Fire in the Star

by Kamilla Benko

  Claire glanced away from her drawings to smile at Lyric, but the girl was already throwing herself at Claire for a hug. “Elaina!” she squealed excitedly. “Your memories, they’re coming back! You remember you have a sister!”

  Claire smiled. It couldn’t hurt to say the total truth for once. “I do.” She settled comfortably against the pillows and watched as Lyric tried out her newly chalked shoes. “And I miss her.”

  Claire knew she would miss Lyric, too, as she watched the younger girl, inspired, begin to practice her dance moves on her own. But Claire couldn’t risk telling her the plan. An uncomfortable thought brushed against her. Was this how Sophie felt all those times she’d chosen to leave Claire in the dark? If it was … well, Claire still didn’t like it, but maybe she understood her older sister just a little bit more.

  Claire was about to say good night, instead of good-bye, and head to Kleo’s empty room to pack when her eyes settled on a pile of books stacked up next to Lyric’s bed: Royal Compendium, Histories of Arden’s Queens and Kings, Journals of Majesty. And last but not least, The Crown and Its Making.

  No wonder Lyric had been able to answer the director’s question! She’d been doing her homework, throwing her heart and soul into becoming an expert on the d’Astora family. That was another thing about Lyric that made Claire think about Sophie. Sophie, too, would become invested in a certain topic or era and become an expert on everything about it. So far, Claire had been a part of Experiences involving Greek gods, Shakespeare’s plays, and right before she went into the hospital, Jane Goodall and other naturalists.

  “Can I see your books?” Claire asked.

  Lyric nodded, too out of breath from her deep knee bends to respond.

  Flipping The Crown and Its Making to its index, Claire scanned the topics for something that could be helpful. She thought “The Breaking of the Crown” might hold something useful, but the pages there, written by a Spinner historian named Alice the Acute, contained only information Claire already knew: that the Spinners had chosen to display their portion of the crown proudly, while the other three guilds were more secretive about what had been done to their tines: if they had been hidden, destroyed, or maybe even lost.

  She flipped the pages again—and froze.

  It was a simple drawing, done in ink and charcoal. It didn’t prance across the page, but Claire had seen it before and not only seen it—but drawn it: a queen and princess, their backs toward the viewer, stared upon the Crown of Arden.

  “Hey, Lyric?” Claire called, and the girl came over. Claire pointed to the sketch. “What is this?”

  “Oh, I love it, don’t you?” Lyric said. “This is supposedly a sketch that Queen Estelle drew—well, Princess Estelle, actually. This is just a copy—I think the original might have gotten destroyed in the great flood, about one hundred and fifty years after the war.”

  “Do you mind if I borrow this?” Claire asked, already shutting the book and clutching it to her chest. Lyric nodded, and Claire hurried to the guest room and closed the door. She went to her cloak pocket and pulled out the sketch she’d done, along with the pink marble she’d found in Woven Root. Carefully, she flipped open the book and placed her sketch next to it. With barely a thought, she polished the pink marble to a glow so that she could see the details more carefully.

  Claire’s breath caught. Her sketch was exactly the same as the one in the book, right down to the border of geese. But how, if Claire had never seen this image before? Nervously, she nibbled on the end of her pencil.

  The pencil.

  Claire pulled it away from her lips.

  Letter stone was rare in Arden, and pencils were treasured. This was the only pencil she’d seen in Arden. Legend was that it had belonged to Charlotte Sagebrush, who’d created Arden’s first alphabet. Claire wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but she knew for sure who had been its owner before her: Scholar Terra. Otherwise known as Queen Estelle d’Astora.

  What if Queen Estelle had had this pencil since she was a little girl? It was a rare enough treasure to be fit for a royal gift.

  Her fingers traced the drawing she’d done that afternoon. Rocks held the memory of the earth—isn’t that what she’d learned in Arden? They contained imprints of all the creatures that had once swum in the seas and walked on the land. Claire had even witnessed for herself how a stone forest could keep the echoes of a unicorn hunt. If petrified wood could do all that, why couldn’t the letter stone in her hand remember what it had been asked to draw before?

