Ruin of Stars

by Linsey Miller

  I’d been in too deep with my gang and its leader, Grell, to make friends as a kid, but now I could befriend who I wanted, and there were plenty of folks like me here, Lark included. It was just easier with them.

  It was mostly Erlends, they’d said, who couldn’t grasp people not binary like them. It was mostly Erlends, I’d agreed, who couldn’t take my word for it when I explained I was fluid, that I wasn’t both or neither. They existed in a world of pairs.

  Binary, Lark called it. Said it had been the old word before Erlend had gotten tired of inclusion and burned the ancient libraries of Alona’s ancestors.

  “It would have been children. They always take young boys to be rangers.” Lady de Arian glanced at me. I was short, sure, but still clearly young. “Children disenfranchised by Igna life ten years ago with ties to Erlend, ones he could make hate you enough to kill you. With less than a handful, he could keep it secret but make sure at least one or two had a chance of getting close to you.”

  Gaspar, the man responsible for pushing mages to create the shadows, doing what-have-you to kids to make sure they obeyed, churned my stomach.

  Our Queen took a deep breath. “I had hoped that anyone Gaspar sent to kill or spy had been flushed out by now or won to our side.”

  “We’ll change our standards.” Emerald’s voice, low and flat, wavered behind her mask. “The Left Hand was originally founded to proactively prevent the assassination of Our Queen when Gaspar del Weylin sent killers here ten years ago. They will not make it so close to Our Queen again.”

  Our Queen laid a hand on Lady de Arian’s arm. “Lena, you will walk with Amethyst and Nicolas, and you will point out all the staff members from yours and Mattin’s lands. We need to know if Weylin attempted to recruit them or anyone they know. You will harm none of them and threaten no one. Being born Erlend is not the problem; subscribing to Gaspar’s ideas are a threat. We will not alienate our Erlend-born citizens. We are not better than Weylin if we repurpose his supremacy for our own nation.”

  A warm, prickling sweat dripped down the back of my neck. Our Queen would sooner die than that. Least some part of my hero was not a lie.

  Sometimes, at night, when I’d nothing better to do than know this fact while my bones healed and the shadows crawled around my bed, it was hard to hate her. She wore power for others’ sakes.

  “Dimas and Maud, the servants from my lands, what will happen to them?” Lady de Arian raised her chin. Barely. A slight show of power.

  Our Queen smiled. “They have been with us since they were children and have been exceptional staff. Unless they decide to kill me, no actions will be taken against them.”

  Lady de Arian’s shoulders slumped as she breathed out, and her pale brows drew apart.

  “Emerald, you’ll stay with me.” Our Queen rose and dismissed us. “Nicolas, make sure the servants and guards know not to talk as you go. I want no word of this to reach the ears of people who were outside of this room. Pull anyone who has heard out of rounds.”

  They all nodded.

  I raised my hand. Our Queen caught my gaze, boring through the eye holes of my mask.

  “The killers at the border, the ones flaying people alive.” She held out her hand to me, and I crept closer, the shadows between us merging, growing. “They’re yours. You will clear out the Erlend rangers and their captain, and you will flush out the killers from their hideouts. They are not only killing their victims; they’re torturing them and the survivors still living in the memories of the shadows. If they cannot be arrested, they die. Understood?”

  “Yes, Our Queen.” I laid my hand on hers and shook as she shook, feeling the deep ache that murder left in her soul. “All of them?”

  “At your discretion. If Isidora believes it is soldiers, I am inclined to trust her, and they cannot be allowed to carry on their torturous reign.”

  Our Queen felt it all as she’d felt the loss of magic, a hurt so deep I could see the way her orders ached in her bones and dragged her down. She knew she couldn’t wear power without wearing death. She felt Nacea’s loss in a way the Erlend nobles of my list never would.

  “No one innocent or redeemable will be harmed.” I bowed—nine out of ten on Ruby’s scale if only I could keep my healing arm straight without trembling—and bared the back of my neck. I didn’t love her anymore, but of all the monsters bearing down on us, I trusted her the most and would pick her every time. “Only the ones as soaked in blood as me.”

