Foxhunt Read online

  She’d made the decision to trust this woman. There was no going back now, though she still made sure to memorise the route.

  After what felt like the longest time they’d yet spent underground, Rivasoa’s shape disappeared in front of her. A moment of crawling later, Orfeus breathed in deep as she came into relatively open air. She rested her feet carefully on the ground, soundless, and stood and stretched thankfully.

  Rivasoa walked a few metres along and stopped in front of another large circular door. “Here,” she said, sombre. She didn’t start her light again.

  Orfeus nodded. “Heal,” she added. There was a soft pulse as her Blood fixed the scrapes on her hands. Her knees had escaped the same treatment, in tough padded Order armour.

  “Oh, no,” Rivasoa said. “Tide and Sky forbid you get abrasions.”

  “You seem to go back and forth an awful lot on what you think I’m worth, Riv.”

  Rivasoa wrinkled her nose silently at the nickname, and Orfeus grinned.

  The other woman’s eyes were a human brown, whatever web display or map she’d been looking at slid back down and her consciousness fully engaged, but she stood motionless It was unlikely that she’d changed her mind, but…Rivasoa, however old she was, hadn’t done anything like this before.

  Orfeus hadn’t done anything exactly like this before either, but she’d at least come up multiple times against people who wanted to kill her. That cheered her up a little.

  “Three,” Orfeus mouthed. She held up her fingers and Rivasoa nodded. Orfeus dropped her fingers. Two. One.

  She hauled the door open.

  It was dark inside. Quiet. Just an echoing hollow of black, hard to make anything out. Rivasoa lifted her hand, and Orfeus caught her wrist. She cocked her head, listening.

  Mostly silence. No hum of power. She listened harder and wished she’d thought of augmenting her hearing somehow, with Blood if not with cybernetics.

  But in the dark and the silence, it was easier to focus on sounds. After a few moments, there came a soft, ragged whimper, and then it cut off. Straining, she thought she heard quiet breaths.

  No footfalls, and nothing close by. Orfeus released Rivasoa’s wrist, and padded cautiously forward as gold light bloomed out behind her.

  It didn’t quite look like a lab.

  If it had been one, it was clearly abandoned. There were a few tables, one long, large table a little to one side of the entrance and another running along the wall, but both were empty of any contents. Scuffed and stained, far from hygienic in any case.

  The floor was metal, grid-like, grooves leading to a drain in the centre. The main feature of the room was rows of what looked like chairs. They were nightmarish, all stiff metal, with restraints at the arms and legs and cradles for the head and …she stepped closer despite herself. Cables, leading out, cables all hooked into the chairs and running back into batteries.

  The first two rows were empty. Ten of the back twelve held occupants. Orfeus made herself stand still, scanning the room. There was a small cupboard to one side, and she walked over to it, infinitely slowly, infinitely careful. Twisted the knob and opened it soundlessly, and she tensed as a spill of rubber tubing fell out.

  Nothing else in there, no one else in there.

  Orfeus went to the bound people.

  They were cast in shadow, this far from the light, just dim shapes. Orfeus bent down, staring intently. “Rivasoa, closer,” she said.

  There was a moment, but then Rivasoa’s gold light swelled over the scene. Orfeus heard her make a sharp gasp.

  Orfeus bit her own lip to keep from making a sound, and the salty metal taste of blood filled her mouth as she stared. The people trapped and strapped in those chairs mostly looked unconscious, and that might’ve been a blessing. As well as the shackles at wrist and ankle, cables lead into them and wires lead out. Wires running up under their fingernails, tubes into their veins and out of them. She didn’t want to get too close, but their heads looked to be connected directly into those cradles.

  She didn’t want to think about what the stains on the cradles were.

  She paced along the line until she came to someone who looked to be conscious. Looked to be. Their eyes were open, but unseeing, flooded with blood. Orfeus looked at the person next to them and tensed, shoulders drawing together, she couldn’t help it. That one had wires bursting right out through their eyes, wires in a colourful gaggle of colours, red and yellow and blue.

