The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

Contagion’s Eve at the House Noctambulous RICH LARSON

Burgewick was playing spitters with Gib on the lawn of the House Noctambulous as dusk turned the sky inky black. The spitters were a gift from Burgewick’s favorite uncle, who had arrived earlier that day by crawling carriage. Uncle Bellerophon dabbled in gene art, and so always brought interesting gifts for Contagion’s Eve.

The latest were two fleshy purple stalks that spat, at the pull of the little bone trigger, a shiny clear glue viscous enough to trap one’s fingers together or stick one’s feet to the ground, which naturally became the goal of the newly invented game.

“Don’t dodge so much, Gib,” Burgewick scolded. “Or I’ll never get you.”

Gib only grinned with all his crooked teeth, wiped his nose on the pale yellow servant smock that covered most of his lesions. “You be a good dodger, too, if you was a kitchen boy. Cook has that metal hand, dun he.”

Burgewick darted forward and squeezed his trigger; a long ribbon of glue shot through the air but Gib danced away.

“You be the kitchen boy and I be the House,” he sang. “And I eat vatmeat all day in bed while Cook boxes your ears.”

“That’s a horrible idea and I should have you beaten,” Burgewick replied, but he made the threat often and rarely followed through. Gib was a much better playmate than Burgewick’s older brother Mortice, even if he was only a servant, and it was Contagion’s Eve besides. Everything felt topsy-turvy; the air itself seemed to buzz, so it was understandable that Gib would think such a strange and improper thought.

“This is good practice for the hunt,” Burgewick said as it occurred to him. “Mortice has a new rifle, so I get his old one.”

“You told me,” Gib said, then sprang with his spitter. “Ya!”

Burgewick dove to one side, but it still splattered the knees of his black hyde. The cilia rippled in response and began chewing away at the glue. Burgewick got to his feet, laughing, and gave chase as Gib turned tail and ran.

They dashed across the lawn, using the eerie yellow glowtrees and decorative foam crypts for cover. It was dark enough now that the hardlights were flickering to life, which added excitement to the game whenever an infected monster lunged from the dark, jaws snapping, or a flock of plague birds swirled past. The servants setting up the last of the decorations looked distinctly unhappy to see globs of glue hurled so near to their work. One even tried to press-gang Gib into helping them, but Burgewick interceded.

The final decoration for the lawn was a drowning tank, the clever kind with faucets you could turn that would make the water flow faster or slower, or hotter or colder, and there was even a lever to release a spiny little biting creature once the tank was full enough. It was lit soft blue from the inside.

Most years it was a doppel in the drowning tank, but this year it was the young man who had stolen a vial of Mother’s cell-knitters last week. He crouched at the bottom puffing short panicked breaths.

Gib slowed to watch as they wheeled the drowning tank into place, and Burgewick finally managed to stick his playmate’s right foot to the ground.

“Got you!” he crowed.

Gib looked down at his trapped foot, giving it an experimental tug but hardly seeming to care, then looked back up to the tank. “Poor Cluny,” he said.

“What?” Burgewick asked, annoyed that Gib was not more annoyed.

“Poor Cluny,” Gib muttered. “He thought they’d work for his daughter, for her blindness and all. Stupid Cluny. Didn’t know nothing about genestuff.”

Burgewick didn’t much like drowning tanks, but it was a Contagion’s Eve tradition, same as the hardlights and the sweets and the games and the Doppelhunt. He scratched at the back of his neck, peeling away a bit of glue that his hyde hadn’t reached, feeling uncomfortable and a bit angry at Gib for dulling the fun.

He was thinking of something to say, something that would make Gib feel better but also remind him that thieves needed to be punished, when his brother came striding across the lawn. Mortice was already wearing his hunting cloak, a feathery silvery cape grown separately from his hyde; judging from the way it wriggled and shivered on his shoulders the two garments were not yet entirely accustomed to each other.

“Little Wicky and his little catamite,” Mortice said. “What’s that thing? What have you got?”

Burgewick felt a small stab of unease, as he often did when his brother spotted him and there was nowhere to escape to. As Mortice drew closer, Burgewick saw the skin between his eyebrows was angry red from plucking the unruly hairs that grew there.

Mortice cared very much about how he looked lately, especially on nights like this where all the relatives came to the House. It seemed to have made him crueller.

“Master Mortice,” Gib mumbled. He finally yanked his foot free, taking a clod of damp earth and moss with it—the lawn’s caretakers would have been aghast—and bowed low.

“They’re spitters,” Burgewick said, hefting his present. “For playing spitters.”

Mortice rapped his knuckles against the drowning tank, where the servant named Cluny was hugging his knees to his chest. “Hope you’re thirsty, bastard,” he said, then thrust his hips against the glass.

Burgewick saw anguish spiral across Gib’s face for a moment before it became blank again. “They were a gift from Uncle Bellerophon,” he announced, loudly, to retake Mortice’s attention.

His older brother spun around. “They’re from Uncle Belly, and you gave mine to your filthy little friend?”

“Uncle didn’t say who they were for. Not exactly.” Burgewick swallowed back his pride. “I’m sorry.”

