The Star Thief

by Lindsey Becker

  “I have to know where he is,” she replied. “I have to know if he’s all right.”

  Lux looked at her with calm golden eyes and nodded.

  “Someone here will know,” he said. “We need to find the Mapmaker and Sirona anyway and let them know you’re awake.”

  Lux led the way through the pine boughs toward the back of the ship, where a grove of black oaks grew over a gentle slope of rising steps, their ancient roots curling tightly into tiered levels and curving branches forming arches draped in moss. Tiny white moths flitted about the grove like little fairies. The hum of crickets settled in the air like a soft fog, but it wasn’t a usual rhythmic insect chirp. There was a faint melody to the sound.

  “Ah, the crickets,” Lux said. “That means Scorpio is about somewhere.”

  Honorine waited under a mossy oak arch as Lux trotted around the grove, sniffing at the roots and the air.

  “No use hiding,” he called into the trees. “You have to come out and meet her eventually.”

  There was a long pause, and then a rustling of branches as Lux retreated to the middle of the grove, followed by a scorpion so enormous that his great barbed tail hung as high as the treetops, with huge black claws and eight glittering, lidless black eyes over a grotesque mouth of pincers and fangs.

  “There you go,” said Lux encouragingly. “Nothing to be worried about.”

  The scorpion turned toward Honorine, which required moving his entire enormous body on eight monstrous legs that gouged the deck with each step.

  “Honorine, this is Scorpio,” Lux said, nudging his nose toward the towering arachnid, who stopped just in front of her and raised his great claws. Green embers crackled and drifted from the creature’s black armored body.

  Honorine winced as the embers drifted toward her. She had been hit by popping sprays from the fireplace before and was especially wary after the burn to her arm and shoulder. To her surprise, the green embers brushed over her face like falling snowflakes, nothing more.

  Scorpio’s claws clicked softly. Something about his quietness made him much less frightening, and though Honorine was not exactly comfortable in his presence, she was not inclined to run screaming into the forest, either.

  “He wants to know if you’re feeling better after that terrible fall,” Lux said.

  “Yes, I’m feeling much better,” she replied.

  “And the clothes,” Lux interpreted. “Are they to your liking? It was his spiders that wove them for you.”

  “Um… yes. They’re wonderful. I love them.”

  The scorpion’s upper half raised up in what could only be interpreted as a nod of thanks, or as close as he could get.

  “Honorine is eager to know what happened to Francis Vidalia,” Lux said to Scorpio.

  There was a pause as Scorpio’s strange insect mouth moved about in unsettling directions. He didn’t seem to make a sound, yet Lux nodded.

  “He does not, unfortunately, have any information for you about the boy.”

  “Oh,” Honorine replied. “Well, thank you for asking.”

  Something rustled the treetops, and Honorine tried not to cringe at the thought of another huge insect appearing in the grove. But it was only Astraea swooping in, windblown and trailing violet sparks.

  “You’re awake,” she said. “Good. Now, brace yourself. The Mapmaker is on his way.”

  “And he’s in a pleasant mood?” Lux added hopefully.

  Astraea folded her wings and sent back a withering look just as Corvus came flying through the trees like a comet, trailing blue sparks before landing abruptly in the oak grove. The Mapmaker leaped to the ground before Corvus’s wings were folded and advanced directly toward Honorine. He gave Lux some manner of signal to retreat, which the wolf did, but only a few steps.

  “Honorine,” the Mapmaker said in a tone that made her own name sound like a curse. “What have you done?”

  She was too frozen in surprise to come up with a reply. The Mapmaker leaned down until he was so close he could have bitten off the tip of her nose. The rage in his eyes was painful to look at, though she didn’t dare turn away.

  “I told you what he was doing,” the Mapmaker said. “I told you he was hunting us. I asked you to come with us, to help us. You agreed. And then”—he took a long, angry breath—“then you ran off with Nautilus Olyphant!”

  “No! I didn’t!” Honorine shouted in defense. “I didn’t leave with Nautilus. I left with Francis!”

  “Oh, so it’s acceptable to break your word and abandon us as long as it’s for Francis, is it?”

