And The Sky Is Limitless Part One
Mar. 3rd, 2011 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laliandraMaster Post
&&&&&
They finally find the Prince after three hours of searching. He’s leaning on a rail overlooking the harbour, lit only by the lights of the ships below. The shadows make him look like a pen and ink drawing, Kris thinks, all sharp lines and contrasts, dark hair and pale skin, black jacket with buttons shining white. He spots the glint of an Upgrade fitted over the right arm, and he knows he’s got his man.
“How can I help you?” the Prince asks, drawing himself up to a fairly impressive height.
“Captain Allen, of the Airship Conway,” Kris says, then curses at himself and quickly adds, “Sire.”
The Prince’s eyes widen, incredulous and pleased. “They've finally sent me an airship? I've been telling them for months that we could wrap this campaign up with just one airship.” He has the look of a man whose wishes have all come true at once, and Kris feels like the kind of messenger who’s going to be drawn and quartered, never mind shot.
“Um… no… I…” Kris has to take a deep breath, but crashes on with his prepared speech anyway, “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but the Idol…your father… he passed away.”
The Prince looks at him with an expression caught midway between annoyance and confusion.
“So, you’ve flown half away across the globe to tell me? I knew my father was sick.”
“To bring you back. Your presence is required at home immediately.” Kris sees the Prince set his jaw stubbornly.
“We’re in the middle of a military campaign and I’m the Commander. I’m needed here. I’m sure the Court can cope for a little longer. I need an airship for combat, not to act as my coach, dammit,” the Prince snaps, and Kris can hear months of frustration in that one word.
“The situation in the kingdom is, um, somewhat precarious. Sire. Your succession is being challenged.”
“Gokey,” the Prince says instantly. Kris isn’t surprised. There’s never been much love lost between the two cousins.
“He’s trying to set himself up as the next Idol. He thinks he can usurp you if he moves fast enough and,” Kris can’t stop his hands curling into fists, “he’s taken Allie. Um. I mean, the Princess Allison.”
The Prince goes white at that. “Taken?” he asks, his voice more unsteady now than when he was discussing his father’s death.
“The official line is that she’s gone on a visit to the Outer Isles, but that’s obviously just a line. It makes no sense and besides, she’d choose me to fly her there, I know it. She’s been pestering me to take her up in the Conway for months now.”
The Prince’s expression goes suddenly quizzical and he steps forward, peering at Kris in the dim light.
“Oh!” he says and his smile blazes out. “You’re Captain Kristopher. Allie writes about you all the time. You’re the one who taught her to fire an Acoustic. I heard Minister Cowell pitched a fit at that. She was so excited though, I…”
Kris hears Michael coming up behind him and watches all the expression, the life that had burst onto Prince Adam’s face as he talked about Allie, vanish as if someone had closed all the valves. In its place is a calm mask of a smile, flat and practiced. The smile of someone born at Court.
“How soon can we get back?” the Prince asks. Kris feels relief like a punch to the gut. Adam had defied The Idol to stay with the troops here; there had been no guarantee he would agree to come back. The Minister had used the phrase “By any means necessary,” his voice as ominous as the rattle of pipes before an engine blowout.
“Michael, go tell the crew to prepare for immediate departure. Sire, we’re the fastest ship in the fleet. We can have you back in a week,” Kris tells him, not a little proud.
“Only a week? It took me nearly three to get here. The Conway must really be something.”
The smile returns, just for a second, and Kris remembers Allie telling him how much her brother loves to fly. He’d been dreading this mission, with all the stupid diplomacy and extra danger for his crew, but now all he can see is an enthusiastic smile slid sideways at him, covert and pleased. It might not be so bad.
This feeling lasts right up until the moment they reach the Conway and the Prince looks at Kris’s ship, his darling girl, and says, “That’s the pride of the Fleet?”
Kris glares at him, then remembers who exactly this is and tries to make his face devoid of emotion. He’s really not as good at it as Prince Adam, who raises his eyebrows coolly. Kris doesn’t trust himself not to say something insubordinate, so he motions the Prince up the gangplank in silence.
Katy is standing at the top, wind whipping at her skirt, the start of a real squall by the looks of things.
“Is that you, Kit?” she calls, and she must have been worrying, to use his nickname from childhood.
“Aye, Kat,” he yells back. Katy opens the gate onto the ship and gives Kris a brief, fierce hug.
“You did disappear in a war zone,” she tells him sternly when he cocks his head at her in surprise.
The Prince is looking round like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing; the deck is still covered in piles of coal and spare parts from their latest on-the-job repair.
“This is Katherine, the co-owner of the Conway. So be nice about our girl,” he tells Prince Adam.
Katy gives him a pointed look and Kris feels stupid beyond measure. He’s never been much good in Court, not sure enough of himself to cope with it all, and now he has to remember all these rules, on his own damn ship.
“I mean, Prince Adam, may I present Miss Katherine O’ Connell?”
The Prince bows low, an easy, graceful movement, and Katy is instantly charmed. Kris can tell from the way she inclines her head, a little shy, as she curtsies back.
“My condolences about your father, for what they’re worth, sire,” Katy says, the title easy on her lips.
The Prince smiles at her, a smile with purpose that makes her sparkle back at him, before she dashes off to investigate the noise coming from the engine room. Kris waits for a moment, hears, “Meg, not again,” and relaxes.
“Meg’s a brilliant engineer but a little erratic,” he tells Prince Adam, who looks amused. “Sometimes the engine complains.”
“Is it a Newcomen?” the Prince asks, hand stretching out towards a stack of spare parts. “I thought I saw some difference cogs?”
“You know what a difference cog looks like?” Kris picks one up and twirls it through his fingers, a tick he’d really hoped he’d grown out of.
“Oh yes,” Prince Adam says and then steals the cog, his fingers a fleeting, warm presence on Kris’s. “I tried to build a Newcomen when I was 12. The difference cogs were the hardest part to try and recreate. In the end Allie and I snuck some out of the Upgrade Workshop.”
Kris can just imagine them, running wild through the corridors of the Mansion, too brilliant to be contained, and he can’t help grinning. Prince Adam returns the grin and Kris feels momentarily blindsided.
“What happened with your engine?” he asks, watching the Prince’s hand close round the cog so that it almost looks part of the Upgrade that extends down to his wrist, fitted neatly over his arm, starkly, mechanically beautiful.
“It blew up,” the Prince says absently. “The Idol was most displeased, gave me a talk on Conduct Unbecoming a Prince. First of many.” He seems to remember where he is and shifts, looking as near to uncomfortable as Kris thinks he ever could.
“This coat isn’t much good in the rain.” The Prince indicates his uniform. “Could we possibly get into the dry?”
Kris is used to standing in storms, dry in his leather, but he realises that the Prince, hair now dripping into his eyes, is probably less so. His fingers had been warm, though.
“Sorry, sire, I’ll show you where you’re staying,” Kris says, remembering to pick up the case that they had collected from Prince Adam’s lodgings. It’s remarkably heavy, but Kris has been working on a ship most of his life and adjusts easily, winding his way through the corridors until they reach his cabin.
“We thought we’d put you in here with me,” Kris tells Prince Adam, opening the door with his hip. “It’s the biggest room, and suitably out of the way. You shouldn’t be able to smell the engines from here or anything and Matt and I shifted the desk so that we could rig you up a bunk by the window.”
“What about Katherine?” asks the Prince, tilting his head and fixing Kris with a bird-like stare of inquiry, eyes sharp and bright. It reminds Kris so much of Allie that he wants to punch something. That bastard Gokey, for a start.
“Well, her room isn’t as big, and besides, sire, I’m not sure it would be proper for you to share with her.”
“But aren’t you,” the Prince makes vague swirling motions in the air with his hand, “married or something?”
Kris is about to call him crazy, but he considers the hug and the nicknames and the whole ‘co-owner’ thing and he can see why it would seem like that to an outsider. It’s still rather funny, though, all things considered.
“No. She’s always been – I – we dreamed about having our own ship from when we were children, and she’s the best partner I could wish for. But it’s – we’re - nothing like that.”
“Ah,” the Prince says, voice low. He looks distracted, for just a second, then the cheery expression is back in full. “I’ve never slept in a bed that swings before. It’s like a better class of hammock, how interesting. Any tips? Bunk rules?”
“No undoing any knots of the bunk. No jumping on the bunk. No rough sex in the bunk,” Kris recites automatically. Then he realises exactly what he’s said. He reminds himself that he is the goddamn Captain of an Airship, not some burbling idiot, and manages to say, “My apologies, sire, I wasn’t thinking. I meant - the bunks are not the easiest or most stable kind of bed.”
The Prince’s face is impassive, but it looks only by serious force of will.
“That is to say, I only wish we had something more suitable for you, sire,” Kris finishes and avoids thinking about all the very many punishments there are for Treason Subset 5 (Improper language and or conduct directed at the Heir Apparent).
Prince Adam seems to be very carefully avoiding making eye contact, thumb tracing round the teeth of the cog still nestled in his palm.
