The Native Star Read online

  She chewed on her lip, nervousness making her stomach flutter. Finally, she took a deep breath and smiled.

  “You’re right, Dag,” she said. “Listen, I’m going to go help wash up. I’ll come find you later, all right? And we’ll have a walk.”

  “Yeah,” Dag said. And then, right there in the middle of everyone, he gave Emily a kiss on the cheek. She shivered, feeling eyes on them all around. She knew this should please her. If they weren’t engaged before, they were as good as now.

  But she didn’t feel victorious. She felt nothing but dread, dark and sickening.

  Retrieving Pap’s leather pouch from where she had stowed it, she slung it over her shoulder, clinging to the strap like a lifeline.

  The fluttering nervousness in her stomach had congealed into sour apprehension. Besim hadn’t thrown a bunk Cassandra. She had been doing bad magic—or at least, he’d think it was bad magic. And if he was right about that …

  She considered her options. She could tell Dag the truth, that she had bewitched someone, and that by “someone” she meant him. That’d be the end of her professional credibility. She and Pap could be horsewhipped out of Lost Pine, or Dag could bring law against her. Baugh’s Patent Magicks were bad for business, but a turn in the county jail would be an awful lot worse.

  Or she could go up to Old China and sort the mess out for herself.

  She walked away quickly, the cheerful notes of “Sweet, Sweet Spring” chasing her into the darkness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Corpse Switch

  Emily walked briskly up to the Old China Mine, jumping from rock to rock along the narrow pony path that wound alongside the darkly rushing You Bet Creek. The night had grown bitterly cold, and patches of snow glowed blue in the moonlight. She pulled her buffalo coat tighter around herself, glad now that she hadn’t put her winter flannels away too soon.

  Besim’s Cassandra puzzled her. How could the Corpse Switch have failed, and what was a blue star doing in a mine? But the part she kept coming back to was the part of least immediate interest: the name Lyakhov. The name seemed so familiar. Could Besim have stumbled across something useful? Something about her mother?

  Of her mother, Emily remembered nothing. It was not that her memories were sketchy or vague—they simply did not exist. She remembered when she’d first come to Pap’s cabin. But before that, nothing. A clear demarcation—a horizon beyond which stretched only shadow.

  All Emily’s efforts to find out more had been thwarted. Her mother had left so little behind. Emily reached up, feeling for her hair sticks, reassuring herself that they were still there.

  She’d made Pap tell her the story a hundred times. How her mother had staggered into Lost Pine on an icy black night twenty years ago, just after the first snows had fallen in the highest passes, frostbit from her toes to her blue fingertips. Five-year-old Emily was clinging to her chest, a man’s woolen coat pulled tight around them both.

  The timber camp workers had gotten her inside, bundled her up in front of a blazing fire. She had made only one impenetrable utterance before losing consciousness:

  “We must get to the Cynic Mirror.”

  Pap had been called. He’d piled counterpanes and quilts over the delirious woman, coaxed powerful herbal tisanes down her throat. He spoke spell-words over her, remonstrated with her departing spirit, but nothing was any use. She died within days.

  Lyakhov. Could it have been her mother’s name? Then that would make her Emily Lyakhov, as Besim had called her. She’d heard names like that, names ending in -itch and -ov, among the thick-bearded Russians who drove cattle through the passes. They sometimes stopped to ask Pap for charms to ward against curses and the evil eye. They always asked for hot tea to drink, and jam to put in it.

  Deep in thought, she hardly noticed when the moon slid behind the clouds and darkness fell like a blanket. Having roamed the mountains most of her life, she had no difficulty keeping to the path, and was not unnerved by the scrapings, squeaks, and hoots that surrounded her. But when there was a huge pop and a flash of dazzling white light, her heart stopped in her chest. She spun, balling her fists.

  “Dag?” she called. “Is that you?”

  “Of course it isn’t.” A man’s voice, irritable. A spare form held up a pine stick that glowed with magical incandescence. “He was asleep in a corner when I left. Your absence took the steam out of him. Make your love spells pretty harsh, don’t you?”

