The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (42 page)

“
There’s our Reece,” Mordecai declared, applauding proudly, “always makin’ the girls cry.”

Even though there was no way Reece could have heard the comment, the first thing he did after tearing off his helmet and shaking out his sweaty hair was peer up at their place in the bleachers. They all waved encouragingly. Well, except for Scarlet; she just twiddled her fingers noncommittally.

That was when, with a whoosh like a sharp inhale, the lights went suddenly dark.

Scarlet’s twiddling fingers shot to Hayden’s sleeve and held it fast as they looked around with the rest of the startled spectators. Thankfully, there was enough watered-down blue light falling through the hall’s skylight ceiling to keep the crowds from an all-out panic, but it didn’t stop the nervous whispers, the gasps and uneasy stirring in the shadows. It didn’t stop a fierce dread from clenching Hayden’s stomach into knots as he craned his neck to look back at his friends.

“You don’t think it’s…” he trailed off hoarsely. What if Scarlet was right, and the crew had lingered here too long? What if those spiny black Kreft ships appeared, and bombs started falling like they had on Atlas when he’d had to leave Father and Sophie behind in Tutor White’s basement? What if—

He jumped and then deflated with relief as the lights popped back on, duller than they had been, but on. The crowd made a nervous, self-conscious attempt at a celebratory cheer. The crew was a silent island in a sea of cheering.

The announcer tried with commendable gusto to get the tournament’s momentum back up, but the next few bouts and the excitement over them felt stiff and forced. Eventually, Mordecai stood and nodded for the others to follow him. The tournament still had several bouts left, including Reece’s deciding match against Talfryn, but the crew shuffled their way out without complaint. Besides, Hayden didn’t even see Reece down among the thinning ranks of competitors’ anymore.

Out in the corridor, Mordecai beckoned for them to join him in a cozy drinking lounge off the beaten path. The lounge was cool, dimly blue, and damp, like an underwater cave, only with marble floors and posh little booths where the Oceanuns could enjoy their drinks from the glass bar in private. Mordecai strategically stopped before the hissing and sputtering centerpiece fountain and waved them in close even though the lounge was nearly empty, whiskers twitching ominously.

“What’s wrong?” Po asked.

“
I got a feelin’,” he said. “Bad one. Down in my gut. Somewhere behind my kidney.”

With a small shudder, Scarlet guessed,
“I presume that to mean you think the power outage has something to do with the missing anai?”

“
The Oceanuns were too nervous, didn’t ya notice? At least for it to be a common occurrence. The king’s been keepin’ the missin’ anai hushed up, but they won’t have missed the fact the ferries haven’t been runnin’. Wouldn’t be surprised if some’a them were startin’ to get suspicious. ‘Course, power goin’ out in an underwater city twice in one week…does make a man feel a mite clinophobic. Maybe that’s all I’m sensin’.”

“
Claustrophobic,” Hayden corrected absently, frowning at the fountain. “Clinophobia is the fear of going to sleep.”

Mordecai nodded sagely as he twirled a mustache around his finger.
“Had that once, too. Then I fell asleep.”

Hayden barely heard him. He stared blankly down the corridor, his mind churning like the fountain, restless, agitated. After weeks of nervously pacing
The Aurelia’s
infirmary and unsuccessfully chiseling at The Heron’s encrypted book, Neserus had felt like a haven, a place he could actually relax, or if not relax, at least take a moment here and there to give reality the slip and just…not be so frightened all the time. The sparkling, happy city and his comfortable bed and Talfryn had all helped him pretend he and his friends were momentarily safe. And maybe they were. But at least on Aurelia, they knew what was out to get them.

Blinking, Hayden realized he was staring at Reece marching their way with his brown hair more mussed than usual and his expression deadly. He was still in uniform, but his helmet and sword were nowhere to be seen, which Hayden couldn’t help thinking was probably for the best. He looked in a mood to hurl them.

“Reece!” Po exclaimed, spotting him. “What’s wrong?”

“
I’ve been disqualified from the tournament,” he answered shortly as he reached them, hands on his hips and mouth twisted in disgust.

