StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “Milord’s got a visitor, he does!” cried out a shrill voice from the cell. “She looks good enough to share!” I turned and made a rude gesture at him. A mistake; something foul flew toward me and splatted into my sleeve. I jumped, swearing, but it seemed to be rotten vegetables, and not . . . something worse. He was lucky I was in a good mood today.

  I brushed my fingers against Durrel’s cell door as his neighbor’s taunts continued. “Milord,” I called softly. “Are you still in there?”

  I had to stand on tiptoe to see inside. Someone had cleared away the filthy rushes, but the smell of a chamber pot that had needed changing days ago made me gag, even from outside the cell. Durrel was folded up on the bed, staring at the ceiling, but at the sound of my voice, he propelled himself from the bed to the door.

  “Celyn!” His voice, cracked and thin, was filled with so much hope and fear it hurt, like an ache in my throat. His fingers reached through the little window. I hesitated, but found my hand gripped in his. He held on so tightly I used the force of his grasp to pull myself closer to him.

  “You look like hells,” slipped out of my mouth. There were dark smudges under his eyes, and his scraggly beard showed up every contour of his boyish face. In the daylight now, I could see how much weight he’d lost.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Oh, but I have a pass.” I flashed it at him.

  “Do I want to know where you got that?” he said.

  “I should be offended,” I said, forcing cheer into my voice. “It’s completely legitimate!” As if anything from the hands of a Greenman could really be called legitimate. “It answers one question, though. I think we can credit Lord Raffin for our little rendezvous the other night.”

  “Damn. I’m sorry, Celyn. I had no idea. What the hells is he thinking?”

  “He’s thinking his friend is in trouble and nobody seems to be helping!” Durrel didn’t answer, and I didn’t know what else to say, so we stood there, with the door between us, a long, stupid moment. Durrel finally broke the silence, moving back to where I could see him. “I see you’ve met my neighbor, Temus,” he said, gesturing at the stain on my arm.

  “He has good aim. He should talk to the guards about being released for the wars.”

  Durrel smiled faintly. “What’s that?” He nodded toward my basket, where I had the shirt I’d bought from Grillig.

  “Oh. It’s — here.” I handed it up, and watched as he shook out the now-wrinkled linen, took in the mended patch in the sleeve and the slightly worn hemline.

  “I was going to bring you one of Rat’s, but he only has nice things,” I said. “This one, well, I thought it would be less of a shame if it got —”

  “Befouled?”

  “Something like that.”

  Without hesitation, Durrel stripped off his own filthy shirt and shook the clean one over his head. I could see the lines of his ribs, the points of his narrow shoulders, a taut belly that barely held his trunk hose on — he looked like he’d been a prisoner here longer than a fortnight. Weren’t they feeding him at all? Or was it life with Talth that had wasted him?

  “Who’s Rat?” he said, coming up for air. The new shirt was far too large; I had guessed him at a bigger man.

  “My, uh, roommate,” I said, and, for something to say, so I didn’t keep staring at his too-thin body, I explained about Rat’s skills at acquiring the exotic and rare.

  “Sounds like a useful fellow,” he said. His voice was warming up, a cheerfulness creeping into it now that seemed all wrong, somehow. He leaned his head back and took in a deep breath of stagnant, stinking air, as if it were fresh and breezy as a spring meadow. “You’re a miracle,” he said. “You have no idea how good it feels to get into something clean.”

  And why was I the one bringing it, and not his father? “I should have brought you a razor,” I said instead.

  He gave a mirthless laugh, so harsh and quick it startled me. “I’m supposed to have a beard, aren’t I?” he said, his voice bitter. “I’m mourning my dead wife.” He dropped his hands and turned from me, pacing away from the door.

  “I went to Bal Marse,” I said, and he halted, turning back.

  “Bal Marse! But why?”

  “I want to help you. I thought I might find something.”

  His drawn face turned curious. “And did you?”

  “It’s been stripped bare.” I explained about the missing furniture, the empty rooms, the open gates and door. “The place is abandoned.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why —”

  “Barris said the property came to you on Talth’s death. Is that true?”