  Wonder swept through Claire. Her sketch was not her sketch at all but an echo of the queen’s sketches, done so long ago. The pencil had somehow recognized the crown Claire had been drawing, and its memory of that moment had been released. That dream within Claire, that almost memory, was a memory, but not Claire’s. It had belonged to Princess Estelle.

  Claire’s eyes darted to the corner of the page, and excitement began to course through her. She knew how to open the Diamond Tree Vault!

  A slight gasp came from over her shoulder. Claire had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn’t even been aware of Lyric opening the door to the guest room.

  “Elaina,” Lyric said, taking a step closer. “What’s that?”

  Confused, Claire glanced back at the girl. Lyric’s eyebrows had risen into twin arcs above very round eyes that were staring at the pink marble that sat forgotten … and glowing. Claire slapped her hand over it, but it was too late.

  “Elaina,” Lyric whispered, “are you a Gemmer?”

  CHAPTER

  12

  “What?” Claire asked a little too quickly. “Why would you say that?” The marble pressing into her hand hurt, but Claire ignored the pain as she tried to roll the stone without Lyric realizing what she was doing. She could feel the marble protest slightly against her skin, but a quiet hum shot through her, extinguishing the light just as Lyric reached her.

  “Let me see that,” Lyric demanded. Claire let her fingers fall open to reveal nothing but an ordinary marble; the only extraordinary thing about it was its pretty pink color. “Oh,” Lyric said. “What happened to the light?”

  Claire licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. Sophie would never have let herself get caught! And even if she had, she would have had a quick story at the tip of her tongue. But all Claire could manage was to repeat whatever word Lyric said last. “Light?”

  “Do you think this is a hint of who your family is?” Lyric asked, excitement threading through her voice. “I wonder if it holds a clue to what happened to you! Do you think you could be a Gemmer and not a Spinner? Elaina, I bet you’re someone really important to the queen! You need to meet with her to figure out who you are! Maybe you could even be—”

  “Lyric.” Claire hurried to cut off whatever story was running through Lyric’s extravagant imagination. “It’s just a marble, see? It’s not glowing.” And then she bit her lip but silently added, Not anymore.

  “But I saw it!” Lyric said. “I know I did.” She prodded the marble with her littlest finger, and Claire hastily wrapped her hand around it again.

  “It’s my good luck marble!” Claire said brightly. “I use it as a paperweight …” But her voice trailed off as Lyric’s eyes fixed on hers. Claire flinched. They weren’t accusing, exactly, more … more wounded.

  “Elaina,” Lyric said slowly, “if you forgot your memories, how can you be sure your name is Elaina? Or that you are a Spinner?”

  Claire flinched again. With all her heart, she wanted to tell Lyric the truth of who she was: Claire Martinson, rising sixth grader, a Gemmer princess, Sophie’s little sister.

  But.

  The ribbons on Lyric’s nightgown were Royalist blue. And Claire had promised Kleo to leave her little sister out of this. It was better for Lyric not to know. Safer. Yet Claire’s lies were becoming tangled, and each new one sat angrily on her chest, as if to say, You’ve created us—what do you want to do with us? She was so tired of them. And she missed having a sister
nearby.

  And so she decided to tell Lyric the truth.

  Kind of.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Claire admitted. “But,” she hurried to add, “I know that I want magic to return to Arden. That unicorns should run free. And that I am your friend.”

  Claire watched as Lyric took in this information. She could practically see the strands of a narrative weaving in front of her, and Claire wondered what kind of stories Lyric might write down one day. Kleo wanted to be a historian, to record fact, but Claire suspected that maybe Lyric would be a novelist, spinning stories that contained the kind of truths that could be seen only in glimpses.

  Suddenly, Claire felt arms wrap around her waist, and she glanced down to see the mermaid-like braids and twists of Lyric’s hair. “Thanks for my shoes,” Lyric said softly. And then, so quietly that Claire could barely hear: “Thanks for saving me.”

  And then she was gone.

  It was easy to slip quietly through the hallway of the Wefts’ home. The thick carpets muffled even the heaviest of footsteps.

  Seeing, however, was another matter.

