The Black Star by Edward W. Robertson

Author:Edward W. Robertson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Coming of Age, Fantasy, Adventure, Epic, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 1495223965
Published: 2014-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

21

Cee shoved his shoulder. "Quit with the mystery. What are you seeing in there?"

"Not in," Dante said. "Down. There's a city hidden below this one."

"I knew it!"

"I don't remember you placing that bet," Somburr said.

She rolled her eyes. "I told you they were meeting up somewhere."

"That is a far cry from predicting it would be in a subterranean mirror-city."

Dante looked between them. "How did you know to watch this doorway in the first place?"

"We were running down transposed addresses," Cee said. "Asking more people about 327 East. Things like that. We're talking to one guy and he starts to blurt something out, then he thinks better, says he doesn't know. I think, maybe he had it confused with a different address, remembered the right one mid-sentence. An hour later, I remember he was wearing a gray scarf."

"The significance being..?"

"In most cities? None. But look around. The Camrish dress like they slept in a rainbow."

"Whereas this guy was trying to look bland?" Dante shifted his knees; the rooftop was solid stone and he was getting sore. "That's a little flimsy."

"By itself," Cee said. "But this wasn't the first one I'd seen. Earlier, I watched a woman in a gray scarf open a locked door and enter a blank room. No exits besides the way she came in. Not even a window. We had stopped for a meal and were sitting around, so I kept my eyes on the place. A few minutes later, another man opens the door. And the woman's gone."

"That is weird. On the other hand, last week we were living in a metropolis made of five-hundred-foot trees."

"Granted, everything's weird here. My thinking was, maybe one of these little rooms is our missing address." She produced a knife and waved it mock-menacingly. "Now that I've spent the last five minutes explaining what brought me here, you want to tell me what I found?"

"Buildings," Dante said. "People. Business. They have address posts down there, too—but the numbers aren't contiguous."

"Because they're the missing ones." Cee chortled, rubbing her hands together, and stood. "Shall we?"

"The only thing I shall be doing is making sure I'm not walking into a bear trap," Somburr said. "If they go to such lengths to keep this mirror-city concealed, and to identify those who belong and those who don't, that suggests hostility toward interlopers."

Dante tapped the stone barrier ringing the roof. "The monk in Corl sent us here to find this. He wouldn't put us underground if we'd wind up hanged by our own intestines."

"Perhaps he intended to provide us with a code word. Or a pass-phrase. But was unable due to the intervention of the Minister."

"Aren't we overthinking this?" Lew said. Everyone turned to him. He squirmed at the attention. "I mean, why don't we buy some gray scarves?"

"Because that would make too much sense," Dante said. "Well, unless any of you knows of an all-night scarfery, I suppose we'll have to wait until morning."

"You want a scarf?" Cee said. "I can get you a scarf in two hours.

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