The Stars Askew

by Rjurik Davidson

  “The games have always been nothing but ways of controlling the population, of creating something false for them to care about, while the true heroes are elsewhere,” said Kata.

  Dexion tossed his head; his beads danced in the air. “You should see the beauty of it though. There’s something glorious about the movements of the gladiators, about the spectacle of the fights.”

  “There’s something barbaric about it,” Kata snapped. “I don’t want you to go.”

  Dexion shrugged as he opened the door to depart for the Arena. “Look, don’t worry so much. You’re so filled with anxiety, Kata. Has anyone ever told you that? No, I don’t suppose they have. So here it is: Henri will be back, okay? He knows the streets.”

  After he left, Kata waited for Henri, but he did not return. Eventually she left to meet Rikard at the Opera. For a while the daylight had chased away her worst fears, but as she strode down Via Persine, they closed in on her again.

  Broadsheet sellers stood before the Opera building in Market Square, calling out the names of their papers, the slogans of the day. Kata moved from one to the other, buying copies of them all.

  The Dawn contained several sophisticated pieces arguing against the Assembly’s resolutions. The appropriation of powers by the nine-person Authority was a reflection of the city’s weakness, not its strength. It was reported that Georges’s Criminal Tribunal was already drawing up lists of “opponents” and increasing surveillance of them—it was preparing for repressive measures.

  Yet others put forward their own more marginal views. The ultraradical papers emerging from the university claimed the Assembly’s resolutions did not go far enough. They were calling for a seditionist war against Varenis to spread the revolt. The entire city, they claimed, should be militarized.

  Rikard sat on the steps, drinking a bowl of soup. He gave her a hard, distant, touch-me-not smile. Seeing her scanning the broadsheets, he said, “There’ll be war with Varenis soon enough anyway.”

  Kata sat on the stairs next to the young man, embarrassed by last night’s events.

  “We’ve no chance against their legions.” Kata looked up briefly into the sun, which hung low over the ocean.

  Rikard shrugged. “First we eliminate the enemies here, then we face them as a united force. Anyway, we fight, after all, for an ideal. You can’t underestimate the hold ideas have on soldiers. People will die for what they believe in. Without an ideal, they flee like rabbits.”

  Kata snapped at him. “How could you support last night’s resolutions, Rikard? You’re smart enough to see the consequences. To repress opposition will just drive it underground, the way the Houses did to us. It will still exist, slowly building in the dark. Better to have it out in the air, where you can argue against it.”

  Rikard’s cold smile now said: You’re from the streets. You should know better about the world’s cruel ironies. “The Criminal Tribunal is building a killing machine up on the Standing Stones as we speak. The Bolt, they call it. It’s quick, painless. We don’t take pleasure in the liquidation of our enemies, but they force it on us.”

  The name of the new machine brought terrible visions to Kata’s mind. “What if one day you oppose Ejan? Will you then become an enemy? Perhaps all of us will face the Bolt one day.”

  Rikard wiped his empty bowl out with a rag, placed it back into his bag, and squinted up into the sun. Its warmth reminded her of the hot summer that had just passed.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” said Kata. “You were kind to look after me.”

  “We’re on the same side, you know, Kata. We all have weaknesses. You have an illness, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Kata rubbed her face with her hands. She hadn’t the strength to lie. “I’m learning to leave the shame behind, finally. I think. What are your weaknesses, then?”

  Rikard stretched his arms up over his head. “You’re the expert on that.”

  Kata closed her eyes, felt the sun’s rays on her cheeks, saw the red glow of her lids, and opened them again. At that moment Henri came skittering across the square, and Kata felt a surge of relief. She held back the urge to run toward him like some panicky mother.

  Henri glanced suspiciously at Rikard, then leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Pol’s scared, hiding. Says someone is after him. Anyway, he told me where Thom’s crib is.”

  Kata put her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

  “That’ll be three florens,” Henri demanded.

  Kata pushed him away and shook her head at the little brat.

  Henri broke into a devilish smile and protested. “I needed to spend three florens for the information. It wasn’t easy, you know.”

