The House of Binding Thorns

by Aliette de Bodard

  “You mean Heaven and Hell lie beyond it?” Asmodeus’s voice was scornful. “That’s hardly—”

  “You’re not listening. It’s a symbol. It draws its strength from that near-unbreakable boundary, but it’s not the path to the land of the dead. Of course not.”

  Madeleine found her voice, spoke in the silence. “It was half-built.”

  “Of course. The kingdom is as vast as the Seine. You can only build something like this across a small distance.”

  Asmodeus’s face was creased in thought; serious, for once. “So they want to cut off a small part of the kingdom. Seceding from you?”

  “It’s possible.” Ngoc Bich’s hands rested on the broken mosaic of the table. “But it is not something we will tolerate for long.”

  “Thanks to our help,” Asmodeus said. “Which reminds me. What did you do with the prisoner?”

  Ngoc Bich’s face was serene. “She’ll talk. You’re not the only one to have a Court of Persuasion, though I am given to understand that you were never its head. What were you head of? I forget. Oh, yes. The Court of Birth. A charming way to pass your time—finder of newborn Fallen, and midwife to the children of essence addicts.”

  Asmodeus watched her, for a while. Then he smiled. “Princess of the dragon kingdom. The title ill suits you. You deserve higher.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” Ngoc Bich was imperturbable. She pulled the pile of documents toward her—didn’t read them, but looked at Thanh Phan, who nodded. Though she didn’t look happy at all. “And glad you decided not to press for further concessions in the light of what happened to your dependent.” She inclined her head toward Madeleine, who suddenly felt the sole, uncomfortable center of attention of the entire table. She’d have dived behind a pillar if she could.

  “My dependents, you mean?”

  Ghislaine. Elphon looked to be safe, even though Madeleine didn’t understand what he was embroiled in. But Ghislaine had never turned up, and if Yen Oanh didn’t have her, where was she?

  “Envoy Ghislaine?” Ngoc Bich shrugged. “Insofar as I can tell, she left the safety of the palace of her own will. I am sorry that she came to grief, but you can’t expect us to protect people who are determined to venture into danger.”

  Something swam out of the morass of Madeleine’s thoughts: a memory, sharp and unwelcome, of Prince Phuong Dinh warning her. He’d told her Ghislaine had learned something about Yen Oanh. Something bad enough, and worrying enough, that she’d thought she needed to get back to Hawthorn, without waiting for Clothilde’s delegation.

  And now Elphon was warning her against Clothilde.

  “I should think blame in this matter is . . . ah. A shared thing,” Asmodeus said. He’d looked, briefly, at Madeleine, and then back at Thuan. “But since you’re offering me such a delightful morsel . . .” His hands moved, on the chipped table, as if drawing the shape of a noose.

  Thuan didn’t flinch. He was comforting, unremarkable—not an addict to angel essence, not cool and competent and alien like Ngoc Bich—the kind of person she could imagine behind a desk, or buried amidst books.

  “I would remind you the alliance is contingent on his well-being,” Ngoc Bich said, a little too sharply.

  Asmodeus shrugged. “I shall keep that in mind.”

  “As to the rebels . . .” Ngoc Bich shook her head. “The alliance aims to defeat them, among other things. Then you won’t have the grief of changing interlocutors.”

  “I know.” Asmodeus’s face went grave, for a fraction of a second. “Which is why the delegation will remain here, to help you with them.”

  Ngoc Bich’s face didn’t move. “Of course.” The treaty gave her a permanent delegation from Hawthorn, Madeleine remembered, though Ngoc Bich probably didn’t expect it to start so soon, or to be so clearly invasive.

  “Shall we?” Asmodeus asked.

  “We might as well.” Ngoc Bich took up a brush, and, dipping it in vermilion ink, signed every page of the contract. One of the attendants brought her a large golden square seal, topped by an engraving of a dragon, which she stamped on the last page. Then she slid the documents across to Asmodeus, who, reaching inside his jacket pocket, produced a marbled red fountain pen and a knife, the same knife he’d used on the Fallen he’d killed. Unlike Ngoc Bich, he scanned every page before scrawling his initials on it. He finished by prickling his fingers on the knife, and laying three of them at the bottom of the paper, by Ngoc Bich’s seal. When he withdrew his hand, they revealed the bloody shape of the House’s arms, the branches of the hawthorn tree pushing into Ngoc Bich’s seal like daggers.

