“This was my father’s favorite interrogation room,” said Ruslan, warmly patting his glass chair. “In here, no one could hide a thing.”
“Intriguing,” said Séverin, careful to keep his tone bored. “How so?”
He reached for his chair when he felt it … a faint electrical current coursing through the glass. When he touched the table, the same feeling followed. The furniture was reading him … but for what?
“The room has its ways,” said Ruslan, grinning at him.
Séverin remembered the skullcap in his pocket. He had no idea whether the Forged table worked anything like the heartbeat-seeking creatures from his acquisition years ago, but it was all he had. While Ruslan helped himself to coffee and food, Séverin ripped off two petals, feigned a cough, and swallowed them whole.
“I saw you feed a little street urchin today,” said Ruslan. “Do you like the boy? We can keep him for you, if you’d like. I’ve never had a pet, but I imagine it’s quite the same … He’s perhaps a little too stubborn, but we could fix that.”
From his sleeve, Ruslan drew out his Midas Knife and tapped the side of his forehead, grinning.
“A superstition, I must confess,” said Séverin. “Feed another before yourself and you will never go hungry. Besides, I intend to be a benevolent god.”
Ruslan lowered the knife, considering this. “I like this idea … benevolence. What excellent deities we shall make, eh?”
Ruslan held out his coffee cup, clanging it to Séverin’s. Séverin waited a moment before he cleared his throat.
“I find myself eager for my apotheosis, don’t you?” said Séverin, reaching for a bit of tart. “We could get the map to Poveglia as soon as you’d like. Tonight, even.”
The moment he said it, Séverin knew he had made a mistake. Ruslan paused, regarding him over the rim of his coffee cup. When he lowered it, the grin on his face was uncannily knowing.
“But I’m happy here,” said Ruslan, with a slight whine. “I don’t want to go through any muck just yet … we can play and relax and whatnot.”
Ruslan speared a piece of egg. A sparrow of black-and-white quartz alighted near his plate, cheeping. Ruslan lowered his fork and held out his hand. The glass bird hopped onto it.
“Let us leave in ten days, hmm?” said Ruslan.
A spot of cold opened up in Séverin’s heart. Ten days … Laila already had only nine left.
“Poor Laila,” said Ruslan, crooning to the bird. “She went on and on about how she only had ten days left, and now I find the number quite stuck in my thoughts. I assume you have no objections?”
Séverin felt a faint electrical current through his sleeve. Ruslan was seeking something … some sign, perhaps, that Séverin cared more than he let on. He took a deep breath, willing his heart to slow. To calm.
“None at all,” said Séverin. “It will make our apotheosis that much sweeter.”
Ruslan stroked the sparrow’s glass head with his golden fingers. “I quite agree. Besides, I know Laila has no way of finding us, but I’d feel better knowing she’s well and truly—”
He slammed his hand down. The glass sparrow exploded on the table. A corner of its wing stirred feebly, as if the machine was caught by surprise.
“Dead,” said Ruslan, smiling.
7
ZOFIA
Zofia struck the match and watched the little flame seize hungrily upon the wood. The smell of sulfur stinging the air calmed her as she lowered the flame to the candle and surveyed her latest piece of work—a length of metal thinly hammered to the flexibility of a cloth that could ignite on command.
She felt as safe as possible in the matriarch’s house, but she knew a time would come when they had to emerge. And when that time came, she’d be ready.
The Fallen House assumed they were dead, but if they found her and her friends, they would turn that assumption into a reality. And they weren’t only in danger from the Fallen House. Hypnos’s secret contact with House Nyx confirmed that the Order was making inquiries and investigations into the events that had followed the Winter Conclave. If a Sphinx authority got hold of them, they could be arrested, and with only a week left of Laila’s life, all their plans would be for nothing.
It had been two days since they had found the address and key to the matriarch’s safe house.
“This house better be beautiful because I am not leaving it under any circumstances,” Hypnos had declared.
When they had pushed open the peeling, wooden door marked 77 on Calle Tron Strada, they found a small, but richly appointed house. Hypnos had explored first, leaving them on the threshold. When he found neither hidden trap nor adversaries lying in wait, he smiled widely, his eyes appearing bright and glossy.
“It’s exactly as the matriarch promised,” he said.
Inside were several bedchambers, a drawing room with an elegant piano which Hypnos immediately played, a kitchen that Laila instantly perused for ingredients, a vast library littered with strange contraptions along the walls which Enrique had disappeared inside—and, right across from the library, a small room where Zofia might Forge.
It was the smallest suite, with whitewashed walls, a small skylight, and a long, steel workbench. The tools that covered one of the walls were out of date, but serviceable nonetheless. Zofia had immediately run her hands over the glass lathe, the wire cutters, the dusty jars of saltpeter and nitrate, vials of potassium chloride and ammonia, stacks of matchboxes, and the scraps of metal lining the walls. The moment she touched the sheets of iron and aluminum, she could feel the metal within reaching out to read her will … Did she want it to bend? To sharpen? To hold fire in its structure?
The touch of the metal eased a tight, coiling sensation that had been building inside her ever since they had left Lake Baikal. All this time, she felt as if she had been walking through the dark, aware that her eyes were wide open, and aware that it made no difference at all. Every step brought her deeper into unknowable territory, so she could not begin to guess or trust what lay ahead.
That was the problem with the dark.
Once, Zofia had accidentally locked herself in her family’s cellar. Hela and her parents had gone to the market, and Zofia, frightened, had clutched the first thing she felt: a length of silken fur. It wasn’t until Hela had found her and the lantern light spilled over the wooden walls that Zofia saw what she had held so close: a skinless pelt, the creature’s head and paws still dangling from what remained of it.
Zofia had thrown it from her immediately, but she would never forget how the dark had tricked her. She hated how it made even the strange turn familiar and the familiar turn strange. As a child, her fear sometimes grew so great that she would crawl into bed beside Hela.
“You are frightened of nothing, Zosia,” her sister would mumble sleepily. “It cannot hurt you.”
Scientifically, Zofia understood this. The dark was nothing more than the absence of light. But these past few weeks, it had also taken on a different absence. The absence of knowing.
It gnawed at her constantly. The only time she did not feel it was when she Forged, and so Zofia threw herself into work. While the others searched for clues regarding the map that would take them to the temple beneath Poveglia, Zofia created invention after invention. She had counted at least a dozen members of the Fallen House at the Sleeping Palace. Each had been equipped with two short-range explosives and two throwing knives. Whether they had other properties, she could not determine, and so she knew her inventions must account for the unknown. For the past day or so, Zofia had built seven miniature explosives, constructed four coiled ropes that could fit in the heel of a shoe, and chewed her way through five matchboxes.