Hypnos swiped his thumb across his lips. “Do I have something on my mouth?”
“No, not at all,” said Enrique, turning quickly.
Hypnos muttered something that almost sounded like: That’s a pity.
* * *
TIME MARCHED STEADILY toward midnight.
By then, Laila and Zofia had returned. They shared their findings with one another—the bone clock and the hidden Tezcat—and settled down to wait in the stargazing room. The chairs had lost some of their ghostly attributes, and everyone took a seat, leaving only Tristan’s cushion untouched.
In those final stretches to midnight, Enrique thought he could feel everything … From the heat vibrating off Hypnos’s hand, which was just an inch too close, and the glow of Zofia’s candlelight hair as she bent her head to inspect her newest invention, to the sugar crystals from the cookie Laila had snuck him and the cold of Séverin’s fury as he stared at the clock. Enrique, who had always dreamed about what magic might feel like, thought he had found it then: myths and palimpsests, starlight sugaring the air, and the way hope feels painful when shared equally among friends.
At the stroke of midnight, they slid the clock into position: six minutes past two.
Light burst across the room.
Laila jerked backward, but Zofia leaned toward the light. Curiosity flickered across her face.
“It works like a mnemo bug,” she observed.
The vision contained in the clock splayed across the room, blotting out the glimpse of the stars overhead.
A hall full of bones. Grinning skulls crowded together. Compacted earth where a great spiraled pattern like the logarithm floor of House Kore spread out across an abandoned auditorium. And Enrique thought he might even be able to sniff out the smell of that place regardless that he could only see the image of it. Great crosses made of femurs, and an eerie lake where stalactites dripped their mineral tears. Here, finally, was the secret hiding place of the Fallen House. The place connected to the Forged exhibition. The place where, somewhere, Tristan lay trapped in the dark.
Enrique didn’t know who spoke first, but the truth of the words brushed against his skin, raising the hairs along the back of his neck.
“The Fallen House is waiting for us in the catacombs.”
23
SÉVERIN
Séverin’s sixth father was a man he called Greed. Greed was a pretty thief with a petty trust fund, and often resorted to stealing. Greed liked to keep Séverin as a lookout while he ran his “errands.” On one such occasion, Greed broke into the home of a rich widow. He cleared out the curio cabinet, which was full of precious porcelain pieces and elaborate glasswork, but then he saw that atop the cabinet was a clock made of jade. Séverin had been standing outside, watching the street. When he heard the steady clip of horse hooves, he whistled, but Greed shushed him. He reached for the clock, only for the ladder beneath him to crash. The heavy clock fell on his head and killed him instantly.
Greed taught him to beware of reaching too high.
* * *
SÉVERIN PLACED A clove on his tongue, chewing slowly as he mulled over his information.
They knew where the Fallen House hid.
They knew what the Fallen House wanted: the Babel Fragment rejoined.
Everything else was just a matter of timing.
As the light from the bone clock dissolved, Hypnos sighed. “Technically, all House heads are supposed to report any Fallen House activity to the Order.”
“Technically?” repeated Séverin. “Technically, we don’t know if someone from the Order is acting through Roux-Joubert.”
“Which is why I said ‘technically,’” added Hypnos. “I have to report to the Order, but they never specified when I had to do that. I could supposedly do it after we find Roux-Joubert, when we’re sure that no one from House Kore was involved in stealing the Ring.”
“Sneaky.”
“I’m following someone’s example.”
“Do you really think someone from the Order would be behind this?” asked Enrique. “Wouldn’t they be betraying the whole point of the Order?”
“Never underestimate the human capacity for betrayal,” said Laila quietly.
Like the rest of them, she had avoided her usual seat on the velvet chaise lounge. Instead, she leaned against the bookcase, the train of her green silk dress tucked over her legs. Laila rubbed the back of her neck, her fingers disappearing behind her collar to trace her scar. She thought of it like a seam, as if it made her more ragdoll than human, but to Séverin it was just a scar. Scars sculpted people into who they were. They were scuffs left by sorrow’s fists, and to him, at least, proof of being thoroughly human. And then, unbidden, came the memory of touching that scar, how it felt cold as glass and just as smooth. He remembered how she tensed when he touched her there, and how he’d kissed the length of it, desperate to show her he knew what it meant and it didn’t matter. Not to him. Suddenly Laila looked up and their eyes met. The slightest color touched her cheeks, and he wondered if she was remembering too. She looked away from him abruptly.
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
Séverin forced his gaze to the others. “We infiltrate the Fallen House’s meeting location in the catacombs. We take back both the House Kore Ring and the Horus Eye.”
“I doubt he’d leave the Ring lying around on the ground,” said Laila. “Wouldn’t he be wearing it?”
Hypnos wiggled his fingers. “He can’t. He might have managed to tear it off, but it’s still welded to us.”
Séverin nodded, then added, “Looking through the Horus Eye will give us the Fragment’s location, which, assuming there’s no sign of House Kore’s involvement in the theft, we’d then relay directly to the House Kore matriarch. That way, the Order can dispatch people to protect the site of the Fragment and immobilize Roux-Joubert and his accomplice.”
