The Åsten Chronicles: Asterys — That Which Was Lost (Book Six)

CHAPTER 1

Asterys had Always been good at Finding things.

It was a fundamental part of Him.

They both Knew it.

This was always how it was going to Happen.

It was just a matter of Time.

The heat was sweltering. It had been one of the hottest Summers that he could Remember. This was different. Heat that you could see in waves. Aster wore a headband to keep the sweat out of his eyes. 

They were in a place that most sane people wouldn't go. Subtle tremors ran beneath his feet. Pools of lava collected at the edges of the caverns. He was fairly certain that what he had originally thought was a Mountain, was actually a Volcano.

And then he Found tunnels. He held his small lantern aloft, scattering the shadows about the jagged edges of the rock walls. His amber eyes scanned around for movement.

Asterys Knew he was getting close. He Knew with a Certainty that was bone-deep. Led by something that he could only describe as a Pull. The Artifact was Calling. He had to Answer. He walked alone through the tunnels, moving slowly. 

He Knew the Council would be waiting. The Artifacts could sense the Council of Darkness, and their Intentions, and they Called to Aster the nearer they drew. But when he got so close that it Felt like he was almost on top of it, Orthos came out of the Shadows.

Aster stopped.

Orthos Malus.

Leader of the Council of Darkness.

He was angular. Black shirt. Black pants. Black hat. The same weathered cowboy hat he'd had since he came out of the Void. The rest of his style had Changed, but that one thing remained Constant.

"Asterys," Orthos said with a nod.

"You won't get the Artifact this time," Aster said. "I won't let you."

"Hm. What makes you think you have a Choice," Orthos said.

Aster Summoned it. His skin began to glow with what appeared to be the Light of early Morning. "Because the Dawn thinks so."

Orthos barely moved. The Shadows deepened around him.

"The Shadows," Orthos said, "They think you don't stand a chance. Just You and I this time. The Dawn against the Darkness, and I will snuff out your Light."

And then the fight began.

The Shadows came first.

They moved the way water moved — fast, purposeful, filling every space between them before Aster had time to think. He raised his hands and the Dawn answered, a barrier of pale gold Light that held for three seconds before the Shadows hit it like a wave and it shattered.

He was already moving. The tunnel was narrow and that was the only advantage he had — Orthos couldn't surround him completely, not here, not with rock on three sides. Aster pressed his back to the wall and pushed the Dawn outward in a pulse, not a Barrier this time but a Burst. Raw. Uncontrolled. It bought him four feet and a Breath.

Orthos didn't move from where he stood.

That was the thing that was hardest to look at. He didn't need to move. He stood in the center of the tunnel with his hands at his sides and the Shadows coiling around him like something alive, and he watched Aster the way he watched everything —Completely, without visible reaction.

"You're Stronger than you were," Orthos said.

Aster didn't answer. He was Breathing hard. The heat was immense, the lava pools casting everything in red and orange, and the Dawn in his chest was burning Bright and Steady and it was not going to be enough. He Knew that. He had Known it before he came.

He came anyway.

The Shadows surged again. This time they came from below — through the cracks in the rock floor, rising like smoke, wrapping around his ankles before he could move. He pulled the Dawn down through his body and they recoiled, but it wasn't fast enough— they surged back. He went to one knee. The rock was hot beneath him.

Orthos walked forward. Unhurried.

"You came alone," he said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"Why."

Aster looked up at him. The amber eyes and the black hat and the weathered face of a man who had been doing this for longer than Aster had been Alive. The face of someone who had burned everything he was into a purpose and called it certainty.

He thought about the sketchbook on the table. The Woman drawn with particular Care. The Boy who had drawn her.

He didn't say it. He didn't have to.

Something shifted in Orthos's expression. Small. Almost nothing. The kind of shift that happened when someone Recognized that they had been Seen and couldn't decide what to do with it.

The Shadows tightened.

Aster pulled the Dawn up from somewhere deeper than he knew he had and it Blazed — not controlled, not careful, just everything he had at once, pouring out of him in a Wave that lit the tunnel white. The Shadows screamed back from it. The lava pools flared. The rock walls cracked.

Orthos stepped back. One step. His expression didn't change but he stepped back.

Aster Felt it before he saw it.

The Pull hit him like a second Heartbeat — insistent, bone-deep, coming from somewhere to his left. He turned. There, in the nearest lava pool, a small Island of rock rose just above the surface. And on it, half-buried in ash and heat, something that did not belong.

Orthos saw it at the same moment.

The fight that followed was different. Less measured. Orthos pushed harder and Aster Understood why — this wasn't just about Asterys anymore, it was about getting there first. He threw the Dawn in Bursts, not Barriers, keeping Orthos back, buying inches. The tunnel shook. A tremor rolled through the floor beneath them, deeper than the ones before, and then the rock cracked — a sound like something ancient giving up. Asterys moved just in time. The floor between them dropped away.

Lava filled the gap.

Aster was already moving and didn't stop to look back. He hit the edge of the pool at a run and dropped to his knees, the heat coming off the surface in waves that made his eyes water. The Island of rock was close. Close enough. He reached.

The Shadows took his ankle.

They pulled — hard, deliberate, Orthos on the other side of the lava with his hand extended and his expression unchanged. Aster's fingers scraped the rock. He grabbed the ledge with his other hand and held. The Shadows pulled harder. His shoulder screamed.

He reached again.

His fingers closed around it.

The Dawn came up from somewhere he didn't know he had left and he poured it outward — not aimed, not controlled, just out, in every direction at once. The Shadows dispersed. The Pull in his chest went quiet for the first time since he'd entered the tunnels.

He had it.

He was still catching his Breath when Orthos stepped out of the Shadow directly in front of him.

No lava between them now. No distance. Just Orthos, and the Artifact in Aster's hand, and the Dawn burning low and unsteady in his chest.

He knew he couldn't keep this up much longer.

Orthos hadn't moved. He stood there with the Shadows gathering around him again, patient, and Aster understood with sudden and complete clarity that this was the difference between them — Orthos wasn't tired. Whatever he had spent in this fight, it wasn't close to what he had left. Aster had given everything he had to get the Artifact off that rock. Orthos had given almost nothing.

He wasn't going to win this.

The Shadows rushed forward faster than Aster could react. They coiled around his arms, his midsection, and his neck, and pulled down with enough force that Asterys lost his feet. His knees hit the stone below him hard. Instinctively he struggled against the Shadows, but it did no good, and he Knew it wouldn't change anything, even as he struggled against it. 

He gripped the Artifact tighter.

"It won't Help you," Orthos said. He wasn't moving. He didn't need to. "We already have what we need. Your Blood. From our last meeting. Enough to finish what we started." He looked at the Artifact in Aster's hand with the expression of someone who had already done the calculation and found it acceptable. "Keep it, if you like."

And then — from somewhere further back in the tunnel, from the direction that Aster hadn't come from — a Voice.

"Malus."

Mr. Voss. Flat. Certain. The Voice of Someone who had been in position for some time, and was not surprised by anything he was seeing. The sound of multiple People approaching.

Orthos looked past Aster toward the sound. Then back at Aster. At the Artifact in his hand. At the Dawn still burning, quieter now but Present, Steady.

The calculation happened behind his eyes and took no time at all.

The Shadows vanished.

The look he gave Aster was not long. It didn't need to be.

This is not finished.

The Shadows took him, between one breath and the next, and Orthos was gone, and the tunnel was just a tunnel again — hot rock and lava light and the distant tremor of something geological and indifferent far below.

Aster stayed on his knees for a moment longer than he needed to.

Then he stood.

Voss and his Group emerged from the dark. He looked at Aster. At the state of him. At the Artifact in his hand. His expression communicated, with considerable economy, exactly what he thought of the plan to come alone.

He didn't say it.

He didn't need to.

"Can you walk?" Voss asked.

"Yes," Aster said.

"Good. Then walk."

CHAPTER 2

The Artifact was still in his hand when he stepped out of the tunnel into open air.

A Pocket Watch.

