The Stars Askew

by Rjurik Davidson

  Elise rose to her feet. She was olive-skinned and lean. There was something fragile about her, as if she was a spare part that might break at any moment. But her voice was clear and fresh. “The thing is, without some repressive measures, how can we discourage those who would undermine us, who would sabotage our efforts? The villas are still blockading us, and we have to feed the city. To argue against the tribunal is to undermine our own support, for the populace itself knows we must defend ourselves, that we must eat.”

  “We have to act! We have to fight!” came the calls from the machine-gallery.

  Kata found herself on her feet. “You don’t understand!” she yelled. A moment later all eyes were on her. She had not wanted to play a part in the moderates’ leadership, and yet here she was, standing and arguing. Her words came out smoother and calmer than she’d imagined they could. “The point is not merely to respond to the vigilants’ positions but to elucidate our own. We should start from first principles. How should we treat our opponents? How do we deal with those who do not agree with us? Remember, the workers in the villas are participating in the boycott too. Haven’t we failed to convince them? Isn’t the greater responsibility on us to show them we’re on their side? Imprisonment should be enough of a deterrent, especially for those who, in other circumstances, would be our people. The moment the death penalty becomes necessary is the moment we have already lost.”

  This time Kata was subjected to boos.

  “The time for such a position has passed.”

  “Loose the Bolt, I say!”

  But others cheered: “I have a brother working at the villas! He’s poor, just like us!”

  Kata pushed ahead. “To acquiesce is to allow Ejan to consolidate his position and erode ours. And as his policies become increasingly dictatorial, they reconcile the citizenry to their own passivity, and the new order’s base will crumble. No, if we don’t fight now, everyone loses.”

  “If we fight now, Ejan will come for us next!” said Olivier.

  So the debate raged on. Kata sat down and decided she would not speak again, and yet she’d felt good stating her mind, standing up for what she believed in. So it was with a heavy heart that she watched the decision to support Ejan prevail. Many among them hoped that the crisis would pass once the grain had been appropriated. Meanwhile, the moderate guards—fully four hundred of them—would join in any assault on the villas. It’s democracy, thought Kata. Like Rikard said, that’s what it meant.

  As she left the room, Kata knew in her heart that the moderates would pose no threat to Ejan now. The problem was, without Aceline and Thom to make cogent arguments, to use their influence to convince their followers, the moderates would just follow Ejan’s policies.

  As Kata strode from the factory, an urchin came running toward her. For a moment she thought it was Henri, but the little boy’s hair was too light. He passed her a letter and scurried off.

  The message had no signature, just a sketch of two hands joining—the mysterious symbol tattooed onto the bodies of the thaumaturgists—so she presumed it must have come from the thaumaturgist Detis who had rowed her and Rikard through the Marin Palace. The note contained only one line: The transactions in the canals have begun again.

  TWENTY

  After long nights of searching the canals, Kata began to think they would never find the smugglers. As the darkness deepened and the temperature dropped, she wrapped her jacket around herself. Their gondola, directed by a boatman named Pierre, drifted slowly beneath one of the tiny bridges. Starlight illuminated the canal water, making it look like a river of silver in the night. Kata knew it was only an illusion. Daylight would show the canals to be dirty and full of refuse. Even now occasional gusts of stench drifted around them, for summer had passed and the early autumn rains had not yet flushed the canals.

  They had chosen the area near Operaio Bridge, which Thom’s neighbor had mentioned. In the days before the uprising, the canals would have been filled with gondolas, lovers taking romantic rides beneath the picturesque bridges, alongside the gothic walls with detailed bas-reliefs carved into them. Or groups of drunken students would have piled into flat-bottomed boats, singing and pushing one another into the waters. But these days they were mostly empty, for hunger had stripped the city of much of its previous vitality. Now the waterways took on a ghostly air, fog hovering over the water. The bridges began to loom out of the wavy darkness, the opening to the underground canals like openings to the underworld.

  They had taken to whispering, for any sound seemed to carry.

