The Star Thief

by Lindsey Becker

  “What could have happened?” Francis said, finally taking off his goggles and flopping down onto a dusty sofa. He stared vacantly across the room.

  “Haven’t you ever seen something like that before?” Honorine asked, trying to sound just concerned enough that Francis would not suspect her. But he had no reason to, and he did not even glance over at her.

  “No!” he said. “A problem with a globe, maybe. One or even two breaking during a single evening, sure. But I’ve never seen the thing explode like that!”

  Then he turned toward Honorine, his face slowly crushing into a frown as he started to put the events of the evening into a useful order.

  “What did you mean when you said they would be distracted?” he asked. “Did you do something—”

  The doors to the suite burst open, and Nautilus strode across the brushed silk carpet, directly toward Honorine. Her first instinct was to flinch, but when he reached her, Nautilus dropped to one knee and put both hands on her shoulders.

  “Are you quite sure you’re all right?” he asked. He turned her around in a full circle, brushed back her hair from her forehead, looked over her bare palms and wrists. “No cuts, no burns?”

  “No, nothing at all,” she replied, holding up her hands to show she was unharmed. “No damage whatsoever. I promise.”

  Nautilus stood up and put a hand to his forehead, rubbing his eyes in an exasperated gesture.

  “Good. Good,” he said, drawing a long breath in through his narrow nose. Then, when he had composed himself, he looked her straight in the eye. “That was my fault. I shouldn’t have brought you down there right away. I should have tested, run some simulations, been absolutely certain of the effect you would have on the ship—and the machine.”

  Honorine would have been happy to let him go on taking the blame, but his words suddenly stopped making sense.

  “What effect?” she asked.

  “Well, every time we bring a constellation on board, it changes things,” he said. “Every Mordant exerts an influence over the world around them. It’s like they each have their own unique kind of gravity. When we add one to the collection, it creates changes in other, unexpected ways.”

  He stopped there. Honorine nodded and waited for the rest.

  “And…?” she finally asked.

  “Well, you’re one of them, at least partially,” Nautilus replied. “I knew it would have an effect. I confess I did hope you would strengthen the apparatus’s reach, whatever your particular power may be.”

  Suddenly, something shifted deep in Honorine’s heart. She wondered if she was not, in fact, just another Mordant in Nautilus’s collection, one without an amber sphere to hold her.

  She took a moment to compose her thoughts. Since arriving on the Gaslight, she had felt overwhelmed with amazement at the ship, anger at Nautilus for what he was doing to the Mordant, and fear that the Mapmaker would turn up before she could find a way to keep Francis and Nautilus safe. When she saw the glass explode and the look in the crew’s eyes as their work erupted into flames, she had felt a pang of regret. But now, as she stood before Nautilus, she began to feel something new. Something she had never experienced before.

  All the time she had been with the Mapmaker, she had been making sure that he wouldn’t come after Nautilus’s ship. She had made bargains and agreements and done things that terrified her to her bones, all to keep Nautilus and Francis safe. Lux and Astraea had promised her mother they would do whatever they could to guard her from harm. Lord Vidalia had gone into hiding for twelve years, worked side by side with a dangerous creature, to keep his child and his friend’s child safe.

  And Francis, when he learned who she was all those weeks ago in the forest, had first tried to protect her, then tried to reach out to her, and finally snuck out in the middle of a sandstorm to bring her to the place he thought she would be safe.

  Nautilus, on the other hand, had spent his time on his machines and his quests to find Andromeda and to capture the Mapmaker. The more that Honorine worked the idea over in her head, the more she was convinced that he was really and truly not interested in her as anything more than a tool, another component of his machine, to use for his own selfish goals.

  Never had he mentioned coming to look for her. Never told her that he had stayed away for her own good. Never asked her a single question that wasn’t about the Mapmaker or the other Mordant or what she could do to help him. And now there she was, standing on his ship, and he was using her to give him some kind of advantage over his adversary.

