The Silvered Serpents

by Roshani Chokshi

  “Let?” repeated Ruslan, his mouth twisting on the word. “They had objects the likes of which you and I cannot fathom.”

  Ruslan moved toward the dining table, pulling out a chair for Laila and Delphine as he spoke.

  “House Dazbog specializes in the collection of Forging lore, and I believe the Fallen House had come across an ancient weapon … it had many names. In the Indian continent, it was known in the Tamilian language as an aruval, the medieval court of Baghdad called it a lost angel’s zulfiqar, but when the Fallen House came upon it, they called it the Midas Knife, not only after the cursed king from Greek myth, but also for its alchemical properties: blood to gold, man to god.”

  “It sounds like magic,” said the matriarch dismissively.

  “Perhaps Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie can tell us better,” said Ruslan. “Was it magic? What you saw?”

  For a moment, Séverin was back in the catacombs. Once more, he kneeled on a stage, felt the sharp rip of wings searing through his shoulder blades, the pressure of horns at his head, and always the strange cadence in his blood that sang with divine invincibility.

  “What is magic but a science we cannot fathom,” said Séverin.

  Ruslan smiled warmly.

  “Well put,” he said. “Though I would imagine such a weapon is wielded with great cost. It was said to be created from fragments of the top-most brick of the Tower of Babel, and thus closest in reach to God’s power.”

  “Perhaps that’s what made the Fallen House think they could become gods,” said Séverin.

  The matriarch scoffed, gesturing at the gold feathers of the floor, the intoxicating nearness of the stars. “One would think after all these reminders of fatality, they would’ve stopped themselves.”

  Ruslan rubbed his one injured arm, still limp in its sling. “But then we would not be human, would we?”

  He grinned and signaled to a server, who rang a dinner gong. Hypnos continued to play the piano, lost in the music. It used to be impossible to pull Hypnos away from the instrument.

  Eva called out over Hypnos’s playing: “Do you take requests, Monsieur?”

  Hypnos paused. “Yes!”

  “Excellent,” said Eva. “Then stop.”

  And she walked off. Hypnos’s expression soured, but he rose from the piano and joined everyone at the table. When Séverin turned to his right, he found that he was seated next to the matriarch. A servant stopped beside her, handing her a small, bloody vial that he recognized as her immunity to any unwanted blood Forging.

  “You always see so clearly into the darkness of men’s hearts, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie,” she said, before adding in a softer voice, “But I remember when you used to see wonder.”

  Séverin reached for his water goblet. “And now I see truth.”

  For dinner, the spread appeared like burnt offerings, food presented to deities. All of it designed to look charred, though none of it was. In a silver bowl sat black figs, so velveteen and succulent, they looked as if someone had taken a silver spoon to midnight and scooped. Then a roasted haunch, served on a pillow of burnt sage; black pudding on ice terrines; soufflés the color of the night sky. Around them, the animals of the ice menagerie had been repurposed … a crystal jaguar prowled around the dining table, balancing carafes of delicate ice wine on its back. The onyx table reflected the sky above, and as the night stretched longer, the ceiling grew delicate stalactites that resembled thinly beaten strands of silver. Séverin moved through the motions of dinner, but he hardly felt present. As far as his mind was concerned, he was already inside the leviathan, already turning the pages of The Divine Lyrics, already watching as the blood in his veins turned to a god’s rich ichor. He wouldn’t need the Fallen House’s Midas Knife for such a thing. He could have it on his own.

  Séverin didn’t realize dinner had concluded until the gong sounded once more. He pushed back from his chair, only to realize Zofia was standing beside him and glaring. He hadn’t seen her leave her seat, much less walk toward him.

  “What is it?”

  “I haven’t received word from Hela in eight days,” she said.

  Séverin frowned. There was no reason for a delay in messages. He had paid an exorbitant price so a courier would travel through the Order’s inroads and fetch Hela’s letters of health. Perhaps the man had gotten turned around in Irkutsk.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  Zofia hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. “I know.”

