The House of Binding Thorns

by Aliette de Bodard

  Aunt Ha headed straight for the end of the docks, the part where la Villette Basin gave way to the Saint-Martin Canal. There were no ships there, and no quays, either: the warehouses went straight up to the water’s edge, with cranes that had been broken since the war, never repaired. Sometimes, boats would use the ground floor to unload their merchandise; but the basin never worked at full capacity, so there was little point in going this far.

  In the shadow of one such crane was a circle, and, a little farther away, Olympe’s canvas bag, torn and bitten through as though it had been savaged.

  Françoise tried to crouch, and gave up, sitting by the side of the circle instead. She was going to need Aunt Ha’s help to get up.

  It looked like sunken cobblestones: as if something heavy had touched the quay, time and time again—blurred, successive imprints, like a child’s attempt to draw. When she ran her fingers across it, she felt a slight tingle of magic, and an answering spark from within, even as the baby stretched within her womb. Fallen magic? Not, not only. There was something else, something she could barely touch or encompass, the same choking feeling she’d felt from the halberd.

  “Show me,” she whispered. She inhaled and, splaying her fingers across the boundary of the circle—nothing there but wet, slick cobblestones—thought of Olympe: of the smell of jasmine rice in her apartment, the rough silk tunic that she always wore, the way she’d walk through a courtyard or a street as if she owned it, expecting everyone and everything to defer to her, Françoise’s continued exasperation with her reminders to be more filial, more respectful. . . .

  Within her, magic bucked and surged. The cobblestones writhed like something alive, trying to throw her off-balance.

  As if that’d work, when she was firmly planted on the ground, with all the weight of her pregnancy. She drew on more magic, feeling Berith come alive within her, flecks of silver in her brown eyes, the impossible blue of a summer sky.

  Everything grew still, as if the entire world were holding its breath. The circle didn’t move, but a thin line shimmered into existence, the same deep red color as the New Year’s Eve lanterns. It led, unerringly straight, from the circle into the water of the basin, and continued through the water, toward the lock that closed off the basin. Françoise got up with Aunt Ha’s help, biting her lip as her feet skidded on wet stone, trying not to fall. She wasn’t very tall, and the lusterless light of the winter sun didn’t allow her to see very far, but insofar as she could tell, the thread went on, through the Saint-Martin Canal, and straight toward the Seine.

  She remembered Philippe’s conversation with Berith.

  There’s something under the Seine.

  Another power?

  Nothing you can tame.

  “Show me,” she whispered again, and poured more magic into the spell.

  Where it met the water, the thread buckled and reared, splitting, slowly stretching, as if some invisible hand were drawing a delicate tracery in the air. The temperature dropped around Françoise. The wind rose again, but it was tinged with the sharp, biting coldness of snowflakes, coming fast and strong, so that the canal, and the lock, and the ships on the other side of the basin, vanished.

  The light was still moving, still reshaping itself. A long, lithe body with stubby legs—indistinct, then sharpening into five-clawed paws—a scaly tail, dipping into the water, and, towering over Françoise, a maned head with a snout, the ghosts of antlers, huge, glistening eyes, their gaze transfixing her where she stood.

  “Rong,” she whispered, because there was no French word that would do this justice.

  Its long, serpentine body lay coiled around the circle. Françoise realized, suddenly, that it wasn’t finger smudges that had formed that sunken imprint, but rather the mark of huge scales pressing their way into the ground.

  The dragon inclined its head, held its shape for a long, agonizing breath, and then vanished like a burst bubble. The air smelled of wet, warm wind, an electrifying, impossible feeling. Françoise felt so full she could have wept.

  “Child.” Aunt Ha’s voice was shaking. “Child.”

  She didn’t want to listen. Legends had come to life in this city, in this place. Tales that had always been distant dreams.

  “Françoise.”

  The wet smell grew stronger. She looked down. Around her and Aunt Ha, a second circle was growing, like stains of ink spreading on rice paper. It was almost closed, and beyond it was nothing but snow, falling so hard and so dense that it drowned everything.

