The House of Shattered Wings (29 page)

“You must understand that I don't remember her,” Emmanuelle said. “Her name was Hélène, I think, before Morningstar chose her. She was mortal. She studied with him for a couple of years. He'd have grown bored with her, in time; dissatisfied, as with any of his other students. But something happened first.”

“The betrayal.”

“There were two murders,” Emmanuelle said. “It was . . . messy, I remember. Two dependents of Hawthorn, in broad daylight, as they came out from Notre-Dame.” She frowned. “Uphir thought it was our fault. That, even if we weren't behind it, we should have protected them better.”

“And were you? Behind them?”

“How should I know?” Emmanuelle said. “Morningstar never admitted to anything. But yes, it might well have been him. Who else would have had the gall to commit murder on the steps of his own House?”

“Go on,” Philippe said. He felt the darkness, rising within him; the room, growing fainter and fainter; the memory of pain; of anger; of disappointment. He wanted to ask how they could do this; how they could sell their own; but he knew the answer she was going to give him.

“There's not much else,” Emmanuelle said. “That I know of. Morningstar went to negotiate with Uphir. He might have accused Nightingale, because she was convenient. Expendable. I assume . . .” She paused; Philippe only saw her through a haze of rage like a living fire. “He must have left tracks. Traces of his own magic that Uphir saw. And he pinned it on Nightingale—”

“Because she was his student and had learned his magic.” Isabelle's voice was sharper than usual.

Memories. Visions. Philippe closed his eyes—the room was receding, and he could feel only Nightingale's thoughts, drowning his.

They'd come for her one day in the courtyard; Morningstar smiling like a sated cat; telling her she needed to go to Hawthorn, to sort out something for him; a minor detail in an agreement with Uphir. And she had gone, trusting him; until the gates of Hawthorn closed on her, and she saw Uphir's cold, angry smile . . .

“They thought she was responsible for it. In Hawthorn.”

“Yes,” Emmanuelle said. She exhaled loudly. “I can understand why she'd be angry. But she's dead, isn't she?”

She'd hung in chains for days and days on end, endured pain without surcease—blades that opened her flesh, burns, spells that turned her innards to jelly, all of that to make her admit to something she hadn't done—and she could scream and accuse her master, but in the end, it hadn't made any difference, had it? Because Uphir hadn't cared, so long as the price was met. “She died in Hawthorn.”

Isabelle said, “The dead don't walk the earth, Philippe. They don't leave mirrors with curses, or trace summoning circles on the floor.”

“They speak to the living, though,” Emmanuelle said, slowly, carefully. “To magicians foolish enough to summon them, if it comes to that. Death is not necessarily an obstacle. There are precedents . . .” Her arms gripped the side of the chair, so strongly her skin went pale.

“A ghost, then. With human agents.”

“Yes. Claire. Perhaps Asmodeus. And others, quite probably. You would not lack for people with a grudge against the House,” Emmanuelle said. “But I doubt she has need of them any longer.”

Claire—his vision of her hands; the mirror—she'd probably left it in the cathedral, years and years ago: it would be just like her, to try to give Silverspires a nudge in the right direction, to patiently wait for the curse to take hold. Asmodeus was . . . more direct. “I don't make a habit of studying ghosts,” Philippe said, a tad stiffly. Ghosts were bad luck. Their walking the earth was against the natural order of things, and he certainly had no intention of being in the same place as one, if he could avoid it. The ghosts of dragon kings were one thing; those of indentured mortals, House dependents at that, quite another. “I—” He spread his hands, unsure. “I can't give you much more. Madeleine knew what they were—the figures in the crypt.”

“Erinyes,” Isabelle said, in the rising silence.

“Furies?” Emmanuelle looked at her hand; and then at the pile of books on the chair next to her. “Of course. The circle that crushes the original offense. The bites of snakes. But no one has summoned the Furies in—”

“You forget,” Philippe said. “Morningstar taught her.”

“How did she die?” Isabelle asked. She was standing by one of the bay windows, staring at the courtyard outside; at the daylight, slowly eclipsed by the coming of the night.

