Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow Read online

  “You smell… terrbel.”

  “Right, she needs a hospital. Macleod, send up a flare, let’s get a medic down here.”

  “No,” said Morrigan, while the street tilted nauseatingly around her. “Hotel.”

  “She’s delirious,” said a third voice, a woman. “We’re getting you to the hospital, dearie. The hospital. Don’t worry—”

  “HOTEL,” Morrigan shouted, and then in a slurred clarification she added, “Doolekion. Doykelion. Durkel… loyne,” before the world went sideways, then black.

  Morrigan did not wake up in the Hotel Durkeloyne, or in any hotel.

  At first, she thought she was at home. That perhaps Room 85 was annoyed with her again and had transformed her bed into some weird, uncomfortable slab. But no. Apparently, that was what passed for a bed in the Wundrous Society Teaching Hospital.

  It took several minutes to piece together the night’s events, while her brain slowly stretched itself awake. She remembered a lot of water. She remembered being attacked by Brutilus Brown, and… had Thaddea been there? Was that how she got to the hospital?

  Morrigan’s left leg was neatly bandaged, and it throbbed dully in time with her pulse. She tried to bend her knee but failed, groaning loudly as the pain shot all the way down to her toes.

  “Got yourself a nasty scratch there, pet,” drawled the bored-looking nurse who brought her breakfast. “You’ve had a rubbish night, haven’t you?”

  Understatement of the Age, thought Morrigan. Slowly, gingerly, she propped herself up on her pillows to look around. Half the other beds on the ward were occupied, mostly by grown-up Society members, and one or two scholars. She’d never been in a hospital before. It was very… clean. And white. And it smelled a bit weird.

  “Not my best,” she croaked in agreement. “I got chased by a bearwun and then I drowned.”

  “Oh aye,” said the nurse, with minimal interest. He lifted Morrigan’s wrist to take her pulse, making a note on his clipboard. “That’s dreadful, that is. Mrs. Rooper over there slipped getting out the bathtub. Terrible night all round.”

  “Was anyone else brought here last night?” asked Morrigan. “A girl named Heloise?”

  “The green-haired drama queen? Aye. Treated her for shock.” He leaned in, rolling his eyes, and whispered, “Draped her in a blanket and sent her on her way.”

  So, then. Playing dead had been the smart tactic. Morrigan winced as her leg seized with sudden pain, fervently wishing she’d thought of it herself.

  “Does anyone… um, know I’m here? My patron, or…”

  “Ginger fella? Big flirt? Thinks he’s funny?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Pet, I had to tell him to jog on. Never met such a hoverer!” the nurse said indignantly. “Said I’d send for him when you woke up, so I suppose I should go and—”

  “MOG! Mog, you’re awake! I’m here!” Jupiter’s voice boomed through the double doors before they’d even fully opened.

  “—let him know,” the nurse finished, rolling his eyes as he moved on to his next patient.

  Jupiter’s hair was standing at an odd angle on one side of his head and his eyes were wide, as though he’d not slept all night. He crossed the room in three enormous strides and enveloped Morrigan in a bone-crushing hug.

  “I—Jup—okay then.” She crumpled and let herself be held tight, just for a minute.

  Once they’d collected themselves, Morrigan told Jupiter the whole story from start to finish, piecing together her hazy, jagged memories as she went and watching his face grow paler and his fingernails shorter with every awful detail. When she got to the bit about drowning in the Tricksy Lane, he made a weird squeaking noise, jumped up, and started pacing back and forth at the end of her bed, running his fingers agitatedly through his beard.

  “But, you know.” She gave a casual shrug, hoping he would take the hint, sit down, and be cool. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  Jupiter shot a pointed look at her bandaged leg, not bothering to dignify her comment with a response. Then he swept out of the hospital, pledging to find Brutilus Brown before he could harm anyone else.

  Morrigan wasn’t sure this was his greatest idea ever, and she said so as he ran for the door, but of course he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to workshop a better plan. She waved him off with a resigned sigh, feeling quite certain that by morning he’d either have had Brutilus Brown sentenced for his crimes in a makeshift people’s court or—more likely—been mauled to death.

  She closed her eyes, giving in to a depth of tiredness she’d never felt before.

