Summer in Orcus

by T. Kingfisher

  Even with his ruined ears, Zultan’s hearing was better than human. He nodded.

  “She hates you, you know,” said Summer.

  “Oh, I know.” Zultan smiled. “She would not have given me this wretched half-immortality if she did not hate me. But I provide so many opportunities for mischief, she can’t help herself. And it gave me a chance to catch up on my reading.”

  “You’ve got to stop using the Queen like this,” said Summer savagely. “She’ll stop killing everything if you stop bothering her!”

  “Is that what she told you?” Zultan shook his head. “I haven’t unchained her for years. Not since I had her melt the stones around the last enclave of dogs. Though I suppose time is fleeting to a dragon.”

  “I promised her you wouldn’t bother her any more,” said Summer.

  If it troubled him to be standing on a bridge in the middle of a chasm, with the wind hissing through his thinning fur, he showed no sign. “That was a rash promise,” he said. “I have been thinking that the birds are getting entirely too full of themselves. It may be time to finally unleash the queen again, and burn their foolish little roosts down around them.”

  He’s trying to scare me, thought Summer, and then, and succeeding, thank you very much!

  “You can’t,” said Summer. “The wasps will stop you. They didn’t understand before, but they do now.” She hoped very much that this was true.

  Zultan gazed over her head at the wasp nest palace. “Hmm,” he said.

  One does not confront a murderer who has chased you across the world and expect them to say “Hmm,” in quite that tone. Summer found, underneath all the terror and anger, that she was also rather nonplussed.

  “Well, that’s inconvenient,” he said.

  Summer didn’t know what to do. Charge at him and try to knock him off the bridge? Ask him to move out of the way? Stall and hope that her friends came back?

  He lowered his milky eyes. “So apparently you are my doom after all. I should probably have killed you when I had the chance, but one hates to do anything irrevocable without considering the options.”

  Summer had no idea what to say to that. “I wouldn’t have been your doom if you hadn’t chased me!”

  Zultan shook his head. “It wasn’t I who led you here,” he said. “A wasp on a string! I could hardly believe it.”

  He was watching us. After Grub—after Ankh—he followed us. Him and the antelope woman.

  “I’ll take the blame for not killing you,” said Zultan, “but chasing wasps was all your doing.”

  “They were poisoning things,” said Summer. “Because of you!”

  Zultan listened while she explained, with increasing fury, about the motives of the Queen-in-Chains.

  “So it was your fault that so many wonderful things died! Your fault about the Frog Tree and the Great Pipes and the giant turtle!”

  The old dog looked over her head to the wasp palace again. “Fascinating,” he said. “I see now why a crone got involved. So many unintended consequences…”

  Summer risked a look behind her, hoping that the wasps were still there, but they had retreated to the nest. Even the buzzing seemed muted.

  Zultan shook himself. “And now here we are. My doom and I, meeting on a bridge. You without your wolf and your birds, and I without even a single guard or a mount to my name.”

  Summer took a step back from the bridge. He raised a hand. “Peace, my doom. I have very little strength left, I am afraid. The trouble with wight-liquor is that when you no longer have it, it takes back all the strength that it gave you.”

  Summer inhaled sharply and took another step back.

  Zultan laughed softly. He took a step forward himself, and staggered. For a moment Summer thought he would fall, and she reflexively stepped forward, and then her brain got in control of her instincts and drove her back again. What are you doing!?

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I am not about to split my skin and turn on you. It does not take my people the same way. My flesh is riddled with wight-flukes, but they cannot grow in my flesh, so they die. Horrible, isn’t it?”

  “That seems like a very bad way to stay alive,” said Summer.

  “It is not the best. But I did finish a great many books, you know.” He sighed. “It’s a shame, really. If I had killed you before, I might have gotten through the last few. But then again, if I had killed you before, then I would not have known about the wasps poisoning the world. And perhaps Grub would have slipped his leash and killed me and tried to milk the last cursed drops out of my blood.” He lifted his shoulders and let them drop again wearily.

