Foxhunt Page 28

  He released her. Orfeus took a step back, clenching her injured hand in a fist so she wouldn’t hold it to her chest and show weakness.

  “The Falcon didn’t tell me she made you that,” Luga said, looking at the baton curiously. “I suppose her insubordination soon won’t be my concern.”

  There had to be a way out of this. There was a way out of everything if you were sly enough. Orfeus filled her lungs to shout.

  “Dormarch is loyal to the death,” Luga said patiently. “Ve was my Wolf once, and unlike ver successor, ve knows what that means.”

  Orfeus shut her mouth on her call, wishing she didn’t believe him. “Faol deserves better than you,” she said bitterly. “They all do.”

  Luga spread his fingers out in an elegant shrug. “By all means, prove it.”

  Orfeus gritted her teeth.

  Her baton was too far away: she still had her cauterknife, and her knife of naked steel that had spilled the blood of one monster today already.

  So she had been blooded on the mission, just like Luga wanted. Her anger boiled into fury.

  Orfeus rested her hands on the hilts, and said, “You want me to kill you, but there’s plenty of ways to hurt without killing if that’ll get me out of here.” She drew her cauterknife, and he made no move to knock it from her hand. “Mordrai is excellent at their job.” She bared her teeth.

  Luga let his sword tilt down, tip pressing lightly to the ground. “You want to fight me?” he said. “Very well.” He grinned. “Single combat, like you once proposed?”

  She shifted her stance, ready, watching him for his first move. “Why not.”

  “Of course,” Luga said, “you would fight the Wolf in my place.”

  She flinched.

  Faolan had held Orfeus up and steadied her. Come to her aid. Surely, she wouldn’t … “She wouldn’t like that,” Orfeus said numbly. She felt far away, and strangely light.

  “Not now,” Luga agreed. He stretched out his hands and held the sword balanced between it, resting lightly on the palms of his hands. “This is what I’m talking about, Fox, what you’ll need to learn. If my Wolf proves loyal enough to the Order to slaughter someone he’s lost his heart to, then perhaps loyalty can be his strength and not a weakness, and he can be a suitable Leader after all. If not, then you are proven the stronger and worthy heir. Either way the Order wins.”

  Not a simple sparring match, then. Duels to the death over line of descent: she had walked too long through the dark and found herself somewhere ancient.

  She didn’t want Faolan to be faced with that choice.

  Orfeus didn’t want to be faced with this choice either, Luga calmly looking her down. She was hurt and she was tired. She just wanted to go lie down and curl up, and maybe be a follower for a while, instead of the one dictating the story. Tucking songs and plants into the corners. Making no one hate her, and burning nothing down.

  “Faol’s better than you think,” Orfeus said. Luga stood there, sword in hands. Orfeus lifted her hands helplessly up from her knife hilts. “She saved me. He didn’t just not blood me, he kept me from killing. And he’d be better at this than you are, at least. He wouldn’t pointlessly kill!”

  Not pointlessly, but still when he thought it was necessary, graceful as a dance and with less regret. It hurt to think of.

  “You think so?” Luga said. “He’d make a bad Leader then.”

  Faolan nearly worshipped this man. “Anyone would be better than you,” Orfeus bit out.

  Luga stood unmoving, the sword gleaming gold. “If you believe that, then prove it. The Leadership is in your hands; simply take it.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the blade and the brightness. “Not like this.”

  But what else could she do? Run, and feel that sword sliding into her back or slicing through her heels. Try to dive for the baton and knock him out before he could—

  “My Boarhound can be in here in a moment,” Luga said patiently. “I’m faster than you. My Wolf, too, has not fallen so far that he won’t come when I call. There’s nothing you can do.”

  Faol had called them partners. Perhaps she’d fight by Orfeus’s side, when faced with the awful choice.

  The choice between a singer he was enamoured with, or the man who’d raised him from a child and taught him all he knew of the world.

  And Orfeus could fight Faolan and doubtless die, for in all their sparring sessions it had never been Orfeus who won. Unless Faol’s feelings ran as deep as Luga seemed to think. If he loved her, she might be able to win, and kill Faol.

