The Stars Askew (54 page)

The words rang in Kata's ears. Not long ago she might have made the same argument. She might have agreed with both Max and Dumas. In fact, she still did. Yet events had a logic of their own. She had chosen to become a leader and now she was responsible for
this
.

No one responded. Instead, a sense of melancholy resignation hovered over everything. This was no celebration. In a sense, it was a defeat. The crowd understood that.

Dumas was strapped into the machine. The Bolt burst through his chest. It was over.

Kata looked away. “We didn't choose this. It was forced upon us.”

“What other horrors will be forced on us before this is all over?” Max took her hand and held it in his own. He looked at her, his eyes questioning and uncertain. He had changed terribly in these last days. He looked on as if from an Olympian height. He held her hand tighter. “I feel like I'm slipping away from the world. I can't feel anything. I … I…”

Kata leaned against him, the weight of her body pressing into his, the weight of events pressing on both of them. History—life—was exhausting. It ate up people, places, dreams, and visions. It offered happiness, took it away, offered it once more, then wrenched it out of sight.

Max's hand pressed hers even more tightly. “Don't leave me now. I need you. I need you more than I ever did.”

Kata squeezed his hands back, then pushed him gently away. Too much had changed, in her and in him. “We can't, Max. Not like that.” They were different people now, new incarnations of themselves. “Actually, that's not what I meant. I meant that
I
can't.” She thought of Dexion. She was drawn to that magical creature's power, his love of life, his growing maturity. “I have to go now.”

As she left Max, Kata looked at the ruined city before her. They had hoped to be fully human, but it had turned them into … what, monsters? She headed across the city, to the only monster she really knew, the creature who was more fully human than any of them. She knew where she would find him.

 

FORTY-SIX

Max stared at the Standing Stones, oblivious to the crowd and the events surrounding them. A symbol for so much, the Stones had always stood there, mysterious, implacable. They had been there since before the time of the ancients, would last longer than any of them. What did his little life matter in the face of such vast expanses of time? Why had the seditionist movement mattered to him when it would pass out of history in a decade or a century? When in a millennium Caeli-Amur itself might be forgotten?

Max shook his head. He knew those were not his thoughts. They were Aya's, or those parts of Aya he had absorbed. The mage who had existed in Max's mind had been only a fragment of his original self, and so Max was still himself for the most part. He was disappointed to discover he knew only parts of the prime language. Aya himself could not recall it all. It would take decades of study to recover it, if it could be recovered at all.

Max turned away from the Stones and made his way down to where the water lapped against the headland below. He found a rock on which to sit. A cold wind came off the ocean, and Max crossed his arms against it. Winter would be on them soon.

Max had absorbed more than Aya's thoughts: he had absorbed the distance that came with practice of the prime language. He would have to strive desperately to connect with the world. That was why he needed Kata: to keep him human, to save him from the coldness that swallowed up all Magi in the end. But she didn't need him. And so he would have to return to his first love, the seditionist movement. It was a love that never ran away, was always there when you needed it, a trusty companion.

He would work for humanity and the future. Yes, their lives were only brief gusts of wind in a summer storm, but that did not mean they didn't matter. Yes, each of them would be forgotten; the movement would be surpassed; the city would be torn down and rebuilt. Nothing would survive. If he were one of the stars in the sky, he would look down impassively on these tiny people. But he wasn't some distant sun burning in the vast firmament. He was a man, alive. He was a thaumaturgist. He cared for people—not just those close to him, but the people he'd never met and would never meet. He cared for the generations to come. He was Max.

 

FORTY-SEVEN

Kata wandered through the abandoned baths. The air was cold and dry, not steamy like so many times before. Some of the waters were blackened, filled with refuse. Others looked clear and icy. She passed the long corridor with private rooms and stopped at the one with the broken door. She looked into the gloomy room. A bath still stood in one corner, and the wonderful mosaic was barely discernible in the gloom.

Kata stood there for a long time, thinking of Aceline. Perhaps the woman had died at the right time. She had missed the bloody conflicts that had wracked the city, conflicts that had nearly engulfed them, that had taken Rikard away, and many more. Yet they had survived. The seditionists had defeated the enemy within. The city was united for the first time in its history. The citizens marched together in a common front toward the future.

But even if the seditionists were in control, what were they in control of? A city in desperate trouble, its industries grinding to a halt, its supplies barely enough for a hungry population, that population itself cowed, quiet, waiting and watching, getting by the best they could. Where the city had been so full of life, now the nights were characterized by an eerie quiet. Even the Quaedian was a shadow of its former self.

And yet the seditionists
were
in charge. If they could get the farms working, the fishing boats out to sea, the industries running, then life would spring back. The festivals would be full of color, the bars full of flower-liquor, the home fires full of warmth.

