For no mortal can love the moon. Not for long.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS is fairly certain someone hit him on the back of the head though he mostly remembers the front of his head hitting the stairs and that’s where the pain is most noticeable as he regains consciousness. He is also fairly certain he heard Mirabel say something about someone breathing though now he’s not sure who she was talking about.
He’s not completely certain about anything other than the fact that his head hurts, a lot.
And he is most definitely tied to a chair.
It’s a nice chair, a high-backed one with arms that Zachary’s own arms are currently fastened to with cords that are themselves quite high-quality: black cord wrapped in several loops from his wrists to his elbows. His legs are bound, too, but he can’t see them under the table.
The table is a long dark-wood dining table, situated in a dimly lit room that he assumes is somewhere in the Collector’s Club given the height of the ceiling and the moldings but this room is darker, only the table is lit. Little pot lights in the ceiling cast uniform puddles of light from one end of the table to the other where there is an empty chair upholstered in navy blue velvet that probably looks like the one he is currently tied to because it feels like the type of room where the chairs would match.
Through his headache he can hear soft classical music playing. Vivaldi, maybe. He can’t tell where the speakers are. Or if there are no speakers and it is wafting in from outside the room. Or maybe the Vivaldi is in his imagination, a hallucinatory musical complication from a mild head injury. He doesn’t remember what happened, or how he ended up at this blue velvet dinner party for one with no dinner.
“I see you’ve joined us again, Mister Rawlins.” The voice comes from all around the room. Speakers. And cameras.
Zachary searches his throbbing head for something to say, trying to keep his face from betraying how nervous he is.
“I was led to believe there would be tea.”
There is no response. Zachary stares at the empty chair. He can hear the Vivaldi but nothing else. Manhattan shouldn’t be this quiet on principle. He wonders where Mirabel is, if she’s in a different room tied to a different chair. He wonders if Dorian is somehow alive, which seems unlikely, and he finds he doesn’t want to consider that. He realizes he is starving, or thirsty, or both, what time is it, anyway? It’s a stupid thing to realize and the newly realized hunger gnaws at him, like an itch, competing with his throbbing head for his attention. A curl of hair falls in his face and he tries to flip it back into place with creative head gestures but it remains, caught on the edge of his replacement glasses. He wonders if Kat has finished his Ravenclaw scarf yet and if he’ll ever see Kat again and how long it will take before anyone on campus thinks to worry about him. A week? Two? More? Kat will think he decided to stay in New York for a while, no one else will notice until classes start back up again. Perils of being a quasi-hermit. There are probably bathtubs full of lye somewhere in this building.
He is having a heated argument with the voice inside his head about whether or not his mother will know if he dies because maternal intuition and also fortune-teller when the door behind him opens.
The girl from the other night, the one who’d pretended to be a mild-mannered knitting co-ed in Kat’s class, enters with a silver tray and places it on the table. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t even look at him, and then leaves the same way she came.
Zachary looks at the tray, unable to reach it, his hands bound to the chair.
On the tray is a teapot. A low, squat iron pot sitting atop a warmer with a single lit candle, with two empty handleless ceramic cups sitting next to it.
The door on the other end of the room opens and Zachary is unsurprised to see the polar-bear lady though she has shed her coat. Now she wears a white suit and the whole ensemble is very David Bowie–esque despite her silver hair and olive complexion. She even has different-colored eyes: one dark brown and one disconcertingly pale blue. Her hair is tied up in a chignon, her red lipstick perfect and vaguely menacing in a retro way. The suit has a tie that is tied in a neater knot than Zachary has ever been able to manage and that detail annoys him more than anything else.
“Good evening, Mister Rawlins,” she says, stopping when she reaches his side. He half expects her to tell him not to get up. She gives him a smile, a pleasant sort of smile that might have put him at ease were he not so far beyond ease at this point. “We have not been properly introduced. My name is Allegra Cavallo.”
She reaches over and picks up the teapot. She fills both cups with steaming green tea and replaces the pot on its warmer.
“You are right-handed, yes?” she asks.
“Yes?” Zachary answers.
Allegra takes a small knife from her jacket. She runs the tip of the knife over the cords on his left arm.
“If you try to untie your other hand or otherwise escape, you will lose this hand.” She presses the tip of the knife into the back of his left wrist, not quite enough to draw blood. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
She slips the knife between the cords and the chair and releases his arm in two swift cuts, the cord falling in curling pieces to the floor.
Allegra replaces the knife in her pocket and takes one of the teacups. She walks the length of the table and sits in the chair at the other end.
Zachary doesn’t move.
“You must be thirsty,” Allegra says. “The tea is not poisoned, if you were expecting such passive tactics. You will note I filled my cup from the same pot.” She takes a pointed sip of her tea. “It’s organic,” she adds.
