Foxhunt Page 3

  Bitterly. The bite of pain was distracting, but she had something for pain. Orfeus fetched her glass jar of dried willow bark.

  Chewing at the pungent bark, she saw to her other wounds with tiger balm for her budding bruises–she was out of arnica. Off the top of her head, she had no idea how to test for broken ribs, so she’d just take it easy until she could get them seen to.

  Orfeus fetched her potted aloe. She sponged out her burns as carefully as she could. Should run them under water, she thought, but her hair would get in the way, so she soaked a cloth with chilly water and held that to her head instead, stirring her fingers restlessly in the air.

  She wanted very much to go shake some answers out of the world as to why a bounty hunter had been sent after her, and she also wanted very much to lie down and sleep for the next eight hours, and she couldn’t do either of those things.

  Orfeus threw the cloth on to the table and broke a leaf off the aloe. “Sorry,” she said to it. Perhaps she’d be able to find it some fertiliser next trading-day. She cracked the leaf, and smoothed the gel into the reddened skin by her hairline. The burning eased somewhat.

  Orfeus slapped a small pad of gauze over the burn, just to keep anything from getting into it. She stood up, restless and pained and scared.

  She couldn’t, wouldn’t go to Primrose for this. She wouldn’t mind her friends Bright and Em seeing her at less than her best, but they were a long way off, in Farflung with its golden fields. If she couldn’t go to any of her favourite people, who was left?

  Orfeus pulled on a plainer cloak, warm brown wool though the night was not cold. The weight was reassuring. She wore it to one side, as though wearing a cloak over one shoulder was still in fashion and nothing at all to do with her wounds.

  She stepped through her small but close-packed garden, then over the boundary line to her neighbour’s. Orfeus’s garden was mostly flowers and herbs. Nothing here needed watering like the indoor plants did, but the rosemary looked sparse. Soon she might have a pruning day. There was always so much to do, but sometimes songs came to her while her hands were busy and her mind was not.

  Linden’s garden was all woody shrubs and a few small trees, the space less intensely packed but overshadowed with spreading branches. Small wonder he hadn’t moved into one of the more concentrated urban areas: hard to cram saplings into a window box or balcony. This property was a tiny patch of woods, like the wilds that once were. Immaculately tidy, though. Orfeus hated it.

  There was a lamp at the studio window, though no wasteful lights shone in the rest of the small house. She knocked on the door and stood waiting, shifting her weight from foot to foot. No great loss if he was asleep at this hour.

  The light vanished from the window. A moment later Linden opened the door and stood blinking at her, lantern in hand. He had an apron on over his plain clothes, and she caught the whiff of sawdust. “Orfeus?” he said uncertainly. He lifted the lantern.

  “No, I’m a wight,” Orfeus said. “Yes, it’s me. Honestly, who else would visit?”

  She tended to be sharp, but Linden didn’t take more of this than he felt earned. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a small grin. “At this hour, no one. It’s hardly polite.”

  “You need less boring friends,” Orfeus declared. With a shake of his head he took a step back from the door and waved her in.

  She followed her short neighbour through into the studio. He set the lantern down on the workbench, and felt around vaguely for another. “Date with Primrose not go well?” he said.

  One project laid uncompleted on the bench, an anonymous pile of pieces of wood. Linden had made some of the furniture in here himself. The stool wobbled as she sat on it. “An issue with Primrose is that she doesn’t agree with me on what constitutes a date,” Orfeus said, kicking her heels. “What I mean is, whenever I think we’re going on a date, it turns out we’re not.” She shrugged. “But that’s nothing good communication can’t resolve,” she said, more cheerfully than she felt.

  Linden made vague sympathetic noises. A lot of his noises were vague. He lit another lamp, stored sunlight swelling up soft gold, and turned to her and blinked. “You look…awful.”

  She could say something unkind, here. Linden was short and scrubby and his eyes peered out from his bearded face like a worried owl. Orfeus tongued at her split lip pensively and said, “I look like the rock stars of the world that was.” She spread out her arms, a woman on stage.

