Nicolas was free now, profusely bleeding from ankles and wrists. Deep, blotchy bruises spread across his lower arms and calves, but his whole attention was on the sleeping Charles: he was slowly and methodically hacking at the boy’s bonds. Aurore could hear his slow, labored breathing—his voice chanting a litany of fear and hope. She fumbled at Virginie’s bonds, feeling the power within her slosh, like a brim full glass—any false movement and it would incinerate the child. The air was trembling now with the birds’ cries, and the beating of their wings. She was ten years old again, watching them gather, watching the poor mortal that Guy had singled out—birds, peeling away from walls and doorways, made of bricks and glass and iron railing… Her own barriers were buckling and she wasn’t strong enough to hold them at bay.
No.
Again, that vast and almost unbearable thing. It was hers, it was sheer stubbornness and refusal to lie down, the same coiled spring that had kept her walking in the dark, carrying Cassiopée’s body, thinking only of getting away from the House. It was… hunger for power and refusal to lie down and pride and all the things in between.
The last of Virginie’s bonds broke under her hands, and then Frederique was lifting the child away from her, while Nicolas continued slowly, stubbornly, to worry at Charles’ own bonds. He had three already loose, and the fourth crumbled as Aurore reached him. She laid a hand on his shoulder, feeling power slosh and burn, a jolt in his entire body.
“Run,” she said.
The barrier above them broke.
A haze of shrieking birds dived towards the tracks, their wings outstretched, the walls and streets of Harrier’s buildings descending upon them all, a darkness hiding the gray skies and the broken locomotives and the twisted rails at their feet.
Aurore met it, her arms outstretched.
There was a jolt through her entire body; a burning fire—the touch of wings on her hands, her wrists, climbing up within her skin, bulges that sought to tore their way out of her. The House; the flat cages; the birds; Lord Guy and the other Fallen, thoughtlessly, needlessly cruel.
You will pay for it all.
She said nothing, because she didn’t need to. She took them all in—all their hatred and their contempt and their need to crush others for their own happiness—and she crushed them all like paper lanterns, feeling brittle bones snap like charred kindling, and with every bird that died, the House shriveled, grew weaker and more distant, and Guy reeled from the blow she had given him. She took the birds from him and tore them apart with lashes of thorns, stripping him of everything until his mastery of the House meant nothing, because it was all but dead, and its only power now would be used to keep the carrion-eaters at bay.
And then it was over, and she was standing in a circle of charred cobblestones, breathing hard. The birds were gone. Harrier was gone. The House was gone. It would never again come for her or the ones she loved again.
She’d won.
“Aurore…” Frédérique’s hesitant voice.
She and Nicolas were looking at her with something very much like wary awe in their eyes.
“It’s all right,” she said, slowly exhaling. The child of thorns moved; she looked at it, startled, because she’d almost forgotten it was here—like her own arm or her own leg. “But we have to go before Morningstar comes back.”
Nicolas said, slowly, hesitantly, “You could fight him.”
Could she? Power still coursed within her with the same inexorable push as sap in spring. She’d held a House at bay until it had to reel back to lick its own wounds. She…
But there was a child to protect.
“Perhaps,” Aurore said. “But we should get her to safety first.”
The word burned on her tongue. Where could she possibly take them? Anywhere that wasn’t the ruined train yard; anywhere that wasn’t ashes and ruins, except that the entire city was ashes and ruins, and the community was under siege. Still… Still, it was the only place that would shelter them.
“Philippe,” she said, and then stopped. “There’s a few of us—Houseless—that have got together. I can’t promise much, but it’ll be better than the Houses.”
Better than Silverspires, or Morningstar.
Frédérique started, “Niraphanes—”
“She’s dead,” Aurore said. “I’m sorry. The birds…”
The lie tasted acrid and sharp in her mouth.
A long, weighing look, and then Frédérique looked away. Aurore’s guts twisted, but it was brief and fleeting, a shame she was getting used to. She thought the child would speak up, would tell her again how justified she had been, but it was silent.