“
Why? What did you do?” Scarlet demanded, and he glowered at her.

“
Nothing but win repeatedly, that I know of.” With a glance at the bar with its glass columns of brightly bubbling brews, Reece decided, “I need a drink,” and wheeled its direction as if just realizing he was dying of dehydration. By all means, not a good sign.

Hayden winced at Scarlet and shrugged, but it was Nivy who made the brave first move, spinning up onto the stool next to Reece, leaning back against the counter, and locking him in an inquisitive stare. Sighing, Reece flagged down the fellow tending the bar and asked for something strong.
Something flammable
were his exact words.

Once he had in his possession one Turtle Blue—a fizzing house special that turned Hayden green just by sitting there—he spun his stool around to face his audience grimly.
“Another anai was stolen.”

Hayden was surprised only by the fact he wasn’t actually surprised. A part of him had known the instant the lights had flickered out something bad had happened, because there was no such thing as hiccups where the crew of
The Aurelia
was involved anymore. There were earthquakes; there were shockwaves.

“
That’s why they disqualified you?” Scarlet asked. Reece nodded into his cup, and she
tsk
ed. She seemed to have forgotten she was mad at him in light of his bad news. At least one good thing had come from the theft, Hayden thought tiredly. Pryor had put them back on the same side. “Now Pryor is just getting desperate. You have five hundred witnesses to provide you with a steel-clad alibi.”

“
He must want to be seen doing something. He has nowhere else to point his finger, and a city beginning to wonder why,” Hayden reasoned, and was rewarded with a look of approval from Scarlet and a resigned nod from Reece.

Grimacing, Po offered,
“He could’a waited a whole’a ten minutes, though. Wasn’t fair’a him to disqualify you when you were so close to winnin’.”

“
Nah,” Reece mumbled into his cup, his voice a distorted echo, “he couldn’t afford to let me win. The crowds would have made a fuss if their champion was stripped of his victory. Kind of kills the celebratory mood.”

All of that made sense, but there was one thing Hayden was stuck on. Reece was annoyed at being disqualified, and piqued at Pryor besides, but that didn’t account for the way he was quickly drinking down to the dregs of his Turtle Blue, or clenching his mug in a tight white fist. There was more still to come; he was just toeing the waters, trying to decide whether it was best to wade in or just jump and get the cold shock over with.

“Before you drink your brain to numbness,” Mordecai drawled, prying the cup out of Reece’s stony grip, “mayhaps you ought’a tell us what else you got on your chest.”

Reece rubbed his eyes, which was a clever trick for getting out of looking at any of them. Hayden knew. It was his trick.
“Where is Gideon?” he finally asked, his voice as taut around the question as his fist had been around his cup.

Everyone looked at Mordecai while Mordecai thoughtfully considered the Turtle Blue. Slowly, his forehead gathered into wrinkles. It was like some sort of switch had been flipped; the bright old loony pirate had been turned off so their eyes could adjust to something darker, something that looked a lot more like Gideon.

“What are you suggestin’, there, boy?”

Unfazed, Reece answered,
“I’m suggesting it would be good if he had an alibi this time, Mordecai. I had a whole room of witnesses putting me at the fencing tournament when the anai went missing, and Pryor still wants to punish me for it. What do you think he’ll do to Gideon? Before, we were only
sort of
stuck here. If they arrest Gid—”

“
They did,” Talfryn pronounced as she rushed up breathlessly, startling Hayden’s heart into his throat. She squeezed into their circle unabashedly, wincing as she brushed shoulders with a very stiff Scarlet. “Or they will, once they find him.”

“
How do you know?” Scarlet asked, scrutinizing her with a glimmer in her green eyes that put Hayden, at least, on edge. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the tournament?”

Talfryn shrugged.
“I forfeited when I left to find you all.”

“
So Hannick won,” Reece remarked, clucking.

“
He will, yes, but only because neither you nor I fought him, and he knows it. His victory won’t be nearly so sweet, now.” Looking pleased with herself, Talfryn smoothed an auburn curl back into place and glanced at Hayden. “They’ll probably keep him overnight, but they won’t harm him, I promise you.”

