Chapter 17
brOKEN THREADS
LEILANI
Opaline River, Meissa, Northern Realm of Estelia
MEISSA, MY OLD life: it’s all behind me now.
The ship carries us upriver, but the rush of joy I expected as we drift towards Lulana’s rolling hills doesn’t come.
My stomach heaves along with the current, and I can’t stop worrying about falling over the side, wishing I’d been taught to swim.
The sinister whispers are muted, for now, but the nagging unease remains, a worm forever gnawing my gut, along with the memory of that phantom face behind the glass. I fear my mind is starting to crack.
After last night, the atmosphere onboard is strained. But for our quest to have any hope of succeeding, we have to find a way of tolerating one another, of repairing our ragged alliance.
But first: avoid retching over the side of this star-damned boat.
‘Are you sure I can’t fetch you anything, Lili?’ Astrophel thrusts his waterskin at me.
‘Don’t call me that.’ Only my mother uses that name for me, and Astrophel well knows it.
That’s four attempts at ingratiating himself since we left the palace.
His crawling is even more nauseating than the reel of the ship.
‘I thought you’d drop the penitential act once my father was out of eyeshot,’ I say.
Blayze snorts from the bench in front of us. He’s sitting beside Maris, whittling a piece of wood with his pocket blade.
‘And you can keep your opinions to yourself,’ I hiss.
The words bubbled up before I could swallow them. Sister’s sake! I’m supposed to be mending broken threads, not picking at them.
Blayze’s hands still. ‘Temper, temper, Sparkles.’ He arches his scarred brow and grins. I wish I could slap that stupid smirk right off his smug face.
Maris laughs and tightens her grip on the ship’s lines, damp ropes groaning as they stretch beneath her webbed fingers. ‘Watch out, or she’ll blast you too.’
I swallow, look away. But not before I see his lips wilt at the mention of my magic.
Blayze sidles closer to Maris, their heads bent together, russet curls mingling with loose cerulean braids. She angles the sail, which soars in graceful wing-like arcs either side of the mast, bloated by the chill breeze.
Maris is a different person on the water.
Something changed the moment she took the helm: inspecting the rigging, hoisting sail, weighing anchor with a kind of reverence, as if performing a beloved litany.
Her expressions are less guarded, her eyes sparkle like the sun-kissed surface of the river, and the set of her shoulders is more relaxed.
She’s more vital, more captivating than ever.
No wonder Blayze can’t stop making moon-eyes at her.
‘What’s that?’ Blayze points towards three stone spires crowning a hill in the far distance.
‘The Asteum,’ I breathe.
I’ve built it up in my imagination for so long, the reality is much smaller, almost commonplace.
Still, something tugs at my chest. Some part of me longs to order Maris to guide us back to the riverbank, to walk the frosted hills till I reach its hallowed halls, in case they do hold answers.
Some scrap of information about the lost Book of Mysteries.
But it’s in the opposite direction from where we need to travel, and my mother is wasting more with each moonsrising.
My dreams of a normal life will have to wait. I’ll have to make peace with my magic till we find the Starlight Staff. Pray the strange new powers I displayed in the ballroom don’t resurface, that Shadow doesn’t consume me.
‘Asteum?’ Blayze asks.
‘Our centre of learning. Of no interest to you,’ Astrophel spits back.
This is hopeless. They’ll kill each other before we get anywhere near the Astral Mountain, if I don’t strangle them both first.
‘Why isn’t the river frozen over?’ Maris calls over her shoulder.
It makes sense she’d take an interest – she’s an Islander after all – but this is the first time she’s struck up a natural conversation with me. Surely, that counts as progress?
‘The river has its source inside the Astral Mountain.’ I nod towards the distant glimmering point, which towers behind the spine of the seven Desolate Peaks.
‘When the Dawn Sister plucked the Wishing Star from the heavens as a vessel for her Star-Aether, and buried it in the heart of the mountain, the force turned rock to starcrystal – the same crystal my ancestors later mined to build Meissa. Some of what remains in the mountain eroded over time, turning to silt. Prismwort grows from the silt; it’s bioluminescent, varicoloured.
That’s what tints the river and causes it to glow.
The starglow’s energy keeps the water above freezing point.
The silt is also harvested for the starfruit plantations.
The traces of Star-Aether in the soil are the reason the fruit helps us acclimate to conditions here. ’
Tansy, seated behind me, leans over the side of the boat as we navigate a bend in the river, staring into its glistening rainbow depths. ‘And the water’s still drinkable?’
