The Native Star Read online

  “What?” Emily said.

  “Your mother. You said she was looking for the Cynic Mirror. In Russian, sin means ‘son.’ Mir translates as ‘earth.’ Apply the plural possessive declension and you have ‘Earth’s Sons’—or as Grimaldi called them, the Sons of the Earth. The Cynic Mirror is not a thing … it’s a group.”

  “You’ve heard of them?” Emily said.

  “Yes.” His tone made it sound as if he wished he hadn’t. “They’re a society of Russian scientists. Eradicationists.”

  “Eradicationists?”

  “Eradicationists believe that the practice of magic should be stopped, but none of them agree on how that should be accomplished. The Scharfians, as you’ve discovered, advocate burning. The Sini Mira, on the other hand, believe that advancements in science will ultimately replace every advantage magic currently affords us. Their researchers are said to be working on a chemical method that will destroy the human body’s ability to channel magic. It is said that all their experiments on human subjects have been fatal.”

  Emily absorbed this silently.

  We must get to the Sini Mira. That’s what her mother had really said that cold night in Lost Pine … but why would her mother have been going to Eradicationists?

  “I’m supposed to go to them,” Emily whispered. That’s what Komé had said, that’s what she’d seen in her dream.

  “Ridiculous.” Stanton turned east, began walking. “Your mother said that twenty years ago. I’m sure whatever business she might have had with them is long since passed.”

  But it wasn’t just her mother’s words that she was thinking of. Emily opened her mouth to tell Stanton about the strange dream she’d had on the train, what Komé had shown her, what she had said … but she drew the words back on a breath and pressed her lips together tightly.

  She had trusted Stanton completely. His dismissive certainty had always made it easy to do so—hard to do otherwise, in fact. But self-sure as he was, even Dreadnought Stanton could be compromised. He could be brutalized, his mind taken hostage, his will bent or even broken …

  The more he knew, the more danger he was in.

  She looked up at his back. At the blood crusting on his palms.

  And the more she knew about him …

  She did not allow herself to complete the thought. Instead, she stopped suddenly, brow wrinkling, dust swirling up in front of her.

  “I can’t just follow you anymore,” she said, the knowledge and the regret of it attacking her simultaneously. “I have to find a different way.”

  Stanton stopped, but did not turn. He stood staring down the dusty road that led east. He flexed his fingers, as if they were remembering something, then let his hands droop slack at his sides.

  Emily caught up with him in a half dozen quick steps and placed her body in front of his. He did not look at her but rather past her, his eyes fixed on the road. She reached up and placed a hand on either side of his face. He flinched but did not pull away. She gently tilted his face down until his eyes met hers. She looked into those green eyes, trying to find something there that would reassure her, but there was nothing—only distance and formality. She let her hands drop quickly.

  “I swear it won’t happen again,” he said.

  “Which?” she said. “The blood magic, or—”

  “Both are unforgivable.”

  Emily looked at him for a long time. There were so many things she wanted to know—but she wanted not to know them even more. She didn’t want any more answers. He had been the one thing she could trust, the one person she could rely on. She wanted to beg him to be that way again. But it wasn’t him who had changed. It was her. It was her own credulity she really wanted back. And credulity, like virtue, could be lost only once.

  “Grimaldi will have gotten off at the next stop. He will have gotten a horse. He’ll find us. And when he does—” Stanton stopped, and when he spoke again his voice was brilliant with despair. “You don’t know what he’s capable of. I know you don’t trust me … I can’t even trust myself. But I can’t leave you. I won’t.”

  Emily put her arms around him. She held onto him as if she were trying to keep him from floating away from the earth. He did not bend under her embrace, but rather stood with fists clenched at his sides. She held him more tightly.

  “I do trust you,” she whispered fiercely into the dirty, torn fabric of his shirt. “I have faith in you. We’ll find a different way together.”

  Stanton was still for a long time. When he did finally put his arms around her, he clung to her like a drowning man, his hot breath stirring the hair on the top of her head. He held her like this for a long time. Finally, he straightened, drew in a deep breath. She looked up and saw that his face was set with familiar determination.

