Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  Mordecai looked up at the sound of Reece’s boots squelching in the dewy grass. There was nothing crazy about his bright blue gaze this morning, just a level shrewdness.

  “Well, I’m off.” Reece’s mouth felt dry, and he swallowed.

  Without looking at the board, Mordecai reached over and swept up one of Nivy’s knights. “You be careful, Reece. I don’t think Eldritch can be the only Kreft hidin’ on Honora. And if The Owl’s headmaster can be one…anyone can.”

  Nivy looked up at Reece, worry plain on her face. He knew it was a gesture of friendship, but someone needed to tell her that sometimes the best thing a friend could do was not show how worried they were. Things were going to be fine. He was going to confront the duke with what he knew, warn him that his life was in danger, and then book it back to Atlas before anyone was the wiser.

  “Things are going to be fine,” he repeated out loud. “Nivy…walk with me for a minute?”

  Nodding, Nivy scooted her legs out from beneath the wooden chess board and walked with him across the yard, leaving Mordecai to lazily slide his last bishop into check. They turned the corner of the house, and Reece sat on the front step, patting the place beside him. Nivy sat down, her face curious.

  Reece had made up his mind last night, when he’d sat beside her and faced the Vee and realized that no matter what else she was, she was on his side. He trusted her. Maybe it was reckless of him, maybe he was setting himself up…but he didn’t think so. The trust came too naturally for that. He didn’t have to choose to trust her. He just did.

  “I think I’m right in saying this belongs to you.” Reaching beneath his jacket, he pulled out the ancient tome Liem had left behind and offered it to her.

  Nivy stared at it for so long, he wondered if maybe he’d imagined the aching in her eyes every time he’d had the book out around her. Then she took the book and hugged it tenderly to her chest, hiding her face behind her long black hair. He was startled and embarrassed by the intensity of her emotion.

  “Nivy?”

  She looked up at him and smiled. She shook her head to dismiss his concern.

  “Did you bring it with you? Did it come with you to Honora?”

  She shook her head again. Sniffing, she gestured slowly, almost sluggishly, without raising her eyes.

  “The book came with the first capsule?”

  Nivy nodded, but seemed too absorbed in the gentle perusing of the book’s thin pages to give him much more. That was alright. His pocket watch said it was time to go anyways.

  As he stood, Nivy glanced up at him sharply, her question plain on her face.

  “Not a chance. The only thing we have up on Eldritch is the fact that he doesn’t know we’re hiding you. I’ll be back.”

  Nivy watched from the step as he rolled out his bim and let its engine warm up in the cool air, its exhaust curling into the fading fog. He sat for a minute on the bim, his hands on the handlebars, and returned her unreadable stare with a small smile. Then she bowed her head once more over the book, and he slipped away and didn’t look back.

  Emathia shone in autumn. Her oaks were orange-tipped, her fields tall and yellow, her apple trees plump with fruit. There was an orange and gold wreath the size of a carriage horse over the front doors, and candles wrapped in marigolds and firehearts in all of the mansion windows. Reece paused as he handed his bim off to a black-clad servant who didn’t meet his eyes, and sniffed deeply. He’d almost forgotten what food not bird-on-a-stick smelled like, fresh out of the oven—warm rolls, cinnamon turkey, spicy hot cider poured over dessert scones…

  Before he even started up the stairs, one of the purple front doors burst open, and Abigail stepped out into the bracing sunlight, her skirt gathered in two fists. Her peppered hair was down about her shoulders, looking wispier than usual. With pursed lips, she swept down the front stairs and threw her bony arms around his neck.

  Too shocked for words, Reece dumbly patted her on the back. The last time he’d seen Abigail, she had been watching him leave from the bay window just after she’d thrown a picture frame at him and very nearly taken off his nose, furious slash distraught over Liem’s disappearance. Maybe, having been allowed to sit for some weeks now, those emotions had turned into—

  The whole left side of his face was suddenly prickling and stinging and—he dazedly felt it—hot to the touch. He looked at his mother, standing back with her fists on her hips, and realized she had slapped him.

