“Tell me why I can’t stop and help.”
“Because,” Victor said, gently, as if to a child, “if you stop, they’ll realize you’re Fallen, and that they outnumber you. Can you imagine how much they’re hungering for magic right now? You’re worth more to them dead than alive.”
Emmanuelle opened her mouth. She stared at the grimy, shocked people with barely healed wounds, trying to dig through rubble to find someone who might well be dead by now. Something, long held, finally snapped.
“Take me back.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We’re not that far from Hawthorn, are we?”
“No—”
“Take me back.”
Emmanuelle stopped, and crossed her arms. She felt light-headed, and if she thought about it for a moment she would back down.
Darrias sighed. “It’s on your head.”
Some un-Fallen angel must have been watching over her: they hadn’t been gone that long, and Thuan was still at the wrought-iron gates of Hawthorn, talking to a dragon dependent who was nervously running a hand over her antlers.
“Emmanuelle? Are you so much in love with the place?”
Emmanuelle planted herself firmly in the earth, looking at him and desperately scrabbling for arguments she didn’t have.
“You’ve been outside.”
A raised eyebrow.
“It’s chaos. The Houseless areas are devastated. People have died. The living are digging through the rubble to find, most likely, corpses, and it’s going slowly because they have neither magic nor manpower.”
The raised eyebrow didn’t move.
“The Houses should be out there, helping them,” Emmanuelle said.
She’d tried to help, before. She’d gone out on the streets, talking to people, asking what they needed. She’d tried to share. But that had been too little, and always inadequate. She’d gone back to the House; and only her and a few people like Aragon had ever tried to help.
Thuan laughed. “And you come to me for this? I’m not Selene.”
“You’re closest,” Emmanuelle said. She could convince Selene, given enough time—her partner was a reluctant ruler of the House, derived no pleasure from crushing others and doing what was needed—and it wasn’t as though any other House was going to argue with them if Silverspires chose to waste its time. She’d also follow Hawthorn’s lead, if they were allied. “And we help each other.”
Thuan didn’t move. “A bleeding heart on two legs,” he said, but the tone was the same as Darrias’s, low and almost affectionate. “And to think I believed you had something to do with the explosions.”
“The rules have changed. The city has changed, and you’re going to need friends, if you want to survive. And you’ll need them to help you, too.”
A short, amused laugh. “No. If we help them, it’s not on condition that they dance to our tune,” Thuan said. “That’s not reaching out. That’s just self-interest. They won’t stand for it, and neither should we.”
He was half-turning away: the conversation was over, and she’d lost.
She could have gone on, found better arguments. Further threats, but she held no hand that mattered to him.
“Please,” she said. And, slowly, carefully, “The House welcomed you in, once. Wouldn’t you want to do that for someone else?”
His face didn’t change. “What I have, I took. It wasn’t given to me.”
“Do you think that’s the way it should be? That we must always take things by force to be acknowledged by the Houses? That fear and strength is the only currency?”
“The Houses. You’re House. You were born House.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” Emmanuelle said stubbornly. “Tell me I am.”
Thuan exhaled. He didn’t seem annoyed, just weary. “You can’t change everything at once. Believe me, I tried.”
“I’m not asking for everything. Just for something that moves us forward. That reaches out. Everything has to start somewhere.”
A silence. He stared at her, head cocked, with the shadow of antlers above his topknot. Then he laughed, finally.
“You never let go, do you? And when you get to Silverspires you’re just going to mercilessly nag your partner until she gives in, too. I can see why Asmodeus likes you.” His face relaxed, a fraction. “Fine. We’ll see what we can do.”
* * *
After they left Hawthorn for the second time, they walked in silence until they reached the ruins of the Trocadéro. Darrias crossed, not through the gardens, but through a network of small streets behind them, barely looking up to orient herself—as if the debris and people digging through it didn’t matter to her. People stared at their House uniforms, barely noticing the colors or the crests. There should have been envy, or fear. Something—anything. Not that dull, hopeless shock.
