She stood firm. “It’s the only option, Asteroid. Either we find them a wild space, or we hunt them to extinction. Don’t you see that’s the only possible end to this?”
I laughed, bitterly. “You see an end to this. That’s sweet. The only end I see is getting out, like Zelda, like all those missing recruits. Like you.”
Phil shook her head, looking near tears. “I’m not out, Astrid. I still have a duty to this place, magic or no magic. And I hate seeing you like this. I know this past year hasn’t been easy, and I know that a lesser person than you would have run away, would have gotten out. We have to believe there’s a solution; don’t you get it?”
No. No, I didn’t. My solution had been to run away from hunting and become a prison guard, but somehow, that was even worse. Angel was probably even now trapped in some sterile cage in the bowels of the Gordian labs, awaiting some horrible, scientific fate. I couldn’t save that unicorn. I couldn’t protect any of them. I couldn’t do it at the château, and I couldn’t do it here. And Phil, no matter what she wanted to believe, wouldn’t be able to do it, either.
Maybe Cory was right, and the only solution was to kill them all. Except, the hunters themselves were dropping like flies. Four unicorn hunters. René needn’t worry about the fate of the unicorns. It was mankind that was toast.
Bonegrinder whined and licked my hand.
19
WHEREIN ASTRID REACHES THE PEAK
Two days after my arrival, the remaining members of the Order of the Lioness gathered in the rotunda to bid Zelda Deschamps adieu. She stood with her luggage all around her, one hand resting casually on the waist of her boyfriend, David. They were flying to Fiji for a vacation and … whatever.
“Should be a good break from the weather,” Phil said bravely. I’d caught her crying this morning. She and Zelda had become close friends ever since I’d left for France. It made sense. At eighteen, Zelda was the nearest in age to Phil, and they probably had more in common than anyone else. I remembered when she’d first come, how Phil, Cory, and I had marveled that the gorgeous, black Parisian model had even been eligible to be a unicorn hunter.
“Should be a good break from a lot of things,” Zelda joked.
Rosamund had been inconsolable since dinner last night. This morning, her eyes were as red as her hair as she embraced her old roommate and wailed. “Must you go?” she asked. “It’s not too late.”
Zelda looked lovingly at David, affection and desire shining out of the depths of her dark eyes. “It’s way too late.” He smiled back at her, every bit as besotted.
I swallowed thickly, thinking of the way Giovanni used to look at me. I still hadn’t called him, not even to tell him I was in Rome. I’d picked up the phone five separate times. A few times, I’d even dialed the number, but I couldn’t bring myself to press the send button. As soon as I heard his voice, I’d have to tell him what I did.
And then I’d never hear his voice again.
Cory, Valerija, and Grace stood, bleary-eyed and obviously longing to return to bed. The worst of the food poisoning had passed, but they all looked as if they’d need a few days to get their energy back.
I’d brought Cory some soup and lemon soda my first night back, and confessed to her what I’d done with Brandt.
“Don’t worry,” she’d responded. “We all do stupid stuff. Like that time I ate headcheese. Oh, wait. That was yesterday.” She groaned and clutched her stomach. Food poisoning or not, I didn’t like the look of her. She’d grown thinner and paler than ever, and spoke of occasional fevers or aches in her joints.
“Giovanni doesn’t have to forgive you for that.”
Cory eyed me carefully. “I hate to say this, Astrid, but you must be prepared for the fact that Giovanni might not forgive you.”
We’d been interrupted then by Grace, returning from one of her many trips to the toilet. She grunted at the bowl of soup and bottle of soda I’d brought her, then collapsed on the bed and covered her face with a pillow. From what Cory had told me, she was bitter about getting Cory as a roommate, but after Neil and Phil had learned about Cory’s relationship with Valerija, they’d decided this arrangement worked far better.
Grace Bo as chaperone. I’m sure she loved it.
