The Stars Askew (47 page)

She grasps what fragments she can, none of them complete, each the torn-up pieces of a long-lost page. She is a child, watching boats from the Southern Headland. Her mother returns from the Thousand Stairs. “I've brought you something!” She's at the university—there is a boy with dark hair and a soft mouth. She turns away from him. “I can't. I have things to do.” She is in the seditionist group; she doesn't like the others. They are ambitious, lacking in self-consciousness.
They haven't had enough defeat in life,
she thinks. Max is worse than Ejan. He is ambitious; he covets his place in history. Ejan simply doesn't think about it at all; he is a cold machine running smoothly in the night. She watches them as she eats a simple soup in the large Communal Cavern. She looks down at her thin mattress. One of its sides has split, and straw is bursting from the opening.

The memories were overwhelming, a drug rushing though Kata's body. Afraid, she grabbed the chaise longue beneath her with both hands, felt its solidity with her fingers, slipped back into the vertigo of someone else's memories. The drug swept her away again, and she discovered she could find the memories she wanted, though it was like picking up torn pages from a disintegrated book.

She shuffled forward, past the last days of the seditionist hideout, through the torture of the terror-spheres with their nightmare visions of burning alive, past the thrilling uprising on Aya's Day, until it's—

After the overthrow of the Houses, and she is sitting beside Kata in the Opera, watching the others pass. She has come to rely on this dark-haired woman, though she has the opposite flaw as Max or Ejan. Kata is afraid of her power; she keeps herself small, like a little animal in the night. She has come to love her, for she sees in her the one thing a seditionist leader should have: no ambition at all. She wants to rest her head on Kata's lap, but she dare not.

Back on the chaise longue, Kata let out a little cry of grief for her lost and lovely friend, but she kept moving, until—

She's with Thom on the way to the baths. Flashes of his face: his beard and blue scarf obscuring the tightness of his skin; his eyes strikingly pale in the light. He assures her the meeting place will be safe. He has arranged a room in the Great Steam Baths, but it's not the same one where they met the two thaumaturgists the first time. She hesitates for a moment. “Come on,” says Thom. Then she's in the room; the thaumaturgists are behind her. Magnificent colored mosaics cover the walls. A tiled Augurer stares at them through a window high in the Eyries.

“The Brotherhood of the Hand are organizing, but we daren't do it in the open,” said Ivarn. “Not even the leaders know.”

“Are there many of you?” Thom turns back from the mosaics he had been examining.

“Enough,” said Uendis. “When the time is right, we will come out and support seditionism openly, but it's too dangerous now. Everyone is paranoid. There are rumors the Prism of Alerion has been found. Whoever uses it can stop the thaumaturgical sickness. All the thaumaturgists who seek personal gain will follow whoever controls the prism.”

“The prism
has
been found,” said Aceline.

Suddenly the four of them are standing in new positions. Time has jumped. The memory is fragmented.

Aceline leans against the wall. “Show them the letter, Thom.”

Thom shakes his head. “I thought it best to keep it safe at the Opera.”

Aceline looks at Thom. Something is wrong. The tightness on Thom's face, the deathly look in his pale eyes. A chill drives through her body, and she glances at the door. It is on the other side of the room. Thom is between her and the thaumaturgists. All are between her and the door. The two thaumaturgists are looking at Thom, uncertain. Fear crosses Ivarn's face, a fleeting shadow. Uendis takes on a shock of recognition. He raises his hand, begins to chant quickly.

“You…” Ivarn steps back, but Thom had already covered his hand with a bloodred power. The fiery hand clamps Ivarn's face. The thaumaturgist grasps his wrist, but a gurgling sound comes from his mouth, and the air is filled with the smell of burning.

Thom's form begins to shimmer; a hulking shape appears beneath it.

Aceline backs into the corner, watching the desperate fight. Fear courses through her. Again the memory skips. Aceline hears a knock on the door and Rikard's voice, calling to her from beyond the chamber. “Aceline?” She wants to get up, but her limbs have lost all strength. She can't tell if it is fear, or if some charm has robbed her of all will.

