The water hag regarded her curiously.“I could read the memories that cling to this rune, should you wish.”
What memories would be trapped within such a mark? Those of the Turnbull who had placed it, perhaps? Or someone else? Emma’s nails bit into her palms. The Judge had said that the bargain wasof long standingandpaid before now at the appointed time.So she could not have been the first sacrifice. Others had worn this mark before her. She imagined it clawing into them, drinking away their souls, those unlucky ones who had not been protected as Emma was by her fox’s skin. She thought of small pieces of those souls catching on the mark, staying trapped like food stuck between teeth.
Emma scrabbled backward. She had to get away. She could not witness those kinds of memories. But she did not even make it to the door. Those memories might hold the Turnbulls’ secrets. She needed those secrets to trade with the Night City for her reward. So she could go home, destroy the Turnbulls, and not even need the locked room to do it.
“And you can show me these memories, even if they aren’t mine?”
“Oh yes. I read memories held in objects, not just people. Will you hear my terms?”
Emma would taste the memories within the mark, the hag said. But once tasted, payment would be due. The memories would become the property of the water hag and be wiped from Emma’s mind. The memories of nightdwellers did not have the blazingvitality of the mortal kind, but they still held some value. Added up, they paid the water hag’s dues to the Night City. Emma would understand.
Emma edged back. It would be no use discovering the Turnbulls’ secrets if she could not remember afterward. There had to be another way.
“What if I offered a trade?” she faltered. “A memory for a memory, yes. But you take other memories from me instead, and I keep these.”
The water hag’s gaze bored into her.“The memories here are strong. I can feel them. Their intensity gives them value. What could you give as equal?”
Emma thought fast. It was a gamble, and she would need Nat’s performance skills to pull it off. “Take the thing I valued most in my mortal life.” She paused for dramatic effect. It was what Nat would have done. “Take my law studies.”
The water hag leaned in.
“My learning at the University meant everything to me. Everything.” Emma tried to look wistful and noble. “Take those memories.” She hoped she had been convincing.
Firelight glittered on dark eyes.“Very well.”
The water hag stoked the fire and bade Emma close her eyes. There were rattlings and chants. Smoke puffed up Emma’s nose, acrid and scented with herbs. It made her cough until her throat tore. She wiped bleary eyes.
And found herself within the first memory. She was in the Turnbull Clubhouse. It was her own memory, exactly as she recalled it. Jasper held a jar aloft, poured four red drops into the Turnbull bowl. Emma felt the press of the next memories, calling her away.But she lingered another moment. Because here, Julia was beside her. Memory-Julia turned to Emma with light in her eyes. Emma wanted to lean into her warmth, but the memory-body would not move. And so she watched Julia fade and the next memory take hold.
She was in the same room; a table stood at the center with the same ritual objects. But the boy above the bowl was not Jasper. And the memory-body was not hers. This girl—Lucy, her name was, Emma heard it in her mind—had almost sweated through the shirt the agency had made her wear, and she was worried. Her arms ached after hours of carrying trays. The money for the gig was good, she was reminding herself. And though her friend had said they’d be the worst kind of posh boys, they’d been fine so far. Even asked her to stay after dinner for drinks. Which made it hard to go home, not without being rude. But things were getting strange. They did some weird shit, rich people. Emma lost track of the girl’s thoughts then. Because she had looked at the crowd of Turnbulls behind the table. And she had seen Jasper and Richard. For them to have been at the University in this memory, this girl had to have been sacrificed the year before Emma. But they could not have sacrificed two girls in as many years. Once a generation, she’d imagined. To claim a soul every decade or two was monstrous; unthinkable, even. But one a year? She lost her grip on the girl, and the current of memories took her.
The next sacrifice was sobbing. Clutching the wall of Wessex College, falling. Something was happening to her. Her thoughts were draining away and her name and herself—
Gray flooded the world. Faces loomed close, askingWhat’s wrong?andCan you hear me?and none of it mattered. It was toomuch trouble to move. There was nothing left inside. No feelings, no memories. Just numbness.
Emma reeled back. The first memory had shown her the ritual and the boys; this girl had given the story of her draining. Left alive, but empty. Her soul, her self, taken. She must have been on her way home when it happened. Emma tried to stay, to see if she was safe, but the next memory was upon her. And they began to flick faster now. Over and over, she saw the Turnbull Clubhouse, the bowl and the runes, the boys in tailcoats. She felt one memory-body after another wrack with screams, with sobs, as thought and soul and self spilled out like warm blood. She wore a miniskirt, an A-line dress, finger-waved hair, a corset. Often now, there was a servant’s apron over her dress. And still the memories roared through her. Men bent over her: in breeches, in powdered wigs, in lace cuffs. Then ruffs, cloaks, doublets. The Turnbull Clubhouse she knew gave way to smoke-blackened beams and a floor strewn with rushes.
There were so many girls. Too many. Dimly, Emma felt tears track down the face of her living body, far away in the water hag’s hut. But she was down in the screaming. Now the Turnbulls had her by the river, and the damp was soaking through her shift. Only her shift; they had taken her clothes. They put a bowl before her on the ground, forced her over it, hands and knees, like a beast. They pulled her hair back. A man crouched next to the bowl. He had a knife. She was trembling now, and her bowels went, but he did not flinch. He patted her forehead, as you might a cow. His eyes were cold as snow, she thought. Then his knife moved. And she was gone.
Emma came to gasping, clutching her throat. She felt the sear of the knife’s slit, hot on her skin. That memory had been different. They had not just drained the girl of her soul. They had killed her.
“Well? That was the last, and oldest, memory.” The water hag emerged from the dark.
But Emma’s voice was locked within her. There had been so many. She had held a thousand women’s breaths in her mouth, felt their fear, lived their pain. The sacrifices had been happening for centuries. And the Turnbulls would do it again. They would keep doing it unless someone stopped them. Unless she stopped them.
“It is time for your payment.”The shadows within the hut thickened.
“Yes, my studying memories,” Emma said brightly, edging her foot from the dark tendrils. “You can take them now.”
“You thought to trick me?”hissed the water hag, lunging from the dark. Her hands were shards of ice on Emma’s shoulders.“With memories so weak and thin, you discard them without care? No, what I take must be warm and alive, as close to you as the beating of your heart.”
Cold dripped through Emma, like fingers probing at her mind.
“And what will be worth a thousand years of memories, I wonder? Your name? Or the ones you love, perhaps? I see a mother. And friends. The boy, all jokes and aliveness. And the girl. Their memories glow within you, so rich…”
The very reeds of the hut were wailing, the air a whirling shriek of smoke and shadow. She had to have something of value to trade, if she could only think of it. She could not lose Nat, or her mother, or Julia. She could not lose her name.
And an idea flashed before her. “I know how to pay you.”
