Sky Without Stars

by Jessica Brody

  “Are you okay?” Marcellus asked, his deep hazel eyes so close to hers, she felt like she could look right through them, straight into his mind. In that brief flicker of a moment, she could almost understand why all the Third Estate girls squealed when his face appeared on their Skins. It was a nice face. There was no denying that.

  “I’ll be fine,” Chatine muttered, glancing down. Her gaze landed on his hands, resting on either side of Chatine’s legs. So close. Too close. She suddenly wanted to shove them away, push him back, but just then something snagged her attention. Marcellus’s crisp white jacket sleeve had risen up his left wrist to reveal a faded bruise underneath.

  What is that?

  Chatine instinctively bent down to get a closer look.

  “Don’t look down,” Marcellus said, breaking into her thoughts. “Look out the window. Trust me, it’ll help.”

  “Out the win—?” Chatine started to ask.

  “Visibility mode!” Marcellus called out, cutting off her question. The darkened plastique around them suddenly vanished, and once again, Chatine felt like she was falling. There was nothing between her and the fast-moving ground except air. She gasped as she realized that the entire cruiseur had become transparent. The walls, ceiling, and floor were crystal clear, making it seem like she was flying. Literally.

  The uneasiness in her gut disappeared as she gaped at the sights around her. Stretching out beneath the cruiseur, as far as the eye could see, was a rolling, infinite landscape, dappled with large patches of ice and even larger patches of frozen, tufted grass. Strange rocks poked up from the ground, sharp and angular, stretching upward, as if trying to reach the clouds. There were no towns anywhere. No Frets, no shelters, no people. Not even a single treetop or bird in the endless white sky.

  This was the Terrain Perdu.

  Dead Man’s Land, she’d heard people call it. Because no one had ever crossed it on foot and survived.

  They were soaring right over it, the ice and rocks and frozen grass whizzing by so fast. Chatine had never once in her life used the word “breathtaking,” but that seemed to be the only word that flitted through her mind now.

  Breathtaking.

  The vast, frozen emptiness was both terrifying and magical, all at the same time.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Marcellus broke into her thoughts, and it was only now that Chatine realized she was literally pressed up against the clear wall, her palms flat, her nose squished.

  She pulled away and tried to shrug. “It’s okay.”

  Marcellus tipped his head back and laughed. Chatine immediately felt her hackles rise again. “What’s so funny?” she demanded.

  “Has anyone ever told you, you’re a horrible liar?”

  No, no one had ever told her that before. She was starting to worry she was losing her edge. Ten minutes in a cruiseur with Officer Fancy Hair and suddenly she was turning soft.

  Chatine crossed her arms over her chest, feeling her lungs flare with heat. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a coward?”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew they had struck much harder than the casual jabbing insult she’d intended. Marcellus’s face instantly closed off, and he seemed to shrink in on himself, like he was trying to turn his entire body inside out. He slumped in his seat and stared at the passing scenery.

  Chatine silently berated herself for broaching such a clearly sensitive topic. But how was she to know? Once again, she could feel how deeply she was failing at this job. She was supposed to be bonding with him. Not making him all sad and droopy. How on Laterre was she supposed to get any information out of him in this state?

  Chatine closed her eyes and tried to think of a new tactic. A new topic. Something to break him out of this melancholy that he seemed to have fallen into. No, correction: that she had pushed him into.

  “Mabelle.”

  Chatine’s eyes snapped open and she glanced across the aisle at Marcellus. He was still staring at the scenery, his eyes focused on something far off in the distance. Something that, Chatine suspected, was not in the Terrain Perdu. Maybe not even on Laterre.

  “That’s who the lead is,” Marcellus went on. “Her name is Mabelle Dubois. She used to be my governess. Until seven years ago, when it was revealed she was really a Vangarde spy. All this time, I’d thought Mabelle was in prison.” He shook his head pensively. “All this time.”

  Chatine stared at Marcellus in disbelief, unsure what she should say to this, if anything. He seemed to almost be talking to himself. As though Chatine had become as transparent as the walls and floor around them.

