The Stars Askew

by Rjurik Davidson

  Max felt limp, as if he might collapse to the ground. When he saw that some of the creatures had roving eyes and that others moved their limbs weakly, a shiver ran across his skin.

  Against a nearby pillar—its sides chiseled with ancient faces—one of the creatures sat propped, its chest heaving. The creature stood shakily, like some hideous and furless newly born deer. It haltingly staggered toward Max.

  The thing called out, its voice the sound of sand streaming over glass. “Ah, you’ve come, you’ve come.”

  As it approached, Max was filled with the desire to flee. Instead finding that he still had the use of one arm, Max quickly invoked an invisibility conjuration. He spoke the word, drew out the ideograms with his hand, and felt himself disappear from vision. The world gleamed with strange power—everything except the creature. To Max’s amazement, the creature’s appearance did not change. He saw now from the withered breasts that it was a woman.

  The Elo-Talern stopped walking and stared briefly. An orange mold had grown over her left arm, up her spindly neck, and over the left side of her face. The mold covered one eye and seemed to plunge into the creature’s mouth. Max pictured mold growing in the creature’s lungs, slowly choking her.

  The Elo-Talern laughed a horrible laugh—almost a cackling cough. “Forget your puny tricks. You think you can hide from me?”

  Max let the conjuration fade, and the world once more became prosaic. Already he had begun to feel weak and nauseated—the consequences of using the Art without the prime language. Max had learned that only the prime language stopped the Other Side, the world of death, from seeping into the thaumaturgist and warping them, sickening them.

  The Elo-Talern flickered, and in her place stood a decaying skeleton, all rotten bones and meat. Another flicker, and the vision disappeared.

  Let me talk to her.

  —Tell me what to say, and I’ll say it.

  Let me have control of your speech centers. Now.

  The Elo-Talern stepped close to him, now more certain on her feet. Her spidery hand shot out and grasped Max’s jaw. He felt its wetness as well as its strength. The eyelid hidden beneath the mold slid like something under a sheet.

  “You’re not who I was expecting. Are you a messenger?” She craned her head close to his, one eye blackly menacing, the other half visible beneath the layer of mold.

  With this, Max relinquished control of some part of his mind and, with a slight panic, felt himself mute. He realized that along with the power of speech, he needed to allow Aya control of his face and jaw muscles. He let them go slowly, as one would a rope after a long period of gripping it. He felt them slip away, as if through his now open fingers.

  And your body. I have to be able to gesture—just while we speak to her.

  Max released the remaining parts—arms, body, legs—and drifted away into the deep recesses of himself. There he floated without anchor on a dark sea, watching events from afar.

  Aya knocked the Elo-Talern’s hand away and smiled broadly. “Well, Drusa, I see you’ve been looking after yourself.”

  The Elo-Talern stepped back, uncertain. Now her voice took on a shaky tone. “Who are you?”

  “It’s I—Aya. Drusa, don’t you recognize me?” Aya laughed.

  “Aya died almost a thousand years ago. He’s gone.”

  “I stored myself in the Library of Caeli-Enas before I fled across the seas. I died, but now I am reborn. I inhabit this body for the moment, but I must escape it. I must have a new one.”

  The creature laughed horribly, a cackle barely distinguishable from a cough. “But really, who are you?”

  Aya invoked the prime language and pulled the Elo-Talern toward him like a puppet. When her ghastly face was almost close enough to touch his, he stared into the creature’s slowly comprehending eyes. “Drusa. You were always one of the kindest of the Aediles. I liked your raven hair, your strong face. Before Alerion came down upon us with his troops, it was you who helped the children escape the city. What has become of you?”

  The Elo-Talern tried to move but couldn’t. “It’s not possible. You died. You died, didn’t you? Yes, but you saved your mind. I remember that now, before you left. You— Why did you leave us, Aya? We trusted you. You seemed so confident. Now look at us. Look at me.”

  Aya released her, and she staggered back. “Help me escape from this body. The man who inhabits it is filled with the everyday desires of this time, these people. I find it—grubby.”

