The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (45 page)

Swallowing painfully, Reece nodded, rose to his knees, and managed to stand. On his feet, he was finally able to push past the imagery around him—the cracked walls, the puddles of glass, the leaking water trickling down runnels in the lopsided marble—and come to terms with what it all added up to. Dizzy, he planted a hand against the bare bones remains of the glass door and belatedly realized that the wetness in his eye was too warm to be water. He absently scrubbed the blood away.

“The Kreft,” he said softly. For a horrible moment, he was too overwhelmed to remember what he was supposed to do now. Doing
anything
suddenly felt like more than he could handle, but it also felt like nothing he could do would really be enough.  He put a hand to his head and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to concentrate past the pounding in his skull that sounded like war drums. “We need to round up the others.”

“
They’ll head for Aurelia.” He opened his eyes and looked at Scarlet as she rose unsteadily. Another ominous tremor rattled the tower, and Gideon had to catch her by the elbow as she almost toppled again. “We have to run, Reece. Just like on Atlas. We can try to draw The Kreft away from the city and the planet, or we can stay here and let them find the ship. We
have
to run. For everyone’s sake.”

Reece felt himself nodding.
“You two head for Aurelia. I’ll check the chambers, in case anyone thought to meet there instead. No matter who’s on board…if I’m not there and they get close, you take the ship and go.”

“
That’s a stupid plan,” Gideon said flatly.

“
Very,” agreed Scarlet. “I’m going with you.”

“
Same here.”

“
No,” Reece said evenly, straightening. His head was thankfully clearing, though he kind of preferred the dreamy haze of head trauma. It had kept back the fear he now felt crawling up his throat. “Gid, you can pilot the ship in an emergency.
Someone
who can fly needs to be on post, and we don’t know where Nivy is.” As Gid stubbornly opened his mouth, he ordered firmly, “
Go
. I’m not arguing with you anymore.”

After a beat, Gideon haltingly nodded and hopped out the broken window, leaving Scarlet and Reece to pick their way out over the jagged ledge alone.

The assault seemed to follow them as they sprinted down corridors and up stairs, backtracking as often as not when a passageway was clogged with rubble or sealed off to prevent further flooding. In the near distance, an alarm started keening sharply, making Reece’s head feel like it was going to burst apart like the shop window. They encountered panicked pub-goers moving together like startled flocks of birds, and medics pushing the wounded towards makeshift shelters on hovering gurneys. The air was cold,
too
cold, and everything was soiled, wet, and sticky. For the first time since setting foot in the city, Reece was really aware of all the water overhead; the weight of it seemed to loom like a shadow and a threat more than the ships that were doing the actually attacking.

Rumors chased them just as doggedly. They said that this pier hadn’t been directly hit. It was the north pier and the docks that were under attack; the eastern pier was just feeling the percussions. But the north pier was where the guest chambers were housed. So Reece refused to believe it. His friends could be up there.

“They’re hitting the docks,” Scarlet panted as she tried to keep up with him. “You think they’re trying to destroy Aurelia?”

Reece cursed as they careened around a corner only to meet another wall of caved-in wreckage. Water was hissing and spitting like a geyser from its cracks. He turned on his heel and bolted back the other way.
“Seems like it.” He blessed Pryor’s piggish insistence that Aurelia be removed from the public docks and kept somewhere she could be observed at all times: the king’s very own exclusive cluster of docks, in the tip of the southern hangar.

“
But I thought they wanted her whole?”

Reece didn’t answer. As he and Scarlet raced along parallel to a windowed wall that had somehow survived without so much as a crack, he craned his neck and peered up at the surface. It was still night; the black ships, if they were even out there, were camouflaged by a thousand feet of water and the black sky beyond.

Something zipped past them on the other side of the window, a vast shape in the murky water. It was too fast and rigid to be organic, but he’d never seen a ship move like that out of space. The hairs on his arms stood on end as it doubled back and zipped by again, as if it was stalking him personally, watching him. That’s all it did. Watch. As if sensing his curiosity, it fled back into darker waters, trailing streamers of bubbles.

Scarlet yanked on his arm as he started to slow, mystified. Their footsteps pattered in an inch of water.
“Come on, Reece! We’re almost—” Suddenly, she started pulling his arm the other way, trying to stop him as they hurtled towards the foot of the stairway they’d been hoping would finally get them into the north pier.

