The Stars Askew (2 page)

Kata was a seditionist at heart, living in a city that finally belonged to them.

*   *   *

Great pillars adorned the façade of Marin's water palace of Taium. Its many domes rose above them like a collection of bubbles in the corner of a soapy bath. The entry hall was equally wondrous. Water coursed along channels to each side of the entryway. Glorious mosaics decorated the walls, depicting minotaurs standing on the rocky island of Aya and looking far across the ocean toward the Sirens singing back at them from Taritia.

Inside the water palace was a maze of corridors and pools, rocky open-air gardens and long halls filled with great spheres. Apparently, a complex of rooms in the center of the palace could be filled with superoxygenated water, allowing the bathers to swim through worlds of imagination and fancy, breathing water as they journeyed. The notion of total submersion filled Kata with horror.

As Kata passed from room to room, great clouds of steam drifted around her, at one moment obscuring everything, the next revealing half-naked figures laughing giddily at their newfound freedom. Once the sole province of the upper echelons of the Houses, Marin's water palace was now constantly filled with seditionists, members of the Collegia, thaumaturgists liberated from the yoke of the Houses, and workers who had never been allowed in such a rarefied building. The once-stratified world was mixed up, and since one group of social rules had been shattered, why not others?

A long-haired woman bumped into Kata, then drunkenly staggered toward the archway that led to the steam rooms, renowned as a place for easy sex. Just beyond it, a group of students lay semicomatose, arms and legs draped over one another, half-empty bottles of flower-draughts loosely gripped in their hands or toppled over beside them. Kata was both attracted to and repelled by these libertines. She pictured joining in but crushed the idea the moment she had it.

Kata's eyes roved the place for Aceline's lithe figure and close-cropped black hair. Aceline had been coming to the water palace recently, which surprised Kata, for Aceline was a moderate in all things: philosophy, politics, personal predilection. Still, House Technis had captured Aceline just before the revolt and subjected her to the terror-spheres in their dungeons. Who knew what nightmares she needed to escape from? Despite their newfound friendship, Kata did not dare ask her about it yet. But if Aceline needed the louche attractions of the baths, Kata could not judge her for it.

The minotaur shifted his great bulk and looked longingly at the baths, half obscured by steaming air. Linked by thin channels, they formed a labyrinth of connected baths—some circular, others square or octagonal.

“Oh, go on,” she said.

Dexion's eyes blinked rapidly in excitement. In seconds he had dropped his clothes onto the floor. He leaped, seeming to hover for a moment in the air above one of the pools, while the other bathers' eyes widened in fear. They screamed, grimaced, and tried to push themselves away through the water, but Dexion crashed into it and drenched them before they could escape.

Kata passed through an archway, heavy wooden doors and exquisite crimson circular patterns disappearing and reemerging in the roiling mist.

At the end of the corridor, a half-hidden figure lurked. Kata moved closer until she caught the young man's profile: a fine nose and lustrous shoulder-length black hair. Walking close to the wall, Kata stopped beside the young man and examined the frigidarium beyond, where citizens plunged into the icy baths, laughing and giving cries of pleasurable shock. Others staggered from the cold waters and ran through another archway, toward a great central complex containing the water-spheres.

“So, Rikard,” Kata said. “Ejan has you spying on his opponents, does he?”

“
Spying
is such a cruel word, don't you think?” Rikard turned his brown eyes to Kata. He had just recently passed over the cusp of adulthood and had a newly grown, soft, thin mustache. His father had died in the tramworkers' strike against Technis, and Rikard had joined the seditionists not long after. Now there was a steely cast to his high cheekbones and thoughtful eyes.

A couple embraced in one of the nearby baths. They dropped beneath the waters, then burst up again, calling out in joy.

Kata said, “Have you seen Aceline?”

“Taking a message to her, are you?” Rikard asked nonchalantly.

Kata smiled grimly. “Always at work, I see.”

This time Rikard shrugged and raised his eyebrows rapidly, a half-humorous gesture he liked to disarm people with. “Tell me the message, and I'll tell you where she is.”

Kata checked Rikard with her shoulder. “Don't do that, Rikard. You're too kind for such bargaining.” When Rikard didn't reply, Kata changed the topic. “All this space devoted to quick pleasure—Ejan must hate it.”

