Secrets of the Starcrossed

by Clara O'Connor

  I spent hours at a time with Devyn watching the patrols go by the coffee house nearest the warehouses on Shad Thames. I plagued Devyn with questions about life outside the walls. I had never been beyond Londinium – had he? How did he know people to send Linus and now Marina to? On certain topics he was utterly intractable and it was infuriating. He had warned me against searching online. Now was not the time to start showing an interest in the world beyond the walls.

  But that time of watching and waiting was over now. Devyn was moving the date up… to tonight. I sucked in a breath. I’d already had my nails done this week, a beautiful cerise shade with a light diamante finish, so what else did I have to do with my evening?

  I touched the disk hanging off the chain around my neck, rubbing my thumb against the faint engraving inside. Noticing, Devyn raised his eyes to mine, frowning questioningly. I shook my head. I didn’t have anything to say, it was just becoming something of a nervous habit when I felt… well, nervous.

  Still holding the pendant in my fingers, thus ensuring no one was listening in, I gathered my scattered thoughts.

  “Everything is in place?” I asked. For all that Devyn had involved me in his scheme, he had been sketchy on the details. I wasn’t sure if this was because he didn’t trust me with them, or because the plan was still coming together.

  His eyes searched mine briefly before nodding as if satisfied with what he saw there.

  “Yes, everything is ready.” His long fingers tracked back and forth across his wristband. “We’ve got to do it this evening. I’ve been monitoring the sentinels’ database. They know Marina is sick. She’s going to be picked up so I’ve hidden her at Linus’s place until we can get her out. The new timeframe limits our options. I’m afraid you’re going to be more involved than I had hoped. We need to move fast.”

  I waited, but apparently that was all I was getting for now.

  “Do you need the…” I hesitated, despite Devyn’s promise that the pendant would conceal any use of words the authorities were listening for. Now that I knew they were listening, I was reluctant to take the risk. “…Notes I took for you the other week in Reformation class?”

  Devyn raised a brow.

  “Yes, Cass, the notes you took for me will come in most handy. Are they at your home?”

  “No, the forum. If I take the monorail I can be there and back in an hour.” I scowled. “If you’d told me you needed them this evening I could have brought the notes with me.”

  “I didn’t know myself until an hour or so ago,” Devyn explained quietly. “Do you need me to come with you?”

  I shook my head and stood up from the table, grabbing my bag from where it lay slung over the back of the chair.

  “I’m fairly certain I can make it to and from the forum without an escort. I’ll meet you there?” I checked. By now I was reasonably confident of finding my way to Linus’s on my own.

  Somebody was following me. I hadn’t seen anyone, but I was pretty sure of it. The monorail platform had been quiet when I got there. Not terribly surprising as it wasn’t the cheapest mode of transport. I had recently become aware that it wasn’t a cost that fit comfortably into the budgets of those who lived between the walls. It bypassed the guarded gates of the inner eastern wall, making crossing town a relatively simple affair without the admittedly remote possibility of being pulled aside to have my papers checked. When I changed lines and was boarding the second train, something made me stop and turn as I was about to get on the train. Nothing out of the ordinary, I told myself, trying to dismiss my feelings of paranoia.

  As I took my seat on the near-empty train, I held my bag closer to my body. I’m imagining it, I repeated to myself as the transport whizzed through a tunnel. I felt a little dazed this evening, struggling to contain my thoughts, which felt loose inside my head. I needed to focus, and not on what I was about to do. My stomach fizzed with nerves as it was.

  I looked past my reflection out to the city beyond as the monorail wove its way through the urban maze. I busied my mind by identifying the styles of the many layers of the city outside the window: the austerity of the lower layers spoke to the strict rule of Governor Garai; the arches of the great conquering Governor Varian; the swirling towers were favoured during the period of Governor Jerolin when really the more practical procurator had controlled the city in everything but architecture; the whimsical fancies and decorations from the short-lived Emperor Dorian; the military austerity and transparency of the post-reformation era during the wars which had left an indelible mark on entire levels in the upper part of the city. Since the Reformation, the solidity and privacy afforded by stone had given way almost entirely to glass. The open galleries crisscrossing the city at that level allowed passersby to see into homes, eschewing privacy in an architectural statement that each citizen was content to be on display, perfectly at ease living transparently within the Code.

