Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) (27 page)

“So you’re saying The Kreft just came to Epimetheus and set up camp for the long haul? According to you, they have it conquered. Why stay? Why not move onto the next galaxy and start reupholstering that one?”

In the chair next to Reece, Nivy stirred uncomfortably, frowning. The Vee’s eyes narrowed in on her, cold and studious.

“True, Reece Sheppard, but The Kreft do not yet consider this galaxy conquered, for it is the only galaxy they have encountered true opposition in. As long as there are those who rebel, as long as there is something left to overcome…” Again, the Vee gave Nivy an almost pointed look. “…they will not leave. All opposition must be destroyed. An interesting dilemma, is it not? They cannot be conquerors without something to conquer. While a rebellion provides them that, it also holds them here. The alternative to rebellion is lying down and allowing subjugation. There can be no winner until one has destroyed the other.”

Suddenly, Nivy stood and walked calmly from the room, hugging herself. The curtain of her hair hid her expression, but there was something in her walk that suggested she was feeling very deeply, almost as if her emotions were too much to carry.

Reece knew this much: he might not understand who Nivy was or where she had come from, but what she did, she did to fight these beings known as The Kreft.

And he knew this: he was going to help her.

It was after midnight when Reece finished with the Vee and called a conference in Mordecai’s sitting room. Mordecai, Hayden, Nivy, and Gideon sat staggered about the room, all of them with bleary eyes and cups of tea and burnthroat steaming in their hands. Reece paced before them, hands behind his back.

“So Eldritch established The Veritas thirty-five years ago, meaning to use them to build up his power over the people,” Hayden typed into his datascope, balanced on his knee. “He wants to reinstate a kingship with him as king so he can have the absolute power of a monarch to weed the Westerners and Pantedans out of Honoran society. All in accordance with The Kreft’s grand plan for the Epimetheus.” He looked up. “How…how could we have never known?”

“Because they didn’t want us to.” Reece’s face and voice were both utterly deadpan. A stillness came over the room when he spoke, as if they were all wary of his mood, or lack thereof. “Because they’ve been in control the whole time. The duke was unfortunate enough to catch onto Eldritch, and now he’ll die for it. The Vee said The Kreft exist in the shadows. The Epimetheus is just their puppet box, and us, we’re just the puppets. All of us.”

“Bad stuff, that,” Mordecai murmured, brushing his thumb over his mustache. “Makes a man want to spit.”

“But I don’t see how Honora will ever stand for a kingship,” Hayden said quietly. “We haven’t had a kingship in nine, maybe ten generations—”

“Eleven,” Reece corrected without feeling. “Eldritch told me in passing, that day we spoke and he gave me back my hob.”

For a time, they sat in near silence, listening to the wind hoot as it whirled down Mordecai’s chimney. That’s what Reece felt like. A hollow space with a cold storm trapped inside.

“You’d be surprised how many folk will jump at the idea of a king,” Mordecai finally said, sighing as he hoisted himself up off his couch, mug in hand. “Lotsa them don’t like havin’ to think for themselves, just wanna be safe, protected. Havin’ a king does that. Makes a person feel like the responsibility is on someone else’s hands if somethin’ goes amiss. Makes them feel like they’ve got a hero if nothin’ does.”

“You know,” Hayden said after a pause. “I bet that’s the real purpose of The Veritas. To sedate the people enough so that when…when a change in rule happens,” he glanced uncertainly at Reece, “they’ll accept it without putting up a fight. The Kreft might have been planning to use them for that from the beginning.”

“Peh.” Tipping back his head, Gideon finished his tea with a noisy gulp and then clapped his empty mug triumphantly onto the end table. “We won’t go for a king meanin’ to kill the rest’a us off.” It was clear that by
we
and
us
, he meant Pantedans. “There’re enough’a us. Paired with the Westerners, I bet we could give the bleedin’ Kreft a heckuva time with it.”

