The Gilded Wolves

by Roshani Chokshi

  The second terrace was reserved for dressing rooms. Each star of the Palais had their own, customized to their specifications. Laila cast a glance over the terrace, quickly scanning the crowd, spotting the mark. The House Kore courier. He looked unsure of himself, sitting in a velvet upholstered chair. On the table before him was a bowl of chocolate-covered strawberries. Laila grinned. You took my advice.

  A Sphinx stood motionless in the corner, as she and Séverin had known one would. For large parties, the Palais always kept two on hand in the event someone tried to swindle an Order member or smuggle House-marked treasure out the doors. Today, the second Sphinx would not show up until an hour later, thanks to Zofia and Tristan’s clever tampering with the Palais’s Forged Sphinx schedules. But there would be another “Sphinx” to take the guard’s place: Séverin. Tristan would be with him, posing as a police officer. A decoy item would be slipped in the courier’s pocket. Something that looked as if it might be House-marked, thus letting a Sphinx approach him. From there, the courier would be accused of theft, taken to a holding cell, freed of all personal effects—including the catalogue coin with the Horus Eye location—“interrogated,” and let go.

  Simple.

  In the background, La Fée Vert had just finished to thunderous applause. Next, it would be her turn.

  Laila opened the door to her room. Inside, flames danced on stunted candles. The low light turned the room drowsy and golden. On a side table near her vanity lay a bouquet of white roses.

  And on her burgundy chaise lounge …

  A boy. He was reclining on his side, absentmindedly tearing petals off a rose. He must have heard her open the door because he lifted his head and grinned. His eyes were strikingly pale against the lustrous dark of his skin.

  “Ah, hello, ma chère,” said the boy.

  “Who are you?”

  The boy stood and bowed. “Hypnos.”

  Laila lifted her chin. “And what are you doing here?”

  Hypnos laughed. “I adore you already! So imperious! I bet Séverin likes to be bossed around a little, doesn’t he?”

  At Séverin’s name, Laila snapped upright.

  “What did you do to him?”

  Hypnos clapped his hands together and sighed.

  “Oh, goodness, you care for Séverin! And why wouldn’t you? That boy looks like every dark corner of a fairy tale. The wolf in bed. The apple in a witch’s palm.”

  He winked.

  Heat rose to Laila’s cheeks. “I don’t—”

  “I don’t really care one way or the other,” said Hypnos, waving his hand. His smile held all the danger of a pried-open secret. “And that’s not why I came, lovely. I’m here because if we don’t act soon, I’m afraid Tristan and Séverin will be dead within the hour.”

  9

  ZOFIA

  Zofia chewed on a matchstick, her eyes fixed on the exhibition door. The Exhibition on Colonial Superstitions was a glass and steel enclosure the size of a large greenhouse. Inside it were examples of ancient Forging objects throughout France’s overseas empire. Any moment now, the security guard’s shift would end. After that, she and Enrique would sneak in, steal an artifact Enrique believed would neutralize the effects of verit stone, and meet up with the others back at L’Eden.

  “God, this wait is miserable,” said Enrique.

  At this time of evening, no one was left in the Champ de Mars but vagrants, beggars, and the occasional tourist trying to catch a glimpse of the Exposition before it opened. Over the past few months, preparations for the Exposition Universelle had transformed the city, pulling the skyline into new shapes every day. Colorful tents sprouted up overnight, and the trill of new languages joined the sonorous buzz of electrical lights.

  But nothing captured Zofia’s attention more than the imposing Eiffel Tower, the official entrance to the 1889 Exposition Universelle. The papers said that, together, Forging and science would pave a new age of industry. But Zofia did not consider Forging separate from the sciences. To her, Forging was not some divine art bestowed by ancient objects, but a science not yet understood.

  Zofia glanced at the forbidding Eiffel Tower. Some called it a Tower of Babel for the new age, for both had been built without Forging, and both marked the start of a new era. But the Tower of Babel had been built to reach God and the heavens. Zofia was not sure what kind of god the world sought to reach now.

