It wasn’t going to hold. They’d built a second weave of protections behind it: a thinner, flimsier thing because there had been no time for more, and they were running ragged. Grandmother Olympe had insisted they pile all the furniture they could find into the streets to form illusory barricades—as if anything could protect them against the fire—but sooner or later it was all going to burst.
He was out of ideas, which was why he’d let Hoa Phong smear something sticky and eye-wateringly sharp over the back of the barricades. He couldn’t see how it could possibly work, how Dân Chay wouldn’t laugh and sidestep it, but they didn’t have many better options.
“Are you all right?”
“No,” Isabelle said.
She stared at the weave again. Beyond it was Silverspires, and—somewhere he couldn’t see—Javier, trudging home. Dân Chay would see nothing more than one of the House-bound abandoning a fight he had no part of; he’d sworn not to harm him in any case, but who knew what he’d do, if he learned what Javier was looking for in Silverspires?
“I wanted to go with him,” Isabelle said. “So badly.” She raised a hand. “Don’t tell me what they’d do to me there. Is it really worse than the fire?”
At least the fire was clean. Philippe clamped his lips on that remark.
“You didn’t. Go, I mean.”
A short, bitter laugh. “I’m not completely irresponsible. Hoa Phong, you and I are the only ones who can draw the wards. And maybe Tade. I want to, but I can’t afford to.”
“It’s good of you.”
“No. It would be monstrous of me to put my own interests first, right now.” Another bitter laugh. She scared him. The easy-going smiles, the delight in life she’d shown before—all of it seemed to have snapped, and he didn’t even know when. “I saw you watch me like a hawk. Ready to grab me if I bolted.”
“You’re not a prisoner here.”
Her gaze was distant. “If you’re preventing me from doing something I want, even if it’s for my own good, what else does that make me?”
A child, Philippe wanted to say, but again he clamped the thought down. More and more threads were gathering in front of their protection spells: the entire weave seemed to glow orange. The pressure he felt in his mind, the ever-present threat of his spells collapsing, rose to an unbearable high. A low-pitched, buzzing sound was ringing through the ground—a distant growl in a distant jungle, enough to make Philippe’s legs tense in preparation for a desperate dash to safety.
Except there was no safety. Not for people like him. And especially not for people like her.
“When this is over…” He stopped, then, because he didn’t know. “Hoa Phong asked if I would return. To Annam.”
It felt unreal. A thing he’d wanted for decades turning suddenly true.
Isabelle said nothing, for a while.
“You could come.”
“As a foreigner in a foreign land?” Her voice was biting. Then she stopped. “I’m sorry. I forget…”
That he was the foreigner in a foreign land? And then he realized with a chill that he’d been in Paris for far longer than she’d been alive.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get—”
Something burst, far away. Heat filled his thoughts—fire dancing, shriveling. And someone was running towards him, calling his name.
It was Tade and a couple of other dock workers, Mélanie and Hugo. He was out of breath, the mnemonic tattoo glowing like a small sun.
“He’s through.”
“I know,” Philippe said.
He ran in Tade’s wake, struggling to find words for a prayer to some unknown deity—and worried that the only one around who even remotely fitted the definition was him.
Please. Just a little time. Just let us hold until Javier…
But would Javier really bother to come back, now that he’d returned to his House? Or would he leave them to fend for themselves, as his kind had always done?
Deep, deep down, he knew the answer. He’d always known. But he couldn’t bring himself to voice it; to acknowledge that he had no hope left.
In the street where Frankie had died, Hoa Phong knelt on the pavement. The dress she’d worn was spread on the floor in a wide circle of cloth, and her arms were spread out, too, her skin turning into rot-flecked petals and flattening itself until she seemed to be at the center of three large, overlapping circles: the one of her dress, and the other two of petals drawn from her own body. In front of her, Philippe’s spell of protection was riven through, threads racing through a hole the width of a person. Except that, instead of spreading through the cracks of the street, as they had done before, these were spreading through the flowers, veins of darker orange leaving shriveling petals in their wake. Hoa Phong’s face was set—not in pain, but in acute concentration, as if she was trying to solve a difficult problem. Petals peeled off, carried by the wind. They were black and charred, and smelled sharp and acrid, like smoke.
