Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) (41 page)

“The war began shortly after our arrival in the Epimetheus. We were stronger, but The Heron…they were resilient. In a final, desperate feat of sacrifice, they destroyed their weapon. In return, we enslaved them. But there has always been a strong underground movement against us, and The Heron,” Eldritch glared down at Nivy with a pitying shake of his head, “they have a way of breeding rebellion wherever they can. Thirty-five years ago, we received intelligence that the weapon had
not
been destroyed….merely moved, perhaps hidden.”

“That’s why you’re building Honora’s armies,” Reece realized. His voice sounded rusty. “For your war. In case The Heron bring out this thing…whatever it is.”

Eldritch continued pacing languidly across the bridge, shaking his head. “Why, that’s not it at all. How much more satisfying—how much more justified!—for The Kreft to use The Heron’s own weapon to destroy them. Then we shall have come full circle and ended the war as it should have ended long ago. There is a
rightness
in it, is there not? We simply must find where their foolish ancestors hid the weapon before they do. Mmm. But you are right about one thing. The final battle is coming. It is time for Epimetheus to be subdued, time for The Kreft to finish what we began. We cannot leave until Epimetheus is ours, Reece. It is…how would you say…a part of our
peculiar
genetic code.” He smiled unpleasantly. “There is a saying, among Kreft. To conquer in life is life to be conquered.”

With a sudden twitch, Eldritch raised his arm and shot Nivy again, so that she crumpled in a shivering heap at his feet. Reece lurched out of his chair, and when Liem caught him by the sleeve, elbowed him as hard in the nose as he could. The crunching crack implied a satisfyingly messy break.

“I sent Liem to Nivy, after her landing,” Eldritch continued calmly, with only a disdainful smile for Reece and Liem’s scuffle. “She was unconscious when he found her, so he took her back to Emathia. When she woke, he tried to offer himself as a friend, someone she could trust. He kept her safe at Emathia under the guise of being his fiancé. In time, I planned on learning her secrets using Liem as a filter. Only she didn’t trust him.

“I knew at this point of your spying, Reece; I had your gun, proof of your eavesdropping at the crash site. How interesting, I thought. Reece Sheppard, the younger, rebellious brother, infamous for his choice in inferior friends. I suddenly knew that where Liem had failed with Nivy, you could succeed. You were known and even popular for collecting friends no one else would claim.

“How true you were to your reputation! That day you came to Emathia and met Nivy, I had already laid plans to have her passed to you. The duke was showing suspicion regarding Liem’s involvement, so having Liem fake his own kidnapping served a dual purpose. He could wait in the shadows while The Kreft prepared his throne, meanwhile passing Nivy to you, who had promised she would be looked after. Only Nivy also had her suspicions about Liem—so when she realized he had been taken, she ran. It nearly ruined everything.

“Then,” Eldritch sighed almost nostalgically, “by marvelous chance, you met up again on Aurelia. And I began to listen, very carefully, for Nivy opening up to you. You carried the cufflinks nearly everywhere with you—they worked better than I could have dreamed. It was imperative I obtain the information Nivy was hiding within her person. If anyone knew the location of The Heron’s weapon, she would.

“I only had three clues to work with.” Eldritch counted them out on his long fingers. “One, the ancient manuscript that the first Heron spy had brought with him to Honora, which The Kreft have never been able to translate. Two, Nivy’s gun, a broken antique that I knew from an informant had always been carefully guarded by The Heron underground. Three, the fact that both Heron spies had come to Honora. Why?

“I allowed the book to fall into your hands, Reece, so Nivy would find it. I thought perhaps she might be able to translate it. I had no other leads. I had the gun taken from your Pan friend on the road, but it seemed a useless relic, and revealed nothing. But I knew it was important, because twice Nivy brought it up with you, wanting to know what had become of it.”

Suddenly, Eldritch reached inside his dark coat and pulled out Nivy’s strange gun. In the bright light of the bridge, Reece could see how closely its design imitated Aurelia’s. Sleek and classic and one of a kind. In Eldritch’s large hand, its bizarre shape looked more than ever like a skeleton key.

