The Key to Starveldt (3 page)

Small and exultant, Duchess began to eat.

It wasn’t until a bloody pinion landed near Solace’s foot that she tore her eyes away, uttering a small cry. Electra, who was closest, made an ungainly jump over both cat and prey, rushing to put distance between her and the macabre spectacle. Even Jess, who had joked about the first swan, looked pale.

‘She … she’ll vanish the bones and … leftovers. When she’s done.’ Jess gulped, running a hand over her eyes. ‘We must really have been on another plane last night.’

‘And you’ve
just now
figured that out?’ Paige’s voice shook with a mixture of horror and selfdisgust. ‘Remind me to hit you later.’

As Duchess cracked what sounded like a particularly sturdy bone, Jess blanched. ‘I’m not going to argue.’

‘Grim,’ commented Harper.

‘So,’ said Evan, into the resultant silence. ‘Where were we?’

‘Pages,’ said Solace, faintly. ‘Sharpsoft’s pages. Unless anyone else has a better idea?’

Automatically and with no small amount of trepidation, Manx and Solace turned to see Duchess poking her head around the corner of the bench, her normally blue-and-white features streaked with red.

Purring, she licked her lips and vanished back into the kitchen.

‘Duchess says thanks,’ Solace said, wincing a little as she spoke. ‘At least one of us is happy.’

Electra shuddered. ‘Let’s make a pact, all right? This is not to be mentioned ever again, on pain of disembowelment.
Ever
.’ When nobody objected, she let out a sigh and gestured to the lounges. ‘Right. So. Let’s see what Sharpsoft has to say. Or at least, what Sharpsoft thinks we should know.’

Nodding, Solace smoothed out the pages, and walked over to the armchair Laine and Evan had shared the previous evening. She sat down, trying not to tremble. What did they say about her? For a moment, her throat was too tight to speak. Then she glanced across to where Jess and Electra were recovering via the time-honoured practice of mocking Evan, and felt her spirits recover. Whatever Sharpsoft had brought them, she could bear it.

‘My mother’s book,’ she said, by way of introduction. The others looked up. Solace took a deep breath and smoothed out a final crease. Tantalisingly, the first sentence started halfway through – had Sharpsoft been too hurried to notice, or was it a deliberate omission? Had Sanguisidera noticed the pages were gone, or had they been stolen before she saw the book? Putting these thoughts aside, she started to read aloud:

‘…
prophecy is, although quite beautiful, damnably vague. Such is always the way with seers. In any case some warning of the future, no matter how cryptic, is infinitely preferable to no warning at all. As I have become the chronicler of these events, Aaron has warned
me of the trouble in punctuating prophecy when we do not know where the correct emphasis should lie, and so I have endeavoured to be careful. Here, then, are the words we were given:

‘In a place of nameless speaking

bloody-eyed a star is seeking

memories undone

come will eight of rarest making

in their echoes power waking

in their selves and selves forsaking

darkness overrun.

‘At the doom of Starkine’s crossing

Trueheart grieved in turmoil tossing

Watcher’s secrets all unsaid

Daughter chained and hope unlocking

where the fates are cruel and mocking

and where worlds are interlocking

Bright One, listen to the dead.

‘Warden under midnight learning

Shadowfriend in silence burning

Quickling’s prison fades

heavy with remembered yearning

fight the wheel within its turning

all go forth and two returning

worldly renegades.

‘We do not know the whole meaning, but this much is plain: our child – the Daughter – will have seven companions in the fight against Sanguisidera. Or so I hope. Some parts of the prophecy suggest treachery – forsaken selves and unshared secrets are not happy futures, and yet there is one called Trueheart, and woken power. Luck and the universe willing, these words will mean more to my daughter than to me, as it is for her sake they are written
.

‘The Daughter. I had not known I will bear a girl.

‘She will read this, Aaron says. We will leave her my book. And suddenly I feel the pressure of years upon me: not age, but my daughter’s life. Most women fear to die in childbirth, a primordial clutching as they ebb and bleed. I had not thought to feel it when I bore Sanguisidera’s Grief – my life was already forfeit – but at the last, I did not want to die. A century has passed since then, one hundred years in which I have fought and loved, and lived, and lost. More span of time than most mortal men are given; but I am older still. And yet, I fear to die. I want to know my daughter
.