“It’s your best chance,” Aurore said. “We can stand together.”
She knelt by Virginie’s still shape, her fingers millimeters from the disk—she could feel its heat, its power, a faint memory of Morningstar’s own radiant power. It wasn’t frightening—compelling, yes, but not that murky attraction she’d once felt, a moth drawn to the light that would burn it. It drew her because like called to like.
“But we need to get that away from her first.”
Frédérique’s face was drawn. She looked at Nicolas, and then back at her daughter. She looked broken and exhausted, and Aurore wanted to wring Guy’s and Morningstar’s necks for inflicting that on her.
“Do what you must,” she said.
Aurore grabbed the disk. Magic flowed upwards, into her fingers and her hands—not like Niraphanes’ or the House, but a slowly growing warmth under her skin, as if she’d been holding her hands to a fire. Then she realized, trembling, how exhausted she was; how much it had cost her, to defend Frédérique and the others; how much she needed magic, a thirst in her like a dying person’s. She had to take this, to take all of it in, now, a sweetness like that at the heart of a translucent dumpling, the sustenance she so desperately needed, just as she’d needed Niraphanes’ own magic to replenish her own…
No.
No.
She’d drain Virginie dry. She couldn’t…
Of course she could. Of course she deserved it. All of it, and why should she ever think of stopping? Hunger had driven her all her life, and it was only right that it be sated.
No. Please no.
But the part of her that was saying this was small and insignificant, and held fast within her with bonds of thorns, as surely as Frédérique and the others had been held in Morningstar’s coils.
The hunger was hers. The power was hers. And it was her due.
* * *
Javier was in the library at Silverspires, and it was not going well.
Selene had been decidedly unhappy that he would strike an agreement without her—and even more unhappy and uncomfortable that Morningstar might have something to do with the explosions. It wasn’t just his testimony: a lone survivor of Harrier, Lorcid, had turned up demanding an explanation for the kidnapping of their dependents by Morningstar. Fortunately she didn’t come with the authority of the head of the House, and Selene had forestalled her so far, but the situation was nothing short of disastrous.
House Silverspires was the leader of a ruined, devastated city; and they were in no state to do much of anything, either. The House hadn’t exploded, but the shock wave had torn it apart. The buildings had held, the wards had held—but dependents had not. The hospital was full of people with torn faces and punctured eyes, and those were the lucky ones. The unluckier ones had broken bones ranging from ribs to collarbones to limbs, and burst organs when the shock wave had picked them up and shaken them like limp rags.
Javier hadn’t fought in the war, but he’d been born in its wake, and he could recognize sea changes when he saw one.
He’d left Selene chewing on the consequences for the House, and had gone to the library.
Emmanuelle wasn’t there—another reason Selene wasn’t, either. She wouldn’t break: she’d always done what had to be done, and she certainly wasn’t about to start because her partner was missing. But she was annoyed and short-temper
ed, and given half a chance she’d level Harrier all over again. Or Hawthorn, just as a precaution.
None of the harried archivists knew where he could find information on the House’s war research. He’d ended, finally, in the older stacks, amidst the smell of mold, and the sharper, more acrid stink of magic gone slightly stale. He was unstacking book after book, not feeling sanguine about his chances.
It had been bad for the Annamites. He didn’t have much time—if he had it at all. And he still needed to get back there, which was going to be laborious enough.
With a sigh, Javier turned back to his books. He offered a brief, desultory prayer to the God he was sure had stopped listening a long time ago, and turned pages, desperately looking for something of use.
“Here,” a voice said.
Javier, startled, looked up. It was Selene. The head of House Silverspires wore her usual suit, the swallowtail jacket impeccably cut. Her hair, cut short, framed a face awash with the light of Fallen magic. She was holding out a book.
“It’s in the restricted section.”
“The restricted section?”
“The one for the head of the House.” Selene’s voice was bleak.
