Ruin of Stars

by Linsey Miller

  Riparian had called Adella “useful medium.” He’d agreed. I’d gagged.

  “Why bother making her feel better?” Maud’s voice carried in the quiet dark, and the guards might’ve mistaken the disdain as directed at Adella.

  Dimas didn’t and flinched. “It’s not a pleasant feeling.”

  “Like fire ants,” Adella muttered. She kept speaking, but I couldn’t hear.

  I crept closer. The guards were at my back, but it was Dimas who worried me. Maud bent over the trunk, using the still-open lid for cover, and slipped a little bundle of food into Adella’s hands. Dimas pulled back. I settled beneath a tangle of overgrown bushes and shook my head.

  Maud was trusting Dimas to not turn her in.

  “Why are you here?” he asked softly. “You’re too kind for Lady de Arian.”

  Maud rounded on him, braid slapping her back as she spun, and raised her chin. “Speak to me again and learn how kind I can be.”

  Lady help me. She was going to get herself killed.

  “If you keep saying things like that, she’ll know and she’ll kill you.” He scratched at the ink staining his skin. “This is dangerous, Maud, and I know—”

  “You don’t know anything about me.” She stepped toward him, away from Adella’s trunk.

  He stepped back. “I know everything about you.”

  I rose from the underbrush behind Dimas. Maud raised her hand.

  There was no part of this world hurting Maud so long as I still breathed. Not when she stared into the dark and knew she was staring at me.

  She trusted me to be here, and I always would be for her.

  “You know all the silly things about me. You know where I was born, how old I am, how long I lived in that orphanage, how much I hated it. All the worries and facts and fears I shared with you while you were lying don’t mean you know me.”

  “We were both alone.” He stumbled back, freezing only a whisper from me. “If Erlend had your siblings, if Erlend would kill them if you didn’t help, what would you do? You would do what I’m doing, but this”—he gestured at the clearing around them—“is not you.”

  “No,” she said. “This is me. This has always been me because no matter who you serve now, if Erlend gets what they want, we’ll all be dead soon enough.”

  Dimas’s mouth opened in a little gasp. She’d given herself away.

  “But Lady de Arian likes me.” Maud lifted her face to him, teeth clenched, hands fists. Proper, thumb-out fists. “My siblings are safe. I am safe. You’re the only one with blood on your hands.”

  Dimas fell against the tree at his back and buried his face in his hands. “It’s either my family’s blood or theirs.”

  “As I said.” Maud rolled her shoulders back and sniffed. “We don’t know each other. I hope your mother and sister are alive, and I hope you know what you’re doing, but don’t speak to me again unless Lady de Arian requires it.”

  Dimas didn’t. We traveled two more days, and I stayed as close to Maud as I could, sleeping a handful of hours in the highest branches of thick evergreens to hide me. There was only one way into Lynd proper, and I’d need my strength to do it.

  Needle-thin paths twisted up the hills and mountains of northern Erlend and merged into one great road leading to the main gate of North Star’s capital, Lynd. It was his last great land, the bastion of all of Erlend’s old ideas, and it had enough farms and workers to outlast any number of sieges. Riparian—Lady de Arian—was in charge of keeping the records straight and the city stocked, counting down everything to the last single grain. Guard towers lined the hilltops, and mountain posts could probably see folks as far as a half day off. I stayed in the trees.

  North Star’s lands were the farthest north, stopping at the peaks of the mountains looming over Lynd, and they were impassable. The only way into Lynd was the front gate.

  No wonder Our Queen had wanted a thief as her Opal.

  Course, I’d no papers and an Alonian accent, so my stealing myself inside was the only way in, and given how handsy the guards were being with everything, it’d be tricky.

  Riparian’s carriage lined up with all the other folks traveling and she sent Maud out to talk to some guard. Maud looked around, nose crinkled, and I knew she was looking for me because I had caused that same tired look on her face plenty of times before.

  Erlend wasn’t even good enough to steal that from me.