  “Ow!” Claire let out a gasp of pain as she ran into the edge of a table. She clapped her hands over her mouth as tears pricked her eyes. Had anyone heard her? One second passed, then another. There was no creak of an upstairs door or a concerned call from Mistress Weft. Her breath slowly returned to normal.

  Picking up the pace, Claire moved forward, keeping her hand outstretched and careful not to rustle the Hollow Pack. Ten feet … five feet … Her hand grasped the doorknob, and then she was out in the fresh air, always slightly tinged with salt.

  Though the hour was late, a few Spinners still strolled the streets, admiring the Starfell ribbons and enjoying cups of warm nectar as they ambled by, arm in arm. And while one or two Spinners kept an eye on the shadowy patches, most of them moved loosely, taking their time to stop and stare up at the moon without fear of a wraith’s attack. With the queen’s promise of protection, it seemed many of them wanted to explore the night.

  None seemed to take notice of a girl quietly making her way toward the Historium. She would steal the tine and make it to the Weaver’s Bridge with enough time to meet Kleo and safely escape.

  Or she’d fail, and …

  No, she couldn’t think about that possibility.

  After hours, the theater was as quiet as it was large—an eerie contrast to the afternoon’s flurry of noise and color. The smell of smoke hung heavy on the air, and for a moment, Claire imagined Gemglows in the sockets of the stone wall, perfectly lighting up the tapestries of the greatest historians Arden had ever known. She could almost imagine Nett’s face there, brown eyes smiling, hair tufts and all, beaming down from the walls. The first Tiller in more than three hundred years to be honored in the Spinner Historium.

  She had entered through the back door, which she knew would be open, as earlier she’d left a pebble carefully wedged in its crease so that it wouldn’t seal closed. Now she tiptoed past the dressing stalls, letting the pale pink of the marble’s light shine over the shoe closet and the practice rooms, before she at last reached the lobby. There the Love Knot Tine stood on its diamond-tree pedestal. The diamond branches hadn’t stirred since she’d seen them last. They still grew up and over the tine, weaving themselves into a thick, seamless box. An unbreakable box.

  Claire slipped off the Hollow Pack and pulled out a pair of scissors she’d bought from Woven Root’s Exhibition’s Row. Carefully, she closed the blades around the rope and began to cut. As the blades flashed before her, she recalled what Sena had told her about the history of scissors in Arden—that they were once used to ward off Spinner weavings during the Guild War. Queen Estelle had wreaked havoc while on the throne, but according to Lyric, tensions among the guilds stretched from before even her reign. Claire wondered if it were possible for Arden to ever change.

  The rope snapped and her muscles tensed, ready to run if an alarm sounded, but the theater remained quiet. One hurdle down, a hundred to go. She approached the vault.

  This time, she breathed normally. Or at least as normally as possible when one is conducting a heist. The diamond vault glittered in her marble’s light, each of its thousands of facets cut to blinding perfection. It was like looking at an eclipse.

  As quietly as she could, Claire set the pink marble on the floor, and the vault’s glitter dimmed. It still sparkled, but this time it was bearable.

  Claire pulled out the pencil and studied it. Charlotte Sagebrush’s pencil always looked more like a twig than a yellow pencil, but tonight, it looked even more twiglike, with a tiny spot of green that resembled a new leaf. Rubbing her thumb over it, Claire tried to brush the speck off, but it remained. She squinted, and slowly a smile crept across her face. The green spot was, in fact, a tiny sprouting leaf. No matter how many times Claire used it, the pencil would never become a stub. It would always be just the right fit.

  “I hope that’s a lucky leaf,” Claire whispered to it. “Because I could use the help.”

  The transportation Kleo had arranged for her would leave in just a few minutes. She needed to be far, far away by dawn. Far away from the so-called prince. Far away from an empty Diamond Tree Vault.

  Taking a deep breath, she placed the pencil’s point on the diamond and scrawled the first thing that came to mind: Open up.

  Nothing happened. The pencil didn’t even leave a mark.

  Claiiirrre, Sophie’s voice groaned. Relax.

  Shh, Claire mentally shot back, but she felt her shoulders slump. There’d been no hum of magic when she’d moved the pencil. How had she released the echo-sketch before? Claire’s foot tapped nervously. She’d been thinking about the crown and how heavy it might be to wear … a thought she might have shared with a younger Princess Estelle.

