CHAPTER 40 #2
“—only for bargains. I see.” He was wrong, but it didn’t matter. She had just wanted him to hear the right name. Richard chuckled. “The Night City. You won’t understand, you idiot, but you’ve given me exactly what I need to end this.”
“End this? End this how?” She added a touch of terror. Tried to sound weak, an idiot. A thing she never had been. Richard was the one who didn’t understand.
From the other side of the wall came a muffled sound of pain.
“I give my blood, to open the way.”
The wall scraped as he pushed himself up it.
“The desperation of the trapped.” His footsteps began to thud again, moving around the outside of the room. “Pounding heart, painful breath. And oh, would you look? I have that.” He was wheezing now. “And what was the last you said? Oh, yes. The plea.”
She heard him raise his voice, sonorous. “Great Night City. I pledge you this bargain. I will offer you just payment—”
Emma steeled herself to jump in. The interruption would infuriate him. But she had to say it perfectly. Every word mattered. “No! The Night City won’t let you break in here to hurt me, it can’t—”
“It can and it will.” Oh, there was real venom in his voice now. “You think you can do what I can’t? I command these powers. You are nothing.”
The repetition of the idea was important. She needed him to pick it up.
“Oh please, don’t let him in,” Emma declaimed to the heavens, borrowing Nat’s favorite dramatic tone. “Don’t let him break in here so he can finish his ritual, please—”
“Great Night City,” he roared over her interruptions.
She had stoked his fury well, she noted with satisfaction.
His voice was shaking, the words tumbling over one another.
The sound of a man primed to make a mistake.
“Let me in, damn you. Take my bargain. Come on.” The walls rattled with his pounding.
She heard the grit of exhaustion in his snarl.
“Please. The old boys won’t take me back without it.
The Balfours don’t have a home for me, not if I can’t fix things.
I need this. Wherever she’s hiding, just let me through so I can finish our ritual.
I’ll pay whatever you want, if you give me that. ”
Emma squeezed her eyes shut and her hands over her mouth, smothering laughter.
He had done it. He had thrown himself, tongue-first, into her trap.
For the Night City loved its tricks with words.
And there was a vast difference between a bargain to kill someone and a bargain to break into a room so that one might kill them.
She had only to wait for what came next.
The nearest door swung open. Richard stumbled in, disheveled and sweating. Emma perched on a desk, waiting.
He stalked toward her, blood soaked and awful.
One thick pink hand yanked a reading lamp from a desk.
He hefted the heavy bronze in his arms. His eyes traced a path through the air to Emma’s skull, as though rehearsing the blow that would crush it.
Emma felt sweat dampen her back. Something ought to have been happening by now.
She had bet her life on it. He had made a bargain; the Night City would come to collect.
But he was nearly on her. She readied to spring, every muscle taut.
His gaze tracked over her head and stopped.
Emma looked back. The corner of the tapestry was fluttering.
Then it blew back, as if in an invisible gale.
Behind was an earthen passageway, tree roots tangling into the distance.
Richard stepped closer, mouth soft with amazement.
At the end of the tunnel, Emma could just make out a carved door with a crystal knob.
A door she had seen before, although she had come to it by a different entrance.
Emma stilled the joy leaping in her chest, and cued herself for a performance. She huddled her face into her hands, sobbing as best she could. With the adrenaline and the horror of the night, it was easier than she thought to call up some real tears.
“What is that? Answer me.”
She lifted her face, shining with tears. “It is the Night City’s place.” Then, with an obvious shudder: “It is bad, wrong, don’t take me there—”
He dropped the lamp. “The Power, guiding my hand at last.” He took her by the arm, pulling her into the passage. “It wishes me to deliver you. It shows me the way.”
The earthy scent of the Court tunnels wrapped around them.
Mineral streaks glowed from the walls, bright enough that Emma could make out the door of the Room of Choosing, growing closer.
A room that appeared when mortals had a bargain with the Night City, left unpaid.
The sign of a debt, soon to be collected. She smiled to herself.
Richard wrenched the crystal knob of the door and tugged Emma through behind him.
