The Star Thief

by Lindsey Becker

  She quickly switched off her lantern and the washing machine motor and snuck up the flagstone steps into the dark central hallway above the kitchens. Far down at the other end, something was moving in the foyer, much more lightly than before, tapping carefully across the marble floor. Honorine rushed down the hallway as quickly as she dared, to the edge of the archway leading to the foyer and the east parlor.

  Yellow lantern light spilled out of the parlor, along with the sound of muffled, unfamiliar voices. Whatever was making the omen stones glow was in the house at that very moment. And this was her chance to see what it was.

  She came in here,” said the growling, unfamiliar voice of someone who did not belong in the house.

  “Are you certain?” replied the cold voice of someone else who did not belong in the parlor in the middle of the night.

  “There’s feathers all over the floor.”

  “Lots of things got feathers.”

  The intruders moved farther into the parlor, their voices growing too faint to hear.

  Honorine slunk across the foyer until she was tucked behind a tall potted lemon tree standing just outside the parlor. From around the carved terra-cotta pot, she could see a pair of men standing on the singed rug, just in front of the hearth.

  “Feathers like these, Bloom?” said the growling one, holding up an iridescent black feather exactly like the one that had crumbled to ash in Honorine’s hand.

  He was a huge bulldog of a man, with a boxer’s face and knotty shoulders bulging under his snug blue coat. His face was burned and bleached, with the red skin and white hair of a fair man who’d spent too much time in the sun. The bridge of his nose was smashed nearly flat, leaving a little lumpy nub with round, flaring nostrils over his iron jaw. On his shoulder rested the long barrel of a rifle made from what appeared to be copper, painted wood, and glass.

  “You’re right, Salton,” said the one with the cold voice. “That’s definitely her.”

  He was a pinch shorter and much leaner, with mismatched eyes and hair in wild tangles. His face was deeply tanned, and his teeth glinted with gold when he spoke. He wore the same style of long blue coat, tall cuffs on his high black boots, and jewelry fashioned from bones. He held a lantern like nothing Honorine had ever seen before, a sort of glass-and-iron orb atop a short copper baton, which he could point in any direction to aim the illumination. He also appeared to be carrying two guns and a variety of knives.

  They were sailors, Honorine realized, though this did not provide any further information as to what they were doing in Lady Vidalia’s house in the dark of the morning, nosing about in the fireplace.

  Then a third figure entered the room through the servants’ entrance. She was dressed like the others, in breeches and tall boots, with a billowing shirt and a knee-length blue coat, though hers was adorned with a few extra bits of brass and braiding. She was rather tall—nearly the height of the Salton fellow—with a serious face, and a tremendous amount of thick black hair swept up into a sturdy but messy knot on the top of her head. She wore spectacles with thin yellow lenses and silk gloves over her hands, which she used to examine the room, occasionally running a finger along a surface and inspecting the tip of the glove.

  “Professor du Ciel,” Salton said with a nod to the woman.

  “Gentlemen,” she replied without looking at either of them. “Have you found anything useful?”

  “Astraea was here,” Bloom explained. He held up a clutch of feathers, which were already curling into embers and ash.

  “But you’ve touched them, so now there’s nothing left to study,” said the professor with a sigh of annoyance.

  “There are prints on the carpet,” Salton added, waving a meaty finger toward the foyer, where Honorine crouched behind the lemon tree. “Wolf, I suspect.”

  “Yes, too small to be the lion,” Professor du Ciel observed.

  Wolf? And LION? Honorine thought, looking quickly over her shoulder. The foyer was, for the moment, dark and still.

  “And what about the book?” Professor du Ciel continued.

  Honorine felt a cold prickle around her collar. They must be talking about the one she had pulled from the ashes and was now resting in her pocket beside the odd mechanical bee.

  “Not here,” Salton replied.

  “Not in this room, anyway,” Bloom added.

  “Then we keep looking,” said Professor du Ciel. “The Mapmaker wouldn’t come all this way to find a book and then leave without it.”

