The Star Thief

by Lindsey Becker

  “Well, then I would keep an eye out for him,” Nautilus said. “I’m sure he’ll be back here before long.”

  Andromeda’s fire scorched to blinding white. She gestured toward Nautilus, sending a line of fire that raced across the water and encircled him, with flames dancing up to his chest.

  “What about you and the Mapmaker?” she asked. “If I’m to let you leave here, it must be with a solemn promise to leave him be. Your feud with him is ended. There can be only a truce now between you.”

  “All right,” Nautilus said.

  Andromeda’s flames roared around him.

  “I swear!” he added. “I give you my word. I will not engage with the Mapmaker anymore.”

  “I accept your oath,” she said. “And you accept the consequences if you break it.”

  Nautilus nodded. Andromeda gave him one last look and then turned to go, leaving Nautilus caught in a circle of white fire until she had left the laboratory.

  Honorine followed, looking back over her shoulder every few steps until the flicker of white light went dark behind her.

  In the end, nearly half of the Gaslight crew decided to stay, even Bloom and Professor du Ciel. Salton went on ahead with Nautilus. He had never been very interested in the scientific research part of their expedition anyway.

  It took just one more day to prepare the Black Owl with the cannons removed and enough food and supplies to last quite a long journey.

  Honorine was on the Carina, docked along the black sand beach, when Nautilus left. He hadn’t set foot on the island except to say a brief good-bye before he had finished readying the airship for his journey.

  “I’ll be back someday,” he told her. “If you need me before then, you can send a message.”

  “How?” Honorine asked.

  “You’ll find a way.”

  Honorine didn’t know quite what to say. She didn’t want any harm to come to him, but she didn’t feel the same way toward him as she did toward Lux or Francis or Andromeda, or even—though she would never admit it to anyone but herself—the Mapmaker. They were her family, and Nautilus, somehow, was not.

  “Well,” Honorine said, “it was very good to meet you.”

  “And you, too,” Nautilus said with a short nod.

  The next night, he and the other half of his crew set sail on the evening tide. The Black Owl launched from the deck of the Gaslight, soaring gracefully up into the sky until it became just another shimmering star on the horizon.

  The Gaslight looked quite different without her elegant crystal dome. She was undergoing many renovations, but the missing greenhouse was the most glaring. A new one would soon be installed with a redesigned version of the Sidus Apparatus that communicated with the Mordant, rather than imprisoning them. That had been Francis’s idea, a sort of floating extension of Possideo where Mordant and human beings could travel together, gathering knowledge.

  Honorine’s plan for a new, mechanically reinforced gate had come together quite quickly once she had the time, the materials, and the crew.

  The lava eruption had sealed the mountain shut, but the entrance to the underworld still existed just beneath the surface, and a thin crust of stone would not be enough to keep it closed now that the ancient ironwood tree had been destroyed. Fortunately, there was a single tree left on the Carina, and it’d been able to provide seeds. Unfortunately, even Mordant Silva trees took time to grow, and the Bellua were not likely to be patient or cooperative.

  Iron, it seemed, was a good tool against the Bellua, and as Honorine pointed out, the Gaslight happened to be built of the stuff.

  The Mordant residents of Possideo, along with the former Gaslight crew, spent a month dismantling the iron framework of the greenhouse dome and bringing it up to the top of the mountain. It took another month to clear the old buildings and begin to repair roofs and walls and roadways. They built steppes from black obsidian and white marble around the peak of the mountain, and they filled them with rich earth from the remains of the dead forest below. The Mordant guarded the mountain closely every moment, watching for signs of unrest under the ground.

  The forest looked much different now. Instead of a lurking canopy of charred pine skeletons, the ground was covered in a field of tiny seedlings, their leaves bright against the black surface of the mountain.

  Within six months, the fastest-growing trees were already as tall as Honorine, though still as thin and wispy as twigs. They even began to grow tiny lantern buds. Honorine and Francis were walking through a stand of silver maples when the lanterns finally grew in and began to bloom. It was a welcome occasion, because the sun never rose over the island. It was always night there.

  And, Honorine noticed, the island was often in a different place from night to night. Sometimes there were other landmasses in the distance, sometimes a coastline, but often there was nothing at all but rolling black sea and a sky full of millions of stars.

  Lord Vidalia chose to build a cottage near the beach because Lady Vidalia had always loved the ocean. When it was ready, he sent word—and a Mordant escort—to bring her back, if she wished to come. His health seemed to improve greatly once Sirona was free to provide remedies again. But he made the most improvement when he received word that Lady Vidalia was on her way to join him.

  Though he was free to roam anywhere in the world now, Lux, too, chose to stay on the island near Honorine. She took long walks with him through the forest, quietly exploring the trees and the changing landscape. They passed through gardens, stretches of wild forest, and over a cold, rushing stream, which they would cross again as a waterfall pouring into a clear pool, where they would stop to say good evening to Eridanus.

  “Storm tomorrow?” Honorine asked.

  “Just a little one,” Eridanus replied.

  “We could use some rain,” Lux agreed.

  They continued on up the winding road, paved in crushed black lava stone, toward the town. The outer edges were still the roughest, with most of the buildings cleared from the lava but not yet restored. Up another few hundred yards were buildings with doors and windows refitted and roads cleared for traveling.

