The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (29 page)

             
His eyes on Gideon's wan face, Reece asked, “What happened? We were supposed to go quietly.”

             
“I did,” Gid growled, then paused, and for a second, looked almost sheepish. “I just checked on Aitch and Po first.”

             
Reece kept his voice even with an effort; he could feel a tense vein ticking in his jaw. “You checked on—”

             
“I know it wasn't part'a the bleedin' plan, but you should'a seen them. They were lost. I couldn't leave them turnin' circles on their own.”

             
Watching two huddled prisoners crawl stiffly by, Reece sighed and slumped till he was crouched, his elbows draped limply over his knees. Was this bad captaining on his part, or were all his plans just destined to blow up like a Freherian fireshow in his face?

             
One of the two prisoners down in the mud unexpectedly pounced, and quicker than Reece could get to his feet, grabbed Scarlet about her shoulders and pulled her shrieking to the mud floor. Reece leaped after them, sliding to his knees in the muck as he tried to pry Scarlet's attacker off her back.

             
“Rich, filthy, gluttonous…”

             
It was the girl Raider, the one from the street. She looked no fonder of Scarlet than she had of Po; in fact, Reece wasn't so sure Scarlet's prettiness wasn't working against her in this regard, because as soon as her face surfaced from the mud and she opened her green eyes, the Raider gave a feline howl, elbowed Reece in the sternum, and dove at her again.

             
Coughing, Reece roped his arm around her neck and tried to put her in a hold, but someone seized him by the hood of his cloak and hauled him backward with a hiss.

             
“Thieving townsfolk!” whoever had Reece from behind spat. “Getting us caught! Getting Guybet killed! All for that miserable morsel in the street!”

             
Reece was just comprehending that the
miserable morsel
must be Po when Gideon joined them in the mud with a snarl, hammering Reece’s attacker across the face with his elbow.

             
“Reece!” Scarlet's voice was garbled. She had the girl Raider by two fistfuls of her dark hair, but the girl had her by the throat, and they were grappling, half-submerged in the mud. Reece made a quick assessment—it looked like Gideon was determined to break every last tooth out of the bearded Raider's mouth—and tackled the feral girl onto her stomach. She writhed and screeched beneath him.

             
But when a voice outside the scuffle frantically hollered, “Strike! Strike! Everybody off the floor!”, the girl's writhing became less violent and more desperate. Scarlet cried in a hoarse voice, “Reece! Lightning!”

             
Growling, Reece thrust the Raider away from him, turned, and with Scarlet, tripped onto the stone outcropping. The Raider girl half-stumbled, half-crawled to the other side of the pit and clawed her way up onto its ledge, leaving her companion lying sprawled in the mud, pinned beneath Gideon's boot.

             
Reece could feel the air crackling with static; his scalp tingled, his hair wanting to stand on end.

             
“Gid!” he yelled, flailing and catching the back of Gideon's shirt. With a tug and a shout of effort, he pulled Gideon off balance so the Pan was forced to catch himself on the canyon wall. Gid hastily pulled his boots out of the mud…and a blinding branch of red lightning exploded overhead, and violent electricity raced down the wires on the canyon walls, up the metal poles, and into the silver spheres. For a second, thin tendrils and threads of red light rolled across the surface of the spheres, forking out and connecting pole to pole, splitting and branching and multiplying again and again, until with a sudden
krchhh
, they flashed to darkness. Blue light slowly washed over the gorge, dingy looking after that spectacular display. Red dots danced in Reece's eyes no matter how hard he blinked.

             
The bearded Raider was dead where he lay spread-eagle in the mud. Wisps of smoke trailed up from his body, reeking of…well. Just reeking.

             
As Reece, Gideon, and Scarlet watched, a pair of goggled Letoian sentries came, peeled the corpse out of the mud, and dragged it out the prison door. But they weren't finished. When they returned, it was for the girl.

             
“No!” she screamed, rabidly thrashing as they pinned her wrists together in a square manacle. “
No
!”

             
“What're they doin'?” Gideon asked in a low voice, nursing his shoulder again.

             
Scarlet drew her wrist across her mouth, panting, as the girl's shrill screams faded into eerie echoes. “Taking her to the Pool. Any prisoners who incite violence are offered to the Rippers straight away. It's barbaric. I wish I could sit Petric down and school her till she—Nivy!”

             
The girl was determinedly trudging through the mud towards them, looking surprisingly clean, compared to the rest of them. Which was to say she was muddy up past her knees and elbows.

             
“Find anything?” Reece wearily asked, glad to see she hadn't been mud fried.

             
Frowning briefly at Gideon's shoulder, Nivy nodded, put a dirty finger to her lips, and nodded for them to follow her. Reece wasn't the only one who made a face at having to get back into the mud after that lightshow.

             
Nivy led them to the foot of the gorge, where a few exhausted workers were sitting on an island of rock amid the mud, a sphere and pole on either side of them. They watched impassively as she pointed to a thin breach in the stone wall, just big enough for Reece to fit in sideways with his head slightly bowed. Gideon would have to wait outside, but going by his sickly expression, sitting down might be just the medicine he needed. Scarlet offered to stay with him. Her exact words were, “You go on. I'll babysit the bear.”

             
Reece tried not to get his hopes up as he squeezed himself into the opening after Nivy, adding a layer of gritty orange dust to his coat of mud. If this was a way out, the other prisoners would have found it long ago.

