“Oh.” Leila’s eyes were wide. “You mean Lord Asmodeus slept with her.”
Thuan managed not to choke on the pâté, but it was a close thing.
“No!” Nadine said. She looked up. The gardens were deserted, but you never knew who might be listening. “Lord Asmodeus doesn’t sleep with anyone. Not since Samariel . . .” She closed her eyes, and started again. “Samariel was the one who picked Clothilde. Twenty years ago.”
Twenty years ago. Thuan was starting to guess what the problem was. “Loyalist?” he asked. The ones who had supported Uphir, the previous lord of the House, and then, in increasing desperation, his heiress, Ciseis, before it became clear that Ciseis wouldn’t come back, wouldn’t challenge Asmodeus’s hold on the House.
“Yes,” Nadine said. “He found Clothilde in a cell. I don’t know what he promised Lord Asmodeus to spare her life. I don’t want to know. But she was . . . his pet, I guess. His little project. His student.”
Explaining why she was a magician. Taught by a Fallen, shaped and molded by him. “A very good magician, then.”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t know what she thinks, either. But Samariel is dead.”
And Asmodeus presumably, with the long, long memory of a Fallen who never forgot grudges, especially if they involved disloyalty, wasn’t inordinately fond of her. A woman who had been close to his lover; a former loyalist, and who knew if she was still one? “There are no loyalists left, are there?” he asked, aloud.
Nadine looked startled. “Of course not,” she said. But he could have sworn she was going to say something else and had changed her mind. So: probably yes. And ancestors knew what their goal was now. Undermining Asmodeus’s rule, presumably.
Though, if they were working with Ciseis, and Ciseis was in turn working with someone else . . . It was a possibility, but he had not one shred of evidence for it. And it didn’t change anything.
The House wasn’t like the kingdom, being slowly nibbled away by essence. It was younger, brasher, its foundations more solid. There was opposition to Asmodeus, yes—there had always been, would always be. Fallen had long memories, and that didn’t just apply to Asmodeus’s side.
What it meant was just that the House had no vulnerability that he could find. That, presumably, Asmodeus was up to something else with the kingdom, but he had no idea what.
He tried to imagine Second Aunt’s face if he made her that report. It wasn’t a happy thought.
“You’re looking thoughtful,” Leila said.
“Or passing out in the cold,” Thuan said, shaking his head. “I wasn’t made for these climes!”
“Me neither.” Leila reached out for a slice of apple tart, and put it in her mouth. “I’ll never get used to these.”
Out in the streets, the flour wouldn’t be so fine, the fruit so fresh. Thuan knew this, intellectually, but he’d never really been out on the streets. In the kingdom, the issue would have been that the closest thing to apples was jujubes, assuming the harvest didn’t rot on the trees like the two previous ones. “It’s not bad,” he said.
Leila looked around the gardens. “You know, we’ve been all around here, and we’ve never seen a hawthorn. Why is the House called Hawthorn?”
Nadine looked as though she was going to berate them again for not paying attention in their classes. Thuan said, “Because it was a village here, once, with a commons. And there were hedges of hawthorn trees separating it from the rest of the village. That’s where the House is. On the remnants of the common.”
“That’s boring,” Leila said. “You know there are better stories.”
“The poison berries?” Nadine asked. She smiled. “I’ve heard some of them. They’re interesting.”
“Tell us,” Leila said, never one to miss an opportunity for a scare.
Nadine sighed. “I’m pretty sure my role as a tutor doesn’t include ghost stories.”
“No, but we’ve finished our homework,” Leila pointed out.
“Have you?”
Thuan shrugged. No exams coming up for a while, and the dissertation on the uses of breath-infused containers wasn’t a particular difficulty if you had enough magical theory. Which he had, because Second Aunt’s unspoken policy was Know your enemy. “For the time being.” There was the other matter, too: that of the accounts book and the report he’d have to make to her, but that could wait until he untangled his own thoughts. “Why not?”
