The Stars Askew

by Rjurik Davidson

  “We could storm this complex if we wanted to,” said Rikard.

  “Hear that?” said Kata. “That’s the sound of trained militia. Even if you did defeat us, you’d pay too high a price, both in death and loss of face. The citizens would turn against you. The textile factories, the machinists, the builders—they’re all on our side.”

  “Who has the thaumaturgists?” countered Rikard.

  “No one,” said Kata. “The Authority is split. The thaumaturgists won’t follow any faction. You won’t be able to command them even if you tried.”

  Max was still struggling to gain a sense of the vast changes in the city. Those who controlled the thaumaturgists had always controlled Caeli-Amur. There were surely those who had become seditionists, but others would continue to be troops for hire, mercenaries—especially those used to the privileges accorded to them by the Houses. Much depended on which way they fell.

  Rikard grasped Kata’s hands tightly. “Kata. As your friend, I beg you.”

  “A friend wouldn’t ask this of me,” said Kata.

  “You know politics, Kata. Sometimes you agree with people you don’t like. Sometimes you care for those you disagree with.” Rikard dropped Kata’s hands and looked down at his feet. “You’ve changed me. You’ve made me see subtleties where there were none. Please.”

  “Sometimes there is no room for subtleties. Sometimes things are fundamental,” said Kata. “Ejan sent you because he knew you would have a greater chance of changing my mind.”

  “He wanted to come himself,” said Rikard. “I begged him to let me go in his stead.”

  That silenced Kata for a moment.

  “The assault will be in the next few days.” Rikard stood before them, his arms hanging hopelessly at his sides.

  Kata nodded. “Tell Dexion not to come here for me. Tell him to stay at home.”

  Rikard looked around the trees in the complex, the outbuildings, the mechanical attempts to reproduce the beauty of the Arbor Palace. He then walked back toward the gate.

  Leaving Kata behind, Max hurried beside him. “When I was captured, I was carrying an object—a cylinder. Have you heard anything about it or where it might be?”

  Rikard shook his head. “Georges has a room of captured goods in the Arbor Palace. But you won’t have any luck getting it from him—not unless Ejan orders it.”

  “I must see Ejan, then.”

  “Now, that I wouldn’t recommend.”

  As Rikard walked on, Max called to him, “So that’s your new order, then? A gathering of thieves?”

  Rikard seemed bereft, perhaps hurt. He took two steps back toward Max. “The room is on the third floor of the wing of the Palace that hangs over the lake. If Georges does have your cylinder, that’s where you’ll find it.”

  * * *

  Moderates packed into a theater in the northern wing of Technis Palace. Open on one side, it afforded a view of the city, and the cool night air swept in from the sea. Older moderates anxiously argued for surrender. Against them, the factory delegates—hard men and women who had lived their lives in smoke and soot—argued both against capitulation and against conflict with the vigilants. It was an impossible position, but one which seemed to be winning. The only option they were left with was to hole up in the complex and wait for events to develop.

  Max loved these citizens, silent and under the sway of the Houses for so long. Now they had found their own voices: rough, unsophisticated, but honest. He swore he could dedicate himself to them, once he had rid himself of Aya.

  Still, Max’s new modesty eventually drove him from the theater and back to the Director’s offices. He slumped into the seat behind the desk, examined the memory-catcher. He had known at first glance what the thing was, for a fragment of Aya’s memories had integrated with his. The bolts were fixed in a belt circling the machine. Max glanced beneath the desk, and there found the little bolt-thrower, aimed to fire at someone standing before it: an indication that the machine still operated.

  He began to think again of the Core, lying in Georges’s storeroom in Arbor Palace. There was no getting around it. He would have to retrieve it himself, under cover of night and illusion. He was preparing himself for the journey when Kata entered the room.

  “I’m going to the Arbor Palace to retrieve the Core,” said Max.

  Kata took a deep breath. “I know I shouldn’t, but I’ll come with you.”