  “Mr. Stanton?” Her voice was high with disbelief, then a ferocious whisper. “What are you talking about? Love spells?”

  “Oh, please. I was riding back from Dutch Flat last night, and I saw—” He stopped abruptly, evidently reconsidering his words. “Well, it was obvious at the dance tonight. Your lumberman smelled like a French whorehouse just burned down. Ashes of Amour, I take it? You used far too much lavender.”

  “You … saw me?” Emily hissed. “Under the Hanging Oak?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “But I was …” Emily choked on the words: naked as a beggar’s toes.

  “All right, so I may have glimpsed you,” Stanton said. “Briefly. But with your hair all undone, I certainly couldn’t see …” He paused. “Anyway, I rode on immediately. I certainly had no wish to watch you lay a trap for some poor male to blunder into.”

  “You dirty spy!” Emily was hot with embarrassment.

  “I make no judgments.” Stanton’s tone implied that he didn’t have to, that judgment had already been passed by eons of respectability and decency. “Of course, it represents an egregious breach of professional ethics, but he is the richest man in Lost Pine, and not missing any limbs or digits, so I can understand—”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sure you understand completely,” Emily snarled. “You’re so all-fired insightful. See if you can guess what I’m thinking right now.”

  Stanton didn’t venture. Rather, he picked up another stick from the ground and said, “Lux.” The branch flared to light with a loud pop—the same sound that had startled her a few minutes earlier. He handed it to Emily. To her surprise (and slight regret, for her fingers were stiff with cold) she found it gave off no heat, and rather glowed as if illuminated from within.

  “Thank you,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I guessed you’d take it upon yourself to check on things at the Old China Mine. And not knowing the way to get there, I decided that following you would be the best way for me to get there, too.”

  “Why do you want to go up to Old China?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I can’t let a female with such dangerously antique notions about magic—not to mention such a questionable code of ethics—face a pack of zombie miners alone.” He paused. “Pap couldn’t go, and none of those drunken sots back there would be any help.”

  “Then you believe Besim was telling the truth?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Half of Besim’s Cassandra, the half about you casting spells on people without their knowledge and being a büyüleyici kadin—that translates as ‘bad Witch,’ in case your colloquial Turkish has gotten rusty—was entirely accurate. Knowing that, I have every reason to believe the other half. Or at least to believe that he believes the other half. I still maintain that Corpse Switches do not fail.”

  “Well, I don’t want company,” she snapped, turning on her heel. Especially not your company.

  “You may not want my company, but you need my help.” Stanton’s long legs easily matched even her most rapid strides on the rough path. “I have studied with professionals who have done years of necromantic research. You haven’t the least exposure to modern theories of revivification or devivification—subjects with which I have practical experience.”

  “This is my job,” Emily said. “Besides, you’ve got a whole new crate from New York to open. Why dirty your hands with real magic?”

  “And what would you know about real magic?” The scorn in his voice made her want to punch
him. “Lives may be at stake. Perhaps you could curb your pride and think about that?”

  Emily clenched her teeth. Insufferable.

  “Suit yourself,” she hissed.

  Emily and Stanton reached Old China two hours past midnight.

  Shacks and mine gear glowed stark white in cold moonlight, and everything was graveyard-still. In a mining camp that used live labor, this would not be unusual at two in the morning. But zombies didn’t sleep. The whole point was their ability to work continuously, for months on end, until they literally fell apart.

  And indeed, there were signs that work had just recently come to a halt. Flickering coal-oil lanterns still burned along the hundred-foot board sluice that stretched like a dark road up to the mouth of the mine. A thin trickle of black water ran off the sluice into a muddy pit that snaked down to rejoin You Bet Creek below.

  The foreman’s cabin, crooked and leaning, shone silver-gray in the moonlight. Dark shadows under its eaves made it look angry. Stanton used his foot to carefully ease open the door.

  “No one inside.” He disappeared through the door and Emily followed.

