It was absurd, of course. The people of Celaena had shunned faith thousands of years ago and exhausted, extricated it from their history in the great purge. None of the other Astral partook in such ridiculous pursuits.
Didn't her father worry about more important things?
Her family was the poorest of the five; their influence was small and their contingent of singers was almost non-existent. She thought her father played with fire given the that conflict between the families that had simmered since the end of the war, the blame placed at her family’s feet.
The conflict had grown even hotter after recent events. A herald had arrived before her expedition from the city-home bearing news of murders at House Rayn. Two Starsingers assassinated! She and her father had spent hours discussing the ramifications of the message. Who could kill a singer but another singer? The Arbiters, defiant, could do such a thing, in theory, but to what end? In truth, they would never break their tenets. The Houses blamed each other, of course, elevating already boiling tensions.
She’d wandered through the Nightmarkets unaware while extrapolating on the political consequences of an Astral assassination, following lights and voices without direction or purpose and oblivious to where her feet took her. Now she walked in a place with narrowed and darkened streets, and quieter voices.
“Miss, miss, you must come in. Come see Lady Luvanna and the wonders inside, yes, come see!” Ahryn turned to the cracking voice of an older woman whispering at her from the doorstep of her shop, which looked to be full of finery of all sorts. “Oh my, is that a constellation on your blouse? I didn't see before, no, no, but an Astral in my shop? What a day indeed!”
Ahryn hadn't actually entered the woman's shop, but she felt compelled and stepped up off the street onto the wooden planks at the doorstep. The older woman stood before her, much shorter with a rounded back and toothless grin, ghoulish except for the kindness in her eyes.
“Don't see many Astral in the Nightmarkets these days, miss—too many clouds these days, miss. Not safe for you in the shifter, miss, no, no, not safe at all. Of course, you must sing the star—don't you?—but unsafe still. Never mind, never mind, you are safe here with me. What can I get for you, Lady Astral? Somethin' nice for the betrothals, maybe? But no, of course, what am I saying. You're a Ferai! No betrothals for you, I gather. Hmmmmm, something nice to wear, then? If you don't know now, no matter, I invite you to look! Yes, please, come and look around, Lady Astral, won't you?”
The woman rambled worse than the cloudwatchers during a storm. As Ahryn moved into her shop, her fingers traced a charred pattern that had been branded into the door-frame, a square with a crescent moon inside.
How did I end up in shifter square?
She'd not been here before, this rumored black corner of the Nightmarkets, below standard even for the starless, a haven for those seeking to launder stolen tokens or buy their way out of the path of an Arbiter.
Despite the gloomy mood and atmosphere within shifter square, the haggard woman's shop was decorated nicely and clean. Ahryn walked between dresses and blouses and tested the quality of fabrics between her finger and thumb. The material was more often than not thick and deftly woven. She didn’t want to purchase anything, but kept the shop in mind next for her next wardrobe augment.
Why am I here?
“Will you buy, miss, will you? A token, or two, yes, yes, please. Breads and milks, too much today, more tomorrow. So unfair, so unfair.”
Ahryn softened her face, aware of her status. The other Astral would have barked, or simply bought the woman’s lease and run her into destitution, but the Ferai carried themselves differently.
“I'm afraid I'm not interested in your fabrics, madame.”
“Oh no, fabrics are not all, you will see, you will. Five minutes, I return. You will wait, yes? Yes, you will wait.”
The woman's pleas masked her curious speech, but Ahryn sensed the desperation behind them. She should buy something, if only to ensure the woman ate. So, she waited.
True to her word, the woman returned in five minutes. In her arms, she carried a bundle of dusty books—old, tattered, bound in a sort of vellum. Much different from the newly printed volumes of the Doctrine sitting on every shelf in the seminary. Was that a star on one of the covers?
“You see, you see, these are valuable, yes, very valuable indeed. Old, hidden.”
“And expensive, I take it?”
The woman gave a toothless grin, the blackness of her mouth an eerie sight. “So it is, my lady, but a deal you shall have, yes, yes, four tokens for the lot. Only four, very good deal, I think. You buy, will you buy?”