They were taking a side street back towards the Seine, in tense silence, the sky overhead dark with smoke. Emmanuelle was trying to steel herself for the Alexandre III bridge, and her first view of Silverspires—how much of a wreck was the House? Were the spires of Notre-Dame still standing?
Selene…
The earth under them rumbled, and then that rumble faded as if utterly spent, replaced by a noise that twisted in Emmanuelle’s chest, a slow rhythmic sound that grew clearer and clearer as they got closer to the Seine, squeezing her ribs so hard she thought she’d choke.
And, as they reached the river and its bridges—the only intact things on a sea of ruins—she saw the Alexandre III bridge covered in orange, ethereal light. For a moment she caught a glimpse of a distinguished Annamite in old-fashioned clothes, leaning against the plinth of one of the ruined statues. He was looking intently at something, his smile sharp, hungry, disquieting. As she followed his gaze she saw that along the edge of the Seine almost every building had toppled into shredded debris—the empty Champ de Mars, House Fontenoy, House Mansart and Les Invalides, House Solférino. And, along that line of uninterrupted sight, she saw what the man was staring at.
“Darrias,” she said.
Over House Harrier, the plume of smoke was gone: what was rising from the heart of the House was a dark flock of birds, slowly fragmenting into a thousand burning embers above the city. The buildings had been shimmering with a faint, incandescent light. That was going away, as if some huge cloud, driven by the wind, were passing across their facades and bringing only darkness in its wake. The rhythmic beating of the birds’ wings—the same noise twisting in her chest—was the only sound in the silence: a hundred, a thousand of them stretching towards the Champ de Mars, and ten thousand more sloughing away from the flock and fragmenting into nothingness.
A last, exhausted and drawn-out rumble underfoot, and the buildings went dark. A distant sound of falling masonry and breaking glass, and then the flock of birds faded away, leaving only the smaller heart of it on the Champ de Mars.
“It’s dead,” Emmanuelle said, trying to breathe. “House Harrier. It’s dead.”
At the center of the remaining flock of birds was the shape of a man—and behind him, the handful of soldiers that had to be still following him.
Guy. The hawks. A darkness of talons and claws and raucous screams, headed straight for them.
Darrias’s hand on her wrist, tight enough to bruise.
“I told you. He’ll have nowhere to go. He’s not here yet, Emmanuelle. We have to go.” She pulled, but Emmanuelle was still staring at the birds. They were dark now, the color of ashes, of smoke—too far away for her to see the patterns of faded stonework and wallpaper on their wings. “There’s still time to escape this, but we have to move now.”
The knot of continuous, tense fear in her, tightened too far, finally broke. A wave of coolness on her brow; a memory of ice on her skull and on her tongue, and Thuan’s amused voice. Darkness, rising around her: not the flames still smoldering in every House, not even the fire in Harrier, but the trembling one of House Harrier’s corridors. The doors, opening; Guy, smiling at her
with the crazed smile of one under siege.
“Darrias is coming for her family. I’ve always known she would, from the moment she slipped my grasp. I’ve been waiting a long, long time, Emmanuelle.”
And, when she didn’t answer, “Tonight. And you’ll watch. Everyone will watch. Silverspires and Hawthorn and all your masters…”
He laughed, and it would have been almost more bearable if it had been high-pitched and uncontrolled, but it was simply the good-natured laugh of someone looking forward to an evening with friends.
Morningstar, standing at the door of her room in House Harrier. His large, pale hands were empty: no weapon, except the translucent radiance of his magic, briefly lighting up his cornflower-blue eyes.
“Emmanuelle, what’s wrong?” And, abruptly, crossing the space that was separating them, his hand resting briefly on her cheek. “You’ve been crying.”
It should have fuzzed. It should have become distant and unattainable, on the edge of that chasm she couldn’t hope to bridge. Instead, merciless and clear, it went on.
“I can’t stop her,” she’d said. She’d sat, shivering, on the bed, hands crossed in her lap. “She’s going to go up against Guy, and she’s going to die.”
