The House of Shattered Wings

THIRTEEN. A THREAD OF WOOD, A THREAD OF WATER

ISABELLE was in Madeleine’s laboratory, gluing a panel of glass to the inside of a mirror frame, her face furrowed in concentration. Earlier, she had looked preoccupied and uneasy, working the fingers of her good hand into the hollow of her crippled one, as she always did when worried — though she’d shaken her head when Madeleine had asked her what was wrong. Not trusting enough — Madeleine, remembering Oris, fought an urge to ask her again, but it was useless. She couldn’t pry words out of Isabelle, not if the Fallen didn’t want to talk.

Madeleine turned her attention back to the vials, where Selene had stored a few breaths: not much magic, but enough to get someone out of trouble, if need be. She would need to seal those carefully, stoppering them with primed wax so the breath didn’t escape.

A sound brought her out of her reverie: a knock at the door. Madeleine opened it, to find Selene, Aragon and Emmanuelle on her doorstep. What—?

Selene was as impassive as ever, cool and composed and revealing nothing of her thoughts. But Emmanuelle’s face was ashen, her hands shaking.

“What is it?” Madeleine asked. Something grave, no doubt, to bring the three of them to her laboratory at this hour of the night. Thank God she hadn’t taken angel essence; she wasn’t sure she could disguise its effects from Selene’s sharp gaze; though she felt the lack of it keenly, her mind shriveled and small in a moment when she could have used all of her wits.

Selene’s gaze moved past her, to rest on Isabelle. “I thought I’d find you here,” she said. “Your dedication is commendable.”

Supercilious and entitled, as always. “We all do our duties,” Madeleine said, dryly. Some of them better than others — it was a frightful thought, but what had Selene achieved, beyond opening them up to Hawthorn again — to reduce the safe House Morningstar had been so proud of to a tottering wreck? She quenched the thought before it could betray her, but the anger wouldn’t leave her. “What do you want?”

Selene completely ignored her. “I need your help,” she said to Isabelle.

Isabelle looked startled. “My help? But I don’t—”

“Don’t underestimate your powers, child.” Selene crossed the room and gently removed the mirror from Isabelle’s hands. “Listen to me, but don’t ask questions. There isn’t much time. Samariel is dead. Asmodeus has vanished, and so has Philippe. I need to find them, but it’s a large House and we can’t afford to search every room.”

Isabelle, as Selene had asked, did not speak up. Her face drained of color, in what seemed an eternity to Madeleine; but when she spoke, Selene was still waiting. “What do you need?”

“Your help. You’re still tied to Philippe, aren’t you? There’s a bond between the two of you, one I don’t quite understand.”

Isabelle flushed. “It doesn’t quite work like that. I can’t locate him, precisely. I just get images, and feelings, and only at certain times, when my mind isn’t busy with other things….”

“Please, child. There isn’t much time.”

Isabelle closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she seemed to have aged — her cheeks hollowed out, her hands shaking. “He’s in pain,” she said. “So much pain, dear God, how can he bear it all?”

Selene grimaced. “That’s not very helpful,” she said; but Madeleine, who was more observant, was there to catch Isabelle as she swayed and fell. Her body had gone rigid.

“His pain,” Madeleine said through gritted teeth. “That’s all she’s getting from him.” She didn’t even bother to hide her contempt from Selene. Isabelle was convulsing in her arms — her body arching backward while her skin turned deathly pale, the weight of her almost catching Madeleine off balance.

“I know.” Selene’s voice was cool. How could she keep her head, in a situation like this? “But I need her. Asmodeus is an old hand, and he’ll have obscured his location. I don’t have the time or the resources to search every room in the House.” She came to take Isabelle’s hand, her dark brow furrowed in thought. “Isabelle, I need you to focus. I can help you, but only if you let me.”

Magic blazed through her: a light from beneath the skin that cast every bone in sharp relief, a feeling of warmth drawn from the entire House, so strong it made Madeleine tremble. She ached for that power to go through her instead of Isabelle, to fill the emptiness within her, to wash away the rot in her lungs.

“Isabelle.”

Isabelle’s eyes opened. The brown iris had disappeared: they were white through and through, the color and harshness of seagulls’ feathers; and shining with the same unearthly radiance as Selene. “Pain,” she whispered, and said nothing else for a while. Her hands were clenched, her fingers held at an angle that seemed almost impossible — another trick of Fallen anatomy? Selene’s grip on her remained tight.