Zachary picks up his cup with his left hand, his shoulder protesting as he does so, adding to the injury list. He takes a sip of the tea. A grassy green tea, almost but not quite bitter. On his tongue there is a knight with a broken heart. Broken hearts. His head hurts. Heart hurts. Something. He puts the teacup down.
Allegra watches him with studied interest from the other end of the table, the way one watches a tiger in a zoo or possibly the way the tiger watches the tourists.
“You don’t like me, do you, Mister Rawlins?” she asks.
“You tied me to a chair.”
“I had you tied, I didn’t do it myself. I also gave you tea. Does one action negate the other?”
Zachary doesn’t answer. After a pause she continues.
“I made a bad first impression, I fear. Knocking you down in the snow. First impressions are so important. You had superior meet-cutes with the others, no wonder you like them both better. You’ve cast me as a villain.”
“You tied me to a chair,” Zachary repeats.
“Did you enjoy my party?” Allegra asks.
“What?”
“At the Algonquin. You didn’t pay much attention to the fine print. It was thrown by a charitable foundation that I run. It promotes literacy for underprivileged children around the world, sets up libraries, provides grants for new writers. We also work on improving prison libraries. The party is an annual fund-raiser. There are always unexpected guests, it’s practically traditional.”
Zachary sips his tea silently. He recalls the party having something to do with a literary charity.
“So you close one library to open others?” he asks as he puts his cup down.
“That place is not a library,” Allegra says sharply. “Not in any sense of the word. It is not some underground level of Alexandria if you were drawing incorrect conclusions. It is older than that. There are no concepts that grasp it entirely, not in any language. People get so caught up in the naming of things.”
“You take away the doors.”
“I protect things, Mister Rawlins.”
“What’s the point of a library-museum if no one gets to read the books?”
“Preservation,” Allegra says. “You think I want to
hide it, don’t you? I am protecting it. From…from a world that is too much for it. Can you imagine what could happen if it were to become common knowledge? That such a place exists, accessible from nearly anywhere. That some place magical, for lack of a better term, waits beneath our feet? What might happen once there are blog posts and hashtags and tourists? But we are getting ahead of ourselves. You stole something from me, Mister Rawlins.”
Zachary says nothing. It is more statement of fact than accusation so he does not protest.
“Do you know why he wanted that volume in particular?” she asks. “The book he had you lie your way into this building to procure? Likely not, he was never the type to divulge more information than necessary.”
Zachary shakes his head.
“Or perhaps he did not want to admit his own sentimentality,” Allegra continues. “When one of our order is initiated they are given the first book they ever protected, in their first test, as a gift. Most do not remember the specifics but he did, remembered the book, that is. Several years ago we adjusted this practice to keep the books here or in one of our other offices. Pity he won’t get it back after going through all that trouble.”
“You’re guardians,” Zachary says, and Allegra’s eyes widen. He hopes he put the right kind of emphasis on the word so she cannot tell if it was just an observation and not a connection.
“We’ve had a great many names over the years,” Allegra says and Zachary manages not to sigh his relief. “Do you know what it is that we do?”
“Guard?”
“You are cheeky, Mister Rawlins. You probably think it is charming. More likely you use humor as a defense mechanism because you are more insecure than you want others to think.”
“So you’re guardians but you don’t…guard?”
“What do you care about?” Allegra asks. “Your books and your games, am I correct? Your stories.”
Zachary shrugs his shoulders in what he hopes is a noncommittal way.
Allegra puts down her teacup and rises from her chair. She moves away from the table and into the shadows on the side of the room. From the sound Zachary guesses that she might be unlocking a cabinet but he can’t see. The noise repeats and then stops and Allegra steps back into the light around the table, the lamps grasping again at her white suit to the point where it nearly glows.
She reaches a hand out and places something on the table, just out of Zachary’s reach. He cannot tell what it is until her hand moves away.
It is an egg.
“I will tell you a secret, Mister Rawlins. I agree with you.”
Zachary says nothing, having not actually stated that he agrees with anything she’s said and not entirely certain if he does or not.
“A story is like an egg, a universe contained in its chosen medium. The spark of something new and different but fully formed and fragile. In need of protection. You want to protect it, too, but there’s more to it than that. You want to be inside it, I can see it in your eyes. I used to seek out people like you, I am practiced at spotting the desire for it. You want to be in the story, not observing it from the outside. You want to be under its shell. The only way to do that is to break it. But if it breaks, it is gone.”
Allegra reaches a hand out to the egg and lets it hover over the shell, putting it in shadow. She could crush it easily. There is a silver signet ring on her index finger. Zachary wonders what’s inside this particular egg, exactly, but Allegra’s hand does not move. “We prevent the egg from breaking,” she continues.
“I’m not sure I’m following the metaphors anymore,” Zachary says, his gaze lingering on the egg on the table. Allegra pulls her hand back and the egg is in the light again. Zachary thinks he can see a hairline crack along its side but that might be his imagination.