  “Thank you, Miss Edwards,” he said, releasing her.

  There was a sound, like the dry chuckle of a very old woman. Emily turned slightly, trying to catch it, but it was already gone. But as she was turning her head, something else caught her eye: something back at the crossroads. For a moment, it seemed that the dust took a shape, the shape of a woman pointing. Emily took a couple of steps away from Stanton, staring at the dust as it blew away on a refreshing gust.

  “What is it?” Stanton looked in the direction she was staring.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  She walked back to the crossroad. Leaning against the empty signpost, she pulled off her boots and her stockings. She ground her bare feet into the hot dust, wiggling her toes.

  Speak to me, she whispered. Speak to me in a language I can understand.

  Closing her eyes, she imagined Ososolyeh, its intricate glowing traceries spreading out from beneath her feet. And as she imagined it, she found that she could feel it pulsing and throbbing beneath her bare soles. She let herself sink into that vast place, let herself expand to become part of it.

  She took a step.

  And then another.

  Energy threaded up around her feet, her ankles, her legs. A hundred tiny filaments—like roots or streams or veins of ore—traced the contours of her calves, her thighs. They gently pulled her forward, and her steps became a drumbeat, rhythmic and cadent, step after step after step, in the direction Ososolyeh wanted her to go.

  “What are you doing?” Stanton hurried after her, grabbing her boots and stockings out of the dust. “You’re going west!”

  Emily hardly heard him. The earth was singing in her ears.

  Her body, a tiny pinprick on a vast terrain, moved through eons of memory.

  But she was no longer in her body, crawling like an insect through dust and sun; rather, she slept in cool dark water flowing in deep channels. She remembered glaciers, great mountains of ice. She dreamed of oceans.

  After an eternity and an instant, there was the sound of an old woman’s voice, speaking in Miwok:

  Come back now, Basket of Secrets.

  Her consciousness jerked back into her body, slamming back into a hot tiny prison of thirst and exhaustion. She stumbled and fell to the ground, groaning. She tried to pull her mind back together, but it was like trying to refold a map, she couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. She felt Stanton kneeling beside her, a steadying hand resting on her back.

  “Miss Edwards,” he said softly.

  She tried to move her mouth, tried to make words come out of it, but it was impossible. It was all she could do to open her eyes, to admit the piercing unwelcome brightness. Eyes were such ridiculous things, so limited, all they could see were reflections, never the truth itself …

  “You’re exhausted,” Stanton said. “We’ve been walking for miles.”

  Emily sat up, coming back to herself bit by bit. Her mouth was bone dry and her head ached. She saw that they had left the road and had crested a little rise. She looked down on a field planted with a winter cover of hairy vetch that bloomed with pretty curves of tiny purple bells. In the center of the field there was a broad spreading tree in full leaf. The cool shade beneath
it looked indecently inviting. But as she lifted a mute, trembling hand, it was not the tree that she pointed to.

  “What is that?” Stanton said.

  An odd machine rested a little ways off from the tree. It wasn’t a farming machine. It was much larger, and unlike any farming machine it had long broad silver wings resting slack on either side. Helping her to her feet, Stanton took two steps forward and shaded his eyes with his hand.

  “That looks like … but it can’t be!”

  “Can’t be what?”

  “If that’s not a Cecil Carpenter, I’ll eat my hat.” Stanton started running down the hill through the field of purple flowers and tangled foliage.

  “What’s a Cecil Carpenter?” Emily called after him. Her legs were sore and her feet ached and she wasn’t about to do any running.

  “Cecil Carpenter is a designer of biomechanical flying machines,” Stanton began, only to fall into awed silence as he came upon the machine. The thing was even more imposing up close. Its body was as broad as a railcar. Each wing was as long as a hundred-year fir and as wide as a wagon.

  “Tail of a serpent, body of a rooster … this is one of his Cockatrices!”

