Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) (28 page)

She suddenly spun, muttering to herself, and started marching back up the front steps. There was nothing for it but to follow and let her slowly run out of steam.

In the sitting room, they sat across from each other in matching scarlet armchairs, and Abigail had a servant bring tea, as if all her screaming had been just another detail of her schedule. Reece thought it was safe to take Eldritch’s note off the table between them and flick it open with a finger. There wasn’t much to it that Abigail hadn’t already recited, just Eldritch’s angular signature.

He looked over the top of the letter at Abigail, who was tipping back her second cup of tea like a shot glass. “Did the duke see this?”

“Not
yet
,” Abigail snippily emphasized. “It just came today. The headmaster delivered it himself, rather than sending a log.”

A chill rushed down Reece’s back; goosebumps pebbled his skin. “How long ago did he leave?”

“Not long before you arrived. He had business at The Guild House with your father.” She looked up as Reece jumped to his feet, almost toppling the table and their tea platter with it, and then smashed her cup down with an angry clatter as he pulled on his jacket and gloves. “Don’t you dare—”

Reece raised his voice over hers. “I’ve got to see the duke.”

Abigail stared as if he’d grown a second head right in front of her.

“I—that’s—” She hesitated, clearly suspicious. Then she huffed, “You’re not going like
that
, are you? You look like something the wolfdogs got into. For goodness sake,
at least
put a comb through your hair. I’ll have the servants draw a carriage for you, you can’t go The House on that horrendous—”

But Reece was already walking out the parlor door, mussing up the back of his hair as he went.

By this time, he was so full of angry nerves that when Guy Clark started chirping over the wireless about the Grand Duke’s masquerade (“The gala of the solar cycle! Academy students are invited to volunteer for serving duties for a once in a lifetime chance to see The Estate of Emathia at its very blah, blah, blah!”), he yanked the earpiece off and threw it into the wind.

Caldonia traffic, both ground and air, was a nightmare. It seemed the biannual equestrian march was still going on, so the streets were crammed with horse-drawn carriages and automobile drivers who were impatiently drumming on their horns, while the skyways between buildings were packed with overflow from the road, hovering aethercopters and Dryads. His bim was narrow enough to carve its own path between carriages, but it was slow-going, and he didn’t much like getting called a gingoo by drivers stuck in line.

Fortunately, access to the cobbled lane leading to The Guild House was restricted. As Reece pulled off Mablethorpe Road and up to the tall iron gate, a sentry with a baton and an ALP strapped to his belt came to run his classification card through a datascope.

“Reece Sheppard,” the sentry said, surprised, as Reece’s information blinked red on his screen. He tilted back the black visor of his cap to get a better look at Reece, simultaneously nodding for the other sentry on post to open the gate.

Reece didn’t wait around. He revved his bim’s engine and shot through the small opening in the gate while the sentry was still cranking it open.

The road ran in a straight, stark line, pinned in by a fringe of trees on either side. It made Reece feel like he was moving down a tunnel of mirrors, because everything looked the same for so long, until the House suddenly loomed before him,
five stories of white stone and column and black roof. Having no windows but seven whole smoking chimneys, it resembled a very fine, very neat factory.  

The sentries posted at the wide black doors, wearing green jackets with black tassels on their shoulder guards, double-checked Reece’s classification card before bowing him in with a synchronized, “Sir.”

As a child, Reece had been scared of The Guild House; a bit of that feeling hung with him now. His confidence wavered as he stepped into the marble entrance hall, looking up at the green and black banners hanging down from the ceiling, each the size of his suite back at The Owl. A white staircase curled around the cavernous hall five times, up all five stories.

When someone called his name, he had to hop to catch the bust of some scholar or another he had accidentally elbowed o
ff its pedestal.

Hugh Rice was hurrying across the entrance hall, from this far away, looking uncannily like Hayden, right down to the mousy hair and off-kilter bifocals.

