The House of Binding Thorns

by Aliette de Bodard

  No better, in the end, than Houses, but then, why had he thought it would be the case, that the dragon kingdom was somehow immune to the tangle of small and large cruelties Paris had become, after the war?

  Philippe considered, for a moment, walking away, while the crab official’s attention wasn’t on either of them—halfheartedly, and without conviction. Other people’s messes, indeed.

  “Grand Chancellor.”

  Her head whipped around, to stare at him, surprised that he could read her title even from the small patch on the uniform she wore. “Another mortal? This is getting tiresome. Get with the others.” Two soldiers moved, around her, made for Philippe with bayonets at the ready.

  He would get only one chance, one throw of the mat chuoc tiles, one colossal bluff. Because he certainly didn’t have the energy for more than one. As the guards moved, Philippe yanked to him khi earth and khi metal, the unclaimed currents in the shed, and drew them through the guards’ legs like scythes. No finesse or subtlety, just brute force, of which he had so little.

  The guards toppled, bleeding. The crab official’s painted eyebrows shot up.

  “I’m not mortal. And they’re under my protection.” He used, not the Viet Annamites spoke, but the older, ornate language of the court of the Jade Emperor; when he had been an envoy, bearing decrees of execution into dragon kingdoms. He hadn’t spoken this way for years. The words felt odd, on his tongue—comforting, too, the mantle of an illusory power.

  She watched him, for a while. Her hands, wrapped around the hilt of the swords, were long and jointed.

  “You’re weak,” she snorted. “In no state to dictate anything.”

  “Am I?” By his side, Isabelle was quiet. She might have remembered how to wield power, but she no longer had any, and this deep into the dragon kingdom there would be no Fallen magic anyway. He planted his feet, firmly, in the silt of the Seine, feeling his entire body anchor amidst sea currents. He’d sat, once, in a cave on a mountain, fasting and meditating, and opening himself to the elements. There was something left of that unyielding balance; of being a quiet, utterly unmovable center through which everything passed.

  The crab official grinned. “Don’t stall for time.”

  Philippe hadn’t been stalling for time, but for strength. He cast out again for khi currents, but this time he aimed straight for the khi water by the crab official’s side, the currents that she claimed for her own. Startled, she tried to hang on to them. He pulled again, in another direction. Balance. Strength. He couldn’t hold for long, wasn’t going to have the energy, but . . .

  The threads snapped, coming to rest in his hand, where they became blue flame, dancing on his fingers. The crab official’s nostrils flared, her antennae stiffening.

  “They’re under my protection,” Philippe said, again.

  At length, the crab official shook her head, and made a dismissive gesture. “Houseless mortals,” she said, with a snort. “It’s not as if anyone will believe you if you talk of spirits and dragons. Come. We have better things to do,” she said, and she and her men left the shed, heading for the wrecked wall.

  Olympe walked to Philippe. “That was exceedingly foolish.”

  Philippe closed his fingers. The blue flame died. It was all he could do to keep standing, knowing that if he collapsed, the crab official would see his weakness, and that nothing would stop her.

  The others were watching him with something like wary awe, their faces lit up with an expression that made him uncomfortable. “Grandmother,” Hortense said. “He’s—”

  “A fool,” Olympe said, without breaking stride.

  “You were the one who told me to get involved. Grandmother.”

  “Killing yourself in the process?” Olympe rolled her eyes upward. She held his gaze, for a while. “‘Grandmother.’ How old are you?”

  Philippe didn’t feel like debating the finer points of who used what form of address to whom. “We can discuss that later. Please. Let’s get out first.”

  Olympe snorted. Then she looked at Isabelle. “My apologies,” she said in French. “You are?”

  “This is my friend,” Philippe said, throat dry. “Isabelle.”

  “Grandmother.” Isabelle bowed, slowly, never taking her eyes off her.

  “Isabelle.” Olympe rolled the name on her tongue. Then she shook her head. “She’ll do. And you’re right,” she said grudgingly. “Let’s go home.”

