The Gilded Wolves (15 page)

“Thank you for letting me know I was
strapping
acid
to my back when you gave me the hump.”

S
é
verin started laughing.

Zofia crossed her arms. She hated when she didn’t get the joke. She wished Laila were here.

“What’s so funny about disintegration?”

“Nothing,” said S
é
verin. He wiped at his eye. “I needed that. Give it to her. She’ll show you.”

Scowling, Enrique took off his jacket, unstrapped the hump, then handed it to Zofia.
Zofia took out one of her hairpins and gently pried it open.

“I need one of those—” started Enrique.

“It’s hidden in the heel of your shoe,” said Zofia. “Just click them together and it will pop out.”

Enrique let out a whistle. “First, the walking stick. Then the acid. Now this. Not to mention what you do with numbers. I like how you think, Zofia.”

Zofia paused, the pin still in her hand.
No one had ever said that to her before. In fact, the way she thought was usually the thing that got her into trouble in the first place.

She frowned. “You do?”

Enrique smiled. A real smile. She knew it was real because he always smiled like that when Laila snuck him a second helping of cake.

“I do.”

I do
.

Zofia returned to the hairpin and lock, but something fluttered low in her stomach.
The hump opened with a small
pop
, revealing a glass tube on a velvet bed.

“Piranha solution,” said S
é
verin. “It’s what you’re going to use when you’re escorted to the greenhouse as Monsieur Ching—”

“It’s
Chang
!”

“
Chang
, my apologies. Point is, you’re going to get us started. Tell me what you’re doing.”

“This isn’t my first—”

“Enrique.”

“Hmpf.” Enrique crossed his arms. “We arrive at Ch
â
teau de la Lune before midnight. You, Zofia, and Hypnos go off and feast and do what rich people do, even though I’m an honored botanist who has traveled over many,
many
oceans and—”

“Enrique.”

“—and then we meet in your rooms and do a final rundown. Between the hours of three
A.M.
and four
A.M
., me and Tristan meet in the greenhouse. Then we break open the acid container, raise an alarm, and
make sure the greenhouse is sectioned off.”

Zofia yawned. She already knew this.

“Correct.”

“Tristan will get us both gas masks so we can keep breathing
after we use Zofia’s chemical death trap, and we show up there again by the eighth hour.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know why you’re so fixated on the greenhouse, though. What do you think is there?”

“At the very least, it’s a safe zone for keeping
the Horus Eye. But I think it’s more than that. Why else would all the guards’ guns be loaded there and not elsewhere? It’s a little too interesting,” said S
é
verin. “But I won’t make any guesses until after the midnight feast. Hypnos is bringing something precious, or so he said. Under Order law, he can demand that any object he deems important be immediately removed and taken to the House’s most
protected vaults.”

“The library,” said Zofia.

“Exactly. The House Kore matriarch will have no choice but to put away whatever it is. While Hypnos does that, I’m going to be tailing him and the House Kore matriarch.” S
é
verin removed his tin of cloves from his jacket pocket and popped one into his mouth. “Zofia. Tell him how the piranha solution works.”

“It’s hydrogen chloride and sulfuric acid,
so the chemical process is fairly simple—”

“Not that way, Zofia.”

She pointed at the glass vial. “I’ve Forged the glass with levitating titanium. All you have to do is break it, then throw it into the air of the greenhouse. It will fall slowly and spray acid from top to bottom. But once you break it, don’t let it touch your skin. Unless you want to disintegrate.”

She started laughing.

S
é
verin
and Enrique stared at her.

“See?” she said. “It’s like your joke earlier! Disintegrating!”

“Oh, Zofia,” sighed S
é
verin.

He glanced at his watch, his mouth flattening. “I need to take care
of some things. I’ll see you when we exit. Separate carriages for all of us.”

As they approached the Ch
â
teau de la Lune, the silvery mist reminded Zofia of the light that split the metal Sator Square. She
remembered how it felt to watch the letters of the Sator Square slide back and forth, how the numbers had aligned perfectly into a repetition of zeroes and ones. Enrique had called mathematics the language of the divine. When she thought about the power of the Horus Eye, her skin crawled. What it could
do
did not seem within human grasp, but that was the thing about numbers. They weren’t like
people, who could say one thing and do another. They weren’t like riddles of social mannerisms or conversations.

