Foxheart

by Claire Legrand

  As the boat glided back to the royal docks, the king kept his head tilted toward the pipe, listening. Only when he heard the prisoner’s screams, the roar of fire, and the clatter of bones did he relax, for that meant the test was successful, and that the traps throughout the catacombs were in working order.

  King Kallin shuddered to think of the generations upon generations of kings and queens buried beneath his home. Catacombs were a nasty tradition, but no matter how hard he tried to convince his court, no one would allow him to change the law and simply dump the bodies of dead royals into the sea. Everyone told him skeletons were merely bones, and could not come back to life, and that it was disrespectful to simply discard bodies like old handkerchiefs. No one believed the story about Old Throop, the legendary witch who had, as revenge against Queen Varaline the Fourth, cursed the catacombs’ contents to come alive unpredictably and without warning—but King Kallin believed it. Years ago he had commanded one of his own royal witches to set a series of magical traps in the catacombs, so that when the cursed skeletons did come alive, they would never make it up into his castle.

  But even the best spells required regular testing. And no one made for better test fodder than the criminals filling the royal jails.

  So, in remarkably good spirits at the sound of this latest prisoner’s dying cries, King Kallin kissed his wife and suggested they all sing a rowing song to pass the time.

  .27.

  DOES IT SMELL LIKE SKELETON?

  “I can’t believe we spent the rest of our money on this.” Quicksilver held up the hem of her gown as if it were a piece of dung rather than a fine length of satin. Her pack, hidden on a belt under her huge ruffled skirts, was much lighter now, with so much of their coin gone. “Fox and I should have just stolen what we needed.”

  “An unnecessary risk,” Anastazia muttered. “Better to keep our heads down when we can—”

  “Yes, I know, I know. Just let me complain without explaining why I’m wrong, won’t you?”

  “Well, I think we all look fantastic,” said Sly Boots, marching alongside them. “Besides, how else would we get inside? Sneak past the entire royal guard in our filthy everyday clothes?”

  Quicksilver glared at him. He looked far too content dressed in that vest and silk shirt. The cap on his head reminded her of the well-dressed people from town who had visited the convent from time to time and pretended to care about orphans.

  “Stop waving at everyone,” she grumbled at Sly Boots. “We’re not here to make friends.”

  “We’re at a party.” He jabbed her in the side, a little too sharply. “We should act like it.”

  “Oh, and you’ve been to many a party, then? You were a regular partygoer, back home?”

  Sly Boots ignored her, waving at a pretty girl with glowing spring-green hair down to her feet, who wore a billowing satin dress adorned with plum-colored ribbons. The girl waved back and then hid behind her hands to whisper to her friends. Sly Boots puffed out his chest like some featherbrained bird, and Quicksilver wondered, with a hot flash of fury, how she could ever have stood the sight of him.

  “Are you certain the bones are here?” muttered Anastazia, glaring at the crowd from within the folds of an excessively ruffled collar. “I feel like the most ridiculous twit in this getup.”

  “Why, Anastazia, you’ve never looked better!” crowed Sly Boots, bowing gallantly to her.

  Quicksilver and Anastazia exchanged a look.

  Can we accidentally lose him in the crowds and leave him here? Fox grumbled from Quicksilver’s hair. He hid behind her ear as the tiniest mouse he could make himself, and the slight softness of him against her scalp made her enormous, flouncy dress almost bearable.

  Almost.

  “I’m sure it’s here,” said Quicksilver under her breath. “Fox feels it, and so do I. It’s somewhere in this castle.”

  “Like an itch you can’t scratch because it’s just out of reach,” said Fox.

  “I think this one is the cat.” Quicksilver concentrated on the Wolf King’s memories, swimming chaotically through her mind. You’re close, they seemed to purr. Here. Almost. “Don’t you think? It feels like a cat.”

  “Of course, it would be a cat that would drag us into such a place,” said Fox. “Miserable, wretched creatures.”

  “Somewhere in this castle,” murmured Anastazia drily. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  They stepped through the castle doors, which had been thrown open to receive visitors, and into a grand receiving hall decorated with garlands of luminescent flowers and banners embroidered with the young princess’s likeness. Hundreds of candles lined the room, and an orchestra of fiddles, trumpets, and tambourines performed a merry jig from a stage in the corner—in front of which Princess Tatjana twirled from dance partner to dance partner, her golden curls flying.