Another crack rent the weave. More threads converged on Hoa Phong. Philippe looked behind her: at the buildings, bakeries, cafes where people were starting to mill, their eyes widening in horror. These absurd, useless barricades, with old people sitting behind them, their eyes narrow, their gaze sharp. Hoa Phong’s useless concoction, because the threads didn’t really seem to care about glue or whatever she’d spread on the barricades.
“Get them out,” he said. “Isabelle—”
Her face was grim, resigned. “I know. Stay back.”
The buildings were protected, which meant they could redraw a line just behind Hoa Phong, just behind the protections that had caved in—at the other end of the café and block of flats that had been the edges of their first line of defense on that street. Isabelle was already kneeling in the center of the street, drawing another jagged line on the cobblestones.
“It’s not going to hold!” she said, her eyes on the threads.
The threads were fast. Too fast. They’d been complacent; holding their council of war, wasting time they didn’t have while Dân Chay contemplated the best way to get past their defenses. Philippe ran to join her; knelt, frantically gathering khi currents in his hands. They moved away from each other: Isabelle towards the shuttered windows of the café, and him towards the block of flats. His fingers were leaden, clumsy things—no matter how much he gathered or how many meters of weave he lay on the ground, the other end of the street remained impossibly far away. Isabelle was working in grim silence, and meanwhile more and more petals were peeling off Hoa Phong’s still body. Tade was herding people away. You’d think it would have been enough to see the mess on the streets, but there was a bottleneck of confused bystanders who thought the rules didn’t apply to them.
They had to hold. They just had to hold until Javier…
Javier wasn’t coming. The thought coalesced in the silent, exhausted part of him, the darkest corner of his mind where the curse of House Silverspires still lurked—as cold and as lucid as the ringing of a bell and drum at a distant pagoda, acknowledging the inevitability of death. He wasn’t coming.
Even if he’d wanted to, even if he’d convinced Selene, there was no time. There was no way they could hold for that long. Ahead of him, Hoa Phong’s body was almost all blackened petals—he couldn’t even guess what strength of will kept her upright.
They had the second weave. Of course they did, but if the first one had been breached, what chance did a thinner one stand?
Each of them was perhaps twenty centimeters from their end of the street when Hoa Phong collapsed. It was slow and gradual and almost obscenely graceful—her arms spreading out, long sleeves flaring out, merging into petals, her entire tunic billowing in the wind, now a mixture of orange and black, and the smell of charred flesh in the air. For a moment, as she crumpled, her eyes shone orange as if she’d swallowed the fire’s light.
The threads raced past her, grabbing and fusing Tade with the ground. Fire flickered around him, absorbed by the mnemonic tattoo. They took Isabelle
, binding her to the ground as surely as ropes. No time. Philippe reached out, stretching towards the wall of the block of flats—his hand brushed a glass window, the weave of khi currents stretching from the street to rest on the building. He just had to…
The threads reached him, tore the weave from his hand like paper—grabbed his hand and twisted. Pain shot up his wrist as bone cracked, and he bit his tongue, tasting blood. Then they were past him, butting at the second weave, at their last, shivering line of defense while he still struggled to stand. They reared up, and the ghostly shape of a man wearing the old-fashioned, billowing clothes of an earlier dynasty formed just in front of the weave.
Dân Chay.
“Immortal.”
He had legs this time: his body was changing into threads only at the very hem of his robes, though he still moved in a flowing, disturbing way that didn’t actually involve walking. He stared at Philippe, while the rest of the threads continued to push against the weave, insinuating themselves in every crack, every flaw in their hasty pattern. Tade and Isabelle were on the ground, struggling to escape their own traps.
