Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  “No. Everything’s fine. But promise me you’ll go, alright? Promise me you’ll stay there.”

  “Hayden—”

  “Promise?”

  “…I promise.”

  He’d warned his father about The Veritas, though he wasn’t specific as to how he knew what to warn. Hugh had been less than pleased and more than a little anxious, but he had promised to lie low with Sophie at the Adams’s. Mother’s parents. They would probably be glad of the extra company.

  The night grew heavier as it stretched on. Hayden and Reece had brought their schoolwork, and plunged themselves into catching up on it while Nivy, faithful to her promise to Reece, worked her way through vocabulary graphs that Hayden had brought from The Owl. Mordecai swapped duties with Gideon, disappearing into the tunnel as his grandson emerged, convulsively rolling his revolver around his finger. His forearms were still shiny with the fresh coat of medical glue Hayden had reapplied to the scrapes from his bim accident.

  “If you’re gonna question the Vee,” he said to Reece, “I think now’s the time. He’s actin’ kinda funny. Might be sick.”

  “Sick?” Hayden raised his eyes from the screen of his neurosciences lapbook. “How so?”

  “Shakin’. Sweatin’. Actin’ like he’s run a race or somethin’.”

  “It sounds like he’s going through withdrawal.”

  “From the serum,” Reece guessed, scratching the dark stubble that had dusted his cheeks these last few days. “I hadn’t thought of that. How often do you suppose he’s used to getting it?”

  Not sure, Hayden shrugged. The exact formula behind the Veritas’s serum was protected by Parliament, but it was easy enough to speculate on its properties. “As much as three times a day, maybe? To replace the standard meal? It’s hard to say. A compound like the serum’s is extremely unforgiving on the body. I mean, from what we know if it, its effects are instantaneous, and no drug should be able to work with that kind of speed. So it must create a sort of fake internal system—” He stopped when he saw Reece’s vacant look, and went back to his lapbook, trying to immerse himself in its simple, familiar words. Adrenergic, amygdala...

  “So how are we going to do this?” Reece wondered quietly, standing.

  “Figure it should be just you and me. You ask your questions, and I’ll make sure it answers.” Gideon gave the revolver an extra energetic spin.

  It had never bothered Hayden to be excluded from talks like this…before today. Today, in every way, all his studies and good marks had failed him. He’d let Gideon hide him, Nivy push him to safety, Reece save him again. He felt like a shelved book that never got read: full of good information, but in the end, useless.

  Nivy tapped his arm, and he tore his eyes away from a diagram to look at her. Her face impassive, she handed him a scrap of parchment. In her lopsided, messy hand, she’d written, “ask”, and then, puzzlingly, “pun”.

  “I…don’t understand,” Hayden admitted, embarrassed. “What pun?”

  “Someone’s making puns right now?” Reece asked incredulously from above where they were sitting. “Seems kind of inappropriate.”

  Nivy was at work again, scribbling out her mistake and replacing the word “pun” with a drawing that Gideon recognized before anyone else.

  “Gun, not pun,” he grunted. “She wants us to ask about her gun.”

  “Oh. Nivy, G faces the other way, see? And it has a fishhook on its bottom, like this…”

  Reece and Gideon left the room, one behind the other. Hayden followed the sound of their footsteps down the dimly lit hall, Gideon’s a heavy march, Reece’s a brooding stamp. A door opened with a rusty groan, then closed with an ominous squeal and a click.

  “I wish you could speak,” Hayden told Nivy earnestly. “I hate the quiet.”

  Quirking her head to the side, Nivy studied him in her not-quite-smiling way.

  “Sorry. I suppose you’re use to it. It must have been very quiet, coming across space in that pod. How long did the journey take?”

  Nivy shrugged one shoulder and laid the side of her face down on folded hands. She shut her eyes.

  “Oh. They put you in a sleep stasis.” Hayden considered for a moment. “It was probably months, then, especially if you didn’t travel by Stream. The Streams intrigue scientists, you know. We couldn’t dream of getting to even Cronus Twelve without them, at least not in any reasonable amount of time, and yet we haven’t a clue where they came from or how they were formed. They—what?”

  Nivy was staring at him with an amused if slightly mystified smirk. She put her pen to her parchment and thoughtfully tapped its nib a few times, spotting the page, before shaking her head and giving up.

