Lodestar by Shannon Messenger
“Maybe if I had the gadget in front of me and could open it up and see all the inner workings,” Dex told her. “But I can’t tell much from a picture. The only thing that stands out is this line.” He traced his finger over a glowing strip of purple down the center of the crystal sphere. “That could be some sort of scanner.”
“And what would a scanner do?” Fitz asked.
“Well, the obvious answer is ‘scan stuff,’ ” Dex said, “which might fit, since scanners usually scan codes. So maybe there’s a code hidden in the symbol? And the gadget scans it, and that somehow tells it to make a light path—maybe using the light from the corresponding star?”
“I guess that does make sense,” Fitz said. “But, dude, couldn’t they just use a Leapmaster or a pathfinder?”
“Maybe they think this method is more secure,” Dex said, “since crystals can get lost or stolen, and this would only work for people they train. Or, maybe the Technopath who designed it wasn’t very good.”
“I thought you said their Technopath was super talented,” Biana reminded him. “When we went through Alvar’s registry records you seemed super impressed.”
“They did do a lot of crazy tricks I never would’ve thought of,” Dex admitted. “So maybe this was designed by a different Technopath. Or . . .”
“Or?” Fitz prompted when Dex didn’t finish.
“Hang on. I need to think for a second,” Dex said, sitting up and flipping back through the memory log until he found a page showing the symbol.
One second turned into two—then three and four and five and on and on, until Sophie got tired of counting.
“While he does that”—she turned to Biana—“did Dex ever tell you what he and Marella were talking about yesterday?”
“Oh! That’s right, I only told Fitz. I guess Dex decided to ask Marella if we could talk to her mom about the day Cyrah faded—and she freaked out. Partially because he wouldn’t tell her why. But mostly because her mom can’t handle that kind of stress. She told him her mom’s gotten so bad lately that she won’t even leave the house, and Marella thinks it’s because she’s heard about the awful things the Neverseen have been doing. So she can’t risk freaking her out more by talking about painful memories.”
“That makes sense,” Sophie said quietly. “And must be so hard for her.”
“I know. Dex said she cried. Makes me feel super guilty for not checking on her sooner—but now if I try, she’ll think I’m just trying to get information about Cyrah.”
“Probably. But there has to be something we can do,” Sophie said. “Maybe if we—”
Dex jumped to his feet. “Do you remember those number chains I uncovered in Alvar’s registry records well enough to project them?” he asked Sophie.
“Of course.”
She took the memory log back and recorded the four chains of ones and zeroes, plus all the extra dashes and symbols and asterisks.
0-11-<<-1-1-1-0*
*0-1->-1->-111-0
*0->-111->>>-1-0
0-<<-1-1-11-<-0*
Dex stared at the numbers for so long that Sophie was about to turn back to her Marella conversation.
But before she did, Dex laughed and pumped his fist, shouting, “I know what the clue means!”
FIFTY-THREE
THE NUMBERS AREN’T numbers!” Dex said. “Well, I guess they kinda are—it’s the symbol that’s not really a symbol. Or maybe it’s both, depending on which way you’re looking at it.”
He sighed when they gave him nothing but blank stares.
“Okay, let’s try this another way,” he said. “Can I get something to write with?”
Sophie gave him one of her school notebooks and a pencil and he flipped to a clean page.
“Biana, can you read me the first sequence of numbers we found in Alvar’s records—and give me all the dashes and symbols and stuff too?”
“Sure. It’s zero, hyphen, one, one, hyphen, less than, less than, hyphen, one, hyphen, one, hyphen, one, hyphen, zero, asterisk.”
Dex grinned as he stared at what he’d written. “See what happens when I convert the whole thing to pure symbols?”
He held up his drawing.
Everyone sucked in a breath.
The markings looked exactly like one of the rays in the Lodestar symbol—and not just any ray. The ray they’d connected to the Paris hideout—which happened to be where Alvar was when his registry pendant had given that code.
