“I do,” she said, and gently took the hand away. “But thank you.”
Outside the air was fogged, with the faint taste of smoke. As Aurore walked towards Harrier, it became… faintly harder to breathe, but almost nothing compared to the pain that had driven her there. She wrapped her scarf around her mouth, and tried to walk as slowly as possible, to not choke on smoke as she ran. She walked by the smoldering ruins of the Exhibition Palace, and the shadow of the broken Eiffel Tower at the end of the Champ de Mars—the knife-slash of monumental buildings and greenery that had once marked the splendor of the city.
Halfway through Place Joffre she saw the dim shape of the North Gate, and tried to breathe through choked lungs. There’d be the guards, and the flat cages—and the casual reminders of the House’s indifference or outright cruelty to its mortal dependents. There would be…
It was different. It was gone—no, not gone, diminished. Look, here she was, almost to the House, and everything was choked with smoke, and she couldn’t see any guards or any people. It couldn’t harm her anymore. It…
Her hands shook. How was she ever going to get to power, if she couldn’t even walk up a street and into a House? It had seemed an easy decision to make, back in la Goutte d’Or, but now every step cost her. Every step changed and shrank her—made her eight years old again, barely out of training. Standing, shivering, with eyes lowered as the Fallen and the members of the Great Interior passed them by in the streets, made her ten years old again, standing unmoving and silent as a Fallen held Cassiopée’s wrist tight enough to bruise, pinching the skin and watching her struggle not to cry out, for pouring a drop of wine on his sleeve.
All the small, casual cruelties; all the mountainous indifference of the House. Of Pellas, the Master of the Baths, who’d beat any servants who stumbled or didn’t come fast enough when he called. Of Corinne, who ran the building while high on angel essence, and never missed an opportunity to assert her power by assigning extra chores to her and Cassiopée. Of stumbling into Cassiopée one final time, the piles of soap-holders they were carrying tumbling on the parquet, the sound of breaking thunder in their ears. Waiting, her stomach tied in knots, for her master’s judgment and bracing herself for a whipping—until Pellas smiled and said he was remanding her and her sister’s cases to the enforcers…
All behind her. She’d gone. She’d escaped. She’d survived.
A day and a night. All she had to do was get into the grounds, and keep her head down, and…
She thought of the hook dragging her back to Hawthorn, to Asmodeus’s mocking gaze, of his taking the knife to her once again. If he did that—if he tortured her again, after her brief, poisoned taste of freedom—she wasn’t sure how much she could hold from him. Best lay low—give him what he wanted and pray for mercy. She’d have laughed, if she still had the capacity to laugh about the business of Houses.
Movement, to her left. Aurore braced herself for an attack, but nothing happened. No, not quite—there was someone moving, except they were too small and too agile to be an adult. A child, here, on the outskirts of the House? She stopped moving, and waited.
Presently, the figure moved again—running through the ruins of the École Militaire on her left, away from her. There was nothing that way. There’d never been anything: the École had been ruins since before the explosion, and the streets behind it, covered with a sticky charred residue, were not desirable enough to go to the trouble of cleaning them. Harrier had all but cut them off, as they always cut off the undesirable.
She was supposed to get into the House, if she was following orders.
Demons take Asmodeus and his arrogance and his orders. Aurore shifted position, and moved to follow.
There was plenty of shelter—the tricky part was moving over debris without making too much noise. The explosion didn’t seem to have done much to the area except throw a layer of charred fragments over everything. The smoke thinned. She was moving away from wherever the explosion had happened. Still no one. No guards. No hawks, either, as if the House itself was sleeping, or blind. Or both.
She kept a wary distance between her and the child, and finally saw them slip into the Grenelle slaughterhouse—a series of large, disused buildings that had fallen into ruins after the slaughtering of beasts had been moved southward.
Inside, the main yard was a quincunx planted with linden trees. The trees were still there, their large trunks threaded through with the whitish strands of fungus, their leaves mottled by rot. Where had the child gone…?
