The Stars Askew (25 page)

Kata shook her head. “As a child, all I could do was survive. No one knows who they are when all they can think of is how to reach the next day.”

“No,” said Sarrat. “There you are wrong. If all you think about is making it to the following day—
that is who you are
.”

“I've killed innocents,” said Kata. “I've allowed innocents to die.”

Sarrat nodded. “So has everyone. What is it you want?”

“I want … I want…” She wanted understanding. She wanted him to say it would be all right. She wanted sympathy. She wanted all the things he had never given her, not in all the years he had been her mentor. Eventually she said, “I have sided with the seditionists.”

“Isn't that just a philosophy that tries to control things, to bend things to its will?” said Sarrat.

“I'm not here to talk philosophy with you.” Kata shifted uneasily on the cold floor.

“Isn't that what we are?” said Sarrat. “Philosopher-assassins?”

Kata spoke through clenched teeth. “We're just assassins. We simply add the philosophy to give us an air of gravitas.”

“I suppose you think I'm being patronizing, don't you? You always do. But I see you're still restless, always searching for something new, someone new.”

Kata drew a ragged breath. He always knew how to antagonize her. She decided to shock him. “I killed a minotaur. I killed a child.”

Sarrat looked at her calmly. “All things die in the end, Kata.”

The next thing she knew, she was on her feet, kicking out at Sarrat, but he was no longer there. Standing several steps back, he caught her foot and swept her standing leg away with a quick trip. She spun in the air, planted her hands as her body fell, twisted her trapped foot free. With a catlike twist, she cartwheeled through the air, landed on both feet.

Now the anger engulfed her. She shot forward, struck out three times rapidly with a closed fist: low at Sarrat's stomach, at his head, low again. But he parried each blow with swift, delicate, open-handed blocks. Each failure fueled her wrath. She dived at him, determined to take him to the floor, but Sarrat had danced away. He was still in his fighting stance, and she was left belly down and prostrate.

“You always fight in anger or fear.” He shook his head sadly. “That's how I know you have not reached peace with yourself. That's how I know you can't be trusted: because you don't trust yourself.”

Kata stood up, anger coursing through her. “It was a mistake to come here. You're self-satisfied; you sit here as if the world doesn't touch you.”

“That's not so,” said Sarrat.

“I despise you,” said Kata. “For your distance from the world. You can't feel. You don't feel. I am your failure.”

“You are,” said Sarrat sadly.

She spat at him—a way to dirty his clean apartment—and stormed away, leaving her former mentor to clean it up. When she was back in the alley behind Via Gracchia, she collapsed, distraught, broken, hoping he would come to her, like the father she hoped he would be, and comfort her. But he never came.

*   *   *

In recent days Rikard had been away on vigilant business. Apparently, he had been helping to organize a force of guards destined for the villas. But he had left a message at the Opera to meet him at the Standing Stones on the tip of the Southern Headland. It was time to return to the trail of Thom's killer.

He was seated on the small semicircular amphitheater that curved around a cluster of twenty-foot obsidian monoliths, black and glassy and alien. Some said the stones predated even the Gods; their origins lay in some even more ancient species or deities. In the center of the cluster, vigilants were building a wooden machine: the Bolt. They nailed and hammered and drilled, and the machine rose up, a complex construction, a little like a war scorpion surrounded by a wooden cage.

The head of the Criminal Tribunal, Georges, watched over the process with deep-set eyes. He gazed at the mechanism impassively, squatting down to examine it before rising up and circling it with interest.

Beside him, Dumas, the head of the Collegia, was remarking on the workmanship. “It's the best way, really. I mean, when you behead someone, it can all go terribly wrong. A slight angle, and the blade ends up in the skull, and the poor soul kicks out and writhes around, and then you have to pull the damned thing from the bone and, well…” Dumas's flabby bulldog cheeks hitched up for a moment in a black grin. “It has a certain drama to it, I suppose.”