Ahryn shrugged. To her, four tokens meant nothing—pocket change for the high-tier boats that traversed the islands or down Celaena’s channels. To the shopkeeper, four tokens may have been the difference between another day of bread and milk or starving to death. She nodded, holding out her hands, four tokens in her palm. The shopkeeper said nothing, but tears quickly formed in her eyes. Ahryn traded for the bundle of books—heavier than they looked—and stowed them in her satchel, then said goodbye to the haggard shopkeeper and stepped back into shifter square.
She forgot the books, immediately returning her thoughts to brewing dissent between the Astral. Learning to sing would not be enough; she needed to master the star. Her family and her House depended on her. She’d decided while standing alone in the shadowed market corner. The shrine was probably lovely—the Patron had spent enough of their tokens erecting the structure— but she had no time for frolicking and detours to sate her father. She found the northern star and oriented herself, then set off through the streets to the western docks for a boat to take her to the seminary. The Doctrine awaited, and with it her starlight.
Ezai stood with arms crossed and head bowed low, inspecting patterns of pooled blood mixed with spilled ale. The liquids swirled together, creating mesmerizing patterns on the floor. He'd seen bodies like these only hours earlier, a brother and sister gashed and punctured by a serrated blade. While the sibling’s corpses had been cold, left overnight, these five dead men scattered unceremoniously through the alehouse still radiated warmth, their deaths recent.
So, the killer remains in the city, task apparently unfinished.
No one had sent a missive to the Order in search of justice for these men. He'd been bonded in person, face to face, by a hysterical woman running through the streets and yelling at him as he drifted through the channels on the way back to the Keep.
Unfortunately, he’d not been silhouetted against the almost fallen sun and hadn’t been able to mask his passing from the woman. The tenets discouraged personal bonds, and strict adherence required absolute impartiality. Solicitation of a specific Arbiter ran afoul of first principles. Further, allowing Arbiters to be hand chosen threatened an imbalance of justice. Only three hundred and sixty families made up the order, so there were a limited number of disciples to send into a city teeming with life and elsewhere through the islands—not enough by far to engage in favors or respond to specific requests.
He'd chided himself for heeding the woman's pleas and diverting from his path, docking the boat, and listening to her frantic screams as he’d allowed himself to be bonded. Taking Sotma’s call had breached his code to never accept a direct summons, despite the Lion's approval; now he’d accepted two in the same day.
Had he slipped so far, indulging in two direct bonds in a single day after a lifetime of self-imposed obedience? Perhaps Veydun spoke true and the Order's rigidity was archaic, surpassed by the modern Arbiter whose flexibility allowed for a greater reach.
No, the pursuit of wealth and personal gain was too dangerous a path, its allure a reality of life to be resisted.
Father, forgive me.
The internal battle raged within even as he knelt beside the first of the recently departed starless at his feet, a millworker, the woman's husband—Dwindo, she had called him. She'd said as much as she dragged him with her words on their way to
the alehouse, the Five Constellations. He'd not heard of it, just one more drinkery among so many similar establishments scattered throughout the districts.
It was an interesting name, suggestive. It invoked a hint of the faith. The Ferai had recently seized on the growing current of celestial worship running through the starless by opening a shrine in the quarries, one of the poorest areas in Celaena. Upon hearing the news, he'd not displayed the same shock as his Brothers and Sisters. No, he saw it for what it was—a clever move to gain power in the city through means other than command of the star. The Ferai were not rich with singers.
The woman sat in the corner, sniffling back what tears remained in her eyes. He'd not let her near Dwindo’s body while he inspected, and she’d whimpered, rebuked, but his bond obligated him to vindicate the wrongs she suffered, not console her or sympathize with her pain. It was a harsh reality for the disciples of the Order, to be so close to pain, day after day, yet having to disassociate and compartmentalize. No wonder many of the starless thought them nothing more than animated stone, devoid of compassion.
