Foxhunt Read online

  “Trust is a mistake only when placed in the wrong person,” Margaux said. “It seems you have others. In any case – it is good you were here, and we’ll see to it that O’Hallow is never in a position to hurt anyone again.”

  Orfeus hummed, trying to keep her doubt to herself. Significance might not be much of a combatant, but xe was formidable, and effectively immortal.

  Margaux looked up at her, gauging, then sighed. “Most likely xyr gifts will be removed,” Margaux said almost gently, and Orfeus felt a jolt.

  “That can be done?” she said numbly. If one drained blood, and then drained it again and again, until the nanites were all removed…but the augmentations Significance no doubt had, those would have to be removed surgically. Orfeus winced away.

  Margaux looked down at her lap, resting her hands there. The gesture was reminiscent of Rivasoa. “Quite,” she said, and Orfeus thought she sounded sad.

  Orfeus nodded and staggered off.

  Before she’d gotten four metres, Faolan caught up to her, and hovered watchfully until Orfeus finished gathering her equipment, gave up and leaned against him again.

  Faol caught her weight and said, “Will you accept being treated here?”

  “Linden,” Orfeus said.

  Faol’s arm around her shoulders was feather-light. “The best thing you can give your friend right now is time to heal.”

  Faolan talked like someone who knew an awful lot about healing, which was strange, she thought surely it was strange. He was so perfectly shaped to cause harm.

  Orfeus tugged at his shoulders. “Take me home,” she commanded.

  Faol sighed, but obeyed.

  They went out through the door, and then through a vast abandoned room in a greater state of disrepair than O’Hallow’s gleaming, sanitised lab. Faol steered her down another corridor, then stopped abruptly.

  She peered past him, then took a step back. They stood directly at the edge of where the wall of a tower opened out into the empty air. At least ten storeys below, the wooded streets of Eldergrove were bathed with coloured light. Not underground after all.

  It was nice. Orfeus breathed in deep.

  Faolan stood without urging her along, though surely this hadn’t been her planned route. Orfeus breathed, breathed in and out till it didn’t feel like she was drowning in tunnels.

  She cleared her throat, then cleared it a couple more times, then had to admit she was able to speak.

  “Faol,” she said, “thank you.”

  A startled sort of silence. “You’re welcome?” Faolan said. He shrugged his shoulders, like the weight of gratitude sat uncomfortably. “I did say we were partners.”

  “I thought that just meant you wouldn’t stand in my way,” Orfeus said. “I didn’t think you were going to help.” The thought of partners was an unpleasant reminder, Significance and Luga and their strange connection, but she pushed that down for now. He felt so steadying at her side.

  Faolan let out a small huff of breath, amused. “I know better than to stand in your way,” she said. “Of course I…I wanted to stand beside you.”

  Orfeus paused then, and looked at him. The curves and sharp angles of his mask. She held up her hand, and Faol stayed still as she touched lightly at his flat black hair, the warmth of his neck. She traced her fingers over his skin, and he straightened, jaw tensing, rigid. Offended or…

  Deep brown eyes stared at her uncertainly. “You think I’m brave?” Faol said stilted.

  “Sure,” Orfeus said. She moved her hand away, carefully. No sudden movements. She added, “Delusional definitely, but brave too. You’re a lot of things. We all are.”

  Faolan tilted his head, looking at her. Eyes boring into her like they always had, filled with hatred, or …

  Orfeus put her fingers to his mask and tilted it up, pushing it back over his face. Faol blinked.

  Orfeus dropped her hand, suddenly shy. She was glad she wasn’t still wearing the stupid daisy earring that had signified Primrose, even if her ear was dripping blood onto her cloak. She was used to making the first move, and at the same time that didn’t feel right.

  “I thought you hated me?” Orfeus said, questioningly.

  Faolan blinked again. Then he laughed, a soundless laugh that she felt in his chest. “You’re the one who hated me!” he exclaimed. He tilted his head, smiling uncertainly, baring just a few crooked teeth. The smile shone from his eyes, though. “How could I hate you? How could I do anything but adore you? You’re brilliant.”

