Star Thief

by Robin Kristoff

  “Well?” The suited man demanded. “Have they broken a law?”

  “Not yet,” someone from the back answered sulkily.

  “Am I now the mayor of a town in Ustengard?” The man answered incredulously. “I think someone would have told me. While we are Maraynians, we will follow the rule of law. And if they have done nothing yet, we will do them no harm.” He looked down his beaked nose at those nearest him. “If I see another display of this kind, I will summon the guards. Now be off. Go home.”

  People began to drift away from the edges of the crowd. Under the mayor’s unblinking gaze, those that hesitated soon hurried themselves along. Relief eased the muscles around the mayor’s eyes and mouth. He nodded to the vagabond at his side, who smiled back.

  “Well done, if I may say so sir.” The wanderer’s voice was musical, but a trace of an accent marked him as a foreigner.

  “Thank you,” Nolan said to them both. “We thank you very much.”

  The mayor blinked in surprise. On a belated impulse Nolan gave a half-height bow. He, Kris and Tylan exchanged glances, then turned in wordless agreement to go.

  “Young man,” the mayor called sharply after them. “You understand me, yes? You are free to go, but do not linger here. Take those two,” he cast a contemptuous glance over Kris and Tylan, “with you.”

  “Yes, we’ll go. But we need to buy supplies first—food, and coats…” Nolan cursed these moments that still found him clumsy at speaking Maraynian.

  “You will be gone from here within the hour, or you will be arrested for disturbing the peace,” the mayor said firmly. “I run a simple, orderly town here, and I will keep it that way.”

  “We haven’t done anything…”

  “If you’ll forgive me, sir, it is rather late in the day to send them on,” the old man put in. “Might they stay until morning if I watch them until they go? There’ll be no trouble if they are with me.”

  The mayor pursed his lips. “I suppose that would suffice. Yes. Thank you, Jal. And we will still hear you tonight at Martin’s inn?”

  Jal bowed with the flourish of a stage performer. “Where my public awaits, I am always at their service.”

  Kris tried to elbow Nolan. He dodged her, very relieved that she’d taken the necklace. Not that he blamed her entirely for a few sparks this time. If he’d had magic, he might have been tempted to send a few burns around himself. He was amazed Kris hadn’t hurt anyone today. He felt ready to burst.

  “Stop it. I’ve pulled it all back,” Kris whispered impatiently. “Let’s go.”

  “He says that old man’s supposed to watch us until we go.”

  “Then let’s go quickly so we’ll lose him.”

  “Why are you even talking about this?” Tylan hissed. “Let’s get out of here before they come back.”

  “Then what are we supposed to eat tomorrow?” Nolan demanded.

  The old man looked back and forth between them all with fascination. “I’ll tell you what,” he said in western-accented Surian. “If all you’re wanting are supplies, let me buy them for you.”

  They all stopped talking and looked him over skeptically.

  “Why?” Nolan asked.

  He smiled. “I see a chance to do a good turn. I try never to miss those chances.”

  Nolan’s scalp prickled. The old man’s words sounded far too close to Nolan’s own thoughts ever since the disastrous night with Edeva.

  “Also, I’ve had my share of luck in the last few weeks. Only stands to reason I share my luck with fellow travelers, wouldn’t you say? It goes rotten if you keep it all to yourself, I always thought.”

  Nolan glanced at the others.

  “I understood. Food is food,” Kris murmured.

  “All right then,” Nolan said aloud. “And we thank you.”

  The old man gave a boyish grin and offered his hand. “Jal. I’m a bard by trade. And what might your names be?”

  “They’re frightened,” Jal explained later at the inn. He sat tuning his harp while Kris, Tylan, and Nolan consumed the rich meal he’d ordered for them. He himself had refused food, saying he sang best on an empty stomach. Jal strummed a note of his harp, then carefully turned a peg.