  The cramped foreman’s cabin was packed with mining paraphernalia—crates marked “California Powder Works” spilling drifts of wood shavings, spools of timing fuse, rope and drills, and broken headlamps waiting to be mended. But it was an enormous machine, huge as the upright piano in Mrs. Bargett’s boarding house, that dominated the space.

  It was a behemoth of gleaming brass and polished mahogany, ornamented with a great deal of machine-engraved scrollwork. Here and there, lights flickered under blown-glass buttons. Emily squinted to read the enameled plaque:

  Vivification Control Switch, D. J. Conway and Company, Chicago, Ill., Pat. Pend. 1862.

  “This is the Corpse Switch?” Emily asked, but Stanton didn’t answer. He was twisting a dial and looking closely at one of the needle indicators.

  “It seems to be working just fine.”

  “You sure? Maybe touring the factory doesn’t make you as much of an expert as you’d like to think.”

  He glared over his shoulder. “Corpse Switches are really very simple, even though they do a complex job. If one were to fail, it would be immediately apparent.”

  “All right. If the Corpse Switch is working, then where are all the corpses?”

  At that moment, a distant, piercing scream sliced the night air. It came from the entrance of the mine where iron tracks vanished into the blackness.

  They rushed out of the shack and up the hill to the heavy-timbered mouth of the mine. From deep within they could hear the amplified echoes of an incoherent shriek of pain and terror. The sound was like a cold steel rod rubbed against Emily’s spine.

  Stanton grabbed the satchel from Emily’s shoulder and threw it open, ignoring her cry of outrage. He pawed through bottles and leather pouches, peering at labels.

  “Chelidonium majus, inula helenium, hyssopus officinalis, viscum album … house-magic basics. Oh, and black storax! That will help immensely. At least you’re well prepared.” He poured garlic and salt and cayenne onto a flat rock, then, using a smoothly rounded piece of granite as a pestle, he ground them together with a few of the other herbs, finally adding the storax. He muttered charms in low cadent Latin.

  “You’re not rhyming,” she snapped. “You have to rhyme!”

  “There isn’t time for that nonsense,” he said. “This is an extremely simple devivification powder, the kind a schoolboy might compound as an amusement on a rainy Sunday.” He scooped two handfuls and put them in his pockets. He gestured to Emily to do the same.

  “Throw it at anything that moves,” he said. “It’s not strong enough to hold them off long, so don’t let your guard down.”

  They crept into the mine, holding their brands before them. The bright white light cast harsh flickering shadows against the rough-hewn pine supports, made the mining-car tracks seem as sharp as if they’d been honed on a whetstone. A thin trickle of muddy cocoa-colored water ran down the middle of the tracks, smelling of iron or, perhaps, Emily thought as they got closer to the anguished screams, blood.

  They followed the screams to the end of a shallow test tunnel off the main line. There, they found him—Mr. Hart, the foreman, the mine’s only live employee. He was buried under huge, mud-slick boulders and crumbling earth. Only his head and shoulders and arms protruded. His breathing was choked, constricted by the immense weight pressing down on his chest. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, black in the half-light.

  “Em Edwards, thank God you’ve come.” He raised a shaking arm to clutch at her hand. His skin was freezing cold, waxy and gritty with dirt. “Thank God …”

  Emily brushed mud from his face. “I won’t leave you.”

  “Light …” The man’s voice was small and terrified. “Don’t let the light go out …”

  “How is he?” Stanton called. Emily came close to Stanton’s side, dropped her voice low.

  “He’s still alive, but he’s under a ton of rock. I don’t know how we can get him out.”

  “Do whatever you can … quickly.” Stanton was looking down into the frigid gloom of the main tunnel. Deep in the darkness, Emily could hear shuffling and grunts and small groans, and now and again she saw something glitter. Eyes.

  “They’re holding off for the moment,” Stanton said. He threw one of the brands down the tunnel. In the sudden flare of light, Emily caught her first glimpse of the zombies. Crouching half bent, in filthy shredded rags, they pulled back from the light, but not far.

  Emily hurried back to Hart’s side and looked at the rocks that covered him. They were far too big to move.