The stairway was an impassable waterfall.

For a moment, he stared at the gushing spring, trying to make sense of what it meant. With a sudden, waking jerk, he started pacing, glaring at it,
furious
with it, with himself. As he prowled past Scarlet, she sniffled and covered her mouth with a hand.

“
Reece,” she whispered.

“
No
!” he snapped.

“
They could be back at the ship.”

They could be. Or they could be up the flooded stairs and drowned under a ton of water, or crushed under a fallen pillar. They could be trapped, hurt, alone, counting on him. He couldn’t risk turning his back on this corridor if there was even the slightest chance of that, because Scarlet didn’t need to say it for him to hear it…this was
his
fault. He’d kept them here too long. He’d been wrong, and he had known all the time he’d been wrong; he just hadn’t wanted to accept it. No one, dead, alive, or injured in the city could be feeling worse than he felt upon realizing that.

Caught between despair and wanting to scream at something, Reece looked back at Scarlet…pale, distraught, soaked up past her knees and shivering, and still, for better or worse, his responsibility. If he focused on that, he might be able to keep himself sane long enough to get the two of them out of here. He grabbed her hand.

“We can cut through the fencing hall and have a straight shot at the southern pier,” he explained as he started running. She took a shaky breath but nodded, her icy fingers tightening around his.

             
After a few nearly disastrous shortcuts, they made it to the fencing hall and found it whole and empty. Reece had thought it might have been converted into another shelter, but he’d forgotten about its huge dome of glass staring up into the underbelly of the ocean. It didn’t make for much of a shelter when its ceiling could at any moment vaporize and fill the room with water faster than a soup bowl. He and Scarlet paused just inside the hall, breathing hard, and stared uneasily up at the dome as reverberations in the deep made the door bang shut behind them.

             
They weren’t the only ones who jumped. On the other side of the fencing strip, Hannick abruptly stood and spun in alarm. He relaxed when he saw it was just them, but only marginally.

             
“Reece!” he exclaimed. He nudged something under the bench with his foot before jogging towards them. “You’re alive! I thought when I heard…the north pier…”

             
Reece’s heart seemed to flinch. “We’re on our way to Aurelia,” he got out. Scarlet slid past him and hurried towards the changing room, maybe to see if anyone was inside. “I don’t have time to explain, but we have to get her out of here.”

“
You mean you know who’s attacking?”

“
We think.” It suddenly occurred to Reece why he was so surprised to see Hannick here, of all places. He was prince of a city that was being pummeled into the ocean floor, and he was laying low in the
fencing hall
? “What are you doing here, Hannick? Where are your counter measures? What about those defense jets you showed me? Shouldn’t you requesting relief from Lumiel, or something?”

Hannick wet his lips and tried to play down his uneasiness with a shrug.
“That’s Talfryn’s designated duty, and the way to the Command Exchange is blocked. Regardless,
someone
should be firing the jets. If they’re not, then there’s a good chance the jets were taken out in the initial shock.”

Which meant it was more imperative than ever Reece get Aurelia out of
Neserus. If the city’s defenses had been knocked out, it was only a matter of time before she sank. The Kreft wouldn’t bother trying to find survivors in the wreckage; they would extricate whatever they needed from Aurelia, then go back to slowly infesting the unsuspecting Epimetheus galaxy.

“
Take me with you,” Hannick said as Reece started after Scarlet. “They don’t need me here. If the city survives—”

Frowning, Reece interrupted,
“The city
will
survive. The attack will follow us back into space, and the other cities will send help. Just get to high ground in the meantime.”

“
Reece,” Scarlet tried to interrupt, and Reece waved to let her know he’d be right there.

“
You don’t understand, Reece,” Hannick pleaded. “Talfryn and I are usually the first ones evacuated in this sort of an event. My father would reward you handsomely, never mind pardoning you for Gideon’s thievery.”

Exasperated now as well as impatient, Reece vaulted over the side of the fencing ring and passed Hannick by.
“Come on, Hannick. You’re not going to bleeding
die
. Not if you don’t keep me from getting to my ship.”

