“This is the most important work on the entire ship,” Professor du Ciel said, stopping Honorine just inside the doorway. “All the rest we just passed was added as we went along.” She waved toward the research hall, as if the overwhelming number of experiments and studies going on outside was nothing of any great concern. “We are in charge of all the navigational studies, which have been, since its launch, the original purpose of the Gaslight.”
“Navigation?” Honorine asked. It seemed a bit underwhelming. They had to be working on more than just sailing around and charting the ocean. Still, she saw no Mordant in the room, and Professor du Ciel was keeping very close.
“Yes,” she drawled, walking farther into the room, clearly intending for Honorine to follow. She gestured to a contraption about the size of a tabletop, with a map on a long, continuous, adjustable scroll. Unlike most other maps, this one had very little information filled in on the major continents. The cartography described the oceans, including thousands of islands, all marked previously uncharted and most of them marked with a tiny silver X.
“Have you been to all of these?” Honorine asked.
“All of the indicated locations, yes,” Professor du Ciel said. “And this is just the Atlantic. There are even more in the Pacific.”
Honorine felt the professor’s eyes on her as she leaned close to examine the map.
“Do any of these look familiar?” Professor du Ciel asked.
Honorine felt as if the question was looking for more information than it first seemed.
“Should they…?” she asked slowly.
“Have you ever been to any of these?” Francis asked more helpfully.
“Oh,” Honorine said with a nod of understanding. “No. Not a one.”
“Where did you sail, then, with the Mapmaker?” Professor du Ciel asked.
An uncomfortable weight dropped into Honorine’s stomach, like a mouthful of cold, congealed cream soup. This question had an obvious answer, but she wasn’t sure she should give it. Or if she wanted to.
“Didn’t you go anywhere?” Professor du Ciel pressed.
“Yes,” Honorine said. “But we didn’t go to any islands.” She considered her answer for a brief moment and decided that telling them where the Carina had been couldn’t do any harm at this point.
“We went to the Amazon forest, the Andes, and then back over here, in the desert. The same places as this ship.”
She looked up.
Professor du Ciel was very quiet, her face unreadable.
“You never went to Possideo?”
“The Mordant city?” Honorine asked. “I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been there. I don’t know where it is.”
“Neither do we, yet,” Professor du Ciel said, looking determined. “It’s located on an island known as the Insual Stellarum—the Island of Stars, rather fittingly—but that has been, well… It’s impossible to find.”
“So none of these are the right place?” Honorine asked, looking at the silver Xs scattered across the parchment ocean.
“No,” Professor du Ciel said. “Apparently not.”
“Well, we’ve always known that the quickest way—some say the only way—to find this place is with a Mordant guide,” Francis said. “But none of the Mordant we’ve encountered so far has been able to help us in any meaningful way.”
“Yes, and we’re running out of Mordant,” Professor du Ciel added.
“Well, perhaps they don’t want to help you,” Honorine said. “Maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea for you to find this place.”
Professor du Ciel looked confounded, as if she couldn’t understand what Honorine had just said. “This ship is on a scientific mission, and part of that mission is to find the island and the city of the Mordant. The knowledge that could be found in their libraries—”
“Yes, but maybe it shouldn’t be found,” Honorine emphasized. “The Mordant hid it away and guarded it for a reason.”
Professor du Ciel huffed and stuttered until she managed to spit out a few words in reply. “Just what are you saying?”
Francis stepped in. “Honorine’s never been on a ship like this. She just doesn’t know how things work around here yet. Actually, she does know a bit about my project, so I’m requesting a moment to ask her a few questions about my work.”
Then he leaned over and whispered something to the professor, who snapped to attention, nodding.
“I have tomorrow’s charts to approve,” she said. “Take a few moments, and then we’ll reconvene.”
“Let me show you my experiment,” Francis said as he led Honorine away from the scrolling map, and toward the port side of the room.
“What was all that?” Honorine asked.
“Protocol,” Francis whispered.
“And what did you say to her?”
“I said that you probably had information about the Mordant city, but you just didn’t understand it.”
Honorine gasped. Her face turned red with the reply she had ready for Francis, but before she could launch it, he was up a set of stairs to a little niche sectioned off from the rest of the room by a low brass railing.
“Get up here so we can talk,” Francis said. “And then yell at me later, please.”
Beyond the railing was a half-moon-shaped space, the walls lined with cases of tools and instruments, and dotted with occasional portholes. Fixed to the outer wall was a wide glass plate filled with a brass and copper honeycomb that was mostly empty.
“You’re running out of bees,” Honorine said.
“Well, most of them went down with the Nighthawk. And a thunderstorm got a lot more, you might recall,” Francis said. “It takes time to make more. And right now I’m doing a lot of research.” He moved to a wide table topped with black marble and began removing stacks of dusty books. “Looking for accounts of the island, descriptions from previous explorers, clues to how others have had success finding it in the past.”
“Francis, do you know what’s on that island?” she asked. “Has Nautilus told you?”
“The city of the Mordant,” Francis said. “There are rumors among the crew here about libraries full of all the knowledge in the world—”
“Libraries?” Honorine interrupted. “Salton and Bloom are in this for the libraries?”
