Foxhunt Page 22

  It felt like time froze for a moment, stilled, slowed, thick as honey.

  Marisa set plates on their little corner table, whisking off the covers to unleash delicately sifting aromas. “But that’s impossible,” Rivasoa said, staring at Orfeus. Then she sat up a little straighter and smiled at her wife. “This looks lovely,” she said more politely.

  “You and your deep secrets,” Marisa said, jokingly, like she wasn’t sure Rivasoa dealt in deep secrets at all, or maybe knew and didn’t care. She kissed her forehead and bustled off.

  Rivasoa spooned up some of her dish, a cool soup, and let out a contented sigh. A moment of peace, before she laid her spoon down and fixed Orfeus with her wire-lined gaze. “It’s not as though it hasn’t been tried before,” she said. She frowned, one finger tapping lightly at the table. “Your friend is a genius of course, but even so…” She shook her head. “Unless Blood is given when very young, it’s impossible to use it intuitively.” She looked at Orfeus curiously.

  Like she was about to demand a show of magic then and there, when she’d already seen it. Orfeus had no wish to be anyone’s lab experiment or object of study. She should’ve known better than to make this play, but Rivasoa had raised her gall with that more to lose spiel. “Keep to the bargain. I gave you something,” Orfeus said. “You give me something.” She looked down at the plate and sniffed appreciatively: fragrant couscous studded with herbs and salty fragments of tomato and olive. “Aside, of course, from your wife’s lovely cooking.”

  Rivasoa shook her head, frustrated. But that was the thing about honest people. They could be so easy to use. “I have noticed one pattern,” she said slowly. She removed the data seed from her finger, settling it carefully on the table. “Your friend, was he passionate?”

  Orfeus laughed. “Linden? No. Very gay, don’t get me wrong, but he never kept a boyfriend long for as far as I could tell, if he ever wanted to, and I would’ve noticed. Always too focused on his…carpentry.” She trailed off. “Ah. That kind of passion? Yes.” At Rivasoa’s sharp, thoughtful, interested look, Orfeus added almost defensively, “It’s not like he was any good.” As though that would keep him safe.

  Rivasoa shook her head. “Competency doesn’t seem to be the common factor. Passion, though… One person has gone missing from your town, a keen carpenter. A few others, from other settlements. From Eldergrove, nearing thirty.”

  “Tide,” Orfeus whispered.

  Rivasoa gave a curt nod. “I would like it to stop,” she said. She took another sip of her soup, shoulders unspooling, and sighed out. More calmly she said, “All of them have at the least a hobby. Many pursue art as their life’s work or passion.”

  “So he could be in some quiet artists’ camp somewhere,” Orfeus said hopefully. She sighed before Rivasoa could even start to correct her. “No. I know. He would never have left willingly, not without arranging care for his cat.”

  “Ah,” Rivasoa said with slight distaste. “Keeping a small predator mammal for the sake of one’s morale. Your friends are charmingly quaint.”

  Faolan with his wolf’s pelt. Oh, she had no idea. “It helps mental health,” Orfeus said. “Provenly. Weren’t you people meant to like the old ways, within reason? I know you haven’t just severed nature from yourselves.” Not in that flowering garden of a stained-glass city.

  “There is life in the grove, of course,” Rivasoa said. “Many birds and some mice. Plenty of parks to go to quietly enjoy Honoured Earth’s bounty of life…” She shook her head. “We should stay on topic.”

  “Oh, it’s all just musing,” Orfeus said. She ate a spoonful of couscous and sighed appreciatively despite herself. There was definitely basil in there. “Talking aloud, you know how it is. I’m sure I wouldn’t plan any dire action.”

  Rivasoa looked at her curiously. “Not without me,” she said.

  “I don’t know whether you’re proposing yourself as an ally or a jailer, dear Archivist.”

  Rivasoa shook her head. “Whatever my reservations about your use of so powerful a thing as Blood and whatever my duties in that respect, this must come first. Yes, I propose allegiance.” Her brows drew down, lips pulling up slightly from her teeth. “Someone is harming people right in my city, where such things should not be done. I cannot bear it.”

  Orfeus was silent. That was the thing about good people. They did the right thing just because it was.