Aster looked down at it. The Night was clear, the Stars very bright above the Mountain, and in the light of them the Watch sat in his palm like it had always been there. Like it had been waiting for a hand to rest in and had simply Chosen his.

He closed his fingers around it and put it in his pocket.

Behind him, the others were filing out of the tunnel — four of them, maybe five, moving with the quiet efficiency of People who had done this before. Voss was already speaking in low tones to two of them, something about the Eastern Route, and they nodded and moved off without discussion. The kind of Team that didn't need things explained twice.

One of them didn't follow the others.

She was about his age, blonde hair pulled back, and she was looking at him with the particular expression of someone taking inventory. Not unfriendly. Not warm either. Professional in a way that had an edge to it.

"You're the Finder," she said.

It wasn't a question.

"Aster," he said.

She considered that for a moment, as if deciding whether it was useful information. "Olivia Flagstaff. I Mapped the approach Routes for this Expedition." A brief pause. "You Found it faster than the Routes suggested you would."

He wasn't sure if that was a compliment or a complaint. Her expression didn't clarify.

Voss appeared at his shoulder. "Horses."

They moved toward the tree line. Two Horses waited — Voss's and Aster's — and Aster understood that Olivia had her own, and the others had already gone. The Mountain was quiet around them, the kind of quiet that existed above a certain elevation, deep and complete.

"Can you ride," Voss said. Not quite a question.

"Yes."

"Good."

Aster's Horse was grey, nearly white in the starlight, and when he approached she turned her head and regarded him with one large dark eye. He Felt her before he touched her — the particular Steadiness underneath her Attention, a faint curiosity that wasn't wariness. He put his hand on her neck and she leaned into it slightly, just enough.

He mounted without difficulty. His knees disagreed but he didn't give them the satisfaction of showing it.

They rode. Voss at the front, Aster in the middle, Olivia just behind. Nobody spoke. Asterys was tired in the specific way of Someone who had been through Something and was now on the other side of it — Present enough to notice the Road and the Trees and the way the Stars moved slowly overhead, but not sharp. The Pocket Watch sat in his pocket, and he was aware of its weight the way you're aware of something that belongs to you. Not reaching for it. Just Knowing it was there.

"Gateway ahead," Olivia said, from behind him. "Between the two Oaks. Don't slow down."

Aster looked. He saw two Old Trees at the side of the Road, a gap between them that looked like the gap between any two Trees, except that the air inside it was slightly Different from the air around it in a way he couldn't have named.

Voss rode through without slowing. Aster followed.

The Wind changed direction.

That was all. One moment the air smelled of Pine and high altitude cold. Then it smelled of City — Stone and River Water and the particular density of a Place where many people Lived close Together. The Horse's ears moved. The Stars were in slightly different positions than they had been a Breath ago.

Aster didn't say anything. He filed it away.

At the next Crossroads, Olivia pulled her Horse up. "I have something to finish before Morning," she said, to Voss rather than Aster.

She turned and rode the other way without waiting for a response.

Aster watched her go for a moment. Then he followed Voss into the City.

Regalis at Night was quieter than Regalis in the Day but not quiet. The Streets still held People, lamplight spilling from windows, the distant sound of something being Celebrated somewhere. Voss navigated without hesitation, taking turns Asterys didn't know, and Aster followed and watched and let the City tell him where they were going.

History Lane and Magic Lane intersected at a corner that looked like every other corner in this part of Regalis. Old stone, worn smooth. Lampposts. The kind of Street that had been a street for so long it had stopped being remarkable. The Letter Aster had recieved  from the Organization awhile ago, had said that it was at the Intersection between History and Magic. Back then he had thought it was a metaphor. He looked at the Signpost now and Knew differently.

The Building on the corner was plain.

That was the only word for it. Stone brick, slightly worn, the mortar between them darkened with age. No sign on the Building. No metal plaque like you might expect. No distinguishing feature. The kind of Building your eye moved past because there was nothing to catch on — and Aster's eye moved past it, and then he made himself look back, and even then it didn't offer anything. It simply stood there the way it had presumably been standing since Regalis was Built, patient and unremarkable, at the Intersection of two busy Roads.

Voss dismounted. A Boy appeared from somewhere and took both Horses without a word, as if this happened regularly, which it presumably did.

Voss walked to the door.

It was an ordinary door. Dark wood, iron handle, the kind of door that belonged on a Building like this one. Voss put his hand on it and it opened, and the light that came through from the other side was warm and golden and entirely wrong for the exterior of the Building it Belonged to.

Aster followed him in.

The smell reached him first. Something Green and Living — Plants, many of them, more than should have been possible in an interior space. Then Warmth, the specific warmth of a place that had been inhabited for a long time by People who Meant to be Comfortable. Then Color, everywhere, the accumulated color of decades of things added because Someone liked them — rugs layered over rugs, mismatched chairs that somehow all looked like the Right chair to sit in, shelves crowded with books and objects and things that defied immediate categorization.

In the corner, a quill was writing on its own. Nobody was near it.

On the windowsills, Plants trailed and climbed and Grew in directions that had nothing to do with the light available to them. One of them had flowers that were the precise color of something Aster didn't have a name for, a blue that was almost not blue, and it was Blooming in the middle of the Night as if it hadn't been informed that was unusual.

The Building Felt aware. Not haunted. Not watching, exactly. More like a Place that had absorbed so much of what had happened inside it, that it had developed something like a Memory of its own. Aster stood in the entrance and Felt it register him the way the Horse had at the tree line. A quiet Attention. A noting.

"Pendragon Place," Voss said, without looking back. "The House, mostly, when there's no reason to be formal."

He kept walking. Aster followed, taking in as much as he could without turning his head too obviously, which he suspected he was failing at.

His knees hurt. The scrapes on his arms had dried to a tight uncomfortable pull. The Pocket Watch sat in his pocket and weighed exactly as much as it weighed and somehow that was more than it should have been.

He was somewhere he had never been, with people he barely knew, carrying something he didn't yet understand.

He kept walking.

Mr. Voss pointed to a small sofa.

"Take a seat, Mr. Bollard. I'll fetch the Dog."

Asterys wasn't sure what he meant, but he didn't have time to ask. Voss walked briskly to a door on the far wall and left him alone in the Sitting Room. Somewhere a Grandfather Clock was making its presence Known, the seconds ticking by. 

The small sofa was Comfortable and Aster was tired. He tried not to think how tired as he sat there, sore, scraped, and likely bruised. He tried not to think about that either. 

He pulled the Artifact out of his pocket. It looked just like a regular plain gold Pocket Watch. But at the same time it wasn't ordinary. It had sat in a Volcano for who knows how long, and it was still ticking. It had been cool when he grabbed it off the stone in the lava pool. He had expected it to be hot. Maybe hot enough to burn his hand. It was Impossible and yet it Was. 

He opened the cover. Nothing elaborate. By all accounts it looked like an ordinary pocket watch. There was an engraving inside.

'Even Time keeps some things.'

And then below that: 'Time flies, Love remains'

He wasn't exactly sure what it meant, but it was clearly Meant for Someone Special. Someone who was Loved. 

He was still thinking about it when he Felt it. He Felt Her. Adalade. Like a quiet echo from his Heart. She was trying to use the Light Fountain. He Focused on Her and opened the Connection.

'Aster.'

"Ada. I'm here. I'm alright."

'Where are you? Where did you go? Why didnt you tell me?'

"I'm with the Organization," he said. "In Regalis. I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was going. I-" He stopped. "I'll be Home soon. I'll tell you more about it then."

'Ok,' Ada said. 'I'm Glad you're ok. I was worried.'

"I know. I'm sorry."

Ada didn't say anything for a moment.

'Aster.'

"Hm?"

'Please just come Home Safely.'

"I will," he said. "I Love You."

'And I Love You.'

He leaned his head back against the sofa, closed his eyes, and Smiled.

"I Know," he said. 

He Felt her there for a moment longer and then the Connection closed. 