  The hall itself was thrice as tall as the church tower back in Willow-on-the-River, and twice the length of the Convent of the White Wolf. From where Quicksilver stood gaping near the doors, she saw a dozen staircases, fifteen curtained balconies, dozens and dozens of amber-glass windows.

  “Stop staring,” muttered Sly Boots through a fixed smile. “You might as well run through the hall screaming, ‘Hello, I don’t belong here!’”

  Quicksilver bit down on her angry retort. He was right, after all. “Fox?”

  “Working on it.” Fox peeked out of Quicksilver’s hair, his mousy whiskers tickling her neck as his nose twitched “Yes. Yes, I think . . . there. Head for that corridor, on the far left. The air smells more exciting there.”

  “Does it smell like skeleton?”

  “It smells like something.”

  Quicksilver blew out an exasperated breath, but nevertheless made her way across the tremendous room, pausing only to sample the punch.

  This way, Fox thought to Quicksilver, tugging on the magic that bound their hearts, guiding her to the left through the crowded room.

  By the time they reached the corridor, Quicksilver felt ready to punch the next person who got in her way.

  “Is this what all parties are like?” she asked Anastazia. “So many people, all of them hot and sweaty. It’s unbearable.”

  “Haven’t been to a party in quite some time, myself,” muttered Anastazia, staring up at the ceiling with her mouth hanging open.

  Quicksilver followed her gaze but saw nothing there.

  Fox, Quicksilver thought, is Anastazia quite well?

  Right as she thought this, Fox was thinking to her, What’s that fool boy doing?

  Quicksilver turned and immediately saw what he was talking about: Sly Boots leaned on a tall table near one of the hall’s towering windows. He flashed a surprisingly charming smile at two witches nearby—one with yellow curls and a bright green frog monster sitting in her pocket, the other with orange spiky hair and a bluebird monster perched on her elaborately coiffed hair, from which dangled a wild assortment of baubles. The girls laughed at something Sly Boots said and swished over to him. Sly Boots beamed, and something about his smile made him seem . . . taller. Happier. More together, from his freckles down to his overlarge feet.

  In other words, he looked nothing like himself at all.

  For a moment, Quicksilver stood in shock. A strange sort of pain hooked deep into her gut.

  Something wrong? thought Fox, looking at her curiously.

  “Nothing,” Quicksilver bit out. “Just a stupid boy in a stupid vest who apparently can’t be bothered to stay with his friends at a party.”

  Fox thought delicately, And here I thought you found Sly Boots more of a burden than a friend.

  Quicksilver spun around and snapped to Fox, Hide us, and when Fox’s cloak settled around her and Anastazia, Quicksilver did not look back. She grabbed Anastazia’s wrist and led her down the corridor, leaving Sly Boots and his jabbering girls behind.

  She did not stop until they had gone down that corridor, and then ten others, and then through a door behind a tapestry, and then down
three flights of stairs that spiraled deeper and deeper into the palace—all while following Fox’s whispered instructions as the call of the skeleton pulled them farther on. Whenever they encountered a locked door, Fox wiggled through whatever cracks he could find and let them through. The farther they went, the more clearly Quicksilver could hear the skeleton’s movements and memories, all tangled up in her mind—its purrs, its tiny hisses, the clack of its thin claws against the floor.

  Definitely the cat, muttered Fox.

  At last, at the end of a quiet, shadowy corridor, they pushed open a heavy stone door and emerged into a dark series of caverns. Passages snaked off into the shadows, marked by engraved stones. Quicksilver marched onward and then, at a sharp cry of alarm from Fox, stopped.

  Before her, the stone dropped into a wide, dark chasm. A gust of cold wind raced up the sheer walls and blasted her in the face.

  Shaking, Quicksilver found a small rock on the ground and threw it as hard as she could. The rock clacked against stone, and then stone again, and then silently disappeared into blackness.

  “What’s happening?” Anastazia murmured, peering over the chasm’s edge. “Where are we?”

