The House of Binding Thorns

by Aliette de Bodard

  No no no . . .

  Berith stood up from the wall, in a flutter of paper and leather bindings.

  “The baby,” Françoise said.

  Nemnestra’s hands tightened around her throat, hard enough to bruise. “Don’t overestimate your value as a hostage.”

  “Is that all you see?” Berith’s voice was soft. Almost too soft. It wasn’t weariness but anger.

  The armchair was a throne again, and the ceiling of the flat was receding: sharp, blue sky with flocks of birds, and the smell of freshly crushed grass. She was dragging them into her dominion. No, Françoise suddenly realized, her heart going cold. She was stripping the flat of everything, every ward, every protection, gathering all the power she could for one spell. Nemnestra couldn’t see it, because she didn’t understand what the flat was, didn’t understand how it sustained Berith.

  Berith. She couldn’t get the words out.

  “I see death,” Nemnestra said. “For you. For your Fall-brother. For your partner. The baby, perhaps, we can spare, for who would teach her vengeance?”

  The books were fading, one by one, from the bookshelves, the torn pages absorbed into Berith’s skin. Her face glowed like a sun, and the sky overhead darkened, clouds gathering to block the sunlight.

  Berith, no.

  Berith smiled. It was joyless, and ghastly, the rictus of a Fallen whose heart was being removed from them. “Who will teach her vengeance? You don’t understand, Nemnestra. It’s not about Houses dying or rising, or time passing. It’s never been.”

  Nemnestra didn’t move. “You want to kill me? I’ll snap her neck before you even have time to cast a spell.” A slight pressure on Françoise’s neck, with the unmovable, inhuman strength of Fallen.

  “You’ll kill her anyway. Won’t you?” A wind rose, the few remaining torn papers gathering themselves in a spiral, weaving themselves around Berith like a small storm. They’d turned a glistening blue. Words flashed on Berith’s arms, becoming featureless smudges. The bookshelves were all but invisible, faint traceries of light on the cracked walls.

  “Would I?” Nemnestra asked. She shook her head. “The time to make your move is long past.”

  Think. Think. Berith couldn’t do anything to Nemnestra without killing both of them, all three of them, baby included. She needed an opening. A distraction.

  If Françoise hadn’t been shaking with fatigue or carrying a baby, she would have hit Nemnestra in the crotch, and dived out of the way while she was still dealing with the surprise and the rising pain. But that was out of the question.

  Hands at throat. She needed these away. And it would take something painful.

  “Berith, I’m sorry.” Françoise made her voice as weary as possible, which didn’t require much faking. Nemnestra’s hands tightened, relaxed again. She thought Françoise was giving up, that she was going to plead for her life. Her mistake. “I just can’t.”

  She dropped down, as if she were going to faint—her upper body going limp, but her heel moving, sharply, with all the strength she could muster—onto Nemnestra’s right foot, pressing down on the instep.

  A crack of breaking bones. Nemnestra screaming. Françoise pushing herself out of the way, running as fast as she could, as far as she could.

  “You little—”

  Magic, rising at her back, the heat of a spell—and then, in front of her, Berith spreading her arms wide, her eyes streaked with silver, light streaming out of her in the rising wind, and all the smudges on her arms exploding outward like ink splattered from a broken pen.

  Everything flashed a bright, painful white.

  When Françoise managed to open her eyes again, she found her hands over Camille’s face—what if the baby went blind? She waved them, several times, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary: still the same unfocused brown gaze, mildly irritated now. “Ssh,” she said. “Mommy is here. Ssh. Ssh.”

  She raised her eyes.

  There was no flat left. The walls had collapsed, wide-open to the cold outside, and every piece of furniture was thrown aside or broken, or both. The floor had buckled and broken in multiple places, and slats protruded like spikes. Françoise threw a glance backward, to where Nemnestra had been standing. There was nothing left, just a smudge of black on the floor.

  The blue armchair was cleaved in two, and Berith leaned on one half, breathing heavily. “Berith? Berith?”

