The Stars Askew

by Rjurik Davidson

  “I have found my philosophy.” Kata hesitated, decided to leave it at that.

  A slight smile rose on Sarrat’s mouth, and Kata quieted the touch of anger that rose in her.

  “I am developing it, I guess,” she added, then cursed herself for explaining. “That’s why I need your help. I need you to help me train an army.”

  “An army?”

  “Your tendency to answer in questions is as annoying as ever.”

  “Is it?”

  “History is being made,” said Kata. “It’s not clear who—or which ideas—will triumph. It’s time we attached ourselves to these ideas, bring them into being.”

  “I only train specialists. You know that.” Sarrat was a typical Cajiun philosopher: trained in the desert monasteries of Caji, deep in Numeria. Ascetics and elitists, the Cajiun philosophers believed only a select few could learn their practices and their style of fighting. Kata had done the latter well but had failed at the former.

  “I have come to convince you to change your mind,” she said. “Philosophy is not only for the elite. That is the truth of seditionism.”

  “That is not Cajiunism. Patience, simplicity—we are aloof from the material world, where most live their lives. Look at this room.” Sarrat made a circular gesture with his hand at their surroundings.

  “Compassion: that’s the beginning of Cajiun philosophy, but you divorce it from society,” said Kata. “You think compassion is an individual thing, one person to another, but what about the fact that some people stand on mountains and others are on the plain? Some are born into the Lavere, others in the Arantine. Shouldn’t your compassion distinguish between those who ruin others and those who try to stop that ruination?”

  “You have left Cajiunism behind, then?” Sarrat sounded disappointingly calm.

  “This brings Cajiunism down from the air and back to the ground. I stand for something now. What do you stand for, separation from real life?”

  Sarrat’s eyes closed ever so slowly, until he seemed to be asleep. Then, in an instant, he dove at her, his fingers aimed at her eyes. The move took her by surprise, but she fell back in time, rolled to her right along the floor, and leaped to her feet.

  Sarrat stood in fighting stance before her. He meant to test her, to see if she still fought without anger or fear. The realization drove fear into her, for she doubted her ability to control her emotions.

  “Is this a form of penance, for the innocents you killed?” Sarrat circled calmly.

  He spun his leg at her head in a graceful, deadly curve. She raised her arm to block it, but a second later Sarrat had deftly changed its course and it crashed into her already damaged ribs. Kata staggered back, the pain searing through her. She collapsed to one knee, drew a ragged breath. “In a way.”

  “So you are aligned to these seditionists out of guilt.” Sarrat lunged forward, but Kata was already up. She raised her foot and pushed him back with it. He danced to one side, spun backward, his straight leg moving in a second delicate and deadly crescent, aimed again at her head.

  Kata ducked underneath it, and her low kick swept Sarrat’s leg from beneath him. She knew she could not defeat him: she’d never been able to. But she leaped at him anyway, hoping to hold him down, trap him in a lock or a choke. He pushed her off, rose to his feet, backed up a few steps, and regained his balance.

  “I seek to give and not to take. That is the difference between how I feel and how you think I feel,” said Kata. “A guilty person wants acceptance, penance, something that will absolve them of their sins. I seek no such absolution. I regret many of my actions. But that is not what drives me. This is no personal thing. This is for others, not for me.”

  Kata skipped forward, throwing straight punches one after the other, which Sarrat dodged with a series of rapid side-to-side movements.

  With blinding speed, he threw his fist in a vicious overhand punch at her cheek. As Kata ducked, she felt it glance off the top of her head. Still, she lunged forward and took Sarrat crashing to the ground. For a second she was on top of him, but then he swept her beneath him, spun around so that he lay in the opposite direction as her, caught her leg between his, and clasped her foot in a cruel footlock. The pain was immediate. He would tear her tendons.

  Kata looked down at her leg, and at Sarrat. “You’ve beaten me again.”

  Sarrat nodded and twisted her foot in an even more unnatural angle.

