The Key to Starveldt (36 page)

‘We need to bury her,’ said Evan. ‘Them, I mean. Before the sun comes up.’

Harper looked up. ‘I can use my –’

‘No.’ Evan drew a shuddering breath. ‘She’s my sister. I’ll bury her. And Duchess.’

No one spoke. Solace felt tears on her cheeks.

‘Back in the Rookery,’ Manx said. His voice was raw. ‘When Sharpsoft was there, he said that some of the rooms in Starveldt could change shape. That they could turn into what you need. Maybe that means this place can find things for us, too.’

‘A shovel,’ said Evan. He didn’t lift his head. It looked like he was going to add something else: his lips moved, but no other sound came out. Manx waited a moment, and then nodded.

‘Do you want us here? While you –’

‘No. I mean … no. Just Solace. Please.’

It was the last word that did it. Somehow, it was a command. Electra moved first, coming to stand alongside Jess’s body. Her eyes were full of tears. Solace’s bond with Evan flared, and for an instant, she tasted with him the years of friendship Jess and Lex had shared, the uprush of hollow darkness that threatened to swamp the summoner. Then Electra began to glow, light shining from her like an angel’s halo, and when she swayed back, gulping, there was a shovel in her hands. Wordless, she thrust the implement at Solace and ran back the way they’d come, away from the body of her friend.

One by one, Laine, Paige and Harper paid their respects, laying their living hands over Jess’s still ones, making themselves believe that she was really gone. At some point, Manx helped Solace slip the key to Starveldt back into her pocket: it was as though she’d lost control of her limbs. She met his eyes, mismatched and red-rimmed, but didn’t know what to say.

‘I’ll find us some rooms,’ he said, hoarsely. ‘Check that they’re ready. Showers. I think we’ll need showers.’

Solace nodded.

Manx hesitated, but didn’t ask anything else. Briefly, he put a hand on her shoulder. Then he moved away, departing her field of vision. She heard him speak to the others, gathering them up. Their footsteps echoed on the stone like unanswered questions, rebuking her, until she and Evan were left alone.

She could feel him through their bond, unable to step forward, unable to go. He alone was yet to approach the bodies. Turning, she saw him leaning against the curve of a nearby column, gripping it as though he couldn’t quite keep upright, the spear long since having fallen from his grasp. He was trembling furiously, and only when their eyes met did he manage to still himself enough to walk forwards.

Side by side, they knelt over Jess, so close that their arms were touching. At first, Evan only stared, his emotions swirling into Solace. Part of him was waiting for Jess to wake up, to cough and splutter like a heroine rescued from drowning, improbably brought back for the sake of a happily ever after. Most of him knew she wouldn’t, couldn’t. After what felt like hours, he reached out and stroked his sister’s hair.

‘I’m so sorry.’ His voice cracked on the words. ‘Jess? I’m sorry. I love you. Don’t be gone.’

Silence.

Bending down, Evan pressed his lips to Jess’s forehead. Tears marked his cheeks. He pulled back, breath shuddering through him. He looked at Solace, anger flashing across his face: anger that Jess was dead and he was still here, anger that he hadn’t been able to save her.

Solace flinched as if struck. Empathy surged between them, an invisible storm. Part of her wanted desperately to scream, cry, kiss him and lick the blood from her hands, but coiled inside her, fighting to the very last, was the Vampire Cynic, stubbornly refusing to give in. She clung to that sense of self, needing it, fearful of being damaged. Then Evan put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, and suddenly she could breathe again.

Like wounded soldiers, they helped each other to stand. They didn’t speak. Evan took the shovel, walked to the foot of the willow tree, and began to dig. Solace waited and watched. Distantly, she was aware of being in physical pain, the bite on her neck and her Grief-given injuries a constant ache, but it was almost entirely subsumed beneath a wave of numbness. She didn’t know where Manx had gone with the others, but instinct told her he would keep them safe.

Moonlight washed the courtyard, marbling her skin and Evan’s with a faint blue glow. It was like they were trapped beneath the sea; as though the whole world had been turned upside down, the earth beneath her feet transmuting into solid sky, and they were in danger of falling. The only sounds were the meaty
thunk
of the shovel blade biting through turf, Evan’s rapid breath and the occasional grunt as he threw himself into the physicality of doing, being, acting. At the other end of her bond, Solace felt the hollowness rising in him, the palpable sense that he was locked outside his body, controlling it from a distance.

Unbidden, she recalled the words she’d spoken out loud on opening Starveldt; words from her mother’s letter to Liluye.
On whom the pale moon gleams.
She stared at Evan again, unable to fathom the coincidence, even though it pained her, because the alternative was turning to look at Jess’s body, at Duchess’s tiny form.

She felt a presence behind her, and knew through her connection to Evan that it was Laine. She wondered briefly how long the psychic had been standing there. It could have been minutes, or hours. Time felt fluid as magma: thick, viscous and inexorable, yet still in constant motion, wrapping around her, warping her sense of where and when she was. There was the sound of footsteps, and then they came to a halt.

‘What do you want?’ Solace asked. She didn’t turn round, nor did Evan look up. After a moment, Laine seemed to realise this wasn’t about to change, and moved closer, standing just in front of Solace. Her face could have been chiselled from alabaster.

‘Manx sent me,’ she said. ‘He’s found the rooms. When you come up, there’s a place for you to get cleaned up, and sleep. Both of you,’ she added, dropping her gaze.

‘You haven’t told Manx about ... about Evan and me?’

‘No.’

