The Star Shard

by Frederic S. Durbin

  "If it's a trick," Gerta said, "you'll be very sorry."

  "And if it's not, will we be squared away?"

  After a long, dark glance, Gerta nodded.

  "Give me your hand on it."

  Reluctantly, Gerta shook Cymbril's hand.

  "Have a good market day," Cymbril said, and jumped down from the wagon.

  But as she passed the wagon's bed, the glitter of round eyes startled her. There, hidden among a pile of empty sacks, was the fat frog. Cymbril frowned, gazing from the frog to Gerta.

  "Oh, that thing's always following us," Gerta said with an air of disgust, glancing over her shoulder. "We're so sick of chasing it away that now we usually just ignore it."

  This new fact puzzled Cymbril, but she had too much else to think about. At least it was nice to know the frog sometimes followed around people other than her.

  She caught a tongue-lashing from Wiltwain for going missing—and because the right sleeve of her dress was ripped half off. The Overseer turned livid when she said she'd gone to find Gerta. But when Cymbril told him she thought the trouble with the sisters would be over now, Wiltwain looked at her curiously.

  "You didn't hurt Gerta, did you?" he asked.

  "Of course not."

  "And you didn't cast a spell and turn her into something nonhuman?"

  By the moon and stars, I hope not, she thought. Wiltwain's conjectures often struck uncomfortably close to the truth. "How would I have done that?"

  The corner of his mouth twisted. "With you, Cymbril, all things are possible."

  "She's fine."

  "Well, then, if you've mended the fence, that dress is a small price to pay. Go and change. Since we're indoors, brown is too drab, anyway. Wear the red-and-gold. And comb that hair."

  Again Rombol did not keep Loric on display for much of the day. Before noon the Master withdrew him from the market to rest him for the night's journey. From her balcony, Cymbril watched them go, and she was sure Loric glanced up at her with a smile. She envied him. After the mostly sleepless night, she would have liked nothing better than to find her own bed and crawl under the covers.

  Rain sluiced down on the ramp outside, making a mire of the fields and roads. The folk of Gallander came in stamping and dripping in sodden cloaks. Cymbril sang them "Blue Were Her Eyes," which had a beautiful melody and was one of the songs that crowds everywhere requested the most. Cymbril had worked her performance of it into a high art. She knew when to pause, when to increase the sound, when to fade—she knew how to shape and color the notes, drawing the deepest shades of meaning from the words. Usually by the end of it, many listeners' eyes were full of tears.

  Green were the lane and the leaves above;

  Red were the roses around my love.

  Black was her hair, her skin like the dew;

  Her heart was a fire that warmed me through.

  Bright was the sky and golden the land,

  Soft was her breath as she clasped my hand,

  And blue as the ocean, blue were her eyes.

  Red were the banners and crimson the morn;

  To arms we rose at the long, loud horn.

  Dark was my heart as I went to sea,

  Golden the locket she gave to me.

  Black was her hair in a scarlet band,

  Silver her tears as she clasped my hand,

  And blue as the ocean, blue were her eyes.

  Fierce was the battle for land and crown,

  Bloody the day when the walls came down.

  Black were the ravens that followed the fight;

  Deep was the prison still as night.

  Hope was the ember her image fanned;

  In every dream she clasped my hand,

  And blue as the ocean, blue were her eyes.

  Long were my years in the darkling grave,

  Locked in the dungeon beyond the wave;

  Fair was the morning that I went free,

  Borne by the ship that came for me.

  Gold was the light on the well-loved strand.

  I knew that soon she would clasp my hand,

  And blue as the ocean, blue were her eyes.

  Green were the lane and the leaves above;

  Red were the roses around my love.

  White was her hair and cold the fire;

  Strong were her sons by another sire.

  Bright was the sky and golden the land,

  Silver her tears as she clasped my hand,

  And blue as the ocean, blue were her eyes.

  Why were love songs written in such a way? Did love never go unhindered? Was it always unfulfilled and inseparable from pain?