  Something flickered behind his heart, and the rime of ice he’d placed around it slipped for an instant. How did she know he’d take care of it? How could she trust his word after he’d made sure she couldn’t go back to her family? After she’d seen what happened to the last person who trusted him so blindly?

  Séverin clenched his jaw, and the cold in his heart reasserted itself. He had found the best physician in the area to treat her sister. By all accounts, the girl was responding to treatment better than expected. It was Zofia’s trust that inexplicably annoyed him. This was a business transaction. It had no room for hope, and yet she’d shoved that burden on him.

  Beside him, Laila touched his arm. As he readied to leave, he heard Ruslan call his name. He looked up and saw the patriarch of House Dazbog still seated at the table, dragging one finger across the dessert plate to collect what little powdered sugar remained.

  “I can’t decide if going into that leviathan’s mouth makes you brave or mad,” he said, with a small shake of his head. “But perhaps it’s fitting.” Ruslan looked to Laila, smiling. “With a name like ‘Laila,’ and a madman for a lover, I do hope you call your Séverin ‘Majnun.’”

  Laila’s hand stiffened on his arm. “What did you say?”

  Ruslan looked confused. “It’s a reference to the sixth century poem ‘Laila and Majnun’ composed by Nizami Ganjavi—”

  “I know what it is,” said Laila quietly.

  “Ah! Good, good,” said Ruslan. “Do you, Séverin?”

  Séverin almost didn’t realize he was shaking his head. He felt numb all over.

  “‘Laila and Majnun’ is one of my favorite tragedies,” said Ruslan. “I’ve always considered it such a shame that they are overshadowed by their later counterparts, Romeo and Juliet.”

  Séverin fought to listen to their conversation, but his awareness felt pulled to every instance when Laila had called him Majnun. Madman. She’d told him what it meant, but he’d never known his nickname came from a poem. A tragic one, no less. Inexplicably, he felt like a fool. Once, that name had been a talisman to him. Now, it tasted bitter and prophetic.

  “Ah, Majnun. The madman who lost himself to an impossible dream,” said Ruslan. He laughed softly, then glanced at the clock. “I wish you both a good night, and am honored to have spent such an illuminating evening in your company. Good luck tomorrow, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie.”

  He bowed once and turned back to his dessert plate.

  * * *

  SÉVERIN DIDN’T REMEMBER climbing to the top of the stairs, but he must have.

  He didn’t remember opening the door to their suite either, but he must have done that too, for here they were. The silence lay thickly around them, and perhaps that was why when he finally spoke, it seemed louder than he intended.

  “Is it true?”

  Laila startled. She had taken a seat at the ice-and-marble vanity in the corner of the room, her back to him as she drew off her gloves and removed her jewelry.

  “Is what true?”

  “My—” He stopped, gathered himself, started anew: “The name you called me. Did you take it from that poem?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  It struck him then that even before she had kissed him and tangled up some roots inside him so deeply that he would—without thinking—choose her over his own brother … she had already marked him for someone who she would never belong to, an attachment that could only end in disappointment. How well she’d chosen his name.

  He was mad, then, to
think fate would let him be happy.

  Perhaps he was mad, now, to try and change it.

  Laila fumbled with the zipper at the back of her dress. Slowly, he went to her. He almost didn’t realize what he was doing … all this time, he’d only ever tried to put distance between them. To get close to her now flew in the face of all of that, and yet he knew there was some transaction to be made if he wanted the truth. When he stood too close to her, he felt weak. No doubt she would feel weak by parting with her secrets, and so he must meet her on equal ground.

  “Tell me what happens at the end of the poem, Laila,” he said.

  Laila closed her eyes, as if armoring herself. None of that, he thought. He reached out and swept her hair across one shoulder. Goose bumps prickled along her skin as she bowed her neck, graceful as a swan. His hands brushed against the caught zipper. Its teeth had gotten tangled up in the silk. At his touch, Laila flinched a little. She usually hated for anyone to see her scar, but this time she made no move to hide herself, as if just this once, she too was willing to be bare.

  “Tell me, Laila,” he said.