Numbers never lied.

W
hen S
é
verin turned eleven, Envy and Clotilde gave them up, and Tristan and S
é
verin moved into the home of their fourth father: Gluttony.

Gluttony was S
é
verin’s favorite father. Gluttony made funny faces and told funnier stories. Gluttony discarded garments after one day of wearing them. He threw cake with mild imperfections onto the streets. Jewels in storefronts disappeared
almost as fast as he smiled. Gluttony had nothing to his name but a dusty, aristocratic title and some fallow land in the countryside. But this did not bother him.

“Aristocracy is just a fancy word for thievery, my dear wallets. I am simply embodying what I was innately born with, you see?”

He did not call S
é
verin and Tristan by name because he preferred to call children as he saw them. But
names or no, he fed them regularly, found them tutors and even a Forging affinity specialist for Tristan. Tristan loved Gluttony, for he read him poetry at night and promised that he could reshape the world as he saw fit. S
é
verin loved Gluttony because he stoked a hunger within him.

The tutors may have fed him languages and history, but Gluttony taught him diction and how to recognize the accent
of wealth. He taught him how to level a man with a turn of phrase, how to order dishes and send them back. He taught him about terroir in wine and the godliness of a dish that satisfied all the senses.

“It’s not just the fat, acidity, and salt, my dear wallet. It’s about devouring it with your eyes, licking flavors with your sight. And you must never underestimate the importance of presentation.”

He taught him how to eat and how to hunger for things out of reach and how to steal without ever looking like you lack for something. He taught him all his tricks and all he knew until the day he took his nightly fifty-year-old aged tawny port with a dash of rat poison. At his funeral, S
é
verin stole a bottle of champagne from Gluttony’s favorite restaurant and left it on his grave.

Of all his
fathers, he thought of Gluttony the most.

“Half of winning, my dear wallet, is simply looking victorious.”

S
É
VERIN, ENRIQUE, AND
zofia stood before the train doors. Outside the windows lay true night. Not the hesitant midnight of Paris, where gas lamps and trapped steam smudged the stars and threw the city into eternal dusk. S
é
verin could smell the countryside. Sweet grass and loam, the spring
season too young to melt winter out of the air.

Beside S
é
verin, Enrique touched his false mustache.

“Am I pretty?” asked Enrique, plucking at his fake beard and patting his hands over his jowls, wrinkles, and age spots. “Be honest.”

“‘Pretty’ is a stretch. Let’s call you ‘striking.’ Or ‘impossible to look away from.’”

“Oooh. Like the sun?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a train wreck.”

Enrique let out a wounded
hmpf.

After two years and countless acquisitions, S
é
verin knew how his team wore their fear. Enrique wore an armor of ready jokes. Zofia wore hers with mechanical calm, her eyes roving down the train compartment one last time, probably looking for something to count. In the silence, he thought he could see all their wants stretched out and warping the air.

Three days.

Three days and they would find and secure the Horus Eye. With it, Hypnos could protect the Babel Fragment’s location—maybe even find House Kore’s missing Ring—and his inheritance would be restored. Around him, lantern light flashed against the train’s stained-glass panes, turning it a shade of molten gold. S
é
verin’s scar twitched. He blinked, and the image of the golden honeybee found in the dead
courier’s mouth itched at the back of his thoughts.

A loud knock echoed through the compartment door. His cue to leave. S
é
verin touched his hat, not looking at them as he spoke.

“After midnight,” he said.

The two of them split, heading for different doors and different carriages. Their wants cast out in front of them, large as shadows.

HE KNEW HE WAS NEARING
House Kore when the road changed.

His father had brought him here when he was seven years old … back then, Tante Delphine—as he had known the House Kore matriarch—had taken him horseback riding. “He’s like a son to me!” she’d said. “Of course I shall teach him how to ride.” She’d held him close, his spine to her chest, her laugh in his ear. “Next summer, we’ll practice jumping. How does that sound?”