  Again, she placed the pencil’s tip on the box. But she didn’t move her hand. Instead, she tried to settle into the memory the pencil had shared. Of the weight of the petticoats around Estelle’s ankles. Of the way the crown had winked at her, humming a quiet song.

  Claire’s pencil, held by her hand, began to move across the diamond box. This time, instead of sliding off, the tip sank into the diamond, leaving in its wake an orange gleam of molten diamond and an extravagant O. Followed by a swooping P and then the curlicue E, just like the signature at the bottom of her sketch—Estelle’s signature, as she’d realized in Kleo’s old bedroom.

  These were not Claire’s own round, straight letters but were flowing, full of flourishes and impossible to mimic: Estelle’s handwriting. Or, as Kleo had referred to it: written in the queen’s hand.

  With a final swoop, the pencil scrawled an old-fashioned N. The four letters, all glowing bright orange, burned for a moment on the vault and then slowly sank into diamond. Tiny chimes suddenly filled the air as the diamond branches began to move, unlocking one by one. And then it opened, unfurling like a tulip to reveal a black seed: the Spinners’ Love Knot Tine.

  There wasn’t time to admire it. Claire grabbed the quarter of the Crown of Arden—and gasped.

  She stared at the sharp point, barren of its moontear. Even though the piece of crown looked like all the other sketches she’d seen and matched the crown in the pencil’s memory, it didn’t sing.

  The tine felt dull under her fingertips. And … not heavy, like Estelle had described.

  It felt … wrong.

  She stared at the point as the horrible truth sank in:

  This Spinners’ Love Knot Tine … it was a fake.

  Disappointment slammed into Claire, and she swayed. What now? She’d lost so much time here—and for what? Who had the real Love Knot Tine?

  “Halt! Who goes there?”

  Slug soot and rust and patches! She wasn’t alone in the Historium!

  Claire whipped her hand away from the vault and turned away. In the dim light of the lobby, she could make out three figures coming toward her, one of them dressed in Wraith Watch white and the other two in Royalist-blue c
loaks.

  “It’s m-me, me?” she stammered, taking a step back from the podium. “Elaina? I’m a friend of the Weft family? I accidentally left something here earlier today?” She tried to make her sentences sound commanding, but they all sounded like questions.

  “Your name isn’t Elaina,” a new voice said.

  Claire’s heart stopped. A tall boy with bright-blue eyes, sandy hair, and overlarge ears stepped into the light of her marble.

  Thorn Barley had arrived.

  She was out of options, out of lies, and out of time.

  Claire turned—and ran.

  She sprinted into the auditorium, flung herself onto the stage, and disappeared into the wings. Pounding down the twisting hallways behind the Historium’s stage, Claire ran faster than she ever imagined she could. The footsteps were coming closer! But she was running out of breath.

  She reached for a nearby door, and flung it open. She had only a moment to see that it was the same closet Kleo had pulled her into before the door swung shut, locking her in total darkness. Scrambling on her hands and knees, Claire made her way toward the corner, trying to be as quiet as possible. But even with care, a few shoes thumped to the ground. At last, her fingertips found what they had been looking for. As quickly as she could, Claire tugged on the red cowboy boots that Kleo had called “Seven League Boots.” The boots that could get her seven leagues from here in a single step … or splatter her completely.

  It would be her last resort.

  As soon as her heel sank into the last one, she heard footsteps and muffled voices outside the door.

  “Which way, Your Highness?”

  “Take the left corridor,” Thorn said, his voice commanding. “Oscar, you go right.”

  “Are you sure?” one of the guards asked. “She might have gone into a closet.”

  “No,” Thorn said. “I definitely saw her pass this section.”

  Claire held her breath as the footsteps passed by. It was too soon for relief, but she hoped that maybe, just possibly, she was going to get out of this. She stood up but stayed crouched as she hooked a finger in the back of a boot, ready to take them off. There was still enough time. If she ran, she could make it to the narrowboat Kleo had arranged for her. There, she could figure out her next steps—and try to figure out what had happened to the real Love Knot Tine.