A silence. She realized, then, that they’d all turned to her, their faces frozen in that same mildly curious expression, as if watching a dog walking upright on two legs. They could crush her in a heartbeat. Her brain caught up, then, clamped her lips shut. But it was too late. The child closest to her wrapped its fingers around her neck—their tips, resting, lightly, on her larynx, a reminder it needed only to move to crush it. Fear choked her. To die, bound to Hawthorn…
A child said, The House is dying. What matters is that some survive, does it not? That is our mission. The strong always walk on the bones of the weak.
A hiss, from the child holding Aurore. They rely on us.
They have given their lives to the House before. How is this different?
Another silence. The hand on her throat tightened, fingers prickling her skin. Her entire heartbeat seemed to have moved upwards, to the point of contact.
At length, one of the children said, It is agreed, then. They will replenish the wards of the House, as needed. Everything will be as it was before he came.
And what of her?
The first child turned towards her. Ancestors, if you’d ever felt like watching over me, this is the time. Its eyes were two pits of night—holes into which she was drawn, to fall endlessly into darkness. There was nothing in them but hunger—endless and never sated, a burning need to sustain itself at the expense of everything else. They were going to take her too: an appetizer to their main meal, a pleasant distraction of unfamiliar magic injected into the House.
I have seen your like before. The child’s mouth moved: a smile, though it revealed nothing but more branches, without teeth or tongue to sustain its speech. For what you have given us, a reward, mortal.
And, reaching out, it pushed her out of the other child’s embrace—again and again, driving her towards the ruined building—until she stumbled on the wrecks of the steps and fell towards the charred, debris-covered ground. She expected to hit it flat, but instead it opened to receive her, and she fell into the earth like a grave, as rubble and gravel fell in a rain to cover her body.
Aurore pushed back, but it was holding her fast—branches and thorns climbing her arms and legs, weighing her down and tying her until any movement became painfully impossible. Over her, in the rapidly closing sliver of darkened sky, bent the child. Its fingers rested, lightly, over her eyes—and then, before she could even draw a breath to scream, it drove their points in.
Pain transfixed her, spreading from the arch of her eyebrows through her head, and then into her entire body, and for a moment she was forced from her body, her consciousness expanding to encompass the entire House—the earth and the buildings and all the broken things, the broken people it collected, the distant, cruel dreams of the sleeping Asmodeus, the worry of Thuan sorting out people in hospital—and then she was back, but her eyes felt gummed shut.
No, not gummed shut.
Sewn shut. There was no pain—just the feeling of hundreds of pinpricks in her eyelids. That made it worse. She’d have clawed at them, if her hands could move, but these were held, too.
The child withdrew its fingers from her eyes, and laid them onto her lips, briefly—and then on her forehead, as if anointing her with blood instead of holy water.
Breathe, it said, and her mouth moved of its own accord.
She inhaled only dirt and the taste of her own blood—she was choking, struggling to find a way, any way, to breathe and not have her throat close up.
Marianne. Cassiopée.
Everything fuzzed and went still. And, in that moment when she hung at the doors of the Courts of Hell, something rose within her. It was warmth and power—something that filled her limbs and lungs with pure, sweet, liquid fire. It was embers in winter, water in summer: everything she’d ever thirsted for, a feeling that stretched in her chest until it became pure bliss.
The child withdrew its fingers from her face, and the thorns that held her eyes shut broke. She opened them, gummed with blood, saw it as if from a great distance, flicking its hand over the earth of the House. Something fell, watered the debris and muddy expanse underfoot. The thorns on her arms and legs withdrew, one by one—they left trails of fire on her limbs, but she didn’t care. She pulled herself up with the fire coursing through her, feeling as though a wave of her hands would send the world reeling.
“What… did… you… do?” Her voice came hoarse and painful, as if she’d been screaming her vocal cords raw.
Again, that expression that wasn’t quite a smile, stretching across skeletal, hollow cheeks like a thicket of thorn-trees.
