Chapter Text
Deep in the heart of a Spanish nunnery, a young woman sits cross legged on a narrow bed. Hunched over a laptop, the white light from the screen casts the furrows of her brow into sharp relief. She’s been focussed on her screen for so long that the creeping light of dawn has barely registered. The half of her that isn’t engrossed in the screen worries at the careworn tassels of a colourful blanket, tugs at the nest of bedding he has tried to find solace in.
Together they are entirely focussed and completely adrift, still as a statue and in constant motion.
Between them they are carrying a grief that is new and raw. It’s a lodestone dragged back with them from a gunfight in a morgue. It’s sharp edged as well as heavy; a pain they feel dishonest in. It’s a grief that doesn’t belong to them, really: the shiny-newest cog in a well-oiled machine. They were just there - happenstance, an ill-fated first outing that slipped from mundane to mad, blood-soaked scrambling in seconds.
“Ow!” Startled by a sharp nip to the back of her arm, the woman unseats both the laptop and the perpetrator of what is sure to be another hole in her undershirt.
“Stop thinking about it then!” The reprimand is as sharp as his teeth, which nip again in frustration. The bed becomes a battleground for a moment as the woman and her assailant tussle.
The laptop is dislodged from its perch, landing with an ominous clatter that heralds a hurried ceasefire - two sets of eyes peering in horror over the edge of the bed.
“Ruaidhri,” the woman murmurs, all frustration and fondness in equal measure, “you had better pray that isn’t broken.”
Ruaidhri scoffs, shakes himself until his fur settles the way he likes it.
“If it is broken then we will fix it, you know that.” He throws himself down into the folds of the duvet, wiggles until he is a furry little circle.
“We can’t fix it every time,” she flinches as she says it, and at her knee Ruaidhri bares his teeth, “sometimes things are just broken.” She scrapes her hands through her hair, still damp and curling wildly. Sighing, she lays back against her pillow, turning her eyes to the ceiling. The silence sits for a minute, becomes maudlin as the ache of the endless day creeps closer with the dawn.
With a rustle of sheets and a delicate thump, Ruaidhri goes to the floor.
“It’s not broken, Camila, look.” The sharpness has bled out of him, and Camila rolls to look at him, her other half. He sits up like a meercat as his forepaws work to right the laptop, patting at the keyboard to wake the screen. White-tipped ears flick, cataloguing the whirr of a cooling fan, the click-click-hum as the machine powers back up. Triumphant, he peers up to meet her stare, leaps back up to reclaim his duvet nest.
Camila reaches awkwardly down to tap her way into the laptop, squints at the screen as it reloads before yelping in delight.
“It worked! Roo, I did it!” Ruaidhri flings himself into her arms as she sits up, winds himself across her shoulders like an elegant scarf to peer with her down at the screen.
Or rather: at the dozens of screens on the screen.
“We should tell Sister Beatrice,” Ruaidhri murmurs, sharp eyes dancing across the video feeds, “she’ll want to know – we can start looking for the girl properly now.”
“I don’t think she will want to be disturbed.” Camila clicks around the screens, orients herself to street names, begins a search for the pedestrianised area nearest the old church their target had surely fled from.
“You’re just scared of Bellerophon’s silent judgement.” Sniffs Ruaidhri, haughtily.
“Don’t be rude, Roo,” Camila tuts somewhat absentmindedly, hunched over the laptop like a gargoyle. “Bellerophon isn’t scary, you’re just offended he won’t play stupid games with you.”
“They aren’t stupid games!” Ruaidhri bristles and Camila doesn’t need to glance away from the screen to know that he’s puffed up like a bottle brush. “They’re tactical.”
Camila works in silence, daemon at her shoulder falling to stillness in deference to her intense concentration.
On the screen, the streets of the old town sprawl here and there, lightly pixelated crowds flow from box to box, jittering and jolting as Camila scrubs backward through the feed as fast as the software will allow. She knows when she’s looking for, even if she doesn’t know who.
It takes a half hour, all told.
“There!” Ruaidhri spills down from Camila’s shoulder, presses his paw to a window in the upper right of the laptop, narrows his eyes so intently that he bares needle-sharp teeth. “No-one has left the church in hours; the last service is long over.” Camila obligingly clicks onto the feed Ruaidhri pats at.
“Roo, you’re getting smudges on the screen.”
“I told you we should have bought a touchscreen.” He sighs back, wistful even as his whiskers twitch with the excitement of the hunt.
“Mother Superion was hard enough to convince that I needed more than one laptop in the first place, Roo,” Camila tabs around the screen deftly, enlarging the video as much as she can before the resolution craps out and the girl's face becomes unrecognisable. “Like you’d ever actually be helping, if we had a touchscreen, you’d just download a load of mobile games when I wasn’t looking.”
