“What’s your name?” Bryce advanced up the ramp.
Tharion murmured, “Legs.” She ignored the warning. Ithan kept quiet.
Yet the old male replied, utterly unfazed, “Some people call me the Astronomer.”
She couldn’t keep the bite from her voice. “What do other people call you?” The Astronomer didn’t answer. Up and up, Bryce ascended into the heavens, Tharion and Ithan trailing her. Like the assholes were second-guessing this.
One of the mystics twitched, water splashing.
“A normal reaction,” the Astronomer said, not even looking up from his dials as they approached. “Everyone is always so concerned for their well-being. They made the choice, you know. I didn’t force them into this.” He sighed. “To give up life in the waking world to glimpse wonders of the universe that no Vanir or mortal shall ever see …” Stroking his beard, he added, “This trio is a good one. I’ve had them for a while now with no issues. The last group … One drifted too far. Too far, and for too long. They dragged the others with them. Such a waste.”
Bryce tried to block out the excuses. Everyone knew the truth: the mystics came from all races, and were usually poor. So poor that when they were born with the gift, their families sold them to people like the Astronomer, who exploited their talent until they died, alone in those tubs. Or wandered so deep into the cosmos they couldn’t find their way back to their minds.
Bryce clenched her hands into fists. Micah had allowed it to happen. Her piece-of-shit father turned a blind eye, too. As Autumn King, he had the ability to put an end to this practice or, at the least, advocate to stop it, but he didn’t.
Bryce set aside her outrage and waved a hand to the drifting planets. “This space map—”
“It is called an orrery.”
“This orrery.” Bryce approached the male’s side. “It’s tech—not magic?”
“Can it not be both?”
Bryce’s fingers curled into fists. But she said, a murky memory rippling from her childhood, “The Autumn King has one in his private study.”
The Astronomer clicked his tongue. “Yes, and a fine one at that. Made by craftsmen in Avallen long ago. I haven’t had the privilege to see it, but I hear it is as precise as mine, if not more so.”
“What’s the point of it?” she asked.
“Only one who does not feel the need to peer into the cosmos would ask such a thing. The orrery helps us answer the most fundamental questions: Who are we? Where do we come from?”
When Bryce didn’t say anything more, Tharion cleared his throat. “We’ll be quick with our own questions, then.”
“Each one will be billed, of course.”
“Of course,” Ithan said through his teeth, stopping at Bryce’s side. He peered through the planets to the mystics floating beneath. “Does my brother, Connor Holstrom, remain in the Bone Quarter, or has his soul passed through the Dead Gate?”
The Astronomer whispered, “Luna above.” He fiddled with one of the faintly glowing rings atop his hand. “This question requires a … riskier method of contact than usual. One that borders on the illegal. It will cost you.”
Bryce said, “How much?” Scam-artist bullshit.
“Another hundred gold marks.”
Bryce started, but Ithan said, “Done.”
She turned to warn him not to spend one more coin of the considerable inheritance his parents had left him, but the Astronomer hobbled toward a metal cabinet beneath the dials and opened its small doors. He pulled out a bundle wrapped in canvas.
Bryce stiffened at the moldy, rotten earth scent that crept from the bundle as he unfolded the fabric to reveal a handful of rust-colored salt.
“What the fuck is that?” Ithan asked.
“Bloodsalt,” Bryce breathed. Tharion looked to her in question, but she didn’t bother to explain more.
Blood for life, blood for death—it was summoning salt infused with the blood from a laboring mother’s sex and blood from a dying male’s throat. The two great transitions of a soul in and out of this world. But to use it here … “You can’t mean to add that to their water,” Bryce said to the Astronomer.
The old male hobbled back down the ramp. “Their tanks already contain white salts. The bloodsalt will merely pinpoint their search.”
Tharion muttered to Bryce, “You might be right about this place.”
“Now you agree with me?” she whisper-yelled as the Astronomer sprinkled the red salt into the three tanks.