The House of Shattered Wings (6 page)

Neither was what he had done to Isabelle, but Philippe clamped his mouth shut on that response before it could doom him.

Aragon drummed his fingers on his desk. “I don't meddle,” he said, more to himself than to Philippe. “I don't take sides—that was the bargain I struck. But they have to keep their side of it; and they're not.” He looked up; as if genuinely surprised to still see Philippe there. “There is someone who could help you, but it will not come cheap.”

“Do I look like I have money?” Philippe said.

“No,” Aragon said. “It's what they'll ask for that preoccupies me, in fact.” He drummed his fingers on the desk again, staring at Philippe as if he could dissect him. “You're a decent being, underneath. Can you promise you'll follow your own heart in this?”

“I can promise,” Philippe said, “but—”

“Then do so.”

“Fine, fine,” Philippe said. It didn't seem to be much, in any case. “I promise.”

Aragon sighed. “The next Great Market is in two days. Wait in the courtyard near the Préfecture's former entrance—you know where that is? I'll show you on a map. Midday, I suspect, is the time he'll prefer, but I'll confirm with you. Oh, and naturally do keep my name out of this.”

“I don't understand—” Philippe started, but he did understand—that somewhere, somehow, there was a person who could effortlessly shatter Selene's spell; who could make him free.

And wasn't that all that mattered, ultimately? That, and not the bleak maw of the future that Aragon had described so well; the closed doors to an Annam he couldn't return to, to a pale, bloodless life with Ninon and Baptiste and the rest of the Red Mambas; or to the cessation of life itself, the supreme attainment of the Buddhists, the thought of which scared him sick in his belly?

*   *   *

PHILIPPE
went to see Isabelle, afterward—to check up on her, ensure that she was still around. He wasn't sure why, but the interview—and Aragon's promise—had left him shaken, no longer sure of what he ought to do.

He found her in the kitchens, stubbornly trying to handle a wet, sticky dough under the amused gaze of Laure. “She's getting better at this,” Laure said to Philippe when he arrived. Her husband, Gauthier, was nearby, showing two junior cooks how to prepare flaky pastry for bouchées à la
reine
. “Though still a bit of a disaster, if you ask me.”

Philippe forced a smile he didn't feel. Laure was kind, and he couldn't fault her; but right now he couldn't handle another House dependent—except for Isabelle.

Isabelle was kneading the dough as if it had personally offended her—bits and pieces of it were clinging to her fingers, the work surface—and even her hair.

“I take it the lesson with Choérine didn't go well,” Philippe said. He didn't really need to see the state of the dough; this close, he could feel her frustration through the link—strong enough that it drowned everything.

Isabelle snorted. “Just tiring,” she said. “She wanted me to hold a spell for a long time—and it's hard.”

“You'll get it, eventually.” The small things were always harder—especially for a Fallen whose raw power was too strong, too uncontrolled.

“Of course. Choérine said it could take time, with . . . young Fallen. How did the exam with Aragon go?”

Philippe shrugged, with a nonchalance he didn't feel. “Not as bad as it could have gone.”

She looked at him for a while. “Performing like a circus animal? Did that make you happy?”

Again, that odd mixture of naïveté and shrewdness—thrown around with the subtlety of a club. “I suppose not.”

Isabelle tore the dough back from the wooden table, stared at it for a while. “Laure says there'll be financiers for dessert tonight. With real almonds. I can beg some if you want.”

Philippe suppressed a smile. “Trying to distract me with food?”

“Trying to distract both of us,” Isabelle said, sharply—clearly still unhappy about the lesson with Choérine. “What do you think?”

“Of course,” Philippe said. He was never quite sure of what to tell her—already, she moved in a world different from his—a world of magic lessons and etiquette courses, while he got taken apart by Aragon and Emmanuelle—observed, to see what he could do; what his value as a weapon was.

But it wasn't going to last, not if Aragon kept his word.

“Do you miss home?” Isabelle asked.

He shrugged again. From her—from her face, and the faint link between them—only concern. “It was a long time ago.”

