“Guy,” she said. “You’re talking about Lord Guy.”
“Of course. Who else?”
“The man…”
The one with the hard gaze, the one who’d looked into Virginie’s eyes before turning away.
Morningstar’s face was hard. “That one won’t be bothering you. He can’t come here. Not yet.”
Hiding. They were hiding, and he was trying to gauge if he could run away once more—shedding more of them if necessary. Whom did he need, among them?
Virginie. Charles. The magicians. Of course he’d only bothered with the likes of them because they’d made things easier. But, if he could merely grab Virginie and go, why didn’t he? She was between him and her daughter, but she wasn’t arrogant or oblivious enough to believe she presented any kind of threat to him.
Exhausted. He was bright and terrible and possessed magic she’d never been allowed—and of which Virginie had only been allowed fleeting tastes—but he had his limits. Running from the man—whoever he was—and from Harrier had exhausted all his resources.
Limits.
He had limits.
Which meant her chance would come, if she rested enough. If she could find a way—any way—to outflank him.
Frédérique rested her head against her daughter’s, and tightened her grip on her. There had to be a way.
She would be ready.
SIXTEEN
The Price of Power
The House was a wreck. Aurore had thought one of the explosions, the most westerly and southerly one, might be Hawthorn, and it had been. It ought to have brought her comfort, or some kind of vicious satisfaction. She was just exhausted, her breath clogged in her throat, her legs shaking under her. The hook that had brought her there had cared little about how it reeled her in, and she’d run the last hundred meters, pulled back to her feet every time she fell, dragged another few meters on rough cobblestones. Everything hurt, and her clothes were wet with sweat and perhaps blood. She wiped her eyes, shaking. Now that she was at the gates, the hook was fading, but she couldn’t stay still. It would come back. It had always come back.
She tore her tunic open to reveal the shape of the disk on her chest, and walked between the ruined gates.
Everything after that was a blur. Pristine lawn covered in charred debris. Wounded dependents of the House limping or in shock, oblivious to her presence. Buildings that were charred ruins, the elegant staircases sharply cut off midway through their ascent. And inside—corridors with peeling wallpapers, rooms where the roof had collapsed, rooms without floors. A flood of people at gates she couldn’t see, pressing against her. She elbowed her way through, ignoring their frowns.
She was in front of an orderly with no memory of how she’d got there, breathing through lungs that felt filled with dust and debris. The disk was no longer quiescent, but beating slowly and steadily on her chest—the hook gently dragging her to the right, back to its maker.
Asmodeus.
How dare he?
Another orderly was looming over her—had been for a while, but she hadn’t seen him before. A whispered, worried conversation, and then they pushed and prodded her into an office, a hastily cleared space in what looked like the antechamber of the morgue.
The ageless, exhausted woman behind the desk took one look at Aurore and the disk on her chest, and snapped her fingers in annoyance.
“Head of House business. Get her there,” she said with a vicious satisfaction.
The orderlies half-carried, half-dragged Aurore into a room, and threw her on the floor. The door closed with an audible snick, locked against all her attempts to escape. The disk against her chest was silent now, a gentle warmth spreading from its edges, a profoundly alien and disturbing feeling. A faint smell of bergamot and citrus hung in the air—for a moment Aurore was back in the cells, feeling the knife against her skin. Nothing had stopped him then, nothing would stop him now. She didn’t have an ounce of the power she’d need to hold him at bay.
Bastard.
Aurore wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of humility, not even for her own survival. She pulled herself to her knees, and then shakily stood up, bracing herself with an anger she wasn’t sure was wise, or sustainable.
“My lord,” she said.
And was startled to meet the eyes of a child, who looked to be about five or six years old and fairly bouncing up and down on the floor, with discarded sheets of paper and coloring pencils behind her.
“Unka Thuan, Unka Thuan, there’s a lady!”
Behind her, a young Annamite who’d been kneeling on the floor rose as well, eyes scrunched up in confusion and hands brushing the top of his topknot. There was a single bed in the room: the person in it was a sleeping Asmodeus, who still exuded grace and menace even when unconscious.
The Annamite’s eyes narrowed when he focused on Aurore.
“You.” And then, with a sharp look at the child, “Time for you to go, child.”
The child pouted. Her face shifted between human and something else: a large muzzle and scales on her cheeks. Aurore caught her breath, held it. She’d known there were dragons in Hawthorn, but…
“Now,” the Annamite said.
“You’re going to be unpleasant again,” the child said.
It was said with such glee Aurore almost took a step back.
“Perhaps.” The Annamite’s voice was gentle. “Sometimes you have to be unpleasant in the name of the House. Come on.”
He walked to the door, and argued in a low voice with a guard, who came back and escorted the child over her protestations that she was tough enough to watch, and anyway it was going to be more fun than what she’d done so far.
The Annamite came back into the room, and stared at her. He wore the colors of Hawthorn, silver and gray perfectly cut against his slim form.
“You’re a dragon too,” she said. “The head of the House.” Asmodeus’s husband.