  Her stomach roiled. She took a step back, dropped to the ground in a crouch for a moment, mouth clenched tight until the nausea faded.

  Slowly Orfeus pushed back up. Luga stood watching her with interest. She reached out and took the sword out of Luga’s hands.

  She shifted the hilt in her hands. It felt all wrong, too long and unwieldy.

  Luga stood there and smiled. “We can make it a proper fight,” he said, and lifted his hands slightly, fingertips trembling. “Even like this, though, I would beat you. Fox, it will be challenging to hold on to your new power, but you can do it.”

  Orfeus tried to ignore him. The metal was cold.

  If she killed him, Faol would never forgive her. Faolan would also hate killing her, though, or so Orfeus hoped.

  Either way would hurt Faol, but only one way would leave Orfeus alive.

  Luga just stood there, orchestrating all the horrors that had plagued her these last months and the beauties she’d thought she won on her own.

  Orfeus lowered the sword. “No,” she said. “Absolutely not.” She felt firmer every second, though the ground seemed to sway under her feet, and blackness swarmed and ate at the edges of her eyes. “I’m not playing into your hands, and I’m not giving you a scrap more of me. I’ve lost too much to you already.”

  She offered the sword back to him with a sarcastic little bow.

  Luga stood surveying her. “I see,” he said. He sighed out, and his breath smelt sour, acrid, like smoke. “Disappointing. Still, a good leader plans for these things.” He frowned. “If not an honourable death, at least a useful one.”

  Orfeus frowned. “I won’t die easy,” she said, though she ached.

  Luga smiled. He took the sword, and drove the blade into his own chest.

  Orfeus reached out too late. The sword dug into his flesh, a slick sound of cutting meat. She made a choked noise, staring, but Luga made no noise, though sweat sprang to his brow.

  With a heave he pulled the sword out of his flesh. It came out cleaner than she would’ve thought. Sitting up here, he’d kept the blade whisper-sharp.

  “Why?” Orfeus said. Her Blood was still gone, she could not heal, and he was already lifting the blade again and lining it up with his lungs.

  Luga smiled with blood on his mouth. “They all know…how these things go,” he said, voice ragged but triumphant.

  He shifted the sword. It still had the mark of her hands upon it. “Oh, you bastard,” Orfeus said, digging her fingers into her palm.

  “You can run from it, still,” Luga said, “if you want to force my Wolf to be the one to bear this weight.” It was choked, near the end, his face even more pale.

  He stabbed himself again, up through the lung. He choked, blood on his mouth, blood over the black paint on his face, and then he twisted the blade.

  Luga fell forward, falling against her. Orfeus stepped back sickened, and he dropped to the ground dead weight.

  She stood staring down at him. Blood welled out of his wounds, and there was blood all down her and on her hands.

  She had no Blood to heal him. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to call for Mordrai.

  But a living Luga could even more convincingly carry on his lies. A living Luga could enact revenge on everyone here and everyone she cared about, set contracts on Linden, Bright, Em, everyone she’d ever met.

  “Things are going to be different,” Orfeus told him. “I’m bringing you pe
ople out of the industrial ages. We’re going to make this place better.”

  Of course, now, he said nothing.

  She could imagine what he’d say, though. With the same bloody weapons?, a cruel smile ghosting on his face.

  Orfeus knelt and pulled the sword out of him. His eyes were glassy and lifeless. She dropped it to the ground with a clatter, let it lie wherever it lay, and stood up, and wiped off her hands.

  He was right: she could still run. Then Faolan would lead, and turn out much like Luga had, any of his new softness burned away. Never the chance to grow into someone better.

  “The problem is power,” Orfeus said. Her words rung out oddly in the empty room. Just her in here. “No one should be in power at all, when it can be abused so easily. Until then…” She adjusted her knives, so they sat better at her belt. She picked up her baton and tucked it away. “There’s me.”

  She stood there a while. She didn’t notice Boarhound behind her until ve stepped forward and up, staring at the corpse on the ground. Orfeus jolted back.

