Secrets of the Starcrossed

by Clara O'Connor

  She eyed me warily, her survey comprehensive. No chance of this one being cowed by anything, I realised. Her gaze was bold and aware beyond her years, her head tilting to the side as if something about me had struck her as different. On closer examination, she was older than she looked, the tired slump of her shoulders making her appear young while a cough wracked her small frame.

  “You looking for Oban?” she asked once the fit had subsided.

  I nodded. She led me into the small, sparsely furnished apartment, vaguely recognisable from its moment of fame at the arena.

  There was an older lady sewing in the light of the window who barely glanced up from her activity. A few more children huddled in another corner of the room.

  The slight young man from the Mete was bent over some material, standing when his sister called out to him, alerting him to my presence.

  “Donna,” he addressed me formally as the street urchins had done.

  “I was hoping you might make me a dress,” I announced haltingly.

  He smiled shyly, nodding, his survey of me less bold than his sister’s but no less comprehensive for all that.

  “I have no funds for the material, but if you buy it, I can do the rest,” he offered.

  “Deal,” I said quickly. Standing here in this room with his family I felt deeply uncomfortable, my guilt at voting against him at the Mete gnawing at me, an unsettling anxiety crawling over my skin at the squalor of the room. I glanced over at the woman in the corner who sat sullenly watching – their mother, I supposed. As I submitted to Oban’s measuring in the second room, the girl who had greeted me at the door left after confirmation that Oban would be able to manage both attending to me and the care of the two small ones on the floor, but not before her grey eyes settled on me once more. It wasn’t a warning exactly but there was something about her that told me that should I do anything in her absence to hurt her family it would not be the last I saw of her. She was a slip of a thing yet I believed that silent promise.

  “Have you had much business since the Mete?” I queried lightly as Oban continued to take my measurements, jotting down quick notes in a little book on the table.

  He inclined his head in what I took for a soft yes. I made a few more attempts to start a conversation with him but they elicited little more in the way of response. Not a talker then.

  A hacking cough in the other room indicated that his sister had returned, though I had not heard the door closing.

  “Is she okay?” I asked softly to the kneeling Oban as he measured the inside of my leg.

  He looked up, his eyes flashing with concern, before he again gave a small nod. I frowned at the conflicting signals.

  “Has she been ill for long?” I tried again.

  Another nod.

  “Marina’s not contagious,” he said finally after another pause, clearly taking my question as worry for my own health.

  I tsked in frustration. He looked up at me, startled.

  “I wasn’t asking for myself,” I admonished. “I can bring medicine.”

  His face lost the inexpressive look that those in service so often used to hide all feelings and, more importantly, opinions from their customers.

  He looked concerned again and then shook his head. “No cure.”

  “What do you mean, no cure?” I asked, baffled. Our society had little illness – most having been defeated by science and technology generations ago – and what remained was quickly remedied.

  He shook his head and refused to answer any more questions, hustling me out of the house with a slip of paper containing the instructions regarding what material he wanted me to buy.

  I made my way back to Aldgate deeply distracted by Oban’s behaviour. Why would he not want his sister to get help? It was ridiculous. Was it the cost?

  The thought of the dark-haired girl’s illness niggled at me. When I returned two days later with the cloth, I made sure I had some medicine anyway, purchased from one of the few pharmacies in the city.

  Oban was pleased with the cloth, as was I – the rich material glimmered as it caught the light that came through the grimy window, my signature colour turquoise shot through with indigo. He practically hummed with excitement as he felt it, showing me a couple of sketches he had done already that made my own eyes gleam in anticipation. We grinned at each other, appreciating the mutual pleasure caused by his vision.

  His sister was bustling about in the main living area and when she popped her head in to ask Oban a question, I pulled the bottle out of my bag.

  Marina stilled, the colour draining from her already pale face. There was an odd feeling in the room, almost a physical charge that raised the hair on my body. I rubbed at my arms to dispel the fanciful notion. I pulled my eyes from the girl to her brother to find he looked equally as upset.