  Without reflecting too much on her own self, she waved her fork and said, “Eldergrove, yes. Where the most people went missing.” That was only true if Rivasoa could be trusted, but she would make that gamble, trusting to fate and wits and knives that she wouldn’t wake up with her blood drained or bonds at her wrists. “Even if we’re working with the theory that the person or group we’re after is selecting—what, passionate people? I refuse to believe that Eldergrove would be disproportionately targeted simply because it has the highest density of talented folk.”

  “It seems reasonable to me,” Rivasoa said.

  Orfeus sighed. “It could be that,” she said, generously she felt, “or more likely our quarry is based there. Either way, our next stop is Eldergrove.”

  Rivasoa nodded. “I would appreciate your help protecting it,” she said. She looked at the mask on her head and knife at her hip. “And that of any of your allies…?”

  Tempting. What could she do, order the Order after whoever this was? They needed at least identification to start hunting someone, a name. No proof, of course. Maybe once they had a name… No, the Wild went after energy crimes mostly, tree-cutters and resource hoarders and sometimes breakers of hospitality codes, hardly ever the common sort of criminals.

  And someone had been snatched from next door to her. From her own backyard, her territory. She wanted to bring her own justice, not the Order’s. She wanted to bring fire and blood.

  “I’m just me,” Orfeus said. On the chance that that dimmed Rivasoa’s resolve, she stretched her fingers out and added, “But I am formidable.”

  “Yes,” Rivasoa said, accepting this easier than Orfeus had expected. She looked at her. “Oh, and Orfeus?”

  Orfeus leaned forward, impatient, folding her hands together. “Yes?”

  “If you burn down my city, I’ll bring a terrible vengeance upon you.” She said it calmly, then had a spoon of soup. Orfeus sat, feeling cold.

  Honest people dealt in honesty, yes? “I’m not…” Orfeus said and then had to start again, her throat dry. This was why she was so seldom honest: frightful on the larynx. “What I most of all wish to avoid is being the kind of person who starts fires.”

  “Intention counts for something,” Rivasoa said. “But intention and action must be in unity. Harmony in all things.”

  “Eat your soup,” Orfeus said.

  She forked up her couscous. Delicious as it was, she almost missed meat. It was astonishing what a person could get used to. Rivasoa ate her soup with no more words exchanged. It was green, and smelled refreshingly of mint and cucumber. Orfeus ate moodily. Stupid kindly Rivasoa, with her encyclopaedic knowledge of stories and her skilled and talented wife. Orfeus could live twice as long and not obtain so pretty a life.

  As though lives were things to flippantly collect, like teas or silver spoons. Orfeus sighed.

  Marisa came up a while later, wearing the distantly contented look of a satisfied craftsperson, smelling faintly of vinaigrette. “Dinner go well?” she said a little hesitantly, looking between the two of them.

  “It was delicious,” Rivasoa said, which was not a lie.

  “It was,” Orfeus said, and smiled at the woman with an effort. “You’re an honour to your profession, Madame Marisa. Like the old song: Where journeys start and hard roads end.” She tapped the rhythm out with her knuckles. “The wayhouse is the traveller’s friend.”

  Marisa clapped her hands together in delight. “My Riva did say you were a musician! It’s no trouble, really.”

  “You underestimate what a relief it is to be given such hospitality.”
Orfeus pulled out her old earring and set it on the table. “Would you accept this as guest-gift?”

  Marisa smiled. “Oh, what a lovely daisy.” She picked up the trinket carefully. “I’m surprised you can bear to part with it!”

  Orfeus smiled and shrugged. Rivasoa was looking at her far too closely. She hastened on. “Shall we go, then?” Destination chosen, there was nothing left but the leaving.

  Rivasoa looked startled, some of her perpetual calm broken. “I had assumed on leaving in the morning,” she said. Orfeus had a spiteful thought that of course Rivasoa liked early mornings. Orfeus did too, to be fair, early mornings and late nights and the time when the two blended together into glorious haze.

  “Why wait?” Orfeus said cheerfully, and clasped her hands together, looking sorrowfully across at Rivasoa. “I thought you were concerned for the plight of those poor people.”

  “Oh, no, is something wrong?” Marisa said.

  “Of course I’m concerned,” Rivasoa said. She pressed Marisa’s hand and frowned at Orfeus. “The quartertrain is nearly a day from here. It’s bad travel at night.”

