“Fifteen minutes down!” called Enrique, though his voice sounded faraway.
Right before they hit the bottom of the stairs, Séverin asked for the spherical detection device. Hypnos handed it to him, and they both watched as the detection light illuminated the gaping shadows, caverns and shelves of the Fallen House’s treasure room.
In all that he had seen, the word “awe” rarely came to him.
But now … now he felt fresh wonder.
The light illuminated a world teeming with exquisite treasures. It felt like the inside of a holy place. Even now, Séverin could make out the tattered edges of a rich, scarlet rug. There was a water-damaged roll of cushion, a side table with a candle. Whoever built this had intended it as a place of meditation. Beyond the small area of meditation, the room opened to a cavern. Egyptian pillars of lapis lazuli propped up the walls. Huge, half figurines of roaring, golden tigers swiveled their heads in his and Hypnos’s direction and narrowed their ruby eyes. Illuminated manuscripts Forged to the likeness of birds fluttered, shedding bits of gold leaf as they streamed overhead. There were statue busts and relics, necklaces of luminous stones, spinning orreries carved of jade …
“Dear God,” said Hypnos. “The Order would kill for this.”
Hypnos walked toward a pillar in the middle of the room. It was roughly four feet high and adorned with the international House symbols of the Order of Babel. Séverin followed after him. Each of the symbols bore a particular indentation. There, nestled among the thorns of House Kore and crescent moons of House Nyx, he recognized the ouroboros shape of the House that should have been his: House Vanth.
“Why have this here?” asked Hypnos.
Séverin followed the direction of the pillar to the low ceiling above which resembled a warped mirror. Or a Mnemo lens.
“I think it functions like a key,” said Séverin, pointing at the indents within the House symbols. He took out his ouroboros carving and held it up against the sunken shape of it in the stone pillar. A perfect fit. In one smooth move, he pushed in the ouroboros and then looked up at the ceiling.
Nothing happened.
“Let me try,” said Hypnos.
He pressed his House Nyx ring into the indent, and a ripple of light chased down the silver ceiling …
Séverin held his breath, wondering if it might reveal some proof that its final treasure lay here. Instead, the Mnemo screen showed the ice grotto above: Enrique pacing in a circle; Zofia burning a match; Laila stone-faced and unblinking.
“We can see them so clearly, but they can’t see us, can they?” asked Hypnos. He waved his hands wildly beneath the screen, but no one’s expression changed. “How is this possible?”
“The recording device must be on one of the leviathan’s teeth,” said Séverin, though that was not nearly as interesting to him as the Rings. He stared at the perfect fit of the ouroboros carving within the pillar. “My father’s emblem didn’t work.”
Hypnos looked curiously blank as he withdrew his Ring. Instantly, the Mnemo screen went dark. Séverin noticed that the lines of his mouth had tightened, as if his mouth warred with his mind. It was the expression of a secret fighting to be known.
“Perhaps it only works on active Houses?” suggested Hypnos, not looking at him.
“The Fallen House was exiled long before House Vanth fell,” said Séverin, pointing at the emblem of the six-pointed star in the pillar. “It works just fine.”
“Yes, well,” said Hypnos, shrugging. “Does it matter, mon cher? This is no treasure and holds no interest to us.”
Séverin eyed the pillar a moment longer and then withdrew his ouroboros pendant. In the end, Hypnos was right. The pillar held neither hidden truths nor hidden treasure. They needed to keep looking.
While Hypnos turned to the wall of treasures, Séverin moved toward the northern section of the room. Built into the wall was a great steering wheel, the spokes encased in white.
The leviathan didn’t just move, it could be steered. Controlled. Suddenly, the name of the Horowitz family in the well made sense. Each of those Tezcat portals had been routes for the leviathan to sneak through.