There. Movement again, in one of the buildings. Aurore walked to it; and found a Fallen holding court under the metal rafters.
There was literally no other word for it. He sat at the center of a rapt circle that included one small child and two adults, speaking in a low, grave voice that she couldn’t make out. The child who had just run into the building was perhaps eight or nine, standing at rigid attention as if making a report, desperately eager to please.
Aurore must have breathed, or done something she shouldn’t have—because although she didn’t remember moving, the Fallen lifted his head to stare straight at her.
His hair was a bright, vivid yellow—the color of gold, of corn in the books she and Cassiopée had trafficked as children, the ones that showed countryside with plump cows and green grass. His eyes—they transfixed her, intent and bright, a sharp, unreal color of blue, swirling with so much magic they shone translucent.
“A visitor. What an unexpected delight. Come in.”
Not an order—not even a spell—but she found her feet moving of her own accord, drawn like a mouse to a snake. He wasn’t only Fallen—not only the smooth, graceful, deadly beings she’d grown up bowing down to—he was the quintessential incarnation of them, power made flesh.
Everything she desperately wanted for herself: the magic that would keep them all safe.
“I’m Morningstar,” the Fallen said, smiling, as Aurore reached the circle of Harrier dependents. He wore a formal swallowtail, black with a red sheen, and a touch of silver at his throat, a cravat with ruffles—and the insignia of House Silverspires on both shoulders, overlaid with the domes of a city she’d never seen. “And you are?”
“Aurore.” And, because he was still staring at her, because the words wouldn’t stop coming, “My lord.”
She wanted to kneel; or at the very least to look down, as she’d done so often in the House. But that time was past. She wasn’t anyone’s servant anymore. Not even if that someone was the first and most powerful of the Fallen.
Morningstar looked at her, as if waiting; and smiled when nothing happened.
“This is Virginie,” he said, pointing to the child who’d just entered the building. “Frédérique and Nicolas”—who looked to be Virginie’s parents—“and Charles…”
They looked to be two young children—Charles was a toddler still, with baby fat clinging to his cheeks—and their parents. Except…
She stared at Virginie, hard. The child was wearing a nondescript Harrier uniform, but when she moved, magic shone faintly through the planes of her face. Nothing so obvious as Morningstar—a candle to a sun—but still…
“You’re from the Warded Chambers,” she said slowly, softly.
Magicians in training, with no Fallen parent nearby to bathe them in their magic and keep watch over them?
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The urge to look down was becoming overpowering: a Fallen from another House was one thing, but people from the Great Interior?
Frédérique, Virginie’s mother, said, “We could have remained in the Great Interior, and fought to the death.”
She wore men’s clothes, and her hair was cut short—so short it looked almost shorn. She had swarthy skin and light hazel eyes: a distant ancestor from the Mediterranean basin, the way it sometimes happened in the Houses. She sounded angry. Bitter. Aurore had always thought people called to the Great Interior would be less… She struggled to find words. She’d always assu
med they’d be happy, at least—mortals able to lord it over everyone else in the House.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Frédérique smiled, and it was suddenly dazzling.
“Don’t be. It’s been a hard day.”
“It was hard before today,” Nicolas, Virginie’s father, said. He had a bandage over one eye, and a huge gash that ran from it to his lips, a raw, shining wound that didn’t look good. “Lord Guy was losing.” He grimaced again. “And you know Niraphanes…”
Virginie said, in a small voice, “I want Niraphanes.”
Frédérique grimaced. “She can’t be with us right now, sweetheart.”
“We could have stayed—”
“There are bad people,” Frédérique said. “Very bad people. That’s why we need to keep ourselves safe.” Her face was hard. “She’ll understand.”
Nicolas shook his head. “You know—”
“I know she wanted to drag Virginie into this,” Frédérique said.
