“Private hearths,” she said. “The embers will have scattered outside the chimneys, and the floorboards just caught fire.”
The people they saw had to belong to Harrier, but the colors were torn, covered by blood and ash and smoke. They looked at Darrias and Emmanuelle with curiosity, and then moved on, calling for their relatives and friends. They weren’t interested in outsiders: merely in finding their own.
“I don’t understand what happened,” Emmanuelle said, slowly.
It seemed safer than any other subject of conversation, right now. She was missing part of the previous night, and the morning which she’d spent unconscious: it was now early afternoon.
Darrias grunted as Emmanuelle shifted position on her shoulder. She moved forward, one booted foot striking flakes of limestone from the ground. Beside her lay a middle-aged man with open eyes, chest broken and limbs splayed out. His jacket still hung from the lamppost above him—he must have been flung into the air and then back on to the killing ground.
“Something exploded.” She shrugged—a movement that didn’t even seem to faze her and lifted Emmanuelle off the ground for a brief moment. “That cloud of smoke? Dupleix has the armory.”
Something swam up the morass of Emmanuelle’s memories.
“It already blew up. In the eighteenth century. Surely they’d have made sure…”
Darrias snorted. “It’s ammunition. There would be wards and safeguards, but it’s made to blow up, ultimately.”
Emmanuelle tried to remember Selene’s briefing.
“Guy was barely holding on to the House.”
“Yes.” Darrias sounded annoyed.
Ahead of them, the street reached a large crossroads: not the usual square ones of the House, but one with multiple streets at odd angles. Ruined shops, their window displays full of shards and rubble—and people crowding at the entrances, trying to pull others out.
“Here.” She turned right, into one of the smaller side streets. “Almost there. How are you?”
She hadn’t really answered Emmanuelle’s question. Nor was Emmanuelle sure she could answer hers.
“I’m really not sure,” she said.
She felt tired, and worn, but surely that was only stress and fatigue? She was not welcome in Harrier, and would never be.
Ahead was a large gate, the classic green-painted carriage entrance. It now lay broken and half-covered in debris. Darrias stepped over the threshold, pausing to help Emmanuelle. Her feet slipped, and she was only saved from falling because Darrias grabbed her. Inside was a small cobbled street with diseased trees. The trees were still there, but the cobblestones had burst upwards like boils. They went slowly, nothing but silence in their wake. No one, either: not even bodies, as if the place had emptied itself early.
“It’s a school,” Darrias said. “They had the day off for First Presentation.”
Emmanuelle bit her lip, thinking of the teachers. Darrias turned right again, into one of the smaller buildings with a courtyard. It was intact: the trees flecked with mold; the iron gates freshly painted; a little path running through the small garden to the front door. The door itself hung askew, the stained glass of its top half yellowed and streaked with magical residue—it left a faint sting on Emmanuelle’s hand as she brushed against it.
Inside, it was dark, and cool. Emmanuelle had a brief, confused moment as Darrias steered her through empty rooms filled with rows of pupils’ desks, and corridors whose cracked, tiled walls were covered with colorful drawings. Magic still saturated the air—wards that still held, though they had taken a battering. Then she was sitting on a bed, without remembering how she got there, watching Darrias forage through the drawers of a medicine cabinet, muttering to herself angrily as she discarded empty wrapping after empty wrapping. On the walls were posters from before the war: faraway destinations; the Fallen’s latest conquests; crinolines and other fashions from the heady, gilded days when Paris was the center of the world; the Universal Exhibition at the Trocadéro and its colonial displays. That last had a reconstruction of an African village in the gardens of the Trocadéro, with what looked like a mix of ethnicities dressed awkwardly in some white person’s idea of tribal garb. They were behind bars: on display, like a zoo. Conquests. Emmanuelle’s hands clenched. She wasn’t from Africa, though her physical manifestation was Black; but for an accident of timing it might well have been her, in the cage.
“Here,” Darrias said. She filled a bowl from the water basin, and brought it to the bed. “You can clean your wounds, at least.”