“How are we entering the catacombs?” asked Laila.
“Through the normal route on rue d’Enfers.”
“But they can just escape through the hidden Tezcat in the exhibit,” pointed out Hypnos.
From where she sat, Zofia drew out the silver cloth and dangled it before them.
“No, they can’t.”
“Is that supposed to impress me?” asked Hypnos, horrified.
“This cloth is impenetrable,” said Zofia.
“It’s true,” said Laila. “She stabbed the poor thing.”
“Fascinating as that is, it’s still no bigger than a handkerchief,” pointed out Hypnos.
“I know,” said Zofia. “I can reproduce it.”
“A hundred handkerchiefs? I’m quaking.”
“You should,” said Zofia mildly.
“Zofia, if you can manipulate the size of the silver cloth, I wonder if you can play with one other thing.”
Séverin took out a mnemo bug from his pocket. It was small and lightweight and cold to the touch. And yet in its Forged body, it could hold the image of a mind’s eye and project it into the air.
“A mnemo bug?” groaned Enrique. “What’s that going to do? Record the moments before our inevitable death? Because I don’t actually want a souvenir of that.”
“Just trust me.”
“Maybe I could stay behind,” said Hypnos. “I could be a point of contact on the street or—”
“What happened to being excited about teamwork?” asked Séverin.
“That was before I realized how little regard you hold for mortality.”
“If you follow the plan, your mortality will stay intact.”
Hypnos looked highly suspicious. “What is this plan of yours, mon cher?”
Before Séverin could answer, Zofia struck a match against her tooth. “Crocodile teeth.”
The four of them turned to her. Séverin laughed. Zofia had guessed exactly what they were going to do.
“Great minds think alike.”
Zofia frowned. “No, they don’t. Otherwise every idea would be uniform.”
> * * *
BY NOW, SÉVERIN’S mouth burned, but he still reached for another clove. He wasn’t sure where he had first heard that the aromatic herb helped preserve memory. A hotel guest, perhaps, leaving a present for him on the eve of his or her departure. Now, he couldn’t stop the habit. Memories unsettled him. He hated the thought that he might have missed something, and he didn’t want time warping how he remembered things because he didn’t trust himself to remember without bias. And he needed to. Because only then, only with absolute impartiality, could he detect where he had gone wrong. As he made his way to the grand lobby of L’Eden, he combed through—for the thousandth time—his last moments with Tristan. Tristan had been trying to warn him of something, and Séverin had turned him away. Was it then? Did Tristan step outside and get trapped by the Fallen House? Did he try to knock himself unconscious when they showed him the Phobus Helmet, the way he used to when they stayed in the home of Wrath? Roux-Joubert’s words found their way back to him with perfect clarity and for a moment, Séverin wished the cloves he chewed didn’t work half as well: “His love and his fear and his own cracked mind made it easy to convince him that betraying you was saving you…”
Guilt curdled in his stomach. He should have listened.
Séverin stood at the base of the grand staircase that opened into the lobby, surveying L’Eden. Except Tristan wasn’t here, and Séverin was alone. Then, from behind him, came a thin and reedy sound.
“Mama?”
Séverin’s spine stiffened.
He turned and saw a young boy clutching a ragged teddy bear. Children rarely stayed at L’Eden with their parents. He had expressly forbidden any “family-friendly” allure and had succeeded up until now. For a moment, Séverin was riveted by the sight of the child. Where he went, he rarely saw young children. And he forgot that he had ever been so small, barely hip-height and utterly lost.
“Mama?” called the little voice again.
What had happened to the boy’s parents? Had they actually presumed to abandon him … here?
Fat tears slid down the child’s face, and Séverin fought down the urge to yell at him.
Why mourn those who didn’t want you? he wanted to scream. You’ll be fine without them.
But then a woman rushed past him, gathering the boy in her arms and laughing. “Darling, did you not hear me say I was only going to check with the concierge for a moment?”
The boy shook his head, sobbing, and his mother held him close. Right then, his jealousy was a living thing, settling into his heart, pulsing through his veins. Of course, the boy hadn’t been abandoned. Of course, he had only been temporarily misplaced.
“What is wrong with me?” he murmured, turning away from the sight of the boy and his mother.
Across the sea of guests, his factotum caught his eye and waved. Séverin waited at the end of the staircase, occasionally nodding his head in acknowledgment to various guests until his factotum appeared. In one hand, he carried a small box that he held at arm’s length. Distaste rippled across his features.
“Sir, we can easily find someone else to perform this … task.”
Séverin took the box. Inside, a handful of brown crickets chirped and jumped. “I would prefer to see to it myself.”
“Very well, sir.”
Out the corner of his eye, he saw a sleek cheetah bound across the lobby. “And please inform the Marchessa de Castiglione that if Imhotep eats someone’s poodle again, the hotel is not responsible.”
His factotum sighed. “Yes, sir. Anything else?”
Séverin closed his hands into a fist. “The guests with the child … tell them their room is under construction. Find them comparable lodgings elsewhere. The Savoy perhaps.”
