“Indeed,” Lux said. She patted him on the shoulder. For a moment, she considered telling him about the note from Francis, but there were already enough distractions. Nautilus was headed straight for them, and there wasn’t much time to find Sagittarius and get safely back into the sky.
The Carina banked again and headed inland, setting down at the foot of a mountainous sand dune that looked like every other spot up and down the coast. The Mapmaker came down from the wheel of the ship when they were settled.
“All right,” he said as he adjusted his jacket sleeves. “Nautilus was a little too close for my comfort as we came in. For safety, Honorine and I will go fetch the archer. The rest of you wait here, to move the ship if we have to.”
“But this should be quick,” Lux said, his fur rippling a bit with light. “I can help you with the archer if he’s reluctant to come along.”
“We cannot risk it,” the Mapmaker said. “Nautilus knows you’re with us, after that last encounter in the jungle. We need you on this ship when we return.”
Lux reluctantly agreed, giving Honorine a quick look of concern, or perhaps warning, before she slipped over the railing of the ship and dropped down onto the sand. It was bone-dry and slipped away from her feet, but the landing was still hard, and she toppled over into a dusty cloud of fine red grit.
“Careful,” the Mapmaker said, helping her up. “It doesn’t take much to stir this up, and it’ll be difficult enough to find the cavern without a face full of sand.”
“It doesn’t look like there’s anything here, though,” she said, getting to her feet.
“Oh, it’s here,” said the Mapmaker. “It’s just very hard to find. Now, I haven’t done this in a while, so forgive me if I’m a bit rusty.”
Then he held his arms straight down, palms flat and facing the ground. The sand beneath him began to tremble and vibrate. The blue star on his hand glowed. Then the ground gave a quick but violent shudder, knocking Honorine down again and sending a tremor right toward the sand dune. It began to crumble and slide, the sand rolling away until it revealed what looked like a tiny stone archway.
“Ah, I’ve still got it,” the Mapmaker said, shaking out his hands and adjusting his sleeves again.
Honorine looked into the dark hole leading into the earth and felt her nerves quiver.
The Mapmaker looked back toward the coast, scanning the horizon.
“I don’t see a ship,” he said. “The timing should work out perfectly.”
“We’ll have just enough time to get the archer before Nautilus gets here?”
“We’ll have enough time to get the archer and still be here when Nautilus arrives,” the Mapmaker corrected.
A faint chill brushed down Honorine’s spine. “Don’t we want to be gone by then?” she asked.
“Not anymore,” said the Mapmaker. “After this, we can finally stop running. With the archer to protect our ship, we’ll be able to lure Nautilus out to open waters.”
Honorine’s heart began to race, though much of the rest of her went numb.
“And then what?” she asked, rising.
“Then we finally get rid of Nautilus,” said the Mapmaker. “We take over that ship and sink it, if we have to.”
“But what about the Mordant on the ship? Or the people?”
“The Mordant can’t be hurt by a shipwreck,” said the Mapmaker. “And as for the people, well, they don’t appreciate their own mortality. They put themselves in harm’s way. And I, unlike most of the others, respect their decision.”
It was unbelievable, and yet she was surprised that she was surprised. The Mapmaker had said all along that his plan was to stop Nautilus. He never actually said that he didn’t plan to do so by killing him.
“But… Francis,” Honorine said. “You gave your word that you wouldn’t hurt him if I helped you. And I’m helping you.”
“Ah, but there’s every possibility that he could survive. He has before, hasn’t he?”
Honorine leaned back from him. She was in the wide-open desert, yet she had never felt so cornered.
“That’s not what you promised,” she said. “And you know it.”
“Are you saying you’ll stop helping me?” the Mapmaker asked.
“I think it’s only fair that you promise that Francis will live,” she said.
The Mapmaker laughed. “Honorine, he’s a human being. No matter what I do, Francis is not going to live. Not forever.”
