CHAPTER 23
When she woke, Emma stepped back into the corridor.
She might have slept for minutes or untold hours, for all the difference she saw in the House of Foxes.
The rosy lamps, dotted along the walls, cast the same soft light as before.
The wood-paneled passages were just as deserted.
There was no way to tell if it was night or day.
The only windows faced onto earth packed with roots and stones.
If I were a plant, I would die here, thought Emma.
But then again, a plant was a living thing.
And she was—not. Was it possible to exist and not be alive?
Pausing on the staircase, Emma fumbled for her pulse.
It was still beating. Her breath still slid into her belly.
It was possible, then, to not be mortal and yet not be dead.
In a world that had changed, a life with no roots, a home with no night or day: Still her body followed the same physical commands.
It was an anchor. She had not changed, even if her world had.
As Emma reached the door to the common room, the twins pushed past, small faces horror painted.
“She won’t stop,” said one.
“Run while you can,” said the other.
Grabbing each other’s hands, they fled.
Emma stepped into the room, feeling for the place in her mind where she heard the fox’s voice.
It was silent. Nothing smelled like a threat.
Saskia was curled up under a mountain of books by the fire.
The dining table looked freshly polished.
And at the far end of the room, Nancy was flitting from grimy armoire to gramophone, feather duster in hand. A dreamy smile lit her face.
“Clean, clean, clean.”
The tuneless croon floated back across the room.
Saskia’s eyes glinted over her book. “No one can stop her when she gets like this. Put something down for a second, and you’ll never see it again. Gertie’s already barricaded herself into the broom closet with her tarot cards. The others ran for it.”
Emma plumped down on the other sofa. “Terrifying.”
A soapy hand landed on her shoulder. “What’s terrifying?” came Nancy’s chirpy burr. She settled herself at Emma’s feet, tossing the feather duster onto the pile of books. Saskia sneezed and scowled.
“Did you sleep, Emma?” Nancy asked. “It’ll be odd for you at first, sleeping through the day and waking for the night. It’s the way of the City.”
“Is it night, then?” Emma said. “I couldn’t tell.”
The sameness of the House of Foxes was unnerving.
The enormity of a thousand years in this house, with these people, settled on her.
Her sisters, Nancy had called them. And yet they were strangers.
Emma had been ready to trust the tailor at the Court.
And she might have lost her voice for it.
The Night City was dangerous. What might these new sisters truly want of her?
She would need to know more about them to be sure.
Saskia, all spikes and clever eyes, would be tricky to crack.
The nightcapped maiden had refused to share a bedroom, and the twins had run as soon as they’d seen her.
The others—Selina and Frances and Gertie—had also made themselves scarce.
But Nancy could be open to a friendly approach.
“Would you like help cleaning? I’m not bad at it,” Emma lied.
Nancy gently took the duster from Emma’s hand and turned it right side up.
“That’s kind of you, love. But I’m all right on my own. This lot would rather live in decades of dust and crumbs—”
Saskia made an approving noise from behind her book.
“—but they put up with the cleaning, since I enjoy it. I find it calming, like. I couldn’t always have things as clean as I wanted, before.”
“Before what?”
A shutter seemed to fall on Nancy’s face.
“Before she was a fox maiden,” said Saskia.
“Now, here’s me with a right good idea. Saskia, you’ll have run out of books in an hour or two, knowing you. Why don’t you take Emma to the Library?”
The Library. Emma darted a glance at the spines on Saskia’s lap.
Choromancy. The Allusions of Illusions. A History of Magickal Bargains, Part III.
Those did not sound like mortal titles. The Night City must have its own books in the Library.
Books of magic. A place to start looking for her escape.
They might contain stories of crossings to the mortal realm.
Or explain how the Turnbulls—her mind spat the word as though it were poisonous—had known about the Night City and made a bargain with it.
Fury flamed into purpose. She was going to bring them down and she would find something in the Library to help her do it, even if she had to search every book.
“It might be nice for Emma to see the Librarian,” Nancy pushed on. “He seems right fond of her.”
Saskia glanced at the avalanche of books on her legs and opened her mouth. Whatever she saw in Emma’s face seemed to change her mind, and she snapped it shut again.
