CHAPTER 34
The next moonrise found Emma in the night market, humming with satisfaction.
The University had imploded. The student paper had never flown from stacks so quickly.
Students stood in doorways, waving copies.
Academics gathered in conclaves of tattered knitwear, dissecting details.
Expensive cars with silent engines flew up from London, spilling dark-suited government advisers and lawyers who hounded the offices of the University chancellor.
But the paper would not back down. It had published three special editions and counting.
Pickup on social media was moderate, at first. And then the first national outlet had caved.
After sending its own fact-checkers to the student paper’s offices, where the evidence boxes were closely guarded, it ran an article verifying the claims. The internet fell upon the stories with slavering fervor.
Emma had run through the streets, picking up every discarded sheet of newsprint she could find.
She burned with triumph at every page. Two more national papers had joined the first. The Turnbulls’ fall was public.
And yes, it might be a small ripple, for now.
Only a few stories had made it to print; and those not the most lurid in the records room.
But Emma could picture the future. The shamefaced paparazzi walks in front of family castles.
The cars sold, the helipads shut down. Turnbulls leaving courtrooms, heads bowed, chased by whispers that would not cease. The shame. The pain. The justice.
“Lady fox. A sight to gladden my heart.”
Emma looked up. Robin leaned against the sugarsmith’s stall, all curly beard and mischief.
“I have news.” Robin tossed the stall keeper a coin. A large one, Emma noticed. And his tunic was far finer than any she had seen him wear before. There were pearls embroidered on the velvet. But the tree of the Night City was missing.
“That’s not a messenger’s tunic.” A long-lurking suspicion surfaced. “But you’ve never really been just a messenger, have you? What messenger would be given secrets the Night City would not even trust to its Court?”
Robin took a twinkling sugar bluebell from the stall keeper, presented it to Emma, and steered her to another stall.
“None can match your cunning, lady fox. It was, perhaps, convenient for me to wear the uniform. Messengers go everywhere: unseen, unremarked. Unremarkable. A useful costume to carry out my work. I am sent to handle matters that require… discretion.”
“You mean you’re a spy,” said Emma, savoring her bluebell. It tasted of spring mornings. “And a good one, I suspect.”
“I believe the mortal term is ‘spymaster.’” He bowed. “And the Night City has given no complaint of my services.”
“So what is this ‘news’?”
His whisper was warm in her ear. “I have your escape.”
The words sent spirals of shock down her spine.
“A lordling recently displeased the Night City and was sent to the mortal realm.”
“I heard,” said Emma dazedly. “For a week and a day.”
She had not wanted hope to break her. So she had told herself that spreading the Turnbulls’ secrets could be justice enough for her.
That if Robin’s promise of escape never came true, she might live a satisfied life with her sisters in the House of Foxes, hunting her enemies from the shadows.
But it had always been a lie. Now her escape was before her, she felt her hunger for it.
Tasted it, like the sugar on her tongue.
“Of course you heard,” said Robin approvingly.
“You know how to listen and observe. Do you know how rare that talent is? You are wasted in the mortal realms. If you stayed here, I’d have a job for you.
But no matter.” He sketched a square in the air.
“The lordling was sent through a door like this. A hole in the veil between the mortal realm and ours, if you like. But one with a special attribute. Those who pass through it emerge as mortals. It was built in days gone by, when ‘playing mortal’ was a favorite amusement of the Upper Houses.” He grinned.
“A moon’s worth of mischief, and then they might return through the door to our world, and be mortal no more.
Now it is forbidden. The door is heavily guarded.
Any approaching without the Night City’s warrant would be torn apart by the gatekeeper. ”
“I do not think I’d like that,” said Emma carefully.
“Nor I. So you will be granted a boon. In exchange for your reward—the entire sum—you will be permitted to pass through this door. Just once, and in one direction. To become mortal. You will be given a token to let you through.”
“Like my token of protection?”
“A good deal shinier than that, O diamond on the slipper of dawn.”
“So where is it, this door?”
