It was over lunch in the banquet hall that it all came crashing back into focus.
Reece was sitting down with his third plate of lunch, making up for all the meals he’d had to substitute bird-on-a-stick for real food, when his eyes landed on the masquerade poster that Gideon had been using for a placemat. There was a black and white drawing of Emathia on it, accurate except for the miniscule little figures in ball gowns and top hats depicted wandering around the grounds.
The picture disappeared as Gideon arrived and covered it with his fifth or sixth plate (Reece had lost count) of poached eggs, sausage sandwiches, and smoked apple pudding.
Hayden was stirring a mug of chocolate tea and saying exasperatedly, “—but you see, that’s the point of poached eggs, to—” He stopped and grimaced as Gideon began violently scrambling his eggs and pudding together.
But Reece’s mind wasn’t on lunch anymore.
“I think I’ve just realized something,” he said dazedly, falling back in his chair with a thud.
“What is it, Reece?” Hayden asked, still watching Gideon make mush out of his food, looking horrified.
“The masquerade. Scarlet said the most prestigious members of Parliament are going to be there, along with Eldritch. She said if he had something up his sleeve, he’d pull it out then, when it would make the biggest waves.”
Tearing his eyes away from the catastrophe on Gideon’s plate, Hayden frowned at Reece. “You can’t be thinking of going. You know your father wants you away from Eldritch and Parliament. If you show up at the masquerade, he’ll have you arrested and taken to your uncle’s before you can say—” He glanced sideways as Gideon began spooning his creation into his mouth. “Disgusting.”
“I know.”
“I mean, Emathia is the last place you should go right now.”
“I know. So does the duke. That was his plan.” Everything was falling neatly and disastrously into place. Reece pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I thought maybe he was protecting me from Eldritch, but that’s not it. He’s keeping me out of the way.”
Gideon and Hayden still didn’t understand, though they were both alert and listening; Gideon had even stopped tormenting Hayden and put his plate to the side.
“He told me his plan was to do nothing. He’s going to let himself…let himself…but why would he do that?”
“I’m sure you’re just misinterpreting,” Hayden said, trying without success to mask his worry. His fingers were gripping the table’s edge very tightly.
“I’m not.” Reece felt like someone had opened a trapdoor under his stomach. “My father is going to let himself be assassinated by The Kreft. And I know where it’s going to happen.”
When Reece, Gideon, and Hayden banged their way into Mordecai’s, arguing loudly, they were covered in dust and sweat and their hair was standing up, wind-slicked. They’d driven their bims into the ground to get here as fast as they had, but now that they were here, Reece was drawing a blank. He paced around the sitting room, madly clicking his fingers as Nivy and Mordecai stuck their heads in from the kitchen to see what all the noise was about.
“It takes three hours to fly from here to Emathia…I’ve got to get a ship, and not a garbage disposer, either. I need—what do people wear to masquerades? I’ll need one of those…my hob…maybe a backup ALP…”
“What the bleedin’ heckles is goin’ on?” Mordecai demanded loudly.
Reece was too busy talking to himself to answer, so Gideon covered for him from the corner of the room, where he was pouting and not bothering to hide it. “Reece thinks The Kreft’s gonna try to off the duke at that fancy masquerade tonight.”
Mordecai whistled through his front teeth and rubbed his hands together. “Now, that’s what I call a job! Guns, assassins, and free food, I’d wager!”
“That’s the thing,” Hayden unhappily explained, collapsing onto the sofa. “Reece has it in his mind that he’s going alone.”
Reece took a break from his monologue to snap over his shoulder, “None of you will make it past the front gate! You’re too recognizable!”
“And you aren’t?”
“I know every servant’s name at Emathia—I’ll have no problem talking myself in a side gate. Once I’m inside, I can blend in. None of you can.”
“What are you doin’ now?” Gideon mumbled as Reece threw open the cupboard concealing Mordecai’s outdated log interface.
Reece flicked on the small screen, transmitter, and audio box, punching in a four digit code that started the interface up with a protesting hum. “Scarlet said I would need a date. She’s right. I’ll be too conspicuous on my own.”
