His father paused, and then as he had in the library, reached out a hand and clasped the back of Reece’s neck. Reece got the feeling it was supposed to be a paternal gesture, but the hand gripped hard, stiff and cold.
“Reece,” the duke shook his head, “they already have.”
Quicker than Reece could react, the duke shoved back from him and brought up a sleek bronze hob. Reece stared down its barrel, almost cross-eyed.
“Get out,” the duke said. “Now. I don’t care where you go, but leave, leave before it’s too late.”
Angling his head so the gun wasn’t pointing quite so directly at his forehead, Reece snapped, “No! There’s never going to be a winner between The Kreft and everyone else if someone doesn’t take a stand. I’m not letting you die so they can take Honora and do whatever they please with her! That’s not sacrifice or suicide…it’s stupidity!”
As the track carried them past the fairy bulbs, Reece chanced a sideways glance. Nivy and the bag were nowhere to be seen.
“You know nothing of sacrifice.” His father scowled, his hand white on the grip of the hob. “I had to watch Genevieve die because I took the kind of stand you’re talking about. Watch her die, Reece. I as good as killed her! It’s the sort of pain no person should ever have to suffer, the sort of pain I would do anything to never feel again.”
The gun in Reece’s face slid out of focus as he stared blankly past it. But…Liem’s mother had died from a virus, something she’d contracted off-planet…she’d never—
More of The Kreft’s games.
“Now I’ve lost Liem to them, and you and Abigail are all they have left to use against me. I tried to spare you Liem and his mother’s fate…I tried to send you away. But you wouldn’t go. I had to protect you. If you were of no value to me, you couldn’t be used, you see?”
Reece felt as though the duke’s words had to travel a long distance to reach him; they sank in slowly, as if soaking through all the layers he’d built up. The duke gradually pulling out of his childhood…wanting to send him to Leto…never coming to apologize, letting the chasm between them stretch. All to protect Reece.
“Honora will do alright. It is the control The Kreft want, not the power of one planet, the control. It’s their whole purpose. It is who they are.” The duke suddenly shook himself and tightened the slack in his arm so that his hob was held level once more. “This is much bigger than the life of one duke. Much bigger than the fate of one planet, even. I am one of the only unfortunate ones. I was born into this position of power, and therefore I am either useful or expendable. Most people will never know the true power in Epimetheus. They will live. They will be happy. The world will go on.”
Reece’s thoughts came crashing back to Honora, to his father and the hob and the moment. Snow had gathered in the folds of his jacket, accumulated in his hair.
“You think that’s living?” he asked quietly. “You think they prefer to live in ignorance, never knowing that their sons and fathers go off to die in a war that’s all part of someone’s machinations? You think they’re really happier, not knowing?”
The duke was looking at him, not with surprise, but something close to it. “I think they’re safer.”
Reece shook his head. “They should have the choice. Being safe and being happy aren’t the same thing. They should be able to trade one for the other, if they want. They should be given the chance to fight.”
“Charles was right about you, young Mr. Sheppard,” someone behind Reece said ominously.
Reece twisted, and with a kick in his gut counted four armed Veritas blocking the garden gate. The portly Robert Gustley stood in their midst, looking grim but satisfied, his enormous mustache twitching.
“Arrogant, predictable, and too nosy for your own good,” Gustley finished.
“Mr. Gustley,” the duke began, but Gustley cut him off with a swift, chopping gesture. The duke darkened angrily. A Vee stepped forward and confiscated his hob.
“Duke Sheppard must make his appearance at the skywaltz. Escort him there,” Gustley instructed the Vee to his right. “As for the Palatine Second, Charles wishes to see him on the bridge.”
“Good,” Reece snapped, and Gustley blubbered in surprise at the interruption. “I want to see Charles too, Ghastly.”
The duke growled in his throat and made a move in Reece’s direction, but what he’d intended, Reece would never know. The Veritas moved forward, dividing the two of them with easy, reptilian grace. His arms in the clutches of two towering Vees, Reece watched as his father was led from the garden, despite his “escort”, looking completely in control. He never looked back.
He had been trying to protect Reece all along. It would take time for that to sink in…time Reece might not have.
