Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) (36 page)

Gideon must have understood Hayden’s pleading stare, because when a Vee tried pulling him to his feet, he shrugged off the Vee’s white, spidery hands with a snarl, but otherwise came quietly. He didn’t seem to be shaking as much as Hayden, despite the fact his hair had frozen into tiny curlicue icicles on his forehead.

Though it was true Hayden didn’t like being touched by the Vees, he couldn’t have stood without their help—the joints in his knees felt like they had rusted into place.

“Take my jacket,” Po said quietly as she pulled her arms out of her sleeves. She laid it across his back as they walked, three Vees before them, three behind. Hayden didn’t say so, but if the jacket added any warmth, he couldn’t feel the difference.

The source of the mysterious blue and silver glow came into sight as they circumnavigated a copse of evergreens and stepped into a band of white light. The Kraken-class heliocraft loomed like a huge wooden monster rearing over the tops of the trees. Its balloon alone was as big as the mansion, straining lazily against the chains tethering it to the wooden mass of the round-bellied ship. The wintry light beaming from the ship’s every porthole, every open door, made Hayden feel, if anything, colder.

The Vees led them around the back of the silhouetted ship to avoid the crowds streaming from the estate gardens to the wide gangplank being lowered down onto the snow-dashed lawn. Hayden, his numb hands balled under his armpits, tried lagging behind, wanting desperately to be noticed by even one of the ladies complaining that their fur stoles weren’t thick enough.

No such luck. The Vees frog-marched Gideon and pushed Po and Hayden around the hull of the ship and in through a steel hatch without even the nearby lantern-bearing servants glancing their way.

One of the Vees punched a sequence of numbers into a panel on the dirty metal wall next to a bolted door. The steam and noise and smell of metallic heat made Hayden think they were close to the engine room. Sure enough, when he glanced at Po, she was staring straight up, her eyes narrowed in study. He followed her gaze and through his foggy lenses perceived a room-sized block of metal with squiggling wires and gaping funnels pointing off it in all directions. It was suspended above them in an extensive spider web of brass tubes that now and again spewed jets of steam at the junctions where two or more tubes met.

“The Quadrant 7. Pretty,
ain’t it?” Po said under her breath with a nervous smile.

She jumped as one of the Vees seized her arm and guided her and Hayden through the now-open door and into some kind of furnace or boiler room. Pot-bellied stoves crowded the corners while cylindrical tanks topped with gauges lined their walk into the heart of the room, where a low fireplace provided flickering orange light. The two people seated on the ragged blanket before the hearth looked up.

“Hayden!” Hugh let out a gasping sigh of relief, and Sophie hopped up, her feet twisting the blanket awry.

Hayden felt a swooping rush of relief at the sight of his family. Forgetting where he was for a moment, he clumsily squeezed between a Vee and a rusted boiler and rushed Sophie with his arms out.

“You’re drenched—and you’re freezing!” Sophie said, pulling back hurriedly. “What happened? What did those monsters do to you?”

“Silence, little girl,” one of the Vees ordered coldly. His arm flashing out like a snake, he caught Sophie’s cheeks in his bony hand and touched her top lip with one long fingernail. “We have ways of sealing your pretty little lips.”

Gideon lurched against his captor’s hold, growling murderously as Hayden wrapped his stinging arms around Sophie, pried her from the Vee’s grip, and backed into his father, who had jumped to his feet. The Vee left his hand outstretched, his unsightly fingers still positioned for cupping Sophie’s face.

“They are a prime selection, are they not?” the Vee crooned, his thin lips curling. “A perfect sample of humankind at its most endearing.” There was a
pinging
noise as one of Gideon’s thrashing feet nicked an iron stove. Looking suddenly bored, the Vee dropped his hand, peered over his shoulder, and frowned. “We should put that one in irons.”

“And station a pair of watchers on both sides of the door,” contributed another Vee.

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.”

Hayden blocked their cool voices out as best he could as he turned and faced his father with Sophie. Up close, he could see purple bruises flowering up the side of Hugh’s face; his bifocals’ left lens had a crack down its middle.

“Are you both okay?” From behind him came sounds of rustling movement and the hatch closing with a
clank
and a
hiss
.

