Hayden nodded unhappily. He did, or at least, he suspected he did. He hoped Scarlet waited till Reece at least put down his sword before upbraiding him in front of the entire fencing club.
A stream of excited chatter over the much-anticipated tournament swept them towards the fencing hall as the usually airy corridors grew busier and louder with every few steps. Oceanun money was already changing hands as grown men and women laughed over their gambles and made good-natured jabs at their friends. Hayden felt like one of the fish outside, caught up in a school of bright blues, oranges, yellows, and greens—Oceanun girls in tied-off tunics and leggings sporting the colors of their favorite teams. Except he was wearing grey and trying not to get stepped on rather than actually swimming.
“Lovely,” Scarlet complained, squeezing with him into the horde of fans gathered outside the fencing hall. “All this fuss, and the swords aren’t even deadly.”
Someone happily tapped Hayden’s shoulder as he chuckled. “Hello, Hayden.”
For a moment, he forgot to say hello, a little stunned by Talfryn’s teal blue fencing uniform with its armored shoulder pads and black leather gloves. Despite her impish smile and braided crown of hair, she looked ready for war.
She let him stare a moment, then said politely, “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I…didn’t either. Has the tournament already started?”
“Not yet. This is all just fanfare. A chance for spectators to meet the competitors and the competitors to meet their sponsors.”
“Do you have a sponsor?”
“My father. He was the only one willing.” She blushed but determinedly put up her chin as if trying not to show she was embarrassed, which of course just made Hayden feel worse about the fact she was embarrassed. Was there anything he could say that wouldn’t sound completely bumbling? Something Reece-like would be good.
“Does he sponsor anyone else?”
“No,” Talfryn admitted.
“Not even Hannick?” he pressed, onto something now.
“…No.”
“So you’re the only one the king was willing to sponsor.” As Talfryn paused with her head tilted, thinking that over, Hayden added hopefully, “He must think you’re very good.”
Still looking thoughtful, Talfryn teased, “Oh, well, I am rather good. Don’t you remember? I thought I saw you limping a bit.”
The spell Hayden hadn’t even realized he’d been under splintered as he saw her smile politely over his shoulder and it occurred to him that it wasn’t some stranger pointedly nudging his arm. He quickly but belatedly looked at Scarlet, who raised an immaculate eyebrow at him.
“Been trying your hand at fencing between interrogations?” she asked in a tone usually reserved for Reece. He wanted to tug at his collar. It felt tight, of a sudden.
“Tallie, have you seen Reece?” he blurted. “Is he competing?”
With a nod, Talfryn turned and pointed to where the crowds churned thickest. A row of guards shooed the masses back from an arched doorway and called to make way when a fencer in yellow emerged, flanked by his support team. “My brother had guards sent to fetch him out of bed not long ago. One of Hannick’s teammates is from Haldon and couldn’t make the tourney because of the limitations my father put on the ferries. Hannick convinced your captain to replace him. I hope you approve.”
Scarlet snorted. “I rarely approve of anything Reece does on a whim, and he thanks me for it. Someone has to keep him from getting everything he wants. Come on, Hayden.”
“Where are we going?” Hayden asked in alarm, tripping to keep up with his arm as she firmly pulled it towards the guarded door. He looked back at Talfryn, who was standing alone in the crowd, watching them go. She waved goodbye uncertainly.
“To see Reece about leaving the city.”
“But—”
“Everything about this feels wrong to me, Hayden! We—” As a guard tried to bar her way with his ceremonial spear, she drew herself up, put a finger on the spearhead, and guided it out of her way with a frosty smile. The middle-aged guard looked astonished. “I’m on my way to box a boy’s ears so he hears bells for a month, and he happens to be one of my oldest friends. Imagine what I do to absolute strangers when I’m in a temper?”
She didn’t wait for the man to recover, just pressed passed him with a slack-jawed Hayden in tow.
