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  She closed her eyes, resting her hand on the slightly gritty surface of the wall. Trying to gather her nerve. A good person would be able to just walk out there and keep anyone innocent from getting caught in the crossfire, but Orfeus knew she wasn’t that.

  She took a slow, reluctant step forward, then another. Another, dragging herself forward. One more step and she’d be out of the shadow of the building, and her cloak and luck could not hide her.

  “Orfeus,” someone said. Orfeus turned to the side with a leap in her heart. Some friend or loved one to counsel her out of sacrifice?

  Neither: Rivasoa stood there, arms held up with her fingers outstretched, as they had been when she spun her little butterfly of light. A few townsfolk huddled scared behind her. Sweat was damp on her neck.

  Rivasoa didn’t break her focus for a moment. “Keep them away,” she said.

  It could have felt like an order, but it just felt like they were working in sync for once. Orfeus nodded and balled her hand into a fist by her side where no one could see it, and took the last step.

  She glanced back over her shoulder and saw only the façade of a building, where from the other side she had seen no such thing. She couldn’t see any of the people who were concealed behind the false wall. Rivasoa was far more skilled with Blood than she was.

  “There she is,” someone called loudly. Orfeus turned slowly.

  She spread her arms, and smiled charmingly. “Could it be we have a case of mistaken identity?” she called.

  The Hyena didn’t laugh at that, just shook their head slowly. They were shorter than the Wolf but bulky and large, the long-muzzled gun far from the only weapon draped casually over their harness. “Orfeus the singer!” they called.

  Orfeus dropped her hands. “Worth a shot,” she said.

  Hyena pointed the gun in her direction. They didn’t shoot, but they chuckled, starting off low and building up steam. The other hunter, slighter and less threatening, started walking towards her with their hands held up soothingly. A pair of what looked like cuffs glinted at their belt.

  She needed a way out of here. She needed to plan, to figure a way out of this mess for good. “Hey,” Orfeus called and cast a crooked grin at the both of them. “This contract, is it nonlethal by any chance?”

  A shadow shifted beside her and she darted her eyes that direction. The Wolf, silent and cloaked in night. So there were three of them. Fantastic.

  He didn’t move any closer, and neither of the other hunters paid him any attention. The shark-masked one stopped and said, “They’re not contracts exactly.” Orfeus couldn’t take her eyes away from the pair of cuffs.

  “We’re not here to bargain,” Hyena said.

  “No,” Orfeus agreed. They hadn’t shot her yet, even as on-edge and dangerous as they seemed, and that told her all she needed. She held one finger up to her forehead. “You know all about me, right? I have Blood and plenty of tricks up my sleeve. You lot are going to back off now and leave this place, unless you want to explain a dead…prey person, or whatever, to a very angry client.”

  The Shark took several rapid steps back, lifting their hands back up. Orfeus breathed out some of her tension and almost grinned. It was a wonderful thing to have fire at her fingertips.

  They didn’t move back any further. The one with the gun didn’t move at all. Orfeus’s grin faded. She shifted the angle of her thumb.

  “No,” Faol said suddenly. “Wait.” The one with the gun frowned.

  Orfeus kept her gaze steadily ahead. “I’m not at your disposal, Wolf.”

  He said, voice rising in irritation, “Orfeus. Wait. Does your town always smell of—”

  The Hyena fired at her. At the same time Orfeus flicked heat into her fingers, just enough to sell the threat.

  Fire caught in the thick air in front of her and a fireball boomed out. She was knocked off her feet, almost weightless, blown backwards and hitting the ground on a wave of heat.

  Everything was hot, and gold and red and blinding. Orfeus blinked rapidly. Her eyes … it felt like she was crying, but her eyes were dry. The air was very dry.

  Shock, her mind supplied. The word didn’t have much meaning. Burned, badly burned, and that penetrated a little more. Nothing hurt yet, but it not-hurt vastly as a cavern, in a way that said the pain when it came would be terrible.

  That wasn’t right. She couldn’t be this burned. Not this burned. Her playing was better than her singing voice, and she would have trouble charming audiences away from noticing that if she was this burned.