  “But it turns out she escaped. A month ago. I didn’t even realize you could escape from Bastille.” He laughed darkly. “Shows how much I know. Or don’t know, I guess. Anyway, my father left me a message before he died. That’s who I was visiting at the morgue yesterday when I . . . when you . . .” His voice trailed for a moment. “When we met. The message told me Mabelle was in Montfer and that I should go to her.”

  A message?

  Was this what the general had been referring to when he said that the Vangarde had already made contact with Marcellus? Chatine suddenly remembered the shirt she had seen Marcellus cut off his father’s dead body. The one with the Forgotten Word stitched into the fabric. But how had he been able to read it?

  Marcellus went on. “I honestly don’t know what I’m doing in this cruiseur right now. Or why I’m even going. To arrest her? To talk to her? To ask her why she lied to me my entire life? Making me think she loved me, when really she was just gathering intel on the Patriarche for the Vangarde terrorists? All I know is I need to see her. One more time.”

  Marcellus finally turned and looked at Chatine, acknowledging her presence for the first time in what felt like hours. His lips had stopped moving but his eyes were still speaking. For some reason, Chatine felt like they were saying, Yes, I see you. I know you’re there. Thank you for listening.

  And then, as the cruiseur continued to skim above the frozen ground below, all Chatine could think was:

  Maybe I’m better at this than I thought.

  - CHAPTER 28 -

  ALOUETTE

  ALOUETTE STARED UP AT THE shaft of glowing light, utterly mesmerized. She had never seen anything so bright, so green, so out of place in the dark Refuge. The light fanned outward from the candlestick, forming a small, ghostly sphere that seemed to float in the center of the room.

  It was a hologram. Alouette was certain. She’d never seen one, but Sister Denise had told her about them. “They use light beams to project a three-dimensional image so real, you almost feel as though you could reach out and touch it.”

  Alouette now watched as the sphere began to spin. She held tight to the candlestick, too enthralled to let go. The sphere kept turning, becoming more defined with each rotation, until Alouette could see that its surface was a mass of swirling clouds.

  “Laterre,” she whispered.

  It was. It had to be. She’d seen pictures in Principale Francine’s old science books. They were images taken from deep space, when the probes from the Human Conservation Commission had first discovered the planet all those years ago. Images that looked just like this.

  The sphere began to expand further, as if Alouette were zooming in, descending toward the planet from outer space. The clouds cleared and suddenly Alouette could see the long, jagged outline of Laterre’s single landmass, surrounded by ocean on all sides.

  Sister Denise had been right. It was as if you could really touch the hologram. So much so that Alouette felt herself releasing the candlestick at one end and reaching out. As her fingers entered the green light, the image of the globe trembled, seeming to react to her touch.

  She brushed her fingertips against the image and, even though it felt like she was brushing nothing but air, the sphere responded. It moved. With each drag of her finger, Laterre turned on its axis. She pushed it around and around, watching the landmass of Laterre disappear and then reappear ag
ain as the globe revolved.

  Alouette withdrew her finger, letting the sphere slow to a halt. Then she poked at the giant landmass and suddenly she was zooming in again as the hologram image expanded further. She could soon make out the Terrain Perdu, the huge uninhabited area at the center of Laterre, with its barren plateaus and harsh, craggy valleys. She’d only ever seen the Terrain Perdu depicted on the maps and diagrams hand-drawn into the Chronicles. But now, on the hologram, it seemed so real. So alive. So true.

  At the eastern end of the map, where the Terrain Perdu tapered away, she could see a cluster of lights. It had to be Montfer, the biggest mining town on Laterre.

  Alouette swiped her finger across the hologram and the landmass swung westward, back across the vast Terrain Perdu, until she saw another, much bigger cluster of lights. This was Vallonay. The capital. Where she lived.

  Under which she lived.

