Page 19 of Cage of Starlight

What did he do?

The edges of the girl become indistinct, fading into the forest, and Tory’s mind drifts on an ocean of peace. Someone bursts from the trees, though, and the girl returns with startling clarity, the peace vanishing.

“Ariana, up ! Damn you, I told you I was waiting for a friend! Tory? Tory, look at me.”

A familiar hand thrusts into his field of vision and helps him to his feet, then bends to brush leaf litter from the back of his ugly slate-blue clothing.

Tory’s head clears, and he stops her, lifts her with a hand on her wide shoulder. There she is: eyes pinched and black hair loose, a dark blue robe embroidered with interlocking spirals tied at her waist. Hasra looks just like the day he left her.

Tory must not look the same at all, because her face crumples at the sight of him. She exhales a raw, disbelieving noise, crushing him against her, and as Tory inhales the spice of her pipe, a knot inside him unties itself.

“Hey,” he whispers into her robe, eyes burning. “Glad you got out safe. How’ve ya been?”

Hasra thwacks the back of his head and lifts his face to examine it. “Worried! How’d you think I’d be?”

He muffles a laugh into her shoulder. “Sorry.”

Her hands flutter over him. “Don’t apologize, just take care of yourself. Have you been eating? And you’re bruised ! Tory, you’re bruised all over! What have they been doing to you?”

Tory blinks fast and hard. “Just training. But I’m out now.”

“You are. We’ll keep you that way.”

He just needs something sharp and to figure out where Helner planted his damn Core so he can scoop the thing out.

The girl with the murder-freckles interrupts. “Hasra, this is . . .?”

Hasra steps in beside Tory, arm warm around his shoulders. “Ariana, this is the Tory I keep telling you about. Tory, this is Ulenn Belmin’s daughter. She’s the brashness and boldness behind his operation. Still haven’t found out who’s the brains.”

“Hey!” says Ariana, but then shrugs. “Honestly? Probably Wyn.”

The men who were carrying the water stumble from the trees with a third man.

Belmin, if Tory had to guess, rags-to-riches merchant and smuggler of Seeds.

He’s . . . not what Tory imagined. Sweaty and red-faced, with barely an inch on Tory and a thinning head of light-brown hair gone gray at the temples, he sports a bombastic plum-and-maroon jacket embroidered like his daughter’s. Tory imagined him differently.

Belmin stares, eyes wide. “You need to leave.”

“I . . . What?” Tory staggers back on boneless legs.

Hasra pulls him close again. “Don’t you dare, Ulenn.”

Belmin shakes his head. “Get out! You have to leave, now. Those clothes, the bracelet. They’ll track you here. There’s a group of rogue Seeds by the border. Find them, mess things up for them . I don’t care. Just go.”

“I won’t let you do this,” Hasra says, and something unnameable swells in Tory’s chest. “We’re so close to the border. They wouldn’t risk crossing it to apprehend him, even with the tracker—he’ll be safe there as long as we hurry. Ulenn, please.”

“It’s too risky.” Belmin spears her with a solemn gaze. “If they’re tracking him now, they could realize he’s escaping via our trade routes. If you must defend him, you can leave with him.”

She presses her lips together, and shit , Tory knows that face. “Hasra, no. This is your—”

“This is my nothing . I’ll get my things.”

The girl named Ariana steps up between them. “Hasra’s right, Dad. And anyway, from what she’s been saying, he’s probably a Worldseed. Wyn will lose it when I tell her!”

“Ari, it’s far too dangerous. We can’t risk our current and future work for one boy.”

She smiles—a disturbing look beneath her blood-spatter freckles. “Please?”

Off to the side, Hasra lights her pipe, taking one unsettlingly deep drag and then another, like she’s starving for smoke. She squints suspiciously at Ariana.

“I’ve made my decision. Go back to our guests ,” Belmin says.

“Not yet.” Ariana’s eyes widen theatrically and she points toward the road. “Daddy! They’re coming. We need to move .”

Fear jolts through Tory, but when he examines the area Ariana is indicating with her finger, there’s nothing. Her father stares, though, like he’s seeing his own execution. “Prepare for departure!” he cries. “Hurry!”

Ariana spins, graceful, to face Tory. “Where were we, then? Tory, right?” She dances out of the way as someone barrels past. “I’m Ariana Belmin. Part-time student of medicine in the capital, full-time Seed smuggler. Call me Ari.”

