Starborn

by Lucy Hounsom

  There was a candle lamp nailed to the wall, so Kyndra struck one of the matches that lay on its bracket and warm light filled the room. Nediah looked smaller in the artificial glow.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t understand something.’ She waited, but Nediah remained at the window, watching the dark. ‘Is Brégenne … well, is she really blind?’

  Nediah didn’t reply straight away. ‘Yes,’ he said, his tone strangely expressionless. ‘But she uses Lunar energy to help her see at night. It’s not perfect. She can’t see colour at all, I believe.’

  ‘And so in daylight …’

  ‘In daylight she has me.’

  Kyndra suddenly wished she hadn’t asked.

  ‘Not like that.’A brittle edge sharpened Nediah’s voice. He still faced his own dark reflection. ‘We always travel with a Wielder of the opposite affinity. It’s the rules.’

  Before she could ask what he meant, Nediah turned. He brushed a hand across his mouth, as if to erase his self-mocking smile. ‘Now, what do you say to dinner?’

  They ate that night with the Eastern Set’s captain. Kyndra entered the saloon beside Nediah and gaped at the man sitting at the head of the table. It was the sailor she’d spoken to earlier. The workman’s garb was gone, replaced by a waistcoat over a flowing white shirt. The waistcoat was blue and the front of it was busy with bronze buttons, each stamped with a different crest.

  ‘You see I’ve done my share of deals,’ the captain said when he caught Kyndra staring. ‘Each button represents a different Trading Family, all master merchants. A crest is given to celebrate fifty successful contracts between merchant and captain. I get a share of whatever price the cargo fetches and it’s up to me to find the markets where it’ll go for the most.’ He flashed those white teeth at Kyndra. ‘The name’s Argat. Surprised to find I’m a person of quality?’

  Unsure what to say, Kyndra muttered an apology.

  Captain Argat grinned. ‘I do my share of the rough like any crew member. Only difference is I earn a lot more.’ He laughed boisterously and rolled up his sleeves in preparation for dinner.

  With the airship being just out of port, there was plenty of choice, though little was familiar. Kyndra avoided the extrarare meat that Brégenne seemed to relish, and stuck with fruit, cheese and a bit of smoked fish that tasted of the salty waters of a coast she’d never seen. Ocean fish took too long to reach them in the Valleys and the cheese they made at home was softer than the yellow rind-less slab she found on her plate. When the table was clear, Argat proffered a decanter of amber liquid. Brégenne and Nediah accepted, but this morning’s headache was still too close for Kyndra.

  ‘Strange stories in the wind these days,’ Argat said, leaning back. His eyes moved over Brégenne and Nediah. ‘You from the west?’

  ‘Talarun,’ Brégenne said smoothly. ‘But we’re heading for the Hrosst plains.’

  ‘Neither of you has the clan look. In fact, I’d bet my gold that he –’Argat nodded at Nediah – ‘is an Islesman.’

  ‘Your eyes are sharp, Captain.’ Nediah smiled pleasantly. ‘I was born there.’

  ‘Comes from a life of sailing the chain. Only, as I say, one hears some odd stories. I thought perhaps you might have heard them too.’

  ‘I’m afraid our business spares us little time for tales,’ Brégenne said coldly.

  ‘Of course.’ Argat’s smile barely dimpled his cheeks. ‘But one does not hear of a mountain range crumbling into dust every day. Nor of the Breaking striking in two places at once.’

  Although Brégenne and Nediah remained expressionless, the air between them seemed to stiffen. ‘Who told you this?’ Nediah asked.

  ‘A customer, if you must know. He has farmsteads to the west of Sky Port North. It was a portion of the Infinite Hills, he said. Raised a dust cloud several days thick. His cows stopped giving milk, horses wouldn’t step outside. Quite bizarre.’

  ‘And what about the Breaking?’

  ‘That news came up from the south. Apparently, the Breaking struck the Karka Basin and Tirindal on the same day, at the same time. The local cartel in Tirindal claimed it destroyed their entire shipment of garlic, which was why –’ Argat’s voice hardened – ‘they said they couldn’t pay me.’

  ‘Perhaps it was just a bad spring storm,’ Nediah suggested mildly. ‘They blow in off the sea this time of year.’

