The House of Shattered Wings (35 page)

He couldn't do it. He couldn't be free of her. He—

He had to go back.

*   *   *

MADELEINE
sat in the gardens, watching water pool on the rim of the fountain. If she closed her eyes, she would see Asmodeus again; feel the heat of his radiance on her hands, hear his voice again, level and emotionless, calmly stating the obvious.

A truth like a salted knife's blade . . .

Do you really think he came halfway across the city to find you dying on the cobblestones?

She had believed; or had wanted to believe, so much; that she had been chosen by Morningstar himself, that her presence in Silverspires had meaning. That there was safety there, yes—that it was the oldest House—but that he had known. That he had extended his hand as his last act in this world.

And it was a lie. It wasn't kindness that had saved her, but merely a whim. Worse than that; a whim of the Fallen who had killed Uphir, who had killed Elphon—who had destroyed her world—and who had decided, because it cost him nothing, that he could spare her life.

It would cost her nothing to deny him his victory.

A knife's blade, or a noose, or a pool of water: so many ways she could leave. He might stop her once, or twice, but he couldn't keep her forever. In the end, she would win.

No one would miss her. Selene would be glad to be rid of her, and the House at Silverspires had already forgotten her. In a way, the sentence had already been passed, long ago, her twenty years nothing more than suspended time, a miracle that had had no right to exist. No one would—Isabelle would weep. But no, Isabelle was young, and naive—give her a few centuries, and she'd be as hard as Selene.

She stared at the water, knowing she didn't have the courage for any of this. If it had been essence, perhaps she'd have gone on, slowly killing herself. But every other solution required fortitude she didn't have.

In this, as well, she was a failure.

*   *   *

SELENE
was staring at the wings, wrapped in a corner of her office where Isabelle had left them. She'd looked distinctly unhappy, muttering something about shoddy work; and had left abruptly. Even for her, that had been beyond politeness. Whatever the case, it was done. The wings were now infused with magic; with the combined breaths of every Fallen in the House from Choérine to Alcestis to Morningstar—God grant that it would be enough, though she knew all too well the futility of prayers for such as she. Now all that remained was . . .

Her thoughts, as usual, drew back from the abyss: she knew what had to be done, the only thing that they could do, but . . .

“Selene?”

“Come in,” she said.

It was Emmanuelle, dressed in a simple white cotton tunic that set off the darkness of her skin. “There's a sprig of green just around the corridor.”

“I know.” And, more softly: “I will give the order to evacuate this wing. And I will go with them.”

“The parvis?” Emmanuelle asked.

“Yes.” There was no choice. Because a House was not merely a fortress of spells and wards, but a collection of dependents, and she couldn't wait for them to be picked off one by one. The parvis remained clear of roots; and yet still within the protection of the wards: that was where she would tell them to assemble, Javier and Choérine and Gauthier and Geneviève and all the others, from the youngest children to the eldest mortals, grown old in the service of the House. And she would go with them; because it was more important that someone defend them than a last-ditch, desperate attempt to stop a ghost who had almost already won.

She had thought herself unworthy as the head of the House; she hadn't expected to be the one who saw its demise. Unless . . . Unless.

Morningstar was behind Emmanuelle, watching the office with bright, curious eyes. Selene looked away, unable to meet his gaze. “It doesn't matter, Selene,” Emmanuelle said. She reached out, but Selene evaded her grasp.

“You didn't come here for that, did you?”

“Oh no,” Emmanuelle said. “I came to tell you I'd found something.”

“Nightingale's grave?”

Emmanuelle grimaced. She pulled one of the chairs to her: one of the old Louis XV ones, with a pattern of embroidered flowers on red suede. “Forget the exorcism,” she said. “A ghost like this, with this kind of power, enough to summon the Furies in the hour of her death . . . you can't exorcise, not that simply. But you can destroy her curse.”

“How?”