“Liar.”

He couldn't put it into words. “I can't return,” he said, at last, and that was true.

“Because of the Fallen?” Isabelle asked.

Because . . . “Because of the Houses, yes. Because there are no boats left, except for dependents. Because, even if I did get on board one, the Jade Emperor—you would call him God, I suppose, if God was in Annam—wouldn't accept me back.” He left it at that; didn't mention offenses that were never forgiven—what was the point? It was, as he had told her, a long time ago in another land.

“The Jade Emperor.” She rolled the name on her tongue, as if it were some foreign, exotic ingredient. “Does he rule over Annam?”

“No, of course not,” Philippe said, bitterly. “That would be the Fallen.”

“I mean, before the Fallen.”

“He . . . is the guardian of Heaven,” Philippe said. “The keeper of Heaven's will and its closest personification. But no, he doesn't rule over mortals. Just over spirits. The mountain spirits, the dragons, the village protectors . . . they all bow down to him.”

“But you're not a spirit,” Isabelle said. “So you could come back. Just not in his court.”

“I wanted to,” Philippe said. “Even if I didn't really know what kind of life I'd have, back there.” He hadn't really had time to get adjusted to his exile from court before the Fallen swooped in—but he'd had a life as a mortal, once—had tasted rice and fish sauce and all the sweetness of banquets; had once known contentment as he'd rounded the bluff and seen his home, with the smell of jasmine wafting from the door. He was still Immortal enough that his body didn't age, that his powers didn't fade; but . . . “I suppose I could,” he said, finally. “Do something else, be different from what I was—before.” It was an absurd, childish idea, but Isabelle's matter-of-fact tone made it all seem real.

Isabelle watched him for a while. “You should,” she said fiercely. “There will be boats. Maybe not today, but tomorrow or in five years, or in a decade, and you'll find one you can board.”

“There—” Philippe opened his mouth, and then shut it. It was hard to argue, in the face of her faith—as pure and as incandescent as a falling star. “I'm sure you're right,” he said, slowly. It was a lie, a mad dream; but it was in his belly like warm rice; like a comfort he'd forgotten, years and years ago.

Isabelle said, as if utterly oblivious of the struggle within him, “I asked Selene.”

“About what?”

“Lifting the spell.”

“You—” He was going to say she was insane, and then measured the import of what she'd said. “You shouldn't have done that.”

Isabelle shrugged. “She wouldn't listen. She smiled and patted me on the head, as if I were a child.”

You are a child,
Philippe thought—but he could feel her in his mind; could feel her anger—that pure, sharp rage of the young at injustice. His heart twinged, in his chest, and for a moment he wasn't sure what he could tell her.

“That's not what I meant.” And, because he owed her something, anything, in return, even if it was worthless fancies, he added, “I get those flashes, sometimes. Those traces of something familiar, almost as if I only had to turn a corner to be home. It's . . . not a pleasant feeling.” The cathedral; Aragon's office—impossible dreams that he should be adult enough to set aside.

Isabelle's gaze was disturbingly shrewd. “Sometimes, dreams are true things.”

“Not these ones,” Philippe said; and thought of the other ones; the suffocating nightmares about the darkness; his waking drenched in sweat, breathing hard, as if he'd run ahead of a tiger in its own territory.

These ones, too, had to be false—
please, Heaven, let them be false.

*   *   *

“SELENE?”

Emmanuelle came into Selene's office, carrying a stack of books—one that was so large it threatened to dwarf her.

“Oh dear,” Selene said. “What are those?” She got up from behind her desk, helped Emmanuelle divest herself of some of the books, before the whole precariously balanced pile fell down.

“Lady Selene?”

“Oh.” Behind Emmanuelle—equally dwarfed by a pile of books, although in this case it was a much shorter one—was Caroline, the six-year-old daughter of two dependents of the House. “Here, let me help.”

Caroline shook her head. “I can do it,” she said, walking slowly but with determination to the desk—where she attempted to put the entire pile of books in one go, with predictable results.