  “Yes,” Linden said slowly. “Possibly. Did they look like they were coming off a bad trip, and just lost a fight with their front door?”

  “Yes,” Orfeus said promptly. She had no idea.

  “Why are you here?” Linden said. So he did have some sharpness to him.

  “I can leave again,” Orfeus said, and rubbed at her forehead. No headache, but the ghost of where a headache would be by tomorrow. “I don’t think I should sleep tonight. I might have a concussion.”

  “Well, okay.” There was a pawing at the door, and then a more demanding thumping. Linden opened it and returned, sitting down on a stool with his cat slinking around his ankles and sniffing at piles of sawdust. A sweet animal, grey with a splodge of white on its nose. Linden had named it Splodge. Linden had done many wrongs in his life. “Do you want to talk about it?” he said.

  Orfeus shifted on her stool, holding out her hand temptingly under the table for Splodge to come to for pats. Splodge was more interested in going to look at the other door and then coming back again. “That’s the last thing in the world I want.”

  She looked up to find Linden staring at her incredulously. “You don’t want to talk?” he said. “You?”

  Orfeus looked back at the ground. “Not noticeably.”

  A warm presence pressed up against her ankles, and then wound around them, meowing softly. Orfeus lowered her hand and Splodge pressed its head against it, rubbing its cheeks along her fingers. She scratched its face gently, then under its chin.

  “Mm,” Linden said doubtfully. Orfeus, in a daring move, scooped her hands under the cat’s soft belly and hefted it onto her lap. Splodge nyaowed in complaint, and then settled down. It wasn’t a young cat. Linden picked a hammer up and then put it down again. “Fine, but sit in the corner. And I’ll be talking to you every few minutes to make sure you’re not asleep yet.”

  Orfeus picked up her armful of Splodge and went to the bench in the corner, rough-hewn but at least sturdy. “Good,” she said. “Very good. Regale me with carpentry.”

  Linden picked up the hammer again, turning his back on her. “I listen to you when you talk about your interests.”

  “My interests are interesting,” Orfeus said instantly, and then shook her head. “I don’t mean that. I know you’re passionate.” Certainly not skilled at carpentry, but undeniably passionate.

  Linden had an excellent head for numbers, and plenty of other skills. But he spent most of his spare time inexpertly sticking bits of wood together. Found wood and fallen wood, he was perfectly ethical, but he did all that work for no profitable trade at all and no discernible gain. Orfeus didn’t understand it at all. She wasn’t sure she could do something reliably and for enjoyment if she wasn’t very, very good at it.

  Her fingers itched for music. Her stomach hurt, her forehead burned. “I really don’t mean any harm,” Orfeus said. She felt immensely weary. Splodge curled up on her lap, nudging insistently at her hand, and after a moment Orfeus resumed the pets. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know you don’t, Orfeus,” Linden said. He sounded almost fond, like they were friends instead of friendly neighbours. “It’s not like you to apologise. I’ll make you some tea.”

  Orfeus opened her mouth to turn it down, then closed it again. It wouldn’t be like the tea Maylis used to make, always exactly the perfect brew. But it would be hot and a little like being safe again. She imagined wolves howling outside.

  “Yes, please,” Orfeus said. Linden beamed at her. Perhaps she didn’t say please often enough, eithe
r.

  After a few hours, Orfeus shifted the sleeping cat off her lap and went home, grabbing an hour or two of sleep herself. She woke with the birdsong and a pounding headache. Willow bark helped a little, even if she needed to be sparing when her back wasn’t fully scabbed over yet.

  She whistled back at the birds, taking little pieces of melody and altering it, then sung soothing nonsense words as she washed her face and hands and had a cup of tea for breakfast. Her mood was much improved as she tucked an apple into the pocket of her cloak for later and strode out into the morning.

  On the way to the Hub of Speech, the small houses became packed more densely together, sharing yards with trees overshadowing them, then stacked upon themselves as she came closer to the centre of town. Such as it was. Tinctora was no thriving metropolis, and Orfeus liked it that way. She’d visited busier places on tour, and it was good to have someplace to come home to that was quiet enough to feel spacious yet populous enough to have a trading square, so she could eat more than just the vegetables she grew at home and freeze-dried nutrient packs. Orfeus munched on her apple and let her light cloak flutter in the wind as she strode.

