The Gilded Wolves (14 page)

“I come bearing gifts!” he announced.

Enrique didn’t look up from his book. “
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
.”

The five of them fixed him with blank stares.

“What?”
asked Zofia.

“It’s from the
Aeneid
,” said Enrique. “‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’”

“I’m not Greek.”

“Same principle.”

But when Enrique said it, a smile twitched at his lips.

“Are those our invitations?” asked Laila, looking at the handful of golden cards in his hand.

Hypnos fanned them out on the coffee table. “One for each of you. Except Tristan, who has to be there anyway to landscape
the gardens. For your invitations, I’ve arranged that you will arrive Friday in time for the midnight feast. You will depart Saturday at midnight, as Sunday is reserved strictly for Order members.”

“Perfect,” said S
é
verin. “In and out.”

“First invitation goes to our aging Oriental flower expert all the way from China, Monsieur Chang,” said Hypnos.

He held out the gold card to Enrique.

Enrique
didn’t take it, but rather stared at the card like it was a disease. “Are you serious?”

“I’m Hypnos.”

“Well,
I’m
not Chinese. I’m Filipino and Spanish.” Enrique took the card. “That’s terribly offensive.”

Hypnos shrugged. “Terribly convenient too; the matriarch of House Kore is obsessed with all things Chinese. Next, a card for the nautch dancer who is joining the titillating entertainment
troupe.”

S
é
verin shook his head. Laila might perform on the Palais stage as L’
É
nigme, but he knew that for her, dance—the classical way in which she had been trained in India—was considered sacred. Laila took the invitation imperiously, disgust rippling across her features.

“However, the dancers are not technically arriving until the day after the festival starts, so you’ll first have to pose
as a House Nyx servant.”

Laila nodded tightly. “Makes sense—”

“No! It doesn’t! Why does she have to pretend to be an Order servant?” demanded Tristan, rising to his feet. “She’s not part of the Order! None of us are!”

“Tristan, my love,” said Laila with dangerous calm. “If you get in the way of a woman’s battle, you’ll get in the way of her sword.”

Tristan sat back down, his face flushed.

“Oh, so
sweet
!” said Hypnos. “You don’t want her tainted by association with me, I assume. Fair enough. However, it would be unwise for you to smuggle all the tools you might require in one travel excursion. Far better, I believe, to separate the burden. What’s the saying? Don’t put all the baskets on your head?”

Enrique rolled his eyes. “It’s ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’”

“I hate
eggs. I like my version better,” said Hypnos. He pulled out the next golden card. “The next invitation goes to our government official, Claude Faucher. And, don’t worry, every guest is required to wear a mask, and as far as I know, I am the only member of the Order who cares to know what you look like.”

S
é
verin took his invitation, pushing down twinges of relief, guilt, and, though he hated it,
outrage. All this time and all that he’d done, and the Order had never once looked his way. His guilt was sharper, though. His mother’s Algerian bloodline showed only subtly in his features, but otherwise he could hide in plain sight as a Frenchman. Others could not.

“And finally, an invitation for the Russian Baroness Sophia Ossokina.”

Zofia looked around the room even though Hypnos held the
card out to her. “Me?”

“Oui.”

“I’m to be a
Russian
baroness?”

Zofia might be wandering in a cloud when it came to politics, but
under Tzar Alezander, Russia had no love for Jews, and
she
had no love for Russia.

“You’ll be grand,” said Hypnos, tossing the invitation into her lap.

With nothing left in his hands, Hypnos glanced down at them, unsure of what to do next. He clasped them behind
his back. It looked painfully childish. In the light, his emerald-studded shoes looked less grand and more gaudy. Everything about him had been so carefully put together. But it didn’t matter how well one’s clothes fit if the skin didn’t.

Not one of them looked at Hypnos. Or thanked him. S
é
verin understood that. He saw how each invitation flew in the face of each person’s self-image. But he also
understood how Hypnos had seen the scenario, how he had worked to ensure that each person could access the Ch
â
teau de la Lune without incident.

“When you are who they expect you to be, they never look too closely. If you’re furious, let it be fuel,” S
é
verin said, looking each of them in the eye. “Just don’t forget that enough power and influence makes anyone impossible to look away from. And
then they can’t help but see you.”

He didn’t meet Hypnos’s gaze, but he saw the lines of his shoulders relax.

“Now, as for the Ch
â
teau,” he said, bringing up the blueprints by mnemo hologram. The others leaned forward eagerly.

Hypnos’s jaw dropped. “How’d you get
those
?”

“I have my sources,” said Laila, smiling.