  There was a speck in the air far above. Summer glanced at it out of the corner of her eye. Did it have a hoopoe’s crest?

  Zultan took another few steps forward and went down to one knee against the end-post of the bridge. His breathing was ragged.

  “The end is taking me quicker than I wished,” he admitted. “Will you give a little comfort to a dying dog, my doom?”

  Summer stared at him.

  He reached out his hand. His blunt fingers flexed inside the black gloves.

  “Take my hand,” he said, “and promise that you’ll never forgive me.”

  She did not want to. She knew that it was beyond foolish. She knew that it was mad.

  She knew that Baba Yaga would have done it.

  She took his hand.

  “Never,” she whispered. It was easy to promise. Her heart was full of the rotting shreds of the Great Pipes and the polished shell of the dead turtle and the smell of a wheat field decaying in the sun.

  Zultan Houndbreaker’s breath went out in a long sigh.

  ‘Thank you, my doom,” he said, and she believed that he truly meant it.

  And then he grinned up at her with his broken teeth and his hand turned in hers and he grabbed her wrist.

  “And now,” he said, “I shall rectify my last mistake,” and he yanked her toward the edge of the chasm.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Summer thrashed and tried to pull away. But he was not trying to throw her off the cliff, he was falling backwards and determined to take her with him.

  He weighed less than she expected, less than Glorious, as if the wight-flukes had riddled his bones and left them hollow. Perhaps they had. For a moment, as she threw all her weight against him, they swayed, balanced, on the edge of the abyss.

  She saw a brown blur of motion before she quite registered the feeling of something moving against her chest. The weasel exploded out of her pocket and launched himself down her arm.

  He sank his teeth into Zultan’s exposed wrist.

  The dog did not cry out but his fingers spasmed. Summer wriggled away, bent her hand back at an angle that only a nearly-twelve-year-old girl could manage—and slipped free.

  Zultan and the weasel went over the edge without a sound.

  She staggered backward, tripped, and sat down hard.

  No! No! Weasel—!

  Something flashed past her, orange and black, not even bothering to fly, just to fall.

  “Bloody eggshells!”

  “Reginald!” screamed Summer, throwing herself flat against the ground. “Reginald—!”

  Ounk slammed down next to her. In other circumstances, the landing might have been comical, since she didn’t bother with her feet, just belly flopped onto the stone beside her. “Summer! Summer, are you hurt?”

  “The weasel—Reginald—”

  Goose and girl peered over the edge of the bridge.

  Slowly, with labored wingbeats, the hoopoe flew back upward. His crest was flat against his head and his waistcoat was in tatters.

  He landed beside them, took a deep breath, and said, “That was my last good cravat, you little devil!”

  The weasel crawled out of the folds of his neckcloth. His fur stood up in all directions like an angry cat. He stalked over to Summer, plunked himself down on her knee, and began to groom himself furiously.

  “You’re alive,”
said Summer. “You’re alive!”

  She picked him up and hugged him until he nipped her. “Yes, I am, but not if you don’t quit squeezing! And what in the name of Baba Yaga’s backside were you doing, taking his hand like that?”

  “I thought he was dying,” said Summer.

  “Dying! Feh! A proper weasel-war-dance he did on you, and you went for it like a rabbit.” He sniffed. “Could admire the artistry if I hadn’t just been snatched out of the air by a feathered fop who doesn’t trim his claws.”

  “Bacon-brained cravat-worrier!” said Reginald. “Anyway, you’re welcome.”

  “Hmmph. Yes, well.”

  The weasel looked surly again, and Summer kissed him on top of his head, which made him scowl furiously through his whiskers.

  “Where’s Glorious?” she asked.

  “A little way back on the canyon rim,” said Ounk. “The antelope led us quite a chase, and then we found her sitting on a rock. He said we’d been played for fools and told us to come back to you on the instant. I only wish we’d made it sooner.”

  “And Zultan….”

