Secrets of the Starcrossed

by Clara O'Connor

  While I remained calm on the outside, my mind was churning, sifting through recollections of the lean shadow that was Devyn Agrestis, attempting to find a pattern, a truth that made sense.

  Chaos in the Code. The graffiti I had seen this morning flashed through my mind.

  There were some in the city who were not fans of the Code, people who preferred to push against the limitations of the walls rather than embrace the security they gave us.

  Dissidents talked a big talk, but beyond a bit of graffiti they made little impact on city life. Occasionally a hacker was arrested, someone who, in the name of chaos, breached the digital firewalls which were every bit as vital to the protection of the city as the physical walls themselves.

  If Devyn had been questioned with unauthorised tech on him, he could have been accused of sympathising with such people. I wasn’t sure what he might need such a thing for but being mistaken for a dissident would have been bad, perhaps even fail him in our civics course. What was he playing at? He was an elite. He had access to all the tech he could need. Some people just had to poke at things better left alone, I thought, tidying a loose tendril of hair behind my ear.

  Outrageously, what perturbed me most in the immediate aftermath, making my thoughts teem and jostle against each other, was that feeling. The scalding awareness that had exploded between us the second I touched him. What was it? Where had it come from? And more pressingly, would I experience it again?

  Even though I had known Devyn for ever, I felt like I had never really seen him before today.

  I hoped we never had an exam on the topics covered in the rest of the morning’s classes, as unless it was on the shape and texture of the thing in my pocket and the myriad possible explanations for it and its owner then I was doomed.

  At lunch, I grabbed a juice blend from the fruit seller in the forum, momentarily pulled from thoughts of Devyn at the sight of a pineapple. I adore them, but they hadn’t been readily available in recent months, which usually meant that traffic from the tropics was being impeded. It would explain my father’s lousy mood of late. Double bonus to see it in the market today – happy father and delicious tangy beverage. I sipped my juice, wondering if they had released Devyn yet. After all, they would have no reason to detain him now that I had the device.

  I took a perch on the stairs of the arch nearest the silk seller’s shop, an old favourite from when my father would bring me to the forum and I would wait quietly, mesmerised by the colours and feel of the exotic material. The spot on the second gallery also offered an excellent view of the vast marketplace below. The rain continued to pour down on the shoppers, merchants, gossips, and general loiterers milling about in the ancient venue, dodging around stalls and statues, sheltering under the grand columned entrances of the basilicas, keeping to the porticoed arcades as much as possible.

  On the pedestal in the courtyard below me, a sharp-featured man was speaking against the lack of privacy in the city. It was a not uncommon complaint from those who took a stand on the forum’s stage, where citizens could voice their opinion free of repercussions. Taxes, overpopulation, warmongering, and privacy were the topics most commonly debated at length here. Occasionally, some fool would even take the stand to rail against the imperial Code that shaped our society. Those were rare though.

  Honour, loyalty, justice, city, empire – these simply weren’t smart targets to take aim at, and anyone fool enough to attempt it ran the risk of the crowd in the forum dealing out their own form of justice even if the sentinels didn’t.

  Today’s speaker wasn’t even particularly witty or original. If you were going to stand up in the forum to tackle a topic like privacy and the obligation of every citizen to live with complete transparency under the council’s watchful eye, then you really had to bring something new to the debate. This fool seemed to like the sound of his own voice more than anything else.

  Ginevra joined me just as he was reaching his concluding arguments in a voice that suggested he, at least, was terribly impressed with himself. Raising one perfectly arched brow, Ginevra took a seat on the step beside me.

  “I hear your Reformation class was a little more interesting than usual,” she said.

  I tilted my chin up to indicate she should fill me in on what she’d heard. Gossip-lover that she was, she didn’t have to be invited twice, proceeding to regale me with the best of the questions and speculation zinging between our classmates. What could the sentinels want with him? Was it anything to do with tonight’s Mete? If so, what could it be? Had he fallen victim to a street swindler? Had he witnessed something?