  Kata grimaced, but she had fought without anger or fear. “That’s why I need you. I need you to help me train my guards.”

  Sarrat let go, stood up. For the first time since she met him, he broke into a broad smile. He was missing some teeth toward the back of his mouth that she’d never noticed. The smile creased his face. For a moment he seemed both older and younger than he did before.

  “I thought I’d failed with you,” said Sarrat, “But it seems I was wrong.”

  * * *

  The Arena in the Technis Complex was small and dusty. Kata had been there once before, when the Technis officiates had put on a grubby spectacle for their agents, pitting defeated strikers against wild animals. With a shudder, she recalled the sad death of an elephant, stabbed with the surviving workers’ spears.

  Now lines of moderates wandered in. Once assembled, they were a motley group of about four hundred, some of whom had been guards for a while. Only confirmed moderates could sign up at the registration table at the Arena entry. Kata did not want the social climbers and crawlers who would try to slip their way in.

  “Not much to look at,” said Sarrat.

  “I’ve ordered new uniforms that will make them look less scruffy.”

  “What color?”

  “Silver,” said Kata. “The color of Cajiun priests.”

  She made four veteran seditionists from before the overthrow of the Houses—Terris and Ilena, Alani and Frederic—into captains, each with a hundred guards under their command.

  “Why are they the captains?” A man shuffled forward from the general throng. His thick legs gave him a look of preternatural balance, as if his slight torso was the thin sailless mast of a boat, anchored to the bulk beneath. As the legs moved, so the carriage above swayed in tune. “We should elect our captains. By the gods, we should elect everyone.”

  “I don’t know you, friend.” Kata felt sands shifting inside her. He was right: they should elect their captains. They should not reproduce the top-down structure of the vigilants. But the logic of conventional practice was relentless, she saw, and she found herself sliding toward it ineluctably. Many of them didn’t know one another, and there was no telling who might be elected. What was more, Kata knew she needed to forge her army quickly.

  “I’m Luc.” The man planted his two feet as if he were planting a tree, and eyed Kata.

  “There is no time for such delicate niceties. I am appointed by the Moderate Committee, who were elected.”

  “Sounds like a vigilant argument to me,” said Luc. “People on top appoint. The elective principle—that’s how the new world should operate.”

  “All armed forces need discipline. All need direction.” Kata raised her voice and spoke loudly to the rest of the group. “Those who don’t wish to submit to the authority given to me by the Moderate Committee are welcome to leave now.”

  Heads turned, looked to one another for a response.

  “If people are appointing themselves leaders, then I shall appoint myself one.” Luc stepped out from the congregation and faced them. “First off, the captains shall not be these four, but rather—”

  As the man spoke, Kata walked up beside him and, in an instant, seized the pressure point in his neck. He folded up under her grip and fell down, unconscious, in a cloud of dust. Kata thought, Your sturdy legs didn’t hold you that time, did they? She couldn’t tell if she was angry with him or with herself.

  She turned to her captains. “Take him out and make sure he doesn’t come back in.”

  As she stepped back to let Sarrat begin his instructio
n, Kata caught a glimpse of a dark-haired young man seated in the Arena’s seats. She made her way beneath the Arena and climbed up the stands to sit next to Rikard.

  Seeing her expression, he raised his hands. “I was just about to leave anyway. Our guards are marching on the villas in a few days. Don’t forget that you’ll soon be eating because of us.” He looked over the guards in training below, then back at Kata. “Not much of an armed force.”

  “It’s sad, you know,” said Kata.

  “What?”

  “Us. We’re enemies again. How did that happen?”

  Rikard shrugged and pressed his lips together: it had become a regular expression of his. He was upset about it too, it seemed.

  The next morning the textile workers delivered the uniforms to the Arena. They were not silver. They were gray.