“You’re too serious,” Nadine said, with a frown. “Sorry.” She shook her head. “It’s probably no laughing matter, being on the streets.”
“You laugh while you can.” Leila was suddenly grave beyond her years. “Else you never do. Come on, Nadine.”
“All right.” Nadine smiled. “The ones I’ve heard . . . There was a copse of hawthorn trees here, where the House stands now, or very close to it. And you know that you must create wards to found a House? Well, when Echaroth decided to make Hawthorn, she sacrificed herself to create the wards, and they hung her body from the largest of the hawthorn trees. It was her blood upon the earth that bound the first dependents to the House.”
How very uncivilized. Thuan bit back a sarcastic comment. “Except no one knows where the trees are.”
“They are not in this world,” Nadine said. “Not anymore. Though on dark, moonless nights, in the gardens, you may find a path that doesn’t belong anywhere, and follow it to a copse where Echaroth’s body still hangs, dripping blood like fire. And if you’re foolish enough to go wandering in, she’ll grab you, and pull you up among the thorns, to take your blood for the good of the House, to keep the wards strong. . . .” A cold, cold wind had risen in the garden, and the trees around them seemed to shimmer and recede in the distance, to grow small and stunted, and with berries the color of blood. . . .
In spite of himself, Thuan shivered. “Tales for children,” he said. He’d seen some of the magic of the House too close for comfort, but this was overdramatic.
“Of course,” Nadine said, and forbore to point out that, insofar as the House was concerned, they were both children. “As I said, there’s all sorts of stories. Leila mentioned the poisoned berries. It’s less fanciful but equally gruesome.”
Leila was obviously enraptured; she nodded and waited for Nadine to continue.
“It’s not the trees that the House refers to, but their fruit—their small, red berries. Back when Hawthorn was founded, there was a House already on this ground that Echaroth wanted to claim for herself. I forget its name. Montenay, maybe?”
“So she declared war on them?” Thuan asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Nadine said. “The House was strong and powerful, and Echaroth had few Fallen and fewer magicians in her service. But she did have one asset: a magician named Camille Decors, who found a way to turn hawthorn berries into a liquor that killed magic.”
“What do you mean by ‘killed’?” Thuan asked.
“Inhibited, if you prefer. Completely removed the ability to practice it: it’s not clear whether that was for a day or forever. But for a Fallen . . .”
For Fallen—whose very existence depended on magic, whose bones were too light to sustain their bodies without it—even an hour without magic was too long. Their own organs would kill them, caving in to gravity, after their bones snapped and left them on the floor, gasping for breath through lungs that had melted. . . .
Equally gruesome. “So she poisoned them all?” Leila asked.
“Not quite.” Nadine’s voice was wry. “She invited five of their dependents to visit her. Not the head of House, of course, but some who were high in the hierarchy of the House: convinced they had the upper hand with her. Echaroth served them wine, which was an unusual, vivid red. And—”
Thuan closed his eyes. “I’m not sure I want to hear the end of this.”
“Squeamish?” Leila said.
“You’r
e the one who complains about the smell in the infirmary,” Thuan pointed out.
“Yeah, but ghost stories are different. They’re just stuff to scare ourselves.”
As if they didn’t have enough sources of fright, as things were.
“The liquor was poison, too, for mortals. Not the most pleasant way to die. And, as they lay dying and vulnerable in the banquet hall, Echaroth seized the link to House Montenay through them and shattered its wards.”
Thuan snorted. “It’s a nice story.” Wards were meant to last, and if any dependent was that great a liability to the House, no one would be allowed to leave, ever.
“It was the past,” Nadine said. “Or it’s a myth. Take your pick. I don’t say it has to make sense. Or that things haven’t changed, in the meantime. Houses aren’t static.”
To Thuan, they seemed ever the same, before or after the war: diminished, perhaps, but still bloated and greedy.