  ‘I’ll wager it wasn’t a spring storm that took down that mountain range, though,’ Argat mused. He flicked dark eyes to Kyndra. ‘You, girl, ever heard of such a thing?’

  Kyndra caught Nediah’s warning. ‘No, Captain,’ she said.

  ‘What about the Breaking, then? Seen it where you live?’

  Kyndra’s mind filled with screams and fire, folk stumbling through the night, calling for loved ones. Tessa’s swollen cheek, Fedrin’s death. ‘No,’ she said quietly.

  Perhaps Argat heard a shadow in that word, for he dropped the topic and the talk turned elsewhere. Yara, Argat’s tall first mate, began a hard-to-follow discussion about airship mechanics. Kyndra recognized her as the smoke-stained woman from earlier.

  ‘We’re still running inefficiently,’ Yara said, directing her words at Argat. ‘Why use hot air to inflate the balloons when we’ve a boiler already in situ? Steam can be used to lift as well as propel.’

  The captain stopped with a forkful of food raised halfway to his mouth. Slowly, he lowered it. ‘Go on.’

  ‘What we need,’ Yara said, tapping her index finger rapidly against the tabletop, ‘is a contraption capable of turning the paddles and inflating the balloons. We need a special kind of boiler, a kind of engine—’

  ‘You think you could design this?’ Argat said, his eyes gleaming. ‘Could the boiler in the stern be modified? What kind of cost are we looking at?’

  ‘The coin you’d spend on alterations would be offset many times over by the resulting cut in fuel,’ Yara answered, her eyes now gleaming too. ‘We’d have a faster ship that’s less expensive to run.’

  ‘And with a greater potential to unhook …’

  While Argat and Yara traded ideas back and forth, Kyndra found her eyes roaming the saloon. The dining table only took up one end of the long room. Smaller tables dotted the rest of the floor, their flat tops crowded with miscellaneous objects. There were bottles filled with strange-coloured liquids, bones and teeth, books, maps and glass ornaments that refracted the lamplight. The more Kyndra looked, the more she noticed, and the more she wanted to touch. White sticks that looked like a petrified hand held a round stone. A foggy mirror cast endless reflections of the room, until she realized there was an identical mirror directly opposite. Faces leered from paintings propped in a corner, their huge eyes guarding a trio of wooden chests banded with metal.

  ‘What do you think of my collection, then, girl?’

  Kyndra’s head snapped back to the table. The others were staring at her. ‘It’s … big,’ she said lamely, disturbed by the unveiled warning in Argat’s eyes. ‘Where did you get it all?’

  ‘Here and there.’ The captain waved a thick hand. ‘I have a passion for oddities. If I see something I want, I’ll haggle to the death for it.’

  Brégenne asked a polite but quiet question that Kyndra didn’t catch. She was too busy thinking about the captain. Quite suddenly, she decided she didn’t like him. What had happened since this morning to change Argat from friendly to sinister? The rough, talkative sailor was gone and in his place sat a shrewd stranger whose look was not so much companionable as suspicious. Kyndra didn’t like the way Argat stared at her, as if trying to find the answer to an unpleasant question.

  Yara finished her brandy and stood up. ‘Been a fine evening, all, but I have duties to see to before I retire.’

  Kyndra half expected Argat to wave her back to her seat, but he merely smiled and accepted the salute she gave him.

  ‘We should retire as well,’ Brégenne said. ‘Thank you for your hospitality, Captain.’

  ‘Don’t mentio
n it, my lady. You are, after all, paying me a handsome sum.’Argat smiled crookedly.

  Brégenne’s face tightened. She stood and pushed her chair in neatly. The glow in her eyes was so faint as to be barely discernible. Nediah took her arm and Kyndra realized they needed to maintain the charade of her blindness in front of the captain.

  Argat’s eyes were sharp in his reddened face. He held his glass at an angle so that the amber liquid came right to the lip and balanced there. ‘I hope you enjoy your time aboard my Set,’ he said. ‘You’re free to go where you will, of course.’ He leaned back in his chair and his eyes met Kyndra’s. ‘Except this room. You will not come here.’

  ‘We understand,’ Nediah said and Argat smiled again, holding up his glass.

  ‘May your dreams be ever of flying.’

  As they reached the double doors, Kyndra glanced over her shoulder. The captain sat among his treasures, his eyes fixed on her.

