Page 10 of The City of Stardust

Three days before he turns nineteen, Aleksander wakes in his narrow cell of a room, one of many on the mid-level floors of the scholars’ tower. The comforting noises of home echo around him: the gurgle of hot water pipes; the energetic snoring of a fellow novice next door; mountain birds calling sweetly to one another above the early morning mist. A melody he’s heard all his life, but one he never tires of.

He’s always awake by dawn, waiting for a note to be slipped under his door. Written in Penelope’s elegant script, this one says:Pack your things.We leave within the hour.

Hastily, he pulls on a clean shirt and trousers, patched at the knees. The cuffs have been let out, and then let out again, but they still skim his ankles, giving him the peculiar yet accurate look of someone whohas shot up very quickly, and perhaps may grow forever. Unlike the other scholars, he has let his hair grow to his shoulders, tying it back with spare bookbinding ribbon.

He makes his way through candlelit hallways and up the impressive staircase that seems to extend infinitely in either direction. Even beyond the archives’ prodigious memory, there has always been the scholars’ tower, casting its long shadow over the rest of the city. A pillar of knowledge for those blessed with the combination of wit, talent and perseverance to study in its halls. To Aleksander—especially in this golden hour—even standing here feels like an act of reverence.

His feet slip easily into the worn indents on the stone, where thousands of other scholars have stepped before, treading the staircase smooth. Penelope’s rooms are the highest in the masters’ wing, a privilege of her position. Though the air is cold, Aleksander is sweating by the time he reaches her study.

Penelope is waiting for him inside. “I expected you sooner.”

He hears the cut of disappointment in her voice. “I’m sorry, Mistress.”

He considers asking where they’re going, but immediately thinks better of it. Instead, he follows her through her study, towards a door at the back. There might once have been a room beyond, but now Aleksander stands in front of an open archway, the city of Fidelis spilling outwards below him. It’s far from the first time he’s been privy to this view, but it takes his breath away every time. Dawn skims the mountainside, casting a rose-gold glow over snow-topped roofs and precarious stairways, bridges swaying in the breeze. From here he can see the forges blazing like stars to the west, where the craftsmen wrestle with reveurite on their anvils. And to the east, up on the peaks, jagged ruins with sawtoothed silhouettes.

Fidelis: home of the scholars; of myth and wonder; of all that he loves. The cradle to other worlds. He’s lived most of his life here, and he’ll never understand how anywhere could even begin to compare.

Penelope offers him her hand. “Shall we?”

He takes it, making sure to look straight ahead and not to the sheer drop below. They step up to the rim of the archway, toes curled over the edge. The wind tears at Aleksander’s clothes, pulling his balance out of joint. But Penelope looks serene, as always. Her key is already out, the air glittering with an otherworldly light.

Courage, he tells himself—

They step into the open sky.

In the library, there is a locked drawer that Violet has not yet discovered. Late at night, when he’s certain his niece is elsewhere, Ambrose unlocks it and pulls out a battered notebook with intense, looping handwriting, andMarianne Everlyscribbled over the first page. Inside, rows of names line the notebook, most of them in Marianne’s scrawl, and only the last few in his own. Some of them are underlined, or pinned in place with a question mark, but many more—too many—have been crossed off as dead ends. It’s taken years to unravel Marianne’s cypher, and longer still to work through the names on her list. True, Ambrose can’t chase Marianne to the ends of the earth from this house—not when he’s responsible for Violet. But if his elder brother is the arrow, then Ambrose is the bowstring, gathering energy, directing Gabriel’s efforts.

“She’s still out there,” Gabriel had told him quietly, on his last visit.

Ambrose has tried to send so many messages to her over the years, in the hope that they would reach her. Three years ago, one of them did. The response was a letter with no return address, not even a signature. Just two words, in handwriting Ambrose would recognise anywhere:I’m close.

If there is anyone who can break a curse, it’s her.

If anyone can escape their fate, a treacherous voice whispers,it’s her.

Ambrose runs his hand through his hair. There are strands of premature silver woven into sandy blond, and when he looks into the mirror, his father’s face leaps out at him before his reflection settles as his own. And he’s not the only one who’s changed. Violet is growing up, too, the years passing between blinks. Every birthday, he feels a renewed terror for her, and Penelope’s face looms under his eyelids.

Ten years to find Marianne Everly, then five, then two. His sister has left ghostly imprints of herself all over the world, but still she refuses to appear.

They are running out of time.

Once a year, Penelope descends into the underworld to visit a monster.

No assistant to look after, precious little light to see by. The underworld smells like hatred and pain, like suffering stretched taut across centuries.

For a while, she and the monster study one another’s faces in the gloom.

We await your question, star-daughter.

“Tell me,” she says softly. “What do you know of curses?”

CHAPTER

Six

VIOLET EVERLY IStwenty-one years old, and dreaming of other worlds.

Mostly, she dreams of a world where coffee orders are simple—black, white, latte, cappuccino—and not “two shots, hold the froth, soya but onlythisbrand of soya, small but in a big cup” when the queue threatens to stretch out of the door. A world without customers complaining their panini is overpriced, or the rose biscuits taste more like lavender, or that the sugar is too sweet. A world which, dare she dream it, might not involve her working in this godforsaken café at all.

---