  Again, Max felt Aya’s terrible distance from humanity. He knew this was the eventual cost of using the prime language. Even with Aya’s momentary invocation of it, he felt a little wedge between him and the world.

  “Everything is destroyed. All is lost. Look around you.” She gestured to the bacchanalian scenes of death. “That’s all that’s left of the ancient world. The gravities failed, and look.” She indicated the bodies scattered around. “The dehumidifiers are broken, and the mold creeps over everything. There are no technologies capable of what you ask here anymore.” She halted, cocked her head as if thinking. “There is the Library in Caeli-Enas.”

  Aya shook his head. “It was losing power when I left. Even if the waters haven’t already flooded it, its Core would probably not survive extraction. What about Sentinel Tower?”

  The Elo-Talern straightened her head again. “Iria always kept it hidden.”

  “I know where it is,” said Aya.

  Drusa blinked out of existence for an interminable second, reappeared in a slightly altered position. “You do, but the landscapes have changed.… Still, if you could find the Sentinel Tower’s Core, Aya, we could restart things. Bring us that, and we will be able to help you. Return with the Core, and we will free you from this body. And we might even be able to save ourselves. From the mold. From everything.”

  * * *

  Aya sealed the door behind them, the ideograms fading out of existence.

  —It’s time now to let me have my body back—said Max from his place in the darkness. When Aya did not respond, a rush of terror engulfed Max. —Aya, let me have my body back.

  Aya walked on, unperturbed.

  Max flooded forward. With all his strength, he reached for the controls of his body. He grasped some of them, felt implacable force striking back at him. His strength slipped. For a moment he felt like water against rocks.

  Max’s body stopped, fell to its knees as the internal struggle went on. The face contorted as one personality took control then lost it to the other.

  Max felt a blow, then another. His grip loosened. Another blow, and again he floated on a black sea of nothingness. He scrabbled up like a drowning man desperately trying to reach the surface, but he could not grasp on to anything. He felt he was drowning. The terror of nothingness gripped him, like those moments of sleep when he tried to awake and yet could not. His eyes wouldn’t open, for he had no eyes.

  This body is mine now, said Aya. It is you, not I, who will be vacating this vessel.

  Alone and drifting, Maximilian was surrounded by leaden feelings of anger and betrayal and fear. He felt he didn’t exist.

  As they passed through the corridors, Max slowly began to hear as Aya did, and then also to see. About halfway back through the deserted pleasure palace, voices echoed softly along the long empty corridors. They may have been near, or perhaps they were far, but Aya had no desire to meet them. He took a step into an empty room: once-scarlet rugs hung, their patterns hidden by an age of dust, or else collapsed to the floor in piles.

  The whispering voices came closer, and closer. “The Elo-Talern created the prism, after all. You’d think Elo-Drusa would know how to operate the damned thing.”

  “Maybe the Sortileges?”

  “The Sortileges or the Gorgons—but it was created here, then the cataclysm came down before anything could be saved. It’s either Drusa or Thom.”

  “Armand shouldn’t have taken it,” said a second voice. “Too risky. But what can we do?”

  Max thoug
ht he recognized the second voice. Yes, its husky tones reminded him of before the overthrow. “When was it?”

  Then the men flashed past the room. Curious, Aya afforded a quick glimpse. One of the men’s faces was obscured, but he radiated power. Max immediately recognized the second man’s deep-set eyes: they seemed like little points of light down a dark tunnel, as if he had not slept in days. He was the seditionist Georges, one of Ejan’s group. Max barely knew the man. In fact, before the overthrow of the houses, Georges had seemed nothing but a shade of gray, a mediocrity drifting among the middle ranks of the seditionists. He seemed to have few notable skills; Max couldn’t remember anything about his past. He was no orator, no theoretician, possessed no thaumaturgical skills. He just seemed to drift around, doing Ejan’s bidding. Exactly who or what Georges exactly was, Maximilian didn’t know. And now, seeing him in this vast and empty pleasure palace …

  “Do you think he trusts us?” said Georges.

