“Really,” said Hava, squinting ahead at Quona’s tall house. She seemed to be studying the roof. “In that case, it seems like the perfect day to check out her attic.”
* * *
—
The door at the top of the stairway in Quona’s sitting room was locked, but Hava made short work of it with her lock picks while Giddon watched for Quona’s staff.
Behind the door, they found a high, bright, enormous space with many windows. The rafters were visible above; a massive fireplace and a single closed door were set along one wall.
Hava crossed quickly to that door and tried it. Finding it locked, she knelt, examined the keyhole, then tried her lock picks again. “This one’s more difficult,” she said.
As Giddon’s eyes adjusted to the brightness, the big attic space became stranger than it had first seemed. “Hava?” he said, staring. “What do you think of this room?” Colorful paintings covered the walls. In fact, the paintings weren’t just on the walls; they extended onto the window moldings and the rafters, even parts of the floor, most of the ceiling. They were scenes of blue foxes having adventures. Jumping from one tree to another; flying with what looked like makeshift wings; sleeping on mounds of candy; sailing in boats and soaring in airships. Furthermore, though the room contained no furniture in the usual sense of the word, there were narrow, raised platforms built directly onto some of the walls. Like shelves, but with unusual orientations. Straight passageways, steps, hills, slopes, maybe crossing a wall, maybe creating a path over and around a window. A sort of jungle gym? For the world’s most spoiled . . . cats? Did cats like paintings of blue foxes? Also, why weren’t there any cats up here now? And why was the attic kept locked if it was just a cat playroom?
“There are seven tiny little beds in front of the fireplace,” said Hava, who’d come to stand beside him.
“Seven?” said Giddon. “Not twelve?”
“Either the cats share,” said Hava, “or they’re not for the cats.”
“Wait,” said Giddon. “But, seven? Now we’re thinking she doesn’t just have one secret fox, but seven?”
“If she’s breaking the rules by secretly bonding to a fox,” said Hava, “why shouldn’t she break them even more by bonding to several?”
“But why would she do it?” said Giddon. “She wouldn’t just be breaking rules, Hava. She’d be breaking the law.”
“On the axis of annoying to interesting,” said Hava, “Quona is tipping further toward interesting.” Then she frowned at a spot about waist-height on the wall, walked to it, and pushed. A little hinged door, like a cat door right there in the middle of the wall, swung forward and back again. Stairs led to it and the painting on the wall obscured it.
“Whoever this room is for,” said Hava, “it looks like they have paths into the walls.”
Remembering all the sounds of scurrying, Giddon suppressed a shudder. “Can you get into that locked room?”
“I’ll try again.”
“The wind is really something,” said Giddon as it threw itself against the windows. “You’d think we’d be able to hear the ocean, in a house on a cliff above the sea.” Then he noticed a doorknob-like handle on the edge of one of the tall windows. He went to it to investigate. The window was actually a glass door on a swinging frame.
Opening it, he stepped out onto a small, flat platform and found himself overlooking the sea. The wind slammed against him.
“Giddon,” said Hava urgently, startling him, for he hadn’t heard her join him. She pointed out to sea. He followed her finger with his gaze, but saw nothing.
Then, all at once, his eyes found the bulbous, purple-blue bodies, racing across the surface of the sea. “Silbercows,” Giddon cried, which made them turn suddenly to reach their noses to the house, the balcony, though they couldn’t possibly have heard Giddon’s voice from that distance.
They feel us, he thought. They see us. He sensed their curiosity suddenly, like a whisper under his skin. Tentatively, he tried to talk to them, stretching his thoughts out across the water, not knowing how to make himself heard. A house on a cliff? he said. An airship? A disturbance in the water? What does it mean?
Suddenly, unbelievably, he felt their voices.
