Dedication

To what we have lost and what we can still save.

Acknowledgments

A book is a journey, and not one I could have walked alone.

My heartfelt thanks to the beta readers who read this book in whole or in part and offered essential feedback: Karin, Frey, Caro and Roy. Thank you all. This book wouldn’t be what it is without you.

In addition, I am grateful always for the support and counsel of all my loved ones during the writing and editing of this book, a period of time where (unrelatedly!) I found myself having to make some hard decisions about my health. And thank you to my lost worms, my rpg groups, and my writing communities, both online and local. Special thanks to AJ and Andi for the publishing advice and help! I am endlessly lucky in the quality and amount of my friends. Weird how I keep writing about found families even when I don’t specifically set out to, huh?

Janelle Monáe’s album ‘Dirty Computer’ and the Hadestown concept album by Anaïs Mitchell formed significant parts of the soundtrack of writing this book. Fans of the Twilight Mirage season of the Friends at the Table podcast will recognise an influence both in the themes of the setting and in me having the gleeful gall to name characters things like Significance O’Hallow.

Lastly, many thanks to Catherine and the team at Queen of Swords Press for wanting to publish my hopeful queer book. I couldn’t be happier that Foxhunt found its home with Queen of Swords. I will also never be over the beautiful and stunning cover by Laya Rose, my dream cover artist for this book. Thank you all!

Introduction

One of the roles of storytellers is to see us through hard times.

In long winters the community would gather by the fire to hear sagas of bravery and grandeur to distract them from the howling winds. Similar, to me, is the warm moment in the lounge when someone picks up the guitar and plays. Both help us remember the touch of the sun: to close our eyes and be elsewhere, and know the hard times aren’t forever.

There have been darker times than this for much of the world’s population, but no one would call the last few years easy. For a novel first drafted in 2017, and accepted for publication in 2021 – well. Maybe one day, dates that close to 2016 and 2020 won’t ring like a warning bell in a reader’s mind, but for now, you can imagine why my mind turned to escape, to a world that not only didn’t end, but flourished.

The world in Foxhunt is one version of the future, hopeful and green, lovely and deadly. This novel is part of a larger movement I can already see where authors and creators, tired of the grimness forced on them in their everyday lives, sing by the fire of brighter times. Helping us to remember, or imagine. Giving us hope. Working towards a future you can’t imagine is hard, so let imagination be a map, let fiction be a tool to aid your fight.

We need stories of hope, visions of a world that is not a blasted wasteland but balanced and careful and, overall, kind. Here is one such world. There are others. We can build such a world ourselves.

The Brink is now, and we can still step back from it.

Part One

The Wolf

Chapter One

Tinctora: a haven for dyers. The primary source of indigo and its backward cousin, woad. A few reputable wayhouses, but overall a sleepy, quiet region, unlikely to be of much importance.

- From the journal of Rivasoa

Orfeus went out that night to win her lady’s heart. Perhaps this was made difficult by the fact the lady in question was married already, but Orfeus was resourceful and not about to let such a small thing stop her. Morality was important as far as things went, but this hurt no one. No one but the husband, anyway, and it was more Primrose’s actions at fault there than Orfeus’s.

So she dressed as if for performance. A sleek cream shirt with sleeves that blossomed out like rose petals, dark pants that clung to her legs like they were painted there, and the cloak she had dyed herself, the deep blue a little patchy in places, yet sincere, heartfelt, the imperfections charming as a crooked smile. So she hoped.

Primrose entered the dining house later than they’d agreed, far after sunset. Orfeus kept her eyes on tonight’s entertainer, an adequate pianist, and stretched out in her seat, lounging and comfortable, tapping her fingers lightly in the air to the beat.

“Orfeus,” Primrose said as she sat down. Orfeus started in her chair and turned to her and smiled.

“Ah, you’re here,” she said easily, as though she hadn’t had one eye on the door since rather before sunset.

Primrose looked tired but as well presented as always, from her short hair with its slight curl to her perfect makeup. She was one of the few people Orfeus knew who wore makeup, and Orfeus was privileged to know she looked just as good without it. The tips of her fingers were tinted with indigo so she must be fresh off her work.

“Sorry to be late,” Primrose said, and flicked her fingers in the air, dismissing her lateness.

“No matter,” Orfeus said. “Hunger is the best sauce, they say, though I feel if that is true then they should really try mole.”

Primrose sat up straighter. “I don’t have time for a meal,” she said, shaking her head. “A glass of something perhaps.”

Orfeus settled back down. “Ah,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment. She would have to wave away the chef if they appeared brandishing the roast chicken Orfeus had apparently wasted her week’s meat allowance on.

