Foxhunt Page 25

She strode out past xem.

  There was a jab in her neck. Her mind jangled, slowed, broken shards of coloured glass. She fell and she hit the ground. Her body numbing, her eyes still open for now, to see Significance O’Hallow striding forward to grin down at her, bright and impish. Xe bent and lifted her body with surprising strength, and then her eyes closed despite herself, and she was falling.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I knew the moment I met her that I’d tell the story of Orfeus one day. I just didn’t know what kind of story it would be: whether she was hero or a tragic villain or whether, wholly regardless of what she did, it would end in tragedy. I couldn’t tell, and that scared me.

  - From the journal of Rivasoa

  Orfeus woke up slowed. Dreary. All her new energy was gone. She was so tired and drained she might have been dead already.

  Focus. She breathed. She could get out of anything, if she was smart, brave, clever.

  Pretending to be unconscious was probably pointless; her breathing would have changed. Orfeus opened her eyes to get as much information as she could.

  She was strapped to a chair. There was metal against her neck, she could feel the cold —her hair had been lifted aside to let it connect. She moved her head just slightly and didn’t feel anything connecting there at least, no cradle yet, no pain except a slight sting. She’d been jabbed.

  Dosed, betrayed. Anger and fear clenched in her gut. Significance O’Hallow. She should have been more careful, kept her guard up, never trusted, never.

  Flicking down her eyes, her stomach lurched again. There were tubes in her arms, running red and thick with blood. No wonder she felt so ill and weak. Her blood was being drained, again.

  Betrayals on betrayals. She should have known better.

  Significance O’Hallow strode into her line of sight, looking beautiful in soft cream robes, smile charming, eyes bright blue. “You’re awake!” xe said. Xe leaned over to smile at her, hands on xyr knees. “Greetings, good afternoon, good to see you again, Orfeus singer. I’ve been looking forward to having another conversation.”

  Orfeus ran her tongue along her lips, ensuring she could speak. “Gonna start off strong,” she said, croaking only a little. “Fuck you.”

  Significance laughed in delight, leaning back and clapping xyr hands. “Oh, that’s so archaic, you’re very knowledgeable. I knew I would enjoy this. Entertain me, enchant me.”

  “Fuck off and die,” Orfeus said by way of obliging. Significance smiled more thinly.

  Orfeus darted her eyes to the side. She moved her head and couldn’t move it more than slightly: metal bracketed it on either side. Orfeus let out a long breath, nothing to panic about, nothing to panic about, this was nowhere near as bad as it could be, barely even as bad as crawling through the tunnel.

  She might be underground. She might be anywhere. This lab looked like the polar opposite of the other one, from what she could make out with her eyes still wanting to wince away from the light. There was a lot of light. Every surface gleamed, mostly very white, enough so that Significance’s clean cream robes looked positively shabby. Instruments were laid out on a table. Orfeus blinked her watering eyes at them and then averted her gaze. She didn’t want to know about that. Didn’t need to know about that quite yet.

  So she could only look to the side by straining her eyes, and she couldn’t see anything past the steel that bracketed her forehead. Couldn’t see if anyone else was trapped here. Dammit, dammit, this wasn’t how it was meant to go…

  “You don’t seem pleased,” O’Hallow said sorrowfully. Xe stooped down to blink at her in sympathy. “Wasn’t this the plan?”

  Orfeus gritted out, “Not this soon.” She didn’t have any damn backup…

  “Oh,” O’Hallow said and shrugged. “Well, I’m moving it forward.” And xe laughed. “I’m making great strides forward. Just you wait.” Xe added in a mostly recognisable dialect of old Éirish Gaelic, “We all must look to the rising of the sun,” and Orfeus glared at xem.

  “Why are you doing this?” she said. Significance seemed to feel like talking.

  Significance smiled hesitantly, like she was the one acting strangely. “The same reason you do things, I’d thought,” xe said. “For the art and for the beauty. To progress and carry on.”

  Orfeus blinked at xem tiredly. Blood was still running out of her, out, out through the tubes. “You strap people down and hook them into machinery and torture them…for the art.”

  O’Hallow shook xyr head. “Only partly,” xe said. “I was trying to appeal to you. It’s for science, obviously.” Xe grinned. “Do you know how much energy I’ve generated?”