  And why, when Cymbril sang of young men, did she see only Loric's face? To think of him romantically would be foolishness on the scale of Gerta's and Berta's. Loric was Fey, of a different world—a world as far removed from hers as Mount Aruna from the Sea of Shalii. Still, he had helped her. He did not seem anything like the perilous Sidhe in stories.

  Once more, at the risk of missing her own supper, she found herself waiting for Runa and the tray bound for Loric. Cymbril was running out of things with which to pay Runa off. This time she used a silver ring set with a piece of jade. She'd gotten it last year at a market in Highcircle, when a fine lady had stood alone at the end of the day, weeping as she listened to Cymbril's last song. After Cymbril had finished, the lady had torn the ring from a cord about her neck, flung it to the ground at Cymbril's feet, and glided away into the twilight. "May you be better served than I," the lady had said to Cymbril. Picking it up, she'd felt how warm the ring was from resting against the lady's skin.

  "Better served"—doesn't she know I am a servant? Cymbril had wondered. Later she understood that the lady had been speaking of love.

  Now was the time to part with the ring. She'd never particularly liked it. And she had to know if the skeleton key would really work.

  When Cymbril held out the ring, Runa tipped her sun-browned face to one side. "Do you fancy the Fey boy?"

  "No." Cymbril felt her cheeks heating up. "I'm asking him questions, learning things I need to know."

  Runa tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. "He just wants to steal you away to the land inside the mountains. It's what the Fey do, you know. It's why they come among us."

  Cymbril took the tray as Runa examined the ring.

  "This stone isn't very pretty," Runa said, and then dropped the ring into her pocket.

  "No," Cymbril agreed. And then, feeling it was a custom she should uphold, she added, "May you be better served than I."

  When she'd slid back the bar and opened the door, Loric bowed to her with his usual politeness and prayed his Fey prayer over the food. She marveled at his patience. How could he refrain from demanding to know if she'd gotten the key?

  "Did it go well with Gerta and Berta?" he asked.

  "Yes. Thank you."

  "Best not to thank me until we see the results." Grinning, he began to eat. "So you went to a Night Market. I wish I could have gone with you."

  Checking the hallway for any approach, Cymbril took her father's glowing stone from her pocket, then stepped into the chamber and pulled the door shut. Anyone who came along would see the wooden beam out of its brackets, but this way she and Loric could talk more freely. Watching his face in the magic light, she realized she'd just enclosed herself with him in a very small space. A nervous thrill shot through her.

  "That is a lovely one," Loric said, admiring the stone.

  She wondered what he might tell her about the blue-green stone, but at the moment she was in a hurry. Having taken the box from her other pocket, she handed it to him. "Here's a present for you. Although you paid for it, so I suppose it's not really a present."

  Carefully, he took the box and untied the red twine. But when he looked inside, he frowned.

  Cymbril felt a stab of panic. "Is it the wrong kind? Won't it work?"

  "For opening this lock, no, it won't work." He reached into the box with his thumb and forefing
er and held up a stubby, greasy chicken bone, its gristly ends gnawed clean.

  Cymbril seized the box, looked inside, and shook it upside down. It was otherwise quite empty.

  "They tricked me!" she said, feeling both sick at heart and furious.

  "I doubt the skeletons did," said Loric. "They are generally quite honest. But someone seems to have made a switch." He sighed, setting the chicken bone down on his empty tray.

  Cymbril guessed the truth at once. The only time the box had been out of her hand was on the Eye Women's countertop. "The difference has been exacted." The old women had gotten their full price by taking the key. Squeezing her hands into fists, she told Loric the story.

  He listened quietly and then nodded. "So actually, you weren't even cheated. That sounds like the way Night Markets are run. There are rules they follow."

  Cymbril's anger at the women—at herself for setting down the box—came out as anger against Loric. "Then why didn't you tell me all the rules? I had the key in my hand. If I'd known ... if I hadn't..."

  If I hadn't been so determined to get the Nixielixir. Miwa had done everything a cat could do to keep Cymbril away from the Eye Women's shop.

  She glared back into Loric's brown eyes and forced herself to calm down. "I'm sorry," she said at last. "I spent all your money."

