Tade said something at the back of his throat—Philippe didn’t understand the word, but the insult was all too clear. Isabelle was kneeling a little further up the street, hurriedly tracing spells of protection to make another barrier before Dân Chay’s khi fire could flow further inwards. But the spells were failing, and they were too close.
“Move back!” he screamed, and ran.
Things happened too fast, or too slow. The threads of fire hit his spell of protection, again and again, in a single place. It snapped. Khi wood and khi water flared, flailing wildly like the limbs of a decapitated animal—fire poured in, swallowing the other elements, the threads growing larger and fatter as it did, pulsing faster and faster. Philippe was already running, and so was Isabelle. She stopped, panting, in front of a bakery where the baker and her workers were attempting to pick glass from croissants and steamed buns; knelt, tracing hurried lines to block the flow of fire. It hit the first, shaking line, and broke against it. But the fire wasn’t going to be held back for long. Not unless she could reinforce it, and she wouldn’t be fast enough—she didn’t have the experience.
He had to help her.
Philippe tried to follow her, but threads wrapped around his ankles, rooting him to the floor.
“I think not,” Dân Chay said coldly.
Think think. He wasn’t dead or burning, which meant Dân Chay couldn’t strike at him yet. No, that wasn’t it. Because Dân Chay wanted as large a fire as possible, and that meant waiting for enough khi currents to be absorbed. Waiting for enough fuel for his fire. What he’d claimed wasn’t enough yet. Which meant they had time before that happened, but Philippe didn’t know how much.
All right. If he couldn’t help Isabelle directly, he could buy time for her. The explosion wasn’t going to happen automatically: once he had gathered enough khi elements, Dân Chay would have to consciously trigger it. Which meant any distraction to Dân Chay gave Isabelle time to finish her barrier of protection, and make sure that Dân Chay’s fire didn’t go deeper into la Goutte d’Or.
If they could pull this off, Dân Chay was going to blow up the area between Philippe’s broken protections and Isabelle’s new ones; but at least it wouldn’t be the entire community.
Small comfort, but he’d take it with the desperation of a drowning man.
Dân Chay was walking towards Philippe, but Tade and Frankie interposed themselves. Frankie grabbed Dân Chay’s arms, and Tade threw a punch—a low, fast jab aimed at the boundary between threads and torso. Light rippled; for a moment a larger, shadowy form congealed in the air. There was a sound like taut guitar strings thrumming—and threads snapped. Dân Chay shook his head. He lifted his hands, and a mass of fire grabbed Tade and Frankie and flung them aside, into a heap of debris. Tade rose, grimacing, with a hand on his chest. That odd rippling light covered him entirely, throwing the lines of his ribs into sharp focus. Even from where he was, Philippe could see that Frankie’s skull had caved in, and that half her face was a bloodied mess.
Isabelle looked from Philippe to her incomplete spell.
“Don’t,” he said. “Wasted time.” He hacked at the threads holding him with khi water, watching them shrivel and fall away, but when he tried to walk they grabbed him again. “Finish your protections.”
He’d gone maybe three paces. Between the old spells and Isabelle’s new ones, the khi currents were still being consumed. The threads pulsed faster and faster: the air was getting taut, as if they were moments from a monsoon.
Not good.
When he looked up again, Javier was standing in front of Dân Chay. The priest was shivering, his hair singed by the blast, his clerical collar askew, his red and silver uniform torn to shreds. He must have inhaled the contents of an artifact, because he swirled, faintly, with the light of Fallen magic.
“Javier!”
He was going to be slaughtered. Nothing in the Houses had stood against Dân Chay. They must have died in their hundreds, their spells and wards useless against the very weapon they’d forged.
Behind Javier, Isabelle was still kneeling, drawing the final parts of her spell. Philippe could see that she was forcing herself not to look up; not to worry about Javier. She finished, trembling, her weave. The khi currents she’d brought together shimmered and hardened, and Dân Chay’s khi fire hissed away from them.
Philippe let out a breath he hadn’t even been aware of holding. Safe. The community was safe, for the time being.
Dân Chay cocked his head at Javier.
