The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (53 page)

             
He’d tried to help her with that some. At the very least, he’d given her someone to complain about by never lettin’ her alone with the Afterquin these last few days. She could say what she liked, but he knew she was glad for the company, the stories and the occasional laugh he won outta her, impressin’ even himself. Most’a the time, she just quietly fiddled with the engine while Gideon worked on his guns or tried to look busy even if he was bored half to death, but there was somethin’ good even in the quiet—like it was actually the sound’a healin’, of ligaments and sinew pullin’ agonizingly back together. Truth was, Po…she just gave him a sense’a purpose, and he could do with one’a those right now.

             
“Look,” Reece tried with the innkeeper again, huffin’. His breath had long since stopped cloudin’ in the cold, and if his teeth didn’t chatter as much as Po’s, well, it was probably because they were as tired as the rest’a him looked. “You’re not listening. There are six of us altogether. We—”

“
Six
?” the Ismaran woman choked, scandalized.

“
Including our injured friend.”

“
Well, then we
certainly
don’t have the room! And where is this…injured friend?” The innkeeper peered between the three’a them suspiciously, like maybe they were hidin’ Aitch under their coats. But Nivy had thought it’d be a good idea for him to hang back on Aurelia with Scarlet rather than drag his foot around while she tried to get in touch with her people, and after feelin’ the cold for himself, Gideon had to admit Aitch was better off. “No, nevermind. I can’t take you, and that’s that. You ought to be getting along, now. There’s a curfew, you know.”

             
Gideon’s gaze sharpened as the innkeeper’s eyes darted ever so briefly to the side. At the same time, a floorboard creaked about where she was lookin’. She wasn’t alone.

             
Reece noticed too; his brown eyes narrowed, and he nodded thoughtfully. Ever since arrivin’ in The Ice Ring late last night, he’d been takin’ Nivy’s every tip to heart, and The Crazy had been very clear about keepin’ their eyes open for anythin’ fishy. In The Ice Ring, even a backwater little village like Ketswitch was Kreft territory, and these people, right down to the crabby innkeeper, were their slaves. Some’a them worked by day and rebelled by night, but a lot more’a them had had the will to fight bred outta them.

             
The Ice Ring itself was nothin’ like Gideon had expected. For starters, there was only one planet, Icarus, an arctic rock with twelve snowy moons revolvin’ around it like a tight belt. Every kind’a ship bussed back and forth between them, outdated war crafts, foreign explorers, ferries haulin’ scrap metal, and then the hulkin’ Kreft vessels themselves, projectin’ a grim, stoic order onto everythin’. Comin’ outta the Rhea and into The Ice Ring had been like steppin’ off a train and into the busiest station he’d ever seen.

They’d slipped into the hustle and bustle to let it camouflage them, but it had nonetheless been a tense couple’a hours, tryin’ to skirt The Kreft’s main outpost to get to Ismara, the seventh moon in the ring. Thankfully, there had been some kinda disturbance about the same time they pulled in, and most’a The Kreft ships had been headin’ the other direction in a birdlike formation. Nivy hadn’t looked too thrilled about that, but then, so many Kreft headin’ one way all at once couldn’t be good. The crew had laid low in the caves with Aurelia overnight, just to make sure they weren’t bein’ trailed, but that was as long as Reece had been willin’ to wait with Aitch’s health on the line.

Now he was bein’ made to wait again, and the effort’a bein’ polite was obviously takin’ its toll. Gideon felt a bit’a Reece recklessness comin’ on, just like old times. He supposed that was good. The old times had been…easier.

“
Oh, one more thing,” Reece snapped his fingers and called the instant before the innkeeper could shut her door. She eyed him out the crack like she couldn’t believe his nerve. “You don’t happen to know a Nivy Noemie, do you?”

The woman’s gaunt face instantly went blank. Gideon shifted and fingered his gun again as she ducked her head inside to whisper to the someone behind the door.

“Think that’s a yes?” Reece muttered.