  Orfeus said slowly, “The human body is not an efficient generator of energy.” O’Hallow only smiled. Orfeus frowned. She knew this. “Nowhere near as good as solar, even wind. We’re not worth the calories you put in.”

  Significance tucked xyr hair behind xyr ear. “Maybe not most humans,” xe said. “But some of us, we’re set apart.”

  Orfeus flinched back. O’Hallow laughed.

  Xe gestured and said, “I’ve found I get best results from the passionate. But it might still just be confirmation bias. I need to be careful, to be methodical. Take my time.” Xe sighed. “Working alone is hard, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, you’re very tragic,” Orfeus said. “You kidnap people for energy?”

  “For experiments,” Significance said serenely. Xe grinned. “I call them lightning bugs! I just think it’s neat. Nice. Nifty. Do you want to see them? I can wheel you around. There were a lot of improvements in the mark four lab.”

  Mark four? Orfeus said, as emotionless as she could, “Yes.”

  Significance hummed, and went behind her briefly. Something shifted, and she was turned. She could make out more now: another ten chairs, newer-looking than the abandoned ones, seven of them occupied. These people looked better than the further-along cases from down in the Catacombs, though they did not look good: bleeding in the eyes and blood around the mouth, burst blood cells painting stark patterns of veins across the face. Her eyes narrowed in on one, the bearded figure sitting slackly with eyes closed and tubes in him. Linden. Still breathing.

  Significance leaned over her shoulder, and she tried not to flinch at the brush of xyr hair. “Progress,” xe said again. Xe turned her back around.

  Xe stepped away from her, brushing xyr hands off delicately on xyr robes. Orfeus could focus better now. Panic and resolve solidified in her heart, now it wasn’t just her safety at sake. She could make out the things scattered on Significance’s table. Gleaming metal instruments she really didn’t like the look of, and beside them her cloak, bundled up. Her fang earring gleamed on it. Orfeus twitched.

  There was no clear-coloured vial on the table. She still had Bright’s gift tucked away in her boot, a boost of Blood. She’d need it.

  Orfeus said, “Where’s my guitar?”

  “Oh, Orfeus,” Significance sighed.

  Orfeus flung herself hard against her bonds, giving xem no more warning than that. She didn’t get anywhere. Significance frowned.

  “You’ll just hurt yourself,” xe said. “That’s less fun than if I do it.”

  Oh, excellent, sadism. Sadism was just what this situation needed. Orfeus flared her fingers but couldn’t get enough dexterity. She said clearly, instead, “Energy.” Adrenaline pulsed through her, bringing back some hint of energy to her flagging self. She threw herself hard against her bonds. Nothing.

  Significance took a step back, looking sorrowful. Orfeus snarled, “Lightning.” It came jagged out of her fingers, danced a little down the wires she saw hooked up under her fingernails, and then pulsed right back into her. She arched and screamed.

  Of course Significance was prepared for Blooded. “I thought you’d be more helpful,” O’Hallow said with a trace of disappointment. Orfeus stared at xem, panting raggedly. “But I knew this was a risk.” Xe sighed. “There’s no progress without risk. Progress and process and we carry on…I do h
ave to thank you, though, I wouldn’t have thought to go after that little carpenter of yours.”

  Orfeus tensed her shoulders. It hurt to move, but she couldn’t help it. Oh, Linden. “Passionate people,” she grated. So many betrayals she hadn’t even meant to make. “Was it you who took out the hit on me?”

  Significance blinked. “Me?” xe said, and looked behind xyr shoulder like xe thought someone else was in the room. “No. I had no idea who you were until you came here.” Orfeus deflated at that for a few different reasons. O’Hallow looked back at her with a grin. “But then you came here, and, well, I knew you were a prime suspect.”

  “I hadn’t done anything wrong then,” Orfeus rasped. Her throat felt dry as bones.

  Significance stooped down in front of her, then tsked in the back of xyr throat and leaned forward, resting xyr weight and xyr hands earnestly on her knees like they were confidantes. Orfeus tensed her shoulders again. “Prime candidate?” Significance said. “I don’t always think in the language I’m talking in.” Xe smiled. “I’m sure you understand. There’s so many. It’s so messy. I can never talk as fast as I think.”