Morningstar looked puzzled, and then his gaze turned sharp.
“Your friend Darrias? The defector. Then tell her to stop.”
“It’s too late.”
It had been too late since Guy had taken her; and he’d known it. Preparations were already made. She’d tried to find Darrias, and found only the House, barring her way at every step. Dependents directing her elsewhere. Cowering servants telling her Darrias wasn’t there. Smiling Fallen suggesting something else she might want a look at. A barely subtle, barely pleasant steering away from her friend.
A show, for Harrier’s sake. For Hawthorn’s sake. For Silverspires’ sake.
“There’s nothing I can do.” She shivered, remembering Benedict’s corpse in the Great Interior, and Andrea sitting by her son’s side, her face set in that careful mask—on the edge of irremediably cracking. “It’ll just go on and on, won’t it? What they do to people. What they do to parents. What they do to children.” He was sitting next to her, his warmth and radiance driving out the dark—a promise of power and comfort. “Please,” she whispered. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”
A silence.
“There are hundreds of people like Darrias, Emmanuelle.”
“And that’s a reason to stand by?” She knew all the reasons this was a bad idea—the risk of setting off a civil war in a House while they were still trapped in it. The affairs of Hawthorn, which weren’t their own. “That’s how you justify it, so you can sleep at night? I couldn’t help everyone, therefore I helped no one?”
A sharp, weighing look. “You’re really upset. We’re talking about friendship, are we not?”
“Please.”
Morningstar said nothing, for a while. At length, he rose.
“Friendship.” His voice was almost tender. Light trembled on his broad hands, on the yellow fairness of his hair. For a moment, it was at his back too, as if he were still carrying the wings that had been his weapon of predilection. “I can’t promise anything. But every place has its buried shadows, and Harrier has been sitting on these for a long, long time.” He turned back at the door. “You have to leave.”
Emmanuelle stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
A silence.
He said finally, “It will… not be safe anywhere in Harrier, soon. Go. Get to the gates. And remember, whatever happens—it’s not your fault. They brought this on themselves.”
It will not be safe anywhere in Harrier, soon.
Morningstar had known something. He’d left her and gone somewhere, and the House had exploded. He’d done it.
But only because she’d asked. Because she’d been desperate and crying, and she’d begged him to do something, anything. And when he’d stood at the door—when he’d spoken of buried secrets, of hidden darkness, when she’d known in her heart of hearts that what she’d just agreed to wasn’t just him nicely asking Guy, that it was going to involve widespread death and destruction in the House—she hadn’t stopped him. She’d known, and she hadn’t stopped him.
How far would you have gone for friendship, Emmanuelle?
All the way.
“Emmanuelle!” It was Darrias, shaking her, in the present. In the time when House Harrier was already ashes and dust—when Hawthorn and every House in Paris had blown up. “We have to move!”
She’d done it.
I don’t know what you’re failing to remember, but it’s not going to be more than a book you failed to read or an overpolite, unpleasant conversation you had with someone.
If only.
“Emmanuelle!”
With a strength she didn’t know she had, she threw off Darrias’s hands.
“I can’t,” she said. “It was me, Darrias.”
“Emmanuelle—”
“Harrier blew up because I asked Morningstar for help. Because I told him to save you, and he destroyed the House to stop Guy from killing you.”
And, in that instant when Darrias, shocked and horrified, looked at her, Emmanuelle pushed her to the cobblestones, and ran. Away. Away from Darrias and Victor and Hawthorn—away from the Seine and the flock of birds, and away from Guy coming for his revenge.
* * *
Thuan and Asmodeus found Phyranthe sitting in her bed, her head against the frame of the metal bedhead, a thin blanket covering the lower half of her body. She was in animated conversation with one of her interrogators, a mortal named Denise. She smiled when she saw Asmodeus; that smile remained frozen in place when Thuan joined him. Denise bowed and made her excuses, leaving the three of them in the room.
“My lords,” Phyranthe said.
Asmodeus unfolded from the door jamb, graceful and smooth.