  “I… I’m sorry,” Honorine said. She had learned through experience in dealing with the staff of the Vidalia Estate that sometimes taking blame and making amends was the safest course of action. “I didn’t mean to leave with Nautilus. I was just happy to see Francis. I just wanted to—”

  “What?” the Mapmaker asked. “Wanted to join up with Nautilus, tell him all about us, help him hunt us down one by one while we run for our lives?”

  Honorine shook her head furiously. “No! No, certainly not!” she insisted. “I just wanted to know where Francis had been all this time. And now I just want to make sure he’s safe.”

  “Safe!” The Mapmaker reeled back with a snort of laughter, raising his hands to the heavens in disgust. “The world is full of fire and rats, my dear girl. And wolves and sea serpents and snake charmers and girls with wings who look like angels but most certainly are not. Nothing is safe. The closest you will ever get to it is on this ship, and you chose… someone else.”

  The Mapmaker’s rage seemed to crest in his glowing blue eyes, like a wave about to crash down over her.

  “You betrayed us.”

  “No, she did not,” Astraea said, her wings rising over her shoulders as she took a step forward, forcing a bit more space between Honorine and the Mapmaker. “She acted out of loyalty to Lord Vidalia’s son.”

  “Nautilus’s protégé! Hardly any better.”

  “But nevertheless, someone very important to her,” Astraea said. “A boy she would never abandon.”

  The Mapmaker fumed. He frowned and squinted and blew out a long breath like an angry bull. But gradually the rage quieted, and he looked highly perturbed instead of murderous. His eyes calmed from a hurricane to a rolling thunderstorm, and he finally nodded at Astraea, who folded her wings and took a seat on a low-hanging oak branch.

  “The girl wants to know about her dear friend Francis,” the Mapmaker said. “So, what do we know about Nautilus’s ship and the status of his crew?”

  “The Nighthawk is destroyed,” Astraea said. “All the equipment and the balloon are gone.”

  Honorine felt the breath rush from her lungs and her skin prickle with cold, as if she had just fallen back into the crushing black sea.

  “But no souls were lost,” Astraea continued. “Every member of the crew was recovered. They are all back aboard the Gaslight.”

  The breath rushed back. The cold evaporated, lifting the crushing feeling off Honorine’s chest. The Mapmaker, however, didn’t seem so pleased.

  “Wonderful,” he said. “We’ve lost Leo. And can anyone confirm if Hydra escaped?”

  Astraea shook her head. The Mapmaker crossed his arms.

  “So, until further notice, we assume he’s gone as well. That’s two captured in one night, and they have just as many men left to hunt us.” He turned back to Honorine. “Do you know how valuable Leo was to us? A lion that can control fire?”

  “It was hardly her fault,” Astraea said from her perch. Scorpio seemed to click his claws in agreement.

  “And Hydra?” pressed the Mapmaker. “How long has he managed to evade Nautilus, only to be captured trying to save her?”

  “It’s the risk we all take, every time we leave this ship,” Lux added.

  “A risk we can no longer afford. If Leo had come back to the Carina instead of chasing after that airship, and Hydra hadn’t come to the surface to save you”—the Mapmaker pointed a
sharp finger at Honorine—“we wouldn’t have lost them.”

  “All right,” Honorine said, standing up as straight as she could and crossing her arms. “They’re gone, and it’s partly my fault. So I apologize, I suppose, even if I don’t know what for, exactly. I’m sorry the lion got captured. Now, how do we get him back?”

  Every eye on the ship turned toward Honorine. Lux’s eyebrows rose. Astraea tilted her head and almost smiled. Scorpio’s body lifted slightly on his jointed legs. And the Mapmaker’s eyes turned a burning, intense shade of blue.

  “How do we indeed?” he asked.

  Astraea held out her wings and dropped from her perch onto the sandy deck. “We lost Leo, yes, but for the moment, we have an advantage,” she said, drawing the Mapmaker’s attention back to her. “Without his flagship dirigible, Nautilus won’t be able to follow us so easily over land.”

  Lux nodded in agreement. “If Nautilus can’t follow easily, we might be able to get the rest of them before he can.”

