“Nice job, rookie,” Jace said with a jeering smile. “Only forty-nine to go!”

Chapter 10

STARRY NIGHT

A falling star blazed diagonally across the sky, a searing ember of white-gold brilliance with a long tail. After flaring bright enough to cast shadows and make Cole squint, the meteor shrank to a spark, vanishing before it reached the horizon.

Cole’s eyes needed a moment to adjust so he could get back to enjoying the sky. Several of the stars were brighter than any he had seen in Arizona. There was more variety in color as well, particularly in shades of red and blue. He could make out the little spiral smudges of distant galaxies, and cloudy patches of light that were either nebulae or dense clusters of faraway stars.

Stranger than anything was the rising moon. It wasn’t like the moon back home. It was smaller, dimmer, bluer, and more translucent, almost like a glowing ball of ice. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed the difference before.

“You shouldn’t be out after dark without a good reason,” a voice said from behind.

Cole glanced back to find Mira coming toward him across the back porch. “I’m not far from the door. There’s a wall around the whole area.”

“Even the yard can be dangerous once the sun goes down.”

“I needed some time alone.”

“There are places in the caves,” she said.

“Not with stars,” he replied.

Mira stood next to where he sat on the porch steps. “True.” She stared out at the dark salvage yard.

Cole had wanted some alone time, but he found himself glad for the company. He hadn’t spoken to Mira since she’d equipped him the night before. “I just saw a shooting star,” Cole said. “A bright one.”

“We have a beautiful sky,” Mira said wistfully.

“It’s different from the one on Earth.”

“People from outside always comment on it. At least the observant ones do.”

“The moon is really different.”

She gave a faint smile. “That isn’t our most common moon. It’s Naori, the Shiver Moon. We only see it now and then.”

“That makes sense,” Cole said. “I think one of your more regular moons is more like ours.”

“Light can partially pass through Naori, so it’s always full,” she said. “They make a big deal about it in Necronum.”

“How many different moons do you have here?”

“At least twenty,” Mira said.

“Are they ever all up at once?”

“I’ve never seen more than five at the same time. Sometimes there are none.”

Cole reconsidered the glittering sky. “You guys must have complicated calendars.”

“There are no really reliable calendars,” she said. “There isn’t much of a pattern to the moons or the stars. You can never be sure what sky you’ll get. The years tend to be around three hundred and fifty days, but the seasons are haphazard. It can be summer for a hundred days, autumn for twelve, winter for forty, spring for two hundred, then summer for twenty, and on and on without any kind of pattern. The days aren’t trustworthy either. We measure hours, but only to track how many have passed since sunrise. First hour, second hour, and so on. Then we start counting again from sunset. Most days are around twelve hours, followed by twelve hours of night. Without warning, they can be as short as four, or as long as thirty, though the extremes aren’t common.”

“Wow,” Cole said. “Do you have more than one sun?”

“Almost always just one. It usually rises in the east and sets in the west. Sometimes we have duskdays, when the sun seems to be rising in all directions but never does.”

“I saw one of those.”

“That’s right. We had one not too long ago.”

Cole scanned the salvage yard, cluttered with bizarre, shadowy shapes, great and small. Among the discernible objects were statues, potted trees, cages, wicker baskets, outdoor furniture, coiled chains, a huge barbershop pole, a battered jukebox, a canoe, an old-fashioned bicycle with a huge front wheel, and a shantytown of sheds, large and small, that probably housed more fragile treasures. The yard was still, the night cool. The door into Skyport was only a few steps away. It was hard to believe he was in any danger.

“You shouldn’t lurk out here,” Mira said. “They’re still talking about your escape from the centipede. You ought to soak it up.”

“Scorpipede,” Cole corrected. “At least, that was how I thought of it. Part scorpion. It had claws.”

“Whatever,” Mira said. “You should come enjoy the attention. These men have seen it all. They’re not easy to impress, especially on a first outing.”

“I should be dead,” Cole said, suddenly fighting a hard lump in his throat. “This lady . . . she protected me. The scorpipede . . .” He couldn’t continue speaking and keep it together, so he stopped.

“One of the semblances?” Mira asked.

Cole nodded, not trusting his voice.

Mira crouched beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re sweet, but you can’t let that get to you. She wasn’t real. None of them were. They’re just puppets. Dangerous, lifelike, but puppets.”

“She gave me her shawl to help hide me. She seemed so real, Mira. Perfectly real.”

“Some do. It’s an illusion. They’re just temporary. If you had brought her back here, she would have dissolved into dust. Only some of the simplest ones have any chance of surviving outside the castles. That lady didn’t die. She wasn’t alive. She was heading for nothingness in a day or two, when the castle vanishes into the cloudwall.”

Cole stared down at his hands. The guilt had gnawed at him all day, but Mira’s explanation helped. “One mission down.”

“At least the other one was more fruitful.”

Cole smiled at her wordplay. One of his bunkmates, a boy called Twitch, had scouted today for another Sky Raider ship, the Borrower. They had found what looked like a village of big, fancy gazebos. The woodwork was all fragile and ornate, but the raiders were most interested in the extensive gardens, especially the fruit trees. At a signal from the Borrower, the Domingo had joined in reaping the harvest.

The only obstacles had been a few giant carnivorous weeds. Since the weeds were stationary, they were easily avoided once you knew to watch for them. Both ships had spent the day off-loading fruit of all description. Some were familiar, including oranges, lemons, bananas, plums, apricots, apples, pears, and kiwis. Other varieties had looked foreign—fruit protected by stinging tendrils, fruit that grew in clusters like grapes but had thick rinds, fruit they had to chisel out of the trunks like tumors.