Sky Without Stars Read online

  In answer to his question, she pointed to the shirt in her hand. “It says it right here. ‘My dear Marcellou.’ ”

  “You can read?” he asked in surprise.

  Alouette was suddenly speechless, distracted by his gaze. It was so intense. So probing. His brown eyes—with their hints of green—seemed like they were trying to figure Alouette out, inspect her, assess her. He seemed as curious about her as she was about him.

  “Yes, I can read.” Alouette finally found her words, and then, to avoid his inquisitive gaze, she dipped her eyes back down to the bloodied shirt in her hands and to the message so crudely but painstakingly stitched into the fabric. Each stitch seemed so tiny, so intricate. It reminded Alouette of Sister Muriel’s handiwork on the sisters’ tunics in the Refuge.

  “Where did you get this?” Alouette asked, but when she looked up again, his gaze was no longer probing. It was now downcast. Avoiding.

  “I . . .” He seemed to struggle with his response. “It came from a prisoner.”

  Alouette’s thoughts spun. “A prisoner? But why would you—”

  “What does the rest of it say?” he cut her off, as though he was in a hurry to redirect her line of questioning.

  She glanced back down at the shirt in her hands. “It says, ‘My dear Marcellou, Mabelle is in Montfer. Go to her.’ ”

  His eyes darkened. “No. You must be mistaken. It can’t possibly say that.”

  Confused, Alouette smoothed out the fabric so she could reread the words stitched into it. But they didn’t change. She wasn’t mistaken. “That’s what it says.”

  “Mabelle is in prison,” he said dismissively. “For life.”

  “Who is she?”

  “No one. She’s nothing. Just a governess I once had.”

  A governess? People in the Frets can’t afford governesses.

  Her eyes shifted down to his sleek silver raincoat, covered in blood, as he fiddled with one of its shiny titan buttons.

  Definitely not Third Estate.

  Maybe Second Estate? Maybe he was a foreman of a fabrique. Or a superviseur of an exploit. A médecin, perhaps? No. He didn’t have the cyborg circuitry implanted in his face.

  Sensing the shift in him, Alouette searched for something else to say. “So is that really your name? Marcellou?”

  But this question didn’t bring the warmth back to his eyes. “It was just a nickname,” he said with a flick of his hand. “My real name is Marcellus.”

  She smiled a little. Marcellus. That suited him better. There was something noble about it. Like a god, or a hero, or a warrior in those really old books Sister Jacqui read to her when she was little—the warriors who fought strange one-eyed monsters and women with snakes for hair, who could lift mountains and throw thunderbolts.

  Marcellus.

  “Where did you learn to read the Forgotten Word?” he asked urgently, interrupting her thoughts. His examining gaze was on her once again.

  Alouette opened her mouth, but then clamped it shut again. Her gaze darted from Marcellus back up the hallway. She took in the rusting walls, the strange dank smell, and the moist air. Her chest suddenly tightened. What was she still doing here? She was supposed to just tend to his wound and then get back to the Refuge. Quickly. Before Assemblée was over and the sisters ever knew she’d left.

  But instead, she’d gotten distracted and here she still was. And now this boy—this stranger—was asking her questions. Questions she could never answer. She couldn’t tell him about how the sisters had taught her to read so that one day she could maintain the Chronicles and help protect the library. Because if she told him, it would mean breaking the sisters’ vow of secrecy.

  Long ago, Sister Jacqui had explained to Alouette why the Ministère could never know about the Refuge and the books that had been smuggled off the First World. If they were ever to find the sisters’ hiding place under the Frets, they’d surely shut the Refuge down and destroy the library. Alouette had promised to keep the vow to never reveal the Sisterhood’s existence or location. And it had always been easy to do so. Because she’d never had anyone to keep the secret from.

  “I should go now,” she blurted out. “I need to get home.”

  Marcellus’s eyes grew wide. “No, wait. Don’t—”

  But his words were cut off by a noise. The stomping of feet somewhere nearby.

  Alouette and Marcellus froze.