Nadine shrugged. “Anyway, she destroyed the House through her wine, and her magic. That’s why Hawthorn is here. Go to the reception hall sometime, and stand under the dais. You can still see something sitting in the high chair, a translucent ghost. That’s her. Sitting. Watching while they drain their cups, and preparing her ritual to invade House Montenay.”
“And she built her own wards on the blood of those dead dependents?” Thuan guessed. He didn’t expect Nadine to answer: how a House made their wards was possibly their most well-guarded secret, for why make public the making of what protected them?
“Probably. It’s always blood, isn’t it?” Nadine said. “And carving out territory through atrocities.”
Standard things, in the existence of Houses. But then Thuan thought of the Bièvre, and the invasion, and of the countless dead to strengthen his grandfather’s rule. Was it so different? “The world belongs to the ruthless.”
Nadine sighed. “I wish it didn’t.” She picked up the discarded napkins and plates from the tablecloth. “Come on. It’s getting really cold, and dark. Time to head back.”
They hadn’t yet lit the lamps in the corridors when they got back; the House hovered at that uncertain stage between daylight and candlelight: the hour between dog and wolf, they called it, when you couldn’t be certain if the shape on the road was going to lick your face or chew it off. Thuan wasn’t one for fancies, but . . .
“Remind me not to do ghost stories,” he said. “Or drink red wine.”
Leila merely laughed. They left her at the entrance of her own room, and Nadine walked a little farther with Thuan. Her quarters were in the other wing of the House, with those of full dependents.
“You all right?” she asked.
Thuan shrugged. “Fine. I should ask you the same.” Even in the dim light she looked awful, with drawn circles under her eyes, and pale skin that seemed as though all the color had been shocked from it.
Nadine grimaced. “Mother has been unbearable. Lord Asmodeus has left the House to do God knows what, and she’s been riding us all hard.”
If he’d left the House, then that meant there was a chance to dig deeper. “He’s coming back soon, though, isn’t he?”
Nadine shook her head. “No idea. I hear you’ve been haunting the library in your spare time.”
Thuan tried to look casual. “I want to know more about the House,” he said, which was entirely true.
“About Clothilde?” Nadine sounded skeptical.
“Her name came up.”
Nadine sighed, and shook her head. “Thuan. Curiosity is all well and good, but trust me: too much will get you killed. Especially with Clothilde.”
“I think I got the message,” he said, drily.
Nadine grimaced. “I’m just trying to help.”
“I know.” She meant well. She liked him, as a student, as a teenager. None of this would survive the revelation that he was trying to undo the House’s careful work, or that he was much, much older than he seemed. “Thank you. Now go get some sleep.”
“Don’t you try to mother me,” Nadine said, but she sounded more amused than angry. “I’ll remember this. Good night, Thuan.”
“Good night.”
He’d braced himself to leave the light on. It was a night for ghosts and nightmares, and he was pretty sure he’d find Echaroth haunting the dragon kingdom of his dreams in one form or another.
But, when he came in, he immediately knew someone had been in his room.
It was small things: the slight disarray on the ancestral altar; a faint after-smell that didn’t quite belong, like a tang to the air. Someone—
Who?
Someone from the Court of Persuasion? They couldn’t suspect him already, and he’d burned the essence he’d stolen from Sare immediately after using it.
There was something on the altar. Thuan moved closer. It kept wavering out of focus, removing itself from the field of vision. He let out a breath he hadn’t even been aware of holding: he knew that spell, and it wasn’t a Fallen one.
Under the bowl of fruit he’d left for his ascendants, someone had wedged a slim, translucent piece of rice paper. When he pulled it out, he smelled brine, and the sharpness of ink, and a faint touch of khi water like the memory of a storm. A message from the kingdom. He unfolded it, and stared at the vermilion seal at the bottom of the page, elegant characters forming the word “Jade” in Ancient Viet. Ngoc Bich. Second Aunt.
The message was short, and to the point, so short that the seal was its only signature.
Child. Things have changed drastically, not for the better. I find myself forced to cancel your assignment.
