The Black Star (Book 3) (58 page)

He filled sheet after sheet with the scaled-down drawings. He didn't stop until it grew too dark to make out the maps. While Ast looked over the copies, Dante sat back against the interior of the trunk and rubbed his sore eyes.

"This isn't contiguous," Ast declared after some minutes of study.

Dante's eyes flew open. "So you recognize it?"

"The perspective is confusing. But some of the landmarks are obvious."

"Do you see any...directions?"

He shook his head. "It feels like something's missing, doesn't it? Perhaps it will make more sense when it's complete."

Maybe it would, but Dante tried to stay up to catch Somburr anyway, hoping the man would bring back something useful. But wrangling the squirrel all day had been exhausting, and he fell asleep immediately after eating his dinner of free lorbells.

A spike of sympathetic pain woke him before dawn. He moved his vision into the squirrel's just in time to see a disgusted-looking man draw back a candlestick and swing it. Dante's second sight went black.

"Something wrong?" Lew whispered from across the dark round.

"Got my spy. But they didn't understand what it was. I've already got a replacement on the way."

"Well, that's good," he said over Cee's snores. "Speaking of, Somburr came back keenly interested in somewhere called the Spire of the Earths. He didn't say much, but—"

"Where is he now?" Dante said.

"He already went back to Corl. He's crazy, I think." Silhouetted, Lew twisted his hands in his lap. "I've been practicing at puppeting the animals. Like you do. I thought I might send a squirrel or a mouse up to the Spire and have a look around."

"I don't think that's a great idea. I'll have the rest of the maps copied in another day or two. Then I can see about this Spire of the Earths."

"I feel like I could be making better use of my time."

"It's not about that," Dante said. "It's about getting this done right. No mistakes. Nothing else matters."

"I suppose it doesn't." Lew lapsed into silence.

Dante sent a replacement squirrel up to the palace. As the skies lightened, he searched for an open window. This took far longer than it should have. So did the wait for a servant to enter the map room. By the time he had the new squirrel inside, it had cost him several hours. Dante bent to his work with equal parts frustration and vigor. A couple hours later, he reached out his hand for a new sheet of paper, but Lew had gone off somewhere. He stood to get it himself and saw they were almost out of it.

While he resumed copying the drawings on the walls, Ast studied the previous ones. Cee was out on the flats watching the woods. Somburr was gone doing whatever it was that Somburr did when he was on his own, which probably involved thinking of new ways to trick people into walking off cliffs or poisoning themselves.

As dusk fell, he filled his last sheet of paper. He'd copied three full walls and started on the fourth. Someone was going to have to head into Corl for more supplies. Figuring Somburr was already there, he looned Nak and asked him to ask Somburr to pick up more paper before coming back to the loren.

Nak agreed and switched over to loon Somburr. When he came back, his voice was high and on the edge of a quaver. "Somburr said he was right about to loon
you
. It's Lew—he's been arrested."

28

The room warped into a world of black and silver.

In a daze between panic and hilarity, Blays watched as the door burst open. He skipped back, swords out. Guards poured inside, leading the way with blades of their own, but their reaction was very curious. Rather than engaging him in battle, or shouting silly demands for him to lay down his arms, they glanced about the room in confusion, weapons drooping.

One man went to the window and leaned outside. "Hey! You been watching this place or taking a nap?"

The guards in the street hollered something back. Blays had moved beside the front wall and was now exchanging a series of expressions with Minn, who stood against the eastern wall. Her shimmery face was hard to read, but she looked as shocked as he was. There was a note of something else in her glowing eyes, too. Something that looked an awful lot like pride.

Blays had already figured it out—he was shadowalking—but he didn't have time to dwell on that while the room was half full of guards stumbling about and stabbing at the mattresses. Anyway, he suspected if he gave it too much thought, he might quit doing it, and then there'd
really
be trouble.

