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 aweight 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 ofalarm. 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.
CHAPTER 35
Of all the balls that lit up the University on summer nights, St. Dunstan’s was the grandest. It was always on Midsummer Eve. Just as the Night City gave itself over to Midsummer revels at the Court, the mortals threw aside exams and work for a dreamscape of champagne and strawberries and dancing. Competition for invites was intense. The favored few milled inside the college grounds, ushered in by burly security teams. Outside, shut-out students attempted ever more outlandish schemes to gain entry. The inexpert disguised themselves as booked performers, only to be checked against a list and thrown out by security. Others scaled the walls of surrounding buildings, in full formal dress, timing their drop into the ball grounds to avoid the guards patrolling the perimeter. On this occasion, the most extreme—suspected in later years to have been the water polo team—stripped down to trunks and swam the river, with tailcoats stashed in waterproof bags strapped to their backs. Emerging dripping on the unguarded riverfront at the rear of the ball, they wriggled into immaculate white tie attire and strolled into the thick of the party.
Taken as a whole, it was perhaps not surprising that so many of the University’s graduates were recruited into the nation’s secret services.
But a fox maiden needed no such subterfuge. Emma simply gathered the shadows around herself and walked past the guards. Inside the ball, she let the shadows fall. Her gown of mist wreathed her shoulders and floated from her waist in shimmering swathes. A velvet bag hung from one wrist.
She was beautiful. She was magnificent.
She was alone.
