CHAPTER 27
There were many ways into the Court. This one was hidden in the crypt beneath Regent’s College.
Among the sleeping stone crusaders and long-dead college proctors, the lid of one tomb had been pushed aside, revealing a shadowed staircase.
Emma clambered over the lip of the tomb and down into the dark.
Before and behind her, a line of cloaked nightdwellers murmured and jostled.
There was no light. Only by reshaping her eyes into a fox’s could she make out Saskia, striding immediately in front.
They emerged in a part of the Court deep below ground, hewn from dark rock.
Emma followed the crowd through a labyrinth of caverns.
A glow the size of a stamp beckoned. It grew gradually to a majestic doorway, the breadth of two elephants, thrown open at the head of a grand staircase.
Sconces flamed every few steps. A low buzz of sound became a thunderstorm. Laughter. Music.
Emma looked over the staircase and caught her breath.
The ball below was a whirl of shadow and firelight.
The hall was vast, supported by endless columns that faded into the dark.
It looked to have been hacked from the earth millennia ago.
Great stalactites dangled overhead, like savage chandeliers.
At the center, a polished obsidian dance floor writhed with masked dancers.
At first glance, they seemed human-shaped.
But here and there, like carefully planned accessories to the doublets and gowns, Emma spied the outlines of wings, tails, and fins alongside hands and feet.
Some of the Lower Houses evidently preferred to enhance their two-legged forms.
Their dancing was a strange mix of formal and fierce: a curtsy followed by a swipe of the claws; a baring of the teeth as partners traded turns.
The dance of the hunt. The musicians were sawing away with bows of sharpened bone, on strings that sprouted thorns.
The music they made cut straight to Emma’s marrow, setting her feet twitching.
Dance, it whispered. You shall dance your feet to the bone.
You shall dance until blood marks your steps, until your skin falls like rotting leaves. You shall dance.
Emma felt her blood sing in response. She tightened her mask—fox-shaped, with velvet ribbons that tied under her hair—and smoothed the silver skirts of her ball gown.
Her sisters had chosen well. From the classical drapery at the shoulders to the long, twinkling folds that fell to her feet, the gown was designed for someone with height.
In it, Emma forgot to hunch. She strode forward, the gown wrapping her body like a cloud of mist, cool against her skin.
Layers of shimmering gauze swirled with every breath of air.
She felt like a dancing wind herself in it: mercurial, free.
Seen from the corner of her eye, the fabric seemed to drift like a real morning mist, spilling tendrils of vapor into the air.
Saskia leaned on the balustrade, pulling her own mask into place. “So, what do you think?”
Emma raised her voice over the shrieking strings. “Isn’t this a Midwinter ball? I thought it might be more, er… quaint? Holly. Pine cones. Silver bells?”
“Midwinter has never been a tame festival. But neither are we, now. Would you rather have the holly and bells?”
Emma looked at the ball again. The music ran teeth of honey and velvet over her skin.
The fire of the dance licked at her, driving her pulse to a throb, drenching the bare skin at her neck in delicious shivers.
She was not back in the mortal realm just yet.
The Night City beckoned. And for one night, she was ready to answer the call.
To revel in having claws of her own, and a pack of fierce sisters to dance among.
“I don’t want the bells,” she said.
Saskia offered her arm. “Then welcome to the Beasts’ Ball.”
As they descended the grand staircase, the heat rose to meet them.
Silver collars winked from the sliding shadows of the dance floor.
The ballgoers wore masks to show their affiliations.
And Emma was astonished at their number.
The House of Foxes must have been an outlier, to boast so few as nine.
The fox maidens were drowned in a sea of beak-masked Ravens, sharp-nosed Rats, and silvery Eels.
The other Lower Houses of the Night City, who served the City in its most menial roles.
But to Emma’s mind, it seemed that waste removal and cleaning, repair work and guard duty—and, yes, tax collection, which was what the foxes’ drainings came down to—were hardly of menial importance.
What place could run without them? That, Saskia had said, was the point of the Beasts’ Ball.
On Midwinter’s Eve, the workers of the lower orders were given a lavish feast to reward them for the year’s labor.
The fox maidens clustered around Emma, arguing good-naturedly about what they should do first. Some were for joining the dancers, others for exploring the feasting tables.
