Ruin of Stars

by Linsey Miller

It was a ring—plain silver with a slightly raised band that spun when I ran my nail across it.

  “Spin it when you’re nervous.” She smiled. “Emerald made it. We had better ones when magic was around, but she’s been trying to figure out those for a few months, and I didn’t have the heart to import a runed one from elsewhere. All of this,” Isidora said, touching my arm, “rarely starts out bad, but it goes bad quickly.”

  With Weylin and this secret keepers dead set on ruling these lands no matter how much they ruined it, the rangers stealing kids, doing Lady knew what with their ears and picking up the ones who could fight to use as soldiers, and Elise determined on fixing Hinter no matter what happened, the world would need a way to cope in the coming days.

  I would need a way to cope.

  I whispered, “A runed one from elsewhere? What do you mean by that?”

  “Mizuho and the Free Nations still have magic. Berengard probably still does if they’re alive. It’s just us that’s been cut off.” Her fingers tapped the runes in her wrists. “Probably for the best, wouldn’t you say?”

  I laughed. “Should’ve done it sooner.”

  “I have another, older gift for you, but first.” Isidora gently gripped my wrist, fingers barely closed over my forearm. “You’re with me, and you’re Opal. It’s a high crime to hurt a physician, a crime to hurt a member of court, and I’m terrifying enough for the two of us. Nothing can hurt you now.”

  I grinned.

  I only had to hold that close. I was Opal. I was safe.

  As Isidora gently tended the rest of my wounds, I repeated the still-living names from my list: North Star, Riparian, Winter. I would kill them, and the world would be all the safer for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The gift was a small, leather-bound journal, the sort merchants used to keep track of accounting, and the numbers and names were written in Nacean. There were nine thousand people listed, nine thousand Nacean neighbors I’d never known and never would. Nicolas had found it in his library, Isidora had said, and he thought I was from southern Nacea. The first victims of the shadows.

  “Three-fourths of the way through,” Isidora had said. “We think that’s them.”

  I’d flipped through the pages—racing past sharp scribbles that looked like names and numbers, maps of roads and rivers cutting through endless fields: sigils for Nacean things I didn’t know and letters I barely remembered.

  The writing itself was easier to recognize, to remember. It was all hills and mountain peaks, lines and angles instead of Alonian’s and Erlenian’s round, soft symbols. I didn’t have the patience to read the notes, but I knew my name. I knew the names of my family.

  The writing blurred, and I shook my head.

  “It’s important to know your past.” My father, sitting in the dim light every morning when Shea and Hia were still asleep, measured tea leaves with one hand and drew letters on my palm with the other while he taught me to read. Easier to learn the feel of them. “If you do, you will understand the present and the future. We invented printing presses to maintain our histories, to ensure our pasts were available for all. You’re part of those histories now and forever.”

  Now and forever. From Nacean memories to Nacean hands to Nacean pages to me. These weren’t myths or stories, not laws lived here.

  But these names were history. Nine thousand histories that had to matter now.

  Leon Margo. Perrin Cal. Sallot Leon. Shea Leon. Hia Leon.

  I would make them matter.

  I’d tucked the book into my chest pocket, better to feel their histories against my heart, and straightened my shoulders before entering Our Queen’s new safe room.

  I was Opal, deadly and still alive. Mostly.

  I’d no reason to fear this room or these people.

  Isidora entered before me, bowed, and moved aside, and I followed, eyes rising to Our Queen and the rest of the room. Nicolas laid on a couch, propped up by pillows and poppy by the looks of his eyes. Isidora sat near his feet and curled one hand around his bare ankle. Amethyst and Emerald, hands empty but stances ready, stood on either side of Our Queen. I bowed.

  “Our Queen?” I waited for her to speak.

  She rose instead and touched my bandaged hand. “I would comment on Dimas’s escape, but I fear we’re all quite baffled.”

  “All” was an understatement.

  “I don’t know what he did.” I straightened up and shook my head. “He was talking one moment, and then everything exploded.”

