The Gilded Wolves (18 page)

Laila fumbled in the dark, her breaths shallow and quick.

If you panic, you’ll lose even more
.

The taste of metal filled her mouth. She winced. The sharp lock pick had scraped the inside of her cheek. She spat it into her hand, then started feeling around for the hinges.

In a way, this was her fault. Three weeks ago, she’d ruined a cake. S
é
verin, perhaps trying to console her,
or more likely get her out of his study, had said, “It’s just cake. It’s not like there’s anything valuable inside it.”

“Oh really?” she had demanded.

She’d baked his favorite snake seal into a fruit tart, and left it on his desk with a note:
You’re wrong
.

So who was she to blame when S
é
verin had slid the note she’d written across her kitchen counter, told her about his plan, and grinningly
said, “Prove it.”

And here she was.

Trapped in a cake.

Sneaking herself into the base had been easy once the whole thing had been assembled. The final task—locking it shut—required Zofia.

Her fingers fumbled until they finally found the clasp. Sweat slicked her palms. The metal needles were wet with spit and kept sliding from her hands. All she could hear was her heartbeat. And then the pick
notched into something. She stilled. Listening. Listening for the slight gasp of metal, the muffled snick of things aligning …

Pop.

The hinges came undone, clanging to the bottom of the base. Laila grinned.

And then she pushed. But the compartment wouldn’t budge. She pushed harder, but there was something blocking her. Wedging the small metal piece between the edges, Laila pried. A gap opened,
just enough for her to glimpse what was blocking her exit.

The servant who had wheeled her in must have placed the base of the cake against the bookshelf.

She was trapped.

Outside, the clock chimed eight in the evening. The sound of the nautch dancers’ anklet bells chimed through the halls. Her heart lurched as she heard the familiar straining of a sitar in the distance, the musicians tuning
their instruments for the dancers. Any second now, and S
é
verin would be standing outside, waiting to help the lost dancer while she slipped him the key.

But there was no way she could get out in time.

Laila threw her weight against the metal board, but nothing gave way. Another bell chimed. Shoes shuffling outside the door. If S
é
verin had been waiting for her to slip him the key, he’d left by
now.

Folded onto her side in the dark, Laila reached down to remove her slippers. The right slid off. Then the left. She shoved one slipper into the other, twisting them through the gap in the cake base. Her
arms shook as she pushed all her weight into those interlocked shoes braced against the bookcase.

At first, nothing happened. The cart didn’t budge. And then an inch gave way. More light
slid through the base. Laila pushed again, scraping open her elbow.

The wheels of the cart squeaked, rolling backward and giving
just
enough room for Laila to slide out one leg, then the next, before she finally uncrumpled onto the carpet. She let out a breath.

Laila checked the hollow base once more for any strands of her hair or scraps of cloth before making quick work of the locks. On the
other side of the door, the sounds of the party reached her. She cast her gaze to the chaise cushion in the corner of the room where Hypnos had hidden her costume.

Laila pushed any tendrils of fear out of her thoughts. She would figure out how to get House Kore’s vault key to S
é
verin later. First, she needed the key itself.

The matriarch’s office looked like a sprawling, elaborate honeycomb.
Hundreds of interlocking golden hexagons formed the walls, filled with books or plants or etchings of her late husband. The ceiling was a ribbon of gold shot through with crimson, a portrait of still flames. Far from the windows stood a nephrite desk, like S
é
verin’s. The bookcase behind it stretched from floor to ceiling, filled with as many strange objects as actual books: hollow skulls full
of dried flowers, animal prints trapped in slick amber, jars upon jars of preserved things. If she wanted to, Laila could trail her fingers across the desk’s surface, reading for the image of a key that might have touched it. But instinct stopped her.

On the floor, Laila found a small paper clip and tossed it onto the jade surface. The desk glowed red in warning. Her mouth tightened.

Like S
é
verin’s, the desk was Forged.

