The Gilded Wolves

by Roshani Chokshi

24

  ZOFIA

  Two hours before midnight

  Zofia glared at her bed. On it were three different outfits. One was dark, one was light, one was covered in multicolored embroidery. She was aware, distantly, that there was more she was supposed to notice, but she couldn’t fathom it and so she didn’t try. Instead, she reached for the letter pinned to one of the sleeves. It was a list written out in Laila’s neat hand.

  Step 1: Zofia, brush your hair. I tried to help before I left, but couldn’t find you. Or did I see you on the western hallway near the wisterias?

  Zofia felt a stab of guilt. Laila had seen her. But Zofia had seen the brush and disappeared down another hall.

  Step 2: I laid out three dresses for you. The dark one will be the least distracting because there are no asymmetrical frills. The light one will be the most comfortable. The embroidered one is for if you feel nervous because then you can count the stitches while you’re waiting.

  Zofia brushed her hair and reached for the embroidered dress.

  Step 3: On your vanity is a pot of rouge and a pot of kohl. Use them only if you wish. Cosmetics do not mean that you need them. They can be anything you desire them to be. Enhancement, armor, et cetera.

  Zofia stared at the last step. She could not explain why it calmed her, but it did. On her vanity, she found the cosmetic pots Laila had mentioned. Zofia did not keep many things on her dresser beyond the wash basin and a clean towel. At home, she never spent much time on her face or hair. It inevitably ended up frustrating her, and she would simply turn to Hela for help. But Hela wasn’t here. Not yet, anyway. And if tonight went wrong, perhaps she never would be.

  Once she was dressed, Zofia double-checked the pockets and skirts. All her clothing had some Forged aspect to them, and the embroidered dress was no exception. Her pelisse was made of Forged sulfur silk that could burst into flames—perfumed so as not to offend the nose—and she had altered her shoes along with Enrique’s and Hypnos’s to include blades in the heel.

  In her drawstring reticule lay a mnemo bug and the silver cloth. Zofia fumbled, her hands damp as she tightened the reticule’s drawstrings. Just as she was about to leave her room, she caught a faint glow on her bedside table. She paused. It was a moonflower, Forged by Tristan to soak in starlight and serve as a night-light for those times when she got hungry and wanted to sneak down to the kitchens. Tristan was always working on botanical inventions the way Zofia already tinkered with new engineering developments. She smiled, thinking of the last invention he’d been working on: Night Bites. Projectile ink that could temporarily blind a person, much to Laila’s despair.

  Zofia touched the moonflower softly. These past few days she had taken to sleeping in her laboratory and had not left the moonflower on her windowsill. A scrap of light clung to its petals, casting a luminous pool on the wood of her night table. Carefully, she picked it up, then lay it atop the items in her reticule. Tristan was never without a flower, either in his pocket or between his fingers. He would need one for the ride home.

  Zofia walked toward the lobby. On the wall, the Forged torchlight seemed too bright. She rubbed her skin, scalded. Normally, she never entered through a hall where people could see her. But Séverin’s instructions before he left had been strict.

  Be seen.

  The thought made her nauseous. Zofia looked down from the top of the staircase. For a split second, the staircase did not appear at a slanted diagonal, but rather a steep fall, her body leaning off a precipice that fell straight to the floor. She swayed—

  “All right, phoenix?”

  Enrique was at her side, his arm around her waist. He removed it at once.

  “I apologize. I thought you were going to fall.”

  Zofia gripped the bannister. “I was.”

  Zofia glanced at Enrique. Like her, he had dressed with care. She recognized the subtle armor of his clothes. Her invention where buttons could turn to marbles and make someone slip. The silk square in his pocket could become an iron shield. But then her gaze went … up. To his face. She had looked at his face at least once a day for approximately 730 days, and in that time it had not altered. It was still an objectively handsome face. She had noticed the lingering stares that followed him whenever he walked into a room. But her awareness of his features felt … different. More heightened.

  “Um … Zofia?”

  Zofia blinked, then realized she had raised her hand to touch his face. She pulled her hand back, looking at it thoughtfully.

  “Your face is different.”

  Enrique patted his cheeks softly. “Bad different? Good different? Am I still handsome, at least?”

