“There are factions here, as there are everywhere,” Phuong Dinh said. “You will have heard of the Bièvre.”
“Credit us with a little knowledge,” Madeleine said. A bad lie, and he would know it in a heartbeat.
“Envoy Ghislaine grew frustrated with things my aunt wouldn’t budge on, and frightened, I think, at how different things were down here, at a kingdom which was neither as weak nor as vulnerable as what had been sold to her.” Phuong Dinh smiled: the teeth in his mouth curved like a predator’s fangs. “And she made the mistake of listening to Yen Oanh.”
Yen Oanh. The name was familiar. Clothilde had mentioned it, hadn’t she? One of the Bièvre’s ex-partisans, but she’d had no inkling of what role she played at court. “I’ve heard the name.”
Phuong Dinh didn’t answer for a while. They had reached the foot of the cliff: the path went on, leaping over groupings of rock strewn with the shriveled, tainted corpses of fish—as if made for something that could fly. He stepped straight out over the first drop, and floated upward.
Of course. Water. They were still underwater. Madeleine followed, and tried not to gasp as her feet left the solidity of the path, and her entire body rose.
For a while, they didn’t speak, as they crossed ridge after ridge, always with that odd, heart-wrenching moment when the path faltered under her, and she had this sensation that wasn’t flying or swimming, of hanging in the void somewhere in Heaven. Or Hell.
Phuong Dinh paused halfway through the climb, waiting for her on one of the larger ridges. The rock’s surface was mottled with gray algae: it looked solid, but crumbled under Madeleine’s fingers, riddled through with a thousand invisible cracks. Fish still swam around them; one stopped, so close she could have touched it, the flesh of its head all but gone, looking at her with empty orbits, its teeth stained black and unpleasantly sharp.
“You won’t have heard much about Yen Oanh.” Phuong Dinh looked down, at the diminishing shape of the palace building. “Second Aunt won’t be pleased that you have even heard her name, but I guess you would have found out, eventually.”
“Found out what?”
“Every change has its detractors.” A bitter, unamused smile. “Thanh Phan and her faction disapprove of the alliance with Hawthorn, but measure its necessity. Yen Oanh was different. She said, in a memorial meant to be nailed at the gates of the palace, that the dynasty had lost the mandate of Heaven. That any emperor or princess who would choose to ally with the canker eating at us was no worthy ruler, and not worthy of the people’s respect. And then she resigned, and left.”
Madeleine rather doubted this marked the end of Yen Oanh’s involvement with the court. “What did she do?”
Phuong Dinh’s eyes shone white in the oval of his face, lit as if from within. “She rebelled against the throne. Mustered an army that she hopes will one day topple the capital.”
The soldiers that had escorted them from Hawthorn. The solicitousness. The insistence on not wandering around, the fear and worry etched on every face at the welcoming ceremony. That odd incident that had caused Ngoc Bich to dismiss the guards. “They’re winning, aren’t they?”
Phuong Dinh’s face was a study in blankness. “Yes, and no. Their reach extends into the city. It’s not a siege yet: they don’t have the manpower for it. And the throne is safe.”
His definition of “safe” was clearly something Madeleine didn’t really agree with. “So you want our help because it will help you put down your rebellion.” It probably wasn’t why they’d started negotiating with Hawthorn in the first place, but now . . .
“Among other things, yes.” Phuong Dinh looked away, toward the top of the cliff and its distant shrine. What was it about him that was familiar? She had never met him in her life.
“And Ghislaine?”
“Envoy Ghislaine thought she could use one power against another. To gain the concessions she could not obtain otherwise. Not a novel idea. But a dangerous one. Yen Oanh respects nothing, and certainly not the envoys of Fallen.”
“You think they frightened her?”
“I know she learned something while speaking with Yen Oanh,” Phuong Dinh said. “Something that convinced her that she needed to return to Hawthorn, urgently.”
“That’s not something small,” Madeleine said. Defying orders and returning to Asmodeus? It would have to be more than negotiations gone wrong.
