The House of Binding Thorns

by Aliette de Bodard

  There was . . . there was a confused legend of Echaroth doing this once, back when she’d founded Hawthorn. House Montenay. A vague, frightening memory, a tale told to children in the dark. “That’s—”

  “No longer possible, sadly. The House has changed, in the centuries since Hawthorn’s founding. I’ll have to find another way. He sent you here. Presumably you have value to him.”

  “He’s . . .” She thought of Ghislaine, and Elphon. “He’s lost people here already. To the kingdom.” Had Yen Oanh already taken both of them, and sent her message to Hawthorn? Had Asmodeus known, when he had sent the three of them into the kingdom nevertheless—had he picked ambassadors he could spare, those who could die with no consequence to Hawthorn?

  “I know.” Yen Oanh’s expression was sharp, unpleasant. “He will have to risk himself, one way or another, for his subjects.”

  Dependents. “He’s not a fool. He won’t come.”

  “We shall see,” Yen Oanh said. “If he doesn’t come, I can always start making an example of you.”

  Of course he wasn’t going to come. He hadn’t risen to be head of Hawthorn by being a fool, and running after every dependent he lost.

  She was on her own in the middle of nowhere, with no help to expect, at the mercy of someone who thought of her as a pawn to be martyred. The link to Hawthorn flamed in her mind, scattering all her thoughts into cinders. She managed to remain standing, but it was a close thing.

  Madeleine. Run away.

  She couldn’t.

  ELEVEN

  No Easy Things

  TIME passed, slow and jagged and unbearable. They’d shut her back in the small cell where she’d woken up, and from time to time they would give her a bowl of rice with that omnipresent fish sauce. They might have meant well, but the smell of it alone turned her stomach. Light filtered through the door: she couldn’t be sure, but there were fewer meals than there ought to have been. They were starving her, so she couldn’t escape.

  Her cough, now unchecked by Iaris’s medications, came back, doubling her over whenever she shifted, whenever she tried to get up, her lungs once more feeling wrung out and bloodied, without any of the comfort of essence to make it bearable. And prayers came back, too, the half-remembered entreaties of her childhood, fragments of songs and hymns beseeching God for help on paths of darkness and valleys of death, begging Christ to have mercy on them. But there was no one there to answer, in the darkness. There was no God, because this was Hell, where all the Fallen were consigned, and they were all damned, too.

  The tracker disk was cold against her flesh. Was Elphon trapped here, too? She didn’t know. They wouldn’t speak to her; merely delivered the food, and took away the bucket in which she relieved herself.

  Madeleine managed, through sheer stubbornness, to chip a small hole in the barnacles that covered the oeil-de-boeuf window. Through it, she could see a pane of hardened, yellowed glass so thick she couldn’t even dent it, but she could get a glimpse outside. Of the wall, rising; of the stairs leading back to Paris, so far away she might be in another universe.

  Run away.

  The link to the House grew and grew within her, unfolding like a tree of thorns, every branch and every spur shoot prickling into her thoughts. She couldn’t keep anything together, couldn’t focus—could only hear the cool, assured voice in her mind telling her to escape, again and again until she thought she would go mad with its echo.

  Run away.

  One day, there was a commotion on the bridge of the wreck, a glimpse of coarse cotton tunics and the dark orange clothes of guards, and a familiar rippling in the air, like a memory of something she’d lost long ago. Fallen magic? Here? No, it was just angel essence, another addict Yen Oanh was dangling in a cage to die of exposure.

  Words filtered down to her: barks in Annamite, and then someone speaking French calmly, evenly. For a moment, a brief, impossible moment, she thought it was Hawthorn. That it was the House, coming for her, but the voice was unfamiliar.

  No one entered her cell.

  The noise eventually died down, and darkness fell again, on the crawl of her days and nights. The smell of fish, mingled with that sweet sickly odor of essence, had turned even sourer. She hadn’t thought it was possible, but it felt like it was stuck in her throat and nostrils, clogging her breath, gumming her eyes. She was going to be sick again, but if she did bend over the bucket, the smell of urine would be enough to make her vomit, anyway.

