Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) (34 page)

The Gala of the Solar Cycle

Reece and Nivy allowed themselves to be ushered with all the rest through Emathia’s front door and down one of the side corridors that Reece knew led to the ballroom. Every surface in the mansion shimmered under candlelight, polished to the very last mote of dust. Abigail’s extravagant flair decorated everything. A red carpet had been laid like a road to the ballroom, tall antique candle trees rooted on either side. Paintings of past dukes loomed in the shadows, fifteen feet tall.

The ballroom itself, while better lit than the rest of the mansion, had a sort of gauzy golden glow cast by the photon chandelier hanging from the domed ceiling. The air was warm and sleepy, helped on by the burning hearth dominating the far wall of the room. A stringed orchestra played to the left of the fire in matching gold masks that made their faces identical, impassive. To the right of the fire was the grand staircase that spilled out onto the black marble floor from the balconies above.

“Stay close to me,” Reece said to Nivy in an undertone as he led her to one of the circular tables set about the room. It was draped in white and set with crystal goblets, plates, and an unrealistic amount of forks in all different sizes. “We’ll stay put until the duke and Abigail make their appearance, probably there.” He pointed at the staircase. “Then it’s just a matter of—ow! What?”

Nivy, who had kicked him none too gently in the shin, pointed with her eyes. A square-shouldered man with a ruddy, boyish face was heading their way with a blonde in a viciously red gown on his arm.

“Oh, bleeding—” Reece began and then swallowed dryly, grabbing for his goblet, which a waiter in green had just topped off with something blue and steaming.

“Reece,” Scarlet greeted pleasantly enough. The eyes behind her feathered mask flitted to Nivy and back. “How wonderful to see you. I believe you remember Lucius Tobin?”

Lucius smiled and snatched Reece’s limp hand out of the air, shaking it wildly. “Good to see you, old boy, good to see you! It’s been ages, what? You’re looking swell!”

“Yes—it—so are—” Reece blundered. His hand felt like it’d been caught in a clamp. “Scarlet, Lucius, this is Orpha. Orpha is from Olbia.”

“Orpha from Olbia,” Scarlet repeated thoughtfully. “What’s your surname, Orpha? My family has a vacation house in Olbia, I wonder if—”

“Trimble,” Reece blurted. His hands were sweating; the one that Lucius had returned felt like it was swelling. “We met through my uncle. She’s in the theatre.” He winced as Nivy kicked him in the shin again.

“An actress!” Lucius exclaimed. “How positively novel!”

“Quaint,” Scarlet agreed. Was it Reece’s imagination, it did she sound unconvinced? “I wonder if we might join you for the dinner. Are these seats taken?” Before Reece could say yes, she had circled the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down beside him.

“It’s funny,” she murmured as Lucius sat and helped himself to a steaming crystal goblet. Her voice was nearly lost in the rambling monologue he was cheerfully delivering to Nivy. “Last I heard, you had a notice on your head and a warning not to return to Honora.”

He should’ve known better. Nothing escaped Scarlet—she was like a bird ferreting in the dirt for worms. “Is that common knowledge?”

Scarlet studied him from behind her red mask before slowly shaking her head. “No. I only heard from Mr. Rice. When you sent me that log this afternoon, I didn’t really think you were serious about coming. What are you doing here, Reece?”

It was Lucius who saved him from answering. As he finished telling Nivy an apparently uproarious story, he turned to Scarlet and put a comfortable arm around her shoulders, still chuckling. “Scarlet, darling, I was just telling Orpha about the time we were out nightcat hunting and old Mr. Drummond fell off his horse, do you remember?”

“I remember,” said Scarlet tonelessly.

“Oh, it was just wild,
wild
! Poor fellow, but of course, he should have known better than to try to take that jump, he hadn’t nearly the experience for it. I told him, I said, ‘Ambrose, this is really for the more experienced rider, perhaps you should just watch this go around’, but wouldn’t you know, he scoffed at me and went ahead and tried it anyways. Got what he deserved with that broken tailbone, didn’t he! He’ll leave the difficult stuff to the real riders next time, won’t he?”

