Quartz (6 page)

“And women?”

She eyed him somberly. “That is none of my business. Just make a good showing of yourself.”

“And would I find such things in Moon Alley? From a man named Pyotr, maybe?”

Her eyebrows arched. “Perhaps. I can take you.”

“Or draw me a map?” he suggested.

“No. After your interaction with Karzov, I think it’s better if you had a minder.”

It hurt him to say it—say anything for the matter—but he couldn’t stop it. “So burning my mouth was not enough? Now I have to spend my money, too? Where am I getting money from, anyhow?”

Isabella glanced at Burgess, who folded his arms and looked forbidding. She shrugged. “I can loan you some.”

B
Y THE TIME
R
AFE
and Isabella were in the marketplace, the heady rush that had sustained him through the flight from the theater, the encounter with Karzov, and the performance had subsided. Combined with the lack of sleep and a growing nostalgia for Oakhaven, its absence made Rafe feel dull, cold, and small. The Blackstone New Year celebrations were dismally nonfestive. Selene, whose dawning they ostensibly celebrated, was a shiny pebble in the dark sky, barely glimpsed behind the buildings that pressed in upon the open space, threatening to take it over by collapsing on it.

Where was the grand and gorgeous Parade of Animals? The rows of stalls jangling and glittering with jewelry, scarves, trinkets? The girls with their beaded hair and flowing antique skirts? The Shimmer megalamps that flooded whole streets with light? Blackstone’s celebrations included a couple of ragged birds hiding their heads under wings and an old monkey cowering in a corner of its cage as onlookers poked sticks at it. Every second gas lamp was turned off. The food and drink was all the same—soup that was more broth than anything else, dark chewy bread with dried cranberries, and weak ale. The uniformly-dressed citizens paid for the food with tokens—and there were no second helpings.

Unsurprisingly, the performers hadn’t been given any tokens. Blackstone was not known for its generosity.

To someone used to the exuberance and extravagance of Oakhaven’s New Year, this was a grim affair indeed. Rafe felt as if he were in a cracked bell, watching corpses walk about. It was hollow and tinny and somehow unreal.

He fingered cheap beaded bracelets and stared unseeing at stacks of plates and rows of jugs, while desperately-grinning sellers leaned over him. Perhaps he ought to get something for his sister Bryony, some memento to prove his story true, something he could pull out and say, “Aha! See, I really was in Blackstone, on the run, disguised as an itinerant performer!”

If he got out of here alive, he’d have a story to make her smile. Uncle Leo would dismiss his firedancing stint with a wave, but Bryony would see the humor in it. Her life held little laughter as it was. Her mistress, the old Marchioness, worked her hard and paid her little. If only the Queen would approve Bryony’s appointment to her own household…

He had to get home. Bryony had no other champions.

Isabella took his arm and steered him in among the buildings, deeper into the shadows. Here the lights were dim, the stalls smaller, the wares half-hidden and presided over by sullen and suspicious men who sold in front of the crumbling homes they dwelt in.

Isabella murmured into his ear. “If you want the real Blackstone, the cold heart and granite soul and hot blood of Blackstone, this is where you’ll find it.
This
is Moon Alley.”

They meandered down the narrow street that smelled of smoke and cabbage dinners. Rafe paused to examine the objects hidden under awnings. His fingers touched an explosion of textures. Sand-grit roughness, paper smoothness, a riot of etched lines. Not uniform, not made according to state regulations in a factory, fiercely defiant in their deviation. Oval-shaped, square-shaped, no-shaped. Carved, chiseled, gouged. They were more than cups and plates and pots, they were stories, dramas, secrets at his fingertips.

This was the Blackstone shaped and birthed in the dark by those who lived without light. Rafe, hands wrapped around a squat ceramic mug covered in pinprick patterns, felt a keen sense of blessing.

He turned to Isabella with a sudden certainty. “I know you. You do work for Rocquespur. You acquire art for him. That’s why you know about this place.” His gesture encompassed all of Moon Alley.

“Oh?” Polite disinterest bleached her tone. He struggled to make out her expression.

“You’re the one who beat me to the Tivik illuminated manuscripts in Emerald Market. The bookstall owner—Hatter, was it?—said a woman from Rocquespur had gotten there first. It was you, wasn’t it?”

“You’re determined to put me in a neat box in your mind, aren’t you?”

