Tarnished Are the Stars

by Rosiee Thor

  Anna whipped around. A girl in pink, perfect and poised, with an outrageous floral hat, restrained her. Anna snarled. She didn’t care if the pink lady interfered. As long as Anna got her revenge, she didn’t care what came after. That thought alone had driven her from Thatcher’s kitchen, through the Settlement, and over the garden wall.

  Now Nathaniel stood before her, looking shaken but clean. Anna was dirty and bloody and angry; how dare he be anything other than the same? He didn’t deserve to be clean. He deserved her knife in his chest, and she deserved her revenge.

  But revenge was just a fancy word for murder.

  Could she even do it? Could she lift the blade and plunge it into living flesh? Could she kill someone?

  Yes.

  She could do it for Roman—for Roman, who would never have wanted her to kill. But Roman couldn’t tell her to stop. He would never tell her anything again.

  Anna lunged, hitting Nathaniel with her forearm, and again, the petite pink girl fought her in Nathaniel’s stead. The girl grabbed hold of Anna’s shirt, ripping it down the back and jerking her away from Nathaniel.

  “Give me that,” the girl snarled, plucking the knife from Anna’s fingers before Anna could think to lash out. “You’re going to hurt someone, Red.”

  “That’s the idea.” Anna swung her fist and reached for the knife, but the girl pointed it toward her, nicking the skin along Anna’s fingertips. Pain blossomed at her extremities and she recoiled. Now her own blood stained her clothes, too, a crimson badge.

  A growl erupted from Anna’s throat as animalistic rage surged through her body. She didn’t need a knife to hurt someone. But before she could lay a hand on Nathaniel, the other girl grabbed Anna by the hair and kicked at her knees. Anna tripped and staggered back, but before she could recover, the girl put her in a headlock, Anna’s own knife pressed against her neck.

  “Now,” the girl said, “why did you attack us?”

  Anna didn’t move. She wanted to, but she knew the second she breathed too deeply, shifted too much, the knife would become acquainted with her veins.

  “Not you,” Anna said, voice strangled. “Him.”

  Though the girl stood considerably shorter, with Anna held at such an awkward angle, she was able to speak directly into her ear. “That man is the Commissioner’s heir. Are you sure you want to admit to treason?” Her words brushed Anna’s neck, a blistering wind, too warm, too close.

  Nathaniel rose to his feet, approaching with a hand raised. “Eliza, I don’t think—”

  The girl, Eliza, tightened her hold on Anna, her touch searing an invisible brand into Anna’s skin. “This ruffian just tried to kill you.” She glanced at Anna with a critical eye. “Is that blood?”

  “It will be if you don’t let me at him.” Anna ground her teeth, practically choking on the floral scent of her captor, the fragrance clouding her mind. If Eliza would only let her go, she’d be able to think straight again.

  Nathaniel sighed, leaning back against the garden wall. “Anna, please.”

  Eliza’s grip loosened on Anna, but the knife still pressed against her flesh at a dangerous angle. She glanced from Anna to Nathaniel and back again. “You know each other?”

  “She’s the Technician.” Nathaniel sank into a seated position on the ledge of the garden bed.

  “The what?” Eliza asked.

  “My father’s most wanted criminal. She’s responsible for practically the entire illegal tech market. I had her in custody, but then—”

  “Actually, I don’t care.” Eliza’s hold on Anna’s throat tightened.

  “He killed a child!” Anna spat, and Eliza’s fingers scraped against her skin.

  Nathaniel put his head in his hands. “He’s really dead, then.”

  “Do you think I’d be here if he wasn’t?” Anna struggled against Eliza—if she could only reach Nathaniel, this would all be over. “You saw him die. You killed him. Did you think he’d somehow miraculously survive?”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “I know what I did.”

  “What did you do?” Eliza asked Nathaniel. Then, turning to Anna, she raised her eyebrow, the small mole just above it bouncing into her hairline. “What did he do?”

  Nathaniel curled in on himself, burying his face in the fabric of his sleeves. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He repeated it over and over until it became a barely audible mumble.

  Anna wished she could curl into a ball like that, hide from the world, hide from her feelings.

