FOR a moment Philippe stood frozen, looking at Isabelle. The light was already trembling, on the cusp of extinguishing itself, its persistent whispers fading into silence, its secret traceries absorbed into her skin. He tried to whisper her name, but the light held him fast — the light, and the ageless reflection in her eyes, the same storm of power he’d always seen in Morningstar’s gaze, a conflagration that promised him anything he’d ever wanted.
There was something behind her, a shadow that was growing, even as the light sank down and died, even as the dust on the stone bed scattered under the breath of a wind that came from nowhere: something that wasn’t wings, or light. Something…
And then the light was entirely gone, and there was only Isabelle, bewildered and lost, staring at him as though he could make sense of it all; and behind her, a translucent figure, like a ghost: Morningstar, arms outstretched as though to embrace her, a mocking smile on his face.
A cry echoed under the arched ceiling; mingled anger and triumph, even as the shadows deepened around them.
At last! the voice screamed. He had never heard it, but the burden of its presence was one he’d lived with for days; and he knew exactly who it belonged to: the ghost who harried them from beyond its restless grave. Nameless, featureless, weightless — too many things he had no hold on — as Chung Thoai had said, how could he hope to fight it? Why had he come back here? It was futile.
Darkness pooled on the scored floor: the shadows, as thick as ink or tar; raising tendrils like the heads of ten thousand snakes, hissing and snapping at the air. But they never reached Isabelle: they met a circle on the floor — runes that Philippe hadn’t seen in his rush to get to the bones, finely graven into the stone — a protection that seemed to be an impregnable barrier to the shadows. The tendrils thickened and merged, until they became three human-shaped shadows — except that each wore a crown of snakes. Their hiss deepened, became a voice that made the earth tremble.
Kinslayer.
Behind Isabelle, Morningstar stretched and smiled, his serrated wings catching the light. He bowed, an old-fashioned gentleman showing his respect to ladies of good family. Erinyes.
The floor was pulling apart: cracks appeared on the stone pavement, outlining the circle’s boundary, as if burning-hot fingers were pressing down all around the circumference.
Did you think you could escape? the Furies asked.
Philippe’s chest — it, too, felt as though it was going to pull apart, as if the storm of crows roiling within was going to break free in a welter of beaks and blood-soaked claws — but Morningstar merely smiled. On the contrary, I knew I couldn’t. There is always a price to be paid, isn’t there? In blood or lives or both…
The circle was bending inward — the shadows at the feet of the Furies pressing it out of shape — the cracks getting wider and wider — until, with an earsplitting sound that sent Philippe stumbling to the floor, the protections broke.
The Furies surged forward; and Morningstar, detaching himself from Isabelle, walked to meet them. He was still smiling — and the smile didn’t waver as the snakes wrapped around him; and their voices grew into a scream of mingled rage and satisfaction — and the light in the crypt grew so bright that Philippe had to cover his eyes.
When he opened them again, everything was silent; and Isabelle stood, watching him, by the side of the empty stone bed. She looked unharmed. “Isabelle!”
“I’m fine.”
The air had changed: no longer pregnant or oppressive, that sense of breathless waiting gone. “He’s gone,” Philippe said, aloud.
And so, it seemed, were the Furies.
Isabelle shook her head, dislodging a few strands of errant hair from the tight mass wound at her nape. “What was that?” she asked; but he saw in her eyes that she knew. “He was dead,” she said, slowly.
“Not yet. But now, yes.” Dead and gone on, to wherever the Fallen went, the last trace of him removed from this Earth.
“And the… Furies?”
“I don’t know,” Philippe said. He couldn’t hear anything from the cathedral anymore; even the faint pressure at the back of his mind was gone. “They got what they wanted, I think.” Kinslayer. The Fallen who had sent his student to slaughter. Blood or life or both….
And now the House, once protected by Morningstar’s bones, lay vulnerable.
“He died for the House,” Isabelle said.
“Do you—” He shook his head. “Do you have his memories?”
“No. Just images. Glimpses.” She smiled wryly. “It’s just as well, isn’t it? I get the feeling that the full version would burn my eyes clean out of their sockets.”
Philippe forced a smile. Ngoc Bich had warned him about coming back to the House — but she had been wrong. He drew a deep, trembling breath — no, too much to expect. The curse was still there. The shadows — the Furies — had only been part of it. There was… something else to it, something bigger and larger that still sought the destruction of the House — the anger and rage and betrayal of Morningstar’s student.
And still linked to him, obviously.
