The House of Binding Thorns Page 7

  And still no Elphon, before, during, or after the meal.

  After dinner, Madeleine asked Clothilde for the infused mirror she’d used. Clothilde handed it to her with barely a raised eyebrow. It was completely empty, its magic spent first by Clothilde, and then by Madeleine outside Ghislaine’s rooms.

  They might have lost Elphon, but two of the bodyguards were Fallen: it was but the work of a moment to ask one of them to breathe onto the mirror, and seal it safely shut after the polished surface turned black with trapped angel magic. While she was at it, Madeleine also refilled with breath the charged pendants the bodyguards had been using: they’d been draining a fair amount of magic to maintain the wards around themselves and the delegation’s quarters, and there was no sense in their carrying around half-full artifacts.

  When she came back into Clothilde’s room with the charged mirror, Clothilde was ensconced with the papers. “Good,” she said, curtly, tucking the mirror into a fold of her sleeve. “You can stay here now, and help me find ideas about what’s going on.”

  Of course it wasn’t really about ideas. It was about keeping an eye on Madeleine. She wasn’t sure whether it was out of concern for her—too many people from Hawthorn had already disappeared—or because of Asmodeus’s orders, or both.

  No matter. Before dinner, she’d managed to move the angel essence from her trousers, and slipped it between the pages of the book she was reading, like an eccentric bookmark. Now she sat on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees—the only way she felt comfortable around Clothilde.

  “Those are Ghislaine’s notes. There are factions within the dragon kingdom.” Clothilde snorted. “Why did she feel she had to hide this? That’s hardly secret knowledge.” At length, she put the papers away. “Not much of interest, I’m afraid. There was another dragon kingdom called the Bièvre, some time before the war. It was . . . weakened.”

  “By the sewers.” The river Bièvre had once run through Paris, but it had been driven underground to make way for the sewer system.

  “Perhaps,” Clothilde said. “I don’t claim to understand why they do what they do. It’s hard enough keeping up with all the Houses.” Her face was harsh once more: Hawthorn’s face to strangers, merciless and cruel. “At any rate, the Bièvre was absorbed within the kingdom of the Seine: the one we’re standing in right now. It did not go smoothly.”

  “It’s a kingdom. They had a king?” Madeleine asked, curious in spite of herself.

  “It’s unclear what happened to him,” Clothilde said. “Whether someone from the Seine killed him, or whether he died of natural causes. What is sure is how much ill will is going around, and suspicion that the Bièvre refugees aren’t treated the same as the native Seine people. They’re stuck in menial jobs, and prevented from rising to high office unless their talents are extraordinary. Good to know it’s the same the world over.”

  It was rather depressing, though Madeleine had never considered the dragon kingdom a viable refuge. Philippe might have, once, and perhaps Isabelle? But who knew what Isabelle had thought? She’d so seldom played by other people’s rules.

  Clothilde went on. “Thanh Phan was a high-ranking official in the court of the Bièvre. And so were a couple other people, whom we don’t seem to have met yet. Someone named Yen Oanh is prominently mentioned. I’ll have to see who they are.”

  That would explain Thanh Phan’s animosity, not only to them, but to Ngoc Bich. “And that’s all?”

  “There are other notes about Fallen magic and the kingdom. Mostly baseless speculations. But all in all, not really fascinating or enlightening.” She sighed.

  Madeleine said, finally, “What are they asking for? From us?”

  Clothilde shrugged. “Magic. Money. Weapons. Rifles that are better than the old, rusted ones they use. Support against any House or faction that might attack the kingdom, should it happen. The classic terms of an alliance.”

  Madeleine thought, for a while, of the flurry of activity, the armed guards. “They’re already feeling threatened, aren’t they?”

  “Of course,” Clothilde said. She sounded bored. “Nothing that need concern us for long. We didn’t swear to fight their wars for them, and the treaty will limit the help we offer them.”