Now it was just him, his two Vee guards, and Gustley. Gustley seemed downright gleeful about what Reece was sure he thought a daring capture. He bounced on the fronts of his feet, his hands behind his back, the cupped rim of his bowler catching snowflakes like a gutter.
“Come along, Mr. Sheppard,” he said.
Reece went peacefully, following the secretary across the twilit grounds. He cast around in his mind for a plan only to come up empty-handed. It felt like he was back at The Owl on a testing day, staring down at a blank piece of parchment and trying to conjure an answer to an essay he’d forgotten to study for. Try as he might, he couldn’t invent something out of thin air this time. He needed something, anything to work with. Nivy was a start. She was out there, and she had a gun.
Gustley and the Vees took him to the bow of the ship, where a hatch opened into a vertical translocator lit by soft golden light. Reece stepped onto the translocator platform and looked up the long, narrow shaft that climbed to the bridge of The Jester. Soft cello music played out of a gold phonograph horn attached to the platform’s handrail. As Reece, the Vees, and Gustley began their ascent, Reece recognized the last few chipper bars of “Dr. Silverbee’s Danger Emporium” and, looking at the straight faces around him, had to fight the insane urge to laugh.
The translocator rattled to a stop at the top of the shaft with a final gush of dewy steam. Gustley opened the hatch with an effortful grunt and stepped onto the bridge, chest puffed out and straining against the buttons of his waistcoat. The bridge was a luxurious oval room, its front wall a domed oval window, like a bubble containing the sprawling flightpanel where four more Vees were seated. Reece’s shoes sank slightly as he stepped onto the plush scarlet carpet. He glanced up and saw his own face, slightly warped, staring back at him from the mirrored ceiling.
“We have him,” Gustley declared to the room at large. He jerked his chin at Reece’s guards, and they shoved him into one of the crew chairs lining the back wall. “Take the ship up.”
The Vees at the flightpanel made no sign they had heard Gustley, but one began toggling controls on the panel nonetheless. The sparkling chandelier hanging from the ceiling gently jangled as the heliocraft’s engine began to wake.
Jaw clenched, Reece stared out the bulging bridge window, watching trees sink out of the picture as stars slid in. He jumped slightly as the door beside his chair groaned open, a set of bony fingers curling around its edge. Charles Eldritch quietly entered and closed the door behind him with a gentle push. This was the first time Reece had faced him knowing what he truly was. An alien, a tyrant.
“I am impressed, it is true,” Eldritch began without preamble. He turned and faced Reece with his hands clasped together in front of his chest, as if he might begin singing. “I might have known you’d be like Liem, thirsty for knowledge to the point of recklessness.”
At Liem’s name, something inside Reece burned. He leaned forward in his seat, following Eldritch with his eyes as the headmaster moseyed across the bridge. “And you had him killed for it.”
“Killed? Hardly. The Kreft never waste their resources, Mr. Sheppard.” Eldritch held up his hands and made a shushing sound as Reece opened his mouth. “Oh, I’m not going to kill you either
.” Crossing the bridge, he doubled over and tapped a long fingernail against Reece’s forehead. “First, we must mine, mine the recesses of your brain for…what?”
Reece stared.
“For memories!” Eldritch answered himself with relish. “Knowledge in the form of sweet, unblemished memories. You see, you, like Brother Liem, are a resource of the most distinct sort. You are a recording device that I have been eagerly awaiting to reach its capacity. I dare say we are nearly there. Gustley.”
Gustley waddled forward, digging in his jacket. He snuffled his mustache and then made a noise of victory as he pulled from the recesses of his pockets a coin-sized brass disc with six crooked arms. It looked like a tiny insect—the kind you’d rather not find in your bed sheets. Reece leaned back in his chair, trying to make the motion look nonchalant.
“As with any mining expedition,” Eldritch gingerly took the disc in hand, “there are tools we must exploit to achieve maximum efficiency. This Spinner is the first. With it, we brush aside the dirt that hides, reveal the shape of our prize. But for the second stage of mining, we require a more precise tool.”
Reece felt the air leave his lungs in a rush as Eldritch said quietly, “Sophie Rice will be our second tool if you should fail to be generous with what you tell me, Reece.”