“It’s true, though, right?” he pressed.

A shrug. “Believe what you wish.” She strode forward to the next stall. It was empty, a gaping cavity under tattered canvas. A short walkway led up to a small brick rowhouse. “We’re here.”

Rafe walked up to the battered door and knocked. Splinters came away in his knuckles.

The door opened a crack, leaking light. A man with rumpled grey hair peered out. “Go away. I’m not open today.”

Rafe caught the door before the man shut it and stuck his foot in the gap. “Berlioz sent me.”

The man blanched. “I have nothing to say to you. Be gone before I send for the stazi.” He kicked at Rafe’s toes.

“I think you should see what he has to say, Pyotr.” Isabella stepped up beside Rafe.

For a moment, Rafe thought that Pyotr was going to faint. His pupils dilated behind his spectacles and he swayed. “You,” he whimpered, staring at Isabella. “Why are you here? Why are you back? I did everything you said. Lights on at all times. I can barely pay for all that fuel. Why are you back?” His voice, low at first, had risen to a hysterical pitch.

“She’s with me,” said Rafe quickly. “I won’t let her hurt you. Let us in, man. Do you really want a scene on your doorstep?” He pushed gently against the door, and Pyotr stumbled back, his arm falling limply to his side. Rafe and Isabella slid in and shut the door behind them.

Pyotr had not exaggerated when he said that he kept his place well-lit. Blackstone did not supply gas lines to individual homes, so a dozen oil lamps burned in brackets in the wall and many more candles flickered upon small tables.

The room was hot, smoky, and stuffy. A pungent herbal smell lingered in the air. Furniture occupied every corner, boxes stood stacked against the walls, pots and pans hung from hooks. A low-grade hum filled Rafe’s ears and tingled in his bones. His skin grew warm where the mage-made device lay against it. He bumped against a small table, then caught the candlesticks upon it before they clattered to the floor.

Pyotr fetched a pair of soy wax candles, stuck them into tarnished silver candlesticks that might have once graced a Goldmoon mansion, and lit them.

Rafe noted that the old man kept the low table between himself and Isabella.

Pyotr sat down heavily on the rug, and made a sit-down gesture with his hand. Rafe and Isabella did so; she gracefully and Rafe clumsily. Sitting upon cushions on the floor was an old Goldmoon custom.

The old man stared into the candle flames. Then, fiercely, “That fool Berlioz is dead.” It was not a question.

Rafe gave a curt nod. “Furin never showed up.”

“That was my Alik.” Shadows etched deeper lines in Pyotr’s face. “They took him about two months ago.”

Sympathy kindled in Rafe. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“If you really were sorry, you’d leave and take
her
with you,” said the old man, bitterly. “Well. Are you?”

Rafe didn’t move. “I received something from Berlioz. Something that Furin had found, presumably.” He paused, but Pyotr’s expression was unhelpful. Rafe kept his hand from straying to the place where he’d sewn the pamphlet and the plant sample into the lining of his borrowed jacket. “Dragonlace.”

Isabella drew in a breath, a soft sudden intake. Pyotr’s face changed, from stone to melting wax, sagging in astonishment. “So the stories are true!”

“Stories?” Rafe frowned.

Pyotr waved his hand. “You have heard of the Tors Lumena—the Tower of Light—even in your backward country, yes?”

“I have heard legends of a massive pillar of quartz that radiates light, even though it has not been cut or polished, with plants like dragonlace growing in wild profusion around the base.” Rafe shook his head. “If such a thing existed, we’d have seen it. Furin must’ve found a large vein of clear quartz, a great discovery, but not…”

“Silence, boy!” Pyotr smacked the tabletop. The candlesticks skittered. “Did you come here to listen to me or the sound of your own voice?” His eyebrows drew together fiercely.

Rafe bowed his head in acknowledgement of the rebuke. “Continue, sir,” he said with a meekness that had never fooled his older relatives.

