“I have. You must tell me who sent you, or suffer the punishment we agreed. What was it again?” she mused, gazing up at the reading room ceiling. “Something about frogs?”
“But I am fond of my legs,” he complained. “Truly, the beauties at Court have said that they are my finest feature.”
“How sad for you.” Emma grinned. “But just think how much faster you may deliver messages. Bouncing down the corridors of the Court. All who look on you will be stunned.”
“Enough, enough.” Robin buried his face in his hands. “Lady fox, you have me.”
“So who sent you?”
He raised his head slowly. “The Night City itself.”
She had expected some courtier, hungry for gossip. It took her a moment to recover her breath. “It can’t be. The Night City’s power is knowledge. It must have all it needs on the Turnbulls.”
“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 toweakenthe 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 changeour 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.”