  “Let’s leave,” said Rikard. “There’s no point.”

  “This will be the last night,” said Kata.

  They passed through one of the narrowest canals, the gondola bumping against the walls as it drifted along, the lamp hanging in front of their vessel casting a soft sphere of light before them. Creatures scuttled along the walls here, rats and perhaps other things too.

  The canal flowed through a dark tunnel, and before long, the sound of crashing water filled their ears. A little farther ahead, a waterfall from a second canal cascaded into the first. The roof of this second canal was too low for any boat to pass along, and it would be impossible to hitch their boat up in any case, so they continued for a moment.

  “Wait,” said Kata. “Go back.”

  Pierre stopped the boat, stepped across to the front, and began to paddle them backward. He stopped them before the rushing waterfall. They all took deep breaths. Hidden behind the waterfall, a third canal led away into the darkness.

  “We’ll get wet,” said Pierre.

  Rikard shrugged. “Do you know this route?”

  “No,” said Pierre.

  “Let’s get wet,” said Kata.

  By the time they’d entered the new waterway, their clothes clung to their skin and their feet stood in inches of water.

  A whole new system opened farther inland. It was mostly underground, with occasional small openings in the roof giving them brief visions of the sky above. Their lamp cast eerie shadows against the wall.

  As they passed a larger waterway, the voices of several men carried over. Rikard extinguished the lamp, and they inched forward in darkness. The sound of their boat bumping against the wall seemed to echo loudly. Once again, they came to a T-intersection. A hundred feet or so down the new canal, two boats were moored at a small landing. Lamps threw yellow light onto the congregation; spectral forms huddled in the darkness. Kata squinted: yes, she could just make out a group of black-suited thaumaturgists speaking with the people on the other boat.

  She strained to hear what they were saying. Fragments drifted down to her: “The rest can wait—”

  “—as though there hasn’t been enough anyway.”

  “—followed. Should be ready by the Twilight Observance, but we’re supposed to wait for Varenis.”

  “—wait for what?”

  “For them to march on the city. The seditionists will send out their forces and then…”

  Cynical laughter echoed toward them. Without needing any encouragement, Pierre gently rowed their gondola backward. He found a small niche and maneuvered into it; there they hid and waited.

  Before long, the sound of men talking became louder and louder, until it seemed as if they were right beside Kata. One of the boats was approaching quickly, while the other had presumably left in the opposite direction.

  “—middle of the night. I’m sick of it.”

  “If they gave it to us all at once, then we wouldn’t have to come back.”

  “They don’t trust us.”

  For an instant she was certain that the men would look to their side as they passed and see the three of them hiding. Silently, she pulled her knives from their sheaths beneath her shirt and waited. Her heartbeat thumped in her ears. The water next to them lit up with an eerie warm glow. The second boat drifted into view, not ten feet from them. It was impossible that they would not be seen. Kata prepared to strike. She saw the rough faces of the men before he
r; one passed a bottle to the other, who took a swig.

  Darkness engulfed them again, and Kata breathed out.

  They followed the boat as quietly as possible along the canal, which continued far underground. Streams joined it periodically, for much of Caeli-Amur’s water came from underground springs that ran off the mountain or the hills to the west. Most were natural, but some were underground aqueducts built by the ancients, their sources lost long ago.

  Intersecting canals became rare, a sign that they had headed to the south of the main network. Kata figured they were beneath the Quaedian somewhere. The boatmen ahead took little care to disguise their passing. They were drinking and relaxed, perhaps from making the journey often. Their voices echoed along the underground waterways, the light from their boats swinging and bobbing as they went.

  Finally the boat ahead stopped, and the gang disembarked. Pierre allowed the gondola to drift toward the landing as their lamplight disappeared from sight.

  Pierre hitched to the landing beside the other boat, while Kata and Rikard climbed a set of damp rocky steps. Above them, the first gleam of dawn brushed the eastern sky. When they stepped into the open, the stench of refuse drifted around them.