  “He’s a fool. He lives in the old world of tradition. He doesn’t understand the new world.”

  “We need him as much as he needs us, though,” said Georges.

  “Sadly true.”

  By the time the men spoke again, their voices were far away and came only as inaudible whispers, carried along the corridors.

  When Aya returned to the seditionist hideout, Omar had packed a shoulder bag with a pot hanging on it. He had neatly folded the blankets on his straw mattress, as if he were leaving it for someone else. As Maximilian watched from his dark place, something about this moved him. Again he felt as if an age were coming to an end, and it filled him with sorrow.

  Omar stood, threw the bag over his shoulder. “So, this is it.”

  Aya watched the little man, saying nothing.

  “I know it’s hard for you that I’m leaving. You think I’m betraying the seditionist movement. You think I’m giving up on building a better world. But I see it differently. Something within me has changed. I want to help in my own small way. Back at the Dyrian coast, I can help out at the library, perhaps. Work a little on the oyster farms. Lead a simple life.”

  Max felt a terrible sense of loss flood into him. Events were irretrievable, he realized. The weight of history crushed everything. He tried to say something, but he didn’t have the capacity. He struggled to move his tongue; Aya fought back, pushing Max ever further down into the blackness.

  “Won’t you say something?” said Omar.

  “There’s nothing wrong with little people finding their place in the world. Great events are not for everyone,” Aya said.

  “Perhaps your struggles are ineffectual,” said Omar. “Have you thought of that? Have you thought that perhaps leaders are simply carried along on the flow, like flotsam on a rushing river?”

  Aya laughed. “You would be surprised.”

  Omar stepped forward to embrace Aya, but the mage held his hand out. To Max, this gesture seemed like some metaphor for Aya’s relationship to people. Like all Magi, he was always and increasingly at a distance from the truly human.

  Omar’s face showed the strain of grief and rejection. Max tried once more to speak; with a powerful surge he rushed up to take control of the body, which twitched and convulsed, before Aya dealt Max a blow and sent him plummeting down the well of nothingness.

  “I see you’re still repressing your true feelings, Maximilian. Well, I’ll still consider you a friend, even if we may never see each other again.”

  Omar turned, picked up a nearby lamp, and walked away into the darkness toward the tunnel that would eventually lead him outside. In the blackness, Omar soon became simply a silhouette, with a little burning light bobbing beside him. With each step his outline faded into the surrounding dark. So people slowly fade from history, thought Maximilian. He yearned to run after Omar, to give him a decent heartfelt farewell. But Aya looked on with ironic distance.

  Now we must prepare for our own journey, said Aya. As soon as we can, we leave for the Sentinel Tower. Then I can free you from this body.

  —Free me?

  Well, yes. I think I might need it awhile. It’s perfectly good, you know. The curly hair is a bit annoying, granted, but I’m starting to quite like it.

  —This is wrong—said Max.

  I think you’ll find it’s all a matter of perspective. Think of it this way: at least you’ll still be you, sort of. I think. You might not have a body, but you can’t have everything, can you?

  SEVEN

  Someone always seemed to be watching Kata. Wherever she walked in the city, passersby stole quick glances, seditionist guards assessed her. Here in the tiny alleyways of the Quaedian, the feeling intensified. She felt—or imagined—a thousand eyes constantly fixed on her. The city was full of spies and philosopher-assassins, and Kata sensed dangers closing in around her. Perhaps the D who wrote the letter might have his—or her—eyes on her even now. Meanwhile, Rikard was ever watchful behind her, and she still didn’t trust him.

  Kata had left the two vials of material with a philosopher-assassin for analysis the day before. Now she returned to the tiny alleyway, Rikard stepping lightly after her, Dexion’s huge bulk moving behind. The minotaur had been bored and decided wherever they were going was the cure to this ailment.