But there was no next summer.
There was nothing after the day she administered the inheritance test and dropped his hands as if he were rotten fruit.

“Tante?” he’d tried, only for her to shudder.

“You may not call me that. Not anymore.”

S
é
verin quickly shoved down the memory. It belonged to another life.

Ahead, the road split into five lanes that looked like rivers. One lane was polished hematite that looked like a ripple
of silver. One lane glowed red and looked like twisted candlelight. The other, a pale blue, looked like a sky scraped of clouds. Beside it, a lane of glass appeared dimpled as if invisible rain kept denting its surface. And last, a lane of smoke. Beyond the five lanes disguised as rivers, fog and mist stretched or pinched into fantastical shapes—three-headed dogs yawning and baring translucent
teeth, gigantic hands scraping misty nails down the mountain, women wearing ragged tunics, folding in half as they wept and wept and wept. Beyond that … well. S
é
verin could hear the music. The laughter.

“Lethe, Styx, Phlegethon, Cocytus, and Acheron,” he recited softly.

The five rivers in the home of Hades.

House Kore had turned its country estate into an opulent underworld. How fitting, he
thought, for this place was his hell.

The carriage door opened on the River Styx. Before him stood an elaborate entrance: a glowing, jade skull of what might have been a monster dragged out of myth, with a row of teeth concealing verit stone. The barest prickle of ice ghosted over S
é
verin’s skin. When they’d tested the verit that Enrique and Zofia discovered, it had worked like a charm.

It will
work … It has to work.

To the left of the verit entrance stood a group of three guards. Jutting over their shoulders, the points of their bayonets caught the flat, green light of the stone.

“Monsieur Faucher, welcome to House Kore’s country estate,”
said the first guard. “If you do not mind, may we check you before you enter through the jaws?”

“Into the belly of the beast, as it were.”

The
first guard let out a nervous laugh. The lightstick in his hand flashed. “May I?”

“Of course.”

S
é
verin forced himself not to flinch as the penlight neared his skin. Every time he saw a penlight, he thought of Wrath, who had used the penlights to double-check there was no sign left of the Forged mind affinity he used on them. He always knew when the Order was planning their monthly check-in because
for twelve precious hours, Wrath would not place the Phobus Helmet on him. It was just enough time for traces of mind manipulation to disappear … just enough time that no one from the Order ever believed him.

The familiar light flashed over his pupils. Memory conjured the nightmares of the Phobus Helmet behind his eyes, but just as quickly, the light flashed off, and the guard waved him toward
the verit jaws.

Behind him, he heard the scrape of carriages. The others had arrived right on time. Including—judging from the low laugh—Hypnos. Which meant Laila was here, pushing that gigantic icebox of cakes and Forged tools, all hidden by a verit stone concealed in the metal.

As S
é
verin walked through the verit entrance, he held his breath … but the small nub of verit in his shoe had done
the job. With the entrance behind him, he headed to a dock choked in fog and mist where Zofia and Enrique were already waiting.

“Welcome to the country estate of House Kore,” announced a calm, disembodied voice from the air. “Please be advised that all boats may only transport three guests at a time.”

A long boat carved of onyx rose out of the water.

Once in the boat, the false Styx flowed
beneath them, leading
them toward a cave. The cave walls were hewn onyx, gleaming wet and lustrous. Stalactites dripped down from the ceiling. Within minutes, the small boat glided to a stop in front of another elegantly appointed dock, this one shrouded in mist save for the gigantic pair of ebony doors Forged with the snarling, barking faces of the three-headed guard dog of the underworld. Each
head barked:

“In—”

“—vi—”

“—tations.”

The three heads kept their mouths wide. One by one, S
é
verin, Zofia, and Enrique placed their invitations onto the black tongues. The dogs’ jaws slammed shut, the heads melting into the wood and stone. A moment passed before the doors swung open. Light and sound and music poured out of the doors, blinding S
é
verin. The three of them stood, and the boat rocked
beneath them. Once more, the dog heads appeared, this time a slip of velvet dangled from their teeth.

