The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  Yet after several minutes of wandering, he located Iden Street, #327 East. It was a square sandstone building, old but maintained well. He posted the rat across the street to watch.

  Lew was shaking him. Dante reverted to his own eyes.

  Cee strode across the roof, scarves fluttering from her hand. "Get pretty and let's go."

  Dante wrapped one around his neck. "I don't think we should all go. There aren't many people down there. We'll be too conspicuous."

  "I'll stay," Lew volunteered.

  "I'm going," Cee said. "No way I'm sitting around on the roof while you explore a hidden city."

  "I suppose my presence is mandatory," Ast said.

  "Which leaves me on the roof," Somburr said. "I'm not sure that's wise. You always treat things too lightly."

  Dante laughed. "Because I don't spend so much time looking over my shoulder that my feet get screwed into the ground?"

  "Because of the attitude displayed by statements like that." He pressed his lips together. "You have ways to reach me if you find trouble."

  "Whatever we find, you'll hear about it." Dante walked to the roof's stairs. His sword bounced on his hip on the way down. On the ground, he paused to revisit the rat and confirm that at least one of the scattered pedestrians in the undercity was visibly armed, too, and thus they wouldn't be stopped on the spot.

  They crossed the alley to the door. It was firmly locked. Dante swore. Cee produced a kit of metal prongs and got to work. Dante barely had time to look both ways and confirm they weren't being watched before she had it open.

  "I can see we'll have to invest in extra locks around the Citadel," he said.

  He stepped inside the dark, cramped room. It smelled like dust. Once Cee and Ast were in and the door was closed, he shaped the nether into a soft, pale light and moved to the frieze. The white stones bordering its lower edge all felt loose in their fittings. He pressed one, then the one to its right, then the one to its left. Stone ground against itself. Cee whirled around and swore.

  The smell that wafted from below was difficult to place. A little musty, yet also the smell of a dry space that had remained undisturbed for a long time. The scent of inoffensive antiquity. Dante had a conventional lantern, and not wanting to announce to the world that he was a nethermancer, he snuffed his white light and lit the lantern instead.

  He descended the ladder, waited for the others to join him on the platform, then pulled on the rope, swinging the false floor back into place. Nether ready at hand, he headed down the stairs. Halfway down, steps whispered below him. He paused. A man's face appeared in the gloom. Dante resumed walking forward. They passed each other with a faint nod.

  At the bottom, Cee took a quick look around and laughed once. "Why would people live underground?"

  Dante shrugged. "Maybe they don't want people to see what they do here."

  "Maybe they don't want people to know they exist at all," Ast said.

  Dante had kept a bit of his focus on the rat all the while, and as they headed down the cracked pavement of the street, he noticed movement in its vision. Someone was going inside #327.

  "Good news," he murmured. "It's occupied."

  Their clothing drew a few looks from the people walking down the streets, but either the scarves were doing their jobs, or the residents of the sub-city were less xenophobic than Somburr believed. No one attempted to stop them. After several minutes of walking and two wrong turns into dead ends of rock, they stood across from their destination.

  "Well?" Cee said.

  "Hang on a second," Dante muttered.

  "For what? Them to invite you inside their secret underground lair? Walk up and knock."

  "Will do. If they attempt to kill us, I assume you'll have the courtesy to throw yourself on their swords while I run away."

  Before she could say more, he crossed the street. The downstairs windows were shuttered, but lights peeped through the cracks. Candles flickered upstairs. As he neared, laughter burst from inside, startling him. He clenched his teeth and knocked on the front door.

  Chairs scraped. People spoke in furtive voices. Beside him, Cee and Ast met his eyes. He got out a knife and made a quick cut on the top of his forearm.

  "Drop that gods damn knife."

  Dante tipped back his head. People leaned from each of the four upper windows. They bore bow-like weapons, but instead of being held vertically, these weapons were stretched horizontal, secured crosswise on the top of a short shaft. Spiked iron tips reflected the light of the candles.