  She kissed him.

  She rushed forward a little too fast, and Faol was a little taller than anyone she’d kissed lately, so the angle was all wrong. Their noses mushed together. Orfeus shifted so their lips aligned, and kept kissing him. The mouth of the Wolf was soft and uncertain. Yielding to her.

  Orfeus pulled back just a smidge and pressed their lips together, resting her hand on the sharp line of her jaw. Orfeus could take it as slow as Faol wanted.

  There was time.

  There wasn’t time, but here there was, with his arms going uncertainly up around her, then clutching painfully tight. Orfeus grinned savage into the embrace and kissed just a little harder, nipping at his lip. Faolan said softly into her mouth, “Oh.”

  Orfeus pushed away after far too soon, regretfully. She should have used up all her adrenaline some time ago, yet her blood was singing. She wiped her mouth.

  Faol blinked, looking uncertain, and Orfeus grinned and slapped him on the arm, squeezing appreciatively. “I’m bleeding everywhere,” she said.

  Faol nodded, resolve coming back into his eyes. He pulled his mask down, all distant warrior, and she would bet her boots that had been, if not his first kiss, then one of his first. She was far fonder of this honourable murderer than she would normally let herself accept. “Right.”

  “Later,” she said gently, and more like a question than she wanted. Faol smiled at her all tremor and tooth.

  “Yes.”

  They made their slow way back out of the building and to Faolan’s bike, leaned against the wall with not even an attempt made at concealment. He must have hurried. Orfeus grinned at it, then grinned at him. Faol looked away with his pale cheeks flushing red.

  She settled Orfeus into the seat and sat behind, arms tight around her so she wouldn’t fall. Orfeus would be more offended by that except she really wasn’t even capable of standing without help yet. The bike lifted off the ground, skimming and weaving through the reaching branches of poplar trees, then up above, above Eldergrove’s towers, and flying towards the sun.

  Orfeus drifted in and out of consciousness, held safe from falling. Faolan was a little shorter than her ideal, but no one could fault his muscle definition. She could not sleep, though, and could not run any longer from the suspicions that hounded her.

  It all came back to Luga. Luga who sent them after Linden with false claims, Linden who led her to Significance. Significance hadn’t heard of her before she first met xem, but Luga certainly had.

  Luga, who wanted people who could do the harder thing.

  Orfeus roused a little as they came into the base’s airspace, approaching the looming metal rectangle of grey and black. Luga’s flying castle, where he sat tugging at threads. Even so, when she’d called it ‘home,’ she meant it.

  Faol landed neat as ever, in a trim line cruising to a stop half a metre from the bike docking stations.

  The Wolf’s hands settled at her waist like she planned to bodily lift her, and Orfeus gently brushed her hands off and stood herself. Her head swayed only a little. Progress.

  “I’ll get you some juice?” Faolan said.

  “Oh, bless your heart,” Orfeus said fervently, “you are making excellent progress to me kissing you again.”

  Faol frown-smiled. “I need to work my way up?”

  “Clearly, shortstack.”

  Faolan frown-smiled a little bigger. Orfeus wasn’t sure if that meant it was more of a frown or more of a smile.

  They walked t
ogether through the halls, but Orfeus’s steps slowed, slowed, until she came to a stop outside the corridor that led to Luga’s throne room. “I need a word with Luga,” she said. Lying should have been easy, by now, but she still had to force it to her tongue. “Just a report.”

  She ached, she needed rest and blood sugars, and medical attention, from the Owl instead of just intelligent but nowhere near sapient tiny machines in her blood. This was the worst possible time to do this, but she was so tired, and she couldn’t rest until the work was done.

  Faolan looked hesitant. Orfeus tensed, balling her hand, but Faol said, “Luga did not want me to go on missions alone.”

  Orfeus relaxed. “I’ll put in a good word for you,” she suggested.

  Faolan quickly shook his head.

  She smirked after him as he turned and strode off. She swayed, one hand to the wall, and determined she could stand on her own, just.

