Аншул Саксена
Пепел и Звёзды

PART ONE

THREADS OF FATE

Chapter One

The girl who was overlooked

The Silver City Market never went completely to sleep.

Even in the dead of night, when the lamplighters extinguished their last lights and the guards nodded off at the gates, something still lived here—quietly, cautiously, almost without a sound. Shadows glided between the empty counters. Cats hunted rats among the abandoned crates. The smells of the day—fish and spices, hot bread and horse manure—were still there. They only grew more muted, mingling with the night's dampness and smoke, and transformed into something special: the scent of a city that sleeps but never dies.

Elara Wayne knew this market by heart.

Every chipped pavement on the main alley. Every place where the cobblestones give way and you could twist your ankle in the dark. That corner by Mira's shop, where even at midday there's a shadow—a good place to stop and look around without attracting attention. Twenty-three years of living in one city is almost like being part of its architecture. Elara had long since ceased to be a city dweller and had become something of a landscape element: familiar, unnoticeable, necessary, like a drainpipe or an old lamppost at the intersection of two alleys.

The merchants knew her. The guards nodded in the mornings—not because she was important, but because they recognized her the way they recognize their own courtyard. The children of Mira Alley sometimes asked to see star charts. The apothecary from Third Street bought dried thyme and sage from her, paying fairly and asking no questions.

No one asked why she had black eyes—completely black, without pupils, like a sky without stars—and why she sometimes paused in the middle of a conversation and looked slightly past her interlocutor, as if she saw something over his shoulder.

This suited her best.

Air is not touched. Air is not interrogated. Air is not burned in the square for too keen a glance or too strange a gift.

✦ ✦ ✦

Around midnight, she stopped by Mira's shop, pretending to examine the bunches of dried thyme. The bunches hung upside down from a ceiling beam—tidy, tied with twine, just like last year, and the year before. Mira never changed anything. This was one of the few constants for which Elara was quietly grateful.

In fact, she was looking at the threads.

The threads were everywhere—always, everywhere, from birth. Thin, almost transparent, they glowed with that special light visible only to her black eyes. They stretched between people, between things, between houses and trees and cobblestones. Silvery ones—fate, the path of life, what was already planned. Golden, softly shimmering—love and affection, a bond that cannot be broken without pain. Green, like moss—friendship, trust, long years together. Red, sharp and living—blood, danger, imminent violence, or imminent death.

Most people didn't see the threads. Elara had seen them since birth and had long ago come to the only possible conclusion: it wasn't a gift. It was a curse. A beautiful, unbearably detailed, completely unnecessary curse—to see the true structure of the world, all its connections and interweavings, all its little tragedies and joys, written into an invisible fabric—and yet never be able to rest from it for a second. The threads didn't disappear when she closed her eyes. They were there in her dreams, too—fuzzy, quieter, but still there. Elara couldn't remember what it was like to simply see people, without that luminous layer above.

The thread between her and Mira was gray—neutral, businesslike. Habit. No intimacy, no hostility. A commercial relationship that had grown into a kind of mutual recognition of existence: you're here, I'm here, we both do our part.

"Do you want the thyme or not?" Mira muttered, not looking up from her knitting. The needles moved with the mechanical precision of someone who's been knitting for fifty years.

– I'll take it. Two bunches.

– Three nickels.

– Yesterday it cost two.

"Yesterday was Tuesday." Mira looked up for the first time – small, sharp eyes under heavy lids. "Prices are different on Wednesday."

Elara didn't argue. She added a coin, put the herbs in her canvas bag, and was about to leave—that's when she saw the red thread.

Scarlet.

Pulsating.

It wasn't coming from the crowd, or from any of the merchants—it was coming from the north, from beyond the city wall, cutting through the cold night air above the rooftops and pointing straight at her, Elara, like an arrow fired at a precisely aimed target.

The red threads signified different things. Dark burgundy—old blood, the past, an unhealed scar. Bright, shimmering scarlet—a present threat, a living and approaching danger. What she saw now was precisely the latter kind.

A living thread. Moving.

Someone was following her.

✦ ✦ ✦

She didn't run. Running is panic, panic is noise, noise attracts attention, and attention is the end of that small, safe life she'd so carefully built all these years.

Elara just walked faster.

Not so fast as to be noticeable. A little faster than usual—the pace of someone trying to get home, not someone being chased. She weaved between the stalls, cut through Mednikov Alley—narrow, with perpetually rotten boards underfoot, smelling of copper and acid—and emerged onto Malaya Rynochnaya, passing through a gateway known only to her and the cats from the Tannery. She crossed the courtyard where the Kravtsov family lived, the one she'd brought their children medicine for last year when their children had fevers.

The red thread did not disappear.

She grew brighter—whoever was following her was getting closer. They knew the city or had a good sense. Most likely, both.

Elara entered her house. It was narrow, three stories tall, squeezed between a laundromat and a drugstore on a street with a single streetlight that was out more often than not. She slammed the door. Lowered the bolt. She placed her palm on the wooden surface and stood there for a few seconds, feeling her own heartbeat against her ribs.

