The House of Shattered Wings (32 page)

“Ah, Madeleine.”

She never even heard him. One moment there was nothing; the next he stood between her and the bridge—with Elphon and another Fallen one step behind him. His glasses glinted in the sunlight; the expression in his eyes light, mocking. “Leaving so soon?”

The wind blew the smell of bergamot and orange blossom into her face, so strong that her entire stomach heaved in protest. “Asmodeus.” She got the word out; barely. “It's none of your business.”

His smile was bright and dazzling. “Oh, but it is. When a House rids itself of a most talented alchemist, I cannot help being interested.”

There was no one else; or rather, everyone was giving them a wide berth, heedless of Madeleine's feeble attempts to signal for help. She was on her own, and she had never felt so alone. “Go away.”

“I think not. I have a vested interest in you, after all.”

Because she had once belonged to Hawthorn, because the House never let go of what it had once possessed, because she'd woken up at night, shaking and fearing that they would come to take her back, and now it was happening, and she was powerless to stop it. “Please—” she whispered, and Asmodeus smiled even more brightly.

“My lord.” It was Elphon; for a wild, impossible moment Madeleine thought he had remembered, that he was going to speak up in her favor. He would— “We need to return to the parvis.”

Asmodeus did not turn around. “For the formal leave-taking? Selene is half an hour late, and I see no sign of her coming.”

The world had shrunk to Asmodeus's face; to his eyes behind their panes of glass, sparkling as if they shared some secret joke. She couldn't—she had to . . .

Her bag. The box with the remnants of angel essence. If she could find it. Slowly, carefully, she moved her hand, creeping toward the pocket where she had put it.

Asmodeus was talking to Elphon, and his full attention wasn't on her yet. “I expect the House to be . . . somewhat in disarray right now. I'll send someone with our excuses, to apologize for the impoliteness of leaving without the formal ceremony.”

Madeleine's hand closed around the box; undid the clasp, plunged into the essence—warmth on her fingers, a promise of power. If she could raise her hand, and swallow it. If she—

“I'm sure Selene won't begrudge us our departure,” Asmodeus was saying. He reached out, almost absentmindedly, and caught Madeleine's hand in a vise. His index finger pressed down, unerringly, on one of her nerves, and her fingers opened in a shock, sending the box clattering to the pavement; and the essence wafting onto the breeze, the wind picking at her palm and fingers with the greed of a hungry child.

Asmodeus's hand went upward, toward her shoulder; and effortlessly slid down the strap, divesting Madeleine of her black leather bag. “I think not. Where you're going, you'll have no need of this.”

*   *   *

HE
sat on a bed in Selene's room—Javier had spluttered and hemmed on the way, saying something about privacy and the need to keep this a secret, but Selene had been barely listening.

Javier closed the door behind her as she entered, leaving them in relative privacy. Emmanuelle was there, too, her eyes two pools of bottomless dark in the oval of her face. “He was wandering the corridors,” she said, slowly, softly; as though everything might break, if she spoke too loud. “Stark naked.” There was not an ounce of humor in the way she spoke: in spite of the incongruity, the hour was not one for laughter or light-spirited comments.

For a good, long while, Selene did nothing but stare.

He had the radiance of newborn Fallen: a light so strong it was almost blinding, so oppressive she fought a desire to sink to her knees; and the eyes he trained on her were guileless, holding nothing but the blue of clear skies. “Selene?” he asked, quietly. “I was told you were Head of the House now.”

Selene swallowed, trying to dispel the knot in her throat—she wasn't sure if it was relief, or anger, or grief, or a bittersweet mixture of all three. “Glad to see you, Morningstar.”

LIKE SEEDS, SCATTERED BY THE WINDS

EMMANUELLE
came in with Javier: the priest looked much older, much more brittle than Selene remembered. “We found the place,” Emmanuelle said. She looked grim; her sleeves slashed in multiple places. “A cellar with a circle—like the one under the cathedral.”