Dwindo lay face-down in a swirled puddle of ale, blood, and his own filth. Metal ingots and several nine-sided dice lay around him, all showing the same symbol, the game unmistakable. But only worshippers played Celestial, and Ezai didn’t see any constellations near any of the bodies. Perhaps these men were new to the faith and had yet to receive their robes.
“Tell me what you see.”
His father's voice echoed in his mind. Something was wrong. His eyes saw something and triggered his subconscious.
“Look harder.”
There, the dice. Five of them, one for each body.
He’d played games of Celestial as a child in the Keep, a part of his tutelage, the Order intent to teach him the perils of faith as an introduction to the purge. From what he recalled, each player adopted the role of an apostle of the Bringer, any one of the seven, and held a colored sphere representing the apostle's star. Each player took turns arranging metal ingots in an array around their star in an orbit to determine their star’s progression. The nine sides of each dice represented the phases of stellar evolution, from birth to death. But the game used only two dice.
Did the killer intentionally place these beside the bodies?
Ezai picked up the dice and they rattled in his plated palm. On inspection he saw no difference between them, but the dice themselves were unimportant. All sides showed nova, the final state in the star's evolution. Death. Was it as simple as one nova for each dead man, a symbol of their life being taken?
He stood straight and looked at the scene. Next to Dwindo, two other men lay dead, their names unknown. One appeared to be a straw-worker, rough and ragged, so fitting in an establishment like the Five Constellations. But the third man wore a baker's apron. Strange for a commoner of higher strata to be found in these parts. In the end, however, it didn't matter. The Houses considered all starless to be the same, even their cast outs, so why should it worry him if they intermingled in the districts. No, nothing about the baker had invited this slaughter. The other two dead men—a chanter and the alekeep—may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Tell me what you see.”
His father's voice reverberated in his mind. The woman in the corner whimpered as he reached down to Dwindo's body and rolled it over. There. He saw it now. Rips in the man's clothing, raked by a weapon eerily familiar. Blood pooled near his neck, and there Ezai found a single puncture wound. He removed his gauntlet and ran a finger over the ruptured skin, feeling the jagged indents left by a serrated blade. Ezai mindlessly checked the other men and found they’d died the same way. Why here? What link between these men and the Rayn children?
“You must look deeper, child.”
He thought on the dice and considered the nova, and what the additions represented. This was more than just wanton murder; this was a statement, a direct attack on the faith. First had been the Astral children, and now innocent believers. A black metal arrow floated in his mind, as did old memories of the bedtime stories his father used to tell. He needed to get back to the Keep, return to the Order, and seek wisdom from the Lion—from the ancient texts stowed in the arcanum.
He moved back to the front of the alehouse and addressed the crying woman. “I am truly sorry for your loss. Here,” he reached into his robes and removed several tokens, handing them to the woman, “these should be enough to see to his last rights, and to ensure you land on your feet. It will not replace him, but it will help. You may send word to the Keep if you wish to seek updates on my progress. I am bonded now, and you will have justice.”
With that, he left to find a boat to take him back home.
Takha woke up shivering. He pulled his straw-weave blankets tight and kicked his legs until he managed to wrap the bottom edge under his feet, cocooning himself. The night brought a deep chill, as it often did. He'd not been raised in the city and had never acclimated to the hot days and cool nights, finding it a personal torture to undergo such severe changes in the weather on a moment's notice. His body, though still young and relatively healthy, constantly ached, and his allergies reacted accordingly.
After several moments cursing the stars at bringing another morning, he rose and began his routine. He grabbed his lodging gown, made of thick wool but rife with frays and tatters, and hastily put it on. It was so different from the finery he wore for the treasury, but thin, fragile silkweave was not meant to shield against the morning cold. He descended a rickety flight of wooden stairs and grabbed a stone pitcher, then left his home and walked south across the courtyard, heading toward a water station. The mechanism was a simple winch and lever, set below raised pipes traveling over the city from west to east and over open waters to the Empyrean Mountains, from where it funneled glacial runoff.
