Ascendant

by Diana Peterfreund

  Angel opened his eyes and nudged my hand with his snout. Fair enough. He wanted to live.

  I retrieved my sword case and backpack, and stuffed the bag of files and test tubes inside the pack. Then I strapped my luggage on and hoisted the unicorn into my arms. Angel wasn’t light. In fact, he was already far bigger than a zhi, but I had our magic on our side. I set off after the truck tracks, hurrying only when I heard the sound of sirens pulling up to the château.

  I came across the truck less than two miles down the road. The engine was running, but the vehicle was at a stop. I approached it, reeling as the unicorns buffeted me with their panic. They were slamming against the slats of the cargo hold. Some had punctured the sides with their horns. It wouldn’t hold them for long.

  I edged around the side of the truck until I reached the cab.

  Thierry lay slumped over the steering wheel, dead. His face showed signs of alicorn venom, and when I peered closer, I saw a puncture wound at his shoulder. There was a ragged hole in the wall of the cab behind him and I could make out a flash of unicorns flitting about inside the cargo hold.

  I closed my eyes, projecting stillness.

  The unicorns obeyed.

  Now what? I was alone. Alone with a truck full of crazed unicorns and a dead man. And the police on their way.

  I set Angel on the ground, then opened the door to the cab and pulled Thierry’s body out. I could just leave him here. The police would find him, no doubt, just as they’d found Marten’s body when I’d left it.

  Except, this time, I’d been the one to set the unicorns loose. This time I really had been to blame for anyone who died of unicorn poisoning tonight. I was to blame for getting Isabeau and her dogs gored. I was to blame for letting ecoterrorists take advantage of me. I thought they’d just wanted to free the unicorns. I’d believed them when they’d promised me it was so.

  One thing about having brain damage is you have a ready excuse for when you act like a moron. But it’s not a nice thing.

  I was responsible for this man’s death. Sure, he’d left without me, but I’d been the one to run off and leave him with a truck full of deadly unicorns. What other choice did he have?

  I stared at Thierry’s corpse.

  Well, besides waiting to see if I’d come back.

  I lifted Angel and rested him on the passenger seat, then climbed in behind the wheel.

  Okay. Truck. I could do this. With the help of these unicorns, I knew I could.

  I drove off.

  26

  WHEREIN ASTRID TOUCHES THE TRUTH

  The Alps were beautiful this time of year. I pulled the truck over at the end of a narrow, lonely road. There was a valley between two mountains off to my left, a vast field of green grass, boulders, and wildflowers open to the sunshine. I hadn’t seen signs of a village, resort, or even a farm for miles.

  Beside me, Angel blinked open his eyes and lifted his head.

  “We’re here, little one,” I said, and set the emergency brake.

  I let the unicorns out of the cargo hold and surveyed the damage. Two were missing chunks of their ears and one was limping around due to a puncture wound in the leg, but they’d all survived the trip. I directed them into the pasture.

  Go now. You’re free. Stay away from humans.

  I didn’t know if they’d understand, or care enough to obey even if they did. I hoped the wildlife here would be sufficient to sustain them. There were wild goats, I was sure, and probably plenty of rodents, birds, and other food sources. It was the best I could do for them.

  Fats lingered by the guardrail at the side of the road, her eyes on the truck’s cab.

  I sighed. I couldn’t leave Angel with them. I didn’t even know if the animal could walk. And, in the wild, without a horn? How would he protect himself? How would he hunt?

  Fats whinnied at me, the horsiest sound I’d ever heard a unicorn make.

  I looked back at the truck. Angel stood in the window of the cab, battering at the door to be set free.

  Fine, then. I opened the door and lifted Angel to the ground. He tottered over to his mother, who butted her snout against him, rubbing her nose all over his fine white coat and the scabs from the needles and tubes. She licked at the spot on his forehead where his horn should have been.

  I hung my head.

  Curiosity blossomed among the other unicorns, and they drew close to the little one, their minds calming more than I’d felt the entire trip. Awe, pity, wonderment.