“But you have it. Morningstar’s magic.” The link they shared had faded, become fainter and fainter with time; and his plunge into the death shadows of the dragon kingdom had all but killed it. But he could still feel it; the distant heat of molten metal, a sense that it would all become unbearable if he were to come closer.
Isabelle took a deep, trembling breath. “Yes. If I don’t hold it in — like a wild horse, like a breath — then I don’t know what will happen.”
She’d destroy the crypt, and the cathedral, and perhaps a good part of the House around them, but he didn’t tell her that. Either she’d worked it out for herself and there was no point; or she hadn’t, and he didn’t need to add that kind of pressure to the balancing act in her mind.
Philippe walked back to Madeleine, to check on her. Her breath came in slow and deep; her eyes were closed, bruises in the oval of her face. She was shaking. No, it wasn’t her; it was the ground under them. Something was moving, deep within the earth: not a quake, something far slower, far more persistent, like some kind of burrowing worm…. Morningstar had kept it at bay, whatever it was.
“How is she?”
“She’ll live.” Philippe grimaced. “Though she’ll probably spend some time in the infirmary with Emmanuelle.”
Isabelle grinned. “Aragon will be furious.”
Philippe couldn’t help the smile that came to his lips as he imagined the uptight doctor’s face. “Oh yes.” He rose, drawing the cloak back over Madeleine. “We should go… Wait.”
He walked to the circle he’d seen earlier. Now it stood like a crack in pristine porcelain, surrounded by broken pieces of the floor. It had been large, wide enough to encompass the bed; and the letters themselves hadn’t been disturbed by the Furies’ attack. He walked toward it; looked at the letters — a crabbed, prickly handwriting, though the writer had clearly been in supreme control: not a letter was smudged or out of place, and they all had the same expansive curves. He’d never seen Morningstar’s handwriting, but he imagined it would look something like this. A scuffed noise behind him: Isabelle was kneeling on the floor, running her hands on the letters, her eyes shining with a reflection of the light that had engulfed her earlier on. “He carved them,” she said, the wonder in her voice that of a child — it had used to make him smile, but now he felt vaguely queasy — was it Morningstar that she was awed by, or was it the lure of power that, in the end, drew all Fallen?
“I know. Can you read them?”
It was an incongruous sight: crouching in a crypt and betting that his senses were right, that the Furies were gone: there were so many smarter things he could have done, starting with running away, far from Silverspires and its ghosts….
Isabelle frowned. “No,” she said at last, sounding surprised. “But it’s a spell. A very powerful one.”
As if anything handled by Morningstar would be pale and faint, running like old dyes. Philippe closed his eyes. There hadn’t been any mark on the body; though it was hard to remember anything more but the blinding radiance that had surrounded it. You, he thought to the ghost of Morningstar, hovering in the room. You never make things easy, do you?
There was no answer, but then, he had never expected one. He bent forward, letting his hands rest on the carvings, the coolness of the stone on his fingers; and the slow thrum coming from below the House, the worm that was gnawing at its insides. Something growing, ever patient, ever persistent: step after step after step, until it was all done, the House swept from the memory of men….
Let it be, he thought, savagely. It doesn’t deserve to be remembered.
He could feel Morningstar’s disapproval, but with Ngoc Bich’s healing it was faint, barely perceivable; not the storm that would have caused him to bend the knee in abject submission.
There were khi currents, clinging to the inside of the circle: wood, for spring; fire, bright, ever-expanding. Protection, warding; and the desperate love one feels for the doomed; the feeling that would seize a man on seeing a beautiful flower, a perfect sunrise, a piece of sculpted ice, knowing it was all destined to wither and fade.
He died for the House, Isabelle had said. Had sat there, painstakingly carving all those letters by hand: there were no marks, no scuff traces, nothing to indicate that he’d done anything but sit down, and written the words of a perfect circle into the stone. A spell; a powerful one, controlled only by the ruthless force of his will; something that had kept the House safe through the long years after the war.
But even safety, it seemed, came to an end.
He rose, brushing the dust of Morningstar’s bones from his trousers. “Come,” he said to Isabelle. “There is nothing left here.”
They were halfway to the stairs, carrying Madeleine between them, when he heard the footsteps — he didn’t turn aside, or move; what would have been the point, in a confined space with no other exit? — and they’d almost got to the exit when the first head came into view — Father Javier, his face carefully blank as he descended, and behind him…
Selene.
