The Key to Starveldt (24 page)

There was an odd note to the seer’s voice. Evan frowned, walking over to crouch by his sister’s arm.

‘Jess? You feeling all right?’

‘Not particularly.’ She maintained her ceiling vigil. ‘We’re drifting, is all. So, I mean, great – we have new information that Sanguisidera is a crazy lady and Glide was guilty and Sharpsoft exists in a moral grey area. Whoop-de-la. But what about interpreting the prophecy? What about finding Starveldt?’

Silence greeted this remark.

Electra broke it. ‘We know Laine’s the Watcher,’ she said. ‘And I was thinking that maybe – I mean, assuming not every line in the prophecy is literal, but maybe I’m the Bright One. Because, you know. Of the glowing. Not that I know about listening to the dead, but –’

‘Lex!’ Jess sat bolt upright, grinning. ‘Yes! That makes
perfect
sense. See, people? Progress! This is what progress looks like! Any more revelatory contributions?’ She looked at them all, eager as a birthday girl for presents.

Solace found that she was smiling. She hated being melancholy, and Jess in a good mood was hard to resist.

‘Shadowfriend. Is me.’

Everyone turned. It was Harper, hanging in the doorway and looking only slightly worse than if he’d been hit by a piece of heavy construction equipment and inexpertly buried in a chalk pit. At their expressions, he managed a grin, which made him look a little less cadaverous.

‘I’ve been listening for a while,’ he explained. ‘I just couldn’t get up.’ He glanced from Evan to Solace. ‘Meant to say, thanks. I remember you guys looked after me. After the bar.’ Then his eyes went straight to Paige, and stayed there. ‘Thanks to you, too,’ he said, more softly than before. ‘For staying with me.’

Paige trembled. Leaping up, she crossed the room and flung herself at Harper, wrapping herself around his torso in a miniature bear hug. He grunted at the impact, but otherwise remained steady, even dropping a shaky kiss on the top of her head.

Solace looked away, feeling both relieved at their reconciliation and deeply uncomfortable, as though she were intruding on something private. For a few awkward moments, everyone followed Jess’s earlier example and stared at the ceiling, not quite sure where to rest their eyes.

Then Paige giggled, and the spell was broken. One arm around Harper, she led him to the lounge and helped him sit, as happy as Solace had ever seen her.

‘You were saying?’ Jess said, somewhat archly. ‘Shadowfriend?’

‘Yeah.’ Harper nodded. ‘I think it’s another Trick reference –
in silence burning
, you know. And fire casts shadows.’

‘I agree,’ said Laine, in the same subdued voice she’d used earlier. Her eyes flickered to Evan, and again, Solace wondered what she was missing.

‘Daughter, Watcher, Bright One, Shadowfriend.’ Manx ticked them off on his fingers. ‘That’s four down. Not bad.’

With typically impudent timing, Duchess sashayed out of Solace’s room, tail held aloft like a thin blue pennant. Solace translated the remark, wondering distantly for how long her guardian had been listening in. Probably, she’d teleported as soon as the door was shut.

Evan scowled. ‘Not that I’m not grateful for your rescuing us again, but rather than waltz around being generally catlike and annoying, why don’t you give us some actual advice?’

After Manx dutifully relayed this, Evan continued. ‘Because you’re not just an
ordinary cat
, are you? Not even a cat with Rarity. You’re something else. You didn’t meet us by accident, and you’re not helping us just for the free swans. I mean, you knew about the Rookery, and Liluye. Just now, even, you knew –’ he paused, irritated at the lie, ‘– that we’d gone somewhere, and that the key wouldn’t be enough to get us back. And I recall Solace mentioning that a cat was there the first time she ever met Grief, too. Tell us the truth, Duchess. What are you?’

There was a pause. Duchess lashed her tail, clearly annoyed. For all she’d sworn Solace to secrecy about her true relationship with the prophecy, she’d done precious little to conceal her own knowledge of events. Rather, she’d flaunted it. As though she deemed them too stupid to work out the obvious, or simply trusted that their perception of her as a weird cat-creature would remove any curiosity about her words and actions. Whatever the cause, she’d ceased fooling Evan the instant she’d saved them from Mikhail.

As Duchess watched them with pale, slit-pupiled eyes, Solace realised just how little she really knew about her strange guardian. If it hadn’t been for Sharpsoft’s confirmation that Duchess had known her parents, she’d be a lot more worried – but then, she remembered, her friends didn’t know about that, either.

Duchess’s tail had stopped twitching.

Manx translated in a rush of breath. All eyes flickered from Evan to Solace to Duchess and back again.

‘But we found you,’ Electra said, confused. ‘In the alley, when we were looking for a place to stay. You showed us that house, and then the Bloodkin –’

The silence that followed was icy.

‘Do you mean,’ said Paige, as though she couldn’t quite believe it, ‘that you led us into that trap
on purpose
?’

Again, Manx acted as relay. Paige’s gaze whipped to Solace. ‘And you
knew
about this?’

‘Yes. I mean, not at the time, though. Later.’ She was too tired to be outraged and too weary for guilt or apology. ‘I only figured it out at the house. Duchess was meant to bring us there once we’d met the Bloodkin. She told me not to say anything. I’m so sick of secrets.’ She rested her head on her knees.

‘What about Sharpsoft?’ asked Evan, getting in over the top of Laine and Electra. ‘Is he a guardian like you, too? Or has he gone over to Sanguisidera?’

For the longest moment, Duchess simply stared at him.

And before Manx had even finished translating, the little cat vanished in a flash of green light.

As one, they stared at the space where Duchess had been.

‘Well!’ said Paige, breaking the silence. ‘That was illuminating. Or, like, not.’

‘Yes.’ Manx ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘Weird.’

‘You totally made her vanish, Ev,’ Jess said accusingly. ‘Way to deprive the rest of us of question time.’

‘I didn’t!’ Evan crossed his arms. ‘She was just being, you know, prickly. And hiding things from us.’

His gaze moved to Solace. She still couldn’t meet it. Instead, she opened her mouth to speak, but found herself yawning. They’d begun the day hungover, and a lot had happened since.

‘I think,’ she said, surprising herself, ‘that I might go lie down for a bit. If no one minds.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Electra, nodding towards the rooms.

‘Not a bad idea, actually.’ Jess stretched like a leopard. ‘Even bold adventurers need naps.’

‘A noble sentiment,’ Solace mumbled. Tiredness fell on her like a wave. With leaden eyes, she stumbled into her Rookery room, undressing on autopilot. Her last thought as she climbed into bed, muzzy and incoherent, was of Glide.
I hope he heals. I hope he deserves to heal.

She was asleep in moments.