The Stars Askew

by Rjurik Davidson

  Max continued into the maelstrom. Before long, people streamed past him. First came the remnants of House agents—officiates, subofficiates, and intendants—on horseback. They rode with fear in their eyes, saddlebags filled with whatever booty they had rescued, scarcely giving him a second look as they headed south. Then came those fleeing on foot. The bulk of these were simple rural folk who had worked the farms, the goods in their arms just rags and trinkets.

  A hearty-looking old man halted beside Max’s horse. “Turn back, traveler, turn back! The seditionists have come and they’re razing everything.”

  Maximilian’s heart lurched. “But why would the seditionists do that? No, it’s impossible.”

  The old man looked back at the scene behind him. “You’re right—impossible.”

  The man ran on without another word as a group of black-suited guards rode toward Max. As they raced past, they eyed him suspiciously. They were hard-looking men and women, their flat, angular faces and steely eyes filled with ruthless determination. Menacing short-swords dripped with blood.

  In the middle of the road, an abandoned carriage lurched to one side, its axle broken from speeding over the potholed road. Its horses were gone, and clothes and knickknacks were strewn on the dirt around it.

  A villa stood at the end of a short road to Max’s right. Several seditionists were busy setting its walls alight with hay and firewood. Others were throwing stones at the villa’s first story. From the upper windows a bolt-thrower appeared. One of the arsonists screamed, went down clutching his side.

  Through the frosted glass walls of a greenhouse, Max saw figures engaged in a bitter skirmish. Several of the silhouettes went down in a rain of blows.

  Max rode closer. Through the greenhouse’s open doors, he caught sight of sapphire bushes, their blue petals waving desperately about. A black-suited guard hacked at banks of delicate herbs, candle-flowers, and scarlet livid-moss. Many of those beautiful plants had thaumaturgical properties. Beside the beds of flora lay corpses of gardeners, hoes and pitchforks clasped in their hands.

  Max leaped from his horse and strode into the damp heat. Lush and sickly scents wafted over him.

  Three more guards hacked away at the fire-trees. Elsewhere, shivering-moss lay hewn from its bed, its bright green color slowly fading, its motion smaller and smaller.

  “Those are precious!” said Max.

  One of the guards—a pear-shaped woman—turned, and in smooth liquid tones said, “Look, it’s the owner.”

  “I’m not the owner, you imbecile,” said Max. “You should know who I am.”

  “Ejan gave us the right to do whatever we like out here. ‘You’re off the leash!’ he said. So bugger off.” The woman sneered, turned back to the garden, slashed away.

  Max grabbed the guard by the shoulder, turned her around. “You listen—”

  The short, sharp blow hit his head from behind. The world slipped. An immense rug was pulled from beneath Max’s feet. He was on his knees. Ringing sounded in his ears.

  “No, you don’t—” But he wasn’t all there. He was far away, noticing strange little details. One of the sapphire flowers, torn from the ground, was shuddering where it lay. The guard’s belt had been tightened; the belt’s pin had widened one of the holes considerably.

  The woman looked down at him. “What did you say?”

  Max touched the back of his head. Blood covered his hand, warm and slick. “I’m Maximilian.”

  “And I’m Ursilia the Gorgon, from before the cataclysm.” The woman looked up at her comrade, who apparently stood behind Max, and nodded.

  The rug was violently pulled again. The world spun, or perhaps it was Maximilian who tumbled, until everything became a blur. Then the blur sped into a vast whiteness, and he was spun off into oblivion.

  * * *

  There were trees around him, thin tree trunks densely packed together. No: they weren’t trees—they were legs. Things clarified. Eerie light glowed from soft lichen growing on the walls. In one corner of the stone room, red vines clutched a body that hung suspended in their leafy clutches. A species of Toxicodendron didion, perhaps designed to grow beneath ground. Had the man thrown himself into its lethal embrace out of despair, or had he been grasped by the deadly plant as he wandered around the cell? Max rolled to his knees, looked up at the group of people in the center of the stony chamber. Six men stood in a little circle, their gray clothes hanging limply. Against a far wall sat a group of better-heeled men—House agents, Max presumed.