Uendis's body comes down with a thunk, and the smell of burning flesh is thick and sickly in the air. Both Brothers of the Hand are dead.

Aceline cowers in the corner, raises her hands up against the sight of Thom coming at her. His face is now bulging in odd places, and she knows it is not Thom. The eyes are pale and filled with an icy coldness.

Thom cracks open a translucent circular syringe, and a thousand specks crawl over her chest, up, up, over her face, like insects looking for their prey. She reaches for them, but she can't move her hands. They plunge into her nose and she tries to scream, but the whiteness takes her.

When she regains consciousness, Thom is holding up the dart, and she can see the thousands of specks moving inside. He places it back into his bag,
smiles evilly.

She hears a woman's voice now—“Aceline! It's Kata!”—followed by more knocking on the door.
Kata,
she screams in her head.
Please, Kata, save me. Please.

“It will only hurt for a little while,” Thom whispers as he unwraps the scarf from his throat. “Quiet now.”

The scarf is now around her neck. She tries to take a deep breath, but nothing comes. She tries again but cannot even manage a gurgle. The room is filled with a cold mist. The whiteness takes her again. This time she does not come back.

Somewhere in the memory Kata thought to herself,
There must have been another entryway into that room.
It made sense: the shapeshifter had organized the meeting in that particular room in order to escape without coming through the door. Perhaps they could retrace the assassin's escape route. If she could prove to Rikard that Ejan was behind the murder, the vigilant leader might be deposed. She could stop the vigilant attack on the Technis Palace and save the moderates. She could put the vigilants back in their place and disband the tribunal. She could stop the Bolt. She could do all this for Aceline.

Kata sat up on the chaise longue.

“What did you see?” said Max.

*   *   *

After darkness had fallen, Kata, Rikard, and Max passed along a dark and wet tunnel beneath the Technis Complex, up a narrow staircase, out through a nondescript door concealed beneath a bridge, and onto the streets. Their hooded cloaks wrapped around them, protection from the driving rain.

Kata had replaced her knives from the diminishing store at the Palace, but she still felt unsafe. They took side roads through the factory district, past where Kata's apartment lay. She wondered briefly about Dexion. As far as she knew, the vigilants hadn't arrested him, and of course he wasn't mixed up with Dumas. Most likely he was at the Arena, happily preparing for the spectacular on the final day of the Twilight Observance. Still, she worried she would lead him to his doom, as she had with her little urchin, Henri. She worried Dexion might decide to join her in her battles out of loyalty. She couldn't add the weight of his death to the others she was responsible for.

Crowds spilled from the baths, drunk and laughing, and staggered arm in arm off into the night. Kata watched them and yearned to live their lives for a moment. Through the steam-filled halls they passed, figures looming out of the semidarkness, towels hanging loosely from their waists, arms around one another.

The door to the private room was closed, and the sight of it ran memories—hers and Aceline's—through Kata once more. Kata felt terribly cold, as if she had spent a winter's night without shelter. They lit one of the lamps and examined the room again.

With Max holding the lamp in the air, they checked the corners of the room and the bath, inspected the floor, and searched for signs of another entryway, but found none.

Kata turned her focus to the mosaics. As the main doorway was set into the center of the image of Caeli-Amur, she took the lamp and quickly crossed to the other side, which depicted the Eyries of the Augurers. Kata remembered this unnerving image, surprisingly lifelike for a mosaic. She ran her hands across the rocky pinnacle, then back to the many windows at its bulging peak. She came to the Augurer, who sat in the center of the highest room, her wild hair waving in the air.

She peered closer and ran her hand across the wall until she reached the Augurer's right eye, black and piercing. The eye felt a little raised, and she pressed it gently. Nothing happened. She pressed it harder, with her thumb. There was a click, and a gust of cool air brushed her face as a cleverly hidden doorway opened up.

