The Gilded Wolves

by Roshani Chokshi

  10

  LAILA

  Laila couldn’t find enough breath to pull into her lungs.

  Hypnos had sent her head spinning.

  Tristan and Séverin will be dead within the hour.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Hypnos clapped his hands. “I adore when people ask me that.”

  Laila narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t you—” she started.

  But Hypnos ignored her, crossing the room to Laila’s large, gilt mirror propped up on her vanity.

  “Allow me to show you the scene I just left behind on the floor of the Palais.”

  Hypnos pressed his hand to the mirror, and the image rippled. The reflection changed from Laila’s dressing room to an eye-level perspective of the audience facing the stage. In the mirror’s reflection, men lit up their cigars. Waitresses weaved through the audience wearing wings made of newsleaf, each sheet covered in the words of the French constitution: Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité. Laila eyed Hypnos suspiciously. Only the courtesans and dancers of the Palais knew the mirror’s abilities.

  He met her gaze and shrugged.

  “Please, ma chère, this room is not the first dancer’s room I’ve been invited to.”

  A flicker of movement in the mirror stole Laila’s response. A Sphinx.

  “We anticipated one Sphinx in the crowd,” said Laila uneasily. “That’s nothing new—”

  Hypnos pointed at the mirror. From the eastern hall, a second Sphinx. It paced back and forth. At the table nearest it sat the House Kore courier. At first, Laila’s heart lightened. Maybe Séverin and Tristan had gotten there earlier than she expected. Maybe Tristan had just put the decoy on the House Kore courier.

  “That must be Séverin—” she started.

  Just then, right on schedule, a third Sphinx stepped through the doors of the western hall. Beside it walked a Sûreté officer in plain uniform. Séverin and Tristan.

  Tristan spotted the House Kore courier on the other side of the room.

  “Don’t!” Laila yelled.

  She knew even as she yelled that it was useless. The mirror relayed only images. Not sound. No one could hear her.

  If he walked forward, she wouldn’t be able to see him anymore. The mirror only allowed a look at a strict width of the audience. Tristan looked as if he was about to take a step forward when something yanked him backward. Abruptly, a group of men stood from their table, cutting Tristan and Séverin from view. When the men cleared, Laila caught a glimpse of Tristan and Séverin hiding behind a wide, marble column. Any moment now, the two genuine Sphinxes would recognize the imposter. A violent image flashed before her eyes. Séverin and Tristan facedown in a pool of blood.

  Laila whirled to face Hypnos. “Get a message to them! Besides, you’re a patriarch of the Order. Can’t you call off the Sphinx?”

  “The moment I step outside my home, my every action is recorded and submitted to the Order at the end of every month,” said Hypnos, tapping his lapel where a mnemo bug in the shape of a moth was pinned. No wonder he’d come here. All dressing rooms were Forged to nullify any recording devices.

  Outside her door, someone began to beat drums, her cue to enter the stage. Laila eyed Hypnos’s fancy clothes, from the watch and the mnemo bug to the crescent-moon cuff links of his sleeves.

  “Are all your accessories House-marked?”

  Hypnos’s gaze turned haughty. He stroked his matching crescent-moon brooch. “Of course. Far too pretty to be on commoners.”

  Laila had an idea. She unclasped her dress, candlelight catching on her Night and Stars costume.

  Hypnos’s eyebrows skated up his forehead. “Oh, heavens,” he said. “I don’t blame you in the least. But I can’t have the death of my hired associates on the conscience of my irresistibility.”

  “Your virtue is safe with me.” Laila winked. “How would you like to cause some drama?” she asked, shrugging off the rest of her gown. Her Forged peacock headdress tickled her skin.

  Hypnos’s teeth flashed in the candlelight. “I live for it, lovely.”

  * * *

  L’ÉNIGME DID NOT take the stage as planned.

  She did not take the stage at all.

  Laila descended the main staircase instead of the stairwell that led directly to the stage. She told no one—not the stage manager, musicians, or even her fellow dancers. Which was just as well. When the grand courtesan had trained her, she had told her the only rules to follow were instincts and color palettes. Tonight, Laila followed both.