“Beneath that extraordinary-looking mortal bridge. The wooden monstrosity.”
“The Mathematical Bridge, you mean?” Emma had always liked that bridge. It had supposedly been built with no nails or bolts at all. The whole structure, impossibly, was held together by mathematical perfection alone.
Robin shuddered. “Mathematics. Another monstrous creation of the mortal mind. An affront to the beauty of mystery.”
Though she loved all things quantitative, Emma let that pass. Escape filled her mind. “So when will it happen?”
“It will take some weeks to arrange, O sure-footed sprite. You would not believe the paperwork involved. I will send word when all is ready.”
She tried not to sound plaintive. “And will I see you before I go?”
“Afraid not, lady fox. The Night City has commanded me next to a spot of trouble in the far reaches. It may not be in my power to return within the next two moons. But I shall think of you, safe in the mortal lands.”
It was hard to get the words out around the pain in her throat, so Emma clasped his hand instead. “Thank you, Robin. I mean it.”
“Any thanks are mine.” He touched his lips to her hand. “Farewell, my lady.”
And he was gone. She caught a flash of a rosy cheek turning away in the crowd. The edge of a curly beard. Then the night market swallowed him up.
Spring trickled into summer. As the air grew warmer, humans began to linger outside long after moonrise.
The city’s byways filled with bare legs and laughter.
With escape so close, Emma found herself trailing her hands along ancient college walls and fluted bridges in a silent goodbye.
There was so much she would miss. Like the lights of the City.
The warmth and incense of the night market.
Even the feel of the fox beneath her skin.
She could not bear to look at her sisters.
To think of leaving them. And so, when Robin’s letter finally arrived, Emma said no farewells.
She looked back only once, fixing the ring of bright faces around the dining table in her memory, before slipping away from the House of Foxes.
The moon was full: This was the night. A Night City clerk would meet her by the river, Robin had said.
There she would make her final bargain and cross back into the mortal world.
Emma crouched on the bank, trailing her fingers in the water.
The silver fox charm bracelet was a manacle on her wrist: a deadweight of guilt.
Her eyes had teared as she’d shut the door of the House of Foxes for the last time.
Leaving the fox maidens, with no word or clue of her plan, had felt like tearing a tooth out from the root.
But there was no other way. Her reward could not save them all.
And she was needed at home. The fox maidens would forget her: The Night City would take care of that.
But in the mortal world, her absence was an open wound.
The friends she had left behind could not carry on.
She had seen Julia, not two weeks ago, on this very bank.
Hunched and red-eyed, staring at the water.
Just as she had been when Imogen left. There had always been a loneliness about Julia, Emma realized.
She had not seen it when they met. Julia had been a towering figure, elegant and in command.
But there was more Emma ought to have noticed.
How much Julia had always expected of herself.
How harshly she judged herself, and how hard she worked to hide what she thought were flaws.
All of that sadness, Emma might have helped to carry.
Instead, she had disappeared and added to Julia’s pain.
But she had a chance to make things right. When she was back in the mortal world, she would be a better friend. She would fix the hurt left by her absence: for Julia, for Nat, and for her mother.
“Fox maiden?”
Emma brushed her hands together and stood.
A green-wigged Night City clerk tottered down the bank. A river reed brushed their robe, and they kicked it away with a shudder. “And they made me leave the Court for this,” Emma heard them mutter.
They held a heavy gold disc as wide as Emma’s palm. A gemstone gleamed from its center, with runes embossed on the metal.
“That lets me through the door?” Emma breathed. Robin had been right. This was far shinier than her inked token of protection.
“It is the only way. Even should you find the door and beat your fists against it, you could not pass through without such a token.” The clerk drew it back from her.
“You are sure you wish this bargain? The entirety of the reward granted to you by the Night City, in exchange for this passage to the mortal world, and the resulting release from your debts?”
“I’m sure,” Emma said, impatient. She’d told them what she wanted: Why couldn’t they just hand it over?
The clerk tipped it into her palm.