Hadn’t Enrique mentioned there was a lake in Istanbul? And the well was just wide enough for the creature to fit through. Séverin scanned the area nearest the steering wheel, nausea creeping through his body. The Fallen House must have used the leviathan as a transportation vessel. To his right, a metal bubble protruded from the wall, an escape mechanism of sorts, equipped with its own small steering wheel and clouded orbs that he recognized as Shu Gusts, Forged breathing apparatuses full of oxygen and named for the Egyptian god of the air. This part of the leviathan formed a partial narthex, which abutted the place of meditation. A table hunched half-hidden in the shadows. There, a stone slab—like an altar—jutted up from the floor. On it lay something dark and leathered.
Séverin took a step toward it. Something inside him hummed. The scar on his hand tingled.
“Thirty minutes!” echoed Enrique’s voice from far away.
This was it.
Séverin felt as though he were in a dream. That book called to him. Strange paraphernalia littered the surface of the altar. The book itself was as Enrique had described: huge and darkened, the leather eaten away on the sides. Old blood spattered the stone. A knife, now rusted, had fallen to the floor. There was a page of hymns, litanies in different languages and a small, strange harp pushed to the side; some of its strings glittered as if they had been strung with starlight.
In that second, Séverin felt as if he’d caught the tempo of the universe’s pulse, as if he stood on the verge of an apotheosis. He reached for the book. When he touched it, he thought he heard Tristan’s laugh echoing in his ears. He felt the pressure of horns, Roux-Joubert’s voice whispering to him: We can be gods.
He flipped open the book—
And then paused. It was impossible. And yet, the truth slammed into him with all the force of a bludgeon.
26
LAILA
Laila watched as the afternoon light seamed through the cracks of the ice, as if knitting the world back together in gold.
Or perhaps it wasn’t gold at all, but rich ichor, that nectareous blood of the gods that Séverin and Ruslan mentioned at dinner. The thought unnerved her. If she looked at the world that way, it turned the lake from something wondrous to something wounded. She couldn’t bear any more wounds, not from the dead girls and their stolen hands nor from the raw ache behind her chest every time she saw Séverin.
Near the entrance of the Sleeping Palace she found a slender gazebo Forged of ice and marble, the pillars twisted round with jasmine and bruise-colored violets to keep away the smell of fish carcasses left out on the ice by the sleek seals that lived in the lake. She breathed deep. Savoring all of it: the smell of life and death. The fetid sweetness of life expired, the unripe bitterness of life cut short. And always, that metal tang of ice.
In the distance, the jagged Ural Mountains appeared mirrored in the lake, as if an identical belt of them existed just beneath the surface of the water.
She hoped it was true.
She hoped there was another world pressed beside their own, a world where she had been born instead of made; a world where the girls bound to the Sleeping Palace had never died. Laila wondered who she might be in that other world. Perhaps she would be a married woman by now, like so many of the girls her age in Pondichéry. Perhaps a boy with skin as dark as hers and eyes that were not the color of sleep would hold her heart in thrall.
Laila twisted her garnet ring until the number blazed: 12.
Twelve days left.
Or, depending on how soon Séverin and Hypnos could bring up The Divine Lyrics from the leviathan, hundreds of days to spare.
Laila’s throat tightened, and she gripped the gazebo’s railing, avoiding any sight of her reflection when a sudden crunch of snow made her look up. There, bundled against the cold, stood Enrique. He was dressed in a long trench coat, the chill w
ind mussing his hair.
“Can I join you?” he asked.
Laila smiled. “Of course.”
She made room for him on the bench, and the two of them sat looking out at the endless stretch and prisms of ice and light. He fiddled with the edges of his coat. He opened his mouth, then clamped it shut.
“Spit it out, Enrique.”
“You know how you can read objects with a touch?” asked Enrique in a breathless rush.
Laila feigned shock. “I can?”
“I’m being serious!”
“What of it?”
Enrique flipped over his notebook of ideas and research. He seemed agitated. In the past, he might have leaned against her, limp as a puppy angling for someone to scratch his head or, as Enrique used to say: Annoy the ideas under my skull. Something held him back now, and only then did Laila see part of the script written on the notebook:
TO PLAY AT GOD’S INSTRUMENT
WILL SUMMON THE UNMAKING
Strange words that cast shadows in her heart.