  “All right.” Eliza sighed. “One of you had better explain all this, or I flay the girl.”

  Anna’s breath caught as Eliza’s eyes narrowed. Though the other girl made a show of tightening her hold on Anna, it didn’t feel threatening. She was bluffing, and only Anna, who could feel Eliza’s rapid heartbeat against her shoulder, knew the truth. But the realization struck Anna with more fear than relief; the girl who dressed like a flower—smelled like one, too—had a plan, while Anna’s dissolved into nothing the longer she stood trapped in the garden.

  Nathaniel’s head snapped up, revealing puffy eyes. “She doesn’t deserve to die.”

  Eliza frowned. “No one deserves to die.” She slid around Anna to face her, but she kept the knife up and at the ready. “Don’t try to run. I may be small, but I’m faster and fiercer than you by leagues.” She fixed Anna with sharp eyes, almost black in the night. “I won’t play the peace weaver without information. What happened, and what do you want?”

  Anna could run, and maybe Eliza would catch her, but in those skirts—nearly as wide as Eliza was tall—Anna wasn’t so sure. But Anna did not want to run. She could still fight, even if she couldn’t win.

  “He has to pay for what he did.” Anna felt the words fall flat even as she said them. “I want him to bleed as much as Roman did.” She locked eyes with Nathaniel, watching as any remaining resistance flitted from his gaze.

  “Maybe I deserve that,” Nathaniel murmured.

  Eliza shot him a cutting look. “No one is dying tonight.”

  “Why not? I want to kill him and he wants to let me.” Anna reached for the knife, but Eliza caught her hand. Her touch sent gooseflesh up Anna’s arms.

  “What do you want?” Eliza repeated, taking a step closer, dark, endless eyes boring into Anna’s.

  Anna flinched. Her stare made Anna’s stomach writhe. Breathing was harder with Eliza’s eyes on her. She pushed the discomfort away and moved forward until they were only inches apart, until she could see every sharp angle and every soft curve of the girl’s flawless face. “I told you. I want him dead.”

  “No, you don’t. Tell me what you really want.”

  “I did!” But the word want echoed in Anna’s ears, a harsh beat of an invisible drum asking her over and over.

  What did she want?

  She wanted Nathaniel to pay for what he’d done to Roman. She wanted Thatcher and Ruby to forgive her. She wanted Eliza to stop asking, stop touching, stop looking. And she wanted to stay there, never moving, never choosing, poised in the moment before falling.

  Eliza’s lip curled. “If you’d really wanted him dead, you would have tried to kill me, too, when I let go. If you truly wanted a dead body, you’d have one—maybe even two.” She flipped the knife expertly in her other hand and lowered it so it no longer pointed at Anna. “You might want him dead, but I don’t think you want to kill him.”

  Anna shrank beneath her words. Eliza had read her like a book, unraveled her like cloth. No one had ever spent so long analyzing her movements, her actions, her intent.

  Coming here to the Settlement, let alone the Commissioner’s manor, might have been the most foolish thing she’d ever done, risking her life, and risking Mechan for a shot at revenge. If she didn’t kill Nathaniel now, how would she justify it?

  “Think, Red,” Eliza said. “If you kill him, he dies—ceases to exist, to feel. He cannot know the pain he put you through, and he can’t ever make up for it.” Eliza’s eyes glanced to the knife
in her hand. “So if what you truly want is revenge, then take the knife and we’ll see how you fair. My guess is I’ll have you in a headlock again in seconds, and unlike you, I don’t hesitate when I want to take a life.” A smirk flashed across her lips as though she was imagining it, savoring it. “But if what you want is justice, you’ll tell me what happened, and you’ll see what an excellent ally I can be.”

  “Excuse me if I find it difficult to trust you with my own knife pointed at me,” Anna growled.

  Eliza smiled, turning her hand to direct the blade toward herself. “Trust is forged not by the direction of the blade but by the wielder’s choice not to use it.” She offered Anna the hilt.

  Anna’s eyes bounced from Eliza’s face to the knife to Nathaniel. It was a test. Eliza spun words not unlike Thatcher, with a preference for proverb. The blade was just a blade, and Anna’s power now lay in this choice to put her trust in the noble girl, rather than her weapon.