Selina yearned for the shadowed tables where gamblers challenged one another to duels of bargains; Frances to rest on the fur-draped benches around the dance floor, where the gossips chatted.
Emma’s chest pulsed with a dark, joyous greed.
Everything was enchanting and vicious and impossible to resist. She wanted it all.
A figure climbed the dais at the end of the ballroom and dropped into the central throne. A murmur raced through the ballroom, quickly hushed. Nightdwellers bowed as one to the piglike head, the muscled human chest.
Something caught in Emma’s throat. “What is one of them doing here?”
The Boar beckoned a trembling server and speared a grape on one sharpened nail.
He ground it to a sticky pulp between stained teeth.
Behind him, a troop of Boars filed into position on the dais.
At a nod from the throne, they snapped to attention.
The soldiers had plain leather bandoliers, Emma noticed, while the commander wore gold.
The commanding Boar ran cold eyes over the crowd. “Bring that one. The sweetmeat in purple.”
The voice was guttural, as though forced with difficulty between the razor-sharp tusks. Emma shuddered. She had not known they could speak, these boar-men. A tiny Raven in a blackberry gown was pulled to the dais, the shiver in her body visible even through her bodice. The Boar’s eyes glinted.
“The Boars’ve been put here to keep order tonight,” Nancy whispered, her face tight. “And they may pull any maiden or male from the crowd to suit their pleasure. Their station allows it.”
But the commander ran his eyes up and down the tiny Raven, and seemingly did not find his pleasure there. With a snort of disgust, he shoved her back into the crowd. She fled gratefully, small shoulders shaking.
The Boar threw himself back into the throne, beckoning roughly for wine.
“Ordered to watch over a Night-poxed ball like a pack of wetnurses?” Emma heard him mutter to a soldier. Resentment snarled through his voice, a forest of brambles. “Us? The City’s forgotten where respect is due.”
He paused, tilting his goblet. He had seen Emma staring. She ducked her head, wishing her dress truly were a cloud of mist she might hide in. She felt the graze of Boar eyes on her bare skin. It made her feel small and exposed, a field mouse trembling in an open patch of ground.
“Enough.” Saskia’s eyes glinted defiance. “We don’t stand here shaking. That’s what they want.”
“Too right.” Selina hugged Gertie around the shoulders.
Nancy bared sharp little teeth. “And what do we want, loves?”
The others growled in response, grins widening.
Emma heard the growl in her own throat, felt the cool air on her sharp, exposed teeth. She raised her head. “We want to dance.”
The fox maidens exploded into yips and barks.
Then a hand grabbed Emma’s and they were all running through the crowd.
The room was a howl of color and noise. Ratfolk crowded the gambling tables, while giggling Ravens swapped kisses on the benches.
Shadowed figures flitted among revelers to slip a bracelet off a wrist here, an amulet there.
Eels lay under the open spigots of wine, gulping without the need to breathe: Frilly gills had appeared beneath their ears.
Someone thrust a goblet of star wine into Emma’s hands: black as night, its depths glowing with tiny white lights, like constellations.
Then it was empty, and she was knocking back another, and a third.
When she hiccuped, tiny motes of light floated from her tongue.
She swayed as the music bound itself to her pulse, sharp and sweet and agonizing.
“Boots look nice.” Emma whipped round. Saskia stood behind her in a spiked black tunic and silver hose. Dabs of glitter on her cheekbones made her eyes look bluer than ever.
“The ones you gave me?” Emma tried to straighten up. She pointed one silver-booted foot at Saskia. “Yes, they’re perfect.”
“Didn’t give them, new girl. It was a bargain, remember?” Saskia leaned back on one hip, silver hose gleaming. “One pair of boots for a dance.”
“With you?”
“Who else?” Saskia bared her teeth in a fox grin.
Despite herself, Emma found herself grinning back. She let Saskia pull her to the floor. At the touch of hands around her waist, her pulse warmed.
Then the other fox maidens descended.
Selina seized them. “Darlings, we’ve been searching everywhere for you. Dancing time. Come on.”
Saskia shrugged and let her hands slip from Emma. At the sudden kiss of cold air around her waist, Emma felt strangely bereft.