The Key to Starveldt

by Foz Meadows

  ‘Does he always bleed like that?’

  ‘No. It’s a rather interesting development.’ Lukin withdraws his needle. The prisoner shudders. With his eyes closed, it is difficult to tell whether he is unconscious or merely feigning collapse. ‘His Rarity has regenerative elements, but this is his third week on the blocking serum. It had seemed to be working, but I may be forced to reassess my prognosis. A pity.’ He passes the empty syringe to Mikhail, who places it on a nearby bench.

  Solace cannot help but notice the state of Mikhail’s hands: the mage’s palms are raw and shiny with scar tissue, warped after Grief ’s attempt to steal her away from the Rookery.

  ‘That should do it,’ Lukin says, sizing up the prisoner. Groaning weakly, the man shifts in his chains. Lukin tuts, then slaps the prisoner hard across one cheek. The lines of blood smear, marking his palm. Three rogue droplets scatter to the floor.

  ‘Wake up, renegade,’ he says. Under any other circumstances, his tone would pass as cheerfully polite. ‘Tell us about the Aer.’

  The prisoner spasms, opening his eyes. For an instant, their whites are stark against honey-coloured pupils, but as he goes to speak, each eye is flooded by the same swirling, blue-black colour that was so recently injected into his arm. They churn like cups of stirred ink.

  ‘The Aer,’ he rasps, ‘are half elemental, half creatures of flesh. Born when a disembodied sentience takes form and chooses to mingle their essence with that of a bodied race. They are rare, and Rare. Powerful. Pure. Frequently immortal.’

  Lukin smiles. The edges of his mouth are sharp as diamonds.

  ‘Excellent. How can I kill one?’

  Just for a moment, the darkness in the man’s eyes clears. His face twists with despair. ‘No, pl –’

  The churning black returns; his body shakes, once, twice, three times, so that his chains clatter like horse’s hooves. When he speaks again, his voice is hollow.

  ‘Iron,’ he whispers. ‘True iron kills the Aer.’

  As Mikhail Savarin begins to laugh, the vision shifts a final time. Back to the present.

  Fire has come here recently, reducing the warehouse to unstable piles of black smoulder. Police tape encircles the perimeter. Twisted metal and charred wood make roofless arches across the ruins. The whole second storey has collapsed, sliding sideways like the top tier of an unsteady wedding cake. A lone blot of colour survives: part of a red leather armchair, still upright amid the debris. Beside it, a young man sifts through the wreckage. His chestnut hair is unwashed, tangled. Wiping soot onto a striped shirt, he straightens and stretches, wincing at the effort.

  Despite the distance of her body, Solace feels her heart constrict.

  Glide?

  As though she had called to him in the real world, his head snaps up. Green eyes wild, he stares around the wreckage like a hunted beast. His face is bruised and battered. Trembling, he mouths the syllables of her name.

  The vision shatters.

  7

  Sparring Practices

  ‘Solace?’

  Groggy and aching, Solace swam back to herself, pouring into her body like water through a sluicegate. Around her, the air felt thick, hot, and full of motion, as though she were lying in the maw of some great beast. Disoriented, she struggled to focus any of her senses, working from a series of fractured impressions: a white shape looming overhead; the twisting, lolling freedom of her neck; an overloud susurrus against both ears and a strange muskpurple taste on her tongue, inexplicable and yet somehow familiar. Slowly, the white shape resolved into edges, lines, a pair of eyes, a face –

  ‘Sharpsoft,’ she murmured. The word sounded fuzzy, as though spoken underwater.

  ‘My lady of dreams.’ She saw his brief smile, felt the gentle movement of his hand against the back of her skull. He was lifting her up, she realised, and tried to take some of her own weight, struggling against the tremor of her limbs.

  ‘Dreams?’

  He touched her face, lightly. ‘Your mind has wandered.’

  In a garbled rush, her memories came back. The first two visions seemed pointless, but the other was something else.

  ‘Glide.’ She croaked the word. ‘I saw him in the ruins. But he’s dead. You murdered him. You said –’

  ‘I lied. Glide lives.’

  Her heart thumped. Her expression must have changed, too, because Sharpsoft’s weird eyes – purple, gold and silver – began to whirl, moving like the agitated wing-flicker of a caged bird. When he spoke, his voice was hard.