Gradually, Isabelle’s hands unclenched; and brown crept back into her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath, wincing. “It’s an old room,” she said. “With big armchairs and a low table, and that wallpaper with the little white flowers on beige.”

Emmanuelle spoke up, her voice as dry and rasping as Madeleine on her worst days. “The East Wing. Behind the cathedral. Only place where we still have that old wallpaper.”

“Only seventy or so rooms to search then,” Selene said, dryly. “Can you remember nothing else?”

Isabelle shook her head. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help more.” Her mouth opened, and closed, as if she’d just remembered something she wasn’t supposed to say.

“What is it?” Selene asked.

“I’m not sure,” Isabelle said. “But I think I smelled the river?”

“Ground floor.” Emmanuelle’s voice shook. She kept it steady only through a visible effort of will. “Is that good enough?”

Selene’s face was grim. “It’ll have to be. I’m gathering search parties.” She looked at Isabelle; and at Madeleine, who was still hovering nearby. “That includes both of you.”

Isabelle tugged at Madeleine’s hand as they went out. She still looked awful, her eyes ringed with gray, her skin as pale as the corpses Madeleine had seen in the morgue; and her hands twitching in movements not entirely controlled. “You’re still in contact with him,” Madeleine said.

Isabelle grimaced. “It’s like I said. He’s always at the periphery of my thoughts, but now that I’ve focused on him, he’s… hard to ignore. But he won’t last long, Madeleine. Not under this kind of strain. No one can.”

Madeleine could imagine, all too well, what kind of strain they were talking about — this was Asmodeus, after all, and he had learned from the best. Her own skin felt cold, but she kept her voice level as she answered Isabelle. “I’m sure we’ll be in time,” she said, and did not even flinch as she uttered the lie.

Mother of God, look over him, please. She didn’t like Philippe much; but no one deserved to go through this, no matter what they might or might not have done.

* * *

THERE was… pain. There were fingers that would not flex; ribs that hurt every time he tried to suck in a burning breath, and a wet, gurgling sound that didn’t augur well for the state of his lungs — pierced, maybe? What could Aragon put back together, given enough magic? Perhaps not even that — perhaps it was too late, just as it had been too late for the poor student Morningstar had betrayed and left to rot — their agony running red-hot through them like molten lead — the battered legs, the dislocated shoulders, the myriad exquisite cuts as their jailers tried to make them admit to secrets their master had never given them — the babble that ran out of their mouth, mingled with blood and drool. A few lucid, cold thoughts here and there, though he wasn’t sure if they belonged to him. Or to the sharp, implacable will that had waited decades for its revenge.

Given away. Bartered away to broker a fragile peace between the House of Silverspires and the House of Hawthorn — a peace that would not last anyway, for a few years later the Great War would come and destroy everything Morningstar had ever hoped for.

Good.

All you hold dear will be shattered; all that you built will fall into dust; all that you gathered will be borne away by the storm….

The voice, running over and over in his mind; no longer a human voice, but something darker, rasping and coughing and breathing a smell of brine, as if the old stories of the Christian Hell were true…

A door slamming open, in a world far, far away. Emmanuelle’s horrified expression, her eyes two pits of darkness in the muddy-milk paleness of her face. “Philippe—”

“Untie him. Now.” Selene’s voice, cold and cutting. “I won’t ask twice.”

She — she hadn’t sold him to Asmodeus? She — he started to say he didn’t understand, but his swollen tongue wouldn’t obey him.

Asmodeus, rising, turning — the words all blurred together, too low to be made out; but Selene’s reply was sharp and clear, like broken glass. “I think you’ve done enough, Asmodeus. Are you happy now? I should think this is proper compensation, insofar as you’re concerned — and I would highly suggest you leave us alone now. You’re this close to going too far.”

And Asmodeus’s face turning again — his eyes as hard as beetle’s shell, but the corners of his mouth turned slightly upward, in horror, in disapproval; he wasn’t sure.

He had to…

Needed to…

“Let him go,” Isabelle said, and the sound of her voice — and the power blazing from her — was enough to drag him back to sanity for a moment. For a moment — a single, suspended heartbeat — he was himself again, in a body that kept twisting and twitching in pain — but then he was calling the khi currents from the roiling, writhing mass in the room — and fire leaped into his hands, circling his wrists — incinerating the rope and blasting through Asmodeus’s weakening protections.

From his armchair, Morningstar smiled, and raised a crystal glass as a salute — a glass in which shadows slid and merged and waited for their opportunity to leap….

