7. Vulpes

vulpēs ~is, f.

1. a fox, vixen

2. (figuratively) cunning, craftiness

Tally marks are the best way to remember time—gouged in your apartment wall if you must. One line for every day, when every day feels like the same eternity. A single line meant a time you wiped the blood off your split lip and got up again. A single line meant you ate to keep yourself alive. A single line meant you fucked a rich man three times your age for information about your mother’s killer no one else would give you.

For each day in the hospital, I scratch one neon line into my brain.

Three marks. Three days. Every six hours, the nurses check my restraints. Every four, they refill my IV—a lower-grade tranq than the hot honey but still strong enough to keep my heavy limbs in place. In my fevered tranquilizer sleep, the night Mother died plays like a recording corrupted by time, skipping and replaying and skipping back again—the empty hood of the assassin moves toward her like a hungry predator in all black, and she falls to her knees, face blurred and words garbled nonsense. She begged. I remember, but I don’t want to remember. I want to stop the assassin, but I never can. He is darkness, cold space, the devil, and as he looks at me with eyes a terrifying ice-blue, the scar he gave me in my collarbone begins to ache terribly.

I’m crying before I’m awake.

I cry without moving, until my pillow and my hair and my ears are full of salt, like the woman in God’s book who looked back. I was weak with Mother—too happy and naive and soft to do anything—and it killed her. I was weak. My softness killed her.

Four tally marks. Five.

On the sixth day, a man arrives. Not a nurse or a doctor but someone from outside. He smells like a moth—old fabric and dust and secret darkness. He walks measuredly across the tile, his tabard and breeches plain silk but his walking cane made of elaborate sapphire and silver. He could be anyone’s milquetoast uncle: middle-aged, middle height, with smooth skin and a mop of pale brown hair—a man with no hardship in him. Noble, then, but no blacklight halo is painted on his forehead. Strange…I thought they all wore that symbol of fealty to the king.

He seats himself in a chair at my bedside, slender lips pulling into a smile.

“Thank you for waiting for me, Synali.” His smooth voice is identical to the person who called me “brave one.” “It must’ve been terribly hard on you.”

I sit up straighter; nothing good comes from the sort of person who knows your name without asking for it first.

“Apologies,” he says. “I’ve been told your tranquilizer should wear off soon and you’ll be able to speak. Can you at least blink?”

I do. His smile widens, teeth surgery white.

“Let’s say one blink for yes and two for no. That way our conversation won’t be quite so one-sided. Agreed?” He interlaces his fingers on his knee. It’s the expensive rings on his fingers that beget realization: I have been kept alive so I could meet this man. He’s the reason the hospital didn’t hand me over to the vent. And that makes him my enemy. Though, whoever he is, he clearly has power—and power always proves useful.

He repeats himself patiently. “Are we in agreement, Synali?”

Blink once.

“Wonderful. Allow me to be frank—you murdered Duke Farris von Hauteclare by stabbing him with his own ceremonial dagger. Do you regret this?”

Blink twice. I expect anger or disgust, but his smile is gentle.

“I see. That bodes well.” He inspects the silver head of his cane. “After your patricide, you vented the duke’s body out of his office airlock, stole his rider’s suit, and then rode House Hauteclare’s steed in a tourney against House Velrayd. And not just any tourney—the Cassiopeia Cup Semifinals. The nobles were absolutely furious.”

A pleased twinkle moves through his thin gray eyes. I open my throat and croak something impossible to understand, but he interprets quickly.

“Oh, you were decimated by House Velrayd’s rider. Untrained as you were to withstand the g-forces, you were thrown from the saddle on impact, and—as you were unable to deploy your helmet cushion—your skull fractured on the metal innards of the steed. The doctors say it’s a God-sent miracle you survived, even with the nanomachine treatment I ordered.”

Miracles for me? Nanomachines for me? Why bother? I’m a murderer, a bastard—I am nothing anyone values.

The man leans back in his leather chair. “All of what I just relayed to you occurred two months ago.”

I choke. I’ve been in this bed for two months? No—no, it was six days! I counted. I kept a tally.