“Well, I am only sorry to have inconvenienced you so,” says the Prince, matching Kris’s neutral tone so exactly that Kris suspects he’s being mocked. He puts the cog into a pocket and swings his case up onto the bunk.
Kris grins. “Er, sire? You’re inside an Airship. There’s no need to hoard difference cogs. There are probably about 20 of them in the wall next to your bed,” he says, and then adds another, “sire,” just in case. He thinks he sees Prince Adam’s mouth twitch.
“Don’t look so concerned, Captain Allen, I’m not going to make off with your spare parts.” Prince Adam leans back against the wall, one nonchalant sprawl, but Kris notices him press a hand against the wall to feel the hum of it, a smile threatening the edges of his mouth.
“It’s more noticeable as you get closer to the main linkages,” Kris tells him. “Sometimes I try and find the engine room with my eyes closed.” Katy always laughs at him when he trails his hand along the walls of the corridor, but he likes the way the Conway feels, alive under his fingertips.
The smile breaks, finally, and Prince Adam says, “I can see why Allie likes you, Captain Kristopher.”
“Kris is fine, sire. Allie only gets away with Captain Kristopher because she’s cute.”
“Well, then, Adam is fine,” the Prince says, without missing a beat. “Oh come on, don’t look so scandalised. You’ve been running about calling the Princess Select ‘Allie’, for heaven’s sake.”
“But Allie is… We… I met her at a function and she was so bored she fell asleep on my shoulder and drooled on me.” Kris grins at the memory. “And when she woke up she even didn't apologise, just kept whispering terrible jokes about all the dignitaries that went past us to try and make me laugh. She’s not exactly a very ‘Princess’ person.”
“She’s terrible at trying to be, believe me. But I’m not much better a Prince. Not regal enough by half,” says Prince Adam, made a liar by the way he leans forward, all effortless poise and precision.
“But what about protocol?” Kris asks weakly, not entirely sure why he feels he needs to make the point, but determined to at least try.
“It’s not something I’ve ever been particularly good with, and unless you’ve been faking the winces and the hastily tacked on ‘sire’s, neither are you, I suspect,” Prince Adam says with an easy smile.
“I’m hopeless at it,” Kris admits, “but you don’t have to change the rules for me. If you wish me to use your title, I both can and will.”
“What I wish,” Prince Adam says, eyes fixed on the wall and not on Kris, “is that we didn’t have to have this conversation at all. But since you are caught up in formalities, may I remind you that I am a military officer of equal rank to you and a Prince possibly without kingdom or position. Whereas you are most certainly Captain of this vessel. It would be improper of me to treat you as a subordinate, regardless of my wishes to make you wince less. If I had such wishes,” he adds, smile daring Kris to call him on his obvious reinterpretation of the rules.
Kris has a sudden realisation of what it must be like for the Majors when Kris uses that same smile while he explains – very politely – how the crew of the Conway have bent fleet regulations yet again. He feels like someone just turned his own gun against him.
But then he's never been one to back down from a dare.
“Well,” he says, feeling his expression turn slightly mischievous and not caring, “if your highness thinks it would be improper otherwise…”
Prince Adam just does the waving thing again, as if he can dispel the last of Kris’s doubts with a gesture, and says, “Besides, we’re sharing a room now, I can’t have you calling me ‘sire’ all the time. I’d feel like I was sleeping at Court. I'd keep expecting Minister Murdoch to jump out from behind the bunk and start berating me for my attire.”
Kris has to smile at that. “Make yourself at home,” he says. “I have to go to supervise the casting off.”
The Prince - Adam - ’s face goes young and eager. “Can I come watch? Can I help?”
“No,” Kris says instantly. He feels bad as he sees the eagerness darken into uncertainty, but there’s no way around it.
“I’m sorry, but it’s far too dangerous to have civilians on deck. You can watch from the window. It’s brewing a gale out there and you could get hurt or impede my crew, ” Kris explains, but throws Prince Adam a smile as he leaves. Adam isn’t looking, he’s undoing the straps of his Upgrade, face intent on the tiny buckles and tongue tracing over his lips in concentration.
Kris hurries out onto deck, and the cool rain washes the heat out of his cheeks.
&&&
By the time Kris sees Adam again, they have flown through the night and through the storm. Kris loves the Conway like this, singing with the rhythm of residual raindrops dripping on metal, the morning sunlight catching the droplets and making her shine.
It’s a dangerous time, too, however. He tells Matt to summon the crew and set them to disassembling all the guns and checking them for water. There are some unhappy faces, so Kris stands on the steps to the front lookout and shouts, “Attention, everyone!” His crew all gather round; they know he hates to yell.
“I know this isn’t fun, but we can’t afford to let a single gear or linkage rust. The Conway is our girl, and she needs us to take care of her, just like she takes care of us.” Kris thinks of Prince Adam’s shocked face and smiles to himself. “She may not be much to look at, but you all know the truth. We chose every bolt and gear of her to make her the best thing the sky’s ever seen. Let’s do her justice.” There is a general straightening of shoulders and a chorus of "Yes, Captain," which still makes Kris heart-happy after two years.
“Thanks everyone," he says. "You can carry on now, Matt.”
Matt just shouts, “Okay people, you heard the Captain. Carry on.” He turns to Kris and says, “So, I see our royal visitor is making an appearance,” motioning over at the door out on to deck.
The Prince is there, watching Kris with his arms folded. Adam looks different in the daylight, the sharp lines of his face softened by the creases round his eyes, the freckles that scatter his cheeks, and the approving curve of his mouth.
Matt gives Kris a sideways look. “Are you all right? Is he a nuisance? An idiot? Are you allowed to say? What the hell is the protocol for this, anyway?”
The word ‘protocol’ makes Kris chuckle.
“I’ve been wondering the same kind of thing,” he explains to Matt. “And I’m going for - treat him like a Captain, I think.” Matt laughs as Kris qualifies quickly, “Though with a bit more respect than I usually get.” Kris has known Matt since they were both just recruited, a longstanding friendship build on mockery and prank wars.
“Aye, Captain Allen, sir,” Matt replies, face straight and salute perfect. Kris ignores him and nods at Adam to come join him on the steps. Matt gives Adam an ostentatious bow as he passes him to go assign tasks to their crew.
Adam says, “So, that’s you as Captain Allen. Very… masterful.”
“This,” Kris indicates the pair of them with his hand, “could be problematic if I’m never sure whether you’re being serious or not.”
“For future reference, I was being completely serious,” Adam says. He looks worn but relaxed, leaning against the railing and watching the clouds tumble by.
“Cross your heart and hope to fly?” Kris asks, and then feels like an idiot when Adam turns to him with a confused look.
“It’s just something we used to say when I was a kid,” Kris explains, putting his hand to the back of his neck.
“Cross my heart and hope to fly,” Adam repeats solemnly, and then the weariness seeps back into his eyes. “I need you to tell me exactly what’s been happening. At home, I mean.”
“It all got really bad when your father got sick,” Kris starts. He tries to sneak a look at Adam, which doesn’t work because Adam is looking straight at him and rolls his eyes.
“Captain - Kris, let’s not pretend that the Idol was anything like a father to me. Tell me honestly what happened, don't sugar coat it. Or else I’m going in blind - no intel, no recon, no plan,” he says, sounding every inch the military commander.
“The Court was practically at a stand still for the week before. Not a single ship got an order to fly, no proclamations were made or Grievance Sessions held. It was creepy. Then, on the 23rd we were all called into the Hall, all the commanders from the forces and the Ministers and, well, everyone. And they said the Idol was dead. And then Gokey made a speech about how the Princess Allison was inconsolable and had decided to take a respite in the Outer Isles, and that he would be ‘co-ordinating proceedings until,’ no wait, ‘unless the Prince sees fit to return.’”
Kris remembers standing there, trying to catalogue reactions - the shocked, too-tight squeeze of Katy’s hand as she heard Allie’s name, the way Gokey’s eyes slid to the side. Everyone round him was either too stunned to talk or too stunned to stop, voicing their dissent or support with dangerous openness. There had been a small crowd of Ministers on the dais with Gokey, and they had looked particularly displeased.
Kris reports all this to Adam, who fixes Kris with an intent look. “And you?”
“And me?” Kris repeats, distracted momentarily by Anoop dropping something with a very distressing clang.
“What did you think was going on, then, in the Hall?” Adam asks. They both sigh in relief when Anoop yells, “Not broken!”
“Oh. I was just glad that we knew what was going on, finally, but then, when he said that about Allie… I knew he was lying, I knew. She wouldn’t have just left without saying anything and anyway, inconsolable? Not likely.”
Adam swears under his breath and says, “What happened then? Who gave you the orders to come for me?”
“Then we all went back to our ships to await further instruction. Minister Cowell sent for me and told me to take the Conway to get you, as quickly as possible. He seemed pissed off, though, to put it bluntly. I think he'd been made to say that by someone else.”
“Sounds like him,” Adam says with a commiserative expression. “Never happy unless he’s calling the shots. So we don’t know where we really stand with him, or who actually sent you here.”