  “Heal,” Orfeus said. Nothing happened, so maybe her voice wasn’t listening to her. She twisted her hands in the right configuration, heal, heal, it’s alright. She fancied she felt her Blood give a grateful surge as she let it loose to fix all that was broken. She sat quietly as the nanites swarmed over the fused and burned skin, fixing it. They buzzed in her eyes, fixing them. In her throat, an odd tickling feeling. The pain hit, and was soothed away. Everything itched, and she balled her hands and lay still and let herself heal.

  Her mind sorted through pieces calmly. The Wolf was dutiful, of course. After that first failed attack, he must have made a report to the rest of the pack so the others were prepared if she tried the same trick again. They had roundly outsmarted her.

  What had she done?

  Orfeus blinked her eyes open and closed several times until the tears cleared enough she could see properly. The general impression of heat and light and din was only strengthened then. A little way off, she could see roaring fire shifting through thick smoke. She turned her head and saw more fire. It surrounded her like she’d been transported to the nine circles of hell.

  The buildings. The Hub. It was all burning. A lot of it, anyway. Even trees smouldered, so fierce had been the flames. All this from only one explosion? It looked like a dragon had been let loose on the place.

  There was a stabbing pain in the arch of her right foot and then nothing. Her wounds didn’t hurt, but they didn’t keep healing either. Was it possible to short out Blood? She had to ask Bright. No. She had to get out of here. No. She had to help.

  Orfeus stood up and staggered, mind hazing. “Energy,” she said, and she said it clearly this time. But nothing happened. She was clean out.

  She couldn’t heal anyone, could cast no spells. Maybe help with bandaging? Her mind jerked away from the fear of that necessity. If other people had been this burned… Or maybe they had been in the buildings when the fireball hit. What had happened to Rivasoa? Orfeus turned, squinting through the flames, but she could see neither the false façade Rivasoa had built from light, nor any sign of charred corpses where it had been.

  She should have asked more about Rivasoa’s magic. Together they could have spun an illusion-version of Orfeus to walk away, to lead the wolves away and leave the town in safety. She…she could have led them away and left the town in safety and it was burning, everything was burning down.

  Shadows moved through the smoke, shadows with the faces of hyenas and water monsters, talking in raised voices she couldn’t make sense of over the ringing in her ears. Orfeus had the wits to duck away. She limped, slowly but surely, bundling her cloak over her shoulders. She was shivering. It was lucky her cloak hadn’t burned up. Lucky her earring hadn’t melted into her skin, lucky her eyes hadn’t boiled past the point of healing, lucky the worst thing she got was agony.

  Orfeus leaned up against the shelter of a building and then jerked away. Heat at her back. Even the trees were burning, and it was then, staring at them, that she really realised. The gardens in the town square were fierce with fire. This was horrifying, bigger than her mind could fit. This was her town burning. This was a bigger smog debt than she could ever repay.

  Orfeus coughed, coughed and then started laughing without knowing why, and then she looked for the Wolf. “He’ll be easier than the others,” she explained to herself, nearly pitching over before she steadied herself. “If he kills me, at least he’ll be sad.”

 
; There was too much noise and smoke and light to really make sense of anything this close to the Hub. Orfeus limped away. The fires died down as she got further away, but the night sky without fires looked blank and empty, somehow more horrifying. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears, a fast and unsteady rhythm. It was hard to drag enough air into her lungs, hard to think. She clung to the path she could see in front of her: one step, then the next, every other concern crumbling into ash in her wake.

  Faol had said his Leader would have the answers she’d been looking for, and Orfeus had an idea of how to find this Luga, now she had nothing left to lose.

  Halfway to her house, she stopped and squinted: the Wolf was there, standing conferring with the others. Well. That was fine.

  Orfeus walked up to the three of them. She wasn’t used to walking without swaggering. They turned to look at her as she limped out of the smoke, and Faol put his hand on his knife.

  “Good evening.” Her voice rasped. Orfeus cleared her throat and tried again. “Good evening.” It seemed important to do this right.

