The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (46 page)

“I’m sorry I didn’t just leave Hannick,” he told her. The water was climbing his waist. “I should never have gotten you into this.”

Scarlet’s voice was a faint, breathy gasp.
“You were trying to do what was right.”

“
I’ve learned my lesson.”

There was some shuffling, some splashing in the dark. Scarlet doubled over, but before he could help her, a teal light bloomed under the water, wavering, and he drew back curiously. She straightened with an anai in hand, cradled in the space between them. It glowed on the planes of her face and made her look haggard but somehow beautiful in an eerie, sea-creature way.

“You stole it back,” Reece realized, and crowded the anai with her as if it could give off some desperately-needed warmth. He thought he’d gotten used to the water temperature, but that was before it hit his chest with a shock that left him tongue-tied.

“
I stole
them
back,” Scarlet corrected. She fiddled with her skirts and pulled out the red-gold anai. No wonder she’d been so bleeding heavy. “Is it bad I feel a kind of s-spiteful glee?”

“
W-what did you put in his b-bag?”

“
Tr..trophies.”

“
Nice.”

Scarlet said nothing; she was staring at the anai in a daze. Her eyelids started to bat tiredly. All of the sudden, she began leaning to the right, the anai rolling out of her hands and plopping into the water.

“Hey!” Reece caught her before she could go under, took her chin in his hand, and made her look at him. “Scarlet.
Scarlet
. You need to tread with me. Can you do that?”

She managed a lolling sort of nod. The water inched up past her chin and Reece’s hand, and she seemed to come a little more awake, because she started paddling clumsily. Reece helped hold her up the last few moments he had on tiptoe, and then started treading too. As soon as his hands dropped, she bobbed, sinking with her face tipped hopefully towards the low ceiling. Even without the anai—which were glowing like coals beneath their feet—her skirts were too heavy to swim in.

“Here,” Reece gasped, arranging her arms on his shoulders, “keep those there. Push down to keep your head up. I can take the weight.”

“
I’m going to die in a men’s changing room,” Scarlet whimpered woozily.

“
No, no you’re not.
Hey
. Look at me. You’re not.”

It looked like the anai were sinking, falling further away. But that was because Reece and Scarlet were almost to the ceiling now. Reece couldn’t help feeling like he ought to be having some kind of revelation, looking back on his life and remembering certain highlights or regrets, but he was too…surprised for that. More than anything, he just couldn’t believe that just like that, he was done.

Scarlet’s arms on his shoulders seemed to double in weight in a very short time, but they were nothing compared to the cramp in his side and the tightening stitch in his lungs. His arms and legs felt about as sturdy as noodles…what little he could feel of them, anyways.

“
I’m not s-sorry I came along,” Scarlet choked out. “This has been…the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Reece went under and barely managed to surface again.
“Drowning?” he wheezed. The weight on his shoulders shifted; Scarlet was trying to free her weight. He could make out her stubborn expression through the black spots popping up in his vision. “Scarlet…”

He paused, half sure the cold was playing tricks on him. Then he heard it again: a deep pounding, like a heartbeat. Someone was knocking on the underwater door.

Looking around frantically, he set his sights on the photon fixture a few feet away, and with a groan of effort, rowed towards it, dragging Scarlet with him.

“
Grab this,” he told her, guiding her hands into place around the dome. “Hold onto it, keep yourself up. I’ll be right back.”

With a deep breath that scalded his freezing lungs, he let himself go under. For a moment, he floated, muscles limp with relief. It was painful getting them to move again, but he made himself kick towards the back door with the portal window. He put his face up to the glass, slamming his fists against the door to try and call back whoever had been knocking.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t almost go into cardiac arrest when Owon’s face suddenly popped up on the other side of the portal, a few mere inches from his. He blew out some of his precious air supply and squawked like a drowning crow.

             
Then Nivy’s face appeared next to Owon’s, her blue eyes going wide with alarm. As the pressure on his lungs started to get uncomfortable, she gestured urgently, but he couldn’t for the life of him get his brain to interpret right now. It was too busy telling the rest of his body not to shut down yet, and Reece himself was preoccupied wondering why she had brought Owon to witness his undignified death.

             
The water suddenly shifted, churning Reece’s clothes like a breeze. A noise like a fan powering up made him twist and peer back into the darkness. He couldn’t see what was happening, but he didn’t need to, because suddenly he remembered. The steam vents, under the benches. Nivy must have hit the exterior controls to open them so the water could drain.

             
Invigorated by the thought he might actually get out of this alive, he thrust up through the water and surfaced with a gasp. Scarlet was still hugging the dome. Actually, she looked like she had frozen to it. Her eyes twitched to find Reece, but none of the rest of her moved.

“
The water’s going down,” she murmured.

             
He set about gently prizing her hands off the dome so they could ride the water as it dropped. “Yeah. We’re safe,” he promised, and he was surprised again, this time by how ragged his voice sounded. His throat felt tight; his jaw ached. Because it was true…he and Scarlet were safe. But the horrible feeling in his gut that wasn’t draining with the water…it was the feeling that something besides the obvious was terribly, irreversibly wrong.

XXII

The
Death of Po Trimble

             
Water gushed outta every door and every window, chasin’ Po as she breathlessly fled down the corridor. It cracked and splintered fine Oceanun sculptures and swept books, clothes and more past her as she ran, swirlin’ at her ankles. Anythin’ that hadn’t been secured before the attack was at risk’a either bein’ spat out into the ocean or sucked down into the depths with the falterin’ city, people included.
Po
included. The way the city was built, with all its sharp stairways and tiered levels, made for quite the waterfall. The only thing harder than runnin’ up a waterfall was runnin’
down
one, and that’s exactly what she was tryin’ to do.

