Summer in Orcus

by T. Kingfisher

  “Are you here to help?” whispered Summer.

  It glanced up at her, then back down. There was a burr stuck in her shoelace. The valet-bird worked it loose, chirping grumpily to itself.

  Summer’s heart sank.

  Flock-mind, Reginald said. Smarter when they’re together. Did they split up to try and find me? And now it’s not quite smart enough to know what to do?

  The bird looked up at her again, then scuffled at the ground. It seemed to be thinking hard.

  “Can you tell the others where I am?” whispered Summer. “Or lead them back here?”

  It began picking at her other shoelace.

  Maybe it will remember when it gets back to the others. Maybe it’ll be able to tell them then. Or maybe others will come, and then they’ll be smart enough…

  Summer scanned the air for other valet-birds, but saw only the hard blue sky, already softening towards evening.

  Gravel crunched as someone walked toward her, and the valet-bird flew away.

  It was one of the guards. His face didn’t change when he looked at her. He set a thin metal plate on the rock beside her and walked away without speaking.

  Summer stared at the plate, which had some kind of glop on it. It looked like very wet rice with some kind of sauce. There were chunks of something in it. It did not look terribly appetizing. Even goulash day at the school cafeteria was better than that.

  She thought of wight-liquor and it became much easier to set the food aside.

  Time passed with agonizing slowness. Summer watched the guards wander around the camp. No one seemed to care that she was sitting out here.

  Well, where am I going to go? I can’t run with my legs tied up, and the spider-horses can catch me in five minutes on these slopes…

  She wondered if there were other guards posted out of sight, or if this was all of Zultan’s army. Was it really just—she counted—eight guards and Grub and the antelope woman? How could such a tiny handful of people cause such misery?

  I guess in the Old West, all those outlaw gangs were pretty small. And they robbed trains and shot people.

  She’d gone with her mother to historic Tombstone once, and actors had done the shoot-out at the OK Corral. She couldn’t remember how many there had been. Mostly she remembered her mother whispering, “It’s okay. They’re not really shooting at each other,” and being annoyed because she knew perfectly well that it was a show, she wasn’t a baby.

  She wished she’d paid more attention to the number of people at the OK Corral, or that her school hadn’t wasted so much time on vocabulary words when teaching history and had spent a little more time on important things, like how many people you needed to keep a land terrorized for a hundred years.

  And then she remembered Zultan’s face under the mask and her skin crawled again.

  More gravel crunching. Summer realized that she had been staring at the ground and looked up.

  Grub smirked down at her. “Not hungry?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “Oh, but you’ll need to keep your strength up,” he said, voice dripping with fake concern. “Who knows what might happen out here in the—“

  “Don’t be an ass, Grub,” said the antelope woman, elbowing him out of the way. “Just because Zultan doesn’t posture like a two-bit actor doesn’t mean you need to fill in the gap.”

  She handed Summer another waterskin. Summer drank thirstily.

  “Up on your feet,” said Grub, giving the antelope an irritated glance. “I’m keeping an eye on you tonight.”

  The antelope woman rolled her eyes. “Give the child a chance to pee first, unless you want her wetting your tent.”

  Grub scowled. His strange translucent skin pulled tight over…something. Summer stared up into his face, trying to figure out if Grub had cheekbones in the wrong places.

  The antelope woman picked her up by the rope around her wrists. “Come on, child. And turn your back, Grub.”

  She winked at Summer.

  Wait for a signal…was that it? Are we running now, with Grub right there?

  Is there anything that I can do to buy us more time?

  She did not know much about being captured by enemies, but Summer was a veteran of the public school system, and she knew that there are things that even the cruelest disciplinarian was forced to accept.

  “I…I think I might have to do more than pee…” said Summer.

  Grub made a disgusted noise and turned his back.

  “Then we’ll go around downwind,” said the antelope cheerfully. “Zultan’ll be in a fine mood if he’s smelling human crap all night.”