Beet.
“This,” Scarlet said gravely, “had better be important.”
The black and white image of her kept fading in and out of focus, but it was plain to see that her hair was in a tower of strange rods that Reece couldn’t begin to imagine the purpose for outside a torture chamber, and her face was caked in something that looked like it had been dug up from the bottom of the lake.
For a second Reece was too stunned to speak. “Oh—uh—it is,” he said quickly, avoiding direct eye contact with the creature on the screen. “I need you to come to the masquerade with me.”
“The masquerade that is less than six hours away?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” Scarlet’s muddy face lurched closer to the screen (Reece unconsciously leaned backward), and she glared. “Did it occur to you, Reece Sheppard, that I might already have a date, seeing as it is six hours away?”
It really hadn’t. He’d actually been under the impression that she might be waiting for him to ask her to go.
Reece blurted out dumbly, “Who?”
“Lucius Tobin, if it’s any of your business.”
“Him?” It’d been six years since Abigail had forced him to one of her dreaded “most important families in Honora” tea parties, but the name Lucius Tobin brought to mind a picture of a porky boy with hair parted right down the middle under a straw boater. He had to shake his head firmly to dislodge the memory.
“Look, I really need—” In a warped reflection on the screen, Reece saw the answer to his troubles. One of them, anyways. “Never mind.”
His last glimpse of Scarlet before he ended his transmission was not a happy one. He turned around. Before he had even opened his mouth, Nivy started eagerly nodding her answer.
“What?” Gideon barked when he realized what the nodding meant. “You’re takin’ her, but you can’t take us?”
As Reece began punching a new code into the log interface, he said dryly, “Don’t be jealous. If you could fit in a dress, you could come too.”
Beet.
He had called in to the bus-ship housing units at The Owl, and the face that greeted him, while not covered in mud, looked as menacing as Scarlet’s had. Tutor Agnes was wiping her oily hands on a rag and scowling as if Reece was an unexpected blip popping up on her radar.
“Yes, Mr. Sheppard?”
“Hello, Tutor Agnes, may I speak with Po Trimble?” A little extra manners couldn’t go amiss, afterall.
“She’s currently wedged between an Axil 11-Seven engine and a bypass funnel,” Agnes told him curtly, slinging the rag over her shoulder. She put her hands on her hips and scrutinized him through the lens of her interface. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I…really just need to speak with Po, actually.”
“Well, I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait, Mr. Sheppard, seeing as Ms. Trimble—”
“Mr. Sheppard?” Po’s voice squeaked off-screen before she pushed her way into view. Her grubby jumpsuit managed to make Agnes’s look clean. “Hey, Reece! Long time no see!”
Reece waited to speak until, grumbling mutinously, Tutor Agnes picked up a wrench and prowled out of sight. “Po, I need a favor. A really big favor.”
“Short of fixing a Bylink 12-Twelve to run smooth—because you know that’ll never happen—you got it!”
<
br /> Uncomfortably aware that Hayden and Gideon were closing in on either side of him, Reece leaned closer still to the screen. “You see, there’s this masquerade tonight,” Po’s expression brightened, “and I need a ship to get there,” and then fell a little.
“Well, that’s not such a big favor. You can prolly take Tilden’s Nyad back planetside. Him and Gus and me have to ride the bus-ships down anyway, just to make sure they’re all in order.”
They made arrangements to meet on the landing dock where the Trimbles’ Nyad was stationed, and then Reece signed off the interface and turned to face Gideon and Hayden, who were standing identically, arms crossed, frowns deep, eyes dark. The only difference was that Hayden had to work at it while Gid was a natural.
“Seems like everybody’s gettin’ to help but us,” Gideon mused to Hayden.
“I have that feeling as well.”
“You can help me,” Reece said sharply as he impatiently pushed his way between them, “by letting me focus on what I’m trying to do.”