  Maud and Dimas ended up in the cart carrying the trunks. Riparian’s carriage was directed around to the front of the line, ahead of the travelers and farmers and traders vying for time inside the city. The cart of trunks filled with kids and one bandaged cheater had to wait in line with only three guards, Dimas, and Maud to watch over it. The guards at the gate checked each part of each wagon, opened every bag and trunk, and flipped through the citizenry papers of each person. Maud had been gifted a set by Riparian. She’d cried.

  I’d not liked watching it, but Riparian had seemed convinced Maud was who she said she was: a servant loyal to her.

  But I’d no papers and no friends capable of helping me pass through. If I’d been with Rath—my chest ached at the thought, a tight memory of his arms around my shoulders, his cheek against mine, his salted eyes glittering so brightly in the evening light it brought tears to my eyes—he’d have caused a distraction while I snuck in, but Rath would never grace this earth again. He was gone, and I was alone. Only I could get to Cam.

  Grief was a fickle thing. It twisted in my stomach and rose in my throat, a burning pain so sharp, blinking didn’t stop the tears, and I pressed my palms into my eyes to keep from sobbing. It was quick and hot. An uncomfortable prickling like roaches scurrying across your skin. There and gone.

  No time to think, only enough time to react.

  I hated it.

  “Cam.” I swallowed the snot gathering in the back of my throat and rubbed my nose. “He’d want to save Cam.” Rath would want to save everybody. “So I’m saving Cam.”

  I crept as close as I dared to the road. Maud was scanning for my face among the small crowd and frowning each time she looked up without seeing me. A woman leading a herd of goats and children was resting by the side of the road, papers in hand, and I dropped a twig on the nearest goat. It bleated and kicked, leaping over its leash mate. Maud whipped her head round at the sound. She’d know.

  Maud trusted me. She’d trust me to be here, and goats bleating was close as I could get to talking to her. She’d snuck out of an orphanage in a laundry cart, and there weren’t any of them here, but there were plenty of carts and the road was well laid with stones. I could take a wagon in, reverse the order. Just had to find one tall enough.

  I moved up and down the queue, staying out of sight, and looking beneath the wagons and carriages. Maud’s wagon and one filled with straw were perfect. I climbed up an oak to study the guards at the gate. None looked under the wagons.

  Good. Just needed a distraction.

  I had no idea how to say that to Maud in goat.

  No Rath to do it for me either. I squeezed the ring on my finger. It didn’t spin so much anymore as squeal against my knuckle, but it helped. Was something to do.

  Least he’d think my way in hilariously rash. But the guards checked everywhere except beneath the wagons. No one was rash enough to hide under there.

  This would be fun.

  Protective plants lined the wall, green veins breaking through the thorny underbrush and winding up the wall until they thinned into curling points that fell away from the wood. Wagon wheels and horse hooves clattered over the stone road, grinding fallen leaves into a foggy dust that swirled around the waiting people’s feet. I slipped down my tree and shimmied into a bush near a slight bend in the path near where Riparian’s wagon would pass. Thistles scraped through my shirt.

  Fun.

  When the wagon stopped, I rolled beneath it and hooked my arms and knees over the axles. They were fixed to the wagon, the wheels turning round them, and the rolled-up canvas s
trapped to each side—stored there until they needed it on a rainy day—hid me from view. So long as I shifted with each lurch and didn’t slump, I’d be hidden. I collected splinters with each stutter-roll forward though.

  But the gate came and went, the guards never looking beneath, and I was in Lynd.

  I owed this world a debt of blood, and I’d pay it in any way it saw fit.

  The stomach-clenched pain of balancing now would be nothing compared to killing North Star.

  Once we were on a well-worn street with more holes and bumps, I rapped on the bottom of the wagon in the same little tune Maud and I had used during auditions. She tapped back with her foot.

  “What are you doing?” Dimas asked, voice softer than I’d ever heard it.

  Maud huffed and probably gave him that annoyed sneer I knew so well. “Keeping myself occupied?”

  “Just be careful,” he muttered. He shifted, the boards creaking above me. “We’re going to the labs. You shouldn’t come with us.”

