“Ah, Madeleine. A sweet, sweet child, the apple of your eye—”
Hardly. Selene snorted, and crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for the sting.
“I warned you,” Claire said. “Do you know where she is now, Selene? She’s inhaling her life away in some corner of Silverspires, like some junkie on the streets.”
Inhaling. Selene said nothing, but she felt as though she’d been doused with a cold shower.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed,” Claire said. “Her lungs are wasted, and she’s never had much magical talent. How much easier to steal it away—”
“You will stop,” Selene said, slowly, coldly. “This . . . allegation has no truth.” But she’d heard Madeleine cough; had seen the circles under her eyes become larger; had felt the power that filled her alchemist from time to time, far larger and fierier than any magical talent Madeleine might have shown. For a mortal and an alchemist, she was shockingly undertalented. Selene had assumed sickness; there were more than enough of these going around.
“No?” Claire said. “My mistake, then. I’ll leave you to your House and the handling of your dependents.”
Madeleine. Angel essence. That . . . was not possible. She would have known. She should have known, if she’d been paying attention.
Someone came to stand by her side; with a shock, she realized Asmodeus had left his chair. “You’d do well to leave this alone,” he said to Claire.
“Why, Asmodeus.” Claire’s voice was coquettish. “One would almost think you cared for her.”
Asmodeus did not answer; but did not budge, either. There was something in his eyes: anger, fear? How could he possibly care about Madeleine?
By the looks of it, Claire couldn’t work it out, either. “As you wish,” she said. “I’ve said all I had to. Good-bye, Selene. I’ll see you on the parvis.”
After she’d gone, Asmodeus bowed to Selene, with the same old, usual irony. “And I shall see you later.”
“Asmodeus,” Selene said, when he started to move. He didn’t bother to turn around. “She’s right. You don’t care.”
A silence. Then, in a voice as cold as the chimes of winter: “Don’t presume to tell me about what and whom I should and shouldn’t care.”
And, with that, he was gone.
For what felt like an eternity, Selene stood there, trying to make sense of what he had said; knowing she was wasting her time, that he wouldn’t explain anything to anyone, least of all her. And now he was in her House looking for God knew what.
Great.
A knock on the door announced the arrival of Father Javier and Aragon, both in a mess and with the pale look of the sleepless. “Any news?” Selene asked.
Aragon shook his head. Father Javier said, “We’ve turned the House upside down. I think it’s gone—”
No. She didn’t have the strong link to the House Morningstar had had, another item on the long list of why she wasn’t and would never be Morningstar—but she was still linked to it, had still had toll taken from her and bound to the substance of the House. If she called the magic of the House to herself; if she held it, like a trembling breath, she could still feel the darkness that had slain Samariel; could taste it like bile and blood on her tongue. “It’s here,” she said. It hadn’t gone with Philippe, though there was but little doubt Philippe had been its catalyst. But he’d released something; something large and angry and deadly; and she had no idea where it could be hiding in the vast spaces and corridors of those disused buildings.
“I’ll need you to prepare,” she said to Father Javier. “And tell Choérine to do the same with her students.”
Javier had gone pale; though with his dark, Mediterranean countenance, it was merely a slight change of skin hues. “I have a few spells,” he said, “but you know the position of the Church—”
Selene smiled, bitterly. “I have faith. But faith isn’t always enough. And, to Aragon, “I’m sorry.”
Aragon shook his head. “I’m the one who should apologize. But it would be good if—”
“I know,” Selene said. Asmodeus be damned, she needed to see Emmanuelle; even if she was afraid of what she’d look like, of the new hollows the sickness would have carved into her cheekbones. “I’ll be by later.”
Aragon nodded, and withdrew. After a while, Javier did the same. He was too well-bred to say what he thought, but he wanted to protest. She could feel the mood of the House; knew what they all felt but wouldn’t say. They needed strong leadership, and they didn’t feel Selene was providing it, not anymore. It had been easy to head the House in the years of its power—or in as much of its power they could salvage, after the war and Morningstar’s departure—but now that the storm had come . . .
Well, she was all they had, and short of a miracle that Selene didn’t believe in, they’d have to weather this together.
Selene shook herself, and went to see Madeleine.
She shouldn’t have had to. There were far better uses of her time, and myriad things that needed to be done. But she was rattled, and the laboratory wasn’t far, and she was sure that just a few words would be enough to dispel Claire’s suggestions. All she was trying to do was set them at each other’s throat; to weaken Silverspires from within after failing to undermine it from without.
The laboratory was deserted: no sign of Madeleine, or Isabelle, though the latter’s red cloak lay on one of the large armchairs. An assortment of magical artifacts lay on the table, all of them shimmering with the potency of stored magic. There was a sheet with Madeleine’s painstaking, precise handwriting, making a note that some of the ones at the end would need to be emptied and renewed soon. Good. In times like this, it was better to know what they had; though they should think about storing more magic. She herself had been remiss on that, lately, with the various emergencies. . . .
They couldn’t have been gone long, or planned to be gone for very long, given the state of disarray; though, to be fair, Madeleine’s laboratory was always in a state of disarray.