Reece pivoted on the spot, facing Gideon was a hard stare. Nivy was already shaking her head at him. “You’d start a civil war. Innocent people would die. And in the end, you’d be wiped out…because if it comes to choosing sides, the Honorans will side with their own.”

For the briefest of seconds, something unfamiliar flickered in Gideon’s eyes. Reece almost wondered if for the first time in ten years, he’d gotten through that thick Pantedan skin and cut him to the quick.

“The Vee did say there was a war comin’,” Gid grumbled.

“But he doesn’t understand what it’s over any more than we do. Eldritch only trusts The Veritas so far. They know about The Kreft, but they aren’t part of them.” With a heavy sigh, Reece stopped pacing and sat down next to Nivy, leaning his back against the cold, potbellied coal stove and looking at her. “I wonder if this is what Liem knew.”

Nivy looked up at him slowly, her mouth drawn thin. His eyes slid down her neck, hesitated on the collar she wore, and then jerked away. He very likely could have asked the Vee about where she had come from and why Eldritch wanted her, but, as much as he disagreed with her people’s methods, Nivy wore her collar for a reason. And he wanted her to be able to tell him herself.

“Somehow, all this ties in with you, Nivy, and with Aurelia.” The others were quiet, straining to hear him. “I asked you before who Charles Eldritch was…but I think I should’ve asked who
you
are. Eldritch is the most powerful man on Honora, and he wants you. Because you’re fighting him. Your people…whoever and wherever they are…they’re resisting The Kreft, aren’t they?”

Nivy smiled at him, then dropped her shoulders in a heavy, silent sigh. It felt like they had come to an impasse, and yet Reece couldn’t sit still. He studied her for a moment longer, then stood and started pacing again.

“I have to go to Honora. I have to speak with the duke.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Hayden doubtfully frowned. “The Veritas will be on the lookout for whoever broke into their base. And The Kreft…Eldritch—”

Reece cut him off. “Eldritch thinks he’s dealt with me by getting me drafted. If he was really all that worried about what I’m up to, it’s well within his power to have done something else with me.”

“But The Veritas that came for me and Gideon…”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have questions. It just means I’m not his biggest priority. Look, out of all of you, I’m the best off. I’m Palatine Second…or First, I don’t even know which anymore. My father’s the grand duke. That gives me protection that the rest of you haven’t been afforded.”

By the others’ uncomfortable silence, he knew they knew he was right. He was the only one who would be missed if he suddenly and conspicuously disappeared.

That should’ve made him feel better, but it didn’t.

X
VII

Up in Flames

Bright and early the next morning, while it was still misty and blue outside, Reece got up, pulled on his riding jacket and goggles, and took a piece of marmalade toast to eat on his way to
the bus-ship docks. Gideon and Hayden were still sleeping, but Mordecai and Nivy were awake, sitting on the back stoop of the upstairs workshop with a chess board balanced across their knees. Mordecai was teaching her to play, but Reece wasn’t sure he was being exactly fair: she was down to her king and knights while he’d held onto everything but a few expendable pawns.

Mordecai looked up at the sound of Reece’s boots squelching in the dewy grass. There was nothing crazy about his bright blue gaze this morning, just a level shrewdness.

“Well, I’m off.” Reece’s mouth felt dry, and he swallowed.

Without looking at the board, Mordecai reached over and swept up one of Nivy’s knights. “You be careful, Reece. I don’t think Eldritch can be the only Kreft hidin’ on Honora. And if The Owl’s headmaster can be one…anyone can.”

Nivy looked up at Reece, worry plain on her face. He knew it was a gesture of friendship, but someone needed to tell her that sometimes the best thing a friend could do was
not
show how worried they were. Things were going to be fine. He was going to confront the duke with what he knew, warn him that his life was in danger, and then book it back to Atlas before anyone was the wiser.

“Things are going to be fine,” he repeated out loud. “Nivy…walk with me for a minute?”

