She met Vane at the inn first thing in the morning. As instructed, she wore the kerchief, she made a public allegiance to the very thing she wanted to destroy. She couldn’t look at Marten’s shop. The broken window, the sparkle of glass on cobblestones, still teased her from her memory as she stomped up the steps of the Welcome Inn for the first time. She didn’t need to look.
Once inside the building, however, look was all she could manage. Surely once, the tables here had sat in orderly fashion. Now they clumped in one corner, amidst the rubble of broken chairs and surrounded by fat barrels of the landlord’s ale. Suds dried on the floor, and flies hummed everywhere. A stout stone chimney divided the far wall, but she could see little of the fireplace. Starlights blocked it from view.
They perched on the tables, leaned rickety chairs back onto two legs, and shouted orders at the women attempting to deliver food and drinks without getting too close to the patrons. The inn, while still functional, looked to have fared only slightly better than Marten’s shop. If the weary expressions the staff wore could be believed, at least here, the Starlights were not eagerly received.
A fat man waddled through an archway through which the steam and aroma of the kitchen drifted. He wore an apron, smudged with grease and breakfast leavings. His eyes sagged under too much stress and too little sleep. Still, they sparked at the sight of her. For one moment, Satina saw hope there. She wanted to smile, to reassure the man, but Vane’s voice killed the moment, sent the innkeeper back into despair.
“There she is,” Vane spoke loud enough Marten probably heard next door. “My goodmother. Come here, Satina. Have a drink on the house.” Not his house, but then, what did that matter to a man who believed he owned the world?
He closed in on her, wrapping that possessive arm around her shoulders and steering her into the trashed main room. His gang glared and whispered, but Vane beamed. He paraded her in front of them while the barmaids looked at their toes and shuffled back to join their boss in the kitchen. She’d betrayed them, joined the enemy. Some Granter she was.
Marten would have lots of company now. Now the whole town would despise her. Vane would make certain of that.
☼
They hiked to the ruins from the main road, a more direct route than she’d taken with Marten, but one just as hard on the skirts. The Starlights worked as a team, helping each other over fallen trees, root tangles, and at last up the twisty slope and through the guardian trees to the castle basin. They left their women at the inn, and Satina fought to keep up with them, set her resolve and only once or twice needed the offered Starlight hand for assistance.
Once they broke through the trees, the gang spread out. Vane leaped onto a shelf of old wall and used his voice stretching trick to shout directions. He ordered them into smaller groups, and set them to the task he called “surveying.” The Starlights combed the castle ruins, all eyes fixed upon the ground and alert to anything at all unusual.
“Goodmother!” He dropped from the wall and waved in her direction. “You’ll be with me.”
He kept four of his men with him as well, and they formed up the same way the others had. Starting in a line, Vane had them space themselves by stretching out their arms until their fingers could just touch at the tips. Then he ordered a march, eyes on the ground, down the wide avenue that led to the main courtyard, the big staircase and the menhir pocket. Exactly where she’d feared he would want her.
She walked beside him on the right, and she kept her eyes on the stones just as he’d said. But if Satina had tripped over an amulet, a sword, or a whole suit of armor, she’d have kept her mouth shut about it.
The others were too loyal for that. She heard shouts from across the ruins long before they reached the courtyard. Vane smiled and stood taller. He thrust his shoulders back and snapped for one of their party to go and fetch the news. They’d be tearing at the ground before noon. Would they find anything? Despite the chill of that idea, Satina felt a stir of excitement, the same thrill she always felt at the start of a dig, though her experience with them had been strictly informal and solitary.
If her meager efforts could uncover the brooch, the sword hilt, a few small treasures she’d traded away in the port, what could a whole, organized gang discover? She tried not to think about it, tried even harder not to wonder at the magic that might be lurking in a place like this. They marched into the open and she focused on the stairway instead.
Had the fiend survived? Would the Gentry think twice before stepping out of their safe world again? What did this one have to offer anyway?
“Satina!” Vane stood halfway across the courtyard. He looked back at her and scowled. Behind him, the standing stone watched over its pocket. It glowed softly and probably less accusingly than she imagined.
At least she could spend some time with it. Maybe in those twisty symbols, she could find an answer to her problems. Maybe the menhir itself could help her rid the ruins of Starlights. A spark of hope drove her feet toward the gang leader. He meant for her to help him, but maybe, if she played things the right way, she could find her own help here. If there was an answer anywhere, Satina would have bet it was etched into that glassy, gray surface.
