The House of Shattered Wings (3 page)

The young man, Philippe, was stiff and prim. Madeleine's exam had confirmed he was no Fallen, that he bore no scars on his back, nor possessed any characteristics that could be of use. His breath, sealed in Madeleine's containers, had no magical properties; to all intents and purposes, he was what he appeared to be: a young man adrift in Paris joining a gang as his only way to survive.

His behavior, though, was nothing like a young man's; but spoke of customs and manners from another culture, from another age. “Lady Selene,” he said. “I understand we both owe you our lives.” His face was calm, expressionless, nothing of anger or of shame in it. What was he, truly? Like nothing she had ever seen or heard of—and there was potential in that. Morningstar might have considered him a threat, but she wasn't Morningstar; and, especially, she didn't have the magic he had used to effortlessly keep the House safe.

“You are here because I was curious. Don't mistake it for mercy on my part. I know exactly what you were doing.” Blood and flesh and severed fingers; no better than the gang thugs in the streets, a handsome face covering the mind of a savage.

Philippe gazed back at her, quite unfazed. “So, if not mercy . . . what can I expect of you?”

A sharp eye on him, for a start. An education, if it was not too late to bring him back to decency; to unravel who and what he was, and how he had come to be in Paris. And ultimately, how he could be of use to the House, to guard it against its rivals and make it flourish in the lean, famished times after the war. “From this House? A chance to mend your ways, I should say.”

Something was in his eyes: amusement, anger? He was oddly hard to read, closed off like no human or Fallen she'd ever met. “And why should I take up this offer?”

What pointless arrogance. “I think you misunderstand,” Selene said, and let a fraction of power brush against him; a cold touch to remind him of who he was facing. “You don't have a choice. But if you did have one, I would point out that living in a House is much better than scavenging in the streets.”

“Being fed and fattened while you seek to untangle my deepest secrets?”

“You could always save me time and tell me what you are,” Selene said.

He shook his head. “As you said, your curiosity is all that's keeping me alive at the moment, and I'm not foolish enough to sate it.”

She wanted to open him like a nut: here, in her House, at the center of her power, she could burst through his thoughts, drain every drop of blood from his body if she had to. Except, of course, that he was probably more than capable of defending himself against her. With difficulty, she controlled herself. What was it about the young man that made it so hard to keep her temper in check? “Have it your way, then. I'll certainly have mine in the end.”

“Perhaps.” Philippe's voice was shaking, and this time the anger was unmistakable. “So I am to be your prisoner?”

Selene had little use for his anger; and no pity for the riffraff of the streets. “For what you did—for the fingers you severed from her—the punishment would be death. You should count yourself lucky.”

Philippe's lips quirked in what might have been amusement; but then his gaze turned to the young Fallen by his side; and much to Selene's surprise he said, gravely, “I'm sorry. I didn't intend things to turn out this way, but that doesn't excuse me.”

It didn't, Selene wanted to say; but she wasn't the one with the grievance. The young Fallen gazed back at Philippe levelly, her hands in her lap, the left hand with its two missing fingers quite visible in the sunlight. She said nothing, until at length Philippe lowered his gaze, and fell silent.

Good. She might be innocent, but she was not altogether defenseless.

Selene said, a fraction calmer now, “I have set a spell on you that will prevent you from . . . wandering too far away from the House. I'd advise you not to tinker with it, or you'll regret it.”

He looked as though he might laugh, then; and then shook his head, casting a glance in the Fallen's direction. “Security and a bed; and a golden cage. I guess it will have to do, for the moment.”

She was no fool. Of course he would not submit, and would attempt to escape the moment her back was turned. But it was the best she could do. Her spell had taken long to set in: as with the binding to the House, it was as if something within him was resisting the very notion of magic. But with luck, she'd hold him long enough.

“Wait outside, will you?” she asked; and watched him leave, casual and at ease. One certainly wouldn't think he was the prisoner here, and she the jailer.

She turned to the young Fallen, who stood, watching her warily, and said, in a much kinder voice, “None of this applies to you.”

“Then why am I here?” The young Fallen was quite recovered now, the unearthly light of her first hours gone. She appeared almost human, almost whole, except for the two fingers missing on her left hand. Her face in repose would never be called beautiful, but an innocence hung about her, a guilelessness that made Selene's heart ache. She had been like this once, but such things never lasted for long; not in Paris.