Gave you the power you craved.
“You… You made me a House dependent.”
Aurore’s voice was shaking. But it didn’t feel like Harrier, didn’t feel like the link to the House. More like the one time she’d inhaled angel-breath, using it to carry Cassiopée—except ten times, a hundred times more powerful. This was a rising power that threatened to drown her. She lifted a hand, winced when an invisible wind ruffled the lawn in response.
Of course not, the child said. That requires consent.
And this did not.
You wanted the power to protect what was yours. Its voice was almost gentle. It’s in you now.
The old legend. The artifact that gave someone the power of a Fallen. Only it wasn’t an artifact. It was the House.
She stepped out of the ruined building, turned. In the debris was a deep, charred imprint of her body; and thorns, sprouting from it. The same thorns which had left their scars on her body. The House, driving itself deep into her.
Your life is that of the House now. Your power is vested in it.
Aurore took one, two faltering steps, and leaned against the building for support. It was warm and pliant like human skin; and she heard a panicked human heartbeat within it.
Her heartbeat.
She all but leaped away from it. All she’d ever wanted, and it was a poisoned, barbed gift.
“The House. You mean I’m one of you.”
A casual shrug. Not quite. Think of yourself as… a scout. A seed or spores cast on the wind. The questing filaments of a fungus.
Another of the children said, The House is dying and weak. Our salvation may lie in putting down roots elsewhere, to find the blood and magic we need to survive. This is where you come in.
We may not leave the House, but you can.
“And you want me to help you?” Why should she?
We’re not giving you a choice. As we said—your life is that of the House now. If we die, you die. But every time you sate your hunger—so will we.
“I’m not helping Hawthorn. I’m not helping Asmodeus.”
A smile that was all thorns and teeth woven out of sickly white petals.
Asmodeus isn’t us. And neither are we what you think of as Hawthorn. We are simply… he power beneath it. Not the faction. The magic.
“I don’t understand,” Aurore said, chilled.
Another smile. It means do what you want with the magic that we have given you. Because, no matter what you do, you remain tied to us. Your life is our life. Your hunger is ours, and what you take to survive will become ours. A shrug. Do what you want, with our gift.
“Do what I want? Even if that involves going up against Asmodeus?”
Laughter. That would be unwise. But likewise, we will make sure that he or his don’t interfere with what you’re doing.
Aurore looked at the building with the imprint of her body, still feeling the heartbeat that coursed through the walls. Her heartbeat. She wasn’t sure what she was anymore. They’d said their hunger was hers; which meant she’d need to feed them. Which meant blood and magic—but did the price matter, if she had the magic she wanted, and could use it for her own purposes?
“I want to go home.” She hated herself for her weakness. “I want to help my people defend against a fire spirit. Are you really telling me you won’t stop me, if I walk out of Hawthorn?”
The children moved to sta
re at her, the ground itself rumbling under her.
The House is dying. We are dying. Of course we won’t stop you, if you’re going elsewhere to find sustenance.
Aurore opened her mouth to say she wasn’t going to find sustenance, but the sight of all the children staring at her with naked hunger stopped her.
We won’t stop you. On the contrary. We’ll come with you.
SEVENTEEN
Survival
Philippe and Isabelle helped dig people out.
There seemed no end to the debris in the inn, or to those trapped inside. When they finally lined everyone up in the common room, Philippe took in a sharp, deep breath. He’d known most of these people—Sébastien from the docks, Aunt Vy from the bakery, Lucie from the butcher’s. The waiters, the patrons—everyone was gone, as casually as if someone had snapped their fingers and snuffed them out. Javier was sitting very still in a corner of the devastated room: he’d helped dig in silence, and was now staring at nothing. Isabelle, at length, walked to him and started a whispered, low-key conversation whose tones were anger and grief and despair. Philippe clamped his lips on a sharp rejoinder about consorting with the Houses. That conversation would have to wait.