  She shouldn’t show weakness, especially right now, bloodstained and culpable. Dormarch looked away from the corpse and levelly into Orfeus’s face.

  Boarhound, who carried no weapons that Orfeus had ever seen. A drunkard, kind and discerning.

  Luga’s second in command, in this place where nothing was won without blood. Ve could not be discounted as a threat.

  “He wanted—” Orfeus said, and was appalled to find that she stammered it. Which would you lose first, clever tongue or clever hands?

  “I know,” Boarhound said, coldly. Ve looked at Luga again and shook ver head. Dormarch stooped and lifted him, hefting the corpse undignified over ver shoulder. Ve was much shorter than Luga had been, but bore the weight easily.

  Orfeus’s tongue felt thick and bloodstained. Here was the moment where she could try to convince the others, tell them of Luga’s ploy.

  But the Order would never accept a weak leader. She could do so much more good if they accepted her.

  Still bearing ver burden, Dormarch paused, and then inclined ver head to Orfeus. The tiniest nod.

  “If you don’t despise me, I could use your aid,” Orfeus found herself saying. She hated herself sometimes. But she had to survive, had to make the most of the situation she was in.

  Dormarch shook ver head slowly. “It’s past time to retire,” ve said, and tightened ver hand over Luga’s dangling leg. “He was my friend long before he was my Leader.” Ver eyes were distant. “I’ll bury him in the ground, in the old way. He’d like that.”

  “May the road be kind to you,” Orfeus said. Boarhound walked past her, stiff-legged, and made no reply. Fair enough.

  She turned to watch Dormarch go. Faolan was standing in the doorway, a cup of juice dropped on the ground. Standing there, staring. Dormarch stopped too, and ducked ver head now rather than look at him.

  Faolan looked at the corpse of Luga. Looked at Orfeus. Looked at the sword at her feet.

  Despite everything, she still couldn’t read his eyes at all, but she didn’t need to. The small noise he made, the tiny quiet no, was the purest sound of grief she’d ever heard.

  “Wait,” Orfeus blurted, “it’s not – it’s not what it seems. He wanted to die and I…” Faol hated it when she lied, and her rationalisations felt thin right then. “Faolan…”

  “He used to call me ‘wolf cub’,” Faol said, without inflection.

  Then he bowed to her, and said nothing more.

  Dormarch kept walking out, slowed by ver burden. Ve said nothing to Faol. Faolan stood there, looking distant. Orfeus swallowed.

  “Could you fetch Mordrai?” she said quietly. Any busywork would do, to get him away from the bloodstains.

  Faol said nothing, but left.

  Orfeus let out a shaky breath, left alone in that space. She angled a glance up at the throne, but couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in it. And that pile of debris was silly, there were better ways to achieve the feeling of leaders being elevated. The strength of the Order was the illusion of equality, anyway. She’d change a lot of things around here.

  No more kill contracts, for a start. Nothing like what happened to her and Tinctora.

  Could she do this, use this bad start to turn the broken system into something better? She, who had so much more potential than she’d ever known to be monstrous?

  Right now, she had to cement any alliances, cement her position, if she wanted to even stay alive long enough to try.

  She was bloodstained and battered and exhausted and had lost far too much. Anyone else would be far too careworn to perform leadership, but she was an inveterate performer, after all.

  Orfeus shoved the fang earring into her ear, then twisted her fingers in Heal. The flesh fused around it. Part of her now.

  She touched her hand to it, and said, “Brothers and sisters and kindred of the Wild.”

  They could hear her, she knew.

  “Tonight,” she continued softer, “we are having a feast. We are having a feast, and we are having a wake. The Leader is dead. Tomorrow, I will be your leader. Today I am your sister. Your brother. Your packmate. And today we mourn.”

  She removed her hands, though the piercing still stung, as their messages flooded back to her: a chorus of voices chiming yes and what?, conferring with each other, like a great yelping and confusion of the Old World’s packs of hunting hounds. It did sting.

  She would have to get used to that.

  Epilogue

  One Month Later

  * * *

  There were many types of business to be done as Leader of the Wild, not just the bloodier kind. Orfeus strode into the Owl’s infirmary, and Mordrai turned in a fluster and threw off a salute. She still hadn’t managed to keep anyone from saluting.