Hannick lashed out angrily and grabbed him by the arm, waking up bruises Reece hadn’t realized he’d collected.
“I didn’t want to have to do this, Reece, but as Prince Proper of Oceanus, I
order
you to take me aboard your vessel and escort me to safety. At least as far as Haldon.”

Scowling at Hannick disbelievingly, Reece shook him off and pointed a warning finger in his face.
“As Palatine First of Honora…no.” He quickly dodged to the right as Hannick grabbed for him again, this time with a throaty growl. He’d think he was Kreft, except the prince was just acting like a spoiled kid trying to get his way, very stupid, very human. “What’s
wrong
with you?”

“
Reece,” Scarlet said again, loudly this time. Reece glanced at her. With her hand wrapped in skirt, she held up a teal stone that glowed and flickered like it withheld candlelight. The long bag Hannick had kicked under the bench lay open at her feet. Something in its belly pulsed in time with the stone in Scarlet’s hand, red and gold.

Reece stared perplexedly until Scarlet explained,
“The stolen anai.”

“
Get away from those!” Hannick hissed, shoving his way roughly by Reece and grabbing the teal stone right out of Scarlet’s raised hand. He pushed her aside with a Northern curse that, unfortunately for him, Reece recognized.

“
Hey
!” Reece snapped at Hannick’s back as the prince doubled over the bag and fretted with its buttons, hastily hiding his stash of stolen stones.
His
stash, Reece suddenly comprehended in full. His burst of anger shifted into shock.

The thing was, it made horrible sense, Hannick stealing the anai. He had the means, and Reece was pretty sure he knew his motive. Offhand remarks and certain moments that on their own had seemed innocent were linking together, and he could now track how from the very beginning, Hannick had been duping him like a numpty. If he was mad at Hannick for pulling it off, then he ought to be furious with himself for getting played.

After a tense moment, Hannick took a deep breath and deliberately straightened, as if composing himself. Which was a funny thing to do, considering when he turned around, he was holding a sword, and not a fencing sabre, but a real, double-edged disaster waiting to happen. “Now, don’t be dramatic,” he said when he saw Reece’s expression. Quick as a blink, he whipped the sword up to Scarlet’s neck and laid it flush with her skin. “I won’t use it unless I have to.”

“
Please. Don’t act as though you’re above it,” Scarlet bravely scoffed, keeping her face very carefully angled. She glanced at Reece, who shook his head tightly, hoping she knew to stay put for a minute so he could think this one through. He couldn’t jump Hannick and hope to disarm him with the blade touching Scarlet’s pulse; he was good, but he wasn’t
that
good. He needed something else—a distraction.

Thankfully, Scarlet had always been very good at being distracting whether or not she meant to be.

Hannick looked her briefly up and down, his smile frigid. “And how do you know that, Love?”

But Scarlet was the queen of wintry smiles; she leveled one at him that should have buried him under a snowdrift.
“Because you’re not above
cockroaches
, Hannick Pryor. Return the anai. Your city and your people need them. That’s why the jets aren’t firing, isn’t it? Because they need all the anai?”

Swallowing down an enormous ball of damaged pride along with an ugly longing to swing for Hannick’s goading little smirk, Reece started soundlessly creeping towards the edge of the ring, keeping one eye on Hannick, and one on the rack of display swords just out of reach. Hannick was far from the biggest bully around, he reminded himself in lieu of getting caught up in hating him. The Oceanun prince had manipulated Reece, but The Kreft probably wanted him drawn and quartered.

Sighing as if Scarlet was being a terrible inconvenience, Hannick answered, “Hard to say. I’ve never enjoyed sitting around staring at mystical rocks quite as much as my easily-amused sister. I get bored, you see.”

The city gave an uneasy tremble. Muffled shouts of alarm echoed outside the fencing hall, but no one entered. Probably because of its deathtrap ceiling. Reece had never intended to be under it for this long.

“Was it gambling?” Scarlet asked in a rush. “That would explain why you had Reece disqualified, at least…you needed to make sure you won in order to pay your debts, am I right? Or was it just greed that drove you to steal the anai? I’m curious as to what could possibly make any self-respecting human so selfish.”

One of Hannick’s eyes twitched. Reece was close now to his goal, his hand outstretched for the nearest silver curlicue hilt. 
“Be careful how you speak to me, Ms. Ashdown. I am, after all, a prince.”