  “Wait — you talked to Barris?” He sounded alarmed. “Celyn, hold on. What are you up to?” I looked at him impatiently, until he finally sighed. “Fine. Yes, technically I did inherit Talth’s house in the city. But since I’ve been in here since she died, I really have no idea what’s going on with it. Her family probably came in and took away anything that wasn’t strapped down. That would be like them.” He resumed pacing. The ceiling was so low in places he had to stoop. “And there was nothing there? No files, no ledgers or records?” When I shook my head, he continued. “I’ve been thinking maybe the murder had something to do with her business dealings, but that’s probably just the captivity talking.”

  “No, it seems likely,” I said. “What kind of business are we talking about?”

  “Well, the Ceid shipping business, primarily, but Talth also owned some properties in the city. Houses to let, or something. I really wouldn’t know. She wasn’t that . . . receptive to the idea of my participation in her work. She liked to say I was just —” He stopped abruptly, his face clouded. “Just the studhorse.”

  I winced. The implication was obvious; the Decath were famous for their horse farm, and the comment gave ugly credence to Koya’s claim that her mother was interested only in the title and heirs that marriage to Durrel would provide. “That’s horrible,” I said, but he just shrugged.

  “Sometimes she’d have callers, late at night, and she’d entertain them downstairs, but she always sent me up to my rooms, like a naughty child.”

  “And you don’t know what they might have been involved in?” Durrel shook his head, one curt flick that was barely noticeable. I wanted to press him for details, but it was obvious he didn’t want to talk about his marriage.

  “There’s something else.” I pulled myself closer to the door, and spoke as quietly as I could. “I found magic at Bal Marse. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Magic? Are you certain? Of course you’re certain.” Durrel knew about my odd affinity for Sar’s touch; it had been one of the reasons he’d saved me. I explained what I had seen at the Round Court at his house.

  “Did Talth have magic?” I said.

  “No. Definitely not. I’d have known about it.” I believed him; Durrel had spent years living with a magical cousin, always keeping an eye out to make sure she was protected, her secret safely concealed. He didn’t have my ability to spot the Breath of Sar on somebody, but he had a knack I trusted. “Do you think it has to do with her murder?”

  “It might not.” But I wouldn’t put money on it.

  Durrel was silent a long time. Finally he spoke up again. “Celyn, this is too dangerous. I’m sorry I got you involved. You should go home and forget about me.”

  Fat chance there. “You didn’t get me involved, remember? And besides, I want to help. I owe you.”

  “Owe me?” He stood close to the window again, looking down, a curious expression on his scruffy face. “How do you mean?”

  “You saved my life,” I said. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten?”

  “That wasn’t the same thing,” he said. “This is dangerous.”

  “You don’t think what you did for me was dangerous?” I might have laughed, if the memory of that awful day we met, when Tegen died, didn’t still make me sick with dread. “You smuggled a fugitive —
a magical fugitive — out of the city, lied to Greenmen to do it, and harbored her in your family home. And then you armed her!” I added, recalling his gift of an expensive House of Decath dagger when we’d parted.

  Durrel watched me evenly for a moment. “In my defense, I was drunk at the time,” he finally said, and there was a note of mirth in his voice.

  “You were sober enough,” I said drily. “Durrel — milord — what are you so concerned about?” I watched him, suspicious. “You know something, don’t you?”

  He shook his head, but there was more evasion than denial in the gesture.

  “Tell me! I have nothing to go on but a smear of magic in an empty house. If we can’t find out who really killed your wife —” I stopped myself. Durrel knew the stakes, and my yelling wouldn’t help. “Please, if you know something —”

  “I don’t know anything. Just that Talth did business with a lot of dangerous people.”

  “Like who? Inquisition?”

  “I don’t know,” he said again. “Criminals, maybe.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” I said, trying to sound bright. “I’m good with criminals.”

  “Celyn —”

  “Digger,” I said.

  “What? Oh, right. Sorry — I keep forgetting.”

  I actually liked the way his voice sounded when he called me Celyn, but I had a point to make. “No, I just mean, they call me that for a reason. I’m good at what I do. I can help you, if you let me.”

  There was silence as he stared down at the cell floor. His mouse-colored hair was shaggy and tousled, as if he’d been dragging his hands through it. Finally he looked up and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I trust you. But be careful.”

