The Stars Askew (19 page)

“What are you doing?” Rikard sounded annoyed.

“Setting up the press. Thom's paintings were destroyed. Why? Because he had painted something they didn't want us to see. But the killer didn't think of the lithograph. You wouldn't, unless you were an artist and knew how it worked.”

She knew how to operate the press, having drifted among some of the aestheticist philosopher-assassins years earlier. For the aestheticists, everything—life, death, murder—needed to be beautiful, a work of art. When not carrying out their killings, or debating the meaning of elegance, they were often artists themselves. She'd drifted quickly away from them, for she was a child of the streets, and abstract beauty seemed too much of an indulgence for her.

Now she swung the press into action, clamped the poster, waited a moment, unveiled it. The image was surprisingly realist for an artist who had shown himself predisposed to Vorticist imagery, complete with its avant-garde obsession with angles and shapes, with the machinery of life. This image, however, showed Thom himself, peering over a book. Books covered every wall of the ancient room in which he sat. Great mechanical arms held small platforms loaded with shelves high above the floor. Behind Thom, stained-glass windows arched up in brilliant reds and blues. Between them stood windows opening onto the Quaedian and Caeli-Amur.

“The Technis Library?” asked Rikard.

“Look at the scene through the windows,” said Kata. “It's up on the Southern Headland. I'd say it's a room in the university library.”

Kata lifted the poster from where it lay. It caught the light, and she saw another figure in the background, a dark shadow looking on. The figure held an eight-sided shape in its hand that gleamed with sickly arcane power.

“Look there. That must be the Prism of Alerion,” said Kata. “This is Thom's final message to us.”

“If so, why didn't he tell us in person?”

“He was afraid,” speculated Kata. “Something tipped him off, I think. He saw something he wasn't meant to. I don't know—maybe he actually saw his double. So he hid away, for he knew he could trust no one. Remember, Olivier said he looked terrified just before Aceline died. And this dark figure in the lithograph suggests he knew he was being watched.”

“So he planned to return to the Assembly to unveil his dark truth. But when a replica of you arrived, he let his guard down,” finished Rikard.

Kata thought of Maximilian. “I knew an illusionist once. He told me it was difficult to keep the illusion for any period of time. That at some point, part of your real self would shine through. So when Thom recognized it wasn't me, there was a fight. The shapeshifter killed him using the same conjuration he used on Ivarn and Uendis.”

Rikard nodded. “It's all about the Prism of Alerion. So the shapeshifter insinuated himself—”

“Or herself,” interrupted Kata.

“Into the room with the baths. They all thought that the shapeshifter was Thom, to begin with, at least. The shapeshifter moved quickly, killed Ivarn and Uendis using this cruel burning conjuration. But why didn't Aceline fight?”

“Maybe she was afraid. She was small, and gentle. From the location of the bodies, we could presume the deaths occurred closer to the door. She backed away, hoped Ivarn and Uendis would be victorious, but they weren't. Then the killer went to work on her.”

“Thaumaturgists have all kinds of powers. Isn't it possible she was held unnaturally in place, paralyzed by a charm?” said Rikard.

The thought terrified Kata. She imagined Aceline fixed by some terrible equation, unable to move as the killer loosed the mites on her, as they plunged into her nose and up into her brain.

“Once the killer had taken Aceline's memories, he or she strangled her. There would be no rush, no need to use thaumaturgy,” said Rikard.

“It's possible,” said Kata. “It's possible. What, then, did Aceline know?”

Kata looked out over the roofs again. Birds wheeled in the sky far away.

“She knew about the prism and Armand's allies. Perhaps not their identities, but she certainly knew of their existence.” Rikard stood next to her, looked outward with her. “We've two directions we can go. Into the canals, to try to trace the money passing from Marin to … to who? It must be the Houses—the remnants of Arbor or Marin or Technis. The money is going south, to the villas perhaps. Or we can go to the library in the university.”