Anger and desperation and panic fell on Reece all at once; for a moment, he wanted to run, to not have the chance to sell anything he knew to Eldritch. But the last two emotions must have cancelled each other out, because all he felt was anger when he said in a clear if strained voice, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Eldritch smiled blandly. “You will.”
He took the disc and pressed it to Reece’s temple.
The pain was dull but ongoing, the throb of a needle in a vein, pulsing and aching. Reece lost awareness of his body; he didn’t know whether his hands were trying to rip the golden bug off his face, or if he had slumped unconscious in his chair. In contrast, he was certain he’d never been so aware of his mind before, of all its sparks and emissions and messages. It was as though the bug on his temple were a drain, and all his memories were being sucked out of their crevices and swept into a whirlpool he watched swirl past in a blur.
He saw Nivy’s crash site as if peering again through the boughs of an evergreen; he relived racing through the Atlasian Wilds and realizing his hob was gone. The twenty minute conversation he’d had with Liem in the tower streamed through his mind’s eye in mere seconds, and then he was remembering finding Liem’s bedroom and study in ruins. He watched his hand pick up the curiously-placed cufflinks. He felt like a small force, powerless to the flood of memories.
The memories took on a theme: Nivy. Every conversation Reece and Nivy had shared zipped through Reece’s brain like someone was pulling them by a string. In the sped-up memories, Nivy’s gesturing hands were a smudge of movement.
Something stung Reece’s temple, and his awareness of the pain brought him back to the present, to the bridge of The Jester and Eldritch. Gasping as if he’d been holding his breath—he might’ve been—he sagged forward in his chair and propped his arms on his knees. The spot where the gold bug had fixed itself throbbed like a swelling bruise.
Eldritch was turning the bug between his fingers, studying Reece with a frown. As Reece pantingly peeled his sweat-soaked shirt from his skin, Eldritch raised the device and pushed it against his temple like he was pressing a button. His dark eyelashes fluttered over the whites of his eyes; his mouth fell slightly open. After a full ten seconds, the bug popped off seemingly of its own accord and plopped neatly into Eldritch’s ready hand.
Reece’s thoughts felt scattered, as if a whirlpool really had passed between them. But there was an upside to the mental chaos. By picking and choosing between Reece’s memories, Eldritch had left him a clear trail.
“You’ll—never find her,” Reece said, still trying to catch his breath. “Whatever it is you think you can get from her, I hope you can live without it.” He chuckled hoarsely. “Well, on second thought—”
Something hit his cheek; the blow felt like it should’ve unhinged his head from his neck. He toppled right over the arm of his chair and collapsed to the ground. If his head had hurt before, now it felt like someone had taken to it enthusiastically with a hammer.
Groaning, he rolled onto his back and stared up at Eldritch. It couldn’t have been him. One of the Vees must have dashed in and struck. Eldritch’s two skinny arms combined shouldn’t have been able to deliver that much force.
Then Eldritch reached down, tsking, and took Reece’s jacket in a fistful. He jerked. Reece not only rose to his feet, but beyond. His toes dangled over the carpet as Eldritch held him aloft. By one hand.
“Charles Eldritch,” the Vee at the flightpanel said in a scratchy voice, “there has been a malfunction in one of the heat vents. The pipes—”
Eldritch’s gaze twitched to the window and back. “We do not seem to be losing altitude.”
“No.”
“Then I do not wish to be interrupted.” Pausing, Eldritch looked around the room, ignoring the hand holding a stunned and struggling Reece. “Hmm. Miss Sophie should be here by now. Gustley, toddle off and see what’s keeping our little friend, won’t you?”
Nodding his many chins, Gustley scurried to the translocator hatch and disappeared down the shaft.
Reece’s heart was pounding at unprecedented speeds. Choking, he gasped, “Been taking the Vees’ serum, Eldritch? Still power-hungry, after everything?”
Eldritch threw back his head and laughed. For an instant the laughter sounded dual-toned, harmonized, as if there were two different people laughing together inside Eldritch’s one body. It sent goosebumps rioting down Reece’s arms.