Neither Kata nor Rikard said anything when she sat next to him, though the vigilant occasionally turned his head, looking over the city to their left. Eventually he broke the silence. “Are you going to the Moderate Committee tonight? I hear there will be a debate about your attitude toward the vigilants. How do you think it will go?”

“Do you expect us to support this?” She gestured toward Georges, who was running his hand over the solid wooden beam at the center of the Bolt.

Dumas leaned against one the Bolt's uprights, gestured to the killing beam. “Straight through the bones and organs. Instant, you know. There's something nice about using a machine, isn't there? No one actually has to swing the blade. Executioners end up with awful problems, you know: nightmares, regrets. You have to find new ones all the time.”

Rikard turned his head, this time looking south, down toward the water-parks, then back north again. “If the majority see the need, we expect the moderates to support it. It's democracy, Kata. That's what it means.”

Kata followed Rikard's gaze. “What are you looking for?”

“We're being followed, I think. I'm not sure. I haven't really seen them. I've just felt them. A sort of tickle on my neck.” Rikard rubbed his neck at the thought of it.

Kata surveyed the drifters who had made their way up on the Thousand Stairs or from the Lavere below, men and women of the Collegia. Children dressed in fine clothes and shoes had drifted down from the Arantine. Their eyes were wide, for they sensed the Bolt was not an implement of their class, that their officiate parents might spend their nights fearing the knock on the door.

“Good. I want the killers to follow me,” said Kata. “I want them to turn a corner to where I'll be waiting for them. I want them to cry when they see me.”

Rikard threw his arm around her affectionately and rubbed her shoulder. “Look, we'll find Henri. He's a smart boy. He will be all right.”

How strange of the vigilant to comfort her like this, as if they were old friends. It was almost as if he actually cared for her.

She nodded without conviction. “The university library room depicted in Thom's lithograph—I still think that was Thom's message to us. They may have a record of the book Thom was reading.”

The steam-trams had finally all broken down or run out of fuel, so they took a carriage pulled by a skeletal horse across town, through the barren streets, past beggars holding signs which read:
PLEASE HELP
and
I'M A SEDITIONIST WHO IS HOMELESS
and, simply,
BREAD
. No one was giving them anything, though. The city had run dry.

An hour later they passed through the university's long passageways, caught glimpses of the scenes depicted in its famous windows, scenes from the past captured and replayed decades or centuries later: a band of youths chasing goats along an ancient alleyway, a line of figures holding candles and chanting in a dark field that was no longer there. Then, as they turned a corner, vistas of the serene city, its wide spaces and classical buildings, the brilliant blue sky overhead, free of pollution. A wild fancy took her: if she waited long enough, she might see Henri—and whoever had captured him—in the alleyways.

A change came over Rikard as they entered the library. His head swiveled around in wonderment. Long walkways passing overhead like spiders' webs, staircases climbing up and up into the gloom above, and books! Books everywhere, lining the walls, stacked in piles where they had overflown the shelves.

Tall windows opened out to the sky on the entire southern wall. Windows like those pictured in Thom's lithograph—and yet, this wasn't the room. Skinny students worked at long tables lined up in a central hall. Even the overthrow of the Houses had not ended their study, though they seemed more emaciated than usual. Behind a semicircular desk against one wall stood several librarians, checking out books for students or helping them in their research.

Kata kept moving closer and closer to the side of the library until she came to the western wall, the one closest to the cliffs. A huge dark bookcase filled with large dusty books blocked her way.

“It's through here, somewhere.” Kata looked up and down for a door. “There must be another entrance.”

She felt a tap on her shoulder, turned to see a middle-aged librarian staring distrustfully at her. The librarian smiled without conviction. “The reading room. It's for House officials and professors.”

Rikard pulled from his bag a document bearing the stamp of the Authority. “The House officials are no longer in charge. We are.”

The librarian's air changed instantly. She smiled, and her voice took on a light maternal quality. “Yes, of course. It's exciting to meet such important representatives. I voted for you, you know.”

“For whom?” said Kata.