He was on the edge of Sleep when he heard the door open. He opened his eyes. Mr. Voss walked in with another Gentleman. Middle-aged, somewhat rotund and balding at the top, with sleeves already rolled to the elbow as if he'd come prepared. He had the kind of eyes that had seen a great deal of damage and remained Kind anyway — Steady and Warm, the look of someone who didn't panic. 

"Mr. Bollard this is Dog. He'll see to your injuries."

"Humphrey Fairchild," Dog said, "But everyone calls me Dog. Pleased to meet ya."

"Asterys," He said, "But everyone calls me Aster."

"Aster," Dog said, as if trying it out. "It's a Good Name. Now then. Let's see about those scrapes of yours."

Dog got down on his knees, which for someone of his size and age seemed like something, and he looked closely at Aster's knees. They had been bleeding but it had dried some on the Road. Dog looked at the injury and then Aster felt it. It was like warmth washing over the wounds. The soreness came out of it. Aster looked and his knees were completely Healed. Dog saw to his other scrapes and bruises with the same Focused attention. Then the warmth. Then the scrapes were gone. The bruises were gone. Dog stood.

"There. That's done then. How's it feel?"

"Better," Aster said. "Thank you."

"Anytime," Dog said.

Dog left quietly, the way he'd arrived — no ceremony, just done and gone. Voss took a chair near the door. A moment later two more People entered the Sitting Room.

Anwyn looked the same as she always did. Composed, Unhurried, the kind of Stillness that wasn't absence but presence concentrated. She took a chair across from him and folded her hands in her lap and didn't say anything yet.

The Man with her was tall, grey at the temples, with the bearing of Someone who had been making Decisions for a long time and had stopped finding it difficult. Aster recognized him before he crossed the room — the weathered face, the dark coat that had seen considerable use, the particular quality of Attention that made you feel looked at rather than assessed.

Aster Remembered the Courtyard at Aethon. In November. 'We've been looking for someone like you for about thirty years.'

"Mr. Bollard," Percival Everbright said. "I'm Glad you're in one piece."

"Mostly," Aster said.

Something moved at the corner of Percival's mouth. Not quite a Smile — the same small, Genuine thing it had been in the Courtyard. "The Artifact. May I see it?"

Aster reached into his pocket and produced the Pocket Watch. He held it out. Percival looked at it without touching it — just looked, for a long moment, with the focused attention of someone who was reading more than the object itself.

"You Found it in the lava pool," he said.

"It was cool when I picked it up."

Percival looked at him then. "And it was ticking?"

"Yes."

A beat of silence. Percival straightened. "We'll want Al to look at it. In the Morning, when he's fresh." He glanced at Anwyn briefly — something passing between them that Aster didn't have the context to read — and then back to Aster. "In the meantime. I'd like to propose something."

Aster waited.

"You've been working alone for a long time," Percival said. "Finding things. Returning them. Doing good work, by all accounts." He said it plainly, not as flattery. "Tonight was different. Tonight whatever you walked into was larger than a single Person should have been managing on their own." He paused. "I'd like you to stay for a while. See how we operate. Meet some of the others. There's a great deal the Organization does that you haven't seen yet, and I think it would be Worth your time."

He didn't say: 'your Cabin is isolated'. He didn't say: 'we don't know what else is looking for that Watch'. He didn't say any of the things that were also True.

Asterys looked at Anwyn. She was watching him with that particular Steadiness of Hers, and when he met her eyes she gave him the smallest nod. Not pushing. Just —confirming something.

He looked back at Percival.

"Alright," he said. "For a while. I need to go Home first. Grab some things. Let my Family know."

Percival nodded once, as if that was settled. "Good. Anwyn will show you where you'll be staying. We'll talk more in the morning."

He stood, and Voss stood with him, and they left the way People leave when there's more work to be done elsewhere. The door closed.

Anwyn didn't move immediately. She looked at Aster for a moment in the quiet of the Sitting Room, the Grandfather Clock marking the seconds, the quill still writing in the corner.

"You did well Tonight," she said. Simply. Like it was a fact and not a compliment.

"I nearly didn't," he said.

"I Know," she said. "That's what I mean."

She stood and held out her hand for the Pocket Watch. He gave it to her and she looked at it briefly — the engraving, both lines — and then handed it back without comment. Whatever she Thought about it she kept.

"Come on," she said. "You need Sleep."

CHAPTER 3

Percival walked him down a Corridor Aster hadn't been through yet, narrower than the Main Halls, the kind of passage that had been added to the Building rather than planned for it. The floorboards were older here. The walls had more on them — a mounted Compass, a framed Map with handwritten notations in the margins, a hook holding three hats that didn't match each other.

"There's something you should know about Al," Percival said, without slowing down. "He's a bit eccentric."

Aster waited for more. Nothing came.

Percival knocked twice on a door at the end of the Corridor and opened it without waiting for an answer.

The room beyond was — a lot.

It had been a Bedroom once, and still was, technically — there was a bed in the far corner, neatly made, which was the only neat thing in the space. Every other surface had been claimed. Shelves covered three walls floor to ceiling, packed with objects: boxes, jars, wrapped parcels, loose items that had been set down and apparently never moved. A long worktable ran down the center of the room, its surface covered in the organized archaeology of decades — a brass Star Finder, a Child's shoe, a stack of Letters tied with twine, three Clocks in various states of disassembly, a glass paperweight containing something that appeared to be moving slowly inside it. A single lamp burned at the far end of the table, casting everything in warm uneven light.

In a chair beside the lamp sat Albert Short.

He was a small Man, slight in the way of people who had Always been slight and had simply continued being so into Old Age. White hair, close-cropped. Hands that were disproportionately large for the rest of him, the Hands of Someone who had spent a Lifetime using them carefully. He wore a waistcoat over a collarless shirt, both of which had seen better decades, and he was holding a magnifying glass over something Aster couldn't see, and he did not look up when they came in.

"Percival," he said. "And the Finder."

"Al," Percival said. "Aster has something for you to look at."

"I assumed." Al set down the magnifying glass and looked up. His eyes were sharp in a face that had gone soft with Age — the particular sharpness of Someone who had spent sixty-odd years paying Attention to things other People walked past. He looked at Asterys the way he probably looked at everything: with Complete, unhurried Interest. "Sit down then. Let's see it."

Aster sat in the chair across the table and set the Pocket Watch between them.

Al didn't touch it immediately. He looked at it first — just looked, the way you looked at something before you Committed to Knowing it.

The Watch was gold — not bright gold, not new gold, but the deep warm gold of something that had been handled for a very long time and had only grown more Itself for it. The case was etched with designs, a simple pattern worn soft with age and time — pretty, but not overly ornate. The kind of detail that had been put there by Someone who Believed even useful things deserved a little Care.

Al turned it over. The back was the same. Then he opened it.

The face was white, with Roman numerals in gold and two slim hands that continued their work as the seconds ticked by. Inside the dust cover, engraved in a hand that was careful and unhurried: Even time keeps some things. And below it: Time flies. Love remains.

Then he picked it up.

His eyes closed.

The room was very quiet. One of the disassembled Clocks ticked. The thing in the paperweight moved.

When Al opened his eyes, he looked at the Watch for a long moment before he looked at Aster.

"Very old," he said. The way a Man spoke when he was still sorting through what he'd found. "Older than most things I've held." He turned it over, carefully. The gold caught the lamplight. "Its function is Durability. Nothing more. It doesn't open doors. It doesn't stop time. It doesn't find things or break things or bind things." A pause. "It simply — Endures."

"That's all?"

Al looked at him with the mild Patience of someone who had been underestimated before and found it more Interesting than offensive. "That's not a small thing," he said. He set the Watch down between them. "It Means something to Someone. Something it was Meant to Survive." He looked at it. "It was Lost by Time."

Aster looked at the Watch. Gold, worn smooth at the edges, old enough that whoever had owned it was long gone.

'Lost to Time,' he thought.

Al said nothing else. He picked up his magnifying glass.

Aster pocketed the Watch and stood.

"Thank you," he said.

"Mm," said Al, already looking at something else.