“The new order is fragile. The Directors, officiates, and subofficiates of the Houses—they all wait up in their mansions in the Arantine and here on the Northern Headland, out in their country villas or on the Dyrian coast. All the while, their agents are among us, encouraging this dissoluteness, weakening us by the minute. Just when we need discipline, the seditionists indulge themselves. Flower-draughts, hot-wine, gorging on food—look at them. How different are they from those who came before?”

Kata looked on. “Don't they have the right to celebrate their freedom?”

Rikard pushed his hair back with his hands. “You call this freedom?”

Kata knew if she could establish some rapport with Rikard, he might help her. She tried another tack. “We look alike, you know. We could be brother and sister.”

Rikard pressed his lips together, the closest he came to a smile, and ignored her attempt. “Not all of us are uncertain about what should happen. We're not all like you moderates.”

“Certainty can be a dangerous thing.”

“No! It's uncertainty that is dangerous. Audacity is what made us victorious. That's what I don't understand about you, Kata. You're a woman of action. Every part of you screams it. You grew up on the streets, fought your way up and out. Your soul and your allegiance to the moderates will always be in conflict.”

“I liked it more when you used to stand silently as if you were mute.” Kata smiled. “Can't we go back to those days?”

Rikard pressed his lips together again. This time, the edges of a smile
did
appear. Dark and brooding, romantic—already he was a favorite among the young women of the city. Rikard seemed unaware of this—or, perhaps, like the cold-blooded leader Ejan, he had cut off that personal part of himself. For Ejan—and perhaps for Rikard—the seditionist movement was the four points of the compass.

“Come on, Rikard. This is serious. I need to find Aceline.”

“She's in one of the private rooms along this corridor. I didn't see who she met, though. Come, I'll show you.” They retraced Kata's steps along the corridor and stopped before a closed arched door. So it seemed Rikard
had
been spying on Aceline, after all. Kata kept the accusation to herself.

“They're probably…” Kata let the sentence drop away.

Rikard shrugged and knocked on the door. No response came. He knocked again. “Aceline?”

When there was again no response, he finished her sentence. “Enjoying themselves too much.”

Kata placed her ear against the wooden door and heard what sounded like a single knock, followed by a groaning sound. Images sprang to Kata's mind of Aceline writhing with whomever she had met that day, her pretty face distended into a leer, groans escaping from her lips. But the sound also brought thoughts of violence to her mind.

Kata turned the handle, but the door held fast. “Aceline—it's Kata!” She knocked insistently. Anxiety gripped her. She turned to Rikard, who shook his head. They threw their weight against the door, but it didn't budge.

Kata said, “Wait. I'll get Dexion.”

Dexion had dried himself and was half dressed when she found him. He rapidly threw on his remaining clothes and followed her.

Kata pressed her ear against the door again. There was a slight thudding clunk—perhaps someone banging against a table—then all was quiet.

She stood back and nodded at the minotaur. He placed his immense hands against the doorway, which groaned briefly. There was a crack; shards of wood burst into the air; and the door broke open.

One quick look into the room and Dexion stepped back, his nostrils flaring.

A few feet in front of the door, the body of a short heavy man was sprawled facedown, the smell of burning flesh drifting from it. A second man lay on his back in the middle of the room, the skin of his face seemingly melted, white froth around where his mouth had once been. His arms lay above his head as if he were stretching. Both wore black suits, the traditional uniforms of the thaumaturgists.

In the corner, Kata caught a glimpse of Aceline's black hair, her skin whiter than ever.

Kata raised her fingers to her lips. “Oh no,” she said. “Oh no.”

Grief gripped her heart like a ghostly hand, for Aceline's eyes were rolled back in her head. Death had taken her into the land of light.

*   *   *

Kata had cried only once in the last fifteen years. She did not cry now, though grief seemed to press her from her insides, threatening to erupt at any moment.

Rikard turned and whistled. A moment later a grubby little urchin was at his side. “Ejan. Immediately.” The guttersnipe took a brief look into the room, his mouth as wide as his eyes. Rikard grabbed him by his torn jacket. “Keep that trap shut.”