“Not well,” Philippe said. He could breathe—he could keep her at bay; keep her memories out of himself. He had to. Because, as he spoke, it was within him again—the darkness, rising within him; the growing rage, mingled with the memory of the awe Morningstar had generated as effortlessly as he breathed—with a burning sense of shame that she was revolting against her master, betraying his trust—such a terrible thing, that even hanging in her chains in the depths of Hawthorn, she'd been capable of such devotion. “They broke her piece by piece in the name of their justice, but it wasn't them she died thinking of.”

“Thinking of?” Isabelle asked. “Hating?”

“Hate and love and all those things intermingled,” Philippe said. It was hard to focus, remembering that rage; remembering that sick feeling within him, that desperate desire to please, even after what Morningstar had done . . .

Emmanuelle's face was pale; drained of all blood. “I didn't know,” she said. “None of us did.”

“I know you didn't,” Philippe said. “But it doesn't change anything.”

“Morningstar is dead,” Isabelle said, softly. “Does that not—”

“The Furies are gone,” Philippe said. He felt, again, the tightness in his chest; the sense that he was larger, stretched thinner than he ought to have been—the darkness below him, burrowing toward the foundations of the House. “But Nightingale hasn't disappeared. Her revenge is still happening. It will destroy you, in the end.” It would destroy him, too—he'd been a fool; he wasn't strong enough to resist her—he was being torn apart, piece by piece, bones cracking in the furnace of her anger, his brain spiked through with the strength of her implacable resolve. . . .

He . . . he needed to get out of here. Now.

Emmanuelle shook her head. “There's nothing we can do to atone for this. Nothing that will . . .” She took in a deep, shaking breath. “I didn't know,” she said, again, as if she still couldn't quite imagine it. Morningstar had taught them well; hammered loyalty into them until they could barely see themselves anymore. “Philippe, you have to—”

“I'm not the one you should convince.”

“No,” Isabelle said. “But ghosts aren't convinced anymore, are they? They're exorcised.”

“Isabelle!” Emmanuelle said, sharply. “You can't—”

Philippe stifled a bitter laugh—and he wasn't sure whether it came from him or Nightingale. “See what you have?” he said. “See what Morningstar shaped; what all Fallen are, in the end? Perhaps your House doesn't deserve to survive. Perhaps none of them do.” He rose, brushing his hands against the cloth of his trousers, as if he could remove the dust he'd breathed in the chapel. “I'm sorry, Emmanuelle. I don't have more than this.”

He left, without looking back.

*   *   *

ISABELLE
caught up with Philippe in the corridor. “You can't leave.”

Philippe turned, stared at her. There was no illumination in the corridor, but, every two or three breaths, Isabelle's skin would gradually brighten: a slow, lazy radiance that would throw underwater reflections on the flower wallpaper. It was . . . eerie, not least because she had never done that, not even at the height of her powers; back in that single, bloody night in the Grands Magasins where his life had changed.

“I can if I want to,” he said. And he had to. Before Selene found him and imprisoned him, once again. Before this House—and the rage Nightingale felt when he stood within its walls—was his undoing.

“You—” Isabelle shook her head. “You made a promise, remember?”

He had, but it had been to a different person. And perhaps he shouldn't have made it at all. He owed nothing; not to her, not to this House. “I promised to help you. To keep you company, until you could work things out.” Philippe shook his head. “You're all grown up now, Isabelle.”

“Why? Because of what happened in the crypt? Because I touched a body? Is that what worries you?”

No, not that—it was her entire behavior: the light, streaming out of her, the ageless glint in her eyes, the way she held herself. What she had said, to Emmanuelle and Madeleine; the casual way she spoke of exorcising a ghost that bothered her, not understanding any of Nightingale's suffering, or the magnitude of Morningstar's betrayal. Nightingale had been
wronged
, and all she could ask herself—instead of questioning the House and its ways, or the acts of Selene's master—was how to remove this inconvenient obstacle from her path.

Like them. She had become just like them.

No. She had always been like them, and he had been too blind to see it.