  “You have to do something,” Aunt Ha said, but her voice sounded oddly muffled, and even her body was pale, the translucency of snow, of jade. Vanishing. Taken away.

  Where? No. That wasn’t the issue. That—she tried to speak, but her gaze was drawn by the curtain of snow—it wasn’t just snowflakes, was it? There were things, moving within the dense whiteness, silhouettes like cardboard cutouts, serpentine shapes, swimming through the snow as if they were underwater. And, rising from the depths, the fragile, heartbreaking shape of a city: pagodas and large avenues lined with statues of elephants; a covered bridge, arcing over a canal; and lanterns dangling from coral trees—if she could reach out, she would touch them, feel their warmth in her hands, gather blossoms to her, and breathe in a fragrance that had fled the city a long time ago. If she could—

  Something flared within her: a sharp, stabbing pain in her belly. The baby. She was on her knees, with both hands doubled over her midriff, feeling the fetus within her kick and move and kick and move, and Berith’s magic flared up like a spike driven into her spine.

  Her hands were white, leached of color, as if she’d plunged them into the blizzard outside. Her fingers felt like something that didn’t belong to her anymore. And she was almost at the edge of the circle, her face centimeters from the wall of snow. She didn’t remember taking those three steps.

  “Elder Aunt!” She grabbed the other woman as she was about to step over the edge of the circle, and shoved her down, mercilessly, held her down, trying to keep her belly out of the way of the thrashing legs. Aunt Ha’s eyes were white and translucent, the color of fine jade or porcelain, shining with a light that was too pale and cold to be Fallen magic. Her face was . . . It was as if someone had thrown a gauze veil over it, every feature becoming blurred, insignificant—nothing but that white, lambent gaze looking through Françoise.

  Focus. Focus. Getting creeped out wasn’t going to help.

  Philippe.

  Philippe had said . . . Her eyes drifted, again, to the wall of snow. She saw mountains and hills, and the growing shape of a shrine. No no no. She pulled away, gasping, just as her feet were about to clear the circle. Her hands still held Aunt Ha. She couldn’t hold on for long; she was going to get kicked in the belly, or kicked down, or both. She had to do something.

  Philippe had said that when he’d been attacked on rue de Jessaint, he’d been helped by Berith. Anchored. How?

  Not much time, not much time, and she was running out of it, her breath running in sharp, short gasps, hanging in the air before her. The cold was going to get her, if she didn’t vanish first.

  Focus.

  Berith’s flat was her fortress. It was virtually inviolable, but she couldn’t leave it without sundering its protection and needing to start the long, painful process of building another refuge. And Berith had never said so, not in so many words, but Françoise suspected that was part of how she kept herself alive: by bolstering herself in her own dominion, rewriting the laws of magic if she needed to. It was, in many ways, a House of one.

  It had been there for decades, ever since the war, before Françoise met Berith. It had heft. Solidity. And all the magic swirling within her came from the flat, from Berith herself. There was a link between them. A hint that the universe wasn’t all snow and ghostly cities, and vanishing bodies crumpling under the assault of the cold.

  Berith. Françoi
se leaned, with all her weight, on Aunt Ha—sent a brief prayer to whatever ancestors and spirits might be listening, to watch over the baby—and called up everything she had within her.

  It felt as if she’d caught fire. Air burned in her lungs. Her heartbeat magnified a thousand times, joined by the second, weaker heartbeat of the baby. She was kneeling by Aunt Ha’s side, but Berith was by her side. Françoise couldn’t see her, touch her, but the sense of the Fallen’s presence was so strong it was overwhelming, like a hand on her shoulder, bolstering her, steadying her.

  She reached within her, fanned that fire, again and again, drawing on the magic Berith had given her, slowly, carefully unspooling a thread that started within her and went to the flat—no snow, no impediments, just a walk down the docks, into la Goutte d’Or, past the broken door, into that small, cramped courtyard crammed with debris, and up the rickety stairs, into the stale, familiar space that was theirs, the smell of rice and bread and of magic, and the plush blue armchair, transfiguring itself into the throne and the dais, and the bright, frightening figure sitting within it, lips shaping around the syllables of her name. . . .