  ‘I wonder what he’s keeping in there,’ Nediah mused when they’d put some distance between themselves and the saloon. He glanced sidelong at Kyndra. ‘He certainly doesn’t trust you.’

  ‘I didn’t give him any reason to,’ Kyndra answered, with what she hoped was a fair approximation of Argat’s crooked smile.

  Nediah chuckled and then looked at Brégenne. ‘I think we might have more than a little trouble convincing this Argat to fly to Murta.’

  ‘Hush.’ Brégenne pulled her arm free of Nediah’s and the tall man looked faintly disappointed. ‘Don’t go near that saloon,’ she said to Kyndra. ‘Nediah’s right. He’ll be tough to convince and we have to travel west without delay. Don’t give him an excuse to strand us at Market Primus.’

  ‘I’m not interested in his collection,’ Kyndra lied stiffly. Brégenne gave her a dangerous frown. ‘I’m not,’ she insisted.

  Kyndra spent the next couple of days up on deck, watching one foreign landscape change subtly into another and revelling in the constant wind that blew down the length of the ship. It did indeed feel like flying, as the captain was fond of telling her. Kyndra did her best to avoid the man, but Argat had other ideas.

  Whenever she was alone at the prow, she’d inevitably hear the soft tread of the captain behind her. Argat would occasionally stand in silence, but more often he’d rattle off a series of anecdotes, most of which involved the acquisition of a new curio to sweeten his collection. The man talked of little else. His stories were diverting enough, but he never followed up on his promises to show Kyndra the skull of Mactoa or the horn that won a hundred battles. As far as she knew, there hadn’t been a real battle since the Deliverance five hundred years ago, but she nodded politely. Despite her decision not to trust the captain, Kyndra couldn’t help but be intrigued by his tales. Although they didn’t involve Wielders, dragon-riders and towering citadels, they were a good way to pass the hours.

  The rest of the time, Argat worked alongside his crew or shut himself in the saloon. They were not invited to eat there again and they made do with the galley. Kyndra steered clear of the saloon, as Brégenne had instructed, but she couldn’t help but feel Argat’s eyes following her wherever she went.

  On the morning of the third day, they reached the capital, Market Primus. Kyndra leaned over the prow rail, enjoying the sun. It was a warm day – one of the balmy preludes to summer – and the rich breeze carried a hundred smells. When she breathed in, she caught a heavy tang of hot metal together with flowers and spices. Another breath brought a reek of warming rubbish and the musty odour of old stone walls. The city’s open gates looked as if they had never been closed. Ivy and other climbing weeds had claimed them as part of their tangled colonies.

  The thoroughfare was busy. A carriage stamped with the crest of the merchant cartel scattered a group of men bearing crates on their shoulders. Other men walked alone or with women, hauling on ropes tied to heavy-eyed oxen.

  Kyndra was shocked at the size of it all. The only cities she’d seen were the ones she built in her head, the lost cities of Acre. Now she realized how many things she’d forgotten to imagine: the sheer noise of people, hooves and wheels, the baying of dogs and animals bound for market and the screeching and grinding that turns the gears of cities.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  Kyndra glanced over her shoulder to see Nediah strolling up the deck. ‘For what?’ she asked.

  ‘It’ll be a while before the ship leaves for Jarra. Brégenne and I have a few things to buy in the city.’

  Kyndra’s heart leapt at the thought of walking the busy streets. She smiled at Nediah. ‘Yes, I’m ready.’

  The approaching dock was twice the size of the one in Sky Port East. Kyndra watched three sailors vault deftly onto the wooden platform, bearing chains to secure the airship. On the ground, people swarmed between buildings, hauling produce, stacking barrels and loading horse-drawn carts to trundle their goods into the city.

  ‘Nediah?’

  Brégenne stood in the dwindling shade by the deckhouse door, arms wrapped around her body. Noon sun turned her into a grey and fragile figure. Nediah went to her instantly and took hold of her arm. With the other, he beckoned to Kyndra.

  They disembarked and joined the throng of traffic heading into the city. Guards clad in leather, wearing white surcoats emblazoned with a set of scales, stood to either side of the gates. Their eyes slid over the crowd without interest. Peace had reigned here so long, Kyndra thought, that the guards must have forgotten what war looked like. These were just better-dressed versions of the lawmen in Brenwym, who dealt with drunkards and thieves. The Deliverance had ended Mariar’s need for soldiers.

