Catching Stars Read online

  Some said he had acquired magic during his imprisonment and used those skills to get out. The bravest among them suggested he’d been broken out by burgeoning rebel groups seeking to recruit anyone with a score to settle with the Crown. Others, the small number that believed his claims of possession, said the demon had returned to spare him from the hangman’s noose.

  Jayin kept track of all the rumors—a lingering habit from a different life—but those were especially ridiculous. Magic wasn’t a skill to be acquired, and she didn’t believe in demons. Even if they did exist, it was unlikely a Dark creature would suddenly find the benevolence to free their former puppet. As for the rebels, they were mad if they would risk the ire of the King—and more importantly, the Kingswitch—by breaking out Ayrie’s most famous murderer. Such an open show of defiance could only end one way. Badly.

  Absently, Jayin cycled through the Pit’s weaknesses and any possible escape routes as she walked through the nearly empty market. With all the talk of an escaped murderer, the Gull was emptier than usual, and the market was nearly deserted. It was a nice change from the overcrowded streets to which she’d grown accustomed. In the last three years, countless people had flocked to Pavaal from the countryside, abandoning their dying farms to find shelter in the cities. There wasn’t much to be found

  Jayin shook her head, forcing herself to dismiss thoughts of convicts and escapes. That wasn’t her life anymore; hunting criminals and convicts wasn’t her job. The Palace no longer held her leash—they hadn’t for a year—but she could remember the day Kell had been arrested. She suppressed the guilt that weighed on her heart like a stone.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if she was planning on attending the hanging. The fact that public executions were still in practice was repugnant. The boy was a killer, but that was no excuse to turn his death into a spectacle. The capitol was full of killers, and Jayin knew for a fact Ayrie Palace housed a few of their own.

  And to think, Jayin thought, loading her groceries into bags, these are the same people who consider magic barbarism.

  “Hi, Jay,” said a voice at her elbow. Jayin didn’t flinch, used to the small boy’s presence by now.

  “You are getting sloppy,” Jayin said. “I’m surprised you’re not waiting for me in my kitchen by now.”

  The boy, Ravi, was one of the dozens of children that roamed the Gull by day. At night, the lucky few took shelter in the temples. The others scurried back to carrion hideouts where they could find a measure of security with the gangs.

  Ravi’s bright smile lessened, and a faint blush colored the dark skin of his cheeks.

  “You changed the locks,” he said, the words taking on a petulant edge.

  “You picked the last ones,” Jayin replied. “But if you’re going to follow me home, make yourself useful.”

  She shifted one of the bags in her arms, careful not to let him touch the strip of naked skin just above the hem of her glove as she dropped the paper sack into his hands. Ravi struggled under the weight for a moment before righting himself. Jayin smiled as she watched him, the stubbornness on his face exclusive to thirteen-year-old boys.

  “So, whatcha get?” Ravi asked as they walked into the shop. He handed Jayin her bag of groceries and started poking around as she unpacked.

  “The usual ingredients,” Jayin said, shaking a jar so Ravi could hear the liquid sloshing around inside. “Virgin’s blood.” She picked up a container of whitish powder. “Some ground up nixie bones. Be careful with that one,” Jayin advised as Ravi peered into a tiny, empty jar. She plucked it from his fingers before he could pry the lid open.

  “What’s in it?” Ravi asked, standing on his tiptoes to get a better look as Jayin whisked the vial away.

  “The soul of a dying sailor,” Jayin said, wiggling her fingers and poking Ravi in the stomach.

  “Come off it.” His dark eyebrows drew together. “No way you got a soul in there.”

  “If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to take a look inside,” Jayin said, shrugging. “But if the old man’s soul latches onto you, there’s no telling what will happen. I heard this one had a liking for marjan. He used to eat it on everything. Personally, I love the stuff, but you dayri have such delicate palettes.”

  Ravi made a face, his tongue sticking out as he ran his hand through his dark curls.

  “Today’s the day,” he announced, finding a new topic.

  Jayin raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what day would that be?”