  If only they knew. It never occurred to any of them, elites as they were, that one amongst them might have actually broken the Code. The Code outlined our duties as citizens, it was our moral centre, the foundation of our city and our lives within it. Why would we ever do anything to defy it?

  I answered Ginevra’s questions about what had happened, honestly, with a few minor omissions. No need to mention the physical awareness I suddenly had of a boy I had barely noticed before or the small matter of the strange device I had stolen from him. As Ginevra didn’t know to ask those questions, it was unnecessary to lie, which I had never been particularly successful at. I hadn’t needed to be.

  Maybe a good liar was someone who practised more often. Perhaps the more you crossed the line, the better you were at it. I wasn’t in the habit of thinking of myself as inhabiting a space anywhere near the line – until today, anyway – and I was certainly uncomfortable with my current proximity. I would be more than happy to back further away. The device in my pocket was small enough that if I really tried, I could almost forget it was there. If it were to drop out as I walked home by the river, then it would be as if the whole thing had never happened.

  “I have Prof Livius next myself,” Ginevra announced, popping up. “Do you think he’ll know more or could I squeeze in a hair appointment if I leave now?”

  “I think even if Prof Livius knows something he would never say anything. Especially if it’s anything juicy.”

  “Right, as if Devyn Agrestis would have broken the Code.”

  “You never know.” I shrugged with as much indifference as I thought she would buy.

  “Maybe we’ll see him on the sands,” she said, wagging her eyebrows in a faux-ominous manner before dashing off, checking her hair out in a shop window as she made her way down the arcade.

  A pang of unease washed through me. Having illegal tech could be a serious offence. Devyn undoubtedly took a risk in carrying such a thing into the heart of the city. But if the sentinels were questioning him, and he knew where it was, being caught with it in my pocket certainly wouldn’t aid my plausible deniability if Devyn gave me up.

  I hurried through the forum, wondering what on earth to do with it until I passed by the Great Basilica. It was more properly known as Basilica Garai, in honour of the Governor who had rebuilt after the early Londinium settlement had been burnt down by some Briton queen. The basilica was home to a library that was the pride of the city. The lines and lines of dusty tomes hidden inside spoke of age and erudition nearly as much as the ivy that crawled up the stone walls and the impeccably preserved mosaics on the floor. Overtaken by technology, the books had little utility now and rarely left the shelves, which was perfect for my purposes.

  I moved past the students and academics making use of the workstations, heading towards the deeper, dustier rows. I ran my fingers lightly along the edges of the books until I found a title that practically whimpered as it was pulled off the shelf.

  Social Conventions and Concerns of the Shadower Woman in the Age of Sentenus VII, vol. 2748.1.

  Hopefully the anthropology students had moved on to more significant issues by now than whatever petty concerns those who lived outside the walls had protested about nearly two centuries ago. The book had broken away from the spine, leaving just enough space for me to slip the small golden device inside. I pushed it back onto the shelf and walked back through th
e shelves, looking around casually before making my way swiftly home to change.

  It would be safe there. I breathed a sigh of relief, my thoughts now turning to the big night ahead.

  If anyone had told me yesterday that I wouldn’t even have started getting ready for my first Mete at this point in the day, I’d have thought them suffering from some kind of mind glitch. But here I was, only hours away from being there in person and from seeing Marcus in real life for the first time in years, and I hadn’t even done my hair yet.

  Chapter Two

  I made my way down to the lobby, my hands still smoothing my carefully selected outfit. I had spent weeks searching for precisely the right skirt to go with the aqua silk blouse I had bought almost a year earlier because it matched my eyes. My long hair was tied up in the elaborate braids that showed off its multiple hues to best effect. My mother might prefer it if I kept my hair tidied away, but I had moved on from my childhood desire to blend in and preferred to see my red-tinted hair as my signature not my stigma.