  “You selfish, incorrigible boy!” she seethed. “If you had any idea—how worried—how upset—we thought—”

  Hearing rather than seeing her arm swing again, Reece ducked. “I’ve been busy—”

  “You could have sent us a log!” Abigail shrieked.

  “There wasn’t an interface—”

  “Scarlet said she gave you our message!”

  “She did, but—”

  “You knew I wanted you home!”

  “School was—”

  Baring her teeth, Abigail reached behind her back and pulled out a parchment envelope with a bright gold seal. “This is a personal note from Headmaster Eldritch himself.” Heart thudding in his ears, Reece made a grab for the envelope, but she held to it with fingers of steel. “‘Reece has shown worrisome neglect towards his schoolwork’,” she quoted, “‘he spends more time off campus with his comrades than—in—class’!” She slapped the envelope three times against Reece’s chest, punctuating her words. “I have half a mind to lock you up at Emathia, like he recommends!”

  She suddenly spun, muttering to herself, and started marching back up the front steps. There was nothing for it but to follow and let her slowly run out of steam.

  In the sitting room, they sat across from each other in matching scarlet armchairs, and Abigail had a servant bring tea, as if all her screaming had been just another detail of her schedule. Reece thought it was safe to take Eldritch’s note off the table between them and flick it open with a finger. There wasn’t much to it that Abigail hadn’t already recited, just Eldritch’s angular signature.

  He looked over the top of the letter at Abigail, who was tipping back her second cup of tea like a shot glass. “Did the duke see this?”

  “Not yet,” Abigail snippily emphasized. “It just came today. The headmaster delivered it himself, rather than sending a log.”

  A chill rushed down Reece’s back; goosebumps pebbled his skin. “How long ago did he leave?”

  “Not long before you arrived. He had business at The Guild House with your father.” She looked up as Reece jumped to his feet, almost toppling the table and their tea platter with it, and then smashed her cup down with an angry clatter as he pulled on his jacket and gloves. “Don’t you dare—”

  Reece raised his voice over hers. “I’ve got to see the duke.”

  Abigail stared as if he’d grown a second head right in front of her.

  “I—that’s—” She hesitated, clearly suspicious. Then she huffed, “You’re not going like that, are you? You look like something the wolfdogs got into. For goodness sake, at least put a comb through your hair. I’ll have the servants draw a carriage for you, you can’t go The House on that horrendous—”

  But Reece was already walking out the parlor door, mussing up the back of his hair as he went.

  By this time, he was so full of angry nerves that when Guy Clark started chirping over the wireless about the Grand Duke’s masquerade (“The gala of the solar cycle! Academy students are invited to volunteer for serving duties for a once in a lifetime chance to see The Estate of Emathia at its very blah, blah, blah!”), he yanked the earpiece off and threw it into the wind.

  Caldonia traffic, both ground and air, was a nightmare. It seemed the biannual equestrian march was still going on, so the streets were crammed with horse-drawn carriages and automobile drivers who were impatiently drumming on their horns, while the skyways between buildings were packed with overflow from the road, hovering aethercopters and Dryads. His bim was narrow enough to carve its own
path between carriages, but it was slow-going, and he didn’t much like getting called a gingoo by drivers stuck in line.

  Fortunately, access to the cobbled lane leading to The Guild House was restricted. As Reece pulled off Mablethorpe Road and up to the tall iron gate, a sentry with a baton and an ALP strapped to his belt came to run his classification card through a datascope.

  “Reece Sheppard,” the sentry said, surprised, as Reece’s information blinked red on his screen. He tilted back the black visor of his cap to get a better look at Reece, simultaneously nodding for the other sentry on post to open the gate.

  Reece didn’t wait around. He revved his bim’s engine and shot through the small opening in the gate while the sentry was still cranking it open.

  The road ran in a straight, stark line, pinned in by a fringe of trees on either side. It made Reece feel like he was moving down a tunnel of mirrors, because everything looked the same for so long, until the House suddenly loomed before him, five stories of white stone and column and black roof. Having no windows but seven whole smoking chimneys, it resembled a very fine, very neat factory.