“Part of her useful legion of lovesick men,” said S
é
verin quickly. He didn’t
want to linger on the pining men in Laila’s arsenal. “Now, the mansion itself is nothing we haven’t seen in the past. Two salons, grand banquet hall, kitchen, dining room, chapel, crypt, and boot room. The matriarch of House Kore commissioned particular Forged
staircases that lead to the servants’ quarters, which will be challenging.”

The Ch
â
teau itself was situated on nearly fifty hectares of
land, and surrounded by a collection of smaller buildings. Squares of purple marked the gardens: the winter and spring orchard. A star marked the observatory. A leaf marked the greenhouse—a sprawling building—and a handful of blue circles marked the estate fountains. A red
X
marked the library. Their target for where the Horus Eye was held.

“These are the core features of the estate,” said S
é
verin. “Tristan, the only one of us who has actually been to House Kore’s country estate, noted that aspects such as the tent arrangements and entertainment pavilions change by the season. These”—he pointed at the alternating black and red dashes haloing the buildings—“mark the positions of the hired guards. A total of one hundred men and women with rifles. Every eight hours, the House is paying for
the guards to be switched out. Twenty incoming. Twenty outgoing. Presumably so that no one stays long enough to commit any unsavory acts.”

Enrique whistled. “One hundred guards? I don’t mind leaving parties with holes in my memory. My body, however, is a little different. I’m not trying to end up in the catacombs.”

“You’re assuming the rifles will be loaded,” said S
é
verin.

“They won’t be?”

“Only half, according to our man in the police force. Guess what two places they’re guarding the most?”

“Library and greenhouse,” guessed Zofia.

“Correct.”

Those were, after all, the two features that House Kore celebrated most. The entrance to its otherworldly gardens and its extensive collections.

“But we already knew that,” said Enrique.

“Also correct,” said S
é
verin. “But the half of the
police force assigned to the library are carrying blanks in their rifles.”

Enrique lifted an eyebrow. “And the half at the greenhouse?”

“Fully loaded.”

“According to the catalogue coin, the Horus Eye is in the library, though,” said Laila. “Why guard the greenhouse?”

“A mystery that only access to the greenhouse can solve. Tristan?”

Tristan had been oddly silent until now. When he looked
at S
é
verin, his eyes were rimmed red. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“I can handle that,” he said. “With the help of my good friend, the ancient and honorable botanist, Mr. Ching.”

Enrique groaned. “Ugh. It’s
Chang
. Wait, why am I even correcting this?”

“What about the rifles?” asked Hypnos.

Zofia waved her hand. “My designs are superior.”

“Also, how are we getting
out
?” asked Enrique.

“I can help with that,” said Hypnos. “I can invoke Order rule to ensure the matriarch must place something in her most well-protected vaults. She won’t be able to tell what it is, and it can be anything you need. Getaway clothes, et cetera.”

“Fine. But what about weapons?” asked Enrique. “We can’t just stroll in armed to the teeth.”

“True,” said Zofia, frowning.

“I don’t know how you’ll get
around that,” sighed Hypnos. “First, the matriarch of House Kore has to throw the party to keep up appearances, but she isn’t taking any chances on security after the theft of her Ring. Second, the entrances will all have verit stone, so weapons will be useless. Third, the Sphinxes will be present.”

At this, Laila grinned.

She winked. “Trust in cake.”

S
é
verin nodded, knowing exactly what Laila
had been working on to bypass House Kore’s security.

But Hypnos looked horrified. “Have a care for my figure,
ma ch
è
re
.”

It was a silly throwaway comment that had nothing to do with Laila’s plans. And maybe because of that, it stole a laugh out of S
é
verin. Behind Hypnos, Tristan looked stricken.

S
é
verin’s flash of humor crumpled.

He’d promised Tristan the Order would not touch them.

Now look
at them … Hypnos reaching for a cookie from the plate of treats Laila had made. Hypnos grinning with his two asymmetrical dimples, a smile that S
é
verin remembered since their childhood. Hypnos sitting among them … making them laugh even as S
é
verin wore that oath tattoo like a dagger pressed to the heart.

Hypnos took a bite of cookie and nodded approvingly at Laila. “Good plan! Now we can all—”

Cold washed over S
é
verin. “There is no ‘we.’”

The four members of his team exchanged glances of confusion.

He would have to be clearer. “Hypnos,” he said. “You’re employing our services for shared gain. You’re not one of us.”

Slowly, Hypnos put down the rest of the cookie. His gaze shuttered. When he stood, he didn’t look at them, choosing instead to brush invisible crumbs from his fine suit.