  She prodded at the image. And, as the hologram zoomed in again, Alouette could see a vast patchwork of fermes, hothouses, and fabriques, with the outline of the Frets at the center. Three rows of old freightships forming a perfect heptagon around the Marsh. To the northeast of the Frets, standing so proud and decadent on the hill, was the half-moon shape of Ledôme.

  She traced her fingers this way and that, looking closely at everything. Alouette found herself wondering what it would be like to be out there, seeing all those things in person. Touching them. Smelling them. Hearing the sounds. Going above-ground yesterday had given her a small taste. It had shown her that, even in the rusting and moldy Frets, there was so much more light and air than down here in the Refuge. She could only imagine how much light, how much air, how much color, how much sky there would be outside the Frets.

  Then, as if the hologram were interrupting her thoughts, demanding her attention back, a red dot suddenly appeared on the map, close to Vallonay. Surprised, Alouette reached out and touched it, causing the hologram to immediately magnify. Alouette squinted at the fast-moving images. The dot was blinking just south of the city, in the dense forest that stretched onward and outward for kilomètres and kilomètres.

  “Forest Verdure,” she whispered, recalling the name from her lessons.

  She prodded the hologram again and it whooshed in even closer. Now she could see a small lake right where Vallonay’s ferme-land ended and the Forest Verdure began. And from the lake she could see a winding stream snaking into the trees and leading to a clearing. Alouette prompted the hologram to zoom in closer. The image soon became blurry, but she could just make out what looked like a group of tiny huts in the center of the clearing. Twelve small shelters that formed a perfect circle just to the north of where the red dot was blinking.

  She scrolled downward, pulling the dot into the center of the map, until she could see another smaller clearing, this one with a collection of curious shadowy patterns scattered across the forest floor. The red dot pulsed and glowed furiously among these mysterious shapes, as though it were trying to tell Alouette something. Trying to point something out to her.

  Alouette tried to zoom in again, but the image only got blurrier.

  “What?” she whispered to the hologram. “What are these shapes?”

  But just then, Alouette heard the patter of footsteps in the hallway outside her father’s room. Panicked, she shoved the two ends of the candlestick back together. The green glow of the hologram, the vivid images of trees, the flashing red light—all disappeared in a heartbeat.

  Gone. Vanished.

  The footsteps were loud now, getting closer by the second. Alouette dropped the candlestick into the valise and snapped the lid closed. Then she shot over to the closet, hoisted herself onto the chair, and jammed the case back onto the top shelf.

  Just as she was stepping down from the chair, the door to her father’s room squeaked open and Alouette’s gaze darted up.

  It wasn’t her father.

  It was Sister Denise.

  “Sister Laurel asked me to come find you,” the sister said.

  Her dark eyes scanned the room and Alouette panicked. How much had Denise seen?

  The sister rubbed at her temple, near the scars where her cyborg circuitry had once been, and said in her precise monotone, “Tranquil Forme is starting now.”

  Alouette let out a small breath, remembering that Denise was way more interested in her gadgets than she was in the behaviors of other people.

  “I’m coming,” Alouette said.

  Denise turned and disappeared down the hallway. Alouette picked up Katrina from where she’d dropped her earlier. She wanted so badly to take the doll with her. To hold it close to her at night like she’d done when she was a child. But if her father saw her with the doll, he would know that she’d been in his room.

  So she returned Katrina to the cupboard in the nightstand, crept out of the room, and followed Sister Denise down the hallway, past the kitchen and the dining room, and into the common room. All the while, though, her mind was still back in her father’s room. Bathed in the glow of that hologram. Staring at that little red dot blinking among the trees. Wondering what was hiding there.

  - CHAPTER 29 -

  CHATINE

  “SO A BASHER IS A Policier droid, a fritzer is a cyborg, and a cav is a dead body?”

