Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  “Were they—did they—” He couldn’t say what he wanted to aloud, not with Aitch in a wreck at his feet.

  Tremblin’ as he wiped his brow, Mr. Adams shook his head. “They were arrested, I don’t know why, but I don’t think they were harmed. They had been staying with us these last few days…I think Hugh might have known this was a possibility, but all the same…”

  Down on the floor, Hayden’s voice hitched in a sob. “He knew,” he said hoarsely, not lookin’ up. “He knew because I told him it was a possibility. I knew it was. This is my fault.”

  Gideon started pacin’, blockin’ out Po’s brothers’ whispers and Agnes’s perturbed stare. He didn’t even care if they were listenin’.”What did the Vees say? Tell me exactly what they said.”

  “They just recited their terms,” said Mr. Adams as Hayden let out another low moan. “And said to let Reece know—”

  “Reece?” Gideon barked. “Not Aitch or me?”

  “They just said Reece.”

  For the first time, Hayden glanced up, his red eyes clearin’ as he realized, “Eldritch. This has to be Eldritch’s doing.”

  Still pacin’ with his arms crossed, Gideon did some quick work in his head, thoughtfully tappin’ the barrel’a his revolver against his side. Truth be told, it was hard to think when his mind kept gettin’ caught up in fantasies’a huntin’ Eldritch down with a bucket full’a that flesh-eatin’ acid foam.

  “Reece was right. Tonight’s the night Eldritch is gonna try to off the duke.” Someone behind him gasped. “Eldritch knew there was a chance Reece might guess as much and wanted to distract him. Give him somethin’ else to do tonight. So he sent the Vees after Sophie and Hugh.”

  Mr. Adam was starin’ into the lens with a frightened and befuddled expression. “I don’t understand, what do you—”

  As he passed the interface, Gideon reached and shut it off so that Mr. Adams disappeared with a beep and a blink. It was for his own good.

  “Only the Veritas were too late,” Hayden croaked despairingly. “Eldritch didn’t know Reece had already left for the masquerade.”

  Somethin’ seemed off about that, Gideon thought as he scratched his head. He was missin’ somethin’. Brainstormin’ like this was Reece’s strongpoint, not his.

  “The Veritas are never too late,” Agnes suddenly said in a grim voice.

  Gideon paused and stared slowly back at her as the cogs in his mind lumbered into place and the wheels started turnin’ a little faster. She returned his stare with a kind’a subdued alertness, her mouth pulled tight so the wrinkles around her mouth tripled in number.

  “She’s right,” he said. “The Veritas could’a taken Sophie and Hugh any time today if they wanted to occupy Reece. The Vees came when they did because they did know he’d already gone.”

  Hayden said in a tired voice, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Yeah, it does,” Gideon snapped. “If Eldritch found out he would be too late to stop Reece from bein’ at the masquerade, he would try to put somethin’ in place to distract Reece at the masquerade.”

  “Following that train of thought, if you should try to contact Reece and tell him your friends have been taken, you will be serving the headmaster’s plan,” Agnes said darkly. So much for keepin’ everythin’ quiet.

  Findin’ some strength, Hayden stood, holdin’ the wall for support. “We have to! We’re three hours away from Emathia—we’ll never make it in time ourselves! Who knows what the Vees will do to Sophie and Father if Reece doesn’t go for them!”

  “That’s leadin’ Reece right into a trap,” Gideon argued.

  Glarin’ at him, Hayden staggered over to the log interface and started dialin’ it up. Gideon lunged for him and caught his jacket up in two fists.

  “Think, Aitch! You’ll be givin’ Reece into Eldritch’s hands!”

  “I’m not letting them be taken to that place!”

  “We don’t know that’ll happen!”

  “I’m not willing to take the chance!”

  Growlin’, Gideon roped his arms around Hayden to heave him bodily away from the interface. It worked for a second—then Hayden wedged a hand up between them and dug his thumb into Gideon’s arm just below the elbow, and then that whole arm went totally limp, like it’d been struck by a lightnin’ cap.

  “What the bleedin’—” Gideon roared.

