Aurore ran, keeping her eyes on it, jostling people out of the way for street after street until the people ebbed away, and she was on the other side of the wall—the side where the buildings were twisted and collapsed and hollowed out, and bodies littered the streets. Broken cobblestones crunched underfoot. The bird was diving into an alleyway that was little more than debris packed on top of other debris, and…
She stopped, then.
There were dozens of them in the alleyway, perched in hollow window frames, on twisted lampposts—on the corpses that hung draped over broken walls and splintered furniture. More were perched on a corpse and tearing away, again and again, at its flesh as it were the most delectable meal. The thing that spattered when they raised their beaks wasn’t flesh or blood, but it was glistening in an utterly familiar way—and it was wrong.
It was magic. Fallen magic, except that what should have been shimmering light was brown, muddy, devoid of any substance—and instead of that familiar sweet, sickening tang in the air, there was nothing. A profound, far-reaching emptiness.
The birds turned to Aurore, all heads moving at the same time. The two on the corpse had bodies of smoke and flower wallpaper; the ones in the windows were fragments of clocks and mantelpieces; and the others the patterned, burned stones of Harrier’s buildings.
As one, they flew at her.
She had to run. Now.
Aurore closed her eyes for one timeless moment—opened them again, overriding her muscles’ desire to run, trembling with the effort.
No running. Not anymore.
The child of thorns, who had been trailing Aurore, stepped in front of her, hands outstretched, just as Aurore wove her own wards. The light streaming from her merged with that from the child’s hands. The birds struck it, and bounced off as if they’d hit a physical barrier. One of them—the last and smallest one—scattered into a thousand shimmering pieces, carried away by the wind. The others regrouped, staring balefully at Aurore.
One of them spoke. “You will regret this.”
It was Lord Guy’s voice.
She’d heard it too often to mistake it for anything else. Not her own sentence of death in Harrier, obviously—she had been too small and too insignificant for that—but he’d passed enough sentences on everyone else. He’d sat, watching, while mortals were slowly taken apart for his own pleasure—and forced the servants to watch, too.
She… She was out of the House and Harrier was dead, and it couldn’t touch her or harm her anymore.
“Go away!” she screamed, and power streamed out of her, shaking the cobblestones.
The birds watched her. They were going to attack again. She braced herself, shaking, for that to happen. She could do it. She could face them, no matter that her legs felt turned to jelly.
But instead they lifted off, one by one, flying away. The last one, perched on the body of a woman in a broken doorway, remained. The child of thorns made a stabbing gesture with one hand, and the ground under the bird heaved. It lifted into the air. Its body was that familiar flower wallpaper, the green and yellow one in the rooms of the Master of the Warded Quarters. She remembered the way her heart would clench whenever she entered the room, her eyes downcast, her body hunched small, knowing that making herself small was no protection.
It said, in Lord Guy’s voice, “We will find you, once we are done with the others. And it won’t be so easy, next time.”
And then it left, and it was just her and corpses in an alleyway, and that odd feeling of desolation underfoot, the utter absence of threads on the ground, everything burned and charred. And an immense, overwhelming sensation of fatigue, as if she’d drained a well dry. She needed magic, she needed it right now or she would collapse and never rise.
She walked to the corpse the birds had been tearing at. It shone in her field of vision like a beacon, its magic an unbearably sweet promise. She needed sustenance urgently—the child was by her side, trembling with that same hunger—she needed it so badly…
Her hand connected with warm flesh. A shock, muted and clammy, swept through her entire body, and then magic flowed up her arm even as flesh shriveled under her touch, flesh wrinkling and shrinking even as bones collapsed. She breathed in—she hadn’t realized air could taste this sweet, this exhilarating—breathed out, reveling in how tremblingly delightful it felt. She thought she’d weep with joy.
“Aurore…”
The corpse stared at her—no, it wasn’t a corpse, it was alive, barely—and she knew the face.
Niraphanes.