Mortice snatched the spitter from Gib’s slack grip and gave him a sharp slap he didn’t dodge. The loud smack made Burgewick flinch. Gib went to rub the red imprint of Mortice’s palm; Mortice yanked his arm back down and gave him a second slap, harder, to the same cheek. Specks of drool flew from the corner of his mouth.

“So you thought that this year, unlike all the other years, Uncle Bellerophon brought a gift for kitchen boy Gib.” Mortice turned the spitter over in his hands. “You’re very stupid, aren’t you, Burgewick?”

“I’m sorry,” Burgewick repeated. “I should have brought it to you.”

“You should have,” Mortice agreed. “But I forgive you, little brother. Now, how’s it work? What’s it do?” He held it to his crotch and slapped it up against the drowning tank, waggling it back and forth in front of the servant, whose eyes were now squeezed shut. “Look at my spitter, bastard! Look, look!”

“It shoots a kind of glue,” Burgewick said, holding up his arm, which was still streaked with the stuff. “Doesn’t come off very easily.”

Mortice threw his head back and laughed, for a reason Burgewick was maybe half-sure he understood, then pointed his spitter at Gib. “Don’t move,” he said. “And I’d shut my eyes, if I were you.”

Burgewick looked at Gib, whose cheek was aglow with the bright red mark of Mortice’s slap. He looked at the servant Cluny, who was so miserable in the drowning tank. He felt a strange nervous energy building in his chest.

It was Contagion’s Eve, after all. Everything was topsy-turvy.

“You hold it the other way, though,” Burgewick said. “The slit at the back is just a little vent hole. For it to breathe.”

Gib’s face flickered with shock; Mortice caught it and misread it. “Ho,” he said. “You were going to let me fire away, weren’t you, shitbreath? You would have liked to see that, wouldn’t you have?”

“No, Master Mortice,” Gib said.

“Ask me politely to spitter on you,” Mortice said, smirking over at Burgewick now as if they were co-conspirators.

“Please, Master Mortice,” Gib said, voice piteous, and Burgewick could see the barest hint of his grin lashed down tight. “Please spitter all over me, please.”

“My pleasure,” Mortice said, taking aim. Burgewick’s heart leapt in his chest.

Cook himself came to drag Gib away, his metal hand rasping and whirring, and then Burgewick was standing alone on the lawn with Mortice, who was red-faced and shaking angry, with Father, who was expressionless, and with Uncle Bellerophon, who seemed faintly amused by the whole affair.

“Hold still, Mortice,” Uncle said, rummaging in his coat pocket. His blue-veined hand emerged with a canister of solvent, which he proceeded to splash over Mortice’s hunting cloak. The silvery organism steamed and sputtered in the cool evening air.

Burgewick rubbed his ribs where Mortice had pushed so hard with his knee he’d thought they might crack apart. A yellow-brown bruise was already growing. Mortice’s original yowl of outrage had brought several servants running. They had found a chaotic scene: Mortice pinning Burgewick to the ground and cursing at him while Gib tried, ineffectually, to free him.

“Good as new,” Uncle Bellerophon said, putting the canister back in his pocket.

Mortice gave a sulky nod, but his eyes were still razors and still pointed in Burgewick’s direction.

“Thank your uncle,” Father rumbled. He didn’t seem angry, but it was hard to tell with Father. His mouth was hidden in a thicket of wiry black beard and his old rheumy eyes had been scooped out years ago, replaced by two glistening black orbs made by the best gene artisan on the Continent.

“Thank you, Uncle,” Mortice said stiffly.

“I’ll have a word with my progeny, now,” Father said, clapping Uncle Bellerophon on the shoulder.

Uncle Bellerophon’s hyde wriggled in response. It was sleek and mottled orange for Contagion’s Eve and he had grown several curling tendrils that rippled around his head like a strange halo. Father’s hyde, by contrast, was the same swollen black beast as usual, patchworked with swathes of thick red muscle that could make him terrifically strong.

Burgewick still remembered the day an ancient tree, poorly felled, pinioned one of the servants to the lawn, and how Father strode over and squatted down and lifted it as if it weighed no more than a twig.

Once Uncle Bellerophon had departed, Father folded his arms and stared down at them, his pitch-black eyes rolling first to Burgewick and then to Mortice. “Should I send the clowns home?” he asked. “It seems you’ve taken it upon yourselves to do their job.”

Burgewick blinked; Mortice’s mouth twisted.

“The servants were laughing at you,” Father said. “Two sons of the fine House Noctambulous, rolling in the dirt, scrapping and squalling like infants. We do not settle our disputes in front of servants. You embarrass me.”

Burgewick watched as Mortice chewed his lip, angry and ashamed. “It was my fault, Father,” he said quickly. “I provoked Mortice.”

“Mortice, who doesn’t know a mouth from an ass.” Father snorted. “Perhaps I made a mistake gifting you that hunting rifle. You’ll be lucky not to blow your own head off. Perhaps the pair of you should stay in tonight.”