“I can fight!”
Frédérique’s mouth opened, closed. Then she said, in a much softer voice, “I know you can, sweetheart. That was never in question.” Her face said the rest. You shouldn’t have to.
It was none of Aurore’s business—had never been. She’d never had the chance to try for Warded Chambers. Her pregnancy hadn’t been visible when she’d left the House, and menials such as her never caught the eye of the Fallen anyway. Her child would never have grown up bathed in Fallen magic, or become a magician—or had any of the things Frédérique and Virginie took for granted. But Frédérique looked so heartbreakingly afraid. She reached out, and touched Virginie’s hand lightly.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s all right.”
She felt small and inadequate—and so very very angry at the way the world was.
“Guy won’t be able to reach you within Silverspires,” Morningstar said. “I can promise you that.”
Aurore let go of Virginie’s hand. “You…” The words were out of her mouth before she could think. “They’re Harrier dependents. You can’t just steal them.”
Morningstar raised an eyebrow. “Can’t?”
It was none of her business. It really wasn’t, and she had enough problems of her own. She fingered the disk between her collarbones, feeling the imprint of Hawthorn’s arms.
“Lord Guy will never forgive you.”
“Guy will be in no position to forgive much of anything.” Morningstar’s eyes narrowed. “Lord Guy, is it? You’re not wearing the uniform of Harrier.” Magic flowed beneath his skin, lazily, probed at Aurore’s chest and belly—the disk warmed imperceptibly, and it felt as though Morningstar’s spell was sliding off it. “And not linked to any House. Come here to scavenge?”
Aurore opened her mouth, and then closed it. She’d had time to think of a plausible lie on her way there, but something in those blue eyes invited… trust. Confidence.
She wasn’t that naive.
“My sister and I were thrown out of Harrier three years ago. It’s been… hard.”
A sharp look from Morningstar, but Aurore had, by now, had plenty of practice at dissembling to Fallen.
“You’ll be far better off with us.”
A day and a night in Harrier.
“You’re headed back to House Silverspires, aren’t you?”
Morningstar shook his head. “Not quite,” he said. “There’s… something I want to see first.”
Frédérique looked tense again. “We shouldn’t tarry here.”
Morningstar’s voice was reasonable and calm, but Aurore could hear the unspoken edge.
“I’m here for a reason. I’m quite willing to take on… extras”—his voice was low and thoughtful—“but my primary purpose isn’t to poach magicians from Guy. I have a head of House who’ll be very unhappy if I don’t finish assessing the situation here.” He shrugged. “You can go, if you want to. I’m not forcing you to stay.”
But he was their only chance of escape. As if they’d leave.
And he was staying in Harrier, for a time. You’ll be far better off with us. As it happened, Aurore was thinking the same thing. She wasn’t Fallen and couldn’t afford to pay for any reserves of magic—the little charged mirror she’d had with her in Hawthorn, worth a year of savings, had been confiscated when Hawthorn’s guards had arrested her. Still…
“Why would you find me worthy of regard?”
A sharp look. She was failing to be sufficiently servile.
Morningstar said, “I’m a lone dependent of another House, trapped in a burning one in the middle of a succession war. I can use any help.”
It wasn’t that. It was… vanity, or something similar? A desperate need to collect broken things—to break them himself, if it came to that. She’d met his kind before.
A day and a night. She could tag along with them, and attempt to learn what was happening in Harrier from Frédérique and the other parents, uncover the kind of politics that would keep Asmodeus happy—or at any rate, not displeased enough to hurt her again. He’d expect her to explore the House, lying low, but would certainly never approve of what she was doing. His fault. He should have been more specific when setting the spell that had dragged her here against her will.
Being with Morningstar and the escapee magicians wasn’t the safest place, but was there really anywhere safe, right now?
“All right,” she said, feeling as though she was dancing on the edge of a chasm. “What now?”