  Her hand stilled. “Good. Stay safe. Bring me any information you can glean from them.”

  She left me there, still bowing, and it was Lady de Arian who waited for me to rise.

  “Did you find the others?” she asked. “Did Mattin del Aer tell you the true names of the others?”

  She had not known either. Neither did Lark and Nicolas. No one did, it seemed.

  “No.” I took a deep breath, lungs full of the dust from carving a line through his name. “He didn’t know who they were.”

  “I will be glad to be rid of those torturers lurking about the borders. They’re entirely too arrogant and daring.” She sighed, tension seeping from her jaw to her neck. “Was there word of Elise?”

  “No,” I said. “There was nothing from Hinter at all so far as I could see. I’m sorry, Lady de Arian.”

  Wasn’t much. I could recognize Hinter written, but Caldera’s handwriting had been jagged, too-straight nonsense to be letters.

  “You should call me Lena. It will make our conversations easier, Lady Opal, and I imagine we will have many of them in the future. Elise is fond of you. She is usually an excellent judge of character.”

  I winced, glad she couldn’t see it. She was trying to be nice.

  And she knew Elise.

  “Honorable,” I said. We’d a title to keep our hold on male and female onlyness at bay, and it didn’t take any extra effort to use.

  “Apologies.” She gestured to my tunic.

  I shrugged. Ruby would have hated my rudeness. “It’s not foolproof. I am as I am, and the clothing’s a tool, not a cause.”

  Clothes had no gender, but people had a lot of thoughts about clothes, and I’d only been using those thoughts to my advantage.

  Got tiring though, molding myself to make sure people weren’t asses.

  I’d asked Nanami Kita about it—wasn’t the same but she’d changed her name to be easier on Igna ears—and she’d laughed.

  It hadn’t been a happy one.

  Honorable Lark del Evra had laughed, too, when I’d told them about the exchange, but they knew what I’d been after.

  Molding. Changing. Stuffing yourself into another person’s ill-fitting idea of you so they didn’t take offense. Got tiring not being able to just be.

  It was nice having older folks somewhat like me to run to and ask questions, to get all the little worries out of my head. They’d lived their lives already. They’d answers to spare.

  “I was the first person Elise told.” Lena—it was only polite to think of her how she asked me to—began walking, waiting for me in the doorway. “She didn’t know how to tell her father that she was courting another girl. I’m afraid I wasn’t very helpful. Maud speaks highly of you as well. A pity I found her and Dimas only to lose Elise.”

  I ground my teeth together. “I’m glad Maud found someone from her area to talk to.”

  “I hope it helps,” Lena said. “It will be nearly impossible to find all of the family items she pawned, but I’d like to help. And Dimas has some lovely stories about Erlend. I’ve enjoyed talking to him. It’s unfortunate they don’t get along better.”

  “Very.”

  She stared at me for a moment, blue eyes the same crackling pale of clear sea skies after a storm, and I cleared my throat.

  “I am glad,” I said softly, “that I have someone else to talk to about Elise, and I am sure Maud is happy to have someone around who knew her home.”

  Isidora had told me nearly all of her stories about Elise, and we’d tal
ked our throats ragged. Elise had tried to raise chickens as a child, enchanted by the way they didn’t move when she picked them up, and Lena had broken in with a tale about Elise attempting to sleep with them under her bed. Isidora hadn’t known that one. I’d not known any of it.

  I didn’t know much about Elise at all, it seemed. Only that she was alive.

  “Yes.” Lena laughed. “She’s been much more talkative than Dimas.”

  Like I cared about Dimas after the way he’d treated Maud.

  Lena grasped my arm, grip loose and stance too wide for an attack. She didn’t notice my flinch. “If you hear of her, if you hear of Elise, anything at all, please tell me. There may be word of Hinter or her father nearer to the border. I know you would cling to any news as I would. Please.”