Burgewick’s mouth fell open; Mortice flushed scarlet.

“The other families are arriving soon,” Father continued. “This evening you will both conduct yourselves as befits our House, or you forfeit the Doppelhunt. Understood?”

Burgewick nodded hard, relieved, and after a moment his brother nodded, too.

“And Burgewick.” Father’s gleaming black eyes whirred in their sockets. “No more games with the servant boy. It’s unbecoming.” He waved his hand. “Off with you both.”

Burgewick’s first instinct was to flee at speed, to avoid whatever retribution was coming from his elder brother. But Mortice seemed to be in a world of his own as they turned and started back toward the House. His eyes were distant.

“Doesn’t know a mouth from an ass,” Mortice suddenly said, in a thick angry voice. “He thinks I’m a fool. I’m not a fool.”

“No,” Burgewick said, and immediately regretted it as Mortice noticed him. He flinched as his brother raised his hand, but there was no slap.

Instead, Mortice cupped his cheek and looked into his eyes. “You’re going to regret doing that, little brother,” he said in a trembly voice. “Very, very much.”

By the time the other families began arriving, Burgewick had scrubbed himself clean of the last of the spitter glue and slicked back his hair with a scented secretion from his hyde. He stood on the lawn beside his mother, whose hyde had grown a gossamer veil that swirled across her worried face. She always worried when the families came, about a thousand small things the servants never did quite right.

Mortice, on the other hand, was smiling and laughing as he exchanged Contagion’s Eve greetings with the members of House Immaculata and House Lachrymose, who had arrived in quick succession in spindly legged black carriages. Burgewick hoped he might forget his promise of revenge in all the excitement—his ribs still ached and Mortice always knew where his knuckles would hurt most.

House Immaculata had brought their greenman for the occasion. His gnarled body was sprouted with moss; vines slipped in and out of his skin like veins. For Contagion’s Eve he had sugary red bulbs of licorice growing from his knees and thighs—low enough for even the smallest children to pluck.

Burgewick remembered he had been frightened of the greenman when he was younger, frightened by his lumbering steps and his collapsing overgrown face. Mortice had told him he used children’s blood to feed to his vines; Burgewick knew now they only needed purple light and water.

Next to arrive was House Strappado. They had all grown matching masks from their hydes, attached to their flared collars by skinny tendrils, and it took Burgewick a moment to recognize Breesha. She was taller than the last time he’d seen her, taller than him now, but her distinct red-blonde hair flared out from behind her bone-white mask and she still walked the same way, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“Happy Contagion’s, Aunt Demeter,” she said prettily to Burgewick’s mother, then seized Burgewick by the arm and dragged him off. “I’ve got one this year,” she said. “Look, they’re unloading it.” She pointed to the servants of House Strappado, who were wrestling an embryonic tank off the back of the carriage.

“So do I,” Burgewick said, deciding not to mention how close he had come to losing the privilege. He thought of Gib, no doubt laboring away at the nastiest possible kitchen tasks under Cook’s watchful eye, and felt a churn of guilt.

“And here’s House Crepuscule, fashionably late as usual,” Breesha said, peering up at the night sky.

Burgewick was glad for the distraction. House Crepuscule’s airship was lit by greasy yellow globes of biolight, and as it descended he could see other details: the honeycomb bone lattice that formed the deck, the swollen sacks of gas that kept it aloft, the small faces of the twins Ferrick and Freya craning over the edge.

Thick ropes of tendon slithered down from the bottom of the airship; the servants on the lawn scurried forward to catch them and tether them to the docking loops. One servant tripped over his feet and trod on a rope. A shudder went through its length and Burgewick heard a moan from the airship. He could imagine his mother’s sigh of frustration.

Once the airship touched down, the members of House Crepuscule disembarked in solemn single file. The last to exit, orbited by an assortment of servants, was the Old Madam. Unlike Breesha, she was smaller than Burgewick remembered her. Breathing tubes were threaded into her wattled neck and she was ensconced deeper than ever into her chair, which scuttled along on legs that were partly black nanocarbon and partly red bands of living muscle.

“My father says this is the last year she comes in person,” Breesha said in a low voice. “Her whole body’s falling apart.”

Burgewick frowned. “Can’t she take extra cell-knitters, or something?”

“Father says cell-knitters can only do so much for the old stock.” Breesha stared with undisguised fascination as the Old Madam skittered from one descendant to the next, receiving their greetings. “She was the last person born underground, you know. During the Contagion.”

“They didn’t know nothing about genestuff back then,” Burgewick said, with a ghost of a grin.

“Anything,” Breesha corrected, shooting him an odd look. “They didn’t know anything.”

Burgewick watched Mortice give a flourishing bow, his handsome face in its most charming rictus as he wished the Old Madam a happy Contagion’s Eve, his hunting cloak swirling gracefully around his shoulders.

Maybe, just maybe, he would forget all about the spitters.

Soon thereafter, the festivities began in earnest, with everyone milling about the lawn in conversation, circles breaking and joining like the amoebas Burgewick had studied with his tutor. Servants slithered here and there with flutes of wine and bacterial beer. The hardlights were starting to weave their animations together, so monsters chased plague birds and vice versa.