Who are you? they asked him. How do you know our stories? But it wasn’t words; it was images and feelings, impressions rushing through Giddon, like the battering wind against his body. They showed him the house high on a cliff, indistinct, but with rows of shining windows. They showed him a dark oval in the sky, blocking the sun: an airship. Then he saw an explosion in the water, a massive flash of light, terrifying, obliterating the sea, and he had to hold hard to the rail, and remind himself it was a picture, not something real. He felt the silbercows’ pain. It took his breath away.
Help us, they said. Stop them.
Stop them doing what? said Giddon. What’s happening?
They showed him a new picture. A boat at the bottom of the sea, with a pale gray hull. Keepish markings on its side said “Seashell.” Its hull was splintered. Its cabin door was closed, padlocked. Inside the boat’s cabin, visible through a porthole, were two bodies.
Mikka! Giddon cried. Brek!
Mikka, Brek? the silbercows said, curious, but not understanding.
Our friends! Giddon said. Those two bodies. Someone closed them in there! They were murdered! This is proof!
Proof? said the silbercows. Then they showed him a new image: Outside the boat was a gigantic, many-legged, many-eyed creature. An impossible creature, like the Keeper. And now Giddon was confused about everything he was seeing, because maybe it was all just a fairy tale.
It’s real, they told him. Our friend is guarding your proof. But can you help us? Will you stop them?
Yes! said Giddon. We’re trying! But we don’t understand! Stop whom?
And then the silbercows’ messages faded, because they turned suddenly, streaking off to the north.
Wait! said Giddon. Whom should we stop? What are they doing?
“Did you hear what they said?” said Hava breathlessly, beside him.
“Yes. They want help,” he said.
“Did you see the house, the airship, and the explosion? The boat with the bodies?”
“Yes. And an imaginary Keeper too, which was confusing.”
“We need to get into that locked room,” said Hava. “The house they showed us could be this house.”
“Or any number of houses,” said Giddon. “The Cavendas have a house on a cliff in the north. A lot of people have houses on cliffs.”
“Sure, but we’re literally standing in one right now, Giddon. A house with secrets, and a locked room.”
Something was still wrenching inside Giddon at the loss of the silbercows. Something about them had made him want to understand them so badly, but now they were gone. He gripped the railing, frustrated. “I agree we should get into that room,” he said. “But we have a lot of questions to answer. The answers won’t all be in that room. Mikka and Brek found something in the north.” Mikka and Brek. What a nightmare, to be locked inside a cabin while one’s ship sank. What a horrible way to die.
“I’m going to avenge them,” said Giddon. “For Bitterblue.”
“Of course you are,” said Hava. “I am too. But heads up, because that looks like Quona’s airship.” She pointed north, where a dot had appeared in the sky.
“I hope not,” said Giddon. “She said she might be gone all night. It’s barely afternoon.”
“I think we should start paying more attention to what she says,” said Hava, “and how well it matches up with what she does. Now, let’s get inside before she sees us.”
Chapter Twenty
On the night of the prime minister’s gala, a week after her parents’ dinner party, Lovisa arrived at the Keep with two questions. First, had her mother brought her fox to the party, or left him at h
ome? Second—if the fox was indeed at the party—whom could she use as a decoy, to sneak home?
The entrance hall was alive with noise and color. Above her, the glass dome of the Keep disappeared into darkness, making her wish for quiet, solitude, the stars.
In a fitted black dress, Lovisa stepped behind the cover of a gaggle of academy boys who apparently found themselves hilarious. Reaching into the collar of her dress, she touched the string on which hung the attic room key she’d had made in one of the ambles. It scratched against her skin, for the woman who’d crafted it had inexplicably added a fake red gemstone, made of cheap glass, to its top. “Turns it into something special,” she’d said, with a crooked-toothed smile. Lovisa had been embarrassed for her.
From her hidden position, Lovisa looked around. She spotted her father pretty quickly on a staircase, raised above the crowd like an actor on a stage, conversing with the chief of the Ledra Magistry. Then Ta Varana walked by, radiant in a deep pink dress. Could Ta be her decoy? They’d kissed once. It had been fine, except that Ta had kept talking, and talking, and talking. Even the memory was tiresome.
