The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (44 page)

For a minute, Hannick was too busy observing a pair of giggling girls strolling by with their red heads together to answer. The lounge, which earlier had been one empty table short of dead, was now filled to bursting with tournament-goers still sporting their favorite clubs’ colors. Reece could only imagine what the more popular eateries looked like. This just happened to be where Hannick had found him.

“Yes. Talfryn,” Hannick finally said as the redheads sank into the milling press of people. “She knew full well when she forfeited that she was leaving me to win by necessity. Where’s the glory in that?”

“
But you
did
win,” Reece pointed out.

Hannick harrumphed.
“Indeed I did,” he muttered, glaring into the crowd as he reclined with his back to the bar.

Reece tracked his dark stare to its target: a set of approaching blond men who must have been twins. Their smug smirks were as identical as their long necks, teacup-handle ears, and pointed chins. Actually, the closer they came, the more Reece realized they were probably of an age with him, if not younger, and totally unimpressive despite the dim lighting working in their favor. They swaggered up to the bar and without waiting for an invitation, took up post on either side of Reece and Hannick.

“Hannick,” greeted the one at Reece’s elbow.

“
Ridley,” Hannick returned wryly.

“
Hannick,” said the other.

“
Trig.”

“
Reece,” Reece raised his glass and inserted, in case anyone was interested.

The twins scowled at him and straightened the banded collars of their green tunics in unison before resuming their act. One after the other, they said,
“Lucky victory there, Pryor.”

“
Plan that, did you?”

Shrugging, Hannick lazily waved for another drink. He made a show of thumbing through his healthy wad of Oceanun winnings to pay for his newest acquisition.
“I always plan on winning.”

Snorting, Trig snapped out a gangly arm and grabbed the wad of winnings, making Reece start. But Hannick let the wad go, seeming nonchalant, if a little annoyed.

“See, that’s your problem,” Ridley tut-tutted as Trig grazed his thumb across the crisp paper edges with relish. “You’re not invincible, Hannick my boy. You ought to stop gambling like you are.”

“
Let’s see. That’s twenty flat and fifty round, to cover your last two loans. That leaves…” Trig flapped a sad, single bill in Hannick’s face like a flag. “Your change, my prince.”

Smiling coldly, Hannick caught the bill and slapped it down on the bar to pay for his drink.
“Well, that about cleans me out, doesn’t it?”

The twins laughed and tipped invisible hats to him as they backed away. After they had gone, Reece eyed Hannick until the prince felt his stare and looked at him. To his confusion, Hannick burst out in laughter and rolled his grey eyes skyward.

“Don’t look so appalled, Reece. Those winnings were just pocket money. I always planned on using them to fund my hobby.”

“
Gambling.”

“
Please. You say it like I’ve been playing cricket with babies.”

Hitching his shoulders uncomfortably, Reece frowned, trying to get a read on his irritation. It wasn’t the gambling that bothered him. He’d routinely enjoyed Dormitory Linus’s poker nights at The Owl and even gone wild and gambled off the meager change in his sock drawer once or twice. But seeing a bundle of money like Hannick’s casually pass hand to hand—like
pocket money—
made him think of the Rice family in their cramped row house in Caldonia, with its peeling wallpaper, crooked shutters, and leaky pipes. It left a sour taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with the burnthroat. 

Hannick, who had been gulping his second drink down to its dregs, suddenly choked in alarm, coughing into his hand.
“Ah. Time to go. My fiancé is here.”

Now it was Reece’s turn to choke. As Hannick sounded the retreat, he stumbled to his feet, looking every which way for this fiancé he’d never heard so much as a complaint about.
“You’re
engaged
?”

“
Well. Betrothed.” Like a bird in enemy territory, Hannick stretched his neck and peered about, scouting, and then ducked back down again with a knife-edge grin. “But nothing’s final until the altar. If I’m going to have to sell my prize stallion, then I’m going to win as many races with it while I still can. You see what I’m saying?”

Reece did. He thought it was sisquicks.

Hannick either ignored or chose not to see his uncertain squint as he waved for Reece to follow him out the back rotary door. Reece was too glad for an excuse to escape the hot, congested lounge not to obey. Plus, out in the open, he could broach the matter of the anai without fear of being overheard by some fan who would regurgitate the gossip into the first willing ear.

“
Where to now?” Hannick wondered, enthusiastically pushing his way out into the open with Reece a little less enthusiastically in tow. A long and low fountain chattered against the corridor’s baseboard, lining their walk with silver light. “We could hit the main ring. See the docks. I’d like to tour your ship, actually. What?” he abruptly demanded. Finally, he’d noticed Reece’s hesitation, and he didn’t look best pleased at having his bubble burst.

Sighing, Reece grimaced down at his feet with his hands on his hips. He’d rehearsed this a good dozen times in his head, but no matter how many times he practiced it, it just wouldn’t stop sounding like he was trying to get
The Aurelia
freed up for a speedy departure. Probably because he
was
. “Look, Hannick—”

His eyes slid past Hannick’s annoyed expression, focusing instead on the end of the corridor, where Scarlet was waving, trying to subtly get his attention. He nodded at Hannick to curtly inform her he was busy. She actually bared her teeth at him in frustration.

Lately, Reece felt like the air around his crew was laced with gas, and each of his words were little crackling sparks threatening to catch fire. The thing with Po was only partly to blame. He’d been politely avoiding her like his life depended on it, and
still
, she found ways of putting him off-balance. He felt awful for talking to her the way he had in the lounge, but he’d just been at a limit when she’d come in, with everyone pushing and prodding him and trying to get him to see reason where there wasn’t any. They acted as though these four days would upset the balance of the entire Epimetheus galaxy!

