The One-Star Husband

Chapter One: One Point Two

By noon, forty thousand strangers had voted Lucia Moretti down to one point two stars, and below one, the city would put her out at dawn.

Her brother was driving the family who had paid for every vote, and he was the one man alive who could take them back.

Enzo Moretti stood at the foot of the Star Bureau steps with one hand on the door of the Commissioner's car, watching his sister's name on the Starboard. The great screen covered the whole front of the Bureau and listed everyone in Asterholm who was close to the line. Most of the names belonged to people the city had already stopped seeing. Lucia's sat near the bottom in amber, and the number beside it slipped a little further every few minutes.

In Asterholm, anyone could rate anyone from one star to five. A shopkeeper could mark you down for counting your coins too slowly, and a stranger could do it for the way you looked at him on a tram. Your rating decided your school, your hospital and the street you were allowed to live on. Fall below one and you were Dimmed. Officers walked you across Lowbridge to the Dim Quarter outside the walls, the gate closed behind you, and it did not open again.

Two days ago, sixteen-year-old Lucia had filmed thirty seconds beside an underground fighting pit. The video showed Rafferty Abernethy, the Commissioner's son, leaning on the rail with a drink in his hand and laughing, while a one-star boy named Davey Kemble lay on the floor below him and didn't get up. Davey died that night. An hour after Lucia posted the video, her rating began to fall, and it had not stopped since.

On the steps above, Commissioner Benedict Abernethy stood beneath the Starboard at a podium crowded with microphones. He was a silver-haired man who spoke like someone who had never once been interrupted.

"The video is a forgery," he said, and the speakers carried it across the square. "A clever one, built by a machine and posted by a troubled girl. My son has never set foot in such a place, and I will not have this family dragged through the gutter."

Two steps below him, Inspector Thrale waited with his hands clasped behind his back. He had already given the reporters the time: six o'clock at the Lowbridge gate, where he would collect the girl himself.

Off to one side, under a ring of lights, Ottoline Abernethy was reporting live. The Commissioner's daughter was the most trusted voice on the evening news, and for four years she had been Enzo's wife. Her report came through the car's dashboard half a second after it reached him through the air, so he heard every careful word twice. She said "the girl," never Lucia. She said "the Commissioner," never my father. Not once did she look toward the car.

Raff came down the steps before his father had finished, bored of being defended. He stopped at the open door and looked at Enzo's hand on it.

"Hold it properly, one-star."

Enzo opened the door wider. Raff took a last pull on his cigarette, flicked it onto Enzo's shoe and ducked into the back seat. The ember sat smoking on the polished leather. Enzo stepped on it, closed the door without a sound and walked round to the driver's side.

Inside, Raff was already scrolling, following Lucia's number like a match score. "One point two," he said to nobody. "She'll be under by midnight."

Enzo said nothing. He was thinking of his sister at the kitchen table that morning, her phone turned face down beside her cereal so she wouldn't have to watch. He turned back the collar of his driver's jacket. Sewn into the seam, where no one would think to look, was a small brass star with one point filed flat. He took an old phone from the glovebox, its screen cracked across one corner, pressed the star against its back and his thumb to the glass. The screen woke to a single empty line.

He knew what this would cost. The moment the city saw it, somebody would start hunting for the hand behind it. He typed anyway.

Strike every vote against Lucia Moretti from an account less than a day old.

He sent it, put the phone back and folded his collar down.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, behind the Commissioner's head, Lucia's number moved. One point two became one point nine, then two point eight, then three point five, climbing faster than anything on that board had ever climbed, until it stopped at four point one. Her name turned from amber to green. Beside it appeared a mark the Starboard had not shown in ten years: a five-pointed star with one point broken off.

A murmur ran through the crowd, and then somebody said the word out loud. The Lodestar.

Enzo had grown up hearing about it like a ghost story. A seat set above the Bureau by the city's founders, able to strike any vote in Asterholm and answer to no one. Most people believed it had died with them.

The Commissioner turned to look at the board, and his sentence stopped halfway. Reporters began shouting over each other. On the dashboard, Ottoline lifted her eyes to the Starboard, and for one long second the most trusted face in the city had nothing to say. Then she found her voice and told Asterholm the girl's rating had been restored. Below the podium, Inspector Thrale was turning a slow circle, studying the square as if the Lodestar might be standing in it. His gaze passed over the black car and kept going.

"What the hell is that?" Raff said, staring at his phone.

Enzo adjusted the mirror.

Benedict ended the press conference two minutes later. He came down the steps fast, climbed in beside his son without a word, and Enzo pulled away from the kerb.

They were crossing the river when the Commissioner's phone rang. Benedict answered on speaker, as if the driver were part of the car. The voice was flattened by a machine until it could have belonged to anyone. Enzo had never heard it, but everyone below three stars knew what it was. The Critic, whose star farms could make anyone in the city fall.

"Forty thousand accounts, Commissioner," it said. "Gone in under a minute."

"It wasn't anyone in my office."

"I know. Your office isn't capable of it." There was a pause. "Ten years ago, I put a Moretti woman on that bridge, and somebody pulled her off. Keep their son close, Commissioner. When the next one falls, I want to see who comes running."

The call ended. Benedict slipped the phone into his pocket and looked out at the water. Beside him, Raff had stopped scrolling.

Enzo knew exactly which Moretti woman the Critic meant. He kept both hands on the wheel, signalled at the end of the bridge, and drove home the man who had just been told to keep him close.