The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (14 page)

             
“Perfect.”

             
If she'd said anythin' else, he probably would’a started gettin' grumpy. As it was, he sat down on her bed with a grumble and stretched his back, watchin' as she threw back the lid'a the monstrous trunk. He wasn't surprised when stuff started immediately spillin' out, socks, a hairbrush, a book. He instinctively snapped out an arm and caught the circular picture frame on the verge’a tippin' to the floor, and without thinkin', glanced at it.

             
Po was easy to pick outta the black and white kinetic still—the little girl with fair hair, freckles and dimples. It must'a been her parents she was posin' with. The woman was the kind'a old-fashioned beautiful that makes a man feel clumsy and tongue-tied, and she had her arms wrapped around the waist'a the square-jawed fellow carryin' little Po in one arm.

             
Glancin' over at him as she rummaged through her things, Po saw the frame and smiled. “Those are my folks. Aren't they beautiful? Mum still looks the same. What?” She must'a seen his eyebrows go up in surprise.

             
Gideon uncomfortably shrugged and handed her the frame. “Just thought your da was…you know. From the way you talked about him before.”

             
“Oh.” Po went quiet, takin' the frame gently. Then she shut the trunk and propped the frame up on its end, at her bedside. “No, he's alive. He's just been gone a while. He left Honora to find work. He always hated livin' in the Western End, you know. Wanted to find us somethin' better.”

             
Somethin' rang in her voice—not quite a fib, but definitely a stretch'a the truth. “How long's he been gone?”

             
Po's brown eyes looked him dead in the face, as serious as he'd ever seen them, as if darin' him to say more. “Five years.” When he just stared at her, she turned back to her pile’a things and picked out a book with a worn green cover that looked as though it'd been sewn back together more than once. She leaned it up against the frame like it was sacred or somethin'. Its embossed gold letterin' said somethin' about a shrew.

             
Suddenly, Po sighed. She cringingly flung up a handful’a clothes and let them flop to the floor. “I should'a brought more clothes. I wasn't thinkin'.”

             
“How many do you need?” Gideon asked skeptically. One pair'a pants and a few clean shirts could see him through the better part'a month.

             
Po seemed to not have heard him; she was starin' at the sweater in her hands with glazed eyes. “Did you see how Scarlet was dressed? She's like a queen. And she's so graceful, too, don't you think? When she walks, it's like she's got wings on her feet.”

             
Gideon snorted, and after a beat, Po laughed too. She pushed away the sweater, and Gideon thought she was done bein' awkward, until he stood to leave, and she jumped up and stopped him with an anxious, “Gideon?” He turned around with his hands in his pockets. “Do
you
think Scarlet's pretty?”

             
Gideon scratched his head, thinkin' hard, not because he didn't know the answer right away, but because he wasn't sure how he should give it. If this had been Ariel's question and he'd answered wrong, she probably would've kicked his shins.

             
“Uh, I guess. If you can get past how she holds her nose in the air like she's so bleedin' superior.”

             
“That's not nice,” Po chided. “And Scarlet's not like that. She's real sweet.”

             
“You asked.”

             
He was a step outta the door when she called again, “Gideon?” His boots squeaked on the floor as he jerked to an unwillin' stop. “Do you think…
everyone
thinks she's pretty?”

             
He was pretty sure she had been about to say somethin' other than everyone, and he had a feelin' he knew what. He impatiently sighed, considerin'. “Sure, probably.”

             
“Yeah. That's what I figured.”

             
He heard her bed squeak loudly, and even though he wanted nothin' more than to run for it while he had the chance, looked back. She was kneelin' on the bed, tryin' to make up her mattress with a sheet. Every time she managed to get one'a the fitted corners around the mattress, another she'd already tucked in place popped off. He watched her crawl in circles for probably a full minute before tearin' himself away from the door and crouchin' to hold the corners in place for her.

             
“So. You got any brothers or sisters?” Po asked, puffin' a strand'a white outta her eyes as she secured the last sheet corner and then pulled a colorful patchwork quilt up onto her lap from the floor.

             
“Shouldn't you ought’a know that by now?”

             
“Right, well, I guess I meant…
did
you? On Panteda?”

             
Gideon rubbed his scarred eyebrow, starin' at one small patch on the quilt, a red one with white stripes, like a carnival tent. “No. Just cousins.”

             
“How many?”

             
“Two. Enoch and Pheobe.”

             
“How about pets?”

             
When he didn't say anythin', she leaned up from smoothin' out the quilt, saw his look, and spread her hands innocently. “You don't gotta look so fierce. I'm just tryin' to be friendly. You don't talk much, is all. Tell me about somethin' you wanna,” she insisted as she started packin' her clothes into the long, flat dresser at the foot'a her bed. “Like…tell me about Handlin'. How does it work?”

             
“Work?”

             
“Yeah, like how do you start to be a Handler?”

             
“You don't just
start
to be one. You gotta be trained by a mentor for a long time, and then forge your own gun, before you really count for anythin'.”

             
“So how long have you been…you know, countin' for somethin'?”

             
He hesitated. “About eight years.”

             
“So you must be pretty good by now, huh? How many people have you shot?”

             
“I—” He broke off as Po started snickerin', and felt his face go warm. “Wait, are you kiddin'?”

             
“Of course I'm kiddin'!” Mufflin' her laughter in her hands, she took a good look at his face and paused. Her eyes widened over her fingertips. “It's a lot, isn't it?”