Overhead, the sky was still streaked with smoke. Tade came back with shrouds to lay over the dead, and with Frankie, who worked in the inn.
“Half the buildings are on fire. Scattered coals, I think. We’ll need to organize some kind of firefighting force. And search parties for any survivors.”
He stared at Philippe as if he was expecting input. The thought was terrifying. He was an ex-Immortal, an ex-enforcer who’d spent most of his life on tightly circumscribed missions before he was thrown out of the heavenly courts. Such a task would have been for Hoa Phong or Princess Liên, except that Liên was beleaguered, and Hoa Phong was a fighter, not a leader of people.
But then, neither was he.
He took a deep, shaking breath, opened his mouth to say he had to see Grandmother Olympe and the aunts—and then something bounced against the spells he’d drawn around la Goutte d’Or. Not fast, or in anger, more like a quiet raking of claws, a slow, determined digging. No.
“Wait here,” he said to Tade, and ran out.
Outside the inn, it smelled of smoke and charred meat, and the air was a heavy mass of ashes and particles hanging in the air. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the southern border of the community.
Beyond the border—beyond the weave he’d drawn and its protection—the devastation was worse: pulverized cobblestones; people’s corpses hanging from lampposts and windows; wrought-iron railings flattened as if by some enormous hand; the smoke so thick it hid the ruins of flattened buildings.
He hadn’t meant the weave to keep people out—just the khi fire. But people were stopping nevertheless: and something had formed where he’d drawn the weave. A spreading pool of pure khi fire, a mass of swirling red and orange reminiscent of flames—and luminous orange threads ran to it, following the cracks between the cobblestones.
And he could feel, even from here, the protections he’d built struggling to contain it. A siege, of a sort. When his protections gave out—his fragmentary, hastily drawn protections, because there were so few people here who could wield the khi currents and he, Hoa Phong and Isabelle had had to cover such a large surface—they’d suffer the same fate as the Houses: a blast that would make everything so far look small and benign.
He knelt, gently weaving khi water and khi wood around himself as a protection. His fingers brushed, carefully, the surface of the pool—and darkness bloomed, hungering for shadows to devour. Within him, the shadows of Silverspires’ curse stirred. He kept them contained—barely, because the Houses had started this, because they’d tortured a spirit into their perfect weapon, and never considered what would happen if he slipped their control.
The khi fire pulsed under his fingers. He wasn’t sure what made him look up, but when he did, there was a man standing there, looking at him—or rather, half of one, because there were threads where his legs should have been, a mass of them rising from the ground and congealing together until the red-orange turned as dark as crusted blood. He was Annamite, in that uncertain ground between middle and old age, with gray hair tied in a topknot, and the robes of a scholar loosely hanging over his thin frame. Tanned skin, hands with long fingers stained with vermilion ink—no, not ink, but dripping blood. His blood—pinprick wounds on every finger, and further cuts on his face and neck, long and stretched. The marks of a whip.
“Immortal,” the man said.
His shape shivered and wavered, and for a moment stripes covered his skin, as they did Aunt Ha’s.
“Dân Chay.” Philippe bowed his head, slowly and carefully—never taking his eyes off the man. Both because he didn’t trust him, and because averting his gaze would have been a statement of respect he didn’t feel. “My name is Philippe.”
“Is it, now?” A wide, fanged smile. “It wasn’t always so, was it?”
“It’s what I go by now.”
Philippe thought of Hoa Phong, and her questions—her offer of a home, when all was over, where people used his old name. It rang hollow to him now, a rusty thing that hadn’t been used in decades. The name of a stranger.
“As you wish.” Dân Chay smiled. “You’re smart, but you can’t hold out forever.”
“And you suggest I yield?” Philippe spread his hands as the pressure of Dân Chay against his spells flared up sharp and unbearable. “You’ll kill everyone if I do. That’s not much inducement.”