  The sentries posted at the wide black doors, wearing green jackets with black tassels on their shoulder guards, double-checked Reece’s classification card before bowing him in with a synchronized, “Sir.”

  As a child, Reece had been scared of The Guild House; a bit of that feeling hung with him now. His confidence wavered as he stepped into the marble entrance hall, looking up at the green and black banners hanging down from the ceiling, each the size of his suite back at The Owl. A white staircase curled around the cavernous hall five times, up all five stories.

  When someone called his name, he had to hop to catch the bust of some scholar or another he had accidentally elbowed off its pedestal.

  Hugh Rice was hurrying across the entrance hall, from this far away, looking uncannily like Hayden, right down to the mousy hair and off-kilter bifocals.

  “How are you?” Mr. Rice clasped one of Reece’s hands, smiling in his distracted way. “Come to see the duke?”

  Nodding, Reece looked about the hall again, vast but strangely emptied of the green-robed figures that usually busied it. “Where is everyone?”

  Mr. Rice cast a sad gaze around. “Where they always are, of late. In a summit. I’ve never seen the House so quiet, and at the same time, so very busy.” As if seeing Reece clearly for the first time, he started, caught up Reece’s arm, and started pulling him none-too-casually towards the vertical translocators at the foot of the stairs. “You can just, eh, wait in the library until the duke is free. Don’t…don’t want to be idle.”

  Reece let himself be hustled onto the translocator platform, which had a clear glass bottom. The translocator ran smooth and silent, letting off only the occasional spout of steam, like a soft sigh under their feet, as they rolled up and were deposited onto the fourth floor.

  “Who called for the summit?” Reece asked even though he was sure he already knew. He would eat his bim, starting with its tires, if the suspenseful quiet laying over the House wasn’t Eldritch’s handiwork.

  Hugh played restlessly with the lion heart pin on his collar as he gave Reece a sidelong glance. “One of the members of Parliament, I’m sure. But then, what do I know, I’m just the librarian. Here we go, let’s use the back way. It’s quicker.”

  Reece wasn’t sure that it was. Squeezing down the cramped little hallway, he felt like he was back in Caldonia traffic, only instead of dodging carriages and automobiles, he was edging around dismantled library pulleys and kinetic book carts in need of new wheels.

  Hugh kept apologizing for the mess and pausing to wipe dust off his bifocals. ”So sorry—Advisor Kirkland, he thought I was a bit overstaffed, and Parliament cut my help. Haven’t really had the hands to get this all in order—keep meaning to bring Hayden and Sophie to work with me. Almost there now.”

  At the end of the hall, they came to a single door that didn’t want to open even when Reece wedged himself in next to Hugh and helped push.

  “Sorry—sticks sometimes, I’ve been meaning to fix that—”

  Working together, grunting loudly, they managed to throw the door open and spill out into the foyer of the Grand Duke’s Ancestral Library, the single grandest collection of antique books and datascope drives on planet Honora. The sound of their forced entry echoed from wall to distant book-filled wall. The library gave Reece the feeling that he wasn’t as alone as he thought, that if he strained hard enough, he might hear dusty whispers coming from the dark aisles of books that spiraled into the center of the library like a circular labyrinth. When Reece and Hugh walked forward, they walked on black marble painted with webs of constellations and galaxies and Streams. The ceiling somewhere high overhead was lost in darkness.

  “Have you never been in here before?” Mr. Rice asked, surprised. He paused to take down the oil lantern hanging from a bookend, pull a spark-starter out of his pocket, and put the two together. He and Reece were suddenly standing in a bubble of orange, flickering light.

  Reece made himself stop gaping up at the shelves that were taller than the oaks at Emathia. “Not since I was five or six.”

  “Well, I suppose it is rather hard to gain access to, usually. I wish Parliament would open it up to the public, some of these poor books haven’t seen daylight since before even I was born. I’m just going to send a log to Sophie, let her know I’ll be late for dinner. Would you like to see my office?”