Gideon nodded.
“Think that’s a heck yes.”

The woman reappeared with pursed lips.
“Perhaps you had better come inside after all,” she said stiffly. Openin’ the door a smidgen wider so they could see a corner’a the inn’s rustic parlor with its hearth and loaded coat tree, she waved them in.

Reece and Gideon swapped a look before Reece took the lead and nodded for Po to follow him without quite meetin’ her eye. He’d been makin’ an effort to treat her like everyone else since his and Gideon’s talk, but Po still turned pink and stared at her feet rather than his back as he led the line into the inn. Like usual, the exchange made Gideon wish he had an anvil to vent his frustration on.

It was a trap, o’course. If Po and her bleedin’
Po-ness
hadn’t been throwin’ him off, he would’a seen it comin’.

The second his boots crossed the threshold, the innkeeper slammed the door and threw its bolts. Cloaked figures fanned out from either side’a the door at their backs, rushin’ them as Gideon reached a hand to either hip and in one cross-drawin’ motion, whipped up his and Mordecai’s revolvers, pointin’ east and west.

There were about six men in all, cloaked in a muddy white that would make them dirt near invisible out on the greyscale street. Under their cloaks, they were mismatched and worse for wear in knee high boots and tight trousers with beaten leather overcoats. Every man had the Nivy look about him: lean and olive-skinned with a hunted expression that at any second, could snap to crazy, but other than that, they didn’t look so different from Caldonian street toughs.

Po suddenly shoved him with a cry’a alarm. He barely felt the push, but took a hefty step back anyways, mostly in surprise. A knife flew past his chest and nearly amputated Po’s braid.

That about settled it for him. His fingers squeezed the revolvers’ middle triggers, and as he gave his wrists two deft snaps like he was conductin’ a choir, the barrels clicked, one, two. They trapped the man who’d hurled the knife between their aim. If he moved either direction, Gideon would shoot his white hood off, and he wasn’t guaranteein’ it would be empty.

“
Watch it!” the innkeeper shouted. She’d skirted around the tussle and was standin’ next to an open closet door with a black shockgun crossed over her chest. “Nekoda…is he Pantedan?”

“
And a Handler,” one’a the hooded men added with a note’a surprise and somethin’ else in his voice. His accent was different from the others’.

Reece, who was goin’ toe to toe with a grubby-faced fellow missin’ an eye, barked,
“
Gid
! Don’t shoot! They—” With a shout, the man darted in and drove an uppercut into Reece’s gut that folded him over with a pained wheeze.

The brassy barrel’a Gideon’s revolver clicked till it was starin’ at the blank space between the man’s dark eyebrows. His eyes and Mordecai’s revolver, he kept pointed at the knife-thrower in challenge.

“They’re Heron!” Po finished for Reece, grabbin’ Gideon by the sleeve. He shook her off irritably, but she just grabbed hold again. There was a light in her toffee brown eyes that made somethin’ coil and tighten in his chest. He hadn’t seen that light since before Neserus. “They’re Heron,” she repeated. “They ain’t our enemies.”

“
If you believe that,” the innkeeper said gravely. “Lower your weapons.”

Po’s fingers squeezed Gideon’s arm. Reece was trapped; a goon held either’a his arms, pushin’ his shoulders down into a mock bow.
“
Gideon
,” he urged, tensed but no longer fightin’.

For a long moment, the cracklin’ hearth in the parlor and a tin kettle comin’ to boil over it were the loudest sounds. Ice and snow ticked against the window like the second hand on a pocket watch.

With a ragged exhale, Gideon spun his revolvers down into their holsters and rigidly raised his hands. A Heron cautiously disarmed him as he seethed. The innkeeper looked pleased; Reece look relieved. Gideon was neither, but Po’s hand on his arm was an anchor that kept him grounded as the skeletal innkeeper strode calmly into the circle’a men with her shockgun still in hand. For a long moment, she glared down her nose at Reece as he peered back innocently. Then she slammed the butt’a the shockgun across his jaw, and he went limp, danglin’ between his two captors as Po screamed.

