The Silvered Serpents

by Roshani Chokshi

  “Bravery is physically exhausting,” he managed.

  “You’re awake!” cried Laila, hugging him.

  “You’re alive.”

  “And your hair remains exceptional,” said Ruslan kindly.

  “C’est vrai,” said a warm voice.

  Enrique turned to his right, and there was Hypnos, one warm hand at his shoulder. That cold knot of rejection that had coiled in his heart the moment Hypnos had left him at the library eased into warmth. He could’ve been at Séverin’s side, but he’d chosen him.

  “What did you find out?” asked Séverin brusquely.

  “Can’t this wait?” asked Laila.

  “No,” said Enrique, pushing himself up on his elbows.

  The longer he looked at Laila, the more the world sharpened with urgency. In that second, he felt the weight of their eyes on him. The irony of it was almost funny. Finally, he thought, they were all listening to him. Except it happened to be at the exact moment when all he wanted was silence. And sleep. But he didn’t want to imagine what nightmares would chase him through sleep. He’d given those dark dreams too much to feed upon—the dead girls in the grotto, the piled-up hands behind the stone-faced muses. A shudder ran down his spine, and he forced himself to sit upright.

  “We were wrong about the Lost Muses,” said Enrique.

  Ruslan tilted his head. “The women who supposedly guard The Divine Lyrics?”

  “Not just guard,” said Enrique. “There was apparently something in their bloodline that allowed them to read the book itself. I don’t think it’s a myth. Not anymore.”

  “But that’s impossible, mon cher,” said Hypnos. “What woman has a bloodline like that? And what does that have to do with those poor girls?”

  Enrique stared at his lap. He could think of only one woman with a bloodline that let her do the impossible: Laila. And her very existence depended on finding The Divine Lyrics. He avoided her eyes.

  “Enrique?” prompted Séverin.

  “I don’t know who would have that bloodline,” said Enrique, forcing his thoughts back to the conversation. “But it’s clear the Fallen House believed in it. In the portal courtyard, I saw depictions of women without their hands, offering them to the muses. And none of those girls that we found—”

  “—had their hands,” finished Laila softly.

  “I think once the Fallen House got The Divine Lyrics, they tried to find women of the bloodline necessary to read the book. And when they couldn’t do that, they … they sacrificed them, arranging them like a shadow of the Lost Muses, like guardians for their treasures and The Divine Lyrics that they couldn’t decipher. They might have kept finding more girls, but then they were exiled.”

  Laila’s hand flew to her mouth. Beside her, Zofia and Eva looked sick.

  “And it’s not just blood,” said Enrique, thinking of the old man’s gouged-out eyes. “I think there’s more to it, like sight.”

  “The old man,” said Eva, her eyes narrowing. “He said something about how if you cannot see the divine, then you don’t know where to use it? I didn’t understand what that meant.”

  “I didn’t either,” admitted Enrique.

  Séverin turned a small knife in his hand, and spoke slowly, as if to himself. “So to read The Divine Lyrics, someone would need a girl of the bloodline.”

  A frisson of cold traveled down Enrique’s back. The way Séverin said it … as if. No. No, thought Enrique firmly. He would never do that. He wanted the book to avenge Tristan. Anything else was madness.

  “But what about the other treasures of the Fallen House?” asked Ruslan. “Did the symbols lead to anything?”

  Enrique shook his head. “I believe it’s a coded alphabet, but without more symbols or a key, I can’t crack it.”

  At this, Zofia cleared her throat. She held up a Mnemo bug, and he remembered that she’d seen something inside the leviathan.

  “I found more symbols,” said Zofia. “I think we can crack the code.”

  22

  LAILA

  Laila lingered at the entrance to the Sleeping Palace’s kitchen quarters, caught between wanting to join the servants in their food preparations and avoiding the kitchens altogether. She used to love this—examining ingredients like scraps of a universe not yet made. She used to savor the safety of the kitchens where no memories could bite her, where all her touch conjured was something worth sharing amongst friends.