“No,” Kris agrees with a frown. “This is why I hate politics.” He listens to the soothing, dependable sound of the Conway and watches Matt brandish a screwdriver at Anoop, who is now sitting on the deck with an array of parts before him. It’s peaceful, in its own mad, hectic way, and Kris can’t help smiling, just a little.
“So, do you think they’ve really sent Allie to the Outer Isles?” Adam asks, sounding almost apologetic at having to break the moment.
Kris considers this for moment. “Possibly, because then there would be witnesses to her being there. But I think Gokey would want to keep her close.”
“Where he can keep an eye on her. Or just get rid of her if needs be,” Adam says darkly. They stare at each other for one bleak minute until Adam attempts a smile and says, “Could be worse, she could have really had to go to the Outer Isles, and everyone knows you can actually die of boredom there. Or even worse, one of the Far South Isles.”
Kris says nothing, just stares fixedly. Adam winces, which makes a refreshing turn-about, and says, “Oh hell. Which one are you from, then?”
“Arkansay,” Kris says, and then lets it slide because the bleak look is still clouding the edges of Adam’s eyes. “Honestly, you’ve insulted my ship, my home, my Captaining… Anything else?”
It’s an obvious attempt at distraction, but Adam goes along with it. “You have horrible dress sense,” he says quickly. “I mean, apart from the leather coat. And you’re a horrible host; you didn’t wake me up whenever you left this morning. I don’t even know where to get any breakfast.”
“Well, then you are bad at being observant, because I didn’t come back to the cabin after we cast off,” Kris replies, and Adam looks him up and down and says, “You haven’t slept.”
“No time. Storm,” Kris says flatly, and suddenly he feels it, feels the tiredness settle in somewhere around bone level. There’s no time for that, though, because he should check on the guns now that the crew have started putting them back together, and he really should show Adam where everything is.
He takes Adam to the galley, where Katy is contemplating a bowl of porridge. She smiles blurrily at them. Kris sits next to her and she gives him a once over, then pushes her bowl towards him, saying, “He forgets to eat as well as sleep, sire,” to Adam.
Scott brings them over tea and more porridge, and Kris can see Adam is desperate to examine the Upgrade that covers his eyes. To Adam’s credit, he manages not to poke at it like he does everything else mechanical, restricting himself to staring as he thanks Scott politely.
“I’ll need the rotas after breakfast,” Kris tells Katy, before that gets lost in a fog of tiredness. “And Anoop needs the charts checking over; I told him you’d do that. Adam, get someone to show you around. You need to familiarise yourself with the ship layout as soon as possible.”
He freezes as he realises he’s given Adam orders as if he were one of his crew, but Adam just swipes a piece of bread from the counter and falls easily into conversation with Katy. Kris focuses on his porridge, working through the bowl mechanically, and doesn’t notice he’s been tuning out the conversation until he feels the weight of stares on him and sees Adam and Katy looking at him expectantly.
“Yes?” he hazards, and they both laugh.
“You should get some sleep, Captain Allen,” Adam says. “I can look after myself. You just make sure we don’t fall out of the sky or whatever it is that you do.”
Kris says, “Ironically, I have to work out when everyone else is going to get some sleep first,” but he feels a little better all the same.
&&&
It’s a long, long morning, and Kris has to push on through the tiredness until he reaches a strange glassy-eyed place of calm. At some point tea is deposited among the reams of paper on his desk and he drinks half of it in a gulp before looking up to see, not Katy or Scott, but Adam, blowing fastidiously on a small cup of his own.
It occurs to Kris that he should probably stop staring blankly at Adam. But it’s not his fault. It’s not every day that Princes bring him tea while he tries to wrangle political crises and shift rotas. He’s allowed to be a little taken aback.
“You’re welcome,” Adam says pointedly, and Kris realises that thinking about his good reasons for staring creepily at Adam is only making him, well, stare creepily at Adam even more.
Kris says, “Thank you,” taking another sip and pulling a slight face at the bitter aftertaste.
“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t like it.” Adam has an expression like a cat with wet fur, and Kris realises something else.
“You made this,” he says.
Adam nods. “Well, the water boiler looked so fascinating, and then Scott was showing me the system for tea and I made lots, so…tea?”
Kris takes another sip in silent apology, trying to hide the grimace, and Adam says, “Fine, I make horrible tea. But you still have horrible hair.”
“My hair was not on the list of things that were horrible,” Kris protests.
Adam makes an unrepentant ‘what can you do?’ gesture with his cup, avoiding disaster and spillages somehow with the smooth movement of his hand, then nods a goodbye and leaves.
The rest of the day passes in charts and maps and Anoop’s scrawled calculations about where they need to be when to catch the currents that will get them back to the Mansion in the promised week. The cliché about navigators' handwriting is, like all the best clichés, completely true, and Kris spends what seems like hours simply decoding all the notes. Various crew members bring him sandwiches, reports and updates on what His Highness has been up to, which mostly seems to involve obsessing over things in the engine room and letting Scott talk to him about food. The general tone is of slightly awed confusion, which Kris can’t blame them for in the slightest. Prince Adam is unbalancing.
During one particularly vague moment, Kris finds himself thinking that if he had known this was what being Captain of an airship involved, then maybe he wouldn’t have dreamed about it for so long, let it be the light that he’d guided his life by. He shakes his head at himself and tries to concentrate on the numbers in front of him, un-compelling as they are.
Then the door opens and Matt says, “I bring three very important things for you.”
Kris says, still focused on a getting this line right, “You know the rule about knocking, Matt, and one of those things had better be supper.”
“I do slightly object to be called a thing.” Adam’s voice is amused and drawling, and Kris knows even before he looks up that Adam will be leaning on something with careless grace. Matt looks supremely unconcerned by Kris's tone. He brushes past Adam - who is, sure enough, supporting himself on the doorframe - to put plates down on the table.
Kris catches the rich smell of gravy, and it’s possible he lets out a moan, just a little one. Matt laughs and Adam gets that strange, fixed expression again, as if his brain is so busy trying to work out what the hell is going on that he’s had to leave his face on default setting, because there aren’t enough cogs to work both.
“I just really, really like stew,” Kris explains, and Adam seems to come to, joining Matt at the table.
“Well, I may have made a similar noise at the other thing I brought," Matt says with a grin, and Adam raises his eyebrows and murmurs, “Oh really? I didn’t know you felt that way.”
Matt leers at Adam. Kris wonders exactly when they became so friendly, anyway.
“So, Meg thinks she might have found a way to improve the turning angle,” Matt enthuses, and Adam sighs. “Honestly, do none of you people get enjoyment from normal things?”
“Says the man who spent half an hour looking at the power couplings,” Kris retorts easily. “Oh yes, I have my spies. I know all about you and your valve fetish.”
“I’m not ashamed, I admit it freely,” Adam says, sitting down and unrolling a schematic on the table.
Kris weighs each end down with a plate of stew and tries to figure out what Megan is suggesting they do to the main valve system to stop the wide right turn Matt is always complaining about. No one had ever wanted to hire Megan before she came to the Conway and somehow managed to make everything faster and better. Now Kris can’t imagine being without her—her easy affection, her ridiculous jokes, her absent-minded otherworldliness. And most of the other Captains hadn’t even noticed Matt…
Kris smiles and Matt says, “I know the Conway is essentially the love of your life, but that’s never a valve related smile.”
“Just thinking how great it is to be Captain,” Kris tells him, which is the truth in its own way.
Adam sits down next to Kris. He traces a line on the chart with his finger and makes an interested noise, then digs into his plate of stew and says, “I can see why. I never got food like this as a military commander, I can tell you.” He looks at Kris speculatively. “You’re a bit young to be a Captain, aren’t you? Were you some kind of prodigy?”
Kris and Matt both nearly have unfortunate stew related accidents, and Matt warns, “If you make us get gravy on Meg’s schematic she will kill us all. I only wish I were joking.”
“I was very much not a prodigy,” Kris says, and he hears Matt snicker.
“Well, I couldn’t exactly see you playing political games with Ministers or Fleet commanders to get ahead, and your family aren’t significant,” Adam says and then looks guilty. “I mean, in a Court sense. So I guessed it had to be some sort of hidden brilliance.”
“What Kris is hiding is a bleeding heart combined with an insubordinate streak a mile wide,” Matt says around a mouthful of potato, and Adam asks what he means, of course. Which means that Matt will tell The Tale of How Kris Became Captain. Kris looks pointedly at the drawing and tries not to pull a face when Matt starts.
“It was when we were working on board the Mission. We’d been stationed near some pretty heavy fighting, but then we had to pull out. The villagers didn’t have any defences, so Kris here decides to leave them his state of the art Acoustic.”
“Look, we were abandoning those people and Captain Fitzroy wouldn’t leave them anything. So I let them keep my gun,” Kris says. He still doesn’t really understand why people insist on telling this story. It was the least he could have done. He should have done more.
