After making wax impressions of both sides, she checked the key for signs of wax and, finding none, slipped it back into her mother’s pocket. She also returned the money that would have been her excuse had she been caught. Then she snuck out. On the way back to her own room, she encountered no fox and no guards.
Once she had a key made, Lovisa could wait until everyone was out, especially the fox, and satisfy her curiosity about what her father was keeping in a banker’s box in the attic room. Lovisa knew the combinations to her father’s banker’s boxes; she’d spied them out long ago. Maybe, next time one of her brothers was in serious trouble, she could even join him, bring him snacks, act out the Keeper stories with him. She could bring him paper and crayons too, for they all loved to draw. The Keeper was never specifically described in the stories the silbercows told, beyond being big, but Viri usually drew her with twenty-four spiderlike legs around a bulbous, one-eyed body. “Icositetrapus cyclops,” Lovisa always said, a name for a twenty-four-legged, one-eyed creature that she’d made up after doing some research in the academy library, and he would dissolve into laughter, as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
With her own way in and out, Lovisa could be the spy, instead of the spied upon. The rescuer, instead of the prisoner. She could do what she liked.
In her own bed, the face and the voice, the body of her sweet guard wouldn’t leave her alone. What would happen to him when the fox told Ferla about the kissing?
Lovisa was so exhausted that even her guilty feelings couldn’t keep her awake.
* * *
—
The blue fox was in the airship on the roof, standing at the bow in the dark, like a courageous captain exploring the night. He was reflecting on the last few hours.
He’d had to make a lot of tricky, sudden decisions tonight. Lovisa Cavenda had kept him on his toes, literally. At one point, he’d had to streak through a heat duct and leap down from the attic ceiling, so that she would see him, and believe that he was spying for her mother.
He didn’t want to tell on her for the kissing with the guard, and bring her mother’s wrath down upon her. But he needed to do something that would keep Lovisa from being so curious in the future, and nothing could restrict Lovisa’s movements more effectively than telling on her to her mother.
So he would play Lovisa’s game, because yes, of course he knew it was a game. He knew that Lovisa had gone to the attic thinking one of the little boys was there, needing comfort. He knew that the guard had been her cover, for foxes, all foxes, could read the thoughts of all humans, not just humans they were bonded to. This ability was one of the secrets of foxkind, and guarding this secret was one of a fox’s gravest responsibilities. Of course, his ability to read human minds depended on how open the human kept her mind, and it also depended on how complicated the thoughts became. Even his own human, Ferla, could become hard to read when she wasn’t explaining things to him specifically. But the fox could follow basic plans taking place inside the house.
So he would play, because maybe this would keep Lovisa out of worse trouble. Anyway, now that she’d seen him, he had to play. Lovisa would expect him to tell. If he didn’t tell, then everything about his loyalty to his bonded human would be brought into question, an unthinkable consequence with the potential to damage the welfare of all foxkind.
Almost letting her see him in the kitchen after the kissing, when he was supposed to have been trapped in the attic, had been an accident. He was so distracted tonight. He supposed this was the inevitable complicated life of a fox who had chosen to bond to someone like Ferla Cavenda. Most of his fox friends and relations had simpler existences. They didn’t need to spy on everyone and interfere. They liked their humans, only ever disobeying occasionally, maybe for the sake of extra treats or a warmer hearthstone. Not because they were trying to keep terrible things from happening!
But there wasn’t much point in questioning something it was too late to change. At the time, the fox had bonded to Ferla because he’d felt it was his only choice. The day it happened, he’d been scampering down a corridor, trying to decide whether to sneak into the airship now or later, when he’d stumbled upon something interesting: little Lovisa, with her ear pressed against her parents’ bedroom door. How oddly proud he’d been of her in that moment. Such a young human, yet she already knew her parents had interesting secrets. And she knew to pretend not to know. Foxes were born with that kind of knowledge, but how had she figured it out? Were little humans born that way too?
He’d reached out a mental thread to see what she was thinking. Before he could gather any details, however, three things had happened, very fast. First, a biscuit had slipped from Lovisa’s fingers and slapped down onto the marble floor. Second, Lovisa had broken away from the door and fled, faster than the fox had ever seen a human move. Her feet, socked but shoeless, had made the smallest thudding noises as she ran.
Third, the bedroom door had been flung wide and Ferla had thrust herself into the aperture, peering quickly up and down the corridor with a focus and ferocity that had made the blue fox think of an avenging bird of prey. Ferla’s eyes had narrowed on the fox, then on the dry, crumbly biscuit.
Instantly, the fox had understood that things could be bad for Lovisa if her mother suspected her of eavesdropping. Without consideration, he’d begun jumping and prancing, slapping his little feet against the floor as hard as he could, trying to mimic the sound the biscuit had made before. Then, remembering that a fox was probably expected to eat a biscuit, he’d bitten down on it, which had turned out to be a true sacrifice, for it had been stale and disgusting.
Ferla’s lips had stretched into a bright, false smile. “Is there something you want, my beautiful darling?” she’d said, in that cloying voice she’d always used back when she’d wanted him to bond.
No, he’d said, responding inside her mind for the first time ever. I’ve just been out here, dancing with a celebratory biscuit. Did I bother you? I’m sorry. I’m dancing for happiness, because I’ve decided to bond to you.
The thrust of Ferla’s joy—or greed? (it was always complicated inside Ferla)—had almost thrown him against the opposite wall. She’d motioned him into the bedroom, then pointed triumphantly at his little body, for the benefit of her husband.
“It worked,” she’d said to Benni. “I told you I would make it work.”
Benni had started to laugh. “I give up,” he’d said. “You win.”
Then she’d gone to Benni and kissed him and the fox had watched the two of them come together in a heady kind of pleasure that had felt more interesting than it usually did between them, like a meeting of both trust and mistrust, mutual competition, and surrender.
And now, here he was. Tomorrow would be a long and challenging day. It was time for him to check on all the house’s secrets, and go to sleep. He jumped out of the airship, found the loose shingle, squeezed through, and began his rounds.