But the House was dead.
It had been defeated during the war, its wards caving in. Philippe could still remember being there: the sounds they’d made as they’d finally given in, as if the universe were tearing itself apart; the panic, as he and other Annamites fled to an illusory safety; their falling, one by one, until only he was left, panting and breathing hard and covered with blood, the khi currents bending and twisting, tears sliding down his cheeks, as warm as monsoon rain. He didn’t remember the House claiming a tiger spirit as a weapon, but then why would they have bothered to inform their lackeys?
“You said two Houses.” Isabelle’s voice was flat. “Who is the other?”
A silence.
Then, with an edge that bit deep: “House Silverspires.” Diamaras laughed.
Isabelle’s mouth was open. Silverspires. The House that had taken her in as a Fallen. The one she couldn’t hope to return to, because she was mortal, because she had no value to them—because she’d died and they would take her apart to find how the resurrection spell worked, if she dared to walk back into it.
“That’s not possible,” Philippe said.
Diamaras’s laugh was almost gentle. “I remember. He came. His steps made the display cases tremble, and statues of these false idols fall apart into dust. The entire building seemed afire with his light, as radiant and as terrible as dawn over the broken city. When he held it in his hands, he smiled, and everything seemed to make sense, as if you’d had the secrets of the entire universe poured into your ears like molten honey.”
He…
“Who?” Philippe asked, but he already knew the answer.
“Lucifer Morningstar. First and most powerful of all Fallen.” A laugh, that rose and rose until it was teeth biting into his skin, again and again. “Go on, mortal. Go and ask him about his treasure.”
* * *
Sang took Thuan, not to the rubble-filled entrance of the cells, but to the offices nearby. As they walked—of course they couldn’t run through the House, because it would have looked bad—Thuan was having trouble keeping a handle on his dragon form. Something primal within him was telling him the fastest way would be to soar through the corridors, so much simpler and more efficient.
The House was quiet: shocked, its dependents looking warily at Thuan as he ran by. It was only wounded dependents, but even post-war skirmishes hadn’t had that much of an impact.
“Tell me again,” he said.
Sang looked embarrassed. “Phyranthe called Vinh Ly into her office about four or five hours ago. When she came back.”
Straight after she’d left Thuan’s office, angry at his refusal to back down and looking for someone to blame.
“And Vinh Ly has been there ever since.”
“Yes.” Sang sounded apologetic. “I was minding Ai Nhi for her, and she’s not come back.”
Thuan frowned. “Where did you leave Ai Nhi, then?”
“Court of Birth,” Sang said. She raised a hand. “With Berith. She’s playing with Camille.”
Thuan breathed more easily. The last thing they needed was Ai Nhi in the power of Iaris or her partisans, especially at a time the entire House was drawing itself together against an emergency, and principles might well go flying by the wayside.
Phyranthe’s office had an oak-paneled door: on the lower panel was a faint, almost invisible engraving of a constellation of stars above deer antlers. Two of the stars were breaking off from the group in the sky, entangling themselves in the points of the antlers. The same, more complex, scene was engraved on the doors of Asmodeus’s bedroom—Thuan knew it by heart.
Two stars. Two Fall-siblings. Berith. Asmodeus. The old, old crest, Asmodeus’s personal one rather than the House one, used when he’d been running the Court of Birth. A message, a vaguely subtle one, as you had to know the crest to be able to recognize it. But, nevertheless…
A faint murmur of voices coming from inside the office—no, just one voice. Phyranthe’s, in that silky tone she used when slowly peeling off layers of flesh, literally or metaphorically. Thuan reached out in his mind, heard only silence. Vinh Ly’s presence in his mind was still burning: she wasn’t in mortal danger then. But, as with Asmodeus earlier, that didn’t tell him much.
He hesitated. In theory, nothing was wrong. It was, as Sang had said, Court of Persuasion business. Vinh Ly was Phyranthe’s subordinate, and Phyranthe had every reason to call her into her office.