  Berith looked up, and her face was a grinning skull; her skin so taut Françoise could see the bones underneath. “I’ll—I’ll—be—fine. I—just. Need. Rest.” And then she fell silent, and there was only the noise of the winter breeze, whistling amidst the ruins of their lives.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Rebirth

  BEYOND the wall, in the grove of Hawthorn, Ciseis knelt, drawing a circle around a tree.

  She had left Asmodeus, Yen Oanh, and two guards a little way off, by the tree that bore the thin shape of Uphir in its embrace. Asmodeus’s face was pale, his glasses askew, his shirt drenched with blood from wounds that wouldn’t heal. He watched Ciseis without expression.

  Yen Oanh said, “They say old sins always come home to roost.”

  Asmodeus shrugged, and grimaced, one hand going to his chest. “Old sins, new sins. I regret nothing.” He tried to push himself away from the tree; stumbled, and would have fallen if one of the bodyguards hadn’t caught him.

  Yen Oanh smiled. “You care about your House, but you’re too weak to stop us.”

  “Don’t count on weakness.” Asmodeus smiled: a quick, tired expression, a pale shadow of his bright, terrible former self. “It may not last.”

  “Mocking us? You’re in no position to do so.”

  Ciseis’s voice rose and fell, drawing out the words of a spell. The tree at the center of the circle grew sharper, branches twisting, bowing down toward her, blossoms fading away and becoming the vivid, flaming red of berries—and Asmodeus grew paler and paler, dangling from the bodyguard’s grasp like a corpse with all its bones shattered.

  “I’m surprised you would ally with a Fallen,” he said, softly. “Or a House.”

  Yen Oanh’s face didn’t move. “Who else would I ally with? The Houseless, the hungry, the powerless? Needs must, Asmodeus.”

  “As long as they apply, yes.” Asmodeus’s voice was malicious. “You do know she and House Astragale were behind the angel essence traffic into the dragon kingdom? The very thing you so decry, used as the foundations of your rebellion . . .”

  Yen Oanh’s face froze into stillness: the intent gaze of a predator. “Not at the beginning, no.” One hand foraged into her wide sleeve, brought out the engraved hilt of a knife—just a fraction, but Asmodeus saw it. He laughed, softly.

  “And all bonds shall fall to dust, all alliances be torn asunder. . . . What fun we shall have. . . .”

  “You,” Yen Oanh said, viciously, “will be dead.”

  Asmodeus raised his head, met the unwavering, cornflower blue gaze of Uphir’s corpse. “Or worse than dead. They’re all still alive here, preserved for the good of the House.” His voice ought to have been mocking, but instead it was in earnest, stripped bare of pretense or posturing. “And, in the end, we all come here, all give ourselves for Hawthorn. Isn’t that so . . .”

  “Asmodeus.” Uphir’s voice was the whisper of the wind. “I see you have learned your lesson, after all these years.”

  Asmodeus laughed. “Older and wiser, Uphir. Or perhaps just older.”

  In the center, Ciseis’s circle now glowed red, and blood stained her hands. When she moved, the branches of the tree moved with her, crowning her with thorns and flaming berries.

  “It’s time,” she said, her voice echoing in the grove. “Bring him.”

  * * *

  THUAN was in Asmodeus’s office. Iaris had made a face, and Sare had looked outright uncomfortable, but no one had forbidden him o
utright. Their body language had been quite clear: he could risk himself, and it would be on his head when Asmodeus did come back.

  It was impressive, the faith that he would come back. Even as the House descended into chaos—as the unnatural blue sky and the dry, stale, recycled feeling in the air took hold—they clung to the knowledge that he would stand by them. They didn’t like him, would never stop fearing him, but he was still their bulwark—even absent, even diminished.

  Asmodeus’s office was that of a gentleman of means: bookshelves with leather volumes, all carefully dusted; a few cupboards and a secretary desk on Persian rugs, a low table with two wicker chairs in a corner, and a huge desk of polished wood with a leather surface.

  Most drawers and cupboards were closed, and sealed with strong magic. When he ran his fingers over the wood, he felt the slight jolt and catch of Fallen magic, and a faint smell, a memory of orange blossom and bergamot. A voice, whispering “unwise” in his head, the touch of lips on his.

