Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) (47 page)

“Hold on!”

The nose of the ship plunged into the lake in an explosion of ice and water, and Reece fell spinning into the darkness.

X
XV

Welcome Home, Son

Laughter. It cut through Reece’s thick dreams and came muffled to his ears. His eyes were closed. He fitfully rolled his head to the side. Something crackled beneath him—scratchy, papery bed sheets.

With effort, he opened his eyes and stared blearily at the nightstand beside his bed. It held an assortment of personal effects—his pocket watch, flight wings, and leather riding gloves, all of which looked like Reece felt…worse for wear. He’d never in all his life been so sore. His skin felt stretched tight across his aching muscles. And he felt
tired
. Rested, but tired.

He was in a hospital chamber, but that he gathered from his uncomfortable bed and mortifying ensemble. Everything beyond his bed and nightstand was hidden by the white curtain penning him in, and all he could make of the chamber was that it had smooth wooden floors and a domed ceiling painted with fluffy, friendly clouds. He had no memory of being brought in. The last thing he remembered was…

His head suddenly pounded. The onslaught of memories was less than pleasant; most of them were too vivid, and the rest were only made more nightmarish by the things he remembered fuzzily. Like staring down at that smooth, grey lake, losing consciousness…like hearing Eldritch’s death scream…like not knowing if his friends were alive or not…

Reece lifted his head as he heard more laughter, and scooted till his back curled against his headboard, bringing him upright. One of his arms was in a sling, which reminded him…his collarbone. He tentatively touched the bump on his shoulder and was pleased when it barely smarted.

Clearing his throat, he called hoarsely, “Hello?”

The laughter cut off abruptly. Quick footsteps thumped against the hardwood floor, and then someone ripped back his curtain, flooding his little pen with clean white light.

“Reece! You’re awake!” Po exclaimed, beaming. For the first time since Reece had met her, she was wearing normal clothes—sort of. She still had on a mechanic’s jumpsuit, but beneath an oversized grey sweater and a red scarf. “Gideon, he’s awake!”

Gideon appeared beside her with a bandage wrapped around his forehead, and grinned. “Knew he wasn’t gonna die.”

“Die?” Reece choked. “Really? Was it that bad?”

Po and Gideon swapped a look and nodded. Reece wonderingly started to lift his blanket and inspect his side before Po said, “It wasn’t that. Well, not
just
that. It was mostly the serum.”

“What?”

“The Vee’s serum,” Gideon said dryly. “It about killed you.
Should’ve
killed you, the doc said. Settled for puttin’ you in a coma for four days instead.”

Well, that explained why Eldritch hadn’t taken Reece’s body when he’d had the chance. He hadn’t wanted to go down with the ship. Ha ha. “Four days!”

“Yeah. The doc said somethin’ about a, uh…sim-bee-somethin’ relationship…” Gideon uncertainly shrugged a shoulder and glanced at Po, who helped, “He supposes Vees are slowly brought up on the serum, till their bodies and it kind of have a—”

“Symbiotic,” Gideon remembered.

“Yeah, a symbiotic relationship. You takin’ it all at once should have been fatal. They pumped everythin’ outta your stomach, and even then…” Po cringingly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You had us worried, Cap’n.”

Reece considered that for a minute, made aware of the hollow emptiness in his stomach by Po’s words. It let out a mutinous grumble right on cue, and Po, smiling, stood up and left to fetch him a tray of food. Reece was glad for a minute alone with Gid—he had a lot to sort through, and Po’s glowing smiles could be distracting.

“Hayden?” he asked, and then after a pause added, “Nivy?”

“Both fine. Aitch got pretty roughed up, but they let him outta here yesterday, so he must be on the mend.”

Reclining in his pillows with a sigh of relief, Reece asked, “What
happened
? I thought we were scrap metal.”

Gideon just looked at him blankly, then stood, wandered to the other side of the sparsely-furnished chamber, and returned with a wrinkled evening newspaper. He unfolded it and snapped it open so Reece could see the front page, decorated with, “Palatine Second Pilots Burning Heliocraft to Safety”.