She turned to the honeycomb walls, and threw another metal clip. The bookcase did not change color. Not Forged. But that didn’t help her get the key from the desk. If it was Forged to remember her touch—or hold her hand hostage—she needed something to counteract it …

Like a Forged creature, S
é
verin’s desk had a somno that turned off the warning mechanism. It was
just a matter of finding out how to trigger it.

Sometimes people hid a plaster mold of their hands—S
é
verin hid one behind his bookcase—or there might be a piece of wax with a thumbprint concealed by a window. Chances were, the matriarch had something like that too. All she had to do was find it.

Hauling out the leather armchair, Laila balanced on the seat, letting her fingers trail down the
wall of the bookcase. Energy flowed out of her veins. A headache crimped the edges of her vision.

As Laila searched the bookcase, her mind picked up images of contracts, receipts, love letters, and then she caught it: a thumbprint encased in amber. It was hidden in the pages of a book of love poems. She searched for the spine on the shelves, opened the book, and found it. A large amber coin.
Laila muttered a quick prayer, then tossed it onto the desk. The red glow faded.

Grinning, Laila jumped down from the armchair. The noises outside the office grew louder. More urgent. There was no use trailing her fingers down the desk, trying to figure out where it kept the key. Forged things never answered to her readings. Laila reached for drawers and cabinets, rifling through papers as fast
as she could.

Hundreds of keys filled the drawer inside the left cabinet. Laila plunged her hand through the metals, casting out her senses. The keys weren’t Forged, so the images flowed through her. Empty bed
rooms. Halls of senate. Order of Babel auctions. And then … a dark vault, a ceiling full of painted stars, statue busts, and hundreds upon hundreds of rows filled with strange objects. Her
eyes flew open.

The key to the subterranean library beneath the greenhouse.

Laila pulled the key and ran to the chaise lounge near the door. She lifted the cushion and found the nautch costume beneath wrapped in cloth. Quickly, Laila undid the wrappings, but she hadn’t anticipated what she would feel the moment she saw the outfits of her youth. The way her soul staggered, folding in on itself
at the memories. The raw silk blouse the color of parrot plumage and edged in red. The heavy
gunghroo
bells and
jimmikki
earrings that looked so like her mother’s. Laila raised the costume to her nose, inhaling deeply. It even smelled of India. That mix of camphor, dye, and sandalwood incense. Looking at the outfit, a cold fury spread through her. She heard her mother’s voice curling through her
thoughts:
You want to feel real, my daughter? Then dance. Dance and you will know your truth.
Laila had thrown her soul into dance, giving her body to the rhythmic invocations, the sharp movements that stamped out whole stories with nothing but her limbs. It could be sensuous. But it was always sacred. It was, her mother used to say,
proof
that she had a soul. That she was real.

But to people
in the audience … it was entertainment designed to be something else.

What had Hypnos called it?

Titillating
.

Laila changed her outfit, undoing her braided crown of hair so that it fell thickly down her back. She shoved her House Nyx maid costume into the cushions, hid the amber thumbprint coin back in the book of love poems, and secured the key in her blouse.

The third bell struck.

At the
far end of the room, no light appeared at the crack of the
door. If S
é
verin had been waiting for her, he wasn’t anymore. The nautch dancers had probably lined up at the stage. She would only draw attention to herself if she ran out now. Laila pulled the silk scarf over her head and slipped outside into the empty hall. By now, the rest of the guests were already seated inside the vast amphitheater.
All she had to do was get to the theater.

The guard yawned when he saw her.

“You’re late,” he said, bored. “The rest of your party is already assembling.”

“I was asked to perform a solo piece,” she said, crossing her arms.

The man groaned, flipping through the pages of the schedule. “If you can go on now, then—”

“Lead the way.”

She scanned the crowd … somewhere, S
é
verin was there.

The guard
directed her to the musicians to choose a song. Laila recognized their instruments, and an ache dug into her ribs. The double-sided drum, the flute and veena and bright cymbals.