  Honorine continued to feel a strange kind of knot in her chest. It wasn’t anger, really, or sadness. It was disappointment. Growing up believing she was an orphan, she always dreamed of meeting her parents. But now, having met one, she was stuck with the reality that her father was brilliant but quite cold. And she did not like him very much.

  There was only one thought that rose through her disappointment and gave her a glimmer of hope. Nautilus did not suspect in any tiny, fractional way that Honorine had intentionally tampered with his machine.

  Which was exactly what she needed him to think, because she was definitely going to do it again.

  The distraction had worked quite well.

  As soon as Nautilus was convinced she wasn’t hurt, he instructed Honorine to stay in the suite, which she definitely did not do. The Mordant were somewhere on that ship, and she was going to find them.

  Francis insisted he did not know where they were kept.

  “I never see them except in the hall when they’re brought in for research,” he explained again as they ducked out of the main hallway and into a service corridor.

  “That’s all right,” Honorine said, holding up her arm with the Mordant watch still strapped to her wrist. “You just help me navigate the ship. I’ll do the hard part.”

  They stayed out of the main halls and cabins, even though it was loud and dark in the bowels of the Gaslight. Noises rattled in the walls, bare steel grinding and groaning as the engines fired, pushing the ship through the dark water toward the northern seas. The Mordant watch only worked on a few of the dozens of Mordant in the world. But, thankfully for Honorine, it did work on Sirona, who was somewhere on this ship. They wandered around for quite a while, ducking behind pipes and down dark halls when they heard footsteps, hitting dead ends in storage closets and unused pantries.

  Francis grew anxious as the hours spooled off the night, and they were still scurrying about like rats in places they weren’t supposed to be.

  “Nautilus is going to notice we went missing,” he warned as they passed an open doorway and saw a clock reading very late in the night, or possibly very early in the morning.

  “Well, if we get this right, that isn’t the only thing he’ll notice,” Honorine replied, and then gasped with delight as the little stones on her watch finally began to glow.

  She followed the dimming and brightening of Sirona’s tiny spots of light on her watch as they wound their way through a maze of passages and utility rooms full of tools or spare machinery, down hallways clad in rusted metal with pools of briny water on the floor.

  “Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Francis said. “I’ve never been down here before.”

  “This is the right way,” Honorine said as the stones finally began to grow brighter and brighter on her arm. After a few more turns and corners, they came to a place Francis did recognize.

  “We’re near the crew quarters,” he said. “They wouldn’t be down here. I’ve never seen them.” Another turn more, and the trail stopped at a wooden door.

  “This is it,” Honorine said.

  “This is right next door to Nautilus’s cabin,” Francis replied, looking up and down the corridor with a confused expression. “No one uses this. And it’s locked anyway.”

  When he said the word locked, it echoed in Honorine’s mind as if he had just rung a bell. She suddenly remembered something the Mapmaker had said to her.

  An ironwood key will u
nlock any door.

  She happened to have an ironwood key still in her pocket.

  Despite the heaviness of the wood and the rustiness of the lock, the ironwood key did, in fact, unlock the cabin door easily.

  The door creaked open to reveal a standard cabin built to accommodate four sailors, but in this one, there was only a single cot, raised on a metal loft over a spare wooden desk. The other walls were covered with maps and charts, a trunk, a shelf with neatly arranged books. It was all very orderly, very precise, and very deliberate.

  “You’re quite sure?” Francis said. It was dark and cold, more like a vault than sleeping quarters. On the wall opposite the desk and the bed was a door made of solid wood, which looked completely out of place on such a ship. This door was rough and stout, the planks made from ragged timbers. It looked more like something that belonged on the Carina. Honorine walked across the room and placed her hand on the door.

  It was warm.

  “This is it,” she said. Once again, the ironwood key worked perfectly on the rusted iron lock, and the door swung open, revealing a room from another world.