“And you can do the same thing with all four of the codes I found,” Dex added. “The asterisk tells you which zero is the center. See?”
He drew the three remaining codes and held them up, each one matching a ray of the symbol perfectly.
“Wow, how did you figure that out?” Fitz asked.
“It was Fintan’s clue,” Dex said. “I remembered whining about how using a code made of ones and zeroes was too simple. And the really crazy part is, this isn’t simple at all. It’s a seriously brilliant system. The code is hidden but not hidden, still useable and scannable in both forms, and it keeps perfect track of their locations. See? This top one? That’s the hideout that Alvar went to when he was The Boy Who Disappeared.”
Sophie’s stomach soured. “That’s the same hideout they just moved Keefe to.”
It shouldn’t surprise her—and it shouldn’t make her so nervous. But it really did.
“So those other two rays are hideouts Keefe hasn’t seen yet, right?” Biana asked. “Does that mean we know how to find them?”
“Technically, yes,” Dex said. “We should be able to find any of the hideouts we want, but—”
“I’d like to take this moment to make it clear that none of you will be leaving this house,” Sandor interrupted, reminding their group that they had four goblins eavesdropping on their conversation from the hallway.
“Don’t worry, we can’t,” Dex told him. “The only way this works is if we have one of their special gadgets to scan the code and convert it into a path for us—assuming I’m even right and that’s what that gadget does.”
“Can you build one?” Fitz asked.
“Not without having one to study,” Dex said. “Though maybe if I play with a scanner and—”
“Again,” Lovise interrupted. “No one will be building any gadgets to sneak away to see the enemy.”
Dex rolled his eyes. “Just because I build it doesn’t mean I’m going to use it.”
All four goblins snorted a laugh.
“Yes,” Sandor said, “because the four of you are known for your restraint.”
“Well, you can’t stop me from trying,” Dex told him. “Though, honestly, I’m probably not going to be able to pull it off. The intricacy of this system is crazy, so the odds of me duplicating it without having something to copy are pretty much zero. Especially since I’m still not sure how the star runes fit in. The gadget could be channeling their light—but the Paris hideout was underground, so I don’t know how that would work. And the stars could just be the names of their hideouts—but that seems too easy.”
Sophie sighed. “So once again, we’ve learned a ton of things, but we still basically know nothing. And I don’t even see a plan for what to do now.”
“I guess we could tell Keefe all of this,” Biana said, “and when everyone’s asleep, he could sneak out of bed and—”
“Bad idea,” Sophie interrupted. “I bet if he goes to another hideout without the matching black disk in his cloak, the Neverseen will know they have an intruder.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Biana mumbled. “Ugh—this whole so-close-but-so-far thing is super frustrating. Are we missing something?”
The minutes ticked by as they all stared at the symbol.
Sophie was about to give up when Biana made a weird squeaky sound.
“What if this gadget is how the Neverseen got into the Silver Tower?” she asked. “If they hid one inside somewhere, it could’ve let them leap in, couldn’t it?”
“It depends on how th
“But wouldn’t someone have found the gadget during their search?” Fitz asked.
“Not if the Neverseen took the gadget with them when they left,” Biana argued. “Why not have Tam search the tower to see if he can find a shadowprint, like the one in Paris?”
“That’ll take forever,” Dex warned.
“It will,” Fitz agreed. “But it’s better than nothing. And he could start with the Lodestar mirror, since I still think that’s a weird coincidence.”
“It’s worth a try,” Sophie decided. “And Fintan will probably be impressed when Keefe pretends he figured all of this out.”
“And you can ask Gethen about it,” Fitz added. “I still can’t believe you’re doing that without me—what’s the point of being Cognates if they don’t let us work together?”
“It’s almost as ridiculous as assigning her a bodyguard and then not allowing him to accompany her on dangerous missions,” Sandor shouted from the hallway.
“I’ll be fine,” Sophie told both of them. “I’ve handled Gethen before.”
