“You can be more,” she whispered. “You’re mortal and tainted and so much less than we’d hoped for, but you can transcend that. You can be more.” And, in a smaller voice, “It’s just blood and pain. It will pass. It should mean nothing to you.”
Behind the invisible glass pane of the wards, Frédérique had sunk to her knees, head bowed, weeping. Nicolas was still standing, staring at them with the hollow gaze of a man whose heart was being torn out of him.
Blood and pain. It’s nothing. Oh, Ancestors.
Dân Chay let Virginie go. The orange thread faded. She fell, gasping, to her knees—his hand briefly brushed her hair.
“Ssh, child,” he said. “It’s over. They’re dead.” A touch of anger in his voice, but a very different one. “I made sure of that.”
He turned, snarling, to Morningstar, who was walking back through the rubble with exaggerated care.
“And you dare reproach me for hunger? At least it’s clean, Morningstar. There are no lies in the hunt.”
“You’re hardly in a position to reproach me. I understand tigers eat their young.” Morningstar’s voice was malicious. “Do you want to fight? It wouldn’t be contained. There would be… casualties.”
That was why he’d wanted the children. Not to protect them. Not even to recruit them for Silverspires. To use them as shields. That was why he’d been determined to bring Virginie all the way into the fire’s heart: because she was the safeguard he’d planned to play all along.
Aurore dug her nails into the palms of her hand. She couldn’t do anything. She could speak up; she could face them, and die. She had no magic, no spells, no power. She had nothing.
Nothing, or she’d have struck Morningstar dead where he stood.
“You have to understand,” Morningstar said. “I have a duty of care to my own, and no intention of leaving them bereft. It doesn’t have to get messy.”
“Oh, but it will,” Dân Chay said. His smile was fractured, incandescent. His corporeal shape was wavering—and Aurore saw, suddenly, that his body was woven of threads, the same ones he’d flung to the ground. “I’m not an animal, Morningstar. I’m exactly what you made me, and there will be a reckoning. They won’t be always be here to protect you.”
Morningstar’s face didn’t move.
Dân Chay shrugged. “Arrogance, in the end, was your downfall, wasn’t it? No matter. All I need is a little time.” He spread his hands—the nail-guards caught the light and shone like molten gold. “After all, I have a revenge to exact. A city to burn.”
“The other Houses?” Morningstar said. “Suit yourself.” His gaze was hard. “It’ll only make us stronger, in the end.”
“A busy day,” Dân Chay said. “The Houses. A stray Immortal. The mortals.”
“No,” Aurore said. The mortals meant them. It was the Houseless. It was the Annamites. Cassiopée. Marianne. “No!”
They both completely ignored her.
“Go,” Morningstar said. “You’re no longer needed here.” His gaze turned, sharp and angry, towards Aurore. “And neither, I think, are you.”
Of course. At best, she was an embarrassing witness, the only one who’d heard everything between Morningstar and Dân Chay; at worst, she was completely useless, for she provided him with nothing that he valued.
“Morningstar…” she said.
Dân Chay had started to fade, unraveling into threads that joined the network on the ground—lines that shone even through the rubble and burned wood and metal. Links to the other Houses. To the Houseless.
Aurore moved; too slow, too late. Morningstar threw something at her. She raised one hand to ward him off, and pain flared into her palm, clenching her fingers together and sending her to her knees, gasping to breathe. The disk on her chest flared harsh and painful, and then everything fuzzed and went dark.
TEN
Tastes of Home
Emmanuelle spent her time in the cell thinking on how she could get out.
The grate was the most likely exit, or the best way to send out a message, but it was heavily warded: she couldn’t even put her hand close to it without getting a jolt of pain. She could see cobblestones through its bars, but no one had walked across them. Likely, it opened on rue des Entrepreneurs, and she’d seen first-hand how deserted that was, with the devastation in the House.
