The Star Shard

by Frederic S. Durbin

  She watched him slyly.

  "Now," he said, leaning forward, "can you tell me what Gerta and Berta want the most? What do they think would make them happy?"

  Cymbril didn't have to think for long. "They want to be beautiful. They're always fussing over their hair, and they can't pass a mirror without stopping."

  "Is that all?" Loric seemed to gaze far away, deep in thought. "Then I think I know a way."

  Cymbril regarded Loric carefully. In her years on the Rake, she'd seen the ways of hard-driving merchants, how they treated one another and people in general. "Why are you so eager to help me?" she asked.

  He gazed back strangely, as if puzzled by the question. "Isn't that what people do—help each other? We're all part of one another."

  "From what I've seen, most people don't help others unless there's payment involved or they're forced to," Cymbril said.

  "You're making me shiver," said Loric. "This world is cold, this place of few stars. But here's an answer that may meet with your approval. I'll help you, and at the same time, you can do something to help me."

  Cymbril shrugged. "Go on."

  Loric pushed up his right sleeve to the elbow and held his slender arm in the air. "What do you see here?" he asked.

  Cymbril frowned. Was this a magic trick? Listening for any approach in the corridor, she said impatiently, "Five fingers, including a thumb. What am I supposed to see?"

  He smiled and pointed to his bare arm near the wrist. "Look here."

  Cymbril drew a surprised breath. Strapped to Loric's arm was a tiny cloth bag. How had she missed seeing it? But when she moved her gaze by a fraction, his arm looked completely bare again. The bag only became visible when she stared directly at it.

  "This is a symbol of diverting," Loric explained, indicating a complex glyph stitched onto the bag with silver thread. "It's kept my coin purse secret since I was captured." He unbound the cords and held the bag out to Cymbril.

  She took it cautiously. It was too light to be filled with much of anything. She reached for the drawstring.

  "I wouldn't waste time counting the coins now," Loric said. "I think you'll have just enough, although you'd have more if the moon were fuller. Still, it can't be helped. You have to do your buying when the Night Market is open."

  "What?"

  "A Night Market is going to be held—here, in this rolling city, on the fourth night from now. You'll have to wait till then."

  Cymbril shook her head. "What are you talking about? How can you possibly know anything about the Rake and what happens here?"

  Loric grinned. "Your friend Miwa is a talkative cat and quite helpful. She told me about the Night Market. If we're lucky, they'll have what we need. I'll tell you exactly how to get in and what to buy."

  Cymbril watched him closely, holding back her questions. "I'm listening," she said.

  Chapter 8

  The Dark Door on the Right

  Though she'd always confided everything to Urrt, for some reason Cymbril didn't feel like telling him about her complicated feelings toward Loric. They seemed intensely private, and she didn't understand them herself. When she thought of Loric, there was a thrill behind her ribs. But there was a sense of danger, too. She said nothing to the Urrmsh of the plans she and Loric had made concerning the Night Market. Urrt would certainly warn her against it, and she didn't want to act against his wishes.

  To take her mind off Loric, she told Urrt about her encounter with the Eye Women and what she thought she'd heard one of them say.

  Urrt shook his bulbous head. "Those ladies are friends of no one, songbird. You would do well to stay as far from them as sunrise is from sunset."

  Cymbril nodded agreement. "Why does Master Rombol allow them on the Rake—them and their awful frog?"

  Pondering the question, Urrt worked the oar, rocking steadily forward and back in the lamplight. His present bench-mate was Bembhaa, who had never learned more than a few words of human speech. Whenever Cymbril spoke to him, Bembhaa rumbled with quiet laughter that made his huge belly shake. Then he would pat her head and answer in a purring stream of Urrmsh words.

  "I told you of the old sorcerer, Ranunculus," Urrt said at last. "Not long after he vanished, those two ladies—sisters, they are—came to Master Tycho with proof that they were cousins to Ranunculus and his only living heirs. They demanded his place aboard the Rake."

  "So they advise Master Rombol?" Cymbril asked.