  A sharp pain went through her like a jolt. It didn’t leave. It spread to all of her, centering finally in her belly, twisting as if a fist of flames were tearing at her guts. Screams, her screams. The circle, going up in flames with a sharp smell of brimstone. The veil of snow, receding, slowly, until she could see once more the ships on the other side of the basin. Workers, running toward them. She was still screaming; she couldn’t stop.

  “Child. Child.”

  She was on her side, vomiting, staring at people’s feet, her hands curled on her belly. Aunt Ha kept saying her name, over and over. The pain passed, leaving her wrung dry. “I’m fine,” she said, slowly.

  Water pooled between her legs. No, she realized. It was warm, and it came from within her, and it wouldn’t stop dripping. Amniotic fluid. She’d just lost her waters. Too early. Too early, and with nothing and no one to help her. She was going to be fine. No, she was lying to herself: she knew neither she nor the baby was safe. Ancestors, please . . .

  “Can you stand?” Aunt Ha asked.

  Focus. Focus. “I—I need to get back to the flat. Now.” Before the contractions started in earnest, and she couldn’t move anymore. “Need—to find the midwife.”

  Arms, picking her up, carrying her to a makeshift stretcher. The amniotic fluid, still running out of her like an unstoppable river; the baby completely still within her. Voices talking in Viet, overrunning one another until she could no longer keep them apart. “Too early,” she whispered, but nobody seemed to hear her.

  “We’ll get you back. You’ll be fine,” Aunt Ha said, and they both knew she was lying.

  * * *

  THUAN found the palace in complete disarray. Attendants with trays of food and bundles of clothes ran through the corridors, barely stopping by to greet him, and the few officials that he could find looked at him with something close to panic, before waving him on. Even the two cousins he met, who were usually effusive in their affections, wore grim faces and only sent him on to Second Aunt’s private rooms.

  Things have changed drastically, not for the better.

  What had happened?

  He couldn’t see any Fallen, so probably not a House invasion. He couldn’t see any rebels, either, and the walls hadn’t looked breached—at least, not any more than they had been before, crumbling into dust all on their own. He’d crossed the city on foot without any problems, stopping only to buy a steamed bun from a food seller at a crossroads. She’d been fearful and reserved, but he’d assumed it was because his accent and vocabulary were those of the court.

  If it was the rebels, it wasn’t anything as straightforward as an incursion, either.

  No use speculating. He needed facts, and it looked like Second Aunt was the only one who had them.

  She was not in her rooms; the attendants directed him to the ancestral temple, a little away from her private quarters.

  He found her burning incense before the effigy of her father, her back to him. “Second Aunt,” he said, bowing. For one long, stomach-wrenching moment, he thought she was going to turn toward him and show him eyes gnawed away by rot, and the decomposing face of his nightmares. But then, when she did turn, she looked much like herself, except that the makeup couldn’t quite disguise the exhaustion.

  “Child. It’s good to see you.”

  They embraced, her nose briefly rubbing against his, and a smell of sandalwood and brine enfolding him, a reminder of a childhood that was getting more and more distant by the minute. “I don’t have much for you,” Thuan said. He’d come out of Hawthorn much as he’d entered it, empty-handed and at night. He’d left a message to Nadine and Leila: as much as he’d wanted to say good-bye, he wouldn’t have been able to avoid the awkward questions that followed. The only things he’d packed had been the pictures on his ancestral altar, and the tangerines he’d set in front of them. It was those he handed to her now. “Here.”

  “Keep them,” Second Aunt said. She moved away from the altar, pulled one of the wooden chairs to her. Crabs scuttled under it.

  “Tell me what’s happened,” Thuan said.

  Second Aunt didn’t speak for a while. “I need to know,” she said, finally, “where you stand on the subject of women.”

  “I—” Thuan gaped at her. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  Second Aunt’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Your previous two lovers were a second-rank court official and a newly raised member of the Grand Secretariat. Both female.”