  The Hub gleamed with communication dishes, as well as solar panelling on the roof and swooping out from the sides and top of the building like a marine creature’s fins. It was one of the few places in town aside from some of the more complicated dyeing workshops that needed that much power.

  Not every person needed to be in contact with the shimmering lines of information that connected the world, but everyone needed to be able to tug at the strings sometimes, to talk to loved ones or faraway folk with different expertise, or to know whether there was a shaking in the strings that would forebode disaster.

  Threadgall Weaver was another person who had chosen their own name, and they nodded at Orfeus cheerfully as she entered. Threadgall kept odd hours, in from the crack of dawn and out by lunchtime, though there were others who could work the machines in the Hub if someone really needed it.

  “Orfeus!” Threadgall said, brushing pastry crumbs off their shirt and shifting to stand behind the counter as though they’d been ready for work and not breakfasting by the window. They were young for the post, a year or two younger than she was with curling black hair and a smile that faded into focus when they worked their machines. “Getting ready for another tour already?”

  If only. For that she would need more songs, which took time even if she cheated and built on old rediscovered melodies. “Nothing so professional, I’m afraid,” Orfeus said. “I need to make inquiries of the library at Eldergrove.”

  Threadgall said, “I’m sure they woulda told you if they’d uncovered any more melodies.” They grinned unrepentantly. Threadgall and Orfeus both knew the Elders would do no such thing.

  Orfeus merely sighed in answer. “This is for a new song,” she said, in inspiration: a solid story to help explain her odd questions. “I want to know anything they have about the Order of the Vengeful Wild, specifically how to contract them and if they keep records themselves.” She counted off on her fingers. “Anything about the figure known as the Wolf, and anything about a person called Faol.” She paused, and curled her fingers into a loose fist. “Especially that.” Her back ached, and she imagined she could still smell burning hair.

  Threadgall lifted their eyebrows. “Huh,” they said. “Well, not my job to ask questions about people’s personal correspondence.” They turned a little away, beginning to type, with their eyes lifting to her occasionally in hope.

  “No,” Orfeus agreed, leaning against the counter. She breezed them a smile. “I appreciate your professionalism.”

  Threadgall’s typing slowed forlornly for a moment, then picked up again as they gave a philosophical shrug.

  “Do you want me to just say it’s from a citizen of Tinctora?” Threadgall said, fingers hovering, and Orfeus shook her head.

  “Tell them it’s from Orfeus,” she said. “They’ll know me.”

  They wouldn’t, not the librarians proper, not anyone except whoever the specific individual was who occasionally grudgingly sent her old songs. But one day. One day. That was the song that went deepest through her blood, the one that thrummed the rhythm of her bones: one day, one day.

  While she was at the Hub, she exchanged a handful of small capeberries from her garden for a new cloak-brush, and was on her way outside when Threadgall’s machine beeped.

  She turned, and Threadgall looked at the machine and then at her. “There’s a reply,” they said, blinking rapidly. “Already.” They bent down over the machine, then stared up at Orfeus, more impressed than she’d ever been able to make them before. “They really do know who you are!”

  Orfeus bounced on the balls of her feet and smiled smoothly. “Well, of course.”

  “They…they say they want to speak to you,” Threadgall said, eyes growing even wider. They read, “We cordially invite Orfeus the singer to visit us and enjoy the hospitality of Eldergrove…something about earliest convenience … to further discuss her request and other matters of importance at leisure. They want you to visit!”

  Orfeus adjusted the set of her cloak, unsure what to do with this stark departure from the usual way of things. “Tell them of course I’m available at their convenience,” she said. Eldergrove and its libraries were far away. She’d have a few days to figure it out.

  Threadgall shook their head and clasped their hands over their mouth, then removed them to say, “They’re sending someone to escort you.” Announcing that the High Priest of the Honoured Earth was visiting in person would hardly have elicited more excitement.