  And a ritual that would end with his death, and the death of the dragon kingdom.

  He spread the papers he’d brought from his room carefully on the desk. He was sitting in one of the wicker chairs, not the large plush one behind the desk: he would have felt like a thief, consort or not.

  He should have paid more attention in magic classes, both in the kingdom and in Hawthorn, but he’d always assumed that he’d never need to wield or shape Fallen magic, merely oppose it with khi currents. He’d thought of pitched battles and magical duels, and not of rituals in which he would be caught, unawares. Second Aunt would laugh at him if he confessed to such naïveté.

  He stared at the papers, again. Nothing. Nothing he hadn’t seen originally.

  “You have some nerve.” Nadine’s voice was amused. She came into the office slowly, glancing left and right, as if unsure whether she’d be chastised.

  “You don’t sound like you have much,” Thuan said. Calmly, he set the papers over a pile of other, current ones: expense accounts for the House, and memos from the different courts.

  Nadine threw a worried glance at the chair behind the desk. “If you’re not court and you come in here, it’s generally not for commendations.”

  “Did he ever summon you here?” Thuan asked.

  Nadine pulled one of the wicker chairs, sat in it. Her whole body had gone rigid. “When I was a child, and a bunch of us brought down an entire set of shelves with magical artifacts in them and incinerated the laboratory. He wasn’t head of Hawthorn then, just the leader of the Court of Birth. I don’t remember much. Mother says he’s never done anything to children, except put the fear of the House in them.” She didn’t sound as though she believed it. “People go straight from this office to the cells, sometimes.”

  It sounded like a myth. Like something so often told it had gotten deformed. He didn’t want to ask who, or when—they were all old, stale fears—didn’t want to sound as though he was making excuses for any of it. But he was starting to understand what the House ran on. And what, ultimately, had brought it to this juncture.

  “You’re very interested in his papers,” Nadine asked. “The same ones I brought you?”

  Thuan had already given it some thought. “Yes,” he said. “His plans for me. He . . .” He scowled, with a worry he didn’t have to fake. “He wanted to know how dragons’ bodies worked.”

  Nadine’s face was haunted. “An operating table and a knife?”

  “Several types of knives,” Thuan said. “And a long time in which to test things. He had understood we can heal ourselves, like Fallen. It was an added attraction.” Again, a scowl, just enough fear to mirror hers, to play on what was already there, her preconceived ideas. It wouldn’t last, if she did read the papers. But she had other things on her mind.

  Not, of course, that what Asmodeus outlined was any better or any more desirable than a live, slow dissection.

  “Figures,” Nadine said.

  Thuan laid both elbows on the sides of the wicker chair, bending toward her. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Nadine looked at the door again. It was closed, but that didn’t seem to make her more relaxed.

  “I don’t think your mother or anyone else is likely to come in here.” Thuan felt like an interloper, but at least he couldn’t be in any more trouble than he already was. And he had no history with this place. “And I’m rather unlikely to go straight to him and tattle, even if I knew where he was.” He couldn’t afford to wonder where Asmodeus was, or how he was doing. There could be no pity, no compassion, no ambiguous desire getting in the way.

  At length, Nadine said, “I told you. Things are changing.” She leaned back against the chair. It made a creaking, cracking sound. “Twenty years ago, the House was taken from Lord Uphir. He had an heir. Ciseis. She escaped to another House. House Astragale.”

  “I remember,” Thuan said, softly. Old history. Not his, but he’d learned never to underestimate the power of the past. “And now she’s come back? Why support her?”

  Nadine’s face didn’t move. “You’re the one he dragged all the way here and planned to experiment on, and you ask this?”

  Because he didn’t have any proof that Ciseis was any gentler. No, that wasn’t true. He already knew that she and House Astragale ran the angel essence traffic into the kingdom. He closed his eyes. “So this is . . . a takeover? A change of masters? What happens to the servants of the old?”

  “It has to change.” Nadine’s voice was feverish. “We’ve lived in fear for twenty years, Thuan.”

