Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  Reece looked liable to combust at any second, though his voice was deceivingly calm. “Out. Everyone out.” He swung a finger up and pointed at Gideon’s face. “You too, you bleeding trigger happy pirate. Give me the gun.”

  When Reece had shut the lot’a them out in the corridor, Gideon sat his back down against the door and tried to listen in on the negotiations, but they were too quiet to hear. The others hung around too. They played jacks and laughed (Nivy just smiled) when Hayden blindly bounced the rubber ball at nonexistent jacks. Gideon didn’t ask to play. He could shoot an egg off a pole from a hundred and fifty yards, but bouncin’ a stupid rubber ball at a jack was somethin’ else altogether.

  Could’a only been fifteen minutes before Reece rejoined them, face hidin’ all hints’a what’d gone on in the storage room. He tossed Gideon a look’a lingerin’ disapproval along with his revolver.

  “Well?” Mordecai asked, catchin’ two jacks in his hand without lookin’ at them. “Did you strike yourself a deal?”

  “Yup.”

  “What kind of deal?” Hayden asked.

  “The only one there really ever was to make. Our answers for his serum.”

  Mordecai’s bushy mustaches twitched. “In what order, pray tell?”

  Reece crouched down to be at a level with the rest’a them, his elbows on his knees, and let his face answer for him. Mordecai grunted unhappily while Hayden sighed and Gideon glared. Seemed wrong to him, givin’ the Vee what it wanted. Wasn’t like they could let it go free after it met its end’a the bargain.

  Runnin’ his fingers tiredly through his yellow hair, Hayden wondered, “How are we supposed to get him the serum? It’s not exactly stocked at the local apothecary.”

  Reece answered matter-of-factly, “A heist,” and Gideon sat up straighter, finally hearin’ somethin’ he liked. Reece saw the movement and nodded at him. “Gid and I will do it.”

  Hayden was a step behind the rest’a them. “What are you heisting?”

  “The Veritas’ base of operations. Our friend in the storage room gave me the coordinates.”

  “The Veritas’ base? Are you out of your mind?”

  “I hear I wouldn’t know if I was.”

  “Reece, they’re not going to let you just walk in and take some of their serum so you can make a traitor out of one of their own!”

  “Which is why,” Reece said dryly, “they call it a heist. It’s also why you’re staying here with Mordecai and Nivy.”

  Nivy clicked her fingers to get their attention, then pointed insistently at herself. Reece started shakin’ his head before he even looked at her.

  “Sorry, Nivy, this trust thing is still a work in progress, and I can’t be watching my front and my back.”

  Wearin’ her unreadable pokerface, Nivy stood, stepped over the scattered jacks, and sauntered off down the hallway. Sulkin’, likely as not.

  “Hayden,” Reece said, starin’ after her. “Go with her. Make sure she stays put.”

  After openin’ and closin’ his mouth in mute protest for a minute, Hayden obeyed, feelin’ his way down the hall with a hand on the wall. He paused before he sank too deep into the shadows to call back over his shoulder, “If you can, try to get the components for the serum, not just the finished product.”

  “Why?” Reece asked.

  Aitch’s voice was quiet. “Because some good might come from figuring out how the serum really works. Who knows. Maybe it can be used to help people, someday.”

  Then he was gone, and Mordecai, Reece, and Gideon were left sittin’ in a triangle, starin’ at each other blankly.

  “Well, don’t just scratch yer head about it,” Mordecai finally said, tetchy. Gideon knew what about. He wanted to come on the heist too. Just wasn’t humble enough to say so. “Give me the burned coordinates and I’ll figure out how’ta get you off Atlas and where ya need to go. Bleedin’ ginghoos…” he mumbled as Reece passed him a folded piece’a parchment. “…be chasin’ yer tails without me. Heist…peh! This’ll prolly be a slice’a pie compared to the capers I’ve seen.”

  It was near on four in the mornin’ planet time by the time Gideon and Reece arrived in Caldonia in the cargo bay of garbage transporter, which meant they had little more than an hour to get in and outta the Veritas’ base before dawn lit up the city.