“Because you're one of us,” Selene said; and before the Fallen could voice a question, she added, “What do you remember?”

The Fallen's face shifted then, became for a moment wreathed with soft light. “The City,” she whispered, and looked up into Selene's eyes. “You remember, too.”

It was not a question. “Not as much as I once did,” Selene said. All she had were grainy, fuzzy images like old photographs; faces and voices that all seemed to merge together. “You have to be young to remember.”

Young, and innocent, and brimming with raw power. She envied that child, in that moment; who did not yet know bitterness, or how much the abandonment of God lay heavy on one's shoulders.

What had her sin been, the one that had cast her out of the City? She'd wondered over the years—at what could be so grave that a God of forgiveness and love would condemn them all to this slow, agonizing path on Earth, with the wound of His absence lancing like salted knives—and known, in the darkness of her own room, that there would never be any answer.

“I Fell,” the girl said. And, bringing both hands up to stare at them: “I don't remember why.”

“We never do,” Selene said, which wasn't quite true. Morningstar had remembered; but Morningstar had been the first to Fall, the ringleader of the revolt in Heaven. “You'll find out much of what you need to know over the coming months. We all do. You'll—” She took a deep breath. “You'll have to work out your own answers to what it means, to be Fallen. We have a priest here, Father Javier, if you think religion would help. And a library where you can find histories and books.” Emmanuelle would be glad to take her in hand, to show her everything that she needed to see. “As for me . . . there are three things I can give you, if you will have them. The first is help to come into your powers. The second is the protection of this House. Paris, as you will have gathered, is a dangerous place to be.”

The girl swallowed. “Madeleine told me . . . that I didn't have that protection.”

“Not all of it,” Selene said, mildly. If the binding had taken, any attempt to put her in danger would have sent alarms rippling through the House; would have been as loud as a clarion call to anyone bound to Silverspires; but it hadn't happened. Which meant they would need to keep an eye on her. “Be careful, will you? And we'll find out why.” At least, she dearly hoped so, because she'd lose patience with Philippe very soon; and she doubted anyone in the House, save perhaps Aragon, had the forbearance to deal with him.

“You said three things,” the girl said, her large eyes on Selene's face. “What's the third one?”

Selene rose, feeling the weight of the earth against her bones: that odd, awful sensation that everything should have been lighter, easier on her.
“Angels but touch the earth,”
Morningstar had said, but his smile had been bitter as he said it—he who had felt the weight of age and loss more keenly than most, who had watched so many centuries pass by, patiently gathering his kin to him—as Paris grew from a small town to the bloated capital of an empire; and from this arrogant, conceited city to the devastated wreck huddled around the dark waters of the Seine. At least he'd disappeared before he could see how far the damage ran; how far the House he'd founded had tumbled.

Though, damn him, she still missed him: she'd wake up in the morning and remember that the House was hers, that he was not there to offer biting comments or advice; that he had walked out of the House twenty years ago and never come back. They'd searched for him, of course—turned the House upside down, gone into every nook and cranny, and never found anything, a body or a hint of where he might have gone—Selene didn't even know if he was still alive or not, or if he was truly lost, truly beyond any meeting she might have dreamed of.

“Fallen have no parents,” Selene said, extending a hand toward the girl. “And no kin, beyond those that are willing to claim us. I will give you what my mentor once gave me: a name of your own.”

Morningstar had liked old-fashioned names, drawn straight from the pages of some of the obscure books he'd favored: Selene, Nightfall, Oris, Aragon; even Emmanuelle had been called Indigo before she changed her name.

Selene chose something far simpler. “Isabelle,” she said. “It was the name of a queen once. Wear it well.”

“Isabelle.” The young Fallen sat very still, repeating the name to herself as if testing it for suitability. Her gaze, for a moment, was disturbingly adult, as if Philippe had contaminated her. “It is a good name. Thank you.”

Selene nodded. “You have the run of the House. Use it well.”

She watched Isabelle leave the room. She heard voices outside, guessing that she'd be talking to Philippe. The link between those two concerned her; but if it was Isabelle's choice, what right did Selene have to interfere?

“She's strong, this one,” Emmanuelle said behind her.

Selene turned, only half-surprised. Emmanuelle had thrown open the curtain that lay between her office and her private quarters, and stood wreathed in the light of the lamps. “You should rest,” she said.

Emmanuelle walked into the room, and laid a hand on Selene's cheek, briefly, affectionately. “I've rested enough for a lifetime. Or several of them. Have you given thought to the young man?”

