The Silvered Serpents

by Roshani Chokshi

  “Do they know where we are?” asked Séverin.

  “They will soon enough,” said Delphine. “It’s a secret that neither I, nor Patriarch Ruslan nor Patriarch Hypnos, have the right to keep from them when the Winter Conclave begins in three days.”

  “Then I suppose we’d best hurry,” said Séverin.

  Ruslan gestured toward the door, and with that, the two of them left the library. Laila made her way to Zofia, who nibbled on the edge of a sugar cookie.

  “Not as good as yours,” said Zofia.

  “I’ll make them again. When we go home.”

  Zofia looked up at her, confusion giving way to happiness. Beside them, Enrique had just finished swallowing half of a large piece of cake.

  “Begin,” said Séverin.

  Enrique took a swig of tea. He still looked bruised and weary, but there was a new sheen to his eyes. A sheen he only got when curiosity grabbed hold of him. Before he looked at the symbols, he looked to her, and his expression was full of hope.

  “The top set of symbols is what we found on the girls,” said Enrique. “The bottom set is from the leviathan—”

  Laila frowned. “Where exactly did you find those symbols on the leviathan, Zofia?”

  “I walked inside its mouth.”

  Laila rubbed her temples. “Alone?”

  “There was something inside. And it had stairs.”

  “Zofia, that’s too dangerous to do alone,” said Laila. “What if something happened to you?”

  Zofia’s gaze turned bleak. “What if something happens to you?”

  That took Laila aback. Her palm pulsed with the memory of Zofia and Enrique tending to the wound on her hand just outside of St. Petersburg. They cared, and every time she remembered it, it felt like a beam of unexpected sunlight.

  Hypnos shuddered. “That leviathan is a monstrosity—”

  “It’s not a monstrosity,” said Zofia, a touch defensively. “Automaton pets are not so far out of the norm—”

  “Pet?” repeated Hypnos. “Did she say pet?”

  “A pet is a dog or a cat—” started Enrique, appalled.

  “Or a tarantula,” said Zofia.

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “There’s no need to beg,” said Zofia.

  Enrique scowled.

  “I can’t imagine someone naming that thing and looking upon it fondly,” said Laila.

  Zofia seemed to consider this. “… I would name it David.”

  All of them went silent.

  “David,” repeated Enrique. “A tarantula named Goliath and a metal leviathan named David.”

  Zofia nodded.

  “Why—”

  “The symbols,” said Séverin.

  Zofia gestured at the last symbol on the pattern she’d identified.

  Enrique rubbed his thumb along his lower lip.

  “There’s other repeating ones as well,” he mused. “Like letters. If I switched out a symbol with a vowel it might reveal a message. Let’s try A?” Enrique stepped back, then shook his head. “Never mind. How about E?”

  Zofia tilted her head, her blue eyes alight as she studied the pattern.

  “Assuming E is the correct vowel for the stand-in, you can work backwards … It’s all building on each other, like a grid…”

  “Alphabet made from a grid?” wondered Enrique.

  Laila watched Zofia stand, go to the board, bicker with Enrique, and then construct a loose grid …

  Enrique let out a whoop of joy.

  “Now we just have to line up the symbols with the letters. Zofia, you take the set from the leviathan. I’ll take the original.”

  “What do we do?” asked Hypnos, leaning forward eagerly.

  “Bask in their brilliance,” said Laila, sighing.

  Hypnos pouted in her direction, then moved to sit beside her. He reached for her hand, turning it this way and that.

  “How do you do it, ma chère?”

  Laila stilled. Had someone told him what she could do? Panic wound through her. Hypnos knew nothing of her secret. She didn’t think Hypnos would view her any differently than the others, but she didn’t entirely trust he could keep such knowledge to himself.

  “Do?” she repeated.