The Lady of Silverspires wore incongruous clothes, an orderly’s white overcoat tossed over embroidered silk pajamas. She must have come straight from the hospital, with no time to put on anything more appropriate. It would have been a comical sight, if not for the pressure of the magic swirling around her, gathered from every room, every corridor, every ruin of the House. She was followed by three guards, one of whom held a light.
“You—” Selene took a deep breath; her gaze pausing, for the briefest of moments, on Madeleine, though she didn’t appear to be entirely happy to see her. “You will explain. Now.”
Philippe would have spread his hands, in a gesture of peace; but he would have had to let go of Madeleine. “I came back,” he said. “To see if I could—”
“Finish what you’d started?” Selene remained where she was. The light from above pooled around her head, like a memory of what she must have looked like in the Heavens; in another lifetime, centuries ago.
“You—” Philippe took a deep breath. “You bound me. You treated me like a curiosity to be dissected and discarded. Do you really think you have any kind of authority over me?”
“The authority of power.” Selene’s voice was mild, but the pressure in the room had intensified; a wrong word, a wrong gesture, and it would push outward, shattering the pillars and stone bed, burying the crypt out of sight. “I thought you’d be able to recognize that, if nothing else.”
Philippe pulled fire from the ground, let it dance on the tip of his nose.
Selene’s face didn’t move. “Party tricks,” she said.
Party tricks that had absorbed her magic, once. Let her try…
Javier’s voice floated back to him, out of the darkness. “This place is old. I had no idea—”
“Javier. This isn’t the moment.”
“Oh.” There was silence for a while; the sound of feet scraping on stone. Then Javier said, “I think you should come and see, all the same. You two can kill each other afterward.”
Selene raised an eyebrow. Philippe didn’t, but he was as surprised as she. In all the time he’d been in Silverspires, he had never once heard Javier defy her. “What is here?” she asked; it wasn’t clear if the question was to Javier or to him.
“A circle,” Philippe said, cautiously. “A grave.”
Her face was tight, her lips pinched to a sliver of gray. “Whose?”
“Morningstar’s,” Isabelle said, before Philippe could stop her.
Selene didn’t move. Her face didn’t, either. It seemed to have frozen, in the exact same configuration as a moment before: the eyes unblinking, staring rigidly at the darkness, the mouth set in its thin line against the pallor of her skin. “Morningstar,” she said. Her voice conveyed some emotion, but Philippe couldn’t name it.
“His bones were on the stone bed,” Philippe said. “They’re dust now. The magic is gone.”
She should have asked where; if she’d been in anything like her normal state, she would have. But she still stared ahead of her with that same eerie stillness to her face, her lips the only part of her that still seemed to have life. “He’s dead,” she said.
“He died for the House. He inscribed a circle….” Isabelle’s voice was low and fierce.
Selene raised a hand, and a wave of silence spread through the room: magic unfurling, pushing the words back into their throats with a taste like bile. “I don’t want to know,” she said. “Javier?”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Bring them to the ballroom,” she said. “And get Choérine or Gauthier and a few guards to watch over them.” Her eyes drifted to Madeleine, who still lay limp between Philippe and Isabelle. “Belay that. Get them to the hospital wing. And make sure Asmodeus doesn’t find out about them. Not yet.” She didn’t have to work very hard to make it sound like a threat; and Philippe didn’t have to work much, either, to find the fingers of his hands clenched, and to feel a convulsive shiver take hold of his entire body — remembering Asmodeus’s face, twisted with hatred; the methodical snapping of his fingers one by one — the nightmare memories of dying that had seized him, that had sent him crawling and weeping into the night….
Asmodeus? No. No. “You told me he was gone,” Philippe said. “You said—”
Isabelle started to say something, but Selene cut her off.
“I don’t know what your game is,” she said. “Right now, I don’t want to know. We’ll talk more after I’m done here.”
There were too many people, and they could no doubt summon more. Better to obey.
For now, at any rate.
* * *
AFTER they were gone, Selene walked to the center of the room. She stared, for a while, at the stone bed, on which the wind lifted the remnants of dust; at the circle inscribed on the ground, with a handwriting she would have known anywhere, inscribed boldly and without apology. There were cracks all around it — on the outside, as if something had smashed itself, time and time again, trying to get beyond it.
A grave, Philippe had said.
And, from Isabelle: Morningstar’s.
It couldn’t be: Morningstar was as long-lived as the planet that had given him his name; a rock she could cling to even in his absence. He would not die so softly, so easily; would not have been lying under the House for those twenty years, silent and unmourned.