Burgewick felt very much adrift, especially once Breesha left him to join Mortice and the older cousins. He wanted to stay out of his brother’s sight, and he was too young to enjoy their talk about fashions and fights anyway.

But he was too old to play with Ferrick and Freya, who were both hounding House Immaculata’s greenman, darting in to yank the twists of licorice from his knees and giggling as he made his noises of mock protest and waved his stiff stumpy hands. Burgewick also noticed a sort of orange-spotted mushroom growing from between the greenman’s shoulder blades, far out of the children’s reach. Some of the adults leaned out to surreptitiously pick one as the greenman ambled past. Uncle Bellerophon was one of these, and when he saw Burgewick watching he put a finger to his lips and winked.

At one point Burgewick saw his father staring at him, or maybe staring at something near to him, and realized that it was strange and improper for him to be wandering around the party so silently, just looking at people without speaking, so he attached himself to a group of aunts who crowed about how tall he was, and how soon he would be sprouting a beard like his father’s.

They soon went back to comparing the behaviors of their newly implanted calorie worms, which was interesting for a while, but when Aunt Violetta peeled open her hyde to display her pale flat stomach and the rust-colored organism just barely visible under her skin, Burgewick flushed and looked away, and their laughter made him flush even redder so he slunk off.

“But you’re a young man, now,” Aunt Violetta called after him. “Aren’t you in the hunt tonight?”

Burgewick knew he ought to be excited for the Doppelhunt, knew he ought to be enjoying the party, but he was starting to feel anxious more than anything else. There were too many people about. It had been better when it was only him and Gib playing on the lawn. He made a wide circle around the drowning tank, where a small crowd was watching Cluny splutter and gasp on tiptoe, and was nearly to the refuge of the ablution tent when Breesha intercepted him.

“There you are,” she said, and he could tell by her shiny eyes and red nose that she had been sneaking the bacteria beer she’d only ever talked about trying last year. “Everyone’s heading in for dinner. Come sit at our table, or you’ll get stuck with the twins.”

“Mortice might not want me to,” Burgewick said. “I might just sit with…” He trailed off. He’d been going to say Mother and Father, and judging by the horrified look on Breesha’s face, she knew it.

“Fuck Mortice and his fancy cloak,” Breesha said. “He’s too busy puffing himself up to pay you any mind. From how he talks, you’d think this were his thirtieth Doppelhunt instead of his third.” She rolled her eyes and slipped her bone-white mask back on. “Come.”

The banquet hall of House Noctambulous had been transformed into an underworld: plague birds picked their way along the tables, painted acrobats dangled by suspension hooks from the rafters or from slow-wheeling drones, and the usual warm yellow biolights had been replaced by a pale violet glow. When Burgewick looked down at his hand, he could see the bones through his skin.

Half the guests, who hadn’t seen the deadlight trick before, were tittering and inspecting each other’s skeletons. Burgewick dimly remembered that this sort of light was dangerous; they would probably have extra cell-knitters in their meal to compensate.

The acrobats couldn’t use cell-knitters, though, and neither could the servants bustling around with drink trays, though some had stiff heavy aprons on and maybe that helped. Burgewick hoped Gib wasn’t poking his nose out of the kitchen too often.

Mortice’s hunting cloak looked very grand indeed in the deadlight, leaving shimmery silver traces in the air when he moved. He was telling cousin Orry some loud sort of joke when Burgewick and Breesha arrived at the table. His eyes flickered onto Burgewick for only a second, then slid over him as if he were invisible. But he didn’t make any protest as they sat down, and Burgewick knew from experience that being ignored by his brother was preferable to the alternative.

A few more of the cousins joined them, Fenella and the sister whose name Burgewick could never remember, and they all settled in. Burgewick heard, faintly, Cook’s distinctive voice barking orders. A moment later a flock of servants emerged from the kitchen laden down with food. There were vatmeats stacked in quivering towers, amniotic puddings, spheres of scop shaped and pigmented to look like gourds and pumpkins and other things that had grown once. Burgewick thought of Aunt Violetta’s calorie worm and hoped it was up to the task.

He wasn’t particularly hungry, and had only eaten a few bites off his plate when Fenella nudged him under the table. “Want a drink, little cousin?” she asked.

She nudged again, and Burgewick caught on and looked beneath the table. She and her sister had taken the dregs from enough bottles that they could start brewing their own: the bucket’s contents were thinner and foamier than the original bacteria beer, but it carried the same pungent smell.

“It’ll help your nerves.” Fenella beamed. “For the hunt.”

Burgewick looked around. No adults were watching them—Uncle Bellerophon was draped over Aunt Violetta’s shoulder, laughing uproariously, because Father, normally so somber, was doing his trick where he made his slick black eyeballs crawl down from their sockets and race each other around the table on little spindly legs; one was intent on skittering beneath Aunt Nefertiti’s skirts and she was swatting at it with a bunched-up fan. He didn’t see Mother.

