Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

“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…

As they turned into the servants’ part of the wing—narrower rooms with shabbier sloped ceilings, all with that air of decayed grandeur—Thuan spoke up. “What’s this wing?” he asked.

Sare’s eyes narrowed. “You mean why here?”

“Yes.”

Her gaze held him, for a while. Beneath him, he could feel the spikes, quiescent. Waiting. Like the children, in the shadows, the ones he couldn’t see.

“I don’t know,” Sare said. “It’s the water wing—the one with the spring and the pump room—but it’s not the only one.”

The spring. He could feel it, distantly—khi water, far, far underground, all reserved for the House’s use, a trove of power that would never be his. But Sare was right: there were other springs, too, that he could feel on the edges of his thoughts, other currents of khi water being funneled into the House.

“Then that can’t be it.”

Sare’s gaze was hard. “You want everything to make sense, don’t you.”

Thuan fingered dust on a marble table, followed it down the curve of verdigried legs. “I want to understand.”

“Then this is what I want to understand,” Sare said, closing the door behind her. “How come only your friend vanished, Thuan? What made her so special?”

She was clever. But then, he’d expected nothing less of her. She hadn’t gotten where she was—head of the alchemy laboratory, in charge of Hawthorn’s vast troves of stored magic—by being a fool.

“I don’t know,” he said, thoughtfully. It couldn’t be that she was a dragon, or Thuan would have vanished, too. He wasn’t stronger than she was. “They tried to hold us all.”

“Yes,” Sare said. “But they gave up when we proved no easy prey. Except they did snatch your friend, who presumably fought back, same as everyone. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the only Annamites.”

“Yes,” Thuan said, startled. This wasn’t where he’d wanted the conversation to go. The immediate threat of the thorn children had receded, but Sare’s grilling almost made him regret the creepy escort. “But not the only colonials. And I didn’t vanish.”

“No,” Sare said. “But perhaps you’re stronger than her.”

Thuan snorted. “No. If anything, I’m weaker than she is.” He hesitated, then said, “She’s been the one always looking out for me.”

“Like a mother?” Sare’s gaze was sharp.

Children of thorns. No. Thuan shook his head. “She wasn’t the only motherly figure in that crowd, was she? That’s a rather facile explanation.”

“That children want mothers? It seems to me rather natural,” Sare said, with the ease of someone who’d never actually have any children. All Fallen were sterile.

Mothers, perhaps not. He thought, again, of the bracelets on Kim Cuc’s arms, of the wealth of Fallen magic stored there, something most Houseless would never see. In Paris, the Houses had hoarded nearly all the magic, and the rare artefacts went on the black market for a fortune. But no, that couldn’t be it. Otherwise Sare and the other dependents would have been the first to vanish. “Why children? They can’t possibly be the only dependents the House has failed.”

He thought Sare was going to berate him, but instead she walked a little further down the corridor, and stared at the darkness in front of her. “You’re here, aren’t you?” she called, magic streaming out of her like light. “I can feel you.”

Again, that odd feeling in his feet, as if the floor itself were twisting and disgorging something; and two children, stepping out of the darkness to gaze levelly back at her. Their arms were branches woven together, their hands three-fingered, and their bodies merely frames on which hung flowers the color of rot. And, in the gauntness of their faces, they had no eyes, just pinpoints of light.

“Stay,” the one on the left said.

“Where is she?” Sare asked. The light that came out of her was subdued, but Thuan could still feel the power; could still feel it pushing against the children, compelling them to answer.