She picked up the dust in her hand, let it flow between her fingers. It was utterly inert, the ashes of a spent fire: nothing that was or had been magical, though from Philippe’s confused explanations she gathered it had once been the body of a Fallen.
You can’t be dead, she thought, slowly, fiercely. It was, had been, someone else they’d seen, some other corpse on that stone bed, a sacrifice for the spell inscribed in the circle.
And yet… yet, in twenty years, he had never come back. Had never sent word, or given a sign of life.
She walked to the edge of the circle and knelt, tracing the letters with her hands. They needed him in Silverspires, so badly it was like a fist clenched around her heart; a hollow in her chest only his presence would fill. She needed him; the force of his presence; his sardonic amusement at her efforts; his grudging praise when she did do something right; his effortless strength, keeping them all safe. But there was nothing; her fingers, brushing against the tip of the stone, felt only the coldness of the carved letters. She traced them, one by one: not the language all Fallen learned to read, but an older, colder alphabet that she had seen so many times in her brief apprenticeship: the language of Morningstar’s desires.
Through those words I shed aside all desires but one….
Through those words I send my prayers to the City, for the good of the House and the good name of Silverspires….
Let me be the one shattered, let me be the one that falls into dust, let me be borne away by the storm….
Through those words I shed aside all desires but one….
And on and on, around the entire surface of the circle, an intricate network of sentences crossing one another, words that mingled with one another until the spell became a litany — a secret tracery of patterns that spoke to Selene, reminding her of long afternoons practicing the gestures and words that would unlock the magic within her. “Power,” Morningstar had said, smiling — sitting in the red armchair of the room where he taught, that room now soiled by the memory of what Asmodeus had done in it. “The world shapes itself around power, and this is its language.”
She remembered kneeling, tracing letters similar to the ones on the ground in her own blood; the air trembling with the force of the power she was calling; a perfect moment when everything seemed to be frozen, waiting for the gust of wind that would sweep everything away….
Yes, this was Morningstar’s work, no doubt about it. A spell of… self-sacrifice — the thought made her sick to her stomach, because it meant that Philippe was right, that Isabelle was right; that he was gone beyond retrieval, beyond the reach of any magic or miracles. Gone. Dead; perhaps back to that City they all dimly remembered, though she found it hard to believe forgiveness would be so easy to earn.
They needed him so badly, and he wouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t ever be coming back.
Gone. Dead. Forever.
Selene knelt in the dust, one hand on the circle Morningstar had so painstakingly traced; and felt the cool, salty taste of the first tears on her cheeks.
* * *
WHEN Philippe and Isabelle entered her hospital room, Emmanuelle was waiting for them. She was sitting in a battered old chair, her hand lying on one of the armrests, so that the mark on it was clearly visible. It pulsed in Philippe’s vision; but only mildly, like a dying heartbeat. “It’s almost gone,” he said, before he could stop himself.
Emmanuelle smiled at him: her face pinched on itself, around the hollows of cheekbones, as if, lifting a shroud, he had seen the face of death staring back at him. “Philippe. I wasn’t expecting—”
Philippe felt himself grow red. They’d pushed him to see Emmanuelle, as if it would make any kind of difference; as if he could do anything for her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
Isabelle was watching the guards lay Madeleine down on another bed; though she would be listening, he was sure.
“Why?” Emmanuelle asked. She did not move from the chair. He suspected she could not; that it was the only thing keeping her upright at the moment.
“They told me—” He took a deep, deep breath, cursing Silverspires and its ancient, irrelevant intrigues, struggled for words that should have come easily to him. “They told me you were dying. I–I thought I could help. Seeing that I was the one responsible for it.”
“But you’re not, are you.” It wasn’t a question; and her gaze had the sharpness of broken glass.
Not a question he was ready to answer; and he couldn’t quite stop glancing at the door, worried Asmodeus would walk in, with that easy, dangerous smile….
His hands had tightened into fists again; again he was surprised that they didn’t hurt. “Let me have a look at it,” he said. “And then we can talk. Please?”
Emmanuelle shrugged. “If you want.”
He knelt before her, touched her skin. The raised area was surrounded by a circle of dried skin like lizard scales. There was a little magic under his fingers; a little of the same sense of oppressiveness he remembered from the shadows’ presence — it leaped when he touched it, reawakening the same feeling within his chest — for a moment shadows wavered and danced on the edge of his field of vision; for a moment he waited with his heart in his throat, but there was nothing more; it was all fading fast….