  The creature was made of a softish silver metal, dull from oxidation and battered from wear. Its rooster head and sinuous tail had been intricately decorated with smooth hard-fired enamel—now chipped and cracked—in deep shades of lapis lazuli, cherry-heart crimson, and pollen yellow. There was a deep-set passenger compartment scooped out of the back between the wings, which contained a half dozen wide banquettes upholstered in red plush. These also showed signs of hard use; the nap was rubbed off the seats and backs and there were several patches.

  Stanton ran his hands over the individually molded wing feathers, each one delicately engraved to look like a real feather.

  “All aluminum! That must have set him back a pretty penny.”

  “So what’s it doing here?”

  Stanton pointed to a place on the Cockatrice’s side, just below the wing. An ornate cartouche bearing the words “Myers & Shorb’s Traveling Carnival of Novelties” had been half painted over.

  “It must have been a carnival attraction,” Stanton said. “But why anyone would just leave it sitting out in the middle of a cornfield—”

  There was the sound of something clacking shut. Emily and Stanton looked up quickly, found themselves looking down the twin blued-steel barrels of a shotgun.

  “Ain’t no one just left nothing sitting nowhere,” said the old man holding the shotgun. “Now get your gol’durn hands off my Cockatrice.”

  Emily and Stanton lifted their hands slowly.

  “Just who th’ hell are you two?” The old man wore tobacco-stained overalls and a straw hat. He was as thin and hard-tanned as a piece of jerky; the deep wrinkles on his face were lined with grime. “Coupla nice-dressed young people, pokin’ around where you’re not wanted … you two from the guv’mint?”

  “Certainly not!” Emily responded to the question with the same vehemence. “We were just …” She paused. Telling him that the great spirit of the earth had led her here probably wouldn’t cut much ice. “We were just out walking. It’s so hot, and I saw the tree, and … and then we saw this beautiful machine.”

  “Ha. Fifty miles from the nearest town. You’re not out on any lover’s stroll. You’re a couple bummers, that’s what you are.” The man made a menacing movement with his shotgun. “Now git off my land. I got important business, and this ain’t no carnival ride no more.”

  “Couldn’t we just rest in the shade for a little while?” Emily put as much sweet supplication into her voice as she could reasonably muster. “I’m so tired, and it’s so hot.”

  The old man frowned at her thoughtfully. Then he looked over at Stanton, stared at him for a long time, up and down. When he saw the blood on Stanton’s hands, his eyes narrowed.

  “What about him?” The old man clutched the shotgun more tightly. “Don’t he talk?”

  “I talk,” Stanton said. “I do all kinds of things.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” the old man said, still looking at Stanton’s hands. He paused. “I heard you talking about this here contraption like you know something about it.”

  “As I was telling Miss … Smith,” Stanton began, “it’s a Cecil Carpenter Cockatrice. One of his older models. Looks like it’s been used hard and not particularly well kept. You said it’s yours?”

  “Yep,” the old man said. “Bought it off a traveling carnival show.”

  “You intend to fly it?”

  “’Course I intend to fly it. Matter o’ fact, I’m gonna fly it out of here tomorrow morning.”

  “Ah,” Stanton said. He threw Emily a look that was precisely equal in meaning to an index finger twirled alongside his temple. “Well, I guess it’s still every American man’s right to throw away his life if he chooses.” He took Emily’s arm and turned to go. She made small noises in protest, but he squeezed her elbow and she fell silent.

  “Wait!” the old man called after them. “What are you talking about? I don’t aim to throw my life away!”

  “You fly in that thing and you will,” Stanton called back without turning. “The men who sold it to you are crooks. You might get it up in the air, but you won’t be able to keep it there. Unless …”

  “Unless?”

  Stanton smiled, turned slowly.

  “Unless you put down that shotgun and let Miss Smith sit in the shade for a while,” he said. “And a drink of water would be nice, too.”

  “Name’s Hembry,” the old man said, squatting down some distance from them with the shotgun across his knees. “Ebenezer Hembry.”

  Emily and Stanton were sitting under the shade of the big oak tree, and Hembry was watching them closely. Unslinging a canteen from around his shoulder, he tossed it over to Emily. After she’d drunk deep of the warm, stale-tasting water, Hembry fixed his gaze on Stanton.