“Lord Thuan,” he said. He walked to her—he smelled of nothing but distant brine, and the shadows of antlers hung in the air around him. He laid a hand, gently, on the disk on her chest. “House business.” It pulsed, stretching towards Thuan’s fingers as if they were all part of the same thing. “You’re the one from the cells, aren’t you? His pet project.” He didn’t sound impressed.
“I have a name.”
“You do.”
He waited, politely—as if he didn’t have men at the door, ready to beat her up if she displeased him.
“Aurore,” she snapped. And, out of nowhere, “Nguyen Thi Bach Diem.”
“White Flame.” His voice was thoughtful. “Interesting choice of name. Very… original.” The way he said it, it was clearly a failure of her parents.
Her cheeks flamed. “Not everyone can claim centuries of tradition.”
“Indeed.”
He still had his hand on the disk, his fingers to it as if he was unsure if he was going to rip it out wholesale. When he withdrew, it gave a little squeeze—a memory of the pain that had shot through her—and it took all she had to not fall to her knees, gasping.
“Take it out,” she said. “Please. I’ve done my duty by him…” She gestured to the bed where Asmodeus lay.
Thuan’s face revealed nothing of what he thought.
“I don’t know what kind of duty he could impose on you.”
How could he not know?
“A day and a night in Harrier,” she said, spitting the words out. “He wanted a spy in the House, but there’s nothing but ruins and fire and dead people!”
Thuan stared. Then he walked back to the disk, and tapped a finger against it. The same feeling Aurore had had in the streets spread to her chest—the one going up the soles of her feet when she’d tripped against the threads, except that this one was ice cold instead of warm. Khi water. Of course. She should have known. And the red shining threads had been fire, the element that Dân Chay seemed to wield with frightening ease. She could see the khi elements now. Had been able to ever since
she’d seen Dân Chay.
She wasn’t about to tell Thuan. Information was power, and he was going to share it with Asmodeus in any case.
At length, Thuan said, in a changed voice, “I’m sorry.”
He tapped the disk again and it fell into his hand. Aurore stared. Had it been so simple all along? It seemed impossible that something that caused her so much pain could be so small.
“Pain every time you didn’t follow directions. I ought to have known he wouldn’t let go of anyone easily.” He sounded like he was half talking to himself. Then he shook himself—droplets of shimmering water hung in the air for a second before vanishing. “Here,” he said, handing her the token. “It’s harmless now. Just wood. You can get the wounds checked out, though I’m really not sure how long it’ll take before someone comes along. We’re a bit overwhelmed.” He sounded rueful. “And then we’ll need help moving bodies, mostly.”
Aurore stared at him. “I’m not House.”
Thuan looked back. “I know. We could use some help, all the same.”
“Because you’ve been nice?” She spat the words out. “Because you’ve been kind enough to remove what shouldn’t have been there in the first place? You don’t even know who I am or where I came from.”
He didn’t even know about her family. He didn’t care. Why would he? He was the House’s through and through, no better than his husband.
“Aurore—”
“Don’t touch me.”
She was up and running to the door before she could think it through. An abysmally pointless move: the guards would stop her before she got three paces away. How could she hope to get away?
The disk in her hand grew warm again—a net of cold magic settling around it, shining with a cold blue light. More spells she hadn’t asked for, in that usual high-handed way of Immortals.
Thuan said, “Let her go. She’s under my protection.”
He wasn’t her master. And she wasn’t going to let him put more chains on her, more ties to bind her to a House she didn’t care one jot about.
Away. She had to get away.
* * *
No one else tried to stop Aurore. She wasn’t sure if it was the disk—which had stopped shining by then, and was only slightly cool to the touch, like a memory of water—or if everyone was overwhelmed. She hadn’t managed three hours in Hawthorn before being found out, but now the House was an utter shambles.
Good.
She was halfway out of the House before something caught her eye: a building that seemed to be standing alone in the midst of the ruins. When she got closer, she saw what had caught her attention: the door, which still stood whole, had a faded pattern of double stars. Odd, but not worth—
Wait.
She stared at the stars—reached out, and rubbed at the glass with the sleeves of her tunic. Yes. It was faint, but there’d been something else underneath. A raised network of sharp points.
The antlers of a deer.
She closed her eyes, trying to think back before all of this had happened—before the cells, before Harrier, before Dân Chay and Morningstar. She’d learned the map by heart—which directions to take through the gardens to get to the artifact’s hiding place.
Left, here. Three meters at a hundred and twenty degrees, here. Another five at ninety degrees, past the fountain—there was no fountain anymore, just the rubble-choked ruin of one. Seven meters more, past the two cherub statues—not the babies with wings, but the six-winged, towering monstrosities that looked as though they’d reach out and grab her, no matter how devastated they were.
When, out of breath, she looked up, she was in the gardens again, staring at a building she hadn’t seen before. It was isolated and small, like someone’s home. A servant’s house? The doors had been blasted open, and of its four walls only one remained. By its side was the ruin of another building: this one had no walls remaining at all, and just a deep, charred indentation on the earth from which sprouted a layer of ivy.