They were gone. The Furies were gone.
He moved to the secondary rings; they were all but reabsorbed back into the skin. “You’re healing.” He could be done with this; find the source of the darkness and — then what? Face it as he’d faced Morningstar’s bones?
He had no idea what to do.
“So Aragon says. I could do with less fatigue,” Emmanuelle said. She smiled, tightly. “Now you should leave the House.”
“Ha.”
“Selene has expressed interest in our staying,” Isabelle said, behind him.
“Madeleine?” Philippe asked.
“They’ve sent for Aragon, but at this hour he’s not in the House anymore,” Isabelle said. “They’ll see if Gerard or Eric…”
Emmanuelle was not to be deterred from the earlier thread of conversation. “So you’re a ‘guest’ of the House once more.”
Never. “Not if I can help it,” Philippe said, more sharply than he had intended.
“You’re not bound.” Emmanuelle shrugged. “I would advise you to slip out the door — I’m sure you can,” she said, to the too-quick denial she must have seen on his face.
Philippe had not moved; was still kneeling, holding her hand. It would mean leaving with the darkness still inside him; it would mean leaving Isabelle — but he couldn’t hope to remain here, not with Selene aware of his presence. He needed… he needed to be free. “At least let me have not come for nothing.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What—”
He called fire then, and wood, and gently entwined them on her skin. They were weak and faded, nothing like the khi currents he’d played with in Annam, but still, there was a memory of the strength of the House. Still, it was enough.
On Emmanuelle’s hand, the rings faded away one by one; last to go was the central one, its blackened outline shifting to dark red, and then to inflamed brown; and then gracefully merging with Emmanuelle’s dark skin.
She was looking at him, mouth slightly open. “No Fallen magic—”
No Fallen magic could heal that fast, that easily; or not without costs. But his magic was different — just as Ngoc Bich’s magic was different, and thank Heaven for that, or he’d still have been a broken body in a bed, awaiting the death that would extinguish his pain. “Party tricks,” Philippe said, gently; rising, and releasing her hand to fall, limp, at her side. The color was back in her cheeks; her breath came in fast bursts, as if she were bracing herself for flight; and she could have fled, too; with that infusion of strength she could easily have risen from her chair and walked without shaking.
But she didn’t. Instead, she watched him, warily. At length, she spoke in the silence of the room. “What threatens the House?” She didn’t ask what he was, or what he could do; merely took it all on faith. He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. He was sorry he had wounded her, accidental as it was. She was House, true; but she was graceful about it; generous to a fault, even to those who weren’t dependents.
See, there were positive sides to a House.
But of course there were. Of course there would be good people like her, like Laure — within Silverspires, within Hawthorn — even within House Draken, where Theophraste the tailor had been kind, and sorry to see the Annamite troops drafted in the war, and made his best effort to cut them uniforms with flowing patterns like those on Annamite silk, and handed them scraps of cloth they could use as blankets against the killing cold. It hadn’t changed a thing. Such people’s lives were richer, easier because of the House system. And in turn, the House system existed only because such kind, gentle people kept pledging themselves to it and strengthening it from within. They were all complicit, without exception.
And so was Isabelle.
“What threatens the House?” Emmanuelle asked again.
Philippe shrugged. “A ghost,” he said, feeling the memory of darkness within his chest. “Anger. Revenge.”
Not revenge, Madeleine had said. Justice. But was there such a difference to be found in Paris, anymore? The Houses were their own enclosed systems, making their own laws; and bowing only to he who had the greater power.
Morningstar was hovering on the edge of his field of vision, smiling that terrible seductive smile, his wings gilded with the last of the dying light. My world, he whispered. From beginning to end. Will you not play by the game’s rules?
Never.
Then the game will crush you, and grind your bones into dust.
But Philippe wasn’t the one whose bones were dust; wasn’t the one whose dreams had come to an end in the crypt beneath the altar. He was alive.
Emmanuelle was still watching him. “A ghost. One of the dead. Someone we wronged.” She didn’t sound surprised, or shocked. Of course. She was still part of the House. She still knew about what it did, for its supposed own good.
“One of your precious Morningstar’s students.” He hurled it at her like an insult; weary of it all; of Morningstar and his senseless plots, of Selene and her damnable pride, of Asmodeus and his casual cruelties. “You betrayed them. Sold them like a pound of flesh.”
To buy peace.
As if that had ever been a reason for anything.