His gut was telling him otherwise. A dressing-down didn’t last five hours, and Phyranthe was vicious. A sadist like Asmodeus, she usually kept everything in check, but when annoyed…
It was going to be such an ugly diplomatic mess if he intervened. But the alternative was Vinh Ly seriously harmed.
Ah well, nothing for it. He laid a hand on the door handle, and pushed.
It was a huge, cavernous office lined with chests of drawers and bookcases—except that the books on them were labeled with the names of prisoners and dates of interrogations. The room was L-shaped: he couldn’t see what lay around the corner, but a faint smell of burning cloth wafted his way. Phyranthe’s voice drifted to him—smooth, conversational.
“It’s such a shame you’re so poorly trained, isn’t it? Look at you now—not even capable of performing the most basic of tasks…”
Thuan moved into dragon form, and leaped between the bookcases, arrowing around the corner and landing straight on the plushness of a Persian carpet, claws digging into the rich embroidered threads.
Phyranthe was sitting behind a marquetry desk with curved legs, facing away from him at the end of the L. On his right side was a chimney and Vinh Ly, kneeling with her face away from her. Her shoulders drooped, and her hands were dug deep into the carpet. The smell of smoke came from a fire in front of her—not in the chimney but on the carpet. Three embers were at the heart of that, some distance from the chimney: there was no way they had rolled out from it. They’d been set deliberately on the carpet. Tight loops of khi water and Fallen magic mingled kept the fire contained, so that the entire room didn’t turn into a conflagration.
“Ah, my lord.” Phyranthe rose. She turned to face Thuan and Sang, leaning against the desk. “What a surprise.”
She looked annoyed, so that last part had to be true, at least.
Thuan stretched, sinking back from dragon into human form, leaving absolutely no trace of the dragon shape to his own, so that all she saw was the swallowtail with the arms of the House. He looked, again, at the embers, at the magic around them.
“What did you think you were doing?”
But he had an inkling already. Control, Phyranthe had said. Five hours. Five hours kneeling on the carpet, keeping the magic wrapped around the embers so that the fire wouldn’t expand further, but not pouring so much khi water into it that the flames would die altogether. It was the magical equivalent of copying microscopic lines on paper, the kind of exercise one would assign to an apprentice or a child.
And that was, of course, not counting the steady patter of Phyranthe’s poison poured into her ears for the entire time.
No wonder Vinh Ly was drained. It was a sheer miracle she was still upright and conscious.
Phyranthe’s smile was sharp. “Vinh Ly’s work has been… erratic, of late. I thought she could use a reminder that the Court is about precision and utter focus in what we’re doing.”
Thuan could feel Vinh Ly shaking—trying and failing to disguise extreme weariness. And shame: she was older than Thuan, and that she’d need to be rescued by him stung. What had Phyranthe intended? To keep her there until she collapsed, and then return her unconscious body like a trophy to him?
“I think you’ve made your point,” he said, slowly. He didn’t even try to disguise his fury.
Phyranthe smiled. She gestured, and a fist of Fallen magic wrapped itself around the fire, snuffing it out with the same ease as it’d have crushed a throat. Vinh Ly tried to get up. Words came out of her mouth, so garbled that Thuan couldn’t even tell in wh
at language they were—and then she fell full on her face on the blackened embers, drawing into a ball and shivering uncontrollably.
Thuan looked away from her, because he didn’t know how much temper he could keep if he kept having to look at Vinh Ly drained and weak. Sang moved in to steady Vinh Ly, with barely a glance at Phyranthe.
“As I said,” Phyranthe said, with barely a pause, “not much to commend her.”
She’d set Vinh Ly up. She’d tortured her as if she was one of the prisoners, and enjoyed every moment of it. Thuan clamped his lips on the words, because they might relieve his anger, but wouldn’t make anything better.
“I see,” he said. “If she displeases you so much, I’ll be quite happy to send another dragon to your Court, per the agreement I have with Lord Asmodeus to make sure the dragons become part of the House.”
He could threaten her to withdraw his dragons entirely, but the only way that would work was if she was scared enough of what Asmodeus would say. And there… there he was on shakier grounds, especially with the Harrier situation twisting everything.