They’d taken almost everything from her, but the disk Darrias had given her was still there. It was quiescent now—enough time on her and that would change, Darrias said, but of course it had barely been there for a few hours. And even if it did start working, it was a safe bet it wouldn’t work within a heavily warded room.
How could she contact Darrias? Assuming Darrias had even waited for her—and why would she? She’d never trusted Emmanuelle, why would she now risk herself for her? No, Darrias’s best plan would be to go on as they’d planned: to find Niraphanes and her faction, negotiate a safe passage back to Hawthorn. She’d know, all too well, not to embarrass herself with dead weight.
She’s always believed she could have what was mine.
Darrias had come back for her family, but hadn’t told Emmanuelle. It was Guy who had—assuming she could trust Guy, assuming this wasn’t some twisted game he was playing. But why would he bother lying about something they both remembered?
Or both ought to. Annoying brain injury.
So Darrias had come back to House Harrier to get her family out, under the guise of being a Hawthorn envoy. And Guy, never fooled by Darrias’s pretense to be there under Hawthorn business, had made plans to publicly torture and execute Darrias at the banquet all the envoys would attend. And because he’d always been the kind to gloat, he’d told Emmanuelle, secure in the knowledge she was powerless against him.
Except… Except Darrias was alive and not markedly hurt. Certainly not dead or badly tortured: she had a habit of brushing off wounds to appear tough, but she would not have been able to hide something of that magnitude.
What had happened?
The House had exploded, and Guy had never found time to harm Darrias. And Emmanuelle—she had a stubborn hole in her memory, shot through only with glimpses of unbearable fear.
Not that it mattered much, currently. Darrias wasn’t going to walk into this much danger for anyone’s sake.
That left Emmanuelle with herself. Or Morningstar.
She closed her eyes. A memory, bright and unbearable, of an evening before they’d left for Harrier: Morningstar, standing at the door to her refuge in the library, the area where she stored all the spare books along with those in need of more advanced repairs. The lantern on her desk threw trembling light over the cornflower of his hair, and created hulking shadows at his back, like a memory of his lost wings.
“Working late?” he said.
Emmanuelle put down her book. “You’re going to tell me it’s not reasonable.”
Morningstar shrugged. “It’s your business.” He pulled up a chair and sat down. “Selene wanted to make me responsible for the delegation.”
“And you want my approval?” Emmanuelle said, then realized that wasn’t what he was saying. “You said no.”
He’d died and been reborn. None of them were sure how: it had happened in the mess of Silverspires’ collapse the year before. Selene was reasonably sure Asmodeus had had a hand in it, but they couldn’t prove anything.
Whatever the case, the bewildered Fallen they’d found wandering the corridors wasn’t the old Morningstar, the cruel, fey Fallen who had ruled the House with a fist of iron. The only thing he’d kept from that time was the stubborn, boundless desire to do what was right by the House no matter the cost, and the unthinking arrogance of those who believed themselves indispensable.
“You have the most experience.”
Emmanuelle laughed. “Do you want tea?”
When he nodded, she moved to her small stove, and pulled out some of the water she’d kept warm along with the flecks of the black tea that was the best the House had to offer. He wanted milk;
she took hers plain. They sat, warming two mugs and staring at each other.
“My main experience of these things is going to them.”
“Which is more than I have.” Morningstar grimaced.
He had very few memories of what had happened before—as if he were a newly born Fallen. Not an easy thing, in a House where every memory of him weighed as heavy as flung stones.
Emmanuelle said, finally, “She’s right, you know.”
“Selene?”
“I’m not sure I can go,” Emmanuelle said.
Among all the Houses, Harrier was the hardest. It had become harder and harder to go there, knowing what was happening. Knowing that the foundation of the House was that sheer, blind-headed worship of Fallen superiority. Knowing she had to be silent, and not interfere.
“It’s always exhausting, and all for what? So we can reaffirm Guy’s opinion of himself?”
If only she believed that whoever came after Guy would be better, but they wouldn’t be.
“And… it’s going to be nasty, this time around.”