  Orfeus blinked. She glanced outside. Not far from the Hub the train station gleamed ready, with its quartertrain once a day. “Now?” she said, truly startled.

  Threadgall’s hands slowly dropped, and a frown crinkled their brow. “Now,” they said. They looked at the computer doubtfully, as though questioning the evidence of their eyes.

  Orfeus had no doubts at all about Threadgall’s competence. The origin of the message was another matter, but if Threadgall said it was from the Blooded at Eldergrove, she presumed Threadgall would know. But why? Rapidity wasn’t the usual way of things for the Elders. Rather the opposite. And Orfeus didn’t take kindly to being so summarily summoned.

  But Eldergrove was far away. Maybe far enough away to be safe. She didn’t trust the Wolf, who hadn’t even given their word, and it was tiring to look for masked shapes in home’s familiar shadows. Things like that didn’t belong here, not here. Tinctora was a peaceful town. If the Wolf had chosen to attack her in the eating house instead of after she’d left it, then Primrose…then innocent people could have been hurt.

  “I’ll pack a bag,” Orfeus said, without giving it any further thought.

  Threadgall said with a strained version of their usual cheer, “Good luck!”

  Orfeus had to make an effort to keep her eyes straight ahead as she walked home, instead of jerking her head behind her to re-examine every shadow. Her back itched and bled.

  She packed and dressed lightly. A tunic with embroidered sleeves, tan breeches, her usual boots. A travelling cloak of deepest viridian. No extra jewellery, just her daisy earring. In the sturdy canvas bag that had been a gift from an enamoured wayhouse-keeper, she packed some light provisions and clothes, only the vital things. She placed her guitar carefully in its case.

  She rinsed her wounds clean again, and watered the aloe vera and her other plants, and then there was still far too much time left before the quartertrain was due in the late afternoon. No point in saying goodbye to anyone, really; there were few to say goodbye to. Orfeus paced, then hung her cloak back up, her bag. She took her guitar out of its case.

  Out in the garden, she settled amongst her favourite block of ferns and the small apple tree she’d never managed to convince to bear much fruit. She played a few chords, then chord progressions, then finger exercises. Gradually she relaxed enough to lean back and let the tension out of her wound-ti
ght muscles, as her hands limbered and the warm familiar music nestled in amongst the leaves.

  Orfeus was packed and waiting at the station when the quartertrain pulled in, slowing over the course of a league from faster than blinking into slow enough it wouldn’t blow through and past. They never stopped for long, though, unless accessibility demanded it.

  The train slowed to a stop. With a hiss the glass doors slid apart and someone stepped through, making the utilitarian platform seem more dignified just by being there. They were tall, tall, with gleaming black skin and a smooth-shaven skull, proud collarbones and hooded eyes. They were dressed in robes in bright colours, yellow and blue and green.

  “Orfeus the singer?” they said.

  Orfeus for no real reason made a sweeping bow, cloak tucked behind her back. She straightened and smiled up at them. Disorienting when people were taller than her. “So they call me. And you?”

  “Your escort,” they said. “My name is Rivasoa. I use she and her.”

  Orfeus nodded. “As do I,” she said, “but you know that, don’t you? You know all about me already.”

  “Yes,” Rivasoa said, frostily.

  Orfeus felt her brows lift despite herself. She couldn’t think why this woman would have taken a disliking to her with so few words exchanged, but it wasn’t unheard of. She stretched a grin at her, unwise perhaps but always her first reaction, to taunt, to tease. Rivasoa turned in a flare of bright fabric and without a word stepped away into the train.

  Orfeus leaped nimbly up, and tucked her cloak and bag and guitar all safely behind her. She stayed standing by the doors for just a moment as they hissed closed and the train began picking up speed, her familiar world blurring by past her.

  She’d left it a little too long and had to stagger her way to where Rivasoa sat, graceful and stately with her hands clasped in front of her. Orfeus stowed the guitar up above them in the plain white cabinet above the plain white seats. She barely got herself into a seat, jostled half out of it before she grabbed for the straps and secured them around her waist.