  “They … they went crazy.” Hart’s voice was thin and distant. “The diggings were … Everything was normal. Until they found …”

  The man’s leather-gloved hand fell open, and a warm glow filled the side tunnel. In his palm lay some kind of gemstone, rich blue threaded with glowing filaments of white. It shimmered from within, as if suffused with remembered sunlight. Emily brought her light down to examine it.

  “The blue star,” she murmured.

  “They were afraid of it. I picked it up to look … and they went crazy. Turned on me. Not supposed to do that, not with the Switch. They … wanted to bury me, bury it forever …”

  The effort of the last word made the man splutter and choke. An agonized cough racked him, and with it came a bubbling gush of black blood.

  “Miss Edwards …” Stanton’s voice was tense.

  “He’s dead,” Emily said softly. The sudden presence of real death among all the half-death suddenly made everything seem heavier and slower. “There’s nothing we can—”

  But her words were lost. As if by some silent signal, the zombie miners swept forward in a wave of rags and rot, trampling Stanton and the light as they crowded down the side tunnel.

  Emily shrieked, scrambling backward until her back was against cold rock. She felt for the devivification powder in her pocket, but it was too late. The miners were upon her, reeking of mud and rust and decay. In the flickering half-light she saw the face of a man, swollen and brutish and slack with the stupidity of death, his cheek a mass of black mold.

  The thing got a slimy icy hand around her throat. The bones of the skeletal fingers dug into her windpipe, pressing hard against the wall. The close blackness of the tunnel spun around her. She struggled for breath as the corpse pushed her back …

  “Mort statim!”

  The words made the rocks and earth around them shudder. Stanton’s lanky form was outlined in blue flame, and there was a colossal flash. The zombies were harshly outlined in sudden daylight brilliance, then dissolved into sparking clouds that glittered like gold dust.

  Darkness fell abruptly as the magical brightness faded.

  “Lux,” Stanton snapped, and his pine brand flared once again, weak and wavering. The radiance of the attack had seared vibrating black spots onto Emily’s eyeballs. She tried to blink them away, but they
stubbornly refused to vanish, and in a moment, Emily realized that they were not black spots at all, but two corpses that had not fallen in Stanton’s attack. They were lumbering toward her. One had a pick in his crumbling hand, and was looking at Emily as if she had a vein of gold in her forehead.

  “Don’t just stand there!” Stanton was slumped against the rock, breathing hard. She reached out, trying to squeeze past her zombie attackers, but the one with the pick clutched at the loose end of one of her long braids. It yanked her back hard, forcing her to her knees. The pick gleamed above her.

  Desperately, she grasped for anything she could strike out with. A gleam caught her eye. She lunged for it, and her hand fell upon the blue gemstone.

  The moment her fingers touched it, everything changed. She could perceive everything with complete clarity. The texture of the walls. The sound of Stanton’s breathing. The bright metal head of the pick soaring down to split her skull. Faster than thought, she rolled to one side as the pick struck sparks on the rock by her ear. Dumb and dizzy, she grabbed one of the zombie’s leather-dry legs. If she could just knock it off balance …

  … and in an instant, the thing collapsed to the ground, the pick clattering against rock, the end of her braid still clenched in its bony fist. She struggled to free herself, but the second corpse gave her no chance; it clawed at her arm, but the moment its dead flesh touched hers, it shuddered and stilled, falling across her in a slimy heap.

  Then, all was silent but for the sound of Emily’s tattered breath and the roaring of her heart in her ears. The next thing she knew, Stanton had shoved aside the no-longer undead and was slapping her cheeks, even though she thought it perfectly obvious that she was completely awake.

  “Stop it,” she snapped, pushing him away. “I’m … I’m fine. What happened?”

  “I couldn’t get them all.” Stanton’s voice was distant and hollow. “How did you manage to …”

  “I don’t know,” Emily said. “They just … fell down.”

  She felt funny, drifting and warm and oddly light. She lifted a hand to brush a dirty lock of hair from her face and noticed that the strange blue stone seemed to have become stuck to her palm.