The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (38 page)

“Captain?” Pryor called.

Reece glanced back.

Pryor ticked the nib of his pen in his ink well without looking up. “It would be prudent of you to keep your Pantedan comrade close while the investigation is underway.”

Forcing a smile, Reece nodded, spread his hands in a mocking bow, and backed out into the corridor to join Hannick and his sister. The door slammed in his face a half-second later. His last glimpse of the guards made him wonder if it wouldn’t be smarter to forgo sleeping the rest of the night…if that was even an option, any more.

“Well,” Hannick said cheerfully. “That wasn’t so bad.”

Reece snorted.
“Yeah, but a far cry from
fun
. Does one of you want to tell me what the bleeding bogrosh an anai is?”

The siblings answered him in turns as they walked him back to the guest chambers. Talfryn handled the scientific jargon while Hannick threw in theatrics to take the edge of dullness off her explanation. Hayden would have found it all fascinating—he apparently already
had
—but Reece was just too tired to feel more than impatient when Talfryn used words like
ablation
and
faculae
. A power-giving rock had been stolen right out from under the Oceanuns’ noses, and they wanted to blame him or his crew for it. That about summed it up, in Reece’s estimation.

“
You do have to admit, Reece, the timing is a bit uncanny,” said Hannick.

“
I never said it wasn’t. But we’re innocent. And we can’t afford to sit and twiddle our thumbs while your father nurses his prejudice against Pans.”

“
Pans?” Talfryn wondered.

“
Pantedans,” Hannick told her with a dismissive wave. He frowned at Reece. “You’re certain there’s no chance one of your…
friends
might have been involved?”

Reece shook his head.
“Don’t read into this, but I’m pretty sure if Gideon wanted to steal something, he wouldn’t be so blatantly obvious about it.”

Despite his request, he could see Hannick
was
reading into it as he peered down the corridor to where Gideon was waiting inside the arches to the guest chambers with his arms crossed. When they were Elevens, Reece had dared Gid to sneak into the girls’ dormitory and steal Molly Brewer’s chocolate birthday egg, which she’d bragged about in class till Reece had wanted to stick his fingers in his ears. In less than ten minutes, Gid had crossed campus, scaled the brick building to an open window, skillfully navigated shark infested waters (or as good as), and snatched Molly’s egg without so much as letting his shadow be seen. Ten years and who knew how many Mordecai-led-heists later…grabbing the anai without being seen would have been a cinch.

“
Father will see reason,” Talfryn reassured Reece. “It’s obvious it couldn’t have been any of your crew.”

“
Is it?” Reece said, surprised.

She nodded.
“The timing
is
uncanny.
Too
uncanny. Whoever stole the anai must have been planning on doing so for quite some time, and saw your crew’s arrival as the perfect opportunity.”

“
So we’re being framed.”

“
Don’t you think so?”

Scratching the back of his head with a grimace, Reece shrugged, at a loss. It made sense. But something about it just smelled…off. Too contrived, maybe.

Hannick elbowed him with a smirk. “At least there’s a bright side to this mess.” He laughed when Reece stared uncomprehendingly. “The fencing tourney! You can compete now!”

“
What tourney?” Gideon interrupted, straightening. His sharp blue eyes cut back and forth between Hannick and Reece, narrowing with every pass. Behind him, the door creaked open, and Scarlet peeked out the crack, her hair fanning golden about her shoulders.

Rather than answering Gideon, Hannick homed in on Scarlet with interest.
“Oceanus’s biannual fencing tournament is just a few days away. I was telling your captain he ought to compete, now that his plans for departure have changed.”

Gideon and Scarlet’s glares were unpleasant enough on their own, but getting hit with both at once, Reece couldn’t decide whose bad side he least wanted to be on—the grumpy gunsmith’s or the politician sister-figure’s. He decided to play it safe and keep his back to the wall as he turned to Hannick and Talfryn, who seemed not to notice that his friends were trying to melt him with their eyes.

“Could you excuse us? I need to have a word with my crew.”

Hannick nodded as Talfryn said quickly,
“Of course.” She nodded goodbye, and as she turned to go, rose to her toes and strained to see past Scarlet, probably not realizing how terribly obvious she was being. Scarlet pulled the door closed a little tighter around her with a challenging look, and blushing, Talfryn dipped an Oceanun curtsy and fled. Hannick was slower in going, strolling after his sister with his hands in his pockets.

“
Think about what I said, Reece,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “Honora hasn’t faced Oceanus in a tourney in well on twenty years. I’d like to see what they teach you at that academy of yours.”

