The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves #1)(77)

Beside Zofia, Laila stiffened.

“She isn’t my maid,” said Zofia automatically.

Laila winced. And Zofia realized that was not what she was supposed to say. “I mean—”

Another guard started walking toward them. His eyebrows were slanted down.

“Mademoiselle, what’s your name?” asked the first guard.

“I … I…”

Zofia tugged nervously at the silken sheath cover on her dress. Hidden in her sleeve was a box of matches. There were sharp spurs concealed in the heels of her shoes. But she didn’t want to use them.

Laila jumped in. “My mistress does not simply hand over her name like some common token!”

The first guard looked taken aback. “I meant no offense—”

“You should apologize anyway!” scolded Laila.

“It’s just that she seems to match a description for a person involved with the recent disturbance. A girl, of about her height. With white-blond hair. It’s not a very common coloring.”

“She is a rare and exquisite flower,” said Laila, tugging on Zofia’s arm. “Let us go, Madame. We were lost, is all—”

“If she could but stay a moment longer, my colleague will be able to confirm that she is not the woman we seek. I am dreadfully sorry, but protocol is quite strict before opening day.”

Zofia recognized the second guard approaching them. He was the one who had cradled his friend who died at the hands of the man with the blade-brimmed hat. The man stopped short when he saw her. His hand went to the Forged device at his hip.

Zofia grabbed Laila’s arm.

“Run!” she cried, sprinting down the road.

Laila took off after her. Zofia’s heart pounded in her ears. She could hear the guards shouting. Behind her, tents crashed and tables were overturned as Laila threw them to the ground, blocking their path.

“This way!” said Laila, pulling Zofia through one of the twisting streets.

Shouts erupted behind them. Zofia flew past a spice table, overturning cinnamon and pepper in heaps onto the ground. A slew of foreign curses chased her shadow, but there wasn’t time to apologize. Zofia followed Laila through the twisting streets of the colonial pavilions until they arrived at a corner that plunged into the dark.

On the other side of the alley, the streets changed once more. From Cairo to an Annamite village, where the wooden thatched peaks of pointed huts unfurled in front of them. A colorful rickshaw streaming ribbons sped past in the direction of a large theater outfitted with palm fronds. Down the street, Zofia could see the darkened archway of the Exhibition on Colonial Superstitions.

And just behind her, she could hear the pounding footsteps of the guards.

Laila started waving her hands wildly. “I can’t get the rickshaw driver’s attention!” she called.

The footsteps were gaining on them. Zofia had an idea. From her sleeves, she pulled out the matches, struck one against her teeth, and set it to the outer sheath of her dress before jumping in the middle of the road. She tore off the first, burning layer, which now flared into a long column of fire.

The rickshaw driver braked hard.

“I got his attention,” announced Zofia, stomping the fire out with her foot. The rest of her dress, made of Forged flame-retardant silk, gleamed, completely unsullied.

Laila’s mouth fell open, but then it pulled into a wide grin. She waved a bag full of coins.

“For your services. And your silence.”

The driver, a boy no older than thirteen, beamed a gap-toothed smile. The two of them hopped into the rickshaw just as the guards appeared.

“Get down!” said Laila.

Zofia slid farther down in her seat. The rickshaw itself was little more than a covered tricycle. But at least it could get them to the exhibition.

Laila whispered directions to the driver. Once they sped away down the road, she flopped backward in her seat, breathing hard.

“See?” said. “What did I tell you earlier?”

Zofia gripped the edge of her seat. “That some people consider disrobing an art?”

“No, not that!” said Laila, as the driver blushed. “I said that beauty was its own armor.”

Zofia considered this. “I still don’t like dresses.”

Laila merely smiled.



* * *



INSIDE THE FORGING exhibition, the lights had been kept dim. The only pinpoints of luminescence were beneath each of the podiums. Zofia kept herself near the wall.

“What are we looking for, Zofia? Another entrance? A hidden door?”

Zofia shook her head. “Us.”

She reached for the phosphorous pendant from her necklace, remembering how it had revealed the Tezcat door at House Kore. That mirror had been a gift from the Fallen House. And if the Fallen House was behind the theft of the House Kore Ring, then what if she and Enrique had missed something the last time they were here? What if the whole time they had been walking through the exhibition, thinking they were unseen, someone had been watching them from behind a concealed mirror?

With Forging, detecting the presence of a Tezcat required a burning phosphorous formula. Zofia snapped her phosphorous pendant. She held it out where it looked like a piece of chipped-off blue flame.

“Don’t walk in front of the flame,” instructed Zofia.

Laila nodded. The two of them made their way slowly through the exhibit. Zofia let the light of the phosphorous pendant climb up the brocade walls. On the left, nothing moved. Zofia held out the pendant as she made her way to the place in the wall where the man with the honeybee pendant had been waiting as if he had slid out of the wallpaper itself. The light climbed over the brocade slowly, glittering over the golden embroidery, and then—