“We’re alive, in any case,” Hugh said, sounding exhausted. “Sit down next to the fire, Hayden, we need to start warming you up. And take off your jacket.”

Hayden did as he was told, though he already felt better. He could tell the boiler room was actually quite hot—there were beads of sweat on his father’s forehead—and a soothing heat had been spreading inside him like a warm cough syrup since he’d first seen Sophie and Hugh’s whole albeit slightly worse-for-wear faces.

As he self-consciously peeled off his wet undershirt and allowed Sophie to spread it out before the hearth, Po timidly sat down beside him, and Gideon, his balance impaired by his wrists being locked together at the small of his back, more or less fell down beside her, muttering mutinously.

“What now?” Sophie asked, turning Hayden’s shirt like a hotcake.

“What now, indeed?” Hugh ominously shook his head. Sighing, he eased his face into his hands. “This is my fault. I should have protected you from this. All of you. I saw the signs…I knew Reece was digging too deep…if only…”

Gideon, having a private wrestling match with the irons behind his back, grunted exasperatedly, “Can’t see how you can blame yourself. You’re prolly the only one who didn’t have a hand in this.”

Pushing a white strand of hair behind her ear—her braid had a distinctly mussed look about it now—Po said, “But Reece…he’s out there all alone now…

“He ain’t alone,” Gideon snapped, and Po jumped, not knowing what Hayden did, that Gideon was frustrated with the cuffs, not her. “He’s got Nivy, don’t he?”

“He could have an army of you, Gideon, and it wouldn’t make a difference. You saw the Vees. There are at least twice that many on this ship, along with Eldritch himself,” Hugh said grimly. “Hayden, you’re still shaking. Wrap in this blanket, here.”

Hayden was preoccupied, staring into the guttering fire with his mind someplace else. Only when his father shook the blanket at the edge of his vision did he raise a hand to accept it. “Do you know about The Kreft?” he asked suddenly.

Hugh looked startled. “What—”

“You do,” Hayden realized as he lifted his eyes from the fire. Gideon was still twisting his hands into grotesque shapes, trying to slip them out of their cuffs, but he was listening, same as Po and Soph, whose expressions of wide-eyed curiosity were almost identical. “How did you find out about them?”

Hugh grudgingly sighed, then staried long and hard in the direction of the hatch, where Hayden could only assume two Vees were standing—it was too dark beyond the ring of firelight to know for sure. He pulled the blanket tight around his arms, hording his warmth.

“I didn’t know for sure until I overheard Reece and the duke’s discussion in the ancestral library. I had only suspicions before then. The headmaster’s personnel file being personally detained by the duke made me curious. You heard that Ms. Ashdown and I tried to requisition it?”

Hayden nodded.

“Yesterday afternoon, the duke had me in his office for a debriefing on some cuts that are being made to the library’s funding. While I was there, the duke was called out and I…” Hugh looked ashamed.

Gideon had stopped tangling with his irons. “You got into his desk, didn’t you?” He grinned wolfishly at Hayden. “Knew you had to get your unruly streak from somewhere, Aitch.”

“Yes, well,” Father didn’t seem to like that, “Eldritch’s file revealed that he had no history on Honora prior to his promotion to headmaster. He clearly wasn’t Honoran born. And there was something else in the file. Here I thought the duke had been guarding Eldritch’s secret by keeping his file locked away…but he’d really been guarding a secret of his own. He’s done meticulous research into The Kreft’s activities in the Epimetheus Galaxy, cross-referenced and mapped every major political move, every suspicious disaster, every civil war…he even traced The Kreft back to L.F. 709. I think he must have been trying to find their weakness. The man is a genius.”

“That’s what Reece wanted to do,” Gideon said to Hayden. “That day we went back to The Owl. He wanted to go the library and do that kinda research. He must’a been thinkin’ the same thing.”

The hatch in the darkness suddenly burst open with a resounding crash. Po spun and crawled backward; Hayden unthinkingly shrunk back until his father put a hand on his back to keep him from scrambling into the fire. Gideon remained the only one in the foreground, and even he had jumped at the sound.