Breesha was already filling her glass from the bucket, and so were Orry and Mortice, the latter of whom held it out to Burgewick with a smirk. Burgewick dipped his glass into the bucket, half-expecting his brother to dump it all over his trousers or call Mother over and pin the whole affair on him somehow. Instead Mortice only gave him a brief nod of approval.

The regrown beer tasted awful, but after Burgewick choked down a half glass he did feel more relaxed, enough to start enjoying himself a little. The others were enjoying themselves very much, Mortice and Breesha in particular. Mortice had peeled Breesha’s mask away from her hyde so he could peer through its eyeholes from the wrong side, and Breesha, despite what she’d said about fuck Mortice and his fancy cloak, was giggling madly. Burgewick felt an odd twist in his stomach at the sight.

Once the servants cleared the tables, a slow hush crept into the hall. Burgewick realized that the Old Madam had made her way to the front of the room and was waiting to speak, one leg of her chair pawing at the floor. Father gave two booming claps to silence the last chattering voices. The cousins wormed back in their seats to listen; Breesha pushed Mortice away.

The Old Madam surveyed them all for a moment, all the Houses, before she opened her mouth. “Well, here we are again,” she whispered. The black sponges around her head caught and amplified her voice, sending it all through the banquet hall. Burgewick felt the hairs on his arms stand up. “It used to bore me horribly, telling the same story every year, but lately I enjoy it. Like slipping into a familiar groove. I suppose I must be getting old.”

There was polite laughter from the adults; Burgewick joined a beat late.

“Three centuries ago, the world swayed on the brink of disaster, my children,” the Old Madam said, and the familiar words made Burgewick remember back to being much younger, back to sitting on his mother’s knee while he listened. “The summers were scorching hot, and the tides were rising higher, and all the cities of the world were swollen and teeming with parasites. Parasites who bred and bred in the filthy slums and begged for food to fill their children’s fat stomachs so they could grow up to breed all over again. The world could sustain no more of them. So there were wars, and there were famines, and there were floods that ate entire islands. And who did the parasites blame?”

Burgewick mouthed the next word on automatic:

“Us.” The Old Madam’s voice was jagged with contempt. “They blamed the ones who were strong and smart enough to rise to the top of all that human waste, and strong and smart enough to stay there. They blamed us for the poisoned skies and the dying oceans. The parasites were weak and they were stupid, but there were hordes of them and they were hideously angry. They would have hunted us down, my children, and murdered us even as the world collapsed all around them.

“There were many families, back then. Hundreds of Houses, all with different names, scattered all across the globe. But only ours survived. When the hordes came for us, we were already gone, hidden away below the ground in concrete palaces. But we left the parasites a parting gift: the Contagion.”

Ferrick made a small whoop of excitement; the Old Madam’s eyes traveled over to him and she gave an indulgent smile.

“And so all there was left to do was wait, my children,” she said. “We waited beneath the earth while the Contagion cleansed the world. A century, we waited. Our family found the genetic keys to turn that let us survive without sunlight or greenery, to propagate without outsiders, even to push back the hands of death. For a while, at least.”

She stroked one of the tubes in her neck with a pensive finger.

“My father, Wendell, and his twin brother, Eddard, were the heads of our House on the day we finally emerged, on the hundredth anniversary of the Contagion. They found a new world. A clean world, waiting for us. But the parasites weren’t all gone. A few of them were still scrabbling in the dirt, clinging to life, immune to the Contagion but vulnerable to everything else. To all the ills we overcame during our long isolation.

“They had been returned to their rightful place. But Eddard didn’t see it that way. He looked at them with pity. He regretted the Contagion. He renounced his own family.” The Old Madam’s voice turned low and venomous. “My father tried to reason with his twin. He showed him that the parasites could live as our servants, how they once did in the past. But Eddard would not be satisfied by that. He wanted to freely grant the parasites the gifts we had so arduously earned. He would have turned the genetic keys to let them reknit their flesh, grow hydes of their own, stave off hunger and disease. He would have made them our equals.

“Eddard’s kindness would have been the death of us, my children,” the Old Madam said solemnly. “It would have restarted a doomed cycle. And so my father’s hand was forced. He banished his twin brother, his half-self, from the family. But when Eddard went, he took the genetic keys with him, a thief in the night. My father realized, then, that given the chance, Eddard would let the parasites spread again, more powerful than ever, and end the world a second time.”

The hair at the back of Burgewick’s neck stood up—Mortice was gone from the table. He had been intent on the Contagion’s Eve story, too intent to notice his brother leave. Breesha was gone, too. He scanned the banquet hall but saw neither of them under the deadlight. He was only half-listening as the Old Madam finished the story.

“So my father followed his twin out into the dead forest, behind which the fine House Noctambulous now sits, and he retrieved the keys. He killed Eddard and left his body to rot under the trees.” The Old Madam leaned forward; her chair crouched to compensate. “Eddard’s kindness, his weakness, could have infected the family and all the Houses. We have to guard against it. So each year on Contagion’s Eve, we remember our history and we safeguard our future. We kill the weak part of ourselves. How my father did.”