  “I take orders from Lady de Arian, not you.” Maud’s voice rose to a sharp, bitter pitch. “But please continue to offer an opinion I didn’t ask for.”

  I tucked my face into my shoulder and laughed.

  “I don’t know what that woman has offered you, but if it’s not your family, then there is nothing worth what you are doing.” Dimas sighed loudly. Sadly. “You could leave. At the very least, there will be blood.”

  Maud was squeamish but determined, and she knew her limits. If I knew her well as I thought I did, she’d not leave something half done.

  “Or I could stay in this wagon until we pass through the royal gate and arrive at the place Lady de Arian specifically told me to go to,” Maud said loudly, and I withheld my shout of thanks. “Deal with your own mistakes, Dimas, and leave me to deal with mine. If I ever make any.”

  All thorns today, then.

  We rounded a bend and the wagon rocked as if someone had thrown their body against the side.

  “His estate’s carved out of the mountain?” Maud’s shock escaped as a whistle. “How?”

  A pair of soldier’s boots stomped along the side of the carriage and a voice roughened by talking all day said, “Lot of hard work and hope, mostly.”

  “Does it go back?” Maud asked, and I knew she asked for me. “Into the mountain? That’s so clever.”

  People were always more likely to talk when you complimented them.

  “No army’s getting through these gates and tearing down those walls unless they’re capable of leveling mountains.” The guard grunted. “I heard the south’s all wood.”

  Maud stood, the cart creaking beneath her. Must’ve been handing over her papers. “It depends where you are, I suppose. I’ve seen hills, never mountains.”

  “Greenhouses?” Paper crinkled. The guard muttered something low and rapped on the side of the cart. “Why do you need so many trunks for the greenhouses?”

  Lynd didn’t know about the magic? Did Elise?

  Would she care?

  “You have mountains,” Maud said. “We have plants.”

  We started rolling again. Armored, knee-high boots paced up and down the paths around us. I couldn’t see North Star’s estate or the mountains. Sweat pooled along the dips of my chest and gathered in the trembling crooks of my arms. I closed my eyes and breathed.

  Lynd—and the rest of Erlend probably—didn’t know about the magic or the test Riparian was running on kids. Why?

  Having magic would be a boon to the war and would bring hope. Erlend depended on the shadows last time; it was their whole army. Our Queen wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Damn.

  Even if Erlend wasn’t all the way there yet, they were trying. Igna needed to prepare. Our Queen needed to know.

  But they’d have to realize it soon. Dimas’s escape only made sense when you added magic to it.

  If I killed North Star and Riparian first, found Cam, freed Adella, and put a stop to whatever monstrosities Erlend was committing, it wouldn’t matter. There’d be no shadows.

  The wagon jerked to a stop. Dimas leapt down first, unsteady feet tapping the wagon bottom, and Maud’s feet appeared slowly. He must’ve helped her down.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “There.” Dimas’s shadow shifted, raising its hand to gesture, and the bare skin at the back of my neck prickled. “You don’t have to come.”

  “Thank you for reminding me that I asked for your opinion,” Maud said sharply. “How forgetful of me.”

  I peeked out from under the wagon. We were at the back of a dozen or so ramshackle buildings for servants and soldiers, and the horses were being led away by the only person in sight. I rolled out from under the wagon and set off in the direction of Maud and Dimas. North Star’s estate loomed.

  White stone walls grayed by weather and age were carved straight out of the mountain side. They must’ve added to it, but the seams were worn away and fog wreathed the highest reaches of the pale towers, blending them into the storm-cloud sky. Dusk spilled over the eastern mountains like wine, a deep-purple stain seeping into the orange sun still sitting low over the western watchtower. Dishwater-gray snowcaps glittered days and days of walking above us. The castle was more ghost than building. A pompous show rising high above the plain soldier and servant buildings around me now.

  Maud and Dimas had entered a place so squat and plain it looked more bump in the dirt than building. Even the plants growing out of the cracks in the ground bent away from it and avoided twining up its bricks. I raced to it, pausing in its shadow to check if anyone had seen me.