  “If I hear anything, you will hear it.” I pulled her hand from my arm and stepped away. She was too close. Too strange. She wasn’t Maud, who’d earned my trust, or Rath, my childhood friend and thievery partner who’d stitched me up and stolen me breakfast more times than I could count. I didn’t have to humor her. “I promise.”

  She would hear the news from Our Queen. From Nicolas. From whichever member of the high court blurted it out in a meeting first.

  My news of Elise was mine—there was too little of it already—and I had shared too much with the world. The least it could leave me was grief.

  Chapter Five

  Our Queen’s quarters were at the heart of the palace, and in the rooms around hers lived the Left Hand. I’d been given too many rooms to count, Maud to manage them and me, and a common room to share with Emerald, Amethyst, and whoever became Ruby next if Igna survived the war. My time in the infirmary had been eaten up by my days with Emerald and Amethyst, and the handful of meals we’d shared since had been strained. I was new and Ruby was dead. The Left Hand was three again.

  I liked being Opal. I hated being Honorable Opal of Our Queen’s Left Hand.

  The huge rooms and their many corners, my new bed with enough space beneath for a person to crawl, and the constant need for new things—new clothes, new boots, new orders for Maud to follow. The emptiness closed in on me each time I stepped through my doors.

  The only good part of the rooms was the lockbox at the head of the bed I’d stuffed with Elise’s notes from tutoring to keep the charcoal from rubbing away and vanishing completely.

  Being Opal was more emptiness than fulfillment, more long stretches of empty time in empty rooms to think over all that you’d done. It wasn’t a good job. It was a debt-laden weight on my soul I’d taken up willingly. It was a necessary job. It suited my revenge and me.

  And I would continue to be Opal until the Erlend lords intent on murdering their way back into uneasy power were mine and Igna was safe. Elise, and the others like her once set to take over, would make sure the future Igna knew where it had come from. North Star had to die to make way for them.

  “Shadows!” I flung open the door to my washroom—frivolous, useless space for the sake of space—and slammed it shut. “How do people pretend to be shadows?”

  How could they bear it?

  The wall rumbled, and the basin tumbled to the floor.

  “More quietly than that, I imagine.” Maud, impeccable and stoic with her white-collared coat buttoned up to her throat and the emerald pin from Lena still in her hair, stepped out of the closet in the corner. “I know you don’t like anything in these rooms, but could you try not to destroy them every day?”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “And I like some things in this room.”

  She pressed her lips into one thin, serious line and pulled a brush from the closet. “I hope you didn’t imply I was a thing.”

  “I was talking about that big bathtub, but you’re all right.” I took the brush from her and swept up the shattered pieces of pottery, dumping the pieces into one of the buckets she’d set out to clean up another of my messes. “Sorry, really. I’m not used to having so much stuff to worry about.”

  Rath had been enough back in the day. Now I’d rooms and servants and jobs and Rath and Elise and Nacea all knotted into one taut tangle of feelings, the threads tightening with each bit of news from Erlend.

  It made me itch, like every bit of me had fallen asleep and I only needed to move to wake myself up.

  “A sentiment you’ve expressed time and time again.” Maud sighed, nose crinkling. “Your rashness is not my favorite trait of yours.”

  Meant she’d a favorite at least. I wasn’t good at this. The auditions were over and we both had what we wanted, more or less, and I’d nothing to fall back on.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said. “Not really.”

  I wanted to move. Amethyst had me training every morning and Nicolas was teaching me to fence each evening. I was barely better at sword work, and he took every chance to remind me the Erlend lords would disembowel me without getting their sleeves dirty. We used real swords, and he never flinched when I nicked him. He never hit me though.

  He’d perfect control, like a physician knowing how hard to push to set a bone instead of breaking it.

  That skill escaped me. I was moving all the time but didn’t feel it. My mind wandered. My hands trembled. Sometimes I felt like I was still falling and, on the worst days, like I was back in the woods but the shadows at my heels were real. Only when I’d a singular focus did the constant panic vanish.

  North Star. Deadfall. Riparian. Winter.

  I had to keep moving or else the nothing behind me, the yawning emptiness of Nacea and all my debts, all the lives I’d taken, would catch up to me.