  “You have noticed that the heavens have gone dark, haven’t you? They can hardly forget that out here in the country, you know. They’re not like the city people locked away from it, who might forget for a day.” The bard glanced up at them to see if they were listening, then resumed his tuning. “Then there are all the strangers around, not doing anything—don’t look like these people, aren’t any kind of foreigner anybody’s ever heard of.”

  Tylan and Kris stiffened in their seats.

  “People don’t understand what they’re doing here. A few are saying they’re messengers from the gods.” He bent his ear nearer to the string and strummed again. “They’re the minority,” he said bluntly. “A lot of others are saying that they stole the stars from the Night God and are being punished. That they’re demons, or powerful witches at best.”

  The bard nodded to himself and moved on to the next string. “It’s never been a better time to be a bard. This is the stuff of legends. We’re living it. I’ll write it.” He finally looked at them again. “But it’s never been a worse time to be a foreigner. Especially like you lot, wandering around without any purpose.” He held up a slender hand to halt their protests. “Or if you have a purpose, no one knows what it is by looking at you. And you’re not telling anybody.”

  “We just want work,” Nolan said. “And we will work. We’re not asking for any favors. There’s got to be extra work to do at this time of year.”

  “Anyone really looking for work is headed south to the factory towns,” Jal retorted dryly. “Merchants and politicians might have business north in Ostmonton, but you lot are neither. You’re not a man on his own returning to start a farm, or a couple who’s come back to start a family. None of you have the right kind of muscle to be from anywhere around here, even if you didn’t look foreign. The only kind of foreigners really looking to settle anywhere here in the north are the Ustengardians, fleeing that mad king of theirs. But you’re not from Ustengard. And then,” he continued, sounding every inch like Nolan’s last school teacher orating the class’s poor marks, “you’re not even the same kind of foreigner. So why would you be traveling together?”

  “We met on the road,” Nolan said. “It’s safer to travel together. So who are you? You’re Surian?”

  “I’m a bard,” the man answered with a smile, raising his thick eyebrows innocently. “Man of no land, no lord, no master but music. But I was born in Suria, yes. My name is Jal.”

  “Why don’t they mind you being here then, if you’re not Maraynian either?”

  Jal’s smile widened to a grin. “Because I’m a bard. Bards have a reason for traveling—they go wherever there’s an audience, no matter where that may be. Almost any village understands that, and welcomes it more and more as the days get shorter.”

  Nolan nodded, disgruntled.

  “How many?” Tylan asked impatiently.

  Kris dropped her fork. Nolan stared at him. He’d understood Tylan, but the sounds felt very different, somehow.

  Jal raised his eyebrows. “You speak Surian, youngster,” he sounded pleased. “But how many of what were you asking about?”

  Tylan wrinkled his brow and answered gamely, pronouncing each word carefully. “The others. The…foreigners you say are here. How many are there?”

  “Tylan, be quiet,” Kris hissed.

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Don’t let him know more than he has to. They can’t separate us if they can’t talk to us.”

  “I myself have seen three, before you lot,” Jal answered jauntily. “A woman older than me passed through by herself, and two young men a few years older than Nolan here. Others have seen groups of one, two, sometimes four. Probably a few dozen up here in the north so far.”

  “So many…” Kris whispered.


  “We should look for them! They might be family,” Tylan said enthusiastically, reverting back to Rusamite.

  “Tylan, we left for a reason. The point wasn’t to find them all again here.”

  “You’re just scared of the trouble you’ll be in. Don’t you want to see Mother again?”

  “I’m thinking of what’s best for you, Ty,” Kris insisted. “For both of us.”

  “I’m not ashamed, all right? So stop it! Being a mundane doesn’t mean I can’t ever see them again—we still saw mundanes when we used to go into the city!”

  Nolan caught himself watching the argument and turned away, wishing he could risk leaving them their own space. Maybe when they got back on the road he could take a very long walk one night, and leave the two of them alone as they’d left Tylan alone. He studiously ate the food before him, pretending he couldn’t hear either of them.

  Jal had returned to tuning his harp, though Nolan could see a fascinated glint in his eyes whenever the old man glanced up. “Quite a language,” he said mildly. “Haven’t heard the like of that before.”