  Warmth zipped through the base of her spine. How odd. It was uncomfortable. But not painful. “Yes,” she said, and then took to the stairs.

  The two of them wandered through the crowd. In one corner of the lobby were Turkish princes sitting around a game of chess. A woman whose hair looked like a sheet of ink drifted past them, her bright red sleeves touching the floor. The concierge desk was a circle of chaos. Room keys zipped through the crowd, knocking against the wrists of guests like dogs eager for a treat.

  “How long do we have to stay here?” asked Zofia.

  “Just until the clock strikes ten.”

  Zofia glanced up at the large grandfather clock near the entrance of L’Eden. Ten minutes to go.

  “Where’s Hypnos?”

  “Ask and you shall receive, ma chère.”

  Hypnos appeared at their side dressed in a bright purple, velvet coat. He waved his fingers. His Babel Ring twinkled there.

  “You’re flaunting it!” Enrique scolded.

  “Relax, it’s fake.”

  Zofia eyed him. Where had Hypnos hidden his, then? A patriarch or matriarch could never be without their Ring because it was welded to them.

  Enrique made a huffing sound.

  “Fine. What about the rest of you? What are you wearing?” he demanded. “Séverin said go for subtlety.”

  “Someone might recognize me. And if they do, then dressing with subtlety would only attract more attention—it’s that unusual. Besides, I’m wearing all my accoutrements of good luck.” Hypnos lifted the inside of his lapel, revealing massive brooches made of cut jewels. “A good deal of my inheritance if I’m being honest—”

  “You look like an insect!”

  Hypnos fluttered his hand to his chest. “How rude! Zofia, am I an insect?”

  Zofia shook her head.

  “Thank you—”

  “You don’t have the characteristics necessary to be an insect,” she said. “You would need two pairs of wings, a body segmented into three parts, and six legs to be an insect.”

  She had learned that from Tristan.

  Enrique burst into laughter.

  When the clock struck ten, the three of them piled into a carriage. The drive to the Exposition Universelle was short, and when they stepped out, the crowd had formed a thick press along the Champs-de-Mars. Lightbulbs flashed up and down the Eiffel Tower, and fireworks spangled the night sky. Zofia pushed through the crowd, feeling that edge of panic rising in her lungs. People hemmed her in on all sides. She couldn’t even see the road, and they had hardly taken five steps—

  “Make way!” shouted Hypnos, prodding at people with his walking stick.

  Enrique looked horrified. He shaded his face with his hand. And then, Hypnos sighed.

  “Be that way.” He unscrewed the top of his walking stick. “Cover your mouth and nose, my dears.”

  Zofia did not see anything, but she felt a fine mist against her skin. One by one, people’s noses wrinkled, and they took a step away from Hypnos, clearing a path down to the exhibition. When they had gotten through to the other side, Hypnos stoppered the stick and smiled.

  “I hired a Forging artist with mind affinity to make a people repellent. Sadly, it doesn’t last longer than a minute, but it makes for a delightfully useful walking stick.”

  Enrique looked envious. “Well, my wa
lking stick emits a bright light.”

  Zofia felt a flare of pride. She had designed that stick.

  Hypnos lifted his chin. “Mine can…”

  Zofia ignored them. She had no interest in listening to two boys compare their sticks.

  Past the streets teeming with vendors hawking souvenirs and cafés boasting exotic offerings loomed the glass and metal archway of the Galerie des Machines, a testament to the inventions that would usher them into the new century. And right beside it, the Exhibition on Colonial Superstitions. Earlier, Hypnos had planted House Nyx guards at the exhibit, and when the guards saw them, they stepped aside and granted them entry. The place was empty at this time of night, with most of the tourists having abandoned the exhibits to see the fireworks shooting off the sides of the Eiffel Tower.

  As before, neat rows of illuminated podiums striped the floor. On each of the podiums were written descriptions of the Forged object on display and the country of its origin. Zofia reached for the mnemo bug in her reticule.

  The wall concealing the hidden Tezcat door towered above Zofia. At barely four feet eleven inches she was not unaccustomed to feeling small, but it was what stood on the other side of the Tezcat that shrank her. She had beheld the secrets hidden in the bone clock. The ossified auditorium covered in what looked like a gigantic logarithmic spiral. Bones pressed into the walls.