  She had to . . .

  She had to hold on to something. To remember—to—what was the point, anyway? No one was coming for her.

  She pulled out the tracker disk, held it to the light, fighting back a fit of coughing that bent her double, leaving the salty taste of blood in her mouth. The insignia of the House was faded and charred, unreadable; its beat all but invisible, as if it, too, were dying. It was cold against her fingers, like the touch of a drowned man.

  Clothilde had said she could feel Elphon. That she knew where he was. Madeleine closed her hands around the disk, willing it back to life, clinging to it with the stubbornness of a prayer.

  I’m here. I’m alive. Please. Find me.

  I’m here. I’m—

  There was no change in the disk, nothing to tell her it worked. Ghislaine had had one, too, and they’d lost her anyway. Madeleine needed magic, but she had no artifacts, no charged mirrors with angel breath she could have used.

  Nothing.

  Except . . .

  They hadn’t bothered to take away the box of angel essence. Probably they hoped she would inhale it all, and save them a struggle when they dragged her out for her execution. Yen Oanh had said it would make no difference, that the cell was proof against any Fallen magic she could think of.

  Madeleine took the box, weighed it in the palm of her hand. The smell of it rose, strong and acrid enough to banish the other, sickly, corrupted one. It promised power. Relief. Oblivion.

  He would kill her if she relapsed.

  If she did nothing, she would die here.

  Her hands were shaking. If she stopped to think about this, she would simply throw it all away; or, worse, inhale it all. She was an addict: as Iaris had said, no one had ever shaken the addiction. People just died of it, like the dragons in Yen Oanh’s makeshift hospital, which was nothing more than a house of death, a place to slowly slide away from the world. She knew all about those; she, who had hidden in House Silverspires for twenty years, waiting for essence to take her all the way into her grave.

  Madeleine set the box on the floor, well away from her. Then, slowly, carefully—Don’t think on what you’re doing, not now—she took a pinch from it, laid it in the palm of her right hand, and withdrew, fast. A fit of coughing made the world swim, but she ignored it.

  She stared, for a while, at the essence. The smell of it was rising, sharp, familiar, irresistible. If she closed her eyes, she’d be back in her old laboratory in House Silverspires, waiting for Oris or Isabelle to finish sealing flesh into containers. She’d be safe under Morningstar’s protection, where no one and nothing could touch her.

  And you could hold some in the palm of your hand and not be tempted to partake.

  No, of course not. She knew exactly what she was, and how she had come to this.

  She raised unsteady hands, cupped together, to the level of her nostrils; and, tipping them, breathed the entire pinch of essence in.

  Living fire, coursing through her, down her throat, all the way into her lungs and stomach—filling her up, overwhelming the smell of decay. She was held, cradled in arms of light. She could do anything, go anywhere, face whatever was coming with a wave of her hands that would summon enough power to blast away her enemies. For the first time in what felt like forever, she was safe. Not loved or cared for, but armed against the world, against nightmares.

  Here, now, for this suspended, blessed moment, she w
as not afraid.

  She needed to do something else. Focus. Focus. Her hands, now utterly calm and steady, picked up the tracker disk, wrapped themselves around it. Magic coursed from them, from her heart into the charred wood, sending a burst of magic like a clarion call.

  I am here.

  The wood beat, once, twice, under her fingers; and for a moment only, the hawthorn tree and the crown were limned in traceries of light. I am here, she whispered again, and every word seemed to shake the barge’s wreck to its foundations.

  She waited, but no answer came, and the disk grew quiescent again. No guards came, either, to burst in and ask what she thought she was doing. At least that was something, but Yen Oanh was right. The cell was proof against whatever she might attempt.

  The pinch of essence she’d taken slowly left her system; and the room became drab and corroded once more, every smell sharp and overwhelming, the rippling, dim light alien and frightening, a reminder she was far away from any kind of home, from any kind of help.

