Outside, it was almost dawn: that familiar grayness to the polluted sky, in the moment between dog and wolf, as Mother had said—the time when workers congregated into the streets to go to the factories for another day that would wear their fingers to the bone. She could barely think through the pain. Cassiopée slept on, sprawled in her own bed in the other room that served as bedroom, kitchen and dining room all at the same time. Aurore had to be silent. Had not to cry out—she would worry them for nothing, and they could do absolutely nothing to help her.
Fine. Hawthorn had won. Asmodeus had won. She tried to bend down to kiss Marianne goodbye, but she was shaking so much she’d just wake her daughter up, and she didn’t want Marianne to see her like that. She’d worry, or have outright nightmares for the rest of her life.
For that, too, Asmodeus would pay.
Cassiopée had left the map of Hawthorn on the table, the one that was supposed to lead them to their goal. Aurore reached out to grab it, stopped herself. She’d learned it by heart, because it was too incriminating to keep; she could have recited it even in the throes of the current pain.
She staggered down the stairs and into the streets, stumbling towards the distant House of Harrier.
* * *
When they got back into the Harrier streets, Darrias went ahead, carefully scouting the way. Louiza and Jamila followed. Emmanuelle had tried to suggest they could remain behind, but the glare on Darrias’s face had discouraged her. Did she feel guilt or responsibility for them? She’d judged Harrier untenable for herself. What did it feel like, to see others left behind—the mortals, their inferiors according to Harrier’s twisted ideology?
Louiza was hovering beside Emmanuelle: at the next muscle spasm, she set her shoulder against Emmanuelle’s.
“Here, Mistress. Let me.”
The sun had already sunk down but its dim, gray light remained. Everything seemed leeched of color and they had perhaps another half-hour before they needed to find shelter. And then Emmanuelle realized they couldn’t afford to think that way. She was too used to night outside—especially outside the Houses—meaning danger, but they were in danger so long as they were inside Harrier. They’d have to go on in the darkness, and hope that angels—the un-Fallen, the favored ones—were indeed watching over them.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…
“Not ‘Mistress’,” Emmanuelle said, wearily.
She’d eaten the bar Jamila had found, and the food had stayed down. She’d half-feared she was going to vomit again when she woke up, that feeling of retching again and again, continuing to drag bitter bile up from her stomach long after it was empty. But even food didn’t make her feel better. If she was right about her brain injury, there wasn’t much she could do that would.
They were going down a straight street: it was that part of the House where everything seemed to intersect at sharp, clean angles, reminding Emmanuelle of nothing so much as the western area of Silverspires, those places around what had been the Préfecture where everything was rational and orderly. Or had been: no one had lived in those areas for many years. Emmanuelle turned, briefly. In the direction of Dupleix the smoke had become dark clouds, barely distinguishable from night in the dimming light. Whatever was burning had exhausted itself, but there wasn’t enough wind to scatter its aftermath.
They started going east, but soon they turned to the south, towards the gas factory that marked the boundary of Harrier. She saw fewer and fewer bodies in the street—which wasn’t a good sign, because it meant people had been collecting them. Everything was silent again, only broken by distant screams. Ahead, she could see—distantly—the walls of the Great Interior and the occasional light of a spell illuminating a window or balcony.
They passed a deserted market. The roof and walls had held, but its brightly colored stalls were empty, with fruit and vegetables glistening on unsteady trestle tables. Darrias was still scouting ahead, a few paces from them, when a distant scream broke the silence, followed by the sharp sound of rifle fire.
Fighting. It came from the other end of the street, but Emmanuelle couldn’t see anything.
“Wait here,” Darrias said, and slipped on ahead.
Emmanuelle found herself alone, leaning on Louiza. There’d never be a better time to talk to her in private; Emmanuelle liked Darrias, but trusting her was another matter. Her brushing off looking for Morningstar had been reasoned, and reasonable on the face of it; but it still left Emmanuelle reliant on someone who belonged to another House and had vastly different priorities from hers.