“All the knowledge in the world,” Francis said again. “Maps to lost treasures, the locations of diamond mines, volumes on alchemy—”
“So treasure?” Honorine asked. “They think they’ll find gold and riches if they find this island?”
“Some of them, sure. The scientific types have their own reasons. But all anyone really knows is that Possideo is where Nautilus wants to go, and Nautilus is the captain.”
“So they don’t care why this place is so very well hidden or what might happen if you do find it?”
“Most of the crew is busy with other projects,” Francis said, nodding toward the research hall outside. “They give Nautilus the information he wants, and he funds their research. They don’t ask a lot of questions. Besides, it’s a challenge, finding a place that can’t be found.”
“But if Nautilus does find it, he might very well kill everyone on this ship and a good part of the rest of the world,” Honorine said urgently. “Even if he doesn’t find it, if he continues to go after the Mapmaker, he’s going to get himself killed at the very least. And where are all the Mordant? I haven’t seen one since we’ve been on this ship.”
Francis cleared his throat.
“They’re here,” he said, his eyes locked on the table. “You might not have noticed them.”
Honorine wondered for a moment how she could possibly not notice a Mordant. She had only met a few, but they had all been unmistakable.
Francis pointed across the room to another platform surrounded by brass railings. On a tall, narrow table sat a translucent orb, emitting a faint golden glow.
She was across the room in an instant, navigating tables and enormous globes to reach the platform, with Fra
ncis following quickly behind. The orb was roughly a foot in diameter, made of amber-colored stone, and hollow. Within it sat a small figure, a young woman in old-fashioned sailor’s clothing.
“Who are you?” Honorine asked.
“Pyxis,” said Francis.
“Can’t she hear me?”
“She can, but she can’t answer you from inside.”
Pyxis stood up, putting her miniature hand against the amber glass.
“How do you get them out?” Honorine asked, ready to crack the sphere open right on the spot. She was reaching for it when Francis took her hand and waved her away.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “And even if I did, you can’t just let her out here.”
“But that’s what I came to do,” Honorine said. “Nautilus has to let them all go or the Mapmaker is going to kill him and probably everyone else on board!”
“Not if we can catch him,” Francis said.
“I don’t think you can,” Honorine said. “He’s not like the others.”
“Well, he’s stronger, maybe, but at the end of the day, he’s a Mordant. If we know his constellation, we can catch him.”
Honorine shook her head again.
“No, that’s not the answer. Nautilus can’t keep pursuing the Mapmaker, he can’t keep the other Mordant here, and he can’t keep looking for Possideo.”
“Well, you’re going to have quite a time trying to convince him of that,” Francis said.
“I have to try,” Honorine said. “That island doesn’t just have a library on it, Francis. The reason the Mordant built their city on that spot was to guard a gateway to an underworld full of monsters.”
Francis smirked. “Monsters? What kind of monsters?”
“Who’s the worst Mordant you have, the most dangerous? The one who everyone is afraid of?”
“Well, there’s Draco,” Francis said. “He’s a real, actual dragon. Almost got the whole ship on fire when we caught him.”
“Well, imagine a hundred times worse than him, that you can’t catch, running all over the world.”
Francis looked skeptical. “Even if that’s true, the Mordant can control them, obviously, if they’re guarding them.”
“Yes, but you have the Mordant in prison! So if Nautilus does manage to get to that island and accidentally lets the monsters out, he’s going to have to let the Mordant go anyway.”
Francis was stumped, his eyes scanning over the books in front of him as he struggled to come up with a reply.
“Forget about that island, and forget about capturing the Mapmaker,” Honorine said. “Help me find a way to get the Mordant off this ship before Nautilus gets everyone here killed.”
“But what about our work?” Francis said, growing frustrated. “You’ve seen what we’re doing here. Having the Mordant on the ship has inspired everyone. We’re making developments and breakthroughs almost every day, learning everything we can about the world. Now, I’ve read a lot of my father’s work on this subject. He figured out who the Mapmaker is, even though he never located his constellation. The Mapmaker is the muse of Knowledge. He was the one who showed people how to contact the Mordant the very first time.”
“Well, what if I happen to know that your father doesn’t want Nautilus to find the island, either?”
Francis frowned. “How would you know that?”
“Because I met him,” Honorine said. “He’s on the Carina. He’s been there this whole time—helping the Mapmaker.”
The Gaslight was very different from the Carina. Not just because it was busier and noisier and made of steel and glass instead of trees and sand. Being on the Carina had felt like living there. Being on the Gaslight felt like visiting, in a place one wasn’t entirely welcome.
This feeling crept over Honorine on the very first day, when, shortly after seeing Professor du Ciel’s and Francis’s work in the research hall, she was called away and shown to a suite full of marble and polished brass and glossy panels of dark wood. Farther inside was a solarium filled with overgrown palms and ferns, where she found a little table set with china and silver and dishes of food, and Nautilus, busily writing notes in a ledger of some kind while a cup of tea cooled in front of him.