  The smell of angel essence still filled the room: she had forgotten to close the box after opening it. If she reached out, she could take the rest of it in one glorious rush. It was a small amount: not enough to kill her, but it would corrode her lungs further. It might make her insensate, sparing her what was to come.

  Yes, Asmodeus would kill her, but only if he found her. If he bothered to come, and she already knew he wouldn’t come. Whereas Yen Oanh’s threats . . . they would materialize. Yen Oanh didn’t need Madeleine, not even as bait; certainly not whole, not unharmed.

  Be sensible, Madeleine. That was the only thing that made sense. The only thing she could do.

  Her hands were shaking again, reaching out, almost against her will, toward the box, dipping into it and feeling the touch of magic like warm embers on her skin.

  Once an addict, always an addict.

  * * *

  PHILIPPE had braced himself for a number of things once Françoise had sent word that Hawthorn’s safe-conduct had come through, but an unconscious woman certainly wasn’t among them.

  “We’ll pay,” Françoise said behind him, stiff and formal. She and Berith had been playing chess when Philippe had come in, the board precariously balanced on Berith’s knees. While Françoise showed him the mattress, Berith had carefully put the board back on the table, tidying up the dislodged pieces with quiet certainty, as if she’d memorized the entire configuration.

  “Don’t worry,” Philippe said. He couldn’t ignore a woman in such a bad state. Ah well—it wasn’t as though he needed to eat much, or to pay for a roof over his head. World’s worst doctor when it came to actually profiting from his abilities.

  Philippe knelt by the woman’s side. She was mortal, not Fallen, but she’d been, at some point, boosted by Fallen magic; otherwise she would not have survived the battering she’d taken. Even so . . .

  Her posture was rigid, the arms bent inward, and the legs rotated and unresponsive, the soles of the feet flexed. Her hands were clenched into odd fists, fingers flexed as well, knuckles resting against each other on the chest.

  Not good.

  He sent a burst of khi fire into the body, tracking its progress toward the liver and heart, along the meridians. It dispersed after a scant handful of seconds, and the same burst sent into the eyes didn’t elicit a response. The pupils were dilated, failing to constrict. The pulse was barely palpable, but that wasn’t a surprise.

  He laid his hands around her head, slowly, carefully; sent the same burst of fire into her brain. It didn’t vanish, so much as echo hollowly within the confines of her skull, sinking down into a gradual silence.

  Françoise watched him with burning eyes.

  “Her brain is badly damaged,” Philippe said. He could try to operate, to reduce the swelling, but—he thought, again, of his burst of khi fire, fading—it would bring her scant comfort.

  “And”—a deep, noisy breath from Françoise—“there is nothing to do?”

  He shrugged. “Make her comfortable. Wait.”

  “Not for a miracle,” Berith said, from the chair.

  “Unless you can grant her heart’s desire,” Philippe said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. The woman was probably a House dependent, probably used to Fallen, the only thing that had kept her alive this long. He should not have had one ounce of sympathy for her.

  But you’re getting old, he thought, not without irony, because he didn’t, couldn’t age. More likely it was Berith getting on his nerves.

  “I need a ritual,” Berith said. “Consent, you might call it, though it’s a little more complex than that. Certainly nothing that could be performed on an unconscious woman. I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry, more like frustrated and annoyed. Powerlessness, things not going her way? How very Fallen.

  Philippe rose. “Well, as I said, you can wait.” He said, because he knew Berith was going to doggedly come back to the subject, “You don’t need to pay me. That’s not what I’d call a very effective diagnosis.”

  He felt . . . a little queasy, as if whatever he had eaten lay heavily in his stomach—a little irritable, but after all, he was going to walk into the House of Hawthorn with only Fallen magic to protect him and Françoise—and then he turned.

