The Key to Starveldt (34 page)

Trying to distract herself from darker thoughts, Solace conveyed this directive to Jess, who nodded seriously. Smoothing her hands across her cheongsam, she crouched down and looked Duchess in the eye.

‘Get this straight: I’m not your personal packhorse.’

This time, Jess winced only slightly as Duchess leapt onto her collarbone and dug her claws in for purchase. Solace smothered a laugh as the seer straightened up.

‘You are the cutest lady-pirate
ever
.’

‘Shameless wench.’

‘Buccaneer.’

‘Brother-kisser.’

‘Touché.’

Jess gave a mock curtsey. ‘I aim to please.’

Stepping down into the foyer, Solace felt her heart speed up.
This is it. We’re really opening Starveldt. S
he checked her pockets, making sure the pages of her mother’s book and the key itself were still there.

‘I wish you luck, Eleuthera,’ Liluye said, holding out her hands. Solace extended her own, letting the proprietor give both palms a brief, hard squeeze. In spite of everything, she was able to smile.

‘Me, too.’

‘Meeting you has been hopeful. All of you.’

It was an odd choice of words, but the warmth in Liluye’s golden eyes was genuine. Anise flicked her wings and gestured towards the door. Then, Solace found herself standing in a circle of her friends, who had fanned out on both sides, waiting for her to lead them forward. It was a little overwhelming.

‘Thank you,’ she said. It felt like she should say more, but she had no words for a grand speech, not today, not with Jess beside her and Evan’s beautiful smile lighting up her heart like sparklers in a darkened birthday kitchen. She pulled out the key, its icy metal tingling against her fingertips, and slotted it into the door.

‘Take us to St Andrews,’ she whispered. ‘Take us to Starveldt.’

Green light flared against the wood. Solace pulled on the handle and retracted the key. The door swung open, revealing only darkness. Her friends were at her back, and as Evan’s empathy surged through her, she felt a moment of intense connection to the warring fears, hopes, fragility and humour of everyone around her.

She steeled herself, and stepped towards the Voice.

Glide’s eyes snapped open. After hours of what felt like ramming his Trick against a wall in search of Solace, something had changed: a sense of opportunity. Whatever magic had concealed her was withdrawing, fading away like mist.

One hand resting on the heft of a short iron spear, Grief stood above him, alongside Erasmus Lukin and Mikhail Savarin. Strange symbols chased the weapon’s length, glowing faintly. Instead of a simple point, it ended in a leaf-shaped blade, sharp as sin for all its weight, and limned at the edges with some brighter, harder metal that glittered like black ice. Forged by Lukin, charmed by Mikhail and entrusted to Grief, whose already pale knuckles shone bonewhite where they gripped the haft, it had been built for a single purpose.

‘I see them,’ Glide said, trying not to think. ‘They’re in the open.’

‘Iron,’ Grief murmured, turning the weapon this way and that. ‘Everything in this universe wants to be iron. Did you know that, boy?’

Glide shook his head, unable to answer. Grief nodded to himself. ‘Of course not. Still, it is a curious truth. Elements change and break down, Lukin tells me. Atoms spin and ions dance, an invisible riot seething beneath our sight, but there, as here, iron still has weight. More than weight: a voice. It sings to the world around us. Everything lighter than iron envies its heft, while everything heavier covets its lightness. There is power in such elemental jealousy. Iron disrupts; it makes otherwise steadfast substances yearn to change. Appropriately harnessed –’ he kissed the flat of the blade to Glide’s cheek, his black eyes bright, ‘– it can even dissipate a daughter of the Aer.’

From his pocket, Mikhail produced a vial of blood. Though the scars on his hands were still raw, he still asked, ‘Should I summon the Starkine first? If I am also to open a portal –’

‘Yes.’ Grief lowered the spear. ‘Do it now.’

No
, Glide wanted to say, but the word remained locked inside him. He watched as first Mikhail’s hands and then his whole being glowed with purple energy: a crackling, neon-tinged halo shot through with streaks of red and black. The blood began to boil against the glass. Though the mage grit his teeth against the pain, his grip remained steady.

A roar like thunder cracked the air, and by the twist of Mikhail’s face, Glide could tell that the magic wasn’t working the way it ought; something was fighting him. Jets of green began to arc through the purple, forming a storm of competing energies. Glide, Lukin and Grief all jumped back, staring as the space before Mikhail seemed to rip apart. Someone tumbled through, and Glide was left in fear as to which of his former friends had been captured. But then he recognised the white coat, the whirling eyes, and felt himself sink beneath a different kind of sickness.

‘Well, well,’ said Lukin, grinning madly as Mikhail’s magic faded. ‘What an unexpected treat. Switched the blood, did we?’

The old man moved faster than Glide would’ve credited. Pulling a syringe from his pocket, the professor plunged its contents into Sharpsoft’s neck, sidestepping neatly as the man crumpled.

‘And moving outside the Rookery, too? How
courteous
.’ Carefully checking the needle for damage, Lukin winked cheerfully at Glide. ‘I actually brought this in case you took it into your head to misbehave,’ he said. ‘Funny how things turn out.’

Glide couldn’t help himself. ‘Please. What will you do with him? It’s all my fault.’

‘True enough,’ said Grief, kicking at Sharpsoft’s body. Twirling the spear across his fingers, he glanced at Lukin, a speculative light in his eye. ‘Essence farming, perhaps? He’s strong enough. Of course, it goes without saying that you’ll set a decanter or two aside for private consumption. And do tell my mother. Even without the Starkine to play with, something tells me she’ll be pleased with this turn of events.’

