The House of Binding Thorns

by Aliette de Bodard

  He said nothing, merely continued to strain against her. The knife hit the jugular. A spray of blood fountained up, swiftly absorbed by the branches, lapped up eagerly like water on a parched and cracked earth. Asmodeus’s strength finally gave out: his fingers opened, convulsively, and the knife fell to the ground in front of him, was swallowed by the onslaught of frost.

  Yen Oanh leaped back, pressing one hand to the wound. “We don’t die so easily, even by these blades.”

  Asmodeus’s mouth was now completely choked, his eyes rolled back into their orbits behind glasses seized with frost. Blood had drained from his face, leaving his skin sallow, with the faint bluish tint of a corpse. His breath, faint, inaudible, barely shook his lean frame, or the branches that held him.

  Yen Oanh stood, shaking, her hand covering the wound, pressing so hard it had gone pale, with only a faint tracery of scales between the knuckles.

  “It’s started,” she said. Patterns of frost continued spreading from the tree, to cover the entire grove. “And soon it will end.”

  * * *

  FROM the hill, the laundry barge looked smaller, and battered down, and diminished, the skeleton in the iron cage almost obliterated by distance. It felt insignificant, irrelevant.

  It should have.

  But it had been Charles in that cage, eaten up by fish and crabs. And the boat was where she’d been imprisoned, where she’d felt the life ebbing out of her.

  Madeleine’s hands were wrapped around a mirror containing angel breath, feeling the warmth of it in her fingers. A comfort, but all she could smell was the angel essence tucked away in Clothilde’s and Elphon’s clothes—a sharp, acrid odor that couldn’t be covered by silk or cotton—and the memory of it, sweet and sickly, spread over her clothes: lying down and trying not to breathe it in, with nightmares of what would happen to her if Asmodeus found out—and then the kiss, and his magic filling her up like an empty glove, a puppet being picked up.

  There were no strings left now: Asmodeus was gone, the House in disarray. But no, that wasn’t true. Of course promises remained, and old habits; and everything else binding her to Hawthorn. And the gaping emptiness in her mind, the sense of urgency that she had to do something, anything, to fill it before she went mad.

  “I count forty of them,” Thanh Phan said. “At least.” The crab official wore battle armor: a cracked, lacquered breastplate, and two swords crossing behind her back. Her face had been painted white, but in such a thin layer it did nothing to disguise the places where her skin had sloughed off, and the sharper, messier white of bone. She didn’t look happy, but then, she seldom did, whenever Houses were involved. They might have an alliance, and a contract, but Thanh Phan would hate them all the way into her grave.

  The price of survival, of the politics that the House played, to remain powerful, to remain havens in the wastelands of Paris. Madeleine was no fool. Not always.

  Thanh Phan’s force was small: ten soldiers. Among them was Anh Le, who didn’t even bother with a semblance of human form, her face covered in blue-gray scales and mottled with rust, her shape sinuous and flowing.

  “You can’t take them all,” Clothilde said. She’d changed her clothes, from a formal dress to a straight tunic that looked like a newer, sharper version of the clothes worn by the kingdom’s officials: dark gray with ornate buttons, and the same side slits at the midriff. Even from where she sat, Madeleine could feel the heat emanating from her, the treacherous rush of power granted by angel essence.

  Thanh Phan looked as though she was going to roll her eyes up. “Obviously not. We’ll cause a distraction. . . .” She pursed her lips. “The hospital would be ideal, but I’m not keen to slaughter the dying.” Her eyes narrowed. “There.”

  It was a small shed, crammed full of people—Annamites, though Madeleine couldn’t make out their faces.

  “Dragons?” Clothilde asked.

  “Mortals,” Thanh Phan said. “They shouldn’t even be here. So much for our secrecy.”

  Somehow, Madeleine doubted any of the mortals were going to make it out of the kingdom.

  Clothilde said, “Your secrecy is past. As soon as Asmodeus presents his new consort—”

  “Which assumes he survives,” Thanh Phan snapped.

