The House of Shattered Wings (12 page)

Gritting her teeth, Madeleine whispered the words of the spell again, bracing herself—and felt the same blaze of magic spreading from the wounds, incinerating the internal organs and then dying down to that sickly glow.

“Something . . .” She breathed in, willing her heart to stop hammering against her chest. “Something that kills. Humans, by overwhelming them with magic until their bodies shut down. Fallen—”

“With the reverse,” Claire said. She threw something on the body, negligently—but of course she never did anything negligently. “She had this on her.”

Another tracker disk—Madeleine reached out, expecting to see the arms of Silverspires, but the engraving on it was a hawthorn tree circled with a crown. “Hawthorn,” she said. Some informants made ends meet by working for several Houses, and Hortense Archignat must have been one of them. The heads of Houses might not like this state of affairs—or trust them with their secrets—but they were pragmatic enough to make use of what tools they had. “I don't understand—” she said, hoping to hide her confusion.

Claire looked at her, her gaze as sharp as spears, but said nothing. Instead, she gestured, and her assistant opened another drawer.

“He was homeless,” she said, as the third body slid into view. “Slept in the ruins of Saint-Eustache. He died in the wreck of Les Halles.”

Jean-Philippe d'Hergemont—his family, minor nobility, had been ruined during the Great War. Madeleine remembered chatting with him; giving him a charged mirror on Selene's orders. He'd carried one of the loaves from the kitchens, awkwardly balancing it in arms full of the old clothes Choérine had pressed onto him.

Another of Selene's informants.

“He didn't have a tracker disk,” Claire said. She was still watching Madeleine, and Madeleine struggled not to show her rising anxiety. Someone was killing Silverspires informants. Someone was . . .

She couldn't afford to show weakness. She couldn't afford to reveal said weakness to Claire—Selene would have her head, not to mention the disastrous effect this would have on the House.

She took a deep, trembling breath; hiding her confusion beneath a forced cough. One good thing about having wrecked lungs was that she could fake one quite easily. “He died like the others, didn't he?”

“Of course,” Claire said. She smiled, like a grandmother amused by one of her grandchildren's tricks; except there was no warmth in the look whatsoever. “Look at the next one, will you?”

Madeleine braced herself—tried to prevent her hands from clenching, aware all the while that Claire probably read her like an open book. But she had to try. If there was a chance, any chance, she could hide how flustered she was—what she knew, the secrets she couldn't afford to share . . .

The next corpse was a man again, much younger and with an arm missing—and she knew him, too. Jacques Rossigny, one of the ravagers on the banks of the Seine, living off what he scavenged from the angry river; and on his work as informant to Silverspires.

By now Claire's smile was as sharp as that of a tiger sighting its prey—filling Madeleine's entire field of view, quenching the breath in her lungs.

“I don't know him,” she said, forcing the words out between clenched lips.

Claire's gaze didn't waver; but she didn't produce a tracker disk, or anything that looked as though it might bite. Her smile abated a fraction, but it didn't make her less worrisome. What was she up to? How much did she know?

“Here's the last one,” Claire said, as her assistant opened the last drawer.

And the last . . . the last was an older woman; a Senegalese-French, Marie-Céleste Ndiaye, the owner of a bookshop in the southwest, near Hawthorn—who usually came in toward the end of the night, carrying one or two tattered books as if they were treasures.

Claire didn't bother to throw the tracker disk this time; she merely handed it to Madeleine. “Harrier. Infused with Guy's rather distinctive brand of magic,” she said, casually. “Do you see, now?”

“No,” Madeleine said, reflexively. Five dead. Five of Selene's informants, their identities unknown to anyone but the Houses who employed them. It couldn't be a coincidence; but only someone from Silverspires should have known the identity of all five.

Claire's voice was thoughtful. “One of these is a dependent of yours. I assume Selene knows he's dead by now, but not the circumstances in which he died.”