  I surveyed my appearance in the mirror one last time. Satisfied, I headed for the door, smiling back at our maid Anna as she handed me my wrap on the way out. This was a once-in-a-lifetime event for most citizens. While it was not likely to be the case for me, I meant to savour every heartbeat of my first one, every scent, every sound to be imprinted on my mind for ever.

  Attending the weekly Mete was a privilege afforded to few, as there was only room in the ancient amphitheatre for the greatest citizens: the council, of course, and the chosen of the city, those who had been recognised as having served the state and who were honoured by being granted a seat for the duration of their lifetime. The most prestigious families had boxes, many of which had belonged to their houses since the founding of the city. Then there were a couple of hundred seats left that were allocated either by lottery or charitable auction – or in my case because I was in the current civics class. Or rather, because I was in the civics class in the forum; other civics classes in the city weren’t afforded a similar privilege.

  Too excited to wait around, I had decided to walk across the city rather than take the monorail. All the better to fully appreciate the day, or at least the evening. In light of earlier events, I felt, for the first time in my life, slightly worried about my own place in society. Up until this morning, I had been the most upstanding of citizens, could have walked with my head held high into the amphitheatre. Now I felt somehow tarnished, but I pushed the thought aside, determined not to let it ruin my evening.

  The walk would take an hour or so, and I needed every minute of it to get rid of the jitters that had beset me since I arrived home. I didn’t often walk, usually taking the trains or the elevated red buses that sped around the higher levels of the city. But sometimes I was overcome by a restlessness, a sense of being caged that sent me out into the streets, walking until I was too exhausted to feel it anymore.

  Constrained by the walls that protected it, Londinium could not move freely outwards, and so the city had instead built upwards, ever higher and higher into the clouds. I followed the layers of the city into the sky. The grand avenues, interlaced by the medieval lanes and alleys, wound upwards through a city of concrete and steel, marble and glass, the lower levels dotted with the temples and buildings of the ancients.

  The few areas where the sun shone all the way down to ground level were exclusively reserved for the first imperial jewels: the forum, the Governor’s Palace, the amphitheatre, and the White Tower, protected over the ages by the council. The historic temples and some public parks were also conserved, but the scrapers still straddled them, casting them into shadow. Only a handful of ancient buildings were so prized that miles of unhindered sky was kept free above them. It was these precious few that held the most fascination for me.

  Sometimes I felt overwhelmed by the chaos of the world I lived in, lives taking place at different layers of the city. There was the bustle of the ground, the merchants and traders, each street-level front door and window plying their wares in the various sections – Rope St, Candle St, Tailor St – by the forum. There was Services St, Design St, and the like past the financial district up by the silicon roundabout. Surgeons and plastics and dermatologists inhabited the Harley St area. The city was fed via the great Tower markets – meat at Smithfields tower, fish at Billingsgate. Fruit and vegetables had moved from Covent Garden further east towards the docks as the inner West End and Drury Lane tower became a hive of theatres and entertainment centres.

  As I made my way through its labyrinthine grandeur, the thought of that strange stolen device was a loaded stone in my heart. What had I been thinking? Even to touch such a thing was a sin against society. Our city might be seen by the Caesar as a remote outpost, but here we considered it a shining beacon of civilisation, one that should be nurtured and protected. Even if it wasn’t actively dangerous, illegal tech of any kind was a threat to the city I loved and the people in it. I vowed to throw it in the Tamesis as soon as I could – as I should already have done. That would be an end to it.

  I had purposefully chosen to take a highwalk, the curling path taking me through the neons of Piccadilly. It skimmed across the top of the theatre district, many floors above the older theatres and opera houses at ground level and past the more avant-garde centres where the live-streamed dramas and comedies my friends and I watched were produced.

  I kept my eye out for a glimpse of any actors, who could sometimes be seen exiting the stage doors. The die-hard fans always knew how long it took their favourites to end a scene, get out of costume, and hit the exit, so I slowed whenever I saw a group gathered beside a door.

