Free The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) by Courtney Grace Powers Page A

the strain on his conscience broke him. It happened as he and the duke rode the rolling pedestrian walkway through a dark room full of green and blue florescent stones from Leto. The walkway bore them past black pedestals affixed with datascope screens describing the way the Letoians mined the stones, and Reece found himself clearing his throat and studying the screens very closely.
                  “Look, there's something I need to tell you.”
    The duke looked up, seeming unsurprised.
                  “Since the masquerade, I've noticed things…have been different.”
                  Now the duke merely looked wary. Reece trudged on as if the words were being forcefully towed from his throat with a chain. They scraped against him, chafing.
    “ And I wanted to say—that that's good. I mean, it's good. I'm glad we're…speaking.”
                  “Yes.” The duke eyed him. “Yes, I suppose that is good. Is that all?”
                  “Yes,” Reece said quickly. “Let's go to the food exhibit and eat some rocks.” He tried to step off the walkway, but the duke caught him by the shoulder and easily held him at bay, his grip firm.
                  “You're more like your mother than you know.” The duke chuckled at Reece's expression. “It's your own fault you never see her good side, boy. Yes, you two are much alike. Neither of you have ever been very good at masking your emotions. Least of all from me.”
    The walkway scrolled into a new room, this one bright, golden, and springy, loud with the chattering of birds. The ceiling pulled up some thirty feet and ended in a roof of bowed glass. Reece and the duke rolled quietly through the tunnel of netting keeping the fluttering birds from escaping. They flashed like bits of falling marble in all the colors of the world, reds, blues, greens, and yellows.
                  “When are you leaving?” the duke abruptly asked, sighing.
                  Reece paused and then echoed his sigh. He should have known. “Tomorrow.”
                  “And you had no mind to say goodbye to your mother or me?”
                  “I thought you might try to stop me.”
                  “I might. I haven't decided.” The duke suddenly planted his hands on the walkway railing and hung his head. “I wish you'd spoken with me.”
                  Wincing, Reece raised his hand, and then deliberately dropped it. “How did you find out?”
                  The duke straightened and faced Reece, his mouth set in a grim, forbidding line. “The fact you were tapping into your accounts for the first time in five years seemed a pretty good indicator something was amiss. And then I had some help. You should know better than to trust the Pans. Flash a little silver under their noses, and—”
                  Reece bristled. “They didn't double-cross me.” He wouldn't believe it. Raft, Varque, the others—Gideon trusted them, and Gid's trust came at a high price. Unless…
                  Kayl. Reece would bet his collectible Dryad rotary spike it had been Kayl. He wondered if he should mention it to Gid, briefly entertained by a daydream of his friend hunting down Kayl and folding him up till he could fit in a shoebox.
                  “So what now?” Reece asked.
                  “Now you tell me what plumb-headed ideas you have in that brain of yours, and I tell you whether or not you can expect to eat your next meal through a set of bars.”
                  Reece's relief at having his guilt laid out in the open fizzled and evaporated. Thaddeus Sheppard was two people: the duke, and Father. Right now, staring sternly down his long nose at Reece, he was the duke, and the duke would always do what he thought was his duty; he'd proved that by nearly letting himself