“Maybe not,” Honorine said. “But you don’t have to go out of your way to make it happen any faster.”
She felt anger building as she thought of everything she’d done to try to help the Mapmaker. He had never really offered her anything in return. And now, it seemed, he wouldn’t even help her protect the people she cared about most in the world, even though he had the power to do so.
A dry breeze whistled out of the entrance to the cavern. Off in the distance, a storm cloud rumbled over the sea. Eridanus had sent a storm—that was probably it. Nautilus was racing toward them, toward his doom, and the possible death of everyone on his ship.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “We’ll figure something out to get the Mordant off that ship and stop Nautilus from hurting them ever again, but without killing anyone.”
“And if that’s not possible?” the Mapmaker said. “If you have to choose between saving your father or protecting the Mordant, which would it be?”
Honorine shook her head. “But we don’t have to choose! There’s still time to save everyone.”
“There it is!” the Mapmaker shouted, so loudly that his voice echoed down the hollow stone tunnel before them. “You’re not here to help me. Or even to help Francis. What you really want is to save Nautilus. Your father.”
“I want to help you all!” Honorine insisted. “Yes, even Nautilus, if I can! You made an agreement with Lord Vidalia when he helped you. Why not help me, as well?”
“I offered to protect his son,” the Mapmaker replied. “An arrangement I would never extend to Nautilus. I shouldn’t have to make deals with you, Honorine. You belong with us; you should be working in our interests, no one else’s.”
“I am!” Honorine shouted. “Do you still need me to prove it after all this?”
The Mapmaker smirked.
“Fine,” he said, pointing into the void under the arch. “Go down into the darkness, bring the archer back ready to defend the Carina, and I’ll believe you.”
A cold breeze whistled up from the stone tunnel. Honorine’s bluster and anger suddenly ebbed.
“Alone?” she squeaked. “What’s down there?”
“I have no idea,” the Mapmaker said. “I haven’t been down there in centuries. Could be snakes, scorpions, corpses, the whole place could be collapsed into a bottomless pit. And the archer doesn’t like visitors. Really anything could happen.”
Honorine felt her heart thundering again.
“All right,” she said, drawing up every bit of stubborn courage she had to spend. “I’ll bring him back. And we will find a way to do this without anyone getting killed.” Then she spun on her heel and walked through the arch.
The air smelled of wet stone and very, very old earth. It took Honorine’s eyes a moment to adjust. Ahead of her was a narrow, worn trail scattered with white sand that glowed in the light of starglass fixed into the walls.
This place was rougher than the others. There was no elegantly constructed masonry or delicate pools of clear water. This was hard stone, ancient earth, and the faint scent of decay seeping out from the cold rock all around her. Honorine remembered Astraea’s opinion of being underground. Astraea didn’t like it one bit, and now Honorine understood why.
The narrow trail eventually widened into a broad path through a wide cavern. The walls and ceiling were covered in drawings, etchings, and paintings of antelope, scorpions, lions, and elephants in exquisite tones of yellow, red, and sandy brown. In the flickering light of the starglass, the images seemed to move across the
walls. The herds of antelope galloped; cheetahs seemed to crouch and pounce.
At the farthest end of the cavern, a set of ancient, crumbling steps led up toward great, sprawling gates of thorny, twining iron vines. She was only halfway across the cavern when a sound rang out, hooves hitting stone, followed by a low, rumbling grunt that echoed through the hall, shaking the tiny pebbles on the floor.
The gates creaked open and fell forward, sending a cloud of sand out over the steps and across the cavern. Honorine ducked her head behind her arm as she heard a bellow, like that of a bull, but mixed somehow with the angry shout of a man. The galloping animals on the walls froze in place.
And then a horrifying silhouette appeared in the light.
