The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (55 page)

             
Nivy and Scarlet had nearly made it to the other side of the bridge before they looked back together and realized Reece had stopped dead in his tracks. He had thought, judging by the light in the last room, that it was mid-morning. But here, with the small receding lights on the stacked bridges resembling stars, he could suddenly believe it was the middle of the night.

             
“Reece?” Scarlet called.

             
Reece barely heard her. “
If we’re lucky
?” he repeated, hands on his hips.

             
Nivy had the nerve to not even blink at his testy tone, like she’d expected as much from him and was ready to weather it in her usual silence.

             
He scowled at her. “Don’t act like you don’t know why that would upset me.”

             
“Reece…”

             
“I mean, it isn’t like my crew flew halfway across the bleeding galaxy, nearly died a dozen times, and lost Mordecai for this mission or anything.”

             
Nivy turned about to face him fully, and though she didn’t move more than that, he got the sense that she was poised to attack, as dangerous as the hawks in the dark. “I thought I was part of your crew,” she said, deadpan.

             
“You are! You…” People on the bridge parallel to theirs weren’t even being subtle about stopping to stare. Irritated, he ducked over to Nivy and whispered, “You are. And that’s exactly why you should know that I can’t just turn tail and leave. Not after everything I put them through to get here.”

             
Nivy’s eyes darted over her shoulder to Scarlet, hovering with her pale hands clasped and shivering over her stomach. Po was missing. Hayden was incapacitated. Mordecai was dead, and Gideon had been orphaned all over again. Honestly, Reece didn’t even know if they’d
make
it back to Honora on the meager morale they had left between them. 

             
“Reece,” Nivy began again, “I understand, but I—”

             
“Yeah, I can see that. Since you think it’d be
lucky
for us to get sent packing, now that I’ve kept my promise to get you here.”

             
Reece had wondered if he’d be able to tell when he’d gone too far, or if Nivy’s cool focus would keep her in check like it usually did. As it turned out, now that she had her voice back, she was a lot more…outspoken. The heat crackling in her eyes could have boiled a stew as she said evenly, “And if you’re unlucky, you’ll be
dead
. Do you get that? The Heron aren’t like you. They’ve been fighting this war for five hundred years and are
finally
making headway. Do you think they care about collateral damage?” She took a deep breath and looked away. Reece was grateful; he’d forgotten how piercing her stare could be. “Remember when you asked me why they hadn’t sought out help?”

             
He shrugged uncomfortably as the stiffness in his shoulders began to thaw. He remembered. And he remembered not really believing her answer, because it had seemed unfathomable to him—a people so proud, they would refuse even the help that could save them. “You said this was The Heron’s war.”

Nivy nodded, her expression urgent like it had been all those times she had needed him to understand what she was saying without any words to help her.
“We’re not fighting for the Epimetheus galaxy. We’re fighting
for our freedom
. And right now…I
do
need your help. As your
friend.
”

             
Reece was silent for so long, scrutinizing Nivy as she stared at him resignedly, Scarlet said quietly, “I’m going to go after Hayden. Someone needs to be there when he wakes up.”

             
The hard kick of guilt in Reece’s gut snapped him out of his study of Nivy. He looked at Scarlet, grateful and apologetic, as she touched his arm and swept away, holding up the dragging train of her borrowed coat. When he returned his stare to Nivy, she was smirking to herself.

             
“I haven’t answered you yet,” he reminded her, annoyed.

             
She shrugged. “I can wait. Now hobble this way, Captain.”

             
With a grudging sigh, Reece wincingly followed her across the bridge, rubbing his hands together for warmth as he tried to keep up. “Where are we going?”

             
“The labs.”

             
“Why?”

             
As they hurried down a wooden ramp and doubled back to the left, Nivy glanced up, as if out of habit. More screens were fixed to the bottoms of the overhead bridges, gushing with code and making weak light puddle in squares on the floor. Whatever she read in the numerical gibberish made her frown. “I need a Spinner,” she said absently.

             
Reece’s hand unconsciously rose to rub his temple, remembering a prick there, a distant sting—a leak being sprung in his head by The Kreft they’d known as Charles Eldritch. “A Spinner. You mean that bug Eldritch used to harvest my memories?”

             
“Heavily modified for use by The Heron, but yes. Most Kreft technology gets broken down and recycled into our facilities eventually. But then, our technologies are similar to begin with.”

             
Nivy refused to acknowledge Reece’s sidelong look, though he was certain she’d seen it. He didn’t appreciate her offhandedly alluding to the unsettling fact her home looked like a place Kreft ships should be docked without explaining herself, but that was just Nivy. For all the months he had known her, she’d never once explained herself when she didn’t feel like it, and her being mute had nothing to do with it.

Columns of artificial light marched over their faces as they passed beneath the bridges and stopped at a rough oak door with a barred window. Nivy leaned a shoulder against the door and rapped on it, three quick, hollow knocks. A round face materialized behind the bars, squinted out at them, and upon seeing Nivy, lit up like a photon globe.

“Nivy!” the man whooped.  “I heard The Six were all in a bustle about something. Never would have guessed it was
you
!”

“
Hello, Murley.” Nivy’s pleased smile faded. She leaned upright as the man, humming a croaky celebratory tune, began unlocking the door. “I heard about Bai. No news?”

Murley paused, then pushed the door open to admit them. He was a huge man, not fat, just
thick
, with hands Reece estimated could have crushed his head like a barbean fruit. He scrubbed one of them back through his long wavy hair and shook his head slowly.  “I’m afraid not. It’s been more than a month since we heard from his team.”

