The House of Shattered Wings (15 page)

Isabelle shook her head. “Doesn't matter.” She looked at the door, and back at Madeleine. “Can't you feel it?”

“I can't,” Madeleine started to say, and then the words were crushed out of her. There was something—a growing pressure, a growing shadow, something that wouldn't let itself be pinned down, that wouldn't even hold still—something winged and fanged and clawed, seeking to destroy them utterly, to rend the flesh from their bones, to suck their skins dry until nothing was left but scattered remnants of what they had once been—bloated corpses in some morgue with eyes like dead fish . . .

The door was locked. She knew the door was locked, but to even think about moving was an effort.
It won't find us. We're safe. Safe, safe, safe . . .

“Madeleine—”

Isabelle's face was white with fear. She'd backed away from the door, holding the chair as a shield—but she was sinking down with every passing moment, curling into the fetal position against the wall. “Please, please don't come here,” she whispered with the intensity of a prayer. “Please, please, please.”

The laboratory had been lit by a single lamp. Now that lamp cast dancing shadows upon the walls; and those shadows lengthened, moment by moment—there was nothing Madeleine could see, nothing that would come into focus—nothing but that awful sense that they were being followed, dissected—that any moment now, something would leap at them from the shadows. The door was still locked, but the wood was bending, bulging inward. It was standing on the threshold.

Her ribs ached with the growing pressure. She was afraid to look down; if she did she might see blood on them again, might find herself crawling through the streets again.

“Madeleine . . .”

No. She wasn't that powerless any longer. Fumbling, cursing, she forced herself to move, one agonizing centimeter at a time—where had she put her most powerful artifacts? The second drawer of the secretary desk, the third?

The light of the lamp wavered. Out of the corner of her eye, Madeleine saw shadows flow across the dozens of small mirrors in the room—scattered pieces of the same reflection, something inhumanly huge, and it wasn't even in the room yet—this was just what came ahead of it. There was a noise, a hiss like a hundred snakes—it was snakebites that had killed Oris and the others.

Do not think. Do not fear.
She couldn't afford to waste time. Neither door nor lock would hold it for long.

She opened the drawer by touch—the room had gone utterly dark—her fingers scrabbled for a hold on the objects within, trying to remember what it had felt like.

Once, Elphon had given her a locket filled with his breath; but she'd used the last of the magic a few months ago—not even for something worthy, simply to remind herself, one last time, of what his presence had been like. How she wished she had it now, so she wouldn't have to use something else.

Found it.

Isabelle's soft whimpers in the darkness; and the creak of wood as the door bent yet farther; and the hiss like a thousand snakes. They couldn't let it in: its touch would be death. The thought of Isabelle—pale and lifeless, taken apart for scraps of magic—rose in her throat like bile. No. She wouldn't let her new apprentice go the way of Oris.

Her hands closed on cold metal, which flared into warmth at her touch; and then there was another presence in the room, something vast and terrible and infinitely more powerful than anything the darkness could conjure. The heat on her skin was searing now, but she didn't care. She wove the strongest spell of banishing she could think of, and hurled it, half weeping, half screaming, at whatever was trying to come through the door.

The door collapsed into a thousand splinters. Madeleine ducked behind a chair, but nothing touched her. On the threshold was . . . nothing, just a sound she couldn't quite identify, growing farther and farther with every passing minute. Retreating.

Then there was silence, broken only by the sound of Isabelle's breath. “What”—she asked, struggling to speak—“what did you do?”

Madeleine withdrew her hand from the drawer. The container she'd used came with it, now no longer fused to her skin, though it had left a perfect, circular scar on her palm. She felt . . . light-headed, giddy—as if she could do anything, and yet all she wanted to do was to lie down and empty her guts on the floor. Isabelle had almost died. And she—she had almost succumbed again to that gut-wrenching, sickening fear of Elphon's last night, had almost lost herself. It wasn't death that she feared, but that touch, that reminder of what it had felt like, crawling with blood sticking to her skin, to her hair, hardening so it could never be washed away—that inescapable knowledge that Elphon was dead, that she would soon be caught and brought back to Hawthorn, to hear Asmodeus's mocking voice before she, too, died. . . .

No. The past was the past. She couldn't afford to live in it, anymore. Death and its sleep awaited: rest, at long last; and oblivion, free from the grasp of fear. She pulled herself up, shaking; forced herself to breathe until the room came back into sharp focus.

“I don't understand,” Isabelle said.