“Which piece shall we play?” asked the veena musician.

She peered through the curtain at the crowd. Men in suits. Women in dresses. Glasses in their hand. No sense of the story she would have tried to tell with her body.
No language with which to decipher the devotion of her dance.

She would not perform her faith to them.

“Jatiswaram,” she said. “But increase the tempo.”

One of the musicians raised an eyebrow. “It’s already fast.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You think I don’t know that?”

Jatiswaram was the most technical piece, the distillation of music and movement. A piece where she could still perform and
set her heart aside.

A few minutes later, an announcer cleared his throat. The stage fell dark. “Presenting a nautch dancer—”

Laila tuned out the presenter. She was not a nautch dancer. She was a
bharatnatyam
performer.

As she walked, two parts of herself merged together. She had done this walk, worn these clothes. The man who had brought her to France as a performer had thrown away the original
costume sewn by her mother. Laila was supposed to wear a customized
salwar kameez
, not this ridiculous thing that left her midriff and chest on display. Her hair was supposed to be strung with flowers, with a preserved jasmine from her mother’s first performance. Not unbound, and brushing her waist. She looked at her hands, her chest pinching. Her hands felt naked without henna.

A low murmur
of approval chased through the crowd when she walked on the stage. When she performed at the Palais, her favorite moment was stepping onto the stage before the lights rose: the adrenaline fizzing in her veins, the darkness of the theater that made her feel as if she’d only just burst into existence. But here, she felt like something held beneath glass. Trapped. Between her breasts, the key to the
library felt like a chip of ice. She scanned the crowd. Before each seat was a basket of rose petals to be thrown upon the performer at the conclusion of their entertainment.

The music keyed up.

Even before the light fell on her, she
felt
S
é
verin before she saw him. A space of cold in a warm room. The lights cast his eyes into shadow. All she could see were his long legs stretched in front of
him, his chin on his palm like a bored emperor. She knew that pose. Memory stole her breath. She thought back to that evening … on her birthday … when she’d felt buzzed with a daring she almost never indulged. She’d cornered him in his study, more intoxicated by the way he’d looked at her than she had been from any champagne. S
é
verin hadn’t gotten her a birthday present, and so she demanded a
kiss that turned into something more …

Laila could feel the moment he became aware of her on the stage. The sudden stiffness of his body.

He’d never seen her dance before … and instantly something changed within her. It was how she felt before she always performed, as if her blood now
glittered
.

She needed him to look closely. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t get the key on time. But she
wanted
him
to look closely too.

Perhaps it was just her fate to be haunted by a night never acknowledged. But that didn’t mean she had to suffer alone. Maybe it was cruel of her, but her mother’s voice rang in her ears anyway:
Don’t capture their hearts. Steal their imagination. It’s far more useful
.

And so she did. She sank into the beginning pose, hip jutted, chin tilted to expose the long line of her
throat. The music started. She tapped her heels against the floor. The movements so precise it was as if she’d sewn her shadow to the beat.

Tha thai tum tha
.

S
é
verin might have looked like liquid elegance as he lounged in the crowd, but she knew him. Every muscle was strung taut. Rigid. Beneath that posture was something prowling and hungry. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel them
tracking her. His mouth had gone from a controlled smile to a slack line.

Laila felt a burst of satisfaction.

I won’t be haunted alone.

She dragged her hand across her chest. S
é
verin shifted in his seat. Laila hooked her pinky into the gap of the key. She stamped her foot, glancing at the floor as she concealed the key in a row of bangles. As she sank lower, she smiled to herself.

There was
another power in her. A power that sat low and thick in her blood and consciousness. A way to move through a world that tried to keep her to the sidelines.

Steal their imagination
.

She hovered on her heels, knees bent in nritta while the pleated emerald of her skirt fanned out. The music grew faster. The rhythm turned urgent.