“It’s good to see you recovered.”
Phyranthe’s face was a careful study in neutrality.
“I can’t claim all the credit for that.”
She kept her eyes on Thuan, unwaveringly. He shrugged, with an ease he didn’t feel.
Asmodeus withdrew a flask from his inner jacket pocket, uncapped it. The smell of whiskey saturated the room—not just whiskey, but the one he kept in the decanter in his office, the good stuff of which there was so little left in Paris (and even less now, with the city in ruins). He handed it, wordlessly, to Phyranthe, who looked at it as though it was a snake that might bite.
“It’s not poisoned. You know I don’t resort to such cheap tricks. And you could use a drink, considering.”
Phyranthe said, carefully, “You know my loyalty has never been in question. I’ve always done what you tasked me to do.” She was shaking. “The dragon is my subordinate, and my responsibility, and she’s shown no such loyalty or respect to me.”
“I know.” Asmodeus’s voice was curt. “If you ask me, she deserves all of what’s happened to her.” An expansive shrug. “Your loyalty has been exemplary.” He paused, staring at the knife he’d just pulled from his sleeves. “I don’t have anything to fault. Even at a time like this, when it’s important to make strong examples lest we descend into chaos. I do need…” He paused, the knife spinning in his hands. “A favor.”
“My lord.” Phyranthe looked aghast.
Asmodeus laughed. “I’m not asking you to spare the dragon. Merely to have a word with Thuan on the matter.”
Phyranthe’s face closed. “We’ve already had words.”
“Oh, I’m certain of it. Happy and conducive, in the best of all worlds. Nevertheless…”
He let the word hang in the air, like a blade in the moment just before it broke skin and blood pearled out.
“A word. That’s all?”
“Well, obviously a sincere chat,” Asmodeus said. “It would be a shame if someone storms out of this room screaming within the next five minutes.” A quick, amused smile, and a glance at Thuan. �
�That includes you.”
Thuan shrugged. I can give you the introduction, Asmodeus had said. The rest of it—the way you want to do it—that’s on you. He’d sounded thoughtful, chewing on something unexpected.
I know, Thuan had said. You wouldn’t have done it that way.
Oh, as I said—I do trust you, Asmodeus had said, and his smile had been incandescent and wounding, and Thuan had stopped fighting the thing in his chest and simply kissed him.
You can thank me later. Assuming it does work. A finger on his lips, and magic stilling his tongue in his mouth. I will expect… a demonstration of gratitude, never fear. An extensive one.
That had been then. Now it was him and Phyranthe, and it was going to be awkward if he was lucky, excruciatingly painful if he wasn’t. If he failed at convincing her, Vinh Ly would pay the price, and his own authority in the House would be broken, probably past salvaging.
Asmodeus left, waiting theatrically outside the door, though he had the decency to draw it closed—not only that, but Thuan heard the snick of the lock engaged.
Great. At least they were not going to be disturbed.
Phyranthe set the flask on the bedside table, looked at him levelly. Her blue gaze was impassive; her wounds all closed. She looked exhausted; and if she was anything like Asmodeus, that would make her sarcastic, her words biting. She said nothing, merely waited for him to open the conversation. Obviously she was never going to make this simple.
“Thank you for saving Vinh Ly,” Thuan said.
“As I said—I do keep my promises. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it changes anything.”
“I’m well aware it doesn’t.” Thuan sighed. Well, nothing for it. At least it was private. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”
A raised eyebrow that was pure Asmodeus.
“I should never have interfered in the business of your court,” Thuan said. “Not just once, but twice. Asmodeus is right—you’ve been unfailingly loyal. We… We trust you to do your job.”
“Flattering me? That’s interesting.”
“You don’t understand.” Thuan swallowed. He’d gotten used to being the one responsible; the one who cared for his dragons, from Ai Nhi to Sang to Vinh Ly. This one was going to hurt. “I’m saying I won’t interfere again. In the matter of Vinh Ly, or any other. Not without going through you first.”
The House of Sundering Flames Page 34