She put on a smile, easy and quick, and tossed her hair. Long, curly hair, glossy as hazelnuts, buzzed short and soft on the other side. Orfeus herself wore no makeup: it was good to seem as though she put no thought into this. She waved her hand, and with the gesture made a certain curl with her thumb, using just a little of her Blood to make sparks scatter out from her hand. She said grandiosely, “Two glasses?”

Primrose tried to hide her smile and didn’t quite manage it. Those purple lips curved, softened. “Fine,” she said.

Orfeus grinned, and clapped her hands a little too dramatically to summon the server.

No roast chicken, but small glasses of deep red grape juice and a bowl of crisp salad greens to share between them. Plenty of good and comfortable things lay between them, other nights, other pastimes.

Primrose was quiet, rarely smiling, hard to draw out even though Orfeus contrived to be as charming and witty as she could. Orfeus danced a crouton over her fingers and said, “Would you like me to lambaste that pianist? I feel they could try a little harder.”

Primrose let out a sigh, mostly fond, a little not. “No music talk,” she said. “For once?”

That seemed unfair. Most of her talk was music talk. But it wasn’t as if she had any shortage of other things to talk about.

Nor any wisdom when it came to choosing subjects, either. “How’s Bellan?” Orfeus said brightly.

Primrose glanced over her shoulder, as though her husband would suddenly appear brandishing his own tiny glass. “He’s well,” she said after a moment, and looked back at Orfeus with a furrow pinching her brow. “Do you really want to know, Orfeus?”

Orfeus put her chin on her hand and shrugged. “I would hardly ask if I didn’t want to know.” Liar.

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” Primrose said. “But he doesn’t not know, if you get my meaning.” She sighed. “I doubt this’ll be worth the fight.”

Orfeus tapped her foot against the ground, a restless tic that wouldn’t be a tell. “Dear Bell still doesn’t approve?” she said.

She intended it to sound sympathetic, but had made it sarcastic to judge by the look Primrose gave her. Prim could cut sharp as thorns. “Of course he doesn’t,” she said. “He loves me. And I him.”

Orfeus hummed noncommittally and shrugged.

Primrose pushed her chair back. “You know that,” she said. The lines in her brow deepened. “You know me. You know what I can give you and what I can’t, the things I can’t afford to allow you. The boundaries of our relationship haven’t changed.”

Sometimes it almost felt like they had, lying abed with the window open for the breeze, or laughing down by the waterway in the very early morning with the mist coming off it. But Orfeus wasn’t enough of a fool to have believed it.

“I know,” she said, greatly soothing. “I know, I know. Come, come, I know words and I know contracts. I was just humming. A piece of a new song, nothing worth talking about even if you let me. While we’re on the subject, though, he’s still uncomfortable with the idea of you two being in an open relationship? Let alone properly polyamorous?”

“Of course he is,” Primrose said. She took too deep a swig of her drink, set it down, ran her tongue over her lips. As though it were the grapes and not lip-paint that dyed them so deep a purple. “It’s…fair. It’s fine.”

Orfeus should let it go, should’ve let it drop long since, but she was always one to strain her luck until it snapped. “If it’s something you’re open to and always have been and that he refuses to contemplate, that’s a weakness in the relationship. That’s bad of him.”

And if their affair offended or wounded Bellan, in a manner clear and obvious, then this was bad of Primrose. And it was bad of Orfeus to carry on with Primrose, knowing that. None of this was what any of them should be doing.

Orfeus didn’t care that much about should, not when Primrose had so compact a form, so clever a knack with fabrics, so kissable a mouth.

Bellan could stuff it.

“I clearly don’t want to talk about it,” Primrose said, and shook her head. She pushed her chair the rest of the way back from the table and stood. “We’ve had our drink. Good evening, Orfeus.”

“You said two,” Orfeus blurted, showing too much in her distress, hands clutching the edge of the table. “You agreed to two glasses.” She tried to relax, to not be the clinging vine, the burr to be shaken off. She tried to think of some stratagem that wasn’t trying too hard and came up wildly blank. “Let me get you flowers.”

Primrose looked at her, and it wasn’t her cutting look. She looked at her as though Orfeus were a length of fabric that had come out in quite different colours than she expected.

Orfeus leaned forward to press the advantage. “Flowers like when I first courted you,” she said. “Every type of flower I can find.”

The corner of Primrose’s mouth twitched up. She stayed there, one hand on the chair like she wanted to hold onto it. “I suppose daisies are always in season,” she said.