The Old Madam fell silent. The hall waited to see if she was finished; her eyes flickered open and shut. Finally she stroked the arm of her chair and ambled back to her place at the long table. Her words had left a layer of frost. Burgewick was still searching for his brother and Breesha, suspicion growing in his gut, when his father stood up.

“The hunt is one of our most important traditions,” he said. “And lucky for us, it’s a hell of a good time. Let’s see the doppels.”

The frost whisked away and murmurs of anticipation ran through the room. Guests shifted in their seats for a better view and Burgewick saw Ferrick clambering up onto the greenman’s shoulders, Freya scrabbling after him. Then the doors at the far end of the hall glided open, and servants ushered the doppels through with long black prods. For a moment, Burgewick forgot all about Mortice’s absence.

There were almost two dozen of them, one for each participant in the hunt. Burgewick and Gib had snuck into the incubation room a few weeks earlier to see the doppels growing in their red-lit embryonic tanks, bathed in cell-knitters and enzyme gel. Even the largest had only been the size of a baby then, but the accelerants had done their work. Each doppel was now about as big as its originator, though the forced growth had warped them somewhat: many limped on crooked legs or had odd truncated necks.

The cousins started trying to figure out whose was whose almost immediately. The doppels were costumed, of course, dressed in gaudy reflective bodysuits that would make them easier to spot among the trees, and they wore masks with beaks or antlers or long upright ears like the extinct animals that once roamed the forest.

“There’s yours, Orry!” Fennela hooted. “He’s got a big rump just like you do!”

Burgewick found his own quickly and easily: it was the smallest of the lot, wobbly on its feet, dressed like a plague bird with artificial feathers and a beaked mask. He knew some of the older relatives despised the masks. He’d heard them, in snatches of conversation, saying that the masks made it all too easy, and that it wasn’t a true Doppelhunt if you didn’t look the thing right in the eye as it bled and writhed.

He was glad they had masks, especially as his doppel seemed to look right at him for a moment. He reminded himself that the doppels weren’t human. He knew that from his tutor. They were quick and shoddy copies, with blunted brains that couldn’t do much more than keep them breathing and moving.

Their only developed faculty was fear—they were drugged with a bliss chemical before they were dressed and paraded through the banquet hall, but as soon as it wore off they would turn skittish and eager for hiding places.

Just then, Mortice reappeared to slide himself back in beside Orry. His skin was flushed and he wore a wolfish grin. He whispered something to his cousin and both of them laughed. Burgewick looked away. He thought he knew why Mortice and Breesha had disappeared at the same time. Mortice talked about it often enough.

The doppels were led back out of the hall, out to the lawn, and the older relatives who were still hunting stood up and started massaging their stomachs, grumbling about having eaten too much. The cousins all got up from the table—Breesha had rejoined them now, without so much as glancing at Mortice—and Burgewick trailed after them.

Mortice seemed to have been distracted from his promise of retribution, but Burgewick still had the uncomfortable thought that he was Eddard, and Mortice was Wendell following him out into the moonlit wood.

Burgewick had forgotten about Cluny, adrift and glass-eyed in the drowning tank, but now servants were draining the water and one of them, who Burgewick thought might be Cluny’s wife, was softly weeping. It added another needle to the dozens he felt sticking into his spine. The doppel seeming to look at him, Breesha, and smirking Mortice, the worm in Aunt Violetta’s stomach, the game of spitters and its abrupt ending.

Everything felt topsy-turvy again; he knew it could be partly blamed on the watery bacteria beer, but not entirely. Servants were readying the hunting gear on the lawn: rifles and trackers, tailored to sensors in each doppel’s costume to prevent robbing a kill by accident, nimble quadruped drones to flush the doppels out with subsonics, and the flying sort that followed the hunt to beam it back to the warm banquet hall, where it played out in hardlight.

And of course there were the capcutters—a servant decided to test one’s trigger right as Burgewick walked past and he couldn’t hide his flinch at the gnash and snap.

“Nervous?”

It was Breesha, casually checking down the sight of her rifle. Burgewick didn’t reply for a moment. He wanted to tell her that he felt betrayed, that he’d always thought she was on his side against Mortice, but maybe it had only been that way when they were little and she would tell him it wasn’t his business, anyways.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I practiced,” Breesha admitted. “With some servants and a paint gun. It’s easy. Don’t be nervous.” She gave a rueful shrug. “Hardly anyone actually watches it, anyway. They’re busy getting drunk or sneaking off to fuck.”

Burgewick felt his ears go lava hot. “You and Mortice?” he blurted, before he could stop himself.

“What?” Breesha’s voice was flat. “Is that what he’s saying?”

“You were both gone. At the banquet.”

“I was throwing up the bacteria beer,” Breesha said hotly. “I don’t know where he was.”

With that, she strode off to get her capcutter, and Burgewick regretted saying anything at all. Maybe he was wrong, or maybe he was right and Breesha was embarrassed.

The doppels were now assembled at the edge of the forest, tied to each other and to a post in the ground by tendon rope. The bliss drug was wearing off and some were straining against their bonds, grunting.