  She pushed Summer in front of her, with a hand between the shoulderblades. Summer made her slow, shuffling way across the slope.

  “That’s good,” murmured the antelope woman. “A bit slower. He has to be sure you can’t run.”

  This was easy to do. Summer stumbled repeatedly and the antelope woman took her arm.

  “Humans are so slow,” she said loudly. “One of my sisters would be there and back again twice already.”

  “Your sisters don’t have their feet tied together!” retorted Summer, and felt the antelope’s breath stir against her ear as the woman laughed.

  They made their slow way around the edge of a miniature canyon, out of sight of the camp. Summer cast a last glance behind her, and saw Grub standing with his arms folded and his back turned.

  They took two more steps and then the antelope woman crouched down at Summer’s feet. “Hoof up,” she ordered, patting her knee.

  Summer obediently put one foot on the woman’s knee. The antelope woman bent her long neck down, gripped the knot in her teeth, and made one rolling, chewing motion.

  The hemp parted neatly in two halves.

  “How did you do that?” asked Summer, amazed.

  “It’s easy when you’re the one who tied the knots,” said the antelope woman dryly. “Looks impressive, but there was only one strand holding it together. It was already starting to come loose. Now come on. There’s a cut through in the back of the canyon here, and we can go up. Stupid thing to leave unguarded if you ask me.”

  She stood up, dusting off her knees, and began walking swiftly toward the back of the stone defile. The footing here was better,

  “Does Grub know about it?” asked Summer, hurrying after her.

  “I’ve no idea. I never told him. If he doesn’t find it himself, he can wonder where we went. It’ll do him good.”

  “What I don’t understand,” said Summer, scrambling to keep up while the ends of the rope flopped along the ground behind her, “is why you were helping him in the first place.”

  “I still might be,” said the antelope woman cheerfully. “You don’t know, do you? Even I’m not entirely sure. Trust an antelope and you get what you deserve. Everyone knows that.”

  Summer shook her head, baffled. The antelope woman was like the opposite of Glorious. You know what she meant, but you weren’t sure if it was true, whereas Summer never doubted the truth of what Glorious said, she just had no idea what it was supposed to mean.

  “But if everybody knows that, why did Zultan trust you in the first place?”

  “Oh, Zultan.” There was no mistaking the contempt in the woman’s voice. “He thinks he’s a great deal smarter than he is. Assumes that just because he’s angry at the world, he could understand my anger.” She tossed her head and her horns hissed through the air like swords. “He wants the world to burn and I want to dance on the ashes, so he thinks that we are alike. But hate and chaos aren’t the same thing. Occasionally, I see fit to remind him of that.”

  “I still don’t understand him,” said Summer wearily.

  “Pfff.” The antelope woman waved her hand. “Nothing worth understanding. His people are as good as mine are wicked. The better you are, the farther you can fall. Come from a race of angels and about the only thing you can be is a devil.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Goes the other way too, of course. I coul
d have been a saint. I thought about it very seriously when I was young.”

  “Did you really?” asked Summer suspiciously.

  “No. That was a lie.”

  “Unless this is also a lie,” said Summer, who felt that she was beginning to get the hang of things.

  “Oh, very good.”

  The cut in the back of the canyon was easy to overlook, and Summer wasn’t entirely sure that it counted as a way up for anyone less than an antelope. She could make three or four steps up the slope and then she would get stuck and her rescuer would grab her wrist and haul her up to the next little ledge.

  She didn’t look down.

  It’s not as bad as where I hid from Grub in the little cave with the lizard. It’s not like that. If I fall, I’ll roll down, not fall to my death.

  She told herself that repeatedly and she didn’t fall down and then they were standing on the canyon rim above the camp. Summer could see the glow of the campfire below, and wondered how soon she would be missed. Could they see her, if they looked up?