Her House uniform had crumpled, and the two birds against the burning tower were charred silhouettes. The gaping hole in her chest glistened like an empty maw. She was little more than translucent, wrinkled flesh over brittle bones—because Aurore had taken her magic. She tried to breathe, but it came out as a wet, wrung-out gasp that should never have been.
A word, which might have been her name.
“Help.”
“I can’t help you.”
Aurore hadn’t expected the words to be so bitter on her tongue. Niraphanes had been kind to her once, but it had been out of self-interest—she was Fallen and Harrier and couldn’t be trusted. It served her right, to end like this.
Niraphanes’ head moved. Shaking. She was trying to shake it. A word, then another Aurore couldn’t understand. And then it was over, the light rushing out of her body—and into Aurore, through the hand she still had on Niraphanes’ chest, a rush of sweet magic that made Aurore feel warm and safe and…
Sated. Content. The words felt alien on her tongue.
She stared at Niraphanes for a while. The child withdrew its own hands from the body, and grinned at her with a mouth of branches, and twigs glistening in its maw.
Don’t be sad. She was dying and you couldn’t have helped her, even if you wanted to.
She wouldn’t have wanted to.
Would she?
“She said something, at the end,” Aurore said.
The child grinned. Yes.
More lies. Useless pleadings. She ought to have felt some vicious satisfaction, but instead she was queasy, struggling to find words. Niraphanes had helped her, and in return Aurore had drained her of everything and let her die in agony.
“What was it?”
A silence. That was unexpected.
“You don’t know? I thought you could do anything.”
More silence.
Finally: She said, “Not me. Them. Guy. Morningstar. You have to…”
It took a minute or so to sink in, but then her heart felt squeezed in a fist of ice. “Them” wasn’t, of course, referring to Guy or Morningstar, but to Niraphanes’ family. Frédérique. Virginie. Charles.
Once we are done with the others.
The others. Of course.
That was why Guy was here—because somewhere nearby was Morningstar, and the children he’d been using as a shield against Dân Chay. Of course. She didn’t know how they’d come to be here, but it didn’t matter.
“Them,” she said, aloud. “Her family. Guy has them.”
Or Morningstar did—she wasn’t sure which was worse.
A puzzled look. They’re not yours. Why should you care?
“I…” The sickness was still roiling in her stomach. Why was she feeling so queasy? “Children,” she said. “Morningstar is using children as a shields. And Guy wants to use them as weapons.”
“So the lives of children are worth more than those of others?”
“No,” she said. A life was a life no matter how young or innocent it was. She stared at Niraphanes, and remembered the dizzying, sickening rush of power as she’d drained the Fallen. She wanted to articulate something, but it wouldn’t come. “It’s just that I have a child, and I wouldn’t ever want her used this way.”
Decency. How much would that matter to the child of thorns?
It stared at her. She might as well have been speaking the language of Heaven, alien and incomprehensible to everyone but Immortals. In
many ways, it was like the Fallen she’d dealt with all her life. It didn’t care about Aurore’s anxieties, who she loved, who she cared about. All it understood was ownership, and selfishness—and the desperate need to replenish magic. How much of being a Fallen was about being never sated?
“They are mine.” Aurore put just the right inflections on the words to make it sound true—the same ones she’d heard Asmodeus use, once. “Not Morningstar’s.”
Laughter, like a hundred thorn prickles in the air.
You want to take what’s his from him?
“For their sake. For mine.”
Greed, too, they could understand, and the hunger for power. She thought of the flight of birds across the sky. Powers on the move—the House of Harrier, Morningstar. Whatever they did wouldn’t be small, or discreet.
“Where are they?”
TWENTY-ONE
Held at Bay
Asmodeus wasn’t back in their room: the only one there was Madeleine, the alchemist of House Silverspires, who looked downright apologetic.
“He’s not here,” Madeleine said.
“I can see that.” Thuan bit back a curse.