“He's no Fallen,” Selene said.

“He said he was born abroad.” Emmanuelle's face was thoughtful. “Who knows what this might mean? There were other creatures in Annam, and other rules of magic—before the French came over and brought the word of God to those benighted shores.” Her voice was lightly ironic. Emmanuelle manifested as an African woman. Most people mistook her for a Senegalese, though they couldn't place her in a precise ethnic group.

“I don't know anything about Annam,” Selene said. They had people there, of course; got the occasional shipment of silk and rubber, but she hadn't had any reason to focus her attention on the colonies. Travel after the war was slow, expensive—boats to Asia almost inexistent, and communications difficult and infrequent. Heavens, it had taken them ten years and an armed battalion to get back Calixta, and she'd only been stuck in London. Asia might have been another world entirely.

“Indochina,” Emmanuelle said, distractedly. “Once called Viet Nam. Annam is just one of the five regions, but everyone calls them Annamites anyway. Not that most French can make a difference between an Annamite and a Cochinchinese. He might just be one of the witches trained by French schools, you know.”

Witches, even Annamite ones, shouldn't have been able to stop her magic. Perhaps younger, more remote areas retained a vitality that old, bloated cities like Paris never could recapture. Selene sighed. Either way, she would find out more about Philippe and his magic; and how best to use him for the good of the House.

BURIED DARKNESS

IT
was a hard spell to untangle.

Back in his rooms, Philippe had sought traces of what Selene had done to him. He found, without too much trouble—Fallen magic was never subtle or hidden, especially not House magic—the magic that Selene had woven.

It stretched around his neck, an invisible collar that trailed around his entire body before earthing itself into the floor of the House—a tangled labyrinth of ten thousand threads, each of which burned like living fire when he tried to touch them. When at long last he managed to get hold of one of them, heedless of the pain it caused him, it was only to discover that it went straight into the heart of the tangle, where he lost it.

He tried severing the threads closer to the ground, to burn them with the little fire in the House, to dry them out with metal. Each time, he felt the pain of his own spell reflected back at him; until, shaking, he had to stop and suck in burning breaths, waiting for the agony to pass him by; and the threads merely re-formed, seconds after he had burned them.

Demons take Selene, she was thorough, and powerful. But then again, what had he expected of a Fallen; of one of the ruling elite of the city?

He lay on the bed, shaking, and stared at the ceiling until the wooden carvings seemed to dissolve into blurry water. He might not escape this time. He was her prisoner until her goodwill ran out; her victim after that. She had made it clear she would kill him for what he'd done in the Galeries Lafayette. It was . . . frightening, a prospect for which he had no name; as if he were back in the regiment during the war, prodded and poked until he ran with the rest under mortar fire, under a hail of bullets, in the midst of spells that could drain the breath out of him.

He'd survived
that
; but it had been sheer luck, and nothing else. Heaven no longer looked upon him with favor, as he knew all too well. He was not Fallen, but he might as well be; exiled from the Imperial Court of Immortals, and unable to speak with his own kind; his kin long since dead, the only remnants of his blood descendants who worshipped at a distant altar.

He might not survive this. But did it matter? There was no way forward, no return to the Imperial Court. He was trapped in Paris, all the paths back to Annam closed to him—and now worse than this, trapped in a House as a prisoner.

Sometimes, on the edge of sleep, he would dream of when he had first ascended, and turned from mortal to Immortal. He was back in the cave where he had fasted, a thousand years ago—shivering with hunger, hanging on the knife's edge of unconsciousness as he meditated—and there was a sound like the bell toll of a pagoda resonating in his bones; and the shadow of cloud-encrusted buildings and of a vast courtyard, materializing a hand span away from him; and the Jade Emperor awaiting him on the throne, congratulating him for overcoming his banishment . . .

Such a wishful, childish dream. There was no truth in it, not a single gram. He was stuck in France, in Silverspires; and no amount of meditation would make the Imperial Court's power stretch to foreign shores.

The door opened. Philippe was on his feet, drawing on the few scattered hints of
khi
currents in the room, before he saw that it was Isabelle.

“Oh,” he said. “Hello.” After the interview with Selene, he'd walked away, back to the room he'd been assigned. The last thing he'd wanted was to talk to her—his brief apology was all he felt like extending to her. He fully intended to stay away from Selene's prize; and he didn't want to be reminded of what he'd done to her. But it was a small room, and there was only one exit, in front of which she stood.