“No,” Phuong Dinh said. “I think . . .” His voice was thoughtful. “I think she was worried about Hawthorn. And that in turn led her to leave the safety of the palace, and try to return home.”
“That’s impossible. Nothing that happens down here should affect the House,” Madeleine said, surprised at her own vehemence. She didn’t care for Hawthorn. Why should she start defending the House?
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I think I’ve told you enough. Too much, some would say.”
But it was to tell her this, wasn’t it, that he had called her here? This, and to find out more about Asmodeus.
As if she’d ever be in a position to feel other than fearful and sick when it came to him.
“Véronique and Charles will walk you back to your rooms,” Phuong Dinh said. “I have no doubt you and your friends will have much to discuss.”
Friends. Elphon. Elphon, who was out somewhere in the city, within easy reach of an armed band with no liking for Fallen. She needed to tell Clothilde.
So principled. So softhearted. The voice in her mind was Asmodeus’s, low and mocking. Elphon was her jailer, not her friend. She shouldn’t have cared one jot about what happened to him. She should have been concerned that his disappearance would leave her alone with Clothilde in the kingdom, not worried over him like a mother hen gathering her chicks.
But that wasn’t how she thought. It had never been.
Véronique was waiting at the foot of the hill, her dress billowing in invisible currents, some of the dye washing away in little whorls of blue and red ink. By her side was Charles, the official who had been sent to tell Ngoc Bich about Madeleine’s absence.
They walked, for a while, in silence.
“I am sorry about Ghislaine,” Véronique said. “She was kind, and I admired her a great deal.”
“I hardly knew her,” Madeleine said.
Véronique smiled. “We are not all Yen Oanh. We know that the future lies with the Fallen. That the House is our only salvation. Ghislaine understood this, more than anyone in the kingdom.”
They were crossing a corridor Madeleine did not recognize: an empty, deserted affair with the usual cracked, red-lacquered pillars. The pavilion ahead had collapsed under the weight of its roof, and now lay in ruins; and the courtyard to her right was little more than drooping weeds, with no garden of algae or pebbles. A wall, rather than another building, closed it off, and Madeleine could hear a distant, indecorous bustle from beyond it—access to the outside?
“Ghislaine understood you,” Madeleine said, slowly.
“Fallen magic . . .” Véronique’s face contorted. “. . . Fallen magic is not dead, or stricken, or ailing. It’s alive. It makes us feel alive, and powerful. We need that power.” Her face was transfigured, awash as if with an inner radiance. And suddenly, the world shifted and contracted, and Madeleine saw.
The hands, which Véronique was holding still only with an effort of will. That peculiar translucency of her face, the angel magic roiling beneath the skin. The voice, with the fervor of a convert, but more important, the slight slur on the words, which covered—barely—the growing hoarseness.
“Essence.” Madeleine kept her voice flat, expressionless. “She gave you essence.”
“She didn’t. But she did teach us how to use it,” Charles said.
Madeleine would have laughed if it hadn’t been so tragic. “You’re essence addicts. You—” She thought back to the hill, and Phuong Dinh’s expression. “You a
nd the prince and God knows who else.” It would eat at their lungs, slowly at first, and then faster and faster as time passed, as it stopped having an effect and they needed ever more of it. Perhaps it wouldn’t kill them. They were crustaceans and fish and dragons, and who knew what effect it would have on them? But she doubted it.
“Madeleine.” Véronique’s voice was low, urgent.
What was Asmodeus going to say, when it turned out his bridegroom was no better than Madeleine: a wreck on his slow way to the grave? “What did you think we were going to do when we found out?”
“Madeleine. Please.” Too late, she realized that everything had fallen silent. And that whatever she should be looking at was behind her.
Turning, she saw something large and gray floating over the wall, like the body of a whale, and silhouettes leaping or swimming down from it toward them.
And then something hit her in the chest, and there was only darkness.
