The House of Binding Thorns Page 2

She stared at her hands again. They were steady, though everything within her was screaming that she should run.

  As if she’d ever get far.

  “Iaris is right in one respect, though,” Asmodeus said. “There is little we can do with you at the moment.” He stretched the fingers of his right hand, one by one, as if considering a particularly troublesome problem.

  Her. She was the problem. He would take her into the cells, and finish what he had started long ago, break her as he’d broken those who rose against him. He would—

  “You never left, Madeleine, did you? Always crawling away from the wreck of the House, never leaving the shadow of the past.” He reached out, and laid a hand on her ribs, the ribs his thugs had broken, twenty years ago—fingernails, as sharp as knives, resting on her chest, above her madly beating heart. “You live and breathe fear, and there is no room for anything else.”

  “How—” She took in a deep, shuddering breath.

  “You forget. Fear is a weapon, and I’m . . . intimately familiar with its use.” Asmodeus’s tone was sharp, amused. “So I’m going to offer you a choice.

  “Look at me. How much do you fear me, Madeleine?”

  She looked up into his eyes, because he would make her look up if she didn’t. His gaze was gray, mild, uninterested, but there was fire in its depths, the flames that had engulfed him when he’d Fallen from Heaven, the heart of a monster who cared only about inflicting pain on others.

  He’d come into her room one evening, blowing the acrid smell of orange blossom into her face—magic, his magic, pinning her to the chair in which she sat—the knife glinting in his hands as he’d explained, smiling all the while, the consequences if she tried to escape the House again . . . the cold touch of the blade on her arm, flaring into sharp pain as it parted her flesh . . . a deeper, harrowing pain as his spell slowly, excruciatingly squeezed her damaged lungs, a searing fire that made her convulse, except she couldn’t move against his restraints, couldn’t even draw breath to cry out. . . .

  Her hands shook, her palms greasy, sweaty. She struggled to voice something that wouldn’t be a scream. “You know.”

  “Do I?” He was silent, for a while. “We should have had this conversation earlier, but never mind. Things were a little hectic. I stand by my own, Madeleine. It’s how the House works. It’s the only way it can work. If you swear and keep fealty to me, if you do your best not to relapse, then I will protect you no matter what happens. All that fear—I will bring it to other people instead. Those who seek to harm you.”

  It didn’t help. She tried to say something, to convey that being under his protection was as frightening as being hunted by him; but then she thought better of it. It would not change anything if she spoke up, and she’d never been one for pointless, suicidal bravery. “You said I had a choice.”

  “Indeed,” Asmodeus said. He straightened his glasses on his nose. His gaze rested, for a while, beyond her. “You’re my dependent, but you feel no loyalty to me. Quite the contrary. And I, in turn, have little use for you, as things are. If you choose to remain broken beyond anyone’s capacity to heal, if you show no goodwill and pledge no loyalty”—he shrugged—“then I will release you.”

  The way in which he said it made it clear she wasn’t going to walk out of Hawthorn, not on her own two feet. “How—”

  “It matters to you?” His voice was sharp. “Surely death is its own goal, and its own reward. I will choose the manner of it. You might as well be of some use, after all, even if it’s only for a few hours of my own enjoyment.”

  Death. The release she’d sought, all those years. But on his terms. “That’s unfair,” she said, before she could think. “No one chooses death over fear. No one—”

  “No one? Be honest, Madeleine.”

  She could, indeed, endure pain, could endure many things if oblivion was the end of the path. But he would be the one who killed her in the end. He would bring her everything she had run away from; make every single fear, every nightmare, she’d ever had come true in the hours—stretched forever—before he finally deigned to grant her death.

  It was no choice, and he knew it. It was the fear of what he might do, over the sick certainty of what he would definitely do.

  Asmodeus rose, straightening the lapels of his dark gray swallowtail jacket. “You may think on it. I’ll have food brought to you, should you see fit to eat.” Faint disapproval in his tone; that was new. Or perhaps she’d just never noticed it.

  “Wait,” Madeleine said.