David had come into town last night, and we’d all heard their story, which was romantic enough to wow half a dozen teenagers trapped in a convent. Seems he and Zelda had been friends for years. Like her, he’d been a teen model, but he’d grown tired of the industry and quit in favor of École Polytechnique, which, as far as I could tell was the French equivalent of MIT, and which David always called “X” for some reason utterly unknown to me. Smart dude. During a fall holiday from classes, he’d gone to a party with some old modeling friends and ran into Zelda, who was on similar leave from her hunting duties.
“We talked all night,” Zelda had cooed.
They’d talked about their world post-modeling and how the lifestyle had never really suited either of them.
“Which was why we were hiding out from the party, if I recall,” David had said.
He told her about how much he was enjoying X, and she talked about how she regularly feared for her safety on unicorn hunts. She showed him her scars.
“He thought they were beautiful.”
I’d grimaced at that, remembering Brandt.
By morning, they were an item, and they remained so even when Zelda returned to her bow and her habit and her life at the Cloisters. They e-mailed and texted constantly.
“It’s kind of weird to fall in love on the Internet,” Zelda had said.
“We were in love already,” David replied. “We just found out about it on the Internet.”
It was a short jump from there to Zelda deciding that she could no longer stay with the Order of the Lioness. Not just because of David, she was quick to point out. But because David had reminded her that there was a whole world out there she was giving up.
“I want to go to school,” she said. “I want to study classics.”
“Why bother?” Melissende had asked. “We’re already living the lives of vestal virgins.”
And now Zelda was leaving. A romantic, tropical getaway with her handsome boyfriend and a new life as a student in the classes préparatoires, which were like special study courses French kids had to take before they could even hope to apply for their own entrance exams into one of the grandes écoles.
I was so jealous I could spit. Apparently, to get the life you’ve always dreamed of, all you had to do was bide your time and be lucky enough to meet a fantastic, supportive boyfriend who wanted you to go to college just like him—and then be smart enough not to cheat on him.
Oh, and also be willing to walk away from the unicorn magic, from your birthright, from the massive guilt you felt not just for the people you would have been able to save with your special abilities, but also for the unicorns you failed to help in their time of need.
Zelda approached Phil next and hugged her tight. “I will miss you, amie.”
“Me, too,” I heard Phil murmur into Zelda’s shoulder.
“It is time for you to leave as well. The Order has no place in the modern world.”
“You’re right,” she said. “But I have a place with the unicorns.”
I liked to talk about giving up my powers, but I’d never been able to go through with it. And now, knowing what I did about the einhorns suffering at Gordian, about the plight of the Cloisters and their ever-smaller circle of hunters? Now that I knew exactly what Phil was sacrificing, even without magic? For sure I’d never abandon her. Just as, last summer, before she’d found a cause to sustain her, Phil had promised not to abandon me.
“You mean you have a place with Neil.” Zelda drew back and looked my cousin in the eye.
Phil said nothing, and I bit my lip, throat burning with even more jealousy. What had Phil told Zelda that she wouldn’t tell me?
And then I felt Phil fumbling for my hand, and I unclenched my fist and allowed
her to take it. She squeezed, hard, and somehow, that was enough. I relaxed. Neil might be real, or he might never be, but Phil and I were forever.
Zelda knelt near Bonegrinder, who looked up at her with blue eyes filled with more adoration even than David’s.
“Adieu, malodorant monstre” she said with a laugh. “I didn’t think I liked animals, but you are okay.”
Bonegrinder thwapped her tail against the mosaic floor.
“I suppose we shall never meet again,” she said. “But if we do, please do me the honor of not killing me.”
Bonegrinder licked her face, and Zelda crinkled up her nose. I wasn’t sure if that was the zhi’s version of a promise, or merely a taste test.
