Page 18 of The City of Stardust

Aleksander grins and flicks a napkin at her. “We search fortalent, Violet Everly.” When he sees her blank expression, he adds, “People who can manipulate reveurite. This coffee business is just the reward.”

“For what, though? Why—” She cuts off and turns away to hide her creeping blush, aware that she’s asking too many questions.

When she sneaks another glance at him, his smile softens. “Talent—and reveurite—runs Fidelis. And we have other roles besides.Historian, chronicler, alchemist, archaeologist, explorer—they all come under the heading of scholar. It’s a huge responsibility, but it’s the greatest privilege I’ve known.”

“So which will you be?” she asks, no longer teasing.

To her surprise, he shrugs, indifferent. “I’ll go wherever Penelope sends me. That’s the role of an assistant.”

“But what would youliketo be?” she persists.

For a while, he’s silent, and Violet waits patiently, watching emotion ripple over his face like clouds.

“I like history, I suppose,” he says, pensive, “and the archives. So I would be a historian—no, something like an archaeologist, which is what you would call it. On the other hand, though, I’d miss the travel, so maybe—” He cuts himself off. “But it doesn’t matter.”

He looks down at his hands, and Violet follows. On his left ring finger is the tattooed outline of a gibbous moon.

“I owe Penelope my life,” he says quietly. “I owe the scholars everything.”

Violet doesn’t reply, but she recalls the blonde woman standing in the doorway of her kitchen, and the way her fingers had dug into Aleksander’s shoulder as she steered him out of the Everly house.

After work, they walk alongside the river, the last of the day’s sunlight draped across their shoulders. Though the temperature has pitched downwards in recent weeks, Violet feels a glow of warmth with Aleksander beside her.

“Why did Penelope call me a dreamer?” she asks, still musing over that long-ago visit.

Aleksander tilts his head up to the sky. “She says that we were once nothing more than the dreams of stars. Then the stars moulded us from clay, and gave us shards of themselves so we might create in their honour. And we were happy, for a time. But, even though we have our feet on the earth, every time we close our eyes, we dream of being stars again.”

At night, Violet touches the bracelets around her wrists, admiring the golden sparkles that shimmer across the metal like an oily patina.She closes her eyes and imagines herself as stardust, winging her way through the night sky.

Winter in Fidelis is marked with a series of snowstorms, thunder booming across the mountainside. Aleksander wakes to find a thin crust of ice on the inside of his windowpane. Shivering, he grabs his towel and descends to the hot springs. It’s never quiet in the communal baths, and this morning is no exception. Loud shrieks from small children echo in the vast subterranean room as they leap into icy plunge pools, while adults converse under hazy steam, scrubbing themselves as they talk. Faded mosaics depict ancient battles and forgotten myths, while noisy pipes shunt water upstairs to the masters’ rooms.

Afterwards, dressed and wringing the damp from his hair, he makes his way from the lower floors to the entrance, up the long, twisting scholars’ staircase.

As he walks along the cobbled streets from the scholars’ tower, past the sky-docks and airships laden with goods, he has to admire, as he always does, how contained his world is, compared to Violet’s vastelsewhere. Fidelis perches high on a ring of mountains, cupping a valley dotted sparsely with farming lands. But the mountains that protect them also keep the city isolated—no airship can ascend over the peaks; no tunnel can bore through the impenetrable rock. Sometimes, on sleepless nights when the stars burn through the sky, he wonders what the other side of the mountains might look like.

But mostly, he thinks about how much Violet would love to see it all.

In his head, he hears Penelope telling him not to get too involved, to befriend her but not trust her. He can tempt her with Fidelis, but that is all.

“It’s of utmost priority we find Marianne Everly,” Penelope had said. “Thatis the goal.”

How many times now has he opened his mouth to ask why, and then shut it again?

When he was very young and still unable to contain himself, Penelope told him the story of a reveurite blade that sung questions to its owner in a never-ending loop of melody. At the end of the story, the owner threw the blade off a cliff, driven to madness by its endless singing.

“You are my blade of knowledge, little dreamer,” she’d said and ruffled his hair. “But to be a blade, you need to be controlled, unbreakable, unquestioning. Or I might just have to throw you off a cliff, too.”

She’d said it with laughter, but even so, he’s never been entirely certain how metaphorical the cliff edge is. So he tries his best to be her blade, and he bites back the questions that he’d otherwise ask.

It makes answering Violet’s questions all the sweeter, even if he’s constantly worried about giving too much away. Only the other day, she’d asked what the scholars do, in a more specific sense, and he’d had to recalibrate his answer with his mouth already half open, ready to spill every secret he knows.

He’s grown used to the routine of these past few months, so he’s a little taken aback to be summoned to Penelope outside of their regular meetings. Even though he’s halfway through the delicate task of repairing a fragile document from the archives, he abandons everything and climbs the scholars’ staircase to her quarters.

As he waits outside her door, three master agriculturalists barge past, their hair still stiff with melting icicles. Aleksander watches them stomp downstairs in their tough outdoor gear, their faces wind-bitten and prematurely lined, and a knot forms in his stomach. He already knows they’ve struggled to maintain their harvest quotas this year, but there are rumours they’re low on apprentices, too. Every year it seems like the city is squeezed a little tighter by winter, transferring the same pressure to the scholars as they rush to solve the problem, or at least stymie it until a solution can be found.

Still thinking of the agriculturalists, he knocks on the door to Penelope’s quarters, and enters.

“So, my assistant,” she says.

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