  Quicksilver pulled her back to safety. “Listen to me carefully: You’re going to follow me and do exactly as I say until we find this skeleton and get out of here. No wandering off, no leaning over the edges of chasms, and no asking questions. We have to move quickly. Do you understand?”

  Anastazia nodded eagerly.

  What’s wrong with her? Fox inquired.

  I don’t know, but we can’t worry about that right now. Quicksilver edged closer to the drop. There was a set of narrow steps carved into the chasm wall. How far down do you think this goes?

  I’d rather not think about it, master, but I do know the skeleton is down there.

  “Right, then.” Her skin tingling with nerves, Quicksilver started down the steps, Fox in front of her and Anastazia following behind.

  “Stairs!” Anastazia clapped her hands gleefully. “Hooray!”

  They crept down the stairs, deeper and deeper into the darkness. It was too quiet for Quicksilver’s liking—the air thick and still, Fox’s yellow glow the one lonely light. The longer they walked, the more the snowy hare skeleton, tucked safely away in the pack beneath Quicksilver’s skirts, squirmed and fussed. Quicksilver hoped that was a good sign—that it meant they were getting closer to the next skeleton.

  Your guess is as good as mine, Fox thought to her. Or maybe it’s just fussing for the sake of fussing.

  Maybe. Only when they at last reached the bottom of the winding stairs did Quicksilver feel like she could breathe safely once more.

  “Now what?” Even her whisper seemed booming in this quiet. The world above them was total darkness, whatever ceiling there was too high to see.

  We’re closer. Follow me. Fox led them farther into the caverns, down a twisting series of passages with low stone ceilings, until they finally emerged into a vast chamber lit with torches.

  It was littered with thousands and thousands of bones.

  .28.

  LET’S LEAVE THE CREEPY CAVE

  “These are not the bones of animals, Fox,” said Quicksilver calmly, though calm was not at all what she felt.

  “Indeed they’re not.” Fox sniffed a human skull, nudged it with his snout. “Some have been here a long time. Others . . . not so long.”

  Quicksilver felt suddenly very aware of her own skeleton. Such a fragile thing it was, kept in place by a sack of skin. She swallowed. “Well, how are we supposed to—?”

  She whirled, at the same moment Fox did. They had both felt the same tug—and it felt somehow . . . mischievous.

  Here. Almost.

  Quicksilver’s pack shuddered and jerked; the hare skeleton cried out shrilly.

  Anastazia plopped down in the midst of the bones as though preparing to have a picnic. When she caught Quicksilver and Fox staring at her, she smiled and waved.

  Quicksilver gritted her teeth. “Leave her for the moment. I think we’re close.”

  She took a step, and then stopped—for there, right before her feet, appeared a skeleton. Smaller than the others, more delicate, and glowing a bright blue.

  Quicksilver crouched, peering at the skull’s huge eye sockets, elegant jaw, and sharp fangs. A cat. The cat, one of the First Monsters. The power drifting off it, reverberating up through her own bones, was unmistakable—hot and thrumming.

  And though it was no longer alive, Quicksilver could have sworn it had just winked at them.

  She exchanged a glance with Fox as she bent to retrieve the skeleton. “That . . . was easy.”

  But just as her fingers brushed the skeleton, it vanished. The bones in her pack slammed themselves against her with a hiss.

  Quicksilver jumped back. “Where did it go? I had it!”

  There. Fox pointed with his snout at a spot a few paces away, where the cat skeleton reappeared, twinkling with satisfaction. They ran for it, but the piles of bones on the cavern floor came midway up Quicksilver’s calves, slowing her down. The sharp bits of broken bones scraped her legs, snagged her skirts. She kicked them in frustration. Fox darted ahead with a soft flash of light, swooped down—

  But the skeleton disappeared once more.

  Quicksilver growled. “What is it doing?”

  “Anastazia said they might be spelled to move around from place to place, to avoid being discovered,” Fox reminded her.

  “Well, how are we supposed to—?” But then the skeleton reappeared only a few paces away. “Fox!” she cried, flinging him after it.