  But I couldn’t afford to linger, even when I noticed a particularly large crowd outside the Windup Theatre which broadcast my latest favourite period drama, set in the reign of Governor Jerolin, who had ruled during the war years before the Treaty. As I approached the Bailey Tower my heart started to beat faster. I went up a couple of levels to ensure I came out at one of the higher balconies, all the better to savour every moment of my approach.

  The bustle and excitement of the crowd swept me along to the southwestern balcony above the amphitheatre. I looked up to savour the darkening sky and, wriggling through to the front of the gallery, I let my gaze drop down the vast expanse of air, taking it all in: the northern and eastern balconies, the lights of the housing behind lowering as the balcony curtains were dropped, the oohs and ahhs of the crowd making their way onto the terraces as the neon display screens perched high on the surrounding buildings came on. It really was the most spectacular sight and I had timed my arrival perfectly. I smiled my delight into the cooling evening air as my gaze dropped level after level until I could see the oval of the arena itself. The hairs on my arms raised. I could barely believe I was going to be down there.

  “Cassandra.” I turned at the sound of my name, scanning the people milling about on the balcony behind me.

  “Cassandra, over here.”

  Redirecting my search over to the balcony on my right, I spotted Ginevra and Ambrose waving excitedly. I grinned back at them, indicating I would meet them at the nearest lift. Taking one last glance at the arena below, I started to push through the second wave of the crowd entering the balcony. Unlike some who had apparently been holding their spot for hours, these people seemed happy to arrive with only half an hour to go and jockey and jostle each other for whatever view they could manage to get from further back on the public galleries high above the arena.

  I was scanned for my right of admission and, at a nod from the sentinel, skipped over to where Ginevra and Ambrose waited. Ginevra was talking nonstop as we stepped into the glass cube that swept us down to ground level, the cubes synchronised so that the entry of the arena’s audience was efficiently and gracefully controlled.

  I could see that the stone walls and the original cobbles were dusted with sand as we got closer. I could scarcely believe how familiar and iconic everything was, yet also how strangely new it felt seeing it f
irsthand like this. I reached out and trailed my hand along the ancient honey-coloured stone walls of the entrance. What must those awaiting judgement feel now? I shivered at the thought.

  What type of offences would be on show tonight? I hoped it was something good. Last Saturday’s event had been something of a damp squib, definitely the least interesting Mete from recent months. Those in my class whose surnames began M through Q had been disappointed, though they, of course, had still been all about their experience in class on Monday. The worst of the criminals judged last Saturday had been sentenced to the stocks, which those classmates had made sure to visit during the week, if only to lob a piece of bad fruit at them for not having committed something more worthy of what was likely to be the single visit of their lifetime to the amphitheatre. As we followed the signs to our allocated seating, Ambrose and Ginevra speculated animatedly on the type of Codebreaker we might see this evening.

  Nearly every seat was taken when the high council entered, the twelve senators elegantly taking their seats; their immediate families were already seated further back on the balcony. I recognised the Lord Procurator who held the purse strings of the city, Senator Jerdin beside him with whom my father had occasional dealings, then Senator Dolon on the far left. I cast around for his son Marcus, gnawing my lip; I would have expected to see him in the family area behind the council. Was he not coming? It seemed unlikely – if I had a permanently available seat I would never miss one – but I couldn’t see him. I felt a pang of disappointment. I had tried not to think about it too much, but I had secretly hoped to see him in real life this evening.

  I scanned the tier of boxes occupied by the great houses once more. Ah, there he was. A burnished head sat amongst a glamorous group in the Courtenay box. Of course, he would have a box, inherited from his mother’s family, along with his surname which was one of the oldest in the city, and correspondingly one of the largest boxes. Ginevra caught the direction of my gaze and coughed pointedly at catching me mooning over the city’s most eligible son, before bursting into a fit of giggles at the resulting flush of colour on my cheeks. But I could hardly be blamed for looking, as Ginevra well knew.