Free The Stars Askew by Rjurik Davidson Page A

from tiny galleries displaying ever-popular Vorticist art. He dodged past the red-wine–stained grins of avant-gardists, ignoring their calls to join them.
    He stopped on an overhead walkway and watched the street below. Beneath him marched some members of the Order of the Sightless. The apocalyptics wore blindfolds and held themselves together with a small network of chains.
    What strange people.
    â€”They believe the world is reaching some second cataclysm. That things will fall apart. That some end is near.
    If only they’d been around before the war. Then we might have had some warning .
    Max reached out for Aya’s memories of his battles with Alerion, but the mage kept these safely cordoned off. Both of them were aware of the precarious nature of their situation; at any stage the balance might be upset and their personalities might merge with each other. If they let their barriers down, they might lose who they were and dissolve into some incoherent split personality.
    On the street beneath the walkway, Max saw Kata walking alone in black shirt and dress, her black hair flowing to her shoulders. His heart clamped in sudden emotion. “Kata! Kata!”
    The woman stopped, looked up, her face impassive. She did not reply. Something was wrong with her, but Max could not tell what. She looked gaunter than Max remembered, her eyes a strange pale color—yet darkness hovered around them.
    Again he called to her. “Kata!”
    But Kata picked up her pace and skipped down a side street: she was running from him. Max scrambled over the balustrade and prepared to jump to the street below.
    We’ll break our ankles on the cobblestones.
    Max hesitated, leaped anyway. He hit the cobblestones, and a sharp pain drove up his right leg from the ankle to the knee. He fell to his side, clutching it. He scrambled to his feet, tested it out. It wasn’t too bad, after all.
    You really like this woman.
    Max ignored the voice, ran to the side alleyway, and continued. He reached a crossroads and looked down the side street to where a group of old men sat on wooden crates and drank coffee silently. Max looked the other way, where the street was empty.
    You’ll never find her in this maze of streets.
    Max rushed on to another side street, where three women were pasting up posters advertising a play called The Story of X: A Narrative of Everyman.
    In the opposite direction, an open sewer ran along the street; the smell of dank water was overwhelming. As he ran on, Max became aware of doorways passed, open staircases that led into apartments and tenement buildings, side alleyways. When the alley opened into a tiny square where a washerwoman hung clothes from a low line, Max despaired. “Did you see a woman pass this way? Black hair and clothes?”
    The woman scrunched up her face and shook her head.
    Max sat on two small stairs before a closed and rotting door. Now the loss flooded fully into him, a blackness that seemed to fill his limbs with lead. Why had she run from him? He had lost everything: his seditionist group, half of his body and mind. Even Kata had fled from him.
    Oh, I see now. You don’t just like this woman. She is more than that to you.
    â€”You’re right—said Max. —No, you’re wrong. I don’t know what I feel for her. Anyway, there’s no room for such feelings in the seditionist movement. Everything must be subordinated to the cause.
    Aya laughed. That’s the spirit.
    Now anger flooded through Max. —We can’t go on like this. I would rather die than have you chatting away like an imbecile forever.
    That’s melodramatic. But I’ve been thinking: there might be a way of freeing me from your mind, Aya said. Perhaps the Aediles still have the technology.
    â€”The Aediles disappeared after the cataclysm—said Max bitterly. Max knew the myth. After the gods had warred, leaving the world shattered and ruined, the Aediles had