Page 83 of The City of Stardust

She nods to herself.

“Then I’m going to stay, and I’m going to fight. For all of us.”

A few days later, Aleksander knocks on Penelope’s door, willing himself not to betray his nerves. He’s done this so many times over the course of his life that he shouldn’t spare it a second thought. But the last time he was here was the day he tried to steal her key. The day his life unravelled. His heart beats furiously, loud in his ears.

“Come in,” Penelope says.

He enters, and the familiar smell of cedar and vanilla, along with that underlying metallic scent, washes over him. Her fire blazes merrily in the fireplace.

Penelope sits at her table, with the usual detritus of books and letters. He keeps his eyes away from them; another lesson learnt from a young age. But Penelope herself catches his attention. There are dark circles underneath her eyes, and her skin seems almost translucent in the light. She’s never been sick—not a day in his life. But this is undeniable illness. He opens his mouth to ask her if she’s feeling alright, and then closes it again.

After a year at the forge, where no question was too stupid and no forge master too busy to answer, he is forgetting himself.

“Aleksander,” Penelope says pointedly.

Although his mind is churning, his hands work for him, automatically opening cupboards to pull out wine, biscuits, several hard cheeses. He finds two glasses slightly dusty from lack of use, and wipes them clean with a thin rag. When he sets them all down at last, Penelope surveys the table with a pleased smile.

“Now everything is just as it should be,” she says. “Ah, a minute, Aleksander.”

Swiftly, she disappears into one of the other rooms and reappears with a bottle of dark, glistening liquid, no taller than her fist. She gives it a swirl in the light, then unstoppers it and splits it between the two glasses.

“I have been saving this for a long time,” she says. “A very special vintage. But tonight, we drink.”

Aleksander reaches for his glass, but Penelope stops him. “Not yet, my assistant.”

She grasps the knife, and with a practised twist, drives it into the pad of her forefinger. A bead of blood wells up, tinged with a golden hue.

Aleksander flinches. “Mistress—”

“This path has not been easy for you,” she says. “You have endured more trials than another assistant might have, and perhaps you are not entirely at fault for that. But you have persevered through all, which can only be commended.” She squeezes a drop of blood into his glass. “We give back to our own, Aleksander. So allow me to give this to you.”

Aleksander stares down at his glass, jewel red and viscous. There’s just enough for a few mouthfuls. He hasn’t eaten all day, nerves twisting inside him, but with the glass in front of him, he finds he isn’t hungry at all.

She raises her glass. “To home. To destiny. To our future.”

Then she drinks deeply, finishing the glass in one swallow. Hastily, Aleksander takes a sip, and has to hold back a grimace as an oilymetallic taste hits his tongue. He glances at Penelope, but her smile only widens. So he downs the glass as quickly as he can, liquid burning the back of his throat.

And perhaps it’s his imagination—perhaps it’s nothing at all—but a feeling like electricity rolls over his body, flaring down to his fingertips. The dull throb in his lower back, from the unfamiliar feeling of being at a desk again, suddenly vanishes. He glances up at Penelope, but she’s wiping her hands on a napkin, her gaze elsewhere. He thinks of the asteros reading in Prague, of Illios—Aleksander drinking the vial, the cards spilling over one another, Violet’s body in his arms, the path that he has already walked so far and so quickly—

“So tell me, assistant of mine. How have you been using your freedom?” Penelope asks.

Aleksander tries to return to the present. “Reading, working.” He fiddles with the cuffs of his robes. “There’s… a lot to readjust to.”

“Rabia tells me you’ve been spending a lot of time in the archives?”

He swallows. “Yes. I wanted to reacquaint myself with some of the texts.”

He studies the knife on the table, waiting for her to mention the astrals. He has covered his tracks as best as he can, choosing inconspicuous hours to study, when the archivists’ hands are full and no one notices a stray scholar.

“Surely you haven’t forgotten everything I taught you?” Penelope says.

“No, Mistress,” he says. “I just want to be prepared. In case—”

Her eyes gleam with sudden understanding. “You wish to know about the test.”

Relief floods through him. “Yes. The test.”

Anything to get her off the topic of the archives. Or to stop the queasy roiling in his stomach.

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