  “What did you do?” Oban whispered from bloodless lips.

  “I–I…” I stammered, confused by the atmosphere that had descended so suddenly on the room, their reaction to the bottle of cough medicine as though I had taken out a bottle of poison. “I thought it might help.”

  Oban looked behind him at the top corner of the room where the ubiquitous state camera resided. They were supposed to be in every home but became increasingly rare in the higher echelons of society. He followed the trajectory of the camera and realised that the bottle was currently blocked by his own frame. He shot me a quelling look as he covered the bottle with the cloth and turned again to his notebook without looking at his sister who remained frozen in the doorway.

  “Perhaps, donna, you would like something a little higher around the neckline in the fashion of the orient?” he asked, indicating his book. Rather than an adjustment to the sketch he had been happily showing me moments before, there was a hastily scribbled message.

  PLEASE. NO HELP. NO ILLNESS. THEY TAKE HER.

  I was deeply confused but, responding to the desperate pleading contorting the two faces turned to me, I nodded. What was going on?

  Troubled, I took my leave with smiling promises to return a week later for a fitting, my skin still tingling from the strange atmosphere that hadn’t quite dissipated from their home.

  They were hiding Marina’s illness, but why? Because they would take her… but who were they?

  The pharmacist had been slightly off when I bought the medicine, I now recalled, asking me who it was for and why I needed it. I had been vaguely annoyed at her questioning, having been already irritated at Devyn’s elusiveness. I had assumed he would be back, cap in hand, to get his sodding tech but I had assumed wrong. I caught glimpses of him now and then but always at a distance, slipping away like a snake in the grass when I attempted to cross paths with him. It was infuriating.

  “Aarghh.” I released my frustration audibly, earning a startled look from the man in front of me in the queue to get back through Aldgate. I smiled guilelessly up at him. A Shadower from the look of his dirt-stained clothes, come to the city to sell whatever it was he grew in the lands beyond the outer wall. He looked prosperous, as he would have to be to have a permit to pass through the inner walls. Taking in my fine dress, he dropped his eyes and quickly turned away.

  My mind churned over the conversation I had shared with the pharmacist. I had been haughtily brief in my answers but she had been noticeably insistent. Why had she wanted to know what I was purchasing medicine for? It hadn’t been just the idle curiosity of one bored for lack of customers. She had been actively trying to discover where the medicine was bound.

  I had, out of sheer ignorance, been vague about the symptoms, for I had seen little more than the cough, but the keen-eyed pharmacist had asked some questions that had been unnervingly accurate. Flushed cheeks, slightly jerky movements? I had agreed under her soft interrogation, my memory of Marina remarkably clear for someone I had only met for a few moments.

  As I walked up to the platform to take a transport across the city, I also recalled my father asking after my health that evening at dinner. He too had been oddly
persistent, checking I was taking my vertigo meds, but I had laughed it off, teasing him for his excessive care of me. Had he known about the cough bottle? Had he thought it was for me? I couldn’t imagine why as I was clearly quite well.

  I felt unsettled as I took my seat to head west and home. Had my action been watched and observed? Was that why my father was asking about my health for no apparent reason? Why had Oban and Marina been hiding her illness? Who was it they were so scared of?

  I stared out of the window, my mind racing. Usually the journey across the city was one of my greatest pleasures, whizzing through the teeming galleried warren of Londinium, millions of citizens busily going about their day, toiling at the lower levels, ascending into homes in the great scrapers. So many lives full of unknown joys and unknown dramas. Now all I could think of was one single citizen whose life I might have unwittingly made harder.

  I had been trying to help. Had I blindly done the opposite? I cursed my ignorance, reproach washing through me. Had my blithe dance through life meant that I had hurt someone else? Devyn was right, I was a fool. Stupid, stupid, I berated myself.

