The House of Shattered Wings (30 page)

Isabelle shrugged. “It happens,” she said. “To Fallen.”

“To mortals. You're not anything special.”

Her smile was bitter, wounding. “Hunted for magic in our bones, in our breath? We didn't
ask
to be made special, Philippe. But we have to live with it, all the same.”

While he—he had asked to become an Immortal, of course; had starved himself until he was whiplash-thin, meditated until all the mountains blurred and ran into one another like watercolors under rain. He couldn't blame an accident of birth; he had made a deliberate choice.

But then, so had she, one she couldn't remember—the one that had driven her from Heaven. “I guess this is good-bye, then. Fare you well, Isabelle.”

“And you.” Her gaze was clear, distant; the radiance of the wall soft, like water, like tears. “Fare you well, Pham Van Minh Khiet. I hope we meet again.”

They both knew they wouldn't; or that, if they did, it would be under very different terms.

*   *   *

SELENE
might have wished to keep her grief private, but news of Morningstar's death filtered through the House, leaving dependents in a state of stunned shock. No one had believed Morningstar could die, just as the sea or the wind couldn't die—and, if he could die, was the House truly as invulnerable as Selene assured them?

The news filtered elsewhere, too—and in another part of the House, a dusty, disregarded cellar that hadn't been opened in twenty years, other people set to work.

Asmodeus knelt in the center of a circle much like the one that had been traced in the crypt; with the same kind of flowing tracery that had adorned its edges, the same alphabet that was the language of power. He had removed his usual, elegant finery; the letters flowed across his broad torso, like writhing snakes outlined in the light of another world—slowly descending along his arms toward his hands, and from there into the floor, linking the two halves of the circle together.

At one point, halfway through the work, he raised his head, sniffing the air like a hound scenting blood; and bent back with a white-toothed smile, intent on his spell. He whispered words, as the letters filled the empty space on the floor: a litany that seemed to be at once a mourning chant and a prayer.

When he was done, he lifted his hands. For a moment, there was nothing: silence, filling the room as the last echo of his words faded into nothingness, and every letter going dark. Then a pure, single note rang, like a plucked harp string. Asmodeus smiled, and got up.

His attendant, Elphon, was waiting for him at the entrance to the room. He handed Asmodeus his shirt and jacket, which Asmodeus slipped into effortlessly. As he buttoned up his shirt, Elphon spoke up. “My lord, if I may?”

Asmodeus didn't say anything. Elphon went on. “This is a circle of rebirth, isn't it? I'm not sure I understand why—”

Asmodeus smiled, white and sharp, like a tiger prowling the woods. “You mean, because Silverspires is my enemy?”

Elphon blushed, obviously bracing himself for further rebuke. “Yes.”

“You think this is going to benefit them? Oh, Elphon,” Asmodeus said, shaking his head. “I had a bargain with someone else for . . . a ritual. For a weakness in Silverspires' wards, at a key point in time—which required us to be here, in the House, in order to undermine it from within. This isn't a gift I'm making them. Quite the contrary. This, my friend, is their downfall.”

And with that, he turned away, leaving that single note behind him. Unlike the words, it didn't fade away into silence, but gradually was joined by others, until a faint but clear chorus of voices echoed under the vault.

In the room, in the center of the circle, light danced on motes of dust; and then the light died down, and the dust settled, slowly accreting itself into the shadowy shape of a human being.

And something else, too: on the edges of Asmodeus's circle, tendrils of leaves and wood started to grow—plunging so deep into the floor that the stone itself began to crack.

THE ONCOMING STORM

MADELEINE
woke up, and wished she hadn't.

She was lying in an infirmary bed. She would have known that peeled, faded painted ceiling and its flower-shaped moldings anywhere. When she tried to move, every joint in her body seemed to protest at the same time, with a particular mention to a crick in her neck that seemed to have become permanently stuck. What— There had been the strangeness of the dragon kingdom—the flight to the cathedral—

“Oh, you're awake. Good.” Emmanuelle's face hovered into view. She looked better, but distinctly worried.