  ‘He is not to be trusted. Sanguisidera forced his hand, but found the flesh of it unresisting. I have not come here to speak of him.’

  Solace stared. The charcoal twilight of the room-that-wasn’t sharpened to indigo at the edge of things, a brighter spectrum honed by sudden anger. Her flesh felt cramped and sore.

  ‘You’ve got a lot to answer for,’ she said angrily. ‘You’ve been playing both sides since who knows when, for who knows what reason, and I’m sick of it! All we get is cryptic bullshit, nothing we can trust; and you, you flounce off in your damn white coat like some great albino prophet to do my brother’s bidding. My brother! This would be Grief, the insane male version of yours truly, oh-so-smitten with his equally crazed pseudo-mother? I mean, what the freakin’ hell, Sharpsoft?’

  Panting a little, she wriggled back on the grass, watching his pale face for a sign, some damn indication that he’d heard her, felt something, but she might just as well have punched him as she’d done that day in the park, for all the good it did. He merely laughed, or else drew in breath so sweetly that it resembled laughter, and shook his moon-white head.

  ‘Your accusations have merit, but now is not the time. Quickly: did you learn anything of Sanguisidera?’

  ‘What? No!’ She glared at him. He glared back. Infuriatingly, she blinked first. ‘Why are you even here, anyway?’

  ‘Is my presence in the Rookery so impossible?’

  ‘Sharpsoft, everything about you is impossible! You’re bloody impossible! Get used to it!’

  ‘You saw something, just now.’ His voice was maddeningly calm. ‘Tell me what it was.’

  Solace grit her teeth. ‘Lukin and Mikhail have a man in the dungeons. Or they will do. Either way, at some point in the future, they inject him with something. It wasn’t isn’t won’t be – pretty. Now back off.’

  His eyes blazed, and for a moment she feared she’d gone too far. Sharpsoft frowned, rocking back on his haunches.

  ‘Forgive me. I do not know what the Bloody Star is planning, which makes me nervous. I play a dangerous game with her, too, which makes me paranoid. Am I suspected? Has she learned of my allegiance to you? Or is this simply a delight of hers, to confer with Grief and make a game of weighty matters? Though she is capricious, it bodes ill that she has excluded me from anything germane to Starveldt – or rather, that your brother has.’

  ‘Sharpsoft, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Lord Grief tried to steal you away, and almost succeeded. With blood-magic, no less.’ He hung his head. ‘I had thought to have dissuaded Mikhail from that particular course of action long ago.’ He sucked in breath. ‘Understand, I have lied to protect you. Throughout your childhood, we sentinels have kept a watch on your life. One of us even accompanied you here.’

  ‘You mean Duchess?’

  ‘The blue cat? Yes. She is an old ally – one who has helped to shield you from Sanguisidera, ensuring that Mikhail and Grief could not simply pluck you from the ether. But my gift, as you have seen, takes me anywhere and everywhere. Many times, the Bloody Star requested that I simply bring you to her, or at least scry your location. But I lied. I told her that the wards about you were impenetrable; that even if you were found, I would not be able to transport you with me. Of course, I could have done so at any time. But because the other Bloodkin that she set to the task were genuinely obstructed, I was believed. As instructed by your parents, I waited until your seventeenth birthday to revoke the lie, to let you lea
rn of the worlds behind the world. I told Sanguisidera that the wards about you had begun to weaken – and, indeed, Duchess was forced to cease their maintenance when you were made aware of who you are, what you are. But to my shame, your brother acted first. He is a creature of schemes. I had not thought he would be so hasty. I apologise. There is no excuse.’

  Solace felt as if her skin had turned to ice. For all Evan’s defence of Sharpsoft, she’d never given his double-agent status any thought beyond his current involvement with her friends, and yet he had spent years of his life in the service of a madwoman simply in order that she could grow up. The enormity of it dwarfed her. With a pang of guilt, she remembered her complaints to Duchess about being left at the group home, but compared with what her housemates had frequently endured before finding one another – what Sharpsoft had endured – her childhood troubles were nothing. She felt shamed and small. What right do I have to complain?

  She inhaled raggedly. ‘Don’t apologise. You did all you could.’