  Orfeus covered her mouth with her hand. She breathed out, then in, slow and careful.

  She dropped her hand and looked at the conscious one. A thick tube connected to the back of their neck, wires under their nails and in their arms and their legs. Their mouth was open, and another soft, ragged breath eased out, harsh with pain. She couldn’t be surprised. The tips of their fingers were blackened, nails peeling back from the wires, and black marks spread out from the corners of their dry lips and around their eyes. Thick patches of blisters erupted up from their neck and across their arms.

  “Hi,” Orfeus said softly. “Can you hear me?”

  Nothing. The blind, staring eyes didn’t roll to look at her. A quiet, ragged breath.

  Orfeus tapped her foot restlessly. She didn’t need to hold energy in reserve now. She held her hand out over their shoulder —wanted badly to fix those hands, but she couldn’t risk mending the flesh right over the wires. “Heal,” she said quietly.

  Flesh knitted together, slowly. Slower than it should have, and even after she concentrated and the worst thick blisters eased into new skin, it had a ridged and reddened look.

  Orfeus drew her hands back. She didn’t want to just make the damage worse. These people needed proper medical attention. They needed proper medical attention a year ago; failing that, immediately would have to do. Right now, she had the sinking feeling that what they most needed was a soft bed to die on.

  She shook the thoughts away. She couldn’t tell the future. No one could.

  “This is awful,” Rivasoa whispered.

  Orfeus glanced up over at her. Rivasoa’s hand with light was still held out steadily. Her other hand was clasped tight to her chest, her eyes huge with horror.

  “Any idea what’s happening here?” Orfeus said, pitching her voice quiet. She didn’t want to disturb any of these people.

  “Harvesting energy,” Rivasoa said, taking an unsteady step forward. She stopped far short of any of them, but frowned at one of the vacant chairs. “That’s what it looks like.” She shook her head, sharp, quick. “This…”

  Orfeus looked at the chair, at all the empty chairs. “This can’t be all of them,” she said slowly, not sure whether or not it would be better if they found a pile of bodies in a hidden back room.

  “This is a perversion of everything I believe in,” Rivasoa said unsteadily. She stepped forward and rested just the tip of her broad finger against the chair’s arm rest. Orfeus straightened, and Rivasoa looked at her. This was as helpless as Orfeus had ever seen the hypercompetent and put-together woman look. “This isn’t right,” Rivasoa said. “We stopped this. We were meant to have stopped this. The world moved forward.”

  This particular thing felt unpleasantly new, but exploiting people for energy…hurting, and exploiting, and taking and taking. Orfeus wished she’d ever been able to believe that those things could ever be entirely stopped. She looked at the row of people strapped to chairs and said, struggling to keep her voice low, “So, what, you thought you won the fight?” She gestured at them. “This… his just means we have to keep fighting.”

  After a long moment, Rivasoa nodded.

  “Fall apart later,” Orfeus said tiredly. “After the moment of crisis is done, because I know I will. Right now, they need us.” She paced the line, looking for some easy way to get them free. There was no universal overriding mechanism as far as she could see. Probably unwise just to rip them free of tubes and wires, even if she itched to.

  Rivasoa paced the line slowly. “Eight of these are El
ders,” she said slowly. “Two are not.”

  Orfeus would take her word for it. She frowned where Rivasoa was looking. The two who weren’t Elders looked in much worse shape, the tubes leading back out of their veins a dark and sickly red, with scarring built up at their eyes and necks and arms. Elder Blood would have done a certain amount of healing, perhaps, overriding its own safety mechanisms after a certain amount of damage…

  Orfeus winced at the thought of how much damage would have to be done to do that. She’d once broken her leg trying to jump from one building to another, while spectacularly drunk, and had a day of blinding pain before she’d judged herself sober enough to set the bone and let her Blood do its healing work. These people had been driven past suffering and into unconsciousness over and over again. Their bodies had done everything possible to help them. It hadn’t been enough.

  Orfeus shook her head, sharply, once and then again. It had kept them alive, and now maybe they could be helped.