  Angel wiggled under the guardrail and onto the grass.

  The other six unicorns circled him, facing outward, ears alert. They stared at me, their eyes as black and bottomless as ever. But I could read their thoughts loud and clear.

  Ours. Leave.

  In the truck, among Thierry’s things, I found a pair of binoculars. Just out of the range of unicorn magic, I watched the einhorns retreat into the mountains, still tightly clustered around Angel. In the distance, against the backdrop of the meadow, they seemed like nothing more than specks of litter, easily blown away and lost to time. Would they survive out here? Had I endangered any people by releasing them?

  Was I even a unicorn hunter anymore?

  After they were gone, I sat in the dirt at the side of the road, waiting for the fog to descend on the mountain and my mind. I was so tired. Their magic had sustained me all through the long drive. It had overcome my injuries from the fire, the ache in my lungs, and the scrapes and burns on my body. But it was evaporating now, leaving behind only spring sunlight and soft green grass… .

  In the dream, Bucephalus called to me in the voice of Isabeau Jaeger. Somehow, with the sort of logic that made sense only in a dream, I knew it was Bucephalus who spoke, though it sounded like my old boss. I could hear the anger in her voice, as commanding and firm as always, but underneath it, there was something more.

  Understanding.

  I was searching for him, desperate to reach him, scrambling over rocks and across fields strewn with gray ice and slick boulders. Here and there I saw re’ems peeking at me from between cracks in the stone, watching me carefully to determine my next move.

  I felt their thoughts. They hoped the karkadann would get me, and if he didn’t, they were more than ready to kill me themselves.

  I called to him. Help. I need your help!

  It’s too late for that, said the karkadann.

  The fog was coming now, and I stumbled, slowing, as I saw the field drop away off a cliff. Below me lay a ravine so deep the bottom was wreathed in mist. I reeled back.

  “Where are you!” I screamed. And then I turned.

  Bucephalus was there, as massive and deadly as always. His eyes gleamed, not the pits of fire I knew, but with twin crescent moons of pale blue. My eyes. He began to step aside, as he did in every dream, and I knew, I just knew the body he’d show me was mine.

  Stop, I begged with every bit of my brain, and because he was a unicorn, he did. Giant, three-thousand-year-old monsters could do as they pleased.

  But not when it came to unicorn hunters.

  When I woke, my mind was practically clear. I climbed back into the truck and drove down the mountain. In the first town I came to with a train station, I abandoned the truck, bought food, and spent some time looking through the Gordian files I’d stolen. Seemed Brandt had been quite the busy boy this year. Isabeau’s notes had been meticulous. She’d charted the details of each hunter they’d “sampled”—her age, her health, her hunter family origins. It seemed, from what I read, that she’d been formulating a theory about which hunter lines produced the strongest kind of Remedy.

  I scanned the pages, my thoughts growing foggier the longer I was away from unicorn magic. I had a limited amount of time to make my plans before everything slipped away from me completely.

  My mind was already misty when I read the name Llewelyn.

  The conductor woke me up as the train pulled into the station. I blinked my eyes open and looked around, disoriented as usual without the benefi
t of the magic. I stretched my legs, and the hard soles of my boots clinked against the vials nestled inside my backpack.

  I rubbed my eyes and peered at the window. A gray, gloomy landscape, like nearly every other train depot I’d passed. A painted metal sign read KIEL. I’d arrived.

  I grabbed my backpack and the sword case, shoved the hood of my sweatshirt up on my head, and hopped off the train. It took about twenty minutes for me to get oriented with the map I’d brought along with me, and I seriously considered checking into one of the hostels near the station for a few hours of sleep before continuing on my journey. I hated the idea of arriving at my destination and no longer being coherent enough to complete my task.

  Unfortunately, I was running low on funds, so I skipped the taxi in favor of public transport, which took longer, but after all, I didn’t want to barge in on these poor people before they were really awake.

