The House of Shattered Wings

FOURTEEN. SICKBEDS

AS Madeleine could have predicted, Aragon was not happy. “Did I miss a note about wounding season?” he asked, turning to look for his trays of instruments. “Still, at least you’re conscious, which is a huge improvement on the previous patient.”

He was making light of it, but he was obviously still worried — his eyes deeply shadowed, with the same hint of fear Madeleine had seen him show at Samariel’s bedside. She had her artifacts, her mirrors, and her infused containers — enough protection, if she needed to — if she could convince herself that she was safe from whatever stalked the House.

“I’m fine,” Emmanuelle said from the bed. She lay propped on a pillow; her skin the color of muddy milk, her wounded hand painful to see: the circle a little smudged, sitting smug in the center of a swell of red, raw skin.

“No, you’re not,” Aragon said. He slipped into a white gown, and went to a basin to wash his hands. “To start with, you’re running a high fever, and only a fool would insist that injury is a harmless wound. What happened?”

“I wasn’t there. But she tried to catch Philippe as he ran out of the door.” Madeleine couldn’t take her gaze away from Emmanuelle’s hand; from the circle of raised, red skin that wouldn’t go away — the mark that killed.

No.

“Philippe?” Aragon asked, from what felt like a world away.

“He touched me.” Emmanuelle spoke up. “And it was… I’m not sure. It felt like his fingers burned — and it traveled upward. I can’t feel my arm, not so well.”

Madeleine fought panic.

“You didn’t see any shadows?” Aragon asked, slowly, carefully. “Nothing beyond his touching you?”

Emmanuelle closed her eyes, and opened them again with a clear effort. “Maybe a glimpse? I’m sorry. I don’t remember. It felt… as though there was more of him than there ought to be, if that makes sense? His hand was heavier than it should have been.”

It made no sense to Madeleine.

“It doesn’t matter,” Aragon said, gently, pushing one pillow under her back. “We’ll find out.” And then, to Madeleine: “I don’t understand why Philippe would do such a thing.”

“Me, neither,” Madeleine said. She wasn’t altogether sure she had pieced everything together. Had it been Philippe since the beginning, truly? If he’d had a secret agenda against Silverspires, he’d hidden it well, under what seemed to be an entirely understandable grudge against the people who had yanked him from his home and enlisted him into a war that didn’t matter a whit to him. But still — still, the evidence was inescapable. She looked at the wound on Emmanuelle’s skin, the perfect circle with its bloody dot in the middle. “Is she going to recover?”

Aragon turned to her. His face was the mask she knew all too well, cool and professional, expressionless. But she could tell he was worried. “She will, if you let me do my job.”

“It really does look like a snakebite,” Isabelle said. “Can I do anything to help? I have magic—”

“That you won’t use,” Aragon said, curtly. “Healing spells cast on unknown magical wounds isn’t an experiment I’m ready to run, not until we know more.”

“Waiting until we know more could kill her,” Madeleine pointed out.

“I’d rather appreciate if you didn’t talk about me as if I were already gone,” Emmanuelle said, but it was an absentminded comment. Her attention appeared focused on the wound in her hand; her brow furrowed, as if she were trying to remember something.

“It’ll be fine,” Madeleine said. “Really.” But, like Aragon, she was worried. This was something that killed — violently, messily — something that took apart a Fallen’s body, breaking down bones and organs. She wasn’t sure how long contact would need to be, but even that short second between her and Philippe seemed to have had a huge effect.

She’d live. Of course she would. She was strong.

But no one had lived. No one had survived, so far — that was all the truth she had, all the comfort she could offer herself.

For as long as she could remember — since even before she came into the House — Emmanuelle had been there, a solid presence at the heart of Silverspires — like Madeleine, seldom speaking up, doing her job as best she could. To think of her gone; to even consider that tomorrow would be a day when she wouldn’t be found in the stacks, gluing together old books and poring over faded images as if they were treasures…

Aragon put a syringe in Emmanuelle’s arm. “A mild sedative,” he said. “You need rest more than anything else.”