“There are more,” Gideon said, handing over the paper with an unreadable look on his face. “All namin’ you the hero’a Parliament. Not one person died in the crash, though the hospitals are still pretty well stocked. You landin’ in the lake saved all our necks.”

Reece gave a low whistle as he scanned the article, admittedly a little proud. The writer of the article rambled on and on not only about him “valiantly steering the dying
Jester
to a gentle touch-down”, but about him saving the duke from an assassination plot hatched by persons yet unknown, though it was implied Eldritch was involved in the scandal. Most of the article was bogrosh—especially the bit that mentioned Reece was a handsome, strapping six foot two inches tall (he was only five foot eleven)—but that was likely for the better. The public wasn’t ready for the truth about The Kreft.

“What about the duke and Abigail?”

Gid shrugged, staring at nothing. “They’ll be alright.”

Something about the way he said it made Reece cock his head and frown. Meeting his eyes, Gid sighed, “Liem’s dead, Reece.”

Reece’s empty stomach twisted as he dropped his head into his pillows and glared up at the ceiling. Something indefinable broke off inside of him; he felt the jagged edge it left behind, unsmoothed, rough, and sharp. Liem, dead. It would have been easier to swallow if he could just picture Liem shaking hands with The Kreft, agreeing to help kill his own father…but all he could see was his stepbrother as a kid, grudgingly playing magnetic blocks with him. No matter where Liem had ended up, he had had the same humble beginnings as Reece, the same chance at different choices. There would be no more choices, now. His last had been his most important, and it had been costly.

Gideon slowly updated him on everything else, but Reece only half listened. Robert Gustley hadn’t turned up on the airship, or anywhere else, and Parliament had put a steep reward on his head. That had been the duke’s idea. Apparently Parliament was groveling to get back in his good graces, now that Eldritch’s threats of blackmail and murder held no water. They had even heard his proposal regarding the disbanding of The Veritas.

“That’s another thing,” Gid said with a foreboding scowl, “the Vees have disappeared.”

Reece bolted upright, gasped at the stitch in his side, and repeated as he massaged it, “Disappeared?”

“Yeah. Parliament sent ambassadors to them to talk about the duke’s proposal…but The Tholos Stone or whatever they call it was abandoned. And the apothecary’s gone. The bleedin’ cowards, they’re prolly halfway across Epimetheus by now.”

“Probably,” Reece repeated quietly. “Let’s hope they didn’t go looking for The Kreft.”

They gave that a moment of solemn silence.

“Look,” Gideon began after a time. He sat on a neighboring mattress that had been stripped of its bedclothes. The springs squeaked beneath his weight. “I know you haven’t had much time to think on it, but I’ve gotta know.”

Reece studied him curiously. “Know what?”

“What’s next. The Kreft are still out there. Most’a the planet doesn’t know about them, but Parliament, they’re catchin’ on to the duke’s urgings. It’s come out that Eldritch was the one who wanted to build our armies, but the armies are
still
bein’ built. Only now, instead’a bein’ used by The Kreft, they’ll be used
against
them. There’ll be a war. Just not the way The Kreft figured.” Gideon hesitated, and then said in a gruffer voice, “I can’t fight in the war, but dirt if I’m gonna be useless when it comes. With Panteda…not doin’ anythin’, even against a lost cause, was almost worse than the thing itself.”

“What do you mean?”

Gideon grappled with his words for a moment, a fold of wrinkles deepening between his eyebrows. “Mordecai can tell you how it happened, but he can never tell you how it
was
. Waitin’ on an airship, chosen to be sent to safety, me because I was a kid, him because he’d been wounded…and lookin’ out the window, watchin’ my whole world fail. I know there was nothin’ I could’ve done, but I at least… I should’ve…”

“Gid, you said it yourself,” Reece said carefully, “you couldn’t have done anything.”

“But I should have!” Gideon snapped. His face softened after a moment of stiffness, and his shoulders slumped, defeated. “I’ll always feel like I should have.”

Reece absently rubbed his bad shoulder and frowned at his friend. “Why are you telling me this now?” He weakly teased, “I’m not going to die, right? This isn’t a deathbed confession?”