Emmanuelle said nothing for a while. Her eyes were closed; her face pale. When she spoke again, her voice was level. “Sold to Hawthorn, wasn’t she? In reparation for two murders that Lord Uphir threatened to turn into a bloodbath.”
“Who? How did you know this?”
“I can read.” Emmanuelle’s voice was mild. “And you asked for books when you came into the library, some time ago. History books. I had… a refresher course on who might have cause to hate the House.”
“What was her name?” Philippe asked.
“Nightingale,” Emmanuelle said. “It was a long time ago, Philippe. Before the war.”
“And you—” She didn’t seem to see anything wrong with it, with what Morningstar had done.
Isabelle said, “I remember her. She was quick to smile; quick to anger; like a beloved child.”
“How — how do you know that?” Emmanuelle asked.
“I don’t know.” Isabelle looked bewildered for a while. “I had this image — and then nothing else.” An image from Morningstar, Nightingale through his eyes.
Philippe took a deep, trembling breath; forced himself to think. He couldn’t afford to jump at fancies; because the darkness was with him, and it was real, and deadly.
“I need to know,” he said, pulling a chair; and felt as though he had set a foot on loose rock; and stood, perilously balanced, in the instant before everything came tumbling down. “Who is Nightingale?”
“You must understand that I don’t remember her,” Emmanuelle said. “Her name was Hélène, I think, before Morningstar chose her. She was mortal. She studied with him for a couple of years. He’d have grown bored with her, in time; dissatisfied, as with any of his other students. But something happened first.”
“The betrayal.”
“There were two murders,” Emmanuelle said. “It was… messy, I remember. Two dependents of Hawthorn, in broad daylight, as they came out from Notre-Dame.” She frowned. “Uphir thought it was our fault. That, even if we weren’t behind it, we should have protected them better.”
“And were you? Behind them?”
“How should I know?” Emmanuelle said. “Morningstar never admitted to anything. But yes, it might well have been him. Who else would have had the gall to commit murder on the steps of his own House?”
“Go on,” Philippe said. He felt the darkness, rising within him; the room, growing fainter and fainter; the memory of pain; of anger; of disappointment. He wanted to ask how they could do this; how they could sell their own; but he knew the answer she was going to give him.
“There’s not much else,” Emmanuelle said. “That I know of. Morningstar went to negotiate with Uphir. He might have accused Nightingale, because she was convenient. Expendable. I assume…” She paused; Philippe only saw her through a haze of rage like a living fire. “He must have left tracks. Traces of his own magic that Uphir saw. And he pinned it on Nightingale—”
“Because she was his student and had learned his magic.” Isabelle’s voice was sharper than usual.
Memories. Visions. Philippe closed his eyes — the room was receding, and he could feel only Nightingale’s thoughts, drowning his.
They’d come for her one day in the courtyard; Morningstar smiling like a sated cat; telling her she needed to go to Hawthorn, to sort out something for him; a minor detail in an agreement with Uphir. And she had gone, trusting him; until the gates of Hawthorn closed on her, and she saw Uphir’s cold, angry smile…
“They thought she was responsible for it. In Hawthorn.”
“Yes,” Emmanuelle said. She exhaled loudly. “I can understand why she’d be angry. But she’s dead, isn’t she?”
She’d hung in chains for days and days on end, endured pain without surcease — blades that opened her flesh, burns, spells that turned her innards to jelly, all of that to make her admit to something she hadn’t done — and she could scream and accuse her master, but in the end, it hadn’t made any difference, had it? Because Uphir hadn’t cared, so long as the price was met. “She died in Hawthorn.”
Isabelle said, “The dead don’t walk the earth, Philippe. They don’t leave mirrors with curses, or trace summoning circles on the floor.”
“They speak to the living, though,” Emmanuelle said, slowly, carefully. “To magicians foolish enough to summon them, if it comes to that. Death is not necessarily an obstacle. There are precedents…” Her arms gripped the side of the chair, so strongly her skin went pale.
“A ghost, then. With human agents.”
“Yes. Claire. Perhaps Asmodeus. And others, quite probably. You would not lack for people with a grudge against the House,” Emmanuelle said. “But I doubt she has need of them any longer.”
Claire — his vision of her hands; the mirror — she’d probably left it in the cathedral, years and years ago: it would be just like her, to try to give Silverspires a nudge in the right direction, to patiently wait for the curse to take hold. Asmodeus was… more direct. “I don’t make a habit of studying ghosts,” Philippe said, a tad stiffly. Ghosts were bad luck. Their walking the earth was against the natural order of things, and he certainly had no intention of being in the same place as one, if he could avoid it. The ghosts of dragon kings were one thing; those of indentured mortals, House dependents at that, quite another. “I—” He spread his hands, unsure. “I can’t give you much more. Madeleine knew what they were — the figures in the crypt.”
