A better world. A future for them and the child, where they didn’t have to fight for every scrap, where there was even a future, and she didn’t die giving birth; or, worse, survive and lose the child.
“Heart’s desire,” Berith whispered.
“You could—,” Françoise said. They’d had this conversation already. It was well-worn tracks, on a road to nowhere.
“Offer you that? Yes, I could,” Berith said, wearily. “But there’s a price, Françoise. There is always a price.”
“I would be willing to pay it.” If it meant her child was born and survived, what wouldn’t she give?
“The price might be the health of our child,” Berith said. “Desires are seldom granted in the way that you want. It might be a healthy child now, and die in five years—an eyeblink. Or born with wasted lungs, or a tumor in the brain. I . . .” She kissed Françoise’s lips. “I’m sorry, Françoise. But I can’t do it.”
Neither could she, and they both knew it.
Françoise glanced at the table, where their latest chess game was on display—not the Western one with its kings and queens, but the Annamite one with generals and armies, which many old people in the community still played. “Aunt Ha might come by later,” she said. “You should clear that.”
Berith shrugged. “I’ll clear it if she does come and wants to play, and anyway I’ll set it back afterward. Don’t think you’re getting out that easily. I still think I can beat you.”
Françoise snorted. “That’s not hard.” She currently seemed to have no brain to focus on anything strategic, and spent most of her evenings embroidering the baby’s clothes.
“If it was easy, I’d have managed it by now. Western chess is easy. This . . . this doesn’t cooperate.” She looked as though she wanted to incinerate the board with a glance.
“You can look at the book again,” Françoise said. The book was small and tattered, and was meant to cover the basic strategies of the game. Olympe had found it for them, rather surprisingly, since Olympe didn’t approve of Berith. Perhaps she was simply making the best of a bad situation, though that didn’t sound like Olympe at all.
Berith made a face. “I can, but I would like a break from damaging my eyes and my brain simultaneously. I’m not too sure who thought manually adding diacritics over words was a great idea.” The book was in Viet, but like many such books, it had been printed on a press that covered only the Western alphabet. The diacritics on the words, the distinguishing features between similar spellings, had been manually added over the page, making it hard to read, especially for Berith, whose grasp of Viet was still poor.
Françoise smiled in spite of herself. “True wisdom: not so easily gained.”
“Chess strategy?” Berith snorted. “Interesting, but not what I’d call wisdom. And it’s mostly a language problem. For the moment.”
“Think of it as motivation to learn better Viet.”
“I’m not too sure who’s going to be interested in the technical names for openings or tactics.” Berith snorted again. “Some days, I think I should ask Olympe for a recipe book. At least I’d have some subjects of conversation with people.”
Françoise tried to picture Berith and Olympe chatting over cooking matters, and gave up. “I . . . don’t think that’d be a good idea.”
Berith said, “You always pour scorn on my ideas. Ah well. You might as well bring me my work. Those shirts aren’t going to sew themselves, and at least I’d be making my contribution to this household budget. Let’s save the delights of chess for later.”
She was, unfortunately, right.
Françoise disengaged herself from Berith, gently; went to pick up the pile of clothes to hand her: the ones her hands were too thick, too clumsy to deal with. Berith was the better seamstress. “Here. And then I’ll get the rest of it back to Olympe’s, and get paid.”
* * *
AS it turned out, she never made it there. She wrapped herself in her coat and scarf, ponderously descending the stairs, and found Grandmother Olympe waiting for her at the bottom. “Françoise!”
Olympe wasn’t Françoise’s real grandmother. She was, in a way, everyone’s grandmother, knowing everyone in the tightly knit Annamite community, and making sure that everyone’s business was her business. Which verged, sometimes, on the annoying, especially when said business was disapproving of Françoise’s choice of partner. She was wearing her usual clothes: a long-sleeved shirt of rough silk with two long flaps over the hips, and matching pants. Both were a dull brown: peasants’ garments, Françoise’s parents had whispered, with a hint of admiration for keeping to the old ways, even away from Annam. Françoise did admire the way Olympe always dressed the same way, no matter the temperature: with the cold, she needed two extra layers, but Olympe didn’t have a coat, or gloves, or anything that would have been a concession to winter.