  Chatine rolled her eyes but offered Marcellus an enthusiastic “Yes! Exactly!” Or as enthusiastic as Chatine allowed herself to get. She was really getting tired of this game. And Marcellus’s constant need for her to validate his efforts. He acted like being able to name Third Estate slang was the equivalent of being in the Third Estate. As though he were now one of them, which he certainly was not. Until that boy had a tracking device implanted in his arm, was forced to live in filth and squalor, and had to survive off stewed turnips and chou bread for a year, he would not know what it was like to be her. Plus, she hated the way he pronounced “basher.” Like it was a fancy cream sauce dish served in the banquet hall of the Grand Palais, and not a terrifying three-mètre-high droid ready to suck the sensation right out of your limbs.

  “This is great!” Marcellus said, bouncing a little on his toes as they walked. The cruiseur had dropped them at a station just outside of the Bidon, the area of Montfer where most of the Third Estate lived. “I’m learning so much. Tell me more. Like what do you call the Frets?”

  “The Frets,” Chatine replied flatly.

  “Okay. What about Ledôme?”

  “Ledôme.”

  “Gâteau?”

  Chatine stopped walking and stared at him. “Seriously? Gâteau?”

  “What?” Marcellus asked.

  “You think we have a slang for gâteau? We don’t even have real bread.”

  Marcellus bowed his head sheepishly. “Right. Sorry.”

  “Why don’t we talk about your slang for a while?”

  “We don’t have any slang.”

  “Really? What about ‘déchets’?”

  Marcellus sucked in a breath, looking stung. “I’ve never used that term for a Third Estater. I swear.”

  “Whatever.” Chatine continued walking briskly toward town.

  When they arrived a few minutes later, Marcellus’s reaction to the Bidon was immediate. Chatine watched him take in the collection of hovels built from scraps of metal with a mix of shock and sadness. She felt somewhat satisfied by his expression, as though she’d made her point.

  “First time in Montfer?” she asked, mimicking the amused tone he’d used when responding to her reaction to the cruiseur.

  He opened his mouth to say something but only a strangled stutter came out.

  “Let me guess,” Chatine responded for him. “You’ve been here but never to the Bidon slums. You spent your time touring the exploit, observing the workers, but you never followed them home to where they live. Instead you went back to the cushy Second Estate quartier on the other side of the wall.”

  Chatine could tell from his continued silence that she was right. And it made her even more annoyed than she had been before
.

  Montfer was home to the largest iron exploits on Laterre. Unfortunately, however, when the Ministère had started bringing workers out here to mine the ore and process it, they’d conveniently forgotten to bring materials to house them. So the workers were forced to make do with what they could find. Anything that came from the nearby fabriques that wasn’t sent to Vallonay was collected and turned into makeshift housing.

  “C’mon,” she grumbled. “This way.”

  Marcellus followed silently behind her, and Chatine was grateful that at least his relentless questions about Third Estate jargon had ceased. He said nothing as they walked down an alleyway that led through countless metal huts. Chatine thought the Frets were pitiful, but she’d clearly forgotten just how awful the Montfer shacks were too. Their roofs, pockmarked with holes, sagged in the middle, and their ribbed and rusting walls leaned at strange angles. It was as if each shack was being sucked into the mud upon which it was haphazardly built. A river of something liquid and stinking ran through the center of the alleyway, and Chatine had to hop from side to side to avoid getting the worst of it on her boots.

  But worse than the metal hovels were the people who lived inside of them. Desperate eyes watched them silently as they passed. Dirty, chapped hands extended toward them, begging for something—anything—that would keep away the chill and the hunger.

  Same thing, different place, Chatine thought.

  “Where are we going?” Marcellus whispered, staying close on Chatine’s heels.

  “The Jondrette,” Chatine replied, pointing up ahead.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s my . . .” She felt herself choke over the word. Chatine cleared her throat. “It’s an inn. We can ask about Mabelle there. If she lives around here, someone at the Jondrette will know her.”

  “What kind of inn?”

  “It was originally built to house the Ministère officials who came to Montfer to visit the exploits,” Chatine explained. “So it’s one of the sturdier buildings around here. That was before your friends in the Second Estate decided to construct a wall straight through the middle of Montfer and live in their cushy quartier on the other side of it, away from the riffraff.”