The Gilded Wolves

by Roshani Chokshi

  Hypnos knew he hadn’t. If anything, it was a well-placed jab that he was on the inside while Séverin would always be the orphan circling for a way in. There was no point affirming Hypnos with a spoken answer.

  “I should warn you now. It will be as if your eyes are seeing for the first time,” said Hypnos, smiling slowly. “And, if you fail at the tasks at hand or get caught, the last time too.”

  PART III

  Letter from Matriarch Delphine Desrosiers of House Kore to her sister, Countess Odette, upon her initiation to the Order of Babel

  Dear sister,

  I so look forward to meeting my new nephew when you come to visit! You asked how I feel having been entrusted with our family’s lineage, and I confess I feel a mixture of emotions. I feel awe, on one hand, for the sacred responsibility entrusted to me. And yet, wariness … Do you remember the House that fell? Its name has been wiped from the records, so it is known only as the Fallen House. Father said it fell near the time when I was born, but he showed me a letter he received from its executed patriarch. He told me it is a reminder that we do not fully understand the depths of that which we protect. It haunts me, sister, for the executed patriarch wrote:

  “I cannot help but wonder if for all that we protect the West’s Babel Fragment from the public, we are also protecting the public from it…”

  13

  ZOFIA

  Zofia liked computing numbers aloud. Math calmed her. Distracted her.

  “Two hundred twenty-two squared is forty-nine thousand two hundred eighty-four,” she muttered, climbing the marble steps.

  In her hand, the golden invitation looked like a flame peeled off a fire. She traced the elaborate letters: Baroness Sophia Ossokina.

  “Seven hundred ninety-one squared is…” Zofia frowned. “Six hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred eighty-one.”

  Not as fast as she used to be. That numeral had taken her almost fifteen seconds to compute. By now, she should have felt calmer.

  She didn’t.

  In an hour, they would board the train for the Château de la Lune. By midnight, they would be seated at the opening feast. This wouldn’t be like acquisitions in the past when impersonating someone meant memorizing a handful of lines. This meant hiding herself in plain sight. It would have been easier if she was still a sum unto herself. But Séverin and the others made her part of an equation. If she failed, she wouldn’t fail alone. It was Séverin and Enrique and Laila, and all the weight of their hopes. It was Hela, who was acting governess to their pampered cousins, waiting for freedom. It was the dream she clung to, that small image she replayed over and over … the peace of walking down a street and feeling as though she were no different from anyone else.

  Such fragile things swaying in the balance.

  Zofia’s hands were damp as she crossed the final hallway to Laila’s room. She had only visited Laila there once. She hadn’t liked it. It smelled too strong. And it was so colorful. Not like the kitchens with their uniform shades of cream.

  Before she could knock, Laila opened the door, her smile wide as always.

  “Ready?” she asked brightly.

  A wave of perfume hit her nose. Zofia scrunched her face, stepping back sharply, her shoulders rounding like a cornered animal.

  Laila left the door open, disappearing into her room. She did not invite Zofia inside, nor did she wait for an answer. From where Zofia stood, she could only see a sliver of the room. A hint of green silk on the walls. One window draped in linen curtains so the room was not too bright. Near the threshold was a little jade table. And on it … a perfectly pale and round cookie.

  Zofia took a step forward and swiped the cookie off the plate. She wanted to step back immediately, but then she caught a glance at the vanity table. Laila was habitually messy. Once, Zofia had tried to rearrange the kitchen, but stopped when Laila threatened not to make any more desserts. The last time she had been here, it was a disaster: pots of cosmetics on the floor; jewelry hanging from light fixtures; the bed not only unmade, but also asymmetrically positioned because Laila “liked to wake with the sunshine on her face.” It gave Zofia chills.

  Now it looked different.

  She poked her head through the door. All the cosmetics on the vanity were evenly spaced apart, exactly as Zofia would have done. But there was an exception. One glaringly tall tube in the middle of an otherwise perfectly descending scale. Zofia’s fingers twitched to rearrange it.