“You’re unhappy about this,” Javier said.
Selene laid the book on top of his pile. “Of course I am.”
“There won’t be reparations to pay. Even if Morningstar did… do something rash.”
“I know the lay of the land,” Selene said sharply. “No House is in a position to demand reparations from us now. The world has changed, hasn’t it?”
Javier thought of the sky, burning above them. Of devastated Houses with broken buildings and a sea of dead, struggling to recover.
“The city has. But yes.”
“And you think we should acknowledge this.”
Javier was silent for a while. He looked at her. He couldn’t be sure that she’d like his opinion, but he’d never let that stop him before.
“Is it the alliance with Houseless you don’t like? Do you think we should just take what’s offered? The leadership of the city?”
Selene sighed. “Of course not. We can barely take care of our own. Would we crow over a field of ruins? How very Asmodeus-like.”
Or Morningstar, Javier thought, but didn’t say. He opened the book, scanned the first paragraph.
“Then you agree we have no choice.”
“I agree. I didn’t say I liked it.” She looked thoughtful again.
Javier said finally, “I didn’t see Emmanuelle.”
Her face froze. She said finally, “She’s alive, and not in immediate danger anymore.”
Which meant she had been.
“She’ll come back,” Javier said.
A long, piercing look. “Is that the advisor or the friend speaking?”
Javier said, because she scared him, “Please don’t lose hope.”
Selene didn’t move. “I don’t want to.”
He’d never thought she’d break his heart with four words.
“It’ll be all right,” he said gently. “I swear it will be.”
A gentle snort. “Of course.” She rose, graceful, elegant. “I’ll have a car readied for you, when you’re done. See me in my office.”
And then she was gone, and it was just him and the book, and the weight of dusty years, and all the sins of the war.
When he was done. If he was done. If there was still time.
* * *
Thuan stood in the grove of hawthorn trees, beneath the tree on which Uphir’s desiccated corpse hung. The rising wind shook the branches, and blood splattered on the scales of his dragon form. A few centimeters away the wet, churned earth became a gaping hole, the ground falling away into endless darkness, like a grave.
Darkness. Birthplace and grave. What lay under the earth?
Berith, crouching by his side, said, “I could—”
“No,” Thuan said. “Your family needs you.”
A raised eyebrow in an expression that was achingly familiar.
“I take it Asmodeus isn’t my family?”
“You’re right. He is. I’m sorry.”
Thuan looked again at the hole. Around its edges were hazy silhouettes, slowly converging on them: the children, light glimmering on the woven branches that made them, on the drops of waters caught on the thorns of their bodies. They stopped, well away from Berith and him. Waiting.
“It’s for the head of the House.”
“That’s what you said the last time.” Berith sounded amused. “I can’t say it worked out very well.”
Thuan thought, for a while. He knew, in a way that he couldn’t quite articulate, that the children would let him pass unharmed, but that they would tear Berith to shreds if she dared the same. The House didn’t like Berith, as evidenced by the fact that Uphir—who now belonged to it in death—had misgendered her.
“Let’s compromise,” he said. “Wait here, and only go down if I haven’t come back up in a couple of hours?”
Berith looked unconvinced.
“Trust me,” Thuan said, with a confidence he didn’t feel—and, slowly, ponderously, launched himself into the air, and down into the darkness at the heart of the House.
It engulfed him, not slowly and gradually, but rising up to meet him like tar. The small halo of light with Berith’s waiting silhouette vanished, and he was flying through darkness—except that nothing held him up, and that it was like a never-ending fall. He thrashed, trying to control something, anything—tail and body and arms, pushing back against the air that held him, but nothing made a difference. He was still falling—faster and faster, with nothing to slow him down. He’d been so conceited—thinking that the House wouldn’t hurt him, because of course he mattered, of course he was its head and no mere dependent, of course they wouldn’t dare—except none of that meant anything, down here.