‘An excellent proposition, my lord,’ said Lukin. ‘I’ll have him taken to the labs at once.’ Executing a short bow to Grief, the professor grabbed hold of Sharpsoft’s collar and, with surprising strength, hauled him away.

Glide stared after them, willing himself to feel something – guilt, relief, anger – but there was only ice where his chest should be. He touched the wound in his side, but there was no pain. As a chuckling Mikhail discarded the now empty vial, he found his gaze caught by the tip of Grief ’s terrible spear.
I should hate them. Maybe I do hate them.

Maybe I don’t.

‘Come on, boy,’ said Mikhail, gripping his shoulder. ‘That’s enough spectacle for one day.’

‘I don’t feel anything,’ said Glide. Even his lips felt numb.

‘It’s like that, at first,’ said Mikhail. His voice was oddly soft. ‘But you’ll get used to it.’

One instant, they were standing in the foyer of the Rookery; the next, they were in the strange, shadow-and-cobblestone realm of the Voice, illuminated only by a faint glow. Harper swore; Electra whistled appreciatively. From her vantage point on Jess’s shoulder, Duchess lifted her head and blinked.

Solace translated, their lack of surroundings having startled Manx into silence. An answering rumble filled the air. It sounded oddly like laughter.

‘Well met, Vivari. I was beginning to wonder if you were still alive.’

‘I do,’ said the Jeon-Voice, politely waiting until Solace had relayed Duchess’s words.
He called her Vivari. Where have I heard that name?
It was a moment before she remembered her mother’s letter to Liluye and its talk of wards. Startled, she looked at Duchess. Despite everything they’d learned about the little cat, it was strange to realise that she had a name other than the one they’d given her.

The surrounding darkness began to move. This was different to the other times she’d used the key. No door appeared. Instead, the shadows melted, fading gradually into shades of grey. The cobbles vanished, replaced by gravel and clumps of grass, while overhead, the darkness deepened, slowly puncturing itself with myriad sharp-edged stars.

The air was chill and full of the scent of salt – the crash of nearby waves was audible. They were standing on a gravel path beside a fenced-off area of grass, in which could be seen the crumbling, broken-stone shadows of a castle ruin. Here and there, wooden park benches had been set up beside the remaining walls, while half of what had once been an impressive tower looked out over the ocean, its ancient base sloping straight down towards the water.

‘We’re in Scotland,’ said Solace, a little stupidly. Despite all the wonders of the Rookery, there was still a thrill in being, for the first time in her life, somewhere else in the world, on an entirely different continent. Blinking, she turned to Duchess. ‘So, if that’s the old castle, how do we –’

With a flick of her tail, the little cat indicated what Solace had missed: a wooden drawbridge of sorts linking the top of one grassy slope with a stone archway set in one of the sturdier remaining walls, providing passage over what had once been a moat. This time, Manx relayed her directions. The gravel churned beneath their feet as, one by one, they clambered over the meagre fence and landed on the thick grass.

At the edge of the bridge, Duchess called a halt. Still balancing on Jess’s shoulder, she held up a forepaw and bit down hard. Solace winced in sympathy as blood dripped from the bite. Several droplets spattered onto the seer’s new cheongsam. The little cat blinked and swayed, but did not fall.

she instructed.

‘What’s she saying?’ Paige hissed, and as Manx belatedly translated, Solace reached out and wrapped her palm around Duchess’s wound, feeling her skin grow slippery and wet. The little cat was panting. Pulling back, she smeared her palm against the key, which sizzled at the brush of blood. A strong breeze whipped up, stinging her cheeks with cold night air. Overtaken by instinct, Solace lifted her own wrist, peeled back the edge of the bandage and bit down, resisting the urge to flinch as she reopened the wound. Her blood mingled with Duchess’s, fizzing where it landed on the key. Words that weren’t her own bubbled up, like something she’d heard in a dream, and when she spoke there was a foreign resonance to her voice.

‘I am Solace Eleuthera. I speak for the worldweavers of my house, on whom the pale moon gleams. By the vows that bind you, Jeon Faraday, open the way to Starveldt!’

In her hand, the key burned like acid. Solace yelped and released it, but rather than dropping, the metal floated through the air, haloed in a blinding blaze of colour that lit the old stone walls. Everyone cried out and staggered back. The ground shook beneath them.

Suspended overhead in a sphere of green light, the key glowed golden, thin tongues of lightning flickering from it like ropes of static, one of which arced down and connected with Duchess. A crackling aura surrounded the little cat, energy pulsing between her and the key, as though they were communicating in some strange, electric language.

A final burst of energy buzzed upwards from Duchess. Her connection to the key flared gold-green and vanished, leaving her limp, and then the air
ripped
, pulling apart as the castle walls bucked and stretched. A different kind of wall materialised, spreading and expanding, overlaying the ruins like a dress covering a petticoat.

Solace was not alone in swearing. The sight defied belief: the whole of Starveldt was squeezing itself through an ever-widening crack in reality like a great stone elephant sprouting out of a shoebox, cannibalising everything on the far side of the drawbridge – even the empty air above the cliff. Once, Solace had seen the exterior of Starveldt in a tripwalking vision, but that was nothing compared to beholding it here and now. Every centimetre of her skin had goosebumps. Fear and elation rose in her; it was all she could do not to whoop out loud.