  “Exactly,” Astraea said. “The first step, I think, is to gather every remaining hidden Mordant.”

  The Mapmaker rubbed a hand across his chin as he considered.

  “I’d like nothing more,” he said. “But there are so few of us left—and so scattered. As you just acknowledged, it’s a terrible risk every time we leave this ship.”

  “But we have to try,” Astraea said. “This is our last chance.”

  The Mapmaker turned back to Honorine. “Before we do anything, though, you must answer this question, Honorine. Where do you want to be?” he asked. “On Nautilus’s ship? Or here with us on the Carina?”

  Honorine looked up at the Mapmaker. His eyes burned so brightly they illuminated his face, making him look different, wilder. She was suddenly aware that though he looked like a man and spoke and dressed and moved like a man, the Mapmaker was not human. He was something else. Something powerful. She had seen him hurt Sam with only a touch of his hand. What was he capable of doing if he truly got angry?

  But she certainly did not want to leave the Carina. She had only seen a tiny sliver of the Mordant world, and it was already the most fascinating experience of her life—even more than sailing on the Nighthawk, which was saying something. The constellations had come down from the sky to find her, had told her she belonged among them, and now she was beginning to feel it. Astraea, Lux, and even Scorpio, in his own way, had stood up for her. They were claiming her as one of their own in a way no one had ever done before. And perhaps there might be answers here about her past that only these creatures could give.

  “I want to stay here, with you,” she said.

  The Mapmaker took a breath, then nodded.

  “You will have a chance to prove your loyalty to us,” he said. “After what I’ve already seen, I’m not entirely sure I can trust you. So my offer to let you join the crew has been amended. You will have to earn a place aboard this ship.”

  The sound of footsteps made the Mapmaker turn toward an arch of oak branches, where a man was struggling a bit with his cane and the tangled roots in his path. Not a monster, not a beast, not an ethereal mythological creature. Just a man. He wore very elegant but old clothes that hung loosely off his frail shoulders. His short beard was pure white, and tufts of fine white hair rose like mist around his head.

  Honorine took in a sharp breath. Of all the wild and fantastic things she had seen that day, this might have been the most unbelievable.

  “Lord Vidalia!”

  Lord Vidalia gazed down at Honorine with the same bright, sharp eyes that stared out from his portrait over the mantel in the east parlor, though the face around them had weathered over the years. He reached a thin, knobby hand out from the sleeve of his once splendid jacket, and Honorine stepped forward to shake it. She could feel every knuckle and tendon under his brittle skin, but his hand felt like a human hand, of a regular temperature, with no uncomfortable electric twinge in her own bones.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she whispered, forgetting to bow or curtsy or do anything other than stare. Lord Vidalia had been missing for so very long that he seemed more like a myth than a real person. Now that he was standing in front of her, it was somehow even more surprising than meeting a talking wolf or a ten-foot-tall scorpion.

  “And you as well,” Lord Vidalia replied with a stiff nod. He smiled quickly, then drew his hand back and leaned heavily on his cane, his expression keen but also melancholic.

  “How nice that we’re all acquainted,” said the Mapmaker. “Honorine, I’m sure you don’t remember meeting the long-absented Lord Vidalia, but he has seen you before, haven’t you, Bernard?”

  “Well, yes,” Lord Vidalia conceded. “When she was just a newborn child. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “And yet,” the Mapmaker continued, “she was raised by your wife alongside your only son, who currently sails with Nautilus Olyphant.”

  “Yes, that is true,” Lord Vidalia replied, a flash of feistiness in his sagging eyes. “And I have expressed my concern and disapproval over that many times. And you will remember our arrangement—I work for you, so long as you do no harm toward my son.”

  “And I would never have dreamed of breaking that agreement,” the Mapmaker continued, “until I learned that you have been keeping this from me for a very long time.”

  “I did,” Lord Vidalia said. “But only with the best of intentions. What have we been doing here all this time? Protecting you. Protecting the Mordant. Trying to keep them out of Nautilus’s reach. All of them.” He nodded unsteadily toward Honorine. “What better way to keep her protected than to keep her hidden, even—for a time—from you?”