Emmanuelle bit her lip. “I know what kind of tree this is, Selene. It's a banyan.”

“And—?” The name meant nothing to Selene.

“It's a tree from the tropics. He was, after all, the catalyst for the spell—it quite probably drew from his memories.”

Selene scowled, but forced herself to listen. Emmanuelle regularly forgot how much the subject of Philippe was a sore point.

“The point is, it's a strangler tree. Starts as a seed borne by the wind into a tree's branches, and then extends roots until the tree it encases shrivels and dies.”

Just like Silverspires. Selene shivered. “I don't want to think on that.” She shook her head. That was childish, and beneath her. “How do you destroy a banyan, then?”

“Destroy its roots,” Emmanuelle said. “But most of all—because this is no ordinary banyan, Selene—there is a place that's of particular significance.”

“Which one?”

“The hollow,” Emmanuelle said. “The place left by the encased tree when it dies. You could say that's the banyan's secret. In the Far East, they say that's where the spirits of the tree reside.”

In the Far East . . . Perhaps they should have found Philippe in the end; but no, she didn't want to think on Philippe. It was only because of him that they were here.

Because of him, and Morningstar,
a treacherous voice whispered in her mind.
If he had not betrayed Nightingale . . .

But no, she couldn't think that: because, without Morningstar, there would be no Silverspires, no refuge in Notre-Dame. He had done what was necessary to maintain the House, and so would she, if it came to that. Because it was her duty as head of the House. Because the Fallen now staring at her, puzzled and without any comprehension, was nothing like the distant, radiant head of the House; the powerful magic wielder who had taught her, who had worn wings as a reminder that he was the only Fallen who had dared to wear what they had been stripped of; who had dared to use it as a weapon.

“The hollow,” she said. “What about it?”

Emmanuelle handed her something, which she almost dropped, because the malevolence contained within was almost palpable. But she wasn't about to be defeated by a mere artifact. “A mirror,” she said, aloud. Made of obsidian and not glass, an odd affectation that placed it somewhere two centuries ago, perhaps? When anything from the New World had still been new and fascinating.

“Isabelle gave me this,” Emmanuelle said. “She says she and Philippe found it, and that it's what started it all.”

Selene closed her eyes. “The source of the curse?” She didn't ask whether Isabelle could be trusted; how the loyalties she still very obviously held both for Philippe and for Madeleine impacted on this. She
had
to trust Isabelle, because she had no other choice. “You mean to destroy it?”

“Symbolically,” Emmanuelle said. Her face was set. “In a place of power, in the hollow of the banyan. If that doesn't work—”

If that didn't work, then they'd all be out of a House, but it was all they already faced. “Even if you could get there—” Selene's lips moved, silently, as she contemplated the consequences. “She will be there, won't she? You said it was the place of the spirits.” Of ghosts; and of the restless, unavenged dead. “Waiting.” And Selene doubted it would be easy to defeat her. The Furies might be gone, but Nightingale would have other tricks up her sleeves.

“Nightingale?” Emmanuelle nodded. “That's almost certain. I haven't found a solution to distract her.”

Selene turned her gaze to Emmanuelle, resolutely; refusing to stare at Morningstar or at the wings that so fascinated him. “I have,” she said, slowly, carefully.

They were his weapon, and he had retained the mastery of it. What they cut would not regrow—she knew it in her heart of hearts. And, more important, he was the only one who could provide what they so desperately needed.

A distraction.

“Morningstar?”

“Yes?” Faint bewilderment, nothing more, in the voice. Isabelle might have unlocked some memories, but he didn't know; he couldn't know what it had been like, when he was head of the House.

She thought of Asmodeus, telling her she was too squeamish to be head of the House; and of the enormity of what she was about to do. They barely had had time to get used to his presence again, and here she was: a jumped-up apprentice who had become head of the House only because everyone else had died or disappeared, and she would dare . . .