  Me, not so much anymore.

  But could fear and paranoia account for the vague sensation of being watched that I couldn’t seem to shake? The feeling almost overwhelmed me as I pulled the book from the shelf at the forum and retrieved the device from its spine.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of the train door closing. Marina was counting on me. I had promised Devyn I could do this alone.

  What was wrong with me? I put my head in my hands.

  I was travelling across the city carrying illegal tech in my pocket which I was going to deliver into the hands of someone I knew would use it to hack through the firewalls. Once I delivered it to him, I was going to help him get a sick girl out of the city before the sentinels came for her.

  I had lost my mind. Of course I felt like I was being watched. I was going to end up standing in front of the praetor as the entire city sat in judgement of the undeniable evidence of me knowingly helping him commit crime after crime.

  I believed in the Code. I had always lived by it. Being a good citizen was as natural to me as breathing and I expected to graduate with flying colours. Yet, over the last weeks, I had aided and abetted crimes that introduced chaos into the Code.

  More troubling was that I was doing it all for a boy… a boy I thought about all the time.

  I didn’t understand the way I acted with Devyn. I couldn’t help myself. I touched him all the time. My fingers brushed his as he handed me a coffee. I touched his arm when I asked him a question or when he made me laugh with his unexpected teasing humour. I didn’t like others in my space, yet I had traced his chest, head, face, arms within days of meeting him. Was I really risking everything I had for Marina’s sake as I had been telling myself, or for his?

  For a boy who provoked me. Disturbed my comfortable life.

  Told me I was not a citizen.

  Dared to ask more of me.

  I couldn’t stop myself. He kept showing me the boundaries to my cage, the lines of my world, and I kept crossing them. This was not the way of the Code. This was not the way of a girl already promised elsewhere. Once Marina was safe, I would have to return to my own life. Away from Devyn.

  Before it was too late.

  If it wasn’t already.

  Chapter Eight

  Having applied the finishing touches, I sat back to admire my handiwork.

  “Take a look.”

  Marina’s face lit up as she caught her reflection in the dirty mirror at Linus’s place, her usually wan face a picture of health and wealth, which was more important than ever in order to move openly throughout the city. I looked back over my shoulder at her fretting brother.

  “Look, Oban.” She touched her face in wonder as she turned back once more to the mirror.

  “You look beautiful, Mari.” Oban took a step forward, his hand coming to rest on his sister’s shoulder as he turned her back to face him. His hand rose to touch her face as if to prove to himself that the vision before him was real, a temptation I quickly quashed, slapping his hand away.

  “Don’t you dare undo all my hard work,” I scold
ed, my tartness covering up the welling emotion at the tender scene. Even though I was risking so much to help Marina, somehow seeing her dressed like a mini version of myself made her seem more real, her dark hair wrapped like a crown atop her head, her silver eyes bright. She looked beautiful, elegant… elite.

  As individual as she was, in all her adorable, fierce, prickly self I realised I had mostly still seen Marina as a street urchin, someone to aid but not really someone who was the same as me. I flicked a look up at Devyn, who was always so adept at reading my true feelings. I hoped he couldn’t see into my soul at this moment but he too was absorbed in the scene before us.

  Yes, I was helping Marina, and tonight I would be risking a great deal to do so, but really, up until this moment, the little girl had remained other. A diversion from the straight path through shops and the pretty, petty things with which I filled my day. Something I could point to and say, there, see, I did something unselfish and risky and proved that I am a better person than I might at first appear to be. Demonstrating my compassion to my lesser man. Or to Devyn, perhaps.