His factotum eyed him suspiciously. “Very well, sir.”
* * *
AT THE ENTRANCE to Tristan’s workshop, Séverin pinched the gilded ivy leaf of the Tezcat door only to stop short.
He wasn’t alone.
Silhouetted by candlelight and bent over a glass terrarium was Laila. She was singing a lullaby, though not particularly well, and dropping crickets into Goliath’s cage. Now he wished he’d let someone else come. He hated seeing her like this … going through routines, settling herself into a life she couldn’t wait to leave behind.
He took a step toward the table. Around her gleamed the miniature worlds that Tristan crafted. Minuscule spires lording over a painted sky. Gardens where porcelain petals gathered dust. Amidst it, Laila looked like an icon. Her hair was pulled over one shoulder, and he imagined he could smell the sugar and rosewater sprayed at the hollow of her throat.
Not wanting to alarm Laila, Séverin set down the box of crickets. But he ended up placing the box near the table’s edge where it nearly slid and toppled to the ground. Séverin rushed to grab it, only to stab his thumb on a concealed thorn.
“Majnun?” said Laila, whirling to face him. “What are you doing here?”
Séverin winced and gestured at the box of crickets. “Same as you, it seems. Although you managed to do so without injury.”
“Here, let me,” she said, walking toward him. “I know he keeps bandages around here somewhere.” Laila rummaged through one of the drawers until she found a length of gauze and a pair of scissors. “For a moment I thought you might be the elusive bird killer on the grounds.”
Séverin shook his head. It was a pesky problem, but chances were, it was just a cat.
“I’m sorry to disappoint,” he said. He brought his pulsing finger to his lips, intent on sucking the skin as he would any cut, but Laila batted away his hand.
“You could get an infection!” she scolded. “Now hold still.”
She reached for his hand. Séverin did as she commanded. He held still as if his life hung in the balance. Right then, it seemed as if there was too much of her. In the air. Against his skin. When she bent her head to tie the gauze, her hair trailed over his fingertips. Séverin couldn’t help it. He flinched. Laila looked up. Her uncanny eyes, so dark and glossy they reminded him of a swan’s stare, bored into his. One corner of her mouth tipped up.
“What’s wrong? Do you think I’ll read you?”
His pulse scattered. She had told him before that she could only read objects. Not people. Never people. “You can’t do that.”
Laila raised one slender eyebrow. “Can’t I?”
“That’s not funny, Laila.”
Laila waited a beat, then two. Finally, she rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, Majnun. You’re quite safe from me.”
She was wrong about that.
* * *
FOR THE NEXT eighteen hours, none of them slept. Enrique spent so much time scouring books in the library that Laila had arranged for his bedding to be sent there. Hypnos was scarcely seen without a drink in his hand—the better to help me think!—and spent all his time corresponding with his own spies, accomplices, and guards. Zofia, meanwhile, lived up to her nickname, for she spent half the day submerged behind veils of smoke. And Laila … Laila kept them alive. Her hands were always working … pouring tea, offering food, rubbing tired scalps, grazing the edges of objects, while her smile stayed as still and knowing as ever.
One day, then two, and now midnight was nearly upon them.
Far away from the glitter and glamour, midnight soaked the gritty streets. Beggars slept huddled in corners, and skinny cats slipped around stone corners. Séverin and Laila walked lightly, their shoulders hunched against any curious glares. Séverin had never had any interest in seeing the catacombs. He knew that it was an underground ossuary holding the remains of millions. Cradled in its earth were the bodies of duchesses and aristocrats, plague victims, and those whose heads had been snapped off by a guillotine’s teeth. Countless, unnamed individuals who were now nothing more than ghastly halls and arches made from grinning skulls and cracked jaws.
Laila shivered as they got close. Slowly, she plucked off her gloves, then reached down to touch the metal fence surrounding the entrance. She
closed her eyes, then gave a tight nod. Roux-Joubert was here. Calm washed over him then. He thought of the stories he’d heard growing up about the underworld. The tale of Orpheus, who looked behind him and lost everything. He wouldn’t be that. He would descend and ascend, and lose nothing but a handful of time. He swallowed hard against the doubt lodged at the back of his throat and took the stairs. Above his head, a sign carved in stone declared
Arrète! C’est ici l’empire de la mort.
Stop! This is the empire of death.
PART V
From the archival records of the Order of Babel The Origins of Empire
Mistress Hedvig Petrovna, House Dažbog of the Order’s Russian faction 1771, reign of Empress Yekaterine Alekseyevna
We must be vigilant in the boundaries of our work.
We protect and preserve.
We do not pretend at being gods.
Our Babel Rings carry the power to reveal the Fragments, but some have forgotten that this power does not confer godhood. We might have been better served to call them wax wings. A reminder for those who wish to reach for that which they should not. There are Icaruses, Sampatis, Kua Fus, and Bladuds. Those who reached and failed. Their fall, the better to remind us. Their smashed bones upon the ground, a necromancer’s reading of the fate to befall those who forget.
The Gilded Wolves Page 25