  Max’s surprise showed on his face. Already she had rescued him from the Bolt. Moved though he was, he couldn’t let her take this chance. She was needed here. “Look, if this is about us … You don’t owe me anything, you know. And you’re not my keeper.”

  Kata shook her head. “I’m not, but I do owe you something. You were the first person to show me there was more to life than seeking personal advantage. You showed me there was meaning in working for others. You’re my … you’re my … friend.”

  The word friend smacked him hard: to hear himself defined that way hurt. Was there no future for them, after all? He was to blame in the first place and it would take time to win her back. Still he held out hope. The truth was, her offer was too good to refuse. As a former philosopher-assassin—a fact she’d admitted to him before the overthrow—she would be invaluable in facing the dangers of House Arbor.

  “Yes, of course. I need your help,” he said.

  “We have to retrieve the Core safely, though,” said Kata. “Neither of us is allowed to die.”

  “You might have noticed, but I’m not always the best at keeping promises,” said Max.

  * * *

  Later that night Max dropped to the ground beside Kata, inside the gardens of the Arbor Palace. They scuttled away from the Toxicodendron didion, which was beginning to rouse itself from Max’s sleeping conjuration. After the charm, Max felt the nausea rise within him; his legs weakened. The Other Side leaked into him, but he would have to continue on.

  Extraordinarily primitive, Aya’s voice was again strong. You call that a science?

  —Show me how. Show me the prime language.

  Aya did not respond, but Max felt the god’s restlessness once more.

  Tear-flowers started to wail their beautiful, mesmeric cry, and Max thoughtlessly started to walk toward them.

  Kata pulled him away. “Come on.”

  They crept silently past lush jungle plants, smelled thick jungle smells. Above them curled beautiful walkways and aqueducts. If they could reach them, they would be safe from the dangerous flora. He gestured to Kata.

  She shook her head. “Too open. Too vulnerable.”

  They slunk on through the undergrowth, passing a bed of blood-orchids, which stirred at the scent of them. Leaving the deadly flowers behind, they pushed through a thick exotic bush. Max found himself quickly scooting over a floor of bloodred mold, which moved unnervingly beneath his feet. Tendrils rose up to reach him, like little hands of a desperate lover.

  A moment later they were beside a pond. Unseen things moved beneath its dark surface, breaking its stillness. Kata dashed along the water’s edge. Max followed her straight into a bank of razor reeds, which shook savagely. Kata leaped back, blood flowing from her right arm. She checked the long thin wounds with a disgusted eye. “Damn it.”

  They came through the thickest part of the garden, to where many beds of tear-flowers and exquisitely crafted trees had been hacked and destroyed. They froze for a moment, for a carriage raced along the entranceway, past the great fountain and toward the palace. A heavy figure, face obscured by a hood, stepped from the carriage and entered the palace, accompanied by a bodyguard.

  “We’re not the only late visitors, I see,” said Kata.

  The carriage might have belonged to an officiate once. Those who had escaped to the Dyrian coast were safe for the moment. Many had been dragged back from the villas to the dungeons beneath the palace. Yet others had met the Bolt, their last dark friend. Yet Max knew there were still a few free House agents in the city, hiding in their mansions.


  Putting such thoughts aside, they dashed to the palace wall. Kata tossed up a hook, which promptly fell back to the ground beside them. Her second throw was powerful and accurate. The hook lodged in the iron balcony on the third floor.

  “You first,” she said.

  Max grabbed the rope and hauled himself up, up, winding his legs around the rope to steady himself. His arms began to burn from the strain by the time he reached the first floor. By the time he dragged himself to the second, they were shaking. He looked down, realized how high up he was. A tumble would mean a shattered leg, capture, the dungeon, and the Bolt.

  Don’t fall now. Aya laughed.

  —You still want me to die along with you? Max built a little shield within himself, in case Aya decided to strike at him.

  Aya laughed again. You think I hate you that much?

