The Gilded Wolves

by Roshani Chokshi

  Along with Dr. Rizal, Ponce was a member of the Ilustrados, a group Enrique had joined because, like him, all the members were European-educated Filipinos who dreamed of reform to their Spanish-controlled country. But to them, he was only just a member … not a visionary. Not someone who charted the course of a new future no matter how much he wanted to be part of their inner circle.

  “Kuya Marcelo,” said Enrique respectfully.

  He still felt a flash of awe that he got to call the great Marcelo “brother,” but it was more tradition than intimacy.

  “Kuya Enrique,” said Marcelo warmly. His gaze dropped to the pen in Enrique’s hand. “Working on another article to submit to La Solidaridad? Or translating a new language?”

  “Um, some of both,” said Enrique, flushing. “Actually, if you have time, perhaps I might share my new writing with you? I—”

  “That’s wonderful news, truly. Keep up the good work,” said Marcelo distractedly. He looked over Enrique’s shoulder. “I’m actually meeting someone who might help us petition the queen of Spain.”

  “Oh!” said Enrique. “I-I could help?”

  Marcelo smiled. “Ah, but of course! Enrique Mercado-Lopez: journalist, historian, and debonaire spy.” Before Enrique could answer, Marcelo patted his cheek. “Of course, it must be easy to spy when you hardly look like one of us. We’ll see you at the next meeting. Ingat ka, kuya.”

  Marcelo squeezed his shoulder as he walked past him. Enrique forced himself to keep walking, even though his face burned and his limbs felt leaden.

  Of course, it must be easy to spy when you hardly look like one of us.

  Marcelo spoke with no malice. In a way, that was worse. At birth, Enrique had favored his father, a full-blooded Spaniard. In the Philippines, many considered this a good trait. They called him mestizo. His aunts and uncles even joked that his dark-skinned mother must not have been in the room when he was conceived. Perhaps this was why the Ilustrados did not let him into their inner circle.

  It wasn’t his intellect that made him unwanted.

  It was his face.

  * * *

  ENRIQUE SAGGED AGAINST the bar counter. One should never drink champagne unhappy, so instead, he tipped his flute back and forth, watching the bubbles slosh down the sides. L’Eden’s secret bar was small, designed more like a crypt than a gathering place, and hidden behind a bookcase. Inside, flowering vines crawled down the walls. Their buds put forth no flowers, only dainty teacups or champagne coupes of cut quartz, depending on the time of day. Tristan and Zofia’s inventions dominated the room. When building officials deemed a glass chandelier a hazard, Tristan Forged one out of moonflowers and anemone. When the officials declared that lanterns would be a fire risk, Zofia collected phosphorescent stones from the Brittany coast and Forged them into a ceiling net that looked like softly blooming stars.

  Looking at the designs, Enrique felt a familiar stab of envy. He had always wanted to Forge. When he was little, he thought it was like magic. Now he knew there was no such thing—neither fairies in the forests nor maidens in the sea. But there was this art, this connection to the ancient world, to the myth of creation itself, and Enrique longed to be part of it. He’d hoped Forging might make him a hero like the kind his grandmother told him about when he was younger. After all, if Forging could reshape objects of the world, why couldn’t it reshape the world itself? Why couldn’t he be the artist—architect—of change? But his thirteenth birthday came and went, and neither the affinity of mind nor matter called to him. When he realized he didn’t have the talent, he chose to study the subjects that felt closest to Forging: history and language. He could still change the world … maybe not with something as dramatic or grand as Forging, but in more intimate ways. Writing. Speaking. Human connection.

  When he came to Paris, the rallying cry of the French Revolution fitted into the hollows of his dreams: liberté, egalité, fraternité.

  Liberty, equality, brotherhood.