Percival found him in the Corridor outside Al's Room.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yes," Aster said.

Percival walked with him back toward the Main Hall, unhurried. "Liv and BryKae will ride with you to the Portal and back. Liv Knows every Road between here and the Coast — she's Mapped most of them herself." A pause. "BryKae knows the Land. Hears what it Remembers." He glanced at Aster sideways, with the particular expression of someone who was about to say something he Meant. "I think you two would get along swimmingly."

They came out into the Courtyard where Liv was already mounted, holding the reins of a grey Mare with the Patience of someone who had been waiting and didn't mind. Beside her, on a dark Horse that was shifting slightly in place, was a Young Man roughly Aster's age — tan skin, black hair, brown eyes, and an expression of easy, open interest that suggested he found most things Worth paying attention to.

He looked at Aster and Smiled. Not the polite smile of an introduction. The Real kind.

"BryKae," he said. "Bry. You're the Finder."

"Aster," Aster said. "Yes."

"Good," Bry said, as though this confirmed something he'd already suspected. He gathered his reins. "I know a better Road than the one Liv wants to take."

"The Road I want to take," Liv said, without looking at him, "is the correct Road."

"It's also longer."

"It's also correct."

Bry looked at Aster with the expression of a Man who had had this Conversation before and found it more entertaining each time. Aster took the grey Mare's reins from Liv and mounted.

Percival stood at the Courtyard Gate. "Safe Road," he said.

"Always," Bry said Cheerfully, and they rode out.

Liv took the correct Road. It wound down through the old Forest, the Trees closing overhead, the light coming through in long broken columns. Bry rode on Aster's left and Talked — not constantly, not the kind of talking that required anything back, just easy Conversation that moved from the Road to the Forest to a question about StarTide that was Genuinely Curious rather than polite.

"Is it on the Coast?"

"Yes," Aster said. "Harbor Village. You can see the Water from most of the high ground."

Bry nodded, looking at the Trees around them with the particular attention of Someone who was Listening to more than what was visible. "The Land here Remembers a River," he said. "Old one. Ran through this Valley before it changed course." He said it the way you mentioned something you'd noticed in passing — not a performance, just a fact that had come to him. "Couple hundred years ago, maybe more."

Aster looked at the Forest floor. Flat, now. No sign of it.

"You hear that?" he said.

"The Land does," Bry said simply. "I just listen."

Liv said nothing. She rode ahead and Knew the Road and that was her contribution, and it was Enough.

The Portal was a stone arch at the edge of a field, older than anything nearby, moss on the North face. Liv stopped her Horse at the tree line.

"We'll be here when you come back," she said.

Bry raised a hand in farewell. Then, as Aster turned toward the arch: "Aster."

Aster looked back.

Bry's expression was Easy, Unhurried, the same as it had been the whole ride. "The Land between here and StarTide," he said. "It Remembers Good Things." A pause. "Thought you should Know."

Aster looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded, and stepped through the arch, and StarTide came up around him like something exhaling.

CHAPTER 4

StarTide was exactly as he'd left it.

The Harbor. The Boats. The smell of salt and woodsmoke and the particular quality of the light off the Water in the late Afternoon, gold and moving. The sound of it — the gulls, the rigging, someone calling across the Dock — Settled into him the way it Always did, like something that had been waiting to come back.

He came through the Portal and up the Lane toward the House, and the first thing he saw was Aidan in the Yard.

His Father was crouched beside the Garden Gate, which had been listing to one side for as long as Aster could Remember, working at the hinge with a tool that didn't appear to be helping. He looked up when Aster came through.

He stood. Looked at him — the full look, the one that took inventory without making a production of it. Then he crossed the Yard and put a hand on Aster's shoulder, briefly, the way he did. A point of contact. 'You're here. Good.' He didn't say either of those things.

"Gate's still broken," Aster said.

"It's a process," Aidan said, and let him go.

Marina was at the side of the House, a basket of laundry at her feet, pinning something to the line. She heard him before she saw him — turned, and went still for just a moment, and then she was crossing the Yard with the particular speed of Someone who had been not-worrying very hard for two days.

She put her arms around him without a word. He Held On.

"You're Alright," she said, into his shoulder.

"I'm Alright," he said.

She pulled back and looked at his face, checking the statement against the evidence. Apparently it held. She smoothed his collar once — a small, automatic gesture — and let him go.

From around the corner of the House came the sound of running feet, and then Fintan appeared at full speed and hit Aster somewhere around the midsection with the full confidence of an eight-year-old who had never once considered that this might not be welcome. He was solid. Aster caught him, got him briefly, barely off the ground, and set him back down immediately.

Fintan grabbed his arm instead and looked up at him with the serious expression he got when he was deciding whether something was worth being upset about.

"You were gone," Fintan said.

"Two days," Aster said.

"That's a long time."

"I know. I'm sorry."

Fintan considered this. "Did you Find something Good?"

"Yes."

"Okay," Fintan said, satisfied, and let go and ran back the way he'd come.

Asterys watched him go.

Then he turned around, and Ada was there.

She was standing at the corner of the House with her arms folded. She had called him through the Light Fountain — he had heard it in her Voice, the thing underneath the careful questions, and he had told her he was Fine and that he would explain everything when he got Home. She had let him. She hadn't pushed.

She was done not pushing.

She looked at him. He looked at her.

"Walk with me," she said.

It wasn't a question. He fell into step beside her, and they went.

The Cabin sat at the edge of the Bollard property, close enough to the tree line that the light came through the windows differently than it did in the house — greener, quieter, filtered. It had been Aster's for years, the way certain spaces became Yours not by assignment but by accumulation, by enough Mornings and enough Evenings until the Place simply Knew you.

Ada sat across from him at the small table by the window. She hadn't said anything since they'd left the Yard. She'd waited. That was the thing about Ada — she could Wait with the Patience of Someone who had already Decided she was going to get the Truth and was simply giving it time to arrive.

He told her everything.

The Volcano. Going in alone. The Artifact and what it cost to get to it. Orthos, and how close it had been, and the Organization arriving when they did. He didn't soften it. She hadn't asked him to.

When he finished, she was quiet for a moment.

"You went in alone," she said.

"Yes."

"Because you didn't want anyone else in there with you."

He didn't answer immediately. She waited.

"If something went wrong," he said, "I didn't want it to go wrong for anyone else."

Ada looked at him for a long moment. Something moved through her expression — not quite anger, not quite something else. The particular feeling of Loving someone whose first Instinct was always to put Himself between the People he Cared about and whatever was coming.

"I Know why you did it," she said. "That's not the same as it being alright."

"I Know," he said.

"You don't get to decide alone what risks I'm allowed to share with you," she said. "That's not your Choice to make."

He held her gaze. "I Know," he said. And this time he meant it differently — not agreement, but Recognition. She was Right. He Knew she was Right.

She looked out the window at the Trees for a moment. Then back at him.

"I need you to actually Know it," she said. "Not just say it."

"I Know it," he said.

She studied him for a moment longer. Then she reached across the table and took his hand, and that was the end of it — not forgotten, not dismissed, just set down. Filed. She would Remember. He Knew she would Remember.

They sat like that for a while, the light coming green through the window, the sound of the Water somewhere below.

Then someone knocked at the Cabin door.

Ada looked at the door. Then at Aster. "Emrys," she said. Not a question — she Knew his knock the way you knew the knock of Someone who had been part of your Life long enough to have a particular rhythm to it.

"Yes," Aster said.

She stood, and moved to the window seat with her tea, giving them the room without leaving it.

Aster opened the door.

Emrys stood in the doorway with the late Afternoon light behind him. He looked at Asterys the way he always looked at him — taking him in, checking the inventory, not making a production of it. Then he reached into his coat pocket and held something out.

Aster looked at it.

A small wooden Bird. Carved smooth, worn slightly at the wing tips where Emrys's hands had worked it. He Knew the shape of his Brother's carving — had watched him whittle enough times, in enough quiet hours, to Recognize the particular way he finished an edge.

He took it.

It sat in his palm, light and solid at once.