“What did I miss?” Madeleine said, or tried to. Her tongue was as unresponsive as a lump of wood—her mouth felt full of grit and ashes, and her words came out garbled. She tried again, felt something shift and tear. “What—?”

“Aragon said you needed to rest,” Emmanuelle said.

“You're—you're fine,” Madeleine said. “You're healed.”

Emmanuelle nodded.

“I'm glad,” Madeleine breathed. At least they had succeeded in that. At least . . . “Philippe—”

“He left. Isabelle went after him,” Emmanuelle said. “She has some foolish notion that she can change his mind.” Her eyes—her eyes had changed somehow. They were . . . older, as if something had made her age in the space of a few hours. What had happened? Had Philippe healed her? She was standing, and didn't seem to be in any pain other than extreme weariness. Surely that meant they had succeeded; but then, why did she seem so distant? Something . . .

The House, she realized, and felt as though something was squeezing her heart. Something was wrong with the House. She could feel it, even through the tenuous link she had with it.

The House's magic was coming apart.

A commotion: Aragon's raised voice, and then steps, getting closer to her. “I know she's awake,” Selene said. “You should have notified me before.”

If Emmanuelle looked ill at ease, Selene looked unchanged. She was dressed in her usual men's swallowtail and trousers, regal, apparently unaffected by whatever seemed to have oppressed the atmosphere. “Madeleine.” Her voice was cold, cutting. “Will you leave us?” she asked Emmanuelle.

Emmanuelle winced. She cast a hesitant glance at Madeleine, but withdrew; her mouth shaped around words she never did get to pronounce. An apology? But what for?

“You're going to chastise me for lacking to do my duty,” Madeleine said. “We were trying to help Emmanuelle.”

Selene said nothing.

“Isabelle thought that, if we could find Philippe, we could convince him to help—” It sounded small and pitiful, when she said it; with none of the hard-edged certainty she'd felt when she went with Isabelle; as if whatever magic had flowed out of her had utterly, finally gone, leaving only the taste of ashes in her mouth.

Selene's face had not moved. She let Madeleine's awkward, spluttering speech fade into silence. Only then did she speak, and her voice was entirely emotionless. “I would reproach you for that in ordinary circumstances, yes. I expect the alchemist of House Silverspires to be available when I have need; and not gone into God knows what senseless adventure with her apprentice, whom you're supposed to keep an eye on, not indulge, may I remind you?”

“In ordinary circumstances.” Madeleine struggled to think through the layers of cotton wool that seemed to fill her mind. “I don't—”

Selene raised a hand, and power crackled in the room like the prelude to a thunderstorm. “You will remain silent. How could you be such a fool, Madeleine?”

“I don't understand—”

“Don't insult my intelligence. You knew. You knew the rules, and you flaunted them. How long has it been going on?”

“I—” She knew. The only thing that came to Madeleine's befuddled mind was the truth. “Five years. Nights are hard, when you remember the past. It's—” She took in a deep, burning breath. “The dead and the dying and the bloodbath at Hawthorn—”

“Be silent. I don't want your excuses, Madeleine.”

“Then what do you want?” She knew, even before the words were out of her mouth, that they were a mistake; knew it when Selene's face hardened like cooling glass, impossibly brittle and smooth at the same time.

“You know exactly what I want. I'm not throwing you out of the House in your current state, which Aragon tells me is probably so poor because of your use of angel essence. But I want you gone, Madeleine.”

Gone. Cast out from Silverspires; stripped out of her refuge, her last rampart against Asmodeus and the nightmares of the night Uphir had been deposed. Her worst nightmare coming to meet her, and she couldn't even seem to muster any energy for fear; for anything but the sick feeling in her belly. “But—I have nowhere else to go.”