  She saluted back, which was about her attitude to it. She couldn’t blame Mordrai for being intimidated. Orfeus dressed to be intimidating, bare knife at her hip, in a scarlet half-cape and a necklace of stylised silver teeth.

  “Hey, Mordrai,” she said. She looked at the occupied bed and smiled. “Hey, neighbour.”

  “Orfeus!” Linden said and waved. He smiled. “I can nearly see you.”

  His eyes were no longer padded over with gauze, nor staring blankly into space: they looked properly in her direction, though the thick lenses half-hiding his face were like no glasses she’d ever seen before. “You’re missing an excellent outfit,” Orfeus said.

  “I believe it,” Linden reassured her.

  Splodge came out with a mraow, winding at her ankles. The Owl looked deeply pained. Orfeus bent down with the idea of picking the cat up and moving her away from the irritated medical expert, but Splodge was a happier cat now with her human back, and slipped out of her hands with a baleful glare before going to sit in a corner.

  Mordrai sighed.

  “It’s only until he’s healed up,” Orfeus said. She sat down on Linden’s bed and patted reassuringly at his ankles, looking up at the Owl. “You’ve conferred with the physicians in Eldergrove?”

  “Yes,” Mordrai said promptly, sticking their hands in the pockets of their robe. “Our patient is making…more progress than the others.” They looked at Linden briefly, who smiled, like he didn’t at all mind being talked about, or didn’t notice; Orfeus knew better than that at least. “But they have hopes for most of them,” Mordrai continued.

  “Ah,” Orfeus said and was silent for a moment. “Good.”

  She helped with the rehabilitation, when and as she could. Stopping by the facility; magically healing where it could help; sometimes singing, or teaching guitar, or describing flowers, or bringing in flowers. There were many ways to heal and to be healed. Healing others was often healing for the person helping too, though less so.

  To cause harm was to cause yourself harm, too, though less so.

  Orfeus sighed and got up. “I must carry on,” she said.

  “Business to attend to,” Linden said, looking at her hopefully. “Orfeu
s, you’ll bring me that worktable next time, right? Just the small one.”

  Orfeus rolled her eyes at Mordrai, who grinned back only a little uncertainly. She said, “Soon as you can see to use it without cutting your fingers off, dear.”

  “Measure twice,” Linden said.

  Orfeus saluted both of them and exited.

  She hadn’t lied, not exactly. Linden had assumed she had business, and she did have business of a sort. She was working, constantly, always, as much as she could. Not resting as much as she should. She was only sometimes able to convince herself she deserved to, mostly when friends came by.

  Her wounds had long since healed, but the scars still left deep indentations of missing flesh. She had lost many things she wouldn’t be getting back.

  She heard familiar footfalls in the hall and drew in her breath, readying herself, squaring her shoulders and jerking up her chin. The Wolf turned the corner in the corridor ahead of her. Orfeus neither slowed nor sped her pace.

  She walked past, not looking at him. He walked past, saying nothing. His eyes burned into her. Hatred. Surely, now, it was hatred.

  And then he was past her and gone.

  Orfeus didn’t breathe again until the moment was long past. “Stupid lovesick fool,” she said, softly, once Faolan was well out of earshot.

  She went into her room, and relaxed, setting down the burden of leadership she’d shouldered for Faol all unasked and wholly unthanked.

  She was still in the same small room, hadn’t moved to more palatial chambers just yet. The whole base was her property, if she wanted to be technical about it, if she wanted to be possessive. More and more, she found she did.

  It was crowded with plants now, vibrant with green. The knives not currently in use hung on a rack next to her bed, alongside another mask Em had fashioned for her, silver accented in red.

  Orfeus sat down, and shrugged off her cloak. She toed out of her boots and sat cross-legged, relaxed, just her in this small green space. She pulled her new guitar out from under the bed.

  Rivasoa was cautious of her new role, and Orfeus thought perhaps worried for her, but she’d still honoured the gift, and talked to her sometimes. Orfeus couldn’t be too lost yet.