That afternoon, Phil received a report of a re’em attack in the Monti Simbruini Park outside of Rome and gathered the troops together. During my absence, she and Neil had procured their own van to help transport us to and from hunting sites, and the four active hunters—Dorcas, Melissende, Rosamund, and me—loaded up our weapons.
“This is going to suck,” said Melissende, climbing into the van. “All the really good hunters are out sick.”
Phil ignored her, I said nothing, and Rosamund clutched her rosary and stared straight ahead. Phil had told me that the Austrian pianist had rarely attended hunts lately. I’m sure if she were less religious, Rosamund would also be seeking a way out of the biz, and if she were less forthright, she’d probably be faking her own injuries to make sure she stayed on the bench.
“I hate re’em,” she said softly once we were on the road. “I haven’t seen one since the night we were attacked outside the Cloisters, remember?”
I shivered. Of course I did; that re’em had been my first kill.
“Don’t worry,” said Dorcas. “Astrid and Melissende have both taken them before. If it’s only one, we shouldn’t have a problem.”
Rosamund stared out the window and said nothing.
The city gave way to suburbs and then countryside, and then even more rugged terrain as we traveled up into the Apennine Mountains. The ground was spotted with gray slush, and gusts of winds buffeted the van as Phil concentrated to stay on the winding mountain roads. Deep ravines and sharp peaks met every turn, punctuated by pockets of dense woods. Though only about forty miles from Rome, this land made a perfect hiding spot for a re’em, or even a whole herd of them, for the park boasted pockets of wild deer and boar, brown bears, and even a few wolves.
The sky was dim and gray, even though it was just past midday as Phil stopped the van at the entrance to a hiking trail.
“This is where the witnesses found the bodies,” she said. She distributed walkie-talkies as we got our gear together. Our arrows, I noted, were all fitted with the alicorn points that Isa-beau had had made.
“How did they know it was a re’em?” Rosamund asked, sniffing the air. There was no scent of fire and flood up here, just the freshness of evergreen and snow and rock.
“They caught a glimpse through binoculars,” Phil said. “It was up near the top of this trail, by the peak.”
“At least it was keeping its distance from the towns,” I said. “Like the bears and the wolves that live here.”
“I know.” Phil frowned. “You’re preaching to the choir here, Astrid. I’d say live and let live, too, but it’s killing hikers now. There are some big ski resorts around here, and we just can’t risk any more attacks. Especially when we’re so close to getting protection.”
So kill a unicorn to save a bunch of other unicorns? I wondered what the policy would be had it been a bear that had attacked those hikers. How far out into the wilderness would you have to go before the rights of people gave way to the rights of wild animals? Was there ever a time when the animals took precedence?
Phil’s point of view sounded oddly like Isabeau’s. She was willing to kill unicorns to develop the Remedy, which might save human lives, and she didn’t see much of a distinction between what we did and what she was doing, though hunters killed only unicorns who were actively threatening people. The end result was the same: you could kill unicorns to save people.
That was the rule, right?
“Let’s separate into two teams of two,” Melissende said. “We can take either side of the trail and contact one another if we sense anything.” She waved her walkie-talkie—one of the other bonuses from the Gordian largesse.
“Sounds good.”
“I’ll go with Dorcas,” she added, casting a distasteful glance at Rosamund, whose hands were shaking so hard she’d just spilled the entire contents of her quiver into the slush.
Dorcas and Melissende took the left-hand loop, and I waited for Rosamund to gather her bone-tipped arrows together.
“You take care, Asterisk,” Phil said.
“You, too,” I said. “Remember to stay down in that van.”
She saluted me. “Don’t worry. I don’t want to get anywhere near a re’em.”
Rosamund and I started up the trail, sliding a bit on the slippery, lichen-covered rocks pockmarking the terrain, and keeping our senses alert for any trace of unicorn. I decided I had been spoiled by my months wandering in the tiny, flat woods behind the château, carrying nothing more than my alicorn knife and the occasional steak to feed the einhorns. Scaling a mountainside with a bow, a full quiver, my claymore, the alicorn knife, and a full first aid kit was an entirely different prospect. Our progress was slow and arduous and accompanied by a lot of puffing.