  As Hayden tried wrigglin’ out from under his good arm, he brought up his knee and let him ram himself into it in his scramble for the interface. Gideon would’a thought that’d be the end’a it, but he was wrong. Doubled up and wheezin’, Hayden whirled around, lookin’ slightly crazed, and lashed out with just his fingertips. The fingers hit the soft spot between the shoulder and collarbone’a Gideon’s good arm, and then that went limp as a rag too.

  “Quit doin’ that!” he yelled as his revolver clattered uselessly to the floor.

  Hayden turned once more towards the interface. Gideon stuck out his leg and swept both his feet so that he landed with a shockin’ smack face-down on the cement.

  “Stop it right now!” Po suddenly shouted, hurryin’ into the empty space between them. Her brown eyes had gone as big around as cricket balls. “Shame on you both, fightin’ when your friends are in trouble. If you lose your wits now, Reece isn’t gonna have no one to help him!”

  Flexin’ his stubbornly-numb fingers, Gideon scowled down at his feet. He could see Aitch at the corner’a his vision, nursin’ a bloody nose and lookin’ meek.

  “Now,” Po went on in a timid voice, hands still raised as if to deflect any blows that might fly her way, “I can get you to Honora in under two hours.”

  For the first time, her brothers spoke up from the background, soundin’ none-too-happy.

  “What are you bleedin’ goin’ on about now—”

  “Po, don’t be a ginghoo, you ain’t—”

  “And just how do you propose to do that, Miss Trimble?” Agnes asked, puttin’ her fists on her hips. “Do you happen to have a Trixt 2-Four hidden in your jumpsuit? Perhaps a lattice power conduit in your braid?”

  At first Po gulped, but then she dropped her hands and pushed back her shoulders like she was ready to fight for her territory. “The emergency modifications we made on Bus-ship One could do it.”

  Agnes laughed a cold laugh. “Oh, they could do it alright, if they don’t make your engine combust first!”

  “They’ll hold, I know they will, I ran the simulations myself.”

  “You’re not goin’,” Gus said right over top’a her, Tilden noddin’ his agreement. Tilden was the older’a the two, shorter and stockier, but anyone who thought they could push Gus’s buttons had another thing comin’ to them.

  Flushin’, Po turned to her brothers with her hands on her hips. “You can try and stop me if you like, but I’d bet if Da was here, he’d say I was right. And don’t think one’a you is gonna volunteer for the job,” she added when Tilden opened his mouth, lookin’ cross. “I made the mods, I’m the best one to fly it, and you both know that’s a fact!”

  Buttin’ in, Gideon grunted, “Bus-ship One?”

  Agnes shot him a witherin’ look. “For carting The Owl’s staff from Caldonia to campus.”

  “They call it The Tutor Taxi,” Po explained in a gentler voice. “And I know it can get us there in under two hours.”

  “Two hours is still a long time,” Hayden whispered from the floor.

  Gideon glanced at him, saw his head bowed in defeat, and decided that for now, he would forgive him for the temporary paralysis in both his arms.

  “It’s less than three,” Po said firmly as she turned and started climbin’ the ladder stretchin’ up to all levels’a the warehouse.

  Tilden and Gus moved forward as if to stop her, but Gideon took a step in their direction, glarin’ threats. He wasn’t gonna shoot them—after all, he didn’t have any hands just this second—but he could always get in the way. He was a pretty big obstacle, even rendered armless.

&nb
sp; “I’m sorry about your arms,” Hayden said quietly, comin’ to stand beside him as they waited on Po, a scrap’a handkerchief up either nostril. “They should be back to normal shortly.”

  Gideon made a noise’a sorts and wasn’t sure whether there was goodwill behind it or not.

  “Do you have a plan? Are we going to the Veritas’s base?”

  “We’re goin’ to the masquerade.” Seein’ another outburst gatherin’ power on Hayden’s face, Gideon added, “Because that’s where I think they’ll be, Aitch.”

  Hayden blew out a breath’a relief, but Gideon couldn’t hear it; somewhere in the warehouse, an ancient engine was grumblin’ loudly to life.