Tory’s still squinting between the empty road and Ariana’s father, who has burst into motion like there’s fire on his feet. “What did you just . . .?”

He’s heard the stories, here and there, in whispers: that there are some Seeds who can change people’s perceptions of reality.

Mostly, the stories are whispered in fear if they’re whispered at all, but there was a girl in one of the Houses, an older woman, who protected the employees with a power like this one.

“Oh, this? It’s nothing much. Only visual and auditory. But enough about me. Hasra’s told us so much about you ! We’ve been dying to meet you.” She grabs him by the bracelet at his wrist and examines it. “Score! I knew it! Wyn’s gonna flip. We just need a Voidseed for a matched set.”

Hasra, flustered, takes another long drag on her pipe. “By the stars above and fire beneath, Ariana—”

“Hasra, shouldn’t you be preparing to depart, too? You know, considering ?”

The same strange urgency takes hold of her for a moment, but she shudders and shakes it off.

She spears Ariana with an unblinking stare while she inhales deep on the pipe and exhales a lungful of smoke in Ari’s face.

“When will you stop trying to pull that shit on me? You’re a horrible person, Ariana Belmin. ”

“Comes with the job.” Ari coughs in the cloud of smoke. “And that’s a horrible habit.”

“You’ve said. Useful, though, if you’re going to keep messing with me.” She inhales again, looking to Tory. “I figured out the pipe smoke lets me resist her illusions.”

To Tory, Ari grumbles, “Any mind-altering substance makes it less effective, unfortunately.” She starts walking. “This way.”

He’d tolerate weirder and wilder personalities than hers to be free. He hurries after her, through the thinning woods and toward a dirt road. “I don’t have any money.”

“Didn’t expect you to.”

“Then why are you helping?”

She smiles. “Consider it an investment. We’re in the business of shaking things up, and historically speaking, when the First Children are born into the same generation, the world’s overdue for a shakeup.

Now that we know you’re here, we’ve got our theory more than half confirmed.

Just be aware that we might end up asking you for a favor at some point. ”

They pass Belmin, putting up water buckets and preparing the horses.

Caravan cars packed with goods blur by. In the first, paper-wrapped lamps with bubbled shades huddle in covered boxes, blown into dream-shapes and dyed with streaks of blue and gold.

Tory knows them: the House in Hulven has three.

Carallian glass from Belmin’s hometown. His big break, or so the stories go.

The second car is packed with shocks of cloth dyed in rich colors and decorated with maned serpents and prints of stars and vines enwrapped. Arlunian designs.

The third is a closed car, windowless. Ari leads him to the back, where two wide, wooden doors wait.

A man in long brown trousers and a ratty green sweater leans against them, eyebrow raised.

His hair is red as a summer fox’s and just as wild even with a token tie trying to pull it together at the back, his eyes wine- or blood-colored in the low light.

His smile’s vulpine, too—toothy-wide and hungry, though it sours at the sight of Tory’s uniform.

“Picked up a stray pup? They bite, you know. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Tory shouldn’t, given that the guy has just insulted him, but he trusts the man immediately. He tugs at the bracelet locked around his wrist. He’ll need wire-cutters to remove it. “My teeth are plenty sharp, but I’d rather turn them on the bastards who did this to me.”

The smile returns, broad and warm. “Oh, Ms. Belmin, I like this one. Can I keep him?”

It’s Hasra who answers. “Absolutely not, Larsen. He’s going to Arlune.”

“Who is he?” Tory whispers. When Hasra only presses her lips together, he meets the redhead’s eyes. “Who are you?”

“Riese.” The man extends a hand to envelop Tory’s.

“I lead a ragtag group of Seeds based close enough to the border to keep us safe. You might have heard of our work. We and our allies have been haunting their supply routes. We even got inside that damn Compound of theirs hoping to cause some problems, short-lived though it was. Their security was stronger than we expected.”

Tory’s stomach flips. The rebels. These are the rebels Hasra told him about.

The fire that flickered to life in him when Vantaras stole his scalpel—the hunger to fight —flares again in his belly. In Hulven, it was an idle dream. Now, he could make it real. No more whittling himself down, no more hiding.

Hasra snags his wrist. “Don’t even think about it. I want you safe. This man is not safe.”

“Nothing worth the time ever is,” Riese says. “How long you been in?”

“In where?”

“Their little pen of pet Seeds. Too much time under their thumb rots the brain, but I’m getting the impression you’re quite fresh.”

“A few days,” Tory says.