  Once, she’d even baked edible wonders.

  Now all that remained was wondering: How would she live? How would she die? She glanced down at her hands. They seemed alien to her. Long ago, when she’d asked the jaadugar how she might keep living, he’d only instructed her to find the book and open it, for therein lay the secrets to her making. He hadn’t said that she would need to find someone else to read it for her, and yet that’s what Enrique and Zofia’s findings confirmed. To read The Divine Lyrics, one needed someone of the Lost Muses bloodline.

  “Mademoiselle?” asked an attendant. “You came to give us certain instructions for the tea?”

  Laila startled from her thoughts. The attendants must have noticed her standing at the entrance. Beyond them, she spotted tea carts already loaded with samovars and gilded podstakannik designed to hold the thin glasses, mounds of glistening caviar beside slender mother-of-pearl spoons, jam sandwiches the color of blood, and fragile sugar cookies that looked like layers of lace. All in preparation for the meeting to be held now that Enrique was conscious once more. Laila cleared her throat. One step at a time. First, she needed the book. From there, she would figure it out.

  “No pork for platter number two,” said Laila, pointing at Zofia’s tray. “Please do not let anything on the plate touch.”

  She scrutinized Enrique’s tray and frowned. “More cake on that one.”

  For Hypnos’s plate, she pointed at the water goblet. “Could you put that in a lovelier glass? Something etched and in quartz? And put the wine in a plainer goblet.”

  Hypnos had a higher tendency to drink from a prettier glass, and they needed him sober. Laila hesitated at the last tray. Séverin’s.

  “What does Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie want?” asked the server.

  Laila stared at the tray and felt a mirthless laugh rise in her chest.

  “Who knows,” she said.

  The attendant nodded and promised to send the trays to the library within the next half hour.

  “One more tray,” said Laila. “A little bit of everything on it … I’m not sure what she likes. And you can give it to me directly.”

  The server frowned, but did as asked. With the platter in hand, Laila made her way through the intricate lower hallways to the room Ruslan had told her served as the infirmary. By now, the others would be gathering in the library, ready to break the code that Zofia had found in the leviathan’s mouth, but Laila needed one more minute of silence. She hadn’t had a chance to mourn the girls she’d read. She hadn’t even had the chance to catch her breath after Eva, Enrique, and Zofia had gone missing, and all that she and Séverin had found was a blood-flecked arrow spinning across the floor of the ice grotto.

  What she needed was to give thanks, and to the right person.

  Laila knocked on the door of the infirmary.

  “What do you want?” snapped a voice from within.

  Laila took a deep breath and opened the door. Lying on a makeshift cot in the center of the room was Eva. Immediately, Eva pulled up the covers, hiding her leg beneath the blankets. In those unguarded seconds, Laila caught sight of the thick, mottled scars on Eva’s skin and the shrunken muscle.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Eva, settling into her pillows.

  “Who did you think I’d be?”

  “Someone important.” Eva lifted her chin. “I had put out an inquiry to find out more about Moshe Horowitz. I thought you might be someone bringing me useful information.”

  Laila ignored the insult, caught off guard by the familiarity of that name, though she couldn’t pl
ace it.

  “It was a name we found in the well,” added Eva.

  Laila’s hands twitched and turned cold, as if she’d touched a slab of ice and a crown of frosted petals. In her head, she heard the last memories of the dead girl: My father, Moshe Horowitz, is a moneylender. He can pay for whatever ransom you name, I swear it, please—

  Laila gripped the platter harder, her heart aching. “I don’t have any information, but I brought this. May I come in?”

  Eva narrowed her eyes, but eventually nodded. As Laila drew closer, Eva’s hand went to her throat, nervously tugging at the pendant she always wore. This close, Laila could finally see that it was a silver ballerina spinning on a thin chain. Eva caught her looking and quickly tucked it away.

  “If you think you can bribe my friendship—” she started, then her stomach growled. Eva blushed furiously.

  “I wouldn’t dream of bribing you,” said Laila. “Your stomach, however, is a different creature.”

