Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  Thoughtful, Nivy tapped the back of her spoon against her bottle lip, staring over his head at nothing.

  “So that first capsule,” Reece continued after a lapse of awkward silence. “Was that from your planet too?”

  Still staring blankly ahead, Nivy nodded.

  “What do you think went wrong that first time? Do you think it was The Aurelia not being able to fly?”

  Nivy glanced at him as though surprised he had to ask, held his gaze until he figured it out.

  “Eldritch,” he guessed. “Why? And how would he even know what the capsule was? Why the cover up, unless he knew the truth and wanted to hide it? Nivy…” Reece turned sideways on the bench, forcing her to look at him. “Who is Charles Eldritch?”

  Nivy seemed to be suffering from an internal battle of the wills, biting her lip, glancing at him, then shaking her head as if arguing with a voice only she could hear. Finally, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the piece of parchment already decorated with the sketch of her planet and Aurelia’s emblem. She turned to its clean side and stared at it.

  “Nivy?” Reece leaned down to look up into her face.

  Without meeting his eyes, she put a hand on his forehead and pushed him away. He waited.

  Suddenly, she began scribbling furiously, her eyes screwed up in concentration. When she had drawn a new planet, she tapped it madly with her pen until Reece nodded in understanding, then started writing in an unpracticed, childlike scrawl, E—L—R—I—C—H. She was missing a few letters, but he wouldn’t dock her points for that.

  “Okay, okay.” Reece rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Eldritch and a planet. Not Honora? Your planet? No? Okay. Uh. He…”

  Impatient, Nivy kept tapping the nib of her pen against her drawing. She drew an arrow from Eldritch’s name to the planet and darkened it with a few fevered strokes.

  “He is going to another planet? He’s a spy?”

  Nivy paused on the second question and tipped her head uncertainly. Seeming to decide to leave that question be for now, she continued rapping her pen on the planet, waiting for him to try again.

  “He’s…from another planet?”

  Nivy pointed at his face and nodded enthusiastically. He’d struck gold.

  “He’s an alien? Eldritch is an alien?” Reece repeated. He was sure Eldritch was registered as Honoran-born—otherwise he wouldn’t be allowed to be headmaster—but him being an alien wasn’t otherwise fishy. There were loads of non-natives living on Honora. “What planet is he from?”

  Nivy began drawing slapdash circles around her first illustration, and after several guesses, Reece worked the word “galaxy” out of her frantic gestures.

  “Nivy, you’re losing me,” he admitted, rubbing a hand through his hair.

  Throwing down the parchment, Nivy put her chin in her hands. If Reece felt frustrated, he couldn’t imagine how she felt.

  After a moment of sitting in restless silence, Nivy looked up at him, studying him intensely. And somehow he knew, without any certain proof, that she was trying to decide whether or not she really could trust him.

  Nivy carefully picked up the parchment and angled it on her leg so he couldn’t see what she was drawing. After a moment, and another scrutinizing glance, she extended her work. Scratched in the margins of the cluttered page were two words.

  The Kreft.

  Reece opened his mouth to read them aloud, but Nivy put a finger to her lips and shook her head frantically.

  “I don’t understand. What is it?”

  She pointed to Eldritch’s misspelled name.

  “Is it something he’s after?” She shook her head. “Is it his planet? His…his race?” Finally, she nodded, and visibly shivered.

  So there it was. Eldritch was an alien, something called a kreft, or a kreftite, or what have you. How did that help Reece? What was in Nivy’s head that she couldn’t draw or spell? Why was she shivering?

  Someone cleared their throat, and Reece jumped and looked up.

  “Sorry,” Hayden uncomfortably said, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the road. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “What is it?” Despite Hayden’s apology, Reece couldn’t help but feel annoyed by the interruption. He’d finally been making headway. The Kreft. What were they?

  “It’s just, Scarlet’s at the house, and—”

  “Scarlet? At Mordecai’s?” Somehow, the picture of the upstanding young lady in petticoats and the one of Mordecai’s grungy workshop clashed in Reece’s head.

