She wakes on a pallet in a strange room. The scent of noodles, cooked meat, and vegetables, has sunk deep into the walls. A thin blanket lies draped over her. When she shifts, its rough weave catches on her torn skin.
The young man from the alleyway enters carrying a tray holding a bowl of water, a bowl of soup, and a roll of gauze. He sets the tray down and backs away. His hand is wrapped; two spots of crimson have soaked through the white.
He could have run, too. He could have left her in the alley on the blood-colored ground. Why bring her here? Perhaps she reminds him of someone.
She sits up, letting the blanket fall, and reaches for the gauze. He watches, wide-eyed, as she licks the wounds she can reach with her tongue, and cleans the ones she can’t with water from the bowl. The young man is too frightened, too stunned, to look away.
After she wraps the last of the bandages, he shakes himself and hands her a shirt from a pile draped over the back of a chair. She catches his scent—sweat, laced with pheromones, but mostly with fear.
The shirt is clean. It reminds her of the wind on the rooftops. She pulls it on. Only now that she has covered herself does the young man blush, as though his skin has just remembered shame. He looks away.
She reaches for the soup and drinks, swallowing until she almost washes away the taste of crow-oil and shadows and blood. The young man looks back at her as she sets the bowl down; she smiles—a fox-grin.
“What’s your name?” he asks. He watches her as though he believes she will bite him again, or worse.
“I don’t know.” As she speaks them, the fox-girl realizes the words are true. “I don’t remember.”
She lifts the plastic square, which she held tight even as she slept, letting the young man see.
“I stole this. Do you know what this is?”
Fear flickers through his eyes. “I think so.”
He perches on the edge of the pallet, rigid. He doesn’t meet her fox-eyes straight on, but looks at her from the side.
“My name is Yuki. If you don’t have a name, what should I call you?”
She shrugs. She isn’t interested in names, only the patterned plastic in her hand.
“Ani. I’ll call you Ani.”
The way he speaks the name makes her look up. He holds the name on his tongue like it’s a precious thing, one he’s afraid of breaking. The name has a physical weight; it changes the air in the room and leaves it tasting of ghosts. That he has given her this name frightens her. Once she had a name that meant something. Names have power, and this heavy name, fallen from his lips and soaking into her skin, might change her if she lets it. Maybe it already has.
She pushes the thought away. “Tell me about this.” She holds up the stolen plastic again.
“It’s a computer chip, from before the war. Everyone used to have them, but now they only exist in tower.” He points to the window. “I used to deliver food there, but not anymore.”
Ani looks. The tower glitters. A thousand windows catch the setting sun and turn it into a column of living light twisting up from the scrub-brush of the city surrounding it.
“I carried a stone on my tongue,” she says.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” She closes fox-eyes. “Except sometimes, I do.”
She remembers.
Before the glass tower there was a tower of stone. It is nothing like the glittering tower outside Yuki’s window. It has no windows, but it is open to the sky, and it rustles with the sound of restless wings.
In the central courtyard, a line of men with cold, hard eyes stand on a raised platform. If the fox looks straight ahead, she can only see their shoes. Even if she changed, they would still look down on her. She is less than nothing in the Crow Lords’ eyes—all foxes are. So she stands with her head held high, just to show them she can.
Above the hard-eyed men, hundreds of crows line the tower’s edge. The fox-girl holds her tail erect; she does not show her throat; she does not bow.
“Why are you here?” one of the Crow Lords asks.
“I’ve heard you need a thief. I’m the best there is.”
She meets their eyes, bird and human both. Her tongue lolls, a fox-grin. She speaks truth.
Powerful and ancient as they are, there are places no Crow Lord can go. They were tricksters once, but they’ve forgotten the old ways, or let them go. Fox-girls were born to steal, and no fox-girl is quicker or cleverer than she.
“Cocky child.” Another Crow Lord speaks, and the fox-girl turns to him. His eyes are cold, harder than those of his brothers, filled with contempt.
“You must learn your place,” the Crow Lord continues. “I will take your name to teach you respect.”
Every fox-girl earns her name. It is a battle, hard-won with teeth and claws, with wit, and cunning, and quickness. But with a thought the Crow Lord rips her name away, leaving a hole where a thing she can’t even remember anymore used to be. The hole fills with ice; it slows her blood and threatens to stop her breath. She shivers as though at winter’s deepest cold.
The Crow Lord steps down from the platform and crouches. She could reach his throat, tear it out. The cold spreading from the place where her name used to be keeps her from doing anything at all. He laughs—a sound like rustling wings.
He grabs her muzzle, forcing open her jaws. Her needle-sharp teeth are so close to his skin, but she cannot close them while he holds her.
“I could snap your neck,” he says in a voice like feathers brushed against fur. “I could rip your lower jaw from your skull and leave you broken and bleeding on the floor.”
With his free hand the Crow Lord takes a smooth stone from the pocket of his long, black coat. He places it on her tongue. She expects it to be cold—and maybe it is—but it also burns.
“Your name belongs to me until the moment I choose to return it, if I ever do.”
He lets her go. She wants to retch. She wants to whimper and yip, but she won’t give him the satisfaction. He watches her with hard, empty eyes. She does not look away. The shadow of a smile lifts the edges of the Crow Lord’s mouth.
She knew when she walked into the Crow Lords’ hall that this could happen, but she came anyway, because no other fox-girl would. When the Crow Lords fly, her sisters lower their eyes. They keep their places, the places the Crow Lords give them. They whine and show their bellies. And if the Crow Lords’ sharp beaks seek their lights and their livers, they hold their teeth, and whimper as they die.
So for the sake of her sisters, she refuses to look down. She needs to show the crows that at least one fox- girl is not afraid. She bares her teeth, trapping a growl at the back of her throat. A name is a small price to pay.
“What would you have me steal?” she asks, and she does not say,
“The humans in the tower are trying to resurrect their old magic, their circuits and wires. This time they are trying to infuse it with Crow Lord magic. They have forgotten their old ways, and they have forgotten their place in the world. They seek to steal from the oldest and the highest. We would have you steal from them what they stole from us first.”
“Then it is done.” The fox-girl grins, showing sharp teeth.
She will steal this precious thing for them, not because they asked her to, not for their favor, but because she
Ani wakes with the moon and stars still bright in the sky. Even now, shadows and oil linger on her tongue. She slips from the bed, and tiptoes past Yuki, who lies snoring on the floor.
The night air is cold, raising goose bumps. It hardens her nipples, making them stand out against the fabric of her borrowed shirt, fabric so thin that it shows the thatch of hair between her legs—dark as burnt wood.
A man waits beside the dumpster with its peeling paint. The chill in the air dampens the smell of rotting food. A rat squeaks its fear at Ani’s approach, turning tail and running. Ani faces the hard-eyed man, waiting for him to speak.
“You took something from me,” the Crow Lord says.
There is pain in his voice where she expected cold anger. She meets his eyes, which are crow-black and hard, but not as hard as before. The moonlight throws his shadow over the cracked pavement. Ani sees the jagged hole