  Zofia glanced to her left. Laila was fiddling with a long, black dress. Just ahead was another pale cookie balancing on a low trunk near Laila’s vanity. Warily, Zofia stepped inside. She padded over to the second cookie and promptly ate it. She felt … less terrible. But that might have just been the cookie.

  “Nearly finished selecting your outfits,” said Laila. Now she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, fluffing up the train of the black dress. “You’ll need four outfit changes between Friday’s midnight feast and Saturday’s midnight ball. And of course, you’ll have time to tailor them with whatever incendiary devices you deem fit. I think all of that should fit in your traveling wardrobe.”

  Zofia’s traveling wardrobe stood at the back of the room. It was less a travel wardrobe and more of a travel workspace. When completely closed and locked, it resembled tiers of embossed leather suitcases. When opened, it became something else. All the “suitcases” were attached and Forged to hold compartments containing a chemistry set, lock picks, moldings, vials of diatomaceous earth, iron filings, various acids … and dresses. A single piece of precious verit stone lay at the bottom, rendering it undetectable to House Kore’s sensors.

  “You’re going to be fine,” said Laila softly. “You have the bearing of a baroness. Now you have to believe it.”

  Laila took the dress off the hanger, bringing it toward Zofia. Zofia recoiled. She thought of the women she had studied in the lobby. They looked terribly uncomfortable. All cinched waists and pinched shoes. Laughing at unfunny things.

  “Try it on!” said Laila. “My couturier at the House of Worth made it especially for you. There’s a changing screen right—”

  Zofia shrugged off her apron, kicked off her shoes, and started shucking off her clothes.

  Laila laughed, shaking her head. “Or that.”

  Zofia knew that weighted sigh.

  Her mother used to make that sound all the time whenever she thought Zofia lacked modesty. “Lacking.” Another word that did not fit. It was not as if she had some secret stash of modesty and had used it all up. She had learned what was considered modest. Taking off one’s clothes in public? Bad. In private? Fine. This was a closed room which meant private. Who cared? Besides, she never liked the feel of too much clothing. And she didn’t understand why she had to be self-conscious of her body anyway. It was just a body.

  All the same, Zofia missed the sound of her mother’s sigh. After their parents died in the house fire, Hela had done her best not to fill their days with grief, but it seeped into the cracks of their life anyway.

  “Tell me when you can’t breathe,” grunted Laila, pulling the stays.

  “That. Makes. No. Sense.”

  “Fashion, my love, just like the universe, owes you neither explanation nor rationale.”

  Zofia tried to make a sound of protest, but ended up gasping.

  “Tight enough!” announced Laila. “Arms up!”

  Zofia obeyed. Black silk shimmered around her. She glanced down, noting the perfectly round beads of jet that frothed at the hem like black waves. They were Forged too, and the waves rippled and pulsed down the fabric. Zofia’s mind latched onto the pattern.

  “Not discovered until 1746 by d’Alembert.”

  Laila paused in her ministrations. “You lost me.”

  “Waves!” said Zofia, pointing at the pattern of black beading. “Classical physics has lots of waves. They’re a beautiful hyperbolic partial differential equation. There’s sound waves, light waves, water waves—”

  The rest of the r
oom fell away while Zofia talked about waves. Her father, a physics professor in Glowno, had taught her all about recognizing the beauty of mathematics. How one could hear it—even the effect of waves—in something as complex as a piece of music. As she spoke, she hardly felt Laila pulling on the corset stays, sliding her feet into shoes, or tugging at her hair.

  “—and, lastly, longitudinal and transverse waves,” she finished, looking up.

  But it was not Laila’s face she saw, but her own, staring back at her in the mirror’s reflection. She did not look like herself. There was black smudged on her eyes. Red on her mouth and cheeks. An aigrette fastener, with a white plume and gray pearls, pinned to coiled-up hair. She looked like the women in the grand lobby. Zofia reached up to touch the elegant bun on top of her head.

  “You look beautiful, Baroness Sophia Ossokina.”

  Zofia leaned forward, scrutinizing her reflection. She might look like the women in the lobby, but she was nothing like them. If anything, Laila was. Laila, who was as elegant as a wave.