  Here the streets became so narrow that Kata, Rikard, and Dexion could only walk single file. As they strode on, Kata examined the tiny apartments, the garrets and rooming houses. Thom’s workshop would be hidden somewhere up there. Kata was plagued by the fact that Henri might well be able to discover its location if she asked. One of the waifs had surely worked for Thom, but she would never be able to find that child. Of course Henri knew the patterns of power on the streets, where to find each gang or lone urchin, but when she asked him, he refused to name names. There was a kind of urchin code, not unlike that of the philosopher-assassins. Even with their bitter territory wars, they wouldn’t betray or name one another. Her only option would be to ask Henri to make the inquiries in her place, and that was impossible. She would not endanger him.

  She knocked on an absurdly narrow door. The squarish matriarchist called Greta let them in, looking up over her spectacles in alarm at Dexion as he squeezed through the doorway. Greta’s short gray hair and eyepieces lent her the air of a scholar, but Kata knew that they obscured the fact she had killed more than twenty men in the House wars.

  A trapdoor hidden beneath a brilliant red carpet led to her small underground workshop. Dexion came last, the ladder creaking under his weight. The workshop’s walls were covered with shelves packed with bottles and vials of brilliantly colored liquids and powders, jars and vials, siphons and funnels. Kata had known Greta since Technis had hired them both to poison a Marin officiate. He had died cruelly on the deck of a cutter headed for a holiday at the Dyrian coast. Apparently, his wife and children had looked on as he collapsed, frothing on the ground, kicking out and smashing his head on the deck in his death agonies. Kata had called on the matriarchist several times since for her expertise in chymistry.

  Now the squat woman hunched over the glass plate under the powerful magnifying glass on the workshop’s central table. “You’ll have to see it—amazing.”

  Before Kata could step forward, Greta turned quickly and pointed at Dexion, who hovered close to the ladder with Rikard. “Don’t touch anything!”

  “I never—” Dexion slowly placed a round bowl back onto the shelf, as if nobody would notice.

  Irascibly, she turned back to the magnifying glass, spun the wheel on the side of the instrument, and nodded to herself.

  “Look,” she said to Kata. “These are the grains from Aceline’s nose.”

  Kata placed her eye to the microscope, and the tiny particles came into focus. Magnified, they appeared as mechanical mites with six tiny metal legs, intricate latticework constructions of cogs and wheels, hundreds of tiny eyes in their black heads. “Ancient technology.”

  Greta nodded. “Brain mites—extremely rare. They climb up through the nose and are used to
drain someone’s memories, or to add new ones. They come from a storage machine, which you need to access the memories. Gods know where you might find one.”

  Greta turned to the second vial, scraped the black smudge onto a plate, and sprinkled a fine yellow powder onto it. It began to smoke. “This is the remains of bloodstone, used in some thaumaturgical conjuration.”

  From behind them came a crash. Dexion stood rooted to the spot. Between the fingers of one huge hand he held the glass stopper from a bottle. At his feet lay the remains of the bottle, smoking liquid spreading out in a puddle around it.

  Dexion shrugged, as if to say, Who, me?

  “Out—you men, out.” Greta pointed to the ladder. Rikard didn’t need further encouragement. He scaled the ladder and disappeared up through the trapdoor.

  “Perhaps I should clean…,” Dexion started.

  Greta’s eyed him unforgivingly. He turned like a chastened child, the ladder again creaking dangerously as he climbed into the room above.

  Greta returned the mites to a vial, passed them to Kata. “Come back if you need more help, or if you find one of the mite machines. I’d love to see it.”

  Rikard and Dexion had been leaning against the alleyway wall, waiting. At the far end of the alleyway, a group of urchins were playing dice against the wall, laughing and cheering, but Kata felt their little eyes glancing at them surreptitiously.

  Dexion said, “Well, that went well, didn’t it!”

  Kata looked at him for a moment.

  “Anyway,” he added, “I don’t think you’ll need any more of my help today, so I’ll be off. But you should ask Henri to find Thom. It’s the quickest way.”

  Kata stood fixed to the ground, aware of Rikard listening in beside her. “There’s more to the murder than Aceline and two thaumaturgists. The mites were used to implant memories in Aceline or, more likely, to retrieve them. So what did she know? There are too many unanswered questions to risk Henri.”