Hayden had been in the changing rooms at The Owl before, once or twice to visit with Reece before a match, but he’d never been comfortable in them. The heat and sweat and untidiness, the loud laughter and the slamming of lockers and chests…it all added to his blaring feeling of unbelonging. These Oceanun rooms were at least cleaner, but they were twice as warm, owing to the steam whistling up through vents under the wooden benches along the mirrored walls. He and Scarlet had to paw and bat their way through hanging uniforms to get to where Reece was lacing a pair of shiny chestnut boots up over fitted white trousers, a matching undershirt draped over his elbow. Thankfully, he was the only one in here…shirtless or otherwise.
He glanced up, spotted them in the mirror, and rolled his eyes when Scarlet put her fists on her hips and started tapping her foot. He glowered at his shirt as he flapped the wrinkles out of it. “You know this is the men’s room, right?”
“I assumed as much when I heard you were in here,” Scarlet said dryly. “Reece, why are you competing in this tournament?”
“Hannick asked me to. Actually, he kind of just…announced it.”
“Funny. You’ve never been the type to struggle with the word no before. At least not when it’s suited you.”
Snorting, Reece rammed his head into the shirt and emerged tousle-haired. “Whatever you’re mad at me for this time, I wish you would just bleeding say it instead of insulting me for fun. It begins to grate.”
Hayden adjusted his foggy spectacles with a wary frown. Reece was joking, but it was the kind of joking that just thinly veiled a barbed truth. Scarlet either didn’t realize or didn’t care how angry he was, because she echoed his snort and reared her head like a horse about to charge.
“You know what this is about, Reece—you just don’t want to talk about it.”
“Great.” Reece punched a hand through his sleeve. “Thanks for understanding.”
He turned to pull a lightly-padded green jacket on in the mirror, and Scarlet growlingly pulled away from Hayden as he clumsily tried to hold her back. He wished Nivy was here, keeping as close a watch on these two as she was no doubt keeping on Hannick. It was a terrible thing to think, but right then, Hayden wouldn’t have minded being the speechless one, so he wouldn’t have to scrounge for the right things to say if he needed to intervene without making either one of his friends think he was taking sides. He didn’t want to betray Reece; he hated to disappoint Scarlet.
“One day,” Scarlet said as she stomped between Reece and his reflection. “One day on Oceanus, you said, and now you’re playing with swords and letting Pryor push you around.”
Reece picked up a leather chest plate and began buckling it over his jacket, staring right through her. “It’s an extra few days, Scarlet. It’s not as though we’re moving in. The crew needed the break, and besides, I told the king we’d help him find the thief.”
“And a fat load of help you’re being there. Unless your fencing is a clever ploy to lure the thief out?” She went up to tiptoe to try and catch his eye, but he looked away, frowning. “I didn’t think so. Reece, what troubles me is how quick you were to compromise your own decision to leave here, which, I’ll be the first to admit, was a good one. That makes any deviation from it needless and maybe even dangerous. Are you listening to me?”
“Do I have a choice?” Reece asked wryly.
Hayden braced himself for an explosion, sure Scarlet, for all she was the most mannerly person he had ever met, was about to turn violent. He couldn’t see her expression around the back of Reece’s head, but in the mirror, Reece cringed, looked away from whatever he saw, and sighed.
“Scarlet—” he began, sounding tired.
“I have nothing more to say to you, Captain. Clearly the opinions of your friends, let alone your lowly crewmates, aren’t high on your priority list at the moment, what with you having such an important tournament to win.” She slipped past him, clutching her skirts with her eyes on her hands so Hayden couldn’t see what was in them. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” she grumbled to him on her way out. “Since apparently nothing I have to say is worth his precious time.”
The changing room door slammed with finality. Hayden and Reece stared at each other in the loud silence that followed until Reece mechanically returned to buckling and tightening his armor, frowning down at his fingers.
“Well?” he prompted as Hayden slowly sat on the very edge of the bench behind him. “What about that sense you’re supposed to be talking into me?”
Hayden considered him, the way his dark eyebrows were scrunched together in thought, the way he held himself, or rather, didn’t hold himself. Reece was the most confidant person Hayden knew, not arrogant, just…aware of his own competence. The difference must have sneaked up on Hayden while he’d been busy with his own troubles, but Reece wasn’t radiating that easy confidence anymore. He’d made a show of it when Scarlet had been in the room, but now that it was just him and Hayden, a wall had come down, and Hayden could suddenly see how...depleted he looked. It shocked him.