  Dante lowered his hand and let his knife fall to the sand piled beside the door. "I'm not here to hurt anyone."

  "Really?" the archer said. "Because it looks like you're trying to commit suicide by crossbow. Hands on your head."

  "This is a mistake. The monk sent us."

  Above, the man laughed, giving one of his comrades an incredulous look. "The monk? In that case, let me throw down my weapon."

  "The monk from Corl," Dante said. "He serves at the Shrine of Dirisen."

  The man quit laughing and glanced at the woman in the neighboring window. She shrugged. They hissed something back and forth. The man took on an aggrieved look and withdrew from the window.

  "Stay where you are," the woman said, keeping her bow aimed at Dante's chest.

  He nodded. The nether swam in his hands as thickly as flies on a summer corpse. The front door banged open. A young woman regarded him, a thin sword angling from her hand.

  "What was his name?" she said softly.

  "The monk?" Dante said. "I don't know."

  "Nor how to knock." She watched him, then twitched up the tip of her blade.

  "I never learned his name because we were run out of Corl before we had the chance to speak."

  "So how did you know to come here?"

  "As we were being run out of town, the monk gave me this." With slow, obvious gestures, Dante opened his cloak and withdrew the tiny scroll Cee had nabbed from the monk. He handed it over to the young woman.

  She took it with her free hand and raised it high enough to keep an eye on him while reading its contents. Her eyebrows flickered. "Why were you forced to leave Corl in such a rush you couldn't tell each other your names?"

  "Because the Minister threatened to throw me off the top of the tree if I didn't."

  She lowered her sword and smiled crookedly. "Why don't you come inside?"

  He retrieved his knife, then stepped inside a surprisingly airy chamber; the house was small, but it was built into a cave wall, extending back through the rock. A motley bunch watched him impassively, bearing swords and cross-bows at a ready but not entirely aggressive position.

  The young woman took them down the hallway to a large room with a low-slung table in the center and bookshelves and pillows around the walls. Candles burned in the chandelier, providing the most light he'd seen since descending.

  "Be seated," the woman said. "And please, have some water."

  Dante eyed her as she poured a draft into a ceramic mug, but saw no sign of her adulterating the water. He sipped. It tasted dusty but otherwise pure. There was hardly enough for two swallows. She passed a mug to Ast and Cee, took a fourth for herself, drank, and knelt beside the table.

  "My name is Kasee Gage," she said. "And I think you might be dim, walking up to us like that, but Yotom isn't. He sent you here for a reason."

  "Yotom is our mutual friend?" Dante said.

  "It doesn't sound like you knew him long enough to forge a friendship. So what is it about you that earned his trust?"

  "It might help me answer that if you tell me who you are."

  She had a good laugh at that. "You first. I never strip until I know it's worth my while."

  He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. "What we have here is a classic trust problem."

  "I get it. Throwing your truth on the table leaves you vulnerable. Same for me. Or maybe I'm just a prick. Either way, neither one of us wants to make the first move." She flicked a but
ton on the front of her shirt. "It seems to me you're the seeker. That means you want it more."

  "You don't even know what it is. And I don't know if you'll be able to provide it."

  "Like you said, 'classic trust problem.' Let's see if we can come at this sideways. Why did the Minister throw you out of Spiren?"

  "Because we failed to register as foreigners."

  "Wrong." She pulled her feet out from under her and sprawled back on her palms. "Foreigners who don't register get a warning and a fine. They sure as shit don't get called in to see the Minister. Not unless you've done something he can't abide."

  Cee laughed. "The way you talk about him makes it sound like we're on the same side."

  Dante was about to reprimand her, but Kasee gave Cee her crooked smile, then turned back to him. "Give us a hint."

  The way things were headed, they'd be going in circles all night. He closed his eyes. "The Black Star. As soon as we mentioned it, Yotom perked right up."

  "Well, that would make an awful lot of sense. Given the Minister's doing everything he can to find it."

  Dante's heart pounded. "Do you know where it is?"