The urchin nodded—mouth still agape—and sped off through the mist. A couple, arms thrown around each other, staggered toward them along the steamy corridor.

“Come on.” Rikard stepped lightly into the room. “Close the door.”

Dexion forced the damaged door back into its frame, jamming it when it wouldn't fit.

Kata surveyed the scene. The door's latch lay shattered on the ground. On the left side of the room, a large bath was cut into the stone floor. On the right side, three massage tables were lined up against the wall. The three bodies lay in between: the two men closest to them, and Aceline up against the far wall, near the edge of the bath.

Kata stepped gently across the room to Aceline's body. She avoided looking at the dead woman's empty staring eyes. She needed to focus, to reconstruct events.

“Look.” Rikard knelt beside the shorter man. He pointed to the ground near him. “There's some kind of burned black powder on the floor.”

“Here too.” Dexion pointed to a place nearer the center of the room, close to the thinner thaumaturgist. “His face has been completely melted.” Dexion's nostrils flared again with distaste.

Kata knelt beside her former friend and noticed several tiny black specks on the skin between her nostrils and mouth. A thin deep red mark encircled Aceline's neck, bleeding slightly in places. “Aceline was strangled.” There were no cuts on her hands, though. It was almost as if she'd given up without a struggle.

Kata felt a familiar pressure building within her. She took a flask from her bag and swallowed some of the medicine that kept her seizures at bay. Without the precautionary medication, the fits came at moments of stress and left her incapacitated for hours. Now her mouth was filled with the pungent taste of dirt and ul-tree roots. She gagged, steadied herself, and returned the flask to her bag.

Delicately, using the edge of her knife, she lifted as many of the black specks from under Aceline's nose as she could. She looked around hopelessly for a vial, then placed the knife carefully onto the nearest massage table. Then Kata began to scrape some of the blackened powder from the floor with her second knife, until she had recovered a thick curl.

Rikard pushed his hair back with his hand. “The thaumaturgists must have killed each other.”

“I suppose they knew the same thaumaturgical formulae,” said Dexion. “A burning conjuration. Like two gladiators who strike at the same time, each mortally wounded the other with the same spell.”

Kata agreed. “They probably dispatched Aceline first. One held her down; the other did the strangling. But afterward they fought. It must have been this one I heard falling when I pressed my ear to the door.” Kata pointed to the heavy thaumaturgist near the entrance. “Maybe he was making his last effort to escape.”

Kata took in the rest of the room. A glorious mosaic depicting one of the Eyries of the Augurers decorated the far wall. The rocky pinnacle rose into the sky, breathtakingly thin against an azure sky. Through a window, an Augurer could be seen seated in the center of a room, her wild hair waving in the air. With one black and piercing eye she stared toward the viewer as if inviting them in, as the line of Augurers had invited citizens of Caeli-Amur and Varenis since the time of the ancients. Around the pinnacle, the griffins circled in the sky, their feathered wings beating against invisible drafts, their eagle heads rearing up proudly.

The mosaic covered the arch of the roof above, the tiles there becoming first the light blue of the sky, then the dark blue of night. On the wall behind them, the mosaic depicted Caeli-Amur, a thousand little glittering lights in the night. At its center stood the door with its ruined latch.

Leaving Dexion and Rikard to guard the room, Kata slipped out and searched for an attendant. There seemed to be none working—perhaps they were gone for good—so it took her a few minutes to find a storeroom, which had already been ransacked, presumably after the uprising. She snatched two vials, returned to the room, carefully dropped the tiny specks into one vial, and screwed its lid back on. Kata then scraped the blackened powder from the second knife into the second vial.

There was a rattle at the door, and Dexion opened it. Ejan strode into the room and surveyed the scene with his usual Olympian cast. Tall, glacial-eyed, and with white-blond hair in a city predominated by olive-skinned and dark-haired people, it was ironic that he had become the preeminent seditionist leader. He stood out, and he used this fact to his advantage. Kata had never liked the man's calculating, machinelike mind. She felt that if she ever touched him, she might find his skin cold like ice. The vigilant leader built those around him in the same mold: a collection of lieutenants ready to take any action. Even those who had begun with a touch of softness, like Rikard, soon took on the harness of a hammer.