A circle of power, like the one he had originally traced. Had he always intended to come back, then? Had he . . . engineered his own death and resurrection? “I see,” Selene said. She didn't look at the curtain that separated her living quarters from her office; afraid that she'd see Morningstar in repose once more, with that serene, otherworldly expression: innocence personified, jarring from someone who had never been innocent, or even young.

“No, you don't.” Emmanuelle's face was hard. “It was full of roots, Selene. I think . . . I think the circle was a crack between life and death; and a crack in the wards, too—an opening big enough for the curse to exploit. The roots must have descended from the first floor and gone into the foundations through the circle.”

“Morningstar would never do that,” Selene said, startled.

“No,” Emmanuelle said. “If I understand correctly, he was dead at that point.” She bit her lip. “He had a plan, I'm sure, Selene. I just don't think it played out as he wished it.”

No; or he would be back as he had been. But the dead didn't trace circles, or cast spells. Someone else had done this for him.

Asmodeus. Her hands clenched, in spite of herself. “Has Hawthorn left?”

“They're gone,” Javier said. “With apologies for taking their leave so . . . abruptly.”

And no wonder, if what she suspected was true. Except, of course, that she had no way to prove it—and what would she do, even if it were proved? Accuse Asmodeus—who would no doubt laugh at her, and tell her that spells of resurrection were a fantasy? In any case—she had bigger problems on her hands.

“Did you—” Choérine swallowed. “Did you learn any more?”

Selene shook her head. “He says he doesn't remember anything. As if he were a newborn Fallen.” And she was inclined to believe him. If it was an act, some game put on for their benefit, it was an impossibly good one.

Choérine shook her head, once, twice; her dark eyes burning against the porcelain-white tones of her skin. “What's going to happen, Selene?”

I don't know,
she wanted to say; she wanted to surrender to the pressure, to bow down and admit that she wasn't worthy of this mantle, that she never had been. But she stopped herself, with an effort of will. Ignorance or indecisiveness was not what Choérine needed to hear. “We will talk,” she said. “See where the future of the House lies. It's a good thing he's back; we could badly use his insights.”

“Yes, of course.” Choérine smiled, some of the fatigue lifting from her eyes. “I'll go see to the children.”

After she was gone, Emmanuelle pulled away from the wall she'd been leaning on, and came to rest her head against Selene's shoulder. “A good lie,” she said.

Selene breathed in Emmanuelle's perfume: musk and amber, heady and strong, a reminder of more careless days. If she closed her eyes, could she believe they would go to bed now; would kiss and make love with the fury and passion of the desperate?

But, of course, there had never been any careless days. There was war, and internecine fights; Emmanuelle's addiction, and Selene's hours of crippling self-doubt. “What else could I have told her?” Selene asked.

Emmanuelle didn't move. “It wasn't a reproach. But if you think you can fool me . . .”

“I would never dare.” Selene gently disengaged herself from her lover's embrace, leaving only one hand trailing in Emmanuelle's hair, running braids between her fingers like pearl necklaces. “But you can't fool me, either. What didn't you tell me?”

Emmanuelle grimaced. “I underplayed it, Selene. It wasn't easy to search the cellars. Everything was . . . covered in roots. And they weren't exactly friendly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Try fighting your way through a thornbush. One that hits back. And it's big now. Entire corridors are starting to look like the underside of a particularly nasty kind of tree, yes.” Emmanuelle picked at her torn sleeves, her face grim and distant. “At this rhythm—”

“I know,” Selene said. “The entire wing will become unusable.” She didn't need Emmanuelle to tell her that: the magic of the House was flickering, being squeezed and choked into nothingness in so many places. In too many places.

All that you hold dear—vanished.

“That's assuming it stops at the wing,” Emmanuelle said.

Which was, on the face of it, rather unlikely. “It said, in the crypt, that it would destroy us all.” Selene stared at her hands. What could she do? She should wake Morningstar, ask him what they should do. Surely, even amnesiac, he would know. . . .