  The other folks on the bus stared at my scar, my singed clothes, and the long case I carried. I tugged my hood down over my ears and stared straight ahead.

  I wondered what made me think I had the ability to pull this off on my own. All alone, without even a unicorn around to give me a jolt of clarity. Either I was truly getting better or I’d gone completely off my nut.

  I started to panic as we reached the residential neighborhoods, terrified in equal parts that I’d miss the stop, or that I’d reach my destination unscathed. I began to arrange my speech in my head. Casual, confident, and nonthreatening.

  I’m not asking for anything. I’m not asking for anything.

  “I’m not asking for anything,” I said aloud. The woman next to me on the bus scooted away a little.

  I watched the names of the streets and traced our progress on my map. And when we were close enough, I got out.

  The address in Isabeau’s files proved to be a stately town house on a wide, treelined street. I went up the front steps, the edge of my case banging slightly against the stones, and knocked. The door opened to reveal a young woman, maybe two years my senior.

  “Guten tag,” I said. “Ich heiße Astrid—“

  “I speak English,” the girl said most charitably. My accent must be wretched. Her short hair was a sort of light auburn and very curly, but her eyebrows and nose were right.

  “I’m looking for Marikka Loewe.”

  “I am she.”

  “I thought so,” I said. “I, um, have something of yours.”

  Marikka Loewe looked at me skeptically, a skinhead ragamuffin with weird eyes and charred luggage standing on her doorstep. “What is it?”

  “It’s …” I started to slide my backpack off my shoulders. “It’s something you gave away. You didn’t know you had it… .” Maybe I should have just mailed her the vial with a note.

  She peered at me suspiciously. Like I said, eyebrows and nose. Or maybe just that I looked like I’d been through a war. “Who are you again?”

  “I’m Astrid Llewelyn,” I said.

  She inhaled sharply. “Llewelyn. You’re with the unicorn hunters.”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes. But that’s not why I’m here—”

  “It is a waste of your time. I am not—”

  “I know,” I said. “If you’d just let me—” I leaned over to root through my backpack. Contents may have shifted upon travel. The strap of my sword case slid off my arm and bashed hard against the stoop. The clasp came undone, and the claymore clattered out.

  Marikka gasped. She scanned the street, as if terrified anyone would see me there with a weapon. “I think you should leave,” she said. She backed across her threshold and held the door open at a slit, wielding it like some sort of swinging shield. “Please go away.”

  “No, wait! Please, this will just take a minute.”

  She hid behind the door. “I’ll call the police.”

  “I’m your sister!”

  She stopped at this.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, gathered my focus. “I’m not … asking for anything. I’m here to help you.”

  She stared at me, eyes wide. “Who are you?”

  “I told you,” I said, shoving the claymore back in its case. “I’m a unicorn hunter. My name is Astrid Llewelyn. And I’m also your sister.” I recalled the names I’d read in the files. “Julius Loewe is … our father.”

  Marikka stared into my crazy eyes. “I think you had better come inside.”

  Marikka showed me into the kitchen and gave me coffee and a biscuit, which helped considerably. I should have thought to eat before I came here.

  “My mother died soon after I was born,” she told me. “My father was a student. He couldn’t take care of me, so he sent me to live with my grandmother. This is her house.”

  “It’s very nice,” I said.

  “I never see my father,” she went on. “Christmas, maybe. But I can give you his information.”

  I shook my head. “Only if you think he has another daughter.”

  She snorted. “He might have a dozen, after today. How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.” I’d celebrated my birthday in a coma.

  “I’m nearly twenty.” Her face looked pinched. “He didn’t waste much time.”

  I cleared my throat. “He didn’t have a … relationship with my mother,” I said, then realized that might not be exactly comforting. I looked around the kitchen. “What was your grandmother like?”

  She smiled. “Strong. All the women in my family are strong. You look like you are related in that way, Astrid.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  Marikka told me how her grandmother had hid refugees during World War II. “She worked in the shipyard all day, watching them build U-boats,” she said. “And then she’d come home and work all night smuggling slaves.” She cocked her head at me. “You look a little like her. Like the pictures from back then.”