A fox scurried past, racing up to the second-story gallery that stretched around the perimeter of the entrance hall. Sighing, Lovisa saw herself spending most of the night chasing foxes into corners, then struggling to decide if they were the one she was looking for. She watched her mother join her father, then descend with him to Arni and Mara Devret, Mari’s parents. Ferla’s mouth smiled stiffly and Lovisa wondered if she herself looked like that when she smiled. Like it hurt her face.
Nearby, Lovisa spotted Mari with a few of his friends, including Ta. As she approached, she was surprised to notice that Nev was among them. Her surprise faded as she got close enough to overhear the conversation.
“What do you want, Nev?” said Pari Parnin.
Nev shrugged. “You spoke to me first. You said, ‘Nice party,’ so I said, ‘Yes.’”
“I didn’t,” said Pari.
“Okay. You’re right. I just announced the word yes to the air for no reason.”
“Didn’t you used to scream that a lot?” said Pari. “When you were with Mari?”
Nev paused for a beat, looking into Pari’s smirking, self-congratulatory face. “Mari is a nice person,” she said flatly. “I don’t think he’d tell you, or anyone, anything about what we used to do. Or what he does with anyone.” She shrugged again. “And maybe he doesn’t like you suggesting he would.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Pari with a nasty smile.
Nev rested her eyes on Mari, who was frowning at the floor in misery and embarrassment. She glanced at the others in the group, who were twisting their mouths and tittering. Nev’s eyes, cold and scornful, raked sharply across Lovisa, then she turned and walked away. She held her injured fox kit in one arm, tightly enough that she was squirming. The squirming fox was the only evidence that Nev was more upset than she pretended.
Lovisa wanted to lash Mari with shaming words, for standing there like a coward while Nev dealt with Pari on her own. But that would have to wait, because now Lovisa was readier than ever to confirm the location of her mother’s fox, then sneak home. She’d wanted a decoy she could stomach touching and kissing, but now her need for a strong stomach had vanished. She was going to pop Pari Parnin’s puffed-up sense of self-delusion. She would make him think she wanted to have sex with him, then she would lead him all the way to the attic of her house in Flag Hill, where she would refuse him. If he got in trouble with her parents for trying to seduce their daughter in their attic, all the better.
“Hi Pari,” she said, moving closer to him. “When did you get so funny?”
“I thought you’d never notice,” he said with a smirk. She got to work, laughing at his unclever jokes, stroking his arm. She complimented his golden-green scarves and touched her fingers to the orange jewels adorning his pockets. He began to respond, not with conversation, but with heavy hands, knowing smiles, body-to-body contact.
Then, with a promise to return, she excused herself briefly. Was her mother’s fox here or not? Moving through the edges of the party, she watched the occasional fox whiz past like a spinning leaf in a stream. There wasn’t much hope of recognizing a nose or an ear if none of them ever kept still.
Lovisa saw Nev in a corner, standing alone. Scanning the crowd, Lovisa saw someone else who’d spotted Nev in her corner: Nori Orfa, that northern boy, quick to smile, flirty, the one Lovisa didn’t trust. Nori began to move toward Nev.
Half out of her own need and half out of an unexamined impulse to interrupt Nori, Lovisa pushed through the crowd to Nev.
“Hi,” she said, bursting breathlessly into the space before the taller girl.
Nev looked down at Lovisa, not speaking, but conveying worlds with her contemptuous eyes. She wasn’t holding the fox kit anymore. Lovisa could see her shirt, black and high-collared, with long, thin ribbons in every color that wrapped around her torso and seemed knotted together at arbitrary locations. On someone else, it would’ve looked like a failed attempt to simulate current Ledra fashions. On Nev, with her high chin and her straight shoulders, her humorless mouth, it was exactly right. She looked like a queen.
“Come to pick on me?” said Nev. “Or do you people only do that when you have an audience?”