Pathetic
. He had said it himself. She was head of the House now, and it was her responsibility. “Get me Isabelle,” she said to Emmanuelle. “We need to destroy this before it destroys us.”

*   *   *

LATER,
much later—or perhaps it wasn't, but time seemed to have blurred between a series of unbearably sharp tableaux, like teeth, biting over and over into her flesh—walking over the Pont Saint-Michel, watching the omnibus she'd hoped to catch move away from her, the sound of the hooves like thunder in her ears—a brief conversation before a line of black cars, Asmodeus gesturing to her, Elphon prodding and pushing her into the same one as his master—the car pulling away, and the spire of the ruined cathedral dwindling farther and farther away in the distance.

“You're much better off with us,” Asmodeus said. He was polishing his glasses with a yellow cloth; his eyes on the window, on the House that was his rival and enemy. “See? Over Notre-Dame?”

There were . . . clouds, but clouds didn't gather so dense and dark, didn't form that almost perfect circle that ringed the two ruined towers like a crown. And clouds didn't reach down: those were extending tendrils, wrapping themselves around the ruined stone, until the entire cathedral seemed tethered to the Heavens.

“It's survived such a long time, hasn't it? Fire and floods and war. But this, I think, will finally break it.” He sounded thoughtful, not gloating or satisfied, as she would have imagined. His eyes rested on her; in earnest for once, with none of the mockery she was used to. “So silent? Have you nothing to say?”

Madeleine, too weary for words, rested her head against the polished, darkened glass of the car window, and watched her safe haven of the past twenty years vanish into the distance, leaving her alone with the master of Hawthorn.

*   *   *

ISABELLE,
when she came, didn't seem entirely happy, or entirely at ease with her new charge as alchemist. “Madeleine knew better than I,” she said.

Selene shook her head. The last thing she needed was people questioning her decisions. “Madeleine is no longer with us. There are only a few laws in Silverspires; and she broke one.”

“So you don't forgive,” Isabelle said, slowly. She was more sharply defined, somehow, the light from her body radiating more strongly than it should have. Was she on essence, too? But there were no signs of any external sources: merely Isabelle as she'd always been, impossibly young and impossibly old at the same time. “That's good to know.”

“Do you have objections?” Selene said. She hesitated, for a fraction of a second only, and decided to make this her show of strength. “You can leave if you disagree. I'm sure there are other Houses that are far less vigilant about enforcing their laws.”

Isabelle looked thoughtful. For a moment Selene thought she'd misjudged, that Isabelle would indeed leave, seek out Hawthorn or Lazarus—but then she nodded. “Your House, your law. I don't approve, but it's only fair.”

Something in her tone was sharper than it should have been—as if, for a brief moment, she'd seriously considered challenging Selene for the leadership of the House. “Tell me what you know.”

“I don't,” Isabelle said, serenely. “Madeleine knew they were the Furies. Philippe and Emmanuelle figured out it was Nightingale. I—” She shrugged. “I don't know much, other than that Morningstar died.” The light around her flickered, throwing distorted shadows on the walls.

“About that—” Emmanuelle said, but she didn't have time to finish, because, in that moment, Morningstar pulled away the curtain that separated Selene's living quarters from her office. “I heard something about my death?”

Isabelle stared. So did Morningstar. Black gaze met blue; and remained stuck there, as if they recognized something in each other, a connection that went beyond anything Selene would have expected.

What—how could they even know each other? Morningstar had been dead for
years
before Isabelle was born. There was no way they could recognize each other, no way that Morningstar should be paying attention to a minor Fallen of the House.

Emmanuelle laid a hand on Selene's shoulder, squeezed gently. “Do you know each other?” she asked.

Morningstar tore himself from his contemplation of Isabelle. “I don't remember,” he said, thoughtfully. “Perhaps I did.”

Isabelle didn't speak. At length, she shook her head. “I don't think so. But all the same . . .” She was silent, for a while. “I saw your corpse.”