  Jupiter returned the next day somewhat calmer, at least partly due to the influence of Dame Chanda, who’d come along too. She gathered a chorus of bluebirds to sing Morrigan a get-well-soon song, and squirrels to help fluff her pillows. Except the squirrels either didn’t know how to fluff pillows or didn’t care to; instead they went around stealing grapes from bedside tables and causing general mayhem, until Nurse Tim demanded that Dame Chanda either call off her menagerie or leave.

  Only Wunsoc members or immediate family were allowed inside the teaching hospital, so the Deucalion staff had loaded Jupiter and Dame Chanda up with chocolates, fruit, books, flowers, cards, helium balloons, and an old, half-chewed rubber toy that wheezed like a duck with bronchitis when you squeezed it (from Fen). Jack sent along a handwritten card that simultaneously managed to be quite sympathetic about Morrigan’s injury and quite insulting about her being the precise kind of idiot who was destined to get herself mauled by a bear one day and how they should have seen it coming.

  “Well, it wasn’t a bear, actually, it was a bearwun,” Morrigan muttered as she propped the card up on her bedside table. “Who’s the idiot now, Jack?”

  Dame Chanda regaled her and Jupiter with gossipy stories from the rehearsals for her new opera, The Maledictions, and promised to take Morrigan backstage at the Nevermoor Opera House as soon as her leg had healed. But Morrigan wasn’t really interested in the romances and rivalries of the opera world; all she wanted to hear about was Brutilus Brown, and she changed the subject the second it was polite to do so.

  “Do you think he’s… do you think it could be like what happened with Juvela De Flimsé? That he could be lying unconscious somewhere?” she asked quietly. Dame Chanda uttered a horrified little yelp.

  “I’ve been wondering that myself,” Jupiter admitted. “I’ve spoken to the Elders, and I’ve spoken to the Stealth, and they assure me they’re investigating…” He said this with an unspoken question mark at the end, and Morrigan understood that he had his doubts but didn’t want to say so.

  It was almost a week before Morrigan was allowed to go home, and in the meantime she had a steady stream of visitors. Sofia had stopped by one afternoon and sat for hours on the end of her bed, whispering stories of the most unbelievable things she’d witnessed in the ghostly hours on Sub-Nine. Miss Cheery brought her best chocolate biscuits and all of Unit 919. Thaddea was only too happy to reenact Morrigan’s dramatic fainting over and over; Morrigan highly doubted she’d told Gavin Squires he had pretty eyes as she was loaded into the ambulance.

  Hawthorne and Cadence came every day after that, and on Spring’s Eve—which was Morrigan’s thirteenth birthday—Cadence managed to mesmerize Nurse Tim and the other patients so they didn’t notice the fluffy, excitable puppy she’d smuggled in with her.

  “You didn’t tell me you got a dog!” Morrigan gasped, snuggling him up close under her chin. He licked her neck. “What’s his name?”

  “No idea,” admitted Cadence. “He’s not mine, I saw him at the station and thought you’d like him.”

  “You… bought me a puppy?”

  “Borrowed,” Cadence clarified, and then rolled her eyes at Morrigan’s horrified look of realization. “I’m gonna take him back, geez. Happy birthday, you ingrate.”

  Hawthorne gave her a silvery-white iridescent dragon scale he’d picked up in the stables on Sub-Five and p
olished to a shine.

  “Volcano in the Sky is shedding like crazy at the moment. Hold on to that—Volcano’s a featherweight champion, and it’ll be worth LOADS if she wins the tournament this year.”

  Hawthorne had pestered her to tell the Golders Night story again every day that week, and today was no exception. Morrigan obliged even though she was getting sick of telling it and Cadence was sick of hearing it.

  “—and then his eyes lit up, all green and glowing, and he ran right for us, and I told Heloise—”

  “Wait, hold up,” said Hawthorne. His feet were propped up on the end of the bed and he was sifting through a big box of birthday sweets Jupiter had left that morning. Cadence was ignoring them both and quietly reading a mystery novel. “What’s that about his eyes glowing green? You never said that before.”

  Morrigan paused, frowning. “No. Well, I only just remembered. I don’t know if…” She stopped again, as something else suddenly jolted into place in her head. “Wait. Hawthorne, remember Juvela De Flimsé? Didn’t her eyes flash green like that too? Like… like someone had turned on a light inside them.”