She had to. It was the only choice. “You have to go,” she said to Morningstar. “It's what you started. It's you who should fix it.”

Beside her, Emmanuelle took a deep, shocked breath; held it. “You know—” she started, and Selene squeezed her shoulder so hard that Emmanuelle gasped.
Not now,
she mouthed.

Morningstar's face was puzzled. “Go where?”

“Inside,” Selene said. She looked up at last. There was only guileless innocence in his blue eyes, and she tried to swallow past the salty taste in her mouth. “I need you to open the way to the banyan's heart. They're your wings. You're the one who should wield them.”

Morningstar looked puzzled—for a moment she thought he would see it; that he would comprehend the magnitude of what she had just done, but he simply nodded. “I see. Is there no one else?”

“You're the most powerful Fallen we have,” Selene said, simply; the lie tasting like ashes on her tongue. He
was
the most powerful, but also the most naive, the one who couldn't master his own powers. He was the one they could spare. “We need you.”

Surely he wouldn't believe that—who did? Surely . . .

But he merely nodded; and she knew, then, that her old master was dead and buried; that she had already grieved for him in the crypt beneath the chapel; and that there would be no return. “I'm honored by your trust.”

Emmanuelle spoke up, at last, her voice as dry as dust. “Selene—you'll still need someone—”

“I know,” Selene said.

“You can't go,” Emmanuelle said. “I'll do it.”

Selene shook her head. “I'll find Isabelle. Or someone else.” Someone powerful, someone else they could spare—as if there was such a thing. “I'll send them right after you,” she said to Morningstar.

It was enough. It would be enough. Nightingale thought Morningstar was dead; taken away by the Furies. She would be surprised; and they would have a chance.

A small, insignificant chance they'd need to grasp in the moment it was offered; but it would be more than anything they'd had so far.

Morningstar shrugged. “Don't wait too long.”

“I know,” Selene said.

Emmanuelle closed her eyes. “Isabelle isn't on the grounds right now.”

“What—?” God, not another loose cannon somewhere. She was tired of dealing with those. “Does no one in this House know how to obey orders?”

“It's a House, not an army,” Emmanuelle said. But then her face grew more serious. “I could go.”

“That's out of the question.”

“I can do my duty to the House, just as you do.”

No. She had lost the House, or almost as good as; she wasn't going to lose Emmanuelle as well. It was selfish and ill-placed, and she was aware that she would have sent Emmanuelle if there had been no one else, but in this case . . . “Locate Isabelle, wherever she went; tell her she is to come to Silverspires, immediately.”

“I will. But if she doesn't come back in time . . .”

“Let's not talk about it,” Selene said.

“As you wish,” Emmanuelle said, but she sounded dubious. And disappointed. Selene knew the feeling: powerlessness, slowly watching the House being choked to death. For once, they could do something—even if it was such a stab in the dark, even if it was just a likelihood of success rather than a certainty. . . .

She watched Morningstar heft the wings; and slowly and awkwardly adjust them onto his back; watched him assay a few thrusts here and there: they were astonishingly graceful, proving that the body, if not the mind, remembered something of what it had been before. She could have looked away, but she didn't.

After all, she'd just sacrificed him, as callously as he'd once sacrificed Nightingale.

You'd be happy,
she whispered to the memory of Asmodeus.
I have taken the decisions that needed to be taken, for the safeguarding of the House.

And, in her mind, Asmodeus merely smiled, showing his white, pointed teeth; and said nothing.

MORNINGSTAR'S HEIR

MADELEINE
didn't know what she'd expected when Asmodeus summoned her again, but she certainly hadn't bargained for Isabelle.

They were in a room of the House that she couldn't place, a sitting room with a harp and pale green conversation seats. It certainly wasn't part of Asmodeus's quarters, merely a place he had chosen to talk to his current guest; by the looks of it, trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible for her, giving her a metal chair with a high back, set in the middle of unadorned parquet floor. He lounged, as satisfied as ever, in a much more comfortable chair, his hands gracefully resting on the teak desk in front of him.