  “What? What is it, Nivy? Is it about the Streams?”

  “Aitch,” Gideon’s voice boomed down the hall, interrupting. He followed it into the room a second later. “We need you.”

  “What did you do?” popped out before Hayden could stop it, and he flushed deeply.

  Unfazed, Gideon said, “Nothin’. It’s havin’ some sort of fit. You better have a look at it.”

  It being the Vee. Hayden made himself stand on legs that kept trying to lock in place. A person needed his help. He was a doctor; it was his duty to treat any patient entrusted to him to the best of his abilities. Even a Vee.

  “You too,” Gideon said to Nivy, jerking his chin at her. “You’re still our prisoner. Can’t leave you alone.”

  As calm as ever, Nivy set her things to the side and followed him and Hayden down the poorly lit hall with its dingy, flickering photon globes hanging by chains from the ceiling. Ocher lamplight framed a door at the end of the hall, and as someone started choking and coughing beyond it, Hayden walked faster. He rubbed his sweating palms down the sides of his pants.

  He hadn’t given Reece and Gideon much credit. Here he’d been expecting a dark and empty cell when they had set the old storage room up with some civilized albeit small comforts. A canvas cot and a tub of clean water, an ancient oil lamp, a plate of food. It wasn’t so different from the detention rooms at The Owl (which he’d only ever seen from the outside looking in).

  With a scream and a kick, the Vee sent his plate of food flying into the wood-slated wall, narrowly missing Mordecai, who straightened up from dodging with a low, impressed whistle. The Vee was crouched in the far corner like some kind of wounded rodent, hiding in the shadows that the guttering orange light couldn’t reach. Hayden inspected him from a safe distance. Pallid and yellow, shaking, sweating, his eyes ticking back and forth wildly. There was vomit on the floor by the bed.

  He hesitated only a second, and then something in him took over his body and directed it forward. It was hard to be frightened of someone who needed your help. “Can you tell me exactly what you’re feeling?” he asked as he knelt.

  The Vee’s eyes rolled to him, bloodshot. He did not answer.

  “Do you have a name?” Hayden asked instead, tentatively reaching for the Vee’s arm.

  Behind Hayden, someone shifted uncomfortably.

  “Careful, Hayden,” Reece warned. “Don’t get too cozy.”

  “I’m going to have to, if you want him to live out the night,” Hayden said evenly as he closed his hand about the Vee’s wrist. The skin’s sticky coldness made him shiver.

  “I don’t necessarily need him to. I just need him to answer my questions.”

  Hayden looked over his shoulder, alarmed. “I’m not going to help him live just long enough for you to—”

  The arm in his hands snapped to life and roped him about the shoulders in a flailing sort of hug, trying to drag him, thrashing and shouting, to the floor. Quick as a blink, Gideon and Reece and Mordecai were there, Mordecai and Gideon towering with their revolvers trained on the Vee, Reece untangling Hayden from his trembling captor.

  “The serum, we beg you,” the Vee rasped, lathering like a rabid animal. “If you will just give us the serum—”

  “Keep dreamin’,” Gideon growled. “And quit talki
n’ like that. It’s creepy.”

  As Reece helped Hayden up by his elbows, he said loudly enough for the Vee to hear, “Come on, Hayden. He had his chance.”

  “But—” Hayden started before Reece gave him a look that cut the appeal short.

  “Burn you all!” the Vee despaired loudly, ripping at his clothes. “We will make you bleed for this! Bleed until your life…slowly…seeps….out…” His words gave way to horrible, hacking laughter.

  “Shut him in,” Reece snarled at Mordecai and Gideon. “He’ll cave, when the thirst gets too much for him. Everyone out.”

  Hayden had never seen him in such a temper. He knew it was bad by the quietness of it. He didn’t shout, just glowered and burned and twisted his fingers into fists as he marched out into the hall.

  “I told you to be careful,” he muttered in Hayden’s direction.

  Surprised, Hayden turned his back to the cobwebbed hallway wall and observed Reece over the tops of his bifocals. “You’re mad at me for this?”

  “No...no. I just wish you’d been more careful. I know when you go doctor on us, you get tunnel vision, but that’s a Vee in there. He could’ve snapped your neck, did you think of that?”

