Thuan’s feet felt as though he was stuck to the parquet floor. With his free hand he called up khi water—it came slowly, agonizingly slowly—and wove it into the pattern Kim Cuc had shown him, throwing it over the spikes like a blanket. The currents smoothed themselves out. He lifted his feet, trying to stamp some circulation back into them, but he couldn’t get rid of the hand in his.
“Enough,” Sare said. She turned, ahead of them, to face the group. Light streamed from her face, from her arms beneath the grey and silver dress she wore—a radiance that grew steadily blinding, a faint suggestion of wings at her back, a halo around her fair hair.
By Thuan’s side, there was a sharp, wounded sound like wood snapping, and the hand withdrew from his as if scalded. He didn’t wait to see if it would come back, and neither did his companions. They ran, slowly at first and then picking up speed—not looking back, one should never look back—leaving the darkness behind and heading for the end of the corridor, door after door passing them, dust-encrusted rooms, rotten paneling, broken sofas and torn carpets and burnt wallpaper—and finally emerged, gasping and struggling to breathe, in the grey light of the gardens.
They stared at each other. Leila was disheveled and pale, breathing heavily. Thuan was still trying to shake the weird feeling from his hand. When he raised it to the light he saw a dozen pinpricks, already closing. He’d never been so happy for dragons’ healing powers.
Sare stood on the steps of the wing, eyes shaded to look at the rest of the House. “Just this wing,” she said, half to herself. She gestured to one of the dependents. “Get a message to Lord Asmodeus.”
“He said—” the dependent started, with fear in her voice.
“I know what he said,” Sare said. She sounded annoyed. “He’s grieving and doesn’t want to be disturbed. But this is an emergency.” She breathed in, a little more calmly. “No, you’re right. Iaris. Get Iaris. She’ll sort this mess out.”
Thuan showed no sign he’d understood what was going on. From his briefings he knew that Iaris was the House’s chief doctor, and Asmodeus’s right hand, seconding him in his work of ruling the House.
Sare turned back to Thuan and the others, huddled on the steps, struggling to catch their breath. “We’ll find you some food until this gets sorted out.”
Of course. They weren’t going to be allowed to leave, were they? Just in case one of them turned out to be responsible for whatever had happened.
Leila withdrew something from her pocket: it was soggy and broken in half, and left trails of chocolate in her hand. “They’d have tasted great,” she said, forlornly.
“We can always do them later,” Thuan said. And then he stopped, as his brain finally caught up with him. “Where’s Kim Cuc?”
She. She wasn’t there. He hadn’t seen her since the hand had grabbed him in the corridor. A fist of ice was squeezing his innards into mush. Where. Where was she?
He moved, half-running across the steps, gently shoving people out of his way—a gaunt girl with the round belly of starvation, an older man from the factories, his clothes slick and stained from machine oil—no Kim Cuc, no other Annamite, not anywhere. “Older aunt!”
She wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere. She… he stopped at last, staring at the Houseless on the steps, at the grey, overcast sky, so unlike the rippling blue one of the dragon kingdom under the Seine. Gone. Stuck inside. With the children of thorns and the floorboards and whatever else was going on inside.
Stay.
No.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Sare, towering over him, with the remnants of the magic she’d used to extricate them from the wing, a dark, suffocating presence far too close for comfort. Within him, the khi water rose, itching for a fight, for anything to take his mind off the reality. But he couldn’t. Even if he’d been the most powerful among the dragon kingdom, he couldn’t take on a Fallen within her House.
“My friend,” Thuan said.
Sare was quick on the uptake. Her gaze moved, scanned the crowd. “Not here. All right. Is anyone else missing?” she called out.
It should have been chaos, but fear of what Sare would do kept them all in check. At length, after some hurried, whispered talks among themselves, the other Houseless established that, if anyone had gone missing, it was someone who’d come alone, and whom they hadn’t noticed.
Great.
Thuan looked at the wing they’d just come out of. The doors were a classic: a lower half of faded wooden panels, once a shade of purple but now just flaking off to reveal pale, moldy wood underneath, and broken window panes on the top half.
But, around the handles… faint and translucent, and barely visible in the autumn light, was the imprint of thorn branches. Thuan sucked in a deep, burning breath. “What’s going on?” he asked Sare.
Her face was hard. He thought she’d brush him off, put him in his place with the other Houseless, but he must have caught her at an unguarded moment. “I don’t know. This wing has been odd since Lord Asmodeus came home from House Silverspires. Since…” she stopped herself, then.
Grieving. Thuan thought back to his mission briefing. Asmodeus’s long-time lover, Samariel, had died in House Silverspires. He wouldn’t have thought the head of House Hawthorn was the type to mourn, but clearly he’d been wrong. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then chose his words a little more carefully. “They say he lost his lover, in House Silverspires.”
“Yes.” Sare was still in that oddly contemplative mood.
“Does this have anything to do with it?”
Sare’s face closed. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She looked at him; seeing him, not as a Houseless, not as a candidate to join the House, but as a person—a scrutiny he might not be able to afford, no matter how good his disguise was. “Cocky and curious. Who are you, Thuan?”
The only thing that came out of him was the truth. “I’m the one whose friend is stuck inside the wing. Assuming she’s even there anymore.” Assuming she was even alive anymore. Assuming…
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret later.” Sare gestured to the other Houseless, who’d fanned out on the steps. Someone had found a deck of cards, and a raucous game of tarot had started, cheered on by half the crowd, though the atmosphere was still subdued. “Now go wait, will you? Iaris has got a lot of experience at cleaning messes.” She looked as though she’d roll her eyes upwards, but stopped just short of actual disrespect. “You’ll be just fine.”
It was gently phrased, but it was an order. Thuan walked back to the group, and found Leila a little way from the doors, leaning on the railing. The éclair had vanished. He guessed she’d eaten it. Good on her, this wasn’t a time to waste food.
“Thuan. Did she—”
Thuan shook his head. “They don’t know what’s happening.” And neither did he. He eased, cautiously, into his second sight, trying to see what was happening with the khi currents. Wood and water, curling around the door; but weakened, just an after-effect of what was happening within the wing. And those same little spikes everywhere, like a field of thistles underfoot, but nothing that made sense.
“I’m sorry,” Leila said.
“It’s all right,” Thuan said. It wasn’t. He should have paid more attention to Kim Cuc, but of course he’d assumed she’d take care of herself, because it was what Kim Cuc always did. He squeezed her hand, briefly. “Why don’t you watch the tarot game?”
Leila made a face. “Not interested.” She slid down the railing, her eyes on Sare. “I’d rather know what they will do.”
“The House?” Thuan shrugged. He didn’t expect much from the House. They weren’t its dependents, and Sare had hardly seemed heartbroken to lose someone.