             
She’d been lookin’ for Mordecai in the western pier when the attack had started, so far underwater, she’d felt the first explosions in the pressure in her ears before she ever felt them shake the city’s spires. As she’d frowned wonderingly, the floor had given a slight tremble, and a distant, brassy gong had started soundin’ some kind’a eerie alarm. The Oceanuns in the hall with her had stopped walkin’ and looked upward in astonished disbelief as she curiously budged her way to a round window and peered at the city proper, loomin’ in the murky water to the north. Aside from some flickerin’ lights in the hazy grid’a residential tower windows, which could prolly be written off as another power flux, there was nothin’ to explain the alarm or the shiver underfoot. Someone behind her whispered somethin’ about bein’ under attack.

             
She turned away from the window to see who’d spoken, and at the same time, heard a grainy pop. For such a little sound, it packed a lot’a punch. It felt like a giant had kicked the side’a the pier; everyone in Po’s corridor went sprawlin’ into one another, and Po herself almost crashed face first into the wall.

Curiosity turned to horror as she pulled herself up by the windowsill and blinked out into the sea. Swathes’a bubbles boiled from a jagged, broken tower that had not minutes ago been whole. Flotsam jettisoned to the surface, rubble and bits’a the city, but Po didn’t think she was imaginin’ that some’a the rubble had arms and legs. Screams drowned out the gong as the people around her figured out the same thing, and suddenly, it was all she could do to not get swept away as they wildly fled just a minute too late. With another
pop
and
whoosh
, and the whole western pier groaned and shook. Vases tipped and shattered; people tumbled into one another, rollin’ as the ground slanted treacherously to one side. What had sounded like distant whispers turned into a rush’a water that came careenin’ around the corridor corner. Po, who had gotten pushed against the wall, gasped as the frigid water splashed up to her knees, her mind briefly wiped blank by the sharp shock’a it.

For a moment, she was too confused and scared to do much else besides let the crowds push her along. By the time she got her wits about her, she’d been herded all the way to the next crossroads’a corridors, where she was able to squeeze outta the press’a bodies and duck into a corner to get her bearings.

By the distant bass poppin’ sounds, other ends’a the city were holdin’ the attention’a the attackers, whoever they were. She didn’t want to think it for fear the name alone would be enough to make her panic, but it slipped out before she could catch it.
The Kreft
. They’d finally caught up to Aurelia, and they didn’t sound none too pleased. Takin’ deep, shudderin’ breaths as she tried to ignore the pins and needles feelin’ in her soaked legs, she listened to the murmured booms’a ship fire and approximated that The Kreft were focusin’ mostly on the north to east piers. The ship bays, she thought. They were tryin’ to sink Aurelia to the bottom’a the sea, and if they took the rest’a the city down with her, all the better. ‘Cept they didn’t know that Aurelia wasn’t parked with the Oceanun fleet. Which meant there still might be time to get to her.

One look at the fleein’ crowds, which were quickly becomin’ a mob, and Po knew she’d never cut through the traffic fast enough to make it to the ship before she was either destroyed or taken to safety. The crowds were understandably all forcin’ their way upwards, like they’d just now figured out that they were under a million’a pounds’a water. It wasn’t a comfortable thought, and Po felt tight-throated just lookin’ at the splintered corridor windows.
Down
, she thought. The water didn’t seem to be leakin’ in too fast yet, at least not in this wing. Chances were, she could bypass all the madness by duckin’ down just a level or two and climbin’ back up once she was nearer to Aurelia.

That was how she’d ended up trippin’ her way down a corridor alone, the lights flickerin’ weakly, bouncin’ reflections off the ruffles on the water. Her raspin’ breath echoed damply in the green-lit corridor, which was horribly quiet aside from the hush’a the swirlin’ water and the gentle bumps’a litter nudgin’ the walls. She stumbled to a set’a slidin’ doors and had to brace her back against one side and her foot against the other to press them apart enough for her to fall through. Someone caught her under the arms and hauled her up with a grunt.

Mordecai’s face looked gaunt in the low light’a the underwater tunnels, actually old, for once. Probably because he wasn’t smilin’, like he always seemed to be. It didn’t really matter, because Po threw her arms around him and hugged him anyways. He patted her on the back kindly before pullin’ back and askin’, “Seen the others?”

She shook her head a bit wildly, owin’ to the fact she was already shakin’ so hard.
“You?”

He calmly told her no, and takin’ her hand, folded it over his elbow and started escortin’ her down the corridor at a pace just short of a jog. Down two more corridors and over one, she and Mordecai hurried along in silence, tryin’ not to look too closely at the rubble bobbin’ around their feet. They passed a few people hurryin’ the opposite direction, but let them go. They’d probably be safer up there. Po and Mordecai were just tryin’ to get to Aurelia before The Kreft did, and that unfortunately required this dark, roundabout way. The water kept climbin’, inch by inch. Po’s knees rattled together from the cold and her nerves.

After what felt like hours’a trudgin’ through icy water and pushin’ open reluctant doors, Mordecai pulled her by her arm to a stop. She almost kept goin’, her march through the water had become so stiff and mechanical.

“
What’s—”

“
Shh,” he hushed her gently. They strained their ears to the quiet. Around their knees, the water suddenly started lappin’ madly. From the distance came a sound like wild applause that rattled Po’s teeth in her skull. “Move,” Mordecai urged. “
Move
.”

They started gracelessly lopin’ towards the nearest door as the corridor quaked behind them and the water started speedin’, tryin’ to sweep them away into the unknown with displaced books and clothes and toys. For a heart-stoppin’ moment, the door didn’t want to open, not even with both’a them pullin’ at it with groans and growls’a effort. They finally managed to pry it open enough for them to squeeze through one at a time before it slammed shut violently at their backs. Behind the door, the ocean purred like a thing alive.