  “Here,” he said, and handed them to Thuan, who pressed his own seal at the very end.

  Something tightened in the room, not Fallen magic but a coldness, as if a dozen currents had suddenly converged on the table. Thuan’s hands clenched into fists. Ngoc Bich’s face remained serene and distant, as she gathered the papers and handed them to Thanh Phan. “We will expect your goodwill soon.”

  “Of course.” He waited, watching her. “And the ceremony?”

  “As you fully know, your presence here was unexpected,” Ngoc Bich said.

  Asmodeus raised an eyebrow. “Not my fault.”

  “It was always assumed Clothilde would escort Prince Thuan to Hawthorn, where the wedding ceremony would take place. Though, technically speaking, you have both signed the marriage contracts already.”

  Asmodeus inclined his head. “It was planned that way, yes.”

  “But, since you’re both here, you can be introduced to the ancestors as Thuan’s husband, as would be proper.”

  Asmodeus shrugged. “As you wish. Hawthorn won’t renege on its obligations, though it might be a little while before we can organize everything.”

  “Of course.” Ngoc Bich inclined her head. “I’ll await your invitation, then.”

  Madeleine tried to imagine the ceremony: a full-fledged, formal affair with a seated dinner, and people in swallowtail suits and mutton-sleeve dresses mingling by a buffet, having polite and inconsequential conversation around canapés and wineglasses. Tried to imagine the sheer alienness of dragons and crabs and other sea creatures among them, and gave up. In House Silverspires, she’d seen Philippe, the captive Annamite, looking awkward and ill at ease in his suit. But Ngoc Bich and her train wouldn’t bother with suits, or looking ill at ease. They’d move around House representatives like birds of prey among tigers, two different kinds of predators with no intention of giving any ground.

  No wonder Asmodeus looked amused, if that was indeed his intention.

  * * *

  THE ceremony, whatever it was, didn’t include the delegates, or the officials: just Ngoc Bich, Thuan, and Asmodeus. Clothilde paced, all the while they were gone, and finally settled by Madeleine’s side. “We’re staying on,” she said. “It’s not over yet.”

  Madeleine hadn’t thought it was. She kept her fingers wrapped around the message from Elphon. “The rebels?” she asked.

  “Whatever they’re up to.” Clothilde’s voice was dark. “There was a Fallen with Yen Oanh. That means House involvement. This means something larger than a small civil war in a land we don’t really care about.”

  For the love of all that is holy, do not bring Clothilde with you, or tell her about this message.

  She didn’t know anything about Clothilde. Or about Elphon, in the new House of Hawthorn, or why he would suddenly stop trusting Clothilde. It made no sense, but the only person who might have the answers in the vicinity was Asmodeus, and she couldn’t take the problem to him. Even if he deigned to explain, she couldn’t control what he decided to do. And, with no idea of the stakes . . .

  “A House. Which one?”

  “I don’t know,” Clothilde said. “It’s not like anything is solved. The dragon kingdom is still under siege. Yen Oanh is still . . . I don’t know what she’s up to.”<
br />
  Building a wall. Healing addicted dragons. Putting together weapons that damaged Fallen past healing. Snatching delegates from a heavily guarded palace, in the heart of Ngoc Bich’s power. Making Ghislaine flee to Hawthorn, for a safety she’d never reached. It didn’t sound altogether promising.

  “She’s a threat,” Clothilde said. “And Lord Asmodeus will want her dealt with.”

  As a message. As revenge. Madeleine said, slowly, “She wanted Asmodeus, specifically. To throw the House into disarray?”

  “To send a message,” Clothilde replied. “But yes, that, too. Historically, it’s been chaos when the head of a House died.” Her gaze became distant. “It was bad enough when Uphir was deposed.”

  Madeleine shivered, touching the wound on her calf, the one that had never properly healed. “It was a bad time for everyone.”

  “You were lucky,” Clothilde said. “You left.”