  "I think not, little thrush. When his father died, Master Rombol left things as they were, but I've never seen him speak to the ladies at all. Near as I can tell, he stays out of their way, and they keep to themselves."

  "I wonder why they want to be here," said Cymbril.

  "Best not to wonder about them at all, little linnet," said Urrt.

  Bembhaa chortled suddenly, patting Cymbril's head, and merrily repeated words he didn't understand, forming them with effort: "At all, little linnet. At all, little linnet."

  The next four days crept by in cycles of work, sleep, and the songs of the Urrmsh. There was a grand two-day market in Panoply, complete with a joust put on by the Knights Fountainers, which gave Cymbril an afternoon's rest from singing. She was allowed to watch, but she found no amusement in the brutal sport. The knights were good and brave men, sworn to protect the weak, and for such work, they must be warriors. But a joust was more frightening than exciting, with the pounding hooves, the crash of padded lances on shields, the rough unseating of knights. Always at such events, some were injured, limping or carried off the field. Why did the crowds cheer at such things? Loric was right: the world of the Second Folk was cold and cruel.

  Cymbril pondered what Loric had told her. He could talk to the Rake's cats, or so he claimed. True enough, they seemed to like him. When Rombol displayed Loric in the markets, there was often a cat curled contentedly at the boy's feet. The fat frog, on the other hand, glowered at him from beneath wagons. The frog's dislike, Cymbril thought, was a definite point in Loric's favor. Then again, the frog seemed to disapprove of everyone.

  The purse contained seven coins of a surprisingly light weight, each about half the size of Cymbril's palm. By day they were a dull bronze color, without markings of any kind. At night a little over half of each coin's surface glowed with a brilliant hue, just like the waning gibbous moon in the sky. From certain angles, Cymbril could glimpse a face in each bright swath—a face turned mostly away from the full to a profile, the Man in the Moon, with merry-looking eyes and a cunning smile.

  On the second night after receiving the purse, she had a fright, thinking she'd lost it. She was certain she'd put it into the trunk with her clothing and the two treasures, but it was nowhere to be found. As her panic mounted, she suddenly remembered the symbol of diverting. "It's here," she told herself. "I just can't see it." Moving slowly, she shook out each garment until she heard a small thump and saw an indentation in the hem of her folded red dress. Sure enough, when she looked right at the spot, the coin purse was there.

  Eventually, curiosity got the best of Cymbril. She showed one of the coins to Urrt, just to hear what he'd say.

  "A moonmarket coin," he rumbled, pushing and drawing the mighty oar. "Did the Fey lad give it to you, little thrush? Most of the Elder folk use them, the Sidhe and—the others."

  "So I can't spend it at a market?" She was being devious, curious whether he'd mention the Night Market himself.

  Urrt pursed his lips, and his bench-mate looked uneasy. "I wouldn't show it to anyone, songbird. It will only bring trouble to you and the young lad. Put it away, and keep it safe. You know its value changes with the moon? When the moon is full, you'll be richer."

  Cymbril scowled. "That's a nonsensical system of money," she said.

  Urrt laughed softly. "Indeed? But there are times to buy finer things, and times to buy lesser. A moonmarket coin serves at either time. Isn't that better than a little copper piece that will never amount to much, or a stack of gold when all one wants to buy is a sack of pota
toes?"

  "The world has no constant values," chimed in the bench-mate, whose name Cymbril didn't know for sure. "The selfsame leaves are green in the summer and golden in the fall. What is fixed about a river—or the sky?"

  Early on the third evening, Cymbril took a turn down her once-secret hallway off Tinley to see what Rombol had done about the storerooms. The Master's X was still scratched into the floor at the corridor's mouth, and the dull padlocks on the doors had been replaced with shiny new ones. The old, she supposed, had been cut off, since Rombol didn't have keys to them. From the hatchways above, she saw that the rooms had been mostly emptied out. It gave her a lonely feeling that Byrni and his box were no longer on the table. And whose fault is that? she reminded herself.