  Once through the gates, the crowd began to thin. People splintered away down side streets, pushing handcarts or guiding mules by worn bridles. Those who continued up the main thoroughfare were generally better dressed: master craftsmen, merchants seeking an audience with the Trade Assembly, or rich ladies visiting friends in the capital.

  ‘I’ve never seen so many people,’ Kyndra said to Nediah, who only smiled in answer. Although he kept a close hold on Brégenne, the blind woman was rarely jostled. People veered away when they noticed her, darting glances at her white eyes. Brégenne pulled up her hood, as if she could sense their discomfort, and Kyndra felt a flicker of indignation until she remembered how uneasy she felt under that same stare.

  The crowded streets put her in mind of Sky Port East and her failed escape attempt. I haven’t forgotten you, she said to the smoke-stained faces of Reena and Jarand which floated accusingly to the front of her mind. I will come back. Since her encounter with Medavle, however, Nediah was being especially watchful. She wouldn’t be allowed into any more taverns alone, either. Kyndra watched the city’s menagerie pass before her eyes, and for a moment she was in one of her stories, strolling down the streets of some lost metropolis.

  ‘We need another week’s worth of food at least,’ Nediah said, jolting Kyndra from her thoughts. They’d turned into a large square filled with sunlight and chatter. A market sprawled there, its stalls set up in horizontal and vertical lines like a gaming board. Kyndra took a deep breath, pulling the warm scent of baking into her nostrils. A nearby stall held fresh plaits of bread, seeded rolls and buns, all towering in wobbly stacks.

  A woman wearing a white linen headscarf looked at them enquiringly. ‘Five loaves,’ Nediah said. ‘Spelt, if you have it.’

  Smiling, the woman wrapped the bread and passed it to Nediah, who dropped a silver coin into her palm.

  As they continued through the market, Nediah added sausages, fruit, vegetables and cheese to his loaves until he needed a sack to carry it all. ‘I think that might do us,’ he said, ignoring the herbalist eyeing him hopefully from between two bunches of yarrow. ‘What did you need, Brégenne?’

  ‘Some ink,’ she answered shortly. She’d barely spoken since they’d entered the city. While Nediah haggled with the scribing merchant, Kyndra watched her surreptitiously. Brégenne seemed distracted. Her head swivelled from side to side, as if she
were searching for something. Occasionally, she would hold herself still, listening to the market’s cries.

  Barely audible under the throaty advertisements of a dozen tradesmen, Kyndra caught the regular sound of a kick wheel. She looked around for the potter and spied him right at the end of a row. The man was absorbed in his work. Frequently his hands would pause while one pumping foot restored the wheel’s momentum. Kyndra found the steady rhythm soothing. It reminded her of home and she drifted closer.

  The man worked a large lump of clay, breathing heavily from the effort of spinning the stone wheel. After a few minutes, a bowl began to take shape under his deft hands. Kyndra moved closer still, staring at it. The bowl grew shallow and wide. Water lay in the bottom, water that knew her true name and future path.

  Kyndra sucked in a breath and shook her head to clear it. But when she opened her eyes, the water and the bowl-shaped Relic were still there, spinning and spinning. And then –

  … she stands on a hill, the glass citadel to her left, watching an army advance up the valley. A hundred thousand men march beneath its banner and its siege weapons roll forward without the help of horses. Solinaris stands fragile against the bloody sunset. Tomorrow, it will fall. She has told them this, warned them countless times. Now it is too late.

  She must do what she has come here to do. And quickly. She will clothe herself invisibly, the better to slip unseen between the crystal gates. She reaches …

  Kyndra recoiled, stunned, as if she’d run full-tilt at a stone wall. The blow hit her mind with bone-breaking force. Pinpricks of light surrounded her, tried to fill her, but she wasn’t ready. They were pain and power, and she wanted them and hated them.

  Body trembling, head afire with agony, Kyndra found herself back in the market. The potter’s wheel was broken, cracked right across the middle. The man himself sat in the wreckage of his stall, his wares smashed all to pieces. Dazed, Kyndra stumbled forward to help him. The man looked at her with eyes dim and unfocused. He ignored the hand she offered.