The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (15 page)

             
“Po sent lunch,” Hayden announced as he stepped onto the bridge, a tin plate of food and a tankard in his hands, a large scroll tucked under one arm. His patched grey coat was buttoned up to his neck. Hayden always looked like someone had tried to beat the dust out of him with a broom, but these last few days, the look had grown troublingly pronounced. “And I brought the floor plan you asked for.”

             
Distracted by the thick smell of warm brown sugar curling away from his lunch, Reece waved the floor plan aside, then took the plate off Hayden's hands. One look at the mash and diced potatoes set his mouth watering. “Did you already eat?”

             
Hayden nodded calmly as he swung Nivy's navigator chair around and sat down. “I wanted to talk to you while we were still alone.”

             
“Something to do with Nivy?” Reece blew on his forkload of potatoes before upending it into his mouth.

             
“I hope not. But then again, I…” Hayden trailed off, pinching the bridge of his nose like he had a headache.

             
“What?” Hayden just shook his head despondently. After a second's hesitation, Reece set his food on the flightpanel and rotated his squeaking chair to face his friend with his elbows on his knees. “What's going on?”

             
Hayden's heavy sigh blew his bangs back from his glasses. “Someone's been stealing supplies from the infirmary.”

             
For a minute, Reece blankly returned Hayden's miserable stare, his jaw slowly clenching. “You're sure?”

             
“I wish I wasn't, but I've double-checked all the ledgers. I'm in the infirmary almost every waking hour, Reece. Whoever's stealing is doing it at night.”

             
“Which doesn't help their case any.”

             
“No,” Hayden sighed, “not really.”

             
As much as he didn't want an answer, Reece had to ask, “Any idea who…?”

             
Shifting uncomfortably, Hayden cleared his throat, intent on studying his hands in his lap. “Well, whoever it is, they've been taking pain agents, the strongest medicine I brought. I would think, based on the missing dosages, we'd be noticing some behavioral changes in them, unless…”

             
“Unless they're always crazy.”

             
“Yes.”

             
“Mordecai.”

             
“I don't know, Reece. I don't like thinking about it. But…what are you doing?”

             
Crossing the bridge, Reece snatched the floor plan up from where Hayden had left it by the door and marched it back to the flightpanel, where he spread it determinedly. His eyes started roving the outlined squares of quarters, closets, nooks and crannies, following the printed lines of corridors he'd begun to know well. “Mordecai wouldn't do that.” His voice grew harder at Hayden's uncertain silence. “He
wouldn't
, Hayden. If he's our best suspect, there's more going on than meets the eye.”

             
Hayden's chair squeaked as he stood and joined Reece at the panel. “Like what?”

             
Not answering, Reece leaned down over the map, glaring at it. He wouldn't accuse
any
of the crew of stealing without proper evidence; he refused to even think it of them. And while that was all well and good, it left him with a serious problem. If someone was stealing from the infirmary, but that someone wasn't a part of his crew…that meant they weren't alone on
The Aurelia
. The little hairs on the back of his neck prickled at the thought.

             
Rolling up the map, Reece beat it in his open palm, making a hollow thumping sound. “Where's Gid?”

             
Hayden was still looking at him wonderingly over the tops of his bifocals. “He
was
in the galley.”

             
Reece snatched the speaker com off the wall and cranked its golden dial to SW, for Ship Wide communication. “Nivy,” he said into the mouthpiece, “could you get up here? I need you on helm.”

             
“Reece,” Hayden began, sounding uncomfortable as Reece hung up the com, “you're not suggesting
Gideon
—” He trailed off at Reece's scandalized look. “Okay, okay, I just—you two have been kind of at odds these last few days, and I didn't know if—”

             
Snorting, Reece shook his head and pointed the map at Hayden's sheepish expression. “Just because Gid's been in a bleeding foul mood for the better part of a week doesn't mean—”

             
“I know,” Hayden quickly insisted, holding up his hands in a peacemaking gesture. “I know. I wasn't thinking. You'd never suggest that.”

             
“You're right, I wouldn't.”

             
“I'm sorry.”

