isolated incident. Had something happened to the Deep Current alone, or was this a larger epidemic? And how would she know if it was? She needed more information. Specifically, she needed to know how many stars there were and where to find them. Once she knew that, she could figure out which ones had disappeared (assuming the Deep Current wasn’t an isolated incident), and then she could start looking for patterns.
Identifying and locating the stars had seemed like a simple and reasonable starting point. Surely, if stars were so important, they would be well-known. All Miranda had to do was ask her spirits. Her rings had been with her every step of the way; they understood the need. But while her spirits were perfectly willing to break the Shepherdess’s edict of silence (yet another mystery she intended to unravel), what they’d had to say hadn’t actually been very helpful. In hindsight, Miranda shouldn’t have been surprised. Spirit politics were about as transparent as baked mud.
“I don’t see why you’re so upset about it,” Kirik crackled from his place in the lamp at her elbow. “It’s not like we need to know who our stars are. They’re supposed to watch over us.”
“Well, excuse me for expecting a large and intelligent spirit to know who was in charge,” Miranda grumbled, glaring at the flame. “You’d think you would at least know whom to complain to.”
“That’s what Great Spirits are for,” Kirik flickered. “I don’t even think I have a star, actually. Any fire that big would burn the continent to ash. I’m probably under the watch of one of the great volcanoes down south.”
Miranda’s glare grew belligerent, and the fire puffed up. “What? It’s not like it’s ever been an issue before now. And I’d know my star when I saw it. You can’t miss the mark, after all.”
“You missed it on Eli,” Miranda huffed.
“That was different,” Kirik said, his crackle defensive. “You humans keep your spirits closed up all the time.”
Fortunately, not all her spirits were so willfully ignorant. Her stone spirit Durn, for example, had named his star right off. Too bad it was one of the few Miranda already knew: Durain, the Shaper Mountain.
But while the stars were universally powerful, they seemed to have wildly different policies on how to manage the spirits under their care. Some were very involved, like the Shaper Mountain, or another Durn had named, Gredit, the Lord of the Bears. Others seemed downright indifferent, like the Great Ghosthound. From what Gin had told her, the Great Ghosthound cared for nothing but the hunt, and would even kill other ghosthounds who got in his way. Gin seemed to take this as a matter of course.
“He’s a ghosthound,” he said at Miranda’s look of horror. “What else can you expect?”
“Nonsense,” she said. “You wouldn’t act that way.”
“I’m not like other ghosthounds,” Gin said, tucking his nose under his tail. “That’s why I’m with you.” And that was all he’d say about the matter.
So it had gone all morning. Miranda had grilled her spirits one by one, and while she’d learned things about them that she’d never thought to wonder over before, like how her mist spirit Allinu was actually a member of the Wind Courts and thus had no star at all, she got precious few of the answers she was actually after. Around lunch, she’d finally given up on her own spirits and gone for the one source of information she had left—the Spirit Court’s Restricted Archives. That’s where she was now, three fruitless hours later.
The Restrictive Archives dealt exclusively with the Court’s interactions with stars. Of course, they were never called stars, either by the spirits or the Spiritualists who’d written the records, but the truth was plain if you knew what to look for. She’d skimmed the archives the morning before Master Banage had ordered the Court to Osera; now she dug in deep, plucking out the details the dry reports did their best to dance around—names, places, and, most important, the star’s past relationships with the Court. It was slow work, but thanks to her stint working for the Council before she’d chased Eli up north to Izo’s, Miranda had gotten surprisingly good at picking the important bits out of bureaucratic writing.
Despite this advantage, however, she had precious little to show for her hours. Her list of stars, so optimistically penned on a piece of paper as long as her arm, had a grand total of ten names on it, four of which she’d known before she started her research: the Shaper Mountain, Eli, the Immortal Empress, and the Deep Current that Mellinor had replaced. From her own spirits she’d added Gredit, the Lord of the Bears, her moss spirit Allinora’s star, a huge cave lichen that supposedly lived in the Empress’s lands, and the Great Ghosthound, whose actual name Gin hadn’t mentioned, probably because he didn’t know it. And there was one more, a surprise confession from Skarest, her lightning bolt, who claimed none other than the Lord of Storms himself as his star.