“Have you forgotten all the times I’ve picked on you when we were alone?” said Lovisa. “I’m hurt.”
“Ha, ha. What do you want, Lovisa?”
“Can you tell foxes apart?”
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever noticed the one that belongs to my mother?”
“Not particularly,” she said. “When would I? I don’t exactly get invitations to your house.”
“Oh,” said Lovisa, disappointed. “Oh well.”
“Also,” said Nev, “why would I do you a favor?”
Lovisa hesitated, considering. Then she said, “For a complicated reason that includes punishing Pari Parnin.”
This was met with a brief silence. Then Nev spoke. “How old is your mother’s fox?”
Lovisa did a quick calculation. “Seven or eight, maybe?”
“Then it’s probably one of the ones who’s not flying around like it’s intent on tripping people. The manic ones are usually the young ones.”
“Oh. I haven’t seen any keeping still.”
“They’re less noticeable. They’re mostly either standing with their person, or watching the party from the edges of the stairs. Excuse me,” said Nev, slipping away. A moment later, Lovisa saw her joining Nori, the two of them grinning at each other in the shadow of an archway. When Nev grinned, it transformed her face, lighting her up with joy and mischief. It made Lovisa wonder if Nev ever kissed girls. It also made her feel sharply alone.
Whatever. Lovisa turned to examine the edge of the nearest staircase. Immediately she saw what Nev meant, for foxes crowded the spaces between the banisters, just like her little brothers did at home during dinner parties. One of them suddenly sprang to the floor from an alarming height—one Lovisa recognized, by her smallness and the bandage on her face. That was Nev’s fox, Little Guy. Lovisa could see her bolting between people’s feet toward Nev, and wondered if they were bonded yet. Tell her not to hook up with that rotten loser! Lovisa shouted at the fox, uselessly, of course.
Then a fox watching Lovisa from the steps caught her attention, and held it. She recognized that long-nosed profile, those perky ears. For a moment, the fox held her gaze with his flashing eyes. Then he stood and slunk away, but not before confirming what Lovisa now knew. Her mother’s fox was here.
* * *
—
When the fox who was bonded to Ferla Cavenda saw Lovisa glaring up at him on the staircase, he understood, instantly, what she was planning to do.
And now the entire calamity of what was likely to t
ranspire was playing out in his mind, for he knew something Lovisa didn’t know: Ferla, who had one of her stress headaches, was planning to leave the party early and go home.
The fox had never before experienced the level of anxiety he’d been experiencing lately. It was too much. He could not keep everyone safe all by himself! And his siblings, all of whom were present at this party, were as useless as ever. All they wanted to do was play Trounce Each Other, with occasional forays into Catch the Falling Food. As if they were kits! They had no interest in helping him with any of his dilemmas. How could he foil Ferla’s plans?
He could delay her departure home, maybe. Distract her from her headache. Then he could try to be on hand to help Lovisa.
The fox set out to find Ferla, composing a lie about having snuck into the inner Keep, then having seen someone trying to break into the president’s office. That would delay her, while he came up with the next lie.
* * *
—
It was easy for Lovisa to convince Pari to leave the party.
“Come help me get my coat, Pari,” she said.
“Are you leaving?” he said with a small pout.
“Aren’t we both leaving?”
Outside, though, a light snow was falling, and he balked at the idea of going all the way to Flag Hill. “We live in the same dorm,” he said. “No one would know.”
She didn’t respond, just kissed and rubbed up against him. Then, when they reached a place where the footpath diverged, she turned toward a staircase that led away from the dorms.
“What are you doing?” he said. “It’s this way.”
“Shut up, Pari,” she said. “I have a better plan.”
“The dorm is right here.”
“If you want this,” she said, “then you’ll have to come back to my house.”
“But, why? It’s freezing out here!”
She took hold of his hand and put it inside her fur coat, thanking the cold for her hard nipples. She gave him a minute to touch her, kiss her throat. It wasn’t terrible, actually. It was even a little bit exciting.
Winterkeep Page 21