She looked at him for a while, speculatively. Her brown eyes were still halfway translucent, the irises dilated and washed out, as if some of the light he'd seen resided still in her. “I thought I would find you here. We need to talk.”

“I'm not sure we do.”

Isabelle smiled. There was something primal and innocent about the look, something that seemed to set the whole room alight—but then again, she knew the power of that smile, and she was using it. Fallen all over, that curious mixture of naïveté and guile. She raised her hand; the one that was missing the two fingers, the ones he and Ninon had cut off. Demons take him, he wasn't one to shirk away from responsibilities.

“I owe you that: apology for inflicting that wound,” Philippe said. “But nothing else. Can we leave it at that?” He sat on the bed; which wasn't much, but was the farthest he could get from her.

“Do you think I can? Breath and blood and bone”—she sounded as though she was quoting an old children's rhyme—“all linked in the same circle. Can't you feel it?” To Philippe's horror, she bent her hand toward the parquet floor in a graceful gesture, letting him see the two threads of luminous magic that started from the stumps of her fingers and stretched through the air, straight toward his face—no, straight toward his mouth, which was suddenly filled with the same sweet, electrifying taste of Fallen blood, a memory from his nightmares.

“I can't do more than apologize.” Philippe swallowed, trying to banish the taste in his mouth. Never get tangled with Fallen—a lesson he'd learned, over and over. Why hadn't he listened to it? “I'll apologize again, if that's what you want to hear, but it won't change anything. . . .”

“Can't you feel it?” Isabelle asked, again; and suddenly she was no longer ageless or terrifying, but merely a young, scared girl.

“The—” Philippe swallowed, trying to banish the taste of blood from his mouth. “The link? Of course I can. I'm assuming it's not a usual thing.” He meant to be flippant, and regretted it when he saw her face. “I'm sorry.” It seemed all he could do to her was apologize.

Plenty of people drank Fallen blood without any side effects; but then again, plenty of people weren't former Immortals. Blood was the body's embodiment of
khi
, of the vital breath that saturated the universe—the source of long life and stability. He closed his eyes—could still feel her, a tenuous presence at the back of his mind, like a distant pain.

“I don't know what to do,” Isabelle said.

“And you think I do?” Philippe shook his head, unsure of where the conversation was going. He doubted the link could be broken, and with Selene's spell on him he wasn't about to attempt experiments.

“You have more experience,” she said, slowly.

“I'm no Fallen,” Philippe said. “And not experienced in magic, either.” He'd never made use of magic that wasn't his, or consumed the more refined magical drug of angel essence, save for that one moment of weakness—why did such a small thing always have such large consequences? But of course he understood about discipline, and how the smallest lapse could lead to the largest failures. “I can't tell you what to do.”

“Selene says no one can,” Isabelle said. She came into the room; and sat on the bed, by his side. He held himself rigid—trying to be polite; to not frighten her, even though everything within him screamed at him to move away as far as he could, as fast as he could. He couldn't help breathing in her smell—musty, like old books falling into dust—couldn't help feeling the raw magic in her, a temptation forever beckoning to him. No wonder mortals went mad over Fallen, one way or another; hungering for essence, for breath, or even for a simple touch. “But I'm not Selene. I need—”

“Advice?” Philippe said. It wasn't much, but he could give her that, at least. “Look, it's not a bad place, as Houses go.” It was the House keeping him prisoner, but that wasn't her problem. “You have people to talk to, inside and outside it. I can't give you guidance or wisdom; I'm not qualified.”

“What about company?”

Startled, he looked up at her; at the dark eyes that seemed to have no expression. “You're among your kind here.”

“They're old,” Isabelle said. Her hands, he saw suddenly, were shaking; the threads between them contracting and expanding on a rhythm that seemed to echo a heartbeat. “They talk about things they barely remember. I can't—”

“Neither can I,” Philippe said, more gently this time.

“No, but you can help me. Can't you?” There
was
something in her eyes, a reflection of the fear and emptiness the City had left behind. What would it be like, to remember snatches of what you'd lost; to know that you were in the mortal world, away from the communion of angels or whatever else had fulfilled her in Heaven?

Not far from how he'd felt, when he was first cast out of the company of Immortals: the bleak despair that had sent him roaming from end to end of Indochina; the black veil descending over the forests and the rivers, turning the chatter of town markets into small, petty tripe, and the beauty of mountain retreats into aimless desolation.