Emmanuelle remembered the evening she and Morningstar had arrived in Harrier—the party for the House envoys, an uneasy, cramped affair that thinned as envoys left, each conversation growing more and more uncomfortable.
Darrias had found her by the buffet, and dragged her to a table.
“Here,” she said, pouring champagne into a glass.
“Getting me drunk for Silverspires’ secrets?”
Darrias snorted. “Getting you drunk so you can forget where you are.”
“I’m not—”
“You look like you’d jump if I said ‘boo’,” Darrias said.
“You’re honestly going to tell me it’s not that bad?”
Darrias looked at her for a long, long while, and then shook her head.
“You don’t want the lie, do you? You were never one to bury your head in the sand.” And, then, more slowly, “It’s bad, and tomorrow is going to be worse. Guy isn’t going to waste a single opportunity to humiliate us.”
Emmanuelle hesitated, and then forged on.
“It must be worse for you.”
It had been Darrias’s previous House, and she didn’t even understand how Asmodeus could be cruel enough to send her there. But, of course, she was the ideal envoy from his point of view, already knowing the lay of the land.
“Oh, I’m already drunk,” Darrias said sharply. She stared, moodily, at her glass, and then downed it. Nothing in her voice or demeanor suggested drunkenness. “I’m going to need this to get through the day.”
“You didn’t have to come,” Emmanuelle said. “I know Asmodeus wouldn’t have left you much choice—”
“Oh, I asked to come,” Darrias said.
Emmanuelle opened her mouth to ask why, but before she could Morningstar was there.
“Anything the matter?” he asked, smiling at Darrias with a mouth full of teeth.
Darrias flinched, visibly. Morningstar wasn’t his old self any longer—not the cruel and mercurial ruler of the House who’d done anything, sacrificed anyone, for the good of Silverspires. He’d died and been revived in murky circumstances and remembered nothing of the days before his death. He had changed immensely. He had become a friend. Someone she could rely on. Though Darrias couldn’t know any of that.
“Darrias is a friend.” Emmanuelle knew what he’d say about friendships between Houses—that it was an unattainable, unreasonable dream. “She means me no harm.”
Darrias had looked startled, then, staring at Emmanuelle.
“Of course I mean no harm,” she said, and something in her voice—some barely hidden steel—had suggested that all the harm was reserved for someone else.
Emmanuelle had meant to track her friend down and ask, but there’d not been an opportunity. Or perhaps there had been, and she didn’t remember? She felt herself, once again, probing at the edges of that missing chunk of time, steeling herself against a flood of memories that couldn’t possibly be true. She was following a Harrier envoy through a long, darkened corridor—towards a room that filled her with slowly mounting dread—and there was a sound in the background she couldn’t quite make out, something that tightened around her heart and squeezed until it beat faster and faster, desperate to escape, the same sound she’d already heard whenever she tried to reclaim her lost memories. And, finally, large cream-colored double doors opening on a dimly lit room.
“Lord Guy is expecting you,” the Fallen said.
And then the memory ended, and she was back on the streets of a devastated House, staring at Louiza and shivering. Another person she couldn’t be sure of, but that didn’t matter right now. Darrias did.
She considered, for a while, the best opening.
“You’ve known Darrias a long time,” she said finally, as it was close to the only thing they had in common.
The air was colder now, with that bite that promised autumn.
Louiza cocked her head. She was obviously deciding how much to tell an outsider, even if that outsider was Fallen.
“Everyone knows Mistress Darrias,” she said. “Nothing would stop her, once she got started.”
She sounded proud—all that went through Emmanuelle’s mind was what kind of things Darrias would have started and taken to an end.
“I’ve known her for a year,” she said, curtly.
Her arm spasmed, hitting Louiza in the face—and when she tried to stop it, her leg did the same, sending her sprawling to the ground, debris digging into her skin.
“I’m sorry.”