  “Yes, you know, in the sense that … and I mean no offense … but you contribute perhaps as much as I do in these meetings, do you not?” he asked. “There’s the arrangement of food and such, but I tried to do that as well and was met with very pitiful success. How do you…”

  He trailed off, and Laila knew the word he wouldn’t utter: belong. Though Hypnos didn’t realize it, as he turned her hand, a part of her couldn’t help but to reach out with her own senses. She remembered what Hypnos had said in the music room of the Moscow teahouse. Of how music had filled his loneliness, and even in so small a thing as the cuffed edge of his shirtsleeve, Laila thought she could hear that loneliness clattering through her. It felt like icy rain sliding down her neck, like staring into a room full of warmth and missing the door to enter it each time.

  “Give it time,” said Laila, squeezing his hand. “I think most would place more value on knowing who you are … rather than who you’re with.”

  Laila tensed, not knowing if he would find offense at her last comment. Everyone knew that he was involved with Enrique, but to what degree? Hypnos’s affection had always struck her as casual, despite its sincerity. What he had with Enrique hadn’t seemed serious until Enrique had emerged unconscious from the Tezcat. At that instant, Hypnos had insisted upon tending to him. And yet, Laila noticed how his gaze went to Séverin far more than it did to Enrique; how his hand on Enrique’s shoulder looked less affection and more like he was anchoring himself to a place in the room. Hypnos turned a couple of shades darker, and his gaze darted almost guiltily to Enrique.

  “Knowing me,” repeated Hypnos. “Are you calling me a cipher, Mademoiselle?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “Someone has to,” he said loftily. “How to crack a cipher, one wonders. Perhaps with names? Perhaps you might even tell me yours?”

  Laila fixed him with an annoyed look. “Laila.”

  “And surely, I was born a Hypnos,” he said, smirking. And then, after a moment, he let go of her hand. “Then again, the names we are born with can end up meaning so little. The names we give ourselves, well, perhaps that’s the truth of us.”

  “And in truth, you wanted to be the god of sleep?”

  Hypnos’s smirk softened.

  “I wanted to be a person I saw only in my dreams, and I named myself for that realm,” he said quietly. “And you?”

  Laila thought back to the day she’d plucked her name from one of her father’s volumes of poetry.

  Laila.

  Night.

  “I gave myself a name that hides all manner of flaws.”

  Hypnos nodded. For a moment, it seemed as if he would say something else, but then Enrique’s voice rang through the air—

  “Cracked it,” said Enrique. “There was a message waiting for us this whole time.”

  Laila closed her eyes. Panic flared briefly inside her chest. She steeled herself, then opened her eyes to the translation of the first set of symbols:

  The teeth of the devil call to me.

  Then, her gaze shifted to the translation of the symbols Zofia found in the leviathan’s mouth:

  I am the devil.

  23

  ZOFIA

  Zofia felt her pulse quicken as the words came into view … I am the devil.

  The year before her parents had died, someone had vandalized the storefront of a well-known Jewish merchant, calling him a demon responsible for the death of Tsar Alexander II. All day, her father had helped scrub the paint off the bricks. When Zofia had visited him, he placed his hand on hers, and together they traced the stone still wet with painted slurs.

  “You see that, my Zosia?” he had asked. “That is the devil. When a man cannot see a person as a person, then the devil has sli
pped into him and is peering out of his eyes.”

  A low, frantic buzz built up at the base of her skull. Zofia forced herself to take a deep breath. She started to count whatever she could see—the cookies on the plate before her, the number of tassels hanging from the carpet. She counted until she no longer had to remind herself to breathe. When she thought of evil, she did not think of mechanical monsters swimming in lake waters, but people. The people who had captured those girls and killed them; the people who hid cruelty behind politics. When the buzzing subsided, she tried to decipher the expression on everyone’s faces. Laila’s face was blank. Hypnos and Enrique wore matching expressions of what looked like horror. But Séverin’s lip curled. The gesture unnerved Zofia. It reminded her of an animal’s imitation of a human smile.

  “We have to go inside the leviathan,” said Enrique, breaking the silence.

  “All of us?” asked Hypnos. “Can’t we send, I don’t know, an envoy into the terrifying beast?”

  Enrique crossed his arms. “You’re a paragon of bravery.”