  “Today,” Ravi said, hopping onto an empty spot on her counter, “is the day you tell me how you got that scar.”

  Jayin smiled, the small motion only making the mark more noticeable. Ravi had asked about it since the day she first found him in the shop, and Jayin made up a new answer every time, each more ridiculous than the last.

  “Pirates,” she declared. Jayin drew her thumb over the thin line that carved through the left side of her face, sweeping from just under her eye and splitting her lips. It was a miracle her tongue had survived. “They were harvesting souls and got a little too friendly.” She shook her head. “Never was a fan of pirates.”

  Ravi pouted, folding his arms across his chest. “You’ll tell me someday.”

  “I’ll tell you when you earn it,” Jayin said, before turning to a safer subject. “And you can start by helping me organize the shop and update my ledger. I’ll even give you a bronze.” Ravi’s eyes lit up at the prospect of earning a coin.

  “My numbers ain’t so good,” he said, his smile deflating by slow degrees. “I don’t wanna mess it up.”

  “How about you try it in pencil first, and I’ll check it over?”

  Ravi nodded, and Jayin made a mental note to add arithmetic to their impromptu curriculum. Like most in the Gull, Ravi could only read at the most basic level. Over the past few months, Jayin had worked to improve his education. It was an optimistic ambition, but some part of her thought that if Ravi could read and write, he would have more options than being dragged into the gangs.

  Jayin handed him the ledger, opening it up to the next blank page. Ravi took it carefully, his eyes solemn, before heading to the furthest corner of the shop to start inventory.

  As she stocked the counter, Jayin watched him out of the corner of her eye. His wiry curls bounced as he ticked his head back and forth, tallying numbers and crossing them out again. She didn’t think he would try to make off with anything—nothing here was worth much, and with a bronze on the line, it was unlikely Ravi would cut and run. Even so, kids in the Gull grew up quickly and shed their consciences even quicker.

  Jayin had known the risks of settling in the Gull when she’d chosen to open her apothecary over a year ago. Newcomers were routinely robbed and bullied into supporting one gang or another. Red Crows, Vultures, Ironbeaks, and Bloodwings, they all vied for territory and didn’t care who they killed to get it.

  But no one, not the most fearsome of carrions, was willing to cross the Gulwitch. Jayin thought the nickname was a little heavy-handed, but theatricality and violence walked hand-in-hand in this place. Stories and reputation were everything. They were the difference between life and death; the difference between being left alone or having the gangs holding her leash.

  Jayin had been collared before. It didn’t suit her.

  Only two days after she first set up shop, the apothecary had been raided. According to the legend, she hunted for a day and a night before she found the thieves and spelled them into returning the stolen goods. One rumor said she had cursed and enthralled them, so they were bound to do her bidding or die. Another insisted she could shed her human skin to reveal a monster that stood seven feet tall, with magical tattoos that meant ruin to whoever saw them. The newest story was she could kill with a look, her green eyes poisonous to anyone who dared to meet her gaze.

  If I were seven feet tall, I wouldn’t need a ladder to stock my own shelves, Jayin thought. The stories preserved her safety and status in the Gull, but the reality was much less exciting
. Finding the thieves had taken less than two hours, and the carrions had laughed themselves stupid when she’d demanded her wares back. The herbs weren’t worth much, but just as the gangs had to hassle newcomers, Jayin had to prove that she wouldn’t be pushed around. All it had taken to get her things back was a bit of flash and a few nonsensical words, and thus the Gulwitch was born.

  Jayin smiled at the memory. Carrion gangs might run the Gull, but everyone was afraid of witches.

  After that, rumors of the vengeful Gulwitch flooded the streets, growing more fantastical with each retelling. As they pinwheeled out of control, Jayin earned a reprieve from the carrions. The stories made customers harder to come by, but for those who couldn’t afford medics or expensive sahir healers, she was the only option. Home remedies and naturalist cures weren’t much, but they were better than nothing.