  She pushed the platter forward. Still, Eva did not take it. Laila sighed.

  “It doesn’t have to be an overture of friendship,” she said. “Call it gratitude. Without the ice bridge you made, Enrique would be dead, and my heart would be broken. So whether you want my friendship or not, you have my thanks.”

  When Eva still said nothing, Laila stood and made her way to the door.

  “You don’t like me,” called out Eva. “And I don’t like you.”

  Laila’s hand paused at the door. When she looked at Eva, there was such hardness on her face that something softened within Laila.

  “Then perhaps we can just agree on mutual respect.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Laila left her. She only made it a couple paces down the hallway before she felt a tightening sensation around her neck. It never tightened to a choke, but her breath caught anyway. Séverin was summoning her.

  Laila made her way through the winding crystalline halls. It was almost entirely silent. The light cast off from the Forged luminescent threads set into the walls looked eerie, like glowing roots for unearthly halls. Cracked-open doors revealed rooms empty of furniture, but not of wonder. In one, intricate snowflakes sifted down from the ceiling. In another, sharp carvings of impossible plants and creatures opened their eyes and bared their crystal teeth as she passed. When Laila emerged into the atrium, she was greeted with another inhuman sight. Séverin stood wrapped in his long, sable coat, the lights catching in his dark curls, shadowing the cruel set of his mouth. If the frosted lights of the Sleeping Palace reminded her of stars crowding the night, then Séverin appeared amongst them like an eclipse. Everything about him was the opposite of radiance, and he drew her eye like a blight on the horizon. Unwanted, and yet, impossible to look away from.

  Behind him shuffled artisans hired by House Dazbog, their hands raised as they led out the menagerie of ice animals. It was like something from a child’s tale. Laila half expected Snegurochka to walk amongst them, cold hands pressed to her colder heart lest she fall in love and melt. Huge stags with glittering antlers stepped lightly onto the ice. Giant bears dragged their translucent bellies over the floor. Jaguars whose carved paws clinked like champagne flutes on the crystal floor padded after the ice artisans, who led them into the atrium. They looked like the ghosts of dead animals trapped in frost.

  “Ruslan had the idea to reconfigure their Forging mechanisms,” said Séverin, his voice low as he walked toward her. “Makes them safer to be around if they can’t attack.”

  He closed the distance between them, his hand sliding around her waist. Laila wondered how cold she must be if a boy made of ice still shivered at her touch. She knew this was a show put on for the benefit of the attendants, but her pulse betrayed her anyway and Séverin knew it. A faint smirk touched his mouth, and Laila bit back her fury. She brushed her thumb over his lip and was rewarded with the faintest tremble in his fingers.

  “You’re overplaying your part,” he said coldly. “Again.”

  “You summoned me, my love,” she said, her voice a touch louder than it needed to be. “In full view of everyone. Are we to have an audience?”

  Séverin’s gaze snapped to hers. The ice in him hadn’t reached his eyes. They were still that vespertine shade of violet. Still unsettling.

  “I summoned you to know what you saw when you read those girls,” he said, lowering his voice. “Does it corroborate with what Enrique, Zofia, and Eva saw in that courtyard?”

  Laila nodded, even as her soul recoiled. “Those girls were failed sacrifices meant to act as ‘instruments of the divine,’ whatever that means. The patriarch was insane, Séverin. What he did to them—” Her voice broke for a moment and she struggled to continue. “What Enrique said was right. They didn’t have the bloodline needed to read the book, and the patriarch of the Fallen House hoped his son would have more luck. That’s why he left clues across their faces. And the way he chose them … he specifically said he went after them because he thought no one would look. Eva is tracking down the families now.”

  Séverin nodded, then regarded her curiously.

  “You have been searching for that book a long time,” he said lightly. “How will you read it?”

  Laila raised her eyes to him. “Who said I needed to read it?”

  “Could you?”