Cursin’, Gideon surged forward. One’a the knives up his coat sleeves slid obediently into his right hand as he grabbed the innkeeper and hauled her against his chest. The edge’a his blade was at her throat before the cloaked men could more than shout in alarm.

“Wait!” the innkeeper snapped. She sounded steely and calm, which was pretty impressive considerin’ he could feel her pulse stampin’ wildly against his thumb. “Stay back. This one isn’t bluffing.”

“
Dirt straight I’m not,” Gideon growled. “Po?”

“
I’m here,” she peeped from behind his shoulder.

“
Get where I can see you.”

She ducked in front’a him, white-faced and horror-struck as she stared at Reece’s droopin’ form.

“What do you intend to do?” the innkeeper demanded. Gideon eased the edge’a the blade up closer to her chin in warnin’, and the men leanin’ forward on their toes like they were thinkin’a jumpin’ him went still. “You’re trapped, Pantedan. Lower your weapon and you will come to no harm.”

“
What, like he didn’t’?” Gideon jerked his chin at Reece, whose head lolled as the men hoisted his dead weight. “I ain’t entirely convinced.”

The innkeeper flinched and hissed, “Nekoda!”

Someone strode around Gideon and Po and stopped in front’a Reece. He held Mordecai’s revolver loosely but not carelessly in hand, which was curious. There weren’t many people who could pick up a revolver and hold it comfortably the first time; they wouldn’t and
shouldn’t
be used to its bulkier width and off-balanced weight. Then the hooded fellow adjusted his grip. His right leg slid back and bent. His shoulders squared. Gideon’s chest felt suddenly tight. That was a near perfect Handlin’ stance.

The mystery Handler peered over his shoulder with wild blue eyes that almost glowed. Pushin’ his hood down, he revealed a pale diamond-shaped face and a shock’a black hair that was shaved down to a bristle on the sides. A scar made his lip curl a bit on the left. He was a Pan, no doubt about it.

Without so much as blinkin’, he snapped his wrist, and Mordecai’s barrel stopped against Reece’s temple. “They call this an impasse.” His drawl was still there, but faint, like it had been ironed out over time. He was maybe ten years older than Gideon, which meant he’d been through the war, maybe even gotten that scar from it. “You hurt her, I’ll have to shoot him.”

Gideon chanced a sideways glance at Po, who was still starin’ at Reece with her hands on her throat, like seein’ him that way was killin’ her. An impasse meant that neither’a them could do somethin’ while the other one was armed, right? Nekoda could kill Reece, but he would lose his innkeeper, and he wouldn’t’a gone to such measures unless he wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.

Maybe The Heron just wanted to question them, to see where they came from. But Gideon wasn’t gonna risk Po bein’ put through whatever methods they might use. He was gonna bleedin’ skin Nivy, the next time he saw her. She could’a warned him that her people were even crazier than she was.

“
Po,” Gideon muttered, “you gotta go.”

She looked at him blankly.
“What?”

“
Get outta here, run back to the others. If this is all a misunderstandin’…we’ll find you. But you gotta get somewhere safe, till then.”

What he was sayin’ finally seemed to click with the girl; she blinked in surprise and then scowled. The light was back in her eyes.
“I ain’t leavin’ you!
Either
’a you!”

Nekoda was watchin’ him like a hawk. He was Pantedan, but that didn’t make him any kind’a friend or even ally. The war had worn on different Pans different ways. Some’a them had broken and had to find ways’a either fixin’ it or hidin’ it. Some’a them had frosted over, gone cold and angry. A very few’a them had pretended to move on, becomin’ somethin’ they weren’t: Honorans. Nekoda didn’t look like any’a those types. He’d be dangerous even if he wasn’t a Handler.

“You listen to me, Po Girl. If you don’t run—”

“
Whatchya gonna do?” Po demanded. “I said I ain’t leavin’! I ain’t bein’ useless again!” Her voice cracked.