  Madeleine opened her mouth to ask a question, and then the entire hill shuddered, like an angry leviathan, and threw them off. The world shook white and green. For a moment the spell that kept them upright and breathing faltered, and she was inhaling brackish, polluted water, desperately trying not to choke.

  When she looked up again, the line of the wall was . . . not gone, but severely damaged. Cracks had spread to the entire structure of the edifice from a central nexus somewhere to the left of the shed, and a hole vaguely shaped like a door had opened underneath, leading into glistening darkness. The rebel camp was in shambles, people picking themselves from the scattered debris, silhouettes vaguely seen through the rising cloud of silt and sand.

  Clothilde pulled up her gray gloves. Magic shimmered, at the tips of her fingers, and her arms were surrounded by that same dark aura as when she’d thrown Elphon to the ground. “Now,” she said.

  The first rebels who moved to block their path fell to her. Then Thanh Phan’s force moved in, driving a wedge behind her, aiming for the shed, now covered in stone shards. Behind them, dragon kingdom soldiers dropped to one knee, the crack of rifle shots whizzing past Madeleine, downing rebel after rebel.

  Madeleine struggled to follow Thanh Phan. Even with angel magic coursing through her, she could hardly breathe, and certainly not run as fast as they did.

  They passed the makeshift coral buildings—the hospital, with its lingering smell of death and corrupted essence. Every step Madeleine took seemed to be through tar. Ahead of her, Thanh Phan was engaging a guard, coolly wielding her two swords like extensions of her hands. Clothilde and Elphon had peeled away, heading for the opening. Anh Le had fallen back, keeping a wary eye on her—coiled halfway, standing on her tail as though on two legs. Madeleine didn’t need to look at the dragon’s face to feel her exasperation.

  She was never going to make it. Never mind that she was supposed to be some dubious kind of last resort, that Clothilde considered her next to useless—she just was going to run out of breath long before . . .

  She stopped then.

  For, slowly walking out of the mass of rubble, a little ahead of her, was Isabelle.

  “Isabelle?”

  It was impossible. Isabelle was dead. Madeleine had been there when she’d been cut down: a surprised look on her face, and that slow, agonizingly slow fall backward, a spray of blood fountaining from the two fist-sized wounds in her chest. Asmodeus could resurrect Fallen, if he so wished, but of course he had no interest in doing so for someone from another House, someone who had opposed him at every turn.

  Isabelle turned, to stare at her. She was unchanged, dusky skin under black hair, wide eyes open in wonder, and yet . . . “Madeleine.” A guard made for her. Anh Le sprang, wrapping herself around him from the midriff and choking the life out of him. Isabelle walked on beside her, oblivious, as if dragons with broken-off antlers and raw patches of skin under green scales were an everyday occurrence.

  “You . . .” Madeleine fumbled for words, gave up. “You were dead. I saw you die.” A hundred words rose, were choked in her throat.

  “I remember.” Isabelle’s gaze was unfocused, still with a distant glaze, as if she wasn’t quite there. “Death isn’t a barrier. Not always.” She looked back, at the shed, where Thanh Phan and the others were now engaging a host of guards in draconic form. Anh Le, finally losing patience, was trailing after them, swimming rather than running. “Philippe. Philippe called me back.”

  Madeleine hadn’t seen Philippe since the destruction of Silverspires. Hadn’t seen anyone, in fact, save for that brief glimpse of Aragon and Emmanuelle. “I’m sorry.”
>
  “What for?” Isabelle looked puzzled.

  For, ultimately, failing both Oris and Isabelle, her apprentices who had died, unable to find any protection or comfort in her; for watching, powerless, as Isabelle fell and breathed her last. For . . . “I should have protected you better. I should—” She closed her eyes, trying to find comfort in angel magic, finding none. “You got me out of Hawthorn, even if it didn’t last. I got you killed.”

  “I made my own choices.” Isabelle shook her head. She laid a hand, gently, on Madeleine’s shoulder. Her skin was warm, soft. No coiled magic, no power seeking to take over Madeleine. Small comforts. Small gifts. “And so did you.” She looked, for a moment, at the shape of the wall beside them. Clothilde and Elphon were both standing, staring at the opening. “You should go. There isn’t much time left.”