  —You intend to drain my mind from my body. But I’m warning you, once we’re back with the Elo-Talern, you’ll be the one deposited into some inanimate world, like the one in Caeli-Enis’s Library, where I found you. I have the strength. I am the whole personality here. You are but a fragment.

  It’s war, then. War to the end. And you might like to ask yourself quite how whole you are.

  Max struggled to pull himself past the second floor. A groan came unbidden from his lips. He clung to the rope silently for a moment.

  A candle was lit in a nearby room, and Max wondered who he had awoken. A window opened and a guard looked out, right in time for a dagger to drive directly into his eye, thrown by Kata below. He had forgotten how much of a killer she was. The man leaned back, as if someone had slapped him, raised a hand to where the dagger emerged from his face, and collapsed back with a soft thud.

  Max continued up, straining. Just one last haul, he thought. But his arms stopped moving and he held on desperately, unable to continue.

  Kata waved frantically. She risked calling out: “Come on!”

  Max thought of the trials he had undergone; he thought of the peace he now yearned for. He pulled one last time, reached up, grasped the iron railing, and dragged himself against the wall, scraping his knees. He threw a leg over the railing and fell over it onto the balcony.

  A few ludicrously short seconds later Kata squatted down beside him. He closed his eyes. Was there anything she couldn’t do?

  Opening the glass doors quietly, Kata stepped into the deserted room, which seemed to be the office of some House official. Sweating and breathing heavily, Max followed her. Across the room, an open doorway gave access to a corridor. From far down the passageway, loud voices carried to them. Kata cocked her head, listened, and whispered. “There’s a guard in the corridor just outside the doorway.”

  Max strained but heard nothing nearer than the chattering voices.

  Kata produced a strange implement from her bag: a tube with a spherical container at one end. Light as a dancer, she skipped into the corridor, raised the implement to her lips, and blew. Max followed just in time to see a cloud of crimson dust billow from the tube’s end just as someone said, “Hey—”

  Kata caught a black-suited female guard before she crashed to the floor. She dragged the unconscious woman into the room and laid her by the desk. Holding up her implement proudly, she whispered, “Haven’t used that in a while. Quieter than any other weapon.”

  Snatches of conversation drifted down from a doorway at the far end of the corridor, the wing that apparently held Georges’s storeroom. “No, it’s fantastic. The two factions will wear each other out, but your vigilants will prevail, believe me.”

  As they sneaked forward, Kata made no noise at all, but each step of Maximilian’s seemed to find a creaky floorboard.

  Closer now, the voices traveled to them more clearly. “They say he’s always been cold. The thing they don’t seem to realize is that he has a mansion up in the Arantine. It’s not just officiates and subofficiates, you know. He has allies everywhere: investors from Varenis, foreigners, half the bloody thaumaturgists in the city.”

  They crept nearer. Maximilian drew ideograms in the air, spoke the words he knew so well, interlaced the equations just so, and fell into the beautifully lit-up world.

  Now invisible, he continued after Kata, who tiptoed forward, light as a cat.

  “‘Half’ is an exaggeration,” said a rough voice, which Max recognized as Georges’s.

  “Yes, of course. But, you know,” said the second voice, which Max thought he knew as well.

  Kata pressed herself against the wall a foot before the open doorway, on the right-hand side of the corridor, from where the voices carried. She pointed to another large open doorway at the very end of the corridor. Through the opening, Max could see piles of goods packed on shelves and strewn around the floor. A great lock hung open on the door’s latch. The two men had been examining the loot, it seemed.

  Kata nodded at Max to go ahead. Meanwhile, she pulled the second of her knives from a belt hidden beneath her shirt.

  With each of Max’s footsteps, the floorboards creaked faintly. He tried to soften them, but it made no difference. As he passed the doorway to his right, he glanced in.

  At the head of a grand sculpted table sat Georges, looking as exhausted as he ever had. Lying before him on the desktop were several piles of gold and jewelry, several odd-shaped ancient implements, and a bottle of wine, which he picked up and began to fill two glasses with. “Look, the truth is, we have to accept that people change, but the roles stay the same. Ejan thinks there’s a new world being built, but he doesn’t realize he’s just filling the place of a House Director, really.”

