“You’re alive,” Asmodeus said slowly, carefully.
For a moment, raw, naked fear on his face; and then it was gone, smoothed out. He held on to Thuan’s hand for a moment more, lowering it to his lips—trembling, pliant skin—before letting it go.
Thuan shrugged. “It was a little uncertain for a while.”
“Mmmm.”
Asmodeus’s gaze took in the devastation of the room: the bed that was little more than splinters of wood; the distant sound of things still collapsing, of moans and pleadings for help. His face didn’t move. He rose, with barely a tremor to his legs, and headed for the door with not a word spoken. As he did so, Thuan caught the glint of a blade in his hand.
“Asmodeus!”
No answer. He was moving fast, too—one moment more and he’d just be out of the room, gracefully sidestepping the ruins of the double doors. Thuan tried to force himself up on wobbling legs—gave up and called the last scraps of khi water in the room to change shapes and wrap the long, serpentine body of his dragon shape around Asmodeus. There was nothing left in the room: even the khi currents of fire he’d seen only a moment ago were stale and weak, as if they, too, had burned.
Asmodeus looked faintly annoyed for the first time.
“This is no time for games.”
“And it is time for hurting someone? A knife isn’t going to solve anything.”
“I disagree. Blades are such a handy way to solve problems. I’ve been too indulgent, but this ends now. I’m getting the answers I want.”
“In the Ancestors’ name, who are you going to get your answers from? There’s no one here…”
Emmanuelle.
As if what they needed right now was a war with House Silverspires. They could make Selene swallow many things—because she had to, because she was weak—but she would never forgive harming her partner. Thuan tightened his grip around Asmodeus’s legs, rearing up to his full and considerable height, his antlers bumping the ceiling and flakes of mold falling around them.
“No.”
Asmodeus pushed down—using his strength, not to widen the coils, but to step out of them. Thuan tightened his grip.
“You said it yourself—she always tries to help people. Does that sound like someone who’ll bring in a weapon to destroy Hawthorn?”
If she’d even survived. Not everyone in Hawthorn would have. Another thought to be clamped down on, because it was just useless at this juncture.
“She might still be its unwitting agent.”
“In which case she wouldn’t tell you, would she? She wouldn’t even know she had the information!”
His entire body was wobbling. He hadn’t thought Asmodeus would still be so strong. Where did he get his energy from?
“Pain would jog her memory, I’m sure.”
“And alienate us and Silverspires forever. You know this, Asmodeus.” He used, not the endearment—but the stern tone of a parent for a misbehaving child. “There’s a House that needs our help, right now. That’s what matters.”
His muscles felt like jelly. If he didn’t manage to quell Asmodeus soon, he was going to collapse altogether, adding to the list of people who needed help.
A long, drawn-out silence. Then the pressure on his scales abruptly eased, and the knife in Asmodeus’s hand vanished back into the folds of his singed swallowtail jacket.
“You have a point.”
Several, in fact. Thuan felt too exhausted to shift back into human shape—the thought of walking was making his coils tremble.
“Let’s go see what the situation is.”
A sharp, considering look from Asmodeus, but of course his husband had never been the kind to ask people how they were doing, or to drag them to hospital.
“Let’s.”
* * *
It was sheer chaos. The corridor was still filled with smoke, and with bodies, thrown haphazardly against walls and chandeliers. Some of these were still moving—Thuan flew up to disentangle a serving boy who was half folded over the burned remnants of a door, and whose injuries seemed to be nothing more than superficial. The boy insisted on walking, trailing after them with a glazed look of shock on his face.
Not one window was intact, and all the glasses on tables had shattered too, the fragments turned to deadly projectiles. Most of the bodies they saw were pockmarked with wounds.
Asmodeus’s face didn’t move as they went towards the infirmary, but Thuan could almost taste his mood in the air. The anger. The rising despondency. Not far from what he felt.