  "If I did, you think I'd be sitting in a glorified basement?" Kasee folded her fingers together. "What's your interest in the Black Star?"

  "Your turn to answer a question. Who are you and why did Yotom send us to you?"

  "I imagine he thought we could help each other. I think he was right. First, we're going to have to address this trust issue. I got things need doing. Can you do them for me?"

  "Do they require a great deal of travel, pain, or food deprivation?" Dante said.

  She chuckled and rested her forearms on the table. "I'll reveal the dice under my cup. I don't feel too favorable toward the Minister. If you can snatch his prize, then I help myself by helping you. Before we get to that, I got to know you're not some wicked spy."

  "Tell me what you need done and I'll prove my good intentions. But if you're stringing me along, expect to regret it."

  "Well now, threats aren't gonna help us build our bridge across our gap of trust, are they? All I need is a couple of letters. Easy stuff. Get them and we'll go from there."

  Dante stood. "I'll have them in an hour."

  Kasee eyed him. "Awfully confident."

  "Faith in my team."

  "Then go on and impress me. Horace, fill him in on the details."

  A middle-aged man with a shaved head and a thoughtful look detached from the wall and intimated Dante and the others follow him outside.

  At the front door, he stopped to speak in low tones. "A few weeks ago, we became aware of a man named Julen. Kasee believes he's here to scout for the Minister, but we have no hard evidence. We know he's sending and receiving a great deal of letters, but he never leaves his house. Waylaying one of his messengers would tip him off. He'd change up everything. However you steal his letters, he must not be made aware you've done it."

  "He won't be," Dante said.

  Horace nodded, opened the front door, and let them outside. "Do you understand why she has assigned this to you?"

  "Because we're here?"

  "Because we don't have any links to Kasee or her people," Cee said. "If we screw up, it's all on us."

  "Be sure to keep it that way." Horace gave them the address, including the floor and room. Dante made sure he had it memorized, then headed for the stairs up to the city proper.

  "You're sure this is the right move?" Cee said once they'd put the house behind them.

  "Of course not."

  "But at least it's a move?"

  "This isn't some desperate lurch into darkness," Dante said. "This is exactly where Yotom sent us."

  "It's moving a little fast."

  "You'd rather it were going slow? We'll knock off this little errand in minutes. Then we'll see what Kasee has to tell us about Cellen."

  "Fair enough," Cee said. "About that errand—how do you intend to sneak into a home the owner never leaves?"

  "I won't." Dante pointed to the dead rat padding along at his side. "She will."

  "It's kind of cheating when you use magic," Cee muttered.

  They reached the stairs. Up top, he lowered the false floor, climbed into the dark room, and cast about, poking at the frieze to try and figure out how to lift the trap door into position. After two minutes of this, Ast pointed out the metal chain at the edge of the door which could be used to pull it back up. Once the door was raised, a tile clicked into place, concealing the chain.

  Outside, Dante waved at the roof. Somburr and Lew joined them in the alley. Dante quickly laid out what they'd seen below ground, along with their new task.

  "I know you won't like it," he told Somburr. "But right now, our other option is pawing through two thousand pages of a very old book written in a foreign language that might not make a single reference to what we're after."

  Somburr chuckled in his unsettling way. "What isn't there to like about throwing ourselves into the middle of an internecine conflict?"

  "We'll only get deep enough to extract the information we need."

  "Don't get so focused on using this woman that you fail to notice she's using you."

  To Dante's surprise, Somburr recognized the name of the street housing the suspected agent of the Minister. Dante sent Lew and Ast running back to the inn, then set off to locate Julen's domicile. It was a rowhouse in a part of town that was neither too shabby nor too chic. Some of the intersections even had lanterns hanging from poles. Despite the lateness of the hour, talk filtered from a public house at the corner, along with the music of an instrument that sounded like a fiddle, but with a metallic undercurrent Dante had never before heard. They circled around the building to confirm they had the right room. The windows were shuttered, but on the top floor—Julen's floor—the balcony door was cracked.