Reece knew he was being baited, but still, he snorted, jerking his chin curtly in farewell. Hannick was supposedly the best fencer in his club, if not in the city. He was good, but if he hadn’t posted to manage that last point in their match, Reece would have had him.

“Reece,” Scarlet hissed, watching Hannick’s retreating back, “what does he mean? What change in plans?”

Reece looked away with his jaw set. Captainhood was calling, though he would’ve happily gone on planning his strategy for putting Hannick back in his place in the tournament. Not because he preferred fencing to being captain—the helm was all he’d ever wanted, and dirt if he was going to be ungrateful for it just because it was growing ever more demanding—but because it was just…simpler. A refreshing kind of simple. Like leaving behind the busy city with its perpetual buzz of commotion for a ride through the countryside, where it was cheerfully quiet and quaint and by city people’s standards, boring. Boredom started to sound awfully appealing after a few months of being too busy to take your shoes off before bed at night.

“Something’s been stolen. One of the city’s power sources,” Reece explained quietly. “Pryor’s ordered us to stay put until they recover what was taken.”

Scarlet looked scandalized.
“He implied
we
stole it?”

“
More or less.” Reece angled his head towards Gideon. Her green eyes narrowed as she scowled. For Scarlet, that was as good as jumping to Gid’s defense. “Let the others know, will you? We’ll be in in a minute.”

With a nod, Scarlet withdrew and quietly closed the door. Gideon looked at Reece in question. Nodding for Gid to follow him, Reece wandered over to the glass wall, staring down into the gully. In the dull blue light of night, it was little more than a craggy black blotch. Shapes and faint figures swam just beyond the edge of the shadows, dim and ghostly. Anything could have been out there. Anything.

“What’s goin’ on?” Gideon asked, as direct as ever, for which Reece was grateful. There was no good way to broach the subject, and if Gid was going to punch him in the face, Reece would rather he got it out of his system now. He hated the suspense.

He rubbed the back of his neck tiredly.
“Where were you earlier tonight, Gid?”

Gideon went very still, dark eyebrows scrunching together. It was impossible not to take him seriously, even with his hair in messy, matted waves where they’d pressed into his pillow.
“Here, mostly,” he grumbled. “Went out for a while to look around.”

“
Where did you go?”

After a beat, Gideon’s perplexed scowl clicked into something fiercer, something defensive. His arms dropped from over his chest. His hands were in fists.
“You askin’ me if I stole whatever’s missin’?”

“
I’m asking you where you went,” Reece said firmly, hands on his hips as he turned to face him. “Come on. Don’t do this now. I’m not trying to pick a fight with you. I’m trying to
help
you. Pryor has witnesses who saw you walking around just before the theft. We need to find you an alibi, someone who can…what?” Gid had started shaking his head.

“
No one saw me.”

“
What
?”

“
I was bein’ careful. I steered away from people, and besides, there wasn’t no one out to be witnesses in the first place. No one saw me. I’m sure’a it.”

“
You
realize
how that sounds, right?”

“
Yeah, I get it,” Gideon snapped. “I’m a suspect. That all?” He brushed past Reece without waiting on an answer, stomping with hunched shoulders towards the archways.

“
Gideon!
” Reece growled, and Gid actually jerked to a stop and blinked back at him in surprise. Which made Reece feel like a mother who’d resorted to using her child’s full name to get his attention. “I can do this as your friend, or I can do it as your captain. But we
need
to talk about this.”

Blowing out a huff of breath, Gid grumbled,
“Ain’t nothin’ to talk about.” He saw Reece’s flat look and amended with a glare, “Nothin’ worth wastin’ breath on, anyways. You gonna let me go to bed now?” He roughly shouldered open the door to their quarters, and with an exasperated sigh, Reece followed him into the dark, blinking to force his eyes to adjust.

Scarlet was nowhere to be seen, but Reece could hear her low, urgent whispers from the other room, telling the others what had happened. Surprisingly, Hayden hadn’t waited up, or if he had, his tiredness had eventually won out. It looked like he had face-planted into bed with his glasses still on. On the foot of the bed beside him—
Reece’s
bed—Po was curled into a tight, barefooted bundle. He paused in the door and frowned at the sight, thinking back to Sterling Eve dinner and feeling himself grow awkward just looking at her.
Bogrosh
! Why had she had to go and try to kiss him? He had enough complications on his plate without Po making him feel like a self-conscious Thirteen. He’d never been a self-conscious Thirteen. The experience was totally new to him. No wonder it had been a traumatic year for Hayden.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the things about Po that were likable. She was fun and bright, and she made him laugh, but she also made him think. She was definitely pretty—he wasn’t
completely
blind, just…
nearsighted
, to not have seen this coming—but he didn’t think of her that way. Maybe he could, if he tried, but it wasn’t just Po he was hesitant to get involved with. Being captain didn’t leave a lot of room for extraneous emotion. His emotions were always stretched so thin nowadays; he had to think if he tried siphoning any more of them off, the taut lines would snap, recoil, and take out someone’s eye.