  The footfalls grew louder, and soon a shrill, whooping siren filled the air.

  Alouette peered into the maze of rusting hallways, searching for the source. She tried to ask what could possibly be making a noise like that, but all that came out was a strangled cry as her gaze fell upon the most ghastly and terrifying sight.

  It was at least three mètres tall—much bigger than any man—with a face straight out of a nightmare. Part human and part machine, it marched toward her, its joints whirring and clicking.

  It was a monster!

  No, her rational mind corrected. A Policier droid.

  Alouette had learned about them in the Chronicles. She’d even seen a hand-drawn picture of one, but she never imagined how frightening they would be in person. Their massive chests looked like the bodies of the insects she’d read about in Sister Laurel’s nature journals. Except these bodies were crafted from dull gray PermaSteel. Where the creature’s eyes should have been, there were two blinking orange lights, which shone like faltering flashlights. Sister Jacqui once told Alouette that a single droid could lift four men at once.

  “Don’t worry,” Marcellus said with a small laugh, clearly sensing her panic. “It’s just a Policier droid. It’s rounding up rioters.”

  But Alouette barely heard him. All she could hear was that horrible whirring and clanking. Metal grinding against metal. And those terrifying eyes, scanning the hallways; they made her feel alone and helpless.

  Everything about this situation felt wrong. So very wrong. The world was upside down. For the first time since she’d found Marcellus, Alouette felt cold again. Freezing, in fact. She began to shiver inside her tunic, and suddenly all Alouette could think about was home. The Refuge. The warm and safe Refuge.

  “I really have to go.” The words shot out of her. She tried to stand up, but something tugged on the side of her tunic. Panicked, she looked back at the boy and blinked.

  “Wait,” he said. “It won’t bother us. Look! It’s leaving.” He pointed to the droid turning left down another hallway and rapidly moving away from them.

  But that didn’t matter to Alouette. Her body was trembling—from cold or fear, she wasn’t sure. She just knew she couldn’t stay here. The sisters had been right all along. The above-world was dangerous. It was no place for Alouette.

  “I have to.”

  “Can I AirLink you, at least?” he asked.

  Alouette’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  He tapped a finger to the inside of his arm. “Can I message you?” he clarified.

  Before she could reply, Marcellus gently took her hand and pushed up the sleeve of her gray tunic. Alouette felt a curious tingle travel up her arm and down her spine.

  “I’ll message you. On your—” But Marcellus halted when his intense eyes fell on her scar. The long ridge of raised flesh that formed a perfect rectangle on the inside of her arm.

  Marcellus yanked his hands away as though her scar had bitten him. “What on Laterre . . .”

  Alouette didn’t like the expression she was seeing on Marcellus’s face. It was too questioning. Too suspicious. Too distrustful. She quickly pulled the sleeve of her tunic back down and pushed herself to her feet.

  “Stop! Please!” Marcellus called out again. “Wait. Don’t go.”

  But she was already running, the soft soles of her canvas shoes slapping the grated metal floor beneath her feet.

  “I don’t even know your name!”

  She halted, just for a moment, and looked back. Marcellus had pushed himself up from the floor, steadying himself against the rusting wall. />
  “Tell me your name.” The suspicion was no longer in his eyes. Now, all that she could see there was desperation.

  Her world was tilting.

  Should I tell him?

  Nothing made sense.

  Is it dangerous to tell him?

  Everything was too confusing, too perplexing, too much.

  It isn’t technically breaking the vow of secrecy. . . .

  She took a breath and then shouted, “Alouette,” before ducking around a corner and leaving the boy behind her.

  - CHAPTER 13 -

  CHATINE

  “DO YOU SEE? THAT LIGHT right there? That’s Sol 1.”

  Chatine closed her eyes, letting the memory rush over her, trying to hold on to it, but it was like trying to hold on to mist.

  “Isn’t it pretty? Look how it’s trying so hard to shine for you.”

  His tiny face was fading with each passing day as she grew older, and his body—which was now no more than frozen dust—crumbled further into nothing.