“The wards helped,” Asmodeus said, as they turned into one of the large dining rooms. “Otherwise everyone inside would have had their brains rattled in their skulls.”
And have died almost instantly. Yes. Thuan didn’t answer, because he had no words for the magnitude of the devastation. In the dining room, glass shards glinted in the charred remnants of food and chairs. There was still a faint smell of peppers and meat mixed with the sharper, more acrid one of burning.
“Fire,” he said.
If every glass had shattered, that meant the lanterns, too. The one in their room had snuffed itself out, but who knew about all the others in the House? This late at night, most of the large chandeliers were extinguished. That was their salvation.
“The kitchens—”
“The armory.”
“Wait,” Thuan said. “We have an armory?”
Asmodeus didn’t rise to the jibe. Bad sign. He normally took to sarcasm like a fish to water.
“Remnant of the war. My predecessor loved to show it off. I think it’s garish and sends utterly the wrong message. One doesn’t have to show weapons to instill fear. But if it’s on fire then we’ll have another explosion.”
Another two people in the debris. Asmodeus used magic to dig them out, his face showing nothing of the exertion such a spell, unaided, must have cost him.
Thuan carried the one with shattered legs. The other one, a tall, imperious woman who looked to be one of the House’s magicians, tried to bow to Asmodeus, who stopped her with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“Not now, Albane.”
By now Thuan had four wounded people on his back and was moving much more carefully. He was also keeping a mental tally of all the places they needed to check. The armory. The kitchens. The nurseries. Oh, Ancestors, the children. Ai Nhi. Camille.
“Can you walk?” Thuan asked.
Albane nodded, her face a peculiar mixture of shock and awe.
“The Court of Birth,” Thuan said.
Asmodeus said, “I already sent someone.”
“Who…?”
Thuan tried to turn, but his husband’s touch on his scales stopped him. He’d throw people off, if he tried.
“The first person we found.” Asmodeus’s face was grim. “Come on.”
Everywhere the same devastation: people who’d died pierced by shattered glass, by caved-in floors, by bookcases and wardrobes thrown at them with frightful force. People wandering, shocked and dazed, calling for loved ones and not finding them.
“Unka Thuan!” Sang was herding Ai Nhi, the little dragon positively bouncing when she saw Thuan. “Unka Asmo!”
Well, at least she wasn’t scared of Asmodeus at all. Thuan winced.
“Child, I’ve told you not to call him—”
“Leave it,” Asmodeus said. “As I said, not now.”
Ai Nhi appeared unharmed—or, more accurately, her wounds had already closed up with the customary speed of dragons’ healing. Thuan could see faint scars on her face.
“The windows exploded, and then Auntie Sang was so worried!”
Behind her were Asmodeus’s sister Berith, her wife Françoise. Berith was holding Camille on her shoulders, and Françoise was clearly nursing an injured arm. Her eyes were caked with dried blood. Camille was staring, wide-eyed, at the devastation.
“Big ’eight, unka. Big big ’ight.”
Asmodeus nodded, curtly, at Berith—frowned, when he saw Françoise.
; “Can you see?” he asked.
They stared at him. Clearly they hadn’t even noticed the blood round Françoise’s eyes.
“Hospital,” Thuan said. “Now.”
* * *
That the hospital was working at all was a miracle in a day of disasters. Iaris had lost workers—Ahmed had died in the blast along with half the hospital staff. Mia was moving with a cane until her innate magic healed the injuries she’d sustained, and other doctors were clearly barely in a state to be healing other patients.
When the convoy headed by Thuan and Asmodeus appeared at the door, Iaris’s face was terrible to behold—going from despondency to incandescent hope in a fraction of a second.
“My lord! I thought—”
A low, amused laugh from Asmodeus. “I’m a hard person to kill. So is Thuan.”
Iaris looked less than happy, but at that moment Thuan couldn’t care less about what she thought. He slid to the floor, exhausted, while nurses and orderlies helped slide off the five people they’d managed to cram on to his back.