  “Feel like you come pretty close,” Orfeus said.

  Significance tapped xyr fingers against the tube in her vein, then unhooked it carefully. The skin of her arm underneath it formed a pallid circle around the puncture wound, an unhealthy colour. How long had she been here?

  “Everyone was chasing after you, trying to figure you out,” Significance said. Xe cocked xyr head, staring at her intently. Sky blue eyes. Periwinkle. “Trying to learn how you had such lovely Blood. So I took a sample.” Xe waved a hand. “Took the initiative. No one else would.”

  “No one would,” Orfeus agreed. That was almost comforting. Not Rivasoa, not Margaux as far as she knew. Not Faolan and the Wild. Those other people might kill her or scorn her, but only Significance would have done this.

  Significance sparked her a grin electric. “But there’s nothing special about you,” xe said. “You’re just a thief! You’re a crawling, miserable thief.”

  Orfeus barked a laugh. “All those things, right now,” she agreed.

  “If it was a natural deviance, you would have been very helpful,” Significance said sadly. “But you still could. Any broadening of my subject sample is good. There’s never enough time.” Xe huffed out a frustrated breath. “Things went much faster when I had animal subjects.”

  Orfeus recoiled.

  Significance saw her look of horror and laughed. “Not like that!” xe said, holding xyr hands up in front of xem. “I’m no monster. Not real animals! I mean those poor dumb warriors in the Wild. Augments were one thing, but I would’ve gone so much further …” Xyr smooth, perfect face scrunched into a frown. “Luga would’ve burned so bright. My first lightning bug. But no, he had to be a coward and sever our partnership, acquaintance, alliance.”

  Luga’s blackened fingertips, the paint over his face like a bold daubed distraction from his withered hands. Mordrai saying, The old medic. Quite a piece of work. “Alright,” Orfeus said slowly. The room was spinning, and she closed her eyes. She had to force herself to open them again. Everything felt dizzy and grey. “Significance. What do you want?”

  She was bound, blood-drained, helpless. Significance straightened and cleared xyr throat, clasping xyr hands together formally. “I think you could help,” Significance said. Orfeus stared at xem. O’Hallow’s lips tugged up in a shy, uncertain smile. “You’re nothing special, but you could help me.” Xe leaned forward and gripped her armrests, xyr eyes electric blue. “You want to be famous, don’t you? They will tell tales of this for another thousand years. We will never be forgotten.”

  Orfeus said unsteadily, “I would rather die nameless and unmourned and have no one ever speak my name again than ever be associated for a moment with you.”

  O’Hallow leaned back with a sniff. Probably centuries old, and xe most often acted like a teenager. “Oh, fine.” Xe paced a step, turned sharply in an elegant whirl of fabric, and squatted to peer at her. “A different question, then. Which would you sacrifice first?” Xe smiled. “Your clever tongue or those quick hands?”

  She stared at xem blankly. Significance gave her a bracing, slightly sad smile, like this was something xe had no control over at all.

  She felt slowed and dried and empty. Xe would need an answer. “Tongue,” Orfeus said. At the end of the day, what she most needed was music.

  Significance beamed. “Oh, good,” xe said, straightening. “I can skip straight to the throat tube instead of bothering with intravenous nonsense.”

  Xe was halfway to being kin to her. Certainly someone with a lot of similarities, though hopefully not as many as she’d first thought. She had nearly trusted xem at first. It wasn’t the worst betrayal. She didn’t have any true kin left to betray her.

  Significance had nearly the same accent as Orfeus’s mother Maylis, with her Éirish roots. Orfeus looked more like Basma, but she took after Maylis, always coming home with dirt on her hands and grass-stained knees, getting into scrapes.

  “It’s alright, chérie,” Basma had said over and over again. “Get into as many scrapes as you like, as long as you get safe back out of them. Settle down, now, don’t cry. I’ll tell you another story.”

  A smooth, light, lilting voice, nearly familiar, amused. “Wake up, Orfeus.”

  Orfeus focused. Significance, with xyr trailing curls. Orfeus wanted to close her eyes and block xem out for a moment, but she might just pass out, and she couldn’t afford to. Linden depended on her.