There were the five pillars with their glittering objects; there, the skeleton monk in his corner; and there, with its bright black eyes and mushroom skin, was the wizened creature who had guided her.
She bowed to it. Respect was always worth showing.
Emma knew the moment the creature recognized her.
It visibly brightened, its thistle-flax beard twitching.
She had always thought of it as a friend.
She was glad to see it remembered her, and kindly.
For more reasons than one. Emma melted a step behind Richard and placed a finger on her lips, jerking her head at the Turnbull. She traced her bruises and the blood on her gown and again pointed at Richard. The creature gave a sly, sharp nod. She knew it understood her.
Richard strode to the pillars. The feather, the droplet, the ball of light, the rat teeth, and the claw floated gently above them.
“Treasures of the Power,” he breathed. He beckoned the creature. “You there. Servant of the Power. What do these do? Are they how I must fulfill the ritual?”
His tone made the creature stiffen. Before it answered, Emma slid in. “They will complete your bargain,” she said, choosing her words carefully.
Richard snarled over his shoulder. “As if I would trust you.”
“Oh no, the little once-a-mortal does not lie.” Overlarge black eyes glinted at Emma, and then back to Richard. Emma saw the mischief in their depths. “No, indeed. These will complete your bargain. Although—”
Richard turned away without thanks. The creature’s eyes narrowed.
“A trial of my worthiness,” Richard murmured, staring at the objects. “Of course. To fulfill my bargain, to repair the Turnbull ritual, I must choose.”
“Choose, yes.” The creature puffed its chest and drew itself up, delighted to perform. “Debtor, for the City’s payment / You must choose—” it began proudly.
“Leave off all that,” Richard snapped. “I’m trying to think.”
Needle-sharp nails quivered, as though thirsting for the touch of blood.
Richard remained oblivious, musing before the objects.
“I see it now. Each of these must grant a gift, a power… but I must choose correctly. Only one will prove me worthy to command the Night City: to fulfill the Turnbull ritual that was broken.”
Emma and the imp eyed each other, bemused. There was very little need for subterfuge when a victim was quite so determined on deluding themselves.
“A feather for obedience, as in the blazons of heraldry.”
He went on down the line. Emma could only watch in awe as he confidently misinterpreted every object.
“A teardrop to grant purity. The sun, for glory.” He passed from the glowing ball to the rat teeth and broke off, clearly puzzled. “An odd shape. Alchemical symbol, perhaps? Made of gold, for wealth. That’s it. And this claw—”
The amber claw on the final pillar was not glowing, as it had for Emma. But Emma could not bear for him to approach it. It was time to lure him into the final trap.
“Don’t tell him about the ball of light.” Emma shrieked, flinging an elbow over her head. “Oh, creature, I beg you. Let him not have that power—”
“Power?” Richard turned.
From under her arm, Emma winked at the creature, who was looking rather startled.
“The ball,” she said, through clenched teeth, “which he called a sun.”
The ball of light swirled upon its pillar, an angry star. Richard eyed it hungrily.
“Ah,” said the creature, eyes glittering. “Yes. Shame on the little once-a-mortal, seeking to hide this power from the so-noble gentleman.” Its voice dripped with glee. “I can tell him all about it.”
“Those who walk the path of power
Wear the gift of mortal skin:
They shall owe no gift of service,
But only that which lies within.”
Richard looked at the creature with dislike.
“Can’t you do anything but talk in riddles?
Still, doesn’t matter. A child could solve it.
This light bestows a power that only a mortal may wield.
They ‘owe no service,’ because it gives them command over all.
The Night City, bargains, that kind of thing.
But this is only for a certain, worthy mortal: judged by ‘that which lies within.’ Do I have it? ”
“Not allowed to give clues.” The creature stared up with barely concealed venom.
He had missed every warning in the words. Every hint of danger. Just as Emma hoped, Richard stretched out his hand for the blazing ball. His fingers closed around it.
And the Night City seized him. She saw it happen. Power streamed down his arms, the fire of life and thought and soul. His face grayed.