Louiza pulled her up, with visible concern on her face.
“You’re sick, Mistress,” Jamila said slowly, softly, her small face creased—bracing herself for a rebuke. “You should go to hospital.”
If there still was one. Emmanuelle laughed, bitterly.
“When I get back to Silverspires…”
If she ever got back to Silverspires. She wanted to dive into her library and never emerge—far away from fighting, screaming and smoke. She’d never really appreciated the value of it before.
“Where did you meet her, Mistress?” Jamila said. “On the streets?”
“Jamila!”
“I want to go out,” Jamila said, a little plaintively. “Chase down the enemies of the House. Fight gangs and scavengers. Cool things.”
“Excuse her,” Louiza said, with a sigh. “We’re seamstresses, Jamila. That’s our future.” Her face was pinched.
“I don’t want that future!” Jamila gestured towards the ruined streets. “Everything has changed.”
“No,” Louiza said sharply. “Nothing has.”
“There’s nothing left…”
Which just meant things would get worse. Emmanuelle clamped her lips on the words.
“We have to hide.”
Louiza grabbed Emmanuelle’s arm, and ducked into the market.
What? Emmanuelle wanted to ask, but then she heard the sound of fighting, moving closer to them. No. No. Shouts, and the clamour of a crowd—grunts, the moans of the dying. The sound of metal on metal. She looked out, and caught a glimpse of Darrias fighting a Fallen wearing Harrier colors, before Louiza caught her and slammed her against the market’s walls, well away from the fighting.
“Stay down,” she whispered.
All Emmanuelle could hear was sounds: sword against sword; the slow whoosh of indrawn breath; the occasional thunder of rifles; the shifting crinkle of debris; and then a scream, turning into low moans—and the sound of a body striking the cobblestones.
Footsteps, getting closer.
Louiza’s grip on Emmanuelle tightened. She was whispering the Shahada, very fast and over and over. Emmanuelle tried to look for the words of a prayer, found her mind scoured clear of almost everything.
Our Father, who art in Heaven…
She gathered magic to herself, but she was so exhausted she could barely think of a spell.
“It’s over,” Darrias said. She tossed a long knife onto the debris. The clattering sound startled Jamila, who was making calf-eyes at her. “Come on. We’ll have to be a little careful—we’re skirting the Great Interior.”
In the main street, two bodies lay with blood pooling under them—and then, as they moved closer, a handful more, hanging over the wrought-iron railings of a small park with diseased trees and darker grass that looked mostly intact. These last bodies had been torn apart.
“Darrias…” Emmanuelle said.
“Not me.” Her voice was cautious.
Ahead of them was a huge, dark building, shimmering with the light of wards: the Great Interior. The section they were facing had been a church at one point, but its three-lobed entrance was now sealed, and the belfry was burned, with only charred emptiness where the bells should have been. There were no soldiers or guards anywhere, and only silence around them. That wasn’t normal, but what else could they do?
Darrias pointed left, making a gesture for them to remain low. Emmanuelle, Louiza and Jamila crouched as they went around the wall. Overhead, people moved behind the windows—dark silhouettes that didn’t seem to slow down or point. The light was dim, but not dim enough: they must still be extremely visible against the cobblestones, but no one screamed or pointed. That was wrong. And something had torn those bodies apart.
They were halfway along the church’s entrance when the sounds started.
It was low whistles at first—a series of plaintive calls echoing all around them, barely noticeable at first. Ahead, Darrias reached the corner, and knelt by another body. This one had their eyes open, staring at her. Their hand still clung to a useless, broken rifle.
“Asérimée,” Darrias said.
The person looked mortal, but it was hard to tell because so little was left of them, just torn, bloodied skin, and face blackened with marks.
“Darrias…” they laughed, and coughed wetly. “Come back for them?”
“My family is none of your business,” Darrias said sharply.
Family. Emmanuelle looked at Louiza in rising horror. Inside the House. Inside Harrier, where Guy would have had all the time to hurt them as he wished.