Gideon shrugged uncomfortably, still not meeting his eyes. His dark hair looked like he’d run his hands through it all night. “You ever wonder why I became friends with you and Aitch?”

“I was kind of hoping it was our winning personalities.”

  With a snort, Gideon replied, “It was seein’ you save him, on Bus-ship Ten, when no one else gave a second look at the kid with the pail and the ugly bifocals.” Squinting up at the cloud-patterned ceiling, he let out a heavy breath. “I’ve promised myself I’ll never do nothin’ again. If you go off to war—”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Reece interrupted, and Gideon looked at him sharply. “I have a promise to keep, too.
The Aurelia
belongs to The Heron, Gid. I told Nivy I’d take her home, and I will.”

For a moment, Gideon studied him fixedly, almost as if expecting Reece to take back what he’d said. Then the chamber door reopened, and Po entered with a hum, bearing a wide silver tray stacked with food enough for the three of them. She set it at the foot of Reece’s bed, making the toffee-colored juice in the curvy glass pitcher jump and splash. Iced chocolate tea.

“It’s lucky you woke up today,” she chatted as she handed Reece a plate of fruit, bread, and cheese. “It’s the first day since you were brought in the corridors aren’t chalk full’a visitors.”

Reece stacked the cheese on the still-steaming bread and packed it into his mouth. “Like who?” he asked, imagining the sorts of rabid fans the newspaper article would have brought. Hopefully they weren’t admitted to see him in his scanty bed robe.

“Hayden’s family, and your parents, for a little bit…though they’ve been pretty busy since the masquerade, you can imagine. Mordecai and Nivy keep tradin’ shifts with Owon—”

Reece choked noisily on his bread, his eyebrows climbing up his forehead as he shot Gideon a wild look. Gideon flushed.

“Me and Aitch filled her in,” he grumbled and accepted a plate of food from the smugly-smiling Po. “Seemed like we ought to, after everythin’ she already knew from the masquerade. Besides. She’s pushy.”

“Anyways,” Po went on, “they keep tradin’ shifts so they can come see you, so Nivy should be here any minute now. All your tutors came through—even Agnes—and a lot’a people from The Owl, and even some from The Guild House! Oh, and your friend,” she said casually, but watching his face intently. “What’s her name? Scarlet?”

Reece nodded. “So where are they today?”

“Well,” Po suddenly looked cautious, “the snows are keepin’ most people at home with airship problems. Actually, if I’m not back to the shop soon, Gus and Tilden will likely tie my braid in a knot.”

Twisting uncomfortably, Reece glanced out the oval window over the spare bed. Snow was piled high on the sill, and more was dropping outside, great, cottony tufts of it.

“And, um, today is...the funeral. Liem’s, I mean.”

Reece could have sworn he felt his stomach shriveling; his hunger went out like a snuffed candle. He decisively put his plate on his nightstand and used his free hands to rub his tired eyes. He hadn’t been to many funerals—just his grandparents’, and Scarlet’s father’s—and the thought of attending his own stepbrother’s when what seemed like only hours had passed since he’d last seen him was so surreal it fogged his mind.

“It ain’t bein’ made real public…and the duke, he didn’t tell anyone about what Liem did,” Po said gently, chasing her fruit around her plate with a fork.

Gideon, eying Reece, grunted, “Do you wanna go?”

Reece drew a breath that stretched the aches in his ribs. “Yes.” He kicked back his blankets and swung his legs over the side of the bed, briefly distracted by how thin they looked. Then he remembered Po could see them too, and he belatedly yanked a blanket over his lap, holding it like a towel around his waist as he stood and wobbled. “I should be there.” He knees buckled, nearly giving out, and Gideon caught him by the arm, slinging it around his shoulders like a yoke.

“I’ll come with you. Make sure you don’t steal the show by fallin’ over your own feet.”

“You don’t—” Reece started, and then thought the better of it. “Thanks,” he said instead, meaning it.

Gideon made a never mind noise and half dragged him towards the chair in the corner that was piled with a few clean sets of clothes. “I’ll have to borrow a suit,” he mumbled.