In her hand was a sphere of gold, topped by a crown. “It was the last thing I had of him,” Madeleine said. “The last thing anyone had of him, perhaps—I don't know who kept what in this House. But I had to—” She shook her head, dazed. “Morningstar. It was Morningstar's magic.”

But now it was gone in a burst of power, all spent like the gift of Elphon's breath; and how would they defend themselves, if the shadow came back?

She looked at the door, at the walls; heard and saw nothing but the usual sounds of Silverspires at night. It was gone, whatever it was. But it hadn't been a hallucination. And—

“You said it was what killed Oris.”

“Philippe saw it, I think,” Isabelle said. Her voice was still shaking.

Madeleine took in a deep, shaking breath; thinking of bodies shriveling and burning under the assault of magic; of Oris, crushed under the weight of gravity on the floor of Notre-Dame. “It's killed six people, whatever it is. Come on. We have to tell Selene.”

*   *   *

PHILIPPE
ran. It was undignified, and possibly useless, but he was past caring. Doors flashed by him, indistinguishable—at one point a door opened, and he almost toppled over someone in Harrier's uniform. “Sorry,” he said, but didn't stop. There was a noise at his back, a hiss like ten thousand open gas taps; a shadow, slithering across flat surfaces whenever he turned his head, just enough to make a fist of ice tighten around his belly—except that the shadows were growing larger and larger, and the lights in the corridors ahead of him were dimming, throwing his own large, distorted shadow across the wall like that of some monster.

Shadows. A creature of wings and fangs and of darkness—he'd wondered, back then, what he had summoned when he touched the mirror; but he didn't need to wonder anymore. He
knew
.

As he ran, he tried to gather
khi
currents to him. But, without the calm of his trance, it was too hard to see the few threads that would be in the House; and all he could manage was a feeble ring of fire around his hand—which did nothing much to either reassure him or light his way.

He turned one last corner, and found himself in utter darkness. The hiss had gone away, and so had the shadows. So early, so easily? Slowly, carefully, he gathered more
khi
currents to him, widening the ring of fire in his hand until it lit the way ahead.

It was just a stretch of corridor, going to two rooms at the end: Asmodeus and Samariel, of course, the two lovers being accommodated close to each other. There was no noise coming from either bedroom. Philippe crept closer.

It was a bad idea. He should go back to his room, forget the whole incident; and come back later. This was . . . not a good time to be there. Not . . .

There was a sound, as he approached the end of the corridor: a slight hiss like an intake of breath, already slithering away. The shadows danced, around his ring of fire—out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something folding huge wings, and sinking back upon itself, but it might have been nothing more than illusion.

The door to Samariel's room opened easily, swinging with the tortured sound of ungreased hinges—surely it must have been heard all the way to Indochina. But no one moved, or spoke.

“Samariel?”

A slight sound, coming from the bed; a slithering of wet things from the wallpaper; a fist of shadows slowly closing around the lone light in the room. He took one step, then another and another, and approached the huge canopied bed in the center of the room.

The furniture was from another age: two bedside tables with thin, elegant curved legs, their drawer handles in the shape of butterflies; a mahogany commode with a marble top; a vase in that chinoiserie blue and white that looked even worse than the cut-rate porcelain the Chinese had foisted on the Annamite Imperial Court. His feet barely made any noise on the thick Persian rugs; and the
khi
currents in the room seemed to have shriveled and died around him, as if they'd been burned at the root.

His light, unsustained by any fire, shivered and died, leaving him in shadows. Another, stronger light took its place, the golden radiance of Morningstar's hair and skin.

No. Not now.
With all his strength he willed the vision to pass—it did not, but neither did it fully materialize. Instead, Morningstar remained where he was, standing by the farthest column of the canopy. He had his sword in his hand, and watched Philippe with burning eyes.

“I warned you,” he said, and his voice was like thunder, strong enough to make Philippe's knees buckle. “I told you to seize power, or be destroyed. Do you see now?”

Philippe made no answer. There was none he could give—nothing, to this ghost of the past, this bitter, angry memory of whoever had cast the curse on Silverspires. He simply moved closer.

Samariel lay in bed, splayed like a puppet with cut strings; his legs and arms at impossible angles, curved like the corpses of eels, as if all the bones had been sucked out of his limbs. The sound Philippe had heard was the wet struggle to breathe through crushed lungs. Nausea, sharp and bitter, rose in his throat; he held it at bay, kneeling by the stricken Fallen. “Samariel?”