She remembered the daisies. Orfeus’s heart gave a wild leap in her chest, though she stayed cool-calm-smiling. She refrained from lifting a finger to touch her earring. “Yes,” she said. “Daisies. Flax and foxglove. Anything you like.” She stood up and swept a complicated bow, tucking her cape behind her back. “I won’t be a moment.”

Primrose still hesitated, one hand on her chair.

“Less than the time it’ll take for a second glass,” Orfeus said, and that decided her. Primrose nodded, a little grudging but with that reluctant smile as well. She’d made her smile. Orfeus waved joyously for more juice as she exited. She smiled warmly at their server, a nice-seeming young person, and at the chef, and more generally at everyone in the dining house and indeed all the world, even the pianist.

She stepped out into the evening air. Flowers were easy to find, lining the path in neat boxes, useful cultivars along with wildflowers to encourage pollinators. Orfeus loved this town, overflowing with greenery, abundant with hues.

She wandered down the path, brushing her fingers against stems. Though most of the flowers were closed at the approach of night, the buds were still pretty. No daisies, but Orfeus smiled as she came across a patch of willowherb, sprays of small purple flowers among the dark-leaved stems. Not a perfect match for Prim’s lipstick, but close.

Orfeus picked a careful handful, a few from each plant. She straightened, flowers gathered in her hand, and the sky fell upon her head.

A heavy weight slammed into her back, shoving her into the ground. Orfeus inhaled dirt and twisted reflexively, kicking out and away. The heavy form pushing her down moved back, up and off her.

In the moment’s respite Orfeus pulled herself back with her hands, scooting on the ground like a worm. She stared up at her attacker: a looming shadow, an inescapable monument. They weren’t tall but seemed tall from down here, and slab-solid with muscle. Some kind of helmet or mask on their head gleamed silver in the moonlight.

“You jumped me,” Orfeus said a little numbly. She tasted blood in her mouth as well as dirt. “Why?”

They had leaped down from the roof, she judged, yet stood unfazed and unflinching. They said, “I am a hunter of the Order of the Wild, and you are my prey.”

Their voice was medium-low, low for a woman or average for a man, hard to tell. No time to ask pronouns in the middle of a fight.

If they were who they said they were, it would be no fight at all.

“What?” Orfeus said. “No!”

The masked figure advanced on her, armoured in tough fabrics under a dark cloak. That mask, the snarling visage of some animal, hooked down over their eyes. Claws on one hand, jutting out and gleaming. No. Impossible.

The hunter didn’t care that they were impossible and lunged forward, claws whistling through the air.

Orfeus rolled sideways in the dirt with the taste of panic in her mouth, and the claws sliced down inches from her. She got her hands beneath her and shoved herself finally to her feet, diving forward just in time to avoid another slash.

She staggered back, panting. It had been a slow movement, like the hunter was barely trying. They were bulky and enigmatic as a nightmare, her doom come walking, but she couldn’t think of what she might have done to deserve it.

“Give your speech again,” Orfeus blurted. She gripped tight to what little of the stories she knew, as though folklore was fact. “You have to.”

The hunter stood still, more out of confusion than compliance. She couldn’t make out their eyes under the helm, but Orfeus knew when someone was frowning at her. The hunter said, “I already did,” in a low exasperated growl. Everyone this evening was exasperated at her, from old flames right up to hired killers.

Perhaps Bellan was the client? But Bellan didn’t have the nerve to commission the Order, and adultery wasn’t enough of an offence, not like energy crimes. “But you have to make sure I understand it,” Orfeus said. “Right? Maybe – maybe Common isn’t my first language. Maybe I’m fluent mostly in French or English or Arabic. Maybe I only speak sign.”

The hunter just sneered at that, like Orfeus wasn’t worth wasting words on.

Orfeus signed, I don’t understand, in the French dialect, then flipped them off defiantly.

So her mother Basma’s sign lessons had some use, despite Orfeus’s protests as a child. The hunter clenched their fist, claws gleaming, visibly frustrated. But they stood still and straight and spoke.

“I am a representative of the Order of the Vengeful Wild,” they said. “We are the fangs and claws of justice. We go where we are needed. We are the shadows cast by the world. I will bring my prey down or die in the attempt.” She got a glimpse of their eyes, then, a gleam deep in the shadows of the snarling mask. “I will bring my prey down.”

That did seem more likely. Orfeus didn’t even have her pruning knife. “And who are you?” she said. “Who are you, who call yourself representative as though you have no name of your own?”

The hunter said matter-of-factly, “I am the Wolf.”

Orfeus staggered back a step. “Who next,” she said wildly, “the boogeyman?”