“Silverspires,” he said. His laughter was cruel. “Always on the wrong side of the divide. Were you even alive in the war, little man?”
Javier’s face was set. “You know I wasn’t.”
“A child, then. Out of my way.” Low laughter. “They’re the Houseless, the insignificant. Why aren’t you looking to your own House? That’s what your kind always does.”
Javier looked exhausted. “I’m a little tired of generalizations.”
“Try being tortured and carved into pieces by two Houses in the name of power. You might mind them less, then. Oh, but I forget—you belong to one of these Houses. Morningstar’s House.” It was spat with such venom that Javier recoiled, and in that moment Dân Chay reached out, and seized him. Javier struggled to push off a grip like iron. “You’re pathetic. There’s nothing to you at all, is there? Just hollow masks.”
Philippe managed to snap one thread holding him, as three more reformed. The khi fire was building, between the broken old protections and the new ones Isabelle had just finished. Everyone in that area—which included him and Tade and Javier and many of the onlookers—was going to die when the khi currents around them combusted. He tried to gesture to Tade and Javier, move back, and Tade nodded, and ushering people back behind Isabelle.
Dân Chay was getting closer. Philippe pulled at the threads binding him with a growing sense of desperation, and they snapped. Before they could reform, he was running for Isabelle, making a last, desperate leap towards the meager shelter she’d made.
But Dân Chay’s hands grabbed him, lifted him like a rag doll—a brief vision of the street upside down, of Javier running for Isabelle, grabbing Tade on the way. A swirl of fire beneath him, spinning and growing larger and larger.
But then the world spun and cracked, and he hit the ground. He pulled himself up, shaking. Khi fire was everywhere, a trembling wash that stung his skin: a prelude to a fire that would soon tear him apart. Dân Chay was fighting Javier—not with fire or with any kind of magic, but simply trying to beat him back. The light of Fallen magic limned Javier as he grappled, desperately, with the other man.
Javier shouted to Philippe, “Get behind the line, now!”
There was a noise. Distant thunder, he would have said, but it was exhausted and faint. The earth rumbled under them, and a flock of something rose into the sky. Not smoke, but a cloud of birds—of hawks, rising in the dark heavens and forlornly screeching with a sound that was almost heartbreaking.
Dân Chay stopped laughing, then, and it was the roar of flames.
“Finally,” he said. “Even the great, powerful things enter their death throes.”
Javier, exhausted, took his moment to grab Philippe and frogmarch him behind Isabelle’s lines.
Dân Chay was still staring at the sky when the mass of khi fire ignited, and the entire world flashed orange and blinding white.
His voice came from the morass of light—an amused, angry growl directed at Philippe.
“Pathetic, Immortal. You do nothing but prolong your agony. But if that’s the way you want to play, then by all means. I’ll take your home street by street and building by building, and person by person.”
When Philippe opened his eyes again, Dân Chay was gone. The threads remained, pushing at Isabelle’s fragmentary weaves. Not a pool, because there was almost no khi fire left. In between, in the zone of fire, the cobblestones had been pulverized, and a cloud of dust still hung over the street. No people—they’d all run
from the devastation. Twisted lampposts, broken windows and teetering buildings. Debris had been blasted out with the force of bullets. A few had struck Frankie and blood dripped lazily from her wounds—a reflex action, for it was utterly clear she was dead.
“What was that?” Tade asked.
Hawks, dying. Philippe said, slowly, carefully—because he’d seen it only once before, a long time ago, and he’d painstakingly taught himself that it couldn’t, wouldn’t, ever be repeated rather than endlessly be disappointed.
“That was House Harrier. I think it’s going to die really soon.”
Dying. Scoured away by khi fire. If their own lives hadn’t been on the line, he’d have been almost impressed. Almost tempted to cheer.
“Houses can’t just go,” Javier said, shivering.
He let go of Philippe, sat down heavily on the ground. He was breathing fast—faster and faster. Going into shock, and no wonder.
“Isabelle, can you take care of him?”
“I’m not the designated House person,” Isabelle snapped. “Javier? Javier, come on.”