“Grandmother? What brings you here?” Françoise said, wedging her basket of clothes on her hip, as best as she could. The baby was moving again within her, little fists and legs hammering into her belly. “My parents—”
“—are fine,” Olympe said. “No thanks to you, I should add. When was the last time you visited?” She waved her canvas bag, which she always carried with her, stuffed with food or clothes or both.
Too long ago; but then, it was so difficult, to sit still while they dropped more or less pointed hints that she should find a nice father or mother for the child: a mortal, and preferably an Annamite. “You know exactly when,” Françoise said. She felt exhausted already, and they had barely started.
Olympe’s wrinkled face stretched in a grimace. She was small, and wiry, but she still could tower over anyone who didn’t show the proper respect. “Filial duty isn’t optional, child. Especially these days, when everything else is going to waste.”
Françoise made an attempt to shorten the conversation. “You didn’t come all the way here for a lecture. Did you?”
She half expected Olympe to nod and continue said lecture, at which point she wasn’t altogether sure she could have prevented herself from hurling the basket of clothes in sheer frustration—not at Olympe, because she’d never hear the end of it, but at a wall, or somewhere that would make a satisfying thud and crash. But instead, Olympe nodded, briskly. “I’ve come because I have a body for you. An unconscious woman.”
“A . . .” Françoise paused. She must have misheard.
“An unconscious woman.” Olympe’s voice was grim. “You know people have been disappearing from the docks.”
“Yes,” Françoise said. She’d tried to warn Philippe about this, but she wasn’t sure how much attention he’d paid: she might be living on the edges of the community, but he seemed to be on a different planet altogether.
“You’ll want to be careful,” Olympe said. “Jérôme went missing yesterday. Disappeared late at night on his way home. Nothing but a dark circle to mark where he’d been.”
Late at night. Just before or just after Philippe had come to them. “That still doesn’t explain the woman.”
“Bénédicte and Sébastien found her among the crates. Half-starved, and beaten almost to death by the looks of her.” She hesitated, a fraction of a second only, and said, “There was the beginning of a black circle around her. As if someone had tried to snatch her and was interrupted.”
Françoise rubbed her belly, feeling the mound of the baby within her. It wasn’t kicking or shifting, but she already felt tired all the same. “So she escaped. I still don’t see why your first thought was to bring her here.”
Olympe gestured toward the courtyard. “Because she’s one of yours. If anyone can help, it’s your partner.” Whom she pointedly didn’t name.
“One of—” A Fallen? Françoise started to protest she, too, was Annamite and mortal, envisioned the rest of the conversation, and stopped. She had no desire to go there. She considered protesting th
at their flat was barely large enough for the two of them, not to mention the baby, and discarded that, too. “You could take her elsewhere.”
“I could,” Olympe said. She smiled, sweetly. “But it’s best if she’s with her own kind, isn’t it? You know what they say about not mixing oil with water.”
One day. One day Françoise would be old enough that she could enjoy the same casual respect Olympe expected and effortlessly commanded. Right now, it seemed all that kept her going.
An unconscious woman. Olympe wasn’t carrying her; therefore she was heavy. Berith couldn’t move from the flat, and Françoise certainly wasn’t about to attempt carrying someone up two flights of stairs. Which meant allowing people into the flat, however briefly.
“I’ll tell Berith.” She needed to: the wards on the flat were strong enough that most people would stop halfway up, unless Berith let them in.
* * *
TO her credit, Olympe didn’t overstay her welcome: her two helpers—two young Annamites, dockworkers by the look of them—dropped the woman on the bed, and withdrew, leaving Olympe framed in the door opening. “That should keep her safe and sound. Send for me if you need anything,” she said, before leaving, too. “And you can tell me what she has to say about the dark circles, if she ever wakes up.”