  “Time?” Madeleine asked.

  “For Hawthorn.” Isabelle’s smile was fey, enigmatic. Where had Madeleine seen that before?

  And then she remembered. It was the smile on the Buddhist statues from Annam, the alien, disturbingly serene faces of their gods. What had Philippe done?

  “Go,” Isabelle said. She pulled, slightly, at Madeleine’s clothes. “Go face your dead, Madeleine.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to.” Isabelle was walking away from her, toward the shed. Madeleine stared at her, at the wall and at the hole within it, felt the frightening emptiness within her, the absence of the House—and, like a puppet propelled on someone else’s string, or an addict looking for her next fix, she walked toward the wall.

  * * *

  WHEN Madeleine reached the opening in the wall, only Elphon remained. He was staring into the darkness. “Clothilde?” she asked.

  He turned to her a face as white as funeral sheets. “Went ahead. I can’t, Madeleine.”

  The shadow of the cracked wall covered them; this close, it was alight with Fallen magic, a faint, flickering light that seeped through every stone and every mortared joint until the stone itself became translucent. The opening was a jagged rectangle like a door drawn by a child, and nothing lay beyond but impenetrable night. From within, a familiar smell, blood and things burning, and a faint echo of arms clashing. “Why?”

  Elphon’s hands shook. “I—I have been here before. I see nothing. Oblivion, and darkness, and no way back. I can’t.”

  He remembered nothing, he had told her. Nothing from his time before, nothing from being in the gardens with her, nothing from his death—and not, either, wherever he had been when Asmodeus decided to raise him again. And yet.

  He loved the House, far, far more than she’d ever done. To her it was a refuge by default, a place that kept her from the streets. To him . . . His loyalty to Asmodeus was absolute: respect and adulation and even a kind of affection, all things she couldn’t ever imagine feeling for the head of Hawthorn. If Elphon balked now . . . “We can’t leave Clothilde,” she said, slowly. From the shed came the noise of battle, dying down now. It was almost over, which meant that people were going to turn their attention to them, soon.

  Isabelle had been right. No time left.

  Elphon said nothing. Tears ran down his face, and his hands shook, drained of all color. From the doorway, Madeleine still couldn’t see anything, but then, she didn’t fear death. She never had.

  And she wasn’t Selene, or Asmodeus, or Clothilde. She couldn’t push him, not if he couldn’t bear it.

  “It’s going to be all right,” she said. She hugged him, held him until he stopped shaking. “Keep an eye on things, will you? I’ll find Clothilde.”

  It was only after she left him, walking ahead of him into the darkness he couldn’t face, that she realized she hadn’t even asked him for the angel essence he carried.

  * * *

  DARKNESS rose around Madeleine, absolute—no barrier or resistance: she was through the wall, and climbing the stairs leading up to the House, her feet trailing small clouds of silt. They weren’t the same stairs she’d taken. She didn’t even know where they led. They were old, and worn, and crumbling in places. She had to make the occasional leap of faith over the ones that had disintegrated, trusting the water of the dragon kingdom to buoy her. In spite of everything, it was still alien and disturbing to see the laws of physics simply lose their hold.

  As she walked up, she felt . . . something, at the back of her mind. Instead of the gaping absence of the House, the abyss that threatened to swallow her whole, there were flickers: dim flames guttering before going out. The presence of Asmodeus, muted and weak, a bare, wordless whisper with no bite. She shouldn’t have missed him, but she did. Damn him, but of course he was Fallen, and probably already damned. She had no way to know, in spite of the priests’ reassurances that they were on earth to redeem themselves. In Asmodeus’s case, it didn’t really seem to have worked out.

  When she came up, out of breath, she found herself, not on a deserted quay, but in an enclosed room. She had been there before.

  In the doorway stood Asmodeus, not the head of the House, not the dark presence in her mind, but the leader of the Court of Birth, wearing the orange scarf that he had given to his partisans, just as he had stood, watching, when his thugs killed Elphon. He looked at her with gray-green eyes: the gardener, the insignificant girl who had slumped against the secretary with shattered ribs, bleeding from knife wounds and struggling to breathe. . . .