Something loomed out of the darkness—a branch, extended along the width of the hole with the inexorability of a trap. Thuan, unable to move, hit it at full speed. The thorns embedded themselves into his body, settling in the hollows between his scales. They burned like branding irons, except he had no time to think about it, because there was another branch—and another and another until the world was dislocated, fiery pain—and the weight of thorny offshoots wrapped around his body, trussing him up like a pig for the slaughter. He thrashed again, trying to escape them; but he was weakening, and it felt like struggling against an unmovable wall. Still falling, and heavier and heavier now. He couldn’t move, and he wasn’t flying, merely falling, loaded with heavy chains, into a pressing darkness, eager to swallow him whole…
He hit the ground. It flattened him, sent him flying again—and a third time before he realized it wasn’t earth, but a pool of water. The branches were dragging him down: unfolding in the darkness and questing for the bottom of the pool he’d landed in. Everything was fiery pain. At least one arm had been broken, and it was slowly struggling to heal itself, pulling on exhausted currents of khi water. It was… almost peaceful. Nothing to struggle against, just the familiar coldness of water, and his sinking further and further into the mire, the House, growing more and more distant from him…
No.
The House.
Asmodeus.
Thuan moved, again and again, struggling to grasp khi water that wasn’t his. He couldn’t seem to grab the currents, but the branches unraveled. One last one clung to his right leg: Thuan kicked it off, and arced upwards, towards the surface.
He’d expected it to be dark—and really, it wouldn’t have made any difference if it was, because he had excellent night vision—but it wasn’t. The Gothic novels Asmodeus so liked to read would have had mysterious glowing mushrooms, but it wasn’t that kind of light, either. More like the one in the dragon kingdom: of sunlight refracted through water, except that it was the sun of before the war, yellow and blinding, untainted by magic and unmasked by any pollution. He’d almost forgotten what it looked like.
And in the ligh
t… huge masses of hanging threads. No, not threads—roots, inverted pyramids, a seemingly endless succession of them rising in his path as he flew. None of them quite the same, but all a tangle of thin, aerial roots narrowing to one or two thin ones trailing in the water. And where they touched the water, a single widening ring, as if water were continuously dripping from the tree roots into the underground lake. The khi currents were… weird. Not exhausted, as in the rest of the House, but bent in odd shapes, curving away from the trees in all directions.
Asmodeus?
The link wasn’t clear, of course, but he had a sense of his husband’s presence—amused, sarcastic, unchanged, a comfort so strong he thought his heart would burst from his chest. Not the best time to be sentimental, as Asmodeus himself would say.
There was a tightening in the air, all the roots lifting away to point in a particular direction. A clear sign. The House was testing him, not trying to kill him.
Well, it wasn’t as though he had much choice.
He looked down at the water, considering swimming rather than flying. It was his first instinct, except that the water seethed with frenzied branches, slithering above and below the surface, the large thorns glistening in the light. When he flew lower to have a closer look, the branches extended, whiplash-quick, trying to grab him. He withdrew, shaking, though not before one of them scratched his scales, leaving an imprint that burned like fire.
Make that no choice at all.
Thuan flew onwards. There was never an end to the masses of roots, but at length something rose on the horizon: a distant, gray mass. As he flew nearer, he saw it was the foundation of some immense edifice—and that it kept receding as he flew. His wounded leg was beginning to shake with effort. The fall had taken its toll on him. The House, on the other end… His sense of it, diminished after the explosion, grew and grew until it became a constant pressure in his thoughts—the desperate hunger, the need to protect the dependents arrayed like candles in his mind. He couldn’t see the children, but he was getting closer to the heart of it. Not the grove; not the trees, but what lay underneath it. Its origin.
More tangles of roots, straining to catch him—he gave these a wide berth. More widening circles in the dark water. An endless landscape that didn’t seem to change. There was no sound here, only a growing silence, and the faraway drip of water droplets; and something else that made the water shake, a slow immense beat like that of a giant heart. The House.
The House of Sundering Flames Page 39