He was up, and tottering across the room, leaning against the doorjamb before either Selene or any of the Fallen could touch him. “Philippe!” Emmanuelle said, but she’d never had the power to hold him. She must have reached out for him, because he felt her touch on his skin — something reared, deep within him — a head, darting forward, a bite, and Emmanuelle falling back with an incoherent scream.

No. No. But he couldn’t hold on to anything. All his thoughts seemed to be as fractured as the glass in Morningstar’s hands.

Fire in his hands, fire in his veins — the sound of his heart, madly beating against his broken ribs — the strength of water around him, drawn in a protective circle — and he ran on legs that should have been jelly, losing himself in the bowels of the House, letting Emmanuelle’s and Selene’s voices fade to wordless whispers. Away. He had to get away from this room; from Asmodeus, from Morningstar, from whoever was behind this — from the House that had given away its own students, that kept betraying its dependents, over and over again….

Away.

* * *

MADELEINE, out of breath, with the beginning of a cough in her wasted lungs, cleared her corner of the corridor, and saw—

No.

No.

Asmodeus, in the middle of an old-fashioned drawing room, as elegant and dapper as always — his long-fingered gloves dark with the cloying smell of fresh blood. He held a handkerchief between the tip of his index and his thumb, carefully wiping his horn-rimmed glasses clear of any stain. The animal smell of blood, the sharp, sickening tang of it, rose so strong everything seemed to be coated with it, like an abattoir; or the kitchens, the night Elphon had died….

Blood. Fear. No. Don’t be a fool. It had nothing to do with her, or with Elphon. Nothing. She took a deep, shaking breath; forced herself to look at him. He was speaking, wearily, to Selene — giving the impression of an adult indulging a small child. “I have no idea where he went. I notice you didn’t make much of an effort to follow him, either.”

Selene didn’t flinch. “He’ll turn up.” Beside her was Emmanuelle — the archivist’s face pale — and Isabelle, who looked as though she’d descended all the way into Hell. “We have to find him,” she said. “He’s hurt.”

Who—? Philippe. The blood — the blood was his, not hers, not Elphon’s….

Asmodeus raised an eyebrow, looked at Selene with an eloquent expression. “Do you always raise them this dumb?” he asked. “Such pure and magnificent innocence.” He pinched the temples of his glasses between index and thumb, and put them back on his face. The handkerchief, stained with two bloody fingerprints in a corner, remained in his hands. “Trust me, child,” he said to Isabelle. “If you don’t grow up, others will make you grow up, and it will be a far less pleasant experience.”

Heart beating madly, Madeleine turned to leave the room as quietly as she’d entered it; but Asmodeus’s gaze turned in her direction. “Ah, Madeleine. Do come in.”

Her voice seemed to have deserted her, and so had her will. She should bow and make her excuses, go back to the safety of her laboratory. Instead, she found herself moving farther into the room, as jerkily as a puppet on strings — coming to stand by Isabelle in a futile attempt to protect her, with the monster in the center of the room smiling widely all the while.

“You’ve got your audience,” Selene said. “Are you satisfied?”

Asmodeus’s eyes were hard. “Satisfied? No, if you must know. I would have liked to kill him myself.”

Emmanuelle took in a deep, painful breath. “He wasn’t—”

“You saw him.” Asmodeus’s voice was curt. “You saw what was around him. Will you look me in the eye and tell me that had nothing to do with Samariel? Such angry magic…”

Emmanuelle’s face was pale. She lifted her hand: the flesh of the back was raised and red, formed around a perfect circle with a dot in the center. The mark of the corpses. The touch that killed in the time it took to draw breath, like the five informants in Lazarus, like Oris.

No. That wasn’t possible. “You’re still breathing,” Madeleine said, and couldn’t keep the accusation out of her voice. “How can you still—”

“Because she’s a stubborn idiot and didn’t go to the hospital wing when I asked her to,” Selene said. “Emmanuelle—”

Emmanuelle didn’t move. Couldn’t move, Madeleine realized, chilled: too weak to do so. Her instincts kicked in; filling in the void in her mind. “Selene is right. You need to get to Aragon, now. Come on—” She moved to support the weight of the Fallen; and was only half surprised when Emmanuelle let her entire body go slack. She propped her up — she weighed almost nothing, compared to Isabelle — and started to walk toward the door.

“Let me help you,” Isabelle said, and took Emmanuelle’s other shoulder. Isabelle’s eyes rolled upward for a fraction of a second, and the radiance from her skin intensified. “I’ve asked Aragon to meet us halfway.”