I nod.
‘You’re lucky,’ Maris says with a shudder. ‘Our waters are tainted, deadly if we don’t purify them.’ She leans towards the river too, wrinkling her nose. ‘Stinks something horrible, though.’
‘It should be odourless.’ Then it hits me. The stench of smoke, mixed with something riper: unwashed bodies and waste. It curdles my stomach even more than the confounded rock of the boat, but it’s not coming from the river.
Tansy’s sharp eyes search out the Gaspings before mine. ‘It’s some kind of settlement.’
A strangled gasp escapes me. The enclosure is where my father has been sequestering air-refugees for sunrings.
It’s vast. Decrepit. As we draw closer, I’m confronted by row upon row of slumped, threadbare tents jutting from the frosted ground like rotted teeth. The encampment swarms with tattered, wind-chapped people, huddling around meagre campfires.
Astrophel looks away. Out of sight, out of mind. That’s his answer to everything. My father would be proud. The others are quiet, but they don’t turn from the horrors of this place, and there’s no mistaking the judgement in their eyes.
How could my father have sanctioned this? He claimed the camps were necessary to prevent overcrowding and infection in the capital. Said we couldn’t trust the Highlanders, that it was safer to house them outside the city walls. He promised their needs were being met.
He lied.
As we sidle past the camp, the reek of excrement and ash grows thicker. I cover my nose and mouth with my mantle. Meissa’s walls were never designed to keep us in; they were intended to keep these horrors out.
I’ve always known I’m a monster, but fear’s not only driven my father mad, it’s made a monster of him too.
And I’m complicit in the suffering he’s forced on his own people. I didn’t know the ugly truth of the camps, but I also never made it my business to find out. Too wrapped up in my own struggles, I blindly accepted my father was acting in the best interests of the realm.
I reach for the starstone, but deep inside my chest, something starts to unravel.
It’s then I realise the winds have abandoned us. Our sail hangs limp, the Stellarion sigil it bears as shrivelled as my present faith in my family’s right to rule.
*
THE MOONS ARE waning, but there’s light enough to see the ship’s sails still sag like wilted flowers.
Half a sunring. Every moonsrising matters, and we’ve lost two already, waiting for the winds to pick up.
My gaze drifts up the arcing neck of the snow-stork that forms the ship’s prow. A flash of crimson streaks overhead. It’s Serafine hunting, an eerie twin to the comet bloodying the sky. I shiver and make the sign of the Star.
Perhaps Izarius was right. It’s hard not to consider the fiery slash an ill portent. We’re behind schedule and provisions are already dwindling. I can only pray lack of food isn’t the spark that ignites already smouldering tempers.
I thought the lack of breeze might grant some respite from the water-sickness, but my gut aches from constant retching.
I edge past Astrophel, careful not to wake him, and creep down the deck, past the other slumbering members of the Quaternity.
We stacked our packs, tents, and climbing equipment towards the stern, creating a screen.
The small area behind them is the only privacy this ship affords.
It’s also where we stashed the privy pot, and it reeks back here.
But if I have to throw up, I’m not doing it in front of everyone again.
I clamber over the tents, only to find Maris sitting on the deck, knees tucked tight against her chest.
Her head snaps up. Her eyes are puffy, her cheeks tear-streaked. She dashes a sleeve across her face.
Before I can ask what’s wrong, my stomach lurches.
I rush past her, grip the edge of the ship and heave. Over and over, till my sides throb, my throat burns, and the wet slap of vomit hitting the river rings in my ears.
Maris is at my side, holding out a waterskin. ‘Still haven’t found your water-legs, then?’
I snatch the skin and gulp.
Maris snorts. ‘Wonder how you’d fare in the squall of the Wind-Whipped Isles.’ Her mouth edges into a sneer, but then crumples, as if she might cry again.
‘I didn’t mean to intrude.’
Maris waves my platitudes away. ‘Delphine and I had a disagreement, that’s all.’
Winding my cloak closer to ward off the night chill, I squint at the moonslit waters, searching for the pearlsprite.
‘She’s got it into her head to use spritesong to tide-twist and weather-weave. Thinks she can speed our progress upriver.’
The tightness in my chest eases. ‘She can do that?’
Maris shakes her head, stares down at her feet. ‘She’s not herself lately. I don’t want her draining her Aether reserves. She’s too proud to admit it, but she needs to conserve her energy.’ Maris looks like she could say more but she only sighs.
‘My Guardian’s the same. Refuses to accept the Sickening’s weakened them.’