  Orfeus didn’t want to spend the night in Marisa’s doubtless lovely room, sitting up with one hand on her knife under the pillow. “I would really rather …”

  “Rivasoa said you were something of a romantic,” Marisa said, looking at Orfeus slightly accusingly, and Orfeus sat up blinking. She’d been thinking of double motives, waking up with all the Blood drained from her again if her gamble went awry, but the surface motive sufficed perfectly well. This was Rivasoa’s wife, who she didn’t always see much of.

  And assuredly Orfeus wouldn’t be sleeping in the same room as Rivasoa, as she had pictured in her panic. “Yes, alright,” she said defeated. “The morning. But there’s no need to take the train.” Which would give whoever the culprit was advance warning of their arrival, if they had the least skill at web navigation. “My bike should carry two.”

  “Your what?” Rivasoa asked.

  Her bike needed charging, as it turned out. The next morning, Orfeus dragged off the boughs she’d covered it with, wondering how Faolan did this so often without scratching the paintwork. Very likely Faolan didn’t care. It really wasn’t that efficient either, if someone prioritised stealth. Would it be possible to weave a cloak of camouflage? She couldn’t sustain an illusion that far away from herself for long, but using tech, shifting projections of light …

  “Good gracious,” Rivasoa said a little faintly. Orfeus stood back and looked at the bike and grinned. Yes, it was quite something on a first look. Rivasoa traced the handlebars with one finger, then stepped back, shaking her head. “Single-person transports are inefficient.”

  Orfeus bent down and deployed the charging wings. They unfolded delicately, crinkling like foil, like the bike was a dragonfly. The wings stiffened slowly and stayed upright, shimmering slightly as they absorbed sunlight. Orfeus dusted off her hands. “It can manage as a two-person transport, I hope.” She eyed Rivasoa with slight disapproval. “It would help if you were less tall.”

  “And yet,” Rivasoa said calmly.

  Orfeus sat on a tree stump, perching on the edge to avoid the fungi growing colourfully over it. This species she didn’t know off the top of her head, and unknown fungi were best treated with respect.

  “Do you have a plan for how to find them?” Orfeus said, toying idly with the fabric of her cloak. “You’re the local source.”

  Rivasoa after a second’s hesitation shook her head. She shifted her stance, not sitting or leaning against anything but setting her feet apart, her hands clasped behind her back. “Eldergrove is simply too large. I can employ searching techniques, small drones, but there will always be some corners people can hide in. There is no obvious place I can think of. Many things there are ancient. The Catacombs alone…”

  Orfeus lifted her eyebrows. “Catacombs sound like a good place to start!” she said. “Never mind it.” She propped her chin thoughtfully on her hands. “I have something of a plan, or something I can shape into one. It’s just a very bad plan.”

  “This does not surprise me,” Rivasoa said.

  The bike let out a little beep, the battery cell flashing once. Orfeus stood up, adjusting her cloak, and gave the handlebars a proprietary pat. “This should at least get us somewhere,” she said, and smiled at Rivasoa broadly. “Failing a better plan, I’d like to stop by Farflung before we get there.”

  She expected Rivasoa to bridle, but she did not. “I did learn much the last time,” Rivasoa said politely.

  Orfeus kept her grin steady, but it was hard. If she had misjudged, if Rivasoa was an enemy or a threat, then Orfeus was taking someone with a sharp and intellectual interest in Bright’s nanite technology directly to her friends and endangering them. Smog Sky. This was a bad idea.

  She didn’t have a better one. Her mind still nagged at her: delay, delay, when Linden was in danger. “You’re sure in a hurry to leave your wife’s town,” Orfeus observed.

  Rivasoa strode up to the bike. Orfeus a little reluctantly bent down and fiddled with it, and the wings folded slowly back in. “The sooner I finish this task, the sooner I can return,” Rivasoa said, softly. She glanced away, back over her shoulder towards the wayhouse. “I think I can argue for a little more away time.”

  “If you return crowned in glory having caught dangerous kidnappers, certainly,” Orfeus said. “If you fail…” She twisted her hand in the air and said, “Eh.”

  Rivasoa shot her a frown. “My concerns are secondary.”

  “Mine come first,” Orfeus said with a nod. “I’m glad we agree.”

  Rivasoa stopped and clasped her hands together. She said slowly, “Why are you trying to bait me?”