  “Yes.” Hayden played with the buttons on his shirt. Always a bad sign. “Reece, she has a message from the duke. And she’s asking questions. About Eldritch.”

  Standing, Reece took his and Nivy’s dessert dishes and lobbed them into the open-mouthed garbage digester rolling on wheels down the road. It beeped at him, registering his contribution, and he suddenly had the urge to kick it. A message from the duke. That could only be bad or worse.

  “I’ll deal with Scarlet. You take Nivy and get her some new clothes. Something frilly and normal. Take Gid with you, just in case.” Digging into his pocket, Reece pulled out a fistful of crumpled shields and slapped them into Hayden’s hand. “We’re going to need her to blend in a little better until we can get Aurelia operational.”

  Hayden stared at the marks in his hand, left momentarily more aghast by the amount of money he was holding than by what Reece meant. Then he looked up abruptly, paling in the bold sunlight.

  “You don’t mean…you’re not going to…but you can’t!”

  Meeting Nivy’s eyes—which looked almost as surprised as Hayden’s—Reece said, “I don’t break my promises. We have a deal. If Nivy helps me find out what happened to Liem, I’ll take her and Aurelia back where they belong.”

  His own words sank in belatedly, surreal. He’d be flying Aurelia. Across the galaxy, through Streams and into The Voice of Space. How was he supposed to keep his motives straight? He couldn’t be driven to solve this mystery because the end of it was a means to taking Aurelia to freedom. He still had Gid and Hayden to look out for.

  And Nivy, too.

  “You’ve been drafted.”

  “I hope that’s not the duke’s message. Because I found that out yesterday.”

  Scarlet stood in Mordecai’s kitchen, amidst the pyramids of canned foods and dirty dishes, twisting her white gloved hands. It was the twisting hands part that worried Reece. Scarlet always kept her emotions so in check; if something had spooked her to the point of public hand-wringing, he had good cause to be nervous.

  “Scarlet?”

  Without warning, Scarlet threw her arms around his neck, her golden hair springing into his face. “Reece,” she said in a fierce but quiet voice. “It’s so much worse than you know.”

  Startled, Reece awkwardly closed off the hug, let her settle in his arms as she drew a tremulous breath. “What is?”

  “Everything.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  Pulling back with sudden steam, Scarlet said in a clipped voice, “You told me to watch Eldritch, and I did.”

  “I know,” Reece hurried to say. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

  Scarlet composed herself with a deep breath, smoothing down the front of her bright blue skirt. “There’s something wrong about him. Everyone in Parliament is scared of him. He’s been at The Guild House every day for the last week when his place is at The Academy, but no one will question him. They daren’t.”

  As she talked, Reece dragged a rickety stool out from the pantry and held it as she collapsed onto it, her skirts blowing out with a puff of air. Tea. That’s what Scarlet needed: a little tonic for her nerves. She had to become Scarlet again, no more of this anxious girl prone to spontaneous bouts of hugging.

  Scarlet wrapped her hands gratefully around the dented tin mug that Reece had filled with one part herb and two part Burnthroat. “Parliament is calling summit after summit these days, and all the buzz coming out of those summits is the sam
e. They’re building up our military, using the draft. A third of all Honoran men over the age of fifteen will be required to receive training in firearms, tactics, and aviation.”

  “So many.”

  “I know.”

  “What else?”

  “Eldritch. He’s mysterious. Elusive. He’s been at The Academy for thirty-five years but has never had any close colleagues, excepting maybe his secretary. Mr. Rice and I even tried to look into his file, but—”

  “You and Mr. Rice?” Again, two images collided in Reece’s head: Scarlet, regal, composed, stately, and Hugh Rice, quiet, untidy, forgettable. He caught a glance of Scarlet’s smile before her raised teacup hid her lips.

  “Ugh.” She lowered the cup again, grimacing. “This stuff is ghastly. Yes, Mr. Rice and I. Why does that surprise you? He is the Chief Librarian.”

  “Ah, right. And you wouldn’t associate with him otherwise.”