  “Why wouldn’t they take them to the base? That’s where they…they…”

  “Listen, you gotta understand how a brain like Eldritch’s works,” Gideon said impatiently, followin’ the Trimble brothers and Agnes as they started marchin’ towards the source’a the grumblin’, their heads together. “I think I’ve got his number. He can do torture, yeah, but that’s not why he took Soph and your da. He took them on impulse, to use them to get Reece’s attention off the duke. He’s too…dirt, what’s the word…he’s too practical to torture just to torture, he’s gotta have a reason for it. The thing is, he knows Reece too well. Reece would fly off the handle if he found out Soph and Hugh were bein’ hurt at all. Eldritch doesn’t want that, not at the masquerade. He wants him distracted. On top’a that, Soph and your da are no good to him damaged.” Pausin’, he added in an undertone, “I ain’t gonna let anythin’ happen to them, Aitch. They’re like my family too.”

  Hayden smiled gratefully and apologized again for the state’a his arms.

  They paused and stood back as the rectangular bus-ship nearest to the ceilin’ backed outta its spot. Dust eddied around them, blown by the ship’s burners. As they watched, the bay door on the warehouse’s roof scrolled back to show a square’a inky blue sky.

  Po’s voice, amplified by the ship’s exterior megaphone, called, “Come on up the ladder, I’ve got the hatch open for ya!”

  Gideon nodded at the nearest ladder and had Aitch start up first, to give his arms that much more time to recuperate. He’d gotten the grip back in his hands, that was what mattered most.

  “Allow me to be candid,” said Agnes as she, Tilden, and Gus surrounded Gideon at the foot’a the steel ladder. The boys’ freckled faces were hard as thunderheads and made him readjust the weak hold he had on his gun. “If Po returns in less than perfect condition, I will personally weld you to the hull of a garbage disposer and send you out into the Voice of Space, understood?”

  Outta Gus, Tilden, and Agnes, Agnes was the one Gideon would least like to meet in a dark alley, even if he had his revolver, especially if she had a thermal torch.

  He climbed the ladder as fast as he could so his hands didn’t have to think so hard about holdin’ on. All the way up at the ceilin’, Bus-ship One, which looked newer than all its brothers with a fresh black paintjob, hovered a foot above the top’a the ladder. Aitch stood in the mouth’a its open hatch, already a mild green shade. Gideon kicked off the top rung and landed with a few stumblin’ steps as Po heard him arrive and started pullin’ the ship outta port.

  “You’ll want to get up here and strap in,” Po called, her white head visible through the circular window in the cockpit’s door.

  Staggerin’, Gideon and Aitch joined her in the smallish room, Gideon takin’ the co-pilot’s chair, Hayden sittin’ in the spare pull-down seat against the wall. As soon as they were in place, Po flipped a switch on the flightpanel that turned off the overhead photon dome and left them with only the colorful scatterin’a lit buttons on the panel to dampen the dark.

  “Seal and bolt the door,” Po instructed as she fastened a harness over both her shoulders. “If the engine does combust, we might be able to coast out the crash in here and let the rest’a the ship burn up.”

  Gideon spun the handle on the door till he felt the sealants lock in place with a soft hiss. Hayden was goin’ back and forth between puttin’ his head between his knees to fight his oncomin’ airsickness and leanin’ it back to slow his nosebleed.

  The bus-ship vibrated without stop as it began tiltin’ its nose towards the ceilin’, fillin’ the canopy window’a the cockpit with a view’a the blue-black sky they were about to go crashin’ into (hopefully not literally).

  “This is gonna be rough,” Po said quietly. Her throat sounded dry, and she swallowed. Gideon glanced at her hands, grippin’ the yoke as if afraid to let go. “But I know the mods will hold.”

  “Take us to the lake before you take us into space.”

  “Why?” Po and Aitch said together.

  Gideon pulled the paper hat he’d crafted outta poster earlier in the day and sat it on the flightpanel. “I’ve got a plan, is why.”

  XX

  The Gala of the Solar Cycle

  Reece and Nivy allowed themselves to be ushered with all the rest through Emathia’s front door and down one of the side corridors that Reece knew led to the ballroom. Every surface in the mansion shimmered under candlelight, polished to the very last mote of dust. Abigail’s extravagant flair decorated everything. A red carpet had been laid like a road to the ballroom, tall antique candle trees rooted on either side. Paintings of past dukes loomed in the shadows, fifteen feet tall.