“Hmmm,” Morningstar said. “Trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Emmanuelle said. Guy always looked at her as if she’d been dragged in with the trash. She was Fallen, but in his view she consorted too much with mortals. And, of course, she looked like a native. “I don’t know if I can do what’s needed.”
Morningstar laid his cup on the table. “You can.”
“You’re just saying that to make me happy.”
A laugh—and he rose, and for a moment he was tall and overpowering, the Fallen who’d been so disappointed in her lack of hunger for magic and power. The Fallen who’d protected the House from decay.
“Emmanuelle—you and Selene always do what’s needed. And I’ll always stand by you. I’ll be there. I promise.”
Except nothing had gone to plan, and he wasn’t there—not in her cell, perhaps not even in Harrier. Nevertheless…
Morningstar.
It felt blasphemous, to call on Lucifer Morningstar with a faith akin to prayer. But she knew she could trust him—a thought that enfolded her like huge wings.
Emmanuelle rubbed the hollow between her collarbones, wishing again and again that she’d thought of taking a tracking disk from Silverspires. Or something, anything that would make her feel less isolated. Less scared about what the future held.
Within her was the link to the House: the quiescent thread that tied her back to Selene, and to all the other House dependents. It would light up like a beacon if she was in immediate danger, drawing Selene and any other dependents to her aid.
She could put herself in immediate danger—no, there was nothing sharp in that cell, and there was no gain in being near death. Even Morningstar—who had to be the closest Silverspires dependent to her—wouldn’t be able to walk or break through walls.
Selene?
Nothing. A sense of Selene’s presence through the link—distant and preoccupied, mind busy with the business of the House, the need to appear strong.
Selene?
A flicker, perhaps. A ghostly touch on her shoulders, the way Selene would wrap her hands around her at the end of a tiring day. She was lost and exhausted and thirsting for anything that would bring hope. There was none; but perhaps she could take comfort in memories, and the unalterable, unbreakable past.
There had to be a way. Some sign she could send. She stood up on the bench by the wall, and looked at the wards on the grate. Magic flickered and bloomed into being, a rippling light that illuminated the darkness of the cell. The wards were old, anchored in the roots of the House—a spellcasting she wasn’t familiar with, whose patterns were meaningless to her.
Except that they held meaning, after a fashion. She couldn’t read the spell or make out its details, but everything was slightly out of kilter, slightly too loose—bent inwards towards her. From the force of the explosion, no doubt.
She could chip at it, layer by layer. Undo piece after piece with fingers that felt like lead—cursing, from time to time, as the magic earthed itself through her.
Halfway through, her arm spasmed. She held herself still, breathing hard and heavily, as the wards dug into her back. Again and again—it didn’t seem to be stopping, but she needed to stop and rest. She’d been running on too little energy, and her body was going to present her with the complete list of unpleasant consequences soon.
Rest was for the dead. And dead was what she’d be, soon enough, and worse: a pretext for embroiling Selene in a war House Silverspires couldn’t win.
Emmanuelle gritted her teeth, and undid another thread of spell. And another and another. Everything ached. Her hands clenched of their own accord, fingers shaking. The little hole she could see between the bars wasn’t even a free space: when she pushed against it, it pushed back—only not with pain or burning, but with the yield of an elastic surface. Enough of a push, and it’d crumble completely…
The door opened.
What—?
No time. Emmanuelle reached for Darrias’s disk, and wedged it in the small space she’d opened, pushing hard until her wrist felt stretched out of shape altogether. As she did so, she put all the magic she could pull from her body into its opalescent surface. A faint, weak burst answered from the disk as it clattered to the cobblestones, tearing the edges of the wards in the process. Pathetic. A distant, clouded star, not a bonfire. But it was all she had.
Lord in Heaven, help me get through this.
Then, and only then, she turned, clambering away from the grate, making herself look as though her attempt to slither through the bars had been interrupted.
“Leaving us so soon?” The voice was mocking.
“Andrea.”