  “We—,” Madeleine started. She couldn’t imagine a consort was all that Asmodeus wanted of the venture. There were so many other places he could find a lover. “Why are we doing this?”

  “Magic,” Clothilde said. “Theirs. And”—she inhaled, sharply—“a permanent delegation of our dependents in the kingdom. Unfortunately one that will be subject to their laws and customs, instead of being exempted. Ghislaine didn’t manage to get that past them.”

  It sounded small. Almost petty, and Asmodeus seldom did small, petty things. “Their magic? People to teach us? To serve us?” What could he want? A legitimization before a conquest? But the dragon kingdom was well defended and well armored against Fallen magic. When she’d gone into it the last time, she had come out of it only through the goodwill of Ngoc Bich. An army, even loaded with Fallen magic and the most powerful artifacts of the House, would flounder and drown before it even got to the capital.

  Or did he want to use dragon magic in a power play against another House?

  “Ghislaine wanted teachers,” Clothilde said. “They’re digging in their heels, though. We might have to be content with a few staff magicians.” She sighed. “Better go to bed. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

  “Clothilde?”

  “Yes?” She sounded annoyed now: too many questions from Madeleine.

  “Elphon had a tracker disk, didn’t he?”

  Silence. Then, “Oh. You’re still worried about him.” A smile that was pitying, like a slap in the face. “He’s not in danger, Madeleine. Insofar as I can tell, he’s somewhere in the city beyond the palace.”

  “They said it was dangerous. . . .” Madeleine could feel her face burn redder and redder, all the while: that distinct feeling of being chastised like a child was humiliating, and uncomfortable. Madeleine. Poor Madeleine, the world’s poorest liar, sentimental and misguided. Of course she’d be too stupid to do anything but keep her word, be too caring to dismiss her jailers.

  And in another, kinder universe, it wouldn’t have been an insult.

  “They said that because they didn’t want us poking our noses where they don’t belong.” Clothilde exhaled, noisily. “Look. I appreciate your concern, but honestly, he’s fine. We lost Ghislaine because tracker disks behave weirdly down here, but I can feel him clearly, and so can Asmodeus. If he’s in any kind of danger, we’ll all feel it. And you probably will, too. Now go to bed.”

  Dismissed, like a disobedient child.

  Alone in her rooms, Madeleine pulled the folded parchment from the book, and stared at it for a while. The familiar, acrid odor wafted up to her, begging her to open it, to inhale just a fraction of what it had contained. She would be safe. She would feel safe: not loved or cherished, but powerful enough not to care.

  But she still had the bruises from the straps that had held her to the bed in Hawthorn, could still breathe in the smell of bergamot and orange blossom that always heralded Asmodeus’s coming. The price was too high. It was too high.

  She was about to put the parchment away, and take Iaris’s medication for her cough, when she saw the faint blue lines on it. Handwriting. Ghislaine’s?

  She could, with care, unfold the parchment so that the pitifully small remnants of essence didn’t fall out. She’d had years and years of practice in House Silverspires, scrounging all that she could from the bones she’d stolen in her tenure as House alchemist, before she got caught and thrown out. She could turn it around and around, memorizing everything that was on it—and, with the same care, transfer the lines to a sheet of blank paper.

  She put the parchment away after she was done, because manipulating it had
saturated her nostrils with the smell of angel essence, and she didn’t trust herself to handle it anymore, because all she’d have to do was raise it to her nostrils, and then she’d lose the little she had.

  Then she stared at the other paper, the one she’d filled in. It was a bit lopsided, especially around the folds, where she’d had to guess how the lines fitted together. She’d never been especially good with imagining things in three dimensions, and she couldn’t pretend drawing was her forte. But, nevertheless, it was easy to read.

  Prince Phuong Dinh is not unsympathetic. Find a way to talk to him, away from prying eyes.

  Prince Phuong Dinh was the one they were supposed to bring home as part of the diplomatic alliance, wasn’t he? Not unsympathetic to what? To the alliance? But why him specifically? It made no sense. What in heaven was going on here? No matter what Clothilde said, it was something pretty serious.