"I had the Concealment worked into it," Emrys said. "By an Enchanter in Brennan's Town. It'll hide you from those who mean harm." A pause. "Not your Power. Just — you."

Aster looked at the Bird. He thought about asking how long Emrys had been working on this. He didn't ask.

"Thank you," he said, and Meant it all the way through.

Emrys nodded once. He glanced past Aster at Ada, briefly — a look that said 'Good, she's here, good' — and then looked back at his Brother.

Neither of them said anything else. There wasn't anything else that needed saying.

Emrys put his hands in his pockets and walked back toward the House, unhurried, and Aster stood in the doorway watching him go until the Trees took him.

He closed the door.

Ada was looking at the Bird in his hand.

"He carved it himself," Aster said.

"I Know," she said. "I watched him."

Aster looked at her.

"He's been working on it since before you left," she said simply, and looked back out the window.

Aster closed his hand around the Bird and sat back down.

They stayed in the Cabin until the light through the Trees went amber.

At some point Ada made more tea. At some point Aster told her the rest of it — the Organization, Percival, the Members he'd met, what they did and why. She listened the way she always listened, without interrupting, filing things away.

When he finished, she was quiet for a moment.

"You're going back," she said.

"Yes."

She turned her cup in her hands. "And you'll be with the Organization while you're there."

"Yes."

She nodded slowly. He watched her Think — could see the shape of it, the way she was turning something over, looking at it from different angles.

"A Teleporter is useful," she said finally. "For extractions. Getting someone out fast."

"Ada—"

"I'm not asking," she said. "I'm Thinking out loud." She looked at him. "You went in alone this time and nearly didn't come back. This time you'll have People who Know what they're doing. You'll have the Concealment." She glanced at the Bird, still on the table between them. "That's different."

"It is," he said.

She was quiet again. Then: "If I thought you Needed me there, I'd go. You Know that."

"I Know," he said.

"But you don't," she said. "Not right now." She said it plainly, without hurt in it. "You're Safer with them than you were alone. That's enough for me." She met his eyes. "If that changes — call the Light Fountain."

"I will," he said.

She nodded once. That was the Decision, made and set down, and she picked up her tea and that was the end of it.

He found Emrys at the Docks as the sun was going down.

His Brother was sitting on the end of the furthest pier with his feet hanging over the water, looking at the Harbor the way he looked at things he was Thinking about — not really seeing it, using it as somewhere to put his eyes while his mind was elsewhere. He heard Aster coming and didn't turn around.

Aster sat down beside him.

"I'm going back Tomorrow," he said.

"I figured," Emrys said.

They sat for a moment. The Water moved below them. A boat came in slowly across the Harbor, its lamp already lit against the coming dark.

Then Emrys turned and put his arms around him, briefly, the way they'd always done it — not long, not made into a thing, just Real. Aster Held On for a moment and let go.

Emrys clapped him once on the shoulder.

"Take Care of Yourself," he said.

"You too," Aster said.

Emrys looked at him for one more moment — the inventory, the check, the thing he always did — and then looked back at the Water.

Aster stood, and left him there, and walked back up the Dock toward the Village.

Number 4 Whitecap Hill sat above the Harbor, the way it Always had, the paint on the door the same particular shade of blue that Aster had been looking at his Whole Life. He knocked.

Fin answered.

He looked at Asterys the way he'd been looking at him since Aster was small — like he was checking something, and like whatever he found was generally acceptable. He stepped back from the door.

"Come in then," he said.

The front room was warm. Something on the stove. Fin poured two cups without asking and set one in front of Aster and sat down across from him and waited, because Fin always Knew when someone had come to Say something and Always gave them time to say it.

"I'm going back to the Organization Tomorrow," Aster said. "I don't know how long."

Fin nodded. "Orthos."

"Yes."

Fin looked at his cup for a moment. Then at Aster.

"You Know what you're doing?" he asked. Not a challenge. A Real question.

"I Know what I'm Finding," Aster said. "The rest I'm working out."

Fin almost smiled. "That's usually how it goes." He turned his cup in his hands. "The Organization's Good People?"

"Yes," Aster said. "I think so."

"Then Trust them," Fin said. "You don't have to do everything yourself. That's what People are for." He said it simply, the way he said things he'd Learned the hard way and didn't need to make a speech about. "Let them Help you."

Aster looked at him.

"I will," he said.

"Good," Fin said, and drank his tea.

They sat for a while after that, not saying much, the way you sat with someone you didn't need to perform for. When Aster stood to go, Fin walked him to the door and put a hand briefly on his shoulder — the same gesture Aidan used, Aster noticed, the same point of contact, the same weight behind it.

"Come back," Fin said.

"Will do, Grandpa," Aster said.

He walked back down Whitecap Hill toward the Harbor, and the lights of StarTide were coming on one by one, and Tomorrow he would go, and Tonight he was still here.

CHAPTER 5

The next Morning he packed his things. He made sure he had the essentials. He wasn't sure how long he would be staying and he told Ada as much.

"I'll Be There," She said, "If you Need me."

"I Know," Aster said.

He told her he Loved her and Meant it all the way through

She Smiled and Kissed him.

The goodbye wasn't easy. It never was with StarTide and with Ada. And part of Asterys just wanted to go back to the Cabin and just Be with Her. But he Knew he had to go.

He stepped through the Portal Trees and as Promised, Liv and Bry were still there. They were packing up the campsite when Aster arrived.

"Took your time didn't you?" Liv said.

Aster wasn't sure what to say to that.

BryKae broke the tension.

"Welcome back! The Hills had a lot to say."

Aster Smiled. "I bet."

He Helped them pack up. Or maybe it should be said that he Helped Bry pack up. Liv was icy as usual.

He and Bry went to the nearby stream to fill their canteens before they left. Once they were far enough away, Aster asked, "Is she always like that?"

"Who? Liv?"

Aster nodded.

"From time to time," Bry said. "I'm not exactly sure why. Might be Worth asking sometime."

The ride back mirrored the ride there. Bry Talked. Live remained quiet. Aster wasn't sure how to go about asking her why she was so cold without it coming out wrong, so for now he let her have her space. She directed them back to the Portal back toward Regalis, when something changed.

The air suddenly felt heavier. Colder. Wrong in a way that Aster couldn't place.

"Shadow Wraiths," Liv said, "Run!" 

And without further preamble she kicked her horse into motion.

"Let's go!" Bry said and followed with the same speed and urgency.

Aster rode hard behind him.

He Felt them before he saw them. The cold and the heaviness in the air intensified as they approached. They looked like Shadows, and yet nothing like Shadows. They moved like water. Like air. And they were gaining.

Aster wheeled his Horse around.

Bry noticed first.

"Asterys!"

He and Liv stopped their Horses and turned around.

Aster's Horse reared as the Wraiths approached. It telegraphed it's unease with every gesture. It's ears. It's Breath. It landed and stomped it's feet.

Aster leaned forward and whispered something quietly. He stroked a hand across it's neck.

The Horse quieted, but was still visibly nervous.

The Wraiths came closer. The shadows around them seemed to deepen. The noise they made, high pitched and unnatural, caused the Horse to voice it's opinion.

"Hold," Aster said, "Steady now."

The Wraiths drew closer, bunching together. Five of them. Moving through the air with a determination that would not falter.

Aster raised his hands and sent out the Dawn. Radiant Light burst forth. Rose and Gold and impossibly Beautiful.

The Shadow Wraiths screamed and vanished.

Bry pulled his Horse up alongside Aster's and Liv on the other side.

"That was crazy," Bry said, almost laughing.

"That was reckless," Liv said. "Fighting Shadow Wraiths alone like that."

Aster looked at her and met her eyes.

"I wasn't alone," he said. He patted the Horse on the side. "You Helped didn't you?"

The Horse huffed. Aster Smiled. Bry finally managed a small Laugh.

Then Asterys saw something. He dismounted. Where the Wraiths had been, something lay on the ground. He picked it up.

"What is it?" Liv asked.