  Jayin had resolved herself to a life of solitude when Ravi started showing up. She tried to chase him away at first, thinking he was one of the scavenger children that scoped out marks or picked crime scenes clean. But he returned the next day, and the next, always watching her with enormous black eyes.

  Eventually, she gave up and stopped shooing him out the door every time he dropped by. It was nice to be around someone who didn’t look at her with abject horror or thinly veiled suspicion.

  Jayin watched as Ravi took stock and made careful notes in the ledger. His tongue stuck out of his mouth as he did the sums, shockingly pink against his dark skin. While he focused on his task, Jayin busied herself by replenishing her store of healing poultices and other powder mixes. She marketed them as magic, but they were just as mundane as most Aestosi. Many sahir frowned on selling magic to dayri, though there were some that did a booming business in the merchant ring. Technically it was illegal, but in Pavaal, legality had never gotten in the way of turning a profit.

  Busy with her work, Jayin barely noticed someone approaching the shop until they were practically in the door

  “Ravi,” Jayin said coolly. “Mind finishing up in the storeroom?” Ravi nodded, clutching the ledger to his chest and ducking into the back. He knew when to make himself scarce. Jayin couldn’t intervene if he pledged himself to a gang without jeopardizing her neutrality, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t take small countermeasures in the meantime.

  Jayin only spared the carrion boy a passing glance as he walked into the storefront, recognizing the crimson Bloodwing tattoos that patterned his skin. He couldn’t have been much younger than Jayin herself, maybe sixteen or seventeen, but he was clearly high up in the ranks.

  One of the reasons the Guard so consistently underestimated the gangs was because their members were so young. Kids, most of them not even of age, rose through the gangs until they were killed and another child took their place. The oldest carrion Jayin knew of had been twenty-three before he died. Some of them—a rare few—made it out of the game, retiring in comfort to run long cons on merchants and unwary newcomers. But even retired carrions didn’t live very long.

  This one didn’t look anywhere near retirement. He was an enforcer. Big, mean, and stupid, they advanced with whatever streetlord could hold onto power the longest. This one was no exception. He was thick as a tree trunk, all beady eyes and bloody knuckles. It was a wonder he grew to be such a size. Most of the kids running the streets were painfully thin.

  Jayin didn’t initiate conversation, going about her business until he stated his. Enforcers didn’t act unless it was on orders, and there was no way someone with anti-magic sigils tattooed on their shoulders would have any business with a witch. She wondered if he knew sigils were a kind of magic, and they didn’t work for dayri anyway.

  It was unlikely. Aestosi superstitions were boundless when it came to protection against witches. Witches who kept the whole wretched kingdom safe.

  “You gotta come with me,” the boy said finally, his voice a low rumble. Jayin looked up at him, refusing to break eye contact even when the boy’s mouth twisted into a hard line. “The boss needsta see you,” he continued, looking away from her.

  “If Kane wants to see me, he can come himself,” Jayin replied. The boy looked surprised that Jayin knew Kane’s name offhand, but she made it her business to know the powerful players in the Gull. The leader of the Bloodwings had a nasty streak a mile wide. He had been a carrion since the tender age of nine, slashing purses before he learned that slitting a man’s throat was as easy as cutting his wallet. He was not someone to cross.

  Neither was Jayin, and she would not be called like a dog.

  “He can’t,” the enforcer ground out. “He’s sick.”

  “Then take him to a medic,” Jayin said, turning her attention back to her work. The Bloodwings had huge caches of coin squirreled away; they could afford someone more qualified.

  “We did!” the boy shouted. Jayin’s eyes snapped back to him, and she spun a glamor over her skin. Her eyes glowed green, sinking deep into her skull, and mythical tattoos appeared, deep black against her brown skin.

  “You”—she said in a voice that promised violence. The enforcer’s eyes widened, and he scrambled backward—“should think very carefully about your next words.”

  The boy swallowed hard. “What’s wrong with him ain’t physical. It’s magic.”

  “Magic?” Jayin repeated, disbelief coloring her voice.

  “He’s been cursed.”