“Ah, welcome,” said Nautilus, setting down his pen on the open ledger page. “Please, do sit down.”
Only then did she realize that she was to dine with Nautilus, and that it would be just the pair of them. Despite everything she knew about him and his ship, and even the very reason she had come to find him, Honorine felt a twinge of excitement at the prospect of sitting down to have a meal with her father for the very first time.
Honorine took the only other seat at the table, across from Nautilus. With all the frantic and overwhelming activity of the morning, she didn’t realize she was hungry until she saw the table piled with plates of potatoes and sausages and rolls and fillets of chicken dusted with herbs. Not exactly traditional breakfast fare, she then realized how long it had been since she’d eaten something other than whimsically flavored fruit.
“My apologies if this is not what you were expecting at nine o’clock in the morning,” Nautilus said as he speared a few sausages from a silver dish and slid them onto his plate. “We keep unorthodox hours here—a requirement of our work, after all. Dinner is usually served at sunrise, and breakfast before sunset. Go ahead and help yourself, if you find anything to your liking. Despite all appearances, we don’t bother with airs and graces around here.”
Honorine gladly accepted the offer. When she had guzzled a full glass of juice and stuffed at least three sausages and a warm roll into her mouth, Nautilus folded his hands over his sparsely filled plate and looked across the table at her.
“I suppose you have some questions for me,” he said.
“Well…” Honorine replied. “Did you know I was living with the Vidalias all these years?”
Nautilus looked a bit surprised at this.
“Oh,” he said, busying himself with a helping of potatoes and roasted chicken. “I did not, actually. I had no idea of your whereabouts until the night of our arrival at the Vidalia Estate, nearly nine weeks ago.”
Honorine’s fork dropped to the table.
“Nine weeks!” she said. “I’ve been gone that long?”
“Yes, I suppose you have,” Nautilus said. “Nine more weeks away from me. But here you are now, back where you belong, with your family.”
He gestured at the room around them and the suite beyond the open glass doors.
“This was supposed to be our home. I built this for your mother, and later for you as well. I’ve never spent the night in this suite. But now perhaps it will finally get some use. Is there anything else you wanted to know?”
“Why didn’t you come looking for me?” Honorine asked. Nautilus frowned at his plate and then looked up at her, as if it had taken some serious contemplation to come up with an answer.
“Well, I just told you. I didn’t know where you were,” he said. “Unfortunately.”
Perhaps not, but she had been living in the house of his former partner and fellow explorer. He had not once corresponded with Lady Vidalia, in any way, for the last twelve years? Honorine did not like his answer, but she sensed that further questions on the subject would only result in equally unsatisfactory answers. She turned her attention to a bowl of honey-glazed carrots and another of warm, crusty rolls.
“So,” Nautilus said, “what can you tell me about the Mordant on the Carina?”
Honorine swallowed a lump of roll before it was quite chewed enough, feeling the rough edges slipping all the way down her throat.
“I thought you already knew everything about them,” she said.
“Well, no matter how educated, one can always learn more,” Nautilus said with a smile. “Now, who’s on the ship? Astraea, Lux, and, of course, the Mapmaker, we know for sure. We suspect he has Scorpio as well, and, after our last few encounters, Eridanus and most likely Sagittarius are there.”
Ho
norine set down her fork and sat back a bit from the table.
“If that’s all you want to know,” she said, “then yes. They’re all there.” Nautilus must already know this, she reasoned, and he couldn’t reach them on the Carina anyway.
Nautilus nodded and then made a note in his ledger.
“And their next destination,” he continued without looking up from the page. “Do you have any information on where they might be headed?”
“No,” Honorine said flatly.
“Nothing at all?” Nautilus asked. “You didn’t hear anything about their next course of action?”
Honorine did not reply. Nautilus waited for a long moment, pen poised over the paper, before looking up.
“Come, now, Honorine. I thought you came here to help me.”
“I came here to try to save you,” Honorine replied quietly.
Nautilus set down his pen and sat back in his chair.
“Save me? Well, that’s quite noble. But just what do you think I need saving from?”
“The Mapmaker,” she said incredulously. Nautilus nodded but did not reply. “He wants you to let the Mordant go. He wants you to stop keeping them as prisoners.”
“I’m sure he does,” Nautilus said. “Even if I set them all free today, though, that wouldn’t be enough, would it?”
Honorine sat farther back in her chair. “No,” she said. “He doesn’t just want the Mordant free. He wants… well, he wants you dead, and your ship destroyed.”
Nautilus reached across the table to grab a tall silver teapot, then filled a new cup, creating a ball of steam that curled around him as he spoke.
“Honorine, I’m not a complete fool,” he said. “I’ve been sailing these seas for a dozen years now with the Mapmaker himself waiting for his chance to hunt me down, and I’m still here. You must learn to trust your father, at least a little, especially if you expect me to trust you in return. Now, I would like you to give me any information you have about the Mapmaker. Help me catch him.”
Honorine remained silent.
“Don’t you want to see your mother again?” Nautilus asked.
“Of course,” Honorine said quietly. “But how will catching the Mapmaker do that?”
The Star Thief Page 17