  “There’s no escape.” One of the men brushed his straggly, ratty beard as he talked to the circle. “Even if you got past these bars, the grounds are protected by tear-flowers, snow-orchids, and blood-orchids. You’d end up in one of their maws and be worse off than that fella there.” He nodded toward the corpse hanging from the vines. With the mention of the deadly flora, Max knew he had to be in the dungeons beneath House Arbor.

  He searched around for his bag, his possessions, the Core. None of it was there. For a moment he buried his face in his hands. He felt broken, ruined. A vicious headache split his skull.

  Aya rose up for a moment, like a feverishly ill man raising his head. This is a universe of disappointment, you see. There’s only one escape, only one place of safety.

  Several of the men looked down at Max, then away again. The House agents didn’t bother to glance at him at all. Now Max heard cries from beyond the iron bars at one side of the cell. Apparently, there were many such cells down here. Maximilian touched the back of his head gingerly. His hair was matted with blood.

  “When I was at the tribunal,” the second man said, “I begged that bastard Georges to show mercy. I admitted to being a privateer. But they were just things I’d stolen from the Opera, you know. I worked there before the bloody uprising. So I slipped in and made off with food cards and a bunch of forms. Made good money, too. Anyway, I admit to it all, beg forgiveness, and that bastard, he says mine is the worst crime of all. ‘The Bolt for you, my man,’ he says.”

  From beyond the cell, the groan of a door opening. Absolute silence now, as everyone waited tensely. Anxious eyes darted around the circle. A squad of guards marched past them and into the darkness, and the men breathed out. An iron door opened down the passageway. Someone read a list of names; there was a rattling of chains; then suddenly screaming of several voices at once.

  “Please, no, there’s been a mistake.”

  “Please, let me see the tribunal. Let me…”

  “It’s not right. It’s not!”

  The door clunked shut again. Out of respect, the cell remained silent until the group of ten prisoners was led past the cell and out of the dungeon, their chains rattling.

  THIRTY

  Over the following days, Max watched one after another of the inmates hauled in front of the Criminal Tribunal. When each man returned, there was nothing to say. None of them were released. All of them were destined for the Bolt.

  Max would be the exception. Despite Georges’s corruption—his conspiracies with the Elo-Talern, his stolen goods in one wing of House Arbor—he would not risk condemning a former leader of seditionism, a veteran of the struggle before the overthrow of the Houses. Once Georges saw him, Max would be freed.

  Until then, Max waited and watched, ever more frustrated, as each morning and evening another group was led along the corridors, begging for forgiveness. More prisoners were crushed into the cells: petty criminals, spies and saboteurs, outspoken supporters of the Houses. Max could never be sure how many of these dark brooding characters were guilty of these offenses.

  To distract himself, Max hacked at his beard with the one communal razor they possessed, though he knew his curly hair had grown long and wild. There had been knots in it before; now there were long matted clumps he could not separate. These would have to be shaved off.

  Finally the lank-haired guard called Max’s name. Max was taken out, shackled, and led with a group along grim corridors lit by luminescent lichen. They climb
ed a staircase, and the lichen gave way to sad-looking candle-flowers that threw a gentle white light onto a luxurious walkway lined by alcoves decorated with broken statues and dying plants.

  Max was pushed into a great semicircular theater, its walls formed by the same wiry vines. The theater seats were intricately sculpted from the aboveground roots of pillarlike trees. Vines draped from the trees and walls and intertwined with one another, resembling one great leafy organism. A dozen furnace trees stood like sentinels throughout, and Max could feel the warmth thrown out by the nearest one.

  Several hundred people packed into the theater, and the Criminal Tribunal sat at a table carved from black wood. Of the three presiding members, Maximilian knew only Georges, who sat officiously in the middle of the table. Despite his intensity, Georges had always looked exhausted, and recent events had clearly not helped the matter. His square, lantern-jawed face drooped even more heavily, and his perpetually deep-set eyes practically disappeared into his face. Presiding over the tribunal was apparently difficult work, though Max could hardly see why, considering there seemed to be only one possible outcome.