  There were no windows here, only dark walls and the scent of damp earth, moss, and slowly rotting leaves. Here was a great desk covered in notes and maps splashed with ink, books with ribbons marking dozens of pages, globes with routes painted in shimmering golden ink, and a hammock in the corner piled with ragged blankets and a flattened pillow.

  The room was bathed in the light of a hundred golden globes hanging overhead. Some were very round, others pear-shaped, and they each were wrapped in a small net and hung from thin cords at various lengths to keep them from knocking together as they swayed with the ship. Honorine and Francis could see small, moving shapes inside them.

  Honorine dragged a chair in from the next room and climbed up to reach the nearest globe. Inside was a bird, black like the crow, but slimmer and lighter, with a long beak, long neck, and long legs. It was a crane. Other movements in the globes nearby caught her eye: a rabbit, a small man with a bow, and then, at the end of the row, an old friend.

  “Sirona!” Honorine said, standing up on her tiptoes to get a closer look into the globe. Sirona stood and pressed her hands to the inside of the amber shell.

  “Honorine!” she replied, though the sound didn’t make it to Honorine’s ears.

  “How do we get her out?” she asked. Francis shrugged and shook his head.

  “I told you, I don’t know,” he said.

  She turned the globe carefully in her hands. It was smooth and solid, without a seam or hinge or lock. This was something the ironwood key couldn’t open.

  “Well, something on this ship must do it,” Honorine said, and began spouting every idea she could think of. “Copper? Iron? Heat? Starglass—wait! Those stone bullets in your pistol—would they work?”

  “You want me to shoot at… that?” Francis asked incredulously.

  “That would work, wouldn’t it?” Honorine asked.

  “It might, but I don’t have my pistol, and I don’t know if we want to fire off a bunch of rounds in here. And someone will hear us.”

  He was right, though Honorine didn’t want to hear it. Nautilus would come looking for them before long. She studied the hanging globes. There were perhaps a hundred of them, and it was very unlikely that she could get all the Mordant free before Nautilus caught her.

  Her mind raced through possible plans, trying to find a solution. She could come back later, but there might not be time for that. They had to act now.

  “We’ll have to test our hypothesis,” she said finally, searching through the globes while Francis looked on quizzically. “Aha!” she said finally, grasping a particularly large one in both hands and yanking it down from the ceiling with all her might.

  “That one?” Francis asked. “Why are you—”

  “We have to get going,” Honorine said, handing the globe to Francis as the sound of boots rattled down the hallway. She looked around the room at the rest of them, all watching her from inside their little prisons.

  “We’ll be back for you very soon,” she said.

  They snuck back into the hall, dodging the crewmen as they stomped back and forth to their cabins.

  “Honorine, what are we doing?” Francis whispered as they slipped down hidden hallways and back up stairs. “What’s the plan?”

  “The plan has changed a little bit,” Honorine said. “Well… a lot. It’s a completely new plan. We can’t free all the Mordant, so I think there’s only one thing we can do.”

  “What’s that?” Francis asked.

  “We have to find Possideo,” Honorine said.

  “We’re already doing that,” Francis said. “This whole ship is working on it.”

  “No, I mean we,” Honorine said, pointing from herself to Francis. “You and me. Right now. We find that island, and the city, and Andromeda. Then Nautilus will stop looking for and hunting the Mapmaker, and then, maybe, we can get this sorted and get everyone out alive.”

  Francis looked shocked. He clutched the amber orb to his chest, holding it like a little child might clutch a toy bear for comfort.

  “I know it’s going to be dangerous,” Honorine said. “I know it sounds absolutely mad. But Nautilus is going to get that machine fixed, no matter how hard I try to stop him. And when he does, he’ll capture the archer, and there will be nothing stopping the Mapmaker from sinking this ship. But there’s one more thing.”

  She took a deep breath and then put a hand on Francis’s arm.

  “Lord Vidalia is not well,” she said. “He needs Sirona’s help and care. And soon. If we don’t get this matter settled…”

  Now Francis looked as if he might burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Honorine said. “I shouldn’t have told you that. Now you’ll just be worried.”