The skin—all that was left whole—was covered in bite marks; as if a snake had struck him, repeatedly; the same marks, by all reports, that had been on Oris's corpse. The eyes—the eyes were still there, with that same, familiar, sarcastic intelligence. The mangled mouth opened, shaped around something—his name? “I'll get help—” he said, but Samariel shook his head.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked; but Samariel said nothing, merely stared at him with those bright eyes; and magic rose in the room, a burning heat that picked at the strands of the spell around him, snapping them like burned matchsticks.

“You can't—” he whispered. More and more strands were vanishing, though the strain of it should have been too much for a dying Fallen. “You can't—”

“Seize power,” Morningstar whispered, his image wavering and bending as if in a great wind. “Seize power.”

He didn't move as the magic wrapped itself around him, the spell unraveling moment after moment; staring into those bright, bright eyes and knowing exactly why Samariel was doing it. He had told him, all those days ago.

“I imagine it would be quite a setback for Selene to lose you. . . .”

Behind him, the door opened again; and closed, with hardly a sound. “What do you think you're doing here, boy?”

The face of Asmodeus, head of House Hawthorn, was twisted out of shape by grief and rage.
I can explain,
Philippe wanted to say.
Ask Samariel. I can—

But Samariel would not speak, not anymore.

OLD FRIENDS

THE
night had not ended well; and the morning had not started well, either. Selene sat in her office, staring at the papers strewn on them; at the memoirs of journeys in Indochina she'd been reading, back when her only worry had been how to best use Philippe for the good of the House—in hindsight, how much simpler those times had been, such easier moments compared to the tangle that awaited her now.

A tinkle of beads announced Emmanuelle's arrival from her private quarters. She was holding two coat hangers. One was a long black dress with straps; the other was a swallow-tailed suit with straight trousers. “Which one do you want?” she asked.

Outside the room—in the ballroom, where Father Javier was making them wait—stood the heads of every House, all with the same intent: to hear an explanation for the evening's events, and to see what concessions they could wring out of her for failing to protect her guests. Damn this stupidity of a conclave, for putting her in that impossible situation. “Did you hear anything from Aragon?”

Emmanuelle grimaced. “Samariel's alive, but just barely, Selene. Aragon said there was nothing much to be done. Just make him comfortable—”

No miracle, then, but then, why had she thought there would be one? God seldom visited those on Fallen; the thought was so old by now that there was little bitterness left in it. She hadn't prayed in years, not since she was Isabelle's age, in fact. “And Philippe?”

“Confined to his rooms,” Emmanuelle said. “In any case, he can't leave Silverspires. But I highly doubt Philippe would kill Samariel. What possible motive could he have for that?”

Madeleine and Isabelle, now both back in their rooms, had both reported to Selene about seeing the shadows in the laboratory, identifying them beyond doubt as responsible for the killings; and Isabelle had been adamant the original warning had come from Philippe. But it meant nothing—a warning moments before Samariel was attacked was utterly ineffective, and Selene couldn't decide if that had been deliberate.

“I don't know,” Selene said. “But he was with Oris, too. In any case, that's not what's most important now.”

Two things mattered now, both for the protection of Silverspires. The first, to prevent whatever it was from killing again. She had people searching the House from top to bottom; and Madeleine and Isabelle gathering the strongest artifacts and breath-infused mirrors, distributing them among the dependents of the House—whatever it was that was roaming the corridors, it had killed six people and left another one at the doors of death. Javier was coordinating search parties, trying to see if its lair lay within the House. But all of this would be for nothing if she couldn't achieve the second thing—to placate the other heads of Houses before they took Silverspires apart as retribution for Samariel's wounding.

“The Houses?” Emmanuelle asked. She raised her coat hangers again. “Tell me how you want to dress.”

Selene shook her head. “Not like this.” Those were the clothes of the past, the formal evening wear of the days before the war. There was no need to recall any of that today. “Bring me the turquoise dress. And the rest of the ensemble.”

After she was dressed, she looked at herself in the mirror: over the turquoise dress, she'd put on a long, embroidered silk tunic that closed at the neck with a single clasp. The tunic, made in Indochina and traded through Marseilles, was a vivid scarlet, embroidered with birds and plum flowers; and it came with a matching shawl of silk so fine it was almost transparent: like many things, a statement of wealth and power in a ruined world.

As if that would fool anyone but the weakest Houses. . . .

She let the shawl settle in the crooks of her arms, and peered critically at her reflection.

“You look dazzling,” Emmanuelle said.

“Ha,” Selene said. She didn't feel dazzling; she felt small and frightened. “It'll have to do.”

Emmanuelle reached out, and put a kiss on Selene's lips. “You'll do fine. I'm sure you will.”