  “Or perhaps I worry for you, mon cher,” said Hypnos.

  Zofia watched as color bloomed on Enrique’s cheeks. The whole exchange—Hypnos’s slow smile and the brightness of Enrique’s eyes—disoriented her. Her pulse spiked, and her palms dampened … but to what purpose? Those small gestures felt significant for no reason. This was no equation that demanded solving. This was merely a scenario in which she had no place. And yet her center of balance felt tilted, and she didn’t know why. Annoyed, she chomped on the end of a matchstick.

  “When the leviathan returns at noon tomorrow, I will go,” said Séverin.

  “And he is a paragon of martyrdom,” said Hypnos. “You’re not going alone.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ll go.”

  “You’re the one who just called the creature a terrifying beast,” pointed out Enrique.

  Zofia did not agree. A Forged invention was neither inherently good nor evil, but a vessel suited to a particular purpose.

  “Perhaps it would be less terrifying if it had a name,” she said. “I like ‘David.’”

  “No,” said Hypnos, Laila, and Enrique at the same time.

  Zofia scowled. Before she could defend herself, the doors of the library opened and Eva walked inside, carrying a slip of paper. As she approached, the limp in her gait seemed more noticeable. She stopped walking the moment she saw the translation of symbols.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” said Séverin sternly.

  At a snap of his fingers, the Mnemo projection disappeared. Enrique took a side step, blocking the translation from view.

  “I brought news,” said Eva.

  Séverin frowned. “News of what?”

  “One of the girls reported missing was the daughter of a man named Moshe Horowitz, the name we found in the well. House Dazbog’s contacts were able to trace the name to a moneylender who lived in Odessa until 1881.”

  “And?” asked Laila.

  At this, Eva’s shoulders fell, and her gaze darted to Zofia. “Moshe Horowitz is dead. And so is his family. They were killed in a pogrom.”

  All of them fell silent. Zofia did not want to think about the dead girl’s family in Odessa. They had lost their daughter, and then lost their lives. Before now, the dead girls had reminded her only of Laila. Now, she saw something of herself in them. That same powerlessness.

  “The Fallen House patriarch targeted her because she was Jewish,” said Laila angrily. “He thought no one would think to look for her. That no one would miss her. All those girls … he—” She swallowed hard, and Zofia knew that meant she was near tears. “He thought he could get away with it.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Hypnos.

  Zofia noticed that Eva leaned forward curiously. Laila blinked back tears, then waved her hand.

  “I found some writing near the bodies,” she said.

  Eva’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not possible—”

  Séverin cut her off. “Why would they carve the Horowitz name inside a well?”

  When no one answered, he said it again.

  “Why a well?” he repeated. “That’s not a normal place to memorialize the dead. There has to be a reason. Explore it again.”

  Enrique made a choked sound. “After we nearly got destroyed by automaton goddesses, you want us to open all those doors again?”

  “Who said they would open?” asked Eva. “All but one of those Tezcats were completely boarded up.”

  It was true, thought Zofia. The old man in Istanbul could have blocked their way back inside entirely.

  “I want you to look at them, study them. Don’t go through them,” said Séverin.

  Zofia noticed he was only looking at her as he said this. She quickly looked somewhere else.

  “Let me be clear, I am not volunteering my blood to open up those doors again,” said Hypnos, crossing his arms.

  “Am I alone in thinking this is a terrible idea?” said Enrique. “Killer. Automaton. Goddesses. We are not opening that door.”

  “The Istanbul Tezcat is closed,” said Séverin. “I merely want to know if there’s anything written on the other side, the way the bricked-up well has writing.”

  “How do you know it’s closed?” asked Eva.

  Séverin tapped a small Mnemo beetle on his lapel. “Because I’m watching it.”

  Enrique blinked. “How?”

  “Before the door closed, I threw a bug at the opening to keep track. That old man in Istanbul has a giant statue positioned at the entrance. He doesn’t want you to cross over, and neither do I. We have all the eyes we need on the place,” he said. “Zofia, Enrique … go examine the doors—”

  “And me,” cut in Eva sharply. “I saved their lives. I have just as much to offer. And, besides, you have no representative from House Dazbog on this search.”