  Francis shook his head and swallowed a sob. “No,” he said. “Now I understand. We’re going to find that island, and that’s why…” He looked down into the orb in his hands.

  “Yes!” Honorine said. “So let’s get going.”

  Francis, thankfully, knew the fastest way back to the outer deck. He stopped by his cabin to retrieve his pistol, extra stone ammunition, and a pair of his spare boots for Honorine. They were a size too large, but would do in a pinch. Then they were off to begin their tiny mutiny.

  When they emerged out on the deck, they were met with a stiff wind and a cold early morning, but the sky was clear. There was no forest hovering above, only the full pale moon, shining spectacularly over a calm black sea.

  “Perfect,” Honorine said as they tucked into a little alcove along the outer deck, where they might make their getaway without being seen. It was going to be some feat, she thought, once she freed the particular Mordant they had liberated from the cabin. Honorine set the globe on the deck but held it with one hand to keep it from rolling overboard on the smooth wood.

  “Now, well, you might want to stand back,” Francis said as he pulled out his pistol.

  “I’ll pull my hand back when you say when,” Honorine said. It sounded in her head like a terrible plan, but Francis nodded and leveled his pistol at the globe.

  “Now?” Honorine asked.

  “No,” Francis said.

  “Well, when?”

  “That’s what I’ll say when I’m ready, so don’t you say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “When!”

  And Honorine pulled her hand back. The globe began to roll at once. Francis raced to cock and aim the pistol, then fired it wildly, missing the globe entirely and leaving a giant burned mark on the wooden deck.

  The globe rolled toward the outer railing.

  Honorine dove after it but slipped and kicked it farther. It rolled under the lowest bar of the railing and began to fall. She watched in horror as it plummeted toward the black water. It might be lost forever with the Mordant trapped inside!

  Just before she could find her voice to shout, the pistol fired and found its mar
k. The globe burst into thousands of tiny particles fine as sand and scattered in the wind. A great ball of flame rolled up, and from it emerged Pegasus, his black-and-copper wings unfurling as he rose up into the dark sky.

  “Francis, you did it!” Honorine shouted with glee, flinging her hands around his neck as the Pegasus swooped toward the deck and landed with a spray of sparks. He left hoofprints singed into the deck.

  “Well, if Nautilus doesn’t know what we did yet, he’ll figure it out when he sees this,” said Francis as he stepped over the smoldering horseshoe burns.

  Pegasus bowed his long neck, his ears pricked forward, and sniffed at Honorine with his delicate nose.

  “Hello,” she said quietly, and reached up—very gently—to place her hand on his velvety muzzle. It felt like that of a mortal horse, fuzz dotted with sparse whiskers. But then there was that electric hum under her fingertips, especially when he pressed his nose forward into her hand.

  “My name is Honorine,” she said. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  Pegasus took a step forward, pressing the length of his head against her entire body, his ears brushing her cheek. He stayed for a moment, then stepped back and raised his head proudly, nodding and tossing his mane and a spray of silver-black sparks.

  “We need to find Possideo,” Honorine said. “As fast as possible.”

  Pegasus nodded his noble head and stretched out his great wings, as if graciously inviting her aboard.

  She reached up and placed a hand on Pegasus’s back, which was as high as she could reach, and realized that she had no way of getting astride the huge beast. “You know… I’ve never actually ridden a horse before.”

  “Good,” said Francis as he gave her a leg up. “Because I don’t think this is going to be anything like riding a horse.”

  He was right.

  The moment they were on Pegasus’s back, he was off into the darkness, flying with impossible speed at impossible heights. Francis sat close behind Honorine, both of them twining their hands into Pegasus’s long, tangled mane. His wingbeats were so powerful and so swift that Honorine could barely breathe through the searing cold wind that whipped around them. She tucked her head, closed her eyes tight, and clung on with all her strength until the flight began to calm.