Something was wrong with him, though: it took Madeleine a moment to realize that the unreadable expression on his face was as close as he would ever come to showing shock.

Isabelle, by contrast, looked utterly out of place; and yet not—radiating a magic that had passed beyond Asmodeus's reach long, long ago. Something had changed; or perhaps it was something that had always been there: a harshness to the planes of her face, coalescing into sharp focus through the last few days. “You have some nerve,” Asmodeus said, softly, “walking in here and asking me this.”

Isabelle smiled; a sharp, wounding expression that Madeleine had never seen on her. “What bothers you so? It's business between Houses.”

At length, he raised his eyes to Madeleine; pinned her where she stood, fighting the urge to turn away, the rising nausea in her throat. “You are aware,” he said, slowly, softly, “that to bargain from a position of weakness is demonstrably inefficient.”

“Weakness?”

“Your House collapses, even as we speak.” Asmodeus did not even smile. “Morningstar's little schemes have finally borne fruit; and behold, it's as rotten as the heart of Silverspires.”

“Do you truly think there is a House whose heart is not rotten?” Isabelle didn't look at Madeleine. She sounded—old, weary, cynical; Madeleine ached to wrap her into her arms, to tell her everything was going to be all right. But of course it was too late; had been too late for a long while.

Asmodeus laughed. “Of course not. We are all equal, are we not? One day, the many schemes of Hawthorn might bear the same kind of fruit as Silverspires'. But I would be a fool to intervene while a rival is removed.”

“Only if you're sure that's how things will work out.” Isabelle smoothed her silk skirt, with that same smile that was like a knife twist in Madeleine's heart. “If we should survive, in any fashion—” She let the words hang in the air for a bare moment. “—then we would remember those who helped us in our hour of need.”

“Your survival is unlikely,” Asmodeus said, dryly.

“But then again, I'm not asking you for much, am I?”

Asmodeus's eyes had not moved; they were still on Madeleine, with a peculiar expression she could not name. “I went to some trouble to recover her,” he said, still not talking to her. “It wasn't to let her go at the slightest threat.”

“Do you fear she'd never return?”

Her. They were talking about her. Madeleine turned her eyes from Asmodeus's horn-rimmed gaze, and took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. Isabelle had come back for her. She had—“I know she wouldn't,” Asmodeus said. “Would you, Madeleine?”

She didn't know what was expected of her; what would help, what would hinder Isabelle. Negotiations had never been her strong suit, and she struggled to understand most of the undercurrents in the scene before her. Asmodeus's fingers drummed, lightly, on the surface of the desk.

“Answer me.” The voice was light; the threat unmistakable.

She ought to have lied; but she couldn't. Nothing but the truth would come, springing from some deep place, as uncontrollable as the first flow of a spring. “I'm not your toy. I'm not your whim or your project. You spared my life; that doesn't mean you own it.” She was angry, and frightened; and she wasn't even sure if she ought to return to Silverspires; to a House that wasn't hers, that might well be fading away—once her perfect refuge, her dying place, her quiet and undisturbed grave.

There was silence, in the wake of her words. She turned her head, slightly: Asmodeus was watching her with the same faint, amused smile on his face. Isabelle might surprise him; but it seemed Madeleine didn't—couldn't.
You don't own me,
she repeated to herself, and wasn't sure how much of that could be true.

“Commendable,” Asmodeus said, “but I own the keys to your jail. And did you truly think that Selene didn't own you? We're all, in the end, the toys of someone else.”

“And whose toy are you?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

Asmodeus raised an eyebrow, but didn't flinch. “Samariel's, once. Hawthorn's, once and now and always.” His voice was toneless; Samariel's name barely inflected. Had he taken another lover? It didn't sound as though he had. Perhaps in his own, twisted way, he had genuinely cared for the other Fallen; enough to still grieve. But she couldn't afford to think of him that way.