  “Dunno,” he said, shrugging. “I didn’t see any flashing green eyes.”

  Cadence looked up from her book with interest. “Who’s Juvela De Flimsé?”

  Morrigan told her the tale of their strange encounter with the leopardwun on the Wunderground, slightly hampered by Hawthorne jumping in to add extra drama.

  “—and she pounced onto this man’s shoulders—”

  “Hawthorne, don’t stand on the bed, this is a hospital.”

  “—then she lifted her head and howled—”

  “No, she didn’t. Cats don’t howl, you’re thinking of—”

  “AAAROOOOOOOOOOO!”

  “Please stop howling.”

  When they eventually made it to the end of the story, Cadence said exactly what Morrigan had been thinking, even before she remembered they’d both had green eyes.

  “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it—two Wunimals just attacking people out of nowhere? That’s not what Wunimals do.” She’d abandoned her book entirely and was leaning forward. “Do you reckon they’re connected somehow?”

  Morrigan nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. Maybe. Jupiter told me nobody’s seen Brutilus Brown since Golders Night… and Juvela still isn’t awake yet, as far as we know. What if nobody’s seen Brutilus because—”

  “Because they haven’t found his body yet,” Cadence finished for her.

  “Yes! Well—no, not his body, that makes it sound like… I mean… Juvela isn’t dead.” Morrigan turned to Hawthorne. “You really didn’t see the green eyes?”

  “Well, to be fair,” he said, “I was a bit more worried about Baby Dave getting her face chewed off by a vicious leopardwun. Had my mind on other things, didn’t I?”

  “Right,” said Morrigan, scratching behind the puppy’s ears. “I guess so.”

  She made a mental note to tell Jupiter about it next time she saw him.

  The novelty of being in hospital had well and truly worn off toward the end of the week. The food was boring, the bed was uncomfortable, and Morrigan found it almost impossible to sleep through the night.

  Most annoyingly, her injury was sufficiently interesting that every student cohort from Mundane medics to Arcane healers wanted to poke their noses into it. Nurse Tim managed their comings and goings with a stoic resignation that suggested this was all merely business as usual—making sure the sorcery scholars sterilized their healing amulets, dimming the lights for the clairvoyant who came to check how Morrigan’s aura was mending, and so on. He’d barely blinked when an excited group of surgery and engineering scholars came in on the third day, offering to remove the injured leg and put in a new one that could think for itself. (Jupiter kindly showed them the door.)

  After nearly a week of every kind of treatment imaginable, Nurse Tim declared that the patient was fit to go home.

  “I suppose they probably all helped, really, in their own ways,” Morrigan concluded as she was packing up her gifts and cards to leave the hospital. She examined the almost-healed claw mark, hoping it would leave at least a bit of a scar.

  “Oh aye, maybe,” agreed Nurse Tim, rolling his eyes. “Or maybe it were old muggins here who stitched you up, kept your wound clean, and changed your bandages twice a day. I mean, who can possibly say?”

  Morrigan left him all her flowers and chocolates.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HAPPENCHANCE AND EUPHORIANA

  Spring of Three

  On the opening night of famed composer Gustav Monastine’s newest opera, The Maledictions, the foyer of the Nevermoor Opera House looked like the society pages come to life. Members of the aristocracy rubbed shoulders with celebrities while darlings of the theater scene swanned around with fashion industry icons. It was precisely the kind of guest list Frank would drool over.

  The city’s thriving Wunimal communities had come out in force too, to support the lead playing opposite Dame Chanda, celebrated moosewun tenor Theobold Marek—who was, in Dame Chanda’s words, almost as famous as she was.

  “There’s a handful of other Wunimal performers among us, of course,” Dame Chanda told Morrigan backstage as she helped the soprano into her glitteringly elaborate costume. Somewhere outside the dressing room, a stagehand gave the fifteen-minute call, and the distant sounds of an orchestra warming up filtered through the closed door. “The wolfwun Hebrides Ottendahl, you might have heard of him. We did Lilibet’s Lament together, back in Winter of Six. Mrs. Beverly Miller, the famous duckwun mezzosoprano. Now there’s a talent! She’s left the opera now, we lost her to a touring cabaret, of all things. Can you believe?”

