Now they sat staring at each other and chewing on gritty rice. Hoa Phong’s face was drawn and gray, looking as exhausted as Philippe felt. Though in her case it might have been the wound in her side. He should have a look at that, too. When he had time.
“We all need some sleep,” Philippe said, with a tight laugh.
Hoa Phong shrugged, and said nothing.
“Tell me about him.”
“Dân Chay? I don’t know—”
“Try,” Philippe said, gently.
He’d read the papers Isabelle had found: a slow litany of horrors on how to turn a person into a thing—beatings and cages and the repeated insistence that Dân Chay was worth nothing more than the blood he’d cause to be spilled, the wounds he’d inflict. A dog, a pet, rewarded when he did well and hurt mercilessly when he failed. And the worst was that it was a report, a detailed dissection of what they’d done and how they felt the process could be improved for the next time. It wasn’t that it didn’t acknowledge guilt, it was that it didn’t even seem to conceive there was such a thing. Towards the end, he’d felt like setting fire to it all, but it wouldn’t have achieved anything except satisfy his own temper.
“Before,” Hoa Phong said, finally. “He was on earth, most of the time. Or in the other realms.”
Philippe had been an enforcer of Heaven’s will, like Dân Chay, a long, long time ago; bearer of the decrees of the Jade Emperor outside of the palace—attending lavish banquets and celebrations only on his way to somewhere else. He had a vague memory of crossing Dân Chay’s path—a tall, elegant, taciturn man with the air of someone who’d seen entirely too much. It was hard to reconcile with the primal darkness he’d felt in Gare du Nord, foraging for anything it could use to burn him from the inside.
“I remember he didn’t talk much.”
“He had a few friends,” Hoa Phong said. “One of the dragon enforcers—I can’t remember her name.” A silence. “Rong Thi Cam Linh. She was killed a month before he was taken.”
Philippe said, “I can’t turn him aside.”
Hoa Phong was silent for a while.
“I don’t think anyone can fight him. That… was the point.” Of getting him back. Of returning him to the beleaguered Annam and the Court of the Jade Emperor. Another silence. “I don’t think the rules can apply any more. What the Houses did—”
“I know what they did,” Philippe said.
Morningstar. Silverspires. Harrier. A flash of anger as red-hot as liquid iron. How they could take something, anything, and eat at it from the inside out until it became corrupted. Just as they’d taken Isabelle—if death hadn’t stopped her, she’d have become one of them, just as arrogant and as dismissive of others’ well-being.
“So we’re just sitting here waiting for him.”
He’d done that, in the war—sitting behind a wall and waiting in that nerve-racking silence for the other side to break open the door. He’d sworn he would never do it again.
Hoa Phong said finally, “I hadn’t thought it’d come to that.”
Why would she? It wasn’t her fault.
“The box.”
“The box held him, once.” Hoa Phong sighed. “It was bones.”
“His bones?”
“Of course not. His physical body ascended. The bones of his family.” Hoa Phong said.
A silence. What it always meant, being an Immortal: that others would age and die while one remained the same. Philippe’s mortal family had been dust on the wind for so long—their souls passed on to the wheel of rebirth, to make their slow way through the chain of reincarnations towards Nirvana.
“They were the bonds that held him,” he said.
“Yes. I don’t know where it is now.”
In Harrier. Except that House was no longer his jail, was it?
“I know where it is. I don’t know if it’s still whole. But it doesn’t matter. There are threads of khi fire reaching all around Paris. He’s no longer contained. He’s fire.” He looked again at Aunt Ha, shivering with her eyes closed—sitting next to her hadn’t made any difference, but he was going to do it again nevertheless. Just in case, because no one should burn up alone. “Everything he touches burns.”
They’d drawn wards against khi fire—trying to be ready for him, but could anyone really be?
“You should have stopped the refugees,” Hoa Phong said.