  They were standin’ in an alleyway between The Pantheon Theatre, all its gaudy showbiz lights dimmed for the evenin’, and a tavern with some muffled burlesque music singin’ out into the night. Gideon handed Reece his hob and strapped his revolver into the holster on his hip before slidin’ extra rounds into his chest pocket. The only thing he could make outta Reece was the outlines’a his face caught in the green light’a the tavern’s alleyside window.

  Not too many folk were out this late (or this early, however you preferred it), but that didn’t make the city quiet. There was always the distant hum’a the public locomotive or the whiz’a ships overhead, the burr’a photon energy, an undertone to everythin’. And the owls that quietly observed the city durin’ the day owned it at night. Like black kites, they floated from rooftop from rooftop, sittin’ on buildin’s like rows’a gargoyles.

  The area the Vee’s directions led them towards was about what you’d expect. Brick warehouses with outdated advertisement projections flickerin’ reluctantly on their broadsides, tight-fittin’ alleyways with rundown fire escapes. The light’a the projections was made misty by the thick smoke pourin’ outta a couple’a the warehouse’s smokestacks.

  Reece stopped abruptly at a crossroads in the alleys and gestured for Gideon to block the glow’a the photon wand that he used to light up the face’a his wrist compass. A warm wind chased paper trash up one’a the other alleys, rattlin’ it.

  “One more block. The back entrance will be on our left at number three twenty-three. He said we’ll know it when we see it. The word to get us in will be charter. Huh,” Reece grunted as he slipped the photon wand back into his coat pocket and rustled his hand about. “Weird.”

  “What?”

  The hand rustled some more. He shook his head. “Just…never mind. Let’s keep moving.”

  They continued, Reece leadin’ the way, Gideon watchin’ their backs. At number three oh two, he called Reece to a halt with a hiss, sure he’d seen a flicker’a somethin’ on a rooftop behind them. They briefly waited for the flicker to turn into somethin’ more, but Reece was impatient, and dawn wouldn’t wait on nobody. They went on, runnin’ now.

  Turnin’ one last corner neck and neck, they skidded to a stop, blinded by the white light pourin’ into the alley outta a storefront ahead. Gideon stared. All the other stores down this way had been stripped bare and taken to with bricks and paint. This one looked like it should’a been on Main Street. The bright gold numbers on its window sparkled like fresh gilt, and there was a little bell and a pristine green and white striped canopy over its rotary door.

  “He said we’d know it when we saw it,” Reece whispered, and Gideon heard a smile in his voice.

  “It’s creepy,” he decided. “Gives me a feelin’a wrongness.”

  Once they were close up on the window, they could see how the glass was milky so as to make the store light soft like a candle’s under a blanket. It was hard to see much past the empty white display case. Gideon figured that was on purpose.

  Reece didn’t dawdle. He drew a hard breath, lifted his hob, and stepped into the rotary door, which spun him out into the store with well-oiled ease. When Gideon had popped out after him, they stood and stared about together. Closest thing Gideon could compare the place to was a toy shoppe. Its marble floor was black and white checkered while its walls were hidden by dense strands’a colorful marbles like strung-up rainbows. There were no shelves, but model airships, Furies and Harpies mostly, dangled from the ceilin’, spinnin’ in lazy circles. In the middle’a the room was a single writin’ desk—one’a the dainty kinds with curvy legs and clawed feet—and on it, a display’a beakers with a wide spectrum’a liq
uids, bubblin’ blue, goopy green, steamin’ scarlet.

  Gideon was so caught up in studyin’ the weirdness of it all that he almost missed the hatch liftin’ up outta the floor near the back’a the room.

  “There,” Reece hissed, and snapped his gun to the ready a beat behind Gideon.

  They watched as the hatch opened, listened to the dull sound’a footsteps comin’ up the wooden stairs beneath it. A head as white as snow appeared first, followed by the body’a the tallest, skinniest fellow Gideon’d ever seen. He wore green pinstriped trousers with suspenders, a crisp white shirt, and a funny green bowtie. As if oblivious to Reece and Gideon, the old geezer came up outta his hole, shut the hatch after him so it blended back into the pattern’a the floor, and dusted his hands.

  “Just take it nice and slow,” Reece began, and the old man jumped about a mile high. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  “Dear me, who’s there?” the man blustered, lookin’ all around as if followin’ a fly with his eyes. White eyes as milky as the store window.

