Page 15 of The City of Stardust

“Put it out of your mind for now. Was there anything else that Violet mentioned?” Penelope prompts.

“We talked, and I asked as much as I could. But…” He frowns. “I don’t understand, Mistress. If the Everlys are a scholar family—”

Penelope cuts him off. “The Everlys aren’t scholars, and never will be. Befriend Violet Everly by all means, and learn as much as you’re able, but remember that she has no place in our world. Am I clear, Aleksander?”

“Yes, Mistress,” he says.

Later that night, as he settles onto his uncomfortable mattress, he keeps returning to Violet Everly. The echo of his name in her mouth replays in his mind.Aleksander. Bright and heedless, like a clean spring sky, with no regard for who he might be: an assistant no one wants, threat and disappointment rolled into one.

In another life, they might have been friends. In this one, she’s a means to an end. Nothing more.

He promises himself that he’ll remember this, the next time they meet.

CHAPTER

Eight

IT’S A COLD, forbidding day in Moscow, as Penelope steps out from underneath the doorway to a dour apartment complex. She deftly avoids the icy slush collecting in the gutter, and the litter that rustles over the street like leaves. Despite the near-zero temperature, Penelope only wears a light dove-grey coat for warmth, her throat exposed to the bitter wind. Cars stream past her in a constant blur, and pedestrians hurry onwards; no one is keen to take in the sights in this weather.

Winter presses its grey fingers upon everything: the skies, the buildings, the people. Crumbling façades and fading pastel edifices raise the ghosts of a grandeur long vanished, of fur-trimmed coats and jewelled horse-drawn carriages like enormous Fabergé eggs. Then a car thunders past, and the vision melts into the snow.

The dilapidated building in front of her is an all-too-familiar picture of what might have been. Cracked plaster flowers and an elaborate iron gate suggest it might have once belonged to a wealthy merchant, or some minor noble—a townhouse to pair with a rambling dacha in the countryside. Now it hosts a block of flats, each a fraction of the original living space.

Without bothering to ring the bell, Penelope enters and climbs the narrow staircase all the way up to the top floor, then down a damp corridor to the last flat. She knocks twice on the door. Frost rimes the inside of the hallway window, and her breath clouds the air.

After a moment, the door unlocks and a man appears, looking haggard and weary. But when he sees Penelope, his expression drops. Panic flashes across his face.

“Penelope? I—”

“Strasvuitye, Yury,” she says pleasantly, in fluent Russian. “It’s been a while.”

“I wasn’t expecting—” He gathers himself. “Please, come inside.”

The entire flat—just one room—could fit into the Everlys’ front hallway. Portable radiators blaze warmth, so that condensation drips down the windowpane. And every inch is covered in keys: hung on the wall, layered thick on the floor, or spilling out of enormous boxes stacked on top of one another. There are diagrams and illustrations, too, furled tightly into scrolls and propped in a corner, or draped across furniture. Despite the heat, Yury wears several thick jumpers and a heavy overcoat. His lips are chapped and blue at the edges, and he stays as close as he can to the radiators. He fumbles with a kettle, his hands visibly shaking. Penelope notes with interest that underneath his fingerless gloves, his skin is black and withered.

“Where is your faithful assistant?” he asks.

“Aleksander? Oh, I have him on another errand at the moment,” Penelope says. “But he sends his regards.”

The last time Aleksander had come here, he’d blanched at the state of the apartment and Yury’s own condition, both of which had deteriorated from their prior visit. She’d asked him about it, curious at his reaction, but all he’d said was,It looks like it must hurt. Although she has managed to train Aleksander into a competent assistant, he is so easily wounded by the thought of others in pain. A weakness she must temper from him, she reminds herself.

“I did what you said,” Yury says, pouring hot tea into chipped mugs. “I spent just about every rouble I had on those blasted keys. And then some.”

He waits for a response, but Penelope isn’t forthcoming. He clears his throat, and offers her a cup. While she drinks, she studies him carefully. Yury is not even thirty, but his face is prematurely lined,and he holds himself with arthritic pain. His eyes are unusually tinted: a lustrous onyx that seems to shift colour in the light.

“I was not expecting you so early,” he says.

“Neither was I,” she says truthfully. “But I’ve had to expedite my plans.”

She examines the keys, picking up each one. Most of them are antiques: plain copper, steel, bastard metals rife with impurities. But there are also keys pressed in gold and inlaid with jewels, carved in thick mahogany, or blown from delicate glass, light shining through. None of them are made of reveurite, however, and therefore they are all useless.

As she browses, Yury watches her anxiously. Absently, he presses his hands on the boiling kettle, and the stench of burning flesh rises in the cramped flat.

“There is still so much to be done—I haven’t even gone through everything yet—and did you bring the—” He accidentally knocks his mug and it shatters on the ground, tea soaking into the rug underfoot. “Ah, fuck. Fuck!”

Penelope ignores him. Her search becomes more frenzied, less methodical, as she turns her attention to the illustrations. Paper tears, and ink smudges under her warm fingertips. She casts each useless image on the floor, where they quickly become sodden and unreadable.

Finally, she looks up. “Where is the rest of the research I asked for?”

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