He reached the station and deposited a token, unlocking the lever. He then activated the lever, which opened a valve and allowed water to trickle down. The lever slammed back into a locked position before his pitcher was completed filled, and he scowled. Lately, prices had been steadily rising. Nevertheless, he walked back to his home, taking deep swigs of the cool liquid. When he reached his door, he lifted each of his feet to brush off dirt. He refused to devolve into true starless filth and ensured to always present himself as pristinely as possible, in home and in self. Inside, he poured half of the pitcher into a basin in the kitchen, then quickly exited again, stepping back onto his porch with pitcher still in hand.
His home was located in the inward row in the Rayn quint, not far from the inner channel circling the Nightmarkets. Most nights, if he looked out his bedroom window, he could see from his window the liveliness of the patronage in the Nightmarkets, the glows of different-colored lights and the motion of hundreds, if not thousands of shoppers and revelers. Some nights he saw the fiery explosion of starlight, expelled by an Astral who had braved the throng of starless to perform for them and was met with raucous cheering of sycophants. The sight always soured his mood, causing terrible dreams, and he would rise the next day unrested.
Nevertheless, he made his way to the Nightmarkets, looking forward to the morning emptiness and lack of people. Silence, quiet, cleanliness. While most vendors did not open their doors until later in the afternoon, the bakeries ran early, spinning fresh bread from new shipments of wheat—even the coveted harvest from House Lokka, whose bread tasted sweeter and sat in the stomach less heavy. It also cost a small fortune, especially these days.
But he just needed to eat. As he crossed one of the bridges over the inner channel, the smell of fresh-baked goods drifted into his nose and washed out the ever-present pungency of unwashed starless lingering even this far inward.
“Morning, Mister Shun. Two loaves?” The baker at his preferred store greeted him with the same cheeriness every morning, though he never returned the sentiment. Instead he nodded and fished several tokens from the pockets of his wool gown, then handed them over. He brought the loaves he now clutched t
o his nose and inhaled deeply, a brief moment of serenity in his otherwise hateful life.
The shadow man’s blunt threat from the past night hindered his sleep. When first conscripted, cornered in an alley by a white-eyed demon, he was only tasked with bringing disarray to Astral supply lines, slowly degrading the singers' control over the city and destabilizing the economy. Takha's own fury for the Astral tainted the manner in which he held himself, his every word carrying a hint of it. So, he willingly agreed to conspire with the shadow man, despite his personal disgust at going into business with such an individual. Such subterfuge appealed to him and allowed him to draw on his talents.
But now, Takha needed to embark on a covert mission as if a spy or soldier, to infiltrate and destroy the Ferai's new faith. It did not sit well with him at all, the possibility of capture too great. He’d sacrificed many things in his rotten life to get to his stratum; it would be incredibly simple to throw it all away with one misstep.
Still, the shadow man's logic seemed sound. The faith needed to be prevented from spreading under the guidance of Astral, especially not the leadership of the pious House Ferai. The faith needed to cement its place in the Dominion with a faithful populace behind them—a holy army of worshipers rendering a purge of Astral all but impossible.
These thoughts plagued him as he returned over the bridge and through the courtyard, back again to his house until he sat at his table, chewing on fresh bread and drinking cool glacial water. After breakfast he stripped himself of his wool gown then neatly folded it and placed it aside, readying the garment to be washed in the laundry channels. He grabbed the basin of water and went to a corner of his home where the floor inclined to a center point, then poured the remaining water over his head, feeling it run down his body. He began scrubbing with a straw-weave brush, removing the grime from the night as well as the taint from his sojourn into the Nightmarkets. He missed proper showers; they were just memories from long ago still fresh in his mind, before he had arrived in Celaena. He bared his teeth at the starless equivalent. The dirt and stench were removed, to be sure, but his skin was always left raw and red, and never entirely clean. He grabbed a straw-towel and began patting himself down. Once dry, he put on a set of clean moonlight robes, locked his front door, and walked north toward the treasury.
Remember the Dawn Page 7