‘Good. It doesn’t matter. Not tonight, anyway. Not against this.’

‘I don’t envy you,’ said Laine, softly. ‘Anymore.’

‘Thank Manx,’ said Solace, after a moment had gone by. And then, because the phrase was still swimming through her head, she murmured, ‘See if the pale moon gleams on him.’

‘I will.’ Laine hesitated. ‘It’s from a poem, you know.’

‘What?’

‘That line. You said it earlier, too. It’s from a poem by Arthur O’Shaughnessy.’

Her throat constricted. ‘Tell me.’

Stepping hesitantly forward, Laine leaned in and cupped a hand to Solace’s ear, the other resting lightly on the very edge of her shoulder and, as though it were a secret, whispered the words to her. Solace felt tears prick at her eyes. Maybe the poet had visited Starveldt, or known of the Rookery, or maybe he’d just been a human dreamer, but either way, she suddenly felt as though a tiny fragment of a greater truth had lodged itself in the hollow of her heart. Almost, it was a kind of understanding.

Laine stepped away, breaking their contact. Solace exhaled, and the night air seemed to breathe with her.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

Laine nodded, and was gone.

Time seemed to pass more quickly after that. When she sensed that Evan was tiring, Solace wordlessly took over. There was still work to be done, but although every motion of the spade caused her muscles to twitch with pain, she persevered. The sky was brightening, the grey at its edges fading to the faintest peach, before Solace realised she truly was standing in a grave. Evan helped her back onto the grass, his hands rough and warm on her forearms. Sudden panic blazed through her as she contemplated the hole in the earth.
How do we get her down
? Evan seemed to have the same thought, and so they stood there, helpless to think of a solution.

More footsteps approached. This time, they both looked up. There was Electra, her grey eyes tinged with sadness and determination, the others hovering close behind. Through their bond, Solace was aware of Evan’s sudden anger –
I told them to stay away, I told them
– but knew also that it was unfair.

‘She was our friend, too,’ Electra said softly, reading this reaction in his face as clearly as Solace had felt it, ‘– and Duchess was our guide. We need this. I can help. Let me.’

For an awful moment, Evan was on the brink of arguing, but then she felt some of the tension go out of him: acceptance, of a sort. He nodded, and the two of them stepped away from the grave, watching as their friends filed out onto the grass.

And then Electra glowed again.

It was brighter than her usual aura: gold-white and gleaming, pure as sunrise. At first, Solace didn’t know what she was doing, until similar halos began to form around the bodies on the lawn. Slowly, with an aching gravity that it made her tense to watch, Jess’s body rose up from the ground – floating, limned in gold – and was lowered gently into the grave. Duchess followed, a tiny, strange angel, but still Electra wasn’t done. The pile of displaced earth began to glimmer: rising, it coalesced and poured softly down, the sound no greater than if sugar were being tipped into a mixing bowl, until the space in the ground was filled. Like a sun being extinguished, the blonde girl gasped, her Rarity winking out, and would have fallen, except for Manx, who caught her at the last moment, wrapping his arms around her slender shoulders.

Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Words had to be said, Solace realised – something, anything – but through Evan’s empathy and her own sharp sense of loss, she knew that there could be no eulogy, not yet, not when the death itself was still so near.

They were all paralysed, until Laine stepped forward, her pale eyes flickering with unreadable emotion. The psychic opened her mouth to speak.

It was part of
the
poem. Laine’s voice was both soft and strong, and as the creeping dawn approached the walls of Starveldt, her words reached each of them, carried on the air:

‘We are the music-makers
,

And we are the dreamers of dreams
,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers
,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers
,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world forever, it seems.’

As Laine fell silent, a ragged peace settled over the courtyard. The trailing braids of the willow tree moved gently above the freshly turned earth, and Solace swallowed against the lump in her throat.
Goodbye
, she wanted to say, but surely, if Jess was anywhere and able to hear, it wouldn’t matter if she spoke aloud or not. Manx turned her way, caught Evan’s gaze and nodded towards the castle proper. Nothing more needed to be said.

‘Well, Mother? Are you displeased?’

Glide kept his head down, trying to avoid the attentions of both Grief and Sanguisidera while simultaneously keeping his gaze from any more distressing sight. They were in the laboratories, and it was all he could do to avoid staring at what had become of Sharpsoft, no matter that the spectacle repulsed him. Rubbernecking, he’d heard the phenomenon called, after the swivel-headed drivers who slowed down to stare when passing a car crash. Extraction tubes glistened in his peripheral vision, some blood red, some salt white. A low moan thrummed against his ears. He blocked it out.

‘No,’ said the Bloody Star, after a moment’s pause. ‘It is not what I had planned, of course, but as dear Erasmus pointed out, the capture of my former favourite is no small thing. Though denied the pleasure of meeting the Starkine personally, the seer is nonetheless dead, as is the meddlesome Aer.’

‘And what of this one?’

Glide, who was kneeling, stayed stock-still as Grief laid a hand on his head.

‘Shall we turn him, do you think, or keep him fresh?’

This time, he couldn’t help but lift his gaze. Sanguisidera looked different away from her throne – more real, somehow – but no less menacing.

‘Fresh,’ she said, a wicked smile curving her mouth at his obvious discomfort. ‘For now. Perhaps there is merit in the use of unblooded servants, after all.’

Unblooded.
Glide rolled the word over in his head, and almost laughed out loud. He had killed three people. Thanks to his information, Jess was dead, and so too was Solace’s guardian.

Whatever I am now
, he thought,
the blood will never wash off.