Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) Read Free Page B

give you a spot on my ship if I’m not promoted.”
    Hayden’s embarrassment grew till his face resembled a bright red beet. He busied himself with clapping more dust from his uniform. “Reece, you know I won’t really be joining your crew if you qualify for one, right? Not if I get offered a spot on Doctor William’s research team.”
    “Relax, I’m kidding. I know you get airsick.”
    “I don’t get airsick!” Hayden looked affronted, even more so when Reece raised his eyebrows disbelievingly. “I don’t!”
    “Right.” Scooping up his satchel, Reece gave the suite a final eyeball to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything and started for the door. “I don’t know what I’d do with you anyways. I suppose there might be a place for a physicist or a chemist or a doctor on an airship…but all three? One of your hobbies is going to have to go.”
    Hayden only smiled as he followed Reece into the corridor and shut the door behind him. The hallway, lit by photon globe chandeliers at intervals, was quiet enough for the clapping of their boots to sound awkward and loud.
    The brisk walk from their dormitory to the aerodome where Reece’s test would begin was nearly silent. Somehow, the silence made The Owl that much more beautiful, that much more serene. The tall oaks lining all the brick-paved paths, the black iron fences trapping off patches of meadow where students were sprawled, immersed in their studies…even the architecture had an elegance to it, a sort of dark, brooding design. On every road were columns wrapped in ivy, pointed rooftops and cornices, and windows trimmed in deep purples and greens. At night, when the fog over Atlas lowered onto the streets and the black lampposts were all lit, The Owl’s beauty became nothing short of eerie.
    Reece and Hayden had to circle the weedy grey lake in the middle of campus to get to the aerodome. The day was golden and fresh; if it weren’t testing day, the lake would have been full of punters. If it weren’t testing day, Reece would have jumped in without a thought for his nice clean uniform. If it weren’t testing day…
    Drawing up short, Reece stared, sure he was seeing wrong.
    “Who are they ?” he coughed out, blinking hard into the sunlight.
    There were dozens of people crammed into the meadow next to the Airship Command Center, some in The Owl’s black uniform, but most not. He knew Hayden’s father was out there, and Sophie too, but Abigail had only made a halfhearted attempt at booking a flight off-planet, and the duke…well, Reece hadn’t seen the duke in going on two years. An imminent reunion seemed unlikely.
    “Fans, I suppose,” Hayden said, suppressing a smile. “It’s not every day the Palatine Second becomes a captain. They’re probably all here to apply for your crew.”
    Reece gave a shudder and swerved towards the AC’s side entrance. “Paperwork, lovely. See, Hayden, that’s why I need you.”
    “To do all the hard work,” Hayden said, hitching his bifocals up on his nose with a finger. There was nothing sharp at all about how he said it. But then, even if there was, Hayden had too honest a face for anyone to think he’d purposefully say anything hurtful.
    The AC, while having every appearance of being just another brick school building from the outside, was a labyrinth of desks on the inside. Most people didn’t know it, but it took a lot of work to keep track of who flew where, in what craft, and for what reason. Parliament had a ridiculously meticulous system for registering captains and their ships because there was always the chance of stolen cargo flying under the radar, and no Honoran lord was keen on unapproved goods getting to another planet. But it still happened. In fact, Reece knew things about Gideon’s Pantedan family that could’ve had the lot of them incarcerated. His grandfather, Mordecai Creed, had just recently traded stolen medicine for a whole crate of spicy Freherian tobacco.
    As Reece and Hayden