They stood in a widening circle of silence—Houseless self-preservation instincts held strong, and people were cautiously, casually moving away.
Dân Chay didn’t appear interested in the other mortals, those outside the boundaries. Fire, Philippe thought, and watched the khi currents on the streets. Everything was spent and shriveled on Dân Chay’s side: a hint of fire; there were the orange threads that formed his body and tied him to the ground. But all the other khi currents were gone, with only fragments remaining. Khi fire on its own could burn, but it required more fuel to create a large conflagration. To really set off a massive fire or an explosion, Dân Chay had to burn, not only the khi fire itself, but also all the other khi elements. Which meant he couldn’t do that from his side, because there was nothing left. Not that Philippe would have gone over his own protections, because he guessed that even in the desert of khi currents he was standing in, Dân Chay could probably set off small fires—say, on a person—on khi fire alone.
Philippe could guess what kind of conflagration had so badly depleted the khi currents all over the city.
“You burned all the Houses,” he said flatly.
He’d have said he was sad, but it would be a lie. The Houses had brought it on themselves. And yet… The Houses had always been there, to struggle against. The idea that they could be hurt—that they could be almost annihilated…
“Almost all the Houses,” Dân Chay said.
Somehow Philippe didn’t think he’d spared anyone out of the goodness of his heart. He might have done so, once—no, he wouldn’t have, because he was the tiger, and all he did was devour those who strayed into the darkness.
“Didn’t have the strength?” he asked.
An expansive shrug. Dân Chay was taking his measure, as if trying to see what he had before him.
“I struck… a bargain,” he said. “For the time being. But bargains only last as long as the lives of those who’ve made them.” He stopped, then, sniffed the air. “You have a friend here, don’t you?”
Isabelle? No—why would Dân Chay care about Isabelle, an ordinary mortal with no particular House affiliations? He had to mean Hoa Phong.
“She’s busy,” Philippe said carefully. Undoing the damage Dân Chay had wrought.
The khi fire pulsed under his fingers, gently, carefully. Looking for a way past his spells of protection.
Dân Chay laughed. “You should run.”
“B
ecause I didn’t protect you?”
“Because you stink of the Houses. You did their bidding once, didn’t you?”
“You mean—when they captured and used me during the war?”
A low growl. The threads flashed darker—a shade of crimson closer to blood.
“I know your kind. The conscripts. You could have stopped it. You could have stood against it. Did you, Immortal?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
How could he? They’d all died, one by one—Ai Linh and Hoang and An Man, and all the other Annamites taken from their homeland. They’d only have died sooner—strung up as examples—if they had rebelled. He opened his mouth, and then stopped. Because he had been taken care of in an abstract way—as manpower, as cannon fodder—but he hadn’t been in a cage. He closed his eyes, searching for the words. He’d always known that he and the others had been, in their own ways, complicit in the war. Following orders wasn’t a defense, and nor was dying an absolution.
Dân Chay smiled. “All acts carry the seeds of their own burning, Immortal.”
“And the people here? The Houseless? What crime did they commit?”
Dân Chay shook his head. “This isn’t about guilt. This is about how it feels to dance on the ashes.” He growled again. The elegant mask was slipping, showing, not the face of a tiger or a predator, but the same casual arrogance as the Houses. “Once, long ago, I listened to a human who talked me out of slaughter—who tricked me and burned me. Never again.”
He stretched, and to Philippe’s horror his spells of protections started to crack—khi fire pouring through a growing gap in the weave, and threads slowly, tentatively, spreading at his feet, blindly questing like snakes.
“Philippe!”
It was Isabelle, Father Javier and Frankie—and striding ahead of them, Tade, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. His mnemonic tattoo was glowing with the same rippling light it had back in the tavern, except that it was now spreading to his entire arm.
“Get away from him,” Tade said curtly.
“You don’t understand—” Philippe said.
“I understand very well.”
The House of Sundering Flames Page 29