  Kata shook her head. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  Kata looked down at Rikard, weighing her words carefully. A chasm had opened between their views. She wrestled with her conscience before saying quietly. “Henri can lead us to Thom’s workshop.”

  * * *

  In the deepest recesses of the Quaedian, the alleyways became so narrow, the damp walls practically brushed their shoulders. Kata found herself following Henri, stepping carefully to avoid the rivulets of water that ran along their center. The tenements and apartment blocks rose high above the alleys, and the whole place was thrown into shadow, except for those rare moments when the sun angled through the buildings. They pressed themselves against the walls to allow other passersby to squeeze past. The narrowness of the cramped area was oppressive, and Kata felt an ever greater feeling of apprehension. So much would be revealed once they talked to Thom. But with each step, her unease grew.

  Eventually Henri pointed toward a nondescript opening where a set of stairs led up into the gloom. “Room 601.”

  Kata placed her hand on Henri’s shoulder. “I want you to go straight home now. Lock the door and only let me or Dexion in. All right?”

  Henri smiled as if she had made a terrible joke, but her seriousness chased it quickly away. “I suppose, if that’s what you want.” A moment later he dashed down the alleyway, turned at the first intersection, and then was out of sight. Kata thought she caught a glimpse of a figure stepping gently back into the shadows even farther down the alleyway. Had she imagined it? She squinted and tried to see, but there was nothing there.

  Rikard pulled her by the arm. “Come on.”

  They climbed the stairs up to the top level, gloomy light penetrating through little slits cut into the stairwell. On each floor, a dank corridor ran through the middle of the building, apartments to either side. At their far ends, another slit in the wall allowed dim light and a breath of air.

  By the time they came to the sixth floor, fear had clasped Kata’s mind. It was as if she had become an Augurer and had had some dark premonition.

  The number 601 was painted on the nearest door. It was a corner room, not a garret at all. She exchanged anxious glances with Rikard before knocking on the door and calling for Thom. There was no answer. She knocked again, using insistent, rapid blows, and Rikard called out.

  Finally a door nearby opened. A women with mousy hair and deep-set eyes that made her look older than she probably was craned her neck around the doorway. She squinted at them through the gloom. “Oh, it’s you again.”

  Kata stood stock-still. Then, in a flash, she leaped away from Rikard, her stilettos in her hands.

  Rikard backed away from her, confusion in his eyes. “What?”

  The woman looked on, seemingly engrossed by whatever drama was playing out.

  “You’ve been here before. You liar.” Kata screamed inwardly at herself: How could I have trusted him?

  “I swear to you.” Rikard’s face was tight with alarm. “I have never been here.”

  “No—you, young woman. You,” said the woman. “You’re the one who has been here before.”

  A shiver of fear rushed over Kata. “No,” she said quietly. “No, I haven’t.”

  “You came to see the fat man about a week ago,” insisted the woman. Then she
seemed to decide that Kata must be lying, and the rest came out slowly, without conviction. “He wouldn’t let you in. But you … but you finally convinced him.”

  Kata’s arms dropped to her sides, rapid thoughts chasing one another through her mind. “That’s the secret. Thom arrived at the baths, yet was also at the Opera. I was here and yet was not here. Could it be a shapeshifter or illusionist?”

  Rikard nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  Kata rushed back to apartment 601 and pushed on the door. It wasn’t locked, and swung ominously open. Blazing light cut through an open window. Canvases and paints, sketching paper and books, and strange sculptures were strewn across the floors, crammed into the corners. The place was messy, cramped, cluttered. But it was the artist himself, bent backward unnaturally over a chaise longue in the center of the room, who caught their attention. Flies buzzed around Thom’s corpse, landing on his blistered and burned face, disappearing into his open mouth and nose. The smell of death saturated the room, seemed to have sunk into everything.

  “Oh, oh, oh.” The neighbor, who had followed them to the doorway, fled back down the hallway from the terrible scene.