  At the top of the staircase, she waited. In one hand, she carried a half-empty bottle of champagne. Her other hand brimmed with strings of pearls, a set of emerald earrings, and two crescent-moon cuff links. The two Sphinxes had not moved from their posts. Tristan and Séverin were nowhere to be seen.

  “Hypnos!” she hollered.

  The crowd turned. The French horn and piano music cut off sharply. Hypnos sat at a table, his arm around a beautiful man. When he looked up at her, he flashed a wicked smile.

  Laila walked down a few steps, swaying her hips generously so the light caught on her spangled corset. She hadn’t faked a lover’s spat in six months. She owed it to the crowd.

  Gingerly, Hypnos slid his arm off the other man.

  “You lied to me,” she said loudly.

  Hypnos stood, putting up his hands. “My darling, I can explain—”

  Laila threw the champagne bottle in a wide arc. Some people dove out of the way. Others raced to catch it before it fell, but they were too late. The champagne bottle smashed to the floor, glittering shards spinning out across the dance floor. The Sphinx nearest the stage lifted its head. Its nostrils flared.

  “She meant nothing to me!” cried Hypnos, dropping to his knees.

  “She?” repeated Laila. “I was talking about a he.”

  “Oh.” Hypnos winced. “Him too?”

  “I am through with this!” announced Laila. “All of this!”

  From her vantage point on the stairway, Laila broke the streams of pearls. They rained down on the audience. As the crowd dove for the pearls, the second Sphinx lifted its head.

  “L’Énigme is not performing today!” yelled Laila, and then she turned on her heel, disappearing up the stairs.

  The stage manager huffed, but she didn’t care. Her contract allowed—and, frankly, encouraged—one outburst and cancelled performance a year.

  She was just doing her job.

  The moment Laila was in her room, she touched the mirror and watched the scene unfurling on the Palais floor. Séverin and Tristan weren’t there. But neither was the House Kore courier. On the floor, the two real Sphinxes crouched on their knees, pawing through the stray pearls and jewels, their hands wet with champagne. Tossed in with all that rubbish had been Hypnos’s House-marked cuff links and the crescent-moon brooch. Laila was fairly certain one of the cuff links had fallen between the floor panels, which meant they’d be searching for ages.

  Laila changed out of her costume, and then selected a violet crêpe de Chine dress from her wardrobe. Polished amethyst pendants Forged to drink in the moonlight adorned the sharp V of the waistline and the tips of her billowing sleeves. Laila paused to swipe more rouge on her lips before taking a specially commissioned staircase behind her wardrobe that led to the servants’ exit and the cellar that served as a holding cell. At the cellar, she pressed her ear to the door.

  Behind the wood, the voices were indistinct. After a moment, she heard a chair scrape back. Then, a door slamming shut.

  If all had gone to plan, Tristan had finished interrogating the House Kore courier while Séverin discovered the Horus Eye location. Laila was still straining to hear more sounds when the door swung open. She lost her footing, and her head thudded against someone’s hard chest. She looked up, a scream caught in her throat. Sphinx. Its jaws were cracked wide. Reptilian eyes like a gold coin slit down the middle. It caught her with one hand, and then with its other, pulled back the mask to reveal a disheveled
Séverin. He grinned.

  “Had you there for a moment, didn’t I?”

  “God,” said Laila, clutching her heart.

  “A mere mortal, at your service,” he said, bowing.

  The Sphinx mask had mussed his hair, and Laila’s hands twitched with the memory of her fingers combing through it, the surprising texture of it like roughened silk. She shoved aside the memory. She knew all the carefully cobbled pieces of him. He was deception steeped in elegance, from his sharp smile to his unsettling eyes. Séverin’s eyes were the precise color of sleep—sable velvet with a violet sheen, promising either nightmare or dream.

  Séverin held open the door, and Laila brushed past him. The basement holding space was narrow and lined with bookshelves and rusting cutlery. Tristan was in the middle of peeling off his Sûreté uniform in exchange for a swallowtail coat and top hat. He waved a shy hello at her.