“And the city's?” Isabelle asked, softly. “Do you even know why Silverspires is falling?”

“I suspect,” he said. “But it is of no matter.”

“Of no matter.” Madeleine laughed, bitterly. “Morningstar's little schemes, as you call them, involved Hawthorn. She died in Hawthorn, didn't she? Morningstar's betrayed apprentice, to pay the price of a treaty. Whose hand struck the blow?”

Asmodeus raised an eyebrow. “Before my time, I'm afraid. Uphir's, perhaps. But I would not have shied from it. I told Selene as much already: House business is not for the squeamish. If you have no heart for it, then do not rise so high.”

How could he—how could he sit there and say this to her face, knowing what he had done? “That's not my point,” Madeleine said softly. “You should ask yourself what will happen should Silverspires fall. Do you think vengeance will stop at our doors?”

“No longer your doors. You keep forgetting you're no longer part of Silverspires,” Asmodeus said; but it was reflex. At length, he took his glasses, and carefully wiped them clean. “I should think we are adequately protected; and while the points you make are valid, I don't find them quite compelling enough, I'm afraid.” He turned again toward Isabelle; smiled: a thin line that had nothing of amusement in it. “I would suggest you leave, and return to your House, while there is still a House to save.”

Isabelle bit her lip. “I see,” she said. She rose, making her way toward the door—Madeleine's heart sinking with every step she took, watching the only miracle that would have freed her from Hawthorn leaving. At the door, Isabelle turned, slowly, and stared at Madeleine. There was a light in her eyes: something ancient and fey, and wholly unlike the Fallen Madeleine remembered. “Asmodeus?”

Asmodeus looked up, mildly curious; but then something hardened in his face, and he stared at her; the light from her body glinted on the rim and arms of his glasses. “Yes?”

“Uphir was a fool, and so are you. You remember a day long gone by, don't you?”

“Do tell,” Asmodeus said, softly; but he no longer looked flippant or sardonic. What had been so frightening about Isabelle's words?

“Do you truly wish to antagonize me, kinsman?”

Madeleine had never heard anyone call Asmodeus “kinsman,” especially not with that derisive familiarity. For a moment she thought Asmodeus was going to strike Isabelle down where she stood, that he'd find a knife or some magic and drive it all the way into her heart; but that didn't happen. He sat stock-still, staring at Isabelle. At length, he said, “So you set yourself up as his heir, do you? That's a dangerous position to occupy.”

Isabelle stood, framed in the doorway, limned in an old, terrible light that haloed her dark hair, and drew the shadows of great wings over her shoulders—surely . . . Surely that was impossible. “I don't set myself up as anything, save that which I already am. But you would do well to remember that I have survived this far.”

“Indeed.” There was cutting irony in Asmodeus's voice. “Very little of it being my doing, I should say.” He looked at Madeleine again. “I won't release her, and you know it as well as I do. It's high time Hawthorn got back what is due to it. But let's talk.”

“There is no talk.” Isabelle's face was serene, otherworldly so. They were going to fight. Here, now, in this room, in the heart of Asmodeus's and Hawthorn's power.

Madeleine, struggling for breath, found only a memory of what Asmodeus had said, tumbling over and over in the emptiness of her mind like a dust ball adrift in a storm. “Call it a loan,” she whispered.

“Of twenty more years? I think not.”

“A day. A week. What would satisfy you, Asmodeus? I will return. As you pointed out—I have no House of my own anymore.”