“Darrias, you never said—”
Darrias had risen in one single fluid leap, her knife bloodied where she’d drawn it across Asérimee’s throat. She stared around her, breathing fast. The plaintive call had become high-pitched screeches and silhouettes moved across the ruined church’s walls—the shadows of small birds of prey, getting closer and closer.
“Run,” Darrias said. “Now!”
When Emmanuelle stayed frozen she began to push her away from the church.
“If they catch you, you’re dead. Now, Emmanuelle!”
The birds detached themselves from the church. One moment they were flat shapes on the darkened limestone, the next they were wheeling in the air, screeching and squealing triumphantly, except she could still see the outline of the limestone bricks on them—as if someone had cut them from the fabric of the building. The birds dived for them, unerringly, their talons and claws out and glinting in the evening air.
If they catch you, you’re dead.
Emmanuelle turned, stumbling over debris, and ran.
* * *
There was nothing in the world but her body: her feet, catching on cobblestones; the air burning in her throat and lungs; the tight feeling of fear that made her head feel too large, too exposed to the night air. She wasn’t going to make it—any moment now a spasm would come, and she’d sprawl again, an immobile target for the birds when they dived.
When she dared to peek back, just for a moment, she saw there were more of them: an entire flock emblazoned with the colors of broken buildings, shattered windows, and some of them coming from the armory further away, the dark red of flames and smoke, shimmering in daylight. They screeched like birds of prey.
Harrier.
Hawks.
To her left was the dark, deserted shape of the Great Interior. She should turn, go back up the street they’d come from—or at any rate not become hopelessly separated from the others—but all she could do was move forward, tensing at every moment, imagining the rush of air as they finally caught up with her. Night was falling now, and she saw less and less, everything reduced to gray, blurring shapes. Run run run. She needed to—she had to—she didn’t know where safety was anymore. Ahead were the factories, and the Seine, and the bridges to Hawthorn, and Asmodeus’s mocking voice. She could imagine all too well his delight at holding such a prize.
What could he not make Selene do, if he threatened Emmanuelle, if he sent her back piece by bleeding piece back to House Silverspires…?
Screeches, behind her, getting closer and closer. And a wind of beating wings, rising at her back. Feathers swirled to either side of her, tinged with all the colors of the ruined House—fragments of debris and flame and smoke.
She’d heard that sound before—it was the one of her nightmares, the one of her vision of that dark corridor. Not billowing cloth. Just wings, rising in the emptiness. Her worst fear—but why?
If she could just duck into an empty building—just find someplace they couldn’t fly—but there was no shelter anywhere, just emptied parks and plazas with ruined, rusted fountains. Ahead—impossibly far away—was an intersection of streets by a large triangular building, its wrought-iron windows all shattered.
She paused, panting. It was unwise of her, but she couldn’t even breathe anymore, and every step sent pain into her legs, alongside the deeper, sharper pain of a stitch.
When she looked up, the birds had moved in front of her, cutting her view to the square she’d hoped to reach, a wall of beating wings and screeches and sharp talons darkening the sky. One of them detached itself from the flock, moving with its wings spread, as though soaring on thermals. Its wings were the color of ashes, patterned with fragments of wrought-iron railings and fogged-over glass.
Emmanuelle cast her spell—bringing her hands together and emptying all the magic in her body, willing the birds to burn, to fall into a thousand pieces. It felt like sinking into a cloud of dust. The birds at the center of her target flew away, shrieking; but others took their place—and the one hovering in front of them all didn’t move.
This was how it ended, then.
Her exhausted body was bearing her down, on her knees in the street, but she wasn’t going to give them that satisfaction. She forced herself back up—ignoring the aches and twinges in her body—and was betrayed, again, when her leg spasmed and left her sprawling in the dirt.
“You will stop.”
It was a sharp, loud voice—one with the commanding assurance of a woman used to power.
The House of Sundering Flames Page 11