  ‘My lady is gracious.’ He didn’t smile, but stood, pulling Solace to her feet. Around them, the room that was a hilltop shivered with magic. ‘The Rookery is a wondrous place, but you cannot stay here forever. And when you leave, the Bloodkin will be waiting. Grief is waiting.’

  ‘I can’t beat him.’ The words bled from her in an awful gulp. ‘I don’t know how to fight. He’ll come for us – for me – and there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘Solace.’ Sharpsoft’s voice was gentle. ‘Your parents gave their lives to create yours. That was a gift of love, but also a choice of need. What you are – what you were born to be – is a weapon; and what sort of weapon lacks the capacity to wound? Of course you can fight.’

  ‘I can’t –’

  ‘You can,’ he repeated.

  ‘I can’t.’

  Sharpsoft clicked his teeth. ‘My lady, have you ever attacked anyone before, or defended yourself from attack? I mean an actual confrontation, not some isolated blow.’

  ‘No,’ said Solace, ‘which would, you know, seem to support the I’m Not A Weapon theory.’

  ‘Is a gun that has never been fired still a weapon?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘My lady, you have just told me that you have never fought. How, then, can you claim to know what your skills are? And do not say,’ he added, pre-empting her objection, ‘that just because you haven’t learned combat, you cannot possess any aptitude for it. Even the most spoiled and docile housecat is capable of destroying a bird, should the opportunity present itself. Sometimes, a talent for violence is innate.’

  Thinking of Duchess, Solace made a face. ‘Well, that’s true enough, sure. But I’m not a housecat.’

  ‘I’m no bird, either,’ said Sharpsoft. An unnerving grin spread across his face. ‘But I am an opportunity.’

  So fast the motion blurred, his fist swung towards her face. Shock should have registered, or fear; at the very least, she ought to have flinched. Instead, Solace simply moved, as fluid and unthinking as a waterfall. Air grazed her cheek as Sharpsoft’s fist whistled past her head; she twisted away from a follow-up blow and, without any conscious thought, slammed her own punch into his kidneys. Both stunned and satisfied by this outcome, she straightened up – only to stagger as Sharpsoft returned the favour with a solid smack to her ribs. Pain smeared across her skin; Solace was left gasping for air. For a moment, the shock and disorientation was absolute. How far would her guardian go to prove his point? Or had she been wrong about him after all?

  As Sharpsoft drove forwards again, Solace felt an unfamiliar roaring in her ears. Her vision shook. With an inarticulate cry, she surrendered control of her body to something older and more certain than her conscious mind: instinct.

  Time froze. As she battled Sharpsoft, it felt as if her brain had two occupants. One was human, watching with astonishment and no small degree of terror as her physical body kicked and blocked, struck and weaved with the native strength of a warrior born. The other was vampire, calm and cold-minded within the seeming fury of her actions, governed by such swift-moving thoughts that her human side felt whiplashed just trying to keep track of them. Sharpsoft was pulling no punches – literally – but Solace could taste victory. Distantly, she knew that her body was bruising, but the rest of her didn’t care.

  As Sharpsoft bulled forwards, Solace slipped sideways and tossed him hard over her hip. His boots came up, heels over head, and he hit the earth with a sound like a box of books being dropped on slate. Before he could so much as lift his head, Solace was on him, her teeth bared over his throat and hunger in her heart. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. It smelled delicious.

  And then Sharpsoft laughed, a cough of amusement that caused the blood on his lip to bubble and pop like baby spit. In a furious ebbing of anger, Solace came back to herself.

  Her arms hurt. Her legs hurt. Hands, hips, jaw, stomach – nothing seemed as it had been. Sharpsoft propped himself up on his elbows and stared at her with smug admiration.

  ‘You win, my lady,’ he rasped, grinning and panting at the same time. ‘Or do I?’

  It was only then, as she went in search of a witty reply, that Solace realised she was effectively straddling him. With a yelp of embarassed anger, she scrambled sideways and away, running her palms down her clothes as though indignity, like dirt, could easily be brushed off. She’d ripped the seam of her burgundy skirt – not severely enough that it had to be abandoned, but enough that a handspan of her right leg was made visible.