When he realized Reece was watching him in the mirror, he made a rare gut decision, cleared his throat, and asked, “Do you really need it?”
“Everyone seems to think I do.”
“Do you think you do?”
“Well,” a smirk cracked Reece’s frown, “I’m biased, aren’t I?”
“You’re also the captain. Scarlet and Gideon…well, we all could argue our opinions all day, but where would that get us? Sometimes the toughest decisions are better made for us than by us…and secretly, I think it makes people feel better to have someone to blame, unfair though that seems. It’s kind of an…occupational hazard of leadership.”
Slowly, Reece nodded, seeming relieved, but also like he didn’t want to show just how relieved. It was a duplicity that hadn’t always been there. Since officially becoming captain, more and more, he had started suppressing the candidness that had always made him so approachable. So…Reece.
His eyes crinkled as he suddenly grinned. “You want to stay too, don’t you?”
Hayden felt himself flush. “What? No! Well, I mean…not…that has nothing to do with it!” he insisted hotly as Reece laughed. “Reece!”
“Don’t worry.” Reece tossed an arm around his neck and rumpled his hair as he dragged him roughly towards the door. “I won’t tell Scarlet about your cutthroat betrayal. You are going to stay and watch the tournament, right?”
Wrestling his way out of the headlock with difficulty, Hayden frantically patted down his hair. “I suppose so. Do you think you’ll win?”
“Maybe. If Hannick’s the best they’ve got—”
“You know Hannick lost the last tourney to Talfryn, don’t you?”
“Talfryn?” Reece echoed, looking puzzled. “Oh, you mean his sister. She won? Huh. She doesn’t seem the fencing type.”
“You don’t seem all that surprised,” Hayden noted with interest as he and Reece squeezed out into the jammed corridor, skirting around the growing huddle of Hannick’s rowdy followers. A number of spectators pointed openly at Reece and mouthed questions that were lost in the babble of the crowd, probably asking if he was the odd Honoran competing at Prince Hannick’s request. Reece did as he had at The Owl following his masquerade heroics and ignored them all.
“Honestly, after travelling with the likes of Scarlet, Nivy, and Po…” He hesitated, grimaced, and then hoisted his smile back up, but not before Hayden had seen his uneasiness. “Girls can’t surprise me, anymore. Not now that I know the trick is to assume I’ll never stop being surprised by them.”
“Uh-huh,” Hayden said, still eyeing him. Reece wasn’t generally an oblivious person. Generally. Hayden diagnosed him as being…subconsciously intentionally unaware. He was too responsible to turn a blind eye or deaf ear to things that needed his attention, but he did have a way of blocking out distractions he had deemed—not unkindly—less important. Things that pertained to him personally usually took much longer to make it onto his radar. In poor Po’s case, that meant Reece was literally the last person on Aurelia to see she was completely besotted with him. And here Hayden would have called him the crew’s foremost authority on girls.
Eventually, he and Reece popped out on the other side of the crowd, where the stragglers were more curious than anything, and it was safe for them to slow down and look for Scarlet. They spotted her talking to a few well-dressed, older Oceanuns, looking in her element—affable, stately, composed. So much like the Scarlet Hayden had been terrified to so much as make eye contact with just a few weeks ago. As he and Reece maneuvered her way, she nodded deeply to her company, murmured a polite farewell in Northern, and swept over to meet them halfway.
“Don’t you think it’s curious,” she said, addressing Hayden as if he were alone, “that while every other fencer is here preening idiotically for the tournament,” she ignored Reece’s snort, “Hannick is off giving Po a tour of the docks? Wouldn’t he rather be here, modeling for his fans?”
She had a point. Hannick was still mostly a total stranger to Hayden, but it was hard to imagine a charismatic person like him ignoring the demands of all those shrieking admirers just to tour the docks. Unless he really liked Po. Which would be very, very bad for reasons Hayden wasn’t in a position to talk about.