“Wait—,” Françoise said, but the stairs were already creaking under Olympe’s weight, and it was amazing how fast little old Cochin Chinese ladies could go, when they wanted to. Certainly faster than Françoise, whose best speed was waddling at the moment.
Olympe had left a package, too, even though it wasn’t the end of the month: brown paper wrapped around a small bottle. Françoise opened it, expecting some of the personal stuff Bénédicte and Sébastien had found with the woman, but instead the familiar smell of fish sauce rose in the room, making her eyes fill with tears. Even in childhood she’d tasted so little of it: a precious rarity her parents would open with reverence. This one, like all the bottles in la Goutte d’Or, was diluted and adulterated, cut to be cheaper; but it wasn’t soy sauce, salted water, or any of the substitutes that got foisted on poor Annamites.
“I don’t need a reward to do the right thing,” she said, sharply.
“No, but you do need cheering up,” Berith pointed out. “Keep it. It’ll go well with the rice.”
Berith rose from the chair, and knelt to look at the woman. Faint traces of Fallen magic still clung to her skin, and she was mortal. Olympe must have meant a magic user rather than a Fallen. The woman didn’t even look of French descent, or if she was, at some point in the line of ancestors she’d had people from the Middle East or the Maghreb, giving her skin a dark tint, all the more striking because her hair was blond, so pale it was almost white.
“She’s pretty badly hurt,” Berith said. Her hands rested, lightly, on the chest. “I don’t think she’s likely to name her assailant anytime soon, and I should hope Olympe is intelligent enough to know this.”
“Olympe isn’t a fool.” She’d said “if she ever wakes up,” and she’d known exactly how unlikely that was.
Even from where she was, Françoise could see the string of bruises on the face and the arms, and the way the hands rested, folded against each other, knuckles lightly touching. The legs oddly extended, rotated inward. Not a natural position. “What’s wrong with her?”
“I’m not sure. Hypothermia.” Berith shook her head. “She was warmly dressed, but I don’t know how long she lay in the cold. And two broken ribs, certainly. I’m not sure what Olympe thinks I can do. Magic can’t heal, at least not wounds that serious. Most healing spells—”
“I know,” Françoise said, wearily. They’d already established that no magic would prevent her from dying in childbirth. She moved, started the slow, excruciating process of squatting by the mattress’s side.
Up close, the woman looked worse: her pulse was barely palpable. She still breathed, though. Her clothes must have been rich once: a dress of dyed cotton with mutton sleeves and a high waist, which was now so torn the petticoats—also torn and bloodied—showed. Above her wrist was a dark stain. No, not a stain; a tattoo. Françoise knelt, pushed back the sleeve. It was a dragonfly perched on a water lily, a fine, painstaking pattern that must have taken weeks of work.
“She must be House,” Françoise said. She let her hand trail on the chest; drew, for a moment, on the magic that always filled the flat, feeling the way it spread into her body like waves, gently taking her where she needed to be. Her spell sent a small burst of it in the chest, toward the heart.
There was no answering echo. “No House link.”
“No,” Berith said. “I didn’t think so. Else a House would already have come for her. But there are ways to cut it off.”
“There are? I wasn’t aware.”
Her voice was dark. “You don’t want to meet those who can do it.”
Françoise was about to withdraw her hand, when she saw the burn. It was slightly above and between the breasts. “That’s strange,” Françoise said. “I wonder what caused it.” Every other injury looked like the result of a beating: this one stood out—a distinct shape, an oval or a half circle. The skin was raw and inflamed, whorls and patches of red, burned flesh that traced a pattern Françoise couldn’t name. “It looks like someone tried to brand her.” Which was silly, because no one branded anything or anyone, even in Paris. Cattle in the countryside maybe, but certainly not mortals. “I don’t know what with.”