  “Now, Mr….”

  “… Jones,” Stanton said, and Hembry gave a little chuckle.

  “Yeah. Sure. Well, Mr. Jones … what exactly did you mean about my Cockatrice?”

  “It’s a death trap,” Stanton said. “Muscles are probably half rotted away by now.”

  “Muscles?” Hembry chuckled louder this time, and slapped a knee, too. “Well, that shows what you know, friend. This thing here, it’s a machine. Machines ain’t got muscles.”

  “Biomechanical flying machines do,” Stanton said.

  He spoke these words in a tone that Emily had learned to associate with an impending lecture, so she leaned her head back against the tree trunk and considered taking a nap. Hembry, on the other hand, leaned forward.

  “What the hell does that mean?” he said. “Biomechanical who-what?”

  “Carpenter’s contribution to the world of engineering is his ability to interweave living flesh and machine to exploit the unique advantages of each. By using the long muscles of elephants and blue whales to provide motive power, the system can be fueled with a simple glucose solution as opposed to …”

  “Glucose? You mean like sugar?” Hembry said. “The carnies told me I had to fill up the tank with sugar water.”

  “Sugar water is all wrong.” Stanton sounded aggrieved. “You need a much richer solution. Pure corn syrup for a preference, barley syrup if you’ve got nothing else.”

  Hembry clenched his lips, but said nothing.

  “But the syrup is really the least of your problems. To get that Cockatrice into the air, you’re going to need a Warlock.”

  Emily opened her eyes.

  “A Warlock?” Hembry’s bleat made it sound as if Stanton had said he needed sixteen albino pygmies and a mule.

  “The muscles on a Cockatrice have been specially treated to keep them in a state of suspended animation, but even so, they have to be fed and tended and kept limber. The muscles on your Cockatrice haven’t been properly cared for in weeks, maybe months. A Warlock could revive them and repair the damage. Refresh thei
r life force. Then, and only then, you’d be able to fly out of here.”

  Hembry let out a long breath. Reaching into his back pocket, he took out a thick green glass-topped jar. Emily recognized it as the kind she used to put up huckleberry preserves. Hembry unlatched the lid, spat tobacco juice into it, then capped the jar again and stuck it back into his pocket.

  “Weevils in your bean plants?” Emily asked. Hembry looked at her, a slow smile spreading across his face.

  “Yes’m, I have the misfortune of that blight,” he said. “Ain’t nothing better to get after ’em with than ’baccy-juice. I guess you ain’t from the guv’mint after all.”

  “Mr. Jones.” Emily looked at Stanton. “If Mr. Hembry were able to find a Warlock … which would be an utterly astonishing discovery out here in the middle of nowhere … how far could he fly in his Cockatrice?”

  “Why, Miss Smith, he could fly all the way to New York City if he had a mind to,” Stanton said.

  “Don’t need to git to New York City.” Hembry’s mouth twisted in distaste. “Need to git to Philadelphia.”

  “Philadelphia?” both Stanton and Emily said at once. Hembry sighed, reached inside his tea-colored shirt, pulled out a many-times-refolded broadsheet.

  “It opens tomorrow,” he said, as Emily smoothed the paper out over her lap.

  Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

  Emily’s eyes scanned the highlights. Opening May 10, 1876 … President Ulysses S. Grant … the Emperor and Empress of Brazil …

  Something on the broadsheet caught Emily’s eye. Looking at Stanton, she laid a finger next to a small line of type at the bottom of the poster.

  “Look who’s going to be at the opening of the Mantic Pavilion,” she breathed.

  “Sophos Mirabilis, of the Mirabilis Institute of the Credomantic Arts,” Stanton said.

  They both looked up at Hembry in unison.

  “Mr. Hembry,” Emily said. “I believe we can help.”

  Stanton jumped to his feet and took Hembry by the arm. The old man made a protesting sound, but Stanton gave him no time to reach for his shotgun; he pulled the man several feet away from where Emily was sitting. Even at that distance she heard the finger-snap and the word: flamma.