  I gave a half smile. Careful wasn’t my usual approach, but why press the point?

  “Celyn? I mean — Digger?” He looked up at me, and his face was open and vulnerable. “You met Barris. Did you also see —”

  “Koya?”

  Whatever passed across his face at the name was gone so fast I couldn’t identify it. He nodded. “How is she?”

  How to answer that question? Interesting? Incomprehensible? “Bearing up well, under the circumstances?” Whatever those circumstances actually were.

  Durrel gave a slight sigh. “Thank you. This can’t be easy on her.”

  “Or you,” I said pointedly. “You know what people are saying? About you and your stepdaughter.”

  He made a face, just a small wince of distaste. “It’s just gossip. Sometimes I think Talth courted it. She had a cruel streak, particularly when it came to her daughter.”

  “Could Koya have killed her?”

  There was that odd little fog to his expression again. “Of course not.”

  “Are you sure? You sound a little —”

  “Completely.” The weight of that one word killed that conversation.

  I frowned, trying to dredge up another question. “All right, didn’t you tell me it was a maid’s word that had you arrested? She claimed to see you leaving Talth’s room before the body was discovered?”

  Nodding slowly, he said, “Geirt. Her chambermaid. But I told you, she had to be mistaken.”

  “Or lying,” I said. “If we could talk to her, figure out what she really saw, or why she’d lie about it —”

  It was like a shaft of light had broken through the gloom of the cell. “Celyn, that’s brilliant. But the servants are long gone, it sounds like.” And just like that, the shadows fell again.

  “Maybe Koya knows what happened to her. I’ll see what I can find out.” Below us, the ugly bell clanged out the hour. The visiting period was ending. “Pox. I have to go. Do you need anything?”

  “I need to see my father.”

  “I’m working on it. He’s not so easy to reach, these days.” I explained about the guards at Charicaux, but Durrel only looked more confused.

  “No, you must have been mistaken. We — my father doesn’t have any retainers like that.”

  The pistol carried by the guard at the gate had seemed pretty conclusive, but I let it pass. “Don’t get discouraged. We’ll figure this out.” I forced more confidence into my voice than I felt.

  He reached a hand out the small window, and my fingers brushed his. “Thank you,” he said faintly, but I heard him.

  Behind me, Wet Onions had awakened again. “Lift your skirts up a little more, girl. I can’t see much from here.”

  I was tempted to give him a taste of what I kept under those skirts — a three-inch steel blade that I was getting pretty good at throwing — but I just gave him a tart look as I passed by. “Watch your fingers,” I said. “Someone might come by and bite them off.”

  He gave a cackling laugh, but it was Durrel’s small chuckle I heard, all the way down the stairs and across the bridge.

  About the Author

  Elizabeth C. Bunce is the author of A Curse Dark as Gold, which won the William C. Morris YA Debut Award. StarCrossed was inspired by her passions for Renaissance life and classic fantasy, as well as an obsession with cat burglars, and its snowbound story was written in part during the coldest Midwestern winter in thirty years. Elizabeth lives near Kansas City, Missouri, with her husband and their dogs. Visit her online at www.elizabethcbunce.com.

  Text copyright © 2010 by Stephanie Elizabeth Bunce

  All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and the LANTERN LOGO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bunce, Elizabeth C.

  Starcrossed / by Elizabeth C. Bunce. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In a kingdom dominated by religious intolerance, sixteen-year-old Digger, a street thief, has always avoided attention, but when she learns that her friends are plotting against the throne she must decide whether to join them or turn them in.

  ISBN 978-0-545-13605-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) [1. Fantasy — Fiction. 2. Religion — Fiction. 3. Kings, queens, rulers, etc. — Fiction. 4. Social classes — Fiction. 5. Magic — Fiction. 6. Robbers and outlaws — Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B91505St 2010

  [Fic] — dc22

  2010000730

  Liar’s Moon excerpt copyright © 2011 by Stephanie Elizabeth Bunce

  Map art by Mike Schley copyright © 2011 by Stephanie Elizabeth Bunce

  Jacket art © 2010 by Juliana Kolesova

  Jacket design by Phil Falco

  eISBN 978-0-545-42945-0

  First edition, October 2010

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.