She was more worried about the fact that they were only giving her fifteen minutes. In that short time, she’d be lucky if she coaxed one piece of information out of him.
“What’s the most important question,” she said, “out of all of our questions?”
“What do you mean?” Fitz asked.
“I mean, what’s the one thing we absolutely have to know—more than anything else? I’m trying to figure out what I need to focus on during the conversation.”
The last time, they’d needed to learn anything they could about the gnomish plague and what might’ve happened to Keefe’s mother. But this time the threat came in so many fragments and pieces and mysteries.
Should she ask what the Neverseen wanted with Grady and Edaline? Or about Keefe’s legacy and the mysterious door into the mountain? Or should she try to get specifics about the Lodestar Initiative, and what it had to do with “test subjects” and “criterion” and Keefe’s theory about a “gathering.”
All of those were crucial—but were they crucial enough to be her one play in this crazy, confusing game?
The more her mind tossed the question around, the more she realized the Neverseen had tipped their hand. It didn’t matter what she thought was important. It mattered what they cared about—what they’d wanted so desperately that they’d taken a tremendous risk.
Which meant she needed to ask Gethen what the Neverseen wanted from Wylie.
FIFTY-FOUR
THE TRICK WITH Gethen is to make him think we’re interested in one thing, so he doesn’t have his guard up around the stuff we really need,” Sophie told Fitz as they both stared at the page she’d not-so-creatively titled: Plan for Tricking Gethen.
The rest of the paper was blank.
And had been blank for days.
Sophie was starting to worry it would be blank for the rest of eternity.
Six days had already passed since Councillor Oralie told her they’d be visiting Lumenaria—and since the meeting was still scheduled for Friday, that meant they only had two days left to figure it out.
The most logical option—in Sophie’s opinion—was for everyone to stop babying her and let her use her genetically enhanced telepathy. But the suggestion had been unanimously voted as the Worst Idea in the History of Bad Ideas. No one was willing to give the Neverseen’s only Telepath a chance to mess with Sophie’s head. So Mr. Forkle would be doing all the dangerous mental searching, and Sophie would once again be relegated to the role of “distractor.”
“This isn’t going to work,” she mumbled, leaning back against the side of her bed. Her legs were going numb after so many hours of sitting on the floor, attempting to brainstorm ideas with Fitz. “Keefe and I were the distraction last time, so Gethen will be ready for that play—especially since he knows everyone’s super overprotective of me.”
“Then make the distraction so big he can’t ignore it,” Fitz said.
“Okay, but how?”
Annnnnnnd . . . they were back to where they’d been stuck for the last six days.
Overall, their group had made almost zero progress.
Keefe’s updates had morphed into super-short answers before he’d tell her “gotta go—try not to worry” and turn his attention away. He had managed to tell Sophie that Fintan gave him an important assignment as a reward for solving the symbol’s riddle—but everything after that had been “yes,” “no,” and “relax, Foster.”
Dex, meanwhile, had made several attempts to build a version of the Neverseen’s gadget. But so far, all he’d done was burn a hole in the floor of his bedroom. And Tam’s search for a shadowprint of the symbol at the Silver Tower was going sloooooooooooowly. The Lodestar mirror had nothing significant, so now he was stuck going room by room by room.
Linh chose to spend her days at Alluveterre with Wylie. He’d woken up when Maruca and her mom visited, but hadn’t talked to anyone since. The only things he responded to were Linh’s Hydrokinetic tricks. She’d even earned half a smile when she’d shaped the water into a graceful dancer and let it splash and twirl all over the room. But it wasn’t enough to stop everyone from worrying about Wylie’s sanity.
And Biana might’ve chosen the most impossible project of all, deciding it was time to fix their friendship with Marella—even though she knew Marella would be suspicious of her motives. So far, the only words Marella had said to her were, “I liked it better when you guys had forgotten about me.”