Enrique reached for her hand. “Have you ever considered that why you can do this has nothing to do with, um, the circumstances of your birth…,” he said delicately, and then, all in one breath, “… and more like, perhaps, a secret-lineage-in-which-you-are-descended-of-guardian-women-tasked-to-protect-a-powerful-book?”
“Enrique.”
Enrique tugged at a piece of his black hair. “The more research I’ve conducted, the more this sacred order of the Lost Muses comes into play. Granted, they have different titles depending on which culture you look at, but they are prevalent! And then there’s you with your goddess abilities, and need to find The Divine Lyrics, and the fact that all of those statues in the grotto and the dead girls didn’t have hands. Their hands were a sacrifice, Laila, like giving up the power within them.” He poked at her palm. “Just think about the power in your own hands.”
Laila curled her fingers.
“Enrique,” she said, this time more wearily.
He stopped, and the tops of his cheeks reddened. “We must be careful, is all, once they bring out the book. Especially you. There’s far too much that’s unknown and I … I worry.”
He said this last part like a child, and Laila was reminded of the glimpses of boyhood she’d seen in the objects he handed her. The little boy who read by his mother’s knee and wrote “books” from the scraps of merchant ledgers for his father. A boy who was brilliant and eager.
Overlooked.
She brought her hand to his cheek. “I hear you, Enrique.”
He looked crestfallen. “But you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” she said. “If I really were descended of the Lost Muses, I imagine my mother would have told me.”
“Maybe she didn’t have the time,” said Enrique gently. “And it doesn’t even have to be your mother. The man we saw in Istanbul had the bloodline and preemptively blinded himself because of it.”
Laila bit her lip. Enrique had a point … but it felt too huge to wrap her mind around.
He squeezed her shoulder. “Will you come in and wait with us, at least?”
“In a minute.”
“It’s freezing. Why are you even out here, Laila?”
Laila smiled and exhaled, watching as her breath clouded.
“See that?” she said, nodding at the fading plume of air. “Sometimes I need to see that I can still do that.”
Enrique looked stricken as he released her shoulder, tucking his arms around himself and huddling against the wind. He didn’t meet her eyes. “Of course you can … and you will for a long, long time.”
“I know, I know,” she said, not wanting to worry him.
“No, but you really must,” said Enrique, looking exceptionally wounded. “I can’t feed myself, Laila. I’ll perish left to my own devices. Life is cruel, and often without cake.”
She swatted his arm. “There will always be cake.”
He smiled, and then his expression changed to something pleading.
“Speaking of cake … or rather, the opposite of cake.” He paused, frowning in thought. “What is the opposite of cake?”
“Despair,” said Laila.
“Right, well, speaking of despair, I think you should tell him.”
Enrique didn’t have to define him. Laila already knew, and the thought twisted inside her. Séverin had no claim to her secrets, much less her death.
“I know he’s been the opposite of cake, but he’s still our Séverin,” said Enrique. “I know these past months have been hard, and he’s … different. But what if telling him changes how he’s been acting? I know he’s in there somewhere … I know he still cares…”
His face fell a little. Out of all of them, Enrique had always trusted Séverin the most. How could he not? Séverin had earned his loyalty through and through, but that was the past and now Laila felt as though someone had set fire to her veins.
“And what if it doesn’t change him?” she said, her voice rising. “And even if it does, what does it mean that I have to be at death’s door to bring him back to himself? My life, and whatever is left of it, will not be what his soul gnaws on to regain its strength. My death is not in service to his character, and I will not be a sacrifice simply for him to find peace of mind. He is not my responsibility to save.”
It was only when she realized she was looking down at Enrique that she realized she’d shot to her feet.
Enrique’s eyes went round, and he squeaked out, “Agreed.”
“I know you mean well,” said Laila, sighing as she plopped back down on the seat. “But I … I can’t do it, Enrique. It would hurt too much.”
Enrique’s chin dropped a little, and his gaze went to the ice. “I can see that. I know how much it hurts when you realize you’re not held in the same emotional regard as you thought. Or, perhaps, imagined.”