“
And you ain’t listenin’ to what I’m sayin’!”

“
Maybe because it’s
stupid
! You don’t gotta protect—”

With a growl, Gideon dropped his knees and threw his knife arm out to the side so as not to slit the keeper’s neck as he went down. He shoved her from behind, throwin’ her towards Nekoda, who cursed in Pantedan as the flyin’ woman took him, Reece, and one’a Reece’s captors down in a heap.

Po yelped as Gideon whipped her towards the door so hard her boots both left the ground for a second.

“
Bleedin’ numpty,” he growled at her. “If you go, you can find
Nivy
!”

Po’s face, which had been contorted with panic and confusion, cleared, and she nodded frantically, shovin’ off his arms to launch herself towards the door. She opened the bolts with her speedy mechanic’s hands and flew out into the snow without lookin’ back.

“Shoot her!” the innkeeper cried as Nekoda untangled himself and bolted upright. “She could be a spy!”

Gideon looked for his revolver and spotted it on one’a the two men tryin’ to corner him but lookin’ uneasy about it. Nekoda was fast—there were no slow Handlers. But if Gideon could get his revolver back, he might just be faster, and then they’d have an old fashioned duel, right here in the parlor.

Then Nekoda surprised him. “She’s a little girl,” he drawled, starin’ out the window at Po’s retreatin’ back distastefully.

“
They’ve used little girls before!” the innkeeper scathed, brushin’ off her minions’ helpin’ hands. “We have to be certain she’s not one of them. Just take out her leg, for pity’s sake!”

Heart thunderin’, Gideon started for the fellow with his revolver, but then two sets a hands grabbed him from behind. Under the combined weight’a three Heron, he went down to his stomach on the floor, cursin’.
Po
!

SNAP
. The gunshot made his ears feel like they were hot and bleedin’. He raised his head with difficulty, strainin’ against the boot someone had planted on his back. Nekoda casually lowered Mordecai’s revolver. He’d blown out the window; snow and broken glass sparkled on the floor. “Whoops,” he said without expression. His blue eyes locked on Gideon’s, burnin’ wildly, crazy like Mordecai’s had never really been. “I missed.”

Someone smashed the back’a Gideon head with somethin’ hard. He heard more than felt the actual impact, and went under with a groan.

His eyes opened to a black stone ceilin’ curvin’ directly down into the cold floor under his back. He was in a pocket’a stone—a circular cell. The globe’a orange light hoverin’ near the ceilin’ like a lazy firefly pulsed and made the shadows crawl forward and recede, crawl forward and recede, so he felt like the black was an ocean tide, creepin’ closer and closer. The thought made him think’a Oceanus, and Oceanus made him think’a Mordecai. His throat tight, he leaned up and looked around, stubbornly ignorin’ the buzz in his brain.

Reece glanced up at him from across the cell, his face lined with the angular shadows’a the silver bars closin’ off the fourth wall’a the cave. His arms were wrapped around his chest, his hands balled up inside his thin grey sleeves. The Heron had taken his coat. They’d taken Gideon’s too, along with all his knives and the belt that held his extra rounds.

“You alright?” Reece asked him, his voice breathy and thin from the cold.

Gideon nodded and tried to stand, glarin’ around at the pecular prison. His head nearly brushed the ceilin’.
“Where are we?”

“
The Heron Underground, so far as I can tell.”

“
How long you been up?”

“
Most of the night. They woke me to question me.” Which explained why his face wasn’t just bruised on the side he’d gotten gun-smacked with. Reece licked his split lip and continued without elaboratin’. “I told them how we got here. About Nivy, and Eldritch.”

“
They believe you?”

“
Not sure, since we’re still in here.” Suddenly, he pushed to his feet, staggered, and grabbed the bars for support. They hummed and resonated at his touch, like mellow wind chimes. The sound made Gideon’s ears itch. “We came all this way and went through so much to make it here. I didn’t expect them to…”

“
To be bleedin’ numptified?”