  Françoise was holding a bowl to him, with shards of something: a particular smell, a mixture of damp, moldy earth with the barest tinge of wood, the two khi elements entwined, and overlaid with a thin veneer of Fallen magic—a . . . a monstrosity so unnatural he could barely breathe. “What—”

  “She was holding it,” Françoise said, with a shrug. “I thought you would know what it was.”

  Not exactly, no, other than something that shouldn’t have existed. Philippe forced himself to look into the bowl. It looked like shards of jade: of a blade of jade, enchanted with that spell. And the smells of brine and the khi water were faint, but distinctive. “Dragon kingdom,” he said, aloud, before he could stop himself.

  Françoise stared at him. “Rong,” she said in Viet. “That’s a myth. Tales told to children, to distract them from the devastation of the war.”

  Things of Annam, which was long gone, long inaccessible, to her and to him? Six months ago he would have said the same thing with the same fervor. Now he just shrugged, remembering the smell of decay, and Ngoc Bich’s bitter smile. “There’s something under the Seine.”

  “Another power?” Berith asked.

  Not one that would ever be conquered or understood by Fallen. “Nothing you can tame.”

  Berith raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t intend to. I assume this closes the subject?” She gestured to the table. “Have something before you go. Françoise made these especially.”

  It was a plate of buns, not brioche or cake, but the steamed buns that Philippe remembered so well, with a faint smell of cooked pork and vegetables. They’d been closed awkwardly, some of their pleats bursting open during the cooking, revealing the dull gray of their filling, and they weren’t pure white, but the cream color of flour, with darker specks of grits.

  He bit into one. It was mostly bun. The filling, as expected, was small, salty and concentrated, with only the barest hint of fish sauce, but it was still a taste of home. He could have wept. “Thank you.”

  Françoise looked as though she didn’t want to let the subject of dragons go, but, with an effort, she laid the bowl down, and waddled to the table, where she helped herself to one of the buns. “You should visit Grandmother Olympe more often. She always has food.”

  Olympe, insofar as Philippe could tell, was undisputed queen of her little kingdom. No wonder she would get the best of everything the community had to offer.

  She had also told him to stay away from Berith in no uncertain terms, muttering a Viet proverb about unpleasant consequences, “For every seed, a matching fruit,” which was, as far as Olympe went, fairly transparent.

  Not
, of course, that Philippe intended to listen to her advice.

  Berith was sitting in her blue armchair, watching him. “Come here,” she said.

  He crossed the room without a word, to stand before her.

  “I’m afraid sharing breath is more effective,” Berith said.

  Philippe shrugged. Fallen magic was bad enough. Touching lips meant nothing to him.

  She smelled of myrrh; as he bent toward her, her dominion shimmered into existence again, the bookshelves and the impossible blue of that summer sky, and the smell of dry paper, the rustle of wind through pages. Something rose within him, like the storm of crows in his rib cage that had been the curse of House Silverspires: a warmth that spread to his hands and feet, that sizzled in his arms until he felt that his slightest move would crack open the floorboards and send thunder up into the heavens. Was this how magicians felt, all the time?

  He pulled away, with an effort, met Berith’s knowing gaze. “All I can spare,” she said. “It will wear off, never fear.”

  It had better. He had no intention of spending his life tainted by Fallen magic.

  “Ready?” he asked Françoise.

  She was wearing a silk dress and a matching shawl with faded embroidery: it must have been very fine, once, and very costly, but now the many holes in it had not all been patched, and the embroidery had unraveled, leaving the animals looking like half-baked monsters from a nightmare. “I suppose so.” She gripped Berith’s hand, so hard her dark skin went pale. “I suppose so.”

  They both knew neither of them could really ever be ready for this.

  * * *

  THEY took the omnibus to Hawthorn. As it left la Goutte d’Or and the Houseless areas around Lazarus, the crowds thinned. The hard-faced, thin workers in frayed clothes were replaced by middle-class shopkeepers and artisans; and then finally by day laborers attached to Houses, thin, haggard faces giving way to plumper ones, and patched clothes to the faded splendor of uniforms in House colors.