  Those words sang to him as they sang to other students like him. Students who had begun to question the tight grip Spain had kept on the Philippines for nearly three hundred years. In Paris, Enrique had found others like him, but it was Séverin who changed his life, who took a chance on his abilities as a historian when no one else had. Séverin listened to his dreams of changing the world and showed him what needed changing. With one older brother primed to take over the family’s lucrative merchant business and the other older brother promised to the church, Enrique had been allowed to pursue whatever he wanted. He knew what he wanted … he just had to make the Ilustrados want him too.

  Maybe threatening the Order with the Horus Eye’s secret was the answer. Enrique let himself daydream what might happen next: Maybe he and Séverin could tell the Order that civilization hung in the balance … maybe they could confront them on a stage. Lighting was critical for any dramatic showdown. And there had to be champagne. Obviously. Then Séverin would become patriarch—Enrique could make some speech about lineage resurrected, that would sound nice, perhaps with confetti raining down—House Vanth would be restored, and, naturally, the House would need a historian. Him. Then, the Ilustrados would clamor for his attention because they’d finally have an insider who could report on the Order of Babel’s workings. It was the only blindspot in their intelligence. After that, he and Séverin and their whole crew could change the world! Maybe they could get swords … Enrique had no clue what to do with one, but just holding one sounded rather epic. What if someone made a statue of him—

  “Let’s go.”

  Enrique startled, and his champagne flute fell.

  “My drink!” he cried as it smashed on the ground.

  “You weren’t even drinking. You were daydreaming.”

  “But I liked holding it—”

  “Come on.”

  Séverin didn’t wait for him as he jogged up the short staircase. Scowling, Enrique muttered something in Tagalog that would have made his grandmother smack him with her slipper. It wasn’t like Séverin to be that brusque. His shoulders were up to his ears as they walked past the grand lobby and the entrance to the Seven Sins Garden.

  Near the stables, a carriage discreetly pulled up to the road. Unlike the usual fleet of L’Eden’s carriages, this one bore neither name nor insignia. Enrique clambered in after Séverin. The driver closed the door, and dark curtains unraveled to block the windows.

  Enrique fidgeted with his sleeves. “So … now do I get to know what’s happening?”

  From his pocket, Séverin withdrew an envelope. The bloodred seal had been split down the middle, but the wax-stamped letter was clear enough. H.

  Enrique stilled. A beat passed. “Hypnos?”

  He knew the moment he spoke the name that it was true. The very air seemed to affirm his suspicions. Wind crept through a tear in the curtain, chilling his skin.

  Séverin clenched his jaw. “He knows we stole from him. He’s asked for a meeting.”

  “What?”

  He thought the plan had been foolproof. No prints. No recording devices. Nothing to give away their presence in the auction’s holding room.

  As an Order patriarch, Hypnos could have had them arrested. Or worse. That he wanted a meeting spoke of something else … a game of give and take and blackmail. Enrique wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Séverin had chosen only him to come along. Was he expendable or invaluable?

  Enrique didn’t know much about the patriarch of House Nyx, but Tristan had once slipped that Hypnos and Séverin had been playmates, back when both boys were raised as heirs to their Houses. One quick glance at Séverin confirmed they hadn’t been in contact since then. Séverin’s expression was stony, his eyes drawn. His thumb dragged up and down the silvery scar on his palm.

  “What if he…” Enrique couldn’t bring himself to say the words “kills us.”

  Séverin seemed to guess his meaning anyway. “Hypnos was always clever,” he said slowly. “But if he tries anything, I have dirt on him tha
t could destroy his standing with the Order the moment he lays a hand on us.”

  “True, but one can’t exactly savor vengeance when one is dead.”

  Séverin pulled down the brim of his hat. “I have no intention of dying.”

  When the carriage stopped, Séverin leaned forward to unlock the door. As he did so, Enrique caught a glimpse of the letter held in his bandaged hand. He frowned.

  It was blank.

  * * *

  HYPNOS HAD NAMED his residence Erebus, after a place in Greek myth where nightmares bloomed next to red poppies. Ridiculous. Enrique found his nickname, Hypnos, just as pretentious. No one would have named an infant after the god of sleep. At least, for the sake of that poor child, Enrique hoped not.