  * * *

  MADELEINE stood, breathing hard, in the midst of the trees. Frost rimmed them—garlands of ice, white patterns on thin trunks, glistening thorns covered with water, pink petals hardened to the texture of crystals.

  And hands and arms, too. Even with the covering of frost, it was obvious that the fruit of those particular trees wasn’t berries. And, even with the cold, some of them were still moving, trying to reach out for her with sparkling hands, to grab her and pull her upward, into the thorns, her blood sinking into the trees to replenish the wards. . . .

  Madeleine leaped away—stumbled on her bad calf, went down, biting her tongue. They were slow, because of the cold. That was the only reason she was still alive.

  Echaroth. She’d grown up in the House. She’d heard the tales, and the legends, and had never thought that some of them might be true. No, that wasn’t it. She’d heard tales of heads of Houses, and leadership, and had thought they would never apply to a mere gardener.

  The pain in her ribs and calf was . . . not gone, just faded away to its faint, usual levels—for these wounds had not healed, would never heal. The drawing room where Elphon had died was gone, and Asmodeus’s image with it. It was just . . . the hawthorn trees, and the blue sky above her, and the link to the House, a cold, empty thing in her mind, sinking further and further out of reach the more time passed.

  There were noises, ahead; and, with angel magic still coursing within her, she could feel the faint heat of spells being cast. She walked toward it, because she didn’t know what else to do.

  Among the trees, Clothilde was fighting Yen Oanh. She was limned in dark, textured light, a fine coating over her arms like the feathers of a blackbird. They were locked in some alien, beautiful dance. Yen Oanh’s neck was bleeding, but it didn’t seem to make her any slower, or less dangerous. She was still in human form: hands with nails that were slightly too sharp, and patches of scales on her face, and the oily reflections of the river in her hair.

  Behind them was a hawthorn tree; and bound to it by a network of ice and roots was Asmodeus. His face was white—not pale, but completely white, the speckled color of frost, lenses of his glasses sparkling like diamonds, frozen branches clenched between his lips. He didn’t move, or look up, or give any sign of life.

  But. But he was alive. Had to be. Otherwise the link to the House would be gone, completely, or in Ciseis’s grasp.

  A few more steps, and Madeleine saw the body, lying on its side in the opening between two hawthorn trees. She’d seen Ciseis only once, from afar, in the gardens, but there was no mistaking her. Or the red wounds in her side, the ones that had killed her.

  She was no fighter. She couldn’t take on Yen Oanh, even if Clothilde hadn’t been keeping her busy. She shouldn’t even have been there!

  As she watched, Clothilde and Yen Oanh’s fight moved away from the tree that held Asmodeus, and, for a moment, out of her sight.

  Madeleine moved, fast, before she could stop to consider the folly of what she was doing. She ran for the tree. She had been ready to burn the threads with angel fire, but there was a knife, planted in the ground in front of Asmodeus, its blade the same dark brown with green streaks as the stones of the wall. She picked it up, feeling power coursing up her fingers.

  The tree loomed over her, branches slowly stretching, slowed down by the frost. Yen Oanh and Clothilde were still fighting, not paying any attention to her.

  Madeleine hefted the
knife, with a confidence she didn’t feel, and cut one of the threads that bound Asmodeus to the tree.

  Or tried to.

  It fought back, twisting and writhing out of her grasp, its thorns raking her skin. She cut at it again; and again and again, until it finally fell still, gorged with the light of magic. Blood spurted out, staining her fingers—his blood?

  Another thread, another struggle. It wasn’t ice, wasn’t roots. It was red, like a frozen capillary. Slick and smooth, it kept slipping out of her grasp, the blade narrowly missing her own fingers. The blood coating her hands just made it worse.

  She looked up. Clothilde and Yen Oanh were still out of sight. But she didn’t have much time. They would come back. And Clothilde might be able to distract Yen Oanh, but Madeleine didn’t have much that would stand against any attack.

  It should have been . . . it should have been Elphon, or anyone else within the House. Not her. Never her.

  She cut a third thread, a fourth, struggling to grasp them. Blood stained her shirt, her hands, her arms, a rank, animal smell, a sticky, slippery coating that threatened, again and again, to make her lose the knife. How many were left? Ten, twenty? She was never going to make it. . . .