  No one, and Maud had left the door ajar.

  She was better than any thief or Left Hand member. She’d single-handedly infiltrated Erlend without so much as a plan.

  I pushed open the door and found myself staring down a dark set of stairs spiraling deep into the earth. No rooms, no halls. Only the stairs leading Lady knew where.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Narrow stone stairs curving deep into the ground yawned before me. Torches, dim and dying, lit the walls every ten steps, but they did nothing for the flickering dark. Shadows oozed out of the gaps in the stones. It was a hungry dark.

  The sort that suffocated when the last light went out.

  I spiraled down and down and down until the walls grew wet and cold and my teeth rattled with each breath. There were no servants here. No guards. There was only me.

  And runes. Everywhere I looked, there were runes.

  Odd runes, sharper than the ones Our Queen and Nicolas wore on their arms. Darker than the moon-white turtles of Isidora’s wrists. There were even bloodred runes carved and painted onto old, yellow bones.

  The greater the tie to earth, the greater the control.

  I shuddered and gasped. The cold gave my fear a foggy, wispy shape. A ghost in the dark.

  The floor evened out and suddenly the walls were lined with doors. Thick slabs of stone cut with lines and shapes and patterns I couldn’t see shook beneath my fingers. Not from me.

  I wasn’t strong enough to move them. No one person would be.

  But they thrummed, like a heartbeat or a headache, the steady feel of sound shivering just out of sight. A low, deep call of the earth before it quaked.

  Was this magic or fear? It was back—a phrase that set my teeth on edge and made my skin itch—but was this what it felt like? And why Dimas? Adella? Cam? I’d have said it was all about Naceans, but Adella and Cam were the odd ones out.

  A shriek echoed down the hallway. I darted after it. Dimas’s shaky voice bounced off the walls, and I pressed myself against the door he’d gone through, cracking it open so I could watch. Their voices carried into the hall.

  “Tie her down,” he said. “She’ll thrash and might hit you. And don’t undo her cuffs till she’s tied.”

  How many times had he done this? To Igna? To us?

  Maud’s soft breaths quickened. “How do you know she’ll thrash?”

  “Ju
st help me.” He grabbed a rope, the strands of it rubbing across his hand and bandages, and looped it through metal hooks that clanged, metal against metal. “You’re the one who opted to come with me, and if we do not have her prepared for tomorrow night’s viewing, Lady de Arian will be upset. I do not care what she offered you, but it is dependent upon staying in her good graces.”

  If that was true, did he really think she’d let him walk away with his mother and sister?

  “You keep saying things like that, Dimas.” Maud sniffed. “Is it really that easy to believe I would stoop so low as to do all of this for money? You would really think that poorly of me instead of thinking I’m working for Igna still?”

  “What? No. You can’t say that aloud.” He had his back to the door when I finally reached it, and his hands were above his head, working some rune on the doorjamb. “Lords, Maud, I would be glad for it, but if anyone heard that, you would be dead by midnight.”

  “You shouldn’t worry about me.” Maud smiled at me and stared up at Dimas. She pulled the rope in her hands taut. “Worry about Our Queen’s Honorable Opal.”

  I pressed my knife to the small of his back.

  “Hello, Dimas Gaila. No runes today. I’m not in the mood and neither’s your spine.”

  He froze.

  Maud peeked around him and grinned, her fingers curled into horns at her forehead like the goats I’d used as a distraction.

  “Knew you’d notice that,” I told her. I pushed Dimas into the room and shut the door behind me. “Now, about you.”

  I’d not worn my mask into Lynd, didn’t look like Opal, but Dimas shrieked all the same.

  Dimas looked up, unable to move from where I’d pushed him into the wall, and shuddered. “How?”

  “Maud knew I could swim.” I put my knife away—he was shaking too much to be a threat or draw a rune—and stood between him and Maud. “She’s also not a terrible person. It was a good combination.”

  “Thank you,” she said flatly. “Mostly.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Dimas fell back against the wall, trembling. “You can’t be here. Please. I have to do this by tomorrow night, or she’ll kill them.”