The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (51 page)

             
“He’d want you to put it to good use,” Reece agreed, forcing himself to look away. He couldn’t shake the image of the revolver sitting in a puddle in the engine room, dripping quietly and still managing to be the loudest thing in the room. Water rushing, heart pounding, lungs burning, a door that wouldn’t open. The things he thought about when he saw the dripping revolver in his mind’s eye.

             
He tucked the last ink canister away between two waistcoats. “Ready?”

             
With a grunt of assent, Gid stepped to the lid where it leaned against the wall and took its other end in hand. Together, they hoisted it into place over the crate and eased it down till the magnets caught and it clicked closed. Then Reece watched as Gideon slowly, with much more care than he’d shown the possessions themselves, pulled out a clunky padlock, lined it up, and with a slow inhale, snapped it shut indefinitely. He patted the box twice and pulled back.

             
“There ain’t ever been a dual-wieldin’ Handler before. Pretty sure he’d be pleased to know he made room for the first.” He looked at Reece until Reece realized this was as close to a funeral as his grandfather would be getting. He’d learned about captains officiating ceremonies on their ships, but this…this was yet another thing his tutors hadn’t prepped him for. But then, he doubted even another ten years of schooling could really teach him how to say goodbye to a friend that had died on his watch.

             
Shifting his weight with his hands on his hips, Reece cleared his throat and said, “If I knew him at all, Gid, I know there wasn’t a second he regretting doing what he did. He saved Po, and Po is one of the only things keeping this ship flying. So in a way…he saved all of us.”

             
Speaking of Po. Reece caught himself with a hand on the crate as the ship rattled, groaned miserably, and went still again. Mordecai’s sacrifice would be for nothing if the mechanic he’d died to save let the ship fall right out from under the rest of the crew. Which brought Reece to the other subject he needed to broach with Gid.

Gideon frowned at the door to the Afterquin as he dusted his hands on his pant legs.
“What’s she doin’ in there?”

             
“Nothing. That’s the problem.” Reece hesitated as Gideon raised his eyebrows at the door. He knew what that look meant without seeing it head-on; there was a dare behind it, a challenge to go on and see if Gideon wouldn’t stop him if he didn’t like what he was saying. “I need you to talk to her.”

             
“
Po
?” Gideon coughed out in surprise. “About what?”

             
“The ship. The processors got banged up coming into the Rhea and I need her to get them back up and running again, or we don’t stand a change of navigating to Ismara on our own.”

             
Incredulous, Gideon turned and stared at him. “So why can’t you do it?”

             
He hesitated. “I doubt she wants to see me right now. Besides, you two have a…rapport.”

             
“I don’t know what that means.”

             
“She
listens
to you, Gid.”

             
Gideon eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then rolled his eyes and snorted. “She listens to you plenty. You just don’t ever listen back.” Shouldering past Reece, he headed towards the galley.             

“
Wait. She…” Reece caught up to him and grabbed him by the arm, which he could tell was a mistake from the way Gideon ever so slowly turned his head to glare at him. Despite knowing from experience this was the part where he should back away from the bear coming out of its cave, he pressed, “What does that mean?”

             
“Forget it,” Gid growled, shaking him off. “If you ain’t bleedin’ figured it out by now—”

             
“For the love of…figured
what
out?” He had a sudden inspiration. “You mean her…the way she…” He gestured, trying to get Gideon to help him out, but Gid just crossed his arms and waited without expression. It had only recently come to his attention that everyone had known about the situation with Po prior to Neserus and had deigned not to tell their captain, and he half thought it was so he could feel the way he did now—like an idiot. Not that he didn’t deserve it, but their ingenuity on behalf of his idiocy was something else. “You’re talking about her…
feelings
for me.”

             
Gideon made a disgusted face. “There ya go, genius.”

             
“What does that have to do with anything? Po knows she and I aren’t going to happen. I
told
her it wasn’t going to happen—that’s why I’m in this bleeding mess! Now she won’t even let me—”

             
“You
told
her that?” Gideon barked in disbelief. “Burn it! You bleedin’ numptified—” He slipped into a strand of no doubt colorful Pantedan, which Reece hadn’t heard him do in ages, and swung away to kick one of Mordecai’s empty bags clear across the cargo bay. When he jerked back around, it was to jab a gun-like finger in Reece’s astonished face. “See, this is what I’m bleedin’ talkin’ about! You makin’ her feel like you’re bleedin’ better than her when she’s the brightest, best thing on this ship. The rest’a you count on her to always be smilin’ and happy and she is, and then you don’t even notice that she never takes the last biscuit, and sings when she’s workin’ on the nastiest bit’a engine muck, and can’t even
talk
about raisin’ her hand to hurt someone else without lookin’ sick to her stomach. Then you go and just—”

Reece was only paying half a mind to the details of Gideon’s outburst. Not because he didn’t get what he was saying, but because he suddenly understood what he
wasn’t
saying, and what he’d been neglecting to say for quite a while. At least in words; all the grousing and snapping and overreacting sure made a lot more sense now.

             
“
Ha
! You’re in love with her!” Reece crowed loudly as Gid cut out with a croak. Honestly, he was just happy to have solved the mystery of Gid’s recent wishy-washiness, but something about his reaction must have been misinterpreted as offensive, because the next thing Reece knew, Gideon was tackling him with an expletive that would have made Hayden blush, and it was suddenly all he could do to keep his teeth in his mouth.

“
What are you
doing
?” Tangled together in a knot of arm bars and head locks, Reece and Gideon looked up as one at Scarlet where she stood on the cargo bay steps, imperious with her hands on her hips. “Let go. Now.”