Burgewick had a strange and improper thought, one he hadn’t had last year or any of the years before it: what it would be like to be a doppel. To be born scared, then drugged and dressed and shoved out into the forest to be hunted. It was lucky they couldn’t think.

“Your rifle, Master Burgewick.”

Burgewick lifted it from the servant’s outstretched arms. It was the old sort, mostly wood components, but he knew it was loaded with the same smart bullets as Mortice’s new rifle. It wouldn’t miss easily. There was a lantern fixed underneath the barrel, and a tracker attached to the sight showed a swarm of moving yellow blobs—the doppels in their sensor-sewn costumes—and one red one, which was Burgewick’s. The servant handed him a capcutter next; Burgewick took it gingerly and let his hyde sprout a loop to hold it at his hip.

The hunting drones were on their feet now, joints whirring and clicking. The flying drones drifted skyward, disappearing into the blackness. Everyone was making their way to the forest. One of the uncles was red-mouthed and unsteady on his feet from too much wine; the others were slapping him on the back and laughing; Mortice was betting with Orry that he would bag his doppel in twenty minutes or under.

As they neared the tethered doppels, Burgewick felt as if his heart were pounding its fists against the inside of his ribcage. The night air was cold enough to make his breath a frosty cloud. Servants with injectors were going from doppel to doppel, shooting them with adrenaline and fear-o-mone. They bucked and twitched against the rope. Burgewick saw his doppel at the end of the row, wriggling and stomping its feet as a servant plugged its thigh with the needle. It made him feel slightly ill.

Mortice suddenly turned to him and gave his wide white smile. “Well, here we are, little brother,” he said. “Your first Doppelhunt is always the most memorable one, I think.”

The red-mouthed uncle gave a rumble of agreement. “Never forget the first one,” he said. “Now let’s loose the damn things already.”

“I bet you’ll be the last back,” Mortice said, in a whisper so the uncle wouldn’t hear. “Everyone knows you’re a coward in the dark.”

He pushed past him to the front before Burgewick could respond. He only clutched his rifle more tightly. His throat was dry as bone, but there was anger down there, too, throbbing as he took up position between Breesha and Orry. He wasn’t a coward. If he was a coward, he wouldn’t be following Mortice out into the woods, away from Father’s roving black eyes.

Once all the doppels had been prepped, a servant used a spray to dissolve the tendon rope, pulling apart the last of it with his bare hands. The doppels hesitated, unsure of their sudden freedom. Then the drones stalked forward, wailing, corralling them toward the forest, and the doppels fled. A few of the hunters whooped and feinted at them as they loped off into the trees. Burgewick felt a shiver run through his whole body.

He had been in the woods plenty of times, out among the dead trees that had seemed endless when he was a little child, but they seemed different now as they swallowed up the doppels. More menacing. When he shone his rifle’s lantern over the spindly trunks and rippling branches, they glistened the same silver as Mortice’s hunting cloak.

There was a countdown that Burgewick knew the spectators were watching inside the banquet hall, but after only a few minutes the inebriated uncle snarled something about having waited long enough, and fired his rifle skyward. The shot seemed to shatter the night. All the hunters and the drones surged forward into the woods and Burgewick let himself be carried along with them.

At first they walked in one group, but Mortice and Orry darted ahead and everyone else peeled off one by one as their trackers called them in separate directions. Burgewick and Breesha were the last to split up, and for a moment he wanted to tell her to stay with him.

“Mine’s heading north,” she announced, peering down at her tracker. “Good hunting, Burgewick. See you back at the House.”

“Good hunting, Breesha,” he said, and then he was alone.

The red blot on his tracker was moving fast but zigzagging, disorientated. Burgewick felt the same way as he followed it. The trees seemed to tilt and sway and their branches leapt out of the dark like claws. He heard booted feet crashing through the underbrush, a distant shout of triumph. One shot. Another. Both made him flinch.

For a moment he considered turning around, heading back to the lighted warmth of the House. But there would be laughter, and Father would look at him but say nothing, and the Old Madam’s words were reverberating in his head: We kill the weak part of ourselves. That was what he had to do. He would kill his doppel, before Mortice could kill his, and it would make him strong. Maybe strong enough to hit back.

Burgewick sped up, plunging deeper into the woods, following the red blot. His lantern strobed the frosty ground and he saw snapped brambles, the imprint of a foot. Once he saw movement in the shadows, but it was only a drone on the prowl. He skipped over twisted roots and ducked swaying branches, adrenaline thrumming under his skin, speeding his hot pulse. The red blot finally slowed, and Burgewick felt a dart of triumph.

The red blot disappeared.

Burgewick skidded to a halt, panting. His steaming breath coiled around his head. The doppel’s sensor had failed, or else the doppel was standing perfectly still. Burgewick crept forward slowly, moving on the balls on his feet, rifle ready. The doppel had to be close. He tried not to make a sound. He couldn’t hear the other hunters anymore; they were too far and the woods were too dense.