Something was wrong.
That wasn’t ivy. It was thorns. Small, slender branches with hundreds of small, glistening thorns like a hedge or a rose bush.
Or a hawthorn.
There was no way the thorns could grow, not with the blast. Why were they not singed?
The disk in her hand flared to life again, and a feeling on the nape of her neck told her she was being observed. She turned, and saw them, watching her.
They were the size of children, but that was all they had of humanity. Their bodies were woven of thorns—their chests an elaborate impression of ribs and heart seen through cages of branches, their arms long, curving branches bending into a soft curve at the elbow, more like a tree in the wind than an articulation. Their faces were twigs and thorns, and there was deep darkness where their eyes should have been. Power roiled as they moved—magic reaching out, pinning her to the ground as surely as Asmodeus’s magic had held her in place.
“I got lost—” she started, and a three-fingered hand rested on her lips, sharp enough to wound.
Don’t lie.
“There’s something hidden here. An artifact…”
Laughter, brittle and thunderous.
There is nothing here but us. The same hand lifted her face, tilting it left and right. She’ll do, the child said.
Another one was prying open her hand, staring at the disk, lifting it to find the burn-marks underneath.
Is she not House?
No, the first child said. She has nothing of the House in her.
Magic again, foraging in her guts until she thought she’d puke—but she was held upright as surely as a fly in a spider’s web.
A long, measured look between them, a conversation she wasn’t privy to. Thorns. Children of thorns. She didn’t know who they were, but she could guess.
“Did he send you?” Aurore asked.
A head, cocked her way like that of a bird.
Who?
“Asmodeus.”
She ought to know he’d never let her go, even if Thuan had a moment of weakness where she was concerned.
A sound like branches shaken in the wind. She realized with a shock that it was laughter.
We send ourselves, child. The bindings holding her loosened a fraction: she tried to lift a foot, and still couldn’t. For the good of the House.
“I don’t understand,” Aurore said. “What do you want with me?”
She already knew some of the answer—it was highly unlikely they were going to give her a kiss and a pat—but information was information.
Another sigh, halfway between the wind and the creak of parquet floors.
The House is weak.
Too weak.
The wards need blood to be replenished.
Blood and magic.
“I don’t have any magic,” Aurore said, trying to control her rising panic.
They wanted to take her apart to sustain the House. Not this. Not this death.
A gentle tracing of fingertips on her hand, beneath the disk.
Fire, the child whispered.
Khi fire. The tiger. The world, burning. The lines under her feet, springing to life as she ran.
“That’s nothing,” she said. “Not even a whisper of what you’d need.”
Laughter, dry and amused. Asmodeus’s laughter.
We’re the judges of what we need, child.
And hands on her wrists and around her neck, tightening.
No. Aurore pushed with her right hand, trying to raise the disk she held in one hand.
“I’m under your lord’s protection.” It hurt to admit to that, but pride could come later. Survival first. “He said I shouldn’t be touched!”
A pause. The child who had a hand around her neck didn’t loosen it, but the other one—the first one who had spoken—looked at her as if puzzled.
You’re hurting.
Aurore swallowed the angry retort that came to mind, and forced herself to be calm.
“You’re holding me.”
/> That’s not what we meant, the first child said. Its hand rested on Aurore’s chest, just below where the disk had been. It hurts you, to admit you’re beholden to the House. Why?
Aurore debated lying, then gave up.
“It’s not my House. It’s not my home. Please. I just want to go home to see my family. To make sure they’re not hurt.”
I have a city to burn, Dân Chay had said.
Cassiopée. Marianne. She wasn’t even sure they were alive. But if they weren’t… then she’d track down Dân Chay and Morningstar and burn them to the ground.
That same creaking laughter.
I like her. Always looking to protect her own, and never bowing down to anyone or anything.
Like doesn’t come into it. If we spare her, how will we replenish the House?
A pause, then. One of them turned to her with fluid inhumanity.
Tell me, mortal. Would you give your life, to protect what’s yours?
Aurore, startled, said, “Of course.”
The child nodded, with grim satisfaction. Then they will, too.
The dependents? another child asked.
A hiss. We can’t touch them. We’ve never taken from our own.
Why shouldn’t we?
He said we couldn’t. A hiss. That we aren’t like the other Houses. That we care.
He. Asmodeus. Caring. Aurore smothered a bitter laugh.
“He doesn’t care.” Her voice burned like acid. “He’s never cared.”
The empty place on her chest, where the disk had been, felt like an open wound.
Heads of wood and twigs turned in inhuman unison.
She doesn’t know.
“Of course I do!” Aurore yelled. No House-bound had ever paid any attention to her or what she wanted—was it any wonder the House wouldn’t either? “I was with him. He was the one who gave me the disk. He only ever thinks of himself, of how he can use and hurt people for his own pleasure.” And, more viciously, without a shred of hesitation, “You’re the same. You’re all the same, all the Houses, all the House-bound. You take and take and grind it all into magic to feed yourselves. You’re all the same! Why wouldn’t you take your own?”
The House of Sundering Flames Page 28