What’s within a mortal, then? Emma heard her voice echo, from long ago. Oh. Mortality. You give what you contain. Everything that you are. And you’re gone.
The ball of light drank deeply, growing brighter and fiercer. It was just what he had planned to do to her. What Turnbulls had done to victims for centuries. A full draining.
The ball burned unbearably bright. Richard crumpled to his knees.
And a vision flared behind Emma’s eyes. A rune blazed green against the darkness of her eyelids.
A knot of cruel lines, a sunburst of shards.
The rune of the Turnbulls’ blood jar and its victims: the rune affixed to her soul.
With a blinding pulse of green light, she saw it shatter.
The rune’s debt had been paid: the essence of one mortal soul drained into the Night City.
But not hers. Because she had tricked Richard into giving his own soul to the Night City instead.
For the first time, one of the Turnbulls had been the sacrifice for their own Society’s bargain.
And so Emma was free of them. Of their rune, of their debt, of their greed.
Free. The light behind her eyes cleared. She blinked them open.
Richard looked up at her, a perfectly animate man. But his face was empty. Even his body looked diminished, like dough collapsing on itself. He gazed without interest, without fear. Without anything. The ball of light dropped from his hand, rolling into a corner.
“All drained.” The creature kicked him and chuckled, a rasp like a cricket rubbing over a rusty chain. “I have not seen one take the ball in some decades. I do enjoy it.”
“Can I have him?” It would cause fewer questions in the outside world.
“As you please. The Night City has no use for the shell.” The creature rustled its knife-nails over her hand in the softest of touches. “But you, I may miss. Farewell, little once-a-mortal.”
The room began the queasy process of folding in on itself.
Teeth clenched against the nausea, Emma pulled Richard to the passage.
He quivered in her hold like a soft animal.
She pushed him through the tapestry, into the dark of the reading room.
As the tapestry fluttered to stillness, the passage behind became a plain stone wall.
It was done. She let Richard slump against a desk.
He would make no more rituals. He would wield no more knives.
By her own hand, she was free of the Turnbulls and their debt.
Their mark on her was gone. In comparison, her hundred years of promised service were a speck in the balance.
She would find a way around them. She had done this. She could do more.
“Hullo, lady fox.”
A figure in green velvet lounged against a pillar.
Robin looked at Emma. He twinkled, the infuriating creature. “You’ve been busy, I see. I thought I heard you here earlier, but would you know, I had the Night’s own time getting in.”
“What are you doing here?” she scolded, to hide how happy she was to see him.
Robin raised a brow. “I was at the Midsummer revels at Court, freshly returned from my posting, and heard the trouble my own dear lady fox was in. I came, of course, on the instant.”
“You heard about me—about this”—Emma indicated the splintered mess of the Library beyond the reading room—“at Court?”
“Well, my dewdrop, your fox maidens stormed the Court celebrations for your sake. Quite trod over the musicians. They were almost dragged away to the cells for interrupting the revels, but they stood their ground. I have never seen the jaws of the Upper House lords so slack. It was delicious.” He grinned.
“They told of the Boars attacking the Library. You cannot imagine the chaos. The Judge stepped in to create order, and gave his commands. The Boars will be held for judgment in a very unpleasant part of the Court, charged with high treason. He comes here himself, to see the damage. But I, along with your fox maidens, was most anxious to see you safe, and so we sped together to the Library. I left them tending to the Librarian.”
“They’re here?” Emma said, her eyes flooding. “And they did all that, braving the Court, for me?”
A handkerchief unfurled under her nose with a flourish. “You inspire loyalty, my lady.”
“Oh, you.” Emma flicked it at Robin with a watery grin. “Thanks.”
“Do not thank me yet,” Robin replied. “I may well need it back. The Judge will soon be here, and in no kind mood. Somehow, this humble creature always ends up at the lash end of his tongue. It quite oversets my tender feelings.”
Before Emma could spare a thought for Robin’s tender feelings, a shiver ran through the air of the Library.
Robin looked grim. “That would be him. Come, lady. We should find the mortals and bring them. The Judge will command our presence.”