  On most acquisitions, she was off to the side or hiding in their final meeting location and running interference as needed. Never at the forefront. Never the one controlling the aspects. Zofia swallowed hard against that lump of misgiving. Things changed. Tristan needed her. She would not fail him.

  The silver cloth that had taken hours to Forge slid from her hands to the floor. Zofia gathered herself, looking at her sleeves and counting the neat, embroidered stitches until a pleasant hum ensnared her thoughts. At the two ends of the wall crouched Hypnos and Enrique.

  Zofia pretended to look at one of the objects on the podium. And then, under her breath, she muttered a single word: “Go.”

  Hypnos and Enrique reached for the opposite ends of the silver cloth, now adhered to the length of the entire stone wall. The cloth itself was invulnerable to matter, but it could still be torn from a wall, and so she’d lined the fabric with Forged adhesive. Even if someone were to come in after they left, they wouldn’t be able to take it down from this side of the wall.

  As one, they clicked their heels together. The Forged stilts concealed in their shoes unclasped, shooting them straight into the air. The silver cloth stretched out from the ground, like a waterfall pouring upward until it covered the entire wall.

  That done, Zofia reached for the mnemo bug. She rubbed the small button on the right wing. Every time her skin brushed against it, she felt a buzzing trill zip through her veins. Though the mechanics of the bug required an affinity for matter, its internal mechanism used affinity of the mind. The object was linked to how her brain processed an image, and with that image, it could then project the “mind’s eye” into hologram form.

  “What shall I do, pretty?” asked Hypnos. “Sing? Dance?”

  “Why do I have to be in the view of the mnemo bug?” asked Enrique. “Can’t I just be off to the side?”

  “What would Séverin do?”

  “Probably glower attractively and stare into space.”

  “And chew a clove,” said Zofia.

  Enrique grinned. “Definitely that.”

  “Now?” asked Hypnos.

  “Not yet,” said Zofia. They had to get the timing perfectly right, otherwise Séverin and Laila might be exposed.

  Around them, the clock struck eleven.

  Zofia adjusted the lens, then said, “Start posing.”

  25

  LAILA

  One hour before midnight

  Laila’s foot slipped on the slick floor of the catacombs. Her pulse turned jagged in her ears. Slowly, she felt her way through the dark. Up ahead, she could just make out Séverin. A tall, imposing shape that cut through the thick shadows of the bone-warped halls.

  Laila did not dare to touch the bones lining the walls around her. She had never tested her ability against a skull. In India, the dead were cremated. Legend went that those who weren’t properly buried became bhuts, or ghosts. Though she knew she couldn’t read anything living, she didn’t want to take her chances with the dead.

  Above her, coin-shaped carvings in the ceilings cast green light onto the floor. Laila shuddered, thinking of the warning at the entrance to the catacombs.

  Arrête! C’est ici l’empire de la mort.

  Stop! This is the empire of death.

  She could barely stand to look at this place. Even the air offended her. It had the unstirred and cold texture of a sepulchre, and she could feel it frosting her throat with every inhale. As she turned a corner, she saw a child-sized skull and nearly vomited. Everything reeked of a cost to be paid, and Laila did not know what had been the cost of her existence. Is that what the jaadugar had used when he crafted her body?

  “Here,” whispered Séverin.

  Laila crept up beside him. The closer she got, the more she felt as though a hand had pressed down on her thoughts. When they had seen the Fallen House’s location revealed in the bone clock, it had imparted more than just an image, it had given knowledge. Laila shook her head. She didn’t like how it felt, like something parasitic sitting on her thoughts, tugging the very reins of her mind.

  Now, beside Séverin, she thought there had to be a mistake. There was nothing but another shelf of bones, this one hammered into an archway with a row of grinning skulls teetering at its apex. A faint slit of light shone through the hollows of skull eyes. Laila held her breath as Séverin placed his hand to the wall of bone. His hand disappeared, sinking to his wrist.

  “Another Tezcat,” he said. A ferocious grin split his face. “And it’s not even protected.”

  The Fallen House had relied on the secrecy of their location and not much else. Not once when she and Séverin had walked down the halls and held out their Forging devices had they picked up even a hint of additional security.