  When he asked, his eyes looked molten. Desperate, even, and it threw off her thoughts. All this time, Laila thought he wanted the book to avenge Tristan. After all, robbing the Fallen House of their most precious treasure would be a killing blow. But she saw no hunger for vengeance in Séverin’s face. It was something else … something she couldn’t put a finger on, but it unnerved her all the same.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally.

  The jaadugar had merely told her to open the book. That was all. It was flimsy ground for faith, and yet her hope balanced upon it anyway.

  Séverin touched her throat, fingertips resting on the diamond jewels there.

  “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  Laila grabbed his wrist, squeezing the oath bracelet.

  “Don’t make demands you haven’t earned,” she said.

  “Earned?” asked Séverin, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, I’ve earned my demands. I’ve kept my promises. I promised to share all I knew with you and to take you with me. I promised to make you my mistress.”

  Behind him, an attendant strode across the atrium, leading a crystal tiger behind it.

  Séverin leaned in. “I made no promise to treat you as one. Is that the issue?” he asked mockingly. “Do you want me in your bed, Laila?”

  Laila dug her nails into his wrist until he winced.

  “I just want you to remember your promises.”

  * * *

  IN THE LIBRARY, the statues of the nine muses glimmered like nacre. A Mnemo projection hovering midair showed two sets of symbols. Laila recognized one of them as the images carved across the girls’ jaws.

  The other set must have come from what Zofia had seen inside the leviathan.

  Delphine greeted Laila with a huge scowl. As usual, the other woman was dressed impeccably—her steel-blond hair in a tight chignon, a dark sapphire cape trimmed in fox-fur cascading from around her shoulders. Laila considered her. Delphine was not … nice. But she was kind, and therein lay all the difference. When Delphine had led her away after they discovered the bodies, Laila managed to drag her fingers across the other woman’s scarves and furs. What she felt was the crush of loneliness like a clamp to her heart, and what she glimpsed was the memory of Séverin as a child: violet-eyed and cherub-cheeked, his eyes aglow with wonder. Shame tended to warp memories, conjuring slick and grimy textures in Laila’s readings. But the matriarch’s memories of Séverin ran through her mind like a river of light … and she couldn’t reconcile what Delphine had felt for him and what she had done to him. It made no sense.

  “Are they always like this?” asked Delphine.

  Laila looked beyond the other woman’s shoulder to where Hypnos and En
rique argued over the positioning of pillows on a chaise; Zofia absentmindedly lit matches and watched them burn; Séverin—who had left the atrium before her—pretended as though he noticed nothing; and poor Ruslan could only rub his head in confusion.

  “They’re hungry,” said Laila.

  “They’re feral,” said Delphine.

  “That too.”

  “Should I call for food—”

  Behind Laila, the doors opened once more and the attendants came in pushing a cart of food. Laila heard a sigh of “cake” as the food was distributed. Séverin, she noticed, took nothing.

  “Let’s get started,” said Séverin loudly.

  Delphine lifted an eyebrow, and had made her way to the small arrangement of chairs when Séverin held up his hand.

  “Not you.”

  Delphine stopped short. Hurt flashed across the other woman’s face.

  “I am the one sponsoring your acquisition, therefore I can stay.”

  “We already have the presence of two Order patriarchs.”

  Delphine let her gaze settle over Ruslan, who waved apologetically, and Hypnos who was frowning over the stemware on his tray. Even Laila felt a slight cringe in her heart.

  “What an inspiring sight,” said Delphine. “Two Order representatives strikes me as rather extraneous.”

  “Fine,” said Séverin. “I will send one away.”

  Across from Laila, Hypnos went still.

  “Patriarch Ruslan, would you give us the room please?”

  Ruslan blinked owlishly. “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  Laila caught the sudden sag of Hypnos’s shoulders. Relief clear in every line of his body. When he looked up at Séverin, something like hope touched his eyes.

  Ruslan grumbled and pouted, before finally joining Delphine at the front of the room and offering her his uninjured arm. She took it as gingerly as if it were a soiled cloth.

  “I will leave you to your work, then,” said Delphine. “But you should know that the Order continues to grow impatient.”