There was nothing in the laboratory to vindicate Claire’s suspicions. At least, nothing visible. Selene took a deep breath—what was she doing, giving in to suspicions?—and gathered to herself the magic of the House. For a moment, she hung in a timeless space; feeling the connections between the House and its dependents, the ghosts of the dead and the roiling, anguished magic spread throughout Paris; tasting blood on her tongue, and the darkness around them, barely held at bay by Morningstar’s wards.
There was . . . something in the laboratory, or rather the remnants of something. Selene spoke the words of a spell of retrieval, and let the magic guide her to a drawer in the secretary. When she opened it, it was empty, but a slight shimmering indicated a ward. She punched through it and the ward disintegrated, but the drawer was still empty.
Selene let go of the magic. Suspicions, nothing more; Claire playing them all for fools. She shouldn’t have entered her game; whatever secrets Madeleine was keeping, they were none of her business. God knew everyone from Javier to Aragon to her was keeping secrets—she might not be taking in all the strays, as Claire had accused her of, but many people in Silverspires had come here because it was a refuge—and one could seek refuge from many things, not all of which could be freely admitted.
She was about to leave the room when something caught her attention: something that jangled in the subtle tracery of magic, a feeling like something scraping her skin raw. She followed it to a smaller cabinet, which she opened. There was nothing there, either, in any of the compartments; but when she put her hand in one of them, she felt the scalding heat. Something powerful had been kept there: a pendant, judging by the empty jewelry box still bearing its imprint.
“Show me,” she whispered, and put her hand in the box. When she withdrew it, there were minute traces, like dust. Without the magic, she wouldn’t have seen them, but with it, they burned lik
e raging fire. An intimately, obscenely familiar touch: a power that required its users to take always more, always more often—to find more bones, more Fallen corpses to strip—a power that fueled its existence on the death of her kind, an abomination that shouldn’t have been allowed to exist.
Angel essence.
Claire had been right, then, damn her.
Selene reached into the cabinet, and incinerated the jewelry box and every trace of essence it had contained: an empty, grandiloquent gesture, but it made her feel better.
Angel essence. How could Madeleine be so stupid? It was forbidden in Silverspires, because all it did was beget more deaths, more junkies clamoring for a fix; all that for a power they were too drugged to properly master. Morningstar had despised it, and she was no different. She would not have it in her House. Not now, not ever.
* * *
MADELEINE stood on the bridge, staring down into the waters of the Seine—fighting her instinct to take a few steps backward, to be safe from whatever might come up from the river. “Here?” she asked. Below her, black waves were lapping at the embankment. The stone was stained dark, with the oily residue of the water still clinging to the mortar; and the water itself was foaming, far more than it should have been—much as if you’d poured soap into a bath, though she very much doubted it was similarly innocuous. She wouldn’t have leaped into that water, even if you’d paid her. “That’s really not attractive—”
“I think it’s here.” Isabelle bit her lip. “That’s where he is, but they have to grant us entry.”
“You’re not making sense,” Madeleine said. She carried her bag close to her, the weight of the artifacts a reassurance that she could handle whatever they happened to find. Isabelle hadn’t been forthcoming with any information; or rather, the little she’d given Madeleine had added up to no coherent picture. She should have been scared, if she’d had any sense; but the memory of Asmodeus’s fingers, still stained with blood—of being unerringly picked out from where she stood, as if he’d had eyes on the back of his head—left her no room to fear anything else.
The river. Everyone in their right mind avoided the Seine; and here they were, headed straight into its heart—to the frothing insanity it had become, corrupted by the remnants of spells and magical weapons. “Isabelle?”
Isabelle said nothing for a while. Her eyes were closed, and the low-key radiance that emanated from her body intensified—until everything around her, from the stunted trees to the broken benches, seemed slightly grayer, slightly less colorful. The light spread, slowly, softly, engulfing the embankment, the patches of dirty, foamy white on the river; the overcast sky above. Everything seemed limned in that curious illumination, everything somehow diminished, bereft of something vital.
“Speak to me,” Isabelle said, and her voice rang like a bell tolling for the dead.
There were stairs, leading down the embankment onto a small stone dock, where boats would sometimes moor. But, on the last step of the flight of stairs, a shadow caught the light: a hint of something that wasn’t quite there. “Speak to me,” Isabelle said.
The shadow solidified, became the outline of an Annamite pavilion: the elegant curve of the roof, the sharp, brittle brightness of lacquer, the flowing lines of calligraphy on the wooden pillars.
Impossible. This was Paris, not the colonies. There could be nothing like this here. . . . But Philippe had come to the city, and perhaps other things had. Madeleine found, by touch more than by sight, the pendant around her neck, filled with angel essence, let the warmth of its power wash over her until nothing of fear remained. Oris. She was doing this for Oris, and for Emmanuelle; and so that the Silverspires she knew could continue to exist.
Isabelle opened her eyes. They were white, filled with the same light that flowed out of her. “Come, Madeleine.”