NINE
The Houseless
FRANÇOISE was woken up by a flurry of kicks within her. She tried to turn over, before she remembered her belly; and then gave up, and flopped on her back, staring at the ceiling until it stopped. Her back pulled at her, reminding her that she was going to pay for this when she did get up.
“You’ll pass out again,” Berith said. She’d pulled herself out of the chair, and was cooking breakfast over the brazier. The smell of flatbreads crisping in the battered pan wafted up to Françoise, painfully reminding her she’d eaten nothing for a day and a half. “Remember how the baby presses down on the vena cava?”
“Hmmf. I’ve only done it once.” Françoise turned on her side, edged herself out of the mattress on the floor; and slowly, carefully started the process of pulling herself upright.
“Here. Let me.” Berith’s frail arms passed under her own, and lifted her, effortlessly. A tingle of magic passed between Berith and her, a little jolt that sent the baby kicking again. Every time Berith did this, every time her strength seemed limitless, her magic boundless, Françoise thought, again, that it was a lie. That she wasn’t wounded, or dying. That she would be there to watch the children of that child grow into adulthood and old age and have children of their own. There was a comfort in that, in the knowledge the world would go on, regardless.
It was unfair. Mortals who became the lovers of Fallen expected to die first. They didn’t have to worry about a time when the Fallen wouldn’t be there anymore.
“You’re thinking morbid thoughts again. I’m fine,” Berith said. “I’m not going to abruptly go away.”
Françoise clamped on the words that came to her mouth. Berith had heard them all. She stopped, briefly, by her ancestral altar, wedged into a corner of the room: faded pictures of her grandparents, who had died young, of sickness and broken bodies, the fates of the Houseless. And a picture of Etienne: she’d only slept with him to get pregnant, and he’d been rather too fond of absinthe, heedless of what the stuff did to his body, but he hadn’t deserved the sepsis that had shriveled him in mere days. Françoise had left them all a single tangerine, a gift brought by Grandmother Olympe the last time she’d dropped by, but it was now looking worse for wear.
Nothing much left, in the flat. The air was cold, but then it was freezing outside, the city in the grip of a chilling, biting winter. She laid some fresh bread by the tangerine, whispered a quick prayer. No incense; they’d burned it already. Watch over me. Watch over the baby, so that one day they will come and worship you here.
Berith waited until she had finished to speak up. “Come and eat something. It’ll do you good.”
The bread was warm, comforting. It wasn’t the pristine white loaves that came out of the Houses’ ovens, and the grit in the flour crunched a little on her palate, but it didn’t matter.
“No jam, I’m afraid,” Berith said. “That time of the month again.”
Meaning their cupboards were bare. Françoise glanced at the pile of clothes in the corner. “I’ll drop these off at Grandmother Olympe’s. It should bring some money in.” Olympe didn’t run a clothes workshop, but she had an arrangement with the House factories to the east, by the devastated stations: the Annamites of the community brought their sewing, and got more and fairer money than they’d have if they’d negotiated on their own.
Berith had magic: the power she’d invested into the flat, the roots that went deep into the place, locking her within it, but also sustaining and healing her. The part of it that wasn’t rooted went into keeping them safe: keeping Françoise from being mugged in the streets, and gangs from besieging them by providing the odd spell or service. It should have been worth ten times what they earned sewing and mending clothes, but only if someone were willing to pay for it, instead of threatening and coercing and killing.
The baby moved again, an odd feeling, as if he or she had grabbed some internal organ and pulled. “In some ways, I’ll be glad to give birth.” A month away. Like a cliff’s edge, always coming closer.
“I have news.” Berith’s face was grave. “You don’t actually sleep better after the birth.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Just thought you’d want the benefit of my great experience.”
“Still doesn’t make you a better parent.”
“No.” Berith’s lips quirked up in a smile, which faltered only a bit. “You realize parenthood is a terrifying and unknown prospect.”