  She shook her head, refusing the knife. “Justice.” Anna tried the word on her tongue, but she couldn’t tell if she liked it. She’d wanted blood, she’d wanted death—but Eliza was right. Revenge lasted only a moment, and then it would be over. If she killed Nathaniel, she wouldn’t live to enjoy it. And on the off chance that she wasn’t immediately killed by an officer or Eliza herself, she’d almost certainly live to regret it. “What kind of justice are you offering?”

  Eliza smiled. “That depends entirely on you.”

  Openness wasn’t a trait Anna had ever prided herself on, preferring the comfort of secrets, but they didn’t feel like secrets anymore. They wouldn’t keep her safe now. They were only walls, protecting her from a different foe.

  So Anna told her everything: the locket, the betrayal, the boy now dead and buried. Eliza didn’t look at Anna with kindness or with hatred as she spoke but with eyes that listened.

  When Anna finished, Eliza leaned back against the hedge. “It seems we have an enemy in common,” she said at last. “The Commissioner has caused you a great deal of pain, and he stands in my way, too. Nathaniel may have hurt you, but I don’t think he’s your real enemy—the Commissioner is the reason he went after you in the first place.”

  Nathaniel averted his eyes, and Anna’s stomach twisted with something distressingly akin to pity. In a way, the Commissioner had pulled all their strings.

  “If he’s poisoning his people,” Eliza continued, “and we can present enough evidence to that effect, we may very well be able to remove him from power—and the longer he’s in power, the worse it will be for both of us.”

  Anna had fantasized about rushing the Settlement with a thousand soldiers, or creating some type of explosive made up of all the tech the Commissioner hated, but she had never thought of a legal approach to her problem. She’d never had any avenue to pursue one. But with two allies on the inside, she might actually succeed. Maybe then she could return to Mechan, if not with pride and triumph, then at least with welcome arms awaiting her.

  Anna hadn’t thought she’d walk away from this encounter, never expected to live long enough to make the next move, a realization that struck her with a force to rival Eliza’s fists. “You want to help me overthrow the Commissioner?” Anna asked, well aware she spoke treason.

  “No.” Eliza shook her head, a smirk rising from her lips in a way that made Anna’s stomach crawl, curl, clench. “I want you to help us overthrow the Commissioner.”

  Any ruined evening could be salvaged with a knife fight.

  Eliza had thought her visit to Earth Adjacent might be dull—infiltration rarely required use of a blade—but thus far, it had exceeded expectations.

  “How do you propose we do that, exactly?” Anna asked, lowering her voice. “Overthrow the Commissioner, I mean.”

  Eliza frowned, flipping the girl’s blade back and forth between her hands. It looked to be of the kitchen variety, sporting remnants of piecrust, but still sufficiently sharp. It hardly measured up to Eliza’s weaponry, but it would do its job well enough—not unlike the disheveled girl before her.

  Anna was, in a word, a disaster. From her too-red head to her too-worn shoes, nothing about her was remotely decent—not even for something as undignified as a coup—but with a bit of polishing, Eliza could make use of her.

  Tucking the knife into her bodice, Eliza pushed herself away from the hedge. “Let’s begin by finding you a change of clothes.”

  “What’s wrong with—” Anna paused, glancing at her bloodstained clothes. “Right.”

  “Nathaniel?” Eliza nudged his shoulder.

  “Yes. What?” He startled with each word, as though the sound of his own voice frightened him.

  “Care to lead the way inside? We can’t very well do all our plotting in the garden.” Eliza gestured up at the manor, the windows now dark.

  He complied, albeit slowly. Clearly, he’d experienced something of a shock, the ramifications of which Eliza would tend to eventually. For now, she needed to get Anna out of sight and into a clean shirt.

  From the moment Eliza laid eyes on their attacker, she knew she wanted to tame her. Another operative might have simply eliminated the threat. But for better or worse, Eliza had decided to let Anna live.

  The eyes are the window to the soul, fragile like glass, the Queen had often said. Toss the right stone, and you may well break through. She spoke of interrogation, of course, but the same principle applied now. Though Anna’s blade had been sharp, something in her face had softened Eliza. Behind the rage, there had been pain in Anna’s eyes—the kind of pain that came with loss. Eliza knew that pain, and so she’d made a choice based on instinct rather than tactics.