  “What is taking that security guard so long?” Enrique grumbled. “He was supposed to be out by eight o’clock. It’s nearly nine.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t have a clock.”

  He stared at her. “Are you finally making a joke?”

  “I’m pointing out a gap in your observation.”

  Enrique let out a low whooshing breath. “And to think I could’ve been dancing at the Palais des Rêves tonight.”

  “They didn’t want you, remember? Séverin said your face was all wrong.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome.”

  Past the Forging exhibition loomed the points of stone temples, tops of palm fronds, and silk tents that marked the sprawling colonial pavilions along the Esplanade des Invalides. It was to be the largest attraction after the Gallery of Machines and the Eiffel Tower. According to the newspapers, it contained “a Negro Village with almost 400 Africans in their natural habitat.”

  That word struck Zofia as wrong. “Habitat.” It sounded like it was meant for animals. People were not animals. It didn’t seem right that they were there solely to be seen.

  “Ugly,” she said, not quite realizing she’d spoken until she heard her voice.

  “What?” asked Enrique.

  He followed her gaze to the tops of the tents, and his mouth twisted into a grimace. “Part of Europe’s ‘civilizing mission,’” he said quietly.

  Zofia knew the definition of “civilize,” but she didn’t understand why it was being used. In school, “civilize” meant bringing people to a stage of development deemed advanced. But Zofia had seen the illustrations in the traveling books—the grand temples, the complex inventions, techniques and leaps in medicine that had been discovered and implemented long before they ever reached European shores.

  “That word does not fit.”

  Enrique’s mouth was downturned. His eyes wide and jaw set. A pattern of sorrow mixed with something else.

  “I know.”

  Now Zofia knew what else his expression said. He understood.

  A sound in the alley made them both jump.

  “A Sphinx,” he hissed under his breath. “Don’t move.”

  Zofia stayed still as the lamplight twisted into a familiar reptilian shape. Tasked with tracking down stolen House-marked items, the Sphinx operated for and answered to the Order. As the Sphinx stalked past their hiding spot, Enrique and Zofia sank farther into the shadows. Behind him limped a thief, his arm bent at a wrong angle, his wrist broken and bleeding into the Sphinx’s jaws.

  Zofia averted her eyes. The moment a Sphinx targeted someone, the Forgery in their crocodile masks took over. They moved inhumanly fast, and their jaws snapped through skin and bone on whatever they caught first.

  The man was lucky the Sphinx had only gone for his wrist.

  When the Sphinx and the thief had passed, a clanging sound at the Exhibition on Colonial Superstitions caught her attention. The security guard had finished his shift, and the door to the exhibition swung open. Once the night security guard finished locking up, he pressed his palm to a pane of glass. It glowed a brief shade of blue, then faded. The man looked around him. In the distance, beggars huddled into corners for the night. Skinny cats dissolved into shadows.

  Enrique adjusted his outfit of a threadbare shirt and coat. “Remember what Séverin said. The theft has to look like an accident.”

  “No explosives,” she said, bored.

  “No explosives.”

  Zofia did not mention that she brought her fire tape, incinerator, and matches. Just in case.

  Enrique pull
ed a mask over his head. The guard started walking toward the street. Lantern light glinted off the edge of his top hat. Enrique ambled toward him, swinging an empty bottle of wine he’d found near the trash heap.

  “You there!” Enrique hollered. “Have you got any coin on you?”

  The guard recoiled. Zofia moved farther into the lean-to, which meant losing sight of Enrique. But she still heard him. The scuffle. The guard shouting. Coins hitting the ground. Enrique’s drunken apology reverberating off the buildings.

  Now it was her turn.

  Zofia crept through the trash. Like Enrique, she was dressed as a beggar. Albeit, a slightly better kept one. Acting like someone else was easy, a relief, even. She had a script. She followed the script. The end.