  Hayden had, actually, in passing. But the Vee would never have really hurt him with Gideon and Reece in the room—not unless he’d had a death wish. He told Reece so and tried to push back into the Vee’s room, but Gideon stopped him with a one-handed shove to the chest while Nivy caught him by the sleeve.

  “Hayden,” Reece was trying not to smile, “he does have a death wish. He wants to die. He was trying to make us help him.”

  The hallway got very hot then, and Hayden had to excuse himself to get a drink of water, and also a tall glass of burnthroat.

  XIV

  A Deal, a Caper, and…Oops

  Personally, Gideon kinda just wanted to shoot the Vee. He wouldn’t, not without Reece’s say-so, but that didn’t stop him from wantin’.

  It was about midnight, and the house was hushed in its creaky old buildin’ way, meanin’ there were unaccounted-for squeaks and groans regularly breakin’ the quiet, makin’ him edgy. Everyone was sleepin’, except for the Vee, who he could hear whimperin’ through the cell door. His brain felt heavy, stuffed full’a thoughts without an end. Reece had a heckuva mystery on his hands. Gideon felt the weight’a it for him, once he sat down alone and listened to the Vee’s shrieks.

  Speakin’a which.

  Gideon leaned up outta his slump and listened. The Vee was quiet. Then, tap tap tap, knuckles on the door. He looked to the door like he could actually see the sound when it came again, tap tap tap.

  “We know you can hear us,” the Vee’s voice rasped.

  Gideon grumpily knocked the door with the heel’a his boot. “Remember what I said about talkin’ creepy?”

  The Vee’s broken laughter sounded like weepin’. “Oh, we remember everything. The serum lets us. We never forget a face, a voice, never forget a past. We know you, Gideon Cephas Creed. Pray tell us…was the war terribly hard?”

  Gideon braced himself. It’d been like this all night, the Vee pushin’ everyone’s buttons, tryin’ to get outta livin’ without his precious serum. Reece got a whole earful about his mother likin’ Liem more than him, and Mordecai had had to sit through reminiscin’s about Esther…his wife, who’d died durin’ the war.

  “Did Reece Sheppard tell you?” the Vee purred softly. “There’s a war coming here. A grander war than little Panteda ever saw. Reece Sheppard and Hayden Rice will both go to fight…and both will die…and it will be like Panteda all over again, won’t it? Losing everyone, unable to do anything but watch.”

  The Vee paused, and Gideon tried to focus in the quiet, shuttin’ his eyes, pullin’ in slow breaths. His hands were crampin’ from holdin’ them in tight fists.

  “No one who understands, do they, Gideon Creed? How you saw your mother die. Out your ship window, as she suffocated trying to reach you. You did not see your father die, but you were given a ribbon for his valiant war efforts…a little green ribbon…”

  Gideon had risen to his feet and was methodically unlockin’ the door, not knowin’ what he was plannin’ to do, but knowin’ what the end result would be. He was gettin’ ready to pull the door open when an arm shot out and barred his way.

  “Don’t give him what he wants,” Reece said, and despite Gideon’s growl’a protest, started slidin’ the locks back into place to the sound’a the Vee’s fresh bout’a mournful wails. “If he dies before he breaks, he won’t have failed the other Veritas. We can’t give him that.”

  For a minute, Gideon stood chest to chest with Reece, feelin’ his anger crawlin’ over his skin. Then he remembered who he was angry at—not Reece, but the Vee behind the door—and the steam went outta him. His shoulders dropped as he turned away and let Reece finish boltin’ the door. The Vee’s words were sittin’ in the bottom’a his stomach like a hard, cold rock.

  “He said there’s a war comin’ here, and that’s why you and Hayden were drafted.”

  Reece hesitated. “That’s what Scarlet overheard in The Guild House, yeah. Parliament is buffing up our military for some sort of attack, reforging alliances with the outer planets—”

  “Attack from who?”

  “No one seems to know.”

  Gideon sat down, his back against the wall, and hung his arms limply over his knees. The Vee’s despairin’ noises had faded into the night, maybe because he’d given up, maybe because he was eavesdroppin’. Let him. Not like there wasn’t anythin’ he didn’t know anyways.

  “I uh...” Reece gestured mutely, fumblin’ for words. “I do know about your parents, Gid. Mordecai told me and Hayden pretty early on how it happened. We figured you’d say something when you were…ready, I guess. But eight years went by kind of fast.”