Philippe shrugged. “In case one of them is like that man who burned? That’s not a very effective weapon. People burn too fast to pass it on. Aunt Ha happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Which didn’t make it better, of course. But still… Still, from the point of view of the community, he doubted Dân Chay would do the same again. He’d wanted to get a message to them, and now the talking was over. Now there was just fire.
“How are you?” he asked Hoa Phong.
She looked surprised.
“Your wounds.” He’d not offered to look at them, because she’d say no.
A shrug. Her shoulders started crumbling into rotten hoang mai flowers again.
“The same.”
He’d tried everything he could think of. Fallen magic was like a canker at the heart of things. This same magic was now in the Court of the Jade Emperor—the rot climbing into the longevity tiles of the roofs, the peach trees covered in blue-gray fungus, the spirits crumbling into flowers or water or fire.
“I’ll be fine,” Hoa Phong said. “When I’m home.”
He opened his mouth to say she couldn’t be sure, and then shut it. It would have been thoughtless and needlessly wounding. And… he’d felt the power in the impression of the imperial seal on the scroll she’d carried with her. For a moment, he’d been back in the court’s presence, basking in the magic of spirits; for a moment, the past was as vivid and as tremblingly fresh as the previous day. And then he’d remembered the weight of time: the days of wandering Annam; the servitude in House Draken and in House Silverspires; Isabelle’s death and resurrection.
He realized, startled, that Hoa Phong had been speaking for a while.
“I’m sorry?”
Hoa Phong looked at him. She hesitated, then said, a great deal more cautiously, “How can you bear it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Being away.” She set the remnants of her half-nibbled bun on the plate, pushed it away from her with shaking hands. “Everything is wrong here.”
“The food?” Philippe asked, though he knew it wasn’t just that.
“The sky, the language, the food. Even the taste of the air—there’s something that’s not right.” She laid a hand on her wound, gently touching it. “I wake up every morning and I remember that I’m not home.”
“It gets better,” Philippe said finally. He hadn’t felt homesick in so long. There’d been Isabelle to teach, and then the community to help—and things had blurred and thickened around the gaping nostalgia for Annam until he’d almost forgotten its existence. “You find people.”
“These?” Hoa Phong opened her mouth to say something he’d never forgive her for, and then thought better of it. “They can’t fill that hole for me.”
“In time, perhaps.”
“I don’t intend to be here long enough,” Hoa Phong snapped. And then looked at him. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Philippe said.
A small, pregnant silence.
Then Hoa Phong said, “They need every available Immortal to fight, back in Annam. Even the ones they cast out, years ago.”
It was like a blow to the gut, delivered when he’d least expected it. He’d made his peace with the impossibility of return; with the idea that when he eventually died—when his agelessness finally ran out or someone killed him—he’d be buried, not with his ancestors in a monsoon-drenched graveyard, but in a patch of debris-covered earth under the perpetual roiling pall of magic. The idea that he might go back—that he might once again breathe in the lemongrass, jasmine petals and garlic, and count grains of
rice straight from the paddies…
“You don’t know what you’re offering.”
Hoa Phong drew herself to her full height. The outline of petals shimmered on her cheeks and forehead. She was trembling as though she’d disintegrate at any time.
“I know perfectly well. As I know the limits of the power the court vested in me. It is my right and prerogative to offer this.”
“Isabelle,” he said.
A shrug, from Hoa Phong. “She’s your student. The court will respect that.” A long, weighing look. She still didn’t like Isabelle, but she’d taken the measure of him. “You think whatever she is will stop the Jade Emperor from welcoming her in? He employed Dân Chay.”
“Elder aunt—”
“Don’t.” She raised a hand. “You don’t want to talk about it, and I’m not in the mood for lies. But the offer stands.”
“I…” He was surprised to find a pit of fear opening in his belly. “Let me think about it. We need to survive this first. We…”
He stopped, then. “Isabelle,” he said.
Hoa Phong had sat down in her chair again.