Philippe stared at the zone beyond Isabelle’s defenses. All the khi currents, gone, and even the fire was now a paler shadow of its former self. Nothing left outside their boundaries that could burn. But it wouldn’t last. The khi currents in this area and in the rest of Paris would grow back. The threads would have something to feed on again. And Dân Chay would be back, with enough power to break Isabelle’s weave.
And the truth of it—the naked truth—was that they couldn’t hold him at bay.
* * *
He’d lost Aurore.
Thuan had been tired, running on too little sleep and accumulating worries like they were building blocks to something better. But it was no excuse for the words that had come out of his mouth. Or that his first thought had been to give orders as if she were a servant—he shouldn’t even have done it to a House dependent. Was it better than what Asmodeus had done, tearing her from her life and sending her into Harrier like some kind of sacrificial lamb?
It was his House: he could order the guards to track her down, to bring her back and set her to work in their much-depleted hospital, or to imprison her again in the cells, as she’d been before Asmodeus sent her to Harrier. Asmodeus or Phyranthe would say she was a trespasser on Hawthorn grounds and deserved what she got. Thuan was sick of the discourse.
What harm could she do, anyway, being Houseless? Better to let her go. Asmodeus would have had plans for her—he could take those plans and stuff them. It was high time they stopped using people like pawns.
Ai Nhi had come back into the room visibly disappointed that she’d missed “all the fun”, and was now fussing around Asmodeus—who, fortunately, was still unconscious. Thuan watched her for a while. It was almost restful compared to the growing list of his worries.
“Unka Thuan?”
“Yes?” Thuan said.
Ai Nhi watched Asmodeus. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Oh. He’s very tired, child. He had to help a lot of people in a very short time, and he needs to rest.” If Thuan closed his eyes, he’d see the hole again, and the blood spattering on Asmodeus’s face, from the trees shaken in the wind, and hear Asmodeus’s voice, flat and utterly devoid of hope. “And he got very scared.”
Ai Nhi coiled in the air in dragon shape, and nuzzled closer to Asmodeus.
“I thought Unka Asmodeus never got scared.” Her eyes were thoughtful. “Even in the bad place.”
Thuan jerked from his tea. “The bad place? The cells,” he said, in a voice that he hoped was flat. “Child.”
Ai Nhi scrunched her face. “He said he understood why I’d done it—the ice and Mélanie. That nothing more would happen to me, and he’d keep me safe.” Her voice trailed off. “I said you and Auntie Ly were going to do that, and he got angry and said you’d been doing a terrible job of it.”
A terrible job of it. Oh, Asmodeus. Typical.
A thoughtful, scrunched-up face. “He’s scary, but he’s okay. Mostly.”
Ai Nhi laid her doll by Asmodeus’s side. Thuan tried not to choke on his tea.
“I don’t think he needs the doll,” he said, finally.
Ai Nhi looked crestfallen.
“All right,” Thuan said. It had been a long, bad day, and he really didn’t feel like indulging Asmodeus’s vanity. “Just don’t let him see you laugh when he wakes up.”
He went back, with a sigh, to the report about their depleted food reserves—which was like trying to balance a threadbare cupboard with a host of children lacking clothes. The only good news was that an emergency team sent into the armory had found nothing but crates of dusty weapons, and no hint of secondary fire.
There had also been a cursory investigation into the explosion, which had everyone from Fallen to dragons flummoxed. Something to do with khi fire, which no one thought would recur, if only because there was no khi fire left to burn. It wasn’t very reassuring, and that was an understatement.
Thuan looked up. There was some kind of commotion beyond the doors of the room—which wasn’t unusual—but the air was saturated with the smell of curdled brine.
He got up, threw open the door, and saw Phyranthe.
She was making her way through their improvised ward, carrying an exhausted, bloodied dragon on her shoulders like a scarf. Phyranthe herself didn’t look much better herself: one arm hung loose, her face and arms were covered in myriad cuts, her steps were slow and faltering, and as Thuan watched a flare of khi water wrapped itself around her, coming from the dragon on her shoulder—not to heal her, but to give her the little strength she needed to go on.