Then I pulled myself together.

It was one of the few skills her curse gave her: when you constantly see someone else's fear and pain in color and form, you learn to control your own—otherwise, you'll drown. Elara breathed evenly, counting to ten. She looked at the threads in the room—the green one for the books (she'd long since stopped laughing at that), the golden one for the dried flower in the clay vase that Katya, the girl next door, had brought her two years ago. No red thread inside. Only the one approaching from outside.

Three knocks on the door.

Heavy. Confident. Not angry – just the kind that don't ask permission. The kind that are used to the door opening.

Elara picked up a knife from the kitchen table—a small bread knife with a wooden handle. Utterly useless against a mage. But better in hand than out of it.

She opened the door.

✦ ✦ ✦

There was a man standing on the threshold.

No—the word was too ordinary. A presence stood on the threshold, filling the doorway before she could even take in the details. Tall—two heads taller than her, and she wasn't short. He wore a black cloak without insignia, the hood pulled back. His hair was the color of a raven's wing, tousled by the wind. Cheekbones seemed carved from dark stone. His mouth was set straight, not smiling, but also not hostile.

And the eyes.

Blue—not ordinary blue. Blue like the center of a fire when the flame burns brightly enough. Blue like the sky in that brief moment before dawn, when night has not yet departed but no longer has power. Blue like something very old and very deep, for which there was no simple word.

Elara looked at its threads and stopped inside.

Gold and black at the same time. Intertwined so tightly that it was almost impossible to separate them with a glance. The gold of love and living warmth—and the black of that special shade she saw only in people who carried something very heavy inside, and had been carrying it for a very long time. Not evil—she could distinguish evil black from heavy black. That was the second thing.

She had never seen such a combination.

“Elara Wayne,” he said.

He didn't ask. He named it—the way they call things that have already been found. His voice was low, even, with the slight hoarseness that comes from people accustomed to speaking quietly, confident they'll be heard anyway.

"I am Kaen Darr." A slight pause. "The Lord of Ash."

“I know who you are,” Elara said.

"Then you know I didn't come empty-handed." He didn't move. "I need your help."

– You were looking for me at night. To ask for help.

– My days are busy.

It was said completely seriously, without the slightest attempt at humor—and that's precisely why something in her, despite itself, relaxed slightly. People who mean harm usually try to appear friendly. This one didn't.

"Come in," Elara said, stepping aside. "Hands where I can see."

He entered without arguing, holding his hands as she'd asked – at his sides, palms out. That, too, was information.

Chapter Two

Transaction price

Her living room was small—four steps from door to window, three from wall to wall. Kaen Darr filled almost the entire space. Not because he was physically too big for the space—though that was true—but because everything around him seemed drawn to him, like iron filings to a magnet. Elara found herself standing slightly further from him than she would from a normal person. An instinct honed over the years: keep your distance from anything too intense.

He surveyed the room. Methodically, without pretense—simply taking note. Bookshelves lined three walls, a mismatched assortment, old and new, some with marked pages and scraps of paper with notes sticking out. Bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling—thyme, St. John's wort, lemon balm, lavender, five varieties of mint. A small desk covered with herbarium leaves, notes, and an inkwell with frozen streaks. A star chart above the desk—a large one, stretching almost from floor to ceiling, hand-drawn on several sheets of paper taped together, with notes, diagrams, and numerical notations.

He lingered on the map.

"Silver Nebula," he said without turning around. "You've mapped all seven constellations of the Northern Belt. Most maps only show four."

"Most of the maps are inaccurate." Elara placed the knife back on the table, pointedly, so he could see. "Sit if you want. The chair is by the window."

He sat down. The hard wooden chair was clearly designed for smaller people. This didn't seem to bother him.

“Tea?” asked Elara.

– No.

– Then tell me why you came.

He spoke briefly—without preamble, without attempting to soften or embellish. The Lord of Light—the official on the opposing side in that long-simmering war, which both sides called a "confrontation" and neither called what it truly was—had kidnapped his sister three nights ago. Liira Darr, eighteen, a young mage with the Gift of Water, whom he had hidden years ago away from the court's political games, placing her in a relatively safe place on neutral territory. They had taken her at night, without warning, without explanation.

She was reportedly held in the Constellation Tower.

“The Tower of Constellations,” Elara repeated slowly.

– You know what it is.

"Everyone knows what it is." She sat down on the edge of her desk. "The tower stands at the intersection of two worlds. You can't enter it the normal way. The passage opens only through the star threads."

"Exactly." Kaen looked at her. "I spent two years looking for the person who sees them."

The pause is long, like a minute before a thunderstorm.

"How do you know about me?" Elara asked. Her voice came out even. It was an effort.

– Information costs money. I have money.

– Who else knows?

Her gaze from under her black lashes was direct and appraising. He realized what she was really asking.

"Only the person who told me." A slight pause. "He won't tell anyone else."

– Why?

"Because I asked him not to tell." A pause, behind which there was something more, but he didn't formulate it. "I know what you're thinking. No, I didn't kill him. I paid for his silence, not his death."