“Maybe an accident,” Berith said. “Something got burning hot against her skin, and it was engraved or embossed?” She was lifting, carefully, the right hand, unclenching the knuckles, exposing it, palm up, to the pale light filtering through the boarded windows. “She fought off someone with a knife.”
Multiple cuts on the fingers and palm, crossing and crisscrossing the lines of the hand. But . . .
“It was an odd kind of knife.” Françoise traced one cut, carefully. “They’re very long cuts. Most knives have shorter blades. And . . .” A tingle of magic crept up her arm when she withdrew, something that wasn’t Fallen magic, but utterly unfamiliar. Something hard and unyielding, pressing against her until all the air went out of her lungs, and she felt like she was breathing nothing but dust and ashes.
Finger by finger, Berith unclenched the left hand. More cuts, and—
“Glass?” she asked.
Françoise shook her head. She’d never seen it in such a state—broken pieces, with edges as sharp as glass—but she knew exactly what it was. “Jade.” The stone chips were green, translucent, with a thin line of darker green running through their heart. “It must have been a beautiful piece, before it broke.” Was it the pendant that had burned her between the breasts? Hard to tell—the chips were so completely smashed.
She picked one of the largest pieces, and almost dropped it, because the feeling of something that just waited to crush and choke her was sharp and almost unbearable. But it was just pain, and fear, and neither was the master of her. “I think—” She angled it to the light, noting a sharp, thin edge that wasn’t jagged or broken. “I think this is the knife. What’s left of it.” It didn’t look like a knife: more like a sword, with the beginnings of a sharp curve. But there was no mistaking it: this edge was deliberate, not the result of breakage. “The edge was crescent-shaped.”
“Odd weapon,” Berith said. “It was bound to break.”
“Mmm. Give me a bowl, will you? One of the really badly broken ones. Might as well put them to good use.” It was either that or break them completely and start using their shards as defensive weapons. Which would have been entertaining, if not actually useful.
“Too small,” Berith said. “Fortunately, we’ve got two broken ones.”
Françoise carefully put the piece down, and then started collecting all the other fragments from the hand. When Berith laid the bowls by her side, she dropped the pieces, one by one, into
them—and breathed a sigh of relief when that odd feeling of choking finally left her, as if someone had filled the room with fresh air. “It’s enchanted. I’m assuming it wasn’t meant to break.”
Berith picked up one of the pieces, looked at it. “I feel nothing.”
“I don’t think it’s Fallen magic,” Françoise said.
Berith made a face.
“There are other things. Were.” She’d heard tales, when she was growing up: flower fairies and spirits and ghosts, except, of course, that all were long since dead, ground into insignificance by the Fallen.
Berith smiled, displaying sharp, white teeth. “You saw Philippe. I’d say the past tense is probably inadequate.”
“I still don’t understand why we have her.” And then she thought back to what Olympe had said. A half dark circle. Someone had tried to snatch her, and failed. “Safekeeping.”
Berith rose again, waited for Françoise to start struggling to her feet. When that didn’t happen, she went back to her chair and sat, watching the woman. “Protection? It makes sense. If there’s anywhere in la Goutte d’Or that would keep someone safe . . .”
“So they’re still looking for her.” Whoever “they” was—whoever thought it made sense to steal Annamites and other immigrants. No, the issue wasn’t whether it made sense. If you needed people, for whatever twisted reason, taking them from the Houseless areas was the best idea. Few defensive spells, and no recourse, even if the communities worried.
Berith shrugged. “They’re welcome to try and get her. I don’t think they’ll make it past the door.”
“I don’t know,” Françoise said. She knew the rules of la Goutte d’Or: it might not have the distant, unattainable safety of a House, but nevertheless . . . The worst they faced was famine, and illness, and poverty. The disappearances of dockworkers and other Annamites were something else altogether. “There’s something out there, isn’t there? Something that just takes and takes.” Something that wasn’t subject to the unspoken rules of the Houses, or the ever-changing ones of the gangs. Something different.
The House of Binding Thorns Page 12