“Seeing as we’re in a business arrangement, I am privy to information about your progress and will continue to inquire about it,” he said tightly. “I will see you in three days’ time at the Ch
â
teau de la Lune. Oh, and S
é
verin—you have never been on the inside of an Order festivity, have you?”

Hypnos knew he hadn’t. If anything, it was a well-placed jab that
he
was on the inside while S
é
verin
would always be the orphan
circling for a way in. There was no point affirming Hypnos with a spoken answer.

“I should warn you now. It will be as if your eyes are seeing for the first time,” said Hypnos, smiling slowly. “And, if you fail at the tasks at hand or get caught, the last time too.”

Letter from Matriarch Delphine Desrosiers of House Kore to her sister, Countess Odette, upon her initiation to the Order of Babel

Dear sister,

I so look forward to meeting my new nephew when you come to visit! You asked how I feel having been entrusted with our family’s lineage, and I confess I feel a mixture of emotions. I feel awe, on one hand, for the sacred responsibility
entrusted to me. And yet, wariness … Do you remember the House that fell? Its name has been wiped from the records, so it is known only as the Fallen House. Father said it fell near the time when I was born, but he showed me a letter he received from its executed patriarch. He told me it is a reminder that we do not fully understand the depths of that which we protect. It haunts me, sister, for
the executed patriarch wrote:

“I cannot help but wonder if for all that we protect the West’s Babel Fragment from the public, we are also protecting the public
from
it…”

Zofia liked computing numbers aloud. Math calmed her. Distracted her.

“Two hundred twenty-two squared is forty-nine thousand two hundred eighty-four,” she muttered, climbing the marble steps.

In her hand, the golden invitation looked like a flame peeled off a fire. She traced the elaborate letters:
Baroness Sophia Ossokina.

“Seven hundred ninety-one squared is…” Zofia frowned.
“Six hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred eighty-one.”

Not as fast as she used to be. That numeral had taken her almost fifteen seconds to compute. By now, she should have felt calmer.

She didn’t.

In an hour, they would board the train for the Ch
â
teau de la Lune. By midnight, they would be seated at the opening feast. This wouldn’t be like acquisitions in the past when impersonating someone
meant memorizing a handful of lines. This meant hiding herself in plain sight. It would have been easier if she was still a sum unto herself. But S
é
verin and the others made her part of an equation. If she failed,
she wouldn’t fail alone. It was S
é
verin and Enrique and Laila, and all the weight of their hopes. It was Hela, who was acting governess to their pampered cousins, waiting for freedom.
It was the dream she clung to, that small image she replayed over and over … the peace of walking down a street and feeling as though she were no different from anyone else.

Such fragile things swaying in the balance.

Zofia’s hands were damp as she crossed the final hallway to Laila’s room. She had only visited Laila there once. She hadn’t liked it. It smelled too strong. And it was so colorful.
Not like the kitchens with their uniform shades of cream.

Before she could knock, Laila opened the door, her smile wide as always.

“Ready?” she asked brightly.

A wave of perfume hit her nose. Zofia scrunched her face, stepping back sharply, her shoulders rounding like a cornered animal.

Laila left the door open, disappearing into her room. She did not invite Zofia inside, nor did she wait
for an answer. From where Zofia stood, she could only see a sliver of the room. A hint of green silk on the walls. One window draped in linen curtains so the room was not too bright. Near the threshold was a little jade table. And on it … a perfectly pale and round cookie.

Zofia took a step forward and swiped the cookie off the plate. She wanted to step back immediately, but then she caught a
glance at the vanity table. Laila was habitually messy. Once, Zofia had tried to rearrange the kitchen, but stopped when Laila threatened not to make any more desserts. The last time she had been here, it was a disaster: pots of cosmetics on the floor; jewelry hanging from light fixtures; the bed not only unmade, but also asymmetrically positioned because Laila “liked to wake with the sunshine on
her face.” It gave Zofia chills.

Now it looked different.

She poked her head through the door. All the cosmetics on the vanity were evenly spaced apart, exactly as Zofia would have done. But there was an exception. One glaringly tall tube in the middle of an otherwise perfectly descending scale. Zofia’s fingers twitched to rearrange it.

Zofia glanced to her left. Laila was fiddling with a long,
black dress. Just ahead was another pale cookie balancing on a low trunk near Laila’s vanity. Warily, Zofia stepped inside. She padded over to the second cookie and promptly ate it. She felt … less terrible. But that might have just been the cookie.