  "You bought the Nixielixir, which is what you went after," he said. "Which was my idea. If it makes the two girls happy, your trip was not wasted and the money was well spent."

  Cymbril glanced down, startled, at the touch of his hand on her arm.

  "Thank you for buying the key," he said softly.

  She nodded, and he withdrew his hand—looking, for the first time, a little self-conscious.

  Cymbril took a breath and exhaled. In that moment, gazing at Loric's iron collar and chain, she came to a realization. She lived inside a cage, as she'd known for a long time. It was a nice cage, with friends and comfort, food, clothing, freedom to roam about, and, most of all, the chance to sing—but it was a cage. She wanted out of it.

  She wanted freedom badly enough to do whatever it would take.

  "There must be another way to get that collar open," she said. "Promise I can come with you, and I'll help you escape."

  His large eyes peered at her, the light making gold sparks dance in their depths. For a long time, he said nothing.

  What was he thinking? Was he laughing, wondering what more a slave girl could do, when she'd brought back a chicken bone from the Night Market—when she'd never been able to escape herself? Cymbril bit her lip. "Can't I come? Is it such a hard thing to promise?" Don't you want me to come?

  "Oh, you can come, and I will be glad for your company. It's just that you make it sound like a 'deal,' like something Master Rombol would say."

  Cymbril shrugged. "Sometimes deals make sense," she said. "When people give each other their word, both of them try hard. If they try hard together, that's powerful. The Urrmsh rowing together move the Rake." She wrapped her hands around the chain's mooring, the bolted half-ring that anchored it to the wall. It was perfectly immobile, even when she tugged with all her strength.

  "I suppose that is true," said Loric. "Well, we have no more money to spend on skeleton keys, so we will need the real one, the key made for this lock. In the daytime Master Rombol's keys are fastened to his belt. At night they hang on a hook beside his bed."

  "Did Miwa tell you that, too?"

  "I started to tell you before—it is the same way I saw the lights shining in your pocket. Sometimes pictures come to my mind by themselves, and I see objects that are nearby. The pictures are clearer when I am looking for something specific, such as the key."

  He paused, chewing a biscuit. Just as he seemed about to say more, boots clunked along the corridor.

  Cymbril's heart raced. The footsteps were coming straight for the door.

  Loric gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. "You will be all right," he whispered. "Give some thought to how you might get the Master's key, but don't go after it yet. I will tell you when."

  Wiltwain the Overseer yanked open the door. He didn't like it when he saw Cymbril kneeling in the gloom beside Loric, but she thought the Overseer also looked relieved. He'd probably been bracing himself to discover Loric missing. "Haven't you a half-dram of sense?" Wiltwain growled at Cymbril. "The cooks can bring him his supper. Go back to your bunk. If you don't have enough chores, we'll find you more."

  Loric returned the tray and thanked Cymbril. He'd eaten everything. She was startled at how much time had elapsed in what had felt like a moment.

  "Master Wiltwain," Loric said, "will you take me to the relief closet?"

  Wiltwain fingered the jangling keys at his own belt and frowned. Cymbril moved out of his way as he leaned against the door frame. "Can't take you anywhere," he said, "until Master Rombol gets back with the key to your collar. He's at a feast with the Master of Gallander."

  "This cannot wait," said Loric.

  Wiltwain scratched his ear. "Cymbril, bring us a scullery bucket."

  Cymbril bowed and hurried away with the tray. So Loric was right about the key—if Wiltwain himself didn't have a spare, there was only one that could open the lock.

  In the dark watches, Cymbril awoke. The only light was the dim yellow glow of the hall's lamp leaking around the edges of her door. She rubbed her face, wondering what had woken her. Probably the blanket—the air was too close and hot for covers. But as she pushed the ragged bedding aside, she heard a sound: Rombol's hound barking somewhere on a lower deck. She raised her head to listen.

  It wasn't Bale's moon bark, nor did it sound like the way he upbraided cats who got on his bad side. There was real anger and urgency in his tone, and at times he broke into a yi-yi-yiii that Cymbril had never heard.

