Joe looked skyward in the same direction she was peering. “Oh, no,” he muttered after a tense pause. “You’re right. The star is gone.”
CHAPTER
2
STARLESS
“What does that mean?” Mira cried.
Cole felt horrible for her. That star was her one connection to her endangered sister. Mira’s panicked eyes studied the section of sky where the star should be.
“Could mean lots of things,” Joe said, his voice deliberately calm. “Might mean your mom was worried about enemies using the star. Might mean your sister has been rescued.”
“What if it means she’s . . . ?” Mira whispered, covering her mouth.
“I’m sure that isn’t it,” Joe said. “We can’t let this sink us. I have to track down whoever is slipping away. You go to Carthage. There’s a fountain with seven spouts on the Elloweer side. If I don’t catch up to you on the road, look for me there every day at noon. Lay low. If I’m more than three days behind you, I’ll be either dead or captured.” Joe glanced at Cole, Jace, and Twitch. “Watch over her.”
Joe turned and dashed up the hill.
Mira continued to stare at the patch of sky. Following her gaze, Cole saw many stars. But he knew the one she yearned to see was not among them.
“Don’t linger,” Joe called down to them as he charged up the slope. “There’s no telling who else might be headed this way.”
“He’s right,” Twitch said.
“What about our stuff?” Jace asked, dipping his head toward the crippled autocoach. “At least the money!”
“Good thought,” Cole said.
“You two grab what you need,” Twitch said. “I’ll get Mira out of sight. We’ll wait for you up the road.”
“Fine, shoo,” Jace said, waving a hand. “You too, Cole, if you want.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Cole told Jace, then glanced at Mira. “See you in a minute.”
Twitch took flight, and Mira used her Jumping Sword to leap halfway up the slope opposite the one Joe had climbed. “Flail, follow,” Mira called, and the weapon obeyed.
His shoulder smarting and his scraped legs sore, Cole crossed to the autocoach. No longer harnessed to the coach, the walking brick lay motionless on its side, two of its legs broken off at the thigh.
Cole and Jace reached the opening where the door had been and climbed inside. Bertram lay facedown, his body limp.
“Is he dead?” Jace asked.
Worried that Jace might be right, Cole crouched and shook the elderly coachman’s shoulder. “Are you okay, Bertram?”
The old man stirred and raised his head. “I’m on holiday with my grandniece and my grandnephews.” He gave a small smile. “Nothing to worry about here.”
After climbing to reach the floor of the coach, Jace opened a hatch and several items fell. He jumped down and started rummaging. From outside, Cole heard the faint trickle of the stream.
“You didn’t seem like yourself back there,” Cole said to Bertram. “You screamed.”
The old guy blinked. “I’m no longer a spring chicken. The young must forgive us older gents a little episode from time to time. I’ve been under the weather. I won’t let it ruin our holiday.”
Jace dropped down. “We should go,” he said, backing out of the coach.
Cole held up a finger to tell him to wait. He tried to frame a question in terms that might enable Bertram to respond. “Our holiday is in trouble. The coach went wild and crashed. How will we get to Elloweer now? What happened?”
Bertram gave an uncomfortable chuckle. “The coach did what it had to do.”
“The coach takes orders from Mira,” Cole said. “It doesn’t go fast. What happened?”
“It performed as required,” Bertram said. “So did I.”
“Who gave the order?” Cole asked. “Who changed the autocoach?”
Bertram looked unperturbed. “You youngsters may have to go ahead without me for now. The coach is in poor repair. Might do me some good to rest here for a time. This holiday has worn me out! Every uncle has his limits.”
“Come on,” Jace urged. “I grabbed the money and some food.”
“Bye, Bertram,” Cole said. “Thanks for the holiday.”
Bertram gave a nod. “You’re a fine grandnephew.”
Cole stepped out of the autocoach.
“Are those tears?” Jace asked.
Cole wiped his eyes and glanced away. “No.”