  “You said yourself they’re not from around here. You knew they were foreigners.”

  “Very foreign, by the sound of it.”

  Nolan shrugged. “We’re just looking for work.”

  Jal nodded. “So you said,” he said mildly. He let Nolan eat a few more bites and drain the cider from his glass. The argument between the Rusamites drew to a close of charged silence. Tylan sulkily stabbed the chicken on his plate and forked it into his mouth. “By any chance are you lot musical?” Jal asked. “Any of you?”

  Tylan shrugged, pointedly glaring at Kris.

  “The young lady?”

  “I play the flute, or I did before I hurt my hand,” Nolan said cautiously. “Why?”

  “I’m leaving town tomorrow, and the road can be a lonely place. It seems to me we could travel together, perform together if your hand’s healed and you’re any good—split the profits. If you…need a bit of rehearsal, I can still use a few strong backs to help me carry the goods, and a few good stories for the next songs I write.”

  Nolan shook his head. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Now take a second to think,” Jal said, holding up a hand. “You need work. You…likely won’t be able to settle in one place for a time, and wanderers without a purpose put people on edge, as you saw. People expect bards to be different—outsiders, even exotic. If you’re with me, you won’t be as suspicious but you’ll still put food in your mouths every day. What do you say?”

  “Ask him where he’s going,” Kris ordered thoughtfully.

  Nolan translated.

  “Where the wind takes me,” Jal answered with a shrug. “Or where the wind’s taking you, if you’ve a destination in mind.”

  With a brief excuse to Jal, Nolan stood and moved apart slightly with the others. “If every town greets us like this one, we may need the help,” he said softly. “But I don’t like the thought of anyone following us.”

  Kris shook her head reluctantly. “It’s only slowing us down to knock on every door, even if they aren’t afraid.”

  “But there’s something odd. He wants to help us too much.”

  “Maybe he’s another witch. He could be after protection.”

  “That would make him more dangerous, though.”

  Kris frowned at him.

  “For all of us I mean. It would be harder to lose a witch.”

  Kris gave a half-shrug of agreement and eyed Jal consideringly. “I doubt he’s stronger than me. I don’t like it either but we need the help, Nolan. We’re not moving fast enough.”

  “The jar’s getting dimmer,” Tylan cut in.

  Nolan and Kris fell silent and stared at him. Nolan swallowed a lump in his throat. He thought he’d been the only one to notice the change in the star–jar. He’d half convinced himself he was imagining it.

  “If we move faster with him, that’s better. If we don’t scare people with him, that’s better. If we can leave him when we want…” Tylan shrugged. “Why not?”

  Kris took a breath and nodded at Nolan. Nolan reluctantly turned back to the expectant Jal.

  “All right. We’re headed north.”

  For an old man, Jal was a fast walker. Nolan had expected the older man to slow them down at least a little bit, but Jal was the one who set a loping, regular pace for the four of them the next day.

  He was also an incredible musician. Tucked in a corner just behind and to the right of Jal for his last performance in Nanair, Nolan couldn’t help being impressed by the music that swelled through the common room of the inn the previous night. He was used to a singer or a fiddler that played for a few coppers, playing loudly rather than particularly well to break over conversations, shouting cooks, laughter and slamming doors.

  The tables were full that night with expectant faces, but Jal had no trouble in making his music travel over the hum of conversation. His fingers moved deftly across the harp strings, sending vibrations of sound over the tables and into the walls. He sang his way through country harvest songs, a ballad about Gavin’s first meeting with Amelia, and two classical pieces before taking requests from the audience. Jal knew every song that was called out, from a harvest prayer to the Mother to the bawdy call and refrain about a lonely shepherdess.

  The crowd in the inn looked completely different from the people that had seemed so menacing that day. Nolan watched the stress ease from their faces over the course of the evening. He even caught Tylan smiling. Kris leaned against the back of her chair, her foot tapping. She looked as relaxed as Nolan had ever seen her, and suddenly much younger than she’d ever seemed before.