She had to; there was no other choice. Squaring her shoulders, Selene went out of her office, to meet the heads of the other Houses.

*   *   *

THEY
were all waiting for her in the ballroom, amid the cadavers of last night's excesses: the tables lying bare without their magnificent clothes, the empty bottles and the glimmer of shattered glass, the faint smell of food and perfume, their mingling turning vaguely sickening.

Guy of Harrier, portly and his brown hair slick, with red highlights; Andrea, his wife, her dark eyes shining in the paleness of her face. Claire of Lazarus, for once without the posse of children that accompanied her—no, that wasn't true; there was one with her, a little girl dressed in a formal suit, the vivid blue in sharp contrast to the darkness of her skin. Bernard of Stormgate. Sixtine of Minimes; and a sea of other minor Houses, yapping terriers she hardly paid attention to in normal times—save that even terriers could turn nasty, once they had smelled blood.

Asmodeus, though, wasn't there. Should she wait for him? He was no doubt at Samariel's bedside; praying, perhaps, though the idea of the head of Hawthorn praying for anything at all was ludicrous.

One of the faces staring at her—or perhaps all of them; it wasn't unheard of—was responsible for this. One of them, or several, was working to undermine the House, utterly destroy it. She'd find them; and make sure they couldn't harm Silverspires anymore.

They were getting restless, all of them; still politely waiting for whatever she had to say—again, amusing to see how courtesy still held sway, even in moments like those, when they hung poised, once again, on the edge of a feud that could lay waste to the city.

“You know why we're gathered here,” she said. A dozen faces swung to look at her, silent, watching. “There has been . . . an incident.” She raised a hand to forestall the inevitable outcry, and said, infusing her voice with the strongest spells of charm she could conjure, “Lord Samariel is at death's door. Something attacked him in his bedroom. We're not quite sure what yet, but rest assured that we're investigating. Silverspires will not tolerate this breach of the peace.”

“Won't you?” The speaker was Claire, as impeccable as always. “There have been other deaths, and you haven't done anything. One might think you remarkably inefficient, or insufficiently motivated, or both.”

Selene went for bluntness. “I don't take the deaths of dependents lightly, and you know it.”

Claire did not bat an eyelid. “I'd hate to see what you do when you take things lightly, then.”

“It's abundantly clear that you need our help,” Guy of Harrier said. “With Silverspires' declining status—”

“We're not dead yet,” Selene said, more sharply than she'd intended to.

Claire's thin, self-satisfied smile was more than she could bear. It was because of the three of them—Harrier, Hawthorn, and Lazarus—that she was here now; that she had to defend her House's failure to protect its guests, to justify why her wards and magical protections had failed to stop whatever roamed the House.

“The young man is involved, isn't he?” Sixtine of Minimes asked. “The Annamite, the one they found in Samariel's bedroom.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Guy said. “He's human, nothing more. How could he do this?”

“He's human, yes,” Claire said. “It just means he has no innate magic. With the proper artifacts, a bit of angel essence—”

This was too much for Selene. “You know we don't use angel essence in this House.”

Claire's gaze was frank, untroubled. “Oh, don't you?”

She sounded as though she meant something specific, but Selene wasn't about to let Claire catch her off balance. “I have no interest in your games.” They needed to find the means of murder. Shadows. A dearth of magic, or an excess of it, Madeleine had said; and Aragon had confirmed, once given access to the other bodies Claire had been keeping.

Not that it helped, of course. Neither Selene nor anyone in the House knew of any creature, weapon, or spell that killed that way. She had Emmanuelle digging into the archives; and of course Aragon was examining Samariel right now, trying to find something, anything that would get them out of this mess. Selene said, “If the question is whether a human could have done this—then the answer is yes. Everyone here—human, Fallen—is a suspect.”

There was silence, in the wake of her words. Then, as what she had said sank in, a babble of protestations rising to a deafening pitch: “—surely you don't mean—” “—this is an outrage—” All things she had expected and counted on. She raised a hand and cast a spell of dampening: a cheap trick, but one that never failed to have its little effect. All sounds around her hand gradually sank to a murmur, in a spreading wave of silence.

“
You
came
here
,” she said. “All of you. You forced your way in, claiming you would help us find our attacker, and then you have the audacity to complain when someone else dies. I know you. I know you all—Guy, Claire, Sixtine, Andre, Viollet.” A further shocked hush. She had them now; she had to seize the moment, while they were still cowering in fear, and gazing suspiciously at their neighbors. If she could break their fragile alliances . . . “None of you are above killing to further your plans. None of you would weep if Silverspires paid reparation for your murders, and sank into obscurity.”

