“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 beena 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.
“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.