She scrambled toward Vane. He walked straight through the pocket’s edge as if it wasn’t there. She could bolt through it. The shimmer of the membrane would be a constant reminder of that fact. It would take her less than a breath to be free of him, to leave Marten, Hadja and the whole town to their own fates.
When she passed the barrier, she had to focus, to put actual effort into not slipping inside. Not because she had any inclination to flee, but because slipping into a pocket was the natural thing to do. Walking through them went against her instincts.
Still, Vane was in charge of her now, and she sulked to his side and stared at the menhir in front of them. Dull gray here, the stone’s only special attribute in normal space was the designs, and even they looked shallower and less magical by ordinary sunlight. She imagined, through human eyes, they wouldn’t even glow at all.
“It looks very old.” Vane stated the obvious, proved her point without realizing it. “Maybe older than the Kingdoms even.”
“Maybe.”
“Can you read it?”
She almost said no. Her better judgment saved her before she gave away another advantage. They needed to find ways to manipulate Vane. All she had to do was work out if knowing how to read the stone worked in their favor or against them. Hesitation, however, would look suspicious, and she’d thought long enough to have earned his frown.
“Some of it.” Best to remain ambiguous whenever possible. “I might be able to decipher the rest, if I had time to examine it.”
“Then take time.” He relaxed his disapproval and brushed at his clothes. “I want to know as much as I can about this place.”
That much worked in her favor. She wanted time with the menhir. If she could spend her days studying the sigils, maybe joining Vane’s company wouldn’t be all bad. If he left her alone, she could live with it for now. He ruined the fantasy as if he’d read her mind.
“When I need you elsewhere, I will call for you.” He wanted his treasure, and her obedience. He made that clear, but the real treasure was in the stone to anyone with eyes that could see it.
Satina nodded, and he turned away. His men hollered from a far corner, and Vane made a show of holding out his medallion, of waving the thing in front of himself as if it were a magic magnet instead of exactly the opposite. She wanted to scoff, to decide that anyone that ignorant would be easy to manipulate after all, but a whisper of Marten’s accusations kept her uncertain. To some eyes, she was equally stupid. She didn’t want to underestimate her enemy the way Marten had undervalued his ally.
While Vane rejoined his Starlights, she turned to her stone. The symbols twisted and teased her. She knew only one of them, despite what she’d told Vane. Most of the markings here were far too old for her to be familiar with. Only Vision had revealed its purpose, a
nd so she turned to it, found the curves easily and ran one finger over the lines in mid air, not quite touching the surface.
The sigil flared. Satina felt the upward thrust. She traveled out of her mortal shell and zipped up, over the trees to freedom. Here Vane could not control her. Here, she could work to her own purposes, and even as she thought it, she whisked away again. Her consciousness shot in an arrow’s path straight toward Westwood.
Vision dropped her down, to right above the town’s rooftops. It wound her along the stable road, past the chapel and the fountain. It hovered over Marten’s shop, and she knew her thoughts had brought it there. How could the sigil not find Marten in them?
She considered directing it, pressing to control the journey and steer it away from him. Then again, she didn’t really want to, and Vision, it seemed, knew her mind as well as she did. It lowered her slowly, and then, instead of slipping her through the roof, moved back toward the alley behind the shop.
Satina got a bird’s eye view of her former escape route. She’d come out that back door and headed toward the blacksmith’s at Marten’s orders. Now she floated in the other direction toward a familiar silhouette that currently posed in full, impish fashion on top of a pile of crates. He waited, and if she knew that pose, it was for Skinner business.
She waited with him, invisible and airborne. When a cloaked figure moved up the alley, when a huge shadow crept toward Marten’s post, Satina saw it first. Even under all that wool, she could identify Cygnus the blacksmith. Maera’s father meeting with Marten in the back alleyways, meeting in daylight but obviously on the sly—it could only mean trouble.
“Good afternoon, Cygnus.” Marten bowed low, but he didn’t curl, didn’t slump his shoulders or fold into anything like humility.
“Skinner.” The blacksmith’s voice rumbled, and Marten cringed.
“Don’t announce it to the whole town.” He hopped from the crate and bounced closer to the man.
“What do you want?” Cygnus growled, but his head turned guiltily. He looked back over his shoulder.
“What I want isn’t really important, now. Is it? I think we both know that.”
“I don’t have time for riddles.”
“Then let’s talk about what you want.” Marten’s cackle lifted up and swirled around her. Satina felt it like a sting. He was up to something, working the blacksmith this time, but definitely working. When Cygnus leaned in, when he whispered his desire to the imp, her mind recoiled. Vision swept her away again, back over his town, across the fields and forest, and straight into Vane’s clutches.
Chapter Fifteen
Unlikely Page 15