There was a gulf between them—in age, in nature, in magic. But . . .

They were not so different, after all—isolated and new to the House, trying to learn its rules fast enough to survive—and linked, by blood and magic—thrown into similar circumstances. No wonder she would see a kindred spirit in him, no matter how incongruous the thought was.

“You heard Selene. I'm not House; and I shouldn't be here. I won't stay,” he said.

“I know,” Isabelle said. “But while you're here . . .”

“You realize what you're asking?” Philippe asked. “I cut your fingers. I tasted your blood.”

Her face was turned toward his, her need bare—for the familiar; for anything that wasn't the House and its ageless, unwelcoming rituals. “Yes,” she said. “You did. I haven't forgotten that. But—because of it—you'll understand.”

He raised his hand: the invisible collar Selene had woven around him rested like a yoke on his shoulders; tying him to the House, to its unbearably arrogant mistress and her will. “Fine. I'll help you. Inasmuch as I can.”

And when she smiled, the entire room seemed to become bright with the same soft, low-key glow she'd had in the Grands Magasins—when she was young and barely manifested; before everything had changed.

*   *   *

THE
House creeped Philippe out.

It was a big, sprawling place—not a single edifice, as he had assumed, but a series of buildings joined by a maze of corridors and courtyards, stretching across the entire Ile de la Cité. Most of it was derelict: the western part of the island seemed to be entirely deserted, with not even the lowest in Silverspires' hierarchy daring to venture there, though it was not so much fear as a disinclination to go into empty rooms where every piece of furniture was covered in soot or dust or both.

His first communal dinner had been a nightmare. He had sat at one of numerous trestle tables in the great hall, surrounded by what seemed to be the entire House: hundreds of people pressed together in a suffocating mass—turning, from time to time, to stare at him, the only Viet in the room, and then turning back to their discussion of subjects and House concerns that seemed utterly alien to him.

He had fled then, back to the safety of his room, and begged until Emmanuelle agreed to let him dine alone. But even that didn't make him feel better.

It had been weeks since that first dinner; and he hadn't stayed that long in a House since the fall of House Draken—in fact, he'd rather have swum in a river at monsoon time than go anywhere near the fastnesses of the Fallen. And to do so while under a spell of imprisonment . . .

His only comfort was Isabelle. He never thought he'd say that of a Fallen, but she was fresh and young and naive—pulling warm bread from the oven and tearing into it with relish, while the cook, Laure, frowned affectionately at her—skipping stones in the courtyard with the children—and keeping a stash of biscuits and tea in the drawer of her room, which she shared with him around a card or a dice game—she was a terrible gambler, but then, so was he, so it all balanced out.

Those were the bright spots—the few, desperately few. In between, there was the House.

Philippe had a continuous feeling of ants crawling on his skin; an itch that never went away, that woke him up at night; an elusive, ghostly pain somewhere near his heart and liver, as if his organs had been subtly changed while he'd been unconscious. Perhaps it was the House; perhaps it was the spell; but he couldn't seem to be rid of either, much to his annoyance. He'd been on a French leash sixty years before, in the war: taken from his home in Thu Dau Mot and conveyed to foreign shores under duress; abandoned in Paris to fend for himself when, against all odds, he'd survived the war. Never again, he'd sworn, but fate made fools of all men, it seemed.

Isabelle found him in Laure's kitchens, kneading dough. Laure, who had little time for anyone, had taken pity on him and allowed him a table corner—there was something infinitely relaxing about feeling the dough coming together between his fingers; the stretching and turning and pulling until it all came together smooth and silky, effortlessly detaching from his fingers. When he was done, Laure would find something else for him to do: chopping up meat or vegetables or keeping an eye on soup stock. He wasn't sure she ever served what he'd touched—though she did present him with his baked loaf of bread every morning—but it was a way to pass time.

“Still here?” Isabelle asked.

Philippe shrugged. “As good a place as any.”

Isabelle slid in next to him, dislodging a kitchen boy—who smiled at her, though she didn't acknowledge him. “Want help?”

He held out the dough to her. She took it in both hands, and started kneading in turn. “No, not like this. Here.” He moved, placed her hands, showed her how to do one stretch and one fold. “You turn, and then you do it again.”

Isabelle frowned. Her hands moved, slowly, carefully.

“Feeling it take shape yet?”