  Next came a market day at Brindle and then one at Harn's Ford, where the Rake stopped on a broad stony island in the middle of the shallow Wander River. The booths and tents came down during a glorious sunset, when all the sky was full of red fire and purple shadow, and fireflies winked as cool sparks under the trees.

  As Cymbril ate a supper of brown bread, sausages, beans, and cheese, the Rake rolled eastward, splashing through the Wander and up a rocky ravine, the trunks of dead trees snapping beneath the wheels. Cymbril rested as best she could, but she was too excited to sleep. Dressed in a drab brown skirt and a frayed blouse the color of lilacs, she curled on her bed and studied her stone and hairpin.

  She would have to leave the treasures here. "Don't take any valuables to the Night Market," Loric had said, "even if you're certain they can't be stolen. Don't take along anything you're not ready to part with."

  Night Markets, Loric explained, were held in various places secret to all but a few, and they were moved frequently, because much of what was sold did not exactly belong to the sellers. The Rake provided the perfect venue for a Night Market since it moved all the time.

  "It sounds like it's breaking the law," Cymbril said.

  Loric nodded. "There are no laws in your King's books to cover what goes on at a Night Market."

  "But you're sending me there?" she asked.

  "It's not really dangerous," he said, "as long as you don't touch anything you're not buying."

  Cymbril didn't have to ask why this was so. Daytime merchants were protective enough of their wares. She supposed those running a Night Market would be all the more suspicious. She eyed Loric doubtfully. "Have you been to one of these?"

  "No. But my brother has, and he's told me all about them."

  She left her room when the night was deepest and descended quickly, using an out-of-the-way crank basket. On the Rake's second level, she took the darkest side routes toward the aft right quarter of the rolling city. As she neared her destination, Miwa appeared from behind a row of lidded baskets.

  Cymbril could only just recognize the cat in the faint glow of the torchmoss growing in clumps on the wall. Miwa purred and circled her feet. The cat always seemed to find her when Cymbril was about to do something risky.

  "So you've been talking to Loric," Cymbril whispered, lifting Miwa in her arms. "I wish you could talk to me."

  Miwa reached up a paw and batted affectionately at Cymbril's face.

  She put Miwa down. The cat pattered just ahead of her, a pale ghost shape in the gloom, her tail held high. "I'll follow you, then," Cymbril murmured.

  Cymbril almost never came to this part of the Rake. It was dark in a way she couldn't quite explain and didn't like—a darkness that had nothing to do with the scarcity of lamps. There seemed to be more spider webs in the door frames and among the bracing beams overhead. The floors were unswept, and the timbers of the walls had a dank, unhealthy smell. The maidservants circulated rumors that Rombol kept fierce fighting dogs (or maybe they were wolves) in cages somewhere nearby. Ahead, the passageway of Inbrace dead-ended in a kind of cramped court two stories high.

  To Cymbril, it seemed a court by default, its walls formed by the back walls of other structures and levels. Over long years and many reconstructions, these buildings had almost grown together. It was like a cavern in the city's innards, an imperfectly stitched seam in the dark. She edged warily into the strange mildewy place.

  At the center of the court was a grotesque statue Cymbril hated. She'd seen it before only from the entrance arch and had been disinclined to approach any closer. It was made of some black pitted wood and represented two battling giants. Clawing and throttling, the two giants were draped with spider webs. Torchmoss tufts higher up cast a faint, cold glow over the warriors, the shadows making their faces more horrible and savage. In the webs, Cymbril saw the many tiny dangling, jiggling bodies of the weavers.

  But there was something more ominous than the statue. Across the court, farthest from the lamplight of Inbrace, stood two ironbound doors. The one on the left, Cymbril knew, was the residence of the Eye Women. In the door's lowest quarter was a hinged hatchway that must be for the use of the fat frog.

  A single candle burned in an iron fixture between the two doors.

  The door on the right—

  Truth be told, Cymbril had not noticed this second door before. Probably her view had been blocked by the statue. This portal looked the same as the other but without the frog hatch.