  The ballroom itself, while better lit than the rest of the mansion, had a sort of gauzy golden glow cast by the photon chandelier hanging from the domed ceiling. The air was warm and sleepy, helped on by the burning hearth dominating the far wall of the room. A stringed orchestra played to the left of the fire in matching gold masks that made their faces identical, impassive. To the right of the fire was the grand staircase that spilled out onto the black marble floor from the balconies above.

  “Stay close to me,” Reece said to Nivy in an undertone as he led her to one of the circular tables set about the room. It was draped in white and set with crystal goblets, plates, and an unrealistic amount of forks in all different sizes. “We’ll stay put until the duke and Abigail make their appearance, probably there.” He pointed at the staircase. “Then it’s just a matter of—ow! What?”

  Nivy, who had kicked him none too gently in the shin, pointed with her eyes. A square-shouldered man with a ruddy, boyish face was heading their way with a blonde in a viciously red gown on his arm.

  “Oh, bleeding—” Reece began and then swallowed dryly, grabbing for his goblet, which a waiter in green had just topped off with something blue and steaming.

  “Reece,” Scarlet greeted pleasantly enough. The eyes behind her feathered mask flitted to Nivy and back. “How wonderful to see you. I believe you remember Lucius Tobin?”

  Lucius smiled and snatched Reece’s limp hand out of the air, shaking it wildly. “Good to see you, old boy, good to see you! It’s been ages, what? You’re looking swell!”

  “Yes—it—so are—” Reece blundered. His hand felt like it’d been caught in a clamp. “Scarlet, Lucius, this is Orpha. Orpha is from Olbia.”

  “Orpha from Olbia,” Scarlet repeated thoughtfully. “What’s your surname, Orpha? My family has a vacation house in Olbia, I wonder if—”

  “Trimble,” Reece blurted. His hands were sweating; the one that Lucius had returned felt like it was swelling. “We met through my uncle. She’s in the theatre.” He winced as Nivy kicked him in the shin again.

  “An actress!” Lucius exclaimed. “How positively novel!”

  “Quaint,” Scarlet agreed. Was it Reece’s imagination, it did she sound unconvinced? “I wonder if we might join you for the dinner. Are these seats taken?” Before Reece could say yes, she had circled the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down beside him.

  “It’s funny,” she murmured as Lucius sat and helped himself to a steaming crystal goblet. Her voice was nearly lost in the rambling monologue he was cheerfully delivering to Nivy. “Last I heard, you had a notice on your head and a warning not to return to Honora.�
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  He should’ve known better. Nothing escaped Scarlet—she was like a bird ferreting in the dirt for worms. “Is that common knowledge?”

  Scarlet studied him from behind her red mask before slowly shaking her head. “No. I only heard from Mr. Rice. When you sent me that log this afternoon, I didn’t really think you were serious about coming. What are you doing here, Reece?”

  It was Lucius who saved him from answering. As he finished telling Nivy an apparently uproarious story, he turned to Scarlet and put a comfortable arm around her shoulders, still chuckling. “Scarlet, darling, I was just telling Orpha about the time we were out nightcat hunting and old Mr. Drummond fell off his horse, do you remember?”

  “I remember,” said Scarlet tonelessly.

  “Oh, it was just wild, wild! Poor fellow, but of course, he should have known better than to try to take that jump, he hadn’t nearly the experience for it. I told him, I said, ‘Ambrose, this is really for the more experienced rider, perhaps you should just watch this go around’, but wouldn’t you know, he scoffed at me and went ahead and tried it anyways. Got what he deserved with that broken tailbone, didn’t he! He’ll leave the difficult stuff to the real riders next time, won’t he?”

  Scarlet glared at Reece as he raised his eyebrows at her. Nivy looked a bit shell-shocked, and was gripping one of her forks as if taking a necessary precaution.

  Oblivious, Lucius tipped back his goblet and finished out his draught with a gulp. He smacked his lips contently. “I do say, this is good stuff, really classy, don’t you think? I’ll go fetch a servant to bring us a bottle.”

  “Spiffing,” Reece said, suppressing a laugh, and winced as Nivy and Scarlet tag-teamed and kicked his throbbing shin one after the other.

  Lucius hadn’t even pushed back his chair before the photon chandelier dimmed and the orchestra died out on a high, suspenseful note. Reece craned his neck to get a clear view of the staircase as a globe of light appeared on the steps.