Asterys didn't answer right away. It was a piece of heavy paper, neatly folded. He read it.

'You always come Home. I know that. I'll always know where you are.- Orthos'

"Aster?" Bry said.

Asterys hadn't moved. He stood there looking at the words written in Orthos's hand. He Knew who the Letter was Meant for. Then he moved.

He mounted the Horse and started riding back towards StarTide. 

 And then Olivia and BryKae were in front of him.

"Where are you going?" Liv asked.

"Back," Aster said, and handed her the note.

She read it. Bry leaned over and read it too.

"That's exactly what he would want you to do," Bry said. His usual good humor replaced by absolute seriousness.

"But what about Ada? What about my Family?"

"Malus would be stupid to attack StarTide or go after your Family," Liv said. "That Town is a Powerhouse. All those Extraordinary Gifts and a Living Legend all in one place. Only a fool would go there with the intent to cause harm."

"She's right," Bry said. "I think we should go back to the House. Show Percival the Letter. It's meant to rattle you I think, and if you go back they'll find you on the Road back. Sure enough."

Aster looked down at the Horse's mane. At the middle distance. He Remembered what his Grandpa had said.

'Then Trust them... You don't have to do everything yourself. That's what People are for... Let them Help you.'

Aster looked up. "Alright," he said.

Liv and Bry set their Horses back on the Trail towards Regalis.

Aster followed.

After a while Bry asked Asterys, "How did you Know how to Calm that Horse down when the Wraiths were coming?"

"I don't know," Aster said. "I just Listened."

CHAPTER 6

Liv brought him straight to Percival.

Not to the Sitting Room, not to the Main Hall — to the Study at the back of the Building, the one Aster had only seen through a half-open door. She knocked once and opened it without waiting, which told him something about how serious she considered the Note.

Percival was at his desk. He looked up when they came in — took in the three of them, the state of them, the particular quality of urgency that Liv carried when she was being professional about something that had rattled her — and set down his pen.

"Sit down," he said.

They sat. Bry took the chair nearest the window. Liv stood. Aster sat across from Percival and put the Note on the desk between them.

Percival read it.

He didn't react visibly. He read it once, set it down, and looked at Asterys with the weathered, attentive face of someone who was thinking carefully before he spoke.

"Shadow Wraiths," Liv said. "On the Road back from the Portal. Five of them."

"Aster handled it," Bry said. Then, after a beat: "The Horse Helped."

Percival looked at Aster. "You're alright."

"Yes," Aster said.

Percival looked at the Note again. Not reading it — he'd read it. Just looking at it the way you looked at something you were Deciding what to do with.

"He's telling you he was watching," Percival said. "That's the point of it. Not a threat. A demonstration." He folded the Note once, precisely, and set it aside. "He wants you to feel exposed. To make a Decision from that feeling."

"Bry said the same thing," Aster said.

Percival glanced at Bry briefly. Something in his expression that wasn't quite approval but was adjacent to it. "He's right." He looked back at Aster. "Your Family is Safe. StarTide is not a place Orthos would move against — not with what's there. He knows that as well as we do." He paused. "What he's telling you is that he's patient. That he'll always have another window. That's the threat — not the note itself."

The Study was quiet for a moment. Outside, the Building went about its Evening.

"What do we do?" Aster asked.

"We do the work," Percival said. Simply, the way he said things that were more complicated than they sounded. "That's what we do." He stood, which was the signal that the immediate conversation was over and something else was Beginning. "Come with me."

He took them to the Map Room.

It was a long room on the second floor that Aster hadn't been in yet, its walls covered in Charts and diagrams and hand-drawn Maps with notations in at least four different hands. A large table ran down the center, its surface covered in overlapping papers held down at the corners by various objects — a Compass, a jar of ink, a small brass figure of a Horse, a book left open face-down.

Liv moved to the far wall immediately, the way someone moved toward something that was Theirs. She stood in front of a particular Map and looked at it with the focused attention of someone reading something she'd written herself.

Percival stood at the head of the table.

"The Diviner's Reliquary," he said. "You know what it is."

"I've held it," Aster said.

"You've held it," Percival agreed. "Which means you're the only Person in this room — possibly the only Person Alive — who has a direct Connection to it." He looked at the Map. "We've been looking for it for eleven years. We've come close twice. Both times it moved before we could reach it." He paused. "It doesn't move for us. It moves for reasons we don't fully understand."

"It Chose him," Bry said, from the doorway. He said it simply, the way he said things that were obvious to him. "In the Cave. It was waiting for him specifically."

Percival looked at Bry. Then at Aster. "Yes," he said. "That's what we Believe."

Aster looked at the Map. At the notations in Liv's hand, the Routes marked and remarked, the places circled and crossed out. Eleven years of looking.

"Orthos is also looking," Aster said.

"Orthos has Always been looking," Percival said. "The difference now is that he Knows you had it. He Knows what that Means." He folded his hands on the table. "Whoever reaches it second loses everything. That's always been True. It's simply more urgent now."

The Map Room was quiet.

"So we find it first," Aster said.

"We find it first," Percival said.

His Room was on the third floor, at the end of a Corridor that got quieter the further along it you went. Small — a bed, a desk, a window that looked out over the back Garden and, beyond it, the rooftops of Regalis going amber in the Evening light. Someone had put a lamp on the desk and a pitcher of water on the windowsill and a spare blanket folded at the foot of the bed, which was the Organization's version of a Welcome.

He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment.

The Note was in Percival's Study now. The Map Room was two floors below. The Reliquary was somewhere out there, moving or waiting or both, and Orthos was patient in the way of someone who had been doing this across multiple eras and had Learned that Patience was its own kind of Power.

Aster reached into his pocket and took out the wooden Bird.

He held it for a moment in the lamplight. Small, solid, worn at the wing tips where Emrys's hands had worked it.

Then he set it on the desk where he could see it, and lay back on the bed, and looked at the ceiling, and let the Day settle around him.

Down the Corridor, someone was moving quietly through the Building. The floorboards had a particular voice at this hour. He was already Learning which ones.

He thought about Ada. About the Cabin and the green light through the Trees and her hand turning her cup. If that changes — call the Light Fountain.

He thought about Fin's Voice in the warm front room. Let them Help you.

He thought about the Reliquary on its shelf in the Sea Cave, catching moonlight, waiting.

He closed his eyes.

Tomorrow the work would begin.

CHAPTER 7

The House had been empty long enough that the dust had settled into the furniture and stopped moving. Bry said so at the door, not the words exactly, but the way he paused with his hand on the frame and listened to whatever the walls Remembered. Then he nodded once and they went in.

Percival had given them each a whistle before they left. Plain brass, no markings. If you need something, he'd said, blow it. That was all. No further instruction. The Organization, Aster was Learning, Trusted its People to determine when something qualified as Needing something.

They split at the foot of the stairs. Bry took the ground floor. Liv took the East rooms. Aster went up.

The Studio was at the end of the upper corridor, behind a door that was slightly ajar, and Aster Knew before he opened it. Not the Pull exactly, something quieter. The particular awareness of something nearby that had been waiting a long time and had recognized him.

He pushed the door open.

The Room was large for an upper floor, a Working Space, not a Bedroom. North-facing window, the light flat and good. Canvases stacked against the far wall, some framed, most not. Sketches pinned in overlapping layers across a long board. A worktable with the particular disorder of someone who had been using it regularly and recently, brushes in jars, pigment in small dishes, a palette with colors dried at the edges and fresh at the center.

Someone had been here. Recently enough that the work was still alive.

Aster looked at the Sketches. Faces, mostly. A Man with a broad jaw and paint-stained hands. A Woman with her hair pinned up, caught mid-Laugh. A younger Face, a Boy maybe sixteen, with the easy posture of someone who had never had reason to be careful. The same faces over and over, in different lights and different moods, the way you drew People you were trying to hold onto.

Then he saw the Mirror.

It was hanging on the wall beside the window, about two feet tall, the frame dark wood worn smooth at the edges. The surface was luminous, not reflecting the room, not showing him his own face. Showing something else. Something that moved.