* * *
Her captors marched Emmanuelle to a room underground: some kind of cellar, at the end of a maze of damp, dark corridors holding closed doors and cells. They left her there, without a word, to stare at the inside of her cell.
There was stone under her, and light coming through a grate. She waited for her eyes to make out shapes: the bench on which she was lying, the darker shape of the closed door.
She remembered the birds, and the magician—and the way the hawk had passed through her as though she were just a wall of water, or thin paper that crumbled under its touch. Remembered the soft, wet sound of her crumpling, the coat floating down to the ground. Harrier had sent guards to retrieve her instead of killing her. Why would they bother with her, when they were already busy with their own succession war?
And where were the others?
Darrias.
She remembered Darrias’s taut face as she drew the knife across the Fallen’s throat.
My family is none of your business.
Darrias was jewel-hard and taciturn: Emmanuelle had always assumed that she’d walked out of her Harrier life with no regrets, as lonely as she’d been in the House. She’d never thought she had a family. Who had she left behind? One or several spouses? People seldom said “family” unless children were involved.
Which meant…
Emmanuelle hated playing political games, but that didn’t mean she was bad at it: she’d had ample time to learn, standing by Selene’s side. Her partner was, after all, head of House Silverspires, and the intrigues she breathed in every day had rubbed off on Emmanuelle.
Fallen were sterile. They could adopt mortal children, and some did—but in Harrier that could only mean one thing.
A magician.
Which meant…
Darrias hadn’t just been an outcast when she’d walked out of the House. She must have lost a power struggle—because there was no way the Fall-mother of a magician would have been sent into the streets as an envoy. Magicians lived and breathed with their Fall-parents, long after their formal presentation to the House.
She had never breathed a word of this to Emmanuelle. Not once, in their long, barbed drinking sessions in the cafés House members considered neutral territory, staying all afternoon, remaking the world in their cracked glasses. She… she could have told her. Emmanuelle tasted the thought, carefully, again and again. They’d been… acquaintances, no more. Not friends. There could be no friendships across the dividing lines of House loyalty. Why did it hurt so
much, that she hadn’t been confided in?
And—more importantly—where was Darrias’s family now?
The door opened. Emmanuelle scrabbled to her feet, fighting a wave of dizziness. Two guards in the colors of Harrier, who gestured her towards the door.
“Where are you taking me?”
No answer.
They walked through damp, dark corridors holding more cells, and moaning prisoners—where had they come from, had they always been there?—and then up a flight of stairs, and into the early morning light. Emmanuelle’s eyes burned, but her guards didn’t even slow down. The corridors opened up, widened into chevroned parquet—not decayed or cracked, but brand new, a staggering display of opulence and power. The wallpaper was only lightly mottled, its pattern of hawks in flight exquisite. The furniture was so polished it gleamed, the upholstery a dark, deep green, the marble chimneys pristine. In the distance was the faint sound of a grand piano. Emmanuelle felt she’d woken up in a different universe, one that had nothing to do with the devastation of the House, or the even older one of the Houseless areas.
The corridor felt familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Not until they reached the end, and she saw the double doors—the cream-colored doors with handles shaped like leaves. The exact ones she’d seen in her memories.
Which meant this part—this specific part—of them wasn’t false. It couldn’t be. Because the Great Interior wasn’t open to foreigners; and how could she remember a door and a room if she hadn’t already been there, if she hadn’t already seen Guy?
It didn’t help. Because she still didn’t remember what had happened, not a word. Just dread, and the birds, and the fear.
Useless.
Beyond the door lay a reception room, the ceiling of which was overwhelmed by stucco and moldings of acorns and lily flowers. Huge mirrors alternated with curtained alcoves—the illusion faded with the curtains, whose deep purple was faintly tinged with mold. In front of each mirror was an ornate table with an alabaster bust. Emmanuelle couldn’t recognize their faces. People important to the House, presumably?
The House of Sundering Flames Page 14