  Above the buildings were the new laboratories, sprawling collections of glass domes rising like bubbles around the crown of the mountain. Fixed into the stone around the domes, per Lord Vidalia’s suggestion, were starglass omen stones to detect the Bellua. Honorine was also working on a monitoring system that would measure any movement of the ground and track the changes in heat from the lava still pooling below.

  “If they ever wander too close to the surface, we’ll know,” Lord Vidalia said. So far, the stones had remained dark unless a Mordant came near. Honorine had not made them glow yet, though she had made a habit of checking, even keeping a tiny pebble in her pocket, waiting for it to one day begin to burn with light.

  Above the laboratories was a single narrow path leading up to a courtyard and a little house made of white stone, surrounded by terraces that looked out over the sea. Honorine stopped in the courtyard to pick a cinnamon-flavored apple, before heading into the house with Lux at her side.

  “Ah, there you are,” said Andromeda from out on the eastern patio.

  “Eridanus is sending rain,” Honorine said, pausing to give her mother a brief hug. They had this house at Honorine’s insistence. Andromeda clearly found it strange, but she obliged her daughter. And Honorine, though she couldn’t exactly express it, was more grateful for the little stone cottage on the edge of the mountain peak than she had ever been for anything in her life. She could see it from almost anywhere on the island, the little chip of white right up at the top. Her home.

  Honorine proceeded through the house and the courtyard beyond to a hidden, winding set of narrow steps that led to the last little terrace at the very summit of the mountain.

  “There it is, as always,” Lux said as he paused at the last step.

  It was just a little round patch of rocky black earth. But right in the center grew a thin, spindly sprout that
would one day be a tree. The ironwood sapling seemed to grow much slower than the rest of the trees on the island. That was fine with Honorine. She had plenty of time now to wait for it, on the top of the mountain, under the stars.

  Occasionally one would shoot past, and she wondered if it was a meteor or perhaps Pegasus… or the Mapmaker. She didn’t know what had become of him. He might already be free, or he might still be in his amber prison. But he would not remain confined forever. One day, the Mapmaker would return. And she would be ready.

  From her perch at the top of the mountain, she could see the ocean all around, and the scattered laboratories like sprouting mushrooms all over the slopes. The remaining Gaslight crew originally intended to help in building. But being on the island, and especially around Honorine, had made them astonishingly productive. Many of them had postponed plans to build houses as they found they were spending so much time working in the laboratories. Professor du Ciel was one of the most dedicated, spending all her time developing navigational equipment unlike anything Honorine—or any other living soul—had ever seen.

  Honorine looked down the hill at Professor du Ciel’s laboratory, a little glass dome glowing with the lights of her inventions. Down a trail marked with white stones was Francis’s laboratory, closer to the beach.

  He was working on engines, something that had been his favorite area of study on the Gaslight. Now that they were rebuilding it, he was planning to install a new system that would power the ship with heated seawater.

  “There’s so much work going on down there,” Honorine said as she sat on a little ledge of obsidian, letting her bare feet dangle over the black slope below.

  “And there will be more,” Lux said as he sat down beside her. “You know that it isn’t just a talent you have when you work with machines.”

  He looked out over the island, dotted with lights and fine plumes of steam.

  “You truly are a Mordant,” Lux said. “One day you will be the muse of Invention. You will recognize it in those who don’t even see it in themselves, and others will seek you out, despite time or geography, to understand the need that calls them.”

  Honorine looked down at her feet.

  “It sounds like a terrible amount of responsibility,” she said.

  “There’s still time,” Lux said. “You are not a child anymore, but you are not yet ready to take on what this life will ask of you. But you will be. I promise.”

  “And…” She had never asked this before, but now, in the quiet night, she thought she was ready to hear the answer. “I will have a constellation of my own?”

  “Of course!” said Lux. His coat shimmered with light. “Someday.”

  “How do I know which stars are mine?”

  “When you’re ready, you’ll see them,” Lux said.

  She looked up into the sky, so thick with stars that they changed the very color of the night. The ones that belonged to her were already there, shining down. Just as Francis, Lux, Lord Vidalia, Andromeda, and even Astraea had always been out there, even before she knew them.

  One day, just as she had found her family, Honorine would find her stars.

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  Acknowledgments

  There are so many people to thank for their love, support, and encouragement over the many years it took to make this story happen:

  All my fellow writers who took the time to read bits and pieces, and sometimes whole drafts, while this unruly manuscript slowly became a book. My eternal gratitude to you.

  All the distant branches of my giant family tree. We’re lucky to be connected to such amazing people. And especially my parents, Mom, Dad, and Dad again.

  My teachers who made a wild little kid into a writer—Miss Gallo (Mrs. Perugini), Mrs. Buzzard, Mr. Strom, Mrs. Johnson, Mr. Dougherty, Mrs. Teegarten, Mrs. Frank, and of course, Mr. Parker. Thank you for introducing me to so many stories and for helping me create my own.

  My agent, Natalie Lakosil, and my editor, Deirdre Jones, for their belief in this story and all the hours they spent making it a real book. It has been a wonderful experience.

  And lastly, all my thanks and love to my two favorite people in the world: my son, the brightest star in my life, and my Ben, the fuzzy old scoundrel who measures things in sharks.