  Emerald hummed. “I don’t recall him studying alchemy.”

  “There are many cleaning solutions and healer’s kits that come with easily combustible ingredients.” Isidora took a deep breath and shrugged. “I cannot be sure what he used, but it worked on solid stone three different times. He must have had quite a lot of it.”

  “He used it three times?” I asked.

  “He blew holes in anything in his way.” Amethyst held up her own bandaged hand. “He escaped in the chaos. Willowknot is on lockdown. There’s a hole the size of a house in the wall.”

  Maybe The Lady had taken a liking to him, but why?

  Was she watching me? Had I been found wanting?

  “He said Erlend has his mother and sister hostage.” I used my uninjured hand to make a “maybe” gesture. “Sounded real, but course, I didn’t see the explosion coming, so I don’t know.”

  “Weylin’s reign—politically, ideologically, morally—ends with us.” Our Queen took a breath and held it, steadying herself. “We have been fighting against him for too long. He has peddled his ideas of power to anyone disenfranchised, and he has encouraged his citizens to view life as expendable, to view all resources and rights as finite. We have limited years left. We cannot waste them fixing his mistakes. This is the last war with Erlend or the last stand of Igna. Opal?”

  I stepped forward, mind shuffling through her speech. She was, at least, determined to leave the world in better hands once she died. Not her family’s hands, not her friends’ hands. Better ones that would do right by us. “Yes, Our Queen?”

  “How is your list?”

  “Shorter than it was.” I could not hate her here, not with all them watching. She was, for all her faults, trying. “Riparian is the only unknown now.”

  “Good,” she said, voice rough, throat tense around the words. Her nails scraped up the arm of her chair. “Kill them. I do not care how, I do not care who sees. Kill them all. Bring Erlend’s supremacist traditions to an end. Give peace a chance to return. You will go after Dimas, as well. No one tries to kill me and gets away.”

  I bowed—deep, slow, the back of my neck exposed to everyone in the room—even though she could only hear the swishing of my coat and closeness of my breaths. “They’ll be dead, or I’ll die trying.”

  “Good.” She inclined her head to me. “Leave tomorrow morning once you’ve rested and prepared. Get Dimas first.”

  I could go after Rath, then. Least I could make something right.

  Emerald stayed with Our Queen. Amethyst and I went back to the Left Hand quarters. My rooms were a mess—no Maud, no order—and I’d no energy left to leave my clothes anywhere but the floor. I sunk into a bath and crawled into bed. A piece of paper crinkled. I pulled the note from under my pillow.

  Opal,

  I believe in you. I am certain you’ll pass out the moment you return, and I won’t get a chance to talk to you, but I do worry when you leave. It is nice to have a friend who trusts me, and I do trust you whether you believe it or not. We are kindred souls, I think, too ambitious to let others in. Perhaps ambition will be our downfall, but I think it will be the start of our success.

  Regardless, when you wake up and read this, please remember to unlock the door so I can enter.

  Also, you have terrible taste in jewelry. Pease stop offering to buy me some. Your company is enough.

  My paycheck, of course, is an integral part of your company.

  Yours,

  Maud

>   I know you’ll have to ask Amethyst or Emerald to read this. Please accept having to get out of bed and knock on their door as punishment for tearing holes in the heels of all your socks.

  I darned your socks. You’re welcome.

  Amethyst had laughed when reading that last bit. I’d thanked her—quietly—and snatched the note back. After she left, I tucked the note into my pocket with the book and curled up beneath the blankets, restless and sobbing until sleep claimed me. It did not come quickly.

  I left a lamp burning.

  And the next morning, when I pulled on my socks and started crying, I wiped my face on the long sleeve of my dress. Three scattered dots of white thread had been sewn into the black cloth.

  The Lady’s stars, close enough to touch.

  Emerald didn’t see me off, but Amethyst did. She was dressed to travel too, and a huge painted mare snuffled at her pockets. We were alone at the back gates, our masks bright in the dawn light.