  “It should be you,” said Zofia.

  Laila’s eyes widened in the mirror. Her shoulders fell slightly. A pattern of sorrow.

  “I can’t,” she said softly. “You remember what Séverin said. If you dress to the world’s expectations, it doesn’t look too closely when you steal from it. Though I do wish I didn’t have to go as a nautch dancer.” Her mouth twisted on that word. “Nautch dancers used to be sacred in temples. Where I’m from, dancing is an expression of the divine.”

  “Like at the Palais des Rêves?”

  Laila snorted. “No. Not like at the Palais. It’s not even me on that stage. Even if it were, no one deserves a performance of my faith.”

  Zofia pulled at the tips of her gloves. The right words kept hitting her tongue wrong. Laila looked at her, concern etched on her features. Then she reached out, cupping her chin.

  “Oh, Zofia,” she said. “Don’t be sad. Everyone hides.”

  * * *

  ZOFIA WAS THE first to board the train.

  Séverin had arranged for himself, Enrique, and Zofia to occupy an entire block of suites. The others took separate transit. Tristan had left for House Kore’s country estate yesterday to handle their landscaping, and Laila had gone with Hypnos, lugging with her a marvelous and gigantic cake that House Nyx would transport. They were all due to arrive at the Château de la Lune at the same time.

  Once in her train suite, Zofia yanked down the window’s velvet drapes. Just looking at the crowded train platform teeming with people and engine steam made her stomach hurt. Her nose stung from the char of burnt street snacks, and she was getting bored of those Forged posters floated along the platform. Each one advertised different parts of the Exposition Universelle, which would open to the public in four days.

  Zofia plucked at loose threads on her dress. Across her lap was the walking stick she’d Forged for Enrique. It was hollow, polished ebony, the top of it fashioned like an eagle with outstretched wings. Zofia sighed, wishing she could have brought her chalkboard. There was nothing to do except wait for Séverin or Enrique. Weary, she counted the cut crystals dangling from the chandelier: 112. Next, she counted the golden buttons sewn into the quilted satin seats: 17. Zofia was about to sit on the floor and start counting the carpet tassels when her compartment slid open.

  An old man with a hunched back stood there. He was bald, with splotches of brown on his scalp. He paused at the threshold of the compartment and bowed low.

  “What do you think? Took nearly three hours to conceal my unearthly beauty.”

  Zofia blinked. “Enrique?”

  “At your service—” He started, looking at her. He paused, and Zofia fought the urge to nestle farther into her compartment.

  Be like Laila, said a voice in her brain.

  Zofia sat up straight, held his gaze, then did what she’d seen Laila do many times when she looked at Séverin—lift one corner of her mouth ever so slightly, but tilt her head down at the same time … wait, now she couldn’t see anything, oh, and Laila would sometimes lift up one shoulder—

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  “I am imitating patterns of flirtation.”

  “Wait. You’re flirting. With … me?”

  Zofia frowned. Why would he think that? She just said she was imitating the general strategy of others.

  “Maybe I have the methodology wrong. I also saw women do this. Better?”

  She relaxed her body. Then pretended there was something on her upper lip and licked it off with a slow swipe of her tongue.

  Enrique blinked rapidly then shook his head.

  Shaking one’s head meant no.

  Zofia shrugged and waved her hand. “I’ll practice later.”

  “You … don’t need much,” said Enrique, his voice pitched lower than usual. He wasn’t looking at her. She must have been terrible.

  Enrique took the seat across from her. Because of the hump on his back, he had to lean forward. The sun hit his face, exposing the faintest seam along his cheek that belonged to a Forged mask.

  “In the dark, it won’t look like a mask at all,” said Enrique, gently touching his face. “I checked. And I won’t have to go out into the light either. Apparently, my identity as an aging botanist means I’m also nocturnal.”

  “So are skunks.”

  “Splendid.”

  At that moment, the train lurched forward. The walking stick on Zofia’s lap began to roll. She grabbed it quickly and thrust it at him.

  “Yours.”

  Enrique reached for it. “Is it a prop for my disguise?”

  “It’s a bomb.”