Scarlet glared at Reece as he raised his eyebrows at her. Nivy looked a bit shell-shocked, and was gripping one of her forks as if taking a necessary precaution.

Oblivious, Lucius tipped back his goblet and finished out his draught with a gulp. He smacked his lips contently. “I do say, this is good stuff, really classy, don’t you think? I’ll go fetch a servant to bring us a bottle.”

“Spiffing,” Reece said, suppressing a laugh, and winced as Nivy and Scarlet tag-teamed and kicked his throbbing shin one after the other.

Lucius hadn’t even pushed back his chair before the photon chandelier dimmed and the orchestra died out on a high, suspenseful note. Reece craned his neck to get a clear view of the staircase as a globe of light appeared on the steps.

“My, but they look marvelous!” Lucius loudly exclaimed as the duke and Abigail stepped into the light to thunderous applause. He, along with all the other guests, had pushed back his chair to stand as he clapped, hailing the High Duke and Duchess, both dressed in a deep, almost-black green. Reece rose after a moment’s pause with a strange heat rushing in his ears: adrenaline. As he clapped halfheartedly, his eyes started a circuitous sweep of the ballroom, looking for a hint of out-of-placeness to warn him of danger.

The duke gave a brief welcome, then descended the stairs with Abigail and started for the elevated table on the other end of the room, greeting guests along the way.

“You know, Reece, I’m quite surprised you’re not sitting with them tonight,” Lucius mused. “But I suppose it must be exhausting, being in the spotlight so. Especially since Liem disappeared. Big shoes to fill, isn’t that what they say?”

Reece made a noncommittal noise, staring fixedly at his parents as they shook hands and nodded respectfully here and there. As they passed by a few tables to their right, he dropped his fork and spent a moment doubled over by his feet, waiting for them to move on. When he resurfaced, Scarlet was watching him, tapping her lips with a finger.

Every course of the meal dragged. The cranberry custard salad tasted like weeds in Reece’s mouth, the warm sourdough bread like a sponge. He put away a considerable amount of food nonetheless, just to have something to do with his fidgeting hands.

Halfway through the third course (stuffed cream chicken that tasted like rubber), golden hoops were lowered from the ceiling bearing girls in white leotards who twisted around the hoops as if they had no bones to bend. Reece watched only the duke, who seemed quietly focused on his plate and unaware of the daring acrobatics being performed overhead. Even when one of the performers dangled upside-down by a single foot, he paid her only a glance.

His chin on his fist, Reece frowned. Respect had
sneaked up on him before he’d realized what was happening. The duke knew tonight was the night he was to be assassinated. For whatever numptified reason, he was willing to let it happen, and this was how he faced it. The man was either brave or out of his bleeding mind.

There was a slight pressure on Reece’s arm; he glanced at Nivy, whose brow was furrowed in question. Seeing how Scarlet and Lucius were engaged in a heated argument over which candidate should be elected to represent the southern district of some county or another, Reece asked, “What is it?”

Nivy pointed at the duke, pointed at him, and spread her hands “why”, or maybe, “what”.

A suddenly tired smile pulled at Reece’s mouth. “What happened, you mean? Between the duke and me?”

Nivy nodded patiently, her blue eyes on the duke.

“We had a fall out a few years ago. He wanted to send me across Epimetheus, to a planet called Leto, to study politics.”

Scarlet stopped midsentence to turn and stare at Reece, leaving Lucius gazing at the back of her head with a sleepy smile. “Leto? I never knew that. That—”

“Is halfway across the Epimetheus,” Reece finished for her. “I know.”

Scarlet pursed her lips. “I was going to say that would have been a great opportunity. Leto has needed political intervention for decades now, it’s on the brink of uncivilization.”

Reece wondered wryly how that factored into The Kreft’s plan for Epimetheus.

“Great opportunity for you, maybe, but I was studying to be captain, remember? My life was at The Owl. I would’ve disappeared from everyone’s lives; they all would have gone on without me. That’s how I saw it. That the duke just wanted me out of the way.”

