Page 58 of The City of Stardust

“Do you know where we’re going?” she asks.

He frowns at her. “Well, sinceyou’rethe one who invited me, not really. Unless I’m supposed to?”

She’s surprised to hear the pang of anxiety in his voice. She waves it away, her smile widening.

“No, this is my surprise,” she says.

Aleksander has taught her so much that it feels like a victory to find something he might not actually know about.

She memorised the directions earlier for no real reason other than to give Aleksander a bit of a show, but she still holds her breath as she knocks once, then twice, then once again on an unremarkable door. Seconds tick past, and now it’s Violet’s turn to be uncertain. Either she’s about to be confronted by one angry stranger, or—

The door eases open and a woman holds out her hand. “Token, please.”

Dutifully, Violet hands over the coin Caspian gave her in New York.

“And a plus-one,” she adds, gesturing to Aleksander.

The woman gives Aleksander a once-over just long enough to make Violet nervous, then she nods.

“You’ll vouch for him.” It’s not a question.

The door leads directly to a stairway bracketed by candles dripping wax across the floor. The stairs lead down, where the sound of thumping bass judders upwards. Something hangs from the ceiling and it takes Violet’s eyes a moment to adjust before she realises what it is: keys, hundreds of them, in all shapes and sizes. Feathers, too, dipped in gold paint and strung up so that they twist gently above.

Aleksander takes in a quick breath.

Feeling bold, Violet takes his hand. “Come on.”

She’s been brushing up on her reading, and there’s an entire city underneath Prague, like a second skin. Old cellars bricked up and then rediscovered; eerie dungeons engraved with illegible graffiti; whole streets buried underneath the new buildings. Officially, no one’s allowed in except via carefully guided tours. Unofficially, there are hundreds of entrances, and no one to police them.

She suspects that if she ever sees Elandriel, it’ll look something like this.

As they reach the bottom of the stairs, Aleksander gives her hand a quick squeeze. But he doesn’t let go. Violet smiles to herself in the dark.

The stairway opens out to an enormous cellar with a low barrel-vault ceiling. Candlelight competes with strobe lights, bouncing off the brick walls. Bass pulses underneath their feet from an enthusiastic DJ. Someone has laid down carpets to muffle the sound, and people kick off their shoes to lounge on them. It’s a chilly evening, and others have brought down heaters, plugged into “borrowed” electricity, or drape themselves in blankets. Violet spies a grubby pack of asteros cards, spread out for a small but captive audience.

It’s as different from a scholar party as she can imagine. And yet just as thrilling to be here.

She spies a couple of scholar keys, ringed around fingers or twined around forearms, alongside plain black bands, or glittering tattoos oflace next to bold slashes of colour. But there are far more people wholly unadorned by tattoos, keys or otherwise.

People like her.

Next to her, Aleksander raises his eyebrows. “Who did you say you heard about this place from?”

“I can have more than one friend, you know,” she says, teasing.

But he only looks more apprehensive. “I’m not sure we should really be here. These people aren’t…”

“Scholars?” she suggests.

That’s a bit rich coming from you, she wants to say, but can’t. If she hadn’t asked him to steal the key for her, he would probably be one of them by now. She thinks about how isolated she’d felt at Yulan’s private gathering, and her heart pangs sympathetically. It can’t be easy, she muses, being amongst so many scholars.

Here, though, he doesn’t need to be a scholar. And neither does she.

There’s almost too much to look at, dozens of nooks with a different surprise hidden in each one. A couple of enterprising spirits have set up stalls, selling just about everything: hot drinks to combat the subterranean chill; fragile books and scrolls, in dozens of languages; antique glass bottles that glimmer oddly in the candlelight. There’s even a stand trading stolen scholar’s keys—but Violet decides to steer Aleksander clear of that one.

Instead, they meander towards a nook decked out in bright fairy lights. There’s a table speckled with chips of glittering rock, and at first that’s all they seem. Then she catches a faint golden glimmer and her heart thrills.

Aleksander picks up a piece and immediately puts it down. “There’s not enough reveurite in there to power a light bulb.”

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