  In the door's center, a placard hung from a spike. Letters were burned into the board in a neat script. They said:

  Night Market

  Now Open

  Purchase or Perish

  Enter at Your Peril

  Not Responsible

  Knock First

  By long habit, Cymbril thrust her hand into her pocket to touch the reassuring shapes of the stone and hairpin. Neither, of course, was there. She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the unpleasant odor of the place, and crossed to the Night Market door, giving the statue a wide berth.

  As she moved lightly over the moldy, water-swollen timbers of the floor, she half expected the Eye Women to fling open their doorway or the frog to burst forth. But the only sound was the tread of her leather soles. Maybe the gloom of the place brought a clarity to her thoughts—because all at once she understood what the crone had meant by "She's the one as found it." The hallway. The magical hallway that no one else but Cymbril had been able to find. Of course, the old women were witches. Cymbril was certain of that. They were cousins to Ranunculus, the sorcerer. They must have moved aboard the Rake because they wanted what was in his storerooms! Was it possible they hadn't found those rooms in all the years? And what did it mean that Cymbril had found them and revealed the discovery?

  A memory sprang into her mind like a touch of ice. The fat frog had been watching when she'd led Rombol to those secret rooms. She recalled Rombol shooing it away with a hiss. If the frog was a servant to the Eye Women—if it reported to them—then they knew where those storerooms were.

  She trembled, but there was no time to worry about such questions at the moment. Lips clamped firmly, she raised a fist to the Night Market door and rapped three times.

  A lock turned and the door swung inward, creaking. Hardly daring to breathe, Cymbril took a step forward to the threshold.

  Beyond the door a wooden stairway plunged beneath cobwebs and through darkness to what seemed a large firelit space four or five stories down. It was impossible. The Rake had only one level below this one. The place at the stairway's foot, if it existed at the distance it appeared to, would be under the ground. The stair did not run straight, but twisted slightly from side to side, the steps all angled differently, their intervals irregular.

  Cymbril pressed her hands to her face. Chill sweat seeped onto her skin, and she shrank back, suddenly lightheaded. If all she'd stood to gain was peace with the Curdlebrees, she would have turned right around and gone back to her bunk. But her purpose was to help Loric, too.

  It's not really dangerous, he'd said.

  Just another market, she told herself. I have money for it and things to buy. Since when is a paying customer unwelcome? And besides, if she gave up now, it would be only her fear that ha
d stood in the way of success.

  Swallowing on a dry throat, she advanced again.

  As she set foot on the top step, two hands shot out of the blackness to her left, fingers raised as if to bar her way—two hands with long claws, the skin a hideous blue-white.

  Cymbril shrieked, leaping backwards.

  The hands spread themselves as if in exasperation, flapping their voluminous sleeves. The gesture asked her: Are you coming in or not?

  Gasping for breath, she tried to see who might own the hands. But in the alcove past the door frame, there was only the dark. Unless perhaps, barely visible, two points of light glittered. Eyes.

  She clutched her collar and approached again.

  The hands rose preventively once more, and now a low, harsh voice spoke:

  "By whose invitation?"

  Cymbril froze, hovering on the edge of flight, but she remembered Loric's instructions. To get in, she had to mention the names of the Eye Women, who had organized the Night Market. Miwa had told Loric their names.

  Cymbril glanced down. Miwa was sitting resolutely beside her, tail twitching as she faced the doorkeeper.

  Cymbril cleared her throat. "My hostesses are Mistress Atymnia and Mistress Fennella."

  Now one hand turned palm-up and extended itself toward her. When she eyed it in repulsed confusion, the voice said, "Admission fee."

  Cymbril had heard nothing of this and didn't like it, but she saw no choice. With her left hand, she undid the drawstring of the purse that, as Loric had done, she'd bound to her right forearm. She eased out one coin, whose half glowed fiercely, the rest of the disc featureless and black. She closed the purse, held her hand well above the doorkeeper's, and dropped the coin.

  The yellowish claws closed around the money, curling up like the legs of a dead spider, and the hands dropped away. Cymbril could no longer see the pair of eyes, if she'd seen them at all. The darkness on the stairway was complete.