  Dante sent Somburr down the street to keep watch, then went into the public house, taking Cee with him to watch over him. As soon as they were seated, he sent the rat into the street and delved into its eyes.

  It loped outside and bounded to the side of the building. The structure was faced with rough stone. The rat had no problem scrambling straight up, clawing its way to Julen's balcony. It gazed into the dim apartment and slipped inside.

  A candle flickered across the room. A man hunched over a desk, quill scratching away. Maps hung on the walls. In one corner, a bin overflowed with chicken bones, old rice, wadded paper, and fruit pits. Two live rats were already there, gnawing furtively.

  His rat prowled, taking in the scene. The man continued to write. Fifteen minutes later, he blotted his ink, shook off the sand, blew on the papers, and set them aside while he went to the other room to relieve himself in a pot. Dante moved the rat to a dark corner. The man returned, examined the papers, and stored them in the desk's top drawer. He blew out the candle and lay on the mattress across the room.

  The man was breathing evenly before Lew and Ast came into the public house, bearing Dante's writing implements. As soon as they'd arrived, he sent the rat up to the top of the desk. It wedged its paws inside the drawer and pushed it open with a soft squeak of wood. The man didn't stir. The rat clenched the corners of the papers in its teeth, dragged them out, trotted to the balcony, and descended to the street, where Somburr had positioned himself to intercept. He brought the papers to the pub and Dante and Lew copied them as quickly as they could. Finished, Somburr walked the rat back to the rowhouse and it returned the papers to the desk, closing the drawer as best it could.

  The whole thing took a few minutes longer than the hour Dante had estimated, but it was among the easiest jobs he'd ever pulled. On the way back to the door to the secret underground, he tried to read what he'd stolen, but it was too dark to make out many of the words, and what he could catch seemed rambling and quotidian. After he'd accidentally stepped in his third puddle, he rolled up the papers and pocketed them.

  This time, he took the whole group below, but left Lew and Somburr several blocks away fro
m the abode of Kasee Gage. As Dante approached it, the door opened. Horace ushered them inside.

  Dante produced the papers. "He was writing a letter when I got there. This is a copy of it."

  Horace took the pages, glancing between them and Dante. "How did you get this?"

  "I suppose I'll tell you that when Kasee tells me what I want to know."

  He flapped the letter against his thigh. "She will be extremely pleased with this. Wait here."

  He retreated into the home, which was more shadowed and hushed than it had been on Dante's previous visit a few hours earlier. Horace returned in moments.

  "She is pleased with the news," he said. "But not with the hour. She requests that you return at noon after she's had time to sleep and look over your findings."

  Dante was a bit miffed at being turned away, but he was tired enough to be relieved that the end of the night was in sight. "Before I go, will you at least tell me what this place is?"

  "You mean the Echoes?" Horace gestured around the caverns. "This is where the city used to be, long ago."

  "No offense, but why does anyone still live down here? You do realize there's a perfectly usable sun upstairs, right?"

  "Some are here because they think the city above is an illusion. The history of Ellan is invasion and strife. It has never been safe there. Some day, it will be torn down to the foundation, and the careless, oblivious citizens will be torn down with it." He smiled slightly. "Or so they believe."

  "Why are you here?"

  He smiled foxily. "There is some business the people don't want to see. And there is other business we don't want them to see."

  "I'm guessing your group tends toward the latter."

  "I believe we are a mixture of both." Horace stepped back from the door. "Goodnight."

  Dante went back to the stairs again, collecting Lew and Somburr along the way. He told them what little there was to tell. Everyone must have been as tired as he was, because for once there were no objections or complaints. They returned to the inn straightaway.

  Once Dante woke, he spent the morning paging through the Cycle of Jeren. Ideally, he would have been skimming it for mention of Cellen, or absorbing enough of its theology to have a real conversation with Mikkel and try to tap his wisdom on the matter. But between his tired mind and his genuine excitement about this divergence from everything he held true, he read through the early sections it shared with Arawn to determine if they were worded differently.