  Left wounded and dying after Elphon had died; and crawled to House Silverspires, to endure twenty years of trying to drug herself into an early grave. “I guess,” Madeleine said. Clothilde would have been an adult by then—how had she lived through it?

  She could find no good way of asking the question, and gave up on it after a while. She wouldn’t get her answers that way. But, equally, she wouldn’t get to Elphon if she had to stay on with Clothilde.

  Which left only one way of dealing with the problem; and she so, so wished there were another.

  * * *

  AND then it was over, and Asmodeus was back at the table, just long enough to announce his intention of leaving the kingdom, consort in tow like a prize prisoner.

  It was now or never.

  Easy to say, far less easy to do. It took Madeleine three tries to gather enough courage to approach him. “You know where Elphon is,” she said, hoarsely.

  He looked at her with curiosity, as he might at an insect who had learned to speak. “Of course.”

  “I—” She swallowed, her hand wrapped around Elphon’s message. “I need to speak to him.”

  “And you want me to tell you where he is? Clothilde could tell you as well as I.”

  For the love of God, don’t tell Clothilde. She had so little idea what was going on, or why. “I—” She swallowed again. “I want your permission to join him.”

  “How . . . delightful.” Asmodeus rolled the word on his tongue as though it were red, bloody meat. “Behaving like a proper House dependent. I’m almost touched.”

  He wasn’t, and they both knew it.

  “Joining Elphon?” He was silent, for a while. He was going to ask her the obvious question—why she didn’t go through Clothilde for any of this—and she was going to have to answer, and she didn’t know what she could say or do that wouldn’t lead to either her or Clothilde in the cells. Instead, what he said was, “You pledged your loyalty to me.”

  “Of course,” Madeleine said. “Because I had no other choice.” Honest and suicidal. Beside Asmodeus, Prince Thuan winced.

  Asmodeus laughed. It wasn’t cruel or malicious, but merely amused, a parent by the antics of a child. “Still disastrously naive and forthright, I see. Will you renege on that pledge?”

  She couldn’t afford to, even if she’d wanted to. What would she do? Rebel alone and singly against him, and be crushed as he had crushed the loyalists to Uphir, twenty years before? “You know I won’t.” The words tasted like ashes in her mouth. “Too principled.” If there was a choice, any choice that left her free, that took her away from him, but there was none.

  Asmodeus took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, and carefully wiped his fingertips. Three dots of red spread across the white cotton. “You are quite free to intrigue as you wish,” he said. “As long as it’s not against me, and doesn’t weaken the House. A word of advice, for what it’s worth: you’re not, to put it bluntly, very good at intrigue.” His eyes rested on her, gray-green, the color of the sea before the storm—expressionless, as they would be when he chose to take the knife blade to her. . . .

  She shivered. “No,” she said. “I don’t have to be.”

  “You might have to, if you want to survive.” He looked back, to where Clothilde was still talking with Thanh Phan and Ngoc Bich. “Though I could argue Clothilde’s intrigues aren’t that subtle, either.”

  Elphon. She needed to think of Elphon, of seeing him again, alive and well. Of getting away from the suffocating alienness of the dragon kingdom, and back into a House she feared and hated, but was familiar with.

  Prince Thuan looked at her, curiously. He didn’t seem worried, or fearful, but then, Ngoc Bich probably hadn’t had time to explain the situation she was dropping him into.

  “Elphon is on the docks, by la Villette Basin,” Asmodeus said. He buttoned up his jacket, fluffing up the pleated silver stock at his collar. “I’ll have a word with Clothilde. She can stay here and work with Ngoc Bich on how to destroy that wall and the rebels. And you, of course, will return. I would be displeased if you didn’t.”

  He knew exactly where she was, just as he did with Elphon; and he also knew there was no other House that would take her, and no Houseless that would dare shelter her. “Of course. Thank you,” Madeleine said. The words tasted bitter on her tongue.

  “Don’t thank me.” Asmodeus was amused again. “That’s all you have from me. If anything does go wrong . . .”

  Then he wouldn’t back her. It would be her against Clothilde. “Of course,” Madeleine said, the words sharp and acrid against her tongue. “I understand.”