  “Madeleine.”

  She was back there, among the dead.

  Zoé, the head of the Court of Gardens, lying in a pool of blood, her eyes staring at nothing. Frédéric and Pierrette, side by side, shirts and jackets drenched scarlet, their arms covered with knife slices. Monnis, his head blown away by a well-placed bullet, beyond any capacity for self-healing.

  “Madeleine.”

  She looked away; forced herself to, shaking, looking for that lacquered cabinet, behind the red Louis XV armchair, the one she’d dragged herself to.

  He wasn’t dead, but breathing shallowly, exactly as it had happened, twenty years ago. Two sword strikes, into his chest. Madeleine had crawled to him then, struggling to breathe through her own wounds, keeping the darkness at bay through sheer stubbornness. Now she was upright, with no wounds except those within her own memory, and yet she was struggling to breathe.

  “Elphon.”

  He was outside the wall. He was waiting for her. For the House of Hawthorn—for Asmodeus—to be saved. He wasn’t there. Asmodeus wasn’t there, wasn’t standing in the doorway, waiting for her to cross.

  There was nothing, within her mind. A weak, impalpable link to the House, a terrifying sense of being on her own, with no comfort, no essence, no magic to cushion anything. Her calf was shaking, old pains rising up to the surface, the knife wounds that hadn’t healed, that would never heal.

  Elphon stared at her with glazed eyes. The light was going out of him, streaming through his skin and mouth and eyes, until nothing was left. And his labored breathing, too, fell silent. If she knelt, if she could somehow bring herself to move, she would find him dead again, with no pulse that she could feel. With no hope. A faint, forgotten prayer, words that made no sense, to a God that wasn’t listening, that would never listen.

  Ahead of her was the door she had crawled through, in another lifetime. The one where Asmodeus was waiting for her, gray-green eyes impassive behind horn-rimmed glasses. The only way out, to the gardens, to Ciseis. To save the life of the Fallen who had turned Hawthorn into an abattoir—who owned her, as casually as he owned fine porcelain and weapons—collecting broken things and bloodied trophies, lining them up on cracked marble mantelpieces, and never, ever letting go.

  She walked, slowly. Halfway through, her calf gave in. She started limping, and then the pain of her shattered ribs rose again, and every breath sent scalding agony through her chest. She . . .

  She wasn’t going to crawl. Never again.

>   She found, by touch rather than by sight, the container with the angel breath, broke the clasp, inhaled.

  It should have been a slow, gentle comfort. Instead, as she struggled to breathe, it was agony, as if someone were tightening bands of red-hot iron around her chest. She wasn’t whole enough or strong enough, to hold it all.

  You never left, Madeleine, did you? Always crawling away from the wreck of the House, twenty years ago, never leaving the shadow of the past.

  Not. Crawling.

  Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she walked. Dragging her useless leg behind her. Fighting the weakness in her limbs and body, the fire in her chest. Watching Asmodeus, who wavered and danced in her field of view, blurred through tears. Leaving the dead behind, all her dead, numbered and named and forever beyond her.

  Every step, she thought that she would fall. That the pain raging within her was finally going to fell her, that the fire in her chest, the bones rattling within her, what felt like a thousand cuts on her skin, would bring her down to the floor. That she would fall, and not get up; lie there with the dead, in the ruin of Hawthorn . . .

  But she had walked—crawled—away from the House, once. She could do it again.

  When, at last, she came to lay one shaking hand on the doorframe, Asmodeus had faded away almost to nothingness. “You don’t own me,” she whispered, through the excruciating pain in her chest.

  Commendable, he had whispered when she’d first told him that, newly returned to Hawthorn, filled with the inescapable knowledge that he would do what he pleased with her. But now he said nothing, his image slowly fragmenting—the orange scarf going last, replaced by the shadow of dark stones, and then that, too, faded away as Madeleine stepped through the door.

  And found herself at the top of broken stairs, standing in a frost-covered grove of hawthorn trees.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Safe Places

  THUAN was standing outside the huge doors of Asmodeus’s bedroom, watching Nadine fumble with a set of antique keys, when the temperature suddenly plummeted.