  While most of the Houses of the Western world used and collected Forging objects made from both affinities, House Nyx collected treasures of a particular strain: those that showcased an affinity of the mind. House Nyx had objects that spliced memory, soaked dreams, gathered someone’s will in a tight fist, and brought forth vivid illusions. Mind was the most regulated form of artistry, used as much in pleasure houses and entertainment venues as it was for prison camps. It was the only affinity that universally required registration, whether or not a person chose to hone that talent. Some mind affinity techniques were even banned. And for good reason. Until about twenty years ago, mind-manipulation objects had been especially popular in the Southern states of the Americas where wealthy landowners kept slaves.

  Up ahead loomed the entrance to Erebus. At either side stood two lions carved of diorite, and above the threshold shone a milky jade strip of verit stone. Like the verit entrance at the Palais Garnier, the stone could detect any weapon or harmful Forged object. The only way to neutralize its effect was to carry verit stone on one’s person, like two magnets repelling one another. Supposedly, there was nothing in the world like verit, although Enrique had recently come across a treatise on a North African artifact that made him wonder otherwise.

  “He’s known for his illusions,” said Séverin, interrupting his thoughts. “Focus on one thing, and don’t lose yourself in his tricks.”

  The door swung open. Without hesitating, Séverin walked between the two lions. When he passed beneath the verit stone, it glowed bright red and the stone lions growled, their heads whipping toward him. A bulky guard appeared at the entrance.

  “Reveal your weapon,” he said.

  “My apologies,” said Séverin mildly. He withdrew a small knife from his pocket. “I always keep one on hand for cutting apples.”

  Enrique kept his face blank. Séverin was lying.

  “You’ll have to pass through the verit entrance again—”

  “We’re already late,” said Séverin. “Patriarch Hypnos won’t like that, and I can assure you there’s nothing else on my person. Here, I’ll turn out my pockets in front of you.”

  Séverin made a show of lifting the bottoms of his trousers and insides of his sleeves. When he got to his pockets, a card fluttered to the floor. The guard picked it up, his eyes widening.

  “Ah, and that’s a credit for two free nights at the hotel I own. You may have heard of it. It’s called L’Eden.”

  The guard had certainly heard of it.

  “Why don’t you hold on to it and let me through? Or I could take it for safekeeping as I go through a silly entrance yet again?”

  The guard hesitated, then waved Séverin through the doors. Enrique followed after him without incident. He never had reason to carry a weapon.

  Erebus, he soon discovered, was aptly named. No sooner had they crossed into the hall than it shifted. One moment, he glimpsed parquet floors, ebony pillars covered in golden filigree, a sumptuous rug close to his toes. He should have kept his gaze on the floor, but a flicker of movement distracted him. He looked up. Instantly, the room transformed into a wildwood. Silver dusk seeped between frosted tree branches. The chandelier dissolved into a snowdrift. What pieces he could see of the carpet looked sugared. Cold touched his skin. He could smell it. The mineral tang of snow. The inside of his nose burned from cold. He was in a world of ice and sugar. Blood spatter on white silk. No, not blood. Poppies. Poppies blooming, shriveling, budding in glyph-like patterns. Secrets just beneath the petals and the snow, if he only—

  A voice broke the illusion. “Goodness, how rude of me.”

  The images melted. No more snow or poppies or sugar.

  Enrique was on his knees, hands splayed on the scarlet rug as if he wanted to shred it apart. In front of him, a pair of polished shoes. He looked up before he realized he should have stood first. The patriarch of House Nyx stared down at him.

  Until now, he had only seen Hypnos at a distance. He knew the other boy’s skin, a deep umber like the rain-soaked bark of an oak tree. He knew the textured hair cropped close to his head. Even knew his strangely colored eyes, a blue so pale they looked like panes of frost. Hypnos was beautiful at a distance. Up close, he was just plain staggering. Enrique stumbled to his feet, hoping the other boy hadn’t noticed. When he looked up, Hypnos’s eyes looked darker. The pupils blown out, as if he was trying to take in all of him too.