Eldritch suddenly heaved him across the room; he crashed to the floor in a rolling sprawl, knocked breathless. He felt two of the burstpowder marbles tumble out of his pocket and skitter across the carpet.
“Is that really necessary, Headmaster?” a familiar voice said from the doorway.
There was a cold, plunging sensation in Reece’ stomach. The voice. He’d thought...but hadn’t the duke said…
His elbows shaking, Reece rose to his hands and knees and dragged up his heavy head. The man standing in the doorway wore a golden mask that covered his full face, but he had familiar eyes, brown eyes, eyes like Reece’s…only blacker. He was holding a windswept Nivy pinned with her arms behind her back.
Eldritch gasped with delight, clasping his hands together. “Nivy! My dear! Well, doesn’t this make short of our chase?”
Reece was still staring at the golden-faced man, thunderstruck. He could be hallucinating, he supposed. His head had suffered enough recent trauma.
But no, when the man reached up a gloved hand and pushed the mask to the back of his head, it was Liem looking down at him. Reece’s brain was still muddled; he couldn’t make out individual emotions anymore, just feel the wild rush of them all, like a torrent inside of him.
“She must have somehow recognized me as I boarded the ship,” Liem was saying in answer to a question Reece hadn’t heard. “She pulled me aside and asked for my help. For him, I assume,” Liem nodded at Reece. The offhand acknowledgement twisted the imaginary knife stuck in Reece’s back. “She didn’t seem surprised to see me. I suppose she must have suspected I was being kept alive as a tool against the duke.”
“Perhaps,” said Eldritch thoughtfully, stroking his chin. He seemed amused. “Or perhaps not. Nivy always was admirably clever. I would not be surprised at all to learn she revealed herself to you because she knew you would bring her here, to me and to Reece.”
Reece met Nivy’s urgent stare. He couldn’t put the energy into reading her thoughts. He was confused to the point of lightheadedness—though again, that could be the head trauma—and all his willpower was going into containing the storm building power inside of him.
“My plan hasn’t gone too far awry after all,” Eldritch mused. He suddenly chuckled to h
imself and performed a little pirouette. “Oh, Nivy, Nivy, Nivy! I should never have doubted you! Bring her in, Liem, I want your brother to see something.”
When Nivy and Liem drew close enough, Eldritch reached out his bony but, as Reece vividly remembered, unnaturally-strong hands and caught her by the shoulders. He turned her to face Reece. She was snarling, her teeth bared.
“As you have deduced, Mr. Sheppard, Nivy is not from Honora, nor any of our near-lying neighbors. Her people are from The Ice Ring, an outlying cluster of frigid planets on the other side of the sun. They call themselves The Heron. And allow me to say, Nivy, that your audacious people have been a thorn in The Kreft’s foot since the day we crossed into the Epimetheus Galaxy.”
“Headmaster, is this the time?” Liem asked, throwing an unreadable look at the Vees by the flightpanel. With his eyes roving, Reece was able to study him. He looked thinner, paler, his unkempt hair longer, though it seemed to be falling out in places. Good. Sleepless nights were the least of what he had coming to him.
Eldritch’s attention wasn’t on Liem, but on Nivy’s neck, and the ribbon ringing its base. His fingers skimmed across it, and Reece’s anger flared up out of the mass of his other emotions, sharp and invigorating. He sat up a little straighter.
“You once wondered, Mr. Sheppard,” Eldritch said breathily, “if Nivy was a slave. You concluded that she wasn’t. That she had been Collared by her people—The Heron—to protect their secrets. You were correct.”
Reece didn’t ask how he knew this. Eldritch had browsed his memories of Nivy, but Reece was certain he’d eavesdropped on his conversations before now. Kneeling, Reece grabbed hold of the silver cufflinks on his sleeve, ripped them off, and cast them at Liem’s feet. He should have realized when the alarm had gone off at the gate—those cufflinks Liem had left behind hadn’t been a clue, they’d been a trap. They were broadcaster links, relaying everything they heard to a receiver likely in Eldritch’s possession at this very moment. Reece scanned Eldritch through squinted eyes, and homed in on the gaudy ring on his middle finger.
Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) Page 31