  She doubted that. The Kingswitch banned curse magic years ago, and there were entire squads of witches who monitored all the magical activity in Aestos. If a curse had been cast—especially so close to the Palace—someone would have known about it.

  The boy shuffled, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’ll pay.”

  “Yes, you will,” Jayin said, but she wasn’t thinking about the money. Since Maddix Kell had escaped, it had felt as if Pavaal was holding its breath, waiting for something that loomed just over the horizon. Maybe this was it.

  Or maybe it was just the beginning.

  Chapter Two:

  Jayin

  The enforcer let himself out, and Jayin quickly scribbled a note for Ravi, telling him to lock up, before following the carrion boy outside. It wasn’t hard to guess where they would go. If Kane really was as sick as the boy said, he would be holed up in Bloodwing territory with a dozen lieutenants by his side. Jayin made sure to maintain her glamor as they walked farther away from her shop.

  “Well it’s not my taste,” she said when they finally arrived at a building by the docks. It was dingy and damp, but well fortified. “But you carrions do love squatting in the dark.” His lieutenants glowered at her, but from his bed in the back corner of the room, Kane barked out a laugh.

  “Charming as always. You look well, Gulwitch.”

  She couldn’t say the same for him. Jayin barely recognized the wasted figure beside her. His skin was yellow and waxy, stretched thin over his skull. His eyes sunk deep into their sockets and the bones in his collar looked like they might break through his flesh at any moment. Jayin had seen hunger, she’d seen starvation, but this was something different. Even if Jayin thought it was some kind of dayri illness, the thrill in her blood told her otherwise. She blinked the world away, allowing her second sight to settle over her eyes. Kane shone with Dark magic, and there was no question that it was killing him.

  “Everybody out,” Jayin ordered, allowing the world to filter back in.

  “We ain’t going nowhere,” one of the carrions growled and Jayin rolled her eyes at the ham-fisted show of force. Idiots.

  “Fine, but if you get spelled, don’t blame me.” The carrions tensed, torn between their duty to Kane and their fear of magic.

  “It’s okay,” Kane said, waving them away. Reluctantly, his people filed out of the room. “Don’t you try anything funny now, Gulwitch.”

  “Believe me, there’s nothing I could do to make this worse,” Jayin said. There probably wasn’t anything she could do to make it better either. She wasn’t a healer, and this wasn’t an illness. Jayin caref
ully peeled away the psychic barriers that separated her from the energy that saturated the air and clung to people like second skins. She tried to be as gentle as possible as she looked for the source of Kane’s deterioration. Her eyes fell closed as the pulse of his aura obscured everything around her.

  She only searched for a few seconds before her energy brushed against something lodged behind his heart. Something with its hooks in so deep it would be impossible to remove. Something deadly. Something Dark.

  Jayin hissed, retracting her magic and throwing the shields back into place.

  “That bad?” Kane asked. Jayin nodded. Whatever had been done to him, it was bristling with intention and energy the likes of which she’d never felt before. She didn’t know what he’d done to be cursed like this, but Jayin wanted nothing to do with it.

  It was time to leave.

  “You have a week,” she said, not unkindly. Kane was a monster, but no one deserved what was happening to him. What was going to happen to him if he survived the coming hours. By her estimate, he’d lose control of his body in three days and his mind soon thereafter. Unless he could find the sahir that had done this and have them undo it, the final days of his life would be excruciating.

  “Boss!” A slim, shark-nosed girl burst into the room, her eyes wide and urgent. “There’s a raid. The Guard is coming.”

  Jayin’s heart stuttered, panic setting in. Without another word, she shouldered past the girl and out the door, weaving through the throng of scrambling carrions. She’d only taken three steps when rough hands gripped the back of her neck. The carrion shoved her hard, forcing her up against the wall before Jayin could so much as reach for her knives.

  Always opportunistic, Jayin thought, wrenching her wrists to the right and feeling the cool slide of bewitched steel as it snapped into place. She slammed her forehead into the carrion’s nose. He released her, howling and clutching his face, and Jayin drove her newly gauntleted fist into his stomach.