“
Pretty much.” Eyein’ him sideways, Reece cautiously asked, “So…what happened to Po?”

“She got away. I
told her to run. Find Nivy.” Gideon snorted humorlessly. “Don’t know what good that’ll do us, since mentionin’ the Numpty is what got us stuck here in the first place.”

For a long moment, Reece stared down the stark stone tunnel fadin’ to pitch black a few yards away.
“I trust Nivy,” he finally said, like that settled it. He looked at Gideon as if just rememberin’ somethin’. “They have a Pan.”

“
Yeah. Nekoda. He’s a Handler.”

“
You know him?”

“
What, you think we have reunions or somethin’?”

Somewhere in the dark, a door groaned open. A hushed but giddy whisper leaked into the hallway, accompanied by hurried footsteps, two sets, at least. Reece threw Gideon a curious look and leaned against the bars like he could barely hold his weight, tryin’ to seem less like a threat. Or maybe he wasn’t pretendin’. Under the lantern, his bruises were like leopard spots.

A scrawny kid who looked about ten appeared at the edge’a the orange light, wearin’ a floppy leather cap that his mouse-like ears barely kept from fallin’ down over his blonde head. He blinked at them thoughtfully. “Are these your friends?” he whispered. He looked over his shoulder when he didn’t get an immediate reply, and with Gideon and Reece, watched Nivy prowl forward with a frown.

She’d cleaned up, changed outta the Westerner clothes Mordecai had acquired for her and into a strange pair’a fitted trousers with black stripes down the sides. He couldn’t tell if what she was wearin’ on her arms was a coat or an overdress; the leather jacket went down to her knees and split into tails, but stopped short’a her wrists, where she wore a pair’a thick brown gauntlets instead. Her black ponytail, which was pulled back tight and neat, hung through the back’a the hood. For the first time since he’d known her, she really looked like a spy. Or an assassin.

He’d been so busy takin’ in the new her, he hadn’t paid much attention to the old parts that were missin’. So when she opened her mouth and spoke in that liltin’ voice he’d almost forgotten, and he realized it was because her neck was bare and the black band was gone, all he could do was stare like an open-mouthed ginghoo.

“
That’s them.”

XXV

It’s Nice to Meet You, Nivy Noemie

             
“Watch your hands.” As Nivy swiftly typed a command into the control panel hanging beside the bars, she asked, “What happened to you?”

She nodded at Reece like everything about the cell, her strange transformation, and the kid with the impressive ears was normal, and Reece looking—and more importantly
feeling
—like he was about to fall apart at the joints was somehow his fault. She’d obviously had time to straighten up, brush her hair, and shine her shoes while he’d been getting soundly thumped by Nekoda at the bequest of an audience of Heron who hadn’t even had the good manners to introduce themselves. He didn’t see why she should care.

As the bars retracted into the walls with a rasp of metal on stone, Reece gave her a look not unlike the ones he’d given her all those times she’d annoyed him on the bridge of
The Aurelia
. To try and make himself feel like this was still Nivy and nothing had changed in the face of everything actually changing very quickly. “I got nobbled by The Heron’s Pan. What happened to you? Go shopping?”

“
These are my normal clothes.”

             
“You brushed your hair.”

             
“A little, yes. Can you run? We need to hurry.”

             
Reece was used to Nivy’s flat looks and melodramatic eye rolls, but hearing the voice that should’ve always accompanied them…he felt like he did when someone got an unexpected haircut that changed the whole way they looked. In time, he probably wouldn’t be able to imagine her
not
talking, but right now, it was hard to get used to.

Nivy tipped her head to watch him clumsily duck out of the cell, ignoring Gideon, who was still squinting at her incredulously as he followed in tow.
“I didn’t hear they had brought you in till just now, or I would have stopped them questioning you. I thought you were going to find an inn and stay there until I got in touch with you?”

             
Dusting his hands together, Reece curtly informed her, “We did. We found a nice inn, were invited inside, and got promptly taken prisoner.”