  Honorine’s cold prickle turned to a flush of goose bumps at the mention of the Mapmaker. He was someone, or something, that even brave Lord Vidalia considered too dangerous to discuss in his own private journal.

  The three of them turned away from the fireplace, heading toward the foyer. Honorine huddled into a ball and pressed herself against the wall.

  “What if he already has it?” Bloom asked.

  “They wouldn’t still be on the ground if they already had it,” du Ciel replied.

  Just when she was sure they were going to discover her, Honorine looked up to see a girl standing on the staircase landing. She was no older than Honorine and dressed in a short silvery tunic and leggings that seemed to be woven from wide silver ribbons. She had dark skin and a wild mane of glossy black hair falling past her knees, all illuminated by a faint outline of soft violet light.

  The girl held up a finger to her lips, gesturing for Honorine to stay silent, then pointed very slowly to the sitting room across the foyer from the east parlor. Honorine turned to see something huge, white, and glowing with blue light moving silently among the silk-upholstered couches and tall potted ferns.

  “There’s one of ’em!” Salton said, raising his rifle as he and Bloom ran for the sitting room, no longer bothering with quiet footsteps.

  “Put down your weapon!” Professor du Ciel commanded, marching after them. They didn’t appear to heed her instruction.

  As their boots clattered across the marble and the trio headed into the sitting room, Honorine heard a sharp, faint voice call to her.

  “Hurry!” it insisted, as if right in her ear, though when she looked up, the girl was making her way silently down the stairs, gesturing for Honorine to come toward her.

  Between the thieves with guns and the little girl in the silver tunic, Honorine opted to follow the girl. She padded across the foyer as fast as she dared as the sailors stomped through the sitting room.

  “Outside,” the girl whispered, pointing to an open door leading onto the patio overlooking the gardens. “Go. Fast. Before they find you.”

  She heard the crack of gunfire, then an angry bark: “I gave you an order.” This was followed by, “You’re not in command of this expedition.” And then further muffled arguing.

  “Run,” said the girl flatly. Honorine ran.

  Her feet pounded down the carpeted hallway, slapping so hard when she reached a bit of wood floor that her heels stung. As she skipped over the threshold of the terrace doors and into the night, the girl slipped out after her, pulling the door shut very quietly.

  “Who are you?” Honorine asked, panting and looking back over her shoulder at the dark house. Strange lights flashed through the windows. “Who are they? And what are they doing in Lady Vidalia’s house?”

  “I am Astraea,” said the girl. Her eyes sparkled very dark green. There was something both familiar and uncomfortable about her stare, as if she were seeing more when she looked at Honorine than Honorine saw when she looked back. “And they are dangerous henchmen, though not as dangerous as the man they work for. There are many more of them, and you must come now, before they find you.”

  “Wait,” Honorine panted, suddenly aware she was standing out in the yard, in the dark, with a complete stranger, who, though she looked harmless enough, was no more supposed to be in the Vidalia house in the middle of the night than Salton or Bloom or Professor du Ciel. “How do I know you’re not dangerous, too?”

  “Oh, I’m very dangerous,” Astraea
said. “But only to them.”

  Honorine looked back to see Salton and Bloom lurching toward the terrace doors.

  “Aren’t you supposed to say something comforting, like ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of’?”

  “I could, but that would be a lie,” Astraea replied.

  Salton burst through the doors, his rifle cocked and aimed.

  “Get to the greenhouse,” Astraea said, though Honorine wasn’t certain she had said anything aloud. Then Astraea sprinted to the terrace railing, hopped onto the stone banister with one graceful step, and leaped off. Something rose up behind her, as if she had caught part of the night and was pulling it around her.

  “Wings!” Honorine gasped. What she had mistaken for long, glossy black hair was actually a pair of wings. The feathers shimmered violet and green in the pale starlight.

  Salton took a terrible shot, which exploded in a ball of hot, sulfurous green smoke. While the men were choking and wiping their watering eyes, Honorine tumbled over the railing and dropped onto the lower level of the terrace a few feet below. Her heart pounded, and she could feel her pulse racing through her ears. She would have expected to be terrified, having just been chased from her house by men with rifles. But there was something more than fear racing through her veins. There was excitement, like a shock of ice water. After all, she had just seen a girl with wings.