  I unhooked a piece of hair from my elaborate updo and pulled it to my lips to hide the tremble that was emerging there.

  What had I been thinking? I wasn’t dallying here; this was no food run into the stews. I would throw myself under a hackney bus to save Marina. In fact, if tonight didn’t come off, I would have failed to protect her and I knew I would never get over it.

  Squaring my shoulders, I tucked the lock of hair back into place, impeccable once more.

  Devyn nodded, his expression grave. There was sorrow at the back of those dark eyes, empathy perhaps, for the girl about to go into exile, leaving behind all she knew. She was only twelve, too young to leave home, but at least she wouldn’t be alone. Oban was reluctantly leaving the other two children in his mother’s care. He couldn’t risk staying once Marina disappeared. One transgression might be forgiven but two would be fatal. Marina obviously couldn’t stay though I still wasn’t entirely sure what happened to the sick who got picked up by the sentinels. Devyn said he didn’t know but I guessed he was hiding the answer from me. For my own protection or for his?

  “Right, we need to make a move.” He crouched down to Marina, his hand smoothing back the intricate elite style I had given her, careful not to touch the makeup that disguised her illness. “Are you ready?”

  Marina stood, her chin lifted, and she gave him a solemn single nod.

  His dark eyes flicked up at me.

  Mirroring Marina’s conviction, I too gave a single nod and swallowed my fear.

  “Good.”

  A single word of encouragement. A nice speech wouldn’t have gone astray, something more than one bloody word. Anything to delay walking out of this room and irrevocably putting everything on the line. My life as I knew it, Marina’s actual life, both of the men’s lives. If Oban made it out through the outer gate before nightfall, he was free and clear. It was up to Devyn and me to deliver his sister safely to him on the other side. Walking through the gate was not an option as Shadower children were never issued papers granting them access to the city; there was simply no need. Adults came into the city to trade or work but their children remained firmly outside the walls. And no citizen ever left the safety of the walls for the Shadowlands. It was unthinkable

  Oban patted his top pocket for what must have been the hundredth time since I had arrived earlier that evening. The papers resting there were one side of the key to his escape from the city, documents that proclaimed him a Shadower, permission granted to enter and exit the city during daylight hours.

  The other half of that key lay in the heart of Devyn’s device and his ability to inject some chaos into the Code and plant a corresponding file that verified the papers. I had seen someone fail that verification a few years earlier. I wasn’t sure what happened to Shadowers found within the walls without the right documents as they were not tried publicly like citizens. But the woman the sentinels had caught that day had not gone quietly. Her screaming had haunted my dreams for weeks after, despite my father’s assurances that it was a legal matter which far from warranted such fuss.

  I had never quite been able to gloss over the fear that sat at the core of those screams.

  I went over and patted Oban’s papers for myself, my hand resting on his briefly.

  I met his grey eyes, so like his sister’s.

  “Good luck.” I smiled as encouragingly as I could with the replay of that woman’s arrest rattling around in my head.

  Oban smiled his shy grin.

  “Don’t you worry about me, love, you got enough to do yourself. You get my Mari through this night and there is nothing I will refuse you from now till the day I draw my last breath.”

  He looked directly at me, for once not showing the bowed-head deference those in this part of the city usually showed the elite, his eyes locked with mine as he made a vow I knew to be more than just mere words. It was unlikely I would hold him to it, for once out he could never return to the city. I would never see either of them again.

  He extended his arm in farewell in what I vaguely recognised as the Briton version of a handshake, ready for his life beyond the walls. I awkwardly responded in kind. He gripped me on my forearm and I felt a pulse along the touching veins of our inner wrists.

  “Don’t take any chances you don’t need to,” Devyn ordered us all.

  I nodded. There was a small chance my voice wasn’t quite as steady as I would like it to be. I saw no immediate need to communicate that to the rest of the room.

