Ascendant

by Diana Peterfreund

  That made some sense to me. “So how do you make it?”

  She pursed her lips. “It’s complicated. And difficult, and very, very touchy. I had hoped that this was something we could produce on a vast scale. I was hoping that the Remedy would be a cure for the masses.” She smiled in self-recrimination. “Barring that, I hoped I could make a luxury drug. Even if we had to charge an exorbitant price for every dose, it would be worth it, to save whatever people we could.”

  “But you can’t do that?”

  Isabeau shrugged. “No. It is impossible, as rare now as it was throughout history. In this case, the ancients were not hampered by their inferior technology. The Remedy, like the unicorns, like the hunters, is not the product of science. It is the result of magic.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Does it take a large number of unicorns to make one dose?” How many must have died to create the one my mother had given Brandt?

  “No,” she said. “Nevertheless, its ingredients are incredibly rare. I now understand why it was spoken of with such reverence.” Isabeau stopped and looked at me. “I would like to give it to you.”

  23

  WHEREIN ASTRID CONSIDERS THE CURE

  The shock wave that followed her statement was enough to wake Angel from his slumber. I heard the rattle of a cage in the next room, the soft bleat of a unicorn.

  “You can’t be serious,” I spluttered.

  “I most certainly am.”

  “You just finished telling me how very rare it is!”

  “And therefore why you should feel that I am not making this offer to you lightly. My company has already invested millions of euros in the development of this drug. We have nothing to show for it but a handful of doses. We cannot recoup those fees, even if we were to sell them to the richest people on the planet. So why not instead give one to a person I love?”

  Angel began to cry. I followed in short order.

  “Please calm down, ma chère,” said Isabeau. “You are disturbing the unicorn, and we have gone to great lengths to keep him sedated.”

  “Why?” I sobbed. “Why would you do that?”

  “I told you,” said Isabeau. “I love you, and I hate to see a young woman with your intelligence, your potential, hampered by this injury. You know that you cannot count on the unicorn magic forever, and there is no telling if you will ever progress past this state.”

  I cried even harder, no longer caring if it upset the einhorn. Yes, this is what I needed to hear. Not Phil’s pandering and protectiveness. The truth. I’d be forever trapped in the Cloisters, forever trapped alone and ignorant. Without the unicorns, without the magic, without being a hunter, I was doomed to eternal fog.

  Isabeau handed me a tissue. “I cannot make any promises that the Remedy will cure you of your condition. It may be that it has no effect on a hunter. It may be that it has no effect on a condition that is not a wound or a poisoning. We have not had enough of it to do proper testing. You would be a guinea pig, Astrid, and it may well be that we waste one of our few precious doses of the Remedy on you.”

  I choked.

  “But,” she added, “I am willing to try.”

  I said nothing, just sat there and sobbed until I had no more tears left. Around me I heard the sterile hum of machines, the high-pitched whine of the fluorescent lighting, the scent of disinfectant and medicines and blood. If I closed my eyes, I could sense them through Angel’s point of view.

  This was his life. This had been his life since I’d left. Every single day of his existence had been spent inside a cage, in a room with latex-gloved hands and needles and bright white lights. He couldn’t remember even the large enclosure in which he’d been born. He didn’t know the scent of dirt or leaves. He barely remembered the feel of his mother.

  And I realized now what a hypocrite I was. Because I didn’t care. I wanted the Remedy. I wanted it for my own. Angel’s existence was a sacrifice worth making if it meant that I could be cured of the fog that lay around my brain like a chain. I wanted my own freedom far more than I wanted his.

  I hated this about myself, but I couldn’t deny it.

  “Do you remember what Brandt used to say about me, Astrid?” Isabeau asked. “He said that I treated you like a child. Like my child.”

  I nodded.