‘I won’t. But Liluye will.

‘The Rookery lives at the Sign of the Singing Hawk. My daughter, if you read this, seek Liluye there. She can be trusted. Mayhap she knows more of the prophecy. At the very least, she can guide you – not only to Sanguisidera, but in yourself. Homewards.’

Staring at the final line, Solace stopped.

‘That’s quite a prophecy,’ Manx said at last. ‘So much so, in fact, that I didn’t understand a word of it.’

‘You and me both,’ Solace muttered, genuinely piqued. She’d hoped for some answers, but instead had found a bittersweet commingling of the cryptic and the personal, neither of which was particularly illuminating.

Jess held out a hand. ‘Perhaps if we all had a look?’

With strange reluctance, Solace handed over the pages. After some initial tugging, the others crowded around Jess, reading over her shoulder. Paige in particular made a show of scrutiny; but it was Laine who lingered longest in study, eyes flicking back and forth over the three prophetic stanzas before returning them to Solace.

Then came discussion: a long, speculative ramble. The simplest agreement was that all of them were mentioned: certainly, there were eight of them now, and as the house was clearly intended to house eight occupants, it acted as validation. That spawned a separate discussion as to who had set up the house. Solace, who had promised Duchess to keep the full truth a secret, suggested that it must have been her parents, a scenario which was thankfully accepted with minimal fuss. How Duchess had known to take them there was a more problematic question, but with the swan still bloody on the kitchen floor, the others were mercifully eager to divert back to the prophecy itself, thus letting Solace off the hook for the time being.

Of greater concern were the names they’d been bestowed and what they might mean. Solace, obviously, was the Daughter, but who was Shadowfriend? Quickling? Bright One? Nobody could quite decide, and although Evan theorised that it must have something to do with their respective Tricks, Manx pointed out that none of them had super-speed or were friendly with darkness. The idea that Solace might be chained again at some point was cause for disturbance, as were the notions of selves forsaken and listening to the dead.

Paige went briefly pale at that particular line. Harper squeezed her hand and pointed out that it probably meant heeding the contents of the book, which, what with the deaths of Solace’s parents – in addition to their vampirism – had effectively been written by the dead twice over. Jess looked like she wanted to challenge that interpretation, but caught Laine’s eye and thought better of it. Evan took that opportunity to exclaim over the age of Solace’s parents, and the fact that Grief was over a hundred years old.

Eventually, they fell silent.

As a last-ditch effort, Jess exhaled lengthily and nodded towards Solace’s lap, where the fateful pages rested.

‘I wonder what the Sign of the Singing Hawk means,’ she mused. ‘That, at least, sounds like something we could find, if we only knew what it was.’

Solace jumped. Manx stared. This time, the others were quick to notice their reaction, turning almost in sync to watch Duchess, now cleansed of blood, pad daintily out of the kitchen and into the lounge.

‘What did she say?’ asked Paige, eyes wide. When Solace told her, she blinked. ‘Oh. Pretty.’

Abruptly, Solace remembered Paige’s exchange with Duchess the previous evening, and wondered at the positive effect it seemed to have wrought on her. No longer skittish and frightened, the pink-and-purple-haired girl was almost entirely back to normal; calmer, even. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine that she remained a little in awe of Duchess, if not completely fond of her culinary preferences – but then, that was true of all of them.

‘Have you cleaned up the swan?’ asked Electra, watching the little cat warily. Duchess looked up at her with pale green eyes before yawning and washing a paw.

most
satisfactory>

Manx relayed the sentiment before Solace could.

‘A secrecy of birds,’ Laine echoed. Her tone was thoughtful. Freshly scrubbed, her pale skin glowed, bright against the blackness of her clean hair. The effect was softening, as though her edges had been temporarily worn down. ‘It kind of makes sense.’

‘How so?’ Harper asked.