  Clamping a handkerchief to her nose, Kata stepped gently inside. Rikard closed the door softly behind them.

  Thom’s face was blackened with horrific burns. On the floor near his body were the same signs of incinerated bloodstone. A small table had been turned over, and the couch had been pushed across the floor and now sat at an angle. Behind it, a pile of canvases had been knocked over and now lay flat on the floorboards.

  Kata felt the strength leave her legs, but she held herself up by force of will. Aceline, Thom—one by one the leaders of the moderates were being killed. Flashes of the artist’s death flared into her mind unbidden: he lets the killer in, thinking it’s her, but something about her tips him off. They fight, and the shapeshifter’s body reveals itself. Bloodstone burns on Thom’s face, and the murderer forces him down over the chaise longue. It’s not a fast execution, but a long death.

  Kata rifled through the canvases, but the images had been cut away, leaving only holes. What had been painted on them?

  Kata walked away from the body and into the separate sun-room, where Thom’s lithographic press sat: a grand metallic structure, like some multilayered table, wheels in its center.

  She stood there, looking through the open window and onto the building facing her, and over the rooftop gardens, vermillion tiles, and small bronze domes. A white bird landed on the roof opposite, waddled along its peak toward her, stopped.

  “There’s no sign of the book Olivier mentioned. Others. Some by Andrenikis. Piles of broadsheets,” said Rikard.

  The bird pecked at something on the roof, turned, and took to the air. The world was unaffected, untouched by all their hopes and dreams. How could that be so? How could life go on?

  Kata could hear the sound of Rikard sifting through the apartment. She looked back over the lithographic press to Rikard. “The killer would have taken the—”

  Kata stopped, then stared at the press’s limestone slab, where she could see an image etched. Her mind moved rapidly, and strength shot back into her. She walked to the slab, cocked her head, and tried to make the image out. The machine was almost ready to print. She took a poster-sized sheet of cardboard from a roll nearby and placed it onto the limestone slab.

  “What are you doing?” Rikard sounded annoyed.

  “Setting up the press. Thom’s paintings were destroyed. Why? Because he had painted something they didn’t want us to see. But the killer didn’t think of the lithograph. You wouldn’t, unless you were an artist and knew how it worked.”

  She knew how to operate the press, having drifted among some of the aestheticist philosopher-assassins years earlier. For the aestheticists, everything—life, death, murder—needed to be beautiful, a work of art. When not carrying out their killings, or debating the meaning of elegance, they were often artists themselves. She’d drifted quickly away from them, for she was a child of the streets, and abstract beauty seemed too much of an indulgence for her.

  Now she swung the press into action, clamped the poster, waited a moment, unveiled it. The image was surprisingly realist for an artist who had shown himself predisposed to Vorticist imagery, complete with its avant-garde obsession with angles and shapes, with the machinery of life. This image, however, showed Thom himself, peering over a book. Books covered every wall of the ancient room in which he sat. Great mechanical arms held small platforms loaded with shelves high above the floor. Behind Thom, stained-glass windows arched up in brilliant reds and blues. Between them stood windows opening onto the Quaedian and Caeli-Amur.

  “The Technis Library?” asked Rikard.

  “Look at the scene through the windows,” said Kata. “It’s up on the Southern Headland. I’d say it’s a room in the university library.”

  Kata lifted the poster from where it lay. It caught the light, and she saw another figure in the background, a dark shadow looking on. The figure held an eight-sided shape in its hand that gleamed with sickly arcane power.

  “Look there. That must be the Prism of Alerion,” said Kata. “This is Thom’s final message to us.”

  “If so, why didn’t he tell us in person?”

  “He was afraid,” speculated Kata. “Something tipped him off, I think. He saw something he wasn’t meant to. I don’t know—maybe he actually saw his double. So he hid away, for he knew he could trust no one. Remember, Olivier said he looked terrified just before Aceline died. And this dark figure in the lithograph suggests he knew he was being watched.”

  “So he planned to return to the Assembly to unveil his dark truth. But when a replica of you arrived, he let his guard down,” finished Rikard.