“Against the express orders of our Captain. He was standing in the middle of the village as we were packing up, giving this whole speech about how our resources were too valuable to be wasted, and Kris strides past him and hands this girl his Acoustic.”
Kris really wants to point out that he didn’t ‘stride’, he walked like any normal person, but Matt is not to be stopped. “The Captain went ballistic and told him to take it back at once, but Kris said that as it was his own gun, bought with his own money, he could do what he liked with it.”
Adam looks remarkably unsurprised.
“So then The Captain gives Kris this big lecture about ‘the chain of command being sacrosanct’ and when we get home he drags Kris off to see the Majors, right?” Matt continues.
He looks over at Kris, who admits defeat and takes over the story, “Yes, that’s right, and I was expecting the worst, a demotion or a Grounding order. Then Major DioGuardi stood up and said, ‘Lieutenant Allen. Interesting stunt you pulled there. We’re promoting you to Captain.’”
Adam laughs sharply, like it’s been surprised out of him, and Kris laughs too because it is ludicrous when he thinks about it, the whole situation.
“She said they’d thought I was too modest and unimposing to be a Captain, but that this showed I had ‘initiative and balls.’”
Matt grins. “Lucky git. Captain at twenty-two, it hardly seems far.” Kris catches Matt’s eye and sees the warmth there, so he grins back.
“Then he drags me all the way back to Arkansay so that we can get Katy…”
“I took you to meet the new co-owner and so that you could help pick the parts for your ship,” Kris says gently, because he doesn’t want Adam to think that Kris just marched around ordering people to come work for him. “And then we made the Conway.”
Matt rolls his eyes. “And we all lived happily ever after.”
“I suppose that you get what you give,” Adam says, and his voice is unusually gentle.
Kris says, “That’s what my mama said,” and Adam looks so pleased that Kris can only smile at him, fork stopped halfway to his mouth, until Matt says, “You’re dripping gravy on the schematic. When Meg throws you off the foredeck I will be nothing but vindicated.”
“She’ll probably be made Captain,” Adam says as Kris busies himself trying to blot up the gravy with his sleeve. “Nothing shows initiative like throwing the previous Captain off the ship.”
“That better not be disapproval in your voice. I know all about how you became Commander,” Matt says, his tone suggesting scandal at the very least. Kris has no idea what Matt is referring to, but before he can ask Adam has launched into a story about his former C.O, who had got promoted through a series of ‘liaisons’ with high-ranking Ministers.
Kris and Matt have stories of their own, and they start trying to outdo each other telling Adam all about the other’s failures. Eventually Kris has to concede to Matt because Kris has no comeback to the story about how once, when he’d been a Second Lieutenant, he’d hit a vital pipe on his own ship when he was meant to be firing at an enemy message carrier.
“In my defence, it was really windy that day,” Kris says. “Which isn’t much of a defence, I know. Damn, but the Captain was cross. I wasn’t allowed to fire my gun for a week.”
“Don’t let that fool you, he’s usually a crack shot,” Matt informs Adam and then stretches, cracking his neck.
“I need to get out of this chair,” he adds, standing up. “Goodnight Kris, Commander.”
“Commander?” Kris asks Adam when Matt has gone, and Adam shrugs. “Well, it seemed like the best solution, protocol wise, for the crew to call me that.” He must catch something of Kris’s thoughts on his face because he says, “No, not Adam. I have to maintain some standards.”
Kris tries to hide the start of an utterly nonsensical smile with a yawn and Adam makes a distressed noise and says, “God, I’m sorry, I should have let you go to bed hours ago. You must be exhausted, did you get any sleep?”
“Not really,” Kris confesses. “I was so tired earlier I even started getting gloomy about being Captain.” It’s been preying on his mind all day and it’s actually a relief to say it out loud, even as he tries to pass it off as a result of being exhausted.
“I thought you loved it?” Adam says, and Kris nods quickly. “I do, I absolutely do, it’s just the madness of today and …” he trails off because it’s almost impossible to put it into words, this overwhelmed feeling he gets sometimes, the weight of expectations.
“I won’t pretend to understand completely,” Adam says, rolling up the schematic and going to his case on the bunk, “but I’m a Commander in the army. I know what it’s like to be responsible for other people’s lives.”
“This is a very serious conversation to be having while getting ready for bed,” Kris says, sitting down and unlacing his boots. He doesn’t think he can look at Adam right now.
“All the best conversations are had in the lead up to bed,” Adam says, a little too innocent.
Kris settles his expression before he looks up and says, “Surely you mean all the best conversations lead to bed.”
Adam gives him an impressed look. “Well played.”
“Try to remember that I’ve been in the military a long time. You’re going to have to try a lot harder.”
“It’s the face,” Adam tells him, taking off his waistcoat. “It’s deceptive.”
Kris turns on the lamp by his bed and Adam makes a small noise and comes over to investigate, kneeling by Kris’ bunk and following the linkages that lead out through the wall.
“It’s air powered, only works when we’re moving” Kris explains, flicking at the switch to make it stop and start again. When the light comes back on Adam is looking over with that expression of open wonder that he gets sometimes.
“Valve fetish,” Kris says fondly, and Adam stands up quickly and goes back to his own bunk.
“I should take this off before I forget,” he says and starts to work at a buckle at his shoulder, where the Upgrade goes under his shirt, “or else I’ll wake up with gear teeth digging into me, not for the first time.” His voice is missing the component that makes it real, makes it Adam’s voice and not the Prince’s or the Commander’s.
Kris can’t begin to guess what he did to make Adam close up like that so he asks politely, “You don’t notice it?” He gets under the blankets, sighing with relief as he lets his body relax. He always appreciates the bunk after days like today; it almost seems comfortable, which makes a pleasant change.
“I barely notice it most of the time, which is good, it means I’m in sync with it,” Adam says. “When I get home, I’m going to take Cassidy out for dinner or something; it’s an amazing piece of work.”
“What will you do when you get home?” Kris can’t believe it’s taken him this long to think to ask. “I mean, do you have a plan? What will you do about Gokey?”
“There’s nothing much I can do until I get there and see what’s what,” Adam says, “seeing as we know next to nothing about the extent of his machinations.”
“But what if he’s already claimed the throne?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Adam says, voice frayed by sleepiness. “Actually, no, we’ve got an airship, there’s no need to worry about bridges at all. Even if there turns out to be a river. Which there very well may not be, we shouldn't count our rivers before they hatch....”
“Okay,” Kris mumbles, too tired to fight extended metaphors, and he lets the world slide into hazy softness.
&&&&&
Adam is still fast asleep when Kris wakes up. He’s spent too long in the Fleet to sleep much past six, his body conditioned by years of drills and lectures on tardiness. He’s Captain now but it’s practically worse because although there’s no one to lecture him, he has to be ready to command at any hour.
Adam has flung out his arm in his sleep. It looks strangely naked without the Upgrade. Kris shakes his head at himself and goes over to the basin where he runs the tap and splashes loudly. Then he gets dressed, letting his boot fall on the floor with a thump, then pulls his chair out with a scrape. When none of this seems to have an effect he says, “Morning,” very loudly.
Adam scrubs his hand over his face and looks over at Kris with dark, hazy eyes, red playing over the edges of his cheeks.
“Good morning,” he says, sitting up and pulling at his sleeves and collar so that they cover more of his skin.
“I know it’s early, but I have to go give a crew briefing in, oh, ten minutes, and I’ve a quick question, now that we are both vaguely awake. If you could?”
“This is unfair. I wasn’t allowed to hijack you while you were all groggy,” Adam grumbles, but he gets up and washes his face, then looks at Kris expectantly.
“Will there be consequences, do you think? For us, the Conway, I mean, when we get home? I need to know what to prepare my crew for.”
“Whatever happens, I don’t think Gokey can do anything to you for following orders. Even he’s not that much of a dick. Although he tries,” Adam says bitterly.
Kris can’t quite believe that Adam could hate anyone so much that it drips harshly into the polite tone of his voice. Adam has shut up his face again, though, so Kris doesn’t ask.
Adam doesn’t say anything else for a few moments, he just sorts through his suitcase until he finds a shirt that is to his satisfaction and sets it on the bed.
“So, what’s the plan for today?” He rummages again, hair messing over his eyes.
“Um, well, you are free to do as you like, obviously. I have the briefing this morning with the crew and some checks to do. But I should get this afternoon off because I’m on night shift tonight.” Kris tries to sound neutral about it, but Adam looks up from his seemingly bottomless suitcase and says, with a small smile, “It’s the worst, isn’t it? Night patrol really plays on all those dreams you have as a child about monsters in the shadows. But at least the paranoia breaks up the monotony.” His laugh is jarringly merry.
“I’ll be back later. You’ll have to amuse yourself in the mean time, I’m afraid,” Kris says, gathering up the necessary papers from his desk.
Adam makes his eyes go big and tragic. Kris laughs, balls up a piece of paper and throws it at him. Adam catches it with his left hand and throws it back in one effortless movement.
Kris keeps smiling to himself throughout the meeting every time he has to consult his now very crumpled food supplies list.
