CHAPTER 34 #2
“You must carry it when you enter the river. The door is underneath the mortal bridge, and its guardian will rip you apart well before you reach it, should you approach without the correct token.” A cloaked figure hurried from the dark, and the clerk looked up with obvious relief.
“And here is the guide to show you the door. Thank the Night, I can’t spend a moment more in this wretched damp.
A nice, dry scroll room, that’s the way… ”
The clerk’s grumbles faded into the distance.
Emma took in the guide’s Eel collar and rough jerkin.
There was something familiar about his face.
Not from the Beasts’ Ball, she was sure.
Then it came to her. He had not worn an Eel’s collar when she’d seen him last. He had been a messenger then, the first she had met in the Night City: the one who had banged on the Sister and Librarian’s cottage door.
He’d been apologetic about doing it, though.
She’d thought he seemed decent at the time, scared as she was.
So she fell into step with him along the riverbank. It was nice to have a friendly face for her last moments in the City.
He nodded ahead. “Not far now. Gate’s beneath the bridge. You’d not spot it, but I guard this bit of river, so I know.”
“New job? Last I saw, you were a messenger.”
“House of Eels now. Volunteered for this tonight. Bit of extra coin.”
Quite a step down, for a messenger. She’d not known of any nightfolk entering the Lower Houses, only foolish mortals.
But the little servant at Court had mentioned a relative going in for a family debt, so perhaps this was similar.
She pitied the ex-messenger his fall, whatever the cause.
It was doubly good to be leaving. The Night City was precarious.
“There.” The guide pointed. His sleeve was stained and torn, quite unlike his immaculate messenger uniform.
At first, Emma saw nothing but the Mathematical Bridge. Then something tickled the back of her mind. Memories, scented with green things and salt water. Afternoons spent in a silent crouch on a riverbank. Eight-year-old Emma’s hands, pressed around a pair of binoculars for a glimpse of seals.
She had always been good at observing. She sank into the quiet place in her mind, the part that knew how to still her limbs and thoughts until she became part of a landscape.
There was no need to look for anything specific.
Only let the patterns of movement wash over her.
And then, just as it had in her mortal days, something stood out.
A patch under the bridge’s arch where the moonlight struck the water differently.
The phosphoric glow of the City danced over the rest of the river: Here, there was dead darkness.
She moved closer. There was a hole in the world, like a flap cut in a veil.
She was looking straight through to the mortal side.
The guide blocked her with a warning arm and threw a stone. It clunked into the river near the door. The water erupted, ripples frothing outward. Dark scales curved above the surface.
“The guardian? But the token will keep me safe, right?”
“You’ll be fine. Just kneel here and look into the water. Straight down, that’s right. You’ll see the path.”
The guide’s hands were warm on her shoulders. Emma stared hard into the river’s depths. She saw ripples, a few strands of floating algae—
Her head plunged into the water. There was a force on her shoulders, holding her under.
It was the guide. As Emma thrashed and screamed, bubbles jetting from her mouth, she felt him rip a weight from her hand.
The token. He forced her arms behind her back, and she felt something slide around her wrists.
It was hard and cold, and no matter how she tugged, she could not free herself from it.
The guide hauled her back as though reeling in a fish and flung her on the riverbank. She coughed, spitting riverweed. A quick twist behind her confirmed that her wrists had been bound with a silver chain, like the one the Sister had used at the Court. No knots, no breaks.
The guide waved the gold disc before her. “Mine now. Not so quick this time, hmm?”
Strands of wet hair had glued themselves to Emma’s eyes. She tried to shake them from her face. “This time?”
Now that she could see him clearly, she regretted it.
His face was flushed, teeth bared in a feral promise.
“I don’t suppose you cared, last time we met.
That when you ran, I paid for it. Cast out of the messenger service, forced into a Night-poxed Lower House.
All as punishment for ‘letting’ you escape. ”
“I didn’t know.”
“I took this job tonight to pay you back, didn’t I?” He grinned. “My turn to get away. Out of the Night City, forever. I’ll not take a hundred years of this collar.”
He had the token. He had her way home. Emma strained against the chain. It only cut deeper into her wrists. But if she ran at him, she could ram him in the stomach. Emma struggled to her feet.
But the guide closed the gap between them in a stride. He swung Emma by her bound wrists and hissed in her ear. “I took pride in being a messenger. And you stole that from me. Now watch me steal from you.”
He shoved, and Emma toppled into the water with a splash.
Cold closed over her. She waited for the thump of river mud against her shoulder, then turned and shoved for the surface with all her might.
She gasped in air, kicking for the shore, as the river behind her exploded like a pot on the boil. The guardian was awake.
The guard was already climbing nimbly over the Mathematical Bridge’s supports, token in hand. She saw the moment his head disappeared, then his shoulders, until only his leg remained hanging out of the hole in the world. He pulled it through behind him. He had gone.
Emma snarled, and it was the sound of blood and fury.
Then a current surged against her legs. Something powerful was moving through the water.
Emma pictured prehistoric jaws stretching for her and flailed harder for shore.
She needed her arms. Forcing her panic away, she thought of wrists shrinking, of hands made small.
Fox paws, fox forelimbs: so narrow, so easy to slip free.
It worked. The chain slid off, and her arms churned in a desperate paddle.
But there was a sudden lightness on her wrist, and too late she grabbed for the fox bracelet that sank beneath her.
Paws became fingers, but not fast enough.
The silver fox charm winked into the murk.
It had been her reminder of her bond with her sisters, and she had hoped to keep it with her always in the mortal realm.
But now it was gone. Just like all of her hopes and plans.
Just as the ripples behind her licked her toes, she heaved herself onto the riverbank.
The guardian’s scales grazed the surface and disappeared.
She was no more threat to the door. Emma flipped onto her back, cold to the marrow.
Stupid, stupid; she had been so stupid. She did not want to be warm. She did not deserve it.
Emma clung to that thought as she stepped dully into the hall of the House of Foxes.
She waved away the fox maidens’ cries of alarm.
They wanted to warm her, to dry her, but she could not let them.
She did not deserve them either. If they knew the secret she’d kept from them, they wouldn’t want to love and care for her like that.
The silver fox bracelets swinging on their wrists were an unbearable reminder.
Hers was at the bottom of the river. Because she had tried to leave the fox maidens behind.
She’d had an unimaginable reward. Shared, it might have at least helped her sisters.
But she had been selfish. And she had lost everything.
Turning out her pockets in her bedroom, she found a sodden mass of paper. But she had used up all of her feelings, so there was no grief left in her when she saw the token of protection, ruined and bleeding ink. The Boars could come for her now, and she would have nothing to stop them.
Then something stirred beneath the numbness.
Not sorrow or regret. No, what she felt was fury.
For the victims whose memories burned within her, demanding justice.
For the bruising around her wrists from the chain, and the weight of the Turnbulls’ crimes, and the sheer cruelty of her bargain with the City.
While she was trapped here, the Turnbulls got to carry on.
A few newspaper attacks could only do so much.
There would still be more sacrifices, more wealth, more power for them. And she was more helpless than ever.
Then the thought came to her.
She finally had nothing left to take. No token, no bracelet. Not a single shred of hope. Buried under debts that would keep her enslaved for centuries. She had nothing. She was nothing.
So she was free. Because she had just become the most dangerous weapon of all.
A person with nothing to lose.