“How are you?” Mr. Rice clasped one of Reece’s hands, smiling in his distracted way. “Come to see the duke?”

Nodding, Reece looked about the hall again, vast but strangely emptied of the green-robed figures that usually busied it. “Where is everyone?”

Mr. Rice cast a sad gaze around. “Where they always are, of late. In a summit. I’ve never seen the House so quiet, and at the same time, so very busy.” As if seeing Reece clearly for the first time, he started, caught up Reece’s arm, and started pulling him none-too-casually towards the vertical translocators at the foot of the stairs. “You can just, eh, wait in the library until the duke is free. Don’t…don’t want to be idle.”

Reece let himself be hustled onto the translocator platform, which had a clear glass bottom. The translocator ran smooth and silent, letting off only the occasional spout of steam, like a soft sigh under their feet, as they rolled up and were deposited onto the fourth floor.

“Who called for the summit?” Reece asked even though he was sure he already knew. He would eat his bim, starting with its tires, if the suspenseful quiet laying over the House wasn’t Eldritch’s handiwork.

Hugh played restlessly with the lion heart pin on his collar as he gave Reece a sidelong glance. “One of the members of Parliament, I’m sure. But then, what do I know, I’m just the librarian. Here we go, let’s use the back way. It’s quicker.”

Reece wasn’t sure that it was. Squeezing down the cramped little hallway, he felt like he was back in Caldonia traffic, only instead of dodging carriages and automobiles, he was edging around dismantled library pulleys and kinetic book carts in need of new wheels.

Hugh kept apologizing for the mess and pausing to wipe dust off his bifocals.
”So sorry—Advisor Kirkland, he thought I was a bit overstaffed, and Parliament cut my help. Haven’t really had the hands to get this all in order—keep meaning to bring Hayden and Sophie to work with me. Almost there now.”

At the end of the hall, they came to a single door that didn’t want to open even when Reece wedged himself in next to Hugh and helped push.

“Sorry—sticks sometimes, I’ve been meaning to fix that—”

Working together, grunting loudly, they managed to throw the door open and spill out into the foyer of the Grand Duke’s Ancestral Library, the single grandest collection of antique books and datascope drives on planet Honora. The sound of their forced entry echoed from wall to distant book-filled wall. The library gave Reece the feeling that he wasn’t as alone as he thought, that if he strained hard enough, he might hear dusty whispers coming from the dark aisles of books that spiraled into the center of the library like a circular labyrinth. When Reece and Hugh walked forward, they walked on black marble painted with webs of constellations and galaxies and Streams. The ceiling somewhere high overhead was lost in darkness.

“Have you never been in here before?” Mr. Rice asked, surprised. He paused to take down the oil lantern hanging from a bookend, pull a spark-starter out of his pocket, and put the two together. He and Reece were suddenly standing in a bubble of orange, flickering light.

Reece made himself stop gaping up at the shelves that were taller than the oaks at Emathia. “Not since I was five or six.”

“Well, I suppose it
is
rather hard to gain access to, usually. I wish Parliament would open it up to the public, some of these poor books haven’t seen daylight since before even I was born. I’m just going to send a log to Sophie, let her know I’ll be late for dinner. Would you like to see my office?”

They entered the aisle of shelves, making frequent right-hand turns as they spun deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, every ten or so steps passing flickering datascope screens referencing where in history they were. It was terribly tempting not to pull over and innocently browse
The Knighting of the Dukes, An End to Monarchy
.

Hugh’s office, lit by a pair of dim photon stands, was at the eye of the spiral. Or rather, his office—which wasn’t much more than a small writing desk and a filing cabinet—was
on
the eye of the spiral. Steady vibrations ran through Reece’s boots as the massive gold clock face underfoot ticked loudly; every time the second hand as long as he was tall snapped into place, the pens on Hugh’s desk rattled.

“That’s not distracting?” Reece wondered, walking the circumference of the clock and pausing over the stout hour hand.