  * * *

  Kata worked hard organizing her new center in the Technis Palace, which had been half abandoned since the overthrow. Only seditionists had passed through, carrying off files and books and anything else that might be of use. Now it was occupied by moderates, some overawed by the place, others curious at what they might find. Many decided to live there, and carried all kinds of goods in with them: bedding and food and clothes and lanterns and assorted knickknacks. Kata couldn’t help feeling ambivalent about moving into the Palace. It felt like slipping into the clothes of your oppressor: they were finely made and comfortable but stained by their history.

  In the evening she strode through the Palace’s strange rooms and grottos, up and down stairs in its ramshackle construction. The southwest wing had ground to a halt: the rooms, which had once circled around one another, were now stationary, locked in a single configuration. Technis’s great library had been plundered, but she hoped one day to restore it. Many of the books had ended up with Alfadi and the other thaumaturgists in House Marin, and she figured it would take some prying to return those.

  In the Palace’s upper levels, she saw Dexion striding toward her. How easy his life was, she thought. He was not engaged in these events. Instead he pursued his own interests and had no responsibilities to anyone.

  The minotaur bent down rapidly and threw her over his shoulder.

  “Now, where are the dungeons?” he boomed.

  Kata struck him on his back. “Dexion! No! I’m meant to be a leader. You’re undermining my gravitas.”

  He strode on. “What gravitas?”

  She stopped striking him, knowing that would only seem more undignified.

  He put her down just as quickly. “I came to tell you that my first fight is organized. You are going to be amazed at the Arena, Kata, when you see what’s planned! And those who survive are to be promoted to gladiator captains!”

  Nearby, a pair of grand doors hung askew from their hinges. Kata had been here before: the room had been Director Autec’s former office. The last time she’d been here, Director Autec’s disturbing body had been sprawled on the ground, a ragged gash cutting deep into his neck. Autec’s body was gone: into the lime pits on the far side of the mountain with the rest of the dead. She thought of the Siren she had embraced on the balcony so long ago. The Siren had escaped, perhaps even back to her island in the Taritian archipelago.

  Inside the office, spidery cracks ran along the walls, as if they had been subjected to intense pressure. Mounted on a pillar in one corner of the room stood a glassy head-sized sphere, its metallic latticework insides clearly visible. This she knew to be a communication device, linked with a second sphere somewhere else. At the far end of the room stood the Director’s large desk, its drawers open, papers scattered on the floor. Behind it stood a strange egglike machine, black with uncanny silver ideograms inscribed into it: ancient technology whose potential unnerved her.

  Dexion ran his hand over the sphere on the pillar. “Where does this scrying ball connect?”

  “Probably to one of the other Houses, or to Varenis.”

  Kata watched fearfully as Dexion grabbed a lever at the base of the sphere, pulled it down. For a moment nothing happened.

  “Perhaps the ball on the other side isn’t functioning,” said Dexion.

  A moment later a pinpoint of light appeared in the center of the ball. Slowly, it grew, engulfing the ball, and a second room was projected into the offices, a shadowy world superimposed on their own.

  Behind a ghostly desk stood a man, his wiry gray hair and genial face undercut by an air of tension and fatigue. A deep red birthmark disfigured one side of his face. “It’s about time you reached me. Oh, a minotaur—you’ve returned to the old ways, I see.”

  “There is no return to the old ways,” said Dexion.

  “Caeli-Amur always had a nostalgia for the ancients. Surely, that’s why you’re the delegates from this Authority of yours I hear about. You are the delegates, right? Shall we talk?”

  Kata was transfixed for a moment, made a guess. “It’s a relief that the Directorate of Varenis wants to talk, after so hastily imposing its embargo on us.”

  The man brushed his wiry hair back, seemed to calm himself. “You seem like reasonable people and I’m a new Director, not responsible for the old policies. My name’s Valentin.”

  Kata took another, wilder guess. “Armand surely explained to you that we will not stand for those who seek to reassert the old order. You understand that, right?”