“The others belong to other Houses,” Madeleine said; the words a reflex, driven out of her before she could think. Of course House Silverspires was the target. Of course the corpses were all theirs—from the five in Claire's morgue to poor Oris. “And you could have sent a message.”

“Perhaps I should have.” Claire was silent for a while. At length, she picked up the tracker disks, one by one. “It's a fragile city. A careful balance of magic, to protect all against a resurgence of the Great Houses War, and all of us seeking to change it, to grasp what advantage we can. We wouldn't fight the war again, of course; but if we can have a chance, even a small chance, of making others tumble down—if we can humble down our rivals, even our allies . . . we would seize this opportunity in a heartbeat, and never even look back.”

“I'm not interested in your games.”

“I know. What a pity. You'll find, I think, that you need to play to survive, Madeleine; that you can't go through life enamored of your artifacts and mirrors and scraping of bones.” Her voice was sharp, mocking—Madeleine froze at the reference to bones, but Claire couldn't possibly know about the essence—couldn't . . . No, she was going on, not touching on it again. . . . She couldn't possibly know.

“If you don't take control of your own life, other people will do it for you—with far less kindness and far less compassion than you would expect or deserve. The Houses shape Paris, and there is very little that isn't caught in their nets. To attack them all . . . would be sheer folly.” A clink of wood against wood, as Claire played with the charred tracker disk; and the noise of the drawer as she closed it, gently leaning against it.

Madeleine struggled to see things the way Claire did—dead informants belonging to different Houses, killed by a spell no one had seen the like of. “Someone has found a way to power,” she said, slowly, lightly. The room felt too small, the air tightening around her as if it were going to crush her against the floor.

“Of course,” Claire said. “They always do, in this city. As I said—we all hunger for power; for what we grasp to haul ourselves to the top of the hierarchy, even if it's just to crow over the ruins.”

“Silverspires doesn't crave power at all costs.”

Claire smiled. Something was wrong. Something . . . “You don't know much about what Silverspires does and does not do, do you? I imagine Selene finds it wiser to keep you in the dark.”

As she'd done, insisting Madeleine shouldn't come here, but she'd been right—Madeleine shouldn't have left all her protections behind—shouldn't be here, trying to spar with Claire, who had so many more years of experience at this than her. Was Claire trying to rile her up? Madeleine didn't have much pride to speak of. “Do you think I'm unhappy being kept away from the limelight? I'm not. To each her role.”

“Oh, Madeleine.” Claire's voice was almost sad. “To each his or her place, and let no one question it? You are worth more than this.”

Something was wrong. Claire would never give her compliments unless there was something she needed from her. Something . . .

And then, with a lurch in her belly that seemed to turn the entire world upside down, Madeleine realized that there were only the two of them in the room. The assistant was gone—when had he left? She hadn't paid much attention, engrossed by the corpses and what Claire was saying. A mistake. It could all have been innocent—a minor Fallen, gone because Claire had no more need of him.

Except . . . Except Claire had been stalling for time, hadn't she—that rambling, lengthy tirade on power within the city, making small talk in a place where there should have been no need of it?

The assistant was gone, and no doubt he had carried a message—to whom, and what for?

She—she needed to get back to Silverspires. She needed to warn Selene; and she needed to warn her
now
.

“I need to go,” she said. “Thank you for showing me your dead. I'll tell Selene to keep an eye out; I'm sure she'll appreciate the attention.” She was babbling by now; utterly incoherent, her fear and worry all too visible, broadcast like a foghorn on a calm sea.

“So soon?” Claire hadn't moved from where she stood, with her arms crossed on her chest, and that same satisfied smile on her face.

Keep calm.
She needed to keep calm. She needed to . . . breathe, but the breath wouldn't come to her clogged, wasted lungs. “You wanted me to warn Selene.”

“Perhaps I did.” Claire smiled. “Or perhaps I didn't.”

No. Madeleine saw, suddenly, with painful clarity, that it had never been the point. Claire had wanted something from her; and she'd had it.

“If I were unable to read people, I wouldn't have got to where I was,” Claire said, softly—with that same smile that Madeleine suddenly wanted to smash from her face. “And you're so easy to read, Madeleine. Like a child.”