The threads that held Philippe tightened, the pain in his wrist becoming unbearable.
“Where is your vaunted composure now?” Dân Chay asked.
He once fasted in a cave to achieve it, his thoughts only on Heaven—except it all seemed so far away now, an unattainable fantasy.
“Dân Chay…”
The eyes in that face were luminous—amber held to light, to fire, and in the background only the roar of flames.
Dân Chay moved away, with a shrug. He was staring at the weave again, with that overwhelming hunger on his face—the urge to see everything dance in the firelight. He didn’t really care about Philippe or Hoa Phong—or even the people involved. The Houses had made him their means to an end, or was that too facile an explanation?
Philippe pulled, futilely, at the threads holding him to the ground.
They had nothing, nothing that could hold Dân Chay back. It had never been possible. He’d race along the currents of khi fire to the center of the community—until Grandmother Olympe and the aunts, the bakers and the dockers and the seamstresses, all that he’d become part of, would vanish in a maw of fiery, unquenchable thirst, another explosion that would destroy buildings and incinerate people with casual ease.
There was nothing.
TWENTY-TWO
Against Darkness
The child of thorns led Aurore through the ruins of a rail yard: the massive grouping of rails and stabling spaces that had once held the trains behind Gare du Nord. Broken locomotives and wagons littered what was left of the rails: the metal was twisted and rusted, as if a giant had reached down and pulled again and again until nothing was left but a disordered jumble. Metal creaked as she walked through the yard: the wagons shifting positions. Had to be. This was a bad place for ghosts.
Harsh cries, overhead—and she didn’t need the child after all, because a dozen hawks were circling as if over prey. She ran then—over the uneven ground, the power of the thorn children rising through her like sap in trees, so charged it was almost unbearable.
Frédérique was on the rails, stretched out over her daughter. She was trying to shake her awake, while her husband Nicolas—Aurore had to struggle to remember his name—was standing with the faint light of magic beneath his skin, hesitantly staring at the birds. Aurore knew that expression all too well.
“If you don’t know a spell, it won’t help you.”
He wasn’t Fallen, or a magician. Raw power might have helped them, but clearly he’d inhaled so little it wouldn’t make a difference. Aurore threw a glance at the birds. One of them saw her; or changed its mind, and dived. She raised a hand, wincing as the power flowed through her. The bird struck the invisible barrier she’d erected, and bounced off it, shrieking.
Neither Frédérique nor Nicolas had moved. Aurore peered at them, saw the invisible bands of magic pinning them to the ground—a warm heat like a sun, even at this distance.
“Morningstar?” she asked.
“He’s gone. He said we shouldn’t move.” Frédérique laughed, and it was bitter. “I guess he still has a use for us. Or for her.”
Aurore followed her gaze, and saw the disk on Virginie’s chest. Her blood ran cold.
No. How dare he.
“What does he want?”
The birds dived, again and again, their small bodies striking her barrier. Every impact was a jolt in her body, but the child stood with its hands pressed against the barrier, whispering indistinct words as they fell—no, not indistinct, but a song like a nursery rhyme, counting sticks as they were laid down.
“What do you want?”
“To help you.”
“No one does.” Frédérique’s voice was sharp. “Tell me. Why did Morningstar strike you down? He said you’d have betrayed us eventually—and I see that you have bought yourself some Fallen magic. The power you so craved, at last. I wonder what currency you used.”
Nothing but herself. She’d have laughed, but it would have sounded desperate. The birds kept diving, launching themselves at the barrier until it shook with their weight.
What could she tell Frédérique? That Niraphanes had asked the same—moments before Aurore drained her dry because she’d needed magic like a dying person needed water?
“Let’s get you out of here,” she said.
She stared at the birds again. There didn’t seem to be more of them, but that was no guarantee. And if they were there, it meant a warded Harrier magician wasn’t far away. And she didn’t want to face them.