A guard stood in the doorway, gripping both sides of the frame and blinking at the others as they thumped around, knocking on walls for false doors (or just to spread their misery to the guests in the neighboring rooms). Sooner or later, one of them was going to bump into Blays. He wasn't certain if that would do anything, but based on the fact Minn couldn't walk through walls or the like, he didn't want to find out. He edged toward the door, careful not to let his soles scuff. Though the floor didn't quite feel as hard as normal. And if he was bumbling about in the nether, he didn't know if it was possible for his shoes to scuff (or why they, like his clothes and swords, had followed him into it). He sheathed his swords, clamped his arms against his sides, and stood as straight as possible, minimizing his physical presence.

"You're sure they were here?" one of the men said.

"This was where he told them to meet," another replied. "The boys in the street confirmed they came inside. Haven't seen shit since."

The soldier was still blocking the door. Blays picked up an unlit candle from the shelf and flung it across the room. A couple of troops cried out. The one in the doorway gasped, drew his sword, and advanced inside.

Blays didn't waste a moment. On his way out, he nearly crashed into another man who'd stayed back to watch the hall. Blays stopped himself short and edged around the soldier. Though the hallway had very little light—it was after dark, there was one lone window in the far wall, and a mere two candles burned from the sconces—Blays could see perfectly fine. Minn followed him out.

She grabbed his hand. Her skin was as cool as the underside of a stone. She took him down the stairs and through the common room, where men stared at the ceiling, murmuring to each other about the arrests upstairs. Reflexively, Blays glanced up, too. His foot banged into a chair. The world flickered between normal and the land of quicksilver. An old man stared straight at him, blinked, then tipped his mug and squinted at its contents.

Minn pulled Blays outside. Even the air felt different. Less cold than it ought to be, as if he had a blanket draped over his shoulders. Minn seemed to glide down the street, dragging him behind. She ducked into a crooked alley. They'd no sooner gotten off the street than the boring ol' normal world hauled Blays back into it.

He turned in a circle. "What just happened?"

Minn popped into view. "Well, I'm no expert, but I'd say you just shadowalked."

"But how? I didn't do anything!"

"First things first. We were just betrayed, right? Was it by the servant? Or her friend who was supposed to meet us?"

"Doesn't matter," Blays said. "Whoever it was alerted the authorities. They'll warn everyone in the Pillars what will happen to them if they're found sharing secrets. From here on out, no one's going to talk to us."

"So what do we do?"

"First, we get the hell off the streets."

He headed down the alley, keeping his eyes peeled for more of the king's men. They cut a wide circle around the ambushed inn, then walked quickly to their apartment. He couldn't be certain it was safe, but they hadn't revealed their address to anyone in Setteven, and unless someone had been following them—he would've noticed that, he liked to think—they ought to be able to sit tight and work things out.

Upstairs, he locked the door and lit a single candle. "Before we try anything crazy at the Pillars, I'm going to pay a visit to my friend. She's well connected. Might be able to put us back on course."

Minn cocked her head. "If you have this resource at hand, why did we spend all this time trying to scare up a servant?"

"I didn't want to get her involved. Now how did I do the thing I just did?"

"You must have been ready."

"Much like someday I'll roll out of bed and be ready to sing an aria? I'm getting the idea that no one bothers to learn the nether because it's a bunch of hooey."

"It's not like it came out of nowhere," Minn said, an edge in her voice. "You've been training for months."

"Even so. It's like training to box, then discovering I've become an expert archer."

"These things are hard to explain because they're hard to understand. What happened in the inn was like Betweening. It was life and death. Your mind was shocked back to the primal state when it's easiest to access."

He mulled this over. "The first time Dante did anything was when we were in the middle of a fight."

"So you've already witnessed such things happen."

"This is true. Okay, I don't understand it, but I believe it. Guess the only thing that's left is to see whether I can do it again." He moved to the middle of the room and closed his eyes. The nether flowed to him. Thoughtlessly, he let it go, then pursued its retraction into the non-spaces of its existence. He opened his eyes and looked on the dreamy world of charcoal and moonlight. "That was easier than expected."