  “Blind,” Gideon grunted, and Reece nodded to show that he had seen.

  “Why don’t you come sit down?” he suggested kindly.

  The old man hesitated, twistin’ his long fingers into knots. “Oh, you shouldn’t be here…you shouldn’t be here at all…”

  “We were sent. Sent with the word ‘charter’.”

  Sighin’, the green-clad man walked unsteadily to the desk, felt about for its chair, and sat down heavily. “No, you weren’t. You aren’t one of them. I can hear it in your voice. Oh, you shouldn’t be here. This is terrible. I can’t let you go on, you know. They’ll stretch my ears, if I do.”

  “I could knock you unconscious.” The old man and Reece both looked in Gideon’s direction, and he explained impatiently, “Least then it would look like you went out with a fight.”

  The man’s narrow face brightened. “A fascinating proposition! Yes, yes, quickly, a blunt object!”

  Gideon was gettin’ ready to oblige when Reece asked the fellow, “Who are you?”

  “I—” The man started, and then stopped to look surprised. “You mean you don’t know? Why, I thought it would be obvious. I am the apothecary!”

  The hairs on the back’a Gideon’s neck shifted, his skin pricklin’. He swung about and brought the revolver up on the rotary door, sure he’d see a silhouette on the other side’a it, watchin’ them. Nothin’. So far as the eye could tell, they and the old man were the only folks about for at least a mile. So far as the eye could tell.

  “You mean…you make the serum for them?” Reece said, like it was too good to be true. Gideon heard him sheathin’ his gun and made a disapprovin’ noise that was ignored. “Do you have some? Here?”

  “Oh no, that would be most forbidden. All completed droughts are confiscated immediately. I simply work from here. They wish me out of the public eye, you see, for my own safety. If the public knew who I was, I’d be hounded for the serum. No, it’s better I stay here altogether. That’s better for everyone, you see.”

  After a thoughtful pause, Reece answered, “Well then. I’m assuming the way to the Veritas’s base of operations—” The old man made a chokin’ noise at the name. “—is through that hatch. So Gideon will be knocking you unconscious now, maybe even tying you up for effect. Are you ready?”

  “Y-yes, of course.”

  “Gid. Gideon!”

  Hesitatin’, Gideon pulled his eyes and gun from the door. The feelin’a bein’ watched came back as soon as his back was turned. He sauntered over to the old fellow and popped him on the back’a the head with the revolver without puttin’ any real heart into it. As he pulled retractable rubber coil outta his jacket and bound the wilted man’s wrists together, he grumbled, “There a plan if this turns out to be a trap, Cap’n?”

  Crouchin’ by the trapdoor, Reece cheerfully shrugged. “Hope for the best?”

  Gideon snorted.

  The stairs beneath the hatch stretched down into darkness in a tunnel’a wooden crossbeams. They must’a been climbin’ down them for a good quarter mile before the stairs leveled out into packed dirt floors and the ceilin’ lowered so that Gideon felt the subconscious need to stoop.

  It was a few minutes’ walk in the dark before they saw the lights up ahead, three dozen’a the dingy red sort, arranged in a curious six by six pattern. In another minute, their tunnel drained out into an underground cavern the size’a one’a the warehouses above ground. Square in its middle was a bronze dome with six terraces, with six arched doorways on each level and a red light over each door. Tippin’ his head one way, Gideon could see it as a rust-colored honeycomb. And the lean, graceful shadows glidin’ in the inner depths’a the dome—those were the bees.

  “Finished serums are fourth row up, third row in, second door on the right. The components are first row up, second row in, seventh door on the left,” Reece murmured.

  Gideon felt him tense when the dome suddenly emitted a shrill, mechanical whistle. Steam flushed outta small fissures in its body. The whistle dwindled; a scream echoed through the cavern, long and pain-ridden and human.

  When the scream faded out, Gideon and Reece leaned back on their haunches and looked at each other in the panes’a red cast by the dome’s lights.

  “Well,” Gideon rumbled, “don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya.” Still in his crouch, he started to edge outta the tunnel and into the cavern. Only, somethin’ caught him by the back’a his jacket and gave it just enough of a backward tug for him to tip and sit down hard on the dirt floor. “What the heck, Reece—”

  He stopped when he saw that Reece was sittin’ too, and lookin’ sour besides. He pointed. Gideon turned to find Nivy stooped with her arms roped around her knees, smilin’ smugly at the two’a them.