  As Max was being pushed into a small square enclosure, he called out, “Georges, enough of this—”

  The guard struck Max in the stomach. He doubled over, the wind sucked from him. A low hiss carried through the theater and gave Maximilian hope. Perhaps the audience would be on his side. On one side of the theater sat a group of university students, young and with bohemian clothes and short beards. Scattered among the crowd were white-haired retirees who might have wandered down from their equally white houses near Via Gracchia. They were not the mob of the Lavere.

  Behind the tribunal, a line of golden-plate helianthuses gleamed like little suns. As he peered down at Max, Georges seemed as if he had a halo. “Prisoner, you’re charged with obstructing the action of the Caeli-Amur guards, sabotage of the new order. How do you plead?”

  “Georges, it’s me, Maximilian.” Max looked to the other two tribunal members, two women who watched impassively. Did his matted curly hair and shaggy beard obscure his identity?

  Georges closed his eyes slowly, as if Maximilian’s words wearied him further. “Claiming to be one of the fallen heroes of the movement will not gain you leverage.”

  Hoping for help, Max looked up at the leafy galleries hanging above, packed with yet more spectators. He caught a glimpse of a figure—tall, standing stiffly—looking down at him. Was it Ejan? But the figure was just one of many, all of them obscured by shadows. Max turned back to face the tribunal.

  “Well?” Georges sighed.

  “I am the seditionist Maximilian. Georges, you know me.” Maximilian raised his shackled hands to his face, felt the straggly beard that grew thickly. “Fetch any of the veterans, and they will vouch for me.”

  One of the two other tribunal members, this one a pretty and willowy woman, held up a few sheets of paper in her long fingers. “Prisoner, I have before me an account of one of the guards whom you assaulted in the region of the villas. The account claims that as the guards were undertaking the orders of the Insurgent Authority itself, you attempted to stop them. You struck one, and attempted to rescue the property of House Arbor. Do you deny the accusations?”

  “They were destroying—”

  She spat back zealously, “And what were you doing in the region, if you were not fighting on the side of the Houses?”

  “I was returning from a journey to Lixus.”

  Georges crossed his arms with disdain. “Everyone knows Lixus is nothing but a deserted ruin. You had better invent something more plausible.”

  Max felt events slipping away from him. He was suddenly sure he would not escape this tribunal. He would end up like the rest of the prisoners, condemned to the Bolt even as they begged for clemency.

  —Aya, help me—said Max, but he heard nothing in return. He could feel Aya’s bulk within him, hidden away, but the god felt like a great marshy pit, sodden with depression.

  Max scoured the audience once more. Several voices called out, “He’s harmless! This is a farce!”

  Max decided it best for the moment to refuse their game. He countered their charges with his own. “I returned with a power source, the Core—a long cylinder. Where is it?”

  Until now the last member of the tribunal had looked on silently. Now she leaned over the imposing table. Older than the others, she had a fragile build, short hair, and olive skin. She had the earnestness of a child, and Max sensed she might be an ally.

  “What is the function of this cylinder? Why did you carry it?” she said.

  Max thought of explaining the Core, but he hesitated. They would look on his story as nothing but a grandiose tale. He doubted the truth could save him. Desperation was now taking him. There is a chance, he thought, that I can use thaumaturgy. He could draw the ideograms in the air, though his hands were shackled, and incant the words quickly. Once invisible, he could sneak through in the resulting pandemonium. He glanced at the door, where mean faces leered in at him.

  “Well? If you don’t speak, we can’t help you,” she said.

  Max tried to buy some time. “Where is it?”

  “You see, Elise, he is willfully obstructionist,” Georges said to the woman. “If you had done nothing wrong, you would have nothing to hide.”