  “I wouldn’t look,” said Reginald. “It’s…well, I wouldn’t look. But he’s stuck his spoon so far in the wall that no amount of magic would get it back out, if you take my meaning.”

  “No one ever takes your meaning,” groused the weasel.

  “Good,” said Summer. “Good.”

  “And the Queen-in-Chains?” asked Ounk.

  Summer looked over her shoulder. The wasp nest hummed, but very softly. A buzz like a lullaby, like something winding down.

  “She’s with friends now,” said Summer. “Let’s go find Glorious.”

  They heard the antelope and the wolf long before they saw them. A thin, atonal music pierced the air, and when they arrived, they found the antelope woman sitting cross-legged on a rock, playing the flute.

  Glorious was standing, staring at her, with his fur erect and a low growl in his chest.

  “Don’t worry,” said the antelope, lowering the flute. “It’s not magic. It won’t put you to sleep.” She looked at Summer. “Hmm. I didn’t expect you to survive Zultan, I admit.”

  “Zultan,” said Reginald, “did not survive her.”

  Summer’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. Not for herself any longer—but for the Queen.

  “It was you,” she said. “It was you who gave her the wish. The woman with a headdress with horns. That was you.”

  The antelope woman laughed. “You give me far too much credit,” she said. “That was one of my grandmother’s sisters. Or perhaps one of my great-grandmother’s sisters. I’m not sure of the exact timing. But yes, it was an antelope. And she paid for that trick with her life, when the dragon burned the city down.” She blew a few thoughtful notes on the flute. “Entirely worth it. Giving something that powerful to the utterly powerless always causes chaos. We will dance in her honor at the end of the world.”

  She put down the flute and scrambled to her feet. “Yours too, perhaps, child.”

  Summer’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t. Just…don’t.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t a lie,” said the antelope woman. “We’ll do a dance for all the ones we’ve used. It’s the least we can do.”

  She laughed then, and as much as Summer hated her, she could not help but feel a stab of admiration for someone who would laugh so freely with a wolf growling at her feet.

  “Can we tie her up?” asked Summer. “Take her to…to somewhere?”

  Ounk shook her head slowly. “I don’t think it’s safe,” she said. “For us, I mean.”

  Summer knew what she meant. Even if they weighted her down in as many chains as the Queen, if the antelope woman could talk, she would be impossibly dangerous. What authority in Orcus could they turn her over to?

  She thought briefly of the practical thrush, the Prime Minister of the Dawn Chorus. Perhaps she could handle an antelope woman…but Summer did not think that they could find a way to get her there.

  “Glorious?” asked Summer.

  “I could tear out her throat,” said Glorious.

  “Go ahead,” said the antelope cheerfully. “The taste of my blood will give you dreams like no wolf has ever had. If you think being a house is bad, imagine being a house haunted by my ghost.”

  “You’re lying again,” said Summer.

  “Probably.” The antelope woman lifted the flute to her lips. “Go home, innocent,” she said. “This world is no place for you.” She began to play again.

  Summer wanted to say something. She wanted to think of some unbelievably scathing thing that would tear the antelope woman’s heart the way her own was torn. She wanted to get the last word.

  She turned and walked away. The thin, pulsing music of the flute chased her as she walked, and she was careful not to breathe in time with it. She did not want to give the antelope woman even that last small victory.

  A little time later, there was hot breath on the back of her hand, and she stopped and put her leg over Glorious’s back. The weasel grumbled in her pocket. They rode out of the edge lands with Reginald and the goose-guard overhead.

  It seemed to go faster coming back than it had taken going.

  “It’s always the way,” said Reginald. “You’ve done it once, you know all the shortcuts.”

  “Wolves say that your paws have already smoothed down the path,” said Glorious.

  “Also, we’re going straight back to Almondgrove,” said Summer, feeling like the practical one for once, “and I’m not getting kidnapped at the Great Pipes.”

  “Well, there’s that, too.”

