The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (3 page)

             
Shaking his head, he waved her through the door to begin the trudge to the stables through ankle-deep snow. The raw cold made his face prickle and his eyes sting, even screwed up against the snow and wind. Fifty feet suddenly felt uncannily like fifty yards.

             
A servant in a hooded trench coat opened the stable door for them, and they broke into the warmth breathlessly, wiping their eyes dry. Immediately, Reece looked around the cobble-floored stables, picked out the familiar freckled redhead dusting the shelves of spare parts against the back wall, and called to him.

             
“Lionel, I want the heat generators in the ceiling vents turned up to fifty-five degrees. I'm going to power up the Dryad and get her compressors hot, so it's going to get pretty steamy in here. I'll need the fans going.”

             
“Yes, sir,” Lionel said, saluting enthusiastically and hurrying off towards the utility stalls, feather duster still in hand.

             
“I haven't been in here in years,” Scarlet mused, pulling off her hat as she walked forward.

The stables opened up like an immaculate barn around them, its wooden walls steepling several stories overhead. There wasn't dust floating in the shafts of cold light as there would have been in a real stable, but there was an air of quiet mustiness, of large animals sleeping just out of sight. The window slats up near the ceiling usually supplied a good amount of daylight, but with the snow blotting out the sun, the servants had resorted to switching on the photon globes hanging on long iron chains from the ceiling. They swung in small circles, drifting like tethered birds, as the ceiling vents gasped out hot hair.

“It looks the same,” Scarlet added.

“
I think they painted,” Reece said as he wandered the length of the barn. The first animal he encountered was his beloved bimotor, propped against the back wall of the barn. A servant was working on cleaning out its rear funnels, and nodded respectfully as Reece bent over to check his work before moving on.

Scarlet joined him and took his elbow smoothly.
“It
feels
the same. But, like you said, it's not. The changes are subtle…noticeable only to someone who is as familiar with the stables as you are.”

Together they strolled past the duke's three automobiles, all of which were boxy, with long noses and overlarge tires with shiny silver hubcaps. Scarlet and Reece's reflections slithered over their shiny red, gold, and green paintjobs.

“That's what it's like with you, Reece. You look the same, you act the same, but something's changed. Most people wouldn't notice, but I know you. You're focused and distracted at the same time. You joke when I know you're really pensive. You ask favors of me,” Scarlet studied him shrewdly, “
strange
favors, and expect me to not ask questions.”

“
You can ask questions,” Reece cut in. “You just can't be suspicious when I give you unspectacular answers. I told you what that favor's for.”

“
It's not what it's
for
, it's the manner in which you asked. You wanting to know who bought
The Aurelia
's original parts isn't all that strange, but you were so intentionally casual in asking…and then followed that up by asking me every third day if I had found your answers for you.”

Reece stooped by the wheel of Abigail's blue and silver day carriage, and by pretending to retie his bootlace, hid his annoyed expression.
Intentionally casual
. And here he'd thought he'd acted masterfully, playing the flippant friend, asking the favor as an afterthought.

When he stood, he found Scarlet's face a mere four inches from his. He could see his cornered-rat expression reflecting in her eyes.

“Why?” she asked. “Why can't you tell me? You didn't tell me about Eldritch, you didn't tell me about the assassination—I had to figure those things out on my own. You pretend to keep things from me for my own good…but that's not it at all. Why can't I earn your trust?”

To Reece's horror, there were tears welling up in Scarlet's green eyes. As soon as he noticed, she pressed her forearm to her face and looked away. This was a conundrum nothing over these past four months could have prepared him for.

“Does it…really bother you that much?”

Scarlet laughed bitterly and dropped her hands.
“I know I…I'll never be the kind of person to…”

Reece waited helplessly, the airflow from the vents rustling his hair slightly.

“Reece, you see me in my perfect world, imagine it's all tea and politics…and maybe, to some, it
is
a perfect world. It's orderly. I'm good at it. But I see you with your friends…and I'm
jealous
. You have more friends than I've had in my entire life. And you, the one friend I can trust isn't talking to me for political gain or secretly hating me…you won't even let me help you.”

It wasn't what Reece had expected, but it was a measure better than a profession of love. He relaxed and even went so far as to awkwardly pat her arm.

“Secretly hating you?” he repeated incredulously.

Scarlet laughed as she blew her nose into a handkerchief.
“Yes. You know, because of my wealth, because I'm beautiful...”

“
Well, I'll try not to hold that against you.”

Scarlet smiled a watery smile and drew her white coat in tightly around her. She seemed to be waiting for something, watching Reece with the stains of her tears still on her cheeks, a reminder of her sincerity.

Pushing a hand through his hair, Reece sighed. She'd been a good friend. Despite the fact she'd clearly seen through his “favor”, she'd agreed to it, and even turned out some answers for him. No matter what she thought, he did trust her.

He also trusted his father, but he hadn't told
him
one word of his secret. There was too much at stake. He couldn't afford to have one of them try and stop him from returning
The Aurelia
to where she belonged in The Ice Ring, with the people of The Heron.

“
I'll tell you this much,” Reece began, and Scarlet leaned forward with interest. “The duke's right. Parliament is keeping Honora's army bolstered in case Eldritch's buddies come looking for him. The draft was Eldritch's design, but it probably seemed like a good idea to Parliament to go ahead and use what he'd already set in motion.”

