The House of Shattered Wings

by Aliette de Bodard

  The second book was an account of an obscure Merovingian procession back in the eighth century—pages and pages describing religious rituals, and the presence of noblemen and Fallen—even, it seemed, a captured manticore, such an unusual occurrence that the writer had devoted an entire chapter to its description, even though it hadn’t lasted long past the execution of its summoner—Emmanuelle had probably been only interested in the brief mention of Morningstar and the House of Silverspires, but the detailed description of what everyone had been wearing and in what order people had been ranked made for rather dry reading.

  Madeleine turned to the next book in the stack, which was printed by a small university, and looked to be a medicine doctoral thesis about the effects of some medicine on the Fallen body. Her heart sank. Surely Emmanuelle wouldn’t have read this cover to cover? But of course she had.

  It was tiring work: poring through diagrams adorned with spidery handwriting, and through paragraph after paragraph of nearly incomprehensible jargon, struggling to make sense of the subject. There were sicknesses and symptoms, and the results of experiments, and everything merged and ran together in her mind, like ink on wet paper. . . .

  She woke up with a start. There was someone else in the room—her hand, fumbling, found the amber pendant, released its power into her before she could think—and then, in the growing light of magic, she saw it was only Selene.

  The ruler of Silverspires looked awful. There was no other word. She was disheveled, and there was something wrong with her clothes. It took Madeleine a moment to realize that the black jacket hung slightly askew, and the shirt was slightly creased: negligible, except that Selene would rather be dead than be seen with a less than perfect outfit.

  Selene exhaled when she saw Madeleine. “Oh. It’s you.” She sounded disapproving.

  Madeleine put the book she’d been reading back on the precarious pile at the bottom of her chair. “I thought I’d keep her company,” she said, obscurely embarrassed, as if she’d been a child again, caught out when stealing jam from the communal kitchens. “In case—”

  “In case it came back?” Selene shook her head. “It’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?” Madeleine asked.

  Selene massaged her forehead for a while. “I know the signs. It’s not Philippe who is doing this. It’s something . . . some power he’s the catalyst for. He let something loose in Silverspires. Something . . . deadly, and it’s still loose.”

  “I don’t understand.” Slowly, stupidly.

  “It’s gone. For the time being.” Selene came in, and watched Emmanuelle for a while. Her face did not change expressions; but her body seemed to sag a fraction, as if something had given out within her. “She doesn’t look good.” She pulled a chair, and sat down, watching her lover with that same curiously impassive face.

  “Where were you?”

  Selene didn’t look up. “Negotiating with the other Houses,” she said. “Making sure they didn’t blame Silverspires for this mess, and that it won’t find us defenseless when it comes back.”

  “Comes back?” Madeleine asked slowly, stupidly; feeling as though she and Selene walked in entirely different worlds.

  “You didn’t think it’d stop now, did you? That’s why I asked Asmodeus what he’d do, if it turned out Philippe was alive.”

  “I thought you wanted to question him yourself.”

  “Question him?” Selene’s face still did not move, but her hands clenched. “I would like to, though Asmodeus will find him first. In the meantime, I do know that powers like that don’t die fast, or easily. No, it will be back.”

  “But you don’t know what it is,” Madeleine said. She’d shared everything she had with Selene; and Selene still hadn’t found anything. Emmanuelle had been looking; but . . . “You don’t know what killed Oris or why.”

  “I know it’s threatening the House. That’s enough for me. Do I need detailed motivation? No. Detailed motivation for whoever summoned that power would be nice, but isn’t necessary, either. The motivations are always the same, after all.”

  “One of the other Houses—”

  “Oh, it’s one of the other Houses,” Selene said, sharply. “Who else in the city has that kind of power? I would guess it’s Lazarus. But I’ve already done what I can with them. If they will not negotiate or align themselves with me”—her face was hard—“then there isn’t much I can do, save prepare us for more attacks. I will not lose this House. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know you won’t lose the House,” Madeleine said. “But we need more than that.” The words were out of her mouth before she could think; the light in Selene’s eyes shriveled and died.