Sighing, Reece walked to the bed and shook Po by her shoulder. She stirred, mumbling, and swatted at him.

“Po,” he whispered, smirking in spite of himself. “
Po
.”

Po dazedly opened her eyes, looked at him, and yawned.
“Sorry, Cap’n. Guess I fell asleep.”

“
Yeah, that was my guess, too.”

“
What did the king want?”

Reece hesitated, then sat on the edge of the bed. Across the room, Gideon violently fluffed his pillows with his fists and then slammed his head down, his broad back to them.
“Something’s been stolen from the city. He’s grounded us until it’s recovered, in case we took it.”

With a frown, Po forced herself upright only to drop her back against one of the bed’s four posters.
“So we’re stuck?” Reece nodded. “What are you gonna do?”

“
Try to help them recover it as soon as possible. Figure out how to get us out of here in case…”

“
In case…?”

Gideon’s back was rigid; he hardly seemed to be breathing. Reece tried to block him out with difficulty, looking instead into Po’s toffee brown eyes, wide and fixed on his face. The intensity of the look made him want to lean back. He’d been in tough spots like this before, when a girl had gotten it in her head that maybe he felt something he actually didn’t, but this was
Po
. He didn’t know
what
he felt for her, but that in itself should be a pretty big indicator something was missing.

“
Are we ever gonna talk about this?” Po asked quietly.

Reece rolled his shoulders uncomfortably and like a true gentleman, tried taking the coward’s way out.
“About what?” Then Po blushed, looking down at her hands in her lap, and he could see her trying to figure out how to recover from her forwardness. He hated himself. Shooting a glance at Hayden’s bed to make sure he was asleep and deciding no one could fake that melting-off-the-pillow, exhausted face, Reece sighed and said in an undertone, “You mean what happened on Sterling Eve.”

Blinking, Po looked up at him, studying his face before nodding uncertainly.
“I guess…it’s more about what
didn’t
happen.” Her dimples deepened as she smiled. “Not that it still couldn’t. If you’re feelin’ at all inclined.”

“
Po…” At a loss, Reece spread his hands helplessly, which was a mistake. Po caught and stilled them, her fingers coiling around his. He stared stupidly at her for a moment before clearing his throat and trying to gently pull them back. “It’s not that I don’t…”

“
Yes?”

“
…don’t
like
you…”

“
Do you?”

With a small jerk, Reece reclaimed his hands, holding them up to forestall Po as she leaned in towards him, her smile a whole lot less shy than it had been a half minute ago.
“I just don’t think that’s in the cards for us,” he croaked.

For a second, Po frowned, hesitating as she considered him. But of course, it couldn’t be that easy.
“How do you know?”             

“
What?”

“
How do you know it ain’t in the cards without givin’ it a try?”

This time when she reached for him, he scrambled sideways off the bed and stood, taking a generous step backward.
“
Po
!” he exclaimed, exasperated now, and Hayden gave a great, ungraceful snort in his sleep. Composing himself—or trying to, anyways—Reece went on in a quieter voice, “It just isn’t, alright?”

Po stood, her hands braided around the bed post. Her eyes looked huge in the dark, twisting his gut.
“Is it Scarlet?” she whispered, barely audible.

“
Is it…no it isn’t Scarlet! Why does it have to
be
anyone?”

“
Because,” Po timidly came around the bed despite Reece’s obvious frustration, “why else wouldn’t you want this? Out here, where it’s so lonely, questin’ like we are and…and not knowin’ if we’ll ever see home again…we ought to take our chances as they come, right?”

Swallowing with difficulty, Reece tried again in a strained voice,
“That isn’t—”

“
I’m not askin’ you to make any promises,” she inserted quickly, and Reece could feel himself losing ground because he hadn’t dug in his heels when he’s had the chance. It wasn’t that Po was being manipulative; on the contrary, she was being absolutely guileless, probably without even realizing it. That was why he found it so hard to let her down as she stared up at him with those wounded doe eyes. “Just…just think about it, alright?”

After a moment of frowning, hating himself some more, and wishing Hayden
would
wake up just so he would be spared having to answer, Reece forced his head to nod haltingly. No promises, she’d said. He could think about it. He
would
think about it, whether he wanted to or not. He just didn’t know that any amount of deliberation would make him feel something he didn’t feel.