  “Drawing energy from Blooded people would certainly give more,” Rivasoa said slowly. “If that is what they were doing.” Her voice rippled with loathing on the mysterious unknown they. Good to know how she sounded about people she truly hated. “But not…all that much.” She glanced down the row. “These look like people who have had everything taken already.”

  “Experiments that didn’t work out,” Orfeus said slowly. Her stomach gave a tight flip at people just being disposed like that. “So then where are the ones that they haven’t given up on yet?”

  Rivasoa stared down the line, eyes hollowed, then shook her head. “We can look for excesses of energy,” she said, looking nauseous. Her dark skin was ashen. “Or you can try your plan if you have to. Anything to stop this.”

  Orfeus nodded. Priorities. Yes. She rested her hand very lightly on the shoulder of the bound person she stood beside, then drew it back again helplessly. “Can you call for help?”

  Rivasoa nodded, the filaments in her eyes blazing blue.

  The work was not easy or quick or clean. Rivasoa nodded, which meant the message was sent, and then there was the waiting. Orfeus paced the dimensions of the chamber again. It was large, mostly empty. Any instruments had been taken away, which was almost a relief. She didn’t touch anything in case Elders had technology that could trace the touch of a person’s fingers, the brush of their hair. One of the people was shivering, compulsively, and Orfeus laid her cloak over them. The shivering didn’t stop.

  It was far too quiet, and then the room was bursting with noise and efficiency, clean people with blue uniforms and serious expressions gathering around the people in chairs. People in blue uniforms asking questions of her and Rivasoa that Orfeus answered nearly in a blur, and followed with, “But can I help?”

  They put a blanket around her shoulders and set her down. Orfeus suffered this for a minute, then came and stood behind them, quietly, not interfering. One person per chair, the health workers busily, carefully, delicately disconnected and cut wires and tubes, pulling free individual fingers. Orfeus stayed well away from that. The first person was loaded up on a stretcher, and Orfeus lurched gladly forwards. “I can help carry, I have steady hands,” she said. “If you need to get the rest back.”

  The would-be carrier nodded, brief, quick, and went to help the next person, with their eyes all wire-burst.

  Orfeus focused on the stretcher. On steadiness. Through the crawlspace, she and the medical worker had to push the stretcher through the space between them, inching it forward. The cramped passage barely felt like it took any length of time now, before they were out in more open space. Balance, balance, carrying the burden forward. The dripping of water. Soft algae glow of light.

  Out, out into the sun, and busy teams of blue-uniformed people eased the stretcher away and into the white and sterile interior of a small cubed vehicle, just narrow enough for the road.

  She went to go back down, and someone put a hand on her shoulder, shook their head. Orfeus stayed. It wouldn’t make any sense to clog up the tunnel.

  She shivered and felt at her shoulders. No cloak.

  Orfeus didn’t want to go too far, but didn’t want to stay in one place either. She wandered off a ways to a small park, bright with flowers. She laid down on the bench and stared up, watching the slow shift of colours over the world as the angle of light changed.

  After a while, someone cleared their throat. Orfeus turned and saw Margaux of the council of Elders in her hoverchair, her hair longer than when Orfeus had last seen her, wavy and brown. Orfeus swung her feet to the side and sat up very slightly faster than she would have done for anyone else.

  “Are they safe?” she said with no precursor.

  Margaux didn’t chide her. “They’re out, at least,” she said. She frowned at a tall frame of wisteria. “How to help them from here is unclear, but they are in the hands of our most qualified medical professionals. And our most qualified means very qualified indeed.” She looked tired, leaning back in her chair like her back needed the support. “No one’s ever seen anything like this before…”

  “That’s good,” Orfeus said. Margaux gave her a sharp look and Orfeus shrugged. “Maybe we stopped it early.” Not early enough: her brain screamed too late, too late. Linden hadn’t godsdamned been down there.

  “Regardless,” Margaux said somewhat grimly, like someone doing work they did not look forward to. “My Archivist did good work, it seems, bringing you back here.” That wasn’t precisely how Orfeus remembered it, but that wasn’t important: Margaux said, drearily, “It would seem we owe you.”