“Erinyes,” Isabelle said, in the rising silence.
“Furies?” Emmanuelle looked at her hand; and then at the pile of books on the chair next to her. “Of course. The circle that crushes the original offense. The bites of snakes. But no one has summoned the Furies in—”
“You forget,” Philippe said. “Morningstar taught her.”
“How did she die?” Isabelle asked. She was standing by one of the bay windows, staring at the courtyard outside; at the daylight, slowly eclipsed by the coming of the night.
“Not well,” Philippe said. He could breathe — he could keep her at bay; keep her memories out of himself. He had to. Because, as he spoke, it was within him again — the darkness, rising within him; the growing rage, mingled with the memory of the awe Morningstar had generated as effortlessly as he breathed — with a burning sense of shame that she was revolting against her master, betraying his trust — such a terrible thing, that even hanging in her chains in the depths of Hawthorn, she’d been capable of such devotion. “They broke her piece by piece in the name of their justice, but it wasn’t them she died thinking of.”
“Thinking of?” Isabelle asked. “Hating?”
“Hate and love and all those things intermingled,” Philippe said. It was hard to focus, remembering that rage; remembering that sick feeling within him, that desperate desire to please, even after what Morningstar had done…
Emmanuelle’s face was pale; drained of all blood. “I didn’t know,” she said. “None of us did.”
“I know you didn’t,” Philippe said. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
“Morningstar is dead,” Isabelle said, softly. “Does that not—”
“The Furies are gone,” Philippe said. He felt, again, the tightness in his chest; the sense that he was larger, stretched thinner than he ought to have been — the darkness below him, burrowing toward the foundations of the House. “But Nightingale hasn’t disappeared. Her revenge is still happening. It will destroy you, in the end.” It would destroy him, too — he’d been a fool; he wasn’t strong enough to resist her — he was being torn apart, piece by piece, bones cracking in the furnace of her anger, his brain spiked through with the strength of her implacable resolve….
He… he needed to get out of here. Now.
Emmanuelle shook her head. “There’s nothing we can do to atone for this. Nothing that will…” She took in a deep, shaking breath. “I didn’t know,” she said, again, as if she still couldn’t quite imagine it. Morningstar had taught them well; hammered loyalty into them until they could barely see themselves anymore. “Philippe, you have to—”
“I’m not the one you should convince.”
“No,” Isabelle said. “But ghosts aren’t convinced anymore, are they? They’re exorcised.”
“Isabelle!” Emmanuelle said, sharply. “You can’t—”
Philippe stifled a bitter laugh — and he wasn’t sure whether it came from him or Nightingale. “See what you have?” he said. “See what Morningstar shaped; what all Fallen are, in the end? Perhaps your House doesn’t deserve to survive. Perhaps none of them do.” He rose, brushing his hands against the cloth of his trousers, as if he could remove the dust he’d breathed in the chapel. “I’m sorry, Emmanuelle. I don’t have more than this.”
He left, without looking back.
* * *
ISABELLE caught up with Philippe in the corridor. “You can’t leave.”
Philippe turned, stared at her. There was no illumination in the corridor, but, every two or three breaths, Isabelle’s skin would gradually brighten: a slow, lazy radiance that would throw underwater reflections on the flower wallpaper. It was… eerie, not least because she had never done that, not even at the height of her powers; back in that single, bloody night in the Grands Magasins where his life had changed.
“I can if I want to,” he said. And he had to. Before Selene found him and imprisoned him, once again. Before this House — and the rage Nightingale felt when he stood within its walls — was his undoing.
“You—” Isabelle shook her head. “You made a promise, remember?”
He had, but it had been to a different person. And perhaps he shouldn’t have made it at all. He owed nothing; not to her, not to this House. “I promised to help you. To keep you company, until you could work things out.” Philippe shook his head. “You’re all grown up now, Isabelle.”
“Why? Because of what happened in the crypt? Because I touched a body? Is that what worries you?”