Whoever she meant the order for, they both obeyed. Reece stopped cranking Gideon’s wrist the wrong way a beat before Gid unfisted his hair and pushed him away with a scowl. It was a good thing Scarlet had shown up when she had; Reece had wrestled Gid plenty of times before, but never when Gideon had had so many reasons to hurt him. At least…
good
reasons.

Sighing, Scarlet adjusted the beaded shawl around her shoulders.
“Shame on you. How do you think Hayden would feel if he saw you two fighting like this? Or Po?”

That depended on whether or not Po knew the reason for their fighting, Reece thought, and then she’d feel either good or terrible. Thinking back over the last few months, he didn’t know how he could have missed this. But then, this wasn’t the first instance of his astute observational skills failing him. As he dusted off his battered jacket, he glanced at Gideon, who was dragging a wrist over his split lip. Po and Gideon.
Of course
, one part of him said, while another part demanded,
How?
He’d known Gideon through a lot of girls, the main one being Ariel, but all of them were at least
like
Ariel—assertive, audacious, usually unpleasant. And then there was Po. Who, like Gideon said, never took the last biscuit.

He trusted Gid with his life, but oddly enough, trusting him with their breakable little mechanic was different.
Po
was different.

“
Honestly,” Scarlet scolded as she shook her head. “There hasn’t been a fistfight in all of history that couldn’t have been prevented with a little diplomacy.”

Reece feigned surprise.
“I didn’t know you’d been there for all of them.”

“
How come you didn’t stop ‘em?” Gid added, mumbling around his fat lip.

Giving the two of them an unimpressed look, Scarlet picked up her skirts and glided away, leaving them alone in the strained quiet of the cargo bay. After a minute of hovering uncomfortably, Gideon, obviously avoiding Reece’s eye, leaned his shoulder against the packed crate and with a grunt, shoved it till it was flush with the wall.

“Don’t go sayin’ anythin’,” he finally muttered. “It ain’t worth mentionin’.”

Joining him in slouching against the crate—and cracking his back twice in the process, thank you Gideon—Reece wondered,
“Why not?”

“
Just ain’t. I’d be no good for her and besides, she’s had eyes for you since we were kids.” Gid shook himself and started scowling again as if just remembering he was angry. His eyes still wouldn’t venture higher than Reece’s collar.

Anxious to keep the conversation away from Po’s unrequited feelings, Reece tilted back his head and made a preoccupied noise up at the ceiling. However leery he was about Po taking up with Gideon, he was a whole lot leerier about her taking up with
him
. He could only know Gideon so far, but there was no avoiding the inside of his own head. No one else should be subjected to
that
. “She could do a lot worse than you, you know,” he said thoughtfully.

“
Yeah,” a small smirk splintered Gid’s bleak stare, “she keeps tryin’.”

Reece smiled darkly and let the jab lie.
“So stop her trying. I mean it,” he added when Gideon started ruefully shaking his head. “Just…be careful with her, alright? I know I’m not the best example, but Po is special. To all of us. Scarlet would probably—”

“
I get it. And I said it ain’t worth mentionin’. Po can’t see three feet in front’a her own nose when you’re around, and you don’t even care,” Gideon said curtly, shoving off the crate. “I’ll talk to her about the ship. Someone has to, seein’ as you’re too scared.”

Reece let him go, watching him march away with his shoulders hunched and his twin revolvers rocking at either hip. Something ugly in him wanted to yell and demand he take back that last, mostly because he knew…Gid was right. He
was
scared, but not of Po or her feelings; there, he was just inept and apparently oblivious.

He started walking, drifting in a daze in the general direction of the bridge, where Nivy would be waiting to hand over the helm. He didn’t want it. No, that wasn’t true…he
did
want it, more than anything. But what he was scared of—the fear Gideon had felt from him—it was the fear of letting himself have it, and what would happen if he did.

At the top of the stairs, he paused, realizing he wasn’t alone. Scarlet stood in the shadows with her hands folded in her lap, chewing her bottom lip as she waited for him. The one person he could count on making him feel impossibly worse.

Scarlet cautiously approached, frowning at him as he raised a single challenging eyebrow. “Bad day?” she asked quietly.

Just as Reece was about to think up something especially witty to put her off his trail (
“
I’m fine
” came to mind), his exhaustion hit its peak, and his guard dropped like a curtain. Not that it mattered. Subterfuge had never worked on Scarlet back when he’d had nothing to hide—why should it now?  “I’ve had better,” he admitted dispiritedly.

Without another word, Scarlet put her arms around him and hugged him. He let her.

              The engine room felt abandoned. That was the first thing Gideon noticed, and it was all wrong. Usually, Po made this place homey and warm. The engine kept the ship runnin’, but Po, she gave it a purpose. Maybe the Afterquin, for all she was just a machine, wasn’t abandoned so much as she was lost. She wouldn’t be the only one.

             
Gideon looked around as he slowly wandered the metal jungle, tryin’ to walk off some’a his agitation. Every hangin’ photon lamp and smallest candle was lit, but instead’a makin’ the room warmer, the light just lit up its emptiness, so it felt vast and old. He cautiously peered around the foldin’ screen wallin’ in Po’s room, but the cubby hole was empty. Her bed had been stripped’a its blankets. She’d been sleepin’ on Scarlet’s floor, he knew, but she wouldn’t be there just now.

             
Frownin’, he leaned a shoulder against the wall and listened to the quiet lyin’ under the sighs’a the Afterquin. It took him a minute, but he eventually picked out a single squeak’a rubber sole chaffin’ against metal. There was nothin’ for it but to go lookin’ for the little red boot that would’a made that sound, and the mechanic wearin’ it. He hadn’t figured out what he planned on doin’ that would be at all better than anythin’ Reece could manage with his bleedin’ charms, but Reece had guessed right on one thing…Gideon
wanted
to be here.