Reece shuddered as if the old memories he drudged up brought a chill with them. He clenched his eyes shut and remembered. Sitting at the clawed feet of a chair, playing with a wooden replica of Aurelia as his father read
Legends from the Voice of Space
aloud. Two or three years later, the duke taking him to The Guild House, telling him how one day, when he and Liem governed Honora, he would be in charge of managing Emathia. A few years further on, Reece begging to be allowed to study aviation at The Aurelian Academy, not Interplanetary Politics. That’s when the chasm between them had started to grow, when the duke had stormed out of Reece’s bedroom and left him standing there, alone…

He’d met Hayden and Gideon not a year later. For the longest time, the duke had pretended this didn’t concern him. The chasm stretched. Reece got older, saw the duke less and less. Imagined more and more how he must resent him for choosing becoming a captain over becoming Liem’s second-in-command.

Then there was that fateful day in late winter. Reece could remember just how it felt, standing in the doorway of the duke’s office at Emathia, staring at his father’s back as he poured over notes on his desk.

“I’ve decided to send you to Leto,” the duke had rumbled without turning, jotting something down with an eagle-feather quill. “You’ll finish out the rest of your schooling there.”

It had taken Reece a whole minute to stop staring and demand why.

“Experience. Practice. The planet is in need of strong political faces. If you assert yourself properly, I expect you’ll return to Honora in a few years time ready to take a stand in The Guild House.”

“But I’m not…The Guild House…” Reece had tripped to his father’s desk and planted his hands to support himself. “I’m studying to be captain! These last six years, that’s all I’ve worked for! For what, if you’re going to send me to Leto now?”

“You will be Liem’s right hand. You will manage the estate and
do as you are told
.”

“But classes—”

“An end must be put to your juvenile fancy with flying. It’s time to grow up, Reece.”

“Six years!” Reece had yelled. “Six years, and you never once told me this was the plan. Liem doesn’t need me! He’s going to be the bleeding duke, he could care less what I do with myself!”

“This is hardly about you or Liem. It is about duty, about obligation.” Frowning, the duke had bent over his desk, checked a schedule projected on his flat datascope screen, and added with finality, “You leave tomorrow at noon.”

Reece flinchingly remembered kicking the leg of the desk as he shouted, “It’s the middle of the school year! I have friends here! Hayden…Gideon!”

“As I said, it’s time to grow up. Your friendship with those beneath your station has been encouraged for too long.”

“Encouraged? Mother won’t even let me bring them in the front door! And you, you haven’t cared a scrap about who I spend my time with, you’ve never even asked, you never ask
anything
! You haven’t been here—
you haven’t cared
!”

The knuckles gripping the duke’s quill had gone white. “A man in my position can’t often afford to expend himself upon caring. You’ll want to start packing.”

Reece often wondered when this memory came back to haunt him if he and the duke might’ve recovered from their fight if he hadn’t had a total lapse in judgment and shouted at the duke, “I hate you!”

The duke’s response, given calmly, without looking up from his work, had been, “Then perhaps it is fortunate I cannot afford to care.”

That had been two years ago. Reece had left Emathia on his bim, gone to Atlas, and stayed with Mordecai and Gideon at the workshop for the rest of the school year. When he returned to Emathia months later, the duke said nothing about Leto, their fight, or their parting words—which had made Reece that much angrier. As if the duke could just pretend he hadn’t meant to ship Reece out of his and everyone else’s lives! Well, if that’s what he wanted, Reece decided he would give it to him until he acknowledged he’d been wrong.

Only the duke never came to set things right, and after the first seven or eight months of waiting, Reece knew he’d gone too far to ever turn back. And the regret he felt was never enough to drive him back to Emathia when he knew the duke would be home. They both knew the chasm could never be closed again.

Reece swiftly ducked his head as the duke gazed briefly in his direction. “We fought. I waited for him to apologize, but he never did, and by the time a year had gone by, I knew I never could either.”