The Silvered Serpents

by Roshani Chokshi

  “You wanted to be a ballerina?”

  Eva’s mouth tightened to a flat line. “Once.”

  To Zofia, Eva already looked like a ballerina. She was tall and slender, and though her gait dragged, she was no less graceful.

  “I’m sorry,” said Zofia.

  She had no reason to be. It wasn’t as though she had done something, but she figured it was the kind of response Laila would use.

  “I am too,” said Eva. Abruptly, she let go of the pendant she held. “Do you dance, Zofia?”

  “No.”

  Eva tilted her head. “But Laila does?”

  “Yes.”

  Although Zofia recalled that Laila did not always consider what she did at the Palais des Rêves to be dancing.

  “I envy her that … among other things,” said Eva. “Laila and you are close?”

  When Zofia nodded, Eva made a hmm sound at the back of her throat.

  “She’s very astute, isn’t she?” asked Eva lightly. “It’s as if she knows the impossible sometimes.”

  Laila knew what other people did not because she could read what other people could not. But that was a secret, and so Zofia said nothing. Instead, she followed the commotion of the room, watching as an artisan opened one of the atrium walls and shoved in the broken stag.

  “A prison cell,” said Eva, following her gaze.

  Zofia’s throat tightened. She did not like cramped, lightless spaces. She had not even known there was a prison cell hidden within the Sleeping Palace’s atrium.

  “How did Laila and Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie become lovers?”

  “They’re not,” said Zofia. A second later, Zofia realized she had said the wrong thing. Her pulse spiked. “They are. I mean—”

  “Oh good, you waited!” called Enrique, jogging toward them from the library hall.

  He shifted the mass of notebooks under his arm. When he got to them, he was out of breath. He looked to Zofia and grinned. Zofia felt the smile as if it were a tangible thing, and it made her feel uncomfortably warm. She did not smile back.

  * * *

  ONCE MORE, THE THREE OF them stood in front of the Tezcat doors.

  Zofia could not shake the news that Eva had told them about the Horowitz girl and the pogroms. More than anything, Zofia wished she could hear from Hela … and then she paused. She hadn’t heard from Hela.

  Due to the Order’s numerous inroads throughout Russia, Séverin had arranged to let her hear from her sister weekly. The last time had been exactly eight days ago when Hela had spoken of her cough returning and of meeting a boy named Isaac. Zofia told herself she should not be concerned. Statistically, there were a number of reasons why mail should go awry: human error, illegible handwriting, weather, etcetera. Any action must be accompanied with a standard deviation. If she had the figures to calculate the chances, she would not panic. And yet, without it, her panic often felt unquantifiable, defying the boundaries of a solid number, and instead, threatening to grow into a gaping hole that would swallow her thoughts whole.

  “Ready?” asked Enrique.

  Without answering, Eva drew her taloned pinky ring across her palm and pressed her hand onto the metal shield. The hinges of the Tezcat portal glowed a light blue, and then swung open. Behind the first door lay nothing but the damp moss that had grown over the brick which had become so tightly adhered to the Tezcat portal entrance that hardly an inch of space existed between the opening and the wall.

  “As expected,” said Enrique.

  But Zofia could hear the slightest tremor in his voice.

  “Now for the well in Odessa,” said Eva.

  Eva pressed her palm against the second door. Again, the hinges glowed fluorescent and then released. A bubble rose in Zofia’s chest. She told herself to be calm … to count the things around her. When the door opened, she counted the bricks: eighteen; the bolts around the Tezcat Portal: forty-three; the beads of blood welling on Eva’s palm: seven. But none of it prepared her for the sight of the bricked-up well once she knew why the name had been inscribed.

  “I knew there was more writing here,” said Enrique. He turned to Eva. “Knife, please.”

  Eva handed the blade to him, and Enrique began to scrape away the damp moss that grew around Moshe Horowitz’s name. When he was finished, he read aloud the inscription:

  “For the family of Moshe Horowitz, gone but not forgotten…” He scraped at the rest of the moss covering the brick. “… This being the site where Rebekah Horowitz went missing and, presumably, drowned…”

  Rebekah.

