Page 40 of The City of Stardust

Violet stares at the photograph. It refuses to match up with the person she has in her head—fragments of soft hugs, laughter. Kindness. Not someone who would get into arguments, who could be cruel.

“What are you doing here, in Vienna?” she asks, diverting the conversation.

He gestures around him. “This is my work now.”

“So you’re retired?” Violet asks curiously.

Johannes shakes his head. “Scholars don’t retire. Or quit, for that matter. It’s not a job.” His hand absentmindedly goes to his forearm. “But I’m done.”

“Why?” Violet asks.

He takes off his glasses to clean them and sighs. He’s quiet for so long Violet thinks he won’t answer at all. Then he replaces his glasses and looks up at her.

“Your bracelets are very beautiful,” he says. “Reveurite?”

She pushes her sleeves up so he can see. “Yes.”

He tilts her hand gently to the side, examining the bracelets. “Marianne made these; I can tell. Talent like that is rare.” Seeing her expression, he adds, “It is everything. Life itself, bottled like lightning into rock. Proof that the gods once walked amongst us. Yet so few of us can use it to its fullest, and every generation, more children are born entirely without it.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Violet says.

“There is a cost to our hidden knowledge. A bloody, terrible cost. They tell you some of it, before you sit in the tattooist’s chair. They parcel it out like poison, and by the time you realise what they’ve done—whatyou’vedone—you’ve already swallowed the bottle.”

Violet waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. And when she opens her mouth to ask, he shakes his head, eyebrows creased in obvious pain. She thinks of her uncle’s warning.Wolves.Then what does that make Johannes Braun? Suddenly she wishes she’d not been so eager to leave the safety of the public hallways to meet with him.

“Anyway,” he says. “I presume you’re not just here to listen to my regrets.”

Violet unfolds the crumpled piece of paper with the address on it, and smooths it out on his desk.

“Why did you take the map?” She inches forward, her heart thumping.

“Marianne Everly stole something from me,” he says simply. “I would like it back.”

Violet turns it over in her mind. “Yet you didn’t try to expose her at the party.” She narrows her eyes. “What do you need from her?”

Johannes barks a surprised laugh. “You even sound like Marianne. Straight to the point. Suffice to say, she hasn’t appeared, so I don’t yet have it. We both remain frustrated in our efforts, I’m sure.”

A long-winded way of saying,I’m not going to tell you. Well, she knew this wasn’t going to be straightforward.

“Do you know why she stole from you?” she asks carefully.

She already has an inkling of thewhat. Marianne’s forays have left a trail of furious scholars across the world. A missing ledger here, a stolen book there; such-and-such precious illustration won in a card game. All to do with keys. But how much can she give away? How much does Johannes really know? Underneath the desk, she clenches the edge of her cardigan, her knuckles white.

“Oh, I’m sure she had her reasons,” he says lightly. “As do I.”

He eases back into his chair. For a moment they observe each other, Johannes’ cornflower eyes on hers. A scholar who isn’t a scholar, and yet seems to take a keen interest in their activities. Who was willing to travel all the way to New York on a rumour, but wouldn’t approach her to verify the truth. They’ve tiptoed around this long enough.

“You know what she’s looking for. The key,” Violet says.

The one thing that can undo the curse.

Johannes’ hands tighten on the edge of the desk. “We are a people on borrowed time, Violet Everly. I told you that we scholars are few and far between. But once we were innumerable, before calamity fell on our city, fracturing it forever.” He pauses. “That city is not Fidelis.”

Violet frowns. “What?”

Johannes laughs humourlessly. “You think we are the only two worlds in existence? The arrogance. There are as many worlds as stars in the sky, and once we could traverse them all. Yet we are exiles from our true homeland. Fidelis is but a fragment, and I mean that quite literally. The mythology calls it a calamity; we call it a rift in thevery fabric of existence.” He sighs. “There may be other such city-islands cut adrift, but they all belong to one true homeworld.”

“So Marianne is looking for this ‘homeworld’?” she says, her fingers curled into air quotes.

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