  Max shook with disgust. Here was his opportunity for revenge, but it was an opportunity he couldn’t take. The alarm would be raised, guards would come running, and he and Kata would be slaughtered.

  Behind Georges stood a rough-looking man, a little shorter than average, whose head jutted forward like the spout of a jug. Hanging from his belt was a mean-looking studded mace. Georges had hired himself a bodyguard, it seemed. From the look of him, perhaps a brutalist, one of a group of philosopher-assassins who claimed the world was violent and cruel, and that there was no space for delicate sensibilities. The mace was an expression of this belief: a weapon for crushing and smashing.

  On the far side of the table sat Dumas, who was the figure they had seen arriving in the carriage earlier. His great bulldog eyes roved from Georges to the treasure on the table and back again. “He still thinks Caeli-Amur works like the ice-halls—they’re damned simple places, you know. For him, there is summer and winter, the ice and the thaw, black and white.”

  The floorboards creaked beneath Max’s feet again. For a moment the guard frowned and looked directly through the door. Cursing silently, Max continued to walk slowly on.

  “It’ll be a good thing when he crushes the moderates. Clear the board of a few pieces,” said Georges.

  “They’ll never amount to much anyway. Too much faith in chitter-chatter. Don’t understand that power is all about force,” said Dumas. “At least we’re prepared now.”

  Max halted in front of the storeroom door, turned around, and stepped back to watch the conversation. The image of Georges and Dumas ahead of him was too much. This was the way the power hungry made their way in the world, swapping favors for favors, coin for coin, rumor for rumor, until they rose up above everyone else, a caste unto themselves, vicious and self-interested. Anger surged within Max. The equations vanished from his mind. He materialized in the doorway, staring at the two corrupt men.

  That’s what I like to see, said Aya.

  Georges cried out at the sight of Max, leaped back in his chair. The stunned Dumas gaped, mouth open, but the philosopher-assassin guard snapped into action and pushed past Dumas, his mace instantly in hand.

  Max stepped back against the corridor wall, raised his arm up to protect himself from the weapon.

  “Should I smash him?” The assassin stood in the doorway, his mace above his head, ready to bring it down.

  “Please
,” said Georges. “He’s proving particularly annoying.”

  The guard’s mace fell to his side loosely, the strength suddenly leached from his body.

  “Well, go on,” said Georges, not understanding that it was too late.

  The assassin twisted back toward the room, though his legs had lost all strength. Kata held him like a puppet, her face poked over the guard’s shoulder. She had stabbed him directly in the heart.

  “Hello, friends,” she said. “If you were to cry out, I think I might be able to kill you both before rescue came. So, what are we going to do?”

  The two men backed away as the mace dropped to the ground. Kata eased the body down gently.

  “Let’s work something out, shall we?” said Dumas.

  Max seized the mace and pushed quickly past Kata. This time Georges raised an arm to protect himself. Max jabbed the mace into Georges’s stomach. The blow sucked the air from the man, whose arms came down to protect his vital organs.

  Quickly, Max raised the mace into the air and just as quickly brought it down. There was a terrible crack. A massive depression appeared on the top of Georges’s head as his skull gave way. His eyes roved for a moment, looking up and back toward the indentation, and then he collapsed to the ground.

  Ooh, good one, said Aya. Pity that assassin wasn’t around to see it. Confirmation of his philosophy, I’d say.

  Dumas dived to one side as one of Kata’s knives flew through the air, lodging itself into the table. “Alarm! Help! Intruders! Killers!”

  A bell rang. Doors opened and closed. The sound of running echoed down the hall.

  Kata pulled Max out of the room. Already guards charged toward them along the corridor, pikes in hand. There would be no escape that way.

  They raced into the storeroom. Kata slammed the door shut, slid a bolt into its strike plate, and rapidly pulled a heavy chest against it. Footfalls sounded along the corridor.