  An old hate scraped at the back of Zofia’s mind.

  When Zofia turned thirteen, she remembered her mother’s belly swelling with child. Zofia had not wanted another sibling. She didn’t like all the new changes—the sound of constant woodwork to build a crib, the stream of visitors, the unfamiliar dishes her mother now craved. But then her mother lost the baby. At first, Zofia could not understand how someone might misplace an unborn infant, but then she saw the midwife leaving her parents’ bedroom with a basket of bloody rags, and she understood.

  Was it her fault? She knew her will carried consequence. It was the age when her Forging affinity had started to manifest, the age when she realized that if she held a piece of metal and wanted it set aflame or bent … she could do it. What had she done…? Jewish law held that the child had never lived, and so it never died. And yet, her mother whispered “Rebekah” at the grave, and when the rabbi at synagogue called members to stand for the Kaddish, she stood in the women’s-only part of the synagogue and glowered at anyone who looked her in the eye. Zofia still thought of the name, Rebekah, though she never uttered it aloud. To her, it was the name of a change she did not know how to want. It was the name of a fear that never had a chance to become a joy, and it filled her with shame that she had not tried to love it, and would never have the chance.

  Now, Zofia felt that same rush of urgency and powerlessness all at once.

  The urgency to protect what she knew, and the dread of not knowing what to expect. She steeled herself, thinking of Laila’s dark eyes and Hela’s gray gaze, and she promised herself she would protect them.

  Zofia broke off one of her Tezcat pendants, shining the fluorescent light against the bricks. Small, writhing insects burrowed back into the lining of the brick. Her light caught a molten, silver shape. Enrique held up his hand.

  “I recognize that symbol,” he said, frowning.

  “Where?” asked Eva.

  Zofia peered closer. There, buried right beneath Rebekah’s name and no bigger than a thumbnail was a small, flipped number 3.

  “I’ve never seen that symbol,” said Eva. “Is it the letter E?”

  Zofia tilted her head. The symbol reminded her of something she had seen in her father’s study, a mathematic sign like the lowercase omega.

  “I know I’ve seen it before,” said Enrique, flipping through the pages of his notebook.

  “It looks like a math symbol,” said Zofia. “Like the transfinite ordinal number.”

  “Trans what?” asked Eva.

  “Transfinite is a number treated as ‘infinite’ or far greater than finite numbers, but not quite infinite, and ordinal is a theory used to describe a number that describes the collection of other numbers.”

  Eva rubbed her temples. “What do those words even mean?”

  “Knowing Zofia, I’m sure it will prove to be brilliant,” said Enrique.

  He shot her a warm smile. Zofia studded his face: brows pressed flat, mouth tipped up at the corners. A pattern of pity. He pitied her. And Eva was not even listening. Zofia’s cheeks heated, and she walked away from the Tezcat portal to the third door. Enrique stayed behind, documenting the symbol.

  “It still doesn’t explain why her name would be carved in a well,” said Eva. “Did the Fallen House climb into the well? Who saw her get in?”

  “I have no idea,” sighed Enrique.

  “Maybe the third door will tell us,” said Eva.


  Enrique made a slight whimpering sound and stood behind Eva. A second later, he seemed to change his mind, and instead stood behind Zofia, muttering, “Pleasedon’tlettherebeakillergoddesspleasedon’tlettherebeakillergoddess…”

  Rolling her eyes, Eva pressed her bloodied palm to the metal shield. It swung open with a creaking sound. Immediately, Eva leapt back. Enrique screamed.

  “What?” asked Zofia.

  Eva turned to her, her green eyes round. “There’s … there’s writing on the wall.”

  Enrique didn’t move. “Metaphorically or—”

  “You screamed because of writing?” demanded Zofia.

  “Depending on the script, some writing can appear exquisitely intimidating,” said Enrique. “And I didn’t scream. I yell-breathed.” He clutched his chest and scowled at her. “It’s different.”