“That ain’t helpin’! That’s just stayin’ outta the way!” Reece shot Gideon a pointed look over his shoulder. “Aw, comon’, Cap’n—”
Nivy stepped out of the kitchen and met Reece in the middle of the room with a grim smile. She plucked at her frayed shirt with meaning and then turned around with her hands spread to show him exactly what he had to make presentable and essentially unrecognizable in less than two hours. Skinny, rings under her eyes, lank hair. Not that he was the foremost expert on grooming.
“We need a dress,” he decided, quickly losing confidence in his plan. “Probably a…really poofy one.”
“Leave me to take care of Nivy Girl,” Mordecai announced. “Gideon, get in here and keep your eye on the Vee so I can take Nivy to Madame Maraux’s.”
Hemming and hawing and stomping louder than was necessary, Gideon disappeared into the kitchen; by the sounds of his muffled growls, he was taking out his irritation on their trussed-up prisoner.
“Maraux’s won’t work. The Madame won’t have forgotten what happened last time Nivy came for a visit.” Reece was starting to feel a sort of hot panic boiling in the bottom of his stomach. There wasn’t enough time—they’d already lost twenty minutes just standing here!
“Oh,” Mordecai chucklingly put Nivy’s hand on his arm and led her from the room, “Hettie Maraux is an old acquaintance…you leave her to me.”
After they’d gone, and it was just Hayden and Reece in the sitting room, Reece lowered himself onto the sofa and put his face in his hands. A plan this slapdash couldn’t go smoothly—he was sure there was a rule somewhere that said so.
“What are you going to do?” Hayden asked quietly, sitting down beside him.
“Get as close to the duke as I can and stay there all night. At the first sign of trouble, I’ll just…” Reece shut his eyes. “I hope I’m wrong.”
“So do I.”
“But it makes too much sense. A public assassination on this scale would throw Honora into panic…and set up the perfect atmosphere for The Kreft to step in with their monarchy and save the day. The Vees will be the ones to do it. You didn’t hear them, at the dome. Talking about their last task before bringing their new order of justice to the light…this will be it.”
“And the duke? He’s just going to…let it happen?”
That was the question of the hour. The duke was the hardest, shrewdest person Reece had ever known; he wasn’t the type to roll over for anyone, even under (or especially under, in this case) threat of death. The duke Reece knew would have fought back hard after learning who Eldritch was and what The Kreft were doing. Not taken a bullet for their plan’s sake.
Maybe Reece was wrong.
Please, please let me be wrong.
The minute hand on Reece’s pocket watch seemed to move forward in leaps and bounds every time he glanced at it. How could jumping in Mordecai’s water closet have taken five whole minutes? Did using a thermal press on the breeches Hayden had fetched from the gentlemen’s clothing emporium really take twenty? That was nearly one half hour down already!
Embarrassingly enough, he had to have Hayden show him how the different pieces of his evening suit worked. Cotton undershirt, white dress shirt, green waistcoat, frock coat, handkerchief, breeches, stockings, boots, spats, funny little neck scarf that he learned was called a cravat…by the time he’d finished attaching Liem’s silver cufflinks to his sleeve, he was sweating. Hayden suggested getting undressed so he wouldn’t sully the suit before the masquerade, but he was kidding. Reece hoped.
At last, feeling like a clown and a half, Reece took his stand in the middle of the room and turned around under Hayden’s studious eye.
“You’ll pass,” Hayden said as if he was a great expert on this sort of thing. He was holding something behind his back—going by his face, something he knew Reece wouldn’t like. “But you’ll need to do something with your hair.” He held out a tonic in a red glass bottle, and Reece took it hesitantly.
“‘Captain Pleasant’s Hairstuffs for Gents’,” he read, revolted. “I am not putting anything on my head that’s made by a man named Captain Pleasant.”
He heard a muffled snorting from behind the kitchen door and imagined Gideon pressing his ear up against it, laughing.
Hayden refused to take the bottle back, crossing his arms mulishly. “It’s that or a top hat.”
“And I’m not wearing a top hat, I told you—”
“You’re the one so concerned with fitting in.”
“I’m going to stop an assassination! I think I can afford to be a little underdressed!”
