The old man’s blue-gray eyes shiver, drawing the wrinkles tight around them like an old tree, and he holds out his hand to me. “I’mAugust,” he says, leaning forward, and that’s when I see it: the thin chain around his neck, the ring suspended from the end, just visible inside the folds of his coat. “It seems we’ve waited a long time to meet one another,” he adds.
I swallow, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “You’re—” All the pain and fear and grief I’ve been carrying around inside me suddenly feels like it’s going to rupture. Like I might cry or drop to the floor or vomit. “You’re the Architect?” Each word almost breaks in two as they leave my lips, the cold gone from my skin, only heat roaring through my veins now.
He smiles a little, lifting both eyebrows at me, then reaches into his coat, fingers trembling around the chain, then holds the ring up for me to see—proving who he is, knowing it’s the thing I’ve been searching for.
The constellation Circinus, with its two long rows of stars, is stamped into the silver signet ring, generations of stories held within its weight—the ring that was worn by the first Architect. And now the last.
I found him.
And I feel like I might laugh, like my nerves are too wrung out.
The Architect. I step forward, taking his frail hand in mine, peering down at the silver ring that I’ve tried to imagine many times—an heirloom that has belonged to every Architect before him, worn until the silver has become thin along the band, the indentations of the constellation dulled—the mark of the Architect. His skin is cold, muscles trembling, and I want to weep.
“I keep it hidden,” he says, tucking the ring back into his thick coat. “Out of sight.”
The walls of the barn rattle against the blowing wind, but before I can say anything else—tell him all the things churning in my mind, all the times I feared I wouldn’t find him—he looks to Noah, then Cricket. “Who else has seen the mark?”
Cricket’s arms are crossed, the studs in her left ear shimmering in the firelight, and she speaks up for the first time. “A group of Theorists were at the saloon in Fort Bell—they saw it.”
“And they’re coming after her?” August asks, voice steadier than before.
Cricket nods.
August shifts forward in his chair, hands wobbling against the armrests. He’s trying to push himself up, but he’s too weak. Noah hurries to his side, taking August by the arm, and helps him to stand—the tattoos along Noah’s forearms a sharp contrast of black against August’s pale skin.
Once he’s upright, he nods at Noah, a gesture that he’s okay, and August moves toward me, lungs wheezing against his frail ribs, then grips my hands in his, like he wants to be sure I’m real. “For a time, I wondered if the old stories, told to me by my father, were nothing more than folklore. But here you are.” The glow from the flames makes his skin seem even more transparent, every crease and line and furrow like ravines across his water-thin flesh. “Long ago,” he continues, “the first Astronomer gazed up at the sky, and knew every point of light, every star beyond our own.”
On the other side of the campfire, I see Cricket take a step closer to us, eyes creased, like she’s trying to hear—beckoned forward by the cool drawl of August’s words.
“The Astronomer passed her knowledge down to her daughter,and to her daughter after that.” His eyes pass up to the ceiling, and he is quiet a moment, breathing heavy. “But many years ago, the first Astronomer disappeared. Some thought she was dead; others said she was merely hiding, afraid of those who were hunting her.”
My ribs press in and out, lungs rising, heartbeat rattling. I think of my mother, of the nights we lay on our backs in the tall grass and watched the stars circle in their infinite spirals overhead while she recounted the stories of the first Astronomer—the history of our ancestors, stories that braided themselves into my joints, the fibers of my hair, until they became mine. Stories that didn’t just tell of my past but of my future.
August’s eyes close briefly, and I see Noah move toward us, like he’s ready to catch August in case he collapses. But August clears his throat and continues. “Most think I’m long dead too—only a myth.” He looks at me like he’s looking straight through me, into the galaxy of my insides, where all my secrets are tucked away, hidden from view. He draws his shoulders back, spine creaking tall. “But my ancestors fled on foot, always moving, never settling anywhere for long, for fear we’d be discovered.” His eyes affix themselves to mine. “It’s been many generations since our ancestors made an agreement, a pact.” He breathes. “They did it to protect us, to protect the truth.”
My eyes water, a thousand thoughts swelling inside me at once: these are the same stories Mom told me night after night, and hearing August recite them to me feels like sunlight, like laying down a heavy stone I have carried all on my own.
“But now if the Theorists know who you are, they will track you—they won’t stop.” He sways a little, releasing his hands from mine, and Noah reaches out for him, helping him to sit back in theyellow-printed chair. His eyes flutter closed, stay that way a moment, before opening again. “They believe there’s a cure for the sickness,” he says, nodding at me, making sure I understand. That I’m truly listening. “And they think those marks on your neck will tell them where it is.”
The wind outside screams through the cracks in the barn walls, and the rain increases its downpour, falling in gusts, violent upheavals from the sky, but there is a storm in my chest. A fury coming alive—this ismystory now. The last Astronomer who left the valley and found the Architect. Whose real story is about to begin.
August glances up to Noah, and there is a knowing passing between them. “It’s time,” August says, a strange, shuddering lilt in his voice, as if this were something he’s been waiting for his whole life.
My ears begin to ring, a faraway sound that feels like a tolling bell.
“Get some sleep,” August says to me at last, each word a pulse along my river-cold veins, a knocking rising in my chest. “Tomorrow we leave for the sea.”
Noah builds a small fire in one of the back corners of the barn, tucked out of sight, in what was once probably a horse stall.
“Better to sleep away from the others,” Cricket says, bedding down in a damp pile of straw. “They’ll only ask you questions all night. Especially the younger ones.”
Noah kneels beside the fire, adding more hunks of foraged wood, the glow reflecting on a small scar along his chin. He is strong, broad-shouldered, someone who is built to defend himself, to fight back when necessary—his fists have surely been bloodied, his torsoable to withstand a punch. He has seen far more of this world than I probably ever will. And he has been made tough by it, muscles worked into stone, dangerous green eyes watchful and quick. He is someone you don’t want as an enemy. Someone I’d fear if he pointed a blade at my soft flesh.
I look away, absorbing too much of him. My eyes measuring every detail.
Across the barn, most of the others seem to be asleep, some snoring softly, only a few talking low, their voices hardly more than a whisper.
“Are we safe here?” I ask, feeling uneasy, thinking of the bodies suspended from ropes back in Fort Bell, and I swivel my gaze from Noah to Cricket. But Cricket has already closed her eyes, her mouth hanging open slightly, asleep. I’d guess she can probably sleep anywhere.