  Devyn.

  Perhaps I could repair the damage I had done. Cover the tracks I had left to their door. If anyone could help it would be him. I still had his device, but I couldn’t afford to wait until he broke and approached me. I would have to swallow my pride and ask him for help.

  At the forum over the next few days, I kept my eyes peeled but went from distant sightings to none at all. Didn’t he plan to complete civics? Without a pass, it was not possible to graduate and become a full citizen. Or to travel around the Empire, as I assumed was his plan.

  I was due back at Oban’s for a fitting the day after. I really needed to catch Devyn before that. To understand what I had done and how to fix it.

  Oban and Marina had been terrified. Whatever line I had inadvertently crossed, it was bad. The thought of something happening to the dark-haired urchin was more than I could bear. Devyn had to be around somewhere but how to flush him out? Would the ploy I had used with Felix work a second time, I wondered? It would be infinitely more damaging to be seen flirting with a boy in the forum than it had been in the privacy of my own home at a party. My reputation would definitely suffer this time. Besides which there was no guarantee that Devyn was watching anymore – he had said as much himself – now that I definitely wasn’t the girl he was looking for. I felt strangely bereft at the thought. I shook my head.

  In my first class, I asked Ambrose and Ginevra if they had seen him that morning. Ambrose thought he had but the closer I questioned him, the less sure he became. Maybe it hadn’t been Devyn, maybe it had been someone else.

  The more people I asked, the stronger this pattern appeared. Some people couldn’t recall seeing him in weeks, others had spoken to him that morning, but the topic escaped them, and then they became less sure they had seen him at all. How did he do that? Under any kind of focus, Devyn became even more mysterious as he deflected such scrutiny.

  As I circled the forum at lunch hunting my elusive prey, I spotted that there were some mangos and bananas to be had. Pleased, I broke off my search to acquire a drink.

  I thanked the vendor as he handed me the fresh smoothie, tapping my wrist in payment and bringing the straw to my lips with a sigh of pleasure. I loved the tang and exoticness of these fruits that travelled so far to wind up in the Londinium markets; they were expensive but oh so worth it.

  “What do you want?”

  I jumped at the dark low growl behind me. I turned straight into the solid chest of Devyn Agrestis. I looked up at him as he glowered down from his superior height.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said softly back, my lips barely moving, not even removing the straw in the hopes it would obscure my words to anyone who might be watching.

  Devyn reached behind me and picked up a mango, turning it in his long fingers, a slight thinning of the lips the only indication he had heard me.

  “You have something for me?” he asked lightly with a meaningful emphasis on something.

  “No.” I shook my head, before realising he meant the device. My body relaxed slightly; I had something to trade with. He would have to help me. “That is, I mean, yes. Sure, if you help me.”

  Still not looking at me, he raised a brow in query.

  “I’ve done something stupid,” I confessed under my breath. “That is, I think I have. I bought some cough medicine for someone.”

  I broke off as the graceful fingers dropped the mango on the floor, and the vendor exclaimed loudly in wrath at the sight of his delicious and costly wares being so poorly treated.

  Devyn apologised profusely before backing away, completely ignoring me. Stunned, I turned back to the vendor who had started to complain loudly about clumsy young men. I shrugged – nothing to do with me – and the vendor turned to his waiting customers, a trapped audience more sympathetic to his plight. Turning, I scowled in annoyance.

  Damn it, he was gone.

  I hadn’t taken two steps before I felt a light touch on my fingers.

  “We can’t talk here,” he said. “Come with me.”

  “Where to?” I protested, until he took my hand and, as easily as that, I found myself going with him. Because I wanted his help or because I liked the sensation of his skin touching mine, I did not know.

  Any and all attempts to talk as we hurried across the city were silenced immediately by a harsh glare. I trailed behind, no idea where we were going, our direction too directly east to be headed to our usual park, and fumed silently.