“He isn’t real,” Jace said. “He’s a semblance. He was constructed.”
Cole sighed. “That almost makes it worse. He’ll just sit there thinking he’s supposed to be on vacation with us.”
“He’s not thinking,” Jace said. “He just blabs the kind of stuff Declan taught him to say. Don’t be sad for him. Just be sad we lost our ride. Let’s go find Mira.”
“What about the guys you took out with your rope?” Cole asked. “Should we check if they’re alive?”
“No chance,” Jace said. “They tried to kill us. I didn’t hold back.”
“They had armor.”
“Armor won’t protect you from falling off a cliff. I threw them hard. Joe wasn’t worried about them.”
“Joe was in a hurry,” Cole pointed out.
Jace exhaled sharply. “Fine. You take that one.” He pointed toward the man closest to them. Jace’s rope coiled like a spring, then uncoiled, launching him over to where the farthest of the two fallen riders had been thrown. The rope coiled ahead of him to soften his landing.
Cole trotted over to the other rider. The front of his helmet and breastplate were badly dented from the impact with the boulder. The figure didn’t move. Cole knelt beside him and put his ear by the helmet, listening for breathing. He heard nothing.
“Die!” a voice said as hands grabbed Cole by the shoulders from behind.
Cole jumped and turned, startled enough to make Jace laugh.
“The other guy is no longer with us,” Jace said. “We’re wasting time. Let’s fly.”
His rope coiled again, and Jace shot up the slope. Cole pointed his sword, spoke the command, and whooshed upward.
No matter how many times Cole did it, jumping with the sword remained exhilarating, partly because he always felt a little out of control. Landing tended to be the trickiest part. Cole had learned that if he immediately took another sword-assisted jump instead of coming to a full stop, the impact was greatly reduced. So he strung together some jumps up the slope, over to the bridge, and along the road until he saw Twitch and Mira waving at him from up ahead.
Pointing his blade at a spot near his friends, Cole shouted the command again and flew through the air toward them. The sword slowed him at the last second, but not enough to prevent him from stumbling to his knees on the dirt road.
While bounding with the sword, Cole had passed Jace, who was using his rope to grab trees beside the road and slingshot himself forward. Jace caught up by the time Cole rose to his feet.
“You need to practice those landings,” Jace said.
“You need to work on your speed,” Cole shot back.
Jace gestured toward the side of the road. “What’s that supposed to be?”
Cole turned to see a misshapen brown lump the height of his waist rocking back and forth on two uneven legs. Perhaps sensing the attention, the ungainly object hobbled toward them.
“Mira tried to shape something for us to ride to Carthage,” Twitch explained.
Jace exploded into laughter. “That? It looks like a walking mud ball.”
Cole tried not to laugh. The description was pretty accurate.
“I was rushed,” Mira said, flustered. “Making semblances is very hard. Even the best shapers take their time when simulating life.”
“So why try?” Jace asked.
Mira shru
gged. “I saw what my power can do when we fought Carnag. Remember how big it was? How well it simulated me and my father? That power is inside of me now. I just have to learn to use it. I know I’m capable of big feats of shaping. I thought maybe if I harnessed my desperation, I could shape something useful.”
The mud ball toddled over to Jace, then bumped into his leg and tipped over. The undersized semblance started to sway gently and made a garbled, squishy sound.
“Is it trying to speak?” Jace asked. “You know, it looks a little like Twitch. Was he your model?”
“Stop it,” Mira said, swatting Jace on the shoulder. She staggered, and he caught hold of her.
“What’s the matter?” Jace asked.
“The effort took a lot out of me,” Mira said. “I’ll be all right.”
“You realize we have a long way to go,” Cole reminded her.
“I was trying to make it easier for all of us,” Mira said. They watched the misshapen little semblance as it tried to rock back into a standing position. Mira gave a little laugh. “It was supposed to be bigger.”
Her comment freed the others to laugh, and they did.