“You should have thought of that before you got addicted to essence,” Selene said. She snapped her fingers, almost absentmindedly; and something was gone from Madeleine's mind, a noise she hadn't been aware of, but whose lack was overwhelming, a glimpse into the abyss. “I withdraw from you the protection of the House. Go your own way.” And with that, she turned and left—that . . . that bitch. Emmanuelle had been an essence addict, once; and she'd been allowed to clean up her act, to go on as if nothing were wrong; but Emmanuelle was Selene's lover, and of course she'd be favored over everyone else. Of course.

She couldn't seem to think straight—as in the dragon kingdom, except that it wasn't serenity that plagued her this time. Her thoughts kept running around in circles, around the gaping wound left by the loss of the House; couldn't seem to coalesce into anything useful. But still . . .

Still, she was damned if she'd let Selene have her way. “Selene?” She forced the words through a mouth that felt plugged with cotton.

Selene didn't turn, but she did pause for a moment.

“You're not Morningstar,” Madeleine said. “You're not even a fraction of what he was.”

“Perhaps not,” Selene said. “But I am the head of this House, Madeleine. And nothing will change that.”

*   *   *

PHILIPPE
came out of the House under the same gray, overcast skies of Paris. He barely could remember a time when they hadn't been thus, when he had come in from Marseilles under a sun reminiscent of the shores of Indochina, a long time ago, in another lifetime.

He carried a basket of figs, dry-cured sausage, and bread that had been forced upon him by Laure when he went to the kitchens to say good-bye—Laure hadn't said anything or accused him of anything, merely shaken her head sadly, like a mother whose chicks had had to flee the nest far too early. He'd tried, then; to warn her; to tell her she should leave the House before it collapsed around her, and realized that she'd lived for so long in it that nothing existed outside its boundaries. It had been . . . sobering—and made him think, again, of Isabelle and what she had become.

He stood, for a while, on the boundary between the House and the city, by the raised parapet of Pont d'Arcole, watching the oily waves of the Seine. He had feared the river once, like everyone in Paris; but now his eyes were opened to its true nature, and there was nothing to fear. Dragons ran sleek and superb beneath the water, elegant shapes racing one another; if he frowned hard enough, he could forget the broken-off antlers, the patches of dry scales on their bodies, the dark film that made their eyes seem dull, like gutted fish at a monger's stall. For a moment; an impossible, suspended moment, he was back on the banks of the Perfumed River; with the smell of jasmine rice and crushed garlic, and the sweet one of banana flowers, all the things he should have set aside when ascending.

Past, all of this, gone by. There was no point in grieving for faded things.

Aragon had said he should forget it all; that the way to Annam was closed forever; that he should accept that his new home was in Paris, and act accordingly. But Aragon, who liked to call himself independent and unbound by loyalty to any House, still lived through his services to them; still drew a salary from Silverspires, and the lesser Houses he helped. Aragon could no more envision a world without Houses than he could stop breathing.

And Isabelle . . .

No, he couldn't think of Isabelle now; or of what she might have meant to him. He couldn't afford to.

What he was sure of was this: he would rather die, or forsake any hope of ascending ever again, than be forced into service once more.

Isabelle might have given in, but he wouldn't. He threw a piece of broken stone into the river, and watched the ripples of its passage until they faded away. Then he shook himself, and went to look for the nearest omnibus stop.

*   *   *

MADELEINE
tried not to brood, but it was all but impossible. Her mind was an empty place; a yawning abyss opening onto the night of the coup; and now she had neither angel essence nor the House's protection to dull the knife's edge of memory. In her dreams she smelled blood, the thick, sluggish, sickening odor of a slaughterhouse; and remembered Morningstar's measured steps: the fear, shooting through her, that he would pass her by, that he would leave her to die in the darkness. In her dreams she never made it to Silverspires; or she stood on the Pont-au-Change and watched the ruins of the House, with the acrid smell of magic in her nostrils. In her dreams Asmodeus laughed, and whispered that he had won.