He thought he saw something moving on his left, but the tracker was still black and when he swept around the side of the tree there was nothing there. Another topsy-turvy thought came to him: maybe the doppel had turned off the sensor on its own. Maybe it was watching him. Maybe it was hunting him.

Burgewick’s entire skin was goosebumps that his hyde couldn’t warm away. The stock of his hunting rifle was turning slick in his clammy hands. He put them to his stomach, to wick away the moisture, but they were crawling with fresh sweat only a moment later.

A branch snapped; he whipped his head and saw a dark moving figure, raised his hunting rifle with badly shaking hands, sighted—

“Still looking, are you?” Mortice asked, switching on his lantern. “I bagged mine ages ago.”

Burgewick lowered his rifle, but only just. Every nerve in his body was singing high and sharp. Mortice’s rifle was stowed on his back; his hyde had grown webbing to holster it. He held his lantern in one hand and proof of his claim in the other, dangling from the capcutter. The doppel’s mask had been removed and its face was an ugly parody of Mortice’s own, purple-lipped and glassy-eyed, clotted with gore from the severing. Burgewick’s bile surged at the sight.

“I know my nose isn’t that big,” Mortice said casually, twisting the doppel’s head back and forth in the lantern light. “Is it?”

“No,” Burgewick said by rote, hating himself for it.

“No,” Mortice agreed. His grin was over-wide, almost manic. “Let’s find this doppel of yours, shall we?”

Burgewick hesitated, wishing Breesha or one of the uncles, even the sot, would appear from the trees to join them. But they were alone. He gave his brother a stiff nod. Mortice returned it with exaggerated solemnness, then barked a laugh and turned away, probing the dark with his lantern. Burgewick followed behind him, mind whirring.

Maybe Mortice was just looking for the right branch to whip him with, or waiting for the right moment to hold him down and twist his ears and make him lick the blood from his doppel’s dead face. Or maybe Mortice wanted to rob his kill, go back to the banquet hall with two heads, and explain that his little brother had been too slow, too scared, too stupid to do it himself. That would shame him how he’d been shamed.

But maybe it didn’t have to end that way. Burgewick’s stomach churned. Maybe he was Wendell, and Mortice was Eddard. If he were to shoot Mortice, and pretend it was an accident, pretend that his silvery hunting cloak had blended with the silvery tree trunks, he would be free of his brother’s torments forever. At close enough range, he reasoned the smart bullets wouldn’t have time to turn away. His rifle crept upward until it was pointing at Mortice’s spine.

Then he saw it. Crouched at the base of a tall tree, in the cradle formed by two gnarled roots, its head cocked to one side. His doppel’s reflective costume was half-coated in dirt and the beak of its mask was crooked, as if it had bashed into something. It was still, so still Burgewick thought for an instant it might already be dead.

Its head twitched, ever so slightly, and before Mortice could spot it and steal it, Burgewick raised his rifle and fired. The stock slammed back into his shoulder and the crack made Mortice jump. Burgewick felt some savage satisfaction in seeing his brother flinch, felt even more of it seeing the doppel’s body jerk and crumple.

He’d done it. He’d done it, and it had been easy. Mortice gave a wild laugh, and for a moment Burgewick felt like laughing, too. Lightheaded, he jogged over to the doppel. Smart bullets were designed to disperse on impact and the doppel’s costume was a shredded mess from hip to ribs. A dozen punctures were weeping sticky red blood. Its chest was heaving.

“Well done, little brother,” Mortice said. “You know the right end of a rifle.”

Something was wrong. Burgewick felt it bone deep. Mortice shouldn’t be happy. The doppel shouldn’t have hidden itself so well, shouldn’t have covered the reflecting parts of its costume. With trembling hands, Burgewick reached for the doppel’s mask. He tugged, but it was stuck. Mortice squatted beside him, breathing hot in his ear, eager.

Burgewick pulled hard. The mask tore free, taking shreds of skin with it. Gib’s eyes were panicked and bloodshot, his nostrils were flared wide, and his mouth was coated in spitter glue.

Burgewick’s stomach dropped like the bottom had been gnawed away, slipping through itself, plummeting out of reach. He sank to one knee, splaying a hand for balance on the dead soil. His vision was blurry black; his pulse was roaring in his ears. The doppel was Gib. Gib was the doppel. Everything was topsy-turvy.

“He fits the costume just right, doesn’t he,” Mortice said. “We told him we were playing a trick on you, to make him put it on. And once he was all drugged, he acted just like one.”

Burgewick thought of all the games they had played together and how Gib had always helped him win. His splintered ribcage was still rising and falling. Maybe back at the House, with enough cell-knitters, he could still be saved. But Burgewick knew the cell-knitters weren’t for him or Cluny or any other parasites, and he realized Gib could still help him win one last time.

He swallowed the rage, swallowed the anguish, swallowed every last thing he was feeling. Then he unhooked the capcutter from his hip and slipped it over Gib’s head.

“Clever joke, Mortice,” he said, with his voice and his face both perfectly blank. “But you shouldn’t play with servants. It’s unbecoming.”

Burgewick pulled the lever and the capcutter slashed and snapped, spattering his hands with hot dark blood.