  “Yes,” Thuan said, slowly. It couldn’t be the lovers. The affairs had been short, torrid, and ultimately unsatisfying for both parties. No animosity that he could think of, unless one of them had changed her mind?

  “And before that, the minister of personnel, who was male at the time.”

  “Yes,” Thuan said, because he didn’t know what else he could say. “It’s not a crime.”

  “No,” Second Aunt said. “You’ll understand I’m only asking out of courtesy. I could order you, as both your elderly aunt and your ruler, but it would be messy and protracted. But, nevertheless . . . Are you over the passions of the cut sleeve?”

  Thuan was starting to have an idea of where the conversation was going, and not liking it one bit. He toyed with the idea of lying, and then gave up. The cost would be too high for the kingdom. “If I see an attractive man, and the feeling is mutual, I won’t say no,” he said with a shrug. “Same for women.”

  “Good.” Second Aunt leaned back in the chair, and watched him.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Thuan said. “But you said Cousin Dinh would—”

  “Your cousin was gravely wounded,” Second Aunt said. “It will be months before he can rise from his bed, if he gets up at all.”

  Thuan closed his eyes. Cousin Dinh, who’d always come up with the most idiotic plans, like when they’d sneaked over the wall to hear a famous courtesan recite poetry, and had almost fallen facedown into a bed of pebbles. Or hiding fireworks in their cousins’ quarters, a joke they’d paid dearly for. “What happened? Rebels?”

  “Yen Oanh’s men attacked the palace. They made off with prisoners. Your cousin was trapped under collapsing rubble, and by the time we found him, he’d suffered extensive burns, and broken what the doctors assure me is almost every bone in his arm.” Second Aunt’s voice was dry, emotionless, as if she’d spent all her tears already. “You’ll understand this seriously jeopardizes the alliance, unless I can offer an alternative.”

  Extensive burns. Thuan closed his eyes. Forced himself to focus. Cousin Dinh’s health wasn’t the issue at the moment. Second Aunt had talked of an alternative. That all sounded sensible, until they got to who the alternative was. “I . . . ,” Thuan said. “I’ve been spying in his House for months. Do you—” He stopped, before he ope
nly criticized an elder, but it was close. He knew exactly the fate of traitors in Hawthorn, and he would have only the faintest of protections once he was handed over to them. To Asmodeus.

  “I haven’t said I liked it,” Second Aunt said. “But I have no other choice. It has to be a prince of imperial blood—”

  And as Thuan well knew, his many cousins were almost all women, and there was only one such candidate besides Cousin Dinh: Thuan himself.

  Second Aunt went on, slowly. “I know you’re worried about the spying. But it’s commonplace. Part of the game we all play. Asmodeus has his spies in my kingdom, and I have mine in his. He knows the rules. And yes, he’ll probably recognize you when I introduce you as his new prospective consort. But he certainly won’t harm you at a negotiating table in the presence of half the high officials of the kingdom, not to mention my own.”

  “You mean he’ll wait until we’re back in Hawthorn,” Thuan said, sharply.

  “No,” Second Aunt said. “He won’t go through all that trouble. He’ll merely find an excuse to reject the alliance if your being in the House is such an unforgivable offense. I doubt it, to be honest, but . . .” She paused, shook her head. “As I said—he knows the rules. He’ll pretend he’s known all along, when he brings you back to Hawthorn. That you spied with his full knowledge, if not his outright blessing, because that’s the way things work. He’ll save face, rather than admit he was weak.”

  “I know,” Thuan said, more sharply than he’d intended. “I still—” He paused, bit his tongue again.

  “You don’t like it,” Second Aunt said. “Believe me, I don’t like it, either, child. But the stakes are too high. We need this alliance.” And Thuan knew it perfectly well.

  Asmodeus. Thuan closed his eyes, and thought of the power that had hooked claws under his ribs and pulled; of those eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, dry and amused. “Do you know what he wants? It’s not merely marriage, is it?”