  “How the bleedin’—you been stalkin’ us, girl?”

  “Mordecai.” Reece stood. “He put you on the garbage transporter too, didn’t he?”

  Nivy simply nodded.

  “I’ll kill him,” Gideon grumbled. Reece was too busy tryin’ to beat Nivy in a starin’ contest, a real battle’a the wills by the look’a it, to pay him any attention.

  “Stay here,” he ordered her, deadpan. “Don’t follow us, don’t leave…just stay here. Got it?”

  Gideon couldn’t say how he knew what was comin’—maybe it was that understandin’a Nivy he thought he had—but when she started runnin’, he was ready. Didn’t make much of a difference, because dirt, she was quick, but he was. She slipped outta his hands like a bar’a wet soap and charged into the cavern with long, determined strides that made less sound than an autumn breeze.

  Reece grabbed Gideon around the middle before he could take after her, gruntin’ as they wrestled, “Wait!”

  Their arms tangled together, they froze and watched as Nivy went at the dome in a wild sprint. Gideon was all ready for a collision when she leaped, kicked off the base wall, and grabbed the railin’a the first terrace to pull herself to its level.

  Stumped, Reece and Gideon watched her disappear into the terrace shadows and reemerge again a second later, wavin’ for them to come on already.

  Reece made a reluctantly impressed sound. “Mordecai must’ve known what he was doing.”

  “The old man’s a numpty,” Gideon said harshly. “His job was to watch Crazy, not send her out so he can live vi…what’s the bleedin’ word...vicariously through her.”

  As Reece started forward, he clicked his tongue and said somethin’ like, “Sure you’re not just jealous?”

  Gideon gave him a dirty glare and said nothin’. No need to defend himself against total bogrosh.

  They jogged to the brass dome, and Gideon gave Reece a boost up to the railin’ before jumpin’, grabbin’ the ledge with the tips’a his fingers, and pullin’ himself up after him. Nivy was waitin’ for them, her face an irksome blend’a amusement and patience. She pointed at them and jabbed her thumb at the dark corridor mouth at her back, pointed at herself and nodded upwar
ds, and then finally waved at the tunnel leadin’ to the apothecary’s.

  “You get a sample of the finished serum, we get the ingredients. Meet back at the tunnel.” Reece didn’t sound too thrilled about his own interpretation, but if he wanted to argue, he didn’t take his chance. Nivy’s feet were already disappearin’ as she pulled herself up to the next terrace and outta sight.

  The strange sudden absence’a the Vees had Gideon tryin’ to look every way at once as Reece led the way down the red-lit corridor that had been bustlin’ five minutes ago. Where’d they all gone? And, the more pressin’ question, when were they gonna be back?

  Reece stopped at the seventh door down and punched a few numbers into its access panel as Gideon prowled around him. As the door rushed back into the wall, warm air curled out into the corridor, carryin’ with it the clean, sharp smell’a chemicals. The room’s auxiliary lightin’ was an underwater blue that backlit the glass aisles neatly linin’ the room. Aisles’a endless tiny beakers and bottles, all’a them unlabeled.

  The shadows on Reece’s face took on a hard edge in the room’s light. “Take some of everything, as much as you can carry.”

  The bottles were so small, rollin’ in the flat’a Gideon’s big, callused hand, he had to move extra slow so as not to accidentally crush them. Reece’s pockets filled up twice as fast as his, bulgin’ with the bottles that rattled when he walked up and down aisles. Always, under the sound’a clinkin’ bottles, they could hear the dome hummin’ like it was breathin’.

  “I think that’s everything,” Reece said when they’d finished their rounds about the room.

  “Good. This place puts an itch down my back.”

  Noddin’ as if he was familiar with the sensation, Reece reopened the door and ducked into the corridor, which was still as silent as a cemetery, and in the same sorta eerily restless way.

  It was a second before Gideon realized they’d turned left, not right, outta the door, and that it was gettin’ darker and darker. The corridor ran doorless and lightless in this direction; the auxiliary lights were distant, hazy suns at their backs and just pinpricks’a red far ahead.