Po acted as if he’d gone down to one knee. She beamed at him, dimples out in force, and while he stood there stupidly, rose to her toes and kissed his cheek.
“G’night, Cap’n.” She retreated to her side of the room, bare feet pattering against the smooth wood.

Reece waited till she’d burrowed under her covers before rubbing the heels of his hands miserably into his eyes. He sat heavily, then flopped back into his bed.  Hayden’s snores made for an almost comical backdrop to his distress, but he couldn’t even bring himself to snort. Maybe he was glad they were stuck on Oceanus for the time being. Maybe he was glad he had a whole city to lose himself in while Gideon seethed and Po daydreamed. Maybe tomorrow…no. Because he would still be captain tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and that’s exactly what he wanted, what he’d always wanted, and yet…he was starting to wonder if he was really any good at it, and on top of feeling a dozen other things he didn’t even know how to begin sorting out, that made him angry. He’d wanted this since before he even really understood what an airship
was
. He’d worked for it, studied for it,
earned
it. How dare his bleeding brain go and doubt that now?

Jaw taut, Reece turned over on his side, staring blindly into the dark. Thanks to the weighty silence, he could hear when Po’s soft breathing joined Hayden’s. A flash of bright blue made him look twice at the bed across the room, where Gideon was lying awake, watching him with a dark expression. As soon as their eyes locked, he rolled back over, shutting Reece out.

Po was right. It
was
lonely out here. He’d just never felt it this keenly before.

XIX

Scarlet Ashdown,
Whim-Checker

“
You’re worried.”

“
Aren’t you?”

Hayden took a slow bite of puffy muffin bread, using the time it took for him to chew and swallow to mull over Scarlet’s question. They were sitting at a round table in one of the city’s restaurants, this one a tasteful, clean, but small establishment tucked into a tower corner where two glass walls joined at a point. The view was spectacular, but the city in all its grandeur was quiet. Hayden suspected he himself would still be sleeping if not for the fact this was the start of their fourth full day
in Neserus, and his body was
still
having trouble breaking from Honoran time. He wasn’t sure what Nivy’s excuse was. Her arms were folded on the table, her messy dark head lying atop of them, and she seemed to be dozing.

Wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin, he finally admitted,
“I’m
always
worried.”

Scarlet’s lips pinched into a small smile as she stirred her drink—not tea, but something denser and iced that smelled faintly of fruit.
“So am I, lately. But that’s not what I meant.”

“
I know.” Hayden sighed, leaning back only to quickly sit forward again. The restaurant’s delicately-carved wooden chairs with their curvy legs and spiraled arms were pretty, but hardly comfortable, and he was already nearly as sore as he’d been following the crash of
The Jester
a few months ago. Why was it after three nights running of fencing with Talfryn, he
still
felt as if someone had tied his muscles into knots and pinned them that way? Tallie kept saying the soreness would fade the more he practiced, but he was no longer convinced. He’d seen her arms when she rolled up her sleeves, and she was mottled with yellowing bruises. Surely that proved his point.

Shaking her head to herself, Scarlet sat her chin on her fist and stared out the window. The color of the water rippling on her face made Hayden think of a rainy day at home in Caldonia. A pang of homesickness suddenly joined his other pains.

“I don’t like it. Three days of clue hunting, and we’ve nothing to show for it. Someone is
obviously
using us to cover their tracks, and we can’t afford this delay. I know Reece knows it,” Scarlet added when she saw Hayden hesitantly open his mouth. “I simply don’t know that he’s willing to take the necessary precautions to
do
anything about it.”

“
So…you think Reece is…being careless?” Hayden asked, prodding his muffin morosely.

Frowning, Scarlet said,
“No. Reece can be plumb-headed at times, but even then, he’s never careless. I think he’s allowing himself to be distracted.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Hayden. You’ve known him for nine years. Say we were on Honora, and the duke forbade him from doing something he felt like he needed to do.”

Slowly, Hayden nodded, seeing her point.
“He would do it anyways.”

“
Exactly. Reece trusts his own judgment more than the rules, for better or worse. So why is he content to let Pryor keep us docked when he
knows
we could escape, if need be? The supplies we purchased have already been loaded—I checked myself.”

Hayden looked at her over the tops of his spectacles.
“You think we should forget finding the culprit, defy the king and run?”

“
Not…precisely in those terms,” Scarlet said, busying herself with furiously stirring her drink. “I merely think we need to be prepared. After what happened on Leto…I fear dallying any one place too long. Reece should too. I don’t think he’s happy about the situation, but he’s not nearly
unhappy
enough, nor fully committed to solving the mystery of the stolen anai.”