  The zipper slid down an inch. In the reflection, Laila opened her eyes.

  “Once, a boy and a girl fell in love, but they could not be together,” she said. “The girl married another. The boy went mad, and—”

  Her breath caught as he pushed the zipper farther.

  “And?” he echoed.

  “And he abandoned himself to the wilds of the desert,” she said. She refused to look at him. “At the end, they had a chance to be together, but they chose not to.”

  Séverin slid the zipper farther. Now, he could count the delicate bones of her back. If he wanted, he could trace that glassy scar that some fiend had once led her to believe was a mark of her very unnaturalness. Once, he’d kissed his way down the line of it.

  “In the end, they chose to preserve the thought of the other, uncorrupted, in their hearts.”

  Séverin’s hand stilled. In the vanity’s reflection, Laila finally met his eyes. “I don’t think Laila could stand to see how much her Majnun had lost himself to the wilderness in his soul.”

  She made no move to cover herself or leave, even with her dress almost completely unzipped. He recognized the tension in the line of her shoulders, the lift of her chin … the taut stillness of waiting.

  For him.

  Unthinking, Séverin bent toward the hollow of her neck. He watched her eyes flutter shut, her head tilt back. Laila called to him like a long night’s dreamless sleep after months of unrest. His lips were almost at her skin, when he stopped.

  What was he doing?

  Laila was a mirage glimpsed through smoke. A temptation in the desert that lulls the soul into thinking of false promises. Séverin had his promise, scrawled inside the jaws of the mechanical leviathan slumbering beneath the ice grotto. His promise lay behind the teeth of the devil. Tomorrow, he would have it, and he would be free.

  Her words rang through his head.

  I don’t think Laila could stand to see how much her Majnun had lost himself to the wilderness in his soul.

  Séverin drew back from the curve of her neck and met her eyes in the mirror. Whatever lay in her gaze instantly shuttered, all weakness replaced with wariness.

  “I think he knew that she was never meant for him,” said Séverin.

  He grabbed his coat from where he’d dropped it to the floor. His hands felt as though they were burning. Then, he made his way to the library to wait out the long night.

  PART IV

  The Origins of Empire

  Master Emanuele Orsatti, House Orcus of the Order’s Italy Faction 1878, reign of King Umberto I

  In debating the merits of pursuing hidden treasure, one must weigh the risk of whether it was never meant to be found and if so, why?

  25

  SÉVERIN

  At noon, the devil waited for Séverin.

  Séverin took his time leaving the library. He wanted to remember this … the indifferent faces of the nine muses. They were gargantuan, the tops of their marble crowns skimming the stained glass ceiling. They shadowed everything, and perhaps that was the architect’s intent. To remind him of his own insignificance. His powerlessness. But Séverin needed no reminder. Every touch conjured the slip of Tristan’s hot blood on his hands. Every breath carried the stench of the troika flames cornering them in St. Petersburg; the charnel sweetness of the fire that took his parents. Every sight promised unseeing eyes. To be powerless was the price of mortality. And he was done with mortality.

  Along with Tristan’s knife, he carried one last reminder of his past: the ouroboros carving that had once adorned his father’s Ring. In another life, it would have been the Ring he’d worn as patriarch of House Vanth. Before, every time he touched the warm metal of the Ring and traced the jeweled eyes of the snake, he felt oddly light, as if someone had knocked loose his soul and it dangled outside him, always searching for a place to put down roots and always starved for light. Perhaps after all this time, his spirit had grown accustomed to the sensation. After all, what were roots when one could choose not be anchored, but instead be born aloft?

  And yet, for all that he no longer cared about his inheritance, he couldn’t forget that it had been stolen. He rubbed his thumb along the scar down his palm, remembering the blue light flashing across his eyes from the inheritance test. Proof that the Forging instrument had accepted his blood and still the matriarch had conspired against him. It no longer mattered why she’d lied or what she stood to gain, because in the end, all that mattered was what lay ahead. The alchemy of The Divine Lyrics might grant him the snowy plumes of seraphim or the lacquered horns of demons, but that golden blood would keep its promise:

  Nothing would ever be taken from him again.