Minn clapped. "Oh, how many times I've wished
I
could make you disappear."

Blays snorted. "So should I be slashing myself up and things? I thought you could hardly make the nether light a candle without dousing it in blood."

"It helps. You'll last longer and be able to do more with it."

"Are we still talking about the nether?"

"The only way to learn what I mean is to try it for yourself."

"I will in time," he said. "But we've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Could be a long
week
. Come to think of it, the only thing in our future that's apt to be brief is our lives."

He blew out the candle and went to the window to crack the shutters, as if the dingy alley might give him a look at what was coming down the road of his future. He was suddenly very tired. He thought about leaving, that night, grabbing a berth on a barge to Yallen and sailing into the open ocean, away from Gask and Mallon, to anywhere: that was the point, you always had that choice.

It was a choice most people didn't take seriously. They understood that, theoretically speaking, other parts of the world existed, and that they could, in another universe, move to that place and begin a new life away from their present troubles. Everyone got that. But people thought about this the same way they thought about a surprise inheritance from the wealthy, bachelor uncle they never knew that had. Could it happen? Of course. Would it happen to
them
? No, no, of course not; the idea was a fantasy, nothing to be taken seriously, let alone to plan around.

From a stoop in the alley, a man coughed, a grinding, deep-down bark that translated clearly to "I will not live the winter." It was odd that he wouldn't considering helping the man—he might toss the vagabond a few coins, but he'd never take him in and nurse him back to health, nor find him a home and a job—yet he couldn't stop himself from foiling Moddegan's wrongdoing.

He couldn't leave for a quiet homestead or a sunny island. That voice deep down inside him was telling him that his duty was here. More broadly, that he was and always would be the kind of person who
needed
that duty. Amid the bustle of daily life, that inner voice was often too soft to hear, but obeying its requests was the only way to be happy about who you were.

It was time to stop fighting it. To get done what needed to be done. By whatever means necessary.

At the moment, what most needed doing was sleep. He took care of that, then went round to the stables for the horses. Snug beneath their cloaks and hoods, he and Minn rode into the countryside. A dirt path snaked through the hills. It took some doing to find the farmhouse (though that was the point). It stood alone in stubbly fields that wouldn't be plowed under for weeks yet. Blays rode up slowly, both to let himself be seen, and to allow him space to bolt if someone else had gotten to Taya first. He stopped a bowshot from the house.

After a couple minutes, she walked out onto the packed dirt outside the doorway. She was as ropy as ever and a sword hung from her hand. She'd let her brown hair grow out, wearing it in a warrior's knot behind her head. Blays lowered his hood and hopped from his horse.

Taya didn't smile. "Who's she?"

"Trustworthy."

"Then tell me you met her prior to your recent leave."

"Hey now, the quality of the time is more important than the quantity, isn't it?" He smiled. "Anyway, without her, we're pretty much doomed."

Taya looked straight at Minn for the first time. "By what, exactly?"

Minn gave Blays a look. "You're sure you can trust her with this?"

"With zero doubt," he said. "Before the unpleasantness at the palace, she was helping me take down Moddegan. You both trust
me
, right? Ergo you can trust each other."

"I make my own decisions," Taya said.

"And that's why we love you." Blays pinched the tip of his nose. "How about you listen to what I've got to say,
then
decide?"

He laid out the events of the last few weeks, starting with their travels to Gallador, abbreviating anything related to Minn's association with the People of the Pocket. It took a few minutes to get through. During, Taya didn't invite them inside.

"You find this credible?" she said after.

"Moddegan does," Blays said. "Enough to risk stirring unrest in Gallador. Within the Endless Pillars, even the servants know about it."

"I wouldn't call that proof."

"Minn knew about Cellen before any of this—but not that it was on its way back. Don't ask how. All I can say is that her source is beyond reproach."

Taya moved her fist to her chin. "I'm not used to taking so much on faith. Even from you."