  They entered the aisle of shelves, making frequent right-hand turns as they spun deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, every ten or so steps passing flickering datascope screens referencing where in history they were. It was terribly tempting not to pull over and innocently browse The Knighting of the Dukes, An End to Monarchy.

  Hugh’s office, lit by a pair of dim photon stands, was at the eye of the spiral. Or rather, his office—which wasn’t much more than a small writing desk and a filing cabinet—was on the eye of the spiral. Steady vibrations ran through Reece’s boots as the massive gold clock face underfoot ticked loudly; every time the second hand as long as he was tall snapped into place, the pens on Hugh’s desk rattled.

  “That’s not distracting?” Reece wondered, walking the circumference of the clock and pausing over the stout hour hand.

  Hugh chuckled as he sat down behind his desk. “It’s actually quite relaxing. I’ll be done in just one moment.”

  As he sent his log to Sophie, Reece idly wandered into the labyrinth, brushing the dusty spines of books that looked worse for wear. These were the oldest books in the library, dating back to L.F. 327. They’d be dust themselves if it weren’t for librarians like Hugh who dedicated their lives to the gentle rebinding and repairing of covers and pages.

  So why did Reece feel like Nivy’s strange book was so much older? It certainly didn’t look that old, not compared to these relics. The rule of antiques was, the older, the more important—so maybe Reece thought that because Nivy’s book was very important, it must be very old.

  Which made less sense than Mordecai’s bird-in-a-cake recipe.

  From Hugh’s office came the sound of a ringing bell. Slumping against a bookshelf, Reece listened to Hugh’s low, hurried voice, sounding decidedly relieved. When he came to find Reece in the labyrinth a moment later, he looked ten years younger. Well, maybe five.

  “Headmaster Eldritch has left. The House should be a good deal safer for you, now.”

  His odd behavior and their trip down the library’s unlikely back way suddenly made a lot more sense.

  “Mr. Rice.” Reece exasperatedly dropped his hands. “You don’t have to protect me. If Eldritch thought you were helping me sneak around behind his back—”

  Hugh made a quieting gesture. “I merely thought it would be better for you not to have a run-in with the headmaster on his ground.”

  His ground. So The Guild House was his ground now, not the duke’s, not Parliament’s. It was starting already.

  “Look, I appr
eciate it, I do. And I appreciate what you did with Scarlet. But you don’t have to—”

  “She told you about that, did she?” Mr. Rice nervously looked around, as if the books might have grown ears while his back was turned. “Reece, these are dangerous waters we’re treading. I’m not going to deny there are dark things underfoot, but at some point, you have to weigh the potential risks.”

  It was like hearing his own thoughts read back to him. “I have. And, for what it’s worth, I tried to keep Hayden from getting any more involved.”

  Mr. Rice’s smile was difficult to read. “Much as I wish he would listen to you, I am perhaps a little glad to know that neither he nor Gideon will.” He put a hand on Reece shoulder and looked down over his bifocals at him. “It’s alright to ask for help, sometimes.”

  Both of them jumped as an echo of footsteps carried to them, a quick, confidant march.

  “Probably someone coming to fetch a record out of the archives,” Mr. Rice said uncertainly. “I’ll just—just go see who it is.”

  Thinking about waiting in the clock-office with nothing but its ominous ticking to keep him company, Reece picked up his feet and followed. For some time, there was only the combined sound of their footsteps and the footsteps coming towards them to allay the silence.

  The footfall of their visitor grew to its loudest yet, and then stopped so abruptly that Hugh and Reece both skidded to a stop, Hugh clutching Reece’s shoulder.

  “Hello?” Hugh held up his lantern up a little higher.

  Just as Reece started to reach a hand under his jacket for his hob, the duke stepped into the light. While Hugh almost collapsed with his heavy sigh of relief, Reece suddenly felt like getting seriously lost in the labyrinth.

  “Mr. Rice,” the duke greeted in the deep, rich voice that called to mind memories of being read mysteries in front of a fireplace on cold winter nights after Abigail and Liem had gone to bed. “Tell me, who is that gangly young man behind you with the unsightly hair?”