  * * *

  SÉVERIN HARDLY HEARD the conversation around him. He felt Eva’s hands on his chest, the heat of a rushed, pressed kiss on his cheek. “For luck,” she’d whispered in his ear. Laila stood unmoving by the entrance, her hand playing lazily at her diamond collar. Zofia had brought him and Hypnos an armband full of incendiary devices and spherical detectors, as well as several Mnemo bugs to capture all angles of what they found down there.

  Enrique paced at the entrance of the leviathan’s mouth, tugging the front of his hair.

  “You’re looking for a book,” started Enrique.

  “Non! A book?” repeated Hypnos, with a false gasp. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  Enrique swatted his arm, and Hypnos grinned.

  “We know, mon cher,” he said.

  “It’s not going to look like an ordinary tome. It’ll be huge, probably. Bound with animal skin. According to my research, the last time it was seen, someone had tried to carve its name into the surface, but it was cut off at D-I-V-I-N-E L-Y-R.”

  “Big, old fragments,” said Hypnos. “Noted. Now kiss me. For luck.”

  Séverin watched the exchange. As someone who had been something of an expert in performance, he knew the difference between something genuine and something contrived. That kiss belonged to the latter. The question lay only in who was doing the performing—Hypnos or Enrique? Enrique smiled to himself, color blooming along the tops of his cheeks. Hypnos, however, turned to the leviathan without a second glance.

  Séverin had his answer.

  “Shall we?” asked Séverin.

  Hypnos nodded. By order of the matriarch of House Kore, they only had one task: Go in, find The Divine Lyrics, and get out. It was the highest priority. After that, members from House Dazbog and House Nyx would follow and remove the objects to the library for further cataloguing. The moon in the ice grotto already began to shrink—moment by moment turning more slender, counting down the seconds before the metal leviathan would slip once more back into the waves.

  Delphine waited for them near the leviathan, a plate in her hands.

  As Séverin got closer, he recognized the familiar smell of raspberry-cherry jam smeared over buttered toast. The t
aste of his childhood before he’d abandoned all claim to one. When Delphine looked at him, something like hopefulness dared to touch the corners of her eyes. Séverin took the food without comment. He could feel Delphine’s eyes at his back, but he didn’t turn. Just as she hadn’t turned when he’d stared after her, calling her name, even when she’d shaken his shoulders and told him they were no longer family, that she was no longer his Tante FeeFee.

  “I’ll call down the time,” said Enrique. “Fifteen minute increments. The matriarch wants you out with ten minutes to spare.”

  The leviathan’s mouth was too damp and narrow for them to fit in at the same time, so Séverin went first, his boots easily finding the grooves that led to the staircase. He broke a phosphorescent baton and the light climbed through the metal throat of the leviathan, catching on the tops of a spiraling staircase unwinding deep within its jaws. Séverin swallowed hard. He knew the creature was Forged, and yet it still seemed eerily alive to him. Steam plumed out from its metal joints like exhaled breath. He looked behind him, holding out his hand to Hypnos. The other boy stared into the tunnel, his blue eyes rounded with fear. Unbidden, he remembered Hypnos as he had been—the boy with the singing voice, the boy desperate for an invitation to join the game.

  “You didn’t have to come,” said Séverin.

  “Nonsense, mon cher,” said Hypnos, even as his teeth chattered. “If I didn’t come, who the hell would have protected you?”

  The familiar barbs of those words dug into Séverin. He blinked once and saw Tristan wide-eyed, grinning. He blinked again and saw him dead. Séverin tightened his hand to a fist, feeling the raised edge of his scar, the sour taste of the promise he couldn’t keep: I protect you.

  “Come on, then,” he said tonelessly.

  The steps were slippery, and the metal joints groaned with the pressure of his weight. Arctic water sloshed over his ankles, soaking through his water-resistant trousers. Everywhere the light touched, Séverin saw ruin. There were still a number of steps to go, but at least he could see the slatted, silver floor of the leviathan’s belly.