  Zofia peered into the third portal and saw the words written in a glowing ink:

  TO PLAY AT GOD’S INSTRUMENT

  WILL SUMMON THE UNMAKING

  24

  SÉVERIN

  Séverin knew that the finding should make him happy, but he couldn’t remember what happy was. His mind kept catching on a particular memory, like a silk scarf in sharp branches, from last year. The five of them had acquired a costly Fabergé egg, the sale of which supported an ancient Indonesian gold Forging community against the Dutch business interests. It was Zofia’s birthday, though only Laila seemed to have known. As a surprise, she had hidden a cake shaped like a chicken’s egg inside their escape hansom. Before Enrique could start talking about the mythological significance of eggs, Tristan had loudly asked: “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” Zofia was the first to answer: “Scientifically speaking, the rooster.” The whole hansom went silent, and then they laughed so hard that Séverin accidentally put his elbow through the cake and all the bright yellow lemon curd that Laila designed like a yolk got onto Enrique’s pants, which only made them laugh harder—

  “Stop,” Séverin hissed to his reflection.

  He braced himself against the vanity of the bedroom, struggling to get ahold of his breathing. Ruslan and the matriarch had decided to host a formal dinner, which meant that he had a whole evening to get through before he would venture into the leviathan. He willed his pulse to calm.

  Laila was, of course, accompanying him, but he hadn’t seen her since the library when Enrique, Eva, and Zofia had rushed to show them the writing on the wall …

  TO PLAY AT GOD’S INSTRUMENT

  WILL SUMMON THE UNMAKING

  It did not solve the mystery of the well, but he didn’t need every mystery answered … that writing was as good as a warrant. The unmaking … vague words with vast consequences. He liked it. It meant The Divine Lyrics was every bit as powerful as he had hoped. Powerful enough to undo every mistake.

  “Séverin,” said a voice by the door.

  He jolted upright.

  The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Out of all the things that jarred him, how strange that it was his own name. In the past, Laila would have called him Majnun. He never knew why she’d chosen that name and now it didn’t matter.

  When Laila entered the room, he first glimpsed her through the mirror, like a fairy tale where the hero crept upon the monster, risking only a glance at her reflection lest she turn his heart to stone. Only this was its inversion. Now the monster glanced upon the maiden, risking only a glimpse of her reflection lest she turn his stone to heart.

  In the mirror, he saw that Laila wore a dress of smoke. Gray silk, Forged so the edges looked as if they dissolved into the air around her. The silk moved around her body, revealing a corner of her shoulder before sleeving it in gray plumes, then a plunging neckline for a moment before transforming into a high collar beaded with silver pearls. Her diamond necklace glinted just beneath it.

  Every time she snuck up on him, it was like seeing her for the first time. Two years ago, she had arrived with a troupe of nautch dancers at L’Eden and thwarted an attack on his life. At the time, he’d hardly registered her revealing outfit. He had a vague impression of beauty, but something else had instantly transfixed him. It took him a few minutes before he could pin down what it was. Kindness. Laila’s kindness was warmth freely given—like unasked for treasure—and it overwhelmed him as if he were a beggar gifted a king’s ransom for as irrational a reason as the day of the week.

  “There seems to be much more of you than meets the eye,” he had said.

  Laila had raised her eyebrow and gestured to her outfit. “But not much.”

  That was the first time she made him laugh.

  Now, he looked at her in the mirror, at her beautiful gown and her burnished skin, her kindness drained to the dregs and nothing but a hard crust of wariness left behind.

  “Tomorrow, you’ll have what you want,” he said, not looking at her directly.

  And so will I.

  The Fallen House couldn’t read its own treasure, but the Fallen House didn’t have Laila. Of course, Laila was not the type to consider how she might be the one carrying the bloodline of the Lost Muses. But if anyone could read that book, he was sure it was her. How fitting, he thought, that he should need her as she needed him, though not nearly in the way he had once imagined. If he believed in such things, he might have called it fate.

  “I hope you’ll be satisfied,” he said.

  “And you?” she asked. “Will you be satisfied, Séverin?”

  Again, that name that hardly felt his own.