Phyranthe cocked her head, staring at him for a while. She hated waste: she wouldn’t want to lose time training another interrogator. And she thought she knew Vinh Ly’s weaknesses, whereas she’d have to start all over again with another dragon.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Are you sure?” Thuan softened his face into mock concern. “I could send you Lan, for instance.”
It was a bluff: Lan was a kind and gentle soul who worked in the Court of Gardens, doing her best to coax some flowers out of the shriveled trees on the lawns. The Court of Persuasion would depress her. But it also meant Phyranthe would be short one person, as Lan would be all but useless to her.
“That won’t be necessary,” Phyranthe said again.
Sang had hauled Vinh Ly on one shoulder, effortlessly. She was making her way out of the office without a backward glance at Thuan.
“Her rooms,” Thuan said, sharply, to her.
He wanted to tell her to get Ai Nhi, but he didn’t want Phyranthe to remember Vinh Ly had a niece who could also be hurt. Children weren’t taken into the cells—disciplining them was the Court of Birth’s business—and Iaris wouldn’t stoop to hurting one, but Phyranthe… Phyranthe was another matter.
Thuan said, to Phyranthe, “So you’re satisfied, then.”
Phyranthe cocked her head again. Her blue eyes held Thuan’s. She was impassive once again, with not even a hint of anger. He couldn’t tell if venting her temper on Vinh Ly had helped her calm down.
“Let’s say I am.” She smiled. “For the time being.”
“Good. Because House Harrier is burning on our doorsteps and we’re going to need to prepare.”
A raised eyebrow. “Yes. If there’s a time for order and impeccable discipline, it’s in the midst of chaos.”
Thuan clamped down his lips on the first angry words that came to him. He said, “Also not an ideal time to be turning on our own.”
Phyranthe laughed. “You want to tell me how to run my Court, Annamite?”
The way she spat it made it clear it wasn’t a neutral description.
“I’m merely looking out for my own,” Thuan said. “The well-being of those who belong to me.”
“What belongs to you,” Phyranthe said, with a bare trace of venom, “is the House. All the dependents of the House. Favoritism is ill-placed.”
Thuan raised an eyebrow. “You mean those dependents that won’t take an order from me because they think me an arrivistic native, just like you do?”
She flinched at that. “I didn’t mean…”
No, not in such crude words. His experience was that barbs were acceptable when couched in honeyed terms, far less when people had to face what they’d actually meant.
“Did you, now.” Thuan kept his voice soft, the way he’d seen Asmodeus do to those who’d displeased him. And, in a different tone, “You know as well as I do that things have changed here.”
“Have they.” Phyranthe’s face didn’t move. “Your pet project of making us a kinder place?” A snort.
“You can’t run a House on fear.” Thuan had had that argument with Asmodeus so many times before. Fear brewed rebellions—and the House, drained and exhausted, wouldn’t survive another one of these. “At least, not only.”
Phyranthe’s lips curled up, her smile sharp and wounding.
“Idealist,” she said, much in the same way she’d said Annamite. And, in another tone, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is over.”
Of course it wasn’t. Thuan exhaled.
“And when will it be?”
A smile. “You know exactly when.”
When he was cast out without any influence.
“You mean you want me shut in one of your cells.”
He was reasonably confident that wouldn’t happen. At least in the current configuration of powers in the House.
“Oh, I’ll settle for much less.”
Phyranthe bent closer to him, so he could breathe in the smell of smoke and blood from her dress’s sleeves.
Thuan had misread it. It would, perhaps, have been over, or at any rate less bloody, if he’d not walked in. If he’d let Phyranthe have her way with Vinh Ly. But now she resented him, not only because she was old guard and he wasn’t, but also for interfering—twice—in the business of her own Court.
Now it was war.
“I see,” he said. “That makes me so fortunate, doesn’t it.” He turned, following Sang out of Phyranthe’s office, and out of the Court of Persuasion. “I’ll see you later, then.”
He had absolutely no doubt he would; just as he had absolutely no doubt that he was outmatched, and with too few resources of his own to fight her and Iaris. Even Asmodeus’s affection for him wouldn’t be enough to protect him.