  “Yes, because despite all outward appearances suggesting that I’ve risked my whole career for you, I really am quite shallow.” Scarlet snapped her cup into its saucer and gave him a wry look. “A little credit, if you please. Mr. Rice and I realized that the two of us had drawn similar conclusions about the headmaster and thought to look into his personnel file. I was thinking of you. I imagine Mr. Rice was thinking of Henry.”

  “Hayden.”

  “Whichever. Anyways, the only copy of Eldritch’s file in existence isn’t being kept in the archives as it should be.” Scarlet gathered herself up with a significant pause. “It’s locked in your father’s desk.”

  Reece felt like he’d stepped in a hole as his stomach dropped unpleasantly. “You don’t think the duke—”

  “—knows who Charles Eldritch really is, yes, and is possibly protecting him.”

  Nivy’s information and this unpleasant news aligned perfectly in Reece’s head. Eldritch was masquerading as a Honoran citizen when he was really an alien, apparently with something to hide. Reece considered telling Scarlet what he knew…asking her if she’d ever heard whispers of a people called The Kreft…but she breezed on before he could decide.

  “It gets worse. There are numerous suspicious deaths linked to Eldritch. He has no alibis that anyone can recall, and has never been called to court for questioning. Rumor is it’s because he is in direct control of The Veritas themselves. Reece?” Scarlet pulled up short on her tirade to touch the back of her hand to his cheek. “Are you alright?”

  The coolness of her skin shocked him back to reality, like a spark of static. “What about The Veritas?”

  Scarlet studied him. “I don’t think they answer to Parliament. I think they answer to him.”

  Reece caught himself before he cursed in front of Scarlet. Hayden wasn’t the only Honoran with a Vee phobia; their methods of truth-seeking were the nucleus of almost every good horror story Reece knew. How could something so feared answer to an oily old thing like Eldritch?

  “Since when?”

  “Since always.” Lacking her usual poise, Scarlet tugged her fan out from the belt of her dress, cracked it open like a whip, and beat it before her face so the tiny ringlets hanging like bells over her ears fluttered. “The Veritas were formed just over thirty-five years ago. The same year Eldritch was elected to headmastership by Parliament.”

  “So he created them. What’s the duke doing? Eldritch might be some kind of crooked politician, but the duke is…the duke. The people answer to him, not the bleeding headmaster.”

  Her fanning slowing down, Scarlet said on a different, quieter note, “He caught me at The Guild House and told me to tell you…to ask you…to return to Emathia soon.”

  Wrapped up in dark thoughts, Reece answered her with a grunt. Her hazel eyes steadied on his face, like drills ready to break the surface and dig beneath.

  “Reece, I’ve been to Emathia twice since holiday, once with my mother, once with my etiquette tutor. Abigail is devastated, thinking about you being drafted. She begged the duke to exempt you. You should visit her. I know your relationship is—”

  “Stop.” Reece lifted his head. It felt like lifting a rock. Cold. Heavy. “She asked the duke to exempt me?”

  Scarlet warily shifted her fan before her face. “Yes?”

  “And he didn’t. Does he have that power, as duke? Could he have exempted me?”

  “According to the dukeship’s Rite of Imbuement…yes.”

  “Then it’s worse than both of us thought, Scarlet,” Reece said as he pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “He isn’t protecting Eldritch. He’s taking orders from him. He must be. If it had been up to him to exempt me, his Palatine Second… Palatine First, as long as Liem’s not around…he would have. Not out of fondness for me, his own bleeding son. Just because he had to.”

  No, there wouldn’t have been any partiality in the duke’s decision. Not after their last fight, after the words that were exchanged. Reece had told the duke he hated him. And the duke…he hadn’t even cared.

  With a smart click, Scarlet slapped her fan closed in the palm of her hand. “I’m going to allow myself this one indulgence and be frank with you, Reece. Quit pitying yourself.”

  It went without saying that those three words were not the ones Reece had been expecting.

  “Don’t you see? You’re in danger, I know that, but with Eldritch in power, all of us are in danger. The difference is that you are in a position to act. It would serve us all well if you remembered that, with what’s coming.”