  “The truth is, I did have a child. I had a daughter, many years ago. She died when she was about your age. She died of cancer, and there was nothing I could do to save her. At her worst, she looked much like you do now: shorn hair, pale face, the despair that gripped her when she saw nothing but pain and suffering for the rest of her short life.”

  Yes. How did she know? How did she nail every single sensation? How did she do it while dangling before me the apparition of enslaved unicorns?

  “If I had this chance with my daughter, I would have used it. But I didn’t. Please don’t let me miss out this time. Please let me try to help you.”

  Yes! My brain screamed. Yes, yes, let’s do it now! Now now now now now now now.

  But—weren’t there other people who deserved this more than me? What of Cory, who was growing weaker by the day with some ailment that no doctor had yet been able to diagnose? What of people in the world that were dying—actually dying—that the Remedy might save? Did I have any right to use it in what might be a vain attempt to cure a little brain damage?

  Because if I did take the Remedy that Isabeau offered and it didn’t make a difference, how would I feel then? How would I feel knowing that it might have been used to save someone’s life?

  I opened my mouth. “Thank you,” I said robotically. “It’s an honor. But I have to think about it.”

  Isabeau seemed to understand. She showed me to my old bedroom and left me alone. I didn’t unpack; just sat and soaked it in. My books still sat neatly on the shelf above the desk. The clothes I’d left still hung in the closet. The beautiful dress seemed even more beautiful now, its silken folds a remnant from a time when I believed that I retained some trace of the normal girl I’d once been. Once upon a time, I could dress up in pretty gowns, and if I left my hair down, I could almost pretend that I wasn’t a unicorn hunter. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. No denying that now. I looked like a monster. I understood now why Clothilde chose to keep her head shaved. She didn’t want to hide her scars—she wanted a constant reminder of the person those wounds had created.

  I took off my clothes and put on the dress. Without the veil of my hair, every scar I had stood proudly on display—my back, my arms, my hands, my head.

  I went to the case and pulled out the claymore. Domitare unicorne indomitum. To vanquish the savage unicorn. I held it up and out, copying the pose of the statue in the Cloisters rotunda.

  Now I looked just like Clothilde. Now we might as well be the same person.

  There was a knock on the door. “Astrid?”

  I dropped the sword. Brandt. I cast about the room for a robe, for something to throw over my long formal gown. I thought of wrapping my head in a towel. What was he doing here? Isabeau hadn’t said a word about him! I’d assumed he’d gone.

  “Astrid, open the door. I have to see you. I have to talk to you.”

  “Um …”

  “I know what you look like, and I don’t care.”

  I opened the door, more out of curiosity than anything else. “How do you know?”

  He startled at my eyes—they all did—but recovered himself quickly. He took in my attire, his eyebrows quirked. “They told us when you were hurt,” he said. “They said they’d had to shave your head in the hospital. But they didn’t say anything about your eyes.” He examined me. “Your hair’s cute. Kind of punk.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Now go away.”

  “Why?”

  Because there were no unicorns in my bedroom, and Brandt’s presence had always been confusing to me, even before I was brain damaged. “Because I’m asking you to, and you’ve always been gentlemanly enough to do what a girl asks.”

  “Yeah,”
he said. “Those are the rules.” He was staring intently at me. “But I think I’m kind of over that stage in my life.” He came inside and shut the door behind him.

  I backed into the room, eyes widening. “Brandt—that was a joke.”

  “I love you, Astrid. I’ve told you that so many times.” His eyes were wild and he kept advancing, kept coming toward me until the back of my knees hit the bed.

  My sword was all the way across the room. I could probably get to it before he could stop me, but then what? Hold Brandt off with a sword? Brandt Ellison?

  I wondered if this was what Phil had been thinking that night with Seth. That there was no way a guy she knew could possibly threaten her like this. But I was strong, with or without a unicorn. And I had way more to lose.

  “Keep away from me, Brandt. I’ll—” Scream? Yes, I’d scream, but more important, I’d grab my sword and lop his head off if he tried to touch me.

