The Silvered Serpents

by Roshani Chokshi

  The clock on the wall struck the third chime of noon.

  Séverin felt his thoughts ram together, trying to arrange a puzzle that was missing a critical piece. But then he felt Hypnos pulling him through the door—

  “What the hell were you waiting for?” he demanded.

  The door closed, seaming the monster shut behind its walls. His heart raced. His mind tried to cling to every detail that he’d just seen: pale eyes and teeth, the chime of noon.

  Hypnos clutched his heart. “Will it come after us?”

  “I don’t think it can fit through the door,” said Zofia.

  Enrique crossed himself. “Laila, did you—”

  But he stopped. All of them stopped when they looked at Laila. Tears streamed down her face. The sight twisted inside Séverin.

  “Laila, ma chère, what is it?” asked Hypnos.

  “Those s-statues,” she choked. “They’re not statues.”

  She raised her gaze, her eyes finding Séverin’s. “They’re dead girls.”

  18

  ENRIQUE

  Enrique caught his breath.

  He knew they had just gotten attacked by a mechanical leviathan, but it was the statues—no, the girls—who kept pushing to the forefront of his mind. There was something across their mouths, something that demanded noticing.

  “Did anyone notice the symbols—” he started, only for Séverin to whirl on him, his eyes feral with anger.

  “Not now,” he said harshly.

  Shame spread hot through his stomach. He was only trying to help. There was something about the arrangement of those girls that reeked of intention. Follow the intention, find the treasure. That was what Séverin used to say. Enrique was only trying to do that, and not for himself and whatever glory it might buy him, but for Laila. Out of the faith that what he did could have meaning to the people who mattered most.

  What if what he’d seen could help them find The Divine Lyrics? Then she would live. His research on the book had sometimes mentioned the lore of female guardians. Between that and the dead girls in the grotto, Enrique sensed the possibility of a connection. It called to him like a kernel of a secret, and he needed to root it out.

  By now, Eva had rushed to meet them in the atrium of the Sleeping Palace. Séverin quickly told her what had happened in the ice grotto.

  “A mechanical leviathan?” Eva repeated, staring back down the hallways.

  “And all those girls,” whispered Laila. “Strung up like…”

  She couldn’t finish her sentence. Enrique tried to reach for her hand, but she startled when the matriarch rushed into the atrium. Delphine Desrosiers never had a hair out of place. He didn’t even think her shadow dared to stretch across a sidewalk without her permission. But when she ran in now, her eyes looked wild and her steel-colored hair frizzed around her face.

  “They said there was an attack,” she said breathlessly.

  Her eyes went straight to Séverin, but he wasn’t looking at her.

  “Are you hurt?” asked Delphine.

  “No,” said Séverin.

  Finally, she wrenched her gaze from Séverin and glanced over everyone else. When she caught sight of Laila, her face softened. She took off her own cloak and draped it around Laila’s shoulders.

  “I’ll take her. She needs some hot broth and a blanket,” said Delphine. She narrowed her eyes at Séverin when he moved to block her. “Not you.”

  Laila looked so frail, the great fur coat hanging off her shoulders. Beside him, Séverin watched her a beat too long … and then he turned his face and stared down the hallway.

  “We need eyes on whatever is inside that room,” he said darkly. “And we need to make sure it can’t get out.”

  Zofia nodded. “I’ve got an incendiary net prepped and ready. There are Mnemo bugs already positioned to record its movements inside the grotto.”

  “I’ll get the Sphinxes,” said Eva. “They’ve got motion-sensitive thread and enough weapons to alert us if it makes it past the door.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Hypnos, looking at Eva. “For all we know, that thing might already be planning to sneak into the atrium—”

  “The leviathan didn’t look as if it was designed to leave…,” said Enrique, thinking of how the creature had shot into the air only to rest its head, snake-like, on the ice.

  “I agree,” said Zofia. “Its dimensions are not compatible with the hallway space. It would destroy the beauty of its mechanism.”

  At least someone was listening to him, he thought glumly. While Séverin and Hypnos discussed new schematics, and Eva and Zofia examined a Forging net, Enrique stood there with the Mnemo bug clutched in his sweaty palm. Invisible.