As if rising up out of murky waters, the colors and outlines of a tall, thin figure surfaced out of the darkness. Charles Eldritch stopped just beyond the edge of light, so that his sunken cheeks and deep eyes gathered shadows beneath them.

“Well,” he said simply. “Well.” His hands behind his back, he began circling their little area, his dark eyes contemplating each of them in turn. He was dressed as he had been at the crater on Atlas: all in black, from his silk neck scarf to the gloves stretched tight over his skeletal hands. “Are we all acquainted, then? Mr. Rice and I know each other from The Guild House, of course. And your daughter, Sophie…forgive me, but she looks just like Juliet. Sophie…”

Sophie cringed as Eldritch crouched down beside her. Folded up as he was, Eldritch looked to Hayden like a bat hiding his height in his wings.

“I knew your mother, did you know that? Yes, she was a student at The Aurelian Academy, much like your brother is now, near the start of my term as headmaster. She was such a beauty. Boys used to memorize her schedule just to watch her walk—” he mimed walking with two of his fingers, “—from one class to another. Mmm.”

There was a meaningful pause, and Hayden’s stomach boiled with anger, hating the fondly reminiscent expression on Eldritch’s face.

Licking his lips, Eldritch looked at Gideon, who returned the stare with a soundless snarl, and seemed to deem him unworthy of comment. He passed over the Pantedan and turned his attention to Po instead. He gazed at her for a moment and then suddenly stood and pointed. “This one.”

A Vee appeared at his side and reached for Po with traces of eagerness on his wan face.

“No!” Hugh said loudly as the Vee’s hands closed around Po’s forearms. Po seemed to have fallen into a terrified sort of trance, her brown eyes fixed wide and unblinking, her mouth a little O. “Headmaster, please—”

Eldritch held up a hand, and the Vee straightened, releasing Po. “Yes, Mr. Rice? Would you rather I take Sophie? Either will serve my purpose well. I merely need someone whose screams Mr. Sheppard would be loath to ignore. You may choose.”

Hugh drew Sophie closer into his side, whitening. “I—there’s no reason to—”

Eldritch smiled unpleasantly. The ground, the walls, the hearth—everything gave a terrific lurch, and Hayden had to stamp down his hands to stop himself sliding. A steady vibration rumbled through the wood under his skin while nearby, a whine started out low and then gradually grew to a high beyond hearing. A familiar and not altogether agreeable jolt in the bottom of Hayden’s stomach told him that the heliocraft was taking off for the skywaltz.

“I have an appointment to keep,” Eldritch said, as if the ship’s movement had reminded him. Hayden felt sick, and not airsick, either, as the headmaster’s eyes travelled from Po to Sophie and back again. “Ah, it is like choosing between two beautiful flowers…the choice doesn’t matter, in the end. The frost has no favorites when it comes time to turn that which was once beautiful…” He swept the back of his hand over Po’s cheek, so that she came out of her trance with a shudder and turned her flushed face away. “…into thistles and weeds.”

Hayden was not the only one who jumped when Eldritch suddenly clapped his hands together and smiled. “I believe I
will
take Sophie, after all. Bring her to me on the bridge.”

“No!” Hayden cried as Sophie gave a dry sob into Father’s coat.

But Eldritch had already turned and dissolved back into darkness, leaving the Vee to turn his attention onto Sophie. He started to extricate the weeping girl from Hugh’s arms without a glimmer of guilt in his black eyes, and shameless anger and hate reared in Hayden to the point he was surprised there wasn’t steam coming from his still sodden trousers from all the heat in him rising to the surface.

Behind the Vee’s legs, Gideon was staring at Hayden with the sort of fevered concentration Nivy showed when she wanted to be understood. He made a little jerking motion with his chin. Hayden nodded.

Dropping onto his back from his kneeling position, Gideon kicked with all his might, his feet connecting with the small of the Vee’s back. Hayden dove forward and braced himself, and the stumbling Vee kneed into him and took flight, tumbling over into the hearth.

Hugh, Sophie, and Po leaped out of the way with cries of alarm as the Vee flailed around in the flames. A high keening cut the air—all the small hairs on Hayden’s arms stood on end, every last one of his goosebumps aroused by the scream that was terribly and unquestionably human.