  Beside her, Sharpsoft groaned and swayed to his feet with infuriating calmness. Solace straightened in response, staring at him, thoughts awhirl. The muscles in her forearms burned, but even as she probed the hurt with her fingers, she felt it recede. Her body was already healing itself, and though a quick check of her skin revealed some bruises, somehow she knew that they would not last long.

  Her guardian was waiting for something. ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘I –’ Solace bit her lip. What did you say at a time like this? Being proven wrong both thrilled and frightened her. Like her strange facility with languages, her martial strength was something unearned that nonetheless belonged to her, was her. The fact that both gifts were so innate to be automatic made her feel like a passenger in her own body. She’d gone through a mythology phase early in adolescence, reading everything she could find on legends, religion and ancient cultures. Now, the Voudon concept of loas came back to her, spirit-gods that rode the bodies of hounsi – human priests acting as conduits. Which am I? she wondered. Human mind or vampire instinct? Loa or hounsi? And when the loa rides, is there any difference?

  Out loud, she said, ‘You were right. I can fight.’

  I am a weapon.

  ‘Solace.’ Sharpsoft’s odd eyes flickered. ‘It’s not just that you can fight. It’s that you must. Each of your friends is strong in his or her own way, but though they are Rare, they are not warriors. If you cannot protect them – if they cannot shield themselves – they will die.’

  A yawning chasm opened up beneath her ribs. For an instant, the clean scent of the Castalian spring was replaced by the sharpness of smoke, the char of flesh. In her mind’s eye, she saw the warehouse fire, felt the brush of Glide’s lips against her own, flinched as Grief plunged a needle into her arm, and was overtaken by a fear so absolute that she staggered. But then she remembered something else, and clung to the question it spawned, lest she be overwhelmed.

  ‘Blood,’ she said, trembling only a little. ‘My blood. Lukin took it twice. Or I mean, one of his researchers took a sample, but Grief and Mikhail already had some. They half-vanished me from the dungeon, sedated me, strapped me down –’ She stared at Sharpsoft. ‘Was that … did they do the same thing as today? How did they do it? Why?’

  Sharpsoft sighed. ‘It was the same, though orchestrated differently. That first time, Grief used a sample of his own blood. Being siblings, it was close enough to yours that, once you entered their realm, he could use it to sum
mon you, but even then, it did not bring you all the way across.’

  ‘But today? He has a pure sample now. Why didn’t it work?’

  ‘The Rookery magic,’ Sharpsoft replied. ‘You were under Liluye’s protection. He wants you to join him, which is why he let you live rather than force the issue. But twice and no more is, I think, the limit of his mercy. Do not count on it again.’

  Solace looked away, feeling almost as drained as she had following her most recent ordeal with Grief. Then a horrible thought occurred to her.

  ‘My friends, though,’ she said, trying to keep the panic from her voice. ‘Lukin took blood from all of us. He could summon or kill them that way, couldn’t he?’

  Sharpsoft smiled. ‘He could, if he still had his samples.’

  ‘And does he?’

  ‘Not since he finished the main tests. I got rid of them – refilled the vials with my own. If he ever decides to summon your friends, he’ll end up with me instead.’

  ‘If he decides? And what if he notices you’ve swapped the blood before then? I mean, that’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it?’

  ‘There wasn’t another option.’ Sharpsoft shrugged. ‘No matter what I did, the tampering would be obvious, and your brother already suspects me. At least this way, I’ll know he’s found me out as soon as he tries anything. Who knows? I might even be able to vanish again before he straps me down.’ There was a mad glint in his eyes.

  ‘Well, then.’ Solace fiddled with the hem of her jacket, disquieted. ‘What now? Are you staying in the Rookery, or going back, or what?’

  Sharpsoft shook his head and winked. ‘Both and neither, my lady.’

  And then he vanished.

  Sighing, Solace rubbed her face. There were too many unanswered questions to contend with. For a moment, she felt paralysed. But then she remembered the satyrs were still outside, and after that, there were her friends to face. A new guilt stabbed at her: what could she tell them of any use? The whole point of coming to the grove had been to find out what they might do next. The vision had shown her three things only: a fragment of Luci’s new life at the group home, a frightening future glimpse into Lukin’s dungeon, and Glide.