Realizing he was scowling down the corridor, Reece jerked his chin at Scarlet in a
not now
fashion. Scarlet growled—he could hear it faintly under the babbling fountain—and grabbed at something out of sight. A second later, she hauled a red-faced Gideon around the corner by his elbow, and Reece stopped trying to be subtle at all.

Gid was soaked but not dripping, as if he’d been walking in his clothes a while and had had time to air
out. His hair was starting to dry, sticking up in curled horns in places.

“
Go on without me,” Reece muttered to Hannick, who was starting to look worried that Reece had lost it. And who was to say he hadn’t?

Pressing past the prince, Reece marched down the corridor, following Scarlet and Gideon around the corner just in time to see Gid tug his arm free so he could fold it with his other over his chest, sulking. To Reece’s dismay, Po was there too, though she kept her back to him so he couldn’t see her face. He didn’t need to. She radiated hurt like a photon globe. That left Scarlet the only one willing to look at him.

“What’s going on?” he asked, braving her glare.

“
Po and I ran into Gideon on our way back to our chambers.” Glancing around, Scarlet pursed her lips. “We shouldn’t speak of this here.”

That bad?
Reece almost said. He looked left and right, and then pointed at a vacant shop, some sort of gadget emporium that had been closed for business. Its glass door swung open. Not only because there nothing left to steal—judging by the view through its storefront window—but because Neserus had a commendably low theft rate. It was apparently hard to be a criminal in an underwater city where most everyone knew your name.

Inside the store, Reece turned to survey Gideon, wet and brooding, Scarlet, hovering and uptight, and Po, who lingered near the door, clasping the doorknob behind her back in both hands. The shop’s marble floors rippled with light from the corridor fountain; its skeletal white shelves seemed to glow.

“Is someone going to tell me what happened?” he asked.

Scarlet folded her hands in front of her skirts like she was giving a prepared speech.
“As I was saying, Po and I encountered Gideon on our walk back to the chambers. He was wet as he is now, and coming from the direction of…of the
Lecroux fil Antiquana
.” She gave Reece a meaningful look, but he just blinked at her. He hadn’t had a lesson in Northern since his last tutor had confessed to Abigail he’d have better luck teaching a pigeon to dance. With an impatient huff, Scarlet explained, “The antiquities hall where the anai are kept, Reece!”

Reece let out a long breath before turning to Gideon, but even then, he had trouble finding his calm.
“What did you do?” he asked, deadpan and glad, because the alternative would not have been pretty.

Gid snorted.
“Why don’t you just ask where I put it? That’s what you’re really thinkin’, isn’t it? That I stole that bleedin’…
whatever
?”

“
Did you?”

“
Wanna search me?”

“
What will I find?”

“
Nothin’. But then, if I was smart, I would’a stowed it, right? That’s what Pryor thinks.”

“
Well. If you were smart, yeah.”

Alright, the insult hadn’t been strictly necessary. But it was nonetheless satisfying to watch it process on Gid’s face. His blue eyes flashed like Leto’s colored lightning as he smiled wolfishly and took a challenging step in Reece’s direction.

              “
Stop it!
” Scarlet snapped, stepping in between them and putting a hand on either of their chests. Her blonde hair whipped side to side as she looked sharply back and forth between them. “Po, find Mordecai.” Po nodded timidly in the corner of Reece’s vision, then disappeared.  “Now,” Scarlet continued sternly, “Reece. Think about it. Talfryn said the king is off-world. Who do you think authorized your expulsion from the tournament? Who had something to gain from you not having a chance to win? We’re being set up! We—”

“
You ought’a listen to her, Cap,” Gideon interrupted. “I’d hate to have to muss up those princely features’a yours. Hannick might not wanna go on play dates with you anymore.”

“
Gideon
!” Scarlet scolded, but Reece barely heard her; the angry buzz in his ears was too loud. Then Gideon caught her wrist and neatly spun her out of the way, and the two of them surged forward till they were face to face and in friendly firing range.

“
Where were you?” Reece barked.

Gideon glared defiantly down at him, a silent but nonetheless vicious challenge.
“You gonna try to bully it outta me now?”

“
I shouldn’t have to, Gid!”

“
And I shouldn’t have to tell you where I was
!” Gideon shouted, and shoved Reece so hard in the chest, he flew backward and crashed into an empty shelf.

The wind was punched out of his lungs on impact, but Reece didn’t need them fully functioning, at least for this. He charged Gideon as Scarlet cried out for them to stop and plunged a shoulder into his gut, tackling him to the ground with a growl.

At first, he stupidly thought the ground trembling had something to do with his and Gideon’s combined weights hitting the floor at breakneck speeds. But then, as he freed an arm to try to wrangle Gid into a choke, it shook again—a quick jerk, and then silence.

“
Shh!” he shushed Gid, leaning up. Gideon paused, panting, and cocked his head.

The shop tried to turn upside-down with the next blast. Gideon and Reece were thrown, tossed across the room towards Scarlet, who was leveled by the window splitting into puzzle pieces that splashed into shattered glass all around her. Shelves teetered and crashed thunderously together. A waterline burst in the corridor. Then everything went still. That’s when the screaming started.

Reece groaningly rolled over onto his stomach, blinking wetness out of his eyes. The ruptured fountain was misting in through the ruined store window, spritzing him and his friends where they lay battered and confused but all things considered, alright.

As Scarlet leaned upright with a tremulous breath, she whispered,
“What was that?”

“
An attack.” Gideon looked straight at Reece, picking flecks of glass out of the heels of his red-stippled hands. The electricity in his eyes wasn’t anger, anymore. It was alarm, simple but urgent.