Part Two
&&&&&
They finally find the Prince after three hours of searching. He’s leaning on a rail overlooking the harbour, lit only by the lights of the ships below. The shadows make him look like a pen and ink drawing, Kris thinks, all sharp lines and contrasts, dark hair and pale skin, black jacket with buttons shining white. He spots the glint of an Upgrade fitted over the right arm, and he knows he’s got his man.
“How can I help you?” the Prince asks, drawing himself up to a fairly impressive height.
“Captain Allen, of the Airship Conway,” Kris says, then curses at himself and quickly adds, “Sire.”
The Prince’s eyes widen, incredulous and pleased. “They've finally sent me an airship? I've been telling them for months that we could wrap this campaign up with just one airship.” He has the look of a man whose wishes have all come true at once, and Kris feels like the kind of messenger who’s going to be drawn and quartered, never mind shot.
“Um… no… I…” Kris has to take a deep breath, but crashes on with his prepared speech anyway, “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but the Idol…your father… he passed away.”
The Prince looks at him with an expression caught midway between annoyance and confusion.
“So, you’ve flown half away across the globe to tell me? I knew my father was sick.”
“To bring you back. Your presence is required at home immediately.” Kris sees the Prince set his jaw stubbornly.
“We’re in the middle of a military campaign and I’m the Commander. I’m needed here. I’m sure the Court can cope for a little longer. I need an airship for combat, not to act as my coach, dammit,” the Prince snaps, and Kris can hear months of frustration in that one word.
“The situation in the kingdom is, um, somewhat precarious. Sire. Your succession is being challenged.”
“Gokey,” the Prince says instantly. Kris isn’t surprised. There’s never been much love lost between the two cousins.
“He’s trying to set himself up as the next Idol. He thinks he can usurp you if he moves fast enough and,” Kris can’t stop his hands curling into fists, “he’s taken Allie. Um. I mean, the Princess Allison.”
The Prince goes white at that. “Taken?” he asks, his voice more unsteady now than when he was discussing his father’s death.
“The official line is that she’s gone on a visit to the Outer Isles, but that’s obviously just a line. It makes no sense and besides, she’d choose me to fly her there, I know it. She’s been pestering me to take her up in the Conway for months now.”
The Prince’s expression goes suddenly quizzical and he steps forward, peering at Kris in the dim light.
“Oh!” he says and his smile blazes out. “You’re Captain Kristopher. Allie writes about you all the time. You’re the one who taught her to fire an Acoustic. I heard Minister Cowell pitched a fit at that. She was so excited though, I…”
Kris hears Michael coming up behind him and watches all the expression, the life that had burst onto Prince Adam’s face as he talked about Allie, vanish as if someone had closed all the valves. In its place is a calm mask of a smile, flat and practiced. The smile of someone born at Court.
“How soon can we get back?” the Prince asks. Kris feels relief like a punch to the gut. Adam had defied The Idol to stay with the troops here; there had been no guarantee he would agree to come back. The Minister had used the phrase “By any means necessary,” his voice as ominous as the rattle of pipes before an engine blowout.
“Michael, go tell the crew to prepare for immediate departure. Sire, we’re the fastest ship in the fleet. We can have you back in a week,” Kris tells him, not a little proud.
“Only a week? It took me nearly three to get here. The Conway must really be something.”
The smile returns, just for a second, and Kris remembers Allie telling him how much her brother loves to fly. He’d been dreading this mission, with all the stupid diplomacy and extra danger for his crew, but now all he can see is an enthusiastic smile slid sideways at him, covert and pleased. It might not be so bad.
This feeling lasts right up until the moment they reach the Conway and the Prince looks at Kris’s ship, his darling girl, and says, “That’s the pride of the Fleet?”
Kris glares at him, then remembers who exactly this is and tries to make his face devoid of emotion. He’s really not as good at it as Prince Adam, who raises his eyebrows coolly. Kris doesn’t trust himself not to say something insubordinate, so he motions the Prince up the gangplank in silence.
Katy is standing at the top, wind whipping at her skirt, the start of a real squall by the looks of things.
“Is that you, Kit?” she calls, and she must have been worrying, to use his nickname from childhood.
“Aye, Kat,” he yells back. Katy opens the gate onto the ship and gives Kris a brief, fierce hug.
“You did disappear in a war zone,” she tells him sternly when he cocks his head at her in surprise.
The Prince is looking round like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing; the deck is still covered in piles of coal and spare parts from their latest on-the-job repair.
“This is Katherine, the co-owner of the Conway. So be nice about our girl,” he tells Prince Adam.
Katy gives him a pointed look and Kris feels stupid beyond measure. He’s never been much good in Court, not sure enough of himself to cope with it all, and now he has to remember all these rules, on his own damn ship.
“I mean, Prince Adam, may I present Miss Katherine O’ Connell?”
The Prince bows low, an easy, graceful movement, and Katy is instantly charmed. Kris can tell from the way she inclines her head, a little shy, as she curtsies back.
“My condolences about your father, for what they’re worth, sire,” Katy says, the title easy on her lips.
The Prince smiles at her, a smile with purpose that makes her sparkle back at him, before she dashes off to investigate the noise coming from the engine room. Kris waits for a moment, hears, “Meg, not again,” and relaxes.
“Meg’s a brilliant engineer but a little erratic,” he tells Prince Adam, who looks amused. “Sometimes the engine complains.”
“Is it a Newcomen?” the Prince asks, hand stretching out towards a stack of spare parts. “I thought I saw some difference cogs?”
“You know what a difference cog looks like?” Kris picks one up and twirls it through his fingers, a tick he’d really hoped he’d grown out of.
“Oh yes,” Prince Adam says and then steals the cog, his fingers a fleeting, warm presence on Kris’s. “I tried to build a Newcomen when I was 12. The difference cogs were the hardest part to try and recreate. In the end Allie and I snuck some out of the Upgrade Workshop.”
Kris can just imagine them, running wild through the corridors of the Mansion, too brilliant to be contained, and he can’t help grinning. Prince Adam returns the grin and Kris feels momentarily blindsided.
“What happened with your engine?” he asks, watching the Prince’s hand close round the cog so that it almost looks part of the Upgrade that extends down to his wrist, fitted neatly over his arm, starkly, mechanically beautiful.
“It blew up,” the Prince says absently. “The Idol was most displeased, gave me a talk on Conduct Unbecoming a Prince. First of many.” He seems to remember where he is and shifts, looking as near to uncomfortable as Kris thinks he ever could.
“This coat isn’t much good in the rain.” The Prince indicates his uniform. “Could we possibly get into the dry?”
Kris is used to standing in storms, dry in his leather, but he realises that the Prince, hair now dripping into his eyes, is probably less so. His fingers had been warm, though.
“Sorry, sire, I’ll show you where you’re staying,” Kris says, remembering to pick up the case that they had collected from Prince Adam’s lodgings. It’s remarkably heavy, but Kris has been working on a ship most of his life and adjusts easily, winding his way through the corridors until they reach his cabin.
“We thought we’d put you in here with me,” Kris tells Prince Adam, opening the door with his hip. “It’s the biggest room, and suitably out of the way. You shouldn’t be able to smell the engines from here or anything and Matt and I shifted the desk so that we could rig you up a bunk by the window.”
“What about Katherine?” asks the Prince, tilting his head and fixing Kris with a bird-like stare of inquiry, eyes sharp and bright. It reminds Kris so much of Allie that he wants to punch something. That bastard Gokey, for a start.
“Well, her room isn’t as big, and besides, sire, I’m not sure it would be proper for you to share with her.”
“But aren’t you,” the Prince makes vague swirling motions in the air with his hand, “married or something?”
Kris is about to call him crazy, but he considers the hug and the nicknames and the whole ‘co-owner’ thing and he can see why it would seem like that to an outsider. It’s still rather funny, though, all things considered.
“No. She’s always been – I – we dreamed about having our own ship from when we were children, and she’s the best partner I could wish for. But it’s – we’re - nothing like that.”
“Ah,” the Prince says, voice low. He looks distracted, for just a second, then the cheery expression is back in full. “I’ve never slept in a bed that swings before. It’s like a better class of hammock, how interesting. Any tips? Bunk rules?”
“No undoing any knots of the bunk. No jumping on the bunk. No rough sex in the bunk,” Kris recites automatically. Then he realises exactly what he’s said. He reminds himself that he is the goddamn Captain of an Airship, not some burbling idiot, and manages to say, “My apologies, sire, I wasn’t thinking. I meant - the bunks are not the easiest or most stable kind of bed.”
The Prince’s face is impassive, but it looks only by serious force of will.
“That is to say, I only wish we had something more suitable for you, sire,” Kris finishes and avoids thinking about all the very many punishments there are for Treason Subset 5 (Improper language and or conduct directed at the Heir Apparent).
Prince Adam seems to be very carefully avoiding making eye contact, thumb tracing round the teeth of the cog still nestled in his palm.