  She nearly hoped Luga wouldn’t be here right now, would be asleep or in the mess hall. Then Orfeus could go to her room and curl up on her small bed and look at her plants, maybe with a Wolf bundled in her arms all muscle and warmth.

  Life was not so kind. She came to the door, and Dormarch the Boarhound stood in front like a sentry. Ve wouldn’t do that for an empty room.

  Dormarch was as sober as she had ever seen vem: deadly, dreadly, drearily sober, with sleepless black smears under ver eyes, the panting dog mask like a mockery of ver bleak spirit. “Please don’t,” Dormarch said. “Fox, if our friendship has meant anything, please don’t.”

  Orfeus looked at vem a little blankly, and then walked past. Ve didn’t fight her.

  Luga sat as ever on his throne atop its pile of scrap metal, and looked at her with no change of expression as she strode in. Same face smeared with black war paint: thin brows, sharp nose. His hands were curled in, fingertips hidden as if incidentally.

  Orfeus opened her mouth, and Luga spoke just a little faster. “And did you enjoy your leave?” he said mildly.

  “Why did you set the Wolf on me?” Orfeus said without preamble.

  Luga stood up. “A bold claim,” he said. “I cautioned you about being bold, I think.” He made his way slowly down the pile. It was clearer to her now that he was old, older even than he looked, with the wrinkles on his severe face and his fair hair paling to white. It wasn’t that he lost his footing on the scrap, but the care he took not to.

  He stopped and stood a little in front of her, meeting her gaze with wintry green eyes. “Tell me, Fox. Why did you join the Order?”

  “Answer my question, I’ll answer yours,” Orfeus snapped. Luga tilted his head very slightly. His hand didn’t go any closer to his gold-sheathed sword, but her eyes went to it anyway. She frowned at him. “I should think it was obvious. I joined to get answers from you, and I’ll be damned if I leave without them.”

  “My Wolf is right, about this at least,” Luga said, looking down at her. “You are a liar.”

  Orfeus drew in a breath, and let it out again. Her damn Blood had healed her piercing when it healed the tear in her ear, so she tucked her fang earring into her pocket. This wasn’t a situation Faol or any of the others could save her from.

  “That’s the truth,” she said. “But fine. I had nowhere else to go, and everything I had wanted burned down. Maybe I wanted to become something dangerous, run with the monsters a while. Is that what you wanted to hear? You’re the king of the hypocrites, you can’t really condemn me.”

  He smiled faintly, cracks on ice. “I don’t,” he said. “I suspected your ambition would be formidable, if channelled to a better purpose.” Even smiling, nothing changed in his eyes. “Faol was who I’d intended to take my place, one day, but I raised her too loyal. She does not have betrayal in her.” Orfeus took a step back from him, frowning, shaking her head at his words. Luga stayed where he was and stared coldly into her. “You, now, you have betrayal right in the bones of you. But you know when to make friends. You’d make an excellent Leader.”

  It took her a second, the slight difference of intonation in his voice: not just leader but Leader.

  “So the insanity around here filters down from the top, then,” Orfeus said.

  “That remark does not befit you.”

  Orfeus shook her head, not in disagreement. She pulled her fingers through her hair, tangled, sweaty, bloodstained. “You owe me answers.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Is that not answer enough?” he said. “I sent the Wolf after you, yes. From your songs, you had potential.” He waved around. “I could use people here with some idea of history. Too many look too lightly on what we’ve lost, and forget how easily the world could slide back, without us here to guide it.”

  Perhaps the world needed predators, but not ones who relished it this much. Orfeus spat on the ground. She was faintly dismayed to find her spit still stained with red. “Setting a bounty hunter after someone is a backwards recruitment strategy.”

  Luga shrugged. “Not as I see it,” he said. “Nothing is lost. Either Faol would succeed, and burn out his softer heart, and be a good Leader; or you’d come looking, and you did. A promising new candidate.” He scowled, and he looked simply annoyed, not wrathful. “At the least, I wouldn’t have to watch her mooning over your recordings anymore.”

  “Oh,” Orfeus said, stunned. She put that away to think on later. Faol thinking anything of her at all was still so soft and new. This, though —“You’re cruel, Luga.”