             
There was an uneasy pause, and then they burst into laughter. Gideon thought they might be laughin' at different things…because Po probably wouldn't be laughin' if she knew he'd been serious.

             
The laughter threw him off for a second, elsewise he probably would've heard it sooner. Someone movin' out in the engine room. That wouldn't'a been outta place in itself, only he knew the sound'a someone tryin' to be stealthy, knew what to listen for. It wasn't footsteps he heard beneath Po's fit'a giggles—it was the quiet chaffin'a fabric, the rubbin'a clothes together.

             
“Quiet!” he snapped, and Po choked mid-laugh. He flipped his revolver up outta his holster and waved for her to stay put in the same smooth motion, backin' up to the open door to peer around it slowly.

             
There were too many shapes for an intruder to hide behind, blocks'a metal and tall, cylindrical fans. He tipped his head and listened. Nothin'. He imagined a sneakin' silhouette frozen somewhere out there around a corner, waitin' for him and Po to start talkin' again before it dared to move.

             
Gideon turned to look at Po to find her freckled face not inches from his, peerin' around the corner with him. He leaped back, his heel nickin' the edge’a the screen, and tripped out into the engine room.

             
“You about gave me a bleedin' heart attack!” he growled.

             
“What were you doin'?” Po asked, starin' at his gun.

             
“I heard somethin'. Someone.”

             
“The engine is always makin' funny sounds, Gideon.”

             
“Not like this.”

             
“What was it like?”

             
“Like…like rustlin' clothes.”

             
She immediately pointed up and left. “The rotator belt.”

             
Gideon hesitated. He knew what he'd heard. And there was that feelin' he'd had since comin' aboard, a feelin' like a spider inchin' slowly up his back, makin' it impossible for him to settle. He opened his mouth to speak and left it open as Po swung away from him, hoppin' onto the second rung of a ladder set in the wall.

             
“Comon',” she invited, “I'll show you. It's just the belt.”

             
He uneasily rolled his fingers over the grip’a his gun. “You shouldn’t be scuttlin’ around unarmed, Po Girl.”

             
“Gideon,” Po laughed, tossin' her long braid, “there ain't nothin' out there! Don't be so nervy. Besides—” Suddenly, she was scamperin’ up the ladder, her hands hardly seemin' to touch the rungs at all. “—this is my place. Ain't no one can touch me here!”

VIII

Mighty Bi
g Engine Rats

             
It wasn't like Reece had imagined as a Ten, being a captain, having a crew and a ship. It wasn't as fun, for one. And for another, it was better.

             
During the day, he worked the helm in four hour shifts—four hours on, one hour off—and at night, in three hour increments, with either Nivy or Gideon covering for him while he slept. He started every day with setting the autopilot, and walking with Nivy down to the galley for breakfast with the crew. Depending on whose turn it was to make breakfast, the food itself ranged from toothsome to barely palatable, but it was the experience Reece loved: all of them sitting around the long oak table, loud and laughing, bickering over the last biscuit or apple. Or, in Gideon and Scarlet's case, over any other number of things.

             
Scarlet was warmer to everyone else, if still a little detached. Of course, she could have pretended they were all invisible, and she
still
would have succeeded in making Hayden as jittery as a first-time flyer at the helm of a Chimera. Every day without fail, he spilled his tea around her. Nivy and Reece got in the habit of laying wagers on how soon it would happen once breakfast started.

             
So long as it wasn't his turn to clean the mess, Reece would then make his rounds of the ship, starting with checking on the engine room, Po, and the Bio-Conditions Simulator. After that, it was the infirmary and Hayden. The infirmary was set up like a hospital examination room, with two cots and walls of white cabinets and downward-tilted mirrors that made the room seem twice as big. Whenever Reece visited, Hayden was always sitting at his corner desk, taking notes while studying The Heron's mysterious manuscript. So long as he didn't have any news, Reece would then return to the bridge for his first shift of the day, or if he had enough time, a short nap.

             
Like Po's, his quarters were separate from everyone else's, but where hers were in with the Afterquin, his were not yards away from the helm. Accessible only by ladder, the bedroom was an open loft, a low-ceilinged space over the corridor bottlenecking into the bridge. From his bed, which was just a thin mattress laid over a solid block built up out of the floor, he could see out the canopy window, watch the Euclid run over the nose of
The Aurelia
. His clothes hung from wooden pegs against the wall. A single naked photon globe, screwed upright into a metal stand at his bedside, was the loft's only other ornamentation. Everything about the space, from the lumps in the mattress to the way the photon globe hummed a long while after it had been turned off, was perfect.

             
After dinner, the crew had its daily moot, which usually lapsed into a game of cards or a round of Pantedan foxtail with Reece and Gid as team captains. It was good to decompress, even so early on. There was an unspoken amount of pressure bearing down on the crew—the onboard temperature was still dropping five to six degrees a day, and even if they pretended differently, they were starting to feel it—but it was more than that. They were safe in the Euclid Stream, but being safe didn't make a person forget that danger was still out there. Safety could only really last so long.

             
It was now their third full day out of Honora, and Leto was less than thirty-six hours away. Reece rubbed his fingerless gloves together as he finished setting the autopilot and arched his back, stretching. He'd told Nivy to take the good news to the others; they'd needed a little pick-me-up since Mordecai had shown up to breakfast with frost in his mustache.