  “I don’t like this job, Astrid. I want out. And I think you can help me. I think, with you—it would be different… .”

  For a second, confusion—real confusion—broke through the fear. “Your job?”

  “Here, at Gordian.”

  I stared at him, baffled. “Brandt, there are far easier ways to get out of this job than raping me. Though I assure you if you tried, you’d be more than fired. You’d be dead.”

  He stopped and blinked at me. “Raping you? What are you talking about? I would never, ever do something like that. I love you, Astrid. I know everything you’ve been through. I know about Phil—God, what kind of monster do you think I am?”

  I held up my hands. “You’re backing me on to a bed after I asked you to leave. What else was I supposed to think?”

  He whirled around and walked away, stabbing both hands into his hair. “Is that what she told you? That I can’t control myself? That I’m some kind of wild animal?” He turned to face me. “Well, that’s not how it works, you know!” He glared at me, anger staining his face red.

  Where was a unicorn when you really, really needed one? I sat down on the bed and closed my eyes, trying to still my mind to make sense of it all. Curse my broken brain. I took several deep breaths, then opened my eyes again. Brandt was still across the room, breathing heavy, his hair standing up all over his head.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brandt,” I said. “How what works?”

  Now it was Brandt’s turn to look confused. “I thought she told you,” he said. “I thought she told you all about the Remedy.”

  “She offered to give it to me,” I said. “But I still don’t understand—”

  He laughed bitterly. “But she didn’t tell you about the side effects?” Side effects?

  “Of course not!” he raved. “Because they wouldn’t really pertain to you, would they? That’s what she thinks, anyway. She thinks it’s all about her precious dead daughter. She refuses to even consider it.”

  “Brandt,” I said slowly, in the tone of voice that Phil liked to use on me whenever I got particularly “outrageous.”

  “Please sit down and tell me, slowly and with a lot of detail, what in the world you are talking about. I don’t know if it’s the brain damage or what, but I can’t understand you at all.”

  His lips formed a thin, angry line and he stared at me for a minute, hands clenched at his sides. Then suddenly he rushed forward and fell to his knees in front of me.

  “Please, Astrid, just say you love me. Say you love me and none of the rest of this matters.”

  “What? No!” I shoved him off my skirt.

  “It’s Giovanni, isn’t it? You think he’s the one.”

  “Stop it, Brandt!” I took another deep breath. “And no, for your information, I don’t. But neither are you, so—”

  “That’s not true!” Brandt said. “I know it can’t be. This isn’t like with the others. You’re different. With you it’s love, real love. Oh Astrid—” He lifted his face to mine and kissed me.

  I pushed him off and squeezed out around him. “I said stop it.” I walked over to the far corner of the room, placing the bed and my suitcase between us, and I picked up my sword. “Now, you stay over there”—I gestured with the claymore—”and I’ll stay over here and you’ll tell me what the hell you are talking about. What others?”

  He knelt there against the bed, his hands out on the sheets as if he was praying, then slumped. “The other hunters,” he said, defeated.

  The point of my sword lowered to the floor. “Other hunters?”

  “That’s what I’m doing here, Astrid. I’m not a milkmaid; I’m a scent hound.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m an actaeon.”

  We don’t call them that anymore. How well I remembered Isabeau saying it.

  We’ve been having terrible luck recently, Phil had told me. We get a tip about a possible hunter … but by the time we contact them, they’ve decided to relinquish their eligibility.

  My hand shot out to grab hold of the desk for balance. “What? How?” I asked.

  “It’s a side effect of the Remedy,” he said. “The way I heal. The way I can almost—almost—touch the magic. I can also sense you. I can sense you like you can sense unicorns.”

  I shuddered. Yuck. And he’d been sleeping down the hall from me for months?

  “And I want you. Oh, Astrid, it’s like when I’m near a hunter, she’s all I can think about. She’s the only thing in the world.”

