CHAPTER 24 #2
“It does not,” Robin said quietly. This time, his voice was deadly serious. “And that is something no one can know. A single sign of weakness can unsettle the Court. The Night City cannot have that. There can be no official records of this inquiry. So it sent me.”
“Why does the City need to know more about the Turnbulls so badly?”
Robin lowered his voice to the barest whisper. Emma had to lean in to hear him. “Here it is: The City wants to be free of the Turnbull bargain. And yet the contract has never been undone. Never worked around.”
“And the City would usually do that.”
Robin chuckled. “With the ease you might crush a beetle beneath your dainty foot. Let us say a mortal wishes for endless riches all his life, and the City is not in a mood to comply. How easy, instead, to fill the mortal’s belly with gold coins, without stop or cease, until the very force of the hoard splits his flesh open from the inside. Riches without cease, until death.”
Emma pressed a hand to her own stomach.
“The City delights in finding ways to turn a wish on its head. Especially for those who think to trap it for their own advantage.” Robin pulled at his beard in abstraction. “But not this contract. It seems forced to fulfill their demands. And the City does not like being crossed.”
Emma had seen the Night City as all-powerful. It was unnerving to think of it trapped under the Turnbulls’ command.
“But how can that be? Why would this bargain be so different?”
“To undo a contract, we must know how it was first done. And for this bargain, my beauteous fox maiden, that very pertinent information? It is gone. The original contract, alone among all others in the City, is missing. Without it, the usual means of dissolving a bargain are lost to us.”
“Which makes my knowledge valuable,” Emma said. “I see.”
She did see. In fact, an idea was forming.
“Indeed. In the absence of the contract, the City values every stray piece of information on the Turnbulls. In time, who knows what crumb might bring an opportunity to weaken the Turnbulls.”
Emma had been nodding. At that, she turned with a snap.
“Weaken?” she spat. She had expected the Night City to turn the Turnbulls’ entrails to snakes or force them into eternities of service. Not to hope for a minor reduction in comfort. “I don’t want to weaken the Turnbulls. I want to destroy them.”
Fury crystallized her idea to a single thought. “My value is far more than what happened to me.”
“I can see that,” Robin murmured. “In fact, O radiant one, I wager I’d want you on my side in a fight.”
“So forget just compiling my mortal memories. Let’s change our bargain. What if I find a way to help destroy that contract? To stop the Turnbulls ever making a sacrifice again?”
Robin’s face was alight. “Could you do that?”
“To undo a bargain, you must know how it was done, you said.” She leaned in, her voice intense. “So what if I discover how my particular sacrifice was done? Could we not also work backward, and outward, and discover the key to the bargain as a whole? To undo it, completely?”
“Centuries of Night City scholars tried to find the secret. None have done it.”
“How could they? They’ve never been mortal. They don’t know how to think like one. But I know these boys. If they have hidden their magical workings, I’ll be able to figure out how.”
“If that is indeed the bargain you offer, I will accept it on behalf of the Night City gladly.” He swept a bow. “Lady fox, you are a marvel among marvels.”
She waved aside the hands attempting to clasp her own.
“Can you please be sensible?”
“I am not sure,” he admitted candidly. “I never have before. But for you, I will try.”
From the twinkle in his eye, she was not sure if either of those things was true.
“You know,” he went on. “It might not need to be anything as great as the key to the whole contract. Any new information on what magics the Turnbulls have been using, or how their ritual is worked, could be weapon enough for the City.”
“And if I found that, what kind of reward would there be?”
“I would have to ask. But if you delivered something that helped the City break the Turnbull contract, the reward would be… breathtaking. Enough to cancel your debt entirely, I am sure. Perhaps even enough to get you what you want, O dawnflower of the river marches.”
“What I want?”
“To leave the Night City, of course.” Robin watched Emma stiffen. “Come, lady fox, what else would you want? We all long to return to where we belong, when we are far from it.” He seemed sincere, for once.
“And the Night City would let me go?”
“The Night City would hand over your freedom on a jeweled platter, if you can deliver what you’ve said. Especially now. It needs a good show of power. With things as they are—You’ve heard the whispers?”
“That something’s—not right, with the Night City. That it’s losing its grip. And people here are on edge.”
“They are. Things have been off, since just before the flood. Something was thinning the veil between mortal and magic. I don’t know what, but I do know something’s shaken the City. Enough that it would gladly take a victory wherever it can, especially over an old grudge. And reward richly for it.”
“I will find you the Turnbulls’ secrets. And you will get me home.”
He held out a hand. “Our new bargain. You would need to keep this secret, though. No blabbing to your sisters.”
“Understood.” Emma did not move yet. “And no frog legs this time?”
“No, indeed.”
Emma fought a grin. It was almost fun, dueling wits. She took his hand. “Then I accept this bargain.”
“Very well, O pearl among raindrops. See what you can find. Tell no one. And know that I await your discoveries most breathlessly.” He smiled, bright and sudden, like sunlight through leaves.
“Emma!”
The spiral staircase shook with the pounding of heavy boots. Saskia hauled into view, panting. “You have to come.”
“But my books—I haven’t tidied—”
Saskia’s hand closed around her arm. “We have to leave. Now.”
Emma flung a glance back to the stepladder.
The messenger was gone, as she’d expected he would be.
But her books had been stacked neatly on its rungs.
So Emma let Saskia drag her away, trying as hard as she could not to stumble over the borrowed boots.
Reading rooms flashed by, and still Saskia did not slow.
“Nancy sent a message. We have to get back,” she said, as though through frozen lips. “It’s the House of Foxes.”
“What about it?”
Saskia set her jaw. “There’s been an attack.”