  Séverin looked from Enrique to Zofia. Eva was telling the truth, so Zofia did not correct her.

  “She can come,” said Enrique.

  Eva smiled with all her teeth and lifted her chin in Laila’s direction.

  “We need to know what else might be there before Hypnos and I go into the leviathan tomorrow,” said Séverin. “In the meantime, I’ll be arranging what needs to be done with Ruslan and the matriarch.”

  Laila rose from her seat, making her way to Zofia.

  “Please be safe,” she said. “I can’t have anything happen to you.”

  A sharp pain erupted behind Zofia’s chest as she studied Laila’s face. There was something about its arrangement that made her feel as if she were looking at Hela. It was not something physical. Their eyes were different shades. Hela’s a smoky gray to Laila’s dark chocolate. Their skin color was different too. Hela’s the color of marble and Laila’s the color of tree bark after a rainstorm. Maybe it was the effect they had on the world around them. The way they somehow made it safe.

  “I’ll be safe,” said Zofia.

  And then, she turned and followed Enrique and Eva out of the library. As she made her way to the ice grotto, Zofia watched the light play over the icy, vaulted ceiling and crystalline carvings of leaping rabbits and foxes beneath the balconies. Her parents had always told her to be a light, but the light she found brightest belonged in others. Some people were so bright that they shut out the dark of fear. After they lost their parents, Hela’s presence drowned out the shadows. In Paris, Laila and Tristan, Séverin and Enrique—even Hypnos—had done the same. But losing Tristan let the shadows back in, and as the three of them passed beneath a darkened arch, Zofia feared that if she lost Laila and Hela, she might never find her way out of the dark.

  * * *

  IN THE ATRIUM, Zofia noticed how the ice menagerie had been emptied. Now, motionless crystal figurines of bears and swans, sleek leopards, and huge hawks covered the translucent floor of the Sleeping Palace, scattered throughout its rooms and halls. It was discomfiting merely to stare at the still statues, but Zofia had no choice. Enrique had forgotten his notebook in the lib
rary, and made them promise to wait.

  “And don’t just say ‘promise,’ Zofia.”

  Zofia crossed her arms.

  “They’re repurposing the ice animals,” explained Eva. “They can’t attack if their Forging mechanism changes.”

  Zofia watched as one of the artisans hauled out an ice stag with a snapped foreleg. One of them drew out an unlit torch, then raised a match toward it. She knew it was an ice stag, but for some reason, all she could see was the slain and forgotten girls on the slabs of ice, Hela’s persistent coughing despite all the medicine procured, Laila’s garnet ring and the ever-diminishing numbers within the jewel. All of it converged into some nameless fear that made her shout out, “Stop!”

  The artisan looked up, first at her and then at Eva.

  “Don’t … don’t destroy it.”

  “It’s a broken machine, miss,” said the artisan.

  “I know, but—”

  But it was hardly the machine’s fault that it could not function in this world. That something about it was less desirable. That things had happened to it that it could not control. It did not have to be destroyed.

  Eva stepped in front of her. “Have it put in the jail cell, then. Out of the way.”

  The artisan shot her a look of disbelief, but Eva narrowed her eyes.

  “Do it.”

  The artisan nodded, hauling the stag elsewhere. Zofia’s pulse slowly eased to its normal rate.

  “Thank you,” said Zofia.

  Eva nodded brusquely, her hand going to the silver pendant around her neck. The other girl’s face wore a pattern of hesitation—pressed brows, shifting pupils. Finally, she looked up at Zofia and smiled wide.

  “We don’t really know each other very well, do we?” asked Eva, shaking her head. She did not wait for Zofia to respond. “For instance, do you like the ballet?”

  “I don’t know,” said Zofia. “I’ve never been.”

  “Probably for the best,” said Eva. She tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear. “I stopped going years ago too. It’s no good to be tempted by something one can’t be.”