  Outside, the slow booms had ceased, replaced by the faint sounds of the kingdom at night: crabs scuttling away, the passage of large fish by the doorway, and the low chatter of guards talking among themselves.

  God, how she hated this place.

  At length, Madeleine folded the paper. She wasn’t going to show it to Clothilde. It made no sense, and if she did show it, she would have to explain where she had found it and why. But she could keep an eye out. She could try to understand what was happening. Because, no matter what Clothilde said, Elphon was in danger, and so were they.

  SIX

  The Lure of Angels

  IN Thuan’s dreams, he prowled the corridors of the Imperial Palace in the dragon kingdom, finding every room and courtyard empty, with cups of tea still steaming on tables, and incense sticks smoldering on the ancestral altars, the bowls of fruit still fresh and impeccably arranged as if they’d just been offered.

  “Second Aunt?”

  There was no answer.

  In the ponds, the pebbles formed patterns, signs and symbols in a language he could no longer read. Small crabs scuttled away from him, and something crunched underfoot, coral or bones or both, and he couldn’t even be sure what he was breaking.

  “Second Aunt?”

  In the mausoleum where his grandfather Emperor Rong Nghiem Chung Thuy lay buried, he found her at last.

  She was sitting on the throne, by the emperor’s golden effigy, her face turned away from him. The sign above her said, simply, PRINCESS RONG THUY NGOC BICH, with no other honorifics or achievements: plain and stark, and altogether heartbreaking, after all the trouble she’d gone through trying to hold the kingdom together.

  “Second Aunt—”

  “You’re too late.” She turned toward him, and her face was sloughed-off skin and cracked bones, and her eyes the mottled, grayish color of angel essence corruption, rotted from the inside out—and everything smelled sweet and sickly, a smell that rose and rose until he fell to his knees, gagging and struggling not to breathe, knowing that to breathe it would be his end, too. . . .

  Thuan woke, gasping, and stared at the mold spreading over the ceiling of his room. Oh, ancestors. Her eyes. Nothing left of the beautiful gray-green of the river, of the irises that showed all the colors of mother-of-pearl. Just rot. The Fallen had won. They always did, in the end; always crept and oozed and wormed their way into every nook and cranny of Paris. Why should the kingdom be any different?

  No. That was the nightmare speaking. He was going to find what he’d come here for: the source of the angel essence that was slowly destroying them. And then . . . Second Aunt hadn’t been forthcoming about what she wanted to do, but if Thuan had his way, they would execute the traffickers, and leave the mangled bodies by the Seine as a message that the kingdom wasn’t to be trifled with.

  And if that could help them gain any hold in their negotiations with Hawthorn, it would be grabbed, too, held on to like a lifeline. No one in the kingdom really liked the idea of the alliance, or trusted Hawthorn to respect it, but there wasn’t much choice. They were too hard-pressed.

  He rose, and knelt by his small ancestral altar: four pictures of his parents and paternal grandparents, looking at him with the vacant expressions of the dead over the rim of a bowl with three tangerines.

  “Please help me,” he whispered, a quick, shameful prayer in a land where he barely managed to keep up the proper worship. Mother’s death anniversary had coincided with an all-day exam at school, and by the time he came back to his room, utterly drained of coherent thought, the best he’d been capable of had been a small prayer.

  The House was silent: it was still dark and freezing cold outside, with another hour or so to go to dawn, when the kitchen and laundry rooms would come alive, and the drudges would take their mops and brooms into the corridors, and light, one by one, the big chandeliers with candles on poles, to signal the beginning of the day.