  It was the choice Marla would have made.

  Mercy was never a weapon in Marla’s hands, but Eliza learned to wield it from her just the same. Marla would have made a terrible set of Eyes for the Queen, too kind and honest to deal in secrets, to deliver death. Still, she’d made Eliza what she was—and paid dearly for it.

  “Not the salon,” Eliza hissed as Nathaniel led them on toward the sitting room they’d occupied earlier. “Somewhere less conspicuous, like your bedroom.”

  “M-my room?” Nathaniel withered before her.

  Eliza huffed. “We don’t have time for modesty. Look at her!” She gestured to Anna’s unseemly appearance. “She’s positively repellant!”

  “I’m standing right here.”

  But Anna made no further argument, following as Nathaniel ushered them into his bedroom.

  It was a smaller room than Eliza expected—larger than her apartment on the Tower but smaller than her guest room in the manor. There was an oak bedframe with a canopy in one corner, and a matching desk opposite littered with papers. Aside from the wardrobe, wedged between the wall and the foot of the bed, the room was empty. Where were his things?

  He had no things. He had no one.

  All the loneliness inked into Nathaniel’s letters rushed at her like a shooting star, and it was all Eliza could do not to let it show. Instead, she crossed to the wardrobe, hiding her face as she rummaged through the drawers for a suitable change of clothes for Anna.

  Eliza had thought she’d been alone all this time, friendless and estranged by the nobles on the Tower. But that was nothing to the isolation and abuse suffered in this room.

  Gathering herself, Eliza turned and handed Anna a clean button-up and a pair of trousers. Hardly an ensemble for polite company, but it would do for now.

  Anna made a face as she snatched them, her glare piercing Eliza with far more precision than she’d had with a knife. A dangerous storm churned in her blue eyes, something alarming yet oddly familiar lurking below the surface.

  Eliza forgot, for a moment, they were Anna’s eyes. A calm face framed with sleek black locks unfurled across her vision, and there she was, as real as she’d ever been: Marla.

  It had been three years—quieter, emptier, lonelier years than ever Eliza could have imagined. How she’d missed those green eyes, those perfect dimples, that
generous smile. What she wouldn’t give to have them all back. But Eliza had chosen the Queen’s service; she’d chosen a life alone. She had no room in her heart for regret.

  “Stars! Would you turn around? I promise I’ll change—you don’t have to watch me.”

  Eliza jumped, and Anna’s angry freckles reappeared. Marla was gone.

  “Right.” Eliza turned on her heel and marched to the other side of the room, leaning over Nathaniel’s desk. She let her cheeks redden, embarrassment a luxury she did not often indulge. How could she have lost control like that? How had she let such an odd daydream distract her? Anna and Marla were nothing alike. To begin, Anna’s eyes were blue, and Marla’s were green. Anna was fierce, and Marla was calm. Anna was rebellious, and Marla was mannered. Anna was impulsive, and Marla was cautious.

  Most of all, Anna was alive, and Marla was dead.

  And yet, even as Eliza’s mind enumerated their differences, she found the parallel running through them both, guiding them from their cores. Marla had always been composed, and yet she acted on emotion, letting her heart guide her choices.

  Anna did the same. It had been anger that drove her to attack. It was compassion—though Eliza had needed to guide her to it—that had stopped her hand. And it was love for her family and her home that kept Anna there.

  Anna had convictions, and now Eliza understood her. This, she could use. She had a new weapon for her armory.

  Two, if she counted the knife.

  Nathaniel never thought he’d commit treason, but a lot had changed overnight.

  As Anna and Eliza discussed something—Nathaniel wasn’t listening—he watched their easy exchange. Anna gestured as she spoke, and Eliza leaned toward her, hands planted on either corner of the desk. Their initial meeting had been so very fraught, and as best he could tell, their sudden acquaintanceship continued in the same vein, with each of them flinging insults, venom in their smiles. But as contentious as they were, it seemed to stem from a mutual, if begrudging, respect.