“Nearly finished selecting your outfits,” said Laila. Now she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, fluffing up the train of the black dress. “You’ll
need four outfit changes between Friday’s midnight feast and Saturday’s midnight ball. And of course, you’ll have time to tailor them with whatever incendiary devices you deem fit. I think all of that should fit in your traveling wardrobe.”

Zofia’s traveling wardrobe stood at the back of the room. It was less a travel wardrobe and more of a travel workspace. When completely closed and locked,
it resembled tiers of embossed leather suitcases. When opened, it became something else. All the “suitcases” were attached and Forged to hold compartments containing a chemistry set, lock picks, moldings, vials of diatomaceous earth, iron filings, various acids … and dresses. A single piece of precious verit stone lay at the bottom, rendering it undetectable to House Kore’s sensors.

“You’re going
to be fine,” said Laila softly. “You have the bearing of a baroness. Now you have to believe it.”

Laila took the dress off the hanger, bringing it toward Zofia. Zofia recoiled. She thought of the women she had studied in the lobby. They looked terribly uncomfortable. All cinched waists and pinched shoes. Laughing at unfunny things.

“Try it on!” said Laila. “My couturier at the House of Worth
made it especially for you. There’s a changing screen right—”

Zofia shrugged off her apron, kicked off her shoes, and started shucking off her clothes.

Laila laughed, shaking her head. “Or that.”

Zofia knew that weighted sigh.

Her mother used to make that sound all the time whenever she thought Zofia lacked modesty. “Lacking.” Another word that did not fit. It was not as if she had some secret
stash of modesty and had used it all up. She had learned what was considered modest. Taking off one’s clothes in public? Bad. In private? Fine. This was a closed room which meant private. Who cared? Besides, she never liked the feel of too much clothing. And she didn’t understand why she had to be self-conscious of her body anyway. It was just a body.

All the same, Zofia missed the sound of her
mother’s sigh. After their parents died in the house fire, Hela had done her best not to fill their days with grief, but it seeped into the cracks of their life anyway.

“Tell me when you can’t breathe,” grunted Laila, pulling the stays.

“That. Makes. No. Sense.”

“Fashion, my love, just like the universe, owes you neither explanation nor rationale.”

Zofia tried to make a sound of protest, but
ended up gasping.

“Tight enough!” announced Laila. “Arms up!”

Zofia obeyed. Black silk shimmered around her. She glanced down, noting the perfectly round beads of jet that frothed at the hem like black waves. They were Forged too, and the waves rippled and pulsed down the fabric. Zofia’s mind latched onto the pattern.

“Not discovered until 1746 by d’Alembert.”

Laila paused in her ministrations.
“You lost me.”

“Waves!” said Zofia, pointing at the pattern of black beading.
“Classical physics has lots of waves. They’re a beautiful hyperbolic partial differential equation. There’s sound waves, light waves, water waves—”

The rest of the room fell away while Zofia talked about waves. Her father, a physics professor in Glowno, had taught her all about recognizing the beauty of mathematics.
How one could hear it—even the effect of waves—in something as complex as a piece of music. As she spoke, she hardly felt Laila pulling on the corset stays, sliding her feet into shoes, or tugging at her hair.

“—and, lastly, longitudinal and transverse waves,” she finished, looking up.

But it was not Laila’s face she saw, but her own, staring back at her in the mirror’s reflection. She did not
look like herself. There was black smudged on her eyes. Red on her mouth and cheeks. An aigrette fastener, with a white plume and gray pearls, pinned to coiled-up hair. She looked like the women in the grand lobby. Zofia reached up to touch the elegant bun on top of her head.

“You look beautiful, Baroness Sophia Ossokina.”

Zofia leaned forward, scrutinizing her reflection. She might look like
the women in the lobby, but she was nothing like them. If anything, Laila was. Laila, who was as elegant as a wave.

“It should be you,” said Zofia.

Laila’s eyes widened in the mirror. Her shoulders fell slightly. A pattern of sorrow.

“I can’t,” she said softly. “You remember what S
é
verin said. If you dress to the world’s expectations, it doesn’t look too closely when you steal from it. Though
I do wish I didn’t have to go as a nautch dancer.” Her mouth twisted on that word. “Nautch dancers used to be sacred in temples. Where I’m from, dancing is an expression of the divine.”

“Like at the Palais des R
ê
ves?”

Laila snorted. “No.
Not
like at the Palais. It’s not even me on that stage. Even if it were, no one deserves a performance of my faith.”

Zofia pulled at the tips of her gloves.
The right words kept hitting her tongue wrong. Laila looked at her, concern etched on her features. Then she reached out, cupping her chin.

“Oh, Zofia,” she said. “Don’t be sad. Everyone hides.”

ZOFIA WAS THE
first to board the train.

