Read And All the Stars for Free Online Page B

at the foot of the
next flight of stairs. The second body
Madeleine had seen in person.
    "He has stars," Noi said, fingers digging into
Madeleine's arm.
    After a beat, Madeleine understood Noi's reaction. The stars developed after the
cramps, at what the TV was calling the survival point for Blues.
    "Maybe there's a stage we haven't hit yet," she
said, approaching the body reluctantly.
    He'd been around her own age, and what she thought of as half-made:
someone who'd shot up in height recently, and was all bony wrists and
coat-hanger shoulders, not yet fully filled out. Wide mouth, strong nose, and very straight,
dark brows below a mop of black hair which didn't quite curl. Madeleine immediately wanted to draw him as
well, which felt a wildly inappropriate thing to do with the body of some poor
random boy who had died of being Blue.
    "I think he's breathing," Noi said.
    "Could he have fainted from hunger?" Madeleine reached down to press fingers to
the boy's throat, and easily found a pulse.
    Noi joined the examination. "There's an enormous lump on the side of his head," she said,
and showed Madeleine red-streaked fingers. "I guess we better take him back to the restaurant. This should be interesting."
    Madeleine rescued a pair of rimless glasses about to slide
out the boy's pocket, then she and Noi carefully straightened him and tried to
work out how to get someone taller than either of them down several unforgiving
flights of stairs.
    "If I go first, with his knees hooked over my shoulders,
and you lift him under the armpits?" Noi suggested.
    They experimented with this, and eventually managed to get
enough of the boy off the ground to move down. The steep, lowest flight was hardest, both of them struggling, but not
daring to stop. It wasn't that he was
impossibly heavy, but they needed to keep pace with each other or be pulled off
balance. The last few steps were particularly
wobbly.
    "I don't think I've recovered as much as I
thought," Madeleine panted, as they propped him against the end of the
railing.
    "In future, I'm only rescuing people who faint at the
bottom of stairs." Noi looked down
at the boy doubtfully. "Maybe I
should go find some sort of cart."
    "Hey! HEY!"
    The shout came from above, heralding three more boys
stampeding down the stair.
    "If you're the cavalry, your timing sucks," Noi
said, unimpressed by their rapid approach.
    "What happened?" asked the tallest boy, and
Madeleine had to blink because he was movie-star handsome: precisely
symmetrical features, flawless brown skin, silky black hair, athletic
build. Even his voice was fantastic: a
mix of Indian and plummy English accent which was candy to the ear.
    "We found him on the stair," she said, and felt
silly for her defensive tone. "He's
hit his head."
    "Told you Fish was pushing himself too hard," said
the boy nearest Madeleine, a strawberry blonde well-furnished with
freckles. His blue eyes sloped down at
the corners, giving him a weary look, but his hands moved briskly over the
unconscious boy's head, locating the lump as if he could learn something from
it.
    The third boy was the shortest, his face fashioned from an
imp template, with pointed chin and fly-away eyebrows which darted toward the
sandy-blonde hair at his temples. He
might as well have 'Mischief' stamped on his forehead.
    "You two carried him down the stair?" His grin took up half his face. "Damn, I'm sorry I missed that."
    "Yeah, yeah, the floor show's at eleven," Noi
replied. "Maybe we should get your
friend out of the sun. We were taking
him to the wharf."
    "Lead the way. I'm Pan. This is Nash and
Gav. Looks like you met Fish
already."
    As Madeleine and Noi introduced themselves, the first two
boys hoisted Fish up on linked arms.
    "Was there anyone nearby?" Nash, the tallest one,
asked. "Could someone have attacked
him?"
    "I haven't seen anyone but Madeleine," Noi
said. "We were going up to look at
the Spire."
    "We've just been." Pan glanced over his shoulder, and up. "Fish wanted