  Enrique nearly dropped it.

  “Don’t,” said Zofia.

  “A bomb?” he demanded. “Maybe lead with that?”

  “It’s a light bomb.”

  “That sounds oxymoronic.”

  “A light bomb in the sense that it releases a lot of light.”

  “Oh.”

  Zofia pointed at the middle of the walking stick. “It’s hollow. The filler has a pyrotechnic metal-oxidant mix of magnesium and an oxidizer of ammonium perchlorate.”

  “What the hell does any of that mean?”

  “If you hit it against something, it will explode.”

  “None of that bodes well.”

  “And it will produce a flash that will cause your enemy to lose their sight for a full minute. Only use it in emergencies.”

  “I figured, once you said ‘bomb.’”

  Zofia pointed at the hump on his back that he had strapped on. She had made the prosthetic last week after Séverin had designed a verit-repelling vessel.

  “Give me the hump.”

  Enrique started laughing.

  Zofia tilted her head. “Is rapid disintegration because of an industrial acid funny?”

  He stopped laughing. Every line of his body went rigid. He leaned forward, arching slightly as if trying to distance his skin from the hump. “Is … is that what’s inside this?”

  Zofia nodded.

  “This is the kind of thing someone would like to know before they attach it to their body.”

  The compartment slid open again. Séverin stepped inside, dressed in the attire of a government official. On his lapel, the golden Marianne emblem shone. A symbol of the Third Republic of France.

  “Thank you for letting me know I was strapping acid to my back when you gave me the hump.”

  Séverin started laughing.

  Zofia crossed her arms. She hated when she didn’t get the joke. She wished Laila were here.

  “What’s so funny about disintegration?”

  “Nothing,” said Séverin. He wiped at his eye. “I needed that. Give it to her. She’ll show you.”

  Scowling, Enrique took off his jacket, unstrapped the hump, then handed it to Zofia. Zofia took out one of her hairpins and gently pried it open.

  “I need one of those—” started Enrique.

  “It’s hidden in the heel of your sho
e,” said Zofia. “Just click them together and it will pop out.”

  Enrique let out a whistle. “First, the walking stick. Then the acid. Now this. Not to mention what you do with numbers. I like how you think, Zofia.”

  Zofia paused, the pin still in her hand. No one had ever said that to her before. In fact, the way she thought was usually the thing that got her into trouble in the first place.

  She frowned. “You do?”

  Enrique smiled. A real smile. She knew it was real because he always smiled like that when Laila snuck him a second helping of cake.

  “I do.”

  I do.

  Zofia returned to the hairpin and lock, but something fluttered low in her stomach. The hump opened with a small pop, revealing a glass tube on a velvet bed.

  “Piranha solution,” said Séverin. “It’s what you’re going to use when you’re escorted to the greenhouse as Monsieur Ching—”

  “It’s Chang!”

  “Chang, my apologies. Point is, you’re going to get us started. Tell me what you’re doing.”

  “This isn’t my first—”

  “Enrique.”

  “Hmpf.” Enrique crossed his arms. “We arrive at Château de la Lune before midnight. You, Zofia, and Hypnos go off and feast and do what rich people do, even though I’m an honored botanist who has traveled over many, many oceans and—”

  “Enrique.”

  “—and then we meet in your rooms and do a final rundown. Between the hours of three A.M. and four A.M., me and Tristan meet in the greenhouse. Then we break open the acid container, raise an alarm, and make sure the greenhouse is sectioned off.”

  Zofia yawned. She already knew this.

  “Correct.”

  “Tristan will get us both gas masks so we can keep breathing after we use Zofia’s chemical death trap, and we show up there again by the eighth hour.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so fixated on the greenhouse, though. What do you think is there?”

  “At the very least, it’s a safe zone for keeping the Horus Eye. But I think it’s more than that. Why else would all the guards’ guns be loaded there and not elsewhere? It’s a little too interesting,” said Séverin. “But I won’t make any guesses until after the midnight feast. Hypnos is bringing something precious, or so he said. Under Order law, he can demand that any object he deems important be immediately removed and taken to the House’s most protected vaults.”