  Laila blew him a kiss. “So? Did you get the catalogue coin?”

  Séverin grinned. “Yes.”

  “Where’s the courier?”

  “With a stiff drink, I imagine.”

  “Did you keep the coin or—”

  “Returned it,” said Séverin. “No point holding on to it once we had the coordinates.”

  “Good,” she said. She’d begun to feel rather guilty for the courier and the thought of landing him into even more trouble with his employers didn’t sit well with her. “What happened back there with the Sphinx schedules?”

  Séverin rubbed his hand through his hair. “I couldn’t tell you. Zofia Forged the schedule perfectly. Tristan delivered it on time. A clerical error, perhaps. But you saved us. Feigning a lovers’ spat with Hypnos?” He shuddered.

  “On the contrary, it was quite fun,” said Laila. Séverin seemed to go rigid, and Laila felt the slightest thrill. “He was the one who came to warn me, anyway.”

  “He did?” asked Tristan and Séverin at the same time.

  “I did.”

  The three turned to the doorway. Hypnos leaned against the entrance. He held up his mangled mnemo bug, a sign that for the time being, at least, he was not recording anything.

  Hypnos grinned at Tristan. “Ah! I used you as bait!” He walked forward, with his hand outstretched. “How do you do?”

  Tristan crossed his arms. “I should set one of my spiders on you. They’re very venomous, you know.”

  Hypnos looked around the room. “Are they present?”

  Tristan faltered. “Well, no, not exactly, this is when Goliath eats, you see, and—”

  Séverin cut him off. “Why are you here?”

  “We’re in business together, are we not?” asked Hypnos. His gaze swept over the room as he tilted his head to one side. “Where’s that handsome historian?”

  “On business,” said Séverin tersely. “Which is the only topic I am willing to discuss with you.”

  “Ah, yes. Business. So. Were you successful in finding the catalogue coin?”

  Séverin eyed him for a moment. Then, he nodded.

  “We have the exact coordinates for the Horus Eye in House Kore’s collection. Now, we just need the invitation.”

  “My domain, naturally.”

  “And I’ll need a guest list and the name of the private security organization the matriarch of House Kore hires for her event.”

  “Done!” said Hypnos, clapping his hands. “Is this what teamwork is like? How … hierarchical.” Hypnos winked at Laila. “Hello, lover.”

  “Ex-lover,” she said, a touch fondly.

  Hypnos reminded her of Enrique. If Enrique’s wits had been fed on champagne and bitter smoke for the better part of a decade. Séverin’s face darkened. A small muscle in his jaw twitched, as if he were chewing down an imaginary clove to calm his temper. He stalked forward, placing himself between Laila and Hypnos.

  “You and I should talk privately,” he said to Hypnos.

  “I’ll come for tea tomorrow.”

  “There’s no need for you to come to the hotel.”

  Hypnos’s shoulders dropped, his voice pitched like a child’s. “But I want to!” He grinned and spoke normally again. “And I always do what I want. I shall see you tomorrow.”

  Hypnos blew Tristan two kisses, which Tristan pretended to squash under his heel. Then, Hypnos pushed past Séverin and bent over Laila’s hand.

  “I shall keep your identity secret, L’Énigme. And before I forget, I must tell you I adored your costume. So shiny. I’m rather tempted to see if it will fit me.”

  Hypnos glided out the door. Once he was gone, Tristan’s shoulders dropped, and he released his breath.

  “I really don’t want him at the hotel.”

  For a moment, a cold, hollow look flickered on his face. Laila knew how protective Tristan was of Séverin, but she’d never seen him look like that. A moment later, his expression melted into a warm smile.

  He beamed. “Oh, I liked your costume too, Laila. You looked beautiful.”

  Laila bowed, then glanced at Séverin. He’d taken unusual care with how he dressed. The color of his silk pocket square matched the silvery shade of his scar. On the second button of his shirt, he’d pinned an elaborate ouroboros brooch, one that she knew dug painfully into his skin because he’d told her. His shoes were scuffed hand-me-downs from his father, the long-dead patriarch of House Vanth. Laila’s chest tightened. Today, Séverin had dressed in subtle pain. Laila recognized it because she did the same thing to herself every night when she took off her clothes, splaying her fingers against the long scar down her back as she tried to read her own body. Sometimes the pain was a reminder of where she was … who she was … and what she wanted to be.