“You’re telling me the Lord of Storms is actually a storm?” Miranda said, aghast. “How? I mean, he’s human. I’ve seen him.”
“So have I,” Skarest crackled from his ring. “That’s how I know he’s my star, not that he’s ever done anything for me,” the lightning bolt finished sulkily.
“How does a storm, and a star no less, run a human organization like the League?” Miranda wondered out loud, tapping her fingers on the table.
“I don’t know,” Skaraest said. “He’s different from the other stars, though.”
Miranda frowned. “How so?”
The lightning dimmed a moment, and then he spoke in a humming whisper that ran up Miranda’s arm, making her hair stand on end. “The Lady’s mark is different on him than on the Shaper Mountain. The Mountain’s mark is like a stamp pressed onto the surface of the older spirit. But the Lord of Storms bears the Lady’s mark on every part of his essence. Like it’s woven in.”
“What do you mean woven in?” Miranda whispered back.
“I can’t explain it any better,” the lightning crackled in frustration. “Even if you could see it, I don’t think you’d understand. I don’t understand it myself. One thing is certain, though. Whatever the Lord of Storms was before the Shepherdess touched him, he’s hers now. When the Lady made him, she gave him a purpose, and it wasn’t to take care of lightning. Does that makes sense?”
“It will if I think on it a moment,” Miranda said, working this new information through her head. “The Lord of Storms is the demon hunter, master of the League. If the Shepherdess made him for a purpose, it must have been that. Of course”—her voice turned bitter—“he certainly doesn’t seem to give much effort to demon hunting, judging by what we saw at Izo’s and how he’s let Nico run around loose. If he’s not doing his bit as your star, either, I don’t know what he does with his time.”
“I don’t want to know,” Skarest said with a shiver. “He’s very dangerous, mistress. Wherever this investigation leads, please don’t cross him. I won’t be able to act if you do.”
“I have no plans to,” Miranda assured him.
But that had been three hours ago, when she’d known eight stars off the top of her head without so much as opening a report. Since then, she’d managed only two more: Ell, the mother river far to the south, and Frejesll, the great coral reef off the pirate islands. The slow pace made her want to kick things. She’d promised Mellinor she’d find out what was going on with his disappearing star. If she was going to keep that oath, she needed to get everything rolling before she lost her powers as Rector and access to the Court’s aid. At this rate, she’d still be looking up names when the Conclave convened tomorrow.
Miranda glanced again at her pathetically short list. Of the ten names she had, three—the Empress, the Deep Current, and Eli—were certainly gone. Three out of an unknown number wasn’t much to go on, but her spirits had all insisted that they didn’t feel that their stars were gone.
Of course, none of them had ever been without their stars, but Durn had been adamant that they would know if something had happened. That meant the Shaper Mountain, Kirik’s unknown star, the Lord of Storms, Allinora’s lichen, and Gin’s ghosthound were all still around, at least for now. Discounting the stars she knew were gone, that left two on her small list still unaccounted for: the mother river and the coral reef.
The river had been easy enough to check. Miranda had simply sent Spiritualist Brennagan to ask Rellenor. The Spiritualist had returned an hour later with an extremely long report. It seemed that the river, despite being sorely put upon by Mellinor’s salty presence and the constant strain of the boats and the narrow channeling of the docks and dire concerns about the amount of trash in her waters, was otherwise fine. Certainly not a spirit who’d lost its star. That left the coral reef far down south.
Going down to check it herself was out of the question, and this far from the coast there was no one in the Court with a coral spirit for a servant. In the end, she’d sent her wind, Eril. According to the archives, the reef was over five hundred miles from end to end, spanning the entire southwestern corner of the continent. If something had happened to it, her wind would be able to tell even from the air. She’d sent him as soon as she’d realized the