  The spell ended when the music did. By the next day Nolan could hardly believe that a man who looked so grizzled and ordinary could produce the sounds that he’d heard in Nanair’s inn.

  Jal also talked an aggravating amount at distressingly early hours of the morning. It was just as well that he seemed indifferent to the inattention of his audience. He lamented good-naturedly how his voice had roughened in the last few years. He talked about how the towns had changed during his life and the growth of the factories. He talked about the farm where he’d grown up in Suria until an older cousin had apprenticed him as a concert musician. He talked about getting tired of seeing nothing but the inside of aristocratic halls until he finally left his patron when he was nearly forty. He talked on and on, with a never-ending stream of vocalized thoughts.

  About halfway through the day Kris let down her guard enough to talk back to him, haltingly, in Surian. Tylan, with a half-glance at Kris, then began to satisfy Jal’s wish for conversation, asking him about his harp and his songs and how he’d come to learn them all. He seemed to have given up his newly-assumed moodiness for the day. If Jal did them no other good, Nolan was at least glad he’d given them that change.

  Another bonus was that it turned out Jal wasted no expense on food. And he cooked, over a fire that Nolan lit by an unspoken agreement with Kris.

  After dinner, Jal rocked back casually on his hands and gave them a lazy smile. “So, that’s me in a nutshell. Now that you know my life. What’s your story?”

  Tylan glanced at Kris uneasily, then at Nolan’s pack, where the star-jar lay carefully hidden away. Nolan cleared his throat and outlined a few details about River’s End and his father’s stable.

  “And how about your music? Didn’t you say you play the flute?”

  “I do…did, until I hurt my hand.”

  Jal glanced at the offending limb with easy concern. “So what happened there?”

  Nolan shook his head. “An accident. A…fire.”

  “Not too serious I hope? How long until you’re mended?”

  Nolan thought back, surprised when he realized how much time had passed. “A few days, maybe a week before I can leave the bandages off.”

  “We should change them, before the light fades,” Kris said quietly, reverting to Rusamite.

  Nolan nodded and t
urned to face her, holding his right hand out and ready for the ritual they’d become accustomed to. Her movements had grown surer with practice, her hands smoothly passing over and around his.

  Jal watched interestedly. “Might I see your hand?” he asked when Kris finished unwrapping the used bandage. “I’ve picked up a little of the healers’ arts, over the years.”

  Nolan reluctantly surrendered the limb, trying hard not to flinch away as Jal’s long fingernails probed over his skin. Jal frowned as he first saw the burn, then took to studying each side with practiced eyes. Nolan still bore a scar across his palm, but the swelling had disappeared. The skin was tender and stiff, but not nearly as painful as when he’d first received that shock from Kris. Kris watched them both with the fresh bandage held ready in her hands, looking annoyed, but Nolan began to feel pleased. It had been more than a week since he’d really looked at his hand without the bandages. He’d had no idea the recovery was so far progressed.

  Finally Jal nodded. “This...however you got it, is not too bad. Nearly healed. You should start to use it a bit more. Let your muscles come back. You should give us a song tomorrow night.”

  Nolan couldn’t help a small smile. “I can try. I’ll be out of practice…”

  Kris looked between them with a tight face. Nolan couldn’t guess why.

  “Good. Can we finish wrapping it then? I’d like to get to sleep.”

  No one was impressed with Nolan’s first attempts to play his flute again, but Nolan felt that it could have gone worse. The next night was better. His hand felt strange, and a little clumsy, but he still remembered each note of the simple, lilting melodies he’d learned at his father’s knee. Jal knew every song Nolan could think of, from the ballads to the jigs. He played accompaniment to each song easily.

  Tylan looked entranced. Kris looked as though she were trying very hard to look disinterested. The third night Tylan cajoled her into singing. Nolan and Jal took turns teaching Nolan’s repertoire to her and Tylan over the next few days. Despite his suspicions of the bard, Nolan felt himself grasping for this easy distraction whenever he could. He suspected the Rusamites welcomed the change as well.