The three of them glanced at one another, uncertain and fearful. Cool subterranean air embraced them, and the lamp threw eerie and shifting shadows as they entered the dark tunnel. The steps continued deep underground, and Kata felt their vulnerability keenly. She expected a deadly blow to strike out of the blackness at any moment.

They continued as quietly as they could, as the stairs slowly evened out into a passageway. After a short while, the corridor opened on a small cavern. Moored on the slow-moving black water of an underground canal were two gondolas. The tunnel was larger to the right, whereas to the left it plunged into a tight, narrow hole that practically forbade entry.

Max stepped into one of the boats and attached the lamp to a hook on the curling prow. He pulled the long oar from where it lay inside of the gondola as the others clambered in. Once unmoored, the boat drifted gently toward the narrow left-hand tunnel, but Rikard used the oar against the current, steering them toward the ominously black opening to the right.

The roof above them was dark and damp, dripping water in places. The only sounds were the oar dipping in and out of the water and its creaking against the oarlock. The waterway led them ever into darkness, their lamp throwing a little circle of light over the black water.

Finally they came to a landing with dark and slippery stairs. Another gondola floated in the gloom, and they moored theirs beside it. Up the slippery stairs they climbed, careful not to slide on the little rivulets of water coursing over them.

The tunnel turned and twisted until they came to a cul-de-sac. A door handle had been built into the end. Kata grasped the cold metal and turned.

A burst of laughter came from the room beyond, loud and cold. “Yes, come in. You've done it now, haven't you? How troublesome. Do come in, though.”

 

THIRTY-EIGHT

Kata stepped carefully into the vast room, which was filled with the sound of water coursing through nearby channels. Lamps threw light onto these waterways, reflecting ever-moving waves onto the walls. They were in the Director's offices in the Marin Water Palace. How long had it been since the thaumaturgist Detis had first brought her here? Kata had failed Detis. He had died on the Bolt, condemned by the man who now sat behind the huge desk: the thaumaturgist Alfadi. A fearsome and frozen power lurked behind the man's white eyes.

Beside the desk sat Henri, playing with two mechanical gladiators. The toys had been charged with uncanny energy. As he set them against each other, the first swiped at the second with a sharp little sword. The second dropped down, throwing off sparks as the sword glanced off his helmet, to the delight of Henri, who looked on excitedly at the combat.

Kata's mouth went dry. She tried to swallow and failed. Confused emotions rushed through her: relief and sadness and disappointment. Henri was alive, but he seemed to be here of his own accord. He had meant so much to her, her chance to save a street child, to save some version of herself. She had been stupid to think those feelings were reciprocated.

Seeing her eyes fall on the urchin, Alfadi said, “Ah yes, little Henri here. He's quite handy to have around. He's a fine messenger, you know. Terrific at errands around the Palace. Can row a gondola all by himself, can't you, Henri?”

The boy looked up, grinned, turned back to the gladiators. The second gladiator was now clubbing the first with his small mace, snapping his head back with each blow.

“You can't blame him, Kata. He's from the street, you know, just like you.”

“You don't know anything about me,” said Kata.

“Well, what are we going to do with you now?” Alfadi's eyes roved over the three of them. “Kata and Rikard I know, but you—”

Alfadi's head dropped a little, and he looked at Max curiously. “You have the gift, I see. You're not one of these troublesome Brotherhood of the Hand people, are you? I'll bet you are. Undermining me at every step with your seditionism. Like a cancer, burrowing your way into everything. Secret groups. I mean,
really
.” Alfadi raised his eyebrows. “Uendis and Ivarn—always sticking their noses where they didn't belong. But you, there's something strange about you.”

Max didn't say anything for a moment. When he did speak, he did so with a striking certainty. “You're from the Teeming Cities. Did you know that those white eyes of yours were initially developed as a punishment for sociopaths, so that others might recognize them on sight? Somehow it became hereditary. Well, in your case, the sociopathy, too.”

“How do you know that?” For a moment Alfadi looked disconcerted.

As they spoke, the truth worked its way through Kata, and her voice was tense with anger. “You killed Aceline.”