He was immensely tall, an honest ten feet from the floor to the tip of the stout, curving bull horns sprouting from his head. His upper half was of a man with blue-black skin covered in a pattern of glowing, script-like tattoos. His lower half was like a black goat with thick fur, grotesquely bent legs, and cloven hooves shod in silver. His face was somewhere in between with a thick brow, a wide cleft nose, and very large, dark eyes. He wore a quiver of arrows on a leather strap over his shoulder and a string of luminous blue and white beads around his thick neck. He marched toward her, his hooves spitting out blue-white sparks as if they were striking flint with each step.
Honorine felt her hands trembling as she looked up into the black eyes of the archer.
“You must be Sagittarius,” she said, trying to stand up tall and look him straight in the eye. “I’m Honorine.”
The archer snorted. “And how, may I ask, did you find your way down into this cavern?”
“I came with the Mapmaker,” she said.
“Oh?” said the archer, lifting his head. His horns left trails of sparks in the air. “Why would the Mapmaker bring a child all this way?”
“Because I am a Mordant, apparently,” Honorine said. “At least half, because my mother is Andromeda.”
It was the first time she had spoken the name out loud to anyone, or had claimed herself to truly be one of the Mordant.
The archer furrowed his brow and tilted his head in a posture that looked distinctly like a bull about to charge. The cavern was utterly silent for a moment as he studied her and cold enough that his breath sent up a plume of pale steam. Finally, he took several crashing steps forward and dropped to one knee. He bowed his huge head, his great, curving horns cutting through the air on either side of Honorine, surrounding her for a moment in a curtain of silver sparks.
“Long ago I vowed my allegiance to your mother,” he said, holding his hand out toward her. “And so, by extension, it is yours as well.”
“Thank you…?” Honorine replied, a bit stunned, as she reached out toward him, expecting perhaps a formal handshake. Instead, he clasped her tiny hand between his huge ones in a shake that might have seemed gentle to him but felt to Honorine as if it would rip her arm from its socket. “Well, then maybe you would be willing to help me. You’re the defense… person.… That’s your specialty, or talent, right? Well, I need something defended.”
“Do you now?” asked the archer. Over the points of his horns, Honorine caught sight of the gates at the top of the crumbling steps.
“Unless you can’t leave,” she said. If he truly was the muse of Defense, set to protect things, then perhaps he could not leave the gates at all. “Do you have to stay near the gates?”
He rose back to his full height, which seemed even bigger when he stood so close.
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “There’s only one gateway that still requires a guard. But that is in the ruins of the Mordant city of Possideo. That gateway can still be opened. This gate”—he gestured over his shoulder—“is closed now. No one comes here.”
“Then why do you stay?”
“Because no one comes here,” he replied, his voice rolling across the floor, echoing off the walls. “I prefer to be left alone.”
“Like the Mapmaker,” Honorine said.
The archer’s head reared back. He looked at her from the corner of his eye, the white showing, his nostrils flared.
“Nothing like him,” he said in a low, rolling tone.
The archer did not care for the Mapmaker. This was even better.
“Good,” Honorine said. “Because the thing I need you to protect is a ship. A great big steamship that the Mapmaker is going to attack. I need you to protect it from him, just long enough so that I can get everyone off it.”
The archer nodded his horned head. “That sounds perfectly reasonable,” he said.
“There’s a bit more,” Honorine continued with a wince. “The Mapmaker is going to expect you to protect his ship while he attacks the other one. So I need you to, well, seem to agree with him, while I try to figure out how to get this resolved without anyone getting killed.”
The archer raised his brow. “This other ship,” he said slowly. “The one you truly want protected—why? Whose ship is it?”
Honorine took a breath. There was no use hiding this from him.
“Nautilus Olyphant,” she said.
The archer’s eyes widened. “He’s still around?” he asked. “He must have done something very clever to avoid the Mapmaker’s wrath all these years.”
“Well, he’s built a machine,” Honorine said. “And he’s using it to capture the other Mordant.”
The archer drew up to his full height. His tattoos pulsed and shimmered with blue light as he crossed his arms and let out a long, angry breath. For a second, Honorine could see the entire plan coming to an unpleasant end.