             
There it was—Nivy’s signature eye roll. She was still Nivy. The tight balloon of pressure in his chest deflated to a more comfortable size. “Because you used my name, Reece. I’ve been missing from the Underground for more than a year and was presumed dead. What did you think would happen?”

             
“Tea, maybe biscuits. I thought we would tell jokes and laugh at your expense. Why did you run here on your own? You couldn’t have maybe—”

             
“Reece,” she interrupted calmly. “There’s a lot I haven’t been able to tell you. Things with The Heron—let alone The Kreft—are complicated. I’ll tell you everything, but for now, you’re going to have to trust me.”

             
“Here’s somethin’ pretty uncomplicated,” Gideon interrupted. “Where are my revolvers?”

             
“I don’t have them. Not yet.”

             
“Yet? You got some master heist planned?”

Nivy smiled.
“You can’t rush perfection. Hayden and Scarlet are being retrieved by a few of my friends—I thought it was better to be discreet for the time being. Where’s Po?”

“
She should be with the others. Gid sent her looking for you.”

Before Nivy could more than raise an eyebrow, Reece’s knees suddenly tried to buckle, as if someone had turned off the faucet tapping the last reserves of his energy. Gid caught him under the arm as he staggered, hooking it around his shoulders to ease him back up with what must have passed for gentle for a Pan. Crashing face first to the stone floor probably would have hurt less, but Reece nonetheless appreciated the gesture. 

“Wow,” Nivy said, and Gideon and Reece looked at her. “They really did nobble you.” Though he kind of thought that went without pointing out, Reece nodded, and she helpfully slid in under his free arm, relieving some of the strain of his stretched bruises. “Do you know who interrogated you?”

             
Reece screwed his eyes up as he tried to remember what he could about the dim room where Nekoda had made him feel like an Eleven getting his lunch money beaten out of him. There had been raised seating around the edge of the room where The Heron had skulked, a low ceiling with naked hanging photon globes, and… “There was a woman with her head shaved on one side. She took point when Nekoda was done, had me blindfolded and taken back to the cell.”

             
“Canter,” the kid hovering behind them spoke up, and Nivy nodded, looking grim. As Reece and Gideon glanced at him, the boy adjusted his hat, tipping back his head to keep it from slouching down again. He had a small scar on the side of his neck—a faded puncture wound, from the looks of it. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Mose. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance…Reece and Gideon, is it?”

             
“Yeah,” Reece said, yelping when Nivy tried to shift his weight. “Careful, careful!”

             
“Pleasure,” Mose repeated over the noise, unfazed. He fell into step beside them as they waddled down the dank tunnel like the losers of a five-legged race. “As I was saying, it sounds like you were set upon by Canter and her cronies.” He quickly glanced at Nivy like he’d made a fatal slip, but she hadn’t even blinked. “She’s Second of the Martial Guild.”

             
“Martial. You mean like…married?” Gideon asked.

             
He flushed as Mose gave him a withering look. “That would be
marital
. No, the Martial Guild is in charge of The Heron’s militaristic endeavors. Theirs is a more…aggressive approach. Had you been taken by Asa, or Illie, from the other guilds—”

             
“They’d still be questioning him,” Nivy said dryly. “Or arguing over him. Keep your voice down, Mose.”

             
Canter, Asa, Illie, Mose, Nekoda…the names all ran into a bland soup in Reece’s muddled head as he squinted at the rectangle of fuzzy white light marking the end of the corridor. He tucked his chin in to peer down and over at Nivy. New clothes and neat hairdo aside, she looked the same. But he was having a hard time reconciling
this
Nivy with the one he’d shared the helm with since setting into The Voice.
That
Nivy had always looked just a little out of her element, not unsure of herself, but of everything else, like she was constantly aware of the risks of turning her back for even a second. This Nivy walked with easy self-assurance. She walked like she could navigate this place with her eyes closed. Like she’d finally come home.