  “You don’t trust me, do you?” Selene asked. Her tone was mild, almost curious; but her gaze had the edge of a blade—asking Madeleine whether she would dare voice her doubts and her fears, whether she would face Selene’s anger.

  Madeleine knew she couldn’t. She was an alchemist; not a ruler, and certainly not even close to Selene in terms of power. She spread her hands in a gesture that was as unthreatening as she could make it. “It’s not that. It’s—” How could she make Selene understand? “Forget it. I meant nothing.”

  “You didn’t,” Selene said, but she didn’t speak again. She watched Emmanuelle with the intensity of someone dying of thirst in a desert. Clearly not a moment Madeleine should intrude on; and so she went back to her books, straightening out the stack, and prepared to go back to her laboratory.

  But, when she got up, the pile of books precariously balanced on her arms, Selene was up as well. Already?

  “You’re leaving?”

  Selene shrugged. “I have something else I must do.”

  Something—what could be more important than Emmanuelle? “You should be with her,” Madeleine said.

  “You presume.” Selene was looking through Madeleine again, as if she didn’t really matter. “It was good of you to sit with her, but don’t think this entitles you to familiarity.”

  What was it that they’d whispered, at the banquet she’d attended? Something about decline, and Silverspires being inescapably weak? It had been a terrible thing to say, but perhaps it was the truth; perhaps Selene’s vacillating leadership wasn’t what the House needed, after all.

  “You’re right,” she said, bowing to Selene. “I apologize.”

  But doubt, like a serpent’s fang, remained buried in her mind, and wouldn’t be excised.

  * * *

  PHILIPPE’S dreams were dark, and confused. He lay in a covered bed, watching light filter, opalescent, through a ceiling that kept shifting—there was a face bending over him, almost human, except that it had green, scaled skin, and a thin mustache, and teeth that were too long and sharp—there was another light, sickly gray, and a voice saying words he couldn’t quite focus on, but with a lilt that was familiar, that ached like a wound in his heart. . . .

  Attendants moved soundlessly beyond the veils that hung over the bed: men with pincers instead of hands, with scales and fish tails, with hair the color and hardness of mother-of-pearl, everything billowing in currents he couldn’t see.

  I was there once, he thought, struggling to dredge thoughts through the morass of his brain. Swimming through pagodas of coral and algae, in gardens of basalt where volcanoes simmered, making the water warmer for just a moment; going over bridges with fish swimming under the rail, watching octopi nestle on gongs and drums, calling the faithful to worship . . .

  He had been there once: a familiar memory, except that it wasn’t quite what it should have been. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but there was something—something he should have remembered.

  As the fever sank down to a whisper, he saw more and more: the patches of dead scales on the skin of the attendants, that same oily sheen on the mother-of-pearl; the curious deadness in their eyes; the broken nubs of antlers at their temples. />
  Beyond the veils, the darkness waited. In every reflection on dull nacre, shadows lengthened, stretched, gathered themselves to leap, and he lay on the bed, too powerless to stop them—and every now and then Morningstar’s dreadful presence would press against his brain until he thought his head would burst. He wouldn’t actually see the Fallen, merely guess at the massive silhouette, sitting quietly just beyond the bed: watching, reproaching him for not using his powers, for being weak; for being all but dead, lost to the world.

  One morning, or evening, he woke up, and his head was clear. He lay in bed, too spent to move; but alive, and not hovering on the cusp of Hell. His ribs had been bandaged, and smelled of camphor and mint; his hands likewise, and though flexing his fingers was mildly painful, it was nothing like the excruciating pain he’d once had.

  “I thought we had lost you,” a voice said. The curtains of the bed parted, and a woman bent over him.

  She was the same one he had seen by the bridge: dressed in a five-panel tunic, the pearl under her chin shining faintly in the gloom. Deer antlers protruded from her temples, and scales mottled her skin, here and there—here and there flaking off, like dried skin.