  EIGHTEEN

  A Room of Thorns

  THUAN didn’t remember the presentation to the ancestors, or the long, long climb away from the kingdom into House Hawthorn. The only sharp thing in the blur of his world was bowing in front of the altar to his grandfather and grandmother, lighting three sticks of incense that barely disguised the smell of rot, and desperately praying for their blessing, and good fortune.

  If they gave any answer, he didn’t hear it.

  The gardens were choked with snow, a grayish sludge mixed with debris from spell residue, almost obscuring the burned trees and the ashes scattered through the gravel. As he crossed from the stairs to the quay into the grounds of the House, Thuan felt a slight resistance, as if the House itself knew what he was, and wanted to keep him out. It was cold, more than the winter winds, deep-seated and biting, a feeling that hadn’t left him since he’d put his seal at the bottom of the contract.

  Husband. Consort. It felt unreal, to be coming back to the House walking a step behind Asmodeus, who hadn’t spoken a word to him, only watched him with a gaze that threatened to devour him whole.

  He’d said nothing when Second Aunt had introduced Thuan. Merely smiled, sharp and amused. He knew. He had to know. Save face, Second Aunt had said. He had accepted the alliance: to harm Thuan would end it, and why would he want to jeopardize everything he’d pushed for? He would have to pretend he had known all along.

  But, regardless of what Second Aunt had promised, he’d find ways to make Thuan pay that didn’t involve spilling blood. There were so many intricate forms of punishment, and Thuan didn’t need much imagination to understand how Asmodeus worked.

  They headed down the corridors to the West Wing. Thuan ran his hand over the wainscot, remembering wandering the House at night.

  The bodyguards showed him into a large, airy room. The attendants unpacked his meager possessions, and left him alone. The bed was a four-poster one, smelling faintly of mildew, and a pale red conversation chair occupied most of the remaining space. On the walls, a series of large white panels with a green contour, and the occasional mirror, which reflected Thuan’s pale, exhausted face; and a huge filigreed chandelier over the bed, ablaze with lights and looking like a small sun from underneath.

  On the secretary desk, someone had left paper and paint, and a delicate sketch of pomegranates and orang
es so vividly done it seemed to leap from the page. It was signed with a single “S” at the bottom, twisted into the shape of a snake, and Thuan knew, abruptly, who had painted it.

  Samariel.

  Was this a message, a subtle reminder that he would never take Samariel’s place? It wasn’t as if he’d ever wanted to.

  There was also a suit, draped over the chair: a dark gray swallowtail jacket and trousers, and a subdued shirt that was more silver than gray—the colors of the House he now belonged to. They appeared to have been cut for a larger man than him: Cousin Dinh quite probably. Thuan gave the matter some thought. He had worn Western fashion in the House before, but he hadn’t so badly needed a bit of comfort, something that would remind him of home. Better to keep his own clothes. He could always tell them the fit was wrong.

  He sat down on the bed, closed his eyes, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to meditate. When the door opened—a heartbeat, a lifetime later—he was no closer to feeling serene than he had been when leaving the kingdom.

  They took him down a familiar corridor: one that curved, sharply, flaring into the antechamber with the huge set of wooden doors, and the two bloody stars falling from the firmament. They opened now, into a room that could have been the twin of the one where he was accommodated: same conversation chair, same four-poster bed, and a red armchair in which Asmodeus sat with steepled fingers, watching him. He’d taken off his suit, and was now wearing a dark blue dressing gown, embroidered with birds caught among ivy vines.

  The room also contained—pale and wan and frightened—both Nadine and Leila.

  Nadine’s mouth shaped around his name, stopped.

  “This is Prince Rong Minh Thanh Thuan, from the dragon kingdom of the Seine,” Asmodeus said, as the bodyguards closed the doors behind Thuan. “My new consort, though I gather you’ve already met him.”

  Neither Nadine nor Leila would look at Thuan. Leila’s hands were clenched. Thuan knew what was running through her mind. She wasn’t House, she was there only on sufferance, with only one chance at becoming a dependent, and now she’d drawn the attention of the head of the House by associating with a spy and a traitor.