The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) by Powers Courtney Grace

Author:Powers, Courtney Grace [Powers, Courtney Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

XVI

The Land of No Princesses

Oceanus was bright, clean, and colorful where Leto had been all dark faded colors and stuffy closed quarters. Gideon knew it was a relief for the rest’a the crew, but he personally preferred the dim grunginess’a Leto over the pristine cleanness’a Oceanus’s capital city, which Scarlet called Neserus. Sure it was pretty, but it made him feel like he had at the masquerade a few months back, when he’d been surrounded by lords and ladies with his face caulked with dirt and blood. Stared at and unwelcome.

The surface’a the planet was nothin’ but wrinkled, endless blue-green water. From the canopy window’a the bridge, all he’d been able to see’a Neserus was the tips’a its tallest spires, pokin’ up outta the waves likes reeds stuck in the mud. He almost took them for huts with their spindly roofs and round portal windows; it wasn’t hard to imagine someone openin’ a door and walkin’ out across the water from hut to hut as if that was the city. He was glad he didn’t say anythin’ about it when Reece took the Aurelia down closer to the water and pointed at the hazy shape’a the actual city hulkin’ in the depths’a the ocean like a many-legged creature.

Instructions in that thick Oceanun accent came over the com for Reece to make for the western towers and wait. When he complied and hovered Aurelia over the water there so it rolled back in ruffles, a thin, pearly bubble’a energy clapped neatly about the ship, and cuppin’ it, started easin’ down into the water. Reece set the controls to autopilot while Aitch fidgeted nervously and Gideon glared through the foggy bubble, watchin’ the ocean lap and swirl against its boundaries as the ship was swallowed by the waves.

Through the crystal clear water, they could see the city taperin’ off into the distance in all directions, crawlin’ over shelves and down into basins, marked by bright white lights in round windows and fluted towers like porcelain or glass. Honestly, the thing just looked breakable to Gideon. The bubble, which he could now see was bein’ directed by three beetle-like ships with claws that pulsed white energy, weaved between skinny shinin’ towers that a strong sneeze might’a been enough to splinter. Didn’t seem like a great design for an underwater city, but no one was askin’ his opinion.

The bubble came to rest in a square corral’a docks bobbin’ where they were tethered to the pebbled floor’a the city. Squintin’, Gideon could just make out another layer’a pearly energy archin’ over them, which explained why the half dozen men walkin’ towards Aurelia weren’t drownin’. Not that that put him at ease. The Oceanuns glarin’ up at Aurelia didn’t look like a welcome committee so much as an armed guard meanin’ to chase them back into space. They were all tall and broad, at least compared to Honorans, with shaggy to long hair in shades’a red and orange and unwieldy-lookin’ clubs weighin’ down their belts. They

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