“The most important information I have obtained using Nivy’s trust of you,” Eldritch lovingly ran a single finger down the gun’s slender barrel, “lies in the fact Aurelia and Aurelius apparently once belonged to The Heron. We never knew. The two airships
were sent out from The Ice Ring before the war was over, before we had fully assimilated ourselves into the Epimetheus’s populace. We had always assumed, along with the Honorans, that the two airships belonged to their history. And this curious gun…how would your friend the Pan say it? ‘A dead ringer for Aurelia’s design’?

“Here is what I am going to do, Reece.” Eldritch finally turned and faced Reece, stowing Nivy’s gun in favor of the small silver pistol of The Veritas’s. Nivy braced herself on the floor. “I myself have an engagement to keep. The skywaltz will not begin until I take my place among the dancers, and the duke cannot die until the skywaltz begins. So I must go, and leave you to do my work for me.”

Reece watched, confused, as Eldritch sat the lightning gun down a short distance from Nivy, who stared at it longingly.

“Sophie Rice will be here any moment now. I am going to have The Veritas begin torturing her in slow increments, and you will watch.”

Reece couldn’t do anything but stare blankly at the gun, a feel of nausea churning in the pit of his stomach.

“And when you cannot take the girl’s screams any longer—for she will not die quickly, Reece, I promise you that—you will pick up this gun, and you will question Nivy for me, and you will not stop until you think I might be satisfied. And if I am not…” Eldritch stooped, putting his long nose right up to Reece’s, and Reece heard again that strange duality in his voice as he said, “I will bring up Sophie’s brother, and I will bring up the Pan, and I will bring up the little mechanic girl, and they will all
suffer
. Acutely.”

Straightening, dusting the front of his jacket primly, Eldritch beckoned to Liem. “Come, Liem—you will not want to see this side of your brother, I think.”

Without a backward glance, The Kreft glided from the room, and Liem, still clasping his bloody face, stumbled after him. His eyes met Reece’s for a split second, and they looked…sorry was too strong a word. They looked unhappy. He didn’t like what was being forced on Reece, but he was above helping.

Reece knew this much. Liem may not be sorry now, but he was going to be. That side of Reece Eldritch had mentioned? Liem
was
going to see it.

After a moment of fuming, Reece looked up at the Vee beside him and nodded. The Vee let him slide from the chair onto the floor and crawl to the silver gun. The Veritas closed in around him, too many in number to take with one little lightning cap gun. He let the gun lay on the floor, ignoring it for the time being, though it might come in useful later. Instead, he reached for Nivy.

She shrunk back from him, pulling her knees up to her chest. For the first time in a while, he could imagine her as a wild creature, something untamed. She thought he was going to turn the gun on her; so did The Veritas. Maybe anyone would think that. But it hadn’t crossed his mind.

“Nivy,” he said quietly. “We’re running out of time…both of us.”

Looking out from between two lengths of dark hair, Nivy’s face, her expression of stunned betrayal, cleared. She shakily rose to her knees, The Veritas crowding her too now, making a tight circle around her and Reece and the silver gun. Reece could feel their eagerness. If he failed to shoot Nivy, they could lay hands on Sophie. Either way, as spectators or participants, they won. Reece’s hate gave him steady nerves and a clarity of mind. Everything Eldritch had told him could be dealt with later over a cup of chocolate tea and one of Sophie’s biscuits. He smiled.

Sitting knee to knee with Nivy, he stared hard into her eyes, trying to will his thoughts on her, to use her skill against her. Her eyes frantically scanned his face and blinked blankly. Sighing, he nodded sideways at the innocent burstpowder marble sitting on the red carpet a foot behind the nearest Vee.

He was thinking the two of them would count down together and act as one, but as soon as Nivy saw the marble, she sprang into action without him. Falling onto her side, she brought her leg around in an angular kick that cracked the Vee’s knee. The Vee didn’t cry out, but he did stumble backward, grunting.

The instant before the Vee’s heel crushed the marble, Reece threw himself onto Nivy and buried her head under his arm, closing his eyes.

And then the air exploded, torn asunder.