She put both hands on either side of the bowl, and squeezed as she said the words of a spell. A faint sheet of invisible fire hovered over the surface of the water for a second and every speck of dust or debris in the bowl burst into flames, in defiance of the liquid they floated in.
“That should be sterile. Careful, it’s hot.” Her voice was deadpan.
Neither her ash-stained clothes, nor even the petticoats were sterile. Emmanuelle washed her hands, and used the rest of the water to clean her bloodstained arms. Her body was resistant to most infections, and the wounds would heal by themselves, given a chance. In her state of exhaustion, though, it would take a long while. She ran a hand through her hair, which she wore in neat, tight unprocessed curls cut close to the scalp. It felt dry and brittle; the magic that usually kept her body healthy was running low. Not good.
“You really need a doctor,” Darrias said. “You do recognize your own symptoms?”
Emmanuelle shook her head, and then memory, inexorable, took over, and provided the answer she’d been dancing around. Vomiting. Fever. Spasms. Irritation and depression. And the hole in her memories: that evening that kept being filled with the oddest excuses. She’d read about this, in the Silverspires library.
“Some kind of brain injury. You know, a doctor would only tell me to rest.”
For months; and she didn’t have that time.
Darrias echoed her thoughts. “Which you’re unlikely to do if you want to survive.” She glared at the drawers as if she could conjure bandages and medicine out of them. “Everything of use has been taken. People. The slightest hint of trouble, and they turn feral.”
Emmanuelle leaned back against the raised back of the bed.
“That’s unfair,” she said, exhaling. “They’ve never endured hardship.”
“In Harrier?” Darrias laughed, and it was low, and without joy. “Where the mortals bow and scrape to Fallen for fear they’ll be whipped or taken apart? You’ve seen the flat cages. What Guy does to dissidents.”
The flat cages: gratings that looked as though they might lead into the sewers, but which covered exiguous cells, where shackled prisoners sat until their limbs atrophied and they starved to death, or until the guards received orders to pour in quicklime and stand aside as the screams started. Everyone knew what they were, and everyone gave them a wide berth. Darrias had left Harrier before Guy could put her in one, but as she spoke Emmanuelle could see the old tenseness returning to her face.
“You’re safe,” she said. “You’re Hawthorn’s. Everyone knows Asmodeus comes after those who harm his own. Guy can’t touch you.”
Darrias looked as though she was going to say something, but someone spoke first.
“Mistress Darrias?”
A low, puzzled voice from the entrance. An older Maghrebi woman wearing a scarf around her head, in the colors of Harrier, staring from Darrias to Emmanuelle in growing confusion; and a child of perhaps six or seven years old, clinging to her. The old woman’s forehead was cut, and blood had crusted over her eyes—she looked as unsteady on her feet as Emmanuelle did, but she still attempted to kneel.
“Mistress, I’m sorry. I hadn’t seen you were back.”
Darrias’s face went very still. “Louiza. I’m not in Harrier anymore. Don’t.”
“You’re Fallen—”
“Don’t.”
Darrias slammed the drawers closed, and went to the woman. She pulled her up. The child had s
tarted kneeling, too: she looked uncertainly from Louiza to Darrias, and finally stood, shaking and tense, protecting herself against the inevitable beating.
Darrias said, again, “Louiza, I’m not your mistress, or anyone else’s.”
Louiza looked unconvinced. Her eyes moved to Emmanuelle. She couldn’t possibly see much, could she, with the blood. Emmanuelle pulled herself up, intending to tear a piece of cloth from her petticoats and give it to Louiza. She wasn’t sure exactly what went wrong—something must have spasmed at the wrong time? Some muscles not properly answering?—but she tripped over her own feet, and only a last-minute catch on the edge of the table kept her upright.
“Here,” she said, forcing her voice to remain steady. “You can use this to clean your face.”
The child walked, slowly to Emmanuelle; stared at her with wide eyes.
“Mamma,” she said. “She’s Fallen.”
And Black, which she probably hadn’t expected.