  He stopped, halfway to the door. “Yes?”

  “If”—she swallowed, trying to banish the taste of soured citrus in her throat—“if I choose loyalty—will I get out of this room?”

  His smile was boyish, almost free of any sense of threat. Almost. “The House is busy. If you so choose, of course you will get out. In fact . . .” He paused, as if pondering whether to say more. “I will have work for you.”

  She said, because she had to, “You don’t even know if I will keep my word.”

  Asmodeus turned to look at her, his head cocked sideways like a bird of prey. “You’re a terrible liar, and an entirely too principled person. Of course you will keep your word. And if you don’t”—he shrugged, again—“there is always the other option.” He must have known, then, what she was going to answer. It was obvious. But then, as he had said, she was transparent; an open book that he, and others, had always read with ease.

  “I—” It was no choice. There was no choice. And, in the end, she clung, so dearly, to the little she had. Angel essence was one thing, its heady rush making everything bearable, obscuring the inevitable ending. But to knowingly, willingly, walk into Hawthorn’s cells with him . . . “I will pledge my loyalty to you.”

  * * *

  AFTER they were done, Asmodeus went out of the room for a brief moment, and came back with the people who must have been waiting in the corridor for Madeleine’s answer.

  One of the two bodyguards behind him carried a tray of food that she set on the table, and then both of them withdrew, which left the other two people who had come in with Asmodeus.

  One was a mortal woman, with some of that same smoothness to her face that Iaris had, except her exposure to Fallen magic must have been less, because her dark hair had sprinkles of gray, and her hands showed the first spots of age. She appeared a little younger than Madeleine, but must have been older in reality.

  The other one Madeleine already knew. Or had known, once. Elphon had been her Fallen friend in the gardens of Hawthorn, and had died the night Asmodeus seized power from Uphir. And, somehow, he had been raised from the dead by Asmodeus, and now walked the earth as if nothing were amiss, oblivious to his past life and the connection between them. His loyalty to Asmodeus was absolute.

  Her new minders, no doubt: she was certain she wouldn’t leave this room without supervision.

  Asmodeus gestured for the others to sit. They did, one in each upholstered chair, leaving Madeleine at the end of the four-poster bed. Elphon handed her the tray, which she balanced on her knees. The aroma of the food wafted up to her: some kind of vegetable soup.

  “Eat,” Asmodeus said.

  She didn’t feel hungry. She took Iaris’s medicine before the soup, the white pill a day that kept her cough from returning, even though nothing would ever heal her wasted lungs, or give her more than a few years longer. The soup was scalding hot, and it made little difference. It was bland, much as if it had been boiled for too long.

  They all waited for her to finish, in silence. When she stole a glance upward, she saw that neither Elphon nor the woman looked particularly at ease.

  “You know Elphon,” Asmodeus said. He wasn’t sitting; he was lounging against the wall by the door, with the sated air of a predator, which he affected at nearly all times. Fallen were rarely harmless, but no one who saw him would ever underestimate what he was
capable of. “And this is Clothilde. She’s one of the House’s magicians, and a member of the Court of Birth.”

  The intricate hierarchies of Hawthorn had never meant much to Madeleine. She set her spoon by the side of the empty bowl, and waited for the rest.

  “I have a project,” Asmodeus said. “Outside the House. One which requires a delegation.”

  Another House, then. She grimaced. “I don’t understand why you’d send me.”

  “Not for diplomacy. We both know how abysmal you are at that,” Asmodeus said. “That will be Clothilde and Elphon’s work. You’re part of this as . . . Let’s say I need your skills. And your knowledge.”

  Alchemy, her former work? But Hawthorn had an alchemist, Sare, who would be more intimately familiar with the peculiarities and intricacies of making elixirs and charged containers from Hawthorn’s live Fallen, or the remnants of its dead ones. It had to be about House Silverspires—her former House, the one that had cast her out. But that made no sense, either: Silverspires had been Hawthorn’s enemy, but the events of seven months ago had left them bloodless and in ruins, barely capable of being a power in postwar Paris, much less a threat.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “I need alchemy,” Asmodeus said. “Among other things.”