She lay alone in her room. She supposed Selene had given orders that no one could visit her; it would be just like her, drive home the sheer soul-destroying misery of her situation. Or perhaps no one wanted to see the pariah; to think on how their own existence within the House depended on its master's whims.

Aragon, when he did come, was brusque. She gathered she wasn't the only one he needed to take care of, or perhaps it was the atmosphere of the House, finally getting through to him even though he wasn't bonded to it.

“I can't do anything for you,” he said. His lips were two thin lines in the severity of his face. “Your lungs are all but gone.”

Madeleine suppressed a bitter smile. “How long do I have?”

“You know as well as I do. A few years maybe? Unless we're talking some kind of miracle.”

“Miracles never happen here,” Madeleine said, with terrible bleakness. “Not in this city, not in this House.” She had felt it; the change to the fabric of Silverspires; the worm, gnawing away at the layers of protections Morningstar had painstakingly laid out during the founding of the House. Perhaps it was better if she left; soon there wouldn't be any refuge here anyway. But where else would she go? There was nowhere, nothing; and the thought of taking Claire's charity in Lazarus was a draft too bitter to be swallowed.

“You should have told me,” Aragon said, finally, as he was about to leave: the professional reserve peeled away, to reveal—what? Anger? Hurt? She couldn't read him, never had been able to. “You didn't have to—”

Madeleine thought of Elphon; of blood, warm and sticky on her hands; and the ghost of pain in her hip, the acrid memory of fear as she crawled out of Hawthorn. “There are some things I can't live with, Aragon.”

“There are some things that will kill you, and you should have known that.” Aragon stared at her for a while. “See me before you leave. I can give you a few addresses and names. You don't have to head into the unknown.”

“Thank you,” Madeleine said, but she was too drained, too hollow to care. Silverspires had been her life, her refuge; and now, soon—all too soon—it would be gone, leaving only a bitter memory in her thoughts. She needed . . . a plan, something she could cling to; but nothing seemed to penetrate the gloom around her.

*   *   *

THE
omnibus was crowded, but the crowd lessened as they drew away from the major attractions. They passed the empty space where Les Halles had once been, the charred trees on rue de Rivoli, under the watchful gaze of the dome at La Samaritaine: the shop, like Les Grands Magasins, had been nuked in the war, and an upstart House whose name Philippe couldn't remember had settled in the wreckage, making grand claims of restoring the art deco building to its former glory. Like most grandiloquent claims, this one had never materialized.

Then, in the distance, the dome of Galeries Lafayette, and the roofs of House Lazarus and its counterpart, Gare Saint-Lazare—where trains had once departed for Normandy, but which hid nothing more than beggars and essence junkies. The crowd was no longer House dependents, or middle-class shopkeepers, surviving as they could; but younger, more haunted faces: children with nimble hands doubling as pickpockets, mothers carrying their entire belongings on their backs; old women smoking pipes, tobacco the only luxury they had left.

Philippe left his ornate cloak and Laure's basket of food to one such woman, bowing very low to her; and ignoring the puzzled, suspicious glance she threw him. Suspicious or not, she would sell the cloak: he hoped for a good price, though it was all out of his hands. Then, at the next station, he got down.

La Goutte d'Or had been a workers' neighborhood before the war, the hands and arms toiling away in factories, making the luxuries the Houses gorged themselves on. Now the factories functioned at part capacity only, and the workers sat on the pavement, drinking absinthe when they could afford it, or other alcohols that were much less kind on the eyesight when they could not. They watched Philippe, warily; not because he was Annamite—there were plenty of Annamites there, the descendants of those sucked in by the maw of war—but because, with his quiet, confident walk and his clean cotton clothes, he stuck out like a sore thumb.

Philippe ignored them, except to answer when a mocking voice would greet him. He was unfailingly polite and courteous; but, nevertheless, he called fire from the wasteland around him, and held the
khi
element in his clenched fist, ready to finish an argument with more than good manners.