  “Ready?”

  Laila nodded. Séverin’s main task was to find Tristan. As for her, all she had to do was read the room. Literally. Somewhere on the other side lay not only the Babel Ring of House Kore, but also the Horus Eye stolen from the subterranean library. After that, Hypnos could relay the information to the Order, and Roux-Joubert and his accomplice would be stopped.

  “I’ll go first,” said Séverin.

  For a moment, Laila wanted to stop him. This place unnerved her. But maybe it was superstition. In the end, she watched him sink into that wall of bone, her heartbeat ringing loudly in her ears.

  Laila waited a beat. Her hand brushed against the small satchel at her hip. She drew it aside, removing the small knife strapped to her thigh. She inhaled deep, her body recoiling at the sensation of damp air, and then walked straight through the wall.

  On the other side lay the auditorium, identical to the one the bone clock had shown them. Dirt terraces carved into the wall, sloping downward into a wide stage. The stage itself reminded her of a snail’s shell. A strange whorl grooved deep into the earth. When they had first glimpsed it in the bone clock’s projection, Zofia had mused that it was another logarithmic spiral and then launched into an explanation that Laila completely tuned out. Séverin, though, thought it was something else. A mechanized pathway, not unlike a waterwheel activated by the churning of a liquid, or the fireball that traveled in a corkscrew pattern back in House Kore. But they had no clues about what it was supposed to lead to. Behind the stage, tattered scarlet curtains hung from the ceiling, utterly still. Faded, golden embroidery covered the scarlet drapes. The symbols of the four Houses of France. An ouroboros—a snake biting its own tail—edged the curtain. House Vanth. A crescent moon shaped like a pale and ghastly grin hovered in the center. House Nyx. Thorns and tightly furled buds crosshatched the space between the snake and the moon. House Ko
re. And within the snake, six points touching the scaled body, a giant hexagram. The Fallen House. Behind those curtains, guessed Laila, must be the entrance to the Exhibit on Colonial Superstitions. Laila tried not to think about Hypnos, Enrique, and Zofia. How close they were and how unreachable. She murmured a prayer as she scanned the rest of the view.

  To the left of the stage was a shut door. Laila could just make out the sound of someone playing a violin and another person talking in low murmurs. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, but she didn’t panic. This was as they had planned. Naturally, Roux-Joubert and his associate would be there. In an hour, they’d step through the Tezcat, presumably to take Hypnos’s Babel Ring before returning to the catacombs. A flicker of movement to the right of the stage caught Laila’s attention. She reached for the dagger at her hip. At the same time, Séverin grabbed her hand, his grip like steel.

  Tristan.

  He was slumped over in a chair. The Phobus Helmet still wrapped around his forehead. Even from a distance, Laila could make out a flash of blue flickering across the glass like sparks of lightning. Her gaze flew across his body. To his white-knuckled clench on the armrests. The brittle way he held his legs, straight out and locked. Laila squeezed her eyes shut, forcing back the tears that prickled.

  “Why haven’t they taken off that cursed thing?” he asked hoarsely. “Why are they still hurting him?”

  She didn’t have an answer to that …

  “We’ll take it off. It’ll be over soon.”

  Séverin paled, but he managed a curt nod. Laila forced herself to look beyond Tristan’s face and to the area surrounding him. There was a large workshop table, strewn with mechanical bits—the ends of tools, a wooden awl, a jar of buttons. And then, sitting on a scrap of velvet … the Horus Eye. Something else gleamed just beyond it. It was too far to tell, but that blue sheen raised her spirits. It might be the Babel Ring.

  Séverin held out his hand. Laila dug through the satchel. Next to a small pouch of Tristan’s Night Bites lay a tiny snuffbox. She opened it, revealing a new and precious supply of mirror powder. Séverin took a pinch, dusting his hands and touching the dirt floor. His image rippled, melding in with the terrace. As he moved, it looked as if there was an invisible bump on the terrain, traveling quickly down the slope. Laila did the same, then raced down the steps. Even with the Forged muffling bells, she went on tiptoe. A dancer’s instinct to move with precision. The ground beneath them was slick, covered in grime and gravel. All it would take was one fall and then the landslide of pebbles would give away their location.