“Well, I am only sorry to have inconvenienced you so,” says the Prince, matching Kris’s neutral tone so exactly that Kris suspects he’s being mocked. He puts the cog into a pocket and swings his case up onto the bunk.
Kris grins. “Er, sire? You’re inside an Airship. There’s no need to hoard difference cogs. There are probably about 20 of them in the wall next to your bed,” he says, and then adds another, “sire,” just in case. He thinks he sees Prince Adam’s mouth twitch.
“Don’t look so concerned, Captain Allen, I’m not going to make off with your spare parts.” Prince Adam leans back against the wall, one nonchalant sprawl, but Kris notices him press a hand against the wall to feel the hum of it, a smile threatening the edges of his mouth.
“It’s more noticeable as you get closer to the main linkages,” Kris tells him. “Sometimes I try and find the engine room with my eyes closed.” Katy always laughs at him when he trails his hand along the walls of the corridor, but he likes the way the Conway feels, alive under his fingertips.
The smile breaks, finally, and Prince Adam says, “I can see why Allie likes you, Captain Kristopher.”
“Kris is fine, sire. Allie only gets away with Captain Kristopher because she’s cute.”
“Well, then, Adam is fine,” the Prince says, without missing a beat. “Oh come on, don’t look so scandalised. You’ve been running about calling the Princess Select ‘Allie’, for heaven’s sake.”
“But Allie is… We… I met her at a function and she was so bored she fell asleep on my shoulder and drooled on me.” Kris grins at the memory. “And when she woke up she even didn't apologise, just kept whispering terrible jokes about all the dignitaries that went past us to try and make me laugh. She’s not exactly a very ‘Princess’ person.”
“She’s terrible at trying to be, believe me. But I’m not much better a Prince. Not regal enough by half,” says Prince Adam, made a liar by the way he leans forward, all effortless poise and precision.
“But what about protocol?” Kris asks weakly, not entirely sure why he feels he needs to make the point, but determined to at least try.
“It’s not something I’ve ever been particularly good with, and unless you’ve been faking the winces and the hastily tacked on ‘sire’s, neither are you, I suspect,” Prince Adam says with an easy smile.
“I’m hopeless at it,” Kris admits, “but you don’t have to change the rules for me. If you wish me to use your title, I both can and will.”
“What I wish,” Prince Adam says, eyes fixed on the wall and not on Kris, “is that we didn’t have to have this conversation at all. But since you are caught up in formalities, may I remind you that I am a military officer of equal rank to you and a Prince possibly without kingdom or position. Whereas you are most certainly Captain of this vessel. It would be improper of me to treat you as a subordinate, regardless of my wishes to make you wince less. If I had such wishes,” he adds, smile daring Kris to call him on his obvious reinterpretation of the rules.
Kris has a sudden realisation of what it must be like for the Majors when Kris uses that same smile while he explains – very politely – how the crew of the Conway have bent fleet regulations yet again. He feels like someone just turned his own gun against him.
But then he's never been one to back down from a dare.
“Well,” he says, feeling his expression turn slightly mischievous and not caring, “if your highness thinks it would be improper otherwise…”
Prince Adam just does the waving thing again, as if he can dispel the last of Kris’s doubts with a gesture, and says, “Besides, we’re sharing a room now, I can’t have you calling me ‘sire’ all the time. I’d feel like I was sleeping at Court. I'd keep expecting Minister Murdoch to jump out from behind the bunk and start berating me for my attire.”
Kris has to smile at that. “Make yourself at home,” he says. “I have to go to supervise the casting off.”
The Prince - Adam - ’s face goes young and eager. “Can I come watch? Can I help?”
“No,” Kris says instantly. He feels bad as he sees the eagerness darken into uncertainty, but there’s no way around it.
“I’m sorry, but it’s far too dangerous to have civilians on deck. You can watch from the window. It’s brewing a gale out there and you could get hurt or impede my crew, ” Kris explains, but throws Prince Adam a smile as he leaves. Adam isn’t looking, he’s undoing the straps of his Upgrade, face intent on the tiny buckles and tongue tracing over his lips in concentration.
Kris hurries out onto deck, and the cool rain washes the heat out of his cheeks.
&&&
By the time Kris sees Adam again, they have flown through the night and through the storm. Kris loves the Conway like this, singing with the rhythm of residual raindrops dripping on metal, the morning sunlight catching the droplets and making her shine.
It’s a dangerous time, too, however. He tells Matt to summon the crew and set them to disassembling all the guns and checking them for water. There are some unhappy faces, so Kris stands on the steps to the front lookout and shouts, “Attention, everyone!” His crew all gather round; they know he hates to yell.
“I know this isn’t fun, but we can’t afford to let a single gear or linkage rust. The Conway is our girl, and she needs us to take care of her, just like she takes care of us.” Kris thinks of Prince Adam’s shocked face and smiles to himself. “She may not be much to look at, but you all know the truth. We chose every bolt and gear of her to make her the best thing the sky’s ever seen. Let’s do her justice.” There is a general straightening of shoulders and a chorus of "Yes, Captain," which still makes Kris heart-happy after two years.
“Thanks everyone," he says. "You can carry on now, Matt.”
Matt just shouts, “Okay people, you heard the Captain. Carry on.” He turns to Kris and says, “So, I see our royal visitor is making an appearance,” motioning over at the door out on to deck.
The Prince is there, watching Kris with his arms folded. Adam looks different in the daylight, the sharp lines of his face softened by the creases round his eyes, the freckles that scatter his cheeks, and the approving curve of his mouth.
Matt gives Kris a sideways look. “Are you all right? Is he a nuisance? An idiot? Are you allowed to say? What the hell is the protocol for this, anyway?”
The word ‘protocol’ makes Kris chuckle.
“I’ve been wondering the same kind of thing,” he explains to Matt. “And I’m going for - treat him like a Captain, I think.” Matt laughs as Kris qualifies quickly, “Though with a bit more respect than I usually get.” Kris has known Matt since they were both just recruited, a longstanding friendship build on mockery and prank wars.
“Aye, Captain Allen, sir,” Matt replies, face straight and salute perfect. Kris ignores him and nods at Adam to come join him on the steps. Matt gives Adam an ostentatious bow as he passes him to go assign tasks to their crew.
Adam says, “So, that’s you as Captain Allen. Very… masterful.”
“This,” Kris indicates the pair of them with his hand, “could be problematic if I’m never sure whether you’re being serious or not.”
“For future reference, I was being completely serious,” Adam says. He looks worn but relaxed, leaning against the railing and watching the clouds tumble by.
“Cross your heart and hope to fly?” Kris asks, and then feels like an idiot when Adam turns to him with a confused look.
“It’s just something we used to say when I was a kid,” Kris explains, putting his hand to the back of his neck.
“Cross my heart and hope to fly,” Adam repeats solemnly, and then the weariness seeps back into his eyes. “I need you to tell me exactly what’s been happening. At home, I mean.”
“It all got really bad when your father got sick,” Kris starts. He tries to sneak a look at Adam, which doesn’t work because Adam is looking straight at him and rolls his eyes.
“Captain - Kris, let’s not pretend that the Idol was anything like a father to me. Tell me honestly what happened, don't sugar coat it. Or else I’m going in blind - no intel, no recon, no plan,” he says, sounding every inch the military commander.
“The Court was practically at a stand still for the week before. Not a single ship got an order to fly, no proclamations were made or Grievance Sessions held. It was creepy. Then, on the 23rd we were all called into the Hall, all the commanders from the forces and the Ministers and, well, everyone. And they said the Idol was dead. And then Gokey made a speech about how the Princess Allison was inconsolable and had decided to take a respite in the Outer Isles, and that he would be ‘co-ordinating proceedings until,’ no wait, ‘unless the Prince sees fit to return.’”
Kris remembers standing there, trying to catalogue reactions - the shocked, too-tight squeeze of Katy’s hand as she heard Allie’s name, the way Gokey’s eyes slid to the side. Everyone round him was either too stunned to talk or too stunned to stop, voicing their dissent or support with dangerous openness. There had been a small crowd of Ministers on the dais with Gokey, and they had looked particularly displeased.
Kris reports all this to Adam, who fixes Kris with an intent look. “And you?”
“And me?” Kris repeats, distracted momentarily by Anoop dropping something with a very distressing clang.
“What did you think was going on, then, in the Hall?” Adam asks. They both sigh in relief when Anoop yells, “Not broken!”
“Oh. I was just glad that we knew what was going on, finally, but then, when he said that about Allie… I knew he was lying, I knew. She wouldn’t have just left without saying anything and anyway, inconsolable? Not likely.”
Adam swears under his breath and says, “What happened then? Who gave you the orders to come for me?”
“Then we all went back to our ships to await further instruction. Minister Cowell sent for me and told me to take the Conway to get you, as quickly as possible. He seemed pissed off, though, to put it bluntly. I think he'd been made to say that by someone else.”
“Sounds like him,” Adam says with a commiserative expression. “Never happy unless he’s calling the shots. So we don’t know where we really stand with him, or who actually sent you here.”
