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.
FOURTEEN
SICKBEDS
AS Madeleine could have predicted, Aragon was not happy. “Did I miss a note about wounding season?” he asked, turning to look for his trays of instruments. “Still, at least you’re conscious, which is a huge improvement on the previous patient.”
He was making light of it, but he was obviously still worried—his eyes deeply shadowed, with the same hint of fear Madeleine had seen him show at Samariel’s bedside. She had her artifacts, her mirrors, and her infused containers—enough protection, if she needed to—if she could convince herself that she was safe from whatever stalked the House.
“I’m fine,” Emmanuelle said from the bed. She lay propped on a pillow; her skin the color of muddy milk, her wounded hand painful to see: the circle a little smudged, sitting smug in the center of a swell of red, raw skin.
“No, you’re not,” Aragon said. He slipped into a white gown, and went to a basin to wash his hands. “To start with, you’re running a high fever, and only a fool would insist that injury is a harmless wound. What happened?”
“I wasn’t there. But she tried to catch Philippe as he ran out of the door.” Madeleine couldn’t take her gaze away from Emmanuelle’s hand; from the circle of raised, red skin that wouldn’t go away—the mark that killed.
No.
“Philippe?” Aragon asked, from what felt like a world away.
“He touched me.” Emmanuelle spoke up. “And it was . . . I’m not sure. It felt like his fingers burned—and it traveled upward. I can’t feel my arm, not so well.”
Madeleine fought panic.
“You didn’t see any shadows?” Aragon asked, slowly, carefully. “Nothing beyond his touching you?”
Emmanuelle closed her eyes, and opened them again with a clear effort. “Maybe a glimpse? I’m sorry. I don’t remember. It felt . . . as though there was more of him than there ought to be, if that makes sense? His hand was heavier than it should have been.”
It made no sense to Madeleine.
“It doesn’t matter,” Aragon said, gently, pushing one pillow under her back. “We’ll find out.” And then, to Madeleine: “I don’t understand why Philippe would do such a thing.”
“Me, neither,” Madeleine said. She wasn’t altogether sure she had pieced everything together. Had it been Philippe since the beginning, truly? If he’d had a secret agenda against Silverspires, he’d hidden it well, under what seemed to be an entirely understandable grudge against the people who had yanked him from his home and enlisted him into a war that didn’t matter a whit to him. But still—still, the evidence was inescapable. She looked at the wound on Emmanuelle’s skin, the perfect circle with its bloody dot in the middle. “Is she going to recover?”
Aragon turned to her. His face was the mask she knew all too well, cool and professional, expressionless. But she could tell he was worried. “She will, if you let me do my job.”
“It really does look like a snakebite,” Isabelle said. “Can I do anything to help? I have magic—”
“That you won’t use,” Aragon said, curtly. “Healing spells cast on unknown magical wounds isn’t an experiment I’m ready to run, not until we know more.”
“Waiting until we know more could kill her,” Madeleine pointed out.
“I’d rather appreciate if you didn’t talk about me as if I were already gone,” Emmanuelle said, but it was an absentminded comment. Her attention appeared focused on the wound in her hand; her brow furrowed, as if she were trying to remember something.
“It’ll be fine,” Madeleine said. “Really.” But, like Aragon, she was worried. This was something that killed—violently, messily—something that took apart a Fallen’s body, breaking down bones and organs. She wasn’t sure how long contact would need to be, but even that short second between her and Philippe seemed to have had a huge effect.
She’d live. Of course she would. She was strong.
But no one had lived. No one had survived, so far—that was all the truth she had, all the comfort she could offer herself.
For as long as she could remember—since even before she came into the House—Emmanuelle had been there, a solid presence at the heart of Silverspires—like Madeleine, seldom speaking up, doing her job as best she could. To think of her gone; to even consider that tomorrow would be a day when she wouldn’t be found in the stacks, gluing together old books and poring over faded images as if they were treasures . . .
Aragon put a syringe in Emmanuelle’s arm. “A mild sedative,” he said. “You need rest more than anything else.”
“And you need to talk away from my hearing. Really, you could have gone in the other room,” Emmanuelle said, grimacing. “I’m fine.” She laid her head back against the pillow, staring at the moldings on the ceiling. “It’ll pass in the night anyway. . . .” Abruptly, her gaze focused on Madeleine. “Madeleine. I’ve seen that wound pattern before.” Her voice was low, urgent, but her eyes were already rolling up again.
“Where?” Madeleine asked, but Emmanuelle had sunk down into sleep; and only an indistinct word escaped her lips. Madeleine suppressed a curse.
“She’ll wake up,” Aragon said.
“Are you sure?”
“No, of course not. I can’t be sure of many things. She’s running a fever, which means she’s fighting it.”
“People have died of fevers, Aragon.”
“Samariel didn’t have a fever,” Aragon said. “Oris didn’t have time to have one. She’s alive, and fighting. See it however you want. I’m choosing to be optimistic.” His voice was weary. “We’ve had enough death here for several lifetimes.”
No disagreeing with that.
“I expect Selene will be along later.” Aragon put the syringe back on its tray, and sighed. “And I suggest you both get some sleep. You look like you got about as much as I did.”
* * *
IN the end, as on so many nights, Madeleine couldn’t sleep. She drifted back into the library, staring at the pile of books Emmanuelle had been working on; and, on impulse, took a
pile of them with her. If she’d indeed seen that circle, perhaps it was recent. Perhaps it had been in something that Emmanuelle had been reading.
After some hesitation, she also dropped by her laboratory, and took with her one of her strongest remaining artifacts: a nail clipping from Selene set in an amber pendant, a warm, comforting weight in her hand, like a live coal on the coldest nights. Whatever had stalked the corridors during those fateful nights seemed to be gone—vanished with Philippe’s departure—but she wasn’t fooled. Something that strong wouldn’t be so easily banished; and they still had no inkling of what it was, or what it wanted. Why target Samariel? Had it been smart enough to know what his death would cause, how it would weaken the House?
It wanted Silverspires’ downfall; and perhaps that of other Houses, too. Perhaps, like Philippe, an end to the whole system—“feudal,” Philippe had called it with a sneer, as if he came from a more enlightened place, and not a distant land locked in internecine fights between regions. The nerve of him—but he was gone now, dead; or if not dead, as good as dead. Asmodeus’s fury wasn’t to be ignored.
In Emmanuelle’s room, everything was dark. The bed was heavily warded: Aragon’s work, no doubt, though how effective would the wards be against something that could disrupt magic? Beyond the wards, Emmanuelle slept fitfully; the mark on her hand still raw and angry. No matter what Aragon said, she didn’t look well—her cheeks were flushed, and Madeleine would find her skin red-hot if she reached out—though to do so would also trigger Aragon’s wards, and wake him up from what little rest he was getting.
With a sigh, Madeleine settled in an armchair, and started to read the books.
It didn’t make for much excitement. The first was a transcription of a Greek manuscript, painstakingly copied out. It was some kind of play about Orestes, though Madeleine didn’t know the language and couldn’t read more than a few words. She remembered Emmanuelle working on it in the archives; it had apparently contained one of the first references to the morning star, the most radiant of them all—to her, an intriguing addition to the history of the House’s founder; to Madeleine, an obsession that made little sense.
The House of Shattered Wings Page 22