Laine shrugged. ‘Because of ravens, you know.’ When everyone continued to look at her, she blinked. ‘Oh. Well,
rookery
literally means a place where crows and ravens live, because corvid birds – black carrion birds, like crows and ravens – are also called rooks. And corbies, actually, because of corvid. But “rook” was a slang term in Victorian England, too, meaning a cheat or thief – probably because crows like to steal shiny things – and seeing as how thieves and other undesirable types like poets and prostitutes tended to live in slums, they started to call the slum areas and tenement buildings
rookeries
. So, it makes sense. A conspiracy of birds.’

She fell silent. The others stared at her. After a moment, Laine began to blush.

‘How do you even
know
this stuff ?’ asked Manx, impressed.

‘Dickens,’ said Laine. Evan snickered; the psychic rolled her eyes. ‘
Charles
Dickens, idiot. And, you know. I read a lot of history.’

Unexpectedly, it was Paige who came to the rescue. ‘We’re looking for a slum, then?’ she asked, tugging absently on a lock of hair.

Laine shot her a grateful look and nodded.

Solace frowned. ‘If we are, that hardly narrows it down.’ She toyed with the pages in her lap, flipping her fingers against the edge as though shuffling a deck of cards.

‘What does that say?’ Evan asked suddenly. Solace stared at him; he gestured for her to turn the pages over.

Obedient, Solace leafed through the upturned sheets. Sure enough, a message was scrawled on the back of one in thick, smudgy pencil, the writing all but illegible.

‘Sharpsoft,’ she murmured, softly.

‘What does it say?’ asked Manx.

‘I’m not sure.’ Squinting, she tried to puzzle out the message. ‘It’s almost like directions. I think? Someone else have a look.’

‘Here.’ Laine held out a hand, leaning across Evan in the process. Solace stretched out and submitted the relevant page, brushing fingertips with Laine. A kind of static electricity passed between them. Solace blinked, catching a sudden look of pity in Laine’s eyes, there and gone like a distant flash of lightning. The moment passed; Laine dropped her gaze and withdrew the page, leaving Solace momentarily stunned, embarrassed and, once the initial shock had faded, curious. A suspicion formed in the back of her mind, too immature to be spoken, but difficult to shake. The nape of her neck tingled.

‘You’re right,’ said Laine, after a moment. ‘At least, it’s part of an address. It just says,
Kent Street – early underground
. And then there’s the letter
R
.’

‘Which, along with the number eight, has been the proud sponsor of today’s Open Sesame Street,’ quipped Evan. ‘Directions to the Rookery, I’m guessing.’

‘Makes sense.’ Laine handed back the page. ‘At least it’s somewhere we can find.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Manx, only a little bemused. ‘We should just head over to Kent Street and peer in the guttering?’

‘No,’ said Jess, sitting up suddenly. ‘Underground car parks. There’s a few on Kent.’ She glanced at Laine for confirmation. When the psychic nodded, Jess went on. ‘It might be like Lukin’s lab or the entry into Town Hall – you know, joined to somewhere else. In which case –’

‘– the Sign of the Singing Hawk could be a marker,’ Solace finished. The two of them grinned.

‘So,’ said Harper. ‘This prophecy says we help Solace fight Sanguisidera. Solace’s mother says we should go to the Rookery and look for someone called Liluye, because she – I’m guessing
she
– can help us on both counts. Sharpsoft says the entrance to the Rookery is on Kent Street. We’re not quite sure if we trust him. So far, he hasn’t actually harmed us, but just been party to a boatload of crazy weirdness. Which can be said of everyone in this room. Add in a free house, breakfast, clean clothes and a good night’s sleep, and I’d say we’re doing okay.’

‘Unto that man give a cigar,’ said Evan.

‘But Tryst and Claire and Phoebe … they’re not okay.’

Everyone turned to Paige. She looked up. There was something hard behind her eyes.

‘I don’t mean to ruin the mood. But we need to remember this isn’t a game. Sanguisidera killed our friends.’ She swallowed. ‘Even if we’re fine now, it’s not because we’ve beaten her, or because some prophecy says we eventually will. It’s because of luck, and Duchess, and running away. So we need to be careful. It’s real. It’s not a game.’

‘Agreed,’ said Solace.

Paige smiled, but briefly: thankful, apologetic and sad.

‘We’re heading to Kent Street, then?’ asked Manx.

‘I’ve heard worse plans,’ said Jess, glancing around the room.