  She ran down the cascading veranda steps and onto the damp green lawn, where she was quickly surrounded by mist and shadows. In the darkness, the yard looked much bigger than it did from inside the house. Lantern casings filled with yet more omen stones, instead of oil and wicks, hung on tall poles along the garden paths, swaying lightly in a rustling breeze. The stones glowed here, too, casting diffused yellowish-green light over mounds of manicured shrubbery, making them appear to swell and ebb like the bellies of great, slumbering beasts.

  From the safety of the garden path, Honorine dared to look back up at the house. Astraea had vanished. Salton and Bloom were running along the terrace toward the garden steps. Professor du Ciel was nowhere to be seen.

  Honorine turned away from them and snuck down the path toward the tall, sturdy brick garden wall and the tiny greenhouse tucked up under a lilac hedge, hidden from view of the main house. There was a soft flash of light from within the greenhouse itself as she approached, and a gust of wind rattled the glass in its lead frames.

  “Radicchio?” she called out meekly, as loudly as she dared, though she knew that whoever was inside was not the gardener. Honorine took a deep breath. “Radicchio! There’s someone in the greenhouse!”

  A hound howled on the other side of the garden wall, and yellow lights blazed to life in the big black barn. The stable hands were awake. They would come to investigate the noise, she hoped. Honorine stepped toward the greenhouse door and gripped the curved handle.

  Pulling it open, she immediately reeled back from the powerful smell. The greenhouse was hot and damp and crowded. The leaded glass windows were fettered with ropy vines of ivy creeping and climbing across nearly every surface. Back in the corner stood a long-dead palm tree. It was moldy and withered and infested with some breed of stinging ants, but the palm had been the last gift from Lord Vidalia before he vanished, so Lady Vidalia refused to allow it to be removed.

  “It’s disgusting in here,” Honorine muttered as beetles scattered across the floor.

  “Why, it is only nature,” a voice replied.

  Honorine froze, her hands pinned to her sides, as a black-clad figure moved from the shadows and into the wavering yellow-green light of the omen stones hanging across the glass ceiling. A silhouetted hand brushed over an enormous white flower blooming from a knotted vine.

  “Nothing beautiful in all the world exists without something a bit vile to balance the ledger,” the figure said.

  Honorine trembled as she stared up at him. He was a tall, slim man with a faded yet still handsome face. His hair was gray and wild, his eyes a brilliant shade of blue. He wore a long, dark duster jacket, and his clothes underneath were rather old-fashioned, with a little ruffle on the cuffs of his shirt and a cravat tied neatly under his high collar. On his shoulder sat a ragged black crow, and beside him stood a white wolf, so tall that it stood at eye level with Honorine, its coat shimmering with blue illumination that reminded her of the reflection of sunlight off water.

  “So, this is her?” the man asked. Astraea stepped forward from even farther back in the darkness, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

  “This is her,” she said with authority.

  The man leaned down to bring his face closer to Honorine, until he was looking directly into her eyes.

  “Lovely to meet you, Miss…”

  “Honorine,” she replied.

  “Honorine,” he repeated with a bob of his head. Then he stuck out a hand stained with ink and blood. “They call me the Mapmaker.”

  The Mapmaker took Honorine’s hand, though she hadn’t offered it. He smelled of salt and rich, sweet pipe tobacco, and his skin was rough and dry and far too warm, as if he were running a dangerous fever. On the back of his hand was a faded blue mark, a star with eight points of differing lengths.

  “It’s a… pleasure… to make… your acquaintance,” Honorine mumbled as the Mapmaker grasped her little hand. His eyes seemed to brighten to a lighter shade, lifting from deep navy to a kind of sapphire. Honorine had never seen eyes shift in color like that. The intensity of his stare made her even more uncomfortable. She looked away, down to his hand, and saw that the blue star seemed to glow, sending an unsettling sensation through her fingers. Her hand felt as if it were going numb to the point of being painful, until she pulled it sharply away. The mark disappeared under his cuff.

