Hotel Magnifique(56)

I looked around. “Where’s the door?”

“Hidden in plain sight. The ma?tre penned the enchantment for the aviary keys himself.” The key touched down. Glass rippled. Out of nothing, a door appeared with a rusted copper nameplate that read La Volière des Délices. The Aviary of Delights.

Frigga took my hand. “Follow me.”

Inside, paper leaves brushed against my cheeks. I was grateful when Frigga’s fingers found mine, leading me through the press of trees to a fountain surrounded by statues. Near me, a marble man hoisted a tiny hourglass above his head. Frigga grazed a finger along it. “A suminaire.”

The hourglass must be his artéfact. “All the statues are of suminaires?”

“I believe so.”

A slight woman carved from green marble stood holding a round artéfact that I thought was a flattened face, until I realized the face was a reflection of the statue’s own face. A mirror.

“I’ve seen the ma?tre with an artéfact similar to this. A hand mirror,” I said. “Do you know anything about it?”

Frigga pursed her lips.

“You’ve seen it?” I pressed.

“No . . . I mean, yes, I’ve seen it, but I haven’t asked about what it does. Hellas doesn’t like me to pry.”

Does Hellas control everything you eat, too? I nearly asked, until a bird squawked.

“Where are the birds?” All I saw were a handful of real trees hidden among Hellas’s paper creations.

“This way.”

As we walked, Frigga prattled on about the chanteuses. I learned she ferried the birds between the aviary and the salon for performances nearly every day. Des Rêves performed her act so often, she forced Frigga to live in that second-floor room, because the stairwell next to the A Verdant Enchantment Suite emptied near the salon. Frigga didn’t mind it because the older guest room made a perfect sanctuary for her birds.

“If your chanteuse is inside, she’ll be through here,” Frigga said, and led me through a hedge with leaves like fingers. We popped out in an open space crammed with wooden perches. High above the foliage, I could make out the birds visible from the lobby. Underneath, hidden behind a tangle of white vines, slept hundreds upon hundreds more.

I looked from bird to bird. Most of them were leached of pigment. They still had their markings, but the color was gone, leaving them gray and dull.

“What’s wrong with them?” I whispered.

“They just arrive like that.”

There were a few colorful birds, but no molten gold.

Nearby, a dull bird yawned, cracking one sleepy eye. Its other eye glinted in the moonlight a slightly different color.

It was glass.





I scanned across the birds. “How many are suminaires?”

“Not Des Rêves’s chanteuses, but all the rest,” Frigga said mournfully.

“That black bird from the library?”

Tears flooded Frigga’s eyes. She nodded. “I think he knew what he was doing, that he’d rather disappear forever than be caged up.”

He.

The library bird was a man who was willing to die rather than remain trapped.

I stared openmouthed, appalled. An anger built inside of me that threatened to consume me from within. But I didn’t cry out or tear up. I felt too numb to do either.

These people. There were so many of them. Hundreds of men and women, and probably children. All cut off from the world and caged behind glass.

Suminaires lived long lives. These poor people had probably been trapped here for decades, or more. My god. If they all signed staff contracts, no one outside the hotel would remember them. They would be missing, just like Béatrice from that painting, just like me and Zosa from Bézier’s mind.

The sight was too shocking for words, but the rational part of me also didn’t understand the logic of it. Alastair hoarded artéfacts. If these suminaires’ magic could be used safely, Alastair didn’t need to trap them all. And nothing explained why their feathers looked as dull as they did.

Something Maman had spoken of from time to time popped into my mind. A century ago, the Verdanniere crown commissioned experiments to better understand suminaire magic and prevent it from killing people. But they were promptly abandoned when most parties involved perished. Maman always referred to it as la semaine sombre, the dark week. It marred Verdanne’s illustrious nasty history.

Alastair could be doing something similar with these suminaires. Experimenting with magic. Bile rose in my throat at the thought, and I had to brace myself against a paper tree.

Then there was Issig chained inside the deep freeze. If his magic was so deadly, I didn’t see why he hadn’t been turned into a bird, when all of these others had. Maybe his condition excluded him from whatever Alastair was doing here, or maybe the truth was more horrible than I could imagine. Knowing Alastair, it was probably the latter.

I scanned each bird. Where are you?

A branch snapped. A pair of guests had wandered in alongside a leopard straining on its silk leash. Birds cawed.

I turned to Frigga. “Didn’t you lock the door?”

“Lock it? I’m never here longer than a handful of minutes. No one ever tries to come in.”

I rubbed my temple. I believed her, but I doubted there were often leopards with noses made to sniff out prey.