  Count on Scarlet to make Reece feel like a total numpty. Not to mention present a speech compelling enough to guilt a room of Guild House advisors. Reece bowed his head, trying to look meek when he really just felt bothered. Something in her words stuck with him like a bad itch.

  As Scarlet got ready to go, crowning herself with a brimmed wool cap, she said, “There’s to be a masquerade at Emathia. You would know if you’d been around. All the members of The Guild House are going to be in attendance, and all of Honora’s most prestigious families. You should come. For your parents.” As Reece opened his mouth, his disdain plain on his face, she added, “Also, Eldritch is going to be there. If he’s planning something, that night would be the ideal time to spring it. The publicity would be astronomical.” She straightened her hat with a small grin. “Make sure to bring a date.”

  Reece escorted Scarlet outside, filing her latest information away in the already cluttered stacks of his mind. Afternoon was getting on, and the light over Praxis was the warm golden kind that brought out the deep, true colors of everything, the punchy red of the brick building faces, the edible-looking hue of the sky, like icing. Reece soaked it all in with a sort of grim readiness. Liem’s prophetic words hung on his mind: It only gets deeper from here.

  “What did you mean,” Reece asked Scarlet as he walked her to The Iron Horse platform, “when you said ‘with what’s coming’?”

  She looked at him as if it should be obvious, and it made what she said that much worse.

  “We’re going to war, Reece.”

  XIII

  Pour the Burnthroat

  There were certain things that made Hayden uncomfortable. Raucous laughter when he was trying to study. Being too close to undomesticated animals. Gideon teaching Sophie how to juggle knives.

  This experience, new as it was, trounced them all.

  “Tea, dears?” Madame Maraux held out a tray on white gloved hands. She batted her fake eyelashes at Gideon, who shook his head no and went back to tinkering with some gun part, a chamber, it looked like.

  Hayden accepted a porcelain teacup with two hands, squinting at its color, a pink that put the other pinks in the shop to shame. And there were many other pinks. In the curtains, in the velvet upholstery, in the throw rug on the wooden floor. Madame Maraux herself modeled a peach-pink beaded gown that burned the eyes a bit.

  How funny he and Gideon must look, sitting at opposite ends of the small pink couch surrounded by dresses and gloves and ribbons that went to who-knew-what. There we
re three young ladies flipping through the gowns racked against the mirrored wall, giggling to themselves. Once in a while, Hayden would glance up and catch their eyes reflecting back at him, and he would go as pink as the upholstery, and the girls would giggle again.

  What he wouldn’t give for a book to close his head in.

  “Take it easy, Aitch,” Gideon said as Hayden slouched low in the couch. “It ain’t so bad.”

  “I find it really unsettling that you’re more in your element here than I am.”

  With a shrug, Gideon admitted, “I’ve been here before.”

  “You’ve been in Madam Maraux’s Magnificent Misses before?”

  Flipping the chamber from one hand to the other and then pocketing it in his leather waistcoat, Gideon shrugged. “Sure. Came once or twice with Ariel. I’ll tell you how it works.” He pointed at the curtained stalls where Nivy was currently detained, trying on the garments that the Madame had picked out (or more accurately, forced upon) her. “Nivy’s gonna come out from there wearin’ somethin’ frilly and bright and possibly unflatterin’. All you gotta do is smile, nod, and tell her it’s your new favorite every time she comes out in somethin’ new.”

  “Lie?”

  Gideon nodded sagely.

  “Oh darling, don’t you just look lovely!” Madame Maraux cooed, clapping her hands delightedly. “That fabric just makes your form…pop!”

  Looking as mean as a waterlogged cat, Nivy dragged herself out of the curtained stall. The dress she wore had short puffy sleeves and a high waist tied off with a ribbon. It didn’t make her form pop so much as it made her look skeletal, all bones and cotton dress.

  Taking his cue, Hayden faked a smile and nodded. “That looks nice, Nivy.”

  Nivy menacingly shook her head at him and sank back into the stall. Hayden and Gideon sat in silence while Madame Maraux tended to the other ladies, who were holding dresses up to their shoulders and twirling around, still throwing frequent glances at the couch. Time had never gone slower.