  Dragon.

  “There are no dragon kingdoms in Paris,” he said, slowly. “You don’t . . . You don’t need a dragon king to oversee the floods and the rains. You don’t receive prayers and offerings from anyone. How can you possibly—? How can you possibly live?”

  The woman smiled, revealing sharp teeth. “You’re not the only one to have traveled far from the land of your birth,” she said. She opened her hand, to reveal three sodden incense sticks: they smelled like the rot of the Seine, with a faint afterodor of burned incense. “And there are still those who offer prayers, to stay the wrath of the Seine. Hawthorn, for instance, is built on low ground, and they have cause to fear floods.”

  It was all too much to take in: that, and his near escape, and the visions he’d had. . . . He closed his eyes, willing himself to breathe slower. “What’s your name?”

  “Ngoc Bich,” she said. Her voice effortlessly put the accents on words, giving meaning to things he hadn’t heard in years.

  “Jade,” he breathed. “It’s a pretty name.”

  Ngoc Bich made a face. “Father is very traditional,” she said. “At least it wasn’t ‘Pearl’ or ‘Coral.’”

  “You knew my name,” he said. Not the one House Draken had given him on the conscription grounds; but the one he’d worn, all those years ago when he was a child, which still rang true even though he hadn’t used it in decades. “My real name.”

  “Of course. Did you think you needed incense sticks to send prayers?”

  “I didn’t pray to you,” Philippe said, obscurely embarrassed. In daylight the room was no longer diaphanous or mysterious; he could see the darker patches on the walls, the places where pollution had eaten away at the coral; and Ngoc Bich’s face, painted over with ceruse, couldn’t hide the places where her skin had entirely sloughed off, revealing the pristine ivory of her cheekbones. They were under the Seine; and like the Seine they were tarred with the pollution of the Great War, the cancer that had penetrated everything in the city.

  Fallen again, corrupting everything they touched. He’d been part of that war, too—under orders, yes, but that didn’t make him less guilty of what had happened. “I didn’t know—” he said.

  Ngoc Bich reached out, and closed his hand over the sodden incense sticks. Her smile was wide—like that of Asmodeus, that of a predator, but a very different one—someone who knew, without doubt, her place; and who was secure in her power, there at the center of everything. “When you crawl bleeding under the Heavens, all prayers are sincere.”

  She was . . . old, not ageless in the way of Fallen; but with the weariness of someone who had seen too much, endured too much. “Ngoc Bich—”

  “I’m not the one you should worry about, Pham Van Minh Khiet. Think of yourself, first.” She pulled the curtains back from the bed, and sat on it. “You can sit up.”

  Philippe tried. He could; but it was an effort, and it was so much more comfortable to sink back against his pillow, staring into Ngoc Bich’s face.

  “You should be mostly healed.”

  Her prevarication was all too clear. “Mostly?”

  Ngoc Bich grimaced. “The wounds, yes. The rest of it . . . I’m not sure what you have in your heart.”

  He wasn’t sure either. A curse, a vengeance; something too strong to be exorcised, even by the magic of a dragon princess, it seemed. A dead human’s vengeance, slow and implacable and which would not be turned aside, since there was no reasoning with those that had gone on.

  Then again, he was free of Silverspires now. He didn’t have to care about any of this. It should have filled him with joy; but like Ngoc Bich he merely felt weary, burdened with something he couldn’t name. He’d always known the Houses were corrupt, that they maintained their power on death and blood; but to casually betray their own . . . “I owe you a debt.”

  “As I said—” Ngoc Bich closed her hand around his again. “Don’t think about it now. It’s not as though there is much here, in the way of entertainment.”

  He was thinking about it, trying to remember old protocols, old rules. Dragon kings were old and wise, and lethal; and here he was in one of their courts, powerless and without even the clothes on his back. “I ought to pay my respects to your father.”