  “Aim to kill,” she said. “Don’t hesitate. We’re beyond that now. Dimas went northeast.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Stay alive.” She rested her hands on my shoulders. “And if that fails, do what you normally do.”

  A snort came from behind me, and I turned.

  Emerald shook her head, light bouncing off her expressionless face. “Do better than you normally do.”

  “All right.” I glanced between the two. “Is that all in order of importance?”

  “Stop.” Emerald held up her hand, palm facing me. “Stay alive and end this. Order of importance.”

  I smiled.

  Bowing her head to me, she said, “Those with privilege always allow responsibility to trickle down, but while you kill them, we’ll take care of the rest. This isn’t a one-person job. Be safe. I can’t come save you this time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I was too weak to go after Dimas immediately. Instead, I went east and followed the leftover posters and rumors littering every southeastern town.

  The Carnival of Cheats was making its rounds with a whole new set of cheaters—they’d lost at least three of their performers during auditions, and they were advertising flesh blood in order to draw a crowd.

  It took me two days on the back of a wagon to make it to Felmark, and the tickets were already sold out. Getting tickets was hard enough when they were actually selling them. I’d have to cheat my way into a show full of folks as observant as me.

  I hoped Two was still working here. I’d never gotten her real name, but she had to be.

  If Rath had been here, he’d have told me I’d more confidence than blood. That I trusted my way to be right too often for no reason.

  She might not even agree to my idea. Two and I weren’t friends. There was a chance she wasn’t even here or wanted nothing to do with me. She might’ve given up her life of deadly feats and knife throwing to live as a pastry chef for all I knew.

  I wandered the streets as a normal person. Not Opal and not quite Sal. The world looked different.

  The town proper was well within the shadows of the southernmost tip of the Snake Spine Range, their dark crags blocking the eastern horizon. The main market, an open-air circle surrounded by a crescent of tall apartments atop street-front stores, was wreathed in flags of red and gold. They flickered like flames in the wind.

  I dove into the crowd. It was the evening after Tulen, the harvest moon hanging low and heavy in the sky. A fire burned in the heart of the market, warm and bright atop a public fountain more pond than architecture. The flames crept toward the carnival cheaters preforming high overhead. People trying their hardest to ignore the scrape of bare feet on the ropes above reached into their pockets for purses and pulled out tickets instead. That was how it usually worked—an invitation whether you wanted it or not.

  The brave ones who did want it went to the source and ducked under an arch of knives juggled by two cheaters so far into the dark they were nothing but the sounds of hilts hitting hands. They only accepted the tickets and payments from the people that didn’t flinch, gossips said.

  But I ducked under them without flinching and got nothing.

  Liars.

  I paced between town and carnival, waiting for a hand to make its way into my pocket. Shouldn’t have been this hard to get robbed.

  None of the ones I picked had tickets. Only coins and handkerchiefs and canteens of mulled wine that coated my tongue in uncomfortable sweetness. I spat a mouthful of it out in an alley.

  A voice from above said, “You’re supposed to dilute it with water.”

  “Doubt it’s drinkable either way.” I looked up at the familiar voice of auditioner Two and grinned. “You been watching me?”

  “You could’ve asked for tickets.” She wore no mask, and her upside-down smile—she’d dimples, I’d never pictured dimples on an assassin—was a touch too wide to be sincere. A thin scar split the cleft of her chin. “But I liked the show. You’ve got light hands.”

  “And you’ve got strong feet.” I tilted my head back till the web of wires and ropes she’d hooked her feet over was visible. “How long you been up there?”

  “I could go days without touching the ground,” she said. “Pleasure to meet you face to face.”

  She held out her hand. I took it, how Ruby had taught the both of us.

  “Nice to meet you.” I shrugged. “Again.”

  “Adella,” she said quickly, springy, black curls bouncing round her face as her rope jiggled. “No more numbers. I’m Adella da Zito till I die.”

  “Hello, Adella.” Grinning, I gave her my real name. “You can call me Sal.”