Hugh chuckled as he sat down behind his desk. “It’s actually quite relaxing. I’ll be done in just one moment.”

As he sent his log to Sophie, Reece idly wandered into the labyrinth, brushing the dusty spines of books that looked worse for wear. These were the oldest books in the library, dating back to L.F. 327. They’d be dust themselves if it weren’t for librarians like Hugh who dedicated their lives to the gentle rebinding and repairing of covers and pages.

So why did Reece feel like Nivy’s strange book was so much older? It certainly didn’t look that old, not compared to these relics. The rule of antiques was, the older, the more important—so maybe Reece thought that because Nivy’s book was very important, it must be very old.

Which made less sense than Mordecai’s bird-in-a-cake recipe.

From Hugh’s office came the sound of a ringing bell. Slumping against a bookshelf, Reece listened to Hugh’s low, hurried voice, sounding decidedly relieved. When he came to find Reece in the labyrinth a moment later, he looked ten years younger. Well, maybe five.

“Headmaster Eldritch has left. The House should be a good deal safer for you, now.”

His odd behavior and their trip down the library’s unlikely back way suddenly made a lot more sense.

“Mr. Rice.” Reece exasperatedly dropped his hands. “You don’t have to protect me. If Eldritch thought you were helping me sneak around behind his back—”

Hugh made a quieting gesture. “I merely thought it would be better for you not to have a run-in with the headmaster on his ground.”

His
ground. So The Guild House was his ground now, not the duke’s, not Parliament’s. It was starting already.

“Look, I appreciate it, I do. And I appreciate what you did with Scarlet. But you don’t have to—”

“She told you about that, did she?” Mr. Rice nervously looked around, as if the books might have grown ears while his back was turned. “Reece, these are dangerous waters we’re treading. I’m not going to deny there are dark things underfoot, but at some point, you have to weigh the potential risks.”

It was like hearing his own thoughts read back to him. “I have. And, for what it’s worth, I tried to keep Hayden from getting any more involved.”

Mr. Rice’s smile was difficult to read. “Much as I wish he would listen to you, I am perhaps a little glad to know that neither he nor Gideon will.” He put a hand on Reece shoulder and looked down over his bifocals at him. “It’s alright to ask for help, sometimes.”

Both of them jumped as an echo of footsteps carried to them, a quick, confidant march.

“Probably someone coming to fetch a record out of the archives,” Mr. Rice said uncertainly. “I’ll just—just go see who it is.”

Thinking about waiting in the clock-office with nothing but its ominous ticking to keep him company, Reece picked up his feet and followed. For some time, there was only the combined sound of their footsteps and the footsteps coming
towards them to allay the silence.

The footfall of their visitor grew to its loudest yet, and then stopped so abruptly that Hugh and Reece both skidded to a stop, Hugh clutching Reece’s shoulder.

“Hello?” Hugh held up his lantern up a little higher.

Just as Reece started to reach a hand under his jacket for his hob, the duke stepped into the light. While Hugh almost collapsed with his heavy sigh of relief, Reece suddenly felt like getting seriously lost in the labyrinth.

“Mr. Rice,” the duke greeted in the deep, rich voice that called to mind memories of being read mysteries in front of a fireplace on cold winter nights after Abigail and Liem had gone to bed. “Tell me, who is that gangly young man behind you with the unsightly hair?”

As Reece unconsciously stooped a little, Mr. Rice laughed nervously. “I’ll, uh, I’ll just leave you to find out.” Reece shot him a desperate look, but Hugh made an apologetic face and handed him the lantern. “I have…some books…yes, some books to…read.”

Hayden’s father shuffled away, leaving Reece to stare catatonically at the duke, feeling strangely disembodied. His father began circling him, hands clasped behind his back.

“It is not particularly pleasant,” Thaddeus Sheppard began thoughtfully, “to hear news of my son visiting
someone else’s
father while I am but a corridor away.”

Reece found his voice in a key too high. “I came to see you.”