  “We need to discuss the girls.”

  Enrique didn’t say statues. He wouldn’t disrespect them that way, but he could feel his word choice shuddering through the group.

  “Not now, Enrique, just go and—” Séverin stopped mid-sentence as another attendant ran forward with news about the leviathan in the grotto.

  Enrique clutched his Mnemo bug tighter. He wished Séverin cared enough to at least finish his insult. Commotion whirled around him, and he decided, suddenly, that if he was useless here, then he might as well make himself useful elsewhere.

  “I am going to find the library,” he announced to no one.

  Zofia looked up from her work. “The one that didn’t have books?”

  “The very same,” said Enrique tightly.

  Aside from Zofia, no one said anything. Enrique stood there a moment longer, then awkwardly cleared his throat. Hypnos looked up, his blue eyes slanted in confusion.

  “Perhaps you could escort me to the library?” asked Enrique.

  Hypnos blinked. For a second, his gaze slid to Séverin as if waiting for permission. The gesture rankled Enrique, who nearly turned on his heel when Hypnos finally nodded and smiled.

  “Of course, mon cher.”

  Away from the others, Hypnos seemed lost in thought, his brow creased as he fiddled with the crescent-shaped Babel Ring on his hand. Enrique waited for him to ask about the girls, to notice that Enrique had been trying to speak, but Hypnos said nothing. The wide double doors of the library loomed ahead. Hypnos would leave him there, and finally Enrique’s impatience won out.

  “Do you think those girls are the missing victims from twenty years ago?” asked Enrique.

  Hypnos looked up from his ring. “Hmm?”

  “The girls…,” prompted Enrique. “They might be the same ones from the stories in the area.”

  Hypnos grimaced. “I think you’re right.”

  “And the way they were arranged,” said Enrique, emboldened. “It seemed purposeful. What if they’re part of the key to finding The Divine Lyrics? I was thinking about how in the seventeenth century, there’s a connection between—”

  “My handsome historian,” said Hypnos. He stopped walking and turned to him, rubbing his thumb along the top of Enrique’s cheekbone. “Your words are dazzling, but now isn’t the time.”

  “But—”

  “I have to go, mon cher,” said Hypnos, backing away. “Right now, Séverin needs me. I need to consult with Ruslan, check with the Sphinxes, etcetera, etcetera.” He flailed his hand. “Normally, responsibility gives me indigestion, but I find myself rather motivated.”

  He leaned forward, kissing Enrique.

  “I have every faith you’ll solve what needs solving and dazzle us all! Immerse yourself in your research, mon cher, it’s—”

  “What I do best,” finished Enrique flatly.

  Hypnos looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled and walked away. Enrique stared after him, trying not to let those words—what you do best—sink their teeth into his heart. Of course Hypnos was preoccupied. That’s all. He would’ve listened otherwise, wouldn’t he?

  Numbly, Enrique reached for the door handle. Only once did he look over his shoulder to see if Hypnos noticed that he’d paused outside the doors. But the other boy never tu
rned. As Enrique walked inside, he felt as if someone had taken the nightmare of waiting for the Ilustrados in the library auditorium and turned it inside out … the slow dread of waiting and hoping to be heard inverted to standing before an audience that could not hear him.

  * * *

  THE “LIBRARY” SEEMED to Enrique like the entrance to an abandoned temple. Past the double doors lay a marble aisle stippled with light from the panes of skylights above, so that it seemed to undulate. Marble pillars held up the ceiling. Four on each side of the aisle, and one at the end, each of them carved with the likeness of one of the nine muses.

  On his right stood Clio, for history; Euterpe, for music; Erato, for love poetry; Melpomene, for tragedy. On his left stood Polymnia, for hymnals; Terpsichore for dance; Thalia, for comedy, and Ourania for astronomy. At the end of the long aisle stood one muse set apart from her sisters as the chief of them all … Calliope. The muse of epic poetry, revered in mythology for the ecstatic transcendence of her voice.