  A blast of ice froze her hands, narrowly missing her face. Yen Oanh and Clothilde were back in sight, and Yen Oanh looked furious. “Two of you?” she said. “It won’t be enough, to defend Hawthorn.”

  Clothilde grabbed her, deflecting the next blast of ice. Yen Oanh’s cheeks were hollowed out, like Ngoc Bich’s, showing white bone and rotting scales.

  “The House still stands,” Clothilde spat.

  “Not for long.”

  Another blast of ice: Madeleine raised her hands, drawing crude, shivering wards from the magic within her. The wards held, barely. She could feel them bending in with every blast Yen Oanh was sending her way.

  Clothilde bore Yen Oanh to the ground, pinned her arms and hands away from her. Clothilde’s arms were now completely black—no, it wasn’t her arms, but something at her back, the same black wings Madeleine had once seen around Asmodeus, spreading behind Clothilde until she hardly seemed human anymore. When she moved, there was a sound like a rush of wind in the heavens, thunderous and terrible.

  Madeleine continued, mechanically, to cut thread after thread. The world had shrunk to her and the tree; and the branches, writhing and cutting under her touch. The blood on her hands was the tree’s and hers mingled, and she wasn’t going to hold out long, at this rate. Everything was wobbling and tightening, with that peculiar sharp throbbing that came on the edge of unconsciousness. . . .

  “Madeleine!” Clothilde screamed.

  Madeleine jerked awake with a start. The knife had fallen on the ground: she had to twist it away from the tendrils that had wrapped themselves around the handle. They snapped with the wet, slurping sound of a cut windpipe. But, as she turned to Asmodeus again, she saw that the first thread she’d cut was knitting itself back together.

  No. No.

  She had perhaps six threads left. An eternity, with Yen Oanh’s ice battering away at her inadequate defenses, and the entire tree trying to put itself together again . . .

  Help me, she whispered, to the God she so seldom prayed to. Please.

  Above her, Asmodeus stirred. His face was still that odd, speckled white, but the ice on his glasses melted, and his eyes, no longer gray-green, but colorless, focused on her. His mouth worked, trying to shape a word. Her name?

  Six threads. Madeleine gave up on trying to protect her fingers, and slashed at random, as hard as she could—again and again, until her hands were slick with her own blood, and pain was shooting up her arm—and Asmodeus’s body flopped in her arms, with nothing to hold him upright anymore, mouth still filled with thorns and pale, glistening berries.

  Yen Oanh was up again, her hands held in front of her, sending a wave of ice toward Madeleine.

  Her wards caved in. Frost seized her fingers, hardening congealed blood all over her hands. She flexed them, trying not to scream at the pain that shot up. Once, twice, and again and again until a thin network of cracks spread across the frozen blood.

  Clothilde threw herself on Yen Oanh, pinning her to a tree where a blue-eyed body—Uphir’s—dangled, hands futilely trying to break the spell of cold, to reach down and take either or both of them. In Madeleine’s mind, the link to the House stirred, briefly, and sank again, utterly spent.

  Wake up. Wake up, damn you. There was no one else, to take the House. She or Clothilde, she supposed, if either of them thought that way, grasping what was offered, grabbing at power for power’s sake, but they didn’t. They weren’t Ciseis.

  She had magic. Not much, not enough, but it was fire. It was warmth. It might be enough to burn away whatever held Asmodeus. Madeleine cleared away branches from his face and mouth, heedless of the way they dug into her skin. And then laid both hands on his frozen chest, and without stopping to think, or ask for a permission that he couldn’t have given her, she bent down and, laying her lips on his, poured everything she had into him.

  It wasn’t a kiss. It didn’t even feel like resuscitation. He wasn’t moving, wasn’t speaking, and frozen thorns brushed against her lips. Her mouth filled with the salty, animal taste of her own blood.

  She withdrew, panting. Nothing left. If Yen Oanh targeted her again . . .