“Come on!” Aurore said. The barrier was shaking, and she now felt each impact as a jolt up her entire arms. “We can argue about what happens later.”
“No,” Frédérique said.”That’s exactly what I did with Morningstar. Not again.”
Nicolas said, “Frédérique…”
He’d stopped looking at the birds and was using the magic to slowly saw at his own bonds. Aurore couldn’t be sure how long he’d need to free himself.
“Shut up,” Frédérique said, not even looking at him. “We’ve run for enough, Aurore. If this will simply trade one master for another, I want to know now.” She pulled herself up, tugging at Virginie, who still didn’t move—Aurore saw her face twist with worry and fear, but she hid it well. “I want to know the price.”
What could she tell Frédérique that wouldn’t make her run away screaming?
Aurore said, finally, “When the House threw me out, I was pregnant.”
Frédérique’s face had gone still.
“I didn’t lose the baby,” Aurore said.
Marianne, clinging to her legs; Cassiopée, ensconced in her chair reading a book as Aurore went to bed, her hair and face limned in lantern light.
“I made a life away from Harrier. A family.” She used the French word foyer, the one that meant both family unit and hearth. “My daughter, Marianne. My sister Cassiopée. Only I couldn’t protect them.”
She felt it twist in her gut, again—could feel the pain of the disk against her chest, the perpetual tug back to Hawthorn, like a fish hook—could remember what it had felt like, to walk away from Marianne and Cassiopée.
“That’s what I want. That’s all I ever wanted. I just…” She spread her hands, carefully—seeing, from the corner of her eye, the child of thorns rise and spread its hands in a similar gesture. “I just want you to be safe, like Marianne. That’s all.”
Safe, the child of thorns whispered in her mind. They’re so much yours it hurts, doesn’t it? Feeling that, if something happens to them, you’re the one who failed to protect them?
Yours now and forever…
At length, Frédérique’s face relaxed a fraction.
“Fine,” she said. “For now.”
Her voice clearly said it wasn’t over; but that she at least trusted Aurore not to be Morningstar.
Aurore hadn’t thought it would feel like such a twist in the gut.<
br />
“Come on,” she said.
She knelt and, slowly, methodically, started sawing through their bonds, while behind her the world shook and trembled with the weight of the hawks’ dives. The child of thorns came, and stood by Nicolas’ side for a while. She couldn’t read the expression on its face, but at length it moved away from him, and came to kneel by Aurore’s side, its fingers lingering on the disk on Virginie’s chest.
Not now, Aurore said. The child’s hands danced on the disk, wisps of magic clinging to its fingers. Not now!
In her mind, something large and immeasurable shifted, like a whale in the depths or the mass of a fungus’s roots dormant underneath. The children, she thought—and then she realized with a chill that it wasn’t. It was her. It was a sharp, vast hunger—like the hunger for power she’d felt once, but magnified until it seemed alien.
Her. It was hers. The hunger was hers, the power was hers, and so was the price and the consequences.
She clamped down on it, struggling to breathe. Not now. The last of Frederique’s bonds parted under her hands. Something spiked, then—like a beacon or a signaling fire. She held it within her, feeling its warmth burn her. The child of thorns moved, resting its hands on her shoulders. They tightened, piercing skin, and the feeling died away as abruptly as a quenched candle flame. Aurore breathed out, slowly.
Morningstar, the child said, sounded annoyed. A signal to him, to let him know that they are slipping his control.
Of course. Morningstar wouldn’t have wanted to let go of his precious children. The shields against Dân Chay’s wrath, the Harrier weapons he could sharpen to his own needs. The thought of facing him was… not frightening or blood-curdling, as it once would have been, but merely exhausting. The smiling, bad-faith excuses about how important he was, how important the House was. All of it masking his desire for survival, cloaked in the hollow language of morality.
Aurore laid her hands on Virginie’s bonds—they were thicker, more deeply rooted into the cobblestones.
The House of Sundering Flames Page 38