  Orfeus looked away. The back of her neck prickled.

  At the least, Bright and Em could help. Rivasoa would not dare to do anything there, surely? Maybe there was much a long-lived woman would dare. But if Orfeus was guarded, if she was careful, she could protect them, she would not bring fire down again.

  “Never mind it,” Orfeus said again, and swung up onto the saddle. “Let’s just go.”

  The bike laboured with two astride, but it wasn’t that much slower than coming back to base burdened with plants and potting mix. Rivasoa sat behind her with arms wrapped only loosely around her waist, but her seat was solid enough and she didn’t slip during sudden jerks of motion. The woman must have thighs like a vice.

  Orfeus leaned forward over her bike, coaxing out more speed. A little lower than she normally flew, well below the cloud cover. The landscape rolled by below in a patchwork green and silver. Plenty of growing things and no true wild, no untamed places. No place for wolves in this world.

  There were a few other small craft in the airspace around Farflung, darting nimbly between the towers or floating slower with cargo. Orfeus slowed her pace to avoid collisions, but they all paid her a wide, wide berth. She didn’t see anyone else on bikes like this one, and if Em had designed them specifically for the Order, no wonder people wanted to stay clear.

  Orfeus picked up speed again, weaving between the towers. Wildness had its perks.

  She docked on the exterior of what she was pretty sure was Bright’s tower. Strange to come at it from this angle. There was enough space on the balcony, anyway, even if it was crammed full of overgrown plants – neither Bright nor really Em had much patience for gardening.

  She swung off the bike, and waited for Rivasoa to dismount before deploying the wings to let it charge some more. They shone amongst the greenery like a giant cicada had landed there.

  Orfeus knocked on the window.

  Nothing happened, so she knocked again. Her patience for this dramatic entrance fading, she called, “Bright, I know you don’t leave the house.”

  Shuffling sounds. Bright pulled open the window door, looked at her and sniffed. “Hey, uh, the Fox,” she said. She glanced at Rivasoa as well, then back at Orfeus, and grinned. “Are you here to bring me in for my il
licit expeeeeriments?” She waggled her fingers. “My blood wiiiitchery!”

  It really was perfectly possible the Elders had been the first ones to hire Faolan. Orfeus’s head hurt. “I am bringing you in for crimes of being too brilliant and supportive a friend,” she intoned.

  Bright’s grin faded a smidge. “Haha,” she said. “Okay, so you want something.”

  Orfeus opened her mouth to deny it, but Bright was already stepping back, gesturing inside.

  “It’s good to see you,” Bright said as they entered, and then hurried past the emotional moment with a flap of her hand. “You’re late, though, you know schedules are important.” Bright looked at Rivasoa doubtfully. “Miss Tall, you wanna sit in a corner or something?”

  “Can I observe?” Rivasoa said.

  Bright shrugged like it didn’t matter much either way.

  “She knows,” Orfeus said, and Bright looked at her with her eyes wider. Orfeus shrugged. “So, ah…show her as little as you can?”

  “Oh, thanks for inviting a competitor into my own personal lab, Orfeus,” Bright snapped.

  Orfeus stepped back at the truth of that, holding up her hands in surrender. “I can leave again?”

  Bright shook her head, frowning. “C’mon, this isn’t fun when you don’t fight back. What’s up with you?”

  Orfeus lowered her hands, sighing. Rivasoa watching all of this without a word really didn’t help. “I know I shouldn’t have come back here,” she said. “You asked me not to come to you.”

  Bright frowned. “I mean, with boogeyman bounty hunters on your tail, yeah.” She waved at Orfeus vaguely. “You seem to have that…handled, though. And uh. I guess Em can handle herself.”

  So they had talked. Good. That was something. It was reassuring to know these two were up here, like a little island of serenity. Orfeus wanted to keep it safe.

  “Yeah,” Orfeus said slowly, rubbing at the back of her neck. “But you said…”

  “I didn’t mean never come to me when you’re in trouble,” Bright said, looking highly exasperated. She crossed her arms over her chest, sniffed. “Seriously, I know we used to be rivals but I really don’t want you dead. Could you be just a little more careful?” She looked anxious. Orfeus really wasn’t used to Bright, broad and brilliant and freckled-confident, being anxious. “I’m sure you didn’t need to be this…”