“Are you telling it to move?” Cole wondered.
“I designed it to follow us when we weren’t riding it,” Mira explained. “I think it understands that part. It was supposed to have four legs. And it was supposed to obey instructions from me, but it seems mostly oblivious.”
“Can you shape it more?” Cole asked. “Improve it?”
Mira shook her head. “I’m wiped out.”
“Can you unshape it?” Jace inquired. “People might find it.”
“Probably, but it would drain me too much. I’m already going to have a hard time keeping up with you guys. I was stupid to try to make a semblance all at once. Carnag did it, so I thought maybe I could too. Projects like this are normally done step-by-step, a little at a time.”
The semblance stood up and waddled toward Cole. He backed away. It was kind of creepy.
“What’s it made of?” Jace asked.
“Looks like dirt, but feels more like cork,” Mira said. “It’s tougher than it feels, but again, not quite what I was after.”
Jace pushed the semblance over. Crouching, he ran his palms over it, rocking it gently. “You guys go on ahead. I’ll catch up after I ditch this thing.”
“What are you going to do?” Cole asked.
“Stash it in the woods far from the road,” Jace said. “It isn’t light, but with my rope I can handle it.”
“Isn’t that kind of mean?” Cole asked.
Jace gave a frustrated sigh. “It’s a walking hunk of cork, Cole! Mira made it out of rubble. It doesn’t have feelings. But it might try to walk toward us, which would be a big favor to anybody who wants to track us down.”
“Okay,” Cole said. “Makes sense.”
“Get going,” Jace said. “People might be after us. We don’t want to waste our head start.”
“Are you okay to travel?” Cole asked Mira.
She wiped a hand across her forehead. “I have to be. No other choice.” She glanced at the sky. “I just wish the star was still there.”
“It’ll be all right,” Cole said, unsure about whether he believed his words but trying to help her feel better.
“You go first, Mira,” Twitch suggested. “We’ll keep an eye on you from behind.”
Mira drew her Jumping Sword, aimed it down the road, and called, “Away.” The Shaper’s Flail followed. Cole heard her repeat the command when she landed, leaping forward again. Wings fluttering, Twitch sprang after her. Cole held out his sword and jumped.
CHAPTER
3
CARTHAGE
Breezing through the night, leap after leap, Cole waited for Mira to tire out and stop, but instead she kept going. He hung back, keeping her in view. Cool air rushed by with every jump.
One of the moons glowed fairly bright tonight. Another, a slender crescent, was just rising. The night sky in the Outskirts changed without pattern. The inconstancy allowed Mira and her sisters to be marked by stars without anyone catching on. Ten or eleven different moons could show up on any given night, although Cole had never seen more than three at once. Many of the moons were similar to Earth’s, though tonight’s struck him as a bit more yellow.
Cole scanned the shadows beneath the trees at either side of the road. Anything could be lurking under the cover of that darkness. He glanced behind as well, braced to see a platoon of legionnaires or mysterious riders on ragbeasts.
One luxury of the autocoach was that it shut out the rest of the world, producing the comforting illusion that they were hidden and safe. Cole supposed that was wonderful until you ended up at the bottom of a ravine after an ambush. Without the coach, Cole felt more exposed, but that kept him more alert.
Mira’s concerns about her sister caused Cole’s thoughts to turn to his lost friends. He remembered when he last saw Jenna, caged in a wagon, still in her Cleopatra costume from Halloween. His last glimpse of his best friend, Dalton, had been of a sad, dusty clown, also in a cage. They had been on their way to be sold as slaves when Cole was selected to join the Sky Raiders.
The thought of Jenna behind bars enraged Cole. But she probably wasn’t in a cage anymore. She was a slave somewhere. Was she working in a kitchen? Was she bringing meals to some lazy friend of the High King? Those thoughts didn’t make him any less angry.