“Oh, all right. New girl, you’d need to be ready to go soon.”
“I’m ready now.” Emma jumped to her feet and promptly tripped over the boots the Sister had given her. They were far too big. As she hauled herself upright, she heard Nancy speak in an urgent undertone.
“You’ll take her the back way?”
Saskia nodded. “Down the mortal high street, to be on the safe side. The patrols’ve been seen as far as the river tunnels.”
“Patrols?” said Emma.
Two pairs of startled eyes turned to her.
“Boars,” Saskia said shortly. “They’re all over at the moment. Just keeping order, supposedly. Making sure we’re safe from lawbreakers. But the only real way to be safe? Stay out of their way. Of late, people say they’re a law unto themselves. And there have been… accidents.”
The bruises along Emma’s arms prickled, as though the Boars’ fingers were still pressed into the flesh.
“But I thought they were the City’s guard?”
“You could call them mercenaries, I suppose. The City uses the Boars like a security force, but they’re not part of any house.
They just turned up centuries ago, apparently.
Millennia after the City and the houses first came into being.
And no one seems to know where they came from.
The Boars answer only to the City itself.
Or”—Saskia leaned forward—“to whoever has enough coin, apparently. Although that’s a thing it’s best not to whisper on a moonless night. ”
Emma had not been afraid enough, on that street with the sun sinking below the horizon.
That was clear. Now, thinking of the way the Boar had clawed through the air to get to her, Emma’s body felt like a violin string tautened to snapping point.
It had been so close. If it had not been for the messenger pulling her out of the way—
“There, love.” Nancy was patting her arm. “You’ve got that token of protection, don’t forget. Everyone’s just a little jumpy right now.”
“That’s what the Sister said.” Emma thought back. “That things here were… unstable.”
“Unstable’s right. It’s all whispers and disappearances, recently.” Saskia lowered her voice. “People’re saying things in the market. That the barrier between the mortal world and ours is strangely thin all of a sudden. That the City’s power is—slipping.”
“Fools of people,” Nancy said. “That’s dangerous talk. You just focus on staying out of the way of those patrols. Get our Emma to the Library without running nose-first into trouble, hmm?”
Saskia waved her away. “I will if she can keep up. Come on, new girl.”
She strode from the house. Emma scurried in her wake, eyes flicking round for patrols of cold-eyed Boars at every corner.
But the streets were almost deserted. The statues of Wessex College turned miter-hatted heads to watch them pass.
The Night City’s strange light chased over the cobbles of the High Street.
It was familiar and strange at the same time.
Emma felt in her pocket for the slip of parchment the Judge had given her.
The token of protection kept her safe from the Boars as long as she had it, he had said.
Perhaps she could let go of feeling afraid. Just for now.
After all, there was so much else to take in. The wondrous lights of the Night City, dancing across the buildings. The moon high over college spires. The few passersby, huddled into heavy parkas against the cold. At that last sight, Emma had a new thought.
“Hey.” Emma trotted to keep up with Saskia. “How come you’re dressed like that? Not like the others?”
Saskia scowled, tugging the cuffs of her leather jacket over her hands. “Well, I can’t please everyone. You think I care if you don’t like how I look, new girl?”
She stalked ahead, and Emma felt a pang in her stomach. Five minutes into a conversation, and she was already a failure. She scurried after Saskia.
“No—I just meant, why are you dressed like modern people?”
Saskia’s shoulders unwound. Her back began to look slightly more friendly.
“At the Court, it was all cloaks and tunics.” Emma smoothed her hands over her own borrowed cloak. Underneath, the tailor’s gown felt none the fresher after a night sleeping on bones and leaves. “But you, you’re—”
“Modern?” Saskia said, with a wry smile.
“Nice of you to say. I’ve been in the City forty years, nearly.
I mostly have to steal these from mortal secondhand shops now.
Eighties punk was a long time ago. The City is stuck in some nightmare Renaissance perma-loop.
The hose and the doublets. The curtsying. ”
Emma tried to think it out. “Is it because they’ve always had magic? They never had to keep up with technology, so their world… didn’t change?”
“Dead on. And immortals don’t like change much, I’ve found. Even in fashion. Time moves slower for them.”