Elara looked at the threads. The black within them didn't pulse like a threat—it pulsed like heaviness. Pain. Not cruelty.

“What do you offer in return?” she asked.

"Protection. As long as you help me, no one will touch you, your home, your people." He said this matter-of-factly. "Afterward, documents. Clean ones. A new name, a different city, if you like. Or money."

– What if I refuse?

She asked this question deliberately. She wanted to see the threads when he answered.

"Then I'll leave. My sister will probably die. You'll live." Quiet calmly. "I don't force people."

The threads haven't changed. Not a splash of red. Not a shadow of pretense. The truth.

“This is unexpected,” Elara said quietly.

Something changed slightly in his face—not a smile, but rather a shadow of surprise, as unexpected as her words.

– Why?

"Because you are the Lord of Ash. They say you are a cruel man."

"They talk a lot." Something dry entered his voice. "I burned a village—once. Only Light Court soldiers lived there, and two days before, they had massacred a peaceful settlement, children and all. Stories tend to be oversimplified."

Silence.

"I need time to think," Elara said. "Ten minutes. Go to the kitchen—there's bread and cheese there."

He stood up without protest and left. Elara approached the map and stared for a long time at the intersection near the old fountain.

✦ ✦ ✦

She thought for ten minutes.

On the one hand, there was the obvious danger. It was multilayered. Entering the Constellation Tower was a risk for any mage, and she wasn't even a mage in the classic sense: she had no element, no academic training, nothing but those strange black eyes that saw things they shouldn't. Aiding the Dark Court automatically meant becoming an enemy of the Light Court. And the Light Court had agents all over the city, and its leader was known for not forgiving interference in its affairs.

On the other hand, there are Caen's threads.

Gold and heavy black. A man who carries something great. Not a villain. Not a manipulator. Someone real – complex and genuine.

And somewhere in the Tower of Constellations there was an eighteen-year-old girl, taken without explanation.

Elara couldn't just walk away from it. That was part of the curse, too—to see pain and not have the right to pretend you didn't see it.

She walked into the kitchen.

Kaen sat at a small table, eating bread and cheese with a methodical efficiency that spoke of a man long accustomed to eating when he could, not when he wanted. He looked up.

"I'll help you," Elara said. "But I have conditions."

– Go ahead and speak.

"First: you don't touch my books. Don't take them, don't rummage through them without asking. Second: no questions about my past. About my family, about where my gift came from, about who I was before the Silver City. Third: when we find your sister, you leave and forget I exist."

Kaen looked at her and nodded slowly.

– I accept all three.

– Fast.

“The terms are reasonable.” He put the bread down. “When are we leaving?”

"Not now. The passage only opens when the three stars of Orion's Belt are aligned correctly. The next time is in two days."

"Two days is a long time." Something in him tensed. "I'm not sure she has two days."

Elara looked at him. Then at the map.

– Then I need to explain something to you.

Chapter Three

About star threads and their price

Elara didn't tell anyone about the threads. It was one of the three main rules of survival: don't tell, don't show, pretend you don't see. Her mother knew, and reacted with tears and attempts to "fix" her. The master her mother took her to knew, and reacted with a scientific interest that was almost as frightening. Elara confided in no one else.

Now there was a technical necessity. Without understanding the principle, Kaen couldn't help her, even if he wanted to. She explained.

"Star threads are different from regular ones," she began, returning to the map. "I see regular threads all the time—they're between people, they're passive, I just read them. Star threads are different. They pass through places where reality is subtle—where two worlds almost touch. The Constellation Tower stands on one of the strongest of these points."

"How do I get in?" He stood next to her at the map. Too close for the threads not to be felt—but it was just physics, nothing personal.

"If I pull the star thread directly, bypassing the normal opening time, I'll create a temporary corridor. It's like opening a door that should be closed by picking the lock." She paused. "It hurts. Sometimes a lot."

– For you?

"Yes. Headache. Nosebleed." A pause. "I passed out once from pulling too hard. That means there must be someone nearby."

– Understood.

"That's not all. The space between the transition points—the corridor—is disorienting. There are no familiar landmarks there. I can see the path along the threads. You can't. If you lose me there, you could wander for a very long time."

– How long?

“Some don’t come out,” Elara said briefly.

Silence.

"That's why you need to hold my hand. In the hallway at all times. If I stop, you stop. If I fall, you pick me up. If I tell you to stop, you do it immediately, no questions asked." She looked at him directly. "These rules are non-negotiable."

“Accepted,” he said. Without pause, without reservation. “When?”

– Tomorrow night. I need to get ready today.

– Fine.

Elara waited. Usually, people here asked clarifying questions, expressed doubt, and tried to show their unafraid, demonstratively. Kaen said nothing. That in itself was strange.

“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked.

A short pause.

"I was scared three nights ago when I found out Liira was missing." The voice didn't change. "Everything else doesn't matter much after that."

The threads around him swayed. The gold grew brighter for a second.

✦ ✦ ✦

"You need a place to stay overnight," Elara said. "If you return to the Dark Court, Light agents will notice. Are they following you?"

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