  The Mapmaker’s eyes tumbled from light to dark like waves crashing under flashes of lightning. Lord Vidalia, stooped and feeble as he seemed, stood up as tall as he could manage, for a moment taking his weight off his cane. He looked the Mapmaker square in the eye.

  “The girl needed a home and care, so I sent her to Josefina,” he continued. “And I sent along my very last journal, so that one day, if I never did see her again, or her parents never did find her, she would know at least a little bit about who she was and where she came from. And that is all. A full confession. There is no reason to punish Honorine or my son for my actions.”

  “Well, for all your noble efforts, it was only by chance that we found this girl when we did. She almost succeeded in running off with Nautilus.”

  “I did not!” Honorine insisted, tired of being spoken of as if she weren’t there. “I was with my friend Francis. I never even heard the name Nautilus before last night, when his crew showed up at the Vidalia Manor looking for you.” She waved her hands toward the Mapmaker, and also Scorpio and Astraea and Lux, who were standing in the oak grove around them. “And then Francis turned up on the same night we get pirates in the house, and he was leaving on the airship, and I’ve known him my entire life, and Francis has always been my friend. So when he thought—”

  She paused, uncertain of how to explain the next part. She wasn’t sure she believed what Francis had told her, but she wasn’t sure she didn’t believe him, either. The Mordant seemed to think she belonged with them. It was all very confusing, which might have been an effect of the healing sleep, or because it was actually rather complicated to puzzle out.

  “Francis thought I was one of you,” she said finally. “He said he thought I was a… Mordant.”

  The Mapmaker leaned back. Everyone else stared at Honorine.

  “Is it true?” she whispered. “But I can’t possibly be.…”

  Lux, sitting closest to Honorine, tilted his head and opened his mouth to speak. “It’s—”

  “You’re telling the truth,” the Mapmaker interrupted. “You really don’t know who Nautilus Olyphant is.”

  “He’s a man with a ship,” she declared. “That’s all I know. Promise.”

  “Well, I’m inclined to believe you,” the Mapmaker said. He stepped closer to Lord Vidalia and clasped his shoulder in one ink-staine
d hand. “If Honorine is going to help us stop Nautilus, then she is going to need to know everything about Nautilus Olyphant. And don’t spare her. We do not want her to underestimate the danger we all face.”

  Lord Vidalia was silent for a moment while the crickets sang their eerie song and the wind rippled through the oak leaves. Then he nodded, slowly looking up from the knotted roots along the ground to the Mapmaker.

  “I understand,” he said. “I will teach her. As long as Francis is safe.”

  “Your boy will remain under my protection as long as the girl is loyal to me,” said the Mapmaker.

  Astraea’s wings bristled, but she remained silent for the moment as the Mapmaker turned to Honorine. “She can start by telling us everything she knows about Nautilus. For instance, where he’s headed next.”

  Honorine shook her head. “I don’t know. They were going back to that great, gigantic steamship, but after that…” She shrugged. “I promise, if I knew where they were going, I would tell you. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Francis, or any of you.”

  “I hope that’s true,” the Mapmaker said. “Because at this moment, there are at most three Mordant left, aside from those presently on this ship, who have not been captured by Nautilus.”

  “Good lord,” muttered Lord Vidalia. “Only three?”

  “Yes. He’s gotten to the rest of them at a surprising rate. The three who remain are on opposite sides of the ocean, and if we make the wrong move, Nautilus will have them before we can blink. So, Vidalia, take your charge back to your study. Get her started on her task. Maybe get her something to eat. That’s probably in order.”

  He marched across the deck toward Corvus and gestured for Astraea to follow.

  “Since we don’t know where Nautilus is headed, we have a bit of scouting to attend to. I’ll call on you when I return to see what progress we’ve made.”

  Astraea took a step toward Honorine.

  “Listen to this one,” she said, patting Lord Vidalia on the shoulder. “He is wise beyond his years.”

  Then, they were off. The Mapmaker, Corvus, and Astraea launched into the sky, sailing over the oak branches until they were little more than shooting stars. Scorpio scuttled back into the trees.