“It’s all right,” Emmanuelle said.
She didn’t feel as angry as Darrias at House Harrier’s customs, but only because she was so exhausted.
Darrias said to Louiza, “This is Emmanuelle. Louiza, and her daughter Jamila.”
Louiza looked as though she was going to bow down again. She took the petticoats from Jamila, used a strip of them to wipe the blood from her eyes. Her face was wrinkled and exhausted beneath it.
“We’re looking for medical supplies,” Darrias said. “There’s nothing in these drawers.”
Looking for medical supplies. And so was Louiza, wasn’t she?
Louiza stared from Darrias to the empty drawers. Jamila moved, slowly, cautiously—looking at Emmanuelle and Darrias to see if they’d interrupt her—making a slow and wavering way to the cabinet. She bent down, rifling through the drawers.
“Do you know what happened?” Emmanuelle said.
Louiza looked uncomfortable. It was Jamila—her hands wedged firmly in one of the smallest drawers—who spoke.
“There was a sound,” she said. “And all the windows blew in.”
“The armory,” Darrias said. “It was a challenge.”
Louiza grimaced. “I don’t do politics, Mistress. Please.”
“I told you not to call me ‘mistress’!” Darrias raised a hand as though she might strike her, and then caught herself. “I’m sorry, Louiza. Tell me what you know.”
The look on their faces broke Emmanuelle’s heart—it wasn’t that they were hurt. It was comfort—because Darrias was finally acting like a Fallen inside the House, ordering them around, threatening them.
“No,” she said, before she could think. “You’re not playing that game.”
Darrias turned to her, the shadow of long, black wings unfolding behind her, hands outstretched with a knife in her right one that looked like an extension of her body.
“Really? This isn’t the time for the moral high ground.”
They’d had that argument so many times before: Darrias was highly pragmatic and utterly without scruples, and she thought Emmanuelle’s desire to do the right thing was just a waste of time. She tolerated it, as much as one might tolerate a puppy play-biting: only so long as it didn’t become a bother.
“It’s always the time,” Emmanuelle said.
She wasn’t that irritable, as a rule, but she hadn’t expected Darrias to bring this up again. After several heated conversations, they’d both reached an accommodation where neither of them brought up the subject anymore, for the sake of friendship: the difference was just too strong and utterly irreconcilable. To have it come up now felt like a slap in the face, and an unwelcome reminder she couldn’t count on Darrias all the way.
“The moment you argue that rules need to be relaxed—that it’s a matter of life and death and urgency—you’re admitting that they’re not worth anything.”
Darrias tensed, as if to leap or fight, but Jamila spoke first.
“Look, look!” She waved two rolls of bandages at them, and a pill box.
The tension deflated. Darrias shrugged, and the knife was back in its sheath. Emmanuelle didn’t even see it vanish.
Jamila handed her finds to Darrias, maintaining a cautious distance from her. Darrias’s lips pursed.
“Your mother can use the bandages,” she said to Jamila, handing one roll to her. “Here.” She threw the other one to Emmanuelle. “The pills are aspirin.” She considered. “Too risky, I think. Thinning your blood in these circumstances is probably not a good idea. Fallen can bleed to death.”
She sounded like she was speaking from experience. She might be, at that.
Emmanuelle wasn’t sure she actually needed the bandages, but she wrapped her lower arms anyway, if only to make it clear to Jamila that her efforts hadn’t been wasted. The girl had run back to her mother and clung to her skirts.
“What now?” Emmanuelle asked.
Darrias’s smile was the thin edge of a knife.
“We find a way out of the House.”
“Morningstar…” Emmanuelle said, slowly.
She kept expecting him to turn up. To be by her side as he’d promised, no matter how impossible that seemed. The hole in her memory was still there—whenever she thought of him she’d seen him do improbable, impossible things. Fighting Harrier envoys with his two-handed sword—the one that had been lost long ago—laughing at something Guy said, except whenever had Guy been in Emmanuelle’s rooms? Brain injury. Something had carved out pieces of her past, and she couldn’t seem to return them no matter how hard she strove.