“He’s capturing Mordant. For what purpose?”
“We don’t know,” she replied. “But I’m going to put a stop to it. I just need a little bit of time before the Mapmaker sinks Nautilus’s ship and the captured Mordant and everyone else on it.”
“So you want to double-cross the Mapmaker?” the archer said with a wicked grin.
“I… suppose so…?” Honorine said, looking up at the archer.
The archer laughed. A deep, hearty, booming laugh that bounced around the chasm.
“Then I suppose there’s no time to waste,” he said. “Let’s be off, then.”
He started down the trail toward the entrance to the cavern, his silver shod hooves creating a flurry of sparks with each step. Honorine followed quickly, her heart pounding with the fear that this was never going to work, but her mind slightly at ease with the hope that it would. She soon smelled the fresh night air drifting down into the stale cavern. She would be glad to be aboveground again. And then she saw pale daylight shining on the other side of the stone archway.
It was just past sunrise.
The archer somehow maneuvered through the narrow entrance. Honorine was just about to follow when she heard a blast, loud and sharp, that shook the ground and sent sand trickling down from the stone arch. She had heard that sound before. Cannon fire.
They were too late. Nautilus was already here.
Honorine huddled in the doorway of the stone arch and peered carefully out into the morning sun shining off the red sand dunes. She could see the black clouds of the thunderstorm over the ocean and two rippling black shadows on the red stony ground. Inching farther out, she found the Mapmaker and the archer standing a dozen yards from the archway. They were looking up at the Carina, hovering low over the ground, and Nautilus’s airship, guns firing in the Carina’s direction.
The cannonballs that hit the ground sent up blasts of sand, which were in turn being picked up by a building wind. Eridanus was calling the thunderstorm in from the ocean, sending it after the airship.
Then the cannon fire sputtered a bit as the storm raced up onshore in a crash of thunder and a blast of wind that at once stirred up huge clouds of sand and dust. The airship wobbled about, trying to regain its equilibrium under the storm, but in a moment, the sand and green smoke had been whipped into a thick fog that blocked everything from view: the ocean, the ships, even the Map
maker and the archer only a few feet away. Honorine untied her silk sash and wrapped it around her nose and mouth in an attempt to keep out the flying sand, but some still managed to work its way in, sticking in her teeth and the back of her throat.
She could hear voices shouting, but she could not tell who was speaking or what they were saying. She contemplated setting out for the Carina. Then her thoughts jumped to Francis. If he really was out there in the dunes, he could be trapped in the mess as well, with cannonballs and lightning flying all around him.
The explosions and thunder blended together into one unending roar of noise. She could see nothing but the occasional silhouette of the ships amid the flashes of lightning and cannon fire and the gusts of flying sand. Nothing but the hands in front of her face, and her Mordant watch, secured on her wrist, with one faint spot of light in the dusty darkness.
“Lux!” Honorine shouted through her improvised face mask.
“There you are,” he said as a shining white wolf outline trotted toward her. “Hurry, we have to get back to the ship.”
“No! Not yet! Francis is out here!”
“In this storm?” he asked. “He’ll be killed!”
“I know!” Honorine shouted back. “We have to find him! He can’t stay out here alone!”
Lux’s ears twitched. “All right. Hold on to my coat. And don’t let go, or I won’t be able to find you again.”
Honorine put her hand on his shoulder, grasping a thick handful of his wiry coat. Then she pulled the end of her scarf around her head to shield her eyes and began to walk beside Lux as they picked their way across the desert sand.
With her head down and the silk whipping about her face, Honorine could see nothing but Lux’s paws and her own feet. They moved painfully slow, but as the Carina and Nautilus’s spare airship drew farther away, they kept the storm with them, until Honorine was able to look up and see a patch of open sky, the ocean, and the towering dunes silhouetted against the rising sun. But no Francis.
She shouted for him as they trudged across the rocky ground.
The Star Thief Page 15