  Valentin laughed bitterly. “Armand! Dead in the mountains, I’m afraid, having left me with, well, nothing much at all. Just useless things. The truth is, I need your help, and I’m the only chance you have. We have the same enemies, you see. There’s a faction here who wants to crush you, string you up on dark machines. And to do so, they have to replace me. Even now they’re circling like carrion birds. If you were to release the House officials that have been imprisoned and send a request for Varenis’s aid, indicating you’re prepared to become an autonomous Department of Varenis—paying the appropriate taxes, of course, but having complete self-governance—well, then we can avoid any bloodshed. Allow us to invest in Caeli-Amur. We can get your factories working again. We’ll send you emergency funds to restart your economy—at the appropriate interest, of course.”

  Possibilities opened up in front of Kata like a hundred tracks crisscrossing across a hill. She saw that if she could accept this proposal, she might offer a way out of the never-ending conflict Caeli-Amur seemed to be plunged into. She could take it to a meeting of the Assembly and offer a different policy from Ejan’s. The desperate people would surely accept it. Thus she would defeat Ejan and rise to the key leader in the city. She saw that the insurgency itself might actually survive and be stable—yes, a province of Varenis, but an autonomous one.

  Kata made some more quick calculations. If this Armand had made it to Varenis, then this Director was his contact, the man who possessed the prism. That stood to reason. Her mind jumped tracks. She decided to test the water.

  “What about this book?” Kata left the question vague. She kept her eyes fixed on the Director’s every expression, on the way his nonplussed look filled quickly with anxiety. Yes: she had outwitted him, though she didn’t know quite how. Before he could speak, she added, “The Alerium Calix. What should we do with that?”

  The Director brought both his hands down onto the table and half stood. “That’s what I need! The infernal prism has complex thaumaturgical locks that even the Sortileges cannot lift. And now I’m paying for this fact. Me! I had nothing to do with it! Yes, we can do a deal. Certainly. What can we work out together?”

  Here, then, was her chance. Here was a way to outflank Ejan. But Kata stopped herself. She had learned enough about power to understand the traps of politics, the labyrinths in which one became lost. At first she would think herself victorious, but soon Varenis would use their influence to tear all the wealth from Caeli-Amur, to strip it of its art, its energy, its creativity. Did she trust the Director of Varenis? Of course not. In any case, she didn’t possess The Alerium Calix, and she had no idea where it was.

  �
��Lift the embargo first. Let merchants return to Caeli-Amur,” she said.

  “Send me the book, and I think I can negotiate that. Do you have it there? Show it to me so I can believe you.”

  “It’s in the hands of the Authority,” said Kata a little too quickly.

  His spectral eyes pierced her; this was a man used to the bluff and double bluff. “You don’t have it either, do you? Oh gods. You’re a clever liar. So we’re back where we started. I can lift the embargo if you first accept my proposals. Release the prisoners and become a Department of Varenis.”

  “I won’t help you,” said Kata. “I can’t.”

  “I won the Directorate with a policy of appeasement and negotiation! To refuse me is suicide! Do you want to go to war?”

  Kata turned the screw once more. “Our Authority would never allow it. We’re not even the Authority’s proper representatives. We’re just here by accident.”

  “You’re not? What good are you to me then? Nothing, it’s all come to nothing.” The man collapsed back into his chair and stared out his window, a grayness setting on his craggy and handsome features. He seemed to have died a little death.

  * * *

  A few days later, Kata leaned against one of the statues under the Opera’s portico and watched black-suited vigilant guards march in a long line toward Cable Car Tower. There guards crammed into cars and were carried up over the city to Via Gracchia, from where they would march south, toward the villas. When they arrived, no negotiation would occur, for the time of pleasantries was over. The blockade would be broken, resistance suppressed, the grain stores sacked. A flood of prisoners would be carted back to House Arbor’s dungeons.

  Ejan’s icy face appeared beside Kata. He’d grown a sharp blond beard, which Kata had to admit suited him. He’d added a white cravat to his usual suit and she was surprised to find him handsome. “Organizing your own guards, I hear.”

  Kata rested her face against the cold marble of the statue. “The city needs as many defenders as it can get.”