  “Had I known what pretty company you keep, I might have met with you sooner, Séverin,” said Hypnos, not taking his eyes off Enrique.

  Séverin let out a brittle laugh. “I doubt that. You’ve been a patriarch for two years, and you still have to run every inhale and exhale by the Order of Babel. I can’t imagine what they must make of your meeting with me. My understanding was that any Order member would be forbidden from speaking to me if they remembered my existence. Do they even know what you’re doing right now?”

  Hypnos raised one eyebrow. “Do you want them to?”

  Séverin didn’t answer, and Hypnos didn’t push it.

  “You requested a meeting,” said Séverin. “Why?”

  After all this time, Enrique thought.

  Hypnos grinned. “I wanted to meet my thieves.”

  “Well, you found us.”

  Hypnos made a tsk sound. “Now, now. I only did a little bit of the work. You did the rest.”

  Enrique shook off the dregs of the illusion. He took a step closer to Séverin. All his awareness shifted around the inflection of Hypnos’s words.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Lo! It speaks,” exclaimed Hypnos. He clapped his hands. “That fake compass you left me was a pretty decoy, but there was blood on it. And so I performed a little test … Whoever had stolen from me had bled all over my poor stone beastie. So, I added a bit of blood Forging to my letter to make sure that none but the thief could read it. I had my men deliver it to every person I could think of. Who, I wondered, would steal from me? And why? And then, of course, when I ran out of options, I sent it to you. The fancy hotelier with a reputation a little too spotless, who’s always a little too close to every theft of an Order object. So, you see,” he said, his expression suddenly quite serious, “I didn’t find you. You brought yourself to me.”

  Enrique squeezed his eyes shut. Too late, he remembered glimpsing Séverin’s letter. The curious expanse of blank page. No wonder he couldn’t read it.

  Séverin betrayed nothing. “Clever.”

  “One can always rely on a man’s hubris. I figured you wouldn’t share the letter.” Hypnos tilted his head. “How devastating for you. To let down your team and admit that you’d failed. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Séverin. The Order may not have looked in your direction all this time, but I have.”

  “I’m flattered you think I’m worth watching.”

  Hypnos winked. “With a face like that? I must not be the only one.”

  “What do you want, Hypnos?”

  “You know what I can do to you. I can have you arrested, executed, tarred and feathered, et cetera. There’s no point, really, in detailing it.” Hypnos paused to smile. “But I don’t want to do any of that. I’m actually quite an exceptional human being, and, I fancy myself rather generous. So instead, I ask o
nly two things. First, that you return the compass. Second, that you turn your acquisition skills to an object I’ve long desired. In return, I’ll give you what you want.”

  Séverin’s face had gone rigid, his mouth flattened to a line, his dark eyes nearly burning.

  Slowly, Hypnos raised his hand. His Babel Ring, a thin crescent moon that spread across the middle of his hand, caught the light. From where Enrique stood, it looked like a scythe.

  “Mon cher, you and I always had so much in common,” said Hypnos. “Now, we have even more! Look at us. Two orphaned bastards with colored mothers.” He leaned closer to Séverin. “How strange … Yours doesn’t show up on the skin the way mine does. Mine was the daughter of slaves in a sugarcane plantation my father owned in Martinique. Once I was born, my French aristocrat of a father left her. But I remember you had your mother. That always made me rather jealous, I admit. She had the loveliest hair … what was she? Egyptian? Algerian? Her name was so beautiful too—”

  “Don’t,” said Séverin, clipped. A muscle in his jaw ticked.

  Hypnos shrugged lightly and turned to Enrique, smiling as if he were just another guest and this were just another day.

  “Has he told you how the Order’s inheritance test works?”

  Enrique shook his head.