             
As the blue light from the gorge faded out behind him, new yellow light grew to the size of a lantern up ahead. Nivy popped out of the crack, stirring up an orange fog of dust that Reece had to shuffle through with his eyes closed. He sighed with relief and then collapsed into a coughing fit as he broke out into an open cave.

             
It was really less a cave a more a hole fit for rodents, snakes, and the like. So it was fitting that none other than Owon should be sitting cross-legged against its back wall, staring at their appearance with a knowing little smile.

             
Owon gave him a wry once-over and said, “You look terrible, Reece Sheppard. This pleases us greatly.”

             
“And you're still alive,” Reece retorted, shooting Nivy a quick, questioning glance. She shrugged. “What happened, wouldn't the Rippers have you? Or are they not big on mystery meat?”

             
“Our
meat
is still essentially human, Reece Sheppard. Merely a higher caliber. But in answer to your droll albeit asinine question, it is in our favor that these Letoian sentries are spineless decorations. A few whispered words, a glance, here and there…and they fear to even look at us.”

             
“And did aforementioned spineless decorations give you that?” Reece jerked his chin at the lantern propped at Owon's side, burning low on its wick.

“
Indeed. As well as the trick to escaping this place. Fear makes all men…pliable.” The Vee looked and sounded inarguably smug as he stroked a long finger down the lantern's glass. “If you wish to leave Karadur, we are your only chance. You are obtuse, but you will have done the math. The gate is guarded by two dozen Letoian sentries, and the walls are insurmountable. There is only one way out of Karadur, and you will only learn of it through me.”

             
Reece and Nivy stared together at Owon so long, the Vee pressed, “Well, Reece Sheppard? Is escape so unappealing to you?”

             
“You said
me
.”

             
Owon's face spasmed before he schooled it to cool blankness. He had! Reece hadn't been hallucinating—he'd said
me
!

             
“Make your choice now, Reece Sheppard,” Owon threatened, and his deadpan voice was markedly intentional. “We will only make you this offer once.”

             
Dying though he was to attack Owon's lapse in Vee-ness while he had an opening, Reece thought of Gideon, sitting outside with a hole in his shoulder, and the others, all counting on him to get them off Leto, and with a grimace, suppressed his questions. Even then, his and Owon's conversation about Liem kept trying to edge to the front of his brain.

             
Could you go back to how you were, now? Could Liem have gone back?

             
It is inconceivable…but not impossible.

             
“Alright, Owon. What's your offer?”

             
With a graceful hand, Owon reached and unwound the lantern's wick, feeding the light. He took his time answering as he stared coldly at the sputtering flame. “Safe passage to the next inhabited planet for your escape route. That is our offer.”

             
“Forget it.”

             
“We will. Quickly, once we've escaped this place without you. You would have been our quickest path from Leto, but we have no qualms about leaving you to watch your crew die, one by one, while we walk free.”

             
Breathing out slowly through his nose, Reece looked at Nivy. She made an unhappy face and held out her hands helplessly, but he could tell she knew what she would say, if their places were swapped…what he
had
to say, for his crew's sake. Owon's pale face was getting that infuriatingly smug set again.

             
He was just going to have to hope the bleeding Vee got struck by lightning crossing the desert.

XIV

The Battle of Red Pool, L.F. 1296

             
“I don't like it,” Gideon said instantly. Reece wasn’t altogether surprised.

             
As soon as Reece and Nivy had emerged from the cave with the Vee, the foot of the gorge had cleared out, its prisoners conspicuously leaving to find work someplace else. Gid had taken their vacated spot on the rock island and was leaning on his good elbow, looking tired.

“
Neither do I,” Scarlet added, uneasily watching Owon pace troughs in the mud as he searched for something.

             
Reece made an exasperated noise as Nivy folded her arms and shook her head. “Neither do I, while we’re on the subject, but we don’t exactly have a choice. We’re lucky Petric hasn’t already sent us to the Rippers. Her attention must still be on the others.”

             
“Here,” Owon announced suddenly. He stopped and knelt against the opposite wall, feeling around beneath the safety ledge. With a little effort—not nearly enough—the Vee unearthed a solid rock hatch that bubbled in the mud and leaned it against wall. “An underwater tunnel. This would have been impossible to find, were it not for us.”

             
“Yeah,” Gid muttered, and with a grunt, leaned upright, “I'll remember that next time your bleedin' birthday comes around. It'll make a nice card.”

             
Reece eyed him doubtfully. “Can you swim?” he asked as he gave him a hand up.

             
Hesitating, Gideon felt at his shoulder. “The blood's clotted. I can swim one-armed.”

             
Nodding at that completely unsatisfactory answer but knowing better than to push it, Reece waded to where Owon was impossibly hip-deep in the mud that barely reached the others’ knees.

             
“It will be difficult for your inferior eyes to see through the mud,” the Vee said. “You shall have to feel your way to the top. There.” He gestured, his hand dripping mud, at the top of the canyon far above. “We shall emerge in the desert. Perhaps—”

             
“Nivy goes first,” Reece interrupted dryly. “Then Scarlet, Owon, Gideon, and me.”

He kept an eye open for witnesses as Nivy felt her way to the tunnel’s edge and dropped in up to her waist. If there was one good thing that could be said about Owon—and there was
only
one—it was that his presence produced results; everyone was pointedly avoiding looking their way.