“I am attempting to explain something to you, Mister Rawlins,” Allegra says, wandering back into the shadows around the table. “It may be some time before you understand it fully. There was a point in history when there were guards and guides within that space that you have briefly visited but that time has passed. There were failures in the system. We have a new one now. I would respectfully request that you abide by the new order.”
“What does that mean?” Zachary asks and before the question is finished Allegra yanks his head backward by his hair and he can feel the tip of the knife pressing behind his right ear.
“You had another book,” Allegra says, calm and quiet. “A book you found in the library at your school. Where is it?” She voices the inquiry with a pointed lightness, the same tone with which she might ask if he would prefer honey with his tea. The candle under the teapot flickers and gutters and dies.
“I don’t know,” Zachary says, trying not to move his head but the rising panic is tempered with confusion. Dorian had Sweet Sorrows. They may not have searched him well enough to get the keys out from under his giant sweater but they certainly would have found the book on Dorian. Or on his body. Zachary swallows, the taste of green tea broken heart dry in his throat. He focuses his eyes on the egg on the table. This can’t be happening, he thinks, but the knife pressing against his skin insists that it is.
“Did you leave it down there?” Allegra asks. “I need to know.”
“I told you, I don’t know. I had it but I…I lost it.”
“A pity. Though I suppose that means there’s nothing keeping you here. You could go back to Vermont.”
“I could,” Zachary says. Going home is suddenly more appealing since walking away is better than not walking out of this building at all, which is beginning to feel like a distinct possibility. “I could also tell no one about this…or that place that defies nomenclature…or that any of this ever happened. Maybe I made it all up. I drink a lot.”
Overkill, the voice in his head warns, and immediately regrets its choice of phrasing. The knife presses back into the skin by his ear. He can’t tell if it’s blood or sweat dripping down his neck.
“I know you won’t, Mister Rawlins. I could cut off your hand to ensure you that I am serious about this. Have you ever noticed how many stories include lost or mutilated hands? You’d be in interesting company. But I believe we can come to an agreement without getting messy, do you agree?”
Zachary nods, recalling the hand in the glass jar and wondering if its former owner also once occupied this chair. The knife moves away.
Allegra steps aside but remains hovering by his shoulder.
“You are going to tell me everything you remember about that book. You are going to write down every detail you can recall, from its contents to its binding and after you are finished I will put you on a train to Vermont and you will never set foot on this island called Manhattan again. You will speak to no one about the Harbor, about this building or this conversation, about anyone you have met or about that book. Because I’m afraid if you do, if you write or tweet or so much as drunkenly whisper the phrase Starless Sea in a darkened pub I will be forced to make a phone call to the operative that I’ve stationed within sniper distance of your mother’s farmhouse.”
“The what?” Zachary manages to ask despite the desert dryness of his throat.
“You heard me,” Allegra says. “It’s a lovely house. Such a nice garden with the trellis, it must be beautiful in the spring. It would be a pity to break one of those stained-glass windows.”
She holds something out in front of him. A phone displaying a photograph of a house covered in snow. His mother’s house. The nondenominational holiday lights are still up on the porch.
“I thought you might need more encouragement,” Allegra says, putting the phone away and walking back to the other end of the table. “Some pressure on something you value. You haven’t had enough time to value the other two yet regardless of how smitten you might be. I guessed your mother would be a better pressure point than your father what with his new and improved family. We’d have to take
out the whole house in that case. Gas explosion, maybe.”
“You wouldn’t…” Zachary starts but stops. He has no idea what this woman would or wouldn’t do.
“Casualties have come before,” she says, mildly. “More will follow. This is important. It is more important than my life and more important than yours. You and I are footnotes, no one will miss us if we are not included in this story. We exist outside the egg, we always have.” She gives him a smile that doesn’t reach her mismatched eyes and lifts her teacup.
“That egg is filled with gold,” Zachary says, looking at it again. What he had taken for a crack was a stray hair caught on the lens of his glasses.
“What did you say?” Allegra asks, teacup pausing mid-lift, but then the lights go out.
The sword was the greatest the smith had ever made after years of making the most exquisite swords in all the land. He had not spent an inordinate amount of time on its crafting, he had not used the finest of materials, but still this sword was a weapon of a caliber that exceeded his expectations.
It was not made for a particular customer and the smith found himself at a loss as he tried to decide what to do with it. He could keep it for himself but he was better at crafting swords than at using them. He was reluctant to sell it, though he knew it would fetch a good price.
The sword smith did what he always did when he felt indecisive, he paid a visit to the local seer.
There were many seers in neighboring lands who were blind and saw in ways that others could not though they could not use their eyes.
The local seer was merely nearsighted.
The local seer was often found at the tavern, at a secluded table in the back of the room, and he would tell the futures of objects or people if he was bought a drink.
(He was better at seeing the futures of objects than the futures of people.)
The Starless Sea Page 18