But they had no time. That was the tragedy of it all: as soon as one crisis was averted, another descended. Varenis's legions were on the march. Their Auxiliary troops, comprised of Cyclopses or other giants, had already made it south of the Palian Wall.

What hope did Caeli-Amur have?

Kata walked until she came to a wide clear bath. In the niches of the wall, someone's unusually large clothes were jammed in without care. The lamps hanging on the walls threw off a warm yellow light. Cutting down at an angle, a shaft of white natural light complemented them.

Floating on his back, in the center of the pool, lay Dexion. The giant minotaur's arms drifted out from his body in the shape of a cross. His eyes stared at the lovely mosaic above. For a moment he appeared dead, but in a surge of energy he burst to his feet, the water streaming down his powerful physique. He shook his head, the beaded braids of his mane whipping about, sending water flying.

“Kata! You must come in. It's cold and clear. It will refresh you.”

Kata looked around at the empty complex. “This place is empty. It's lonely.”

Dexion laughed, splashed water up at her. “There's no one around. That's better!” He dove under, came up again, and drenched Kata with two powerful rotations of his arms. The coldness hit her. She laughed and backed away, but he was already out of the bath. Two mighty arms wrapped around her. She squealed like a little girl as more cold water engulfed her. Then she was off her feet, suspended in the air.

With Kata still in his arms, Dexion leaped backward. Kata felt air rushing by. She squawked again, like a bird, but there was laughter mixed with it. She was suddenly afraid of the powerful creature. She had lost all control. Her heart raced. He could do anything he wanted to her. Then a sudden shock, and she was under the cold water, eyes closed.

Dexion let go and she came up spluttering, the shock of the cold coursing through her. “Dexion! No!”

She turned to face him in some confused mixture of anger and laughter. “Dexion, I didn't
want
to come in!”

The minotaur was already floating on his back away from her. He laughed again, kicked backward. “You wanted to come in. You love it in here.”

Kata, still confused, said, “If I…” But she gave up. She was having too much fun, even if Dexion was
maddening
.

“Take your clothes off. It'll be easier to swim,” said Dexion.

Kata pulled off her shirt, looked down at the two knives she kept strapped to her, and unbuckled them. A moment later her boots and skirt and undergarments were lying by the side of the pool.

Kata kicked back. It was true: she was less constricted without her clothes. She floated on her back near Dexion. She became suddenly aware of his massive naked body next to her. Fear and excitement ran through her. She turned her head, looked at him.

His inky black eyes met hers. She fell into them, and they seemed to grow and fill the room. Everything else dropped away. For a moment the atmosphere of the bath changed. Then Dexion reached over and gave her a quick push that sent her spinning and reaching for the bottom.

His laugh filled the baths, echoed down the corridors. “See, it's not so bad in here.”

Kata looked up at the mosaic above her. On one side lay a mythic city from Old Aerth. A grand river ran through its odd square-shaped buildings. On the opposite wall lay a flat sea, an island city in the center, as Caeli-Enas had once sat in the sea off the coast of Caeli-Amur. Above was a mosaic of sky, filled with stars and constellations Kata did not recognize.
Another world,
she thought. She wondered what it might be like, this strange place. She wondered about the hopes and dreams of its inhabitants. She imagined lives and deaths that she would never know about. She would be separated from those people forever, and yet some part of her cared for them even so. She looked up again at the mosaic above her, depicting the strange faraway city, and that deep black night with its stars askew.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my editors, Julie Crisp and Liz Gorinsky, without whom
The Stars Askew
would have been
very
askew; my agent, John Jarrold; the fine folk at Pan Macmillan UK, especially Bella Pagan and Louise Buckley; Tessa Kum, Ben Chessell, Jeff Sparrow, Alex Hammond, Patrick O'Shea, Andrew Macrae, Peter Hickman, Matthew Chrulew, Keith Stevenson, Jason Nahrung, Morgan Grant Buchanan, Maryellen Galbally, Francesca Davidson, and Leena Kärkkäinen.

 

BOOKS BY
RJURIK DAVIDSON

Unwrapped Sky

The Stars Askew

 

The Library of Forgotten Books
(collection)

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rjurik Davidson
, a young Australian author who won the Aurealis Award for Best Newcomer some years ago, has been writing about the city of Caeli-Amur for nearly a decade. His debut novel, Unwrapped Sky is set in this city-state where magic and technology are interchangeable; where minotaurs and sirens are real; where philosopher-assassins and seditionists are not the most dangerous elements in a city alive with threat. During the day, the ordinary citizens do what they must to get along. But at night, the spirit of the ancient city comes alive, to haunt the old places … You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

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