Even their latest skill lesson with the Exillium Coaches had been more exhausting than educational. They were supposed to channel their energy into the ground and cause a tremor. But Sophie was the only one in her Hemisphere who’d pulled it off—and her mighty earthquake had lasted two whole seconds. The feat seemed especially embarrassing when she compared it to the way the dwarves could crack the earth with a single stomp of their hairy feet. And it made Sophie wonder if the whole skill-training program was going to be a waste. Maybe over time the elves would learn to impress. But at the rate they were going, it would take years.
Even the Coaches seemed disheartened. Coach Rohana had told Sophie, “Half the battle is getting the mind to commit—but everyone still thinks these skills are ‘common’ and would rather go back to training in their abilities.”
At least Grady and Edaline had found a useful way to spend their days. They’d arranged regular meetings with Lady Cadence to learn as much as they could about the ogres before the Peace Summit. Their conversations usually focused on the complicated politics between the species. But when Sophie and Fitz headed downstairs for a snack, they found the adults in an intense discussion on how best to manage King Dimitar’s temper.
“You’re overcomplicating it,” Lady Cadence told Grady and Edaline. “All you have to do is treat him like an intelligent equal. Ogres are different from us, but they’re still sophisticated, complex creatures with their own culture, their own wants and needs—”
“Who’ve tried to murder the entire gnomish species,” Sophie interrupted. “Twice. Also stole the gnomes’ homeland. And tried to cripple the Lost Cities by forcing the gnomes into slavery. And allied with the Neverseen. And—”
“I’m not saying the ogres haven’t made mistakes,” Lady Cadence said, earning snorts from all the goblin bodyguards. “I’m saying that doesn’t erase the good in them—especially considering that the elves are not blameless either. We’ve compounded the tensions between our species by refusing to take any time to understand them. Instead, we try to force them to set aside fundamental elements of their society. Who are we to decide how they should live? Who are we to micromanage other societies and species?”
“When those societies want to wage war with other species in order to steal their land, I’d say they need to be micromanaged,” Sandor argued.
“No, they need to be
“What?” everyone simultaneously interrupted.
“Oh, don’t sound so horrified. Dimitar and I have a long history, and when I heard he agreed to the summit, I asked if he’d let me visit his city.”
“You went to Ravagog,” Grady clarified.
“To what’s left of it.” Shadows aged Lady Cadence’s prim features as she fiddled with her Markchain—a necklace King Dimitar had given her to keep her safe during her years living with the ogres. “I do not fault anyone for the destruction. But it hurts my heart that no one has taken the time to consider what the ogres have suffered. Why do you think Dimitar agreed to meet? I’m one of the few elves willing to listen, willing to open my eyes—”
“Unless you count the Neverseen,” Sophie reminded her. “Did he tell you about that? How he’ll be meeting with Fintan? And how Fintan assigned him a test to prove they could form another alliance?”
“Actually, he did tell me about that. And I strongly advised him against it. You have to understand—Dimitar sees no other option. Many of the restrictions the Council hopes to impose through this new treaty will force the ogres to change their very ways of being.”
“And that gives him the right to form an alliance with murderers?” Fitz asked.
“Of course not, Mr. Vacker. Which is what I told Dimitar. I tried to help him find a different path. I’m still hoping the Council can create a treaty that brings peace to all of our worlds while still granting the ogres the freedom to remain who they are. But if that’s not possible, I hope the king will turn to something other than violence.”
“Like that’ll ever happen,” Sophie snorted.
Lady Cadence clicked her tongue. “You disappoint me, Miss Foster. I’d hoped you might bring a bit of compassion to this summit. After all, you’re willing to excuse humans from the many grievances held against them, aren’t you? And when it comes to violence, the humans have no rival. Yes, the ogres must learn to share this planet peacefully. And yes, they need to face the consequences for what they did with the plague, and any other species they’ve harmed. But if we insist on restricting them to a set of laws that would disrupt their very ways of being, we’re sealing our own fate. King Dimitar values elvin guidance—but only from those who treat him as a friend.”