  “Sare—”

  “Sare is House alchemist. She has other work. And what I expect is rather basic: nothing that requires her expertise or skill. I’m sending a delegation of magicians, and I need someone to recharge their artifacts when the magic runs out.”

  Rather basic. Madeleine forced herself not to flinch at the casual dismissal: he was entirely right. Filling containers with angel magic was something she could have done in her sleep. “You said there were other things.”

  “Yes,” Asmodeus said. His hand moved, gracefully, as if he were sketching something in the air; and, in answer, an image gradually coalesced between him and her.

  It was the face of an Annamite woman: mostly human, and mostly resembling the old-fashioned pictures of the imperial court Madeleine had seen in the library of House Silverspires—thinned eyebrows over harsh eyes, a crown of black cloth with golden figures and beaded tassels, worn tight over the head, except that patches of the skin of her face had worn off, revealing the iridescence of scales, and that the nubs of deerlike antlers protruded through the crown.

  It wasn’t a face that Madeleine would ever forget, no matter how much essence she got high on.

  “Ngoc Bich,” she whispered.

  “You are familiar with her, then. And yes: my affairs,” Asmodeus said, slowly, softly, “are with the kingdom under the Seine.”

  The Annamite kingdom. The dragon kingdom.

  “How do you know—?” Madeleine asked, and then fell silent. The dragon kingdom—the underwater power that lurked under the Seine, lashing out and killing Fallen and humans alike—was reclusive, its existence a secret. Isabelle had known, but Isabelle had a link to Philippe, who in turn was Annamite, and presumably better informed about a territory held by Annamite creatures.

  “How do I know it even exists?” Asmodeus shrugged, an expansive gesture that seemed, for a moment, to drag ghostly black wings into existence. “We have long had an agreement with them, even in Uphir’s day. And the time for their secrecy is ending. That means they are vulnerable.”

  Clothilde nodded. Her gaze, throughout, had not left Asmodeus. “You have Ghislaine down there already.”

  “As an envoy, yes. To smooth things out,” Asmodeus said. “To gain allies and support, and win them around to the possibilities we’re offering. But we have to make a formal offer, and that can’t come from her.”

  Clothilde didn’t look surprised. She’d probably been briefed ahead of time, unlike Madeleine. And she had at least a vague idea what was going on. “The terms haven’t changed,” she said: a question, a confirmation.

  “No,” Asmodeus said. “I see no reason for them to change. But you’ll take Madeleine with you. She’s been there before.”

  Madeleine had been there exactly once, with Isabelle, in a past that might as well be another lifetime: when Isabelle was still alive, when House Silverspires was still under threat and not a field of ruins. “And I’m not going to be told what this is about?” Madeleine said, more sharply than she’d intended, before she remembered whom she was speaking to.

  Asmodeus raised an eyebrow, but appeared more amused than angry, as if watching a fish out of water thrash on land. “House Hawthorn will offer a formal alliance to the dragon kingdom. One sealed in the traditional manner. It has all gone somewhat out of fashion, but my perception was that Princess Ngoc Bich and her officials were still fairly traditional.”

  A formal alliance. Madeleine stared at him. He couldn’t mean. He couldn’t possibly mean—

  And, when she did not speak, he did it for her. “Clothilde is carrying an offer of marriage to the kingdom. My marriage.”

  TWO

  The Affairs of Dragons

  THUAN’S days in House Hawthorn were mostly routine, though the real purpose of his presence in the House was anything but. He looked young, much younger than he truly was: a teenager to most Westerners, and as such, his days were split between attending the classes dispensed by the Court of Birth, and doing odd jobs whenever the Court of Hearth needed an extra hand.

  For the current week, he was seconded to the House’s infirmary, which he found overwhelmed, with entirely too many patients battling anything from pneumonia to foul-smelling wounds. He carried bandages and syringes, and mirrors filled with angel magic, to the three doctors on duty, trying to avoid Iaris’s bad mood, and found himself, finally, in the nurses’ room, sharing a quick meal of sandwiches and verbena brew.