  “Sir!” she called.

  The guard walked faster.

  “Sir, you dropped this!”

  She ran forward to catch up to him right before he left. As she ran, she was careful to keep her gel-covered hands from touching anything more than she had to. The man turned, glancing down at her open palm full of silver coins.

  “Merci,” he said, uneasily taking the coins.

  Zofia held still. She pulled her cheeks into a grin that looked like hopefulness. She bent her knees to appear shorter. More childlike. If this didn’t go as she planned, there was one other way. Her necklace was hidden under a high collar, and she felt its dangerous pendants like chips of ice against her skin.

  “For your trouble,” he said gruffly, dropping one silver on the ground.

  Zofia grabbed his open hand, leveraging it so that she trapped it in a flat grip with both hands.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said in falsetto. “Oh, thank you so much.”

  The man quickly yanked away his hand. Then he ran off into the night. Zofia watched after him, then she looked at her hands. The gel was Streak of Sia, a Forge material first developed in ancient Egypt that retained the shape of prints. Specifically, handprints. Normally the gel was bright blue and frigid to the touch, but Zofia had altered the formula, turning the gel colorless and warm as human skin. It was said the Fallen House could do more with the Streak of Sia. That they could Forge the gel not just to remember handprints, but to leave prints on a person that would allow them to be tracked. But such technology, if it had ever existed, had died with the Fallen House.

  At the entrance of the Forging exhibition, Enrique stepped out of the shadows. His beggar costume had been shucked off for a plain, dark suit and top hat.

  “Got it?”

  She held up her hand. Enrique kept an eye out as she pressed her hand to the windowpane. It glowed a dull blue. Match. On the heavy doors, the iron locks unbraided, falling into a noisy pile.

  The inside of the Forging exhibition was far larger than the outside suggested. The gallery stretched into a long row of darkness, lit up by occasional points of light in front of glass display cases. Though the outside looked like steel and glass, the interior allowed no natural light. Instead, large murals covered the windows. All along the back wall stretched panels of brocade fabric. They were so silky and bright, they looked almost wet.

  Enrique pulled a Forged spherical detection device—one of her own inventions—from his pocket. He tossed it in the air. As it slowly spiraled downward, light burst from the sphere, illuminating the room’s contours.

  The place seemed empty enough to Zofia, though she didn’t like how it looked. Too closed off, despite the space.

  “There’s no one here,” she said. “And there aren’t any recording devices. Come on—”

  Just as she stepped forward, Enrique grabbed her from behind and quickly pulled her against his chest.

  “Get off—”

  “Easy, phoenix, easy,” Enrique said, low in her ear. “Look at the floor.”

  The sphere had rolled to a stop near one of the many podiums. A spiraled grid of red light radiated out from the object, netting across the entire floor.

  “They hid the recording devices in the floor?”

  “Rather clever of them,” said Enrique, releasing her. “We’ll have to go slower than I thought.”

  Zofia glanced at the front door, the pile of iron chains just on the other side. Enrique had slipped extra cash to the madame of a brothel the next night guard frequented, so the man wouldn’t arrive for at least another twenty minutes. That should have given them plenty of time.

  But they’d planned their time assuming the recording devices would be on the wall. Not the floor.

  “As long as we don’t touch any of the red light, it’ll be fine,” said Enrique.

  He took the lead. He stepped carefully and completely within the bounded space of red light. Zofia followed, matching him step for step. Within five minutes, her calves started cramping. Every space became narrower. She could hardly fit the whole of her foot into each one. Zofia rose on her tiptoes, hands out to the sides for balance. Enrique did the same.

  “Nearly there,” whispered Enrique. “We just crossed the seventh podium, and I marked it at the ninth.”