“No,” Kris agrees with a frown. “This is why I hate politics.” He listens to the soothing, dependable sound of the Conway and watches Matt brandish a screwdriver at Anoop, who is now sitting on the deck with an array of parts before him. It’s peaceful, in its own mad, hectic way, and Kris can’t help smiling, just a little.
“So, do you think they’ve really sent Allie to the Outer Isles?” Adam asks, sounding almost apologetic at having to break the moment.
Kris considers this for moment. “Possibly, because then there would be witnesses to her being there. But I think Gokey would want to keep her close.”
“Where he can keep an eye on her. Or just get rid of her if needs be,” Adam says darkly. They stare at each other for one bleak minute until Adam attempts a smile and says, “Could be worse, she could have really had to go to the Outer Isles, and everyone knows you can actually die of boredom there. Or even worse, one of the Far South Isles.”
Kris says nothing, just stares fixedly. Adam winces, which makes a refreshing turn-about, and says, “Oh hell. Which one are you from, then?”
“Arkansay,” Kris says, and then lets it slide because the bleak look is still clouding the edges of Adam’s eyes. “Honestly, you’ve insulted my ship, my home, my Captaining… Anything else?”
It’s an obvious attempt at distraction, but Adam goes along with it. “You have horrible dress sense,” he says quickly. “I mean, apart from the leather coat. And you’re a horrible host; you didn’t wake me up whenever you left this morning. I don’t even know where to get any breakfast.”
“Well, then you are bad at being observant, because I didn’t come back to the cabin after we cast off,” Kris replies, and Adam looks him up and down and says, “You haven’t slept.”
“No time. Storm,” Kris says flatly, and suddenly he feels it, feels the tiredness settle in somewhere around bone level. There’s no time for that, though, because he should check on the guns now that the crew have started putting them back together, and he really should show Adam where everything is.
He takes Adam to the galley, where Katy is contemplating a bowl of porridge. She smiles blurrily at them. Kris sits next to her and she gives him a once over, then pushes her bowl towards him, saying, “He forgets to eat as well as sleep, sire,” to Adam.
Scott brings them over tea and more porridge, and Kris can see Adam is desperate to examine the Upgrade that covers his eyes. To Adam’s credit, he manages not to poke at it like he does everything else mechanical, restricting himself to staring as he thanks Scott politely.
“I’ll need the rotas after breakfast,” Kris tells Katy, before that gets lost in a fog of tiredness. “And Anoop needs the charts checking over; I told him you’d do that. Adam, get someone to show you around. You need to familiarise yourself with the ship layout as soon as possible.”
He freezes as he realises he’s given Adam orders as if he were one of his crew, but Adam just swipes a piece of bread from the counter and falls easily into conversation with Katy. Kris focuses on his porridge, working through the bowl mechanically, and doesn’t notice he’s been tuning out the conversation until he feels the weight of stares on him and sees Adam and Katy looking at him expectantly.
“Yes?” he hazards, and they both laugh.
“You should get some sleep, Captain Allen,” Adam says. “I can look after myself. You just make sure we don’t fall out of the sky or whatever it is that you do.”
Kris says, “Ironically, I have to work out when everyone else is going to get some sleep first,” but he feels a little better all the same.
&&&
It’s a long, long morning, and Kris has to push on through the tiredness until he reaches a strange glassy-eyed place of calm. At some point tea is deposited among the reams of paper on his desk and he drinks half of it in a gulp before looking up to see, not Katy or Scott, but Adam, blowing fastidiously on a small cup of his own.
It occurs to Kris that he should probably stop staring blankly at Adam. But it’s not his fault. It’s not every day that Princes bring him tea while he tries to wrangle political crises and shift rotas. He’s allowed to be a little taken aback.
“You’re welcome,” Adam says pointedly, and Kris realises that thinking about his good reasons for staring creepily at Adam is only making him, well, stare creepily at Adam even more.
Kris says, “Thank you,” taking another sip and pulling a slight face at the bitter aftertaste.
“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t like it.” Adam has an expression like a cat with wet fur, and Kris realises something else.
“You made this,” he says.
Adam nods. “Well, the water boiler looked so fascinating, and then Scott was showing me the system for tea and I made lots, so…tea?”
Kris takes another sip in silent apology, trying to hide the grimace, and Adam says, “Fine, I make horrible tea. But you still have horrible hair.”
“My hair was not on the list of things that were horrible,” Kris protests.
Adam makes an unrepentant ‘what can you do?’ gesture with his cup, avoiding disaster and spillages somehow with the smooth movement of his hand, then nods a goodbye and leaves.
The rest of the day passes in charts and maps and Anoop’s scrawled calculations about where they need to be when to catch the currents that will get them back to the Mansion in the promised week. The cliché about navigators' handwriting is, like all the best clichés, completely true, and Kris spends what seems like hours simply decoding all the notes. Various crew members bring him sandwiches, reports and updates on what His Highness has been up to, which mostly seems to involve obsessing over things in the engine room and letting Scott talk to him about food. The general tone is of slightly awed confusion, which Kris can’t blame them for in the slightest. Prince Adam is unbalancing.
During one particularly vague moment, Kris finds himself thinking that if he had known this was what being Captain of an airship involved, then maybe he wouldn’t have dreamed about it for so long, let it be the light that he’d guided his life by. He shakes his head at himself and tries to concentrate on the numbers in front of him, un-compelling as they are.
Then the door opens and Matt says, “I bring three very important things for you.”
Kris says, still focused on a getting this line right, “You know the rule about knocking, Matt, and one of those things had better be supper.”
“I do slightly object to be called a thing.” Adam’s voice is amused and drawling, and Kris knows even before he looks up that Adam will be leaning on something with careless grace. Matt looks supremely unconcerned by Kris's tone. He brushes past Adam - who is, sure enough, supporting himself on the doorframe - to put plates down on the table.
Kris catches the rich smell of gravy, and it’s possible he lets out a moan, just a little one. Matt laughs and Adam gets that strange, fixed expression again, as if his brain is so busy trying to work out what the hell is going on that he’s had to leave his face on default setting, because there aren’t enough cogs to work both.
“I just really, really like stew,” Kris explains, and Adam seems to come to, joining Matt at the table.
“Well, I may have made a similar noise at the other thing I brought," Matt says with a grin, and Adam raises his eyebrows and murmurs, “Oh really? I didn’t know you felt that way.”
Matt leers at Adam. Kris wonders exactly when they became so friendly, anyway.
“So, Meg thinks she might have found a way to improve the turning angle,” Matt enthuses, and Adam sighs. “Honestly, do none of you people get enjoyment from normal things?”
“Says the man who spent half an hour looking at the power couplings,” Kris retorts easily. “Oh yes, I have my spies. I know all about you and your valve fetish.”
“I’m not ashamed, I admit it freely,” Adam says, sitting down and unrolling a schematic on the table.
Kris weighs each end down with a plate of stew and tries to figure out what Megan is suggesting they do to the main valve system to stop the wide right turn Matt is always complaining about. No one had ever wanted to hire Megan before she came to the Conway and somehow managed to make everything faster and better. Now Kris can’t imagine being without her—her easy affection, her ridiculous jokes, her absent-minded otherworldliness. And most of the other Captains hadn’t even noticed Matt…
Kris smiles and Matt says, “I know the Conway is essentially the love of your life, but that’s never a valve related smile.”
“Just thinking how great it is to be Captain,” Kris tells him, which is the truth in its own way.
Adam sits down next to Kris. He traces a line on the chart with his finger and makes an interested noise, then digs into his plate of stew and says, “I can see why. I never got food like this as a military commander, I can tell you.” He looks at Kris speculatively. “You’re a bit young to be a Captain, aren’t you? Were you some kind of prodigy?”
Kris and Matt both nearly have unfortunate stew related accidents, and Matt warns, “If you make us get gravy on Meg’s schematic she will kill us all. I only wish I were joking.”
“I was very much not a prodigy,” Kris says, and he hears Matt snicker.
“Well, I couldn’t exactly see you playing political games with Ministers or Fleet commanders to get ahead, and your family aren’t significant,” Adam says and then looks guilty. “I mean, in a Court sense. So I guessed it had to be some sort of hidden brilliance.”
“What Kris is hiding is a bleeding heart combined with an insubordinate streak a mile wide,” Matt says around a mouthful of potato, and Adam asks what he means, of course. Which means that Matt will tell The Tale of How Kris Became Captain. Kris looks pointedly at the drawing and tries not to pull a face when Matt starts.
“It was when we were working on board the Mission. We’d been stationed near some pretty heavy fighting, but then we had to pull out. The villagers didn’t have any defences, so Kris here decides to leave them his state of the art Acoustic.”
“Look, we were abandoning those people and Captain Fitzroy wouldn’t leave them anything. So I let them keep my gun,” Kris says. He still doesn’t really understand why people insist on telling this story. It was the least he could have done. He should have done more.