“Maybe he’s purposefully coming late. Reece has done that before,” Hayden said slowly.
Quirking an eyebrow, Reece shot back, “Or maybe this is his fourth tourney this year, and all the hysteria is getting a little old. Or maybe he’s not docketed to fence until later in the tournament. Or,” he added sharply as Scarlet, examining her nails rather than looking at him, opened her mouth, “maybe it’s nothing. You two sound like a pair of old ladies gossiping over your knitting.”
With sudden vehemence, Scarlet snapped her head up and retorted, “At least my gossip gets us a little closer to the truth. I’m working at clearing our name so we can continue our mission. Remember that? Our mission? Or are you hiding from that as well as Po?”
Reece’s expression darkened, going dangerously flat as he stared at her. Hayden had the wild impulse to jump between him and Scarlet for everyone’s sake, but—perhaps luckily—he never had the chance, because just then, Hannick arrived.
Po was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Hannick was flanked by a pair of burly redheaded guards who plowed a path for him out of the throng. He was on them before either Reece or Scarlet noticed him coming, his bagged uniform slung over one shoulder, his skinny sword already belted at his hip.
“Reece,” he groaned, exasperated, and Reece jumped and squinted at him as if wondering where he’d come from. “You’re supposed to be with the rest of the club…our sponsors will be expecting it. Ah, never mind that for now. Where’s your sword?” With a hand on Reece’s shoulder, Hannick started guiding him away, talking him through tournament etiquette and traditions, ignoring Reece’s uneasy backward glances at his friends.
“Hannick?” Scarlet called loudly. Hannick finished out his remark about a certain judge Reece should step lightly around before flipping his red hair out of his face to peer back at her. Scarlet’s smile was sharp and level, a sword aimed for the throat. “Where is Po?”
His face clearing, Hannick sighed. “I passed her off to your Pantedan comrades, Love. She assured me they’d all be along to watch the tournament shortly.” Tut-tutting, he nodded for Reece to come along already. “Your friend Ms. Ashdown is a tad disagreeable, you know that?”
“A mite,” Reece agreed dryly, without looking back.
Hayden waited till they’d gone, then slipped his hand into Scarlet’s and held
it till her lower lip stopped trembling.
XX
The Enviable Turtle Blue
Had the task been left up to Hayden, he would never have found the six crewmembers of The Aurelia a place to sit in the fencing hall. Its tiered benches were filled to capacity and then some, with no standing room left to speak of. He couldn’t imagine what the room would have looked like had the three other cities been able to attend. Thankfully, with Gideon and Mordecai leading the way, he, Nivy, Scarlet, and Po had only to focus on sticking together so as not to get swept away by the rocking crowds who screamed, jumped, and waved as down on the fencing floor, competitors were introduced one by one to greater and greater applause. A few growled words from Gideon were enough to clear out a small circle of space halfway up to the back wall.
“Fencing tourneys have changed a bit since my day,” Mordecai said loudly as he made himself comfy on the bench, stretching so the people behind him were forced to duck. “These things used to be dull as mud.”
Gideon snickered and settled on the bench below him. “Still are, at The Owl.”
“That ain’t true,” Po scolded, squeezing in next to Mordecai so there would be enough room for Nivy to join her. Even then, if Nivy weren’t as skinny as a rail, she probably wouldn’t have fit. “They’re just quiet, is all. Focused. This makes it more like a sport. Hey!” Laughing as Gideon leaned back against her knees with his hands folded comfortably on his stomach, she tried shoving him and for her effort only got a satisfied smirk.
“This ain’t a sport,” he drawled. “You get disqualified for fightin’ dirty. What kind’a sport is that? Ship repellin’. There’s a sport.”
Talfryn’s name boomed over the announcer’s sonic transducer, warbled and distorted but nonetheless inciting a burst of riotous applause. Hayden slowly sat between Gideon and Scarlet, neck stretched to watch the slight figure in blue prowling across the fencing floor with her mask pinned under her arm. Waving happily, Tallie stepped into line with her fellow competitors without seeming to care she was one of only three girls among them.
The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) Page 28