“It was you all along,” I said. “It was you conspiring with Beaufort. Not the leagues. No one knew about those papers in Phineas’s room. Not even Beaufort. He thought everything was destroyed by the fire I set.”
A flame lit Montegue’s eyes. He was proud of this information.
“But Phineas had a little secret,” I said. “A side deal he shared with you—copies of the plans.”
“No … not copies,” he answered slowly, his tone cryptic. “And far more than a side deal.” He leaned against the tunnel wall, staring at me, his head angled to the side like he was trying to see inside mine. “Beaufort had offered the continent to me … while Phineas offered me the universe.” He pushed off from the wall and walked toward me, everything about him changing—his shoulders wider, his eyes liquid black, sucking me into their darkness. “You see, the poor man was burdened by being the youngest and lowest ranking of the group—pushed around by the others—but he was also, by far, the most brilliant. A creative mind like his comes along only once every few generations. I recognized that and knew he was eager for a chance to prove himself. I gave him that chance.”
I stepped back as he approached, but my shoulders met the tunnel wall. “All of this, everything you’ve done, none of it was ever about restoring order,” I said. “Just the opposite. You were the architect behind it all.”
He stopped in front of me. Too close. “How does that make you feel?” he asked. “Does it impress you?” The light of an overhead torch flickered across his features, and his thick lashes cut a shadow under his eyes.
Horrified? Sick? But the answer had to be one he wanted to hear. “I can’t help but be impressed, but mostly it makes me feel stupid that I didn’t see it before.”
It was the right answer. He smiled. “If it were obvious, I wouldn’t be much of an architect, would I?”
* * *
Priya’s office was now the king’s. It seemed he had laid claim to some prime space in every place the Ballengers had previously owned. He was like a wolf marking territory—the inn in town, the apartments at the arena, and here at Tor’s Watch, the very serene and ordered office of Priya, the heart of the numerous Ballenger businesses.
He told me more about the side deal he had struck with Phineas—the one that offered him “the universe.” Phineas had had a theory, but he didn’t want to share it with the others. If it played out, his agreement with the king was that he would no longer be under the thumb of Torback or the others. He would have the freedom to pursue his own studies. “He had an intense curiosity about everything and felt stifled by them. His mind never rested. I promised him that freedom.”
“Except that Beaufort murdered him to keep him from talking.”
He shrugged. “Phineas’s mind was strong, but his courage weak.”
I didn’t tell him that as Phineas lay dying, he pleaded with me to destroy his papers. “Before Phineas died, he said the tembris told them. What did he mean?”
His eyes brightened. “Haven’t you ever wondered about the tembris? Trees that reach to the heavens, taller than any others on the continent? Phineas wondered. I did too, from the first time I saw them. They’re unnatural. Not of this earth. They look like something fashioned for the gods. And the way they grow in that neat circular fashion, almost as if something had marked where they should grow. Perhaps where a fiery star had exploded into the earth?”
He went to the window that looked out on the Ballenger gardens. “And what about the racaa? Did you know they’re identical to sparrow hawks except for their size?” He turned to face me. “Phineas knew that. And then there’s the matter of the eight-foot giants who roam the continent. Men and women twice the girth and two heads taller than everyone else. But it’s not just about size. It’s about passion too. We’ve all heard stories about the devastation, the raging of seas that refused to calm, the shaking of the ground that swallowed cities whole, the fury of the mountains that bellowed smoke all the way to the sun. Passion that reached all the way into the belly of the earth.”
He reached into his vest and pulled out a tiny vial. He removed the stopper and tapped a small amount of its brightly glittering contents into his palm, then blew on it as he swept his hand through the air in a circular motion. Instead of the sparkling dust falling to the ground, something else happened. The crystals swirled, and his small puff of air became more—a strong wind that whirled about the room. Papers ruffled and fell to the floor. Wisps of my hair lifted from my shoulders, fingers of warm air circled my arms, then swept across my lips, suddenly hot and stinging. Montegue held his palm out, and the crystals returned and condensed just above it, following the circular movement of his hand. The wind ceased and the crystals sprinkled back into his palm in a tiny pile as if he had spoken a command to them. He carefully tipped his palm and returned the crystals to the vial.
I felt like a child watching a clever sideshow, trying to find the hidden strings. What had just happened? This was not simple sleight of hand.
“What is that?” I asked.
He smiled and looked at a shimmering fleck of crystal still in his palm, then licked his fingertip and dabbed the tiny grain to pick it up. He stared at it, mesmerized. “The magic of the stars,” he answered. “Desire. An element thrown to earth by the gods themselves that can reach into everything that exists and understand its need—what drives it. It imprints on whatever it touches. Grow, eat, burn, hunt, explode, conquer. Its entire purpose is to make things more than what they were, like a fish buried in a cornfield to make plants grow taller and stronger. What farmer doesn’t want that? The magic of the stars can make anything bigger, better, and more powerful.”
“That’s what’s in the munitions?”
He nodded. “That’s what opened the door. The star element is released with heat and fire. You can see what it does to just a small amount of the black powder. But Phineas managed to distill the element to its purest, most powerful form—making it possible to unleash the magic of the stars for everything. Everything and everyone is driven by something. This drives it more. Imagine the possibilities. Creating unstoppable armies, cont
rolling wind, rain, fire, crops, the seasons. Maybe even day and night. The possibilities are limitless.”
Fire. I recalled a strangely scorched hillside on our way here. The edge of the forest was burned in an unusually straight line, as if it had been controlled.
“We already experimented on a few soldiers. The results were astonishing. If only we had more.”
My mind immediately sprang to Fertig’s iron grip, and his soulless eyes that had terrified me as he tried to choke me to death. He was driven by a crazed desire. Was he one of the “astonishing” soldiers? Sickly dread slithered through me like some dark poisonous creature. No Neck, Divot Head, Scar Eye. Their hands were like Fertig’s—and their eyes—as if something had crawled inside of them that wasn’t quite human—or maybe it had just made the inhuman part of them greater.
“This,” Montegue said, patting his vest where he had returned the vial to an inner pocket, “is all I have left. So you can see why those papers are so important. I will have them.”
At any cost. He didn’t need to say the words. They were clear in his tone.
Phineas offered me the universe. Was Montegue mad? Did he really believe he could control the universe?
He walked over to me, the stray grain of stardust shining on his fingertip like a tiny, perfect diamond. He held it close to my lips, studying me, and I feared he might try to put it in my mouth.