When he looked up again, Asmodeus had wandered off, but his smell was all over the tray with tea and biscuits that had been left by his side. Mia was fussing over him in a very uncertain way, sticking bandages on as if not quite sure where they should go. Thuan made a low, growling sound in the back of his throat.
“I’m fine,” he said. The tea cup was too small for his muzzle, but he managed to gulp down the biscuits. They slid into his stomach, a drop of sugar in a wasteland of emptiness. It would have to do. Food, he guessed, was going to become scarcer and scarcer. “The children—”
“Taken care of.” Mia moved away as if he’d bite. To be fair, he probably could. “Ai Nhi was clinging to you and didn’t want to go.”
“Tell her I’ll see her later,” Thuan said. If he still had energy—but no, he owed her that. “And ask about Vinh Ly, will you? Is she still in her cell?”
He pushed himself up, coil after coil, changing back to human as he did so. He didn’t mind being a dragon, but the dependents would—and this wasn’t a time to remind them he was a foreigner to the House. He paused long enough to sip the tea, inhaling its harsh fragrance. Bergamot. Obviously.
The room he was in was packed with people already, but it was an oasis of quiet compared to the rest of the wards. As he pushed his way through the wounded he caught a glimpse of Lan, organizing what looked like orderlies with hospital trolleys. She was obviously using them to ferry wounded people back to the hospital, loading them with everyone who could sit and putting those who couldn’t into their laps. She waved at Thuan, her face breaking into a smile, and then turned back to what she was doing.
“My lord!” It was Alis, a woman who worked in the Court of Gardens.
Thuan stopped, smiled at her in what he hoped was a reassuring way.
“How are you?”
She had a bandage over one eye, and dried blood on her face, a strong, animal smell wafting up to Thuan. A small puppy with white fluffy hair was curled in her lap, barking forlornly at her.
“I’m all right, but we can’t find Mother. I don’t know how she’ll do without us…”
Thuan tried not to think of the worst case scenarios.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” he said.
Alis looked at him for a while.
“Ask,” he said. He wanted to be gentle and kind, but it was hard.
“My lord—what happened? The House…”
Thuan stopped, and took time to phrase his answer carefully.
“An attack. We’ll find out where it’s coming from, and Lord Asmodeus will help me deal with it. You’re safe now.”
“Deal with it.” Alis’s voice relaxed.
It was amazing what the mention of Asmodeus had done. It shouldn’t have been any way to run a House, but he was their monster—the one who held the dark at bay from them, and savaged those who sought to harm them. And if blood and pain were the price to pay for his protection, they gladly would.
Thuan had words about that, none of them pretty. But it wasn’t the time.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said again.
She was only the first of a stream of people desperate for news and comfort, all of them relieved that their head of House was still alive. By the fifth one or so everything blurred—which wasn’t fair to them, but they needed him anyway, and he continued to mouth platitudes and hoped to Heaven his general fuzziness wasn’t showing too much.
By the time he reached Iaris, he was exhausted.
She’d made her office in the antechamber of the morgue—it hadn’t been the hospital morgue per se, but adjacent to it, a wealth of mothballed storerooms where nobody had stored anything for years. It was already overflowing with corpses. Thuan could smell decay in the air—and it would get worse.
Iaris looked up when he came in. Her smooth, ageless face was now drawn, showing something close to her true age—thin, translucent skin and the shadow of wrinkles on her forehead and cheeks and wrists. “My lord.”
On her left side was Asmodeus, leaning against the desk with the same graceful ease as if it had been his own office. He was deep in conversation with two of the House’s magicians.
“I’ll need people making sweeps of each wing, telling people to send their wounded to hospital, and to help them dig out those who are still stuck under furniture or rubble. And to clear away the corpses, too. Iaris!”
“My lord?” There was markedly more deference in that tone than in hers for Thuan.
“We should burn the bodies.”