             
With a never mind shrug, Reece nodded at the bridge door and led the way out into the corridor. “I just wish I knew what he’s been so bleeding touchy about, lately.”

             
They passed Nivy on their way to the galley, carrying a bowl of porridge that reminded Reece he'd left his lunch unfinished. He tried offering a trade, her porridge for the plate on the bridge, but she bypassed him and Hayden without so much as acknowledging his proposition, chewing purposefully.

             
The sounds of laughter found them while they were still a corridor away from the galley, Mordecai's hoarse guffaw, Po's tinkering giggle. Those two were always putting each other in stitches with jokes no one else could understand. An odd pair to hit it off, but then, Po could hit it off with anyone, and Mordecai…well, Mordecai was probably just glad for someone who didn't scratch their head at his punch lines.

             
“Heya, Cap'n!” Po greeted exuberantly as Reece turned through the arched red doorway to the galley. Seated cross-legged on the long table framed by a dozen mismatched ladder-backed chairs—one of which was occupied by the pipe-smoking Mordecai—she waved with her spoon, then plunged it into her bowl of viscous grey porridge. “I sent your lunch with Hayden, didn't he find you?”

             
Blinking, Reece looked over his shoulder, surprised to find himself alone. He glimpsed a bit of yellow out over the corner of his eye: Scarlet in another one of her floor-length coats, drifting down the corridor with Hayden, who was making clumsy conversation as he fiddled with his bifocals.

             
Reece turned back to the galley with a disgusted shake of his head for girls being able to make ginghoos even out of someone as smart as Hayden.

             
The galley had three parts: a dining room, a cozy lounge, and the galley itself, where the meals were prepared and the dishes stored. The oak table and its chairs monopolized most of the dining area, standing on a rug of polygonal designs that had somehow kept its brightness over the years, turquoise, orange, red, and purple. A tightly-wound iron staircase took the little corner that was left and spiraled up to the lounge, which was held over the galley by stout steel columns. 

             
A cupboard door banged shut. A second later, Gid's tousled head and broad shoulders rose up out of the corral of red counters hedging in the galley. His head came within a foot of brushing the galley's ceiling, or the loft's floor, however you wanted to look at it.

             
“Hey,” Reece greeted him with a nod. “Do you have a minute? I need to talk to you.”

             
Gid glanced at the pot in his hand and shrugged. “Sure.”

             
“Mordecai,” the wizened old man tilted his head, “you too.”

             
Frowning at Reece, Po tapped the back of her spoon on the surface of her porridge. “You're not really gonna come in here and say you need to talk to everyone but me, are you?”

             
“There are only three of you in here, Po.”

             
“It don't matter,” Po insisted, tapping more forcefully, so her spoon made a pattering sound. “It's rude. You can't just cut one person out. Tell him, Mordecai.”

             
His bushy mustache twitching, Mordecai mumbled around his pipe stem, “You can't just cut one person out.”

             
The saloon-style door closing off the counters squeaked as Gideon let it swing shut behind him. “What's goin' on?”

             
Ignoring Po's whining sound, Reece stepped close to him and lowered his voice. “I think it's time we searched the ship,” he said, eyebrows raised meaningfully.

             
Gideon glared thoughtfully at his expression before giving a slow nod of understanding. Reece knew he could count on him to not have forgotten about Mordecai's mysterious head bump. “Might wanna put the others on the bridge with Nivy Girl till it's done. Could get messy.”

             
“But it won't,” Reece said firmly. As Gideon started to scowl, he added, “Whoever's here, they could just be another Scarlet.”

             
It was a relief to see Gideon's old smirk shift into place. “You really want more than one'a her?”

             
“So we've a stowaway,” Mordecai spoke up from the table. Gideon's smirk winked out the same time Reece felt his grin slip. “Thought we might. I've been smellin' somethin' odd here and there and couldn't put a person to it.”

             
“A stowaway?” Po exclaimed as Gideon and Reece exchanged a flat look and turned to face her. She had put down her bowl and was scrambling into the chair next to Mordecai as if it was the last safe place left in the Epimetheus. “You…you think maybe they're…Kreft?”