“Let's talk to the neighbor.” Kata stepped quickly into the corridor, knocked on the neighbor's door, hardened herself. The woman did not respond. Kata knocked more insistently. “I know you're there.”

Still, the woman refused to respond. Kata looked at Rikard and back to the door, which looked rickety. She turned the handle, but it seemed to be held by a bolt. She counted down from three, nodding as she did so, and the two of them slammed against the door. There was a crack of splintering wood, a cry from the room beyond. Again she counted, and again they crashed against the door. This time it burst open.

The woman cried, backed against a far wall, but Kata was already on her, one of her knives pressed against the woman's throat. The skin broke slightly beneath it. “If you think that woman was me, then you know I'm a killer. So tell me about the conversation you heard, and you'll live.”

The woman started to tremble. Kata had to hold her up against the wall to prevent her from slipping down.

The woman's voice came out broken and hoarse. “He wouldn't let you in, and you said, ‘I know, Thom, that you're afraid, which is why we must tell everyone about this. You already know Aceline's dead, don't you?' And he says, ‘What?' and you say, ‘Yep, they killed her. So you're the moderate leader now, and we have to talk about what to do.'”

“Was there anything else you noticed about the woman?”

“She had these kind of … kind of frightening eyes that looked right through you, kind of unreal-looking. And then she says, ‘Thom, Aceline met those two thaumaturgists from the Brotherhood of the Hand, and they were killed too.' Then she says something about the canals near Operaio Bridge, Thom mumbles something, and she talks about the Assembly and resolutions and how they had a case against Ejan. And she says, ‘Let me in.' And so he does.”

Kata pressed the woman harder against the wall. “And that's all?”

Fear made the woman dribble, so Kata figured she was telling the truth. She let the woman crumple into a corner of the dirty room, whimpering.

As Kata stormed away, she caught Rikard's amused glance that said:
See, you're tough after all.

He followed her into the corridor. “You realize that if we're dealing with a shapeshifter, well, it could take the form of any of us.” Kata looked at Rikard and felt a flash of fear. She saw the same thought in his head.

“We need a secret word, then,” Kata said. “Something only we would know. To ensure that the other is really themselves.”

They eventually settled on
Aya's Day
.

While Rikard roved through the room once more, Kata found a local urchin to take a message to Ejan. When she returned to the apartment, Rikard looked up at her from where he stood over the body. He pointed toward Thom's hands. “Skin and blood under the fingertips. Thom fought the shapeshifter.”

Good,
thought Kata. She hoped the artist had done at least some damage.

They found nothing else in the room, and soon enough Ejan and his bodyguard, Oskar, arrived. Behind them, the two old embalmers carried bags of equipment.

“Oh, he's just like the thaumaturgists,” said one.

“Yep,” said the second embalmer. “Oh well, another baby born, another one dies. That's the cycle, isn't it?”

“That it is,” said the first.

Chills sunk into Kata, and she turned rapidly to Rikard. “I have to go.”

The walk home was nightmarish. Everyone seemed a threat. Each person, a shapeshifter ready to strike. All eyes seemed filled with menace. Even as she tread warily, her mind was awhirl. Thom was dead: What did it mean for the city? What did it mean for the moderates? What did it mean for her? It was all too fresh to comprehend.

When she returned to her apartment, her mind still reeling from the horror, she found Dexion lounging half asleep and alone in the parlor. His armor was piled in a corner, dirty and even more battered. He stirred a little on his bedding, rumbled deeply.

“Where's Henri?” asked Kata.

Dexion's long lashes opened, revealing his inky black eyes. “Henri isn't home yet.”

He did not return that night, or the following morning. This time Kata knew he was really gone.

 

P
ART
II

NIGHTS

Iria was always the most solitary of the gods. If Panadus was the ruler, Aya the joker, then Iria was the artist. She was not so much beautiful as full of grace and style. Responsible for many of the world's wonders, Iria designed the city of Lixus, with its glorious walkways and wondrous curves. Indeed, the curve—the circle, the ellipse—was her signature form. Effortlessly, she graced the walkways of Lixus, overlooking magnificent white-and-silver-sailed ships. Her dresses were intricately designed: held out by internal hoops of different sizes, themselves sewn in at various angles. She moved in perfumed clouds of jasmine and orange. She basked in the golden sun and the silver moon as if she owned both of them.