“I'm still the same,” Isabelle said. “I—” She raised her hand, the one with the fingers missing; worried at the gap with her other hand, as she always did under stress. “Why can't you see it?”

Because she was changing, and she scared him stiff. Because he couldn't be quite sure when it had happened—when, in the seemingly endless night that had sharpened his entire being to a thin pretense of what he once had been—she had become a Fallen in her own right, like Selene, like Oris.

Like Asmodeus.

Was it when she'd touched Morningstar's bones? A simple answer, that—that power was its own corruption, but of course there were no simple answers. “You've changed,” he said, simply. There was nothing else he could say that she would understand.

“I haven't.” Isabelle's voice was grim. “I warned you once before: this is my House, Philippe, and the only place where I feel safe. I will defend it.”

“You weren't this”—he struggled for words—“categorical before. You didn't go to see Selene back then, did you?”

She held his gaze, unflinchingly. “Perhaps I should have.”

He sighed. “It hasn't got much to do with you in any case, Isabelle. I'm just—” Tired. Tired of it all, of their stupid power plays and reputation games; tired of wondering where he fit into all this and never finding an answer. “I can't go on like this.”

And of course, it wasn't true. Because it wasn't just weariness, but also her. What she had become; the power she effortlessly wielded—and the effortless cruelty that surfaced, like a scorpion sting, in the moments he least expected it.

He couldn't face that, not anymore.

Isabelle's face was a mask, all emotions smoothed out of it. “You—you could offer Selene your help. I'm sure she would pardon you, take you into the House—”

“I don't want to be in a House!” He hadn't meant to shout it, but the words slipped out, as treacherous as a wet knife blade. “A House took me, once. Tore me from my home and marched me all the way here, to fight in a stupid, senseless war; and left me with nothing, not even a mouthful of food or a scrap of cloth to call my own.”

Isabelle's voice was quiet. “A House took you. It wasn't this House, Philippe.”

As if it made any difference—how could she not see it? How could she—? “No,” Philippe said. “It wasn't. But, deep down, they're all the same. Can't you see? Morningstar betrayed Nightingale for what? Two deaths? An advantage with Hawthorn that didn't last the winter? Houses all think lives are cheap.” Pointless. It was all so pointless, their little games like children's fights in school, with no more rhyme or reason than their meaningless professions of charity and care for the weak.

They didn't deserve anything—except to crumble and fall.

“We don't,” Isabelle said. “I—I—”

“You don't, or you don't think you do.” He sighed. She looked bewildered once more, her preternatural maturity gone. She'd always been like that, hadn't she, a child who had seen too much to remain one? But children were cruel, too; casually tearing the wings from flies, mocking and hurting one another and never knowing when to stop. What would she do, with Morningstar's powers, and some of his memories? What would she think of? He didn't want to find out. Better leave now, with some of his illusions intact.

“I'm sorry. I can't help you. How do you appease a ghost, if they're right? I can't believe the House is worth saving.”

“I have to believe.” Isabelle drew herself up, gathering light around her like a mantle; appearing, for a bare moment only, as she must have when in the City, her black hair ringed with radiance, and with the shadow of huge, feathered wings at her back. Like the wings of Asmodeus in his prison cell, he thought, hands shaking. Even if everything else had been different, he couldn't live with that. “Don't you see, Philippe? I have nowhere else to go.”

“I know.” They wouldn't budge, either of them. It was futile. “Let's agree to disagree, shall we?”

Isabelle said nothing. He could have done something then; could have found words to comfort her, could have laid a hand on her shoulder and told her that it was all going to be all right. He didn't, because he couldn't lie to her anymore. Because there was still darkness in his heart; and underneath the House, the soft, crushing sound of that huge thing hungering to reduce the foundations to dust. Because the sound of the wind through the corridors was no longer a lament, but that of an oncoming storm.

She'd be strong enough to weather it—she had Morningstar's magic; and the protection of the other Fallen in the House. He didn't need to worry; or to listen to the treacherous voice in his heart that reproached him for leaving her. “Be well, will you? I—I would hate for you to come to harm.”