“Against the express orders of our Captain. He was standing in the middle of the village as we were packing up, giving this whole speech about how our resources were too valuable to be wasted, and Kris strides past him and hands this girl his Acoustic.”
Kris really wants to point out that he didn’t ‘stride’, he walked like any normal person, but Matt is not to be stopped. “The Captain went ballistic and told him to take it back at once, but Kris said that as it was his own gun, bought with his own money, he could do what he liked with it.”
Adam looks remarkably unsurprised.
“So then The Captain gives Kris this big lecture about ‘the chain of command being sacrosanct’ and when we get home he drags Kris off to see the Majors, right?” Matt continues.
He looks over at Kris, who admits defeat and takes over the story, “Yes, that’s right, and I was expecting the worst, a demotion or a Grounding order. Then Major DioGuardi stood up and said, ‘Lieutenant Allen. Interesting stunt you pulled there. We’re promoting you to Captain.’”
Adam laughs sharply, like it’s been surprised out of him, and Kris laughs too because it is ludicrous when he thinks about it, the whole situation.
“She said they’d thought I was too modest and unimposing to be a Captain, but that this showed I had ‘initiative and balls.’”
Matt grins. “Lucky git. Captain at twenty-two, it hardly seems far.” Kris catches Matt’s eye and sees the warmth there, so he grins back.
“Then he drags me all the way back to Arkansay so that we can get Katy…”
“I took you to meet the new co-owner and so that you could help pick the parts for your ship,” Kris says gently, because he doesn’t want Adam to think that Kris just marched around ordering people to come work for him. “And then we made the Conway.”
Matt rolls his eyes. “And we all lived happily ever after.”
“I suppose that you get what you give,” Adam says, and his voice is unusually gentle.
Kris says, “That’s what my mama said,” and Adam looks so pleased that Kris can only smile at him, fork stopped halfway to his mouth, until Matt says, “You’re dripping gravy on the schematic. When Meg throws you off the foredeck I will be nothing but vindicated.”
“She’ll probably be made Captain,” Adam says as Kris busies himself trying to blot up the gravy with his sleeve. “Nothing shows initiative like throwing the previous Captain off the ship.”
“That better not be disapproval in your voice. I know all about how you became Commander,” Matt says, his tone suggesting scandal at the very least. Kris has no idea what Matt is referring to, but before he can ask Adam has launched into a story about his former C.O, who had got promoted through a series of ‘liaisons’ with high-ranking Ministers.
Kris and Matt have stories of their own, and they start trying to outdo each other telling Adam all about the other’s failures. Eventually Kris has to concede to Matt because Kris has no comeback to the story about how once, when he’d been a Second Lieutenant, he’d hit a vital pipe on his own ship when he was meant to be firing at an enemy message carrier.
“In my defence, it was really windy that day,” Kris says. “Which isn’t much of a defence, I know. Damn, but the Captain was cross. I wasn’t allowed to fire my gun for a week.”
“Don’t let that fool you, he’s usually a crack shot,” Matt informs Adam and then stretches, cracking his neck.
“I need to get out of this chair,” he adds, standing up. “Goodnight Kris, Commander.”
“Commander?” Kris asks Adam when Matt has gone, and Adam shrugs. “Well, it seemed like the best solution, protocol wise, for the crew to call me that.” He must catch something of Kris’s thoughts on his face because he says, “No, not Adam. I have to maintain some standards.”
Kris tries to hide the start of an utterly nonsensical smile with a yawn and Adam makes a distressed noise and says, “God, I’m sorry, I should have let you go to bed hours ago. You must be exhausted, did you get any sleep?”
“Not really,” Kris confesses. “I was so tired earlier I even started getting gloomy about being Captain.” It’s been preying on his mind all day and it’s actually a relief to say it out loud, even as he tries to pass it off as a result of being exhausted.
“I thought you loved it?” Adam says, and Kris nods quickly. “I do, I absolutely do, it’s just the madness of today and …” he trails off because it’s almost impossible to put it into words, this overwhelmed feeling he gets sometimes, the weight of expectations.
“I won’t pretend to understand completely,” Adam says, rolling up the schematic and going to his case on the bunk, “but I’m a Commander in the army. I know what it’s like to be responsible for other people’s lives.”
“This is a very serious conversation to be having while getting ready for bed,” Kris says, sitting down and unlacing his boots. He doesn’t think he can look at Adam right now.
“All the best conversations are had in the lead up to bed,” Adam says, a little too innocent.
Kris settles his expression before he looks up and says, “Surely you mean all the best conversations lead to bed.”
Adam gives him an impressed look. “Well played.”
“Try to remember that I’ve been in the military a long time. You’re going to have to try a lot harder.”
“It’s the face,” Adam tells him, taking off his waistcoat. “It’s deceptive.”
Kris turns on the lamp by his bed and Adam makes a small noise and comes over to investigate, kneeling by Kris’ bunk and following the linkages that lead out through the wall.
“It’s air powered, only works when we’re moving” Kris explains, flicking at the switch to make it stop and start again. When the light comes back on Adam is looking over with that expression of open wonder that he gets sometimes.
“Valve fetish,” Kris says fondly, and Adam stands up quickly and goes back to his own bunk.
“I should take this off before I forget,” he says and starts to work at a buckle at his shoulder, where the Upgrade goes under his shirt, “or else I’ll wake up with gear teeth digging into me, not for the first time.” His voice is missing the component that makes it real, makes it Adam’s voice and not the Prince’s or the Commander’s.
Kris can’t begin to guess what he did to make Adam close up like that so he asks politely, “You don’t notice it?” He gets under the blankets, sighing with relief as he lets his body relax. He always appreciates the bunk after days like today; it almost seems comfortable, which makes a pleasant change.
“I barely notice it most of the time, which is good, it means I’m in sync with it,” Adam says. “When I get home, I’m going to take Cassidy out for dinner or something; it’s an amazing piece of work.”
“What will you do when you get home?” Kris can’t believe it’s taken him this long to think to ask. “I mean, do you have a plan? What will you do about Gokey?”
“There’s nothing much I can do until I get there and see what’s what,” Adam says, “seeing as we know next to nothing about the extent of his machinations.”
“But what if he’s already claimed the throne?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Adam says, voice frayed by sleepiness. “Actually, no, we’ve got an airship, there’s no need to worry about bridges at all. Even if there turns out to be a river. Which there very well may not be, we shouldn't count our rivers before they hatch....”
“Okay,” Kris mumbles, too tired to fight extended metaphors, and he lets the world slide into hazy softness.
&&&&&
Adam is still fast asleep when Kris wakes up. He’s spent too long in the Fleet to sleep much past six, his body conditioned by years of drills and lectures on tardiness. He’s Captain now but it’s practically worse because although there’s no one to lecture him, he has to be ready to command at any hour.
Adam has flung out his arm in his sleep. It looks strangely naked without the Upgrade. Kris shakes his head at himself and goes over to the basin where he runs the tap and splashes loudly. Then he gets dressed, letting his boot fall on the floor with a thump, then pulls his chair out with a scrape. When none of this seems to have an effect he says, “Morning,” very loudly.
Adam scrubs his hand over his face and looks over at Kris with dark, hazy eyes, red playing over the edges of his cheeks.
“Good morning,” he says, sitting up and pulling at his sleeves and collar so that they cover more of his skin.
“I know it’s early, but I have to go give a crew briefing in, oh, ten minutes, and I’ve a quick question, now that we are both vaguely awake. If you could?”
“This is unfair. I wasn’t allowed to hijack you while you were all groggy,” Adam grumbles, but he gets up and washes his face, then looks at Kris expectantly.
“Will there be consequences, do you think? For us, the Conway, I mean, when we get home? I need to know what to prepare my crew for.”
“Whatever happens, I don’t think Gokey can do anything to you for following orders. Even he’s not that much of a dick. Although he tries,” Adam says bitterly.
Kris can’t quite believe that Adam could hate anyone so much that it drips harshly into the polite tone of his voice. Adam has shut up his face again, though, so Kris doesn’t ask.
Adam doesn’t say anything else for a few moments, he just sorts through his suitcase until he finds a shirt that is to his satisfaction and sets it on the bed.
“So, what’s the plan for today?” He rummages again, hair messing over his eyes.
“Um, well, you are free to do as you like, obviously. I have the briefing this morning with the crew and some checks to do. But I should get this afternoon off because I’m on night shift tonight.” Kris tries to sound neutral about it, but Adam looks up from his seemingly bottomless suitcase and says, with a small smile, “It’s the worst, isn’t it? Night patrol really plays on all those dreams you have as a child about monsters in the shadows. But at least the paranoia breaks up the monotony.” His laugh is jarringly merry.
“I’ll be back later. You’ll have to amuse yourself in the mean time, I’m afraid,” Kris says, gathering up the necessary papers from his desk.
Adam makes his eyes go big and tragic. Kris laughs, balls up a piece of paper and throws it at him. Adam catches it with his left hand and throws it back in one effortless movement.
Kris keeps smiling to himself throughout the meeting every time he has to consult his now very crumpled food supplies list.
Part Two