“If you’re not going to let me help with anything else, you can let me do this much right!”
“Then do it right! Get me something that wasn’t made for girls!”
As Hayden fumbled for a comeback, Reece pulled his pocket watch out of his waistcoat, examined it, and swore. They needed to meet Po at the docks outside The Owl in less than an hour, and he couldn’t ride his bim there unless he wanted to show up at the masquerade wearing a film of dust, so that meant catching The Iron Horse’s late afternoon run. In fifteen minutes.
Nothing seemed to be where he had left it as he dashed around Mordecai’s. He wanted to wear his flight wings (still his bleeding “first feathers”) and was sure he’d left them on his morning jacket, but he’d seemed to have misplaced that too. Hayden removed his wrist straightener as an afterthought. Even though it still twinged to flex, Reece couldn’t afford to wear something that would set him apart from the other guests.
“Hey,” Gideon called from the kitchen door during one of Reece’s frantic passes, “here. These oughta help you some.”
He stretched out the most un-Gid-like thing Reece had ever seen him handle: a netted bag filled to its drawstring with colorful marbles. Gideon gently tipped some of the marbles into his hand. They were decorated with swirls like miniscule galaxies.
“Your generosity and resourcefulness is truly humbling,” Reece said dryly.
“They’re full’a burstpowder, genius.” Gideon put the marbles back into their pouch one at a time, his big fingers cautious. “One’a Mordecai’s oldest tricks. The marble masks the metal in the powder, makes it undetectable by magnomiters and the like. Throw one’a them and you’ll get about half the result of a regular burstpowder shell. And there ain’t no reason an upstandin’ citizen like yourself shouldn’t be carryin’ a bag’a marbles on his person.” He handed over the gift with a leer for Reece’s attire. “Just be sure to bring back the spares, Cap’n Unpleasant. Mordecai’ll be put out if I go givin’ away all his tricks.”
Mordecai and Nivy returned with only six minutes to spare. At least, Reece thought the girl with Mordecai was Nivy, but there wasn’t much to go off. The only similarity between the girl they had caught on Aurelia and the one in the silver gown on Mordecai’s arm was their black ribbon necklace.
“Go ahead darlin’, give us a spin!” Mordecai said as he backed away from Nivy a
nd stood in line with Hayden, Reece, and Gideon, who had a foot stopping the kitchen door from closing all the way. Mordecai, Reece noticed, smelled suspiciously of lilac perfume.
Looking like she wanted to laugh at herself, Nivy spun with faked enthusiasm. Reece wasn’t going to pretend to understand the dynamics of her dress or what this part or that part was called, but he knew pretty when he saw it. The gown had laces up its back, short sleeves that sat on the edges of her shoulders, and little pearls around the neckline. Her hair, curled and pinned over her shoulder, had not a lank strand to it.
Hayden gasped as Reece offered Nivy an ALP.
“If you can find someplace to keep this, you can carry it.”
Nivy stared at the gun thoughtfully, chewing the inside of her cheek, and then reached for it. Reece pulled back slightly and added, “I want your word. No unpleasant surprises,” before he let her take it for good.
“It’s just like one’a those stories,” Mordecai said dreamily. “Where the urchin gets to go to the ball and act like a princess.” He pulled out a celebratory cigar and struck a match against the wall. “Makes a man tearful.”
Po was waiting at the docks, sitting cross-legged on the rusty roof of her brother’s Nyad. She pushed her goggles out of her eyes and slid down onto the nose of the ship to get a good look at them—at Nivy in particular, Reece thought.
“You two look clever,” she called, swinging down to the ground with a sigh. “A smart match.” Her eyes lingered on Gid and Hayden. Mordecai had stayed behind to guard the Vee. “Are you two not goin’?”
Reece made his way under the Nyad’s wing and opened her creaky sliding door. For being a family of genius mechanics, the Trimbles’ sure had an old lugger for a ship.
“We weren’t invited.”
“You weren’t?” Po sounded delighted. “Oh, phew, I was scared I was the only one!”
Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) Page 24