“I don’t understand…”
It was dark outside, and the first stars were shining beneath the pall of magical pollution over Paris.
“She’s still not home, and it’s after dark,” Philippe said. “The aunts would have known to let her go.” What if Dân Chay had found her—what if he could smell Philippe’s magic just as he’d unerringly felt his presence? “Where is she?”
* * *
Isabelle had been with Aunt Thuy, the midwife. Aunt Thuy was apologetic as she stood on the door of her narrow apartment, the kitchen of which was crowded with bottles of rice porridge for babies, and baskets of supplies for their mothers. Isabelle had left two hours ago, and she had no idea where she’d been going. She’d looked determined—and Aunt Thuy thought she’d been clutching a piece of paper, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Thank you,” Philippe said, and walked out, uncertain of what to do now.
Determined meant that she hadn’t been snatched by anyone on her way home, surely? But she was, in so many ways, newborn and naive, and the little she knew of khi elements wouldn’t help her. He gathered a fistful of khi earth in his hands—the element of love, of faithfulness—and carefully wove it into a hook: a pattern searching for Isabelle in the vastness of the city.
Nothing. A vague feeling she wasn’t far away. It wasn’t even strong enough to give him a direction.
Where now?
At this late hour la Goutte d’Or was mostly dockers celebrating after receiving their pay. In a café near Aunt Thuy’s house, Philippe caught a glimpse of Tade, the burly Yoruba man who’d tried to help with Aunt Ha. He was arm-wrestling with Sébastien, another of the workers—Tade’s simple tattoo on his right forearm shone with a rippling light under the lanterns of the café. They’d drawn in a couple of the refugees, too: a man and a woman still wearing the blue and black of Harrier were watching from the edge of the crowd.
The smell of rice wine and grape wine hung over them all—light and laughter and an utter lack of awareness of the threat hanging over them. No, that was unfair. Why should they not celebrate? It wouldn’t change anything.
Philippe pushed his way through the crowd to get to one of the waiters. No, they hadn’t seen Isabelle. By then, Tade had finished his bout of arm-wrestling, and came bounding up.
“Expecting trouble?” he asked.
“Not really,” Philippe said. “Not yet. I’m looking for Isabelle.”
Tade raised an eyebrow. “Here?”
Where was she? What could have happened to her? A message meant a meeting, but there were so many meetings that could end badly.
“I don’t think so,” Philippe said. “Can you ask around?”
No one had seen her. Tade dropped by the table with the refugees on his way back, and chatted with them for a while. When he left, there was a pitcher of rice wine on their table, and they were cautiously sipping at the glasses he’d poured for them. He came back to Philippe.
“Sorry. Got to break the ice. Not everyone is happy about taking in the refugees, so they’re wary. People think we have little enough as we do, and they’ll take the bread out of our mouths or some such nonsense.”
“But you don’t,” Philippe said.
He’d been one of these refugees once, except that no immigrant community had wanted to be burdened with him, and the only welcoming ones had been the gangs in the streets. How things had changed.
Tade snorted. “You’ve all been very friendly to me even though I’m not Annamite. It’d be churlish to be choosy.” He seemed embarrassed, and quickly changed the subject. “Come on. Let’s try a few other cafés. Maybe someone has seen something.”
The tattoo on his right arm continued to glow as he walked. Philippe stared at it, until he realized he was being rude.
“Sorry. Just wondering about that.”
“It’s a mnemonic.” Tade shrugged. “The creation myth. A way of remembering how we came to be here. Not a bad one to have away from home.”
“It’s glowing,” Philippe said.
The strands of khi elements had nestled in each of the strokes on Tade’s arm, outlining them in rainbow light.
“Yeah. I don’t know about that,” Tade said. “Something in the air, maybe.”
Danger. Death. A time for comfort if there was any; but it wasn’t his magic or his business to pry.
“I don’t know either,” Philippe said.
The next two cafés hadn’t seen Isabelle. But the third one they tried—a small terrace on the edge of the raised rue de Jessaint bridge—remembered her.