  “There are three Sols in the sky. Yes, three! Sol 1 is the white one, Sol 2 is the red one, and Sol 3 . . .”

  She saw him now only in splintered pieces—cracked moments of time. A curl of light brown hair, the same shade as her own. A dribble of spit-up on his chin. A piercing cry in the night. A thin, bony thigh, pink and angry from their mother’s unforgiving palm.

  On some days, she couldn’t even see his face anymore.

  “Aren’t we lucky to live under so many stars?”

  When she was little, she used to rock him to sleep and point to a streetlamp outside the window of the inn in Montfer. She would tell him that it was one of the Sols. And that the light was dim because it was trying to break through the clouds. Of course, he was less than a year old and unable to understand anything she was saying. But even then, she never wanted to tell him that they lived on a planet that hardly ever saw the light of the Sols. She wanted him to grow up in a different kind of world. A better world. Where the Sols shone brightly every day. Where everyone had enough to eat. Where the upper estates didn’t treat the people like vermin to be swept up under the rug.

  A world like Usonia.

  Which now felt farther away than ever.

  At only six years old, she’d wanted all of this for baby Henri, even though she knew he’d probably never see it.

  “When we’re big, we can go up there. We can zoom off in a big space voyageur and we can see all the stars really close.”

  Chatine leaned her head back against the railing. She sat in the old, collapsed stairwell of Fret 7, staring up through the giant gash in the ceiling. No one ever came here. Most of the residents in the Frets were terrified of this place after the stairs collapsed three years ago, killing eight people. But Chatine liked coming here. It was quiet. And, in the middle of the day, when the sky was the lightest shade of gray, she liked to look up through the giant tear in the ceiling and imagine that she could see the bright white rays of Sol 1 shining above her head.

  But mostly, Chatine came here because it was the one place in the Frets where she allowed herself to think about Henri.

  “Give him back! You’re holding him all wrong! Maman, tell Madeline she can’t hold him.”

  “Shut up, both of you! Chatine, go buy me some vegetables for the stew. Your father has special guests coming for dinner tonight.”

  “Don’t send me. Send her. Send Madeline.”

  “GO! Now, Chatine. Get out of my sight.”

  Chatine’s eyes fluttered open. No matter how hard she tried to think about the good moments with Henri—his hand pressed against her cheek, her lips kissing the raindrop-shaped birthmark on the back of his shoulder—it always ended here. She always saw him the way she’d seen him for the final time: cradled in Madeline’s arms. She could still remember the way the little girl had held him. Like he was a doll. Like he was her own personal plaything. Like his life meant nothing.

  And apparently, to her, it didn’t.

  The memory squeezed her chest so tightly, she felt as though she couldn’t breathe. But even so, she still knew, deep in her heart, that her little brother was better off dead. If he’d lived to be a man, he’d undoubtedly have ended up on Bastille. Third Estate boys born into families like the Renards had little hope of living an honest life.

  “Stop! Please!”

  The voice crashed into Chatine’s mind, and for a moment, she couldn’t tell if it was real, or just another hazy piece of that horrible day she’d come home to find Henri dead.

  She leapt to her feet.

  “Wait. Don’t go.”

  Chatine froze. The voice was real. And she recognized it. She hated that she knew it, but she knew it.

  Marcellus Bonnefaçon.

  Was he speaking to her? Had he found her? Had he somehow tracked her here from the morgue? Panicked, Chatine checked the display on her Skin. The tracker was still disabled. Chatine let out a quiet sigh of relief.

  But that still didn’t change the fact that Officer Bonnefaçon had somehow found her and was calling out to her, possibly wanting his revenge for the little stunt she’d pulled in the morgue.

  Silently, Chatine pushed her back against the wall, trying to calm her pounding heart.

  “I don’t even know your name!” he shouted. “Tell me your name.”

  Of course he’d want to know her name. She’d outsmarted him. She’d conned him into giving her the leveler back. Not to mention she’d punched him in the stomach. He obviously wanted to know her name so he could report her to Limier and ship her off to Bastille for the rest of her life.

