A tall, auburn-haired magician with an elegant dress in the House’s colors had arrived. She was huddled in conversation with Sare, a frown on her wrinkled face, fingering a filigreed pendant around her neck as if debating whether she should inhale the magic contained within. Leila watched them, fascinated.
Thuan turned his gaze, instead, on the wing they’d just come out of.
Kim Cuc would have joked about his inability to see further. She’d have teased him, infuriating as always, and told him to keep his head down, to not make waves. Better to remain hidden and safe, as the kingdom was hidden from Fallen.
Except, of course, that the kingdom wasn’t safe anymore, and that Houses Silverspires and Hawthorn had both encroached on its territory. Except that, like the Houses, they were ruined and decaying, and so desperate they had no choice but to send Thuan and Kim Cuc on a dangerous mission to infiltrate a House.
Stay safe. Stay hidden. As if that’d ever worked.
He crept closer to the handles. Sare was still in conversation with the magician, who was tracing a circle in the dust-choked earth of the gardens, while Sare was interjecting suggestions that the magician didn’t appear to approve of. Leila had crept closer to them, her gaze still full of that enraptured fascination.
Thuan’s hand closed, gently, on the left handle. The spikes of khi wood shifted, lay parallel to his fingers. His palm prickled, where the hand had held him, but nothing bled again, more like the memory of a wound than a real one.
He looked, again, at the steps. The Houseless were engrossed in the tarot game or in their own private thoughts, and Sare was still arguing with the magician. He could imagine what Kim Cuc would have said if she’d seen him. She’d have known exactly what he was thinking, and would have told him, in so many words, exactly how foolish it all was.
But, then again, if their situations were reversed, she’d still charge in.
Thuan turned the handle, slowly. Greased, it barely creaked as he pushed the door open and slipped, invisible and forgotten, into the wing they’d just evacuated.
Inside, it was dark. Not merely the gloom of dust-encrusted rooms, but shadows, lengthening as he walked, and his own footsteps, echoing in the silence. Doors opened, on either side, on splendid and desolate rooms, with fungus spreading on chairs upholstered with red velvet, and a pervading smell of humidity, as if everything hadn’t been aired properly after a rainy day.
And, as he walked, he became aware he wasn’t alone.
It was only one presence at first, but soon there were dozens of them, easily keeping pace with him: the same lanky, dislocated shapes of children made of thorns, their eyes glittering like gems in the darkness. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. It was creepy enough. Thuan could feel the spikes beneath his feet, dormant. Of course, he wasn’t trying to escape the wing. He was headed back into it.
He didn’t even want to think of all the sarcastic words Kim Cuc was going to come up with, after this one.
“Where is she?” he asked, aloud.
They seemed… made of khi wood and khi water, of old things and memories, cobbled together by someone with only a rudimentary idea of what was human. The khi currents didn’t pool around their feet, but went straight through them, as if they were extensions of the floor, and the only noise they made as they walked was the creaking of wood. “You’re not human,” he said, slowly, carefully, and again, there was no answer. It was a stupid thing to say, in any case. Sare wasn’t human, and neither was Thuan, and they were vastly different beings.
What there was, instead, was a bright, blinding light, coming from behind him. And loud footsteps, from someone brash enough to think discretion didn’t matter. The children scattered—no, not quite, they merely stepped back into the shadows, flowing back into them like smaller pools of ink rejoining a bigger one. Thuan mentally added that to his growing list of worries. Though so far, they didn’t seem aggressive. It was going to be rather different when they tried to leave.
“I told you not to do anything you’d regret,” a familiar voice said, behind Thuan.
Sare was alone, but, with so much magic flowing through her, she didn’t need to be accompanied. A pendant swung over the collar of her dress, shining in Thuan’s vision: an alchemical container she’d emptied for its preserved power. As she moved, the faint outline of wings followed her—an inverted afterimage, all that would remain after staring too long at blinding radiance.
He was in the middle of a wing invaded by magic, unsure of whether he’d ever be able to escape it, looking for Kim Cuc and with no leads whatsoever. He no longer had any room for fear of Sare. He didn’t even have room to worry about whether she’d choose him for Hawthorn. “Regret. You mean rescuing my friend? I think I won’t regret that on my deathbed.”
“That’s assuming you get a deathbed and not a violent death.” Sare shook her head, as if amused by the antics of a child. The sort of thing that might be borne by mortals, who were younger than she was and in awe of her. But Thuan was immortal and over three hundred years old, and running out of patience, fast.
“I thought you were waiting for Iaris,” Thuan said.
“I was,” Sare shrugged. “She might be a while, though. She’s currently entertaining the envoys of another House, and she needs to extricate herself gracefully.”
“Why are you here?”
“Curiosity. Also…” she shook her head. “We take turns administering the tests, every year. And because this year I’m the one in charge, I am responsible for whatever you get up to.”
“You don’t care about the Houseless.” Thuan was annoyed. Normally he wouldn’t have let the words get past his lips.
“No, but I do take my responsibilities seriously. And Iaris wouldn’t see it kindly if I were to lose two of you, not to mention an entire wing of the House.”
“The magician—”
“Albane? She’s preparing a spell, don’t worry. Now, you seemed to know where you were going.”
“No,” Thuan said. “They knew.”
“Who?” Sare turned, to look at the corridor. There was nothing but motes of dust in the dim light.
So she still couldn’t see them. And Thuan could. Which wasn’t good. A heartbeat, perhaps less, passed, and then Sare said, with a frown, “You’re not a magician.”
“No,” Thuan said, with perfect honesty. He had no need of angel breath or other adjuncts to perform magic, and he drew on khi water, a power Sare couldn’t see and wouldn’t be able to make sense of. But it wasn’t the khi currents that made him able to see the children, because the Houseless had also seen them.
But the House dependents hadn’t. Because of their magic?
Sare’s gaze held him, for a while. She couldn’t see through him. She couldn’t even begin to guess what he was. He was in human shape, with not a hint of scales showing on his dark skin, not a hint of antlers on his head or pearl beneath his chin.
At last, after what felt like an eternity, Sare asked, “What did you see?”
“Thorns,” Thuan said. “Beings of thorns.”
“Thorns don’t—” Sare started, then stopped. “You mean trees that moved.”
“No,” Thuan said. “Children. They were children. They said… they said the House would fail me as it had failed its children.”
Sare said nothing. Thuan considered asking her whether it meant anything to her, decided against it. He would gain nothing, and only make her suspicious. “Let’s have a look,” she said, carefully.
Room after room, deserted reception rooms with conversation chairs draped in moldy coverings, closed pianos that looked as though they wouldn’t even play a note, and harps with strings as fragile as spun silk, rooms with moth-eaten four-poster beds, bathrooms with cracked tiles and yellowed tubs…