  Orfeus cocked her head, considering. A good person would say she needed no thanks for doing what was right. And she didn’t, she honestly didn’t, but it wasn’t like the task was done. “I ask only for a boon,” she said.

  Margaux’s jaw tightened. “Name your favour.”

  Up to one half of my kingdom, Orfeus thought wildly. “Oh, many people favour me,” Orfeus said cheerfully. Margaux gave a gimlet glare. Orfeus sighed, and stretched out her hands with a smile. “All I want is to play a show in your town.”

  “Oh,” Margaux said. She hovered back a little. “Reasonable,” she said, grudgingly. She waved a hand, dismissing it. “You will have full access to our performance space and whatever tools your trade requires.” Her voice had only the slightest touch of disdain, which probably showed restraint.

  Orfeus grinned hugely. “Oh, you won’t regret it,” she said. “This show’s going to be unforgettable.”

  Tools of the trade turned out to mean a winding and spacious museum full of ancient treasures and lore, a place nearly as beautiful as the gutted lab had been awful. Nearly the inverse of it. She’d stepped out from hell and earned heaven.

  For now. And for good purpose.

  Still, she was being set loose in a room of treasures. The show would be soon, tonight. She should concentrate. “Focus,” Orfeus said aloud. She trailed off into a different room, not even one with stringed instruments, and grinned hugely. “Oh, lovely, lovely…” Flutes, all manner of flutes. Once, they had made these out of silver. Orfeus reached out a hand and rested it carefully against the thin clear glass, staring at the places to rest the fingers, imagining the music that would come out. A bright silver song.

  Rivasoa would bid her to focus, too, but Rivasoa was in conference with the council about how best to investigate. Orfeus had given her more than twelve minutes, she’d given her a full twenty, and Rivasoa hadn’t yet found any more energy blips or found the next place to look into. She didn’t have more time than that, not that she held it against Rivasoa. It had been a stark and upsetting place.

  She walked into a room full of guitars and grinned her brightest, truest grin. Shadows could not reach her here, no tubes could sneak from her memory and slide into her neck: there were guitars.

  The display followed the progression of time, right from ouds up to lutes up to guitars like Galahad, many-coursed, then the design of guitars that folk called classical, five-stringed an
d many-fretted. Orfeus hummed at them admiringly.

  And then after those were guitars flat and jagged, hard as a board and shaped like lightning. Orfeus grinned brighter. “Oh, lovely,” she said again. “Hello.”

  She took one, red as an exclamation, and the cable to connect it to whatever amplifiers the Elders had in whatever passed for a performance space.

  The space turned out to be decent enough, when she paced through it twenty minutes before the show: a shell-like amphitheatre, with a few amplifiers and gear. The tiered rows of seats were open to the air. She went out and practiced with her flat guitar. Without the amplifier, it still let out sound, and she strummed inquisitively. A decent amount of sound. Notes she knew. Yes, she could do this. Her songs wouldn’t adapt all that well to the medium, but not all that badly either.

  She looked back out the curtain after another ten minutes. Only a small crowd, a few dozen curious people, but she could draw more in once she started playing.

  Orfeus went back and fitted the guitar strap around her neck, playing a few more notes.

  A polite cough: “News from the council,” someone said.

  Orfeus glanced at them. “Oh. Significance,” she said warily. Xe smiled, xyr beautiful face creasing with it, seeming sincerely pleased. Orfeus smiled back a little reluctantly. She didn’t really have time for a deep conversation about advances in technology. “What news?”

  “They didn’t think of actually asking the foremost Blood expert, because of course they didn’t,” O’Hallow said, with a shake of xyr head that set xyr curls of black hair rippling. “But I have some good ideas about where this lab could be located.”

  Orfeus nodded.

  Significance looked faintly apologetic. “But you can do your performance first,” xe said, graciously. “Of course that’s important to you.” As though she’d put a show above anyone’s safety.

  Orfeus laughed. “If you only have ideas and not certainties, I’ll try this first,” she said. “Thank you all the same.”

  Cheering from outside. She’d been introduced.