  She’d been a child when Asmodeus seized the House. She’d admitted as much. How much did she remember?

  And what was he doing, trying to find holes and cracks in her story? It wasn’t as though he needed to be convinced of Asmodeus’s ruthlessness.

  “There’ll be”—Nadine took a deep, shaking breath—“positions for people who took the right side at the right time. New courts drawn. New blood.”

  She didn’t say what would happen to the old blood. It was obvious. Hawthorn, ruled by fear and purges—and even Ciseis would be molded by it, in the end: a string of overthrows leading to the same climate within the House.

  “I see.” Thuan said nothing for a while.

  Did any of this include a chance of survival for a consort? He weighed it, for a while. There would be a new head of House, but the ritual would still exist. He could burn the papers and hope no other traces subsided in the drawer, but there was a chance Nadine would remember them before he could. And consorts of deposed heads were embarrassing remnants that never survived long, in any case. There’d be the fear of retribution by Second Aunt if he was harmed or killed. But the kingdom was weak, and who knew if it could afford a war? Who even knew if, with the Houses at their throat and too much to lose, Second Aunt wouldn’t judge it politic to merely ask for blood money?

  “I’m not sure where I feature in this,” Thuan said, slowly. “Except for not liking Asmodeus.” It wasn’t quite a lie, but not quite the truth, either. Was fascination truly dislike?

  Nadine laughed, nervously. “It’s a start. Look. You could help us.”

  “How?”

  “You’re a dragon. You have magic.”

  Even if he wasn’t too sure how much use he could make of it. “And you want me to use it?”

  Nadine said nothing, for a while. “I like you, Thuan, lies and all. I don’t know how much I can trust you.”

  “To save my own skin? Rather a lot.” Or not at all, if their scheme involved removing the dragon kingdom, or harming Second Aunt. “What do you want?” It wasn’t a time for subtlety, or finesse.

  “Mother and Sare and the other dependents are trying to break the wall around the House.”

  “And you want me to defend it?”

  “The wall prevents anyone from getting into Hawthorn, and people from Hawthorn from interfering with Ciseis�
�s ritual. Asmodeus isn’t coming back, Thuan. The future lies with Ciseis. We need to hold,” Nadine said, with a grimace. “Until it’s over and the House has changed hands. Until . . .”

  Until Asmodeus was dead, until Thuan was marginally safe from any arcane rituals. Except, of course, that he would remain vulnerable. No, he couldn’t afford to wait until Ciseis came back, triumphant. Nadine was a child, in many ways, caught in a storm not of her making and trying to weather it with little knowledge. He would have felt sorry for her in other circumstances.

  “What happens,” he asked, because he had to, “to Iaris?”

  Nadine’s face hardened. “Mother made her own choices and her own bed. Let her sleep in it.”

  And see the end, too, of that easy familiarity with Asmodeus, which Nadine hadn’t approved of, the neglect of her own child in favor of the House. Thuan didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t dare.

  He couldn’t trust Nadine. He couldn’t trust Ciseis. She might well listen to Nadine, be convinced that Thuan had helped them, but eventually the situation would be the same: Thuan would remain a pawn within the House, and an expendable one at that. Gratitude, as he well knew, seldom featured in the calculations of the powerful, especially in those of a new head of House, busy purging her new territory of everything that might remind others too closely of her predecessor.

  When the wall came down, when it was all over, Thuan had to be back to his only place of safety: the dragon kingdom.

  But nothing would defend them against the onslaught of the House, if Ciseis decided to come after him.

  Except . . .

  He remembered his night wandering within the House; remembered power surging upward, even through closed doors: a hook pulling, bringing him to his knees. The power Asmodeus had been counting on, to finish his ritual and bring the dragon kingdom down.

  The expenditure of power involved, of course, would be staggering. . . .

  If he took that source of magic, if he could steal it, bring it back with him, then the House would hold little to use against them. And who knew? If worse came to worst and all the other Houses continued to encroach, they could ask Véronique and the others to make use of it. It was Fallen magic, but not the corruption of essence: not safe by any means, but, in the absence of better defenses . . .