  It was, like the kingdom, a much diminished place. Once, the room they were in would have had tiles with vivid patterns, and elegant furniture. Now the grout had yellowed, the tiles faded and cracked, and the table and chairs were old, dusty, creaking ominously as they leaned back into them. Too often patched, the lines of repairs clearly visible in bright light; of which there was so little in Paris.

  “Sorry,” Géraldine said, with a shrug, fingering her crucifix. “There are better days.”

  Her younger companion—Nadine, Iaris’s daughter and Thuan’s tutor in class—snorted. “With the old dragon on duty?”

  Thuan tried not to wince, or react otherwise, at the mention of “dragon.” There was no way Nadine or anyone else could know that he was more than he pretended to be. He had come into the House half a year ago, a waif rescued from the streets through the kindness of Sare, the House’s alchemist; he was, to all intents and purposes, working his way into the House; hoping, like everyone else in the class, to be chosen to become a full dependent of Hawthorn.

  Some nights, he offered a brief prayer to his long-dead ancestors that he would find what he was looking for before the allegiance ceremony ever happened. His disguise would fool many people—many Fallen, even—but the power swirling within him would never allow him to pledge allegiance to a House.

  Not to mention, of course, that his aunt would kill him if things ever got to that point. Or, worse, resort to sarcasm.

  “You do love her,” Géraldine said. She poured tea for Thuan, and Ahmed, the other nurse in the room.

  Nadine rolled her eyes upward. “Mother? Only when she’s not breathing down my neck.” She inhaled the aroma of her cup, and sighed. “She’s been very busy.”

  Ahmed grimaced. “That time of year. Bad enough when it’s the common cold, but this year we seem to be collecting pneumonia and dysentery.”

  “There’s a difficult birth in Ward One keeping Iaris busy as well,” Géraldine said. “Magicians’ babies are always the tricky ones. Though last I checked, she’d admitted defeat and sent to the Court of Birth for a powerful Fallen. This one is clearly going to need to be helped along.” She made a face. “Not to
mention the cholera.”

  “The old woman in Ward Three?” Ahmed asked. “You don’t think—”

  “I don’t know. But Iaris is worried,” Géraldine said. “It’d probably be best if you didn’t go there,” she added, for Thuan’s benefit.

  Thuan shrugged. It was a water-based disease and, as such, had about as much chance of hurting him as the common cold. But they couldn’t know that; their concern was genuine. Which would, if he thought too long about it, make him feel bad about the deception he was currently involved in; about being here for the kingdom’s interest, and certainly not the House’s. “Thanks.” How was he going to bring the conversation around to the subject that interested him without raising suspicion?

  “You heard the news?” Géraldine was already putting on her nurse’s coat. Breaks were short, and she’d been there before Thuan had arrived.

  “Which one?” Nadine asked, draining her cup. She threw a glance at the grandfather clock ticking away the hours in the corner of the small room.

  “Iaris has terminated the experiment with Madeleine.”

  Nadine snorted. “She only tried because Lord Asmodeus asked. She can’t refuse him anything.”

  “No one can,” Géraldine said.

  “You know what I mean,” Nadine said.

  Géraldine looked at her, sharply, and didn’t answer. “Time’s up,” she said to Ahmed. And, to Thuan, a touch more kindly: “You still have a few minutes left. Finish your food. You look entirely too scrawny to be healthy.”

  “What did you mean?” Thuan asked Nadine, after they had both left. He knew her relationship with Iaris was fraught, but not why.

  Nadine sighed. She leaned against the table, nursing the empty cup in her hand. “Mother was with him from the start, before the coup that deposed Lord Uphir. She . . . likes him.” Her tone suggested that she didn’t see why.

  “And you don’t.” Thuan readjusted his topknot, pinning stray hairs back into place. He should have cut his hair before coming to Hawthorn—few Annamites in Paris wore their hair long, these days—but it suited him, and it would be such a hassle to regrow when he was back in the kingdom. He hadn’t quite been able to overwhelm his vanity on the matter.