  I said nothing as we passed through the Bishopsgate – the northeast part of the city had more Christian churches than the Olympian temples nearer the river. I had never been in the area before and grew increasingly nervous as we walked further and further away from the inner wall, the area feeling distinctly seedier than the district Oban lived in. This was the deepest darkest stews, less the busy bustle of those who were poor but struggling to keep themselves above water, more the sinister sluggishness of those who were likelier to pull you down with them than look for a hand up. There were fewer people on the streets which made it seem even odder that nobody approached us to beg, even though with our fine clothes we stood out. A lot. Devyn held my hand firmly as we swept along, his step confident and powerful, his features stronger and more defined. And yet people here barely looked our way.

  Finally, Devyn stopped and, pulling a piece of metal from his pocket, he inserted it into a hole in the door and we slipped inside and up the creaky beaten-down stairs until he stopped once more and repeated the exercise.

  As we walked through the second door, he released my hand and my sense of security melted away, leaving me bereft and deep inside an area where I would never have agreed to go in the full presence of my wits. I was nervous enough about Oban’s home, only two streets away from the old wall; the outer wall was way beyond my comfort zone.

  “Caesar wept.” I looked wildly around the room. “Where in Hades are we? I can’t believe you. My father will kill me if he finds out I’m here.”

  I really was in trouble. My parents were reasonably lenient but the northeastern section of the outer wall was most certainly out of bounds. How had he managed to do that? I had just walked across the city, directly into the worst reaches of the stews, because some boy had held my hand.

  “Your father would be a little upset at a lot of your recent activities, princess,” Devyn said with a smirk. And then in a testing tone, he added, “Was it me who led you here? Or was it you?”

  “What… what does that mean?” I lingered near the door as he strode into the small, dimly lit room.

  “Tea? Water?” he offered.

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t want a cup of your cursed tea.”

  “Please sit down, Cass,” he said, waving at the shabby couch in what I supposed was a kitchen area. It looked like it would most definitely leave a stain on my skirt.

  “Uh, no thanks. I’m fine standing.”<
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  Devyn took a step towards me, lifting my hand and drawing me into the room, manoeuvring me until I stood in front of the grubby seat, at which point he pushed lightly on my shoulder and I found myself yet again in a place I hadn’t agreed to be. I looked up at him, smug and so different from the mild Devyn everyone else still saw. He was intelligent and strong, far from the effete elite he affected to be most of the time. I saw through it. I saw him.

  A fury I was utterly unfamiliar with overtook me. I was practically shaking with rage as I stood and crossed the room to him.

  “Enough.” My voice was sufficiently raised that there was every chance they could hear me back at the forum. “What are you doing to me? Why am I here? Who in Hades are you, Devyn? This is… this isn’t just about that device, you… you’re doing things that aren’t possible. Don’t you dare tell me that I’m imagining it. I know what I’ve seen. You are a lie, a complete and utter fraud. I don’t know how you do it or why but that piece of tech is the least of it.”

  I had his tall, lean body backed against the wall but quick as a flash he grabbed me, reversing our positions, so I was the one with my back to the wall, him looming over me.

  “Quiet,” he hissed. “Lower your voice.”

  I glared mutinously up at him, my mouth opening to begin round two.

  “No, Cass. Stop.”

  He was now uncomfortably close, my attempts to push away from the wall into the confining space between us bringing our bodies into intimate contact, a fact I was fairly sure he hadn’t missed.

  The tension dropped from me as he gently brushed aside the hair that had tumbled across my face and tucked it behind my ear.

  “Can you keep your voice down?” he asked gently.

  I nodded, and he stepped away with a heavy exhale, running his fingers through his thick hair. A flash of uncertainty briefly crossed his face.

  “You can’t shout like that. You’ll draw attention to the flat and after I’ve explained, you’ll understand why that is something we can do without. I’m guessing you’ve already done more than enough.”