No, not that — it was her entire behavior: the light, streaming out of her, the ageless glint in her eyes, the way she held herself. What she had said, to Emmanuelle and Madeleine; the casual way she spoke of exorcising a ghost that bothered her, not understanding any of Nightingale’s suffering, or the magnitude of Morningstar’s betrayal. Nightingale had been wronged, and all she could ask herself — instead of questioning the House and its ways, or the acts of Selene’s master — was how to remove this inconvenient obstacle from her path.
Like them. She had become just like them.
No. She had always been like them, and he had been too blind to see it.
“I’m still the same,” Isabelle said. “I—” She raised her hand, the one with the fingers missing; worried at the gap with her other hand, as she always did under stress. “Why can’t you see it?”
Because she was changing, and she scared him stiff. Because he couldn’t be quite sure when it had happened — when, in the seemingly endless night that had sharpened his entire being to a thin pretense of what he once had been — she had become a Fallen in her own right, like Selene, like Oris.
Like Asmodeus.
Was it when she’d touched Morningstar’s bones? A simple answer, that — that power was its own corruption, but of course there were no simple answers. “You’ve changed,” he said, simply. There was nothing else he could say that she would understand.
“I haven’t.” Isabelle’s voice was grim. “I warned you once before: this is my House, Philippe, and the only place where I feel safe. I will defend it.”
“You weren’t this”—he struggled for words—“categorical before. You didn’t go to see Selene back then, did you?”
She held his gaze, unflinchingly. “Perhaps I should have.”
He sighed. “It hasn’t got much to do with you in any case, Isabelle. I’m just—” Tired. Tired of it all, of their stupid power plays and reputation games; tired of wondering where he fit into all this and never finding an answer. “I can’t go on like this.”
And of course, it wasn’t true. Because it wasn’t just weariness, but also her. What she had become; the power she effortlessly wielded — and the effortless cruelty that surfaced, like a scorpion sting, in the moments he least expected it.
He couldn’t face that, not anymore.
Isabelle’s face was a mask, all emotions smoothed out of it. “You — you could offer Selene your help. I’m sure she would pardon you, take you into the House—”
“I don’t want to be in a House!” He hadn’t meant to shout it, but the words slipped out, as treacherous as a wet knife blade. “A House took me, once. Tore me from my home and marched me all the way here, to fight in a stupid, senseless war; and left me with nothing, not even a mouthful of food or a scrap of cloth to call my own.”
Isabelle’s voice was quiet. “A House took you. It wasn’t this House, Philippe.”
As if it made any difference — how could she not see it? How could she—? “No,” Philippe said. “It wasn’t. But, deep down, they’re all the same. Can’t you see? Morningstar betrayed Nightingale for what? Two deaths? An advantage with Hawthorn that didn’t last the winter? Houses all think lives are cheap.” Pointless. It was all so pointless, their little games like children’s fights in school, with no more rhyme or reason than their meaningless professions of charity and care for the weak.
They didn’t deserve anything — except to crumble and fall.
“We don’t,” Isabelle said. “I–I—”
“You don’t, or you don’t think you do.” He sighed. She looked bewildered once more, her preternatural maturity gone. She’d always been like that, hadn’t she, a child who had seen too much to remain one? But children were cruel, too; casually tearing the wings from flies, mocking and hurting one another and never knowing when to stop. What would she do, with Morningstar’s powers, and some of his memories? What would she think of? He didn’t want to find out. Better leave now, with some of his illusions intact.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you. How do you appease a ghost, if they’re right? I can’t believe the House is worth saving.”
“I have to believe.” Isabelle drew herself up, gathering light around her like a mantle; appearing, for a bare moment only, as she must have when in the City, her black hair ringed with radiance, and with the shadow of huge, feathered wings at her back. Like the wings of Asmodeus in his prison cell, he thought, hands shaking. Even if everything else had been different, he couldn’t live with that. “Don’t you see, Philippe? I have nowhere else to go.”
“I know.” They wouldn’t budge, either of them. It was futile. “Let’s agree to disagree, shall we?”
Isabelle said nothing. He could have done something then; could have found words to comfort her, could have laid a hand on her shoulder and told her that it was all going to be all right. He didn’t, because he couldn’t lie to her anymore. Because there was still darkness in his heart; and underneath the House, the soft, crushing sound of that huge thing hungering to reduce the foundations to dust. Because the sound of the wind through the corridors was no longer a lament, but that of an oncoming storm.
She’d be strong enough to weather it — she had Morningstar’s magic; and the protection of the other Fallen in the House. He didn’t need to worry; or to listen to the treacherous voice in his heart that reproached him for leaving her. “Be well, will you? I–I would hate for you to come to harm.”
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.