“They’re good for hand-eye coordination.” Ruaidhri sniffs, haughty but hiding laughter.
Camila grins, freezes the feed and tabs to a new screen, hands flying over the keyboard.
“Tell me, Roo – which of us can actually hold the crossbow to fire it?”
Ruaidhri laughs, a sharp barking thing, and then he leaps to the side table, and from there to the floor, scurries over to wake the printer nestled in the corner.
“You enjoy them too, Cam.” He sits atop the whirring machine, eyes darting to follow the paper as it is drawn up into the body of the machine. He bats impatiently at the warm sheet as it is passed to him, takes it carefully between his teeth. The a4 sheet is as long as he is, but he carts it daintily across the room with the ease of long years of practice.
“Thanks, Roo,” Camila hums, eyes darting over the paper. “We should actually go tell Beatrice now, I’ve got this headshot running in the cloned facial recognition programme I got set up last month. That’ll take a while.”
“Tch, yeah, I remember, that software the police are using is so bloated it’s a wonder that it even works.”
“We shouldn’t look gift horses in the mouth, Roo.” Camila unfolds herself from over the laptop, twisting and stretching expansively as her body registers exactly how long she’s been sat like a pretzel. She casts about for her habit, dares not set out without its cover even this achingly early.
“Which is a stupid phrase. If you look in horses’ mouths, you’re just asking to get bitten.” Camila huffs out a laugh.
“I don’t think all horses are as violent as Reginald.”
“Reginald wasn’t a horse; he was a monster.” Ruaidhri shuddered dramatically, combing at his fur with his forepaws to settle it.
“Reginald was a mule, and he was overworked and underpaid.” Camila presses her lips together, a wry grin curling at the corner of her mouth. She paces slowly over to the cluttered desk, pushing pliers and dog ends of wires aside with the edge of the laptop and sliding it to rest in the resultant space. “Reginald had more than enough reasons to try and bite you.”
“I wonder how he is.”
“Stop it, Ruaidhri.” Camila sighs, and Ruaidhri’s ears flatten, his tail twitches to loop round his feet where he sits on the bedpost.
“I’m just wondering.”
“Please, don’t. We’ve talked about this.” Camila frowns down at the detritus covering the table, pencils, graphing paper and dogeared notebooks, tools and butchered motherboards and that one crossbow bolt she needs to fix the fletching on – no photos, no letters. “Let’s focus on finding the girl. Come on, you know Beatrice’s still awake.” The watery light of dawn spills through the high window in earnest, slices across Camila’s shoulder and makes her blink. Her eyes burn with it, and she squints tiredly into the marching light of day. She strides up the uneven stone steps, stares down at the smooth wear of a hundred, a thousand distant sisters.
Ruaidhri says nothing, loiters on the bedpost until Camila gets to the doorway, until she steps out into the hall and the distance begins to tug at them ever so faintly. Then, with a whistling sigh like the air being let out of a tire, he shakes himself from his stillness and leaps to follow, stone cold under his paws.
Beatrice will be in the library. Camila had watched her walk there like a woman walks to the gallows, Camila would bet that she’s still in her combat garb. Ruaidhri leaps and catches his claws into her habit, worms his way up to her shoulder and settles himself across her shoulders with a satisfied little sigh. Camila tugs at her skirts, Ruaidhri always makes the shoulders sit funny when he launches himself at her like that, and fidgets with the paper in her hands.
The halls are quiet, but Camila can smell the smoke of a hundred distant candles, can smell the wax and the frankincense and the grief.
“We should bring Beatrice something from the kitchens.” Ruaidhri murmurs, and Camila sighs, nods and reroutes without complaint. Beatrice won’t have eaten. Camila had barely stomached plain toast and water, grimacing all the while.
Beatrice will not have even tried.
The kitchen is silent, the earliest of risers still tucked away for an hour or so, and Camila absently begrudges them their easy rest – then scolds herself for it – what sister in this order has not loved and lost?
Ruaidhri grumbles in her ear, threatens teeth. Camila blinks tiredly, stares out the foggy glass above the sink at the herbs in the raised bed, the walled kitchen garden gilt in watery gold.
Camila boils the kettle. Ruaidhri rummages in a cupboard, disappearing wholesale into its depths and returning triumphant with a box of chamomile clutched between his teeth. Beatrice had brought Camila tea on her first morning in Cat’s Cradle, had carried a tray laden with mugs, clinking merrily with her every step. Camila had sat surrounded by a friendly warmth, had cupped it between her palms.
The clock on the wall ticks sedately closer to the hour, and Camila moves through the kitchen like a ghost, gathers her offerings, leaves no trace of her passage except the disruption of the tea cupboard and a metal spoon sat quietly steaming in the sink.