“
And I was gone for more than a year,” Nivy reminded him.  “He’s alive. He has to be.”

“
Well, of course. You’d kill him if he wasn’t.”

Nivy nodded matter-of-factly, glancing past the bear-like man, who was busy making Reece uncomfortable by squinting at him long and hard.
“Are the labs full?” she asked.

“
Three, four, and six are in use. Five is empty.”

“
And is anyone else on duty at this entrance?”

“
No. With The Six in an emergency assembly, no one—”

Reece jumped back as Nivy one-handedly slammed Murley’s head back into the door, dropping him like she’d been knocking out huge men in her spare time for years. She stepped over him before he’d even finished slumping, leaving Reece to either hurry through the dark door after her, or wait around to be found gaping stupidly at the unconscious man on the floor. After that display, he almost wanted to wait around. It seemed Gid had been right about Nivy all along: she was as crazy as a nightcat with Mead Moon Fever. He skipped after her with a grimace.

              The new corridor was deceptively short; a mirror of black glass on its back wall doubled the number of its few doors and overhead dome lights. At the operation panel beside the second door on the left, Nivy stopped and began typing with two fingers. Dots of color bloomed and then faded under her fingertips with musical bleeps.

             
“So,” Reece said, clearing his throat as the sequence of bleeps grew longer and longer. “An emergency assembly. That doesn’t sound good.”

             
Nivy’s fingers continued their tap dance on the panel. “It isn’t.”

             
“But you’re not surprised.”

             
“I read it on the consoles. The Six convened an hour ago to discuss the strange behavior of The Kreft. They’re typically spread thin around The Ice Ring, but there are reports coming in from the different moons that they’ve regrouped along the border.”

             
“Why?”

             
Nivy blinked as the door hissed open. “I expect that’s what they’re discussing in aforementioned emergency assembly. Which will be over soon, which is why we need to
hurry
.”

Without further ado, she grabbed his arm and hauled him into the so-called lab. He would have called it a library; it had the same suspenseful quiet, the same musty, papery smell. Their reflection wavered on the tiled stone floor, which was black like the vaulted ceilings, the desks spaced sparsely around the room, and even the packed grid of tiny wooden drawers covering the walls from floor to ceiling like the boxes at a postal office.

Nivy moved confidently across the room and jumped on one of the ladders leaning against the drawered wall while Reece followed more slowly. After a moment, she made a triumphant sound and slid down the ladder one-handed, holding something in her closed fist.

They met at a desk in the middle of the room. She showed him the brass Spinner, as small and delicate as beetle in her palm, and for a second, Reece was back on the bridge of
The Jester
, staring at an identical bug in the wrinkled, bony hand of Charles Eldritch.

Nivy sat on the stool behind the desk, carefully positioning the Spinner between her thumb and forefinger with her teeth slightly bared. Reece hadn’t seen that look on her face since the masquerade
at Emathia. When she’d known she was about to be shot. “Watch the door. This will take a minute. Then it’s your turn.”

As he stared, she closed her eyes, pressed the small disc like a button to her temple, and went rigid. Slowly, her eyebrows drew down into a look of fierce concentration, and even though she
was no longer aware of him—she’d be lost in whichever memories the Spinner was sifting through—he knew better than to wait for her to return to the present and find him loafing about staring at her. With a sigh, he began walking the perimeter of the room, his hands in his trouser pockets.

At least he wasn’t the one having his worst memories paraded vividly through his brain by the Spinner; that was a possibility that had made him feel cold inside. Those memories marched enough on their own nowadays, during quiet spells like this one, when the guilt he was always just barely suppressing tried to creep up his throat and get into his head to distract him like he couldn’t afford to be distracted. And, call it his captain’s intuition, but he somehow knew that whatever Nivy wanted to show him—this something she didn’t trust herself to leave to words to explain—was going to make his current problems look piddly in comparison. He needed to take his breaks where he could get them.

He ended his circuit of the room in front of the desk where Nivy was still sitting straight-backed and stiff, beads of sweat dotting her forehead. Tiredly rubbing his face, he perched on the edge of the desk just as her eyes flew open. She caught the Spinner before it could hit the floor, letting out a breath as she turned it over in her hand.

“
I’ve been dreading this a long time,” she admitted.

“
You’ve been keeping a lot of secrets,” he guessed tonelessly, accepting the Spinner from her.

She
shrugged. “It’s what I do.” Finally, she looked at him, and there was something so
earnest
about her stare, so…effortlessly sincere. She meant what she said, and she meant it just the way she said it. “But it’s hard, sometimes. Keeping them from the people I care about.”

He nodded—mostly because he had no idea how else to reply without sounding pleased with himself—and held the Spinner up to the light. Funny, how intimidating its frail little legs suddenly looked.

Nivy studied him. “Scared?”

“
I’d almost rather go swimming in a Freherian marshbed, truth be told.”

“
You’ve mentioned this Freheria a couple times now,” she remarked, peering idly up at the ceiling. “It must be a very unpleasant place.” As Reece started to position it on his temple, she stopped him with a cautious, “Reece?”

He looked at her. For a minute, he could see through the crack in her tall walls just enough to recognize the struggle inside of her, the guilt and anger and insecurities she was fighting to not let herself feel, let alone show. It was a feeling he could relate to. Just not one he knew how to solve.