             
There was an uneasy pause that told Reece he wasn't the only one that idea was new and unsettling to. He hadn't forgotten about The Kreft—he couldn't, not any more than a person could forget about a dormant volcano gurgling under their house—but maybe he'd been hasty to focus so much of himself on the turbine and the temperature drop and making sure the crew was getting along. He wanted to kick himself. They had always suspected there might be another Kreft operative on Honora; Reece had simply been waiting for it to make a move, to give itself away. But The Kreft worked from the shadows, lurking, manipulating. Wouldn't they have a much better vantage point staying hidden, trailing the duke's idiot son all the way to the heart of The Heron Underground?

             
Reece pointed at Po. “Bridge. Now.”

             
Po huddled wide-eyed in her chair. “Nuh-uh, there ain't no way I'm walkin' all the way up there by myself.”

             
“That's a bad idea waitin' to work,” Gideon agreed darkly as he brought out his revolver from its holster and started loading it.

             
“Then I'll take you up. Gid, spare?”

             
Without missing a beat, Gideon reached behind his belt and spun an ALP out on his finger. Reece took it and turned its safety off. Now that Po had gone and mentioned The Kreft, he couldn't imagine their stowaway being anything but.

             
“Not that I don't cherish my grandson's company, but mayhaps you ought’a split us up,” Mordecai said as he pushed his chair back with the boot resting on the edge of the table. “Divide your resources, as it were.”

             
Reece glanced at Gideon, who nodded as if he hated to admit the old man was right, and said, “Fine. Gid, you take Po. Mordecai, you're with me.”

             
As Po stood and hurried into Gideon's shadow, Mordecai reached casually into his coat, and from the holster beneath his arm, drew out his revolver. Reece was used to Gideon always fiddling with his, but it was a rare treat to see Mordecai's in plain light. His revolver was narrower down the barrel than Gideon's, and a patinaed silver where Gid's was a dark brass, but it worked the same, if not better. Mordecai had been forging guns for something like half a century, and he might not do much Handling nowadays, but…Reece had heard stories.

             
Reece and Gideon advanced on the door together, Po ducking behind them, Mordecai bringing up their rear, and peered in opposite directions down the corridor. It was funny, but the hallway had seemed somehow brighter ten minutes ago, and shorter. Gesturing with his gun, Reece briskly started in the direction of the cargo bay. The quickest route to the bridge passed through there, and it'd be a good starting point for their hunt. Bleeding bogrosh, but he wished he had three a piece of Mordecai and Gideon. And even then…if their stowaway
was
Kreft…

             
As the corridor opened up into the yawning cargo bay, Gideon hissed and threw out a long arm to block the others from passing.

             
“What? What is it?” Po whispered, her voice high.

             
Holding his breath and straining his ears, Reece could just barely hear what Gideon must have. He found his hand tightening around his ALP all on its own.

             
Mordecai was at Gideon's shoulder in less than two breaths, his revolver raised in one gnarled hand. “Footsteps,” he said curtly.

             
Clank…clank…clank
…

             
Without havin' to think about it, Gideon spread his feet, bent his knees, and twisted his torso to the side, so as to present less of a target to whoever else was out there. The first'a the four standard Handler stances, and the most basic, but his favorite.

             
The footsteps on the overhead bridge paused; the steel hummed lightly, reverberatin'.

             
“Could be one'a the others,” Mordecai mused.

             
“No,” Reece said in a low, dangerous voice. His face looked fierce, set. They all had reason to hate The Kreft, but for Reece, it was personal. “Nivy's at the helm. Scarlet and Hayden are together. It's someone else.”

             
Mordecai nodded, caught Gideon's eye, and jerked his head pointedly. Walkin' soundlessly on the balls’a his feet, Gideon slunk towards one'a the two staircases windin' up to the main bridge connectin’ starboard corridors to port. Mordecai took the second set. A quick backward glance showed Gideon that much as Reece wanted to come along, Po wasn't about to let him, be it for his protection, or hers. Her hands were clutchin' his arm like they'd been glued there.