Rampant by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Format: epub
Published: 2010-02-20T09:49:43+00:00

WHEREIN ASTRID STRIKES A CHORD

THE SOUND OF METAL against stone resounded through the Cloisters, adding to the vibrations emanating from the wall and increasing my budding migraine. I’d begun building up my resistance to the chapter house, but this situation with the metal spikes and the sledgehammer was not ideal.

Neil gave the metal spike on the right another wallop, then lowered the hammer and stepped back. “Philippa,” he said, practically bowing out of the way.

My cousin stepped forward, a kirin horn cradled in her hands, and laid it across the two protruding spikes in the wall. In the side of the alicorn, she’d carved her name in crude, triangular letters.

PHILIPPA LLEWELYN

“Is it fair,” Cory said at my side, “that I have nothing on the Wall of First Kills?”

“If you’d like,” I replied, “I can clean out Bonegrinder’s grooming brush and you can hang up one of her hairballs. You’ve killed her plenty of times.”

Cory snorted, Phil curtseyed and grinned, and even Neil failed to hide his smile. When Phil noticed that, she twirled her arms in the air and presented the horn again like she was a game show host. Grace whispered something I’m pretty sure was snide to Melissende, who took everything in and didn’t change her expression at all. Rosamund looked longingly at the piano.

Another day at the Cloisters.

It had taken more than two weeks for Gordian to return the horn of the kirin to us so that Phil could post her entry on the Wall of First Kills. I still didn’t know what kind of tests they did on the animals, but there was some part of me glad that they’d switched their focus to corpses rather than live specimens like Bonegrinder.

I’d called Gordian about the killing in the park on Monte Mario, and they sent out a team to collect the remains, but the alicorn venom was too overwhelming for non-hunters to approach, and in the end, they just torched the entire area and called it a fire. This was the story that we heard on the news the following day—a fire. No dead unicorns at all. I didn’t know what the benefit was of keeping the situation under wraps, but when I tried to bring up the subject with Cory, she seemed mostly interested in the idea of fire. She wondered if napalm might be an effective weapon against unicorns.

I wondered why unicorns would turn on each other like that.

After the ceremony at the wall, such as it was, we were granted a bit of downtime. Melissende and Grace were icing their bowstring arms after a grueling day spent at the targets—the former was determined to join the hunter ranks on our next outing, and the latter was still in major guilt mode for her failed shots. They huddled in the corner by the weapons, heads bent close together, gossiping.

Ilesha and Ursula, who had actually hit it off, decided to play chess on the chapter house’s board, which was, as you may have guessed, made of unicorn.

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