  But the Rake was rolling as usual, and even Cymbril's curiosity couldn't overcome her drowsiness. Tonight she was happy not to be at the center of things, where the barking was aimed and running footsteps converged. She rolled over and sighed, glad to be comfortable and alone in the dark, without a duty or an expectant crowd to entertain.

  After a while, Bale was quiet again, and Cymbril was asleep.

  ***

  Two nights later, after a bustling market in Grovender, Cymbril was mending the sleeve she'd torn in her scuffle with Gerta. The decks jolted, and the Rake began its journey to Banburnish Crossing. For the past two mornings and evenings, Cymbril had been trying to catch a glimpse of the Curdlebree girls, but every time she tried to slip away to the cloth dyers' stall, someone had found her and put her to work carrying this or toting that.

  Still wearing her singing dress—fine green velvet brocaded in gold—she sat on her bunk with her feet tucked beneath her. The Rake's arms squealed and boomed, squealed and boomed, pulling the city wagon into darkness. The decks tilted, and Cymbril guessed the wheelman had turned from the road's verge, setting a course over rain-soft, uneven ground.

  It made sense that Rombol would pay eight hundred fifty gold pieces for a Sidhe who could see in the dark. The Rake could not travel on the roads. Its steel claws would demolish any pavement they crossed, churning up cobbles like the soil of a plowed field. Nor could Rombol cut across farms or mow down the King's forests. The Rake must follow the wildest country where no one built or planted, where bogs and chasms threatened even the Rake's giant wheels. Torches on the bow did not drive back much of the night. Rombol groused bitterly on moonless evenings when travel became impossible, costing the merchants good business days.

  Cymbril gazed deep into the glowing stone from her father. Sometimes she pretended the stone was a window through time and space, that somewhere on the other side of its blue-green fire, her father was also holding it, looking deep inside it just as she was. She would turn the stone and stare harder, hoping for a glimpse of his face.

  Loric would be on the Rake's bow this evening, searching the blackness ahead and warning the helmsman of obstacles. If Cymbril was to free him, the first step would be to lea
rn how he was guarded when he worked.

  She'd take extra measures for secrecy tonight. She rummaged in her trunk for the long, hooded cloak she wore when it rained. Its dark gray color would help her blend into the shadows. With the hood pulled low over her face, she closed her door softly and flitted through the least-traveled alleys, heading for the prow.

  Chapter 11

  The Star Shard

  For most of the way, Cymbril followed the edge of the second-highest deck. She preferred to be in the fresh air, and the profusion of apple and pear trees growing in the deck's deep soil beds draped masking branches above her.

  It was a clear night under a waning crescent moon, the stars brilliant and the air warm, scented of mud and the mustiness of a swamp. The Rake's claws, slicing into the marshes, made softer noises than usual. Water gurgled around the wheels. Beyond the rail, Cymbril glimpsed the clumped heads of trees brushing the lower decks. The rolling plain of moon-washed leaves stretched around the giant vessel for as far as she could see, parting before the bow, whispering along the sides. With its wheels and claws hidden among the trunks below, the Rake seemed a real ship plowing the waves of a silvery sea. Crickets sang in the Rake's groves, while tens of thousands shrilled back from the forest outside.

  Cymbril padded up a stairway, avoiding the steps that squeaked. On the second step from the top, she recognized the shape of the fat frog. As she edged past him, he watched her with his wide mouth turned down, as if she had no right to be using his stairway.

  The bow was darker than usual, for which she was grateful. Sidling between the vine-covered wall of a grape arbor and the winery, she spied a row of barrels and crouched behind them. Raising her head, she saw a single lantern flickering on a pole and four cloaked figures at the very front of the foredeck.

  One was unmistakably Rombol, thick and hulking. Wan light glinted on the armor and helmets of two men-at-arms. Past them, on the triangular pulpit sticking out from the prow, glimmered a small shape that could only be Loric. His pale hand rested on the rail, and the chain around his neck jingled as he took a few steps to the right. The row of torches stood unlit in their brackets along the front rail.