“You regained consciousness a week ago.” He answers my spiraling thoughts coolly. “Two months ago, I ordered your nanomachine treatment done. I even managed to keep your murder of the duke a secret; to the rest of the Station, he died of natural causes—heart attack, I believe. I don’t remember precisely what I had the investigating officers write when they recovered his body.”

My groan becomes a single stumbling word. “Wh-Why?”

“I have a favor to ask in return.”

“I won’t…sleep with you, y-you noble fuck. Just kill me.”

The man’s face goes slack, and then he laughs. All his pale lines and thin folds crease into one sun-riddled moment of pure amusement—the most concentrated emotion I’ve heard from him yet.

“Those sorts of favors don’t interest me.” He calms enough to speak. “Nor am I interested in killing you.”

“I want to die—”

“I know precisely what you want,” he interrupts. “One does not murder their father and then make an inexperienced tourney ride intending to trot on to a happy life. If one wished to survive, one would try to escape after their deed, yet you did no such thing. You were ready to die for it. You wanted to hurt House Hauteclare, even if it meant your death.”

The way he talks…he’s unmistakably noble-born. His eyes meet mine without softness. Where there once was joviality, there’s now only steel. He knows who I am. What I was trying to do. It curdles my insides to be known so plainly.

“Who are…you?” I manage, throat burning.

“You may call me Dravik. I’d like for you and I to work together.”

“Why should I?”

“Because the ruination of House Hauteclare cannot be accomplished by you alone.”

A snarl works over my limp mouth, but he continues.

“Please don’t misunderstand me; a duke’s bastard daughter riding, and his murderer besides…the Nova-King’s court would’ve been furious at House Hauteclare. Your plan would’ve done the trick very neatly but not very thoroughly. A flash in the pan, perhaps two months of bastard rumors, and Hauteclare would pay off the proper people to bury it. I have a more permanent method in mind.”

I lean off the pillows. “P-Permanent?”

He knows he has me, because his smile this time is patient. “The Nova-King’s court consists of fifty-one Houses. They’ve merged and split over the centuries, but none of them has been dissolved. Ever. The king won’t allow it, you see—they are his sources of power. They orbit him like planets, providing to him as he provides to them.”

“I know all this—” My voice gives out.

“You’ve heard of the Supernova Cup, I assume?” His doesn’t.

I blink once. The Supernova Cup is the tourney of all tourneys on the Station, coming around once every decade. As ignorant of riding as I am, I know whichever House wins the Supernova Cup earns great favor with the king, and his favor means power, money, influence—everything the nobles endlessly scheme and backstab one another for is handed on a silver platter to whomever wins the Supernova Cup. House Hauteclare—with my father as their rider—won last decade, and I grew up with their banner plastered in every ward and their barely disguised extortion and pillaging on every corner. The powerful Houses enter to cement their supremacy for the next ten years, the weaker Houses enter to reverse their fates, but everyone enters.

This Dravik man can’t possibly—

“I wish for you to ride for my House in the Supernova Cup, Synali. And in exchange, I will dissolve House Hauteclare.”

My heart leaps into my throat. “F-Forever?”

“They will be forgotten. Their deeds, their history, their honors—all of it will be erased.”

He’s mad. A beginner cannot win a cup like that. No one can dissolve a House save for the king. Dravik’s eyes don’t waver as he offers me his hand. If he’s lying, it’s one spectacularly expensive lie—my hospital bills, covering Father’s murder for me. He’s taken a huge risk keeping me alive. If he’s telling the truth…

“You can’t dissolve a House,” I insist.

“A plan is in place.” He says it as if it’s an explanation in itself—a stalwart truth.

“Don’t give me hope, Sir Dravik,” I croak. “I don’t want to hope—I want to die. I want to rest and to see my mother again.”

His gaze crumples strangely, painfully, as if he’s seen someone he knows well. The ludicrous idea of House Hauteclare wiped off the Station forever hangs like golden fruit in my mind. I hesitate, glaring at his outstretched hand. For the last six months, the feel of another person’s skin has meant nothing but pain. I look up at him.

“Can you promise me rest?”

The beeping of the machine slows, my heart begging for the answer.

“When it is done,” he begins. “I give you my word I will bring you rest.”

A stalwart truth.

I reach my hand out, callused palm gripping his soft one.