XXIII

Well Met, Mr. Sheppard

Reece rolled, blown by the force of the explosion, rubble, dust, and torn carpet raining down on him. For a minute, everything was chaos. His ears were humming, his heartbeat too loud in his head. Something was beeping over and over, annoyingly insistent, and there were loud, angry voices, and deep footsteps drumming on the carpet. He cracked an eyelid.

He was staring into the pale, lifeless face of a Vee. The Vee’s black eyes were wide open but unfocused. Blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth to the carpet, where it was camouflaged.

Lifting his head, Reece counted three more downed Vees, their bodies thrown to awkward angles on the floor. It was lucky they had been packed so closely together—they’d made themselves a wall separating Reece and Nivy from the explosion, likely saving their lives.

The two surviving Vees were doubled over the flightpanel, looking satisfyingly battered. A large chunk of machinery had been blown off the corner of the panel, laying bare a mess of sparking wires and leaking tubes. The incessant beeping sound was coming from the flashing blue warning button to the right of the pilot’s yoke. Bleeding bogrosh. Reece had broken the ship.

When Nivy grabbed Reece’s hand, he jumped, inhaled a puff of dust, and choked. He looked at her, sprawled beside him and wearing a loopy kind of grin, and smiled.

“I broke the ship,” he repeated aloud, and she nodded, scrubbing a streak of blood from her cheek. The Heron. He knew who she was now. Knew where she was from. He was a long ways yet from understanding it all, but that little knowledge lightened the heaviness in his head considerably.

One of the Vees at the flightpanel swung around as Reece unsteadily stood, murder in his black eyes.

“Kill them both,” the Vee still bent over the flightpanel said coolly.

“Agreed,” his partner said, and
sprang at Reece with frightening speed.

Reece just had time to plant his feet, grit his teeth, and raise his fists.

CRACK.

The Vee pitched forward, stumbling over his own legs, and crashed loudly to the floor. Reece stared down at him without lowering his fists, dumbfounded. Blood was welling up through the Vee’s jumpsuit, like slowly-spreading spilt paint.

The translocator door—its circular window shot out—opened with a clang, and Gideon, Po, Hayden, Sophie, and Hugh poured out, Gideon deftly spinning his revolver towards the Vee at the flightpanel. The final Vee joined his brothers on the floor in a pile of pale white death.

It was mayhem. Sophie rushed Reece, and he caught her up in his arms and kissed the top of her sooty hair and clasped Hugh’s forearm. The relief had Reece’s stomach soaring; his heart was pounding like he’d run a marathon. He could hardly think for how glad he was to see them all alive and well. He looked to Nivy, who had appropriated the lone surviving lightning gun and was holding it ready, waiting beside the door, and smiled.

The relief lasted maybe one minute before reality came rudely butting back in.

Gid had taken the helm and picked up where the Vee left off, and Po was crawling under the flightpanel with an intense expression of focus.

“This is bad,” she said, her voice muffled. “This is real bad.”

“Are we going to crash?” Sophie asked worriedly, clinging to her brother and father.

Po didn’t answer.

“Try to avoid crashing,” Reece advised as he knelt beside one of the Vees and dug through its pockets until he found two tiny purple vials. He pocketed them and stood. “Nivy and I are going to go finish what we came for.”

“Reece,” Hayden began, face pained. “…Be careful.”

Reece spun and fled from the bridge at a ground-eating pace, his dress shoes clapping against shiny wooden floors. There wasn’t time to look back. There wasn’t time to look ahead. He just had to run, run and hope he wasn’t too late.

Most of the heliocraft’s footage went into its huge, open-ceilinged ballroom, which looked up into a cloudy sky largely obscured by the ship’s balloons. Two obtruding tiers of balconies framed the room, held aloft by gilded columns, while an elevated, slowly-spinning stage in its center—like a giant music box—supported the masked orchestra. With the lights bouncing reflections off the face of the black marble floors, it looked like the dancers were stepping over a dark, quiet sea. The only thing to ruin the illusion was the snow sneaking in through the ceiling and joining the dancers in twirling across the room.