  Thuan had wandered it, at night, when only the bakers in the kitchens were up, kneading dough for the massive stone ovens: the main, cavernous edifice; the small, winding streets spreading out from beyond the gardens, their buildings cracked limestone confections with rusted wrought-iron balconies, and dependents in embroidered dresses and top hats leaning, languidly, against the pillars of blackened porches and patios. The broken ruins in the corners of the gardens: the abandoned buildings, with the trails of water running down glass panes like tears; the melted, pitted limestone overgrown with ivy and other creepers; the black debris mixed in with the gravel; and the broken-off hands on the statues in the fountains. All the traces of the war, in a House that hadn’t been spared by it.

  Second Aunt would have been pleased to see him given such free rein, but in truth there was little to see at night. Most of the rooms were closed and sealed, and most of the people who could have helped him were asleep.

  Today Thuan had no particular destination in mind. He was just killing time until Sare woke up. Careful questioning of Nadine had established that angel essence was kept, not in the infirmary, but in the alchemist’s laboratory, with the other by-products of Fallen magic. So it wasn’t Iaris he wanted to see, but Sare, the House’s alchemist.

  He wandered corridor after corridor, losing himself in the labyrinth of the West Wing, running a hand on the wainscot of cracked wooden panels, his fingers brushing the engraved figures of game animals and trees. There was something addictive, alluring about standing outside the bedrooms of the House’s elite, the leaders of each court, and their being none the wiser as to the danger he represented.

  He stopped at a crossroads between two corridors, to look at a striking piece, a stag whose antlers blurred and merged into the thorns of a tree. Dogs were harrying it, yet the beast held itself tall and proud, as if it didn’t even deign to notice them. The detail had chipped away, and there was dust around the design, a thickening layer like a gray outline.

  On the right, the corridor curved sharply, flaring into something very much like an antechamber, at the end of which was a huge set of wooden doors. They were strangely plain: painted with a scattering of faded silver stars against a dark gray background. Two of those stars were falling from the firmament; their silver tinged with the scarlet of blood, a shade that never quite seemed to hold as the viewer moved.

  It smelled, faintly, of bergamot and citrus, and he had no business being there. None at all. It was one thing to be outside the rooms of the courts’ leaders, reveling in his freedom, but this was Asmodeus’s bedroom, and Thuan had already stood out enough for a lifetime.

  He was about to creep away as stealthily as he had come in. Then he stopped.

  Because there was a light under the doors, quite visible in the darkness, and a rising sense of power coming from the room, a roiling magic like a storm tossing and snapping boats like kindling. Thuan was in the corridor before that antechamber corner, a good distance away from whatever was happening, and still it was terrible enough to send him to his knees, gasping to take a breath—a power that didn’t feel li
ke Asmodeus’s or anyone’s in the House. It was something infinitely old and cruel and merciless; and yet tinged, underneath, with a yearning for a lost home that hooked one curved finger under his heart, and pulled until a sharp, unbearable pain hollowed him out, stilling his breath in his lungs and leaving him thrashing on the floor like a fish with a broken spine.

  What—? What . . . had he felt?

  Thuan pulled himself upright, gingerly. The power was dwindling now, or perhaps he was merely getting used to it: a small hearth fire instead of a blaze. He couldn’t stop himself from shaking, and he still felt that moment when it had reached out, carelessly taking everything from him.

  Move. He had to move. He couldn’t be sure. It could merely be a side effect, but if it had indeed reached out, if it had drawn something from him, then someone inside those rooms had received it. Someone would know he was there, which meant either Asmodeus or his closest associates. Either way, not what he wanted.

  Move.

  He forced himself to walk. His earlier insouciance was gone, and the carvings on the wainscoting leered at him, monstrous and distorted. The darkness was no longer his province, his joy, but something that muffled sounds and sights, that would hide his pursuers until it was too late. Nothing would save him if he was caught, no second aunt to shield him from the wrath of the House, and the cells that always waited for more bodies, like a hungry maw. . . .

  One corner, and then another. No sounds coming from behind him. Nothing but the silence of the House, the distant sounds of servants getting up. He was—

  He heard, clearly even from this distance, the distinct click of a door opening. And a voice, grave and melodious and instantly recognizable, calling words he couldn’t quite make out.