  “Well.” It was Gideon’s turn to fumble as he pulled a trigger outta his pocket and twiddled it between his fingers. Somethin’ to look at besides Reece. “I still ain’t ready.”

  Reece made a noise that Gideon couldn’t quite read. He looked up to see him smirkin’ and shakin’ his head.

  “What?” Gideon snapped, and for good measure, flung the trigger at him. It bounced off the wall by Reece’s head with a metallic ping and chattered to the ground. “Ain’t nothin’ to be smilin’ about.”

  “It’s not that. Listen.”

  Gideon did, squintin’ his eyes as if that might make him hear better.

  There was a whisper, faint like the scufflin’a mice’s feet, comin’ from under the Vee’s door. “Please, we will tell you…we will speak …please…”

  Reece and Gideon locked eyes and stood up with purpose, grim though the purpose was. Reece muttered to himself, “We’ve got him,” as he started undoin’ the locks he’d set in place moments ago. Pullin’ out his revolver, Gideon took a ready stance and waited till Reece had his hand on the door handle to nod his go ahead.

  When Reece turned the handle, the door burst open, and the Vee tumbled into the hallway, scramblin’ to get past them. Gideon caught him by the back’a his jacket, propped the revolver’s barrel against the small’a his back, and steered him back into the storage room.

  “Take a load off.” He thrust the Vee onto the cot.

  “Please…please…the serum…”

  Standin’ beside Gideon with his arms crossed and his face set, Reece informed him, “We don’t have any serum for you. But tell us what you know, and we might see if something can be arranged.”

  The Vee hissed, spit dribblin’ from his chin, as his black eyes burned up at Reece. Gideon added a decisive click to the conversation by loadin’ a bullet into his revolver’s chamber. Those unnatural eyes flinched at the sound, as if it had been all that loud.

  “No no no,” the beak-nosed Vee panted and waggled an admonitory finger back and forth. “We will not let you let us die. For you will. We will give you everything, and you will not repay us. We think not.”

  Frownin’, Reece
looked at the Vee like he was actually considerin’ its crazy talk. “What do you suggest?”

  Gideon glanced at him sideways, keepin’ his finger a smooth twitch away from his trigger. “We bargainin’ with it now?”

  “I’m hearing my options.”

  Mightn’t have been the smartest thing, but Gideon was feelin’ a might tense, and he didn’t like bein’ talked down to, not even by Reece. He split his glare between the Vee, who was smilin’ craftily at him, and Reece as he snapped, “Burn it, Reece! We’ve only got one option! It’s the bleedin’ prisoner here, let’s just get what we need outta it and be done!”

  The look Reece shot him was so packed full’a heat, it was a wonder Gideon’s eyebrows didn’t singe. “If you don’t like how I’m handling things, you can leave me the gun and get out.”

  Simmerin’, Gideon grunted and swallowed down a couple’a choice words that Reece wouldn’t’a understood anyways, because they were in Pantedan. Would’a made Mordecai’s eyebrows go up, though.

  “Good Pan,” the Vee tittered. “Knows when to stop barking.”

  The finger slipped into place almost on its own, and Gideon let it pull the trigger. The boom sounded loud in the confined space, more like an explosion than a gunshot. Plaster rained down the ceilin’, a white dustin’.

  “Gideon!” Reece shouted, livid, as he grabbed the front’a Gideon’s waistcoat in two angry fists.

  “It was just a warnin’ shot!” Gideon yelled back, gesturin’ at the cowerin’ Vee and the dinner plate-sized hole in the wall a foot above his head. “Elsewise I wouldn’t’a missed!” He knew it wasn’t really necessary to add that last, but he didn’t want anyone misunderstandin’.

  Reece shoved off his jacket, leavin’ his hands up in surrendered disbelief. Like he didn’t know what to do with him.

  “What the heckles is goin’ on down here?” Mordecai bellowed, comin’ into the room at a jog with a hob in either hand. He was wearin’ a striped dressin’ gown and a long nightcap.

  Hayden and Nivy slid in behind him, Hayden totin’ his medical bag. “Is anyone hurt?” he added, blinkin’ heavily because he wasn’t wearin’ his bifocals.