  The link to the House flared to life, a slow, quiet thing within her. And, at her feet—slowly unfolding, limb after limb, spitting out fragments of thorns and branches on the frost-covered earth—Asmodeus rose.

  TWENTY-SIX

  A Tree of Thorns

  BERITH didn’t speak as they stumbled away from the flat. She just grew paler and paler, the hollows under her eyes grayer, her skin thin, translucent, like rice paper sprayed with water.

  On the omnibus, Françoise cradled Camille against her chest, letting the baby feed. Even the rush of euphoria associated with that couldn’t overwhelm the gravity of their situation. The only thing she’d taken from the flat was the pictures of her grandparents and Etienne, scraps of papers retrieved from their frames, faded photographs snug against her skin, dry and bloodless and cold. Her only link, anymore, with the past. Berith had taken the chess book, grimacing; had looked, for a while, at the dictionary. “Too heavy,” she said.

  “I—” Françoise started to say she could carry it for her, but they both knew she couldn’t. “I’m sorry.”

  “We’ll find another one,” Berith said. She clung to the book as though it were a lifeline. “I’m sure Hawthorn has Annamite dependents.”

  Hawthorn. With every bus stop, the House grew closer; with every street they passed. Asmodeus. Cruelty, casual arrogance, the province of the thoughtless, nonchalant powerful. Those who took and took, and gave away only when it suited them.

  The walk from Pont de Passy to Pont de Grenelle was almost too much for Berith. She had to stop, several times, leaning against the railings of the low walls that separated the city from the Seine. “Berith?”

  Berith shook her head. “I—I’ll be fine.”

  She wouldn’t, unless she found a way to root herself once more, to a place she wouldn’t be able to leave, just like the flat.

  Hawthorn.

  The word tasted like blood.

  When they reached Pont de Grenelle, there was no House. Merely a shimmering, black wall with the hint of cracks across its surface. People milled outside it: Hawthorn dependents in dark gray and silver, laborers, curious passersby, none of them daring to approach the wall.

  Françoise pressed her hand against it, felt the slight yield, the hint of choking, of decay—the fire of angel magic, mingled with it all. It was weak, even weaker than the blade fragments she had given to Madeleine.

  “Françoise, you shouldn’t. . . .”

  If she pushed, with Berith’s magic and strength within her, if she laid her hand flat,
as Nemnestra had done, trying to enter the flat . . .

  Cracks appeared around her fingers, spread like spiderwebs across the surface of the wall. She pushed again, and entire fragments of green, brittle stone came loose, falling at her feet with a tinkle like broken glass.

  Again, and again, until she’d cleared an opening large enough for the two of them. The crowd watched in silence. The only sound was Berith’s labored breathing.

  Behind it, the wrought-iron gates of the House, the ones she’d walked through, a lifetime ago, when things had been . . . different. Less desperate, or perhaps she’d only been less aware of the situation.

  “Come on.”

  Inside, the overgrown garden she remembered was covered with frost, and full of—statues? No, not statues, people caught by the cold where they stood, the colors of Hawthorn drowned by the ice.

  Berith took a sharper breath as she crossed between the open gates. “It’s dying,” she whispered. “He’s dying.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Françoise said desperately, a cold, comforting lie. Every few steps, she had to pull harder, so that the frost wouldn’t root her to the ground. She sent magic into her legs: angel fire, to keep away the cold.

  Berith shook her head. “Deeper. We need to go deeper.” She leaned on Françoise as they stumbled through the gardens, her weight growing larger and larger as they walked. Between Berith and Camille and the birth, Françoise wasn’t going to hold for long.

  Glistening hedges, white paths, the ice hiding the flecks of dirt and debris in the gravel; fountains that had become alien concoctions, their stone transmuted into crystals, their water cut off. Fewer and fewer people: it was just them, and the House.

  One step, then another, one breath, struggling for the next one . . . Cold had seized her feet, her shoes feeling full of biting water. Every movement felt through tar.

  Berith’s weight lifted, abruptly, from Françoise. Not because she’d stood on her own: she was on her knees in frost-covered grass, the chess book fallen by her side, open on two pages replete with drawings of game boards. “Berith!”