A silence; and his presence at her elbow, strong and nauseating, the smell of orange blossom and bergamot as overwhelming as always. “You're wrong.” Arms, encircling her but not touching her; his fingers on her hand, over the scab from his earlier knife stroke—warm, suffocating skin; she would have pulled away, but he held her, effortlessly—a touch of warmth, and suddenly she was part of Hawthorn again, the House's magic a muted rhythm in her mind; the presence of Asmodeus like the points of a thorn tree—both in her mind and against her body. She pulled away, spluttering—retching, still feeling his touch on her skin like a pollution. “Who gave you the right—”

He smiled; a knife's width between two bloodred lips. “I take it. Have you understood nothing about me yet, Madeleine? You were the one who promised me a return. I'm merely giving you now what you would have had then.”

Hawthorn was fast and impatient, nothing like the steady, reassuring presence of Silverspires, the background to her life for the past twenty years. Had it always been like that? She didn't even remember losing her link to Hawthorn—she remembered kneeling in front of Selene, being welcomed into Silverspires; but with the gloss of things long past, almost as if it had happened to someone else.

Asmodeus smiled. “A week. Run along, Madeleine. I'll know where you are.”

But he always had known, hadn't he?

“Here.” He threw her something. She caught it by sheer reflex: a familiar warmth spread to her fingers. It was a small ebony box, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and she knew what it contained.

“Why?” she asked.

“I would hate it if you got yourself killed,” Asmodeus said. His face was unreadable. “But don't think this is a license to continue this foolish addiction. Merely . . . a convenience, until you come back.”

Until she came back. If she ever did. But she'd survive; she'd proved she didn't have the recklessness or bravery needed to endanger her life.

She walked out behind Isabelle, with the shadow of Hawthorn at her back and the House's presence in her mind, knowing that she would never again be rid of it.

*   *   *

SOMETIME
later—much, much later, when the sun had started to alter its course downward and the light darkened to late afternoon—Philippe must have reached the Seine, crossing the ruins of the Halles, each pavilion clearly delineated in its rectangle of charred ground. He stood, breathing hard, before the Pont-Neuf, in the shadow of the Samaritaine, hearing distant noises of laughter and feasting from the House that occupied its grounds.

Ahead, in the dim light, was House Silverspires. It looked different somehow, less threatening; he wasn't sure how; but then . . . Over the ruined towers of Notre-Dame, burned until only the charred shell remained, something else had spread. In the darkness, it was hard to be sure, but . . .

No, his vision hadn't betrayed him. It was the crown of a huge banyan tree: the towers and the buildings were its buttresses, and its aerial roots seemed to dig deep into the House itself. A banyan. For botanists, a strangler tree; for Buddhists, the symbol of the Buddha's preaching. His people had a different legend about the banyan, though; about Cuoi, the boy who had once seen a tiger mother lay her dead cub in the hollow of the tree, and feed him the banyan's leaves until he had sprung back to life.

A banyan meant rebirth; meant the dead walking the earth once again. Meant that ghosts, perhaps, could be brought back into this world, given enough power; and how much power would there be, in the death of an entire House?

Selene had no means to know this. But did he truly want to warn Selene? Did he truly want to save Silverspires?

No. He didn't. But . . . Isabelle wouldn't leave the House; and neither would the curse—and if saving the House was the price of helping her, then he would pay it.

In the river, dragons flowed like the wakes of boats, sleek and elegant and deadly, and so removed from anything in the world of mortals. One of them looked up at him with intense eyes, the color of dull nacre; he thought he recognized Ngoc Bich, with her broken antlers, but he couldn't be sure.
Come with us, Philippe. Do you truly think you belong here? In any House, in any gangs?

Come with us.

Their song was close to one he'd heard once; to the music that had always played in the background of the Jade Emperor's Court: he could almost imagine himself bowing to a courtly lady, acknowledging an official's respects, back in a world where he knew exactly his place, and how to behave according to it. He only had to find the staircase again; to sink below the waves of the Seine and be lost forever to the mortal world—and it wouldn't be home again; it wouldn't even be the status of Immortal he'd once craved, but it might be something close enough, even with ruin encroaching upon the kingdom. He'd be her consort, and was that such a bad thing?

Come with us
.