“You—” Madeleine shook her head. Nausea in her throat, sharp and acrid; the room seeming to compress around her—all the thoughts she was desperately trying to keep from showing on her face, in her voice. “You can't—”

“Thank you. It was a pleasure to entertain you here, Madeleine,” Claire said; and her face seemed to fill the entire room, her voice like knives driven, again and again, into Madeleine's ears until it was all she could do to keep upright.

She ran, then—tottering straight for the door of the cell with the memory of Claire's thoughtful, smiling face indelibly etched in her mind—through the maze of corridors with barely any idea of where she was going, struggling to remember the way they had come—turning back once, twice, with the moans from the cells in her ear—panic rising, the breath rattling in her lungs, every false start, every wrong turn keeping her away from going back to the House in time; from warning Selene from whatever was going to happen. . . .

Too late. Too late.

*   *   *

SELENE
was in her office, trying to sort out her paperwork. She was worried, though she'd said little to anyone but Emmanuelle: something was happening with her informants.

Like every House, Silverspires had a loose network of spies and informants, ranging from dependents to more punctual services. They reported infrequently to Selene; sometimes a week elapsed before she heard from them.

One day before the Great Market, she'd lost Théodore Ganimard. She'd sent Javier to investigate, but the body was gone and the tracker disk unresponsive. It hadn't been a surprise, per se—bodies and enspelled artifacts were valuable commodities in a wasted city—frustrating that she should be unable to take better care of her dependents, but business as usual in a dangerous environment.

Now, though, in the wake of Oris's death . . .

The previous night, Hortense Archignat and Jean-Philippe d'Hergemont had failed to report in. Neither had been proper dependents, and Hortense had worked for Hawthorn in addition to Silverspires. There had been no warning from either of them, but Selene hadn't expected one.

Being an informant was dangerous, and not an occupation for a long, happy life. But three in three days was too many. Something was up.

Selene finished tidying up her paperwork, and was considering sending for Javier—when a knock at the door made her look up.

It was him. “That was quick,” Selene said; but then she saw Javier looked pale and ill at ease in his clerical clothes. “What is going on?”

“Selene, there are people here—”

And she had other things on her mind. “I said I didn't want to be disturbed,” Selene snapped. “Tell them to come back later.”

“I don't think it's going to be possible,” a voice said behind Javier.

It was low, and cultured; and its owner leaned against the doorjamb with the ease of someone checking out a home for purchase, his arms crossed over the gray and silver of his elegant jacket. Selene's heart sank in her chest.

“Asmodeus. That is an unexpected surprise.” Unexpected, and wholly unpleasant.

The head of House Hawthorn bowed to her, his top hat in his hand; though there was nothing of submission or respect in that gesture.

“Did you come here alone?” she asked.

“Hardly. My delegation is waiting in the antechamber. I thought it best our business remained private.”

“I didn't know we had business,” Selene said. And she had little wish to stay with him any longer than she should have. Asmodeus was a thug; he'd had the ruthlessness to cut himself a bloody path to the supreme position in his House, but that hardly made him respectable material.

“We do.” Asmodeus turned to Javier, who was still standing, petrified, in the doorframe. “Run along, little man. This is business for the powerful.”

Javier went pale. He glanced to Selene, who shook her head. Thankfully, Javier got the message and left, though he looked as though he'd swallowed rotten meat.

Selene said, “Now that you've finished being unpleasant . . .”

Asmodeus gently closed the door. Now it was just the two of them, and he made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn't quite pinpoint. He had the smooth, ageless beauty of Fallen: bright eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses; and thin, long fingers that seemed to belong to some kind of insect rather than a former angel. “There are rumors, Selene.”

“Rumors?”

“About deaths.” Asmodeus smiled. He came forward to lean on her desk with both hands, entirely too close to her; his perfume of orange blossom and bergamot thrust into her nostrils like the tip of a blunt knife—acrid and suffocating.