That meant Asmodeus was still with Aerneth, or whatever had harmed Aerneth. Which was… on balance, probably not good.
Madeleine was waiting for him, nervously wringing her hands. So afraid of the House; but then it occurred to him that she hadn’t been that way when Asmodeus was in the room. Just afraid of Thuan. He must have looked like he was about to bite her head off.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s urgent.”
The last thing Thuan had felt from Aerneth came from a room just next to theirs: one of the small rooms where they’d stored bandages and medical supplies. He threw open the door to it, bracing himself for whatever was within.
The room was empty, with only thorns and flowers clinging to tables and disinfectant bottles.
“Asmodeus…”
No, not quite. It contained a corpse. Aerneth, the dependent Asmodeus had been checking on, the one who hadn’t been in the gardens with the other corpses. She was Fallen; and like Lan she seemed to have shrunk and shriveled on herself, her skin punctured by hundreds of thorn pinpricks.
The House. The same House that was now hollowing out and killing its own dependents to survive, using creatures no one saw coming and no one could defend against. Thuan took a deep, shaking breath. Breathe. Don’t panic. He could still feel Asmodeus’s presence through the link—anything so momentous as the death of the House’s head would have sent devastating panic coursing through every dependent of Hawthorn.
The death of the House’s head. That sounded so absurdly abstract—it was his husband he was talking about—his sarcastic, heartbreakingly infuriating husband.
Breathe.
Panic would be of no use.
“My lord?” It was Vinh Ly, standing in the door frame with Mia a step behind her.
“Find Berith,” Thuan said. “And Iaris.” He paused, for a moment. “And Françoise, Camille and Ai Nhi.”
“My lord, this is no place for children.”
“This is the safest place in the House now.” Thuan bit back on the anger that rose through him. “Get them.”
He crouched on his haunches in the meantime, staring hard at the corpse. Not much there. A husk sucked dry of magic. The House retaking what was its own; a huge, ponderous creature finally biting the hands that fed it. But no, it wasn’t a dog or a cat, but something far older and far more dangerous, a hunger for safety and comfort that would never ever be sated.
He had nothing.
Think.
Asmodeus was alive, or he’d have felt his death. And he wasn’t in immediate or mortal danger. Which meant the House had taken him, but not drained him. So it wanted something from him. It needed something from him.
“Thuan?”
It was Berith, and by her side an exhausted Françoise, with the bandages still covering her face. Françoise was clinging to a sleeping Camille; she sat down after she’d entered, rocking the toddler to sleep. Behind them were Vinh Ly and Ai Nhi, and Phyranthe and a similarly exhausted Iaris, though she was struggling not to show it.
Thuan had no patience for Iaris’s pride anymore.
“The House has turned on us,” he said. “I need you to…” He stopped. What did he have, to defend against it? He was its head. He’d always relied on it—but no. Once, he had been a prince of the dragon kingdom, infiltrating Hawthorn. “Vinh Ly? Is there something that will keep the House at bay?”
They were all looking at him as if he’d suggested that the Seine was flowing backwards.
“The House needs blood and magic,” he said. “It took it from outsiders, once. But that’s no longer enough. It’s taking us now. Its dependents.”
In other circumstances, he’d have treasured the look of utter shock on Iaris’s face.
“Lord Asmodeus—”
“The House has Lord Asmodeus.”
Thuan kept his face light, expressionless. Nothing of the gut-wrenching panic he felt. Once the House got whatever it wanted from Asmodeus, it would kill him. It had never had any use for the weak, even those belonging to it; any care taken for them had been Asmodeus’s ideals imposed on it.
“Thuan.” It was Berith’s hand, lying on his shoulder and squeezing. “What do you need?”
He reached up, squeezed her own hand.
“I want the children safe. Vinh Ly, we have shields against Fallen magic.” He ignored Iaris’s disapproving face. “The other dragons can start protecting the dependents. Iaris, get it organized.”