  “Get through the East End as quickly as you can; you’ll stick out more the further you get into Stepney.” He nodded towards Marina but looked at me. “You need to look like you know where you’re going. Let her guide you.”

  I nodded again.

  “Don’t take any transports; you’ll be tracked. Better if nobody is able to follow your activity this evening”—he paused—“just in case…”

  We got caught. No need to finish that particular sentence.

  “Cass, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m listening, straight through, no transports. No dawdling when we get to the river, up the quays, through the XVII wharf, meet your friend, get to the end of the tunnel, and wait for you.” I gave him my most confident withering stare.

  “Right then.” He nodded.

  No matter how many times we went over it, Devyn clearly didn’t think I had the compos mentis to retain the plan. He’d gone over it and over it. We were ready.

  It wasn’t really the plan he had a problem with. It was me. Devyn had made it very clear that he didn’t like my being so involved. If Marina hadn’t deteriorated so rapidly in the last few days and come to the attention of the authorities, he would be following the original plan, a better plan that didn’t involve me. The checks through the eastern reaches of the river had tighter security due to the presence of non-citizens on the boats. To minimise the risk we were going to board beyond the old wall in a blind spot so there was no record of our passing. As a merchant’s daughter, if we were stopped I could provide a reason for us to be in the Docklands, and as an elite, it was unlikely I would be questioned anyway. As far as anyone was concerned, we were two sisters going to meet our father at his place of work.

  I gathered up my coat and handed Marina’s to Oban so he could help her into it, my old jacket slightly dated but refreshed thanks to Oban’s skill with needle and thread. Devyn had ruled out any purchasing of clothes for Marina. It would be recorded and I would have a hard time explaining why I had bought a top-to-toe outfit for a twelve-year-old. Instead, I’d clambered into the storeroom when my parents were out at a social function last week and rooted through the boxes stored there until I found suitable clothes, shoes, and accessories to create the impression that Marina was every bit as elite as me. As long as she didn’t open her mouth, we’d be fine.

  Oban had his arms wrapped around his sister like a man afraid he would never see her ag
ain, which was a reasonable fear.

  Marina gave him a kiss on the cheek and untangled her arms from around his neck.

  “It’s fine, Oban, we’ll be fine. Cassandra will look after me. I’ll see you in a little while.” She gave him a wide smile which her brother returned.

  “Right you are, scrap.” He looked over at me. “You take care of her, donna.”

  “I will.”

  “Oh, wait.” Oban indicated a large box that I hadn’t noticed in the otherwise bare rooms, sitting on the floor under the table. “I finished it. I hope it fits right.”

  The dress that I had ordered from him weeks earlier, and which I had forgotten in all the subsequent drama. I nodded my thanks distractedly. With that, I hooked Marina’s arm in mine and stole one last look at Devyn, who still looked extremely displeased with the whole situation. Well, tough. I was the only person for the job and if he couldn’t accept it that was his problem. Sweeping round him, we exited the small room and headed down the rickety stairs into the late afternoon.

  We wound our way along arm in arm, Marina occasionally tugging me discreetly in one direction or another, through the warren of the East End. A wistful glance from my guide alerted me to the presence of a music hall, the tinkling music and laughter wafting out the door into our path as we hurried by. The further we went, the greater the presence of activities and merchandise that I considered quaint, if not outright antiquated – from the sound of the live music to the glimpses of people in the open doors of their homes huddled in front of braziers cooking meals. If I wasn’t so scared I’d be fascinated. We hurried through streets where smiths wielded hammers that sent sparks flying as they went about their craft. The smells were overwhelming, if not downright toxic, as we swept through a street clearly inhabited by candlemakers whose wares were a far cry from the elegant, fragrant spires that occasionally graced my parents’ dining room table, a decorative accompaniment to the powered lighting. I had no idea what went into the making of the candles offered to the masses who couldn’t afford electricity and, shuddering at the acrid smell, I hoped I would never find out.