  Seeing the tribunal’s intransigence, Max quickly changed his strategy. He would try the truth after all, and hope it would lead somewhere more hopeful. “I ventured to the Sentinel Tower, Iria’s tower, in search of its Core, which is an engine of sorts. I want to use the Core to … Well, when I was in the Library of Caeli-Enas, I—”

  Georges interrupted. “Fairy tales.”

  Elise leaned over the tribunal’s desk. “I’d like to hear what he has to say. Each has a right to answer the charges, Georges.”

  “Let him speak!” cried out some of the spectators.

  Georges yawned angrily. “This is the third time you’ve demanded we give a prisoner more than their due time, Elise. To the first two I acquiesced, but no longer. Must I remind you we have another twelve prisoners to condemn today?”

  “Judge,” said Elise.

  “Ah yes, judge. Nevertheless, to these mad stories, I put my foot down. I move that the man face the Bolt on the morn. All those in favor?” Georges raised his hand together with the willowy young woman.

  Elise looked down at the table, her face a picture of resigned melancholy.

  Max began his incantation, his hands drawing the ideograms as quickly as he could. As they did, they left little traces of power in the air behind them.

  “He’s a thaumaturgist! He casts a charm!” Georges screamed.

  Max’s words tumbled from his mouth. He completed the ideograms, and the world lit up with vitality. Now invisible, he turned quickly, just as something crashed onto his temple. Pain jagged into his skull, and the charm was destroyed. The world took back its mundane form, and he felt it slipping under him. As he lost consciousness, the last thing he heard was the baleful laughter of Aya.

  * * *

  All morning they waited. Apparently, things had slowed down at the Standing Stones—some part of the process had broken down. It was afternoon by the time guards came for Max and nine other prisoners. He was gagged so that he might not use the Art. The group was shoved into a horse-drawn carriage, enclosed by bars. As it rattled away from the Arbor Palace, Max looked out at the lawns and hedges, the carefully crafted gardens of House Arbor. The plants had started to grow wild, and weeds were sprouting around the lovely trees and statues. Brilliantly colored beds of flowers had been trampled. Only the aqueducts and walkways that crisscrossed through the air still seemed to be in good condition.

  From the woods that encircled the grounds, Max heard the wailing of tear-flowers. They seemed to be crying out for the condemned men.

  The carriage carried them past a huge circular statue depicting the gods at war. Aya, the rebel god, threw lightning bolts as the others chased him.


  —Look, Aya. It’s you—said Max.

  I look quite handsome, don’t I? I hope they remember me like that.

  Max looked at the classical palace behind. Towers spiraled on one side; arches crossed to the opposite wing above a glassy lake. In places, vines, flowers, and mosses had somehow grown into the side of the Palace’s walls. They appeared to be part of the structure now.

  —You escaped once. Why not now? Help me, Aya. I know you can.

  Max remembered Aya had given him matter-shifting equations when he had been caught in Technis’s dungeons. He had broken his chains, shattered locks. But Max could not recall them clearly. His mind had been a jumble back then, fragmented pieces that didn’t add up to a whole. And the prime language was a language. To learn the equations was not to learn the underlying grammar.

  Don’t you understand, Maximilian? It would be better if I died, said Aya.

  —Perhaps better for you, but not for me.

  Before long, the cart was clattering along the cobblestoned boulevard, through the Arantine. They passed grand, stately mansions set far from the road: the houses of officiates, mostly, or wealthy foreigners from Numeria, or the Teeming Cities, or Varenis, even. Some probably belonged to the leaders of the Collegia and the more powerful thaumaturgists.

  —Aya, I beg you—said Max. —We can still take the power source to the Elo-Talern and be free of each other. Is there nothing to look forward to?

  You are the stronger personality anyway, said Aya. You feel it, don’t you? This entity I am—this is not the whole of me. Parts have sloughed off, like dead skin.

  Max caught glimpses of the Quaedian, the Opera, whitecaps breaking on the ocean. A crowd lined the road at the head of the Thousand Stairs and chanted, “Bolt! Bolt! Bolt!” Bits of rotten fruit and muck flew through the air, struck the bars, splattering the condemned men.