“My lord…”
Thuan’s face didn’t move, but he allowed the human shape to slip, so she faced the maw and streaming mane of the dragon.
“Now,” he said.
Iaris opened her mouth to protest, but Phyranthe got there first.
“I’ll do it, my lord.”
Iaris glared at Phyranthe, whose gaze didn’t waver. At length—grudgingly—Iaris bowed to Thuan.
“My lord.”
She’d be looking for a way to make him pay, but her authority had been dented. And it didn’t matter, because there was something more urgent.
Françoise spoke up. “Thuan? What now?”
He came to kneel by her side. Ai Nhi had left Vinh Ly, and was now clinging to him, making small contended noises.
“Unka Thuan Unka Thuan…”
His heart felt like it was going to burst.
“Now I’m going to go get Asmodeus back.”
There was, after all, only one place he could be.
* * *
Frédérique didn’t know how much time had passed when Morningstar moved. It felt like barely a heartbeat; but she must have blinked and lost count of time, because when she heard him move, she came awake with a start, her arms wrapping around her daughter again.
There was a sound in the distance—an awfully familiar one—and after one more heartbeat she realized it was the sound she’d been listening for all her life: the shrieks and wingbeats of Harrier’s hawks. Coming for her.
She rose. Or tried to. Because magic grabbed both her ankles and forced her down. Morningstar was bending over her. No, not over her—over Virginie.
“Leave her alone,” Frédérique whispered, but his grip was like iron as he held her at bay.
His hand placed something against Virginie’s chest: a large wooden disk that clung to her flesh as if it had been sewn there. Virginie convulsed and screamed as the disk’s light faded into her skin.
No.
Frédérique tried to rise again, but the magic held her firm.
Morningstar moved away, barely looking at her.
“I’ll be back,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I would advise you not to free yourself. I won’t be happy if I have to track you down.”
And they would pay for it in pain. The threat wasn’t even implicit. Why had she ever thought she could trust him?
Enough. She couldn’t afford to waste what little
time they had on self-recrimination.
And then he was gone, without so much as a backward glance. Nicolas moved by Frédérique’s side. He looked at her, his handsome face gray with fatigue.
“I can’t move,” he said. “I don’t think the children—”
“No,” Frédérique said.
Not that it mattered since they were both unconscious, and Virginie too heavy to be carried, but when she tried to shift her daughter’s hand she found it held by an invisible manacle. Frédérique’s own bonds held her legs, and rooted her to the ground as surely as chains.
Nicolas grimaced. He reached into his shirt pocket, rooting for something.
“We had her teaching artifacts,” he said. “But…”
But they were not magicians, and as likely as not they’d waste the magic in trying to use it.
A harsh cry. No other sound that she could hear, but there was a dark shape, gliding over the broken trains and the twisted rails, headed straight for them.
“Nicolas!”
And then another and another, until a dozen hawks were overhead, circling them as if hesitant to go for the kill.
Nicolas’s face was grim. He held something to his mouth, inhaled. His lips shone, briefly, with light—which spread beneath his skin but didn’t illuminate much. Because it had been empty, or because he didn’t have enough mastery of Fallen magic for it to matter?
Frédérique turned her gaze away from him—because it didn’t help, because it didn’t take them one step closer to being free. She turned to her daughter, gently shaking her—and then more and more frantically, trying to bring some life into a body that was as limp as a broken doll.
“Virginie. Little fish. Come on. Please.” Please please please.
Overhead, the birds circled lazily.
“Wake up, little fish.”
Footsteps, on the rails. Frédérique tensed to flee—a futile, nonsense gesture when her feet felt fused to the ground—and then stopped, when she saw who it was.
“Aurore?”
* * *
Philippe found Isabelle on the southern edges of the community, dangling her feet on a broken fragment of wall. Ahead of her, Dân Chay’s threads built up, slowly and inexorably—no longer a concentrated pool of khi fire, now reaching into the cracks of their weaves, slowly pushing inwards.
The House of Sundering Flames Page 37