He stepped closer.

A Kitchen. Warm light. The Man from the Sketches sitting at a table, younger than in the drawings, Laughing at something outside the frame. The Woman beside him, her hand on his arm. The Boy, younger still, perhaps ten, standing in the doorway with paint already on his shirt, watching them with the expression of Someone who had everything they Needed and Knew it.

"That was a Tuesday," said a voice behind him.

Aster didn't move.

Orthos stepped into the room from the doorway that connected to the next, a second entrance Aster hadn't seen. He looked at the Mirror the way you looked at something you had made Peace with a long time ago and occasionally still visited.

"My Father Laughed like that at least once a Day," he said. "I used to think it was ordinary." He stopped a few feet away, hands clasped behind his back, looking at the image in the Mirror with the distance of someone who had Learned to observe his own Past without being consumed by it. "It wasn't, of course. I Understood that later."

Aster said nothing. He kept his hand away from the whistle.

"The Friend," Orthos said, nodding toward the Sketches on the board, the Boy with the easy posture. "His Name was Johnny. We were inseparable for about twelve years." A pause. "Things change. People make Choices. The distance between who you were and who you Become is sometimes larger than you expect."

He looked at Aster then. Directly, the way he did everything, without performance, without pretense.

"You have an Extraordinary Gift," he said. "You Know that. The Organization Knows it. I Know it." He moved to the worktable, unhurried, and set down something he'd been holding, a small brush, as though he'd been working when they arrived. "What you may not have considered is that the work you're doing, Finding things, Returning them, keeping them from the wrong hands, is a fraction of what Someone with your Ability could Accomplish. With the right direction. The right resources."

"You're recruiting me," Aster said.

"I'm offering you a larger room," Orthos said. Simply. "The Organization of Strange Fellows does good work within its limits. I'm suggesting the limits are unnecessary."

Asterys looked at the Mirror. The Kitchen was still there, the Father, the Mother, the Boy in the doorway. All of it Warm and Ordinary and gone.

"The People in that Mirror," Aster said. "Did they know what you were going to Become?"

Something shifted in the room. Not in Orthos's expression, that stayed even. But in the quality of the silence around him.

"No," Orthos said. "They Knew who I was. That was enough for them." A beat. "It stopped being enough for me."

"Then we want different things," Aster said. "I don't think a larger room changes that."

He said it quietly. Not as a challenge. Just as a fact, the way you stated facts that had been True for a long time and didn't require argument.

Orthos looked at him.

He was still for a moment, the particular stillness of someone who had heard something and was placing it. Not the words. Something underneath the words. A quality. A register. Something that had no business being in the Voice of a twenty-four year old and was there anyway.

He didn't speak. He turned, slowly, and moved to the far side of the room, away from the Mirror, outside its frame entirely, and looked back at it.

The Kitchen was gone.

In its place: a Cliff at Dusk. Two Figures. One with the particular luminous quality of early Morning Light, gold at the edges, the Dawn unmistakable even in a Mirror's rendering. The other, Shadow that was not Darkness. Threshold. Twilight. The place where Light ended and something else began, not opposing it but Completing it.

Two Brothers. The same Sky holding Both.

Orthos looked at it for a long time.

He had seen that image before. Not those Boys, not that Cliff. But that particular arrangement of Light and what sat at its edge. He had seen it in Records older than the Organization, older than the Council itself. He had seen it described in Language that was not metaphor.

He Knew what it Meant.

The door opened behind Aster. Liv and Bry stood in the frame, Liv reading the room in one sweep, Bry's easy manner entirely absent, both of them taking in Orthos and Aster and the Mirror and the space between all three.

Orthos looked away from the Mirror. He looked at Aster.

"Take it," he said. Meaning the Mirror. Said without inflection, without generosity, without threat. The way you said something when you no longer needed it.

Aster held his gaze for a moment.

"Go," Orthos said. And then, almost as an afterthought, the way someone noted a fact about the weather: "I'll be seeing you again soon."

Aster took the Mirror from the wall and walked towards the door. He was almost there when he saw it. A Painting, small, hung without ceremony between two larger ones. His own Face. He stopped — just for a moment, the involuntary stop of someone who didn't expect to find themselves on a wall — and then he kept walking.

He didn't look at Orthos. Orthos didn't speak.

He walked through the door.

They left. All three of them, Aster carrying the Mirror, Liv and Bry flanking him down the Corridor and the stairs and out into the Street without a word between them until they were half a block away and Bry said, quietly, "Are you alright?"

"Yes," Aster said.

Bry nodded. He didn't push it.

Liv said nothing. But she stayed close on his left side the rest of the way back, which was its own kind of answer.

Behind them, in the Studio, Orthos stood alone.

He looked at the wall where the Mirror had been. The nail was still there. The rectangle of slightly less faded paint where the frame had hung.

The Mirror was gone. He had let Asterys take it.

He looked at the empty space for a long moment.

Then he turned away and began to think.

CHAPTER 8

They made Camp when the light went flat and the Road ran out of reasons to keep following it. Bry built the fire the way he did everything, without fuss, without ceremony, the thing simply happening and then being done. Liv sat with her back against a fallen log and her Maps across her knees, though she wasn't reading them anymore. Aster sat across from her and watched the fire and thought about the Studio, his own Face in a Painting, and the nail in the wall where the Mirror had been.

"He let you take it," Bry said. Not a question.

"Yes."

Bry turned a stick in the fire. "That's the part that bothers me."

"Me too," Aster said.

Liv didn't look up from her Maps. But she said, "He didn't need it anymore. Whatever it showed him was enough." She paused. "He's not going to stop."

"No," Aster said. "He told me as much."

The fire settled. Somewhere in the dark beyond the Camp something moved through the undergrowth and then went still.

"He tried to recruit you," Bry said.

"He offered me a larger room." Aster looked at the fire. "He made it sound reasonable."

"It always sounds reasonable," Liv said. "That's the point."

She folded the top Map and set it aside. In the firelight she looked less guarded than she did in daylight, or maybe it was just that the dark made the usual distances shorter.

"I thought you were going to make me redundant," she said. She said it the way she said most things, directly, without softening it. "When Percival told us you were coming. A Finder. I thought, what does a Cartographer do when someone can simply Feel where the thing is."

Aster looked at her.

"I was wrong," she said. "You Find where it Is. I Find where it Was. That's not the same thing." She picked up the next Map and looked at it. "We need each other. I Understand that now."

It wasn't an apology. It wasn't quite a Peace offering. It was Liv stating a fact she had arrived at through careful consideration, which was, Aster was Learning, how Liv did most things.

"I'm Glad you told me," he said.

She didn't respond to that. But she didn't look away from him either, which was something.

Bry had been quiet for a moment, turning his stick. Then he said, "I'm from Darmonta. Western Provinces." He said it simply, the way you said things you'd said before and had decided to keep saying. "Alytans took me about five years ago. I was alone in the forest outside the village, that was my mistake. They don't take you if there are witnesses. They sold me to the Black Market Slave Trade" He paused. "Percival found me. Bought my Freedom and gave it to me without conditions. I stayed because I don't leave debts unpaid." He looked at the fire. "And because a Ship to the Western Provinces is expensive."

The fire crackled.

"I'm sorry," Aster said.

"Don't be sorry," Bry said. Not unkindly. "Just Know Where I Come From. It Matters, for the Land-Listening. The Land Remembers what happened to my People. Sometimes it's hard to hear past it." He looked up. "But I'm getting better."

They sat with that for a while. The fire burned down a little and Bry added wood without being asked.

"Orthos said something," Aster said. "Before you came in. He said he'd be seeing me again soon." He looked at the flames. "He Meant it."

"He Always Means it," Liv said.

"I Know." Aster was quiet for a moment. "I just wanted you both to Know. Whatever comes next, I'm not going into it alone."

Bry looked at him across the fire. Something in his expression Settled, the Easy Warmth of him going a little deeper than usual.

"No," he said. "You're not."