  But there was something strange in his voice. Something that wasn’t there before. It almost sounded like pain. It was enough to rouse her curiosity and lure her away from her hiding spot. Chatine grabbed on to the broken railing and swung herself over the giant open shaft that used to be the stairwell. She tentatively stepped into the hallway and, careful to stay close to the wall, peered through the slats in the metal flooring.

  And that’s when she saw him, slumped and bleeding in the corridor one floor below.

  Injured, her mind calculated at once. Incapacitated. An easy target.

  Chatine also noticed he wasn’t looking back up at her, as she’d suspected. He was looking at something unseen in the distance, farther down the corridor.

  “Alouette,” a female voice called out, light and melodic, like a song.

  Chatine bent forward, straining to see whom the voice belonged to. She caught a glimpse of dark, curly hair and unnaturally clean skin. Second Estate, perhaps? But what was she doing in the Frets? And her clothes were definitely not Second Estate. Chatine could make out a billow of drab gray fabric as the girl vanished around a corner.

  The officer let out a painful moan, pulling Chatine’s attention back to the hallway directly beneath her. She peered between the slats just in time to see his body slump farther down the wall.

  Chatine crouched lower, pushing her face against the grate, trying to make out whether or not he was still conscious. His eyes were closed and a small trickle of blood dripped from a wound on his forehead. Her gaze zeroed in on the ring around his finger. The one she had failed to nick earlier today.

  Go, her mind urged her. Take everything you can.

  Chatine knew this was her chance. This was the other option she’d been looking for. The officer could have enough on him right now to secure her passage to Usonia. She could take the lot and head straight back to the Capitaine.

  Her eyes roved the hallway, searching for signs of life. In the distance she could hear the whirring and clicking of Policier droids on the move, but she couldn’t determine which way they were heading. Was the sound getting closer or farther away? Were they coming for him or going after some foolish protester on the run?

  Chatine focused back on Officer Bonnefaçon, whose eyelids were drooping. She’d been around the Frets long enough to know that he shouldn’t be closing his eyes after a head injury. She remembered when old Massay from h
er father’s gang had hit his head on the underside of a Policier patroleur during one of their jobs. The other members of the Délabré had dragged him back to the Frets and let him sleep it off. He never woke up.

  Someone had to keep the officer awake. Someone had to ask him questions, make him talk. Otherwise . . .

  “Damn the Sols,” Chatine whispered, and pulled herself to her feet. She couldn’t believe she was going to do this. She, Chatine Renard, rescuing a Ministère officer?

  But there was just something about how helpless he looked. Something about the memory of his eyes, in the morgue, as he offered to get her something to eat. Despite her conviction that he’d been luring her into a trap, there was also something genuine there. Something that told her, if the situation were reversed, he would be rushing down to save her, too.

  You’re wrong, a voice inside her head warned. He would never save you You are worthless to him.

  She knew the voice was right. The voice was always right. It was this skeptical yet shrewd intuition of hers that had kept her alive and out of Bastille for the past eighteen years, despite all the odds stacked against her.

  And yet, for the first time in her life, Chatine defiantly chose to ignore it.

  It was a choice she would surely come to regret.

  - CHAPTER 14 -

  ALOUETTE

  “HALT!”

  The robotic voice ricocheted off the rusting walls of the hallway as a beam of bright orange light cut through the murky air.

  But Alouette did not halt. She kept running, her long gray tunic snapping and twisting around her legs. She glanced over her shoulder and could just barely make out the terrifying, gargantuan monster in the distance.

  A droid.

  Still there. Still pursuing her.

  And she still had no idea why it was chasing her. After she’d left Marcellus, she’d tried to run straight back to the mechanical room, only to discover the mechanical room wasn’t where she thought it was. Somehow she’d gotten entirely turned around. That’s when she’d heard the voice.

  “Halt!”

  There it was again.

  Alouette shrieked and spurred her body onward. She’d never run so hard or so fast in her life. Her muscles burned, and her breathing was coming out in quick, ragged gasps.