  Was anything important, really?

  “What’s your plan this time?” said Hyena, steadying their gun. Their face under the hyena mask was streaked with soot, and the Shark had some scorches on their plain grey clothing, but it looked like the bounty hunters had gotten away without any worse injury. The Wolf was a monument, a monster, a madman free of harm.

  Orfeus dropped to her knees. It was half an accident, her legs folding, but she put a hand on the ground to steady herself and bowed her head. “Take me with you,” she said.

  “You’re surrendering yourself?” said the Shark.

  The Hyena jutted out their chin, balancing the stun-stick on their shoulder. “Smart,” they said. “Play nice and we won’t hit you too much.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Orfeus said a little distantly, and she looked at Faol. “He hit me a lot.”

  The Wolf stepped back sharply, nearly recoiling. “It’s the job,” he said stiffly.

  Orfeus nodded, and dug her fingers into the dirt. Home. The last place she could be right now, or ever again. “Take me with you,” she said. “Your leader will want to meet me.” The bravado felt desperately thin, a shell for them to tear through to get at her. She coughed, and cleared her throat, and looked up at them and said, “I would like to join the Order of the Vengeful Wild.”

  Part Two

  The Wild

  Chapter Six

  Back in the before times, people grew greedy, and we took and we took and we took until the oceans emptied and the forests were torn down and the hungry wailed. Weapons made with our own clever hands raked the soil and left it no good for growing things. We hurt Honoured Earth until she sorrowed, and Smog Sky and Rising Tide arose and punished us. Storms shook the land and oceans ate the coast.

  And then we learned better, little one. We planted more than we took, and we listened, and we honoured the old ways and we found new ways, and we made it better. And we must never step back to the Brink again. All of us, little one. We must do better than our ancestors, and we must do them proud. We will never fall so far again.

  - Basma of Hollyhock

  * * *

  They gave Orfeus time to pack her things. She didn’t think it would take long. There was little to take and this time, there truly was no one left to say goodbye to. It was bad enough knowing what they must think of her now, after she’d set the square burning in sight of half the town. She didn’t need to see the betrayal and hatred written clear on the faces of her neighbours and friends.

  Most of her travelling gear was with her already. Orfeus grabbed the rest of her depleted herb store from the cupboard on the off chance that bounty hunters liked to trade. She could trade rosemary and tea for caffeine or cigarettes, for any advantage, for one more day alive.

  Fire was visible through the shutters as she packed. Quickly, Orfeus bundled up the herbs and some clothes and her pennywhistle in her thickest brown hemp cloak and tied the bundle to her bag and just like that, she was done. No reason to linger.

  Orfeus strode out through her garden, trying not to look at her plants. The rosemary was coming along. Would the fire reach here? Unlikely, but not impossible.

  Something pressed against her ankles and Orfeus jumped. She looked down to see a splotch of white against a dimmer grey shadow.

  Splodge miaowed and wound around her ankles. Orfeus blinked down at the cat, then realised she was crying, silently, the tears streaming down from her newly healed aching eyes as Splodge made small mrrs of comfort or curiosity.

  Or just hunger. Orfeus blinked hard, pushing past the moment. At least this was better than crying where people could see. Stooping down, Orfeus scratched the cat behind the ears, then nudged it gently. “You get back inside,” Orfeus said. “Before your dad worries.” Splodge’s eyes shone with distant firelight as Orfeus straightened and scrubbed her sleeve hard over her face.

  The three hunters, Wolf and Hyena and Shark, rigged a small gravi-capsule to float suspended between their hoverbikes. It was grim and small, windowless and padded on ceiling and wall and floor. They bundled her into it with her hands bound and tossed a bottle of water in after her.

  She spent the flight with her back squared against one wall, hands held in front of her face, wondering why they’d bothered with tying her wrists. She’d burned through her Blood, and the tasegun was long gone. What was she going to do, card tricks?