  They chased the cat around the chamber, Quicksilver hissing every foul word she could think of under her breath. Every time they got close, the skeleton disappeared and then reappeared somewhere else. Quicksilver coughed, her throat full of dust. She was ready to sit down, right there in all those bones, and scream—when the cat skeleton appeared at her feet.

  She froze, breathing hard. Fox. Careful, now.

  Fox, now in his mouse form, inched his way closer. Quicksilver crouched as slowly as she could. They reached for the skeleton at the same moment, and this time, when Quicksilver put her hand on the skull, it stayed put.

  Hurry, master!

  She gathered up the skeleton, though touching it felt like digging through a snarl of briars, and put it in the pouch with its snowy hare brother. Once she had drawn the strings of her pack shut with both skeletons safely inside, she sat back on her heels and sighed, her hands throbbing from the sting of the cat skeleton’s magic.

  From inside her pack came the sound of a purr. A sense of relief washed over her, and she wondered if it was not only her own, but if the hare and cat skeletons were relieved too, glad to be together once more.

  They and their monsters were born out of the same pool of magic, the same ancient star—forever connected, forever sisters and brothers.

  “We did it,” Fox said quietly. “That’s two. Now we only need five more.”

  And still, to Quicksilver’s mind, it felt too easy. What had convinced the skeleton to stop taunting them? Would it soon disappear again?

  I suppose there’s no knowing, Fox said. Whatever we do, can we get out of here first? I don’t much like the smell of this place.

  “Where in the name of the stars are we?” asked Anastazia from behind them.

  Quicksilver turned to find Anastazia sitting where they had left her, looking confused but clear-eyed, herself once more.

  Quicksilver sighed. “Anastazia? You’re all right?”

  “I’m fine, I—” Anastazia fiddled with her ruffled collar. “Quicksilver, I fear . . . I may not be entirely well. When I interfered with the Wolf King, and broke your connection with him . . . do you remember how Olli said that magic flew everywhere, like shattered glass? I fear some of that shattered magic might have hit me, and . . . well, after all, it takes a great patchwork of spells to keep me going in the first place after all these years, and . . .”

>   Then Anastazia’s face turned soft and blank. She gazed up at Quicksilver. “Are we to play a game? I do so love games.”

  Quicksilver had to look away. If Anastazia were indeed ill from breaking the mind magic connection, then there might not be a way to heal her. And if they couldn’t . . . the idea of finding the First Monsters’ skeletons without her made Quicksilver want to curl up in a ball right then and there.

  Thankfully, these morose thoughts lasted for only a few seconds.

  “Why, yes,” Quicksilver said, dusting herself off, “we are indeed going to play a game. It’s called Let’s Leave the Creepy Cave and Go Back to the Party.”

  “And then Leave the Party as Quickly as Possible, and Never Attend Another One?” Fox suggested hopefully.

  Quicksilver grinned. “Sounds like the best game I can imagine—”

  A noise from behind her made her pause. A rattling, sliding sort of noise.

  “Friends!” cried Anastazia, waving over Quicksilver’s shoulder. “Hello! Come and play with us!”

  A feeling of dread crept over Quicksilver, and when she turned to see who Anastazia was talking to, she saw a hundred human skeletons rising from the sea of bones around her.

  .29.

  A SEA OF BONES

  The skeletons wore jewels around their necks and crowns on their heads. Some carried scepters, which they used to stab the stone floor and drag themselves forward. Wisps of hair clung to their chins; their ragged cloaks stank of sewage.

  In Quicksilver’s pack, the snowy hare and the cat shrieked and whined. Under her skirts, the pack strained toward the exit, urging her to move.

  Quicksilver grabbed Anastazia’s arm, pulled her to her feet, and ran. The skeletons followed—some running, others crawling. Their breath wheezed and rattled. Their bony feet slapped against the stone floor.

  Anastazia’s giggles died abruptly. “Have I gone completely mad, or are there skeletons coming at us?”

  Quicksilver tugged Anastazia on, back up the twisting stone passages—but now they were slippery, nearly impassable, coated with gunk and slime. Something had changed. A force pushed at Quicksilver like an invisible hand against her chest, trying to slow her progress. Every few steps, her feet went out from under her, and Fox swooped over in a glowing, dog-shaped cloud to cushion her fall.