  All of them held an object most associated with them: writing tablets and masks, lyres and scrolls. And yet, when Enrique looked closer, wandering over to examine the pillars, he saw that each of the objects were broken. Split down the middle or else lying in stony heaps at the goddesses’ feet. It struck Enrique as a strange artistic choice.

  Empty bookshelves covered nearly all the wall space, and yet, when Enrique breathed deeply, he caught the scent of books. Of binding and pages and tales eager to be known. Knowledge was coy. It liked to hide beneath the shroud of myth, place its heart in a fairy tale, as if it were a prize at the end of the quest. Perhaps whatever knowledge here was similar. Perhaps it wished to be wooed and coaxed forth.

  Each of the nine muses leaning out of the pillars had one hand extended, as if in greeting or invitation. Enrique hoisted up the dossier of his research beneath his arm, then touched the icy marble hand of Erato, muse of love poetry.

  At his touch, the marble muse shivered and split down the middle like a clever pair of double doors that unfurled into shelves. Enrique stepped back, awed. The shelves stretched higher than his head, the sound of the churning wooden gears chewing up the silence around him. When they fell silent, still at last, he reached for the books. At first glance, each tome seemed to be related to love poetry. Enrique studied the titles down the spines: Pyramus and Thisbe, Troilus and Cressida … Laila and Majnun. That stopped him. Laila and Majnun? Wasn’t “Majnun” what Laila had once called Séverin? Enrique’s skin crawled. He had an uncomfortable flashback to throwing open the door to his parents’ bedroom after a harrowing nightmare only to be met with another one.

  “Ugh,” he muttered, putting the book hastily back on the shelf.

  As he turned his head, a strange design leapt out at him, whittled onto the edge of Erato’s hand. He hadn’t noticed it until the statue, or bookcase as it were, had fully opened. It was like the number 3 flipped:

  Enrique traced it delicately. Curious, he thought. Was it the signature of the artisan? He made a quick notation of the symbol and returned to the muse of history. He set up a stand and a projection display for his Mnemo bug.

  In his hands, the Mnemo bug felt heavy.

  Either he was a fool who had seen nothing on those dead girls’ mouths or he had seen something, and, well, perhaps he was still a fool, but at least he was a fool with observational skills.

  Moment of truth, he thought, fixing the Mnemo to the projection.

  Just before he could press the display button, the doors of the library flew open, and in stepped a pair of unfamiliar guards. Judging by the snow-dusted fur collar at their throats, they were sentinels positioned outside the Sleeping Palace. The metallic sun that flared on the lapels of their fur coats marked them as delegates from House Dazbog.

  “What business do you have here?”

  “I am with Séverin Montagnet-Alarie, on business with the Order of Babel—” he started.

  One of the guards interrupted, “Oh, now I remember you … What are you, his servant?”

  “Valet?” said the other with a laugh. “What are you doing in a room full of books?”

  Enrique’s face burned. He was so tired. Of no one listening, or bothering to listen. But then, behind the guards came the fall of thunderous footsteps as Ruslan entered the room and scowled.

  “This man is a scholar,” he corrected.

  The Dazbog guards looked chastened.

  “Our apologies, Patriarch,” said one, kneeling.

  The other kneeled too, muttering his apologies.

  “Remove your hats!” said Ruslan.

  The guards did as told, their hair snow-damp and rumpled. Ruslan made a tch! sound at the back of his throat.

  “You don’t deserve your hair,” he muttered. “Go away before I shave your heads.”

  From Ruslan, this seemed like a legitimate threat, and the guards immediately scuttled away. Ruslan watched them go, then whirled back to Enrique, his eyes bright with regret.

  “I am sorry,” said Ruslan.

  Enrique desperately wanted to say something suave like Hypnos or enigmatic like Séverin … but all he had was the truth.

  “It’s fine. It’s not the first time,” he said. “And it probably will not be my last.”

  Ruslan regarded him for a moment, and then his shoulders fell a fraction. “I understand that.”

  That took Enrique by surprise. “How do you mean?”

  With his uninjured hand, Ruslan gestured to his own face, turning from side to side.

  “Not the most Russian profile in the world, is it?” said Ruslan.