Guy’s wife stood limned in light on the threshold. She wore the colors of the House: a deep, midnight blue on the hem of her dress, and black everywhere else, down to the gloves on her hands and the cigarette holder in her hand—an affectation, or the real thing? The Warded Chambers had seemed flush with things from before the war, so why not tobacco?
“I was surprised not to see you up there,” Emmanuelle said.
“With my husband?”
Andrea walked into the room. The emphasis she put on the last word was… tentative.
Emmanuelle had never dealt with Andrea. She’d grown used to seeing the two of them together, husband and wife, Guy full of bluster and grating arrogance, and Andrea interjecting to support him. She’d thought of her as no more than an extension of her husband—an altogether unworthy and uncharitable thought.
She looked at Andrea again. Deep, shadowed eyes that looked bruised—she wouldn’t have been surprised if Guy were abusive, but he seemed to take his pleasures elsewhere. Make-up that was a little too shakily applied, and of course the black dress.
She thought, again, of the boy’s corpse in the reception room. Not a child, but barely out of childhood all the same. The last of Guy’s sons—which meant all the others, too, had died.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, and was surprised to find truth behind the words.
“Don’t be.” A long, sinuous shrug; a drawl as Andrea leaned against the door jamb, studying Emmanuelle. Dissecting her. “Children are meant to die.”
“They shouldn’t have to.”
“Oh, Emmanuelle. Are you always so naive? You of all people can’t afford it.”
“Of all people?”
“Fallen,” Andrea said, simply. Of course—Emmanuelle had forgotten she was mortal. “And let’s face it—you look like a native.”
A fact people were only too happy to remind her of, in myriad little ways.
Emmanuelle said, more sharply than she’d meant to, “That’s irrelevant, isn’t it.”
A wide, bitter smile. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Let’s talk of the future, then.”
Emmanuelle thought quickly. Guy was beyond reason—but Andrea might not be. It was all about finding the right words.
“I would like to go home.” She kept her voic
e slow and steady; because if this failed, she wouldn’t get a second chance. They would make whatever example Guy had in mind of her. “I have no position in this, and I’m not about to involve House Silverspires in the affairs of House Harrier.”
She stopped before she could say “war of succession”, because she could guess that insofar as they were concerned, it wasn’t a succession question. It was a temporary rebellion, no matter how bad it had got.
Andrea inhaled from the cigarette holder: the smell of something sweet and moldy wafting up to Emmanuelle—she’d have known it anywhere. Not tobacco, but angel essence.
“There’s no going home,” Andrea said, at last, and she seemed to be talking about more than Emmanuelle. “Not after you got involved.”
“Because of Darrias?” What had Darrias done?
“Do you know who she is?” Andrea said.
“A friend.” The words were out of Emmanuelle’s mouth before she could think, and in spite of all evidence. And then, because she wasn’t completely rash, “A traitor.”
She’s always believed she could have what was mine.
Andrea leaned against the door again. Magic flickered and died on the tip of her cigarette.
“Darrias was always a liability. Houses are built on certain foundations, and Darrias… came to doubt them.”
Emmanuelle had known Darrias long enough to know exactly what foundations her friend had questioned.
“You mean she thought that humans could be the equal of Fallen? That hardly seems revolutionary. You’re human.”
“But not immortal. Not infused with magic.” Andrea’s voice was matter-of-fact.
“Fallen aren’t immortal. Just ageless, and very long-lived.”
“You know that makes no difference.”
“That’s assuming the things you most value are magic and long life.”
Emmanuelle was conscious of the privileges they conferred on her. But it wasn’t the same thing as assigning value to an accident of birth. She tried, very hard, to not let that be the rule she lived by.
Andrea laughed. “Look around you, Emmanuelle. Look at your Houses. See who holds the power. There is only one human head of House—Claire in Lazarus—and she’s beleaguered and weak, only getting her way by setting us at each other’s throats. I’m honest about the way the world works. I know where power is, and how you get it, when you’re not its source.”
The House of Sundering Flames Page 19