Stars Rise

V. Late Night Revelers

A masquerade party wasn't the ideal place to find someone, but Cristo looked anyway. Out in the frost of night air under the blank night sky, he searched mask after mask, the hidden faces blank and blending into each other, half of his own concealed behind his gold fox mask. The other half exposed to the cold concealed nothing. Certainly not the small grin he continually tried to squash. Captivated, but without leaving his post against a column by the door, he watched everyone in masks as they gallivanted, searching for the last person he had expected to see tonight; except he already had, and then he had lost her.

But there was no mistaking her eyes.

Now, distracted from his intention to scope out the scene and keep one eye on Ilan Potestas, he instead searched for Nova. Nova, whom he had just left behind a hundred years in the future. He shouldn't smile. It was just an old habit. He had chased the woman her whole life and it made him grin every time she finally returned his messages only to slink away through a link. Or sat next to him at his father's dinners after turning down a request for a date. They were seventy year old children when she finally agreed to marry him. Hilarious.

Eight minutes. Eight minutes was all Cristo had needed to wait for Leander. Shouldn't have been enough time to get into any trouble. Draining the last sip of his champagne, Cristo abandoned the column and the hope that she would come back, and crossed to the edge of the roof to get a better view of the dressy crowd.

He took in a breath of ice air and took a second to be apart from the noise, the dancing, the jazz, the heeled strangers tripping over each other and stumbling from lack of peripheral and inferior vision. There was something magical about getting inebriated so close to the stars — even if he couldn't make out a single one over the city — and just knowing that the penthouse of Potestas Tower pushed up against the fifty stories below like two magnets with the same charge resisting each other.

Levitation must have amused Mr. Ilan Potestas. Unless Cristo was wrong, it seemed like the hovering portion was rotating too, because why not? The view of the city skyline, lit with as much power as it could possibly spend to brighten the night and heat the winter, had already shifted perspective in the five minutes since he arrived. It now showed more of the same narrow impossible towers and show-off bold modern architecture.

Around the rooftop various platforms had been set to float too, such as the table where the boss's son Stephen chewed too much food to be able to talk to anyone, the stage on which the boss stood, and the tray from which Cristo had reached to take the same glass of champagne as a smaller hand than his with darker skin than his and nails polished the color of champagne. He had looked up into eyes that he would recognize anywhere, any time, even behind a black cat mask, and even at a venue and time that was impossible — brown eyes like light brown beach glass sparkling.

Those eyes looked right past him, and Nova, while he was stunned into paralysis by them, took the opportunity to disappear.

"Have you seen my shadow?" Candra Satiri said. A creamy porcelain mask concealed sly eyes; she looked seventeen. Poppy red hair and lips identified her immediately. He knew who she was, but to her he was a jet-haired stranger in a gold fox mask brighter than his dark gold skin tone.

"Now that you mention it, no," Cristo said. The rooftop's illumination was evenly lit not by the moon or stars since the sky was a monochromatic pink sheet reflecting city lights that bounced off the snow below and back again. There weren't any shadows anywhere, and Cristo sort of missed his.

He wondered whether the light came out of everywhere at the same time in every direction, and he would have wondered how the magic was done except that other things were more important — like finding Nova, for example, and not looking as if he were looking for her, and not letting his looking for her get in the way of his actual business, because she wasn't the reason he was standing on the roof of Potestas Tower tonight. The reason he was standing on the roof of Potestas Tower tonight was because Mr. Ilan Potestas was a key voter in Constellation's electoral board meeting tomorrow, and someone was going to assassinate him. Meanwhile, he and Nova had agreed that he would deal with it alone, yet here she was, getting her fingers dirty and disappearing before he could ask her what she thought she was up to.

Now he listened half-heartedly to Candra — after she introduced herself, she had some complaint about the band, something about the band she played in, and how the one playing tonight had stolen her material, and her front man, and possibly her saxophone too — while he kept his eyes roving the shifting waltz on the dance floor for Nova.

He checked regularly the position of the boss man Ilan Potestas, the time on his watch, and for the arrival of the assassins. He repeated the pattern, scanned back and forth again, and finally caught the appearance of someone important. He had the description from his Pop. He was looking for a female assassin, a woman who wore shades instead of a mask, accompanied by two friends. Her name was Lien Cassus, and tonight she was going to assassinate Ilan Potestas, the director of Constellation's Invernali branch. On this night, one hundred years in the past, Lien had murdered Pop's father, Ilan Potestas. Cristo was considering stopping her.

Keeping tabs on Cassus, he checked the time again and excused himself from Candra. He did feel slightly guilty for ignoring every word Candra said and then leaving to find someone else. Not Nova, though, and not the assassins. It was quarter after midnight, which was time to intercept 'Prince' Leander.

Cristo needed to steal his gun.

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