S
é
verin had arranged for himself, Enrique, and Zofia to occupy an entire block of suites. The others took separate transit. Tristan had left for House Kore’s
country estate yesterday to handle their landscaping, and Laila had gone with Hypnos, lugging with her a marvelous and gigantic cake that House Nyx would transport. They were all due to arrive at the Ch
â
teau de la Lune at the same time.

Once in her train suite, Zofia yanked down the window’s velvet drapes. Just looking at the crowded train platform teeming with people and engine steam made her
stomach hurt. Her nose stung from the char of burnt street snacks, and she was getting bored of those Forged posters floated along the platform. Each one advertised different parts of the Exposition Universelle, which would open to the public in four days.

Zofia plucked at loose threads on her dress. Across her lap was the walking stick she’d Forged for Enrique. It was hollow, polished ebony,
the top of it fashioned like an eagle with outstretched wings. Zofia sighed, wishing she could have brought her chalkboard. There was nothing to do except wait for S
é
verin or Enrique. Weary, she counted the cut crystals dangling from the chandelier: 112. Next, she counted the golden buttons sewn into the quilted satin seats: 17. Zofia was about to sit on the floor and start counting the carpet
tassels when her compartment slid open.

An old man with a hunched back stood there. He was bald, with splotches of brown on his scalp. He paused at the threshold of the compartment and bowed low.

“What do you think? Took nearly three hours to conceal my unearthly beauty
.
”

Zofia blinked. “
Enrique?
”

“At your service—” He started, looking at her. He paused, and Zofia fought the urge to nestle
farther into her compartment.

Be like Laila
, said a voice in her brain.

Zofia sat up straight, held his gaze, then did what she’d seen Laila do many times when she looked at S
é
verin—lift one corner of her mouth ever so slightly, but tilt her head down at the same time … wait, now she couldn’t see anything, oh, and Laila would sometimes lift up one shoulder—

“What on
earth
are you doing?”

“I am imitating patterns of flirtation.”

“Wait. You’re flirting. With …
me
?”

Zofia frowned. Why would he think that? She just said she was imitating the general strategy of others.

“Maybe I have the methodology wrong. I also saw women do this. Better?”

She relaxed her body. Then pretended there was something on her upper lip and licked it off with a slow swipe of her tongue.

Enrique blinked
rapidly then shook his head.

Shaking one’s head meant no.

Zofia shrugged and waved her hand. “I’ll practice later.”

“You … don’t need much,” said Enrique, his voice pitched lower than usual. He wasn’t looking at her. She must have been terrible.

Enrique took the seat across from her. Because of the hump on his back, he had to lean forward. The sun hit his face, exposing the faintest seam along
his cheek that belonged to a Forged mask.

“In the dark, it won’t look like a mask at all,” said Enrique, gently touching his face. “I checked. And I won’t have to go out into the light either. Apparently, my identity as an aging botanist means I’m also nocturnal.”

“So are skunks.”

“Splendid.”

At that moment, the train lurched forward. The walking stick on Zofia’s lap began to roll. She grabbed
it quickly and thrust it at him.

“Yours.”

Enrique reached for it. “Is it a prop for my disguise?”

“It’s a bomb.”

Enrique nearly dropped it.

“Don’t,” said Zofia.

“A
bomb
?” he demanded. “
Maybe lead with that?
”

“It’s a light bomb.”

“That sounds oxymoronic.”

“A light bomb in the sense that it releases a lot of light.”

“Oh.”

Zofia pointed at the middle of the walking stick. “It’s hollow.
The filler has a pyrotechnic metal-oxidant mix of magnesium and an oxidizer of ammonium perchlorate.”

“What the hell does any of that mean?”

“If you hit it against something, it will explode.”

“None of that bodes well.”

“And it will produce a flash that will cause your enemy to lose their sight for a full minute. Only use it in emergencies.”

“I figured, once you said ‘bomb.’”

Zofia pointed
at the hump on his back that he had strapped on. She had made the prosthetic last week after S
é
verin had designed a verit-repelling vessel.

“Give me the hump.”

Enrique started laughing.

Zofia tilted her head. “Is rapid disintegration because of an industrial acid funny?”

He stopped laughing. Every line of his body went rigid. He leaned forward, arching slightly as if trying to distance his
skin from the hump. “Is … is that what’s inside this?”

Zofia nodded.

“This is the kind of thing someone would like to know before they attach it to their body.”

The compartment slid open again. S
é
verin stepped inside, dressed in the attire of a government official. On his lapel, the golden Marianne emblem shone. A symbol of the Third Republic of France.