  “Well…”

  Enrique knew the Russian Empire was huge, with citizens who looked as varied as hues in a rainbow, but there was something Enrique recognized in Ruslan’s features. A gap, in a way, where otherness snuck in and blurred his features. He recognized it because he saw it in his own reflection every day.

  “I know,” he said, then patted the top of his head. “I don’t know who my mother was. I imagine she was a Buryat native or a Kyrgyz woman or what have you. Then again, they have such excellent hair that one would think I would’ve inherited it! Rude. Ah well. It does not matter. What does matter is that the part of her that clings to me is the part no one seems to like. So I understand, Mr. Mercado-Lopez. And I see what you wish to hide.”

  Enrique felt a hard lump in his throat. It took him a while before he could muster the strength to talk again.

  “I’m glad I’m not alone.”

  “You most certainly are not,” said Ruslan kindly. He thrummed his fingers against the sling of his injured arm, then turned about the room. He let out a sigh. “Eva told me all about your rather disturbing discovery. Young women dead in these halls?” He shuddered. “I don’t blame you for escaping into the quiet of this room.”

  Escaping? Was that what everyone thought he was doing? His cheeks warmed.

  “I didn’t come here to be alone with my thoughts,” he said, fumbling with the Mnemo bug. “I came here to research and study what I saw in the grotto. I think there’s a link between those girls and the Fallen House’s treasures. And I’m quite certain those girls are the truth behind the ghost stories here.”

  Ruslan blinked at him. “Ghosts?”

  “The … ghost stories about this area?” clarified Enrique, but Ruslan’s face was still blank. “Hyp—I mean, Patriarch Hypnos—told me that this area terrified the locals so badly that House Dazbog even investigated. Nothing was ever found, though.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Ruslan, shaking his head. “If those really are the same victims, I am glad they can be laid to rest. Though what does it have to do with the Fallen House’s treasures?”

  Enrique had his ideas, but maybe they were foolish. He was about to say so when he caught the way Ruslan looked at him. Wide-eyed and excited. Tristan used to be like this, eager to hear what he had to say, even if he hadn’t the faintest clue what he was talking about. It was intoxicating, he thought, to be so clearly seen by someone els
e.

  He slid the Mnemo into the projection. He did not want to go straight to the image of the girls. He needed to think through his process before jumping to a conclusion that could change the course of how they treated the ice grotto. Instead, he brought up a couple of images that had cropped up throughout his research in Paris. One was of the Matsue Castle of Japan. Another image followed, this time of a bridge, then another temple, then a design torn from the pages of a medieval book on Arthurian legends showing a tower balancing atop a red-and-white dragon fighting beneath the ground.

  “All of these buildings have one aspect in common,” said Enrique. “Foundation sacrifice. In Japan, they called this practice hitobashira, an act of human sacrifice specifically done around the construction of institutions like temples or bridges. In this area, in and around the Ural Mountains, the ancient Scythians and Mongolians had similar constructions with their kurgan burial sites, where warriors would be buried with all their riches and sometimes various servants and guards, so that the spirits of the sacrificed went on to act as guardians.”

  As he spoke, he saw the stories he referenced stretch out before him. He saw them linking back to the girls in the ice grotto and their ruined mouths. He wondered at their pain and their fear, all of it sliced through with the taste of snow and blood, metal and cold.

  “In terms of the positioning of the girls … it feels similar to that ritualistic sacrifice, though we need more concrete proof before I can make that leap,” said Enrique.

  “But you think that the presence of the dead girls might be proof that there’s treasure in that room? That there’s something to be guarded?”

  Enrique nodded hesitantly and then maneuvered the Mnemo bug to the last and final image, the one of the dead girls above the three shields. It was bad enough they had been murdered and strung up, but if their jaws held a symbol, then it might be a clue.

  “Dear God,” breathed Ruslan, his eyes widening in horror.

  Enrique stared up at the image, his heart twisting. He made a quick sign of the cross down his body. He wasn’t like Séverin or Zofia, who could separate the human story from the treasure hunt. All he saw were stories … lives cut short, dreams withered from cold and forgotten, families torn apart. How many girls had gone missing for this? How many people had been left wondering where they’d gone? When all this time, they had been here, and no one could find them.