  I retrieved her vial of the Remedy from my backpack. “This belongs to you,” I said. “I hope it’s still good, but I don’t know. They were keeping it frozen, but I have seen it work after hundreds of years sitting on a shelf. So maybe magic lasts.”

  She examined the vial. “What is it?”

  “It’s a cure.” I took another sip of coffee. “It’s a cure for almost anything. And it belongs to you. You can keep it, sell it, save it to use on something really important… .”

  She examined the label then blushed. “Gordian Pharmaceuticals. What is this, payment?”

  “The opposite, actually.” So I told her about the Remedy, and Brandt’s part in it. She didn’t look me in the eye the entire time I spoke.

  “I didn’t want to be a unicorn hunter,” she said when I was finished. “He told me how dangerous it was. He told me about the wounds he’d seen… .” She looked at me and shrugged. “I cannot say that seeing you makes me regret my choice.”

  I grimaced.

  She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to offend you. Your life looks as if it is very difficult.”

  “No,” I said, “I understand. And I envy you. There are reasons I cannot …”

  Marikka raised her eyebrows. “Oh, really? Me, too,” she said. “But you just make the decision and go through with it. It wasn’t so bad.”

  She meant sex with Brandt. Which was a topic so awkward I’d hoped never to bring it up. I wondered if Brandt had known that Marikka was my half sister when he’d bedded her or if Isabeau had just given him a name and an address and he’d gone off on his hunt. Perhaps we weren’t so very different, he and I? After all, no one had ever told us hunters about the lives of the unicorns we were sent to kill. No one had stopped to question if the re’em on the mountain was just protecting her young, rather than viciously murdering any hiker who happened to wander by.

  “And anyway,” Marikka said, “I don’t have time for unicorn-hunting training. I’m studying to be a physician.”

  The revelation hit me harder than Jumps’s hoof in my gut. I took a deep breath and centered myself. “How wonderful.”

  Well,
the coffee was done, the Remedy was delivered, and it was well past time for me to leave this poor woman alone and go find some park to cry my eyes out in.

  She reached across the table and placed her hand over mine. “Truly, you might consider doing it as well.”

  I blinked at her. “Doing what?”

  “Sleeping with a man. It isn’t so bad, and it will release you from your duty. It’s very odd. It’s been many years since I ever thought of myself as a virgin. The magic has a very old-fashioned philosophy, doesn’t it? Very limited.”

  My mouth formed a little O. So that’s what she’d thought I meant when I said there was a reason I was still eligible. The lesbian loophole. “I see,” I said. Well, who’d have thought that? There was knowledge that might come in handy for two hunters I knew. “No, I’m just a plain old virgin. No boyfriend and no girlfriend.”

  “Oh.” Marikka leaned back. “That is very sweet.”

  “Yeah.” We sat in some more awkward silence.

  “Are you … all right? “ Marikka asked me. “I mean, do you have a place to stay?”

  “I have a train ticket,” I said, gesturing to my backpack. “Lots of Remedy to deliver to lots of distant relations.”

  “Right.” She nodded, then sat up straight in her chair. “I have something to show you. You’ll like this. Wait here.” She dashed from the room and I heard her feet on the stairs, then an opening door, then more stairs.

  Now was my chance. I should leave. I should leave now before I was totally overcome with jealousy for my sweet, pretty, intelligent, studying-to-be-a-doctor lesbian half sister. I should leave before she caught me wailing hysterically at her kitchen table. I pillowed my arms on the table and laid my head on top of them, the material of my hood blocking out the morning light.

  The sense of magic prickled across my scalp and down my spine, radiating outward along the whorls of the scar on my back. With it came serenity, like the feel of cool cotton sheets beneath your body after a long fever. I took a deep breath and raised my head as Marikka came into the room with a linen-wrapped bundle in her hands. Magic sputtered from the package like sparks from a dying fire, and my whole body yearned to snatch it from her hands.