  Orfeus looked xem in the eye and said, “A wonderful dance,” enunciating clearly. She couldn’t dance enough to cue up an illusion that way, didn’t have enough attention for a proper one, all hazy and spinning as she was.

  Significance blinked. Fortunately, xe was nonsensical. “It is, isn’t it?” xe said.

  Orfeus added, through her wavering focus, “Your batteries are on fire.”

  Significance turned, staring, to where the tidy stack of energy cells seemed to be flickering with yellow and red. Xe howled and flung xemself at them. There was no chance of getting out of her bonds, but she jerked herself forward with all her strength, and jerked the chair forward, teetering it off balance. It crashed into the ground with Orfeus under it face-first. She spat out blood, blinded with pain. The illusion would have dropped now.

  The chair weighed heavy on her. She wriggled forward, just an inch. Another.

  Significance came striding back. Xe grabbed the chair backing and lifted it easily up, and frowned down at her. “What’s that meant to achieve exactly?” xe said.

  Orfeus spat at xem, which was satisfying. Red stains on cream robes.

  Significance gave a dainty little shrug and let go of the chair. Orfeus jerked her hands frantically, like she could get them in front of her face, but she couldn’t. Instead she twisted her body, turning just enough so the chair fell on its side instead of square on her face again. She lay there for a second. No time to get her composure back.

  She flicked out her cauterknife from her sleeve and cut frantically at her bonds. “What?” Significance said. Then xe laughed. “Oh, the Order’s advanced since last I looked. Oh, I’m so proud of them.”

  No time for history right now. The sharplight wasn’t enough. Orfeus, praying urgently in the back of her mind to any god that would listen, flicked up the setting. Snakebite flared sharper. More than sharp enough to cut easily through her flesh and bone. She might lose her hands after all.

  Achingly careful, she severed through the base of the shackle loop, and it came free. Orfeus exhaled roughly and thumbed the knife back off. She couldn’t handle that burning intensity of blade.

  Significance just watched her.

  Orfeus gave xem a hot, bloody glare over what felt like a broken nose, and pulled the vial from her boot.

  A bolt of electricity impacted directly into her hand, and she hadn’t even seen Significance move. Her teeth rattled, and for that brief
moment it felt like her skin was on fire. The vial and the knife dropped from her nerveless fingers.

  O’Hallow stepped forward at xyr leisure and kicked at the cauterknife. It went rattling away. Orfeus watched blankly as xe picked up the little vial of magic that was her last best chance. Watched as xe straightened, and pushed the needle into xyr own arm.

  Significance let out an appreciative breath. “Oh, that’s nice.” Xe stooped, and patted very lightly at Orfeus’s cheek. “I must find this clever friend of yours.”

  Panic spiked in her. “Heat,” she snarled. She concentrated it not just in her fingertips, but glowing fierce through all of her. As hot as she could make it, as fast as she could make it. She turned herself into a supernova.

  Significance stumbled back a few steps. “Come now!” xe protested.

  Orfeus was protected from the heat of her own Blood, but not from the metal of the chair if she heated it too far. She strained hard at the bonds, gritting her teeth, pain and fire in every inch of her. The other cuff snapped through.

  It was easier to unclasp the latches at her feet now. She got them both, but the second one seared and burned at her fingertips unbearably. Not her hands, not her hands.

  Not her life. Just the next few minutes and then she could worry, warriors couldn’t worry.

  She was aching and in pain, but still herself. She twisted her fingers and felt the lack of heat like a rush of cold water. O’Hallow cocked xyr head, and she had perhaps a moment. Xe was certainly augmented, all the usual Elder gifts as well as whatever else xe had cooked up for the Order. Xe was five steps away. But she only needed to move three.

  Three steps, and xe was nearly on her, but Orfeus snatched up the earring from the table and fumbled it to her ear, jerking back. Significance’s fingers skimmed past her throat, and she put her fingers to the earring. A sting of pain that barely registered.

  Orfeus gasped out, “Help me.”

  And then Significance clicked xyr fingers, and she jolted in pain as electricity passed through her, her muscles locking up. O’Hallow stepped forward and closed xyr fingers around her earring, then ripped it from her ear. Orfeus turned her head automatically to follow the direction it fell, and Significance hit her in the face.