An artist needs time away from society, the better to digest it and regurgitate it transformed and reconfigured. She built herself a tower—the Sentinel Tower, she called it—from which she would watch the world from afar.

A strange couple she and Aya made, for as she was solitary, he was social. Can a joke exist if there is no one to hear it? And yet they seemed to work perfectly. A rebel joker and an artist, arm in arm at the ceremonies, loved by all.

All except Alerion, who adored Iria but whose hateful eyes fell always on Aya.

—Theram of Lixus,
Portraits of Iria

 

FIFTEEN

Armand drifted in and out of a nightmarish reverie. After his abduction in Varenis, he had been put on a train, which now rattled through the night. In a semisleeping state, half conscious of the burst of steam from the chugging engine and the heat of the thirty or so bodies around him, he confronted Valentin.

“You betrayed me when we could have achieved so much! Why?”

Each time the visions repeated themselves, Valentin responded differently. Sometimes he simply smiled and stared. Another time he looked at his feet and wrung his hands, stricken with guilt. In one dream, he explained, “It's all the play of power, Armand. It's all part of the game. You must learn to be
realistic
.”

A shudder of the train awoke Armand. After what seemed an eternal night, light filtered through the cracks between the wooden boards of the train walls. The smell of sweat and illness was overpowering, and yet Armand knew he had already grown accustomed to it. Periodically, someone would shuffle over to the hole cut into the floor to relieve themselves. Children clutched their parents. Lone prisoners averted their eyes in shame or fear. Armand's mouth was parched, yet there was no water.

So this is what has become of us,
thought Armand.
We have been reduced to animals.
Armand's eyes roved over his desolate companions. Each knew their fate, but none spoke of it. It was too horrible to mention.

Near the doorway of the carriage, a man looked calmly at the other prisoners. His hood covered his bearded face, but his eyes still shone with a soft intelligence as if he were considering his predicament. When he locked eyes with Armand, he nodded equably. It was the first acknowledgment Armand had received, and something about it comforted him. For the first time on that dreadful trip, he felt as though he existed.

Armand crawled across the floorboards and leaned against the sliding door, which most of the prisoners avoided. That door represented their future, something none of them wanted to get closer to.

“Which direction are we headed, do you think?” said Armand.

The man nodded again, this time toward the shards of light that cut through the gaps in the walls. “There are slave camps all over Varenis territory, but I'd say southwest, around the mountains.”

“The mines,” said Armand.

The man gave no response, which seemed to indicate agreement.

They sat in silence for a long time. In the far corner, an injured man moaned. At the beginning of the trip, he had staggered into the carriage, ashen-faced, clasping his stomach. He wasn't bleeding, but there had been something wrong. “I resisted. I fought,” was all he said. There was a tinge of blue to his skin, and periodically he clenched his jaw so that the muscles and tendons rose to the surface. Now he drifted in and out of consciousness. His voice was a croaking thing. “Water. Water.”

An older woman placed her hand on his brow, rested it on his shoulder. She looked hopelessly at a young woman nearby who shared her plain flat-faced features.

The children seemed to accept their lot, though they, too, occasionally asked for water. Armand supposed they were more flexible than the adults, able to face their existence without grown-up denial or resentful judgment. A squarish young man, as wide as he was tall, started to cry. But no one paid him any attention. Everyone was caught in their own private torment.

With a spurt of desperation, Armand leaped to his feet and, as the others watched dully, tried to pull open the sliding door. It held fast. Just as quickly, he sat back down and leaned against it.

Eventually he asked the hooded man, “Why did they send you?”

“Oppositionist,” he said calmly. A little while later the man added, “I always thought they would eventually catch me, send me to the camps. There's no space for oppositionists in Varenis. It's not like Caeli-Amur.”