“She was walking fast. Southwards. Towards the hospital,” the owner said.
He eyed Philippe nervously, as if on the verge of prostrating himself. Philippe did his best to ignore it.
Once outside, Tade said, “She wasn’t going to the hospital.”
“No,” Philippe said. Lariboisière was decrepit, overworked, and with a tendency to infect people with bacteria they hadn’t had on their way in. “It was getting dark. She’s not going to head into gang territory, is she?”
Tade thought, for a while.
“There is a place,” he said.
* * *
It was a small, almost invisible café on the edge of the Annamite community: in a small street behind Gare du Nord without any streetlamps, a place with boarded-up windows that looked more like a fortress than a place to get merrily drunk. Three steps down from the cobbled street led to a barricaded door.
“Allow me,” Tade said.
He walked in front of Philippe, and tapped in a complex pattern of knocks against the door. The judas hole slid open—it was so small Philippe couldn’t see who was behind it, and it was dark in any case.
“We’re closed.”
Philippe had had enough, his searching spell had faded away, and he didn’t have the energy to cast it again.
“I think not.” He called the khi elements in la Goutte d’Or to him; let them glow in all their glory, from the deep red of fire to the green of wood and the shimmering, dark depths of water. “Let me in.”
The door opened so fast Tade almost lost his balance.
The owner was a woman with tanned skin and bleached hair the color of pristine snow who looked, aghast, at Philippe as he shouldered his way in.
“I’m sorry, Nene,” Tade said. “We need…”
Philippe was already scanning the main room—a smoke-encrusted affair, redolent of herbs and spices. Waiters carried platters of food, open sandwiches of cheese and glistening marmalade, or pickles and ham. People who’d been deep into their cups scurried to get out of the way, spilling full tankards of brown, spicy liquid. Not all of them were Annamite: some wore, inconspicuously, the arms of Houses on their shoulders or jackets. A meeting place.
By now, the fear that had seized him was a vise of molten metal around his chest.
Isabelle. No.
&n
bsp; Yes.
There.
At the back of the room was a door to a small courtyard, where people crowded to smoke pipes of something acrid and unpleasant that couldn’t possibly be pure tobacco. Philippe elbowed his way through the crowd, using the khi elements to repulse those who didn’t get out of the way fast enough. Behind him, he could still hear Tade arguing with Nene about their intrusion. He didn’t care.
“Isabelle!”
The courtyard was a small square overgrown by weeds, its walls bending inwards as though they’d collapse at any moment, with a scattering of wrought-iron tables painted in garish colors. It was all but deserted, and the reason why became clear in a heartbeat.
Because, when Isabelle turned, startled, holding a fistful of her dress in clenched hands, Philippe saw the man she’d been with.
Red and silver swallowtail suit, with an embroidered patch showing a broad, two-handed sword against the spires of Notre-Dame; and a clerical collar, and an utterly familiar face from an unpleasant past.
Father Javier, from House Silverspires.
“You’re not having her,” Philippe said, gathering the khi elements into a shield. “She’s not yours.”
Javier raised an eyebrow. He rose, unhurriedly, from the table he’d been sitting at—it struck Philippe, belatedly, that there was no one else there. Just Javier and Isabelle—and that the table held two cups of tea and a plate of potatoes with herb. Hardly the work of a kidnapper. They’d been…
They’d been talking, which was almost worse.
“Isabelle—”
“I wanted to know,” Isabelle said.
“Know what? This is the House that sent you to die!”
“No.” Isabelle’s face was flushed, but her gaze was hard. “I chose to die, Philippe. I remember. I remember everything from the time I Fell onto the city. It was my choice, to defend what I believed in.”
He was losing her again. He’d lost her once to the House, their new-found friendship disintegrating as the House made her arrogant, and uncaring, and inclined to sacrifice anyone and anything if she thought it would protect their rule.
The House of Sundering Flames Page 24