“Take—”

“—your—”

“—masks.”

They did.

Zofia entered first. Then Enrique. S
é
verin went last. He couldn’t undo this step once he took it. Past the greeting vestibule, a floor of polished black marble drank up the light cast down from chandeliers of etched bone and stained glass. It looked like
nothing he remembered as a child, and for that he was glad.

Beneath the light, a delicate pattern spiraled across the floor, like that of a nautilus. A network of crystal vines and quartz veins formed the walls, as if they were sumptuously below the ground. Masked guests clad in black and gray and bloodred moved down the halls. An after-echo of a chimed gong lingered in the air. They had arrived
moments after the dinner gong had rung. Only the matriarch and a
group of her servants were left. She walked toward them, dressed in an oxblood gown and a choker of black diamond thorns. On her face, a gold mask.

He stared at her a second too long, convinced she’d recognize him. She didn’t. The last time he’d seen her, he’d seen the blue glow on the Babel Ring—the color that declared he was the
rightful heir—ripped from his sight. The last time she’d spoken to him was the last time he had a family.

“Welcome to our Spring Festival,” she said in her smoky voice, her smile tight.

She extended one velvet-gloved hand. S
é
verin noted the glove of her right hand was heavily padded. Her bones had not yet healed after the theft of her Ring. Enrique bent over her proffered hand and Zofia executed
a perfect curtsy. The matriarch whispered something to her manservants, who immediately led them to different parts of the mansion.

Last, the matriarch turned to him. S
é
verin had prepared himself for this, but practice paled to the reality of her. Eleven years ago, that gloved hand had thrown him in the dark and stripped him of his title. And now he had to kiss it. To thank it. Slowly, he held
her fingers. His hands shook. The matriarch smiled. She must have thought him overwhelmed, stewing in his insignificance before this opulence. Before
her
. His eyes narrowed. S
é
verin squeezed the joints of her broken fingers.

“So honored to be here.” He pressed his other hand atop hers, watching her breath hitch, her smile turn brittle. “Truly.”

To her credit, the matriarch did not snatch back
her hand, but let it fall limply to one side. He smiled.

A tiny hurt was better than none.

S
É
VERIN MISSED L’EDEN
the moment he sat in House Kore’s dining room. It was nothing like the bright green of his hotel. Here, the ceiling had been Forged to resemble the inside of a jeweled cave. Hunks of bloodred rubies and cabochons of emerald and jasper cast stained light onto the onyx table below.
Candles like flowers seemed to bloom from evenly spaced piles of snow. On the floor, S
é
verin recognized Tristan’s design—vines that sprouted beside guests, blooming to reveal dainty wineglasses, much to their awe and delight.

As anticipated, his insignificance earned him a seat near the exit, far from the matriarch. Many of the people around him had been, or were soon to be, guests of L’Eden.
They might have recognized him had they looked close enough. But they didn’t.

Near the head of the table, Hypnos slung back his drinks with happy abandon while the smile on the matriarch’s face turned tense every time he spoke. Near the middle, Zofia had perfected the picture of aristocracy: bored and beautiful. She kept moving her fingers to a strange rhythm, eyes roving around the dining room.
Counting again.
When she met S
é
verin’s gaze, he raised his glass to her. She did the same, holding it aloft long enough that people saw.

The meals progressed quickly: pan-fried foie gras, leek sprouts in a rich marrow broth, creamy quail eggs served in an edible nest of spun rye bread, and a tender filet of beef. Finally, the pi
è
ce de r
é
sistance: a single serving of ortolans. The songbirds were
a rare delicacy, trapped and drowned in armagnac, a regional cognac, then roasted and eaten whole. The sauce dribbled thickly onto the plate, streaking ruby bloodlike smears onto the pristine white porcelain. At the head of the table, the matriarch led the meal. She took the crimson napkin and placed it over her head. The guests followed suit. As S
é
verin reached for his, the man beside him laughed
softly.