That was, of course, assuming it still held.
* * *
Thuan found Vinh Ly’s small room overcrowded.
“Unka Thuan, Unka Thuan!”
Ai Nhi was fussing around her aunt. Vinh Ly was sitting on the bed, nursing a cup of tea and refusing steadily to meet Thuan’s gaze. Nothing unusual there: Vinh Ly was a traditionalist and thought an inferior shouldn’t meet a superior’s gaze.
“Auntie Ly is poorly.”
“I can see that,” Thuan said, wryly.
Ai Nhi’s face scrunched up. “Auntie Sang said a bad person”—he could almost hear the quotes around the word—“had hurt her, but she’ll be fine.”
Vinh Ly shook her head. “I said I had been a negligent person too, child. Not careful enough about who to trust.”
Ai Nhi grimaced. Vinh Ly tousled her head. “Don’t worry. The bad person can’t come here.”
Vinh Ly’s face was gray, her eyes so deep-set and her dark skin so translucent he could almost see the shape of her skull beneath her skin. She’d heal—she’d gone from unconscious to awake in the brief time Sang had carried her back to her room, and dragons’ bodies healed even faster than Fallen ones—but he doubted she was going to forget her ordeal in a hurry.
“Your Majesty,” she said.
“How are you?” Thuan asked.
He used the pronoun for grandmother, and ignored the weary disapproval from her. Vinh Ly was eldest among the dragons who’d accompanied him. She wore her gray hair in a topknot, entirely too much floral perfume, and had mastered a variety of withering expressions she used on all the other dragons. Including Thuan. She’d given him a memorable speech once on how he was shaming his ancestors by failing to address her as child—because, no matter his youth, he was the dragon of highest rank in Hawthorn, the equivalent of their king on land. Thuan had plaintively said she was twice his age, and there was no way his mouth would shape the word child to address her. He’d got a withering look that could have split stone.
“Don’t worry about me, Your Majesty.” Vinh Ly’s voice was dismissive. “I’ll be fine.”
And, if he valued his tranquilit
y, he would never refer to the incident again. Thuan sighed.
“May we talk about the repercussions?”
Sang was leaning against the wall, watching Thuan attentively. Waiting to see how this would all play out? She shrugged when his gaze found hers, pointed to Ai Nhi, who’d given up fussing around Vinh Ly and was now trying to sneak into bed with her. Right. So she thought Vinh Ly was in no state to care for her niece. Good to know he wasn’t the only one who’d learn to run rings around the older dragon.
“Talk,” Vinh Ly said.
Thuan kept his face impassive. “I don’t think it’s going to get any better.”
Sang snorted.
“That’s because you’ve been lax.” Vinh Ly grimaced, her desire to scold Thuan warring with her knowledge one didn’t reproach a superior. “Forgive me, Your Majesty.”
Thuan shook his head. He didn’t have much self-pride to speak of, and was acutely aware of how everything hinged on him. He summarized, quickly, the conversation with Iaris and Phyranthe, and the one with Phyranthe alone.
When he was done, Vinh Ly sipped her tea, for a while.
“You want to yell at me,” Thuan said, deadpan. “Feel free. At least you mean well.”
Vinh Ly sighed. “You should have left me there. Turned away from the office and pretended you hadn’t heard anything.”
“I know,” Thuan said. “But I can’t think that way. And, to be blunt, I don’t have a lot of you here and I can’t afford to lose any of you. Especially now.”
“House Harrier?” Vinh Ly’s voice was uncomfortably sharp.
The burning House; their missing delegation; and most of all the ramifications of it all, coming home to roost.
“It’s going to become precarious here,” Thuan said. And, to Sang, “You’ll need to ask the Court of Strength to call up their reservists.”
“My lord?”
“We may need to field a show of strength.”
Or more, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. They needed to stay out of Harrier’s tangled mess.
“Mmm.” Vinh Ly drained the cup of tea, and waved it at Ai Nhi. “Can you pour me more?”
The House of Sundering Flames Page 9