Jenna was smart and funny. She was pretty and nice. She didn’t deserve this fate. Going into the wrong basement on Halloween had ripped her life away—and visiting the spook alley had been Cole’s idea. Dalton was a great guy, too—the bestest friend Cole had ever had, and his life was destroyed as well.
Where were they tonight? Where were the dozens of other kids who were smuggled from Mesa to the Outskirts? Were they comfortable? Were they suffering? They could be in any of the five kingdoms. And they were in danger. The shapecrafter Quima had warned that the High Shaper intended to perform experiments on them involving their shaping powers. Kids from outside the five kingdoms tended to have shaping powers. The slaver Ansel had sold all the kids with the most potential to the High King.
Bounding along the moonlit road, Cole had to believe his friends were all right. He had to believe they were occupied with safer tasks than raiding sky castles. Cole had considered setting off on his own, with the sole purpose of finding his friends. But the trail was cold. He had no idea where to start. Jenna, Dalton, and the others could be anywhere.
Searching for them alone would put him at a serious disadvantage. Cole knew little about the Outskirts, and he would have no help. If he stuck with Mira, not only could he lean on her knowledge of the five kingdoms, he could also count on finding rebels like Joe who were willing to assist a princess in exile. Cole tried to renew his faith that, as he helped Mira and kept his eyes and ears open, eventually he would find his friends.
How many others did he need to find? Right now his main concern was saving Dalton and Jenna. But what about Jenna’s friends Chelsea and Sarah? Or Blake? What about the rest of the victims? Cole knew most of them by face if not by name.
If he found Dalton and Jenna and learned of a way home, would he ditch the others? It was hard to say. If he was ever fortunate enough to be in that position, he’d decide then.
What about Mira? If he found a way home, would he abandon her? She had already become a real friend. Without her, he would probably still be stuck with the Sky Raiders, which meant his job as a scout would probably have gotten him killed by now.
Mira was always trying to excuse him from making her problems his own. But that only made Cole want to help her more. Without his aid, she probably wouldn’t have made it this far. He had saved her bacon more than once.
Others would aid her if he left. Jace could be a jerk, but he was totally devoted to her. Twitch would help too. And
as a member of the resistance, Joe seemed fully committed as well.
Cole watched Mira jumping along ahead of him. Deciding whether he would leave her was pointless at the moment. By the time something like that became an issue, the circumstances might be totally different. Hopefully, by then, Dalton and Jenna could help him choose.
Finally, Mira came to a halt and looked back at Cole. He aimed his next jump to the side of her and landed in an awkward stumble. Twitch fluttered to a stop nearby.
“Tired?” Cole asked.
“I could keep going,” Mira said. “I’m worried that Jace hasn’t caught up yet.”
Cole looked back down the road. Jace could be a pain, but it would be tragic if anything happened to him. Jerk or not, he was a friend. And he was good in a fight, a survivor. “He’s probably fine. I bet we’re just going faster than him.”
“Right,” Mira agreed. “The trees have thinned out.”
Cole nodded. With brushy fields on either side of the lane, Jace wouldn’t be able to slingshot himself off trees. It would make him even slower.
“If we’ve been stretching our lead this whole time,” Twitch said, “we may have a big wait ahead of us.”
“All the more reason to pause now instead of later,” Mira said. “We don’t want to lose him. If he’s in trouble, we have to go back.”
“If he’s in trouble, it’s probably more than we can handle,” Cole said. “He’s not easy prey with that rope. If he doesn’t show up, I’ll go back. You and Twitch need to keep going.”
Twitch moved off the road and into the brush. “How about we wait behind those bushes?” he suggested. “We’ll have a view of the road, but we can lay low if unexpected visitors show up.”
“Jump to the bushes,” Cole advised. “That way there won’t be any tracks leading to our hiding spot.”
“Good thinking,” Twitch said, springing into the air, wings a shimmering blur.
Cole and Mira jumped to the bushes as well. Mira sat down, legs bent in front of her. She crossed her arms and put them on her knees, resting her head on her arms.