Silence spread in the wake of her words. Then someone clapped: slowly, deliberately, the sounds echoing under the stuccoed ceiling of the ballroom, each one as sharp and as penetrating as a bell tolling for funerals.

“Such a pretty speech,” Asmodeus said in a slurred voice. He detached himself from the pillar he had been leaning on; and came forward, toward Selene, blowing the acrid smell of orange blossom and bergamot gone sour into her face. She didn't flinch. One could not afford to, with Asmodeus.

Once, he'd moved like a sated cat; now his movements were still fluid, but quickened with a manic impatience. He had taken off his horn-rimmed glasses: he held them in one hand, toying with them absentmindedly, except that Asmodeus never did anything absentmindedly. The gaze he turned on Selene was still amused, but underneath it all she could guess at the controlled fury.

“You're drunk,” she said, coldly. “Go back to where you came from.”

“My lover's deathbed?” Asmodeus's smile was terrible to behold, sharp and fractured and incandescent. “Let us speak of Samariel, shall we? Humans expect to die in their beds; Fallen do not. Should not.”

“You know I don't condone what was done to him,” Selene said. “We are looking into it.”

“You're investigating? There's no need for investigation. The culprit was found, surely.”

“Philippe?” Selene forced herself to laugh. Emmanuelle had been right: in the end, she couldn't be sure what Philippe could and couldn't do; and among the strange magics he could call on, perhaps one of them had the power to end Fallen lives. “I'm not in the habit of condemning people on hearsay. Unlike you.”

“We've gone past hearsay,” Asmodeus said, gravely. He dwarfed her in size; and the power that ran through him limned him in gray light, almost drawing the outline of wings, reminding her of Morningstar at his angriest—when she hadn't been quick enough with his lessons, or when she had forgotten the wards that kept them all safe. But, compared to Morningstar, Asmodeus was pale and insignificant, a candle to the unclouded sun. She could handle him. “Discovering an attack is not the same as being the attacker. Even so, I've had him confined to his room.”

“Like a disobedient child?” Asmodeus laughed. “Not enough.”

Selene stood her ground. After all, she'd had plenty of practice. “Until I find otherwise, that is all I will do. Rest assured that if I find him guilty, nothing in this world will protect him from my vengeance.” She said this with a lightness she didn't feel; after all, the young man had absorbed one of her strongest spells and emerged unscathed. She very much doubted he would come meekly or quietly.

“Not enough,” Asmodeus said. “Not timely enough. I have taken my precautions already.”

“Precautions?”

“You were always too squeamish, Selene. The House has far better holding facilities than rooms with guards. Confined to his room?” He snorted. “As if that would ever be enough.”

“You—” Selene took in a deep breath, forced herself to speak quietly. “You've moved him to the holding cells.” They hadn't been used in almost twenty-five years—even before Morningstar disappeared, he had been mellowing, and whatever he had been doing down there had ceased. Selene remembered, with icy clarity, going down there to clean them up; finding sharp instruments on which blood had dried like rust; and breathing in the stale odor of body fluids.

“As I said—” Asmodeus smiled. “Your master had many flaws, but he wasn't squeamish.”

“Neither am I,” Selene said.

“Then prove it to me.”

“This isn't a contest,” Selene said. But it was, and Asmodeus had won the first round: he had broken her authority in her own House. “And I should think you've done enough, haven't you? Or perhaps you want to hop over to Lazarus, too, and see if you can improve their wallpaper?”

Claire's head came up sharply, but she said nothing. Nevertheless, even drunk or on whatever drugs he was on, Asmodeus was smart enough to recognize he couldn't push things much further. “I'll leave you to it then,” he said, bowing very low.

Yes, leave her to it. As if she had the faintest idea what to do next.

*   *   *

MADELEINE
sat by Samariel's bedside. She wasn't sure why, in truth—she'd gone in to talk to Aragon, and the doctor had irascibly wandered off, looking for some instrument or another; and she'd been struck, all of a sudden, by how terribly alone Samariel must be. It was exceedingly foolish: he'd had no need of her while alive and would probably have mocked her at every opportunity, and he was Asmodeus's lover. By staying there she was making sure that, at some point or another, Asmodeus would wander back in and find her; and then she didn't know what would happen, when the knot of fear in her belly spread to all her limbs, and she stood in front of Elphon's murderer, of the Fallen who had turned Hawthorn into a bloodied ruin. The smart thing would have been to get up and slip away while Aragon was gone.