  “Of course.” Ngoc Bich shrugged. “When you can walk. There’s not much hurry.”

  “No.” Fragments of half-remembered lore wormed their way through Philippe’s brain, burning like molten metal. “This is his kingdom, and I’m here as a visitor.” An ambassador from the world above, he supposed, save that he no longer had any status they would recognize. “I should come to him bearing gifts: tree wax and hollow green weed and sea-fish lime, and a hundred roasted swallows, all the precious things from the mortal world, laid at his feet with the jade and the pearls. . . .” Snake pearls and deer pearls, and all the rarities that would speak to animals; and those shining with the luminescence of the depths; and the one that, put in a rice jar, would fill it up again with the fresh crop of the latest harvest, smelling of water and jasmine and cut grass. . . .

  There was something else, too—something he ought to have remembered, precautions to be taken before entering a dragon kingdom. He was sure there were cautionary tales, the kind he’d heard ten thousand times as a child—except that his mind seemed to be utterly empty—wiped out of everything.

  “You need rest,” Ngoc Bich said, gently; and drew a hand over his face; and darkness stole across him with the same gentleness as when it stole across the sky, and he sank back into confused dreams, struggling to name what he should have remembered.

  * * *

  MADELEINE was in her laboratory, cleaning out the artifacts drawer, when a knock at the door heralded the arrival of Laure, two kitchen girls, and Isabelle.

  Laure must have seen her face. “Isabelle didn’t feel like going alone through the corridors, and I have to say I can’t blame her.”

  Madeleine opened her mouth to suggest that Laure had better things to do in the kitchens; and then closed it. Laure obviously knew. “While I’m at it,” Laure said, putting a basket precariously balanced on one of the tables, “here’s the sourdough bread.” She smiled at Isabelle—like a stern mother. “Your dough is a mess, but it’s getting better.”

  Isabelle made a face. “You said that the last time.”

  “That’s because it takes time to get genuinely better,” Laure said. “Now I’ll be off. You two have things to discuss.” The kitchen girls left with her, leaving Madeleine staring at Isabelle. From the covered basket wafted the tantalizing smell of warm, just-baked bread.

  “Am I . . . Am I disturbing you?” Isabelle asked.

  “No, hardly.” Madeleine laid a small wooden box at the end
of the line. There was a small fragment of skin trapped inside, its magic almost spent. “I thought I’d catalog everything. If there ever was a time when we needed magic . . .” The heat of the artifacts’ magic played on her fingers, as if she stood close to a flame in the heart. This was the bedrock of Silverspires: the power that made Asmodeus and Claire and Guy recognize Selene as their equal; the power that kept them all safe.

  Except that it was all useless, wasn’t it, if Selene couldn’t keep things together?

  “Emmanuelle is a bit better,” Isabelle said. She wore men’s clothing, an unusual occurrence for her: a tweed jacket and creased trousers, and a stiff white shirt that looked as though it’d come straight from the laundry. “Aragon said the worst of the infection appeared to be over, but he didn’t sound very confident.” She didn’t sound very confident, either—she kept worrying at the gap between her fingers, quickly, nervously.

  “He’s a doctor. They seldom commit to anything.” She wished she could believe her own lies: it would have been so much easier, so much neater. So much more reassuring, without Emmanuelle’s life hanging in the balance, and everything that made Silverspires slowly unraveling like frayed clothes. Damn Asmodeus and his intrigues; and Philippe and his pointless grudges.

  “I guess they do,” Isabelle said.

  Madeleine hesitated for a moment. “Does Emmanuelle remember—”

  “What she said before she went under? I asked.” Isabelle flushed. “She didn’t, not exactly. She looked at her hand again, and said she’d have a look in the books she’d been cataloging recently.”

  “I had a look already,” Madeleine said. “But I suppose she’d know best.”

  “She said she’d have them brought to her and try to work on them.” Isabelle forced a wan smile. “Always working, isn’t she?”