“Possibly.” Morningstar shook his head. “I don't remember, you see.”

But he'd remembered Selene. He'd lost everything else; most of the memories that would have made him more than this blank slate; but he had still recognized her.

“That's all very nice,” Selene said, “but it doesn't help us.”

“I'm not sure what we need help against,” Isabelle said. “A ghost?”

“Ghosts can be exorcised.” Morningstar lay back against one of the walls, his gaze blank, making merely a timid suggestion, so far from the maelstrom of power she had once known. He hadn't always been that way—back in a time when things had been simpler, easier, when the House had been prosperous; and when solutions had not required so much agonizing over what they could and couldn't do. There was a vise in Selene's chest, squeezing her heart to bloody shreds.

“Not so easily,” Emmanuelle said. “And neither will what she summoned vanish.”

“The Furies?” Isabelle asked.

“No, the Furies are dead,” Emmanuelle said. “I was speaking of the tree choking the magic of the House.”

“How do you stop a tree? Or a ghost?”

“You don't,” Selene said. “Morningstar—”

“Yes?”

“You really don't remember, do you? What you did to Nightingale?”

Only polite interest from him, a raised eyebrow. Perhaps it did mean nothing to him, after all. Or perhaps it did, and there was so little emotion attached to it that he could so easily lie.

“It was done,” Isabelle said. “Are we going to stand here debating the morality of it? At the time, you judged it right for the good of the House.”

Another raised eyebrow. “No doubt.”

The image of Asmodeus rose like a specter in Selene's mind, his eyes and the horn rim of his glasses sparkling in some unseen light.
Your master had many flaws, but he wasn't squeamish.

I am not.

Then prove it to me.

They could stand all night discussing this, with no more progress—none of them, save perhaps Isabelle, would take the authority to make decisions. And it was the decision that mattered, not its rightness.

Selene took in a deep breath. “Emmanuelle, can you research exorcism? All the others, we're going into the East Wing, to see if we can stop the roots. I don't know what Nightingale's game is, but I won't let her swallow the House.”

*   *   *

MADELEINE
had expected to be shut into one of the cells: they'd existed back in Uphir's day; and she had no doubt Asmodeus would have kept them all. But Elphon merely showed her into a room on the first floor—one with a little private staircase leading into the depths of the House's huge garden. “Someone will be by later. I wouldn't try anything funny if I were you,” he said. “Lord Asmodeus isn't known for his patience.”

“Wait,” Madeleine said.

Elphon turned, halfway to the door, politely waiting for her to speak. His face was blank, and there was no hint of recognition in his gaze. He didn't remember her. He would never remember her.

“Nothing,” Madeleine said, slowly, carefully. “It's nothing.” She'd have wept; but there were no more tears to be wrung out of her. Miracles didn't happen, did they?

“As you wish,” Elphon said, bowing to her. “I'll leave you to speak to Lord Asmodeus.”

And he was gone, leaving her alone in the room.

The House hadn't changed; or perhaps she didn't remember it well enough: it had been twenty years, after all, and she was no Fallen. The brain decayed; memories became as blurred as scenes seen through rain. The green wallpaper with its impressions of flowers was the same; the elegant Louis XV chairs were the same she'd once had in her rooms; and the covered bed with its elaborate curtains was, if not familiar, entirely in keeping with the rest of the room.

She was back.

There was no escaping that fact; or the memory of that car ride with Asmodeus, so close the stink of his perfume still clung to her clothes. Back, and powerless; and entirely at his mercy, a fact that no doubt amused him. Probably the only reason she was still alive.

A fit of coughing bent her double, left her gasping for breath; her lungs wrung out, emptied of everything except bitterness. She needed essence, needed its familiar warmth to keep away the memories, to smooth over the bare, inescapable fact that she was back in the last place in Paris she wanted to be; to keep her from imagining her future, which would be short and nasty and brutal.