  “I’m all jittery.” I glanced at Maud. “That make sense?”

  She laughed. Loud.

  “What?” I scowled, my face twisting against my mask. “Me being honest a laughing matter?”

  “You having no idea what you’re doing is not a revelation.” She covered her mouth, braid swinging behind her in silent laughter, and stepped up to me. “I’m not laughing at you, really. I’m sorry. It’s just—”

  She paused. I nudged her knee.

  “You’re sad,” said Maud. She moved as if to touch me and stopped. “You’re sad, and you have no idea what to do about it. Or anything, but that’s another issue.”

  Of all the folks who’d touched me today without asking, I’d have been all right with her.

  “I’m Opal. I won. I got it better than most.” I tilted my head toward her. “We’re at war, Elise is in Hinter doing Lady knows what, and the borders are a bloody mess. Plenty of people have it worse than me. I’m not sad.”

  It was the only emotion I knew well as my own name. It had been with me the longest. But I’d nothing to be sad about now.

  “Are you sure?” She laid her hands on my shoulders, squeezing gently, and knelt till we were eye to eye. “What did you used to do when you were sad? You could talk to Lady dal Abreu. She knows physicians who specialize in that sort of thing.”

  I wasn’t asking Isidora, who’d lost her brother for a second time, what to do about me being sad.

  I shook my head. “I just was sad. Wasn’t much to it. Usually had a job lined up soon enough, anyway, to take my mind off it. Robbed anyone annoying. That was fun.”

  Maybe I needed to rob Winter.

  Elise was too kind—she’d be at the front, making sure the people of Hinter, her people, weren’t in danger. Not that she shouldn’t have been, but it ate at me, wondering if today Nicolas’s contacts would bring news of her death. Winter would never take the same risks she did.

  Maybe I needed to rob him of more than his life.

  “Fine.” I groaned and patted Maud’s arms. “I get it. I know what I need to do.”

  Caring for folks was nothing but fear, and I couldn’t be afraid when I’d a knife in my hand and job underway. I had to keep going, keep hunting, and tear my way through Erlend until there was no one left to hide North Star, Winter, Riparian, and Deadfall. I’d nothing to fear.

  I was Sal. I was Opal. I was death.
I’d never needed anyone. Wanted, maybe, but everyone wanted something.

  Maud clucked her tongue. “You sure you don’t need to talk to someone?”

  “I’m sure.” I rolled my neck, the uncomfortable stretch of muscle under skin a welcome relief from sitting, and stood. “No more door slamming. Promise.”

  “Good because I usually snap a bunch of those pastry sticks with my teeth and eat them, but I don’t think that would work for you. And I ate them all already.”

  I snorted. “I’d not even broken anything yet.”

  “Not you—Dimas.” She groaned. “He told me I had no business being so close to Lady de Arian.”

  “You want me to kill him?”

  She smacked my shoulder. “No. I feel bad about it. I’m certain she told him some less-than-pleasant things about his family—he’s lost weight, his eyes are always bloodshot, and he’s always asking her questions. I’m not thrilled with him taking it out on me, but I’m not letting you murder him.”

  I’d not asked Maud what Lena had told her about her family’s fate, only let her share what she wanted, but I knew the family that had survived still had no interest in helping out her and her siblings.

  “You say that like you could stop me,” I said. “You’re still throwing punches wrong.”

  “Who would I punch with you gone?” She shooed me into the parlor—we’d been the only people to sit in it so far since I had no friends left in Willowknot—and opened the cabinet she kept stocked with tea. “It doesn’t matter. What I wanted to give you before you left again was this.”

  She set a topless box stuffed with finely scrawled papers in my lap. I knew the writing as well as I knew myself, so often had I traced the same words across my skin alone at night. Fingers shaking, I touched the first page and yanked my hand back. Elise’s neat pen strokes shivered as the paper moved, and Maud laid a hand on my arm, patting my shoulder when I leaned into her. The curves of Elise’s name twisted, black ink catching the light. The rest of the words were lost to me.