Thuan found his voice. “You can’t.”
Asmodeus turned his way. He’d combed the debris out of his hair, and found a pair of unbroken glasses—how he’d managed the glasses was a miracle in and of itself.
“Explain.”
His voice was smooth, utterly confident, but Thuan could read the signs. It was his mask on again, and nothing but extreme weariness beneath. He was going to snap, and Heaven help the people nearest to him when that happened.
“Too many people are looking for family members and friends. If they can’t find them among the living, they’ll look for them among the dead. People need to know, Asmodeus.” A raised eyebrow. “Perhaps you don’t, but most people can’t live without knowing if their loved ones are dead or alive. They need closure, even it means staring at a corpse. They need time to grieve. Time to make their peace with it.” Thuan was half-convinced Asmodeus would just shrug and move on, rather than be faced with loss. But that wasn’t the point. “If you burn the bodies without leaving people time to identify them, the dependents will riot.”
“The risks of sickness—”
“Ice,” Thuan said firmly. “The dragons can freeze an entire area of the House.”
“Oh, believe me, I remember.” Asmodeus’s smile was sharp. Dragon ice had almost ended the House.
“He’s right,” Iaris said unexpectedly. She sounded like she was spitting out something particularly sour. “People need to identify the bodies. And we’ll need to keep a record, too, to know who is dead and who is simply missing.”
“So we can continue to search for them in the ruins?” Asmodeus’s face was distant again. “Slim chances. But then, so is the margin between life and death. I agree.”
A pause. He was letting Thuan take the lead.
“Let’s do it,” Thuan said. “Anything else?”
He saw the look on Iaris’s face, and knew that it was only the beginning of all they needed to do.
FIFTEEN
The House, Dying
Thuan must have snatched sleep, at some point. He wasn’t sure. The night passed in a blur, a confusion of meetings and decisions made about wounded, and supplies, and fires put out in various parts of the House; of corpses collected in the morgue, and lists of the wounded and the dead; of those trapped in debris that the Court of Strength was still trying to dig out. When he looked up, it was morning, and someone was shaking him awake.
“Berith,” he said
, his eyes gummed by sleep. Her dress had been vivid blue at one point, but now it was torn, and stained with blood and other fluids he couldn’t identify. “I’m sorry, I said I’d come and see Ai Nhi—”
“Later, Thuan. Can’t you feel it?” And, when he gaped at her, she merely pulled him up. “Asmodeus.”
He felt the House, then, faint and struggling at the back of his mind. It had been screaming at him for a while, except that it was stuck behind a pane of glass and its voice was tinny, incoherent noises.
Berith’s face was grim. “He’s my Fall-brother. The link between us doesn’t depend on the House.”
“Where…?” Thuan said. “Never mind. Tell me on the way.”
He ran out of the overcrowded ward—so many people, such a press—past the mass of those still outside, looking at lists Iaris had had hammered on the hospital’s front door, of the dead and the living. One of the neighboring rooms had had their ceiling cave in: dependents were still clearing away the debris.
Here.
Here they finally had space. He turned to see that Berith was still following him.
“The gardens,” she said, her face grim.
“Hop on?”
He turned and stretched and changed, his body’s coils pressed against the walls. She clambered over him, clinging to the spur at the nape of his neck.
He tossed his mane, stretched his long serpentine back until his antlers scraped the wreckage of chandeliers, and flew through the ruin of the House.
* * *
The gardens had never been pretty, exactly: they were still covered in the brackish waters of the Seine, and most of the pristine lawns had the slight elastic give of waterlogged land. Thuan had never been sure how plants grew at all—some of Lan’s magic, as part of her work in the Court of Gardens.
Now there was no magic, just a churned mass of mud, debris, and exhausted khi elements. Trees had been ripped from the ground and flung into the river; some of them had burned where they stood, and pointed to the sky with skeletal branches.
The House of Sundering Flames Page 26