  Séverin’s eyes flashed knowingly to hers, and Laila forced herself to smile wryly.

  “Tristan and Hypnos admired my outfit,” she said, resting her hand on her hip. “No compliment from you?”

  “I didn’t have a chance to look,” he said. His smile didn’t meet his eyes. “Too busy avoiding certain death. It’s terribly distracting, you know.”

  He could say what he wanted, but she hadn’t forgotten how he’d watched her yesterday. How still he stood. How his eyes darkened, leaving only a halo of violet. Men had looked at her a thousand ways and times, and none of them had made her feel as she did yesterday. The almost-painful exquisiteness of being unveiled by a glance. It made her feel aware of everything about her—skin stretched over bone, silk clinging to her limbs, her breath heating the air. The kind of awareness that makes one feel alive.

  It terrified her.

  It was the same reason why after that one night, she knew it had to end there. There was no point entertaining that awareness when, in less than a year, she wouldn’t even exist. But she still remembered. She remembered that she’d reached for him first, and he was the first to break it off.

  Laila had to leave.

  “The driver is waiting for me,” she said.

  On her way out, she gazed over her shoulder at Séverin.

  “Be sure to appear very sad at L’Eden. After all, if you really were my lover, you should be utterly devastated both by my public dismissal of you and by my marvelous costume.”

  She did not wait to see his expression.

  11

  ENRIQUE

  Enrique collapsed in his favorite blue armchair in the stargazing room. A thunderstorm rattled the windows, and the curtains covered in embroidered constellations shook like rags of night sky.

  “Someone was waiting for us.”

  “Revolution man,” said Zofia softly.

  He looked up. Zofia was curled warily in the armchair across from him. As usual, she chewed on a matchstick.

  “What did you say?”

  “Revolution man,” she said, still not looking at him. “That’s what he talked about. About the start of a new age. Also, the sensor should have picked him up, but it didn’t.”

  That had bothered Enrique too. It was almost as if the man had watched them from somewhere, materializing only after they h
ad secured the area for signs of any recording devices or other people. But there was no way he could have gotten in. The entrance had been locked. The windows were all covered with murals. The exit had been closed and barred until the police officers had broken it open. All that was in that room were the Forging displays and the massive mirror wall.

  Zofia opened her palms, and a golden chain spilled out. A pendant no larger than a franc dangled from it. She brought the chain to her face, turning over the pendant.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “He wore it on his neck.”

  Enrique frowned. Behind Zofia, the hands of the grandfather clock tilted slowly to midnight. All around them, the stargazing room bore signs of their planning. Papers and blueprints covered every surface. Different sketches of the Horus Eye hung from the ceiling. Until now, this had felt like any other acquisition: planning, casing, squabbling over cake.

  Until the man had raised a knife to him.

  It struck him then. The cold knowledge that perhaps someone didn’t want them to find the Horus Eye and would do anything to make sure they didn’t find it. Enrique pulled the artifact from the breast pocket of his jacket. According to his research, it had been placed above the entrance of a Coptic church in North Africa. Enrique turned over the artifact in his hand. It was made of brass, its edges jagged. When he ran his thumb along the top, he could feel the depressions of grooves, but it was too caked with verdigris to see properly. The back of the square showed chisel marks from where it had been hewn off the base of a statue depicting the Virgin Mary. According to the locals, the square at the base of the statue emanated a strange glow when someone stepped into the church carrying evil in their hearts. He’d never heard of a stone Forged to do such a thing except verit. If this square held a piece—or pieces, though that seemed impossible—of verit, then perhaps it had detected a weapon on a man who had entered the church. Perhaps the man truly was bad, and when they’d noticed the glowing stone, they’d accosted him, found the weapon, and made their own connections. There was always an observation at the root of a superstition.