“See anything?” Melissende’s voice came crackling over the radio.
I caught my breath long enough to shoot back a no. She didn’t sound winded in the slightest. Maybe they got the flat side of the trail. So unfair.
There was very little sound up here except for the whistle of the wind and the creaking in the branches of the occasional grove of trees. We hiked steadily uphill for another forty-five minutes, not talking much, listening to the crunch of gravel beneath our hiking boots and the soft clinks of our equipment shifting around as we walked.
It was hard to believe I was less than fifty miles from one of the oldest cities in the world. Beyond the edge of the trail, there seemed to be nothing out here that bore the touch of man. I found myself wondering if my einhorns would like this place, if Angel would have enjoyed frolicking in the snow or chasing hedgehogs and martens around the rocks.
Of course they would. They would like any life outside the confines of their pitiful little grove, trapped, unable to hunt or chase or be safe. I’d known them too long and too well. I’d seen into their dreams and fathomed their desires. This was all they wanted. I’d abandoned them because I realized how much I wished they could have it. Out here, like this, it seemed easier to imagine Phil’s dreaming coming true. Easier to believe that there could be someplace in the wild where unicorns could live free and happy.
And then I remembered that we were out here to kill a unicorn for trying to do exactly that.
“They said they found corpses.” My words spilled out.
“What?” Rosamund said, understandably.
“Corpses,” I repeated. “The unicorn that attacked those people—it didn’t eat them after it killed them.”
“So?”
“That’s kind of weird, don’t you think? “ Rosamund shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it had plenty of food stored for the winter. Perhaps it was scared away by something—a bear, maybe.”
“Unicorns aren’t afraid of bears.”
“A lion, then.”
“There are no wild lions here. A wildcat, maybe. But a re’em wouldn’t be afraid of that, either. Besides,” I added, “other animals can’t eat carrion tainted with alicorn venom. It’s poisonous to them as well.”
“Well, then, I don’t know,” Rosamund said. She hugged her arms around her shoulders. “I’m just cold and wet and tired. Do you feel anything yet?”
I shook my head. “You?”
“No.” We kept walking, and Rosamund began to hum softly, a slow melody I recalled she used to play on the p
iano down in the chapter house.
“So tell me,” I said as we puffed along. “Does music have charms to soothe the savage beast?”
“What?”
“It’s, um, a saying.”
“Oh. I could not say. Bonegrinder seems to like it when I sing, but she likes everything we do. I don’t know if it would work on another kind of unicorn. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Yeah.”
We were silent for a few more yards, then Rosamund spoke again. “Astrid?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you love Giovanni?”
I stopped walking. My instinct was to say yes, but if I loved Giovanni, would I have kissed Brandt? Would I have let my ex-boyfriend put his hands all over me? Wouldn’t I have contacted Giovanni as soon as it happened to confess the truth? If I loved Giovanni, wouldn’t I have spoken to him in the last few days? “Why?” was all I said.
“Because I was thinking of Zelda. She loves David, and she left for him. But you are with Giovanni, and you don’t leave.”
“It’s not as simple as love,” I said. “I thought you believed that as well. You said you didn’t want to have sex until your wedding night.”
“I don’t,” said Rosamund. “But I would also like to have a wedding night.” Touché.
“I’ve never been in love,” Rosamund said. “I had one boyfriend, but it was only for a week, at a music camp. We went to a dance, and he kissed me under the stars.”
“Sounds nice,” I said. Still no trace of the re’em.
“I probably would have had more boyfriends if I weren’t so busy with my music.”
I turned to look at Rosamund, at her long, wavy red hair and her elfin face. “Definitely.”
The walkie-talkie crackled again. “We see her. It’s a re’em. Big one, too.”
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