“
A prince.” Scarlet’s scornful tone jarred as the room shook again and the benches hopped. Reece stole another inch. “Or maybe just a self-regarding, rapacious brat who needs his knuckles rapped.”

Just as Reece’s fingers closed victoriously around the cool metal of the silver hilt, Hannick smashed Scarlet across the face with the fist holding his sword. She sprawled with a gasp to the floor as he spat at her,
“I’ll accept a written apology when you’re feeling up to it.”

Reece didn’t think through the motions; his temper was on autopilot. As Hannick surged towards Scarlet, he flashed his sword under his chin so the prince very nearly beheaded himself. Which would’ve been a real loss for humankind.

“Touch her again and see what happens,” Reece dared, voice taut. “Drop the sword.”

             
Glancing sideways at Reece, Hannick cautiously straightened, and Scarlet crawled out of his shadow, trying to catch her breath and holding her jaw. “You don’t want to fight me, Reece.”

             
“That explains why I told you to drop your sword. Now
do it
.”

             
BOOM
. A nearby explosion made the room lurch violently, flinging Reece and Hannick apart and knocking down Scarlet where she had just been starting to stand with the bench’s help. The rack of sabres leaned forward with a groan, and as Reece and Hannick frantically rolled out from under either side of it, fell with the slow certainty of a mighty tree. It crashed noisily, all off key metallic scratches, clicks, and pings, its swords skittering and skimming across the floor.

             
“
Reece
!” Scarlet cried, making Reece’s head jerk up in alarm. He was worried she might have come off the bad end of an encounter with a flying sword, but she looked fine apart from the bruise swelling up on her cheek. Just terrified. She pointed. “The doors!”

             
Reece twisted on his knees just as something cold soaked through his trousers and hit him with a jolt. A sheet of white water was lapping in a layer at a time under the feet of the hall’s twin doors, creeping almost deliberately towards the fencing strip. The screams he had heard had faded into the distance so the rustling water was the only sound, a sound like chattering static. His arms lit up with goosebumps.

             
He and Hannick looked at each other, breathing hard. Then, in a mad scramble, they both dashed to scoop up a downed sword and leaped forward to meet each other in center ring. Reece attacked first, lunging, but Hannick danced to the side and slashed in an arc that would have split Reece’s throat like a loaf of bread if Reece hadn’t hastily leaned backward. They kicked up water as they parried back and forth, swords cracking together.

Unlike his fight with Headmaster Charles Eldritch, when he had had The Veritas’s serum to keep him focused, Reece was all too aware of the state of things around him—that is, that they were quickly going to pot. The freezing water sloshing in his boots, the ever more insistent purr of the incoming tide, the distant booms and rumbles of The Kreft taking out their frustration on the innocent city…
Don’t fight anxious
, Tutor Forge, his fencing instructor, had always said. Clearly, he had never dueled to the death in a flooding city under alien attack before.

“
Look at you,” Hannick laughed breathlessly as Reece managed to take the offensive, “nobly defending your woman. And here I thought Ms. Trimble was the one you’d decided on. I wouldn’t have spent so much time keeping tabs on her had known that wasn’t the case.”

             
“Keeping tabs?” Reece repeated, and cursed as the fight changed hands again. Hannick was backing him towards a wall.

             
Hannick smiled and clarified syllable by syllable, “
Leverage
, Reece. You never know when you’ll need it. Remember that.”

Reece knew he should probably let Hannick have the anai so he could get to Aurelia while he still had the chance, but it just seemed
wrong
, letting him have his way after everything. Part of him felt like if he could just fix the problem of the anai, he could fix everything else, too. The bad calls and messes he’d made with Gideon and Po and even Scarlet. Maybe he could just…take it all back, put it right again. Prove to himself if nobody else that he was capable of claiming his mistakes and then undoing them.

             
But part of him was just angry and spiteful, a part that didn’t want Hannick to win, no matter what it cost him. That’s when he knew it was time to stop fighting.

             
“Hannick,” he grunted, locked hilt-to-hilt with the snarling prince. “We can’t do this anymore. If we stay here much longer—”

             
“If you’re asking for me to surrender…” Hannick huffed, managing a labored laugh. “I’m afraid I don’t do that.”