We need to talk of the future. Of your future. Come back to the kingdom, now.
FIFTEEN
Stumbling, Falling
MADELEINE had the impression she’d barely slept when Valchior shook her awake. “We have to move,” the bodyguard said. “Again.”
Madeleine rose, brushing tiny crabs from her trousers. She wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed since they’d left Yen Oanh’s jail, wasn’t even sure whether time as it passed in the dragon kingdom had any meaning. Last time she’d been down here with Philippe and Isabelle, a few hours had become an entire day.
They’d left the small shrine behind, and the corpse of the Fallen Asmodeus had tortured, spread out on the hill with his throat cut. Asmodeus had shrugged when Madeleine, gathering her courage, had asked him. “The ravings of a lunatic. Something about a wall that will separate us once and for all.”
“They are building a wall,” Madeleine said, remembering what she’d seen from the deck of the boat.
“I saw,” Asmodeus said. “But they can’t build a wall around the entire dragon kingdom.”
“Around the capital?” Madeleine asked, but knew that wasn’t it. The location was all wrong.
“Not where it’s placed, no. It’s at the boundary between the kingdom and the edge of Hawthorn. To close everything off, they would need power beyond imagining, beyond what even Morningstar was capable of, at his height. Which means they’re up to something else.” He’d not elaborated, and the brief conversation had ended there.
They crawled across a landscape of cliffs and hills, watching the shapes of their hunters growing ever closer: slim shapes when she’d woken up that first morning, now close enough that she could guess at their faces. There were too many of them: a dozen, against the four of them.
Asmodeus was kneeling by the second bodyguard, whose condition had worsened, and who had spent the end of the previous afternoon being carried by Valchior and Asmodeus in turn. He looked up at Valchior, and shook his head. “Not anymore.”
Valchior’s face was set. She knelt, and laid a hand against the wrist. “No pulse.” She whispered something, the beginning of a prayer Madeleine found herself voicing alongside her.
“Give him eternal rest, O Lord, and may your light shine on him forever . . .”
Who knew whether God was listening, in a kingdom even more heathen than a city of Fallen? But . . . but, if he was . . .
Watch over him, and lead him toward life eternal.
“The wounds never healed,” Madeleine said, after the prayer. Her voice was hoarse. She was weak, light-headed, neither the drugs nor the bread making much of a difference.
Asmodeus’s face didn’t move. “No,” he said. He got up, leaning on the halberd. Madeleine, who was looking for it, saw the slight stumble. His wounds weren’t healing, either. All of which wasn’t normal. Fallen wounds healed. Not necessarily instantly, but always in time, unless strong magic was involved to prevent it.
Ahead lay the capital, and the palace: a day’s march, maybe? It had seemed to get no closer in the previous day.
Asmodeus drove the halberd into the ground: a cloud of sand and silt rose to wrap itself around his feet. “Enough is enough. We’re not getting closer to the city because they’ve been making us go in circles. Waiting for us to exhaust ourselves, so they could pick us off one by one. This stops, now.” He stepped back from it, and closed his eyes. Light streamed out of him, the shape of great, black wings slowly coalescing at his back. Magic filled the air, cold, cruel, amused, the same feeling within Madeleine, the link to the House, to Asmodeus. It reached out, like a clawed hand seeking purchase. Something stirred within Madeleine in answer: the puppeteer’s fingers, wearing her like a glove again—for a moment she was one with him—for a moment, she understood what it meant, to tumble down from Heaven and to have no memories, and no resources beyond magic and the fear it inspired. Then the moment passed.
Ahead, something shimmered: a veil, shot through with gray-blue reflections. The city and the palace were beyond it, obscured, blurred. Asmodeus brought his hands together, and clenched them, and Madeleine felt the fabric of the world twisting and tearing. The veil fell into tatters, slowly crumbling like a burned curtain of gauze. The city was now a sharp presence, looming over them.
The House of Binding Thorns Page 20