  There was the occasional toss of wild weather that bounced her against the walls of the capsule until her wrists ached, but otherwise little evidence in this windowless place of the passage of time. Orfeus jammed her feet into the corners and cocked her head. If she strained, she could hear the soft purr of their hoverbikes.

  After a long while, the soft purr faded out. There was no more turbulence either. Orfeus waited. She opened the bottle with her teeth and drank, only coughing up some of it.

  She leaned against the capsule wall. “Want to see my card tricks?” she called through it.

  No answer, less surprising than an answer would have been.

  One wall slid down. Orfeus stepped back from it. The Hyena stepped forward, eyeing her, then gave a nod. A second later the Shark darted in, eyeing Orfeus, relaxing when she didn’t lunge out or attack.

  “You can get your belongings back once the Leader’s done with you,” they said, and apologetically patted the bag and bundle they carried. She felt that unspoken within their sentence was a loud and resonating if.

  Some kind of response seemed required. Orfeus nodded. “You’re the Shark, I’m guessing?”

  “The Shark, he and him.” He waved to the other one. “That’s the Hyena, she and her. Don’t piss her off.”

  Orfeus nodded again.

  The Shark stepped back, and the Hyena did too, one hand resting casually on her gun. Orfeus stepped out and glanced around to see a grey corridor with lights set along the ceiling, coiling tubes on the joints between ceiling and walls that trailed off down around one corner.

  This place was grungy and metallic, with no plant flourishes that she could see. She bounced her heels against the ground, testing. Were they airborne? High up, certainly: the odd weightlessness in her chest put her in mind of the lift to Bright’s tower.

  The Hyena prodded her in the back. “Come on.”

  Orfeus stepped forward, glancing back at her. Her mask was the most distinctive thing about her appearance, mostly tawny, with brown ears and a black snout. A line of jagged teeth ranged above where Hyena’s real nose was. Orfeus could see the mask better in this light, and it was fearsome enough she wished she couldn’t. Hyena looked stocky and competent. She wore similar tough armour to the Wolf’s, mostly obscured by her drapery of weapons.

  “It’s not like I’m fighting,” Orfeus said. “What do you think I’m going to do, lie down on the ground and passively resist?” She scuffed her boot against the thin carpet. The Hyena gave her another cheerful shove and Orfeus sauntered forward into a walk, g
lancing around idly like she was enjoying the nonexistent decoration. “I wouldn’t do that to myself. Your carpet looks like moss. I’d actually be reassured if it was moss.”

  None of them said anything. Orfeus glanced at the Shark, who smiled affably ahead, face cheerful beneath the rows of needle-teeth. She craned back to look at the Wolf: his eyes were fixed on her, furrowed in the snarling silver of his mask. Orfeus sighed. “Cross my heart and hope to sigh that I won’t currently try to fight you or set your moss on fire. There’s three of you! Calm down.”

  “Can’t be too careful,” the Hyena said, and jerked her head towards the Wolf. “You beat him.”

  Faol let out a growl, low-pitched but entirely audible. Orfeus’s laugh sounded bright and joyful to her own ears, like she had no troubles in the world; she was proud of it.

  “Here I was worried about the Vengeful, but you people really take the Wild part seriously,” Orfeus said. She couldn’t stop talking and didn’t really have any reason to. No knife, no Blood, plenty of words.

  The Shark put his hand lightly on her shoulder and directed her down a corridor to the right, then down another. She didn’t have enough presence of mind to be mentally mapping the place yet. That could come tomorrow, if she lived until then. There was something soothing in the stark dead-end of short-term planning.

  “We take both seriously,” the Shark said, still smiling.

  Orfeus glanced back at him, then nodded. She didn’t say anything else as they navigated through the twisting ratway of corridors.

  Being quiet had its advantages. She heard the Shark say in a low tone, “Wolf, I know what you said back there, but are you sure? A lot of trees were burning.” The cheer in his voice sounded strained. “The Falcon’s going to have my head for letting my explosion get so out of hand, but… there’s still time to go help—”

  The Wolf cut him off. “If the Leader orders it,” he said, in a tone sharp enough to cut the throat of any further conversation.