             
“You do now,” said Scarlet’s voice with a note of triumph. Reece hadn’t been keeping track of her—he’d been a little busy trying not to get shredded—but she must have been waiting for a chance like this. While Hannick’s back was turned, she’d retrieved a sword and sneaked up behind him. It now rested on his shoulder, near enough to his cheek for a close shave. He blinked at it as she smiled grimly at Reece. She was pale and soaked, her golden hair lank and pasted to her neck and forehead, but she still managed a sort of…regality. She was definitely going to gloat about this later.

             
That’s when the doors exploded inward, flying off their hinges. A fist of water the size of an automobile burst into the room, but that’s all Reece had time to really see, because then everything was foam and salt and ice, and up was down. He tumbled blindly as the currents whirled agitatedly about him, now and again bumping the ground, the bench, or another body. He hadn’t had time to take a breath; his lungs were stretched, burning.

             
After what seemed like whole minutes, the water receded, leveling out and depositing him in a gagging heap. The room was still flooding, but gradually now. When he stood, the water slapped and pushed against his knees.

             
Hannick was doubled over the edge of the ring, retching. Scarlet was nowhere to be seen.

             
“Scarlet!” Reece yelled, turning in a circle. He had to stop and cough up another pint or so of seawater. “
Scarlet
!”

             
Weak coughing. Behind the bench. He stomped as fast as he could through the water and found her huddling on her hands and knees, barely managing to hold her head up. Blood saturated her hair and blossomed into clouds of red as it dripped into the water. When he tried to quickly but gently ease her up by her elbows, she almost collapsed.

             
“Head hurts,” she slurred, eyes squeezed shut.

Another wave of water gushed into the room. Reece barely stopped himself from being swept away, and Scarlet with him. The lights along the walls flickered uneasily so the circle of ocean on the ceiling was briefly the brightest point in the room.

              “Reece,” Hannick called, trudging across the ring, his bag clutched to his chest. “The changing room! There’s a back entrance!”

             
“Go!” Reece shouted. Even then, his voice sounded muted under the hiss and rustle of the water. Bending, he picked up Scarlet and grunted in surprise. He hadn’t counted on her sopping skirts weighing roughly as much as a pregnant elephant.

             
The door to the changing rooms had been wedged open with a metal block so the room could air out after the tournament. Reece had to turn sideways, angling Scarlet carefully, to squeeze through the slender opening. Once inside, he knocked out the wedge with his heel and hastily backed up to let the door slam shut, pushed by the influx of water. It wouldn’t stop the flooding, but it should at least slow it until they could get out of here. Readjusting his grip on Scarlet, he turned towards the back door.

             
Which meant he was just in time to see Hannick kick out its wedge and let it close.

             
With an oath, he set Scarlet down in the hip-deep water and waded quickly to the door, trying to catch it, but too late. On the other side of the portal window, Hannick smiled and spread his hands, mouthing, “
Oops.”

“
Hannick!” Reece snarled, banging a fist against the portal. He grabbed the handle in two hands, planted a foot against the wall, and tried with all his might to open the door, but he didn’t stand a chance. The water was too heavy, its push too strong. His foot slipped; he fell underwater and rose, sputtering, to pound on the portal again. “
Hannick
! So help me—”

With a little wave, Hannick backed away, hefted his bag, and took off down the corridor.

Reece fought doggedly with the door, smashing his elbow against the portal, yanking its handle until his hands felt chapped and blistered, banging his shoulder into it and calling for help. He dove under and felt around for some kind of release, but that wasn’t the problem; this wasn’t one of the city’s automated doors. He just had to do
something
. The alternative—standing around and waiting to drown—was unthinkable.

“
Reece,” Scarlet whispered hoarsely as the single dome light overhead stuttered and then went out. She turned into a shivering shape in the darkness.

Ignoring her, Reece growlingly pushed his way back towards the other door. He didn’t know what he expected to find. Even if he could somehow manpower the door open, the only thing out there was more icy water. Maybe if they waited, let the room fill up…

“Reece,” Scarlet whispered again, a hitch in her voice.

For another moment, he seethed at the door with his hands braced against it and his head hanging. There was nothing they could do. Strangely, as soon as he thought that, the water seemed to rush not quite so loud. There was a stillness in the air as he trudged to join her.