  She stepped back from the edge, thinking they must look like two black cut-outs along the canyon rim. The antelope woman came with her, her tail swishing.

  “Will they come after us on the spider-horses?”

  “They can try. The beasts haven’t fed for two days, though, and unless Grub cuts some poor sod up for blood and grain, they won’t be happy about moving at night. And once they do, they won’t get far with their saddle girths cut.”

  Summer stared at her back, honestly amazed.

  “Do you have a name?” she whispered, when they had walked for a little way.

  “Yes.”

  She did not elaborate on this. Summer tried again: “Will you tell me?”

  “No. It’s dangerous to lie too much about your name.”

  There were any number of things that Summer could have said to this, but she had a feeling that none of them would end with her learning the antelope woman’s name.

  When they had gone far enough that she could no longer see any light but the stars, Summer asked “Will Zultan be angry when he finds that you’ve gone?”

  “Perhaps,” said the antelope, shrugging. “His anger’s no concern of mine. Where are your friends, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Summer. “Still back at the Great Pipes, maybe. Which way is that?”

  “A little south of the setting moon,” said the antelope woman. “As good a direction as any. Follow me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It took them the rest of the night and half a day. They had no food. The antelope ate grass and the tips of pine needles. Summer ate nothing. But they shared water from the same bottle and when they slept that night, the antelope woman sang a lullaby in a strange, rich voice. Summer wanted to stay awake, to watch for Grub, but she was exhausted. Instead, she slept and dreamed of horned women dancing in the dark.

  She woke feeling strange, and oddly glad to be a girl. It was not a thing that she thought about often, or at all.

  They walked until nearly noon. Summer had no idea how to find the others, and perhaps it would have been impossible, but then a valet-bird dropped out of the sky and landed on her shoulder.

  She wasn’t sure if it was the same one she had seen in camp, but the prickle of tiny claws filled her with intense relief. The antelope woman was not comfortable company.

  “Are you smart again?” she asked the valet-bird. “Is your flock nearby?”

  The bird groomed a strand of hair down over her ear and made a small, gruff chirp. Summer didn’t know if that was an answer or not.

  Then it took off flying, not in the direction they had been going, but toward the road, which they had been avoiding for fear of encountering Grub again.

  “We should follow him,” said Summer.

  “Should we?” asked the antelope woman. “I don’t know that sort of bird. Are you sure they aren’t in the habit of leading travelers to their deaths?”

  The valet-bird made an angry chatter from the bushes.

  “No, no,” said Summer hastily. “They’re friends. They belon—they work for a friend of mine.”

  “Chrrrk,” said the valet-bird, mollified.

  They followed the bird through the trees for perhaps twenty minutes, and then another bird joined him, then two more. Soon there was a bowler-hatted bird on each of Summer’s shoulders and more chirping from the trees.

  One tried to land on the antelope woman’s long horns, but she shook her head and it flew away, disgruntled.

  “Nothing personal,” she said. “We have a deal with the chief of the Oxpecker Clan, and it’s more than my life is worth to break it.”

  The snubbed bird blew something that sounded remarkably like a raspberry, but did not try to land on her again.

  It was less than an hour before there was a gap in the trees and Summer saw the flash of burnt orange feathers.

  Reginald! And—

  “Glorious!” She ran forward and flung her arms around the wolf’s neck.

  His fur was coarse and hot against her cheek. She buried her face in it and smelled wildness and a single dry sob cracked out of her throat.

  There might have been more, but a growl rose in the wolf’s chest, so loud and grating that it rattled her teeth.

  “Glorious…?” Summer lifted her head. “It’s me…”

  The wolf was looking past her, through the trees. Summer followed his gaze to the antelope woman.

  “One of them,” growled the wolf. “One of the daughters of chaos.”

  “Oh, very bad ton,” said Reginald, almost to himself.

  “A pleasure to meet you as well,” said the antelope woman, sketching a small, ironic bow.