  Kata thought of Maximilian. “I knew an illusionist once. He told me it was difficult to keep the illusion for any period of time. That at some point, part of your real self would shine through. So when Thom recognized it wasn’t me, there was a fight. The shapeshifter killed him using the same conjuration he used on Ivarn and Uendis.”

  Rikard nodded. “It’s all about the Prism of Alerion. So the shapeshifter insinuated himself—”

  “Or herself,” interrupted Kata.

  “Into the room with the baths. They all thought that the shapeshifter was Thom, to begin with, at least. The shapeshifter moved quickly, killed Ivarn and Uendis using this cruel burning conjuration. But why didn’t Aceline fight?”

  “Maybe she was afraid. She was small, and gentle. From the location of the bodies, we could presume the deaths occurred closer to the door. She backed away, hoped Ivarn and Uendis would be victorious, but they weren’t. Then the killer went to work on her.”

  “Thaumaturgists have all kinds of powers. Isn’t it possible she was held unnaturally in place, paralyzed by a charm?” said Rikard.

  The thought terrified Kata. She imagined Aceline fixed by some terrible equation, unable to move as the killer loosed the mites on her, as they plunged into her nose and up into her brain.

  “Once the killer had taken Aceline’s memories, he or she strangled her. There would be no rush, no need to use thaumaturgy,” said Rikard.

  “It’s possible,” said Kata. “It’s possible. What, then, did Aceline know?”

  Kata looked out over the roofs again. Birds wheeled in the sky far away.

  “She knew about the prism and Armand’s allies. Perhaps not their identities, but she certainly knew of their existence.” Rikard stood next to her, looked outward with her. “We’ve two directions we can go. Into the canals, to try to trace the money passing from Marin to … to who? It must be the Houses—the remnants of Arbor or Marin or Technis. The money is going south, to the villas perhaps. Or we can go to the library in the university.”

  “Let’s talk to the neighbor.” Kata stepped quickly into the corridor, knocked on the neighbor’s door, hardened herself. The woman did not respond. Kata knocked more insistently. “I know you’re there.”

>   Still, the woman refused to respond. Kata looked at Rikard and back to the door, which looked rickety. She turned the handle, but it seemed to be held by a bolt. She counted down from three, nodding as she did so, and the two of them slammed against the door. There was a crack of splintering wood, a cry from the room beyond. Again she counted, and again they crashed against the door. This time it burst open.

  The woman cried, backed against a far wall, but Kata was already on her, one of her knives pressed against the woman’s throat. The skin broke slightly beneath it. “If you think that woman was me, then you know I’m a killer. So tell me about the conversation you heard, and you’ll live.”

  The woman started to tremble. Kata had to hold her up against the wall to prevent her from slipping down.

  The woman’s voice came out broken and hoarse. “He wouldn’t let you in, and you said, ‘I know, Thom, that you’re afraid, which is why we must tell everyone about this. You already know Aceline’s dead, don’t you?’ And he says, ‘What?’ and you say, ‘Yep, they killed her. So you’re the moderate leader now, and we have to talk about what to do.’”

  “Was there anything else you noticed about the woman?”

  “She had these kind of … kind of frightening eyes that looked right through you, kind of unreal-looking. And then she says, ‘Thom, Aceline met those two thaumaturgists from the Brotherhood of the Hand, and they were killed too.’ Then she says something about the canals near Operaio Bridge, Thom mumbles something, and she talks about the Assembly and resolutions and how they had a case against Ejan. And she says, ‘Let me in.’ And so he does.”

  Kata pressed the woman harder against the wall. “And that’s all?”

  Fear made the woman dribble, so Kata figured she was telling the truth. She let the woman crumple into a corner of the dirty room, whimpering.

  As Kata stormed away, she caught Rikard’s amused glance that said: See, you’re tough after all.

  He followed her into the corridor. “You realize that if we’re dealing with a shapeshifter, well, it could take the form of any of us.” Kata looked at Rikard and felt a flash of fear. She saw the same thought in his head.