Mollified, Pyotr drew his hands back into the overlong sleeves of his patchworked coat and clasped them. His eyes turned dreamy, his voice took on the tones of a storyteller. “Long ago, two moons graced the sky—the twins, Selene and Salerus. They danced around our world in their changing orbits, and under their light, the mages, the true mages, the kayan—not those mincing pretenders in Shimmer—worked wonders of whose like has never been seen since. They say that in those days the combined light of the twins allowed plants to grow out in the wilderness, that the Barrens were green with grass and dotted with flowers. The world was a thing of great beauty, but the creations of the kayan were even more marvelous to behold. Their cities were wonders of glass and light and color. Starfall, the greatest city of them all, glowed so bright it surpassed the light of the twins. Salerus saw this and, mad with jealousy, transformed himself into Dragon.” Pyotr broke off and gave Rafe a hard assessing look. Rafe hoped that his expression showed only considerate attention to a nursery tale he’d heard all his childhood.

“Dragon breathed fire across the land. Starfall fell, utterly destroyed, not even ruins left as witness. The rest of our cities smoldered, the plains burned. This was the time of the Scorching, a terrible time. There were dozens of kayan in those days, but many fell against the might of Dragon and it seemed that the world would perish in flame. In desperation, the last of the kayan, thirteen of them, picked a place where their power would be strongest—a place of shining quartz that cast a radiance across the land. There they confronted Dragon, bound him, and cast him down into the deeps, but in doing so they destroyed themselves and brought a mountain crashing down upon the Tors Lumena.

“In the aftermath of the victory that was almost defeat, with every kayan dead and the shahkayan and rohkayan gone mad, its location was lost to all, except for Kayan Renat.” Pyotr slid a needle-sharp glance at Rafe. “You know of Renat?”

“I do,” said Rafe, gravely. “Every peddler with a curious trinket to sell claims it was made by Renat.”

Pyotr snorted. “He was prolific, certainly. But he kept his secrets close and chose only one family, a Goldmoon family, to guard his greatest treasures—the Keys.”

“I’ve heard of them,” began Rafe.

Pyotr snorted. “You’ve heard of the keys he created to activate fountains of light and other such novelties. No, these Keys are much more powerful, and were given in trust to a great family. I am only a minor offshoot, but all the world knows of the dignity and grandeur of the Ferhani.” Pride straightened his shoulders and spine. “Ah, even you have heard of them.”

Rafe nodded, but his knowledge of the Ferhani was more intimate than Pyotr knew. His father’s mother had been a Ferhani, married into the Oakhaven family for her safety. His great-aunt had barely escaped the Revolution as a young woman. This old man was his distant relative.

Pyotr continued, “The Ferhani kept the six Keys of Renat safe, waiting for a kayan who could use them to lead us back to the Tors Lumena. But not a single kayan has been born in all the generations after the Binding.”

“There’s Shimmer,” Rafe pointed out.

“Bah. They are only rohkayan and not capable of wielding the power of the Tors Lumena. For all they strut and give themselves airs, they are only fit to polish the boots of the great kayan of old.” Pyotr hunched his shoulders. “Then the madness and bloodlust came upon my countrymen and they shattered Goldmoon and all the great families. The Ferhani are destroyed, fled, or in hiding, like me, and the Keys lost.” Pyotr paused, brooding.

Isabella got up, silent as smoke, and did a quick turn around the room. She paused by the door, listening, as if she might hear the beating heart of an eavesdropper.

Pyotr shook himself, and said, wearily, greyly. “Alik was raised on these stories alongside his mother’s milk. More fool I, because when he grew up all he wanted was to become a surveyor and find the Tors. He succeeded but at what price? He is gone, and so is my little Aliki, my grandson.”

“They took your grandson as a hostage?” asked Rafe. If Furin and
his son had been taken, perhaps Blackstone had already tortured or blackmailed the secret out of him. In which case, he needed to be back in Oakhaven
yesterday
.

The old man slumped. “I don’t know. His mother had been estranged from Alik for years over his involvement with the resistance. She told me she’d put Aliki into some special government program. She was quite proud that they’d wanted him, scorch her! My Aliki in some secret training program for the Fist… or worse!” He leaned forward, intense and grim, speaking in an almost-whisper. “Changes are afoot. The stazi used to leave us Moon Alley people alone, but now they raid our stalls and confiscate the remnants of Goldmoon that we have gathered. Word is that the Protector is looking for things made by the kayan.”

“To use them as weapons?” Rafe started up, remembering the odd jumble of items in the train he and Isabella had briefly occupied. “Is it even possible, without a mage? None have been born in centuries, save for in Shimmer.”

“The Protector is raiding families like he raids houses, taking away both children and cherished possessions.”