“Much better,” he pronounced. “We shouldn’t get any mobs screaming for your blood now.”
Maybe not, but still I felt tense as we joined the crowds heading for Charing Cross and points north. I breathed more easily once we left the pack and headed east into the maze of streets that led to Audelin House.
These streets were very close to the river, and for the most part they were deserted. But when we rounded one corner, I heard wood splintering and glass breaking and men shouting and singing.
“Looters.” Gabriel pulled me back. “Let’s go a different way.”
Twice more we had to change our route, but soon we were approaching Audelin House.
Although I had never been inside the house before, Norrie had pointed it out to me a number of times, so I recognized it as soon as I saw it: an imposing residence of stout timber and fancy pargeting, so large that it took up the entire end of one street. At first glance, the house looked very grand, with carved beams and a double bay of oriel windows that jutted out from the front. It was only when you came closer that you saw the cracks and the fallen-away plaster and the boarded-up windows.
The house stood at the very edge of the flood. Even now, the river was lapping at the muddy street in front of it. Quite possibly its cellars were already awash. But the situation was better than I’d feared it might be.
I went forward and pushed my keys into its immense old locks. They took some convincing, and Gabriel and I had to push hard at the heavy door, but finally it opened. As we stepped inside the dark entryway, a damp, moldering smell enveloped us.
Behind us, I thought I heard shouting, coming from somewhere not too far away. And I heard something else, too. Something much closer. Something I was desperately trying not to listen to.
Come to me, the river called.
I swung the door closed, and Audelin House swallowed us up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AUDELIN HOUSE
The house seemed impossibly dark at first, but pinholes of light picked out the edges of a door ahead of us. After I found the latch, we walked into what once must have been the grandest room in the house.
“Once,” of course, was the critical word. It had been only a decade since my godmother had lived here, but it felt like a hundred years. Would she have recognized it? Would she have wanted to? Chunks of ceiling plaster now covered the floor, and the paneled walls that weren’t scorched were pockmarked and splintered.
The place had stood empty ever since Scargrave had arrested my godmother and seized the house as attainted property. He’d ransacked every corner for contraband magic and Chantress secrets. And when he’d finished, he’d had its contents burned.
People don’t know whether to pray to you or burn you.
There had been a great deal of burning in those years. Books. Buildings. Even sometimes Chantresses themselves, and those who were thought to have truck with them. Judging from what I could see of the walls and floor, one of those bonfires had been right here in this room.
Yet if you had the eyes to see, you could imagine what it had been like once, back when it had belonged to my godmother. There were two oriel windows and light poured in where the shutters were broken. Not an inch of wall or ceiling had gone undecorated. You could even make out the original designs: carved circles that overlapped and interlocked.
When I looked more closely, I saw that over half those circles were made of snakes.
Norrie was right. They were everywhere.
Gabriel looked to me for direction. “So what do we do now?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Investigate the snakes, I suppose. Norrie said there were hidden doors behind some of them.”
We wandered from panel to panel, pushing, pressing, fiddling with heads and tails. Nothing sprung out or slid back. When we knocked, nothing sounded hollow.
I lifted my head to the high ceiling. “There are dozens more up there.”
Gabriel peered into the next room. “And even more in here.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. The walls positively writhed with snakes.
I felt overwhelmed. “It could be any of them.”
“Your magic isn’t telling you anything?”
I shook my head. Now that the walls of Audelin House stood between me and the river, I’d been letting myself listen for magic, but I hadn’t heard anything yet. Perhaps Scargrave had destroyed every trace of it.