Nodding, Nivy scooted her legs out from beneath the wooden chess board and walked with him across the yard, leaving Mordecai to lazily slide his last bishop into check. They turned the corner of the house, and Reece sat on the front step, patting the place beside him. Nivy sat down, her face curious.

Reece had made up his mind last night, when he’d sat beside her and faced the Vee and realized that no matter what else she was, she was on his side. He trusted her. Maybe it was reckless of him, maybe he was setting himself up…but he didn’t think so. The trust came too naturally for that. He didn’t have to choose to trust her. He just did.

“I think I’m right in saying this belongs to you.” Reaching beneath his jacket, he pulled out the ancient tome Liem had left behind and offered it to her.

Nivy stared at it for so long, he wondered if maybe he’d imagined the aching in her eyes every time he’d had the book out around her. Then she took the book and hugged it tenderly to her chest, hiding her face behind her long black hair. He was startled and embarrassed by the intensity of her emotion.

“Nivy?”

She looked up at him and smiled. She shook her head to dismiss his concern.

“Did you bring it with you? Did it come with you to Honora?”

She shook her head again. Sniffing, she gestured slowly, almost sluggishly, without raising her eyes.

“The book came with the first capsule?”

Nivy nodded, but seemed too absorbed in the gentle perusing of the book’s thin pages to give him much more. That was alright. His pocket watch said it was time to go anyways.

As he stood, Nivy glanced up at him sharply, her question plain on her face.

“Not a chance. The only thing we have up on Eldritch is the fact that he doesn’t know we’re hiding you. I’ll be back.”

Nivy watched from the step as he rolled out his bim and let its engine warm up in the cool air, its exhaust curling into the fading fog. He sat for a minute on the bim, his hands on the handlebars, and returned her unreadable stare with a small smile. Then she bowed her head once more over the book, and he slipped away and didn’t look back.

Emathia shone in autumn. Her oaks were orange-tipped, her fields tall and yellow, her apple trees plump with fruit. There was an orange and gold wreath the size of a carriage horse over the front doors, and candles wrapped in marigolds and firehearts in all of the mansion windows. Reece paused as he handed his bim off to a black-clad servant who didn’t meet his eyes, and sniffed deeply. He’d almost forgotten what food
not
bird-on-a-stick smelled like, fresh out of the oven—warm rolls, cinnamon turkey, spicy hot cider poured over dessert scones…

Before he even started up the stairs, one of the purple front doors burst open, and Abigail stepped out into the bracing sunlight, her skirt gathered in two fists. Her peppered hair was down about her shoulders, looking wispier than usual. With pursed lips, she swept down the front stairs and threw her bony arms around his neck.

Too shocked for words, Reece dumbly patted her on the back. The last time he’d seen Abigail, she had been watching him leave from the bay window just after she’d thrown a picture frame at him and very nearly taken off his nose, furious slash distraught over Liem’s disappearance. Maybe, having been allowed to sit for some weeks now, those emotions had turned into—

The whole left side of his face was suddenly prickling and stinging and—he dazedly felt it—hot to the touch. He looked at his mother, standing back with her fists on her hips, and realized she had slapped him.

“You selfish, incorrigible boy!” she seethed. “If you had any idea—how worried—how upset—we thought—”

Hearing rather than seeing her arm swing again, Reece ducked. “I’ve been busy—”

“You could have sent us a log!” Abigail shrieked.

“There wasn’t an interface—”

“Scarlet said she gave you our message!”

“She did, but—”

“You knew I wanted you home!”

“School was—”

Baring her teeth, Abigail reached behind her back and pulled out a parchment envelope with a bright gold seal. “This is a personal note from Headmaster Eldritch himself.” Heart thudding in his ears, Reece made a grab for the envelope, but she held to it with fingers of steel. “‘
Reece has shown worrisome neglect towards his schoolwork’
,” she quoted, “‘
he spends more time off campus with his comrades than—in—class’
!” She slapped the envelope three times against Reece’s chest, punctuating her words. “I have half a mind to lock you up at Emathia, like he recommends!”