  They gave the Pipes a wide berth. They did stop at Arrowroot, a small town populated by birds and built on floating platforms in a marshy lake. Frogs sang from the cat-tails and hundreds of lanterns floated in the water. It was wonderful, but it was a small, person-sized wonder that the birds had built themselves. Summer was surprised at how cheering that was.

  They stayed in Arrowroot for several days. Glorious left them at night, saying that he wanted to sit alone with moonlight on his eaves. Summer watched the lanterns in the evening and slept in a circular nest of blankets, and slowly her thoughts settled inside her.

  Even so, she woke up on the third night with her heart pounding and the bluebottle buzz of the Grub-fly in her ears, and she thought, I want to go home.

  The next morning, as they rode away from Arrowroot with the frogs singing madrigals in the marsh, she added, At least for a little while.

  At Almondgrove Manor, they were ushered into Reginald’s father’s study—all of them, including Glorious—and they told the old hoopoe the story, all of them starting and stopping and stumbling over one another’s words.

  He wept a little for Ankh. When Summer told him about Zultan’s face, he only bowed his head.

  “They were a great people,” he said sadly. “I wish you could have known one other than Zultan. But that would have to be in another world than this. Perhaps their time is over in Orcus.”

  In the end, he promised to speak to the Prime Minister about the wasp palace. “I’d set a guard,” he said, “but I am afraid that would only call attention. Perhaps it is better that the place passes out of memory forever.”

  Summer woke again from nightmares that night, but this time it was Zultan’s face she saw, and his broken teeth smiling down at her.

  She expected there to be a funeral for Ankh—something lavish and elaborate, the way the ball had been.

  Instead, the Lord Almondgrove and Ounk and Reginald met her in a far corner of the fields, while Glorious watched from the trees. “No offense meant, you know,” said Reginald, “but we don’t want to scare them off. It’s bad manners.”

  “None taken,” said the wolf.

  They lit a very small fire and waited.

  It did not take long. One by one, vultures appeared in the air, circling, and one by one they landed. They were very large, as large as the goose-guards, and their heads were dark gray, painted with th
ick charcoal lines. Their wings were unrelieved black.

  One shuffled forward, hopping along on feet with claws like coffin-nails.

  Ounk stepped forward to meet him. She held out the head of Ankh’s spear.

  “There is no body,” she said.

  The black vulture nodded.

  He took three more hopping steps, with the spearhead tucked up against his body, and then he flew. The other vultures rose as well and began to spiral up into the air.

  “We will leave a cow out for them tomorrow,” said Lord Almondgrove. “They will come for anyone—rich or poor, small or great. They do not require payment. It is the bargain. But we can give more, so we will.”

  “If…if there was a body…” began Summer.

  “They would take that instead.”

  She asked no more questions.

  It was hard to leave Almondgrove. It was harder still to leave Ounk, who was taking up her duties again.

  “I’m sorry,” said Summer, burying her face in the goose-guard’s feathers. “I’m sorry! If you hadn’t…if she hadn’t…”

  “It isn’t yours to apologize for,” said Ounk. “My sister was an Imperial Goose. It is what we do.” She draped her wing over Summer’s shoulders. “When you are as close as eggs in a nest, you cannot be separated merely by death. I must simply speak for her as well as myself. That’s all.”

  In the end, it was the same group that went back through Fen-town that had passed through before: Reginald and Glorious, Summer and the weasel, the flock of valet-birds twittering around them. Had it only been weeks? It felt like centuries.

  For the first time in a long while, it occurred to Summer to worry about time passing.

  It can’t have been weeks in my world, thought Summer. Orcus must be like Narnia, where only a little time passes. Otherwise…

  Don’t worry about things you can’t fix.

  She rubbed her thumb over the acorn in her pocket. There was one last thing to be fixed, and then, perhaps, she could go home.

  Summer was not entirely sure that they were on the right road until she saw the Wheystation ahead of them. It was dark inside, and there was a sign on the door saying, “Closed For The Season.”