  Kata turned to Rikard. “We’re in the Lav—”

  Glimpsing movement at the corner of her eye, Kata dove to her right, close to the wall, but it was too late. Something struck her in the side, and she went down. Glancing back, she saw one of their attackers land a single blow to Rikard’s head, which felled him. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Kata dived and rolled, pain roaring through her side. Two attackers rushed toward her, but she already had her knives in her hands.

  She threw one knife, striking the first man in the eye. The knife jutted from his head like a broken branch from a tree. The man crumpled as if his legs had been cut from beneath him.

  The second knife flew past the shoulder of the second attacker, who swung a brutal-looking club down at her head. But she had already rolled past him, turned and leaped on his back. She snapped one arm across his neck and locked her hand into the elbow of her other arm.

  The man tried to cry out, but not even a gurgle escaped his lips. Rather than try to pry Kata’s hands loose, he swung at her with his club—a fatal error. The bludgeon glanced off the side of her cheek, a bruising but insignificant strike.

  Her pressure crushed the man’s esophagus and closed off the blood to his head. The club fell from his hands, rattled on the ground. He tried to unhook Kata’s legs from where they were wrapped around his waist. He staggered, and a second later collapsed to his knees and crashed to the ground. Kata held on until well after she felt him go limp.

  She recovered her knives, stepped lightly across to where Rikard was slowly regaining consciousness, his eyes blinking and staring. “Where am I?”

  Kata looked past the slums to the massive building ahead of them, built from metal. She knew this place. Everyone who had visited the Lavere knew it. “We’re at the Collegian Caelian.” Kata knew now for sure whom the money was going to: the flabby-faced Dumas, the D who had written the letter to Armand, the D who employed slaves, the D who had constructed the Bolt.

  “Come on. We’ve got to get away,” she said.

  They staggered down the stairs once more and struggled onto the boat. Pierre rowed them rapidly away as Rikard lay dazed. He brought his hand up to his head, groaning.

  “We were attacked. You beat them?” Rikard was confused.

  “It’s all right now,” said Kata.

  They paid Pierre to drop them near the Opera, where Kata took Rikard’s shoulder. “We have to get you home. I’ll call a carriage.”

  The carriage rattled up into the roughest area of the factory quarter. The weak early morning light was pale and almost colorless. Kata stared at the passersby: lone drifters still up from the night before, a few workers heading to work, others wandering around at a loss now that the industries were closing down. Mean-looking youth loitered on one corner, but Kata was unafraid. If anything, they should be afraid of her.

  A squat little worker’s cottage lay nested between two apartment buildings. Rikard opened the door and led her into a parlor, where he crumpled onto a couch. “I’ve got a terrible headache. Gods, I’ve got a lump the size of a pumpkin.”

  A wide-hipped, broad-faced woman in a nightgown ambled in after them. She had the look of someone who took no prisoners. “Good, that will serve you right. Drinking or drugs?”

  “Mother, this is Kata. Kata, this is Corette,” said Rikard.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Corette’s voice was as rough as the streets outside.

  “Please,” said Kata.

  “Me too,” said Rikard.

  “I’m not sure you should.” Kata looked from Rikard to Corette. “He suffered a blow to his head. He shouldn’t sleep, but I’m not sure coffee is a wise idea either.”

  “Oh, don’t mother me, Kata. I’ve already got one mother. Believe me, she’s tough enough.”

  “Tough enough? I let you traipse around the city and return home at all manner of the day or night. You need discipline.” Corette laughed. “A good dose of it.”

  This time Rikard smiled sweetly. “Coffee, please.”

  Corette put one hand on her hip. “I’d offer you food, Kata, but we’re all out, and the factory’s closed, so there’s no money coming in. Who knows what we’ll do now.”

  “Coffee is fine,” said Kata. “Thanks.”

  Corette sauntered back out of the parlor, and Kata turned to Rikard. “Your mother?”