Vinh Ly. Phyranthe was carrying Vinh Ly the same way Asmodeus had carried Aurore.
Thuan was out and walking through the crowd before he could think clearly, the dependents moving out of his way like drops of water from a fire. He thought it was because he was losing control of his dragon shape again, but his mind was icy cold, his body fully human, chafing against the constraints of the Hawthorn swallowtail jacket and aching to take flight.
“My lord,” Phyranthe said. She’d stopped, trembling. They faced each other across a line of broken tiles. Her lips curled up: it would have been a smile, but there was too much blood and pain. “As I promised you—I won’t kill her.”
And she collapsed like a felled tree, with Vinh Ly on top of her.
* * *
Thuan leaned against the door jamb, watching Vinh Ly and Phyranthe. They’d put both of them in one of the smallest rooms: a glorified broom cupboard hastily emptied of its contents, one half filled with rubble, and the other crammed with two metal-frame beds.
They really shouldn’t have been together, but of course Iaris was the one who made the decisions about hospital beds. She’d said something about how it would look to the dependents of the House, and Thuan had been too bone-weary to even react.
Mind you, in her current state, Phyranthe wasn’t going to be harming anyone.
Vinh Ly was healing with the usual speed of dragons, though her wounds had looked nasty.
“Cuts and bruises, and two shattered ribs,” Sang said, by Thuan’s side. “And really nasty burns on her chest. Looks like flying masonry hit her when the House blew up,” she added, in answer to Thuan’s unspoken question. “There’s some Fallen magic on her, but it was used to staunch blood flow. It looks to have been cast in a hurry.”
They were walking through the House, trying to get away from rubble and debris, and wondering if they were going to make it at all. Healing each other.
I won’t kill her.
Thuan watched Phyranthe. She was unconscious, her closed eyes dark against the extreme pallor of her face. Her chest barely moved, though from time to time she’d scream, a primal sound that seemed to remove all the air from the room and take root in her chest.
“And her?”
Sang sighed. “Khi fire.”
“There isn’t any on her.”
“Aftermath,” Sang
said, curtly. “She’s weak and quite close to death’s door. It might kill her.” She sounded grimly satisfied.
Thuan exhaled, slowly. He looked at Phyranthe again, and at the sleeping Vinh Ly.
“Can you heal her?” he asked.
“Your Majesty.” Sang stared at him, shocked. “Surely…”
It wasn’t like he had much of a choice. He could have let her suffer and die for Vinh Ly’s sake, but what would have made of him?
“Surely we’re better than this? We are,” Thuan said, more sharply than he’d intended.
“That’s not what I meant.” Sang’s voice was sharp.
Thuan didn’t budge. “I’m not abandoning Vinh Ly. I’ll find another way. But this? This isn’t it. Also, you forget—Vinh Ly had already started healing her.”
“Because she knew it was the only way she’d get to safety.”
Thuan said nothing, merely stared at her. At length, Sang nodded.
“As you wish,” she said, with ill-grace.
Her healing was quick, and perfunctory: smoothing out threads of khi water and khi wood, and looping them around Phyranthe’s body—the threads she wove sinking beneath the pale, bruised skin as if swallowed by it. When she was done, she bowed to Thuan, and left without a word. Her anger at him was palpable.
“An interesting strategy,” Iaris said, from behind him.
Thuan didn’t jump out of his skin, because he’d had plenty of practice at seeming impassive.
“Iaris,” he said, wearily. “What is it this time?”
A shrug. “I wanted to admire your way of dealing with your problems,” Iaris said, but she was so exhausted her usual venom didn’t make it into her voice. “Madeleine was looking for you.”
A few paces from Iaris, and looking decidedly ill at ease, was Madeleine d’Aubin, the House’s alchemist. She had one arm in a sling, but the worry on her face seemed permanently etched there.
“My lord. There’s something you should see. In the laboratory.”
* * *
What Madeleine referred to as “the laboratory” turned out not to be the actual laboratory of the House—which was in a wing completely blocked off by rubble—but the annexe they’d opened to store those charged artifacts dependents had managed to rescue.
The House of Sundering Flames Page 30