“Promise me you won’t tell him, Enrique,” she said, gripping his hand. “I have had things taken from me my whole life. My death will not be one of them.”
Enrique looked at her, his eyes bleak. And then he nodded. A moment later, he squeezed her hand and left. Laila watched him go as a light snow began to dust their clothes. Now, the Sleeping Palace looked as if it had been chiseled out of the pages of a cold fairy tale. The spires of frosted quartz looked like glass bones, and Laila wanted to imagine the palace belonged to Snegurochka. Maybe the snow maiden had chosen not to melt for love, but rather freeze for life. But her reverie was cut short at the sight of Delphine greeting Enrique at the threshold. Laila was too far away to catch the words exchanged, but she saw how Enrique went stiff. He looked back to her, but Delphine caught his arm, pointing him inside. Laila knew what it meant.
Séverin was back.
The book was here.
In the cold, Laila’s ring felt wondrously loose, as if it wished to be discarded now that there was no point in wearing it.
The other woman approached her, black furs draped around her body. She cut a striking pose on the ice, and if Laila didn’t know better, she’d guess that Delphine was the kind of woman who breathed as if it were an exercise in leisure rather than necessity.
“They’re back?” asked Laila.
Delphine nodded.
Laila felt as if her life was waiting for her to run and catch up to it, but she couldn’t make herself move. Something kept her back. Laila pushed through her misgivings, and rose to meet her fate.
They walked back in silence for a few moments before Delphine spoke. “It’s hard to look at him, is it not?”
Laila knew she meant Séverin, and a long-dead piece of loyalty flared within her.
“I imagine it is just as hard for him to look at you.”
“I owe you no defense of my choices,” said Delphine haughtily. But then she smiled sadly, lost for a moment. “I only meant that I cannot see him as he is now. In my eyes, he will always be a child turned around in his seat at the theatre. A little boy staring at people, watching as w
onder bloomed across the audience’s faces.”
Laila could almost picture him as a child. Slight and dark-haired, his dusky eyes huge in his face. A little boy who had to grow up too soon.
“Why are you telling me this?”
Delphine smiled, though it was fragile and did not reach her eyes.
“Because I need to tell someone what I remember,” she said. “I envy you, child.”
Laila bit back a snort. The matriarch had nothing to be envious of. Delphine could move through the world without expectation of a door slammed in her face. Delphine had lived. Laila had only dreamed of life.
“I assure you that any envy I inspire is ill-deserved.”
Delphine looked down at the ice, considering the echo of her face in the lake water. “I envy you because you can look at yourself. You can bear your own reflection, knowing you can shoulder the weight of every choice you made and regret you carry. That is a rare thing as one gets older.”
What feels rarer is the chance to get older, thought Laila.
* * *
INSIDE, THE SLEEPING PALACE was a rush of commotion. One of the House Kore artisans popped a bottle of champagne. A cautious wave of excitement wound through Laila.
“Treasure!” shouted one of them. “Mounds of treasure!”
Delphine accepted a glass of champagne. Laila stood in the shadows, her eyes tracking the room, catching on the glint of light bouncing off the slow-moving ice animals and the grand chandelier swaying overhead.
“The patriarch of House Dazbog had no choice but to send word to the Order of Babel according to Order protocol,” said another. “They’re coming, matriarch. All of them.”
The glass dropped from her hand, shattering onto the floor.
“Here?” Delphine spluttered. “What about the Winter Conclave?”
“It would seem, matriarch, that they are bringing the Winter Conclave … to us.”
Laila looked around the vast, empty atrium. Resentment coiled inside her gut. She didn’t want hundreds of Order members running through here with their sticky hands grabbing for treasure. She might have felt differently if the Conclave admitted its non-Western members—those from the colonial guilds that had been absorbed into the Houses of the country that conquered their land—but they had no place here. It reminded Laila of the dead girls, hunted for their very invisibility in the grand scheme of the world.
The Silvered Serpents Page 24