Madeleine nodded. Good thinking — she should have had the idea herself, but her mind was frozen, all her thoughts hopelessly scattered in the presence of Asmodeus, running ragged on fears that he would find her, that he would make her pay for leaving Hawthorn, for betraying her loyalties to him….

Behind them, Selene and Asmodeus were still facing each other. “I ask again,” Selene said. “Are you satisfied?”

“In the name of the House, as reparation for Samariel’s death?” Asmodeus’s voice was sardonic, each word grating on Madeleine’s exposed nerves like sandpaper. “It will have to do. I know the signs. He’s gone away to bleed his last somewhere. There’s only so much abuse mortal flesh can take, after all.”

“And what if he’s still alive?”

An amused snort. “Highly improbable. But, nevertheless, since you’re smart enough to ask — yes. If he’s found alive somehow, I’ll have my revenge on him, but that will be outside House business. I’ll consider — honor”—he rolled the word around on his tongue, as if it were an unsatisfying piece of meat—“satisfied, insofar as we’re both concerned.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Selene said. “Now tell the other Houses.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure I do.”

How could she be so calm, so focused, with her lover all but ready to collapse, struck by whatever had already killed seven people? On her shoulder, Emmanuelle cracked a painful smile. “Mustn’t worry her,” she whispered. “She has a lot of things to do.”

The first of which should have been worrying about you, Madeleine thought, but didn’t say, as they went deeper into the maze of the East quarter, looking for a way into the hospital wing — leaving the two bickering Fallen behind her, talking about honor and the price of revenge on a House, and all the meaningless things they were all so obsessed about — what was the point, when the shadows were still around — when they could still kill as they had killed Oris?

* * *

LATER, much later — when the burst of magic was all but gone, the pain in his body a song that wouldn’t fade away — Philippe crawled. He was almost out of the House by then — he needed to get away from it, from the shadows and the curse and everything that had broken him — on the bloodied floor of Notre-Dame, where Oris had died, his hands brushing the burned remnants of benches, feeling the harshness of carbonized wood against his bloodied skin. The stone under him was warm; the stars above cold and uncaring, as they had always been — where was the Herder, where was the Weaver, where was the River of Stars and all the figures he’d delighted in as a child?

He’d expected them to chase him; surely they’d guess where he would go? But there was nothing but the silence of the night; and the fumes rising from the banks of the Seine. The Seine. The bridge at the back of the church. No one in their right mind would go toward the river, or consider the low bridge safe. But he had no mind, not anymore.

He crawled farther, his mouth filling with the salty taste of blood — every inch a struggle against the encroaching darkness. He’d find his old gang again, beg forgiveness of Ninon, impress them all with his knowledge of the great Houses….

He must have blacked out again, because when he woke up again, the stars had all but vanished, and the gray light before dawn suffused the church, striking the throne. He’d half expected the ghost of Morningstar to be sitting in it, but the stone seat was empty. However, something was…

He felt it again then — that thin thread of water he’d first touched here — and then later in Aragon’s office — that same bubbling, simmering enthusiasm. Dragons. A dragon kingdom.

There were no dragon kingdoms, not here in Paris; not in the blackened waters of the Seine. That dark, angry power they had warned him about could not be the graceful, generous beings he remembered from Annam. But, nevertheless, he crawled, following the thread — soon, it would be dawn, and people would exit the House; soon, someone would see him and raise an alarm, though what could they do to him that hadn’t been done before?

There had been a little verdant square, once, but the grass under him was scorched and dark; and the elegant stone wall that had adorned the bridge was torn, the carvings shimmering with the remnants of the spell that had destroyed them. Hauling himself to the opening, Philippe saw the waters of the Seine, glinting as black as coal under the gray skies. The waves glimmered with an oily, malodorous sheen. No dragon kingdoms there, of course not. What a fool he’d been.

When he looked away, there was a woman, sitting by the bridge. “I didn’t see you. I’m sorry,” he said, but the words couldn’t get past the taste of blood in his mouth.

The woman smiled. She was dressed in a long court dress — not of France, but with the long billowing sleeves of the Indochinese court. Her face was whitened with ceruse, but patches of it had flaked off, revealing dull scales; and the pearl she wore under her chin was cracked, its iridescence the same sickening one as the reflections on the waters of the Seine. “It’s quite all right, Pham Van Minh Khiet,” she said — effortlessly putting all the inflections on his name. And before he could ask her how she spoke such good Viet, she swept him up in the embrace of her long wet robes and plunged with him, deep into the waters of the Seine.