Like death, Françoise thought, and berated herself for the unwelcome thought. “And here I thought nothing ever frightened the Fallen. I’m glad that for a change, I won’t be the one who’s terrified.”
“Liar.”
Françoise shrugged. “We’ll see who is most scared in a month’s time, shall we?”
Berith made a face. She couldn’t leave the flat, which meant she would be taking on the bulk of the care for the child while Françoise ran errands outside. So far it hadn’t seemed to faze her, but Berith had very little experience with children. Most Annamites were too scared to come to see her. Whereas Françoise was used to babies, as Grandmother Olympe’s house always seemed to have four or five, screaming at the top of their lungs and then almost magically quieting when their mothers or nurses breast-fed them.
Truth was, the birth and the child were less scary than some of the other things coming up. “You think he’ll do it?” Françoise asked.
“Philippe?”
It wasn’t his name, at least not the one he’d been born with, but then, neither was “Françoise.” “He didn’t seem happy.”
“I know his type.” Berith turned down the flames on the brazier, and set the frying pan on a cracked wooden board. “He’ll be happy when the sun crosses the sky backward, or the gates of Hell release their dead.”
“Which is what you promised him.”
“A dead person,” Berith said. “Not the same. A dead Fallen. It’s been done before.”
They were both skirting around the subject. Françoise, tired of the unsaid, tackled it head-on. “And walking into Hawthorn has been done before, too.”
Berith moved back to sit in the chair, but didn’t summon the bookshelves again. “Do you want to know the worst that can happen?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea, thanks.” She’d grown up with Houses in the background, with their raids, the corpses they would leave splayed on spikes as a warning—their processions, seen from afar, bright and beautiful and terrible, as inaccessible as the idea of Heaven. She’d grown up with the smoke of Hawthorn’s pyres—and it wasn’t just dead leaves and branches they burned there—with Lazarus’s brutal charity, which killed those who strayed from the right path; with the metal cages outside Harrier’s front doors, where they left their handiwork displayed for all to see.
Berith was silent, for a while. “You don’t have to go. I’ll find another way. Philippe can deliver the letter.”
“The letter is my credentials,
” Françoise said. “That’s its only worth. He’ll only answer to a personal plea.” It really should have been Berith, but Berith couldn’t leave the flat. Failing Berith . . . well, that left her, didn’t it? Berith’s lover, and the mother of their child, the only one who had a chance of convincing Asmodeus to come to the flat and speak to Berith.
“I’m sure he prefers abject abasement.” Berith sounded wearily amused.
“I guess.” It didn’t make Françoise happy, but it was the only way. She moved closer to Berith, passed both arms around her neck, let them dangle there, close to the familiar, electrifying feel of Fallen magic. “What’s he like?”
“Asmodeus?” Berith’s voice was low. “I don’t know, not anymore. He wanted to change things, but he was scared.”
“Scared” was not a word Françoise would ever have applied to the head of House Hawthorn. “Centuries ago.”
“He was young.” Berith sighed, and took Françoise’s hands in hers, lifting them to her mouth for a long, lingering kiss that sent a thrill of desire up her spine. “And so was I. So many things . . . He wanted to join a House. Said it was the only way he and his would ever be safe. And I couldn’t. I said I knew the price and wouldn’t pay it. We had . . . words.” She kept her grip on Françoise’s hands, as if it was the only thing linking her to the real world, to their dingy flat and the smell of cooking and the chittering of cockroaches. “He won’t harm you.”
“For old times’ sake? Because he respects pregnant women?” She didn’t believe either. That kind of outward respect might have been the norm, once, before the war. But nothing that had been true then applied now.
“For my sake, perhaps. But also because you’re not a threat.”
“Great,” Françoise said. “Remind me never to ask you for reassurance.”
“Would you rather I lied?”
Françoise didn’t answer. Her arms were starting to ache, and so was her pelvis: currently, standing up for too long always had that effect. “I don’t know what I want,” she said, at last.
The House of Binding Thorns Page 11