  Morrigan was struggling with a row of tiny, fiddly opal buttons, and not really listening. She was starting to regret her decision to volunteer as Dame Chanda’s last-minute replacement dresser for the evening (the girl who usually helped her had been struck down with a dreadful cold). She’d learned upon arriving backstage at the opera house that Dame Chanda’s character had twelve costume changes—and that was just in the first act. Her leg had improved a lot in the two weeks since she’d left hospital, but it was still a bit stiff and occasionally gave her a jolt of pain. She hoped there wouldn’t be too much running around.

  “But Theobold… he really is something,” Dame Chanda went on, picking up a pot of face powder and puffing great clouds of it all over her face. “One would think a moosewun might have an impressive baritone, but for such an exquisite tenor voice to come from that big antlered—oh!” She caught sight of something in the mirror and gasped. “Morrigan, my sweet, I think we have a loose thread on this sleeve, will you—that’s it, carefully now. Don’t pull too hard, it might unravel. There mustn’t be a single stitch or sequin out of place. We must bring honor to… to Juvela’s… to her beautiful…”

  Dame Chanda trailed off, covering her mouth to hide a little sob as tears sprang to her eyes. Morrigan froze in a slight panic, wondering what she ought to do.

  The Wunimal and arts communities had another reason for coming out in force to support The Maledictions’ opening night. Before the fateful events of Christmas Eve, Juvela De Flimsé had singlehandedly designed every costume in the production. In the weeks after she’d been found in the snow, the newspapers still hadn’t mentioned a word about her strange behavior on the Wunderground (which made Morrigan suspect Jupiter was right about Wunsoc trying to hush things up), but they had obsessively covered every angle of the famous leopardwun’s life prior to her mysterious coma. People from the fashion and opera worlds alike had lined up to preview the costumes before the season even began, lavishing praise on them as extravagant, intelligent works of De Flimsé’s peculiar artistic genius.

  Morrigan looked around the room for something that might help, her gaze finally landing on a box of tissues. She grabbed at them like a life jacket on a sinking boat and thrust them in front of the soprano.

  “Juvela… wouldn’t want you to be upset tonight
,” she said, offering a small, sympathetic smile in the mirror.

  “No.” Dame Chanda sniffed. She returned Morrigan’s smile, plucking a tissue from the box. “No, you’re quite right, darling. Tonight is a celebration! And as they say, the show must go on.” She rose fluidly from her seat, turning to strike a dignified pose. “How do I look?”

  Morrigan took in a sharp breath. The villainess Euphoriana stood before her, resplendent in a gown of deep purple and midnight-black silk, shot through with a bright metallic sheen. The fabric seemed to float on her skin, pooling on the floor around her feet like oil. Draped across her shoulders was a cape of black roses, stitched together with fine silver thread and interspersed with intricate beadwork. Curling upward from her head was a tall, elegant crown that resembled a pair of horns, hand-carved from solid onyx by Juvela herself.

  Morrigan was so awestruck she could barely speak.

  “Magnificent,” she said at last. Dame Chanda beamed.

  Morrigan hadn’t expected to enjoy the opera very much, truth be told. It was one of the reasons she’d been happy to volunteer as Dame Chanda’s emergency backstage helper, instead of joining Jupiter, Frank, Martha, and Fenestra in the box (she’d been somehow unsurprised to learn her patron had his own box at the Nevermoor Opera House—there was a little plaque on the door with his name on it and everything).

  Jack had regretfully declined his opening-night invitation, citing too much schoolwork, but he’d privately warned Morrigan that opera was quite boring, so she’d better practice looking interested and not falling asleep.

  But when the lights went up and Euphoriana sang her first notes, Morrigan found herself utterly spellbound. As she watched from backstage, the sweeping music and emotional performances seemed to reach right inside her chest and poke her in the heart.

  Between urgent moments of wardrobe madness, Morrigan pieced together the story of Queen Euphoriana, a woman feared and hated by her people. As a spoiled young princess, she once was rude to a troubadour in her court, laughing at his strange music and language. The troubadour cursed her to be misunderstood by everyone she met, for the rest of her life.