The air changed as they descended the stairs. It was still clogged with the acrid smell of magic, burning the lungs, but it acquired a peculiar tang, something salty and electric that Madeleine could not place, until she remembered standing by a well in a disused garden, breathing in the smell of rain after the storm. It wove in and out of her lungs, until she felt almost—not healed; nothing could do that, but healthier, the damages of the drug covered by a thin coating of seawater and algae. Nothing should have been able to do that. And she could feel something else, something weaving in and out of her mind, fingers like the teeth of a comb, raking thoughts out of her almost as soon as they surfaced—she fought it, but it was a constant effort to keep everything in place without that alien tampering.
What was this place?
“It’s a dragon kingdom,” Isabelle said, as if she read her thoughts.
“Dragons don’t exist.” The insignia of House Draken had been a rearing dragon, but it was a mythical animal, nothing more. Summoning creatures was impossible.
“Maybe not. Maybe.” Isabelle had that peculiar smile again, half-amused, half-bewildered, as if she knew something but couldn’t remember how she’d come by that knowledge.
At the bottom of the steps, the pavilion had taken on body and heft: no longer a silhouette, it towered over them, its colors vivid in the gray light—red and gold and the deep brown of mahogany. Closer, though, it didn’t quite look as impressive: patches of mold and gray foam had eaten away at the paint; the lacquer, cracked and damaged, had flaked away; and the pillars smelled of rot and damp. So even that dragon kingdom, whatever it was, hadn’t been spared by the war. It made Madeleine perversely glad, that nothing had been spared; and yet . . .
And yet, what would it have been like, at the height of its glory? As blinding as Silverspires, a refuge for Philippe’s kind in the city: bright and welcoming and so terribly unsettling, with that odd tang in the air, that nameless feeling sinking its claws into her, digging into her brain like a worm; making her feel healed, making her feel whole.
Serenity, she thought, and the word was like ice in her mind. She couldn’t afford that, couldn’t let go of fear. It was what kept her alive, for what little time she had left. It was what kept her away from Asmodeus.
“It’s old,” Isabelle said, pausing, for a moment, with awe in her voice, before turning and walking straight on, between the two pillars. As soon as she’d set foot under the temple, her image wavered; became fainter, billowing like a water reflection in a windy day; disappeared altogether from view.
Madeleine looked up. The steps of the embankment, too, had vanished, and she stood within a circle of perfect silence; breathing in, breathing out, a salty taste like tears on her tongue.
Well, there was nothing for it. She reached for the pendant around her neck, opened it; and in a single, practiced gesture, inhaled the angel essence from it.
Fire, in her belly—light, radiating from her outstretched hands—she could do anything, challenge anyone, defend anyone and anything. Slowly, carefully, she rode the crest of the wave, soothing the magic within her until it lay quiescent, ready to be called on at a moment’s notice.
Then, without looking back, she stepped under the pavilion, and followed Isabelle into the dragon kingdom of the Seine.
* * *
SHE’D expected many things, but not a palace—a fragile assembly of courtyards and pavilions of nacre and jade, with marble steps and red-lacquered pillars—all spread below the hill on which she stood. Everything shimmered and danced; and the people moving in the various courtyards all but disappeared from sight as the waters around her shifted.
She could breathe, but that somehow didn’t surprise her; or at least wasn’t any more surprising than anything in the previous hour. As she walked, she felt again the place getting at her—soothing fright and surprise out of her, trying to make her feel at ease. No. She couldn’t.
Had to fight it, had to remain on her guard—
A flight of stairs cut into the hill led downward. They crunched underfoot, and she realized as she descended
that she walked on thousands of fish scales—dark and dull, with none of the iridescence they should have had. Below her stretched a vast plain: a palace in the foreground, in the midst of a city arranged on a grid pattern, with narrow houses crammed together, and small silhouettes carrying water pails, fruit, and wooden boxes.
Everything was . . . charged, saturated with that curious energy of the embankment steps: something that wasn’t magic, that had no business healing or reviving, but that still soothed her hollowed lungs; that still sought to dig its way into her thoughts. The place set her on edge; or rather, it should have, but again there was that relaxing, soothing atmosphere about it that kept dampening down her fear.
At the bottom of the steps, Isabelle was arguing with two guards. As Madeleine walked closer, it became clearer neither of them was human. They had the same dull and dead fish scales on their cheeks, and thin, curved mustaches like catfish, though they shared Philippe’s dark complexion. Their eyes, as they turned to take her in, were like nothing she’d seen: pearly white, gleaming in all colors like bubbles of soap.
“And who is this?” the taller of the guards asked. Madeleine had expected him to speak Annamite; but he spoke French, without a trace of an accent. That odd magic that wasn’t magic again, translating for her benefit? Or, like Philippe, enough years spent in France or in its colonies to speak fluently?
“She’s with me,” Isabelle said. “Now will you listen to me?”
The guard said nothing. He was watching her, holding a spear with a curved blade at the top—afraid, Madeleine thought. Afraid of what she could do, in this kingdom that was no longer young, or powerful, or undamaged.
“We don’t have a policy of welcoming strangers,” the guard said.
“I found the door,” Isabelle said.
“A party trick,” the second guard said, frowning. “Do you have the gifts?”
The House of Shattered Wings Page 25