  Zofia didn’t look up from her feet. The darkness cinched tight around her. She knew it wasn’t a locked room. She knew it, and yet, she thought she could feel the air touching her. Soft as a feather dragged across her skin. Bile reared up in her throat. It’s open. It’s open. She looked up. She had to see the sky. Had to know it wasn’t a wall. That the podiums weren’t students. That the electric whirr wasn’t laughter.

  Enrique stopped a foot away from her. “We’re here! I can see the artifact—”

  Her shoe slipped.

  The red line across from her snapped in half.

  Beams of light shot down from the ceiling. Outside the exhibition hall, sirens screamed into the night.

  Enrique turned to face her. “What did you do?”

  Zofia looked up wildly, but her gaze went not to Enrique or the black column where the artifact sat, but to the man leaning against the wall behind them. In the dark, he had melded in with the shadows, but the light revealed him. His eyes narrowed, lips pulled in a sneer as he raised his hand. Light glanced off a raised blade.

  “Watch out!” screamed Zofia.

  The man thrust the blade. Enrique pivoted out of the way. Instinct took over. When it came to socializing, Zofia had difficulty knowing the right moves. But fighting was different. It was all patterns, anticipation of the movement of muscle. That she could do. Zofia reached for her necklace. At her touch, the Forged pendants shifted.

  Enrique jumped to her side.

  “Get the artifact,” said Zofia.

  He looked between her face and the pendant, brows quirked for barely an instant. The man with the knife made a grab for her. She thrust up her elbow, catching him in the nose. Before he could yelp, she caught him sideways with a right hook. The man growled, backhanding her. Zofia’s face stung as she reeled back. Then, she clicked her heels together. Steel spurs spun out from her shoes. The man lunged once more, and she kicked out, swiping his kneecaps so he fell, writhing, onto the floor.

  The second he was down, Zofia raced to Enrique. He was busy wresting the square-shaped artifact off the wooden block. Behind her came a loud groaning sound. The man had pushed himself off the ground. As he lumberd toward them, a gold chain spilled from the collar of his shirt.

  “Foolish girl,” he rasped.

  He reached for something in his cloak. Zofia ripped off another pendant, flinging it at his face. Chemically speaking, it was nothing more than a metal oxidizer and metallic fuel, but Zofia had Forged it to do more than just flash with light once. She had bent her will to the object, encouraging it to draw from the very air itself. Now it sparked and burned, hissing against the man’s face. His hands sprung apart as he batted uselessly at the pendant.

  “Got it!” yelled Enrique.

  Three policemen appeared at the front of the entrance.

  “Arrêtez!” shouted the first police officer.

  All three of them looked up. The man’s mouth twisted into a grin. He reached for th
e hat on his head, then flung it toward the police officer. Zofia caught a strange sheen to its brim.

  The second Zofia realized what it was, she waved her arms to get the police officer’s attention. “Move! It’s a blade!”

  Too late. The brim swept across one of the police officer’s throats. Blood bloomed down the man’s shirt.

  “No!” she screamed. “No!”

  The man grabbed her wrist. She tried to twist out of his grip, but he was too strong. Instead, she grabbed the gold chain around his neck. The man spluttered as the chain broke off in her hand, the force of it throwing her to the ground.

  “You don’t know what you’re stopping,” the man wheezed. “This is the start of something new. A true revolution.”

  He stalked toward her. The dark shape of him choked off the light. Zofia staggered, crawling backward as she reached for the Forged tape concealed on the underside of her collar. She peeled it off, throwing it between her and the man. As she threw it, she willed it: Ignite.

  Flames spurted up from the ground and heat shimmered in the air. Just through the flames, she saw the man’s face. Livid and red in the glow.

  Enrique helped her stand, his voice sounding faraway as he rallied her: “Move, move!” The exit was within reach. One step, then another, then running. The glass doors flung back. Footsteps slapped the pavement. The scent of fire stung her nose. Her mouth tasted like iron and salt from accidentally biting her tongue, and her ears rang out with the man’s last word: “Revolution.”