  Luga nodded. “A good Leader needs to be.”

  Orfeus shook her head. Luga stepped forward, and Orfeus tensed. He might be anything from simply an old man to a superhuman honed and developed by O’Hallow’s experiments, and Orfeus had nearly bled out not too long ago.

  “I grow frail and my time is limited. A strong king needs a strong heir, or the kingdom will fall apart,” Luga said. “You know the stories.”

  She clenched her fists, though she kept carefully still. “You buy into your own myth too much.”

  “You’d know a little about that,” he said. “Another way in which you’re well suited.”

  She clenched her jaw. “We are not a thing alike.” He didn’t say anything, and she shook her head. She wanted to pace, she wanted to fall down and not get up till she’d slept for a week. “Surely you can’t really want this. I’m…ill-suited to positions of power.” She’d seen too brightly and painfully what could be done with it.

  “Knowing that makes you more suited than most,” Luga said calmly.

  “No,” Orfeus said, lifting her finger. Luga only smiled. Anger burned through her dilapidated veins: what a hateful, scheming old man, sitting up here and entangling her in plans without thought or regard for her opinion of it. Juggling in his hands who lived and who died and who killed. “No, you coal-selling, tree-cutting, strip-mining old bastard. People aren’t just tools to use, and I won’t do what you want. I want nothing more to do with this bloodstained place than I’ve had already.”

  But that was another lie. Faol, and his strong arms and uncertain smile. Faol kissing like he’d never been kissed before.

  She shoved those thoughts out of her mind.

  “In the end, it’s your choice,” Luga said. She tried not to show how that surprised her. “But you’ve already proven you could make an adequate leader, in time, with a lot of work. In some respects, even my superior.”

  Orfeus lifted her brows. “Ah?”

  Luga prowled a step forward, then another. She took a step back, even though he wasn’t really that much taller than her. Something in his posture. “I did not deal with the threat that was Significance,” Luga said, cold and intent. Frost icing up the spine of a dead leaf, withered and curled. “I secured my position and xe was no longer a threat to me, and I had my hunters to protect. I did nothing, and by doing nothing, I am complicit.”

  He stepped forward until he stood eye-to-eye with her, noses nearly touching.

  “But you,” Luga said. “You hunted xem down, and you stopped xem.”r />
  She had to fight tooth and nail not to shiver or step back or at least look away. “I suppose,” Orfeus said. “No thanks to you.”

  Luga shook his head, slightly smiling. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m saying that you went after your prey and caught them. How else do you think one would prove Leadership of the Wild?”

  Orfeus took a step back then, couldn’t help it, mind swaying. “That wasn’t what—that’s not what I set out to do. That’s not why I did it.”

  “But you did,” Luga said. He smiled. It shouldn’t have looked terrible: it was the first time she’d seen him smile properly, and it looked almost warm, though also odd, like he wasn’t at all used to smiling. Maybe that was where Faol got it from.

  Faol’s smiles were endearingly awkward grimaces, though. This, this was a bloodhunter’s grin.

  “As I did, once,” Luga said. “Of course, I killed the Leader before me.” Then he looked at her, and maybe Faolan was used to this too, Luga looking at him with a heavy weight of expectation.

  Orfeus swallowed. “What do you want from me here?” she said.

  Luga drew his sword, a shining length. The hilt was gold, and the steel blue blade was chased with lines of gold down the centre, old-fashioned blood grooves. “Anything you do will be what I want,” Luga said. “That’s the trick of good leadership, and I do think you could learn it.”

  Orfeus stared at him. She didn’t want to step back again and give up any ground, so she just shook her head slowly. Luga laughed.

  “You will,” he said.

  That had the shape of a threat.

  Her head was spinning and she was still out of Blood, backed into the corner, with no idea of his fighting capacity. Still, she wasn’t helpless prey anymore, and had to try.

  She pulled out her baton. Before she could even switch it on, Luga had her hand in an iron grip, clenching hard enough she could hear her wrist bones creak in protest. He was fast.

  With his sword hilt, he knocked the baton effortlessly out of her hand, and he kicked it away.