  She laughed, a bit too hard to be happy, and pulled herself onto the rope, sitting like it was a chair. “What do you want, Sal?”

  Sal, Sal, Sal.

  “Help,” I said. “I’ve got to do something as Opal, but I’m afraid others might get hurt during it, and I’d like you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  I needed a buffer between me and my anger, between me and Rath. Cam and those kids needed saving no matter what, and I’d a duty to do everything I could to ensure that.

  “Meet me by the main tent.” She stood atop the rope and started walking away. “I need to tell my apprentice it’s her lucky night.”

  The main tent was a monstrous thing as tall as castle walls. I bought a stick of sugar-coated fruit, crunching through it as I waited. The thick canvas behind us trapped the heat inside, filling the air with the scents of roasted corn and warm skin sweating in wool each time the flaps parted. Kids, each marked with the carnival’s flames from the leather bands holding up their hair to the cosmetics melting down their cheeks, peeked out at us from under the tent. I grinned.

  “Don’t you all have a show to do?” I asked.

  They giggled.

  “They’re much too silly for shows.” Adella, dressed in plain traveling clothes and carrying a pack stuffed to the brim, shoved her way from the tent. “You ready?”

  “Yes.” I bit into a small, tart fruit. “You don’t even know what we’re doing exactly.”

  “I don’t care.” She looked me over, face blank. In the bright, white lights of the carnival lamps, her dark brown skin was scarred. She’d tattooed a 3 and 4 behind each ear. “I want to figure out why a thief from nowhere survived while the two best people I knew died.”

  I tossed the kids the rest of my fruit. “I wasn’t just a thief.”

  “Point still stands.” Her eyes were ringed in the reddish-brown smear of sleepless nights. “I thought I would die. I didn’t expect to almost die and get stuck here without them. I thought Theo would be Opal. He wanted it the most.”

  “Your job is almost dying.”

  She rolled her eyes. “The trick between fun and dying is almost. Back when magic was still around, my parents held beating hearts in their hands every other night. That would’ve been a good job. This is boring.”

  I winced. “I like my bits inside me, thank you.”
r />   “Your loss.” Adella smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. It was cornered foxes snarling at nearing hunters. “Let’s see what you can do, Sal, Sal, Sal.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I told Adella everything that night. We were heading to Mossvale first, hunting down Rath and seeing where his search for Cam took him. It was in Lena’s lands, a skip over a sliver of Erlend land, and we’d be on the lookout for Lena and Maud too. “Testing her security,” I called it.

  Adella had laughed. “I’m glad it wasn’t me.” She kept her bow and three arrows in hand as we walked, and her mood worsened the farther north we got. “Are you glad it was you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s what I wanted.”

  I had wanted to be Opal forever.

  “Yes,” Adella said. “That’s why I’m asking. I’ve known cheaters with less of a death wish than you, and I’ve been with the carnival for my whole eighteen years.”

  “I thought you were older.” I rubbed my ears, tips cold in the wind, and breathed into my hands.

  She grinned her crooked, close-mouthed grin and laughed. “And I thought you’d be better looking under that mask but here we are.”

  “Fair.” I nudged her arm with my elbow as we picked our way down a hill. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Depends.” She ran a chain through her fingers, a simple thing of sturdy loops and polished steel, and let it pool in her palm. Three interlocking circles hung from it. “Is it about Myra and Theo?”

  I nodded. “Was his name really Theo?”

  Wasn’t a name I’d have picked for him.

  “It’s too round for him, isn’t it?” She froze. “Doesn’t matter now.” She twisted the necklace so tight the red dents in her skin broke open. “Death always happened to other people. Never them.”

  I winced. “Sorry. I liked them.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I’m sorry too.”

  “You sure you’re up to this?” I offered her a canteen full of tea and an out. “I know I’m Opal, but there’s really no mystery to it. Five was an Erlend spy and you were the one I thought they’d pick, but apparently my thieving was what they wanted.”