“
They couldn’t if they tried, but that ain’t the point,” Mordecai rumbled, making her jump. “The point is that boy’s innocent, and they got no right to blame him just ‘cause it makes the most sense. Cap?” He looked to Reece, who had bowed his head into his hands and was mindlessly scrubbing his fingers through his hair.

Reece grunted and hoisted his head up with visible effort. He looked as if he could use his Turtle Blue back, but Hayden didn’t think Mordecai meant to return the cup until it was good and drained.
“Well, I’ve got a plan, but everyone should know in advance…you’re not going to like it.” He looked around at their assorted expressions, from Mordecai’s dark, calm stare to Po’s fretful cringe and Scarlet’s skeptical squint, and seemed to come to a decision. “We leave Gid in the brig overnight.”

His proposal was met by disbelieving silence. Hayden almost made the mistake of chuckling nervously, sure he had to be joking. That was before he saw the set of his jaw and his armored expression and realized with a dull shock Reece was being deadly serious. He really meant to leave Gideon, his best friend, in the Oceanun prison, probably with Owon as a roommate.

“But…we can’t!” Po burst out while Hayden was still processing his shock. “He didn’t do anythin’!”

“
And even if he did,” Scarlet added, “since when do we turn on our own?”

Laying a hand on Reece’s arm, Po looked up at him with big, dark eyes Hayden didn’t know if he could have said
no
to for anything. But Reece’s frown was uncomfortable and unwelcoming, and it was hardening into something fragile by the second. “Reece,” Po pleaded, “we can’t let them take him. It ain’t fair. He—”

Hayden saw the break coming a second too late to stop it.

“Will you
stop
that?” Reece’s voice cracked as he shook a white-faced Po off his arm like a bug that had landed on his sleeve. “Stop…talking to me like we’re…something! We’re not ever going to be something, Po!”

If Hayden wished he could quietly duck behind the bar and hide in that moment, he couldn’t imagine how Po must be feeling. She stared at Reece, mortified, and backed away from him with her brown eyes brimming even as he grimaced apologetically and sighed,
“Po…”

It was too late. She spun and fled without looking back.

“Brute,” Scarlet muttered contemptuously, and picking up her skirts, hurried after her.

Groaning, Reece collapsed back onto his stool.
“Burn it all,” he cursed miserably.

Nivy hailed the bartender and gestured for a round of drinks to be brought out. When Reece looked at her gratefully, she smirked and made a swooping motion with her hand.
Smooth
. Hayden’s thoughts exactly. Reece was outdoing himself today.

“
For the record, that wasn’t the end of my plan,” Reece told what was left of his audience, spreading his hands helplessly. Of all of them, it was Mordecai who clapped him on the shoulder and kindly handed him his new drink.

“
You were thinkin’ if Gideon was in the brig when another anai was stolen, he’d be proven innocent,” he guessed. Reece nodded. “It ain’t a bad plan. But you can see why Gideon might take issue with it.”

“
Whatever you mean to do…” Talfryn spoke up from behind Hayden with a grimace. She rubbed the shoulder of her sword arm as she spoke. “…you ought to do it soon. My father has left the city for an off-world negotiation, but Hannick is always put in charge in his absence. He was the one who ordered your friend the Pantedan brought in for questioning. I think he ordered the arrest in haste, because he was annoyed by the tournament being interrupted, but—”

“
I’ll find my grandson,” Mordecai said levelly, looking Reece hard in the eyes as if to make sure he was listening closely. “You talk to that friend’a yours. If he’s in charge, mayhaps he’ll do us the pleasure’a releasin’ us from Pryor’s house arrest. I think it’s long past time we were off this planet.”

Mordecai, Nivy, and Reece all tipped back their heads and drank as Hayden stood there, having contributed nothing to earn the drink Nivy had passed to him, and feeling more keenly aware of it by the second. He swilled his tall, tapering glass uncertainly, not altogether sold on the idea of drinking something that smelled as though it should be cleaning wounds in the infirmary, until Talfryn tapped his back with a finger.