  “So you don’t love me” I hissed. “You have a fetish. You have a fetish and you’ve been”—the realization struck me with the force of a re’em on a mountaintop—”you’ve been running around Europe deflowering every girl who might be a unicorn hunter before the Cloisters could get to them! You’re disgusting!”

  “No,” he said. “I’m helping. These girls don’t want the life you’re living, Astrid. They don’t want the danger. Can you blame them?”

  I couldn’t, but that was hardly the point. The reason we were in so much danger was because we had so few hunters. We’d gone up against a re’em with only four of us. I’d almost been killed and Rosamund had lost her life. We were all shouldering that much more of the burden because these other girls chose to get out of their duties… . “Then you are a rapist.”

  “No!” He stood up. “I would never, ever do anything against a girl’s will. Never. Marten had it wrong. Marten was too desperate. Seth was a monster. Isabeau and I … we’re not like that. We approach the girls and tell them about their situation, about the danger they are in, and about what we can do to help them. It’s up to them to choose their path after that.”

  “And you get paid for this?” I asked, appalled. “You’re what, a prostitute?”

  “They don’t always come to me. Some of them have boyfriends—” He sighed pitifully.

  I gagged. “Gordian pays you to sleep with unicorn hunters. That’s the definition of a whore. It doesn’t matter how pretty the packaging is, or what you’re saving them from.”

  He hung his head.

  Now the truth lay splayed out before me like a rotting feast. “And that rule that bothered you so much about living here, the one you were always complaining about … it was me. I was the rule. Hands off.”

  That’s why Isabeau was always so scared of him spending time with me. That’s why she’d made sure he was kept away when Cory and Valerija had come to visit. Three hunters might have been too much for him to bear.

  He nodded without looking up. “But don’t you see, Astrid? That’s how I know I love you.” And now he raised his eyes to mine and started moving forward again. “It’s not the Remedy when it comes to you. I liked you before, I like you still, and I like you even knowing I can never have you. Knowing that until you’re cured of your brain damage, I can never, ever be with you, because we have to protect you… .”

  I lifted my sword again. “I am not some delicate flower. I do not need your protection. Ever! Do you hear me?”

  He backed away, lifting his hands
in surrender. “No, of course not. That’s what I love about you! You’ve always been so brave, so strong. You saved my life. I just mean, the magic … your mind …” He trailed off. “God, your eyes. They’re hypnotic, Astrid… .”

  “Shut up!” I cried. Everything out of his mouth was a lie. Isabeau had told me the truth. All he wanted was a taste of power. Just not the way I’d thought.

  Silence reigned in the bedroom while I worked this all out in my battered brain. Poor Neil. All along he’d been out there looking for hunters, and Brandt had been tracking them down using unicorn magic and seducing them out from underneath us. And as sickening as it was, what could we say? These girls were allowed to make their own choices. We couldn’t begrudge them relinquishing their magic, whether they did it with someone they truly loved, like Zelda had planned to, or some actaeon off the street who offered to unburden them of—

  Wait. Why? Why was Isabeau trying to sabotage Cloisters recruitment? Marten had struck a deal with a rogue band of kirin: disable the Llewelyn hunters in the Order, and they would assist him in his quest for power. But Isabeau was a Llewelyn, and she’d protected me from Brandt’s advances. Plus, I knew the einhorns. They were nothing like kirin. It made no sense.

  “I don’t get it,” I said at last. “Why would you do this? What are you gaining from it, except for random one-night stands?”

  “I told you,” he said, “I’m an actaeon.”

  “I know what an actaeon is. I just don’t see why it’s a job.”

  He smiled then. “Then no, Astrid. You have no idea what an actaeon is.”

  I leaned on my sword hilt and placed a hand on my hip. “Excuse me? I’m in the Order of the Lioness. We were the ones to come up with the name. We were the ones to kill them with our zhi whenever we caught them in the act.”