He stared out the window as a snake-like creature wound like a ribbon around a glass pole topped with a sphere of white energy—a lamppost, he supposed—and then slinked fluidly away.
>
  Talfryn startled him by poking him in the side and making his squirm. “Do you want to see something a little more…sciencey?” The word sounded all the more ridiculous for her heavy accent.

  “Is that Northern?” he teased weakly, and with a laugh, she waved for him to follow her as she slipped down a less-travelled corridor with thin curtains of water pouring down either of its glass walls.

  A set of brawny guards were posted at the end of the corridor. As Hayden and Talfryn approached, they simultaneously crossed their dagger-tipped spears, their bare arms heavy with muscle and flexed in a warning Hayden thought they’d be wise to respect. But Talfryn simply said a few quick words in Northern, and without so much as blinking, they withdrew their spears to let her and Hayden proceed into what looked like a gallery of sorts.

  Artifacts and ancient automata sat on pedestals draped with silk while skylights on the ceiling shone down on a spiraling mosaic drawing them in towards the middle of the room like a whirlpool. Framed on all sides by a waist-high basin of sparkling water, the room was long and broad rather than tall, making Hayden feel like he had to duck even though he had more than enough room to stand.

  “Is this a museum?” he asked, stooping to squint at a piece of burnt-out circuitry sheltered in a dome of glass.

  Talfryn glanced dismissively at the display. “Not just. Come.” She waved for him to follow her deeper into the exhibit. He trailed her curiously but slowly, fighting the urge to stop at every pedestal to translate the golden plates affixed to each display. Rushing through a collection like this, he felt like Reece, who had always sped right to the Food from Epimetheus exhibit and bypassed what Hayden considered the most interesting artifacts in favor of free samples.