  He nodded, sat up a little more, and fixed Kata with a stare. His voice filled with leaden seriousness. “I know what you are, Kata. You’re a philosopher-assassin.”

  Kata stared at him, speechless, panicked. He had guessed from the fight with the smugglers, and now this was it: her secret was out. She would be disgraced. She might even find herself in the Arbor dungeons with the rest of the seditionists’ enemies.

  “Look at you,” said Rikard. “Trained, athletic. I was knocked out with a single blow, and yet you defeated two armed men in a matter of seconds. You’ve been keeping it a secret, though. Since before the overthrow. Why would that be?”

  Kata didn’t have the strength to lie, but she didn’t have the strength to tell the truth, either. If she didn’t say anything, perhaps she could believe the conversation wasn’t happening.

  “Were you spying on us for one of the Houses?” said Rikard. “I remember there were suspicions, back before the overthrow. Everyone thought we had been infiltrated, and then one night—wham, the Technis guards were on us.”

  Kata tried to conjure up a defense, but nothing came. There was no defense. “I’ll hand myself over.”

  Rikard examined her. Then his voice warmed. “But you’ve changed, haven’t you? I know you and trust you.”

  “You shouldn’t,” said Kata.

  “But, you see, it’s just that attitude that proves yourself to me. Anyway, who among us has no sins?”

  “Will you tell Ejan?”

  Rikard shrugged. “He has enough on his mind, don’t you think? The next Authority meeting will order the assault on the villas to break the blockade. We, on the other hand, must capture Aceline’s killer.” When Kata said nothing, he added, “You see, Kata, you’ve changed me, too. A little, at least.” She startled, and he added, “Don’t get too excited. I’m still a vigilant.”

  After that, Corette brought in tray with a little pot of coffee cooked over a stove and three small cups. “It’s the best I could do, I’m afraid. Blow to the head, huh? I should give you a blow to the head, young man.”

  “You should,” said Kata. “Beat some sense into him.”

  “I knew it was a mistake to introduce you two,” said Rikard.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Armand swung his feet over the edge of his cot and placed them on the cold wooden floor. Outside, the morning bell rang. He rested there, looked down at his thin legs. His body had chan
ged. His features were beginning to resemble the gaunt and skeletal faces of those surrounding him. The prisoners arrived as individuals, but the camp was ironing out the differences between them. Like tributaries flowing into a river, the prisoners were becoming one—a great flood of humanity, gray and uniform, headed for death.

  Irik and Armand had started to accept their fate. Armand had seen it happening to those around them: men broken down, giving up on life. The autumn cold had set in, striking the weakest with illness, sending them prostrate to the infirmary, where they quickly died. Perhaps they were the lucky ones. Others who had been taken by the bloodstone disease raved incomprehensibly as the spidery redness crawled through their bodies. In the last week, another man had shuffled out of the camp and planted himself on the ground beyond the gates. It took about six months, Armand understood, from first infection until final transformation. But none of them would last that long with winter coming, he thought.

  Armand ran his hand over his mattress. Beneath the canvas cover, he felt the pouch of bloodstone he’d hidden in the straw underneath. If he were a thaumaturgist, he would be able to use the bloodstone to invoke some force to break down the walls of the camp, or to make himself invisible, or fly into the sky, or something. But of course, Varenis’s thaumaturgists were scattered across the Empire, waiting for the stone the prisoners were mining. Armand dreamed of returning to the city to wreak his revenge or to rise back to his rightful position. Of course, the bloodstone would not be enough of a weapon to influence anyone in the Directorate. He needed something more. Still, it was something.

  When they finished their watery porridge, the prisoners began the slow shuffle to the mines. As Armand’s gang descended into the darkness, he felt a rumble from afar. The vibrations hummed up his legs. Like the others, he instinctively squatted down and pressed himself against the cart. In the last week, the mountain had shifted on its haunches several times, leaving the ground shaking and rattling, sending huge slabs of rock sliding down faraway mountain faces. As before, the rumbling passed and all was again silent.