The noise the books made when they tumbled onto the parquet must have woken up the entire House. “Sorry.” Caroline shook her head and picked up the books, one by one—standing on tiptoe to reach the desk and lining them all up one by one.

Emmanuelle watched her, trying very hard to suppress a smile. “She insisted on helping.”

“I see.” Selene considered the books while Caroline continued her ever-widening invasion of her desk. “
My Three Years in Annam
by Gabrielle Vasseur,
Annamite Myths and Legends
by Antony Landes. You've been busy, I see.”

“I thought I'd keep you busy,” Emmanuelle said. “Since the examination was unsuccessful . . .” She didn't sound altogether grieved about that. Selene wasn't sure why she gave so much leeway to Philippe—had she forgotten what the young man had done, so readily?

She was right, however: Aragon's examination had been singularly unsuccessful. Philippe's blood, examined under Aragon's microscopes, appeared nothing more than human. His lungs were quite free of the rot she associated with angel essence (she hadn't thought he was an essence addict, but one never knew); in fact, they were surprisingly healthy, even for a young man—Aragon's face had been creased into something almost like surprise when he gave her the results. All that remained was this strong, unexplained magic that he seemed to wield as easily as he breathed.

“All done!” Caroline stood, proudly. Behind her, the desk was covered in books—she'd been too small to make piles of more than two or three, and had had to expand to either side—a good thing Selene hadn't yet sorted out the paperwork on her desk, because Caroline had pushed things left and right to fit the books where she could, heedless of whether that disturbed anything.

“Very good,” Emmanuelle said, while Selene made a deliberate effort not to step forward and pile everything properly. “Now go find Choérine, will you?”

“Thank you,” Selene said gravely to the little girl.

Caroline nodded. “I'll tell all my friends I helped you with House business, Lady Selene!”

To which Selene had no answer; except watching the little girl rush away while Emmanuelle struggled not to laugh. “She means well.”

“I know.” Selene smiled, then gathered all the books into a pile, which she slid onto one corner of her desk, atop the older reports, the ones she always put off reading. “I presume you didn't come just to deliver books.”

“Of course not,” Emmanuelle said. “Knowing you . . .” She pulled a chair, and sat down. “Consider they come with a reading guide. You asked about Annam, and what it was like.”

“Yes,” Selene said. If Philippe wouldn't talk, and if she couldn't analyze his magic, she'd find another way to discover what he was. “Tell me.”

Emmanuelle closed her eyes—gathering her thoughts for a recitation. When she opened them again, she spoke without hesitation. “What do you know of the beings who ruled the world before the Fallen?”

Beyond Europe, before the mad rush to colonize other countries and bring their wealth back to the motherland, there had been—other beings, other Houses: the
nahual
shape-shifters of Mexico, the
jinn
of Arab countries, the Jewish
shedim
and
nephilim
—and once, a long time ago, the demigods and heroes of ancient Greece and ancient Rome—long since vanished and crushed by newer magics, their creatures cannibalized to form the constructs of the war, or buried so deeply in the earth they required a painstaking and dangerous summoning that no Fallen would dare undertake. The other beings in other lands, too, had either yielded to Fallen rule, or been killed. “Much. But not about Annam.”

“Annam . . . is a land of spirits,” Emmanuelle said. “Magic is tied to the land—there's a spirit for each village, for each household—for mountains and rivers and rain.”

“Rain,” Selene said. “Really.”

“Don't laugh,” Emmanuelle said. She held up one of the books, where an engraving of a huge, serpentine animal circled text—all the way to the maw, which was huge and fanged, like that of tigers. It had a mane, too; like a lion's, and deerlike antlers—and it looked . . . wrong, as if bits and pieces of animals had been jumbled together by a creator with little common sense. “They call them
rong
. Dragons. They live in clouds, or at the bottom of rivers and seas.”

Not the dragons of Western lore, then—not that anyone had summoned one in centuries, too dangerous. . . . Even the one on House Draken's arms had been a fiction; a mere statement of power without substance. “I take it they're not friendly.”