“The moderates, of course.”

Kata smiled teasingly at Rikard, who shrugged in response. There was no baiting the young man, it seemed.

“I knew Aceline's sister, before she moved up to the Dyrian coast. Lovely girl she was.” The librarian led them along the wall, shifted several books aside, and unlocked a hidden door. “Through here.”

A passage led to a beautiful semicircular reading room, the windows showing views of the nearby cliffs and, far up the mountain, the Artists' Square. Down to one side, the narrow streets of the Quaedian lay beneath them: alleyways, walkways, plazas, and roofs of all sizes and shapes. The walls were covered with books; a slight musty smell drifted in the air. In the center of the room, great mechanical arms held little platforms in the air; they rose up like spindly towers, their book-filled shelves held safely aloft.

A chill ran over Kata's skin. “Thom the artist was here. Do you know him? Do you know what he was studying?”

“Yes, of course. He came here several times and studied one of our precious books. I'll fetch it, if you like.” The librarian approached a large mahogany cabinet with a hundred or so drawers. She opened one of these catalog drawers, pulled out a card, carried it with her to an angled bench. She slid open a panel, pulled a lever, and one of the platforms shuddered down toward the ground, its arm bending and retracting into the floor.

“The most valuable of books are stored up in the air. Unless you know how to operate the arms, they would be impossible to reach,” said the librarian.

The librarian opened a door in the waist-high balustrade and, with a finger raised to the books, began her search. Kata was not at all surprised when she turned. “It's gone. I don't understand how it could be, but it's gone. I suppose it could have been misfiled.…”

“You won't find it,” said Kata. “May I see the reference card, though?”

“Yes, of course.” The librarian passed the old yellow card to Kata.

The Alerium Calix: Construction, Structure, and Command

By the Aediles Philan and Drusa

Note: Beware the thaumaturgical properties of the book. Unknown ideograms engraved on cover of skin. Those who studied it have reported illness.

Contents: A recording of the description of the construction of Alerion's prism by two of the Aediles involved in the process. Included are a summary of Alerion's last days and his travel to Caeli-Amur, the extraction of his spirit into the prism, and the thaumaturgical laws according to which the mythical prism can be controlled.

Kata's mind began to whir: the prism again. Thom had sought this book, which described the prism and its workings. Was that simply to discover its nature? It was possible, she supposed, that Armand didn't know how to use the thing. It was an ancient artifact, after all, its powers lost to antiquity. Or was the book of value in itself? Whatever the case, this book was the key. Thom and Aceline had died for it. But there were still unanswered questions: Who had killed them and why was money being smuggled through waterways beneath the city? Kata's thoughts returned to the letter.
Our best plan should be realized by the Twilight Observance,
it had read. The Twilight Observance was a month away, but what plan would they realize?

*   *   *

That evening, Kata found a rear seat in the automaton factory where the Moderate Committee met. She preferred to remain far from the center of the hall, where the speakers would stand. As moderates streamed in, she glanced once more around the giant subterranean space, where huge machines were used to build yet more machines. It was an experimental factory, and one of the first to break down under the blockade, so now the masses of pistons and pylons, the giant pincered arms reaching into the darkness, were silent.

Soon the members of the Moderate Committee faced one another while workers watched from among the machines, where they perched on giant arms, leaned against pylons in the shadows, or sat uneasily on iron girders.

Olivier wore a worried expression as he addressed the group. “I returned with Ejan and the delegation from the villas. They will not stop their blockade, unless we provide them with machines, with boots and coats, with mechanical ploughs, with all the goods from the city. They spat at our feet as we left.”

The audience began to hoot in disapproval.

Olivier continued, “Ejan has made his plans clear. He aims to crush the opposition. Georges runs the new Criminal Tribunal with savage efficiency. They hold court in the old Arbor Palace, where hundreds are already imprisoned. Each day they deliberate on cases brought by the guards. Most are condemned to death by this new machine, the Bolt. Any moment it will start its deadly work.”