Liv said nothing. But she stayed where she was, her Maps across her knees, her back against the log, and that was Answer enough.

Pendragon Place had a rhythm to it that Aster Learned the way you learned any rhythm, by being inside it long enough that it stopped feeling foreign.

Mornings began early. The Dining Room filled before the light was fully up, the long table crowded with People who had been doing this long enough to move around each other without thinking about it. Aster Learned Names. He Learned Gifts. He Learned which chairs Belonged to Whom by unspoken agreement, and which mug was Al's and not to touch it.

He Learned that Percival took his tea standing at the window that faced the Street, and that this was not a habit but a practice, the particular Attention of Someone who had been doing this for eleven years and had not yet stopped expecting the thing he was looking for to appear.

He Learned that Anwyn kept a small Garden in the Courtyard at the back of the Building, and that the Plants in it were not ordinary, and that she tended them in the early Morning before anyone else was up, and that if you happened to be awake at that hour, and looked out the right window, you could see her moving between the rows with her gloves on and her trowel in hand, Unhurried, the way she did everything.

He Learned the work. The Maps Liv made and the way she Read them, the particular Language of her Cartography, not just Where but When, the layered Record of where things had been and how long ago, and what had moved them. He Learned to sit beside her at the long table in the Map Room and follow her finger across the paper and Understand what she was Reading. He Learned that Bry's Land-Listening worked differently in the City than it did in Open Country, that Stone Remembered differently than Soil, that the Streets of Caerwyn had a particular density of Memory that sometimes made it hard to hear anything clearly.

He Learned that his own Gift was quieter here than it had been at the Volcano or in the Studio. Nothing was Calling. He waited, the way he had always waited, and the waiting was not empty. It was full of everything else.

Every Evening he found somewhere quiet and went still.

It came the way it always came, not announced, not gradual. One moment there was nothing and then there was Ada, her presence arriving in his chest the way Warmth arrived, the way you became Aware of Sunlight without being able to say exactly when it had started. He couldn't see her. But she was there, unmistakably, with the particular quality that was entirely Hers.

He Spoke. She heard him through the Fountain on her end. What came back wasn't words exactly. It was the shape of them, the weight of them, arriving in his chest already Understood. Her Amusement. Her Agreement. The particular Feeling of her rolling her eyes, which he Recognized as clearly as if he'd seen it.

On quiet Days it was brief. He told her how it had gone. She sent back fine, tired, nothing interesting, in the way she sent everything, directly, without softening it. The easy shorthand of People who had been talking to each other their whole Lives, compressed now into something even simpler on her end. He asked. She Felt. He sat with whatever arrived until it faded and then he went back to whatever the Evening required.

On Days when there was something Real to Say, he talked properly and she pushed something through with more weight to it. He told her about Bry and the campfire, and Felt her go quiet in the way she went quiet when something Mattered. He told her about Liv's Maps and Felt her Curiosity arrive, specific and focused. She sent him something Emrys had done, the Feeling of it, both infuriating and Impressive simultaneously, which was so entirely Ada's way of experiencing Emrys that he almost Laughed.

One Evening he said, "I'm not tired."

The Feeling that arrived in his chest was Patient and unconvinced and very specifically Hers.

"I'm waiting," he said. "It's the waiting that's tiring."

A pause. Then, with the weight of something she Meant Completely: 'It'll Call when it's Ready.'

"I Know."

Another pause. Then quieter, arriving like something she'd been holding for a while and had Decided to put down: 'When it does, you're not going alone.'

"I won't," he said. "I Promise."

The Evening she didn't come, he noticed at once.

He found his quiet place and spoke her Name and waited. The space in his chest where she arrived stayed empty. He waited longer. Nothing came, not her presence, not the shape of her, not even the faint peripheral Warmth that sometimes preceded her by a moment.

He told himself she was tired. A long Day, an early Night. He told himself this with the careful deliberateness of someone who was aware they were telling themselves something.

He went to bed.

He lay in the dark and thought about the nail in the wall where the Mirror had been. He thought about Orthos standing very still, looking at the Cliff, at the two Figures, and Twilight and Dawn in the same Sky. He thought about 'I'll be seeing you again soon' said the way someone stated a fact about the weather.

He thought about speaking her Name into the quiet and nothing arriving.

He was still thinking about it when it happened.

It came the way it always came, not a sound, not a vision, just a Certainty. A Pull, deep and specific, the particular quality of something that had Chosen him once and was Choosing him again. He Knew it immediately. He had Felt it before, in a Volcano, with the Pocket Watch cool in his hand and the lava moving around him, and he Knew it the way you Knew the Voice of Someone you Loved, not by thinking about it, just by the fact of it.

An Artifact was Calling.

The Diviner's Reliquary.

He was out of bed before he had decided to be. He stood in the dark of his Room with his Heart going fast and the Pull steady and certain in his chest, and he thought about Ada not coming, and he thought about 'I'll be seeing you again soon', and he thought about his Promise to Ada, that he wouldn't go alone.

He put on his boots.

He went to Percival's door and knocked.

Percival answered quickly, which meant he hadn't been asleep either. He looked at Aster in the doorway, at his boots, at his face, at whatever was visible in his expression, and said nothing for a moment.

"It's Calling," Aster said. "The Reliquary."

Percival was quiet for one breath. Then he stepped back from the door.

"We must wake the others," Percival said.

CHAPTER 9

Asterys went back to his Room first.

The Bird Amulet was on his desk where he'd left it. He picked it up in the dark. The carved Bird sat in his palm, small and worn smooth at the edges, the wood warm the way wood went warm when someone had held it a long time.

Percival moved quickly and without fuss, which Aster was Learning was simply how Percival moved when something required it. By the time Aster had the Amulet on and was back in the Corridor, a lamp was already lit at the far end, and Percival was at Voss's door.

They gathered in the Front Room in the particular quiet of People who had done this before and Knew that noise served nothing. Voss came first, dressed as though he hadn't been asleep, which may have been True. Dog arrived a minute later with his sleeves already rolled to the elbow, the way they always were, as if he'd come prepared before he knew what he was coming to. Liv had her Maps under her arm. Bry was pulling his coat on as he came down the stairs, Easy and Unhurried, the way he was unhurried about most things.

Anwyn was already in the room when Aster came in. He didn't know when she'd arrived.

Percival looked at Aster. "Where?"

"I don't know yet," Aster said. "I'll know when we're moving."

Percival nodded once, as if that was a perfectly sufficient answer, which — Aster was Learning — it was. Eleven years of Searching without a Finder had taught Percival to work with what he had. Having a Finder meant following the Finder. He seemed to Understand this without needing it explained.

"Then we move," Percival said. "Stay Together. Dog, stay close to Aster."

Dog looked at Aster with the steady warm eyes of someone who had patched up a great many People and found the work agreeable. "Right then," he said mildly.

They went out into the dark.

Aster led and the others followed, which was the arrangement and required no discussion.

The Pull was steady and specific, the way it Always was when something had Chosen him — not a direction exactly, more like a Certainty that resolved into Direction when he moved. He turned left out of Pendragon Place without thinking about it. Then right, down a narrower street, the cobblestones uneven under his boots, the City quiet at this hour in the particular way Cities went quiet after Midnight, not empty but held.

He was aware of the others behind him. Percival's footsteps even and unhurried. Bry moving the way he moved in the City, carefully, listening to what the Stone Remembered. Liv with her Maps, though there was nothing to Map yet. Dog keeping pace just behind Aster's left shoulder, close enough to be useful, far enough not to crowd.

Mr. Voss said nothing. Anwyn said nothing. Nobody asked how much further or how he knew. They simply followed, and the Trust in that was something Aster felt without having words for it.

The Pull strengthened as they walked. Not urgently — not the sharp insistent quality it had sometimes had with smaller Artifacts. This was deeper. More Patient. The Reliquary had been waiting a long time and it Knew how to wait. It was simply making itself Known, the way something made itself known when it had finally Decided the Time was Right.

He thought about Ada.

He thought about Orthos standing very still in front of the wall where the Mirror had been.

He kept walking.