  “Remarkable,” he whispered. “You see, Astraea? I knew there was something else here. Nautilus wouldn’t come all this way just for a book.”

  Astraea’s black wings bristled. Honorine flinched at the mention of a book. The Mapmaker’s unnerving stare remained on her.

  “Honorine, you seem frightened,” he said, and his eyes went very soft, lifting from sapphire to a near sky blue. “It isn’t us you need to fear. We’ve come to help.”

  “We really must hurry this along,” Astraea said with another irritated rustle of her feathers. “They know we’re here. We shouldn’t be away from the ship much longer.”

  “I know,” the Mapmaker said curtly. “But some things must be done properly, without a hurry. This girl doesn’t even know who we are, and with all she’s seen tonight, I don’t blame her for being frightened out of her skull.”

  The Mapmaker finally looked away from her, and the moment his gaze broke from Honorine’s, she realized she was not afraid of him. Excited and a bit anxious, but the pure terror she had felt at the first sight of the Mapmaker had washed away, replaced by a hungry kind of curiosity.

  “Honorine,” the Mapmaker said again, “my apologies for omitting the proper introductions. I believe you have already met Astraea.” He gestured to the winged girl. “Our other winged friend here is Corvus.” He nodded to the crow. “And then, of course, Lux.” He rested his hand on the wolf’s shoulder.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said the wolf.

  “He talks?” Honorine asked. She leaned toward him in amazement.

  “Yes, and he bites,” the Mapmaker said.

  Honorine recoiled and tucked her hands behind her back.

  The wolf narrowed his eyes at the Mapmaker. “I would never dream of biting you,” Lux said, looking back at Honorine with yellow eyes that were not at all reassuring.

  “You’re the Mordant,” Honorine said. “Lord Vidalia wrote about you in his journal.”

  “Yes, we are. You’re a rather bright girl,” the Mapmaker said. “And that journal, I suspect, is the very one Nautilus has come all this way to pretend to find.”

  “Who is Nautilus?” Honorine asked.

  “We’ve been away from the ship for far too long now,” Astraea warned. The Mapmaker nodd
ed and waved a hand at her.

  “The intruders you saw in the house work for Nautilus. As part of his… acquisitions department, let’s say. The one called Salton is the head gunner on a steamship known as the Gaslight, which is right now lurking in the sea just a few miles offshore. His companion, Bloom, is also known as the Black Rat of Normandy and the Scourge of the North Atlantic. In his day, he was a beast of a pirate, more feared than Blackbeard or William Kyd. Between the pair of them, they have raided a hundred ports, slaughtered a thousand men, and taken ten times as much in plunder, leaving a wake of chaos and destruction. They have never failed to obtain a treasure they were tasked to find. They have never given up on a bounty, never let a man go free when they had the chance to claim his life. And now they are searching—with their guns and shackles and knives—for you.”

  “Me?” Honorine squeaked, though she wasn’t sure the word had made it out of her throat. The fear that had left her just a moment ago flooded back. All the light and sound in the world seemed to rush away, and her eyes blurred until the only thing she could see was the faint blue flicker of the Mapmaker’s eyes.

  “You can’t say things like that to her,” someone said. It sounded like the wolf. “She’s just a child, after all.”

  She felt a tingling in her hands, as if she were touching a mild electric current. Her vision snapped back to focus, and she found herself leaning into Lux, her hands and arms buried in his thick, slightly prickly fur.

  “Careful there,” Lux said. “You nearly fainted.”

  Honorine stood back up, leaving one hand on Lux’s shoulder. Somehow the feel of the wolf’s fur both calmed her and began to build in her a sense of strength and confidence.

  “Thank you,” she said to Lux. “I feel much better.”

  “That’s courage,” the Mapmaker said, followed with a smile and a pat of Lux’s flank. “It’s what he’s good for. And what are you good for, Honorine?”

  The courage only lasted until she pulled her hand away from Lux’s coat. Then the dark and the cold and her smallness in the world seemed to become suddenly very important. Trying to ignore her thudding heart, she said, “I don’t know.”