“I came with him. And a delegation.”
“It’s each person for themselves now,” Darrias said. “I don’t know where he is, and you don’t either.” Her voice was questioning.
“No.”
There were tracking disks, and spells—the sort of thing the House would give to dependents before they went into danger. Harrier, for all that it was inimical to Silverspires, shouldn’t have been a zone where dependents could go missing.
“We don’t have any particular contacts.”
“Then he’s on his own.” Darrias’s voice was mildly acid. “I’m sure he could charm the socks off even Guy, if he tried.”
Louiza looked horrified.
Emmanuelle said, “Morningstar isn’t from the same House as Darrias.”
Not quite true: Darrias’s opinion of Morningstar was close to Asmodeus’s—and Asmodeus hated Morningstar’s guts. He thought someone with Morningstar’s powers should be much more dedicated to protecting his companions.
Darrias said, to Louiza, “I need to know what’s happening in Harrier. Please.”
Louiza opened her mouth. “I don’t know,” she said. And then, slowly, carefully, “Exalted Benedict died last night. I think…” She stopped, again.
Darrias’s voice was gentle. “Go on.”
“Lord Guy was weak,” Louiza’s voice was harsh: it was merely a fact of life to her. “Benedict was the last of his children. The most powerful, but even power fails in the end.”
Thoughts swam up: a room in Silverspires where Selene and Father Javier briefed Emmanuelle on what to expect about Harrier. The children—the magicians, the backbone of Harrier’s power.
All Fallen were sterile: they could take mortal lovers, but neither bear nor father children. They could, however, adopt them. Harrier had raised adoption to—Emmanuelle would have said—an art form… if the House itself, and all it represented, that thoughtless ideal of Fallen supremacy, hadn’t been so abhorrent to her. Harrier’s Fallen could take a favorite: a mortal woman with child, whom they would keep by their side throughout her pregnancy and the first years of the child, saturating fetus and then child with their magic as they grew. A Fallen could breed several children in that way, who would owe their loyalty only to them—and Guy had risen to become head of Harrier on the strength of his numerous magician children.
But a head of House no longer had the leisure or inclination to raise children who needed to be by their side at
all times. And so, in the end, their power weakened and a Fallen with more children overthrew them, to begin the cycle again.
“Benedict,” Emmanuelle said, tasting the word on her tongue. The name made cold sweat break out on her skin. She felt dizzy, her head growing too large, her skin too tight to house her skull—as if there was something she ought to remember but couldn’t quite place, something that had once chilled her to the bone. “Guy’s son.”
“He took too many wounds in a skirmish. House Silverspires killed him.”
Mild resentment in Louiza’s voice, that Emmanuelle would be from Silverspires and not know that.
Emmanuelle ignored it. She didn’t keep close track of every time the House fought other Houses.
“So Guy’s foremost supporter dies. He clings to power, and someone blows up the armory to overthrow him?”
“I don’t know,” Louiza said. “Lord Guy has shut himself in the Great Interior with the magicians. He’s besieged.”
The other ones, the children of the other Fallen in the House—who would they be loyal to?
“Who’s besieging him?”
“It was Ichestra,” Louiza said. The name was vaguely familiar to Emmanuelle: one of Guy’s best acolytes and mother of five magicians. “But she’s was wounded, too. So Niraphanes took her place.” That name was unfamiliar.
“No,” Darrias said.
Louiza’s face froze in fear. “I’m sorry, Mistress.”
Darrias shook her head. “Don’t be. Who else?”
“Minor factions.” Louiza cited half a dozen names that were utterly unfamiliar to Emmanuelle. “They’ll have exhausted themselves, or been absorbed by Niraphanes before anything could happen.”
“All right,” Emmanuelle said, cautiously. “I’m not too sure how relevant that is to finding our way out.” Other than, obviously, finding out that Niraphanes—whoever they were—and Darrias really didn’t get on.
The House of Sundering Flames Page 6