With narrowed eyes, Scarlet leaned back, tapping a finger on her cheek thoughtfully.
“I could have figured that much out for myself.”

“
Well,” Reece squeezed by her, moving towards the Dryad, “beggars can't be choosers.”

“
So parliament is anticipating an attack by aliens.”

“
The Kreft.”

“
What?”

“
That's what Eldritch's people are called.”

If you could call them people. Reece stopped beneath a vent and let it press his hair down around his face, closing his eyes. For a second, he felt a pang in his side and an ache in his shoulder, and tasted blood as he had on the night of the masquerade, when he'd fought The Kreft that had called himself Eldritch and very nearly died.

Avoiding the stream of air he stood in—probably conscious of her manicured hairdo—Scarlet paused. “And Aurelia? What does she have to do with it?”

Reece gave her the shorthand answer.
“The Kreft are interested in her.” With an air of finality, he continued walking, at last reaching the corner of the barn where the duke's Dryad rested, her sleek wings bowed around her brass hull.

After a second, Scarlet joined him beside the cockpit.
“You never cease to surprise me, Reece.”

He regarded her warily, not liking her sly little grin.

“For those tears, I would have expected you to be a lot more accommodating.”

Reece simply stared as Scarlet leaned in, pecked him on the cheek, and then turned to flounce back the way she came, the tails of her fur coat blowing behind her.

Finally, Reece shook his head and looked back at the Dryad, only a little miffed at having been played. He was more impressed than anything.

Still, he'd have to be careful. He couldn't have Scarlet looking too closely at Aurelia while he and his crew spent half their nights pent up in her cargo bay, going over their plans for departure. In fact—he checked his pocket watch—he needed to get back to Atlas. Strange though it seemed to have homework to do while there was world-saving to be done, if he didn't finish his report on fuel molecules for Tutor Agnes, there'd be bogrosh to pay. He needed to get the report done before eleven, when Fog Hour would roll over Atlas and he would join his crew aboard Aurelia.

Scarlet and her devices would just have to wait.

II

A Blue (No
, Grey) Sky

             
As the first of eleven chimes announced the hour, Reece sprung lithely off his four poster bed in his suite at The Aurelian Academy and landed with a thud before Hayden's leather armchair. Hayden glanced up from his book, expressionless. Reece waited for his friend to show some excitement, but Hayden just slowly lowered his eyes, cleared his throat, and turned a page.

             
“Oh, come on, Hayden—”

             
“I can't keep up these nightly escapades, Reece. Not all of us are willing to make up our sleep in class.”

             
Reece paused. He could see the signs of that ringing true for Hayden. Hayden Rice, lean, blonde, and bespectacled, had gone from looking merely disheveled to haggard bordering on sickly. He'd lost what little weight he had to spare over these last few months—his secondhand clothes hung even baggier than usual—and his grey eyes looked bloodshot, much older than nineteen.

“
So take some vitamins, get some sunshine—you'll be as spry as a schoolgirl before you know it.”

             
Hayden very deliberately turned another page. “That phrase is both improbable and disturbing.”

             
With a sigh, Reece swung around and marched to the coat tree by the door. If the care of their suite had been left up to him, the tree wouldn't have served much purpose. His jacket would have been slung sloppily over the door of his wardrobe, his bed would have been retracted, unmade, into the wall, and the floor around his desk would have been littered with crumpled pieces of parchment, like oversized snowballs. Hayden himself was untidy to look at, but he lived in a bubble of organization and order.

             
“What about the packing lists?” Reece pulled on his jacket while shooting the back of Hayden's head a surly look. “You were so annoyingly meticulous in putting them together…don't you want to—”

             
Reece let his sentence hang unfinished as the suite window slid upward and Gideon Creed hopped into the room, wearing a black knitted cap with a bobble on top. His winter jacket and trousers were black as well; against the dark color, his already-too-pale Pantedan skin looked as white as the snow flickering past the window.

             
“The storm's started up again,” Gideon said without preamble. He dusted at the snow speckling his broad shoulders and looked from Reece to Hayden, who had returned to his book after shooting the puddle at Gideon's feet the shortest of disapproving stares. “Somethin' up?”

             
Reece jerked his chin at Hayden. “Get him to come with us, will you?”

             
Shrugging, Gideon walked to Hayden's armchair and put his hands on its back. Hayden started scrambling an instant too late. Gid pushed down on the back of the chair so it tipped up onto its hind legs, teetered precariously, and then toppled with a
thump
. Giving a shrill shout, Hayden spilled out of the chair, his book landing on his stomach.

             
“Crude, but effective,” Reece commended.

             
Hayden picked himself up, red-faced. “Alright, I'll come, but listen.” He busied himself with smoothing the pages of his book that had gotten dog-eared, obviously hiding from their expectant stares. “I told you I'd help with preparations, and I will. But I don't want either of you forgetting I'm not coming with you to The Ice Ring.”

             
Reece's smile suddenly felt pasted. He
did
keep forgetting. It was easy to forget; he'd never imagined having a crew that Hayden didn't play a prominent role in. Mordecai, Nivy, Gideon, and Reece. Hayden would have brought some semblance of balance to their motley crew of talents. But he was insistent upon staying behind for his father and sister's sake. Finishing his hard-earned education was an unspoken bonus.

Hayden suddenly chuckled. He joined Reece and Gideon at the door, grabbing his patched winter coat and winding a tatty grey scarf around his neck.