The hunter cocked their head. “No one in the Order is called that,” they said. “Our call names are mostly animals.” Their skin was pale, Europan ancestry or perhaps East Asian. Not younger than twenty, but not above thirty-five either. They couldn’t be the Wolf, most feared and fearsome hunter of the Wild for hundreds of years, but perhaps the title was passed down through generations of hunters.

Perhaps they were new to the title. Perhaps Orfeus would survive this easily and go back inside, and Primrose would divorce Bellan and come travel on the road with her, and fame would come all at once and not in slow, painful inches by the skin of her teeth.

“It was a joke,” said Orfeus, “much as you are.”

They snarled. Actually snarled. She recognised the animal on their mask now, pricked ears and snout crinkled up from bared teeth.

“Your real name?” Orfeus said. She was pushing her luck. She always would.

Silence a moment. Then, “Faol.”

Orfeus grinned in disbelief, lips pulled back from her teeth. She knew at least a little old Éirish Gaelic. “That’s just wolf again—”

But the time for talking had run out. The hunter drew a tasegun from their hip and fired it in the same motion, far too fast for Orfeus to dodge it even if she’d been keeping up her sparring practice. The stunning beam fizzed over her body and she fell lumpen to the ground.

She lay still, eyes only able to look up at the deep blue evening sky. Faol strode into her line of vision.

Orfeus twitched her fingers, then her toes, movement only slowly returning. It felt as if she’d been inexpertly carved from wood. She tried to move her hands but they only jerked in random twitches, no proper command gestures.

The Wolf stopped over her and drew a knife that was a gleaming length of light. Orfeus croaked out a nothing-word, and then her words came back, her breath and her blessed words, and she said, clearly, “Energy.”

Her Blood activated, and at the command word adrenaline flooded through her, kickstarting her body. She lurched up.

Faol stopped and stared. “So you are Blooded.”

Orfeus grinned and slipped into something like a kickboxing stance. “Only if you play your cards right, Wolfy—”

Faol punched her hard in the throat and Orfeus staggered back, choking on nothing. At least that hadn’t been the clawed hand, but there was still a gauntlet.

The Wolf’s stance shifted slightly, like they would throw another punch. Maybe another haymaker, which was an odd fighting choice for someone shorter than Orfeus, but – her throat ached – undeniably effective. Rising Tide, they were muscle and nothing else.

Orfeus couldn’t take another hit like that. She flared out her hands in quick and complex gestures.

Too much electricity was risky, so she did heat. Someone like the Wolf had combat instincts too good to let her get a blow in, but all she needed was a touch. She got her hand to their shoulder, and watched without pain as the tips of her fingers glowed red, then blinding white.

Faol didn’t make a sound, but their jaw tightened. They took a step back, just one.

Orfeus took a step back too, bracing herself, then turned and sprinted away.

Cowardice was one word for it, but survival was the main one. Someone from the Order had trained their whole life to hunt. Orfeus had done a little bit of everything, but the driving force of her life was music and performance. She was smart enough to know to run.

Smart, and fast, head forward and arms pumping in a sprint that would turn into a jog if she got far enough away.

Before she’d gotten more than a street away, a bike dropped down in front of her.

A hoverbike. She’d seldom seen a single-person transport device, wasteful as they were. Solar foil was visible, tucked in at the sides and between the coiling metal guts of the thing as though to declare that the Wild could be accused of no hypocrisy.

Faol leapt off the bike. In their tough armour they too looked like a carefully designed machine. They didn’t say anything, but looked disgusted.

Running: worth trying, but hadn’t worked. Orfeus braced herself. Trying to hit back would be idiotic, but she wasn’t going to lie down in the dirt again.

She took a deep breath and swung her fist at Faol’s face. Faol stepped to the side, one easy and economical step. Orfeus stumbled past them, and felt claws biting into her back through her cloak.

She loosened the fastening of her cloak and wriggled out of it, diving forward, rolling, coming up in a run. She turned, lifting her hands up by her chin as though to try another hit.

Faol didn’t move. “Make this easy on yourself,” they said. Yes, they were certainly disgusted by her.

“So you don’t know who I am after all,” Orfeus called back. Only her training let her voice carry clearly when her breath was so ragged. Her muscles sang with adrenaline.

The Wolf swiped their claws through the air, a frustrated gesture, certainly nowhere near close enough to hit. She still tensed at that wicked gleam. “Stop fighting.”

Orfeus bunched her shoulders, curling her hands in readiness. “I’m never going to just give up,” she said. “Not for an instant longer than I have to. Never.”

The Wolf shrugged and prowled forward. They were a dramatic series of dark and light, pale skin and dark armour, ragged dark hair like a fringe of shadow. “It’ll happen all the same. You’re my prey.”

“Oh, just stop with all that bullshit!”

And Faol stopped playing.

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