  “More than that,” he said, smiling to himself. “One might even say reborn.”

  * * *

  ON THEIR FIRST WALK-THROUGHS of the Sleeping Palace, the one place that had eluded them was the dining room. It had taken the work of House Kore and House Nyx’s attendants to find it. The entrance was not through a door, but a balcony window on the second floor, fifty feet high, which looked out over the jagged, dusky belt of the Ural Mountains. An ice peacock perched before the huge window, translucent feathers fanned out to block the entrance. When it saw them, it swept its feathers aside and let out a mournful coo.

  As if from midair, the matriarch stepped out into the vestibule and fixed them with a critical eye.

  “Late,” she said, by way of greeting. “Everyone else has arrived.”

  Laila sneezed, and her face softened. The matriarch—the same woman who had cast him aside without a second glance—once more shrugged off her fur coat and draped it around Laila’s shoulders. The gesture summoned a cold lump in his throat.

  “Thank you,” said Laila.

  “I hope your lover is impressively attentive in other respects considering he’d let you freeze at a moment’s notice,” she said, glaring at Séverin. She swept her hand toward the hall. “This way. And do be warned that it looks as though a single step will send you plummeting to your death.”

  She stepped out of the window, and Séverin’s stomach lurched, everything in him expecting that she really would fall. But she didn’t. When he tilted his head just so he caught the glossy sheen of a clever, Forged glass floor. He and Laila followed after the matriarch, down a corridor that promised a drop of at least three hundred feet should they take any missteps. A molten golden door appeared as if in midair, and even though it was closed, Séverin caught the sounds of Hypnos playing the piano …

  The door opened to reveal a great, domed dining room. A feast was spread out on a long, black table carved of onyx. Near the back of the room, Hypnos played at the piano, with Enrique, Zofia, and Eva beside him. As Ruslan made his way to greet them, Séverin eyed the room. Thinly hammered sheets of golden feathers served as the floor. Above, the Forged ceiling magnified the stars so that they seemed within plucking distance, and while the glass walls afforded a breathtaking view of Lake Baikal … they were ornamented with rotating lights that took on the shape of the Greek zodiac.

  “It’s beautiful,” breathed Laila, tipping back her head. The light flared against the burnished line of her throat, and Séverin nearly cau
ght himself staring.

  “Yes, quite,” said Ruslan, bending over Laila’s extended hand. “And does the room please you too, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie?”

  “I find it morbid.”

  “Morbid?” repeated the matriarch.

  But Ruslan’s smile widened. “Tell me what you see.”

  Séverin tapped his foot on the floor. “The feathers of Icarus. And above, the too-close heavens. And around us”—he pointed at the zodiac—“inflexible fate. This room is a reminder of the great overestimation of men … a reminder of how far we might fall. I’m surprised the floor isn’t bloodred.”

  Ruslan hummed in agreement, rubbing his bald head. “‘Blood flow’d, but immortal; ichor pure, such as the blest inhabitants of heav’n, may bleed, nectareous.’”

  “Who’s reciting the Iliad?” called out Enrique from the back.

  “Me!” said Ruslan gleefully. “Sometimes I surprise myself by remembering things … one imagines that without a ceiling of hair, all thoughts merely abandon the skull.”

  “What did you say?” asked Séverin.

  “Skull?”

  “No.”

  “Hair…”

  “No.”

  There was something else. Something that had struck him in that moment.

  Ruslan paused, and then said, “Ichor?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Ichor pure.”

  Ruslan stroked his head. “The Fallen House loved any mention of the gods. It was even rumored they had found a way to give themselves ichor, of a kind. A way to manipulate their very human matter. A rumor, however.”

  “It’s no rumor,” said Laila. “We’ve seen it.”

  “Ah, yes … in the catacombs, correct?” asked Ruslan, looking from the matriarch to Séverin. “So it’s true? You saw their ichor?”

  As if he could forget. Sometimes he found himself touching his mouth, dreaming of sticky gold. Whatever alchemy rendered men to gods, he craved it.

  “What let them do that?” asked Séverin.