  “She helped me escape,” said Summer, feeling guilty, as if she’d been caught in some kind of wrongdoing.

  “For her own reasons,” said Glorious. “And those reasons will be ill ones.”

  “Very much so,” said the antelope. “But I never made any secret of that.”

  “She didn’t,” whispered Summer. “She told me she was a liar—she told me she might be lying—but we got away anyway—“

  The antelope grinned down at Glorious, her blunt teeth a strange mirror to the wolf’s snarling fangs. “What will you do now, wolf?” she asked. “You can hardly blame me for bringing your little friend back to you, and not even under false pretenses.”

  Glorious twitched his shoulder and Summer stepped back, a little frightened. But he was not looking at her. Instead, his cold green eyes bored into the antelope woman’s dark, amused ones.

  “What game are you playing?” he asked.

  She laughed. “Does it matter what I say? Would you believe it?”

  Glorious lunged.

  Summer had seen flashes of the wolf’s astonishing speed before, but she had never seen him simply uncoil like this. He moved like a striking snake, leaping for the antelope woman’s throat.

  “No!” cried Summer. Even if the antelope woman couldn’t be trusted, she had saved Summer, gotten her away from Zultan, been punished unfairly by the gods of Orcus. She’d been kind, in her own twisty way.

  She was never sure afterward if her cry made Glorious lose a fraction of his speed, or if it gave the antelope woman a heartbeat worth of warning. Perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered either way. But Glorious’s teeth snapped on empty air and the antelope woman was gone, gone, bounding away down on the road on her spun-glass ankles, faster than a wolf could run.

  She vanished into the scrubby trees. Glorious stood with his feet planted wide and his teeth bared.

  “I could follow,” he said aloud, almost to himself. “And she would doubtless lead me into a trap, and that would be the end of a wolf.”

  Feathers flashed overhead as Reginald went in pursuit.

  “I’m sorry!” said Summer. “I didn’t mean—I—she really did help me escape—”

  Glorious sighed, and slowly the growl went out of him and his lips dropped back over his teeth.
/>   “Yes,” he said. “Or you were always meant to escape, and now you have led her to the rest of us. No, I don’t blame you! You did the only thing you could do, Summer-cub, and our small winged friends found you and lost you and found you again, so of course they led you to us. They are not complicated enough creatures to put up against an antelope, and you are from another world and could not know.”

  “We don’t have them there,” said the weasel, popping up on Summer’s shoulder. He wrapped his paws around Summer’s ear and began furiously grooming her hair.

  “They are unique to Orcus, I hope,” said Glorious. “They speak a great many lies, and even their truths mean harm for someone.”

  Summer sagged against him. Despite what he had said, she felt that she had failed—escaped wrong, somehow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know how to get away. And Grub was talking about torturing me and Zultan is…is…”

  She trailed off. She didn’t know how to explain Zultan.

  The two goose-guards appeared behind them on the road. “No one on our backtrail—” began Ankh, and then, “Miss Summer!”

  Ounk flew to them and slapped Summer on the back with her wing, hard enough to knock the wind out of her. “You got free of those villains! Well done!”

  “It…I think I did it wrong…”

  “Nothing doing,” said Ounk. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “There was an antelope woman,” rumbled Glorious.

  Both of the Imperial Geese stilled.

  “One of them, here?” asked Ounk.

  And then Ankh astonished Summer by spreading her wings out and curving one around Summer, as if she were a chick. “It is my fault,” she said quietly. “I left you alone with that traitorous priestess. I knew better, but she was polite, and it is easier to fight swords than courtesy sometimes. But you’ve done well, in a situation you should never have been in. You’ve tangled with an antelope woman and walked away, and if there are echoes from this, I will stand the blame.”

  Summer felt tears slide down her cheeks, but she was encased in the goose-guard’s wing like a warm blanket. Ankh was a grown-up, in a way Reginald wasn’t, and if Ankh said that she’d done well…