“And you need to talk away from my hearing. Really, you could have gone in the other room,” Emmanuelle said, grimacing. “I’m fine.” She laid her head back against the pillow, staring at the moldings on the ceiling. “It’ll pass in the night anyway….” Abruptly, her gaze focused on Madeleine. “Madeleine. I’ve seen that wound pattern before.” Her voice was low, urgent, but her eyes were already rolling up again.

“Where?” Madeleine asked, but Emmanuelle had sunk down into sleep; and only an indistinct word escaped her lips. Madeleine suppressed a curse.

“She’ll wake up,” Aragon said.

“Are you sure?”

“No, of course not. I can’t be sure of many things. She’s running a fever, which means she’s fighting it.”

“People have died of fevers, Aragon.”

“Samariel didn’t have a fever,” Aragon said. “Oris didn’t have time to have one. She’s alive, and fighting. See it however you want. I’m choosing to be optimistic.” His voice was weary. “We’ve had enough death here for several lifetimes.”

No disagreeing with that.

“I expect Selene will be along later.” Aragon put the syringe back on its tray, and sighed. “And I suggest you both get some sleep. You look like you got about as much as I did.”

* * *

IN the end, as on so many nights, Madeleine couldn’t sleep. She drifted back into the library, staring at the pile of books Emmanuelle had been working on; and, on impulse, took a pile of them with her. If she’d indeed seen that circle, perhaps it was recent. Perhaps it had been in something that Emmanuelle had been reading.

After some hesitation, she also dropped by her laboratory, and took with her one of her strongest remaining artifacts: a nail clipping from Selene set in an amber pendant, a warm, comforting weight in her hand, like a live coal on the coldest nights. Whatever had stalked the corridors during those fateful nights seemed to be gone — vanished with Philippe’s departure — but she wasn’t fooled. Something that strong wouldn’t be so easily banished; and they still had no inkling of what it was, or what it wanted. Why target Samariel? Had it been smart enough to know what his death would cause, how it would weaken the House?

It wanted Silverspires’ downfall; and perhaps that of other Houses, too. Perhaps, like Philippe, an end to the whole system—“feudal,” Philippe had called it with a sneer, as if he came from a more enlightened place, and not a distant land locked in internecine fights between regions. The nerve of him — but he was gone now, dead; or if not dead, as good as dead. Asmodeus’s fury wasn’t to be ignored.

In Emmanuelle’s room, everything was dark. The bed was heavily warded: Aragon’s work, no doubt, though how effective would the wards be against something that could disrupt magic? Beyond the wards, Emmanuelle slept fitfully; the mark on her hand still raw and angry. No matter what Aragon said, she didn’t look well — her cheeks were flushed, and Madeleine would find her skin red-hot if she reached out — though to do so would also trigger Aragon’s wards, and wake him up from what little rest he was getting.

With a sigh, Madeleine settled in an armchair, and started to read the books.

It didn’t make for much excitement. The first was a transcription of a Greek manuscript, painstakingly copied out. It was some kind of play about Orestes, though Madeleine didn’t know the language and couldn’t read more than a few words. She remembered Emmanuelle working on it in the archives; it had apparently contained one of the first references to the morning star, the most radiant of them all — to her, an intriguing addition to the history of the House’s founder; to Madeleine, an obsession that made little sense.

The second book was an account of an obscure Merovingian procession back in the eighth century — pages and pages describing religious rituals, and the presence of noblemen and Fallen — even, it seemed, a captured manticore, such an unusual occurrence that the writer had devoted an entire chapter to its description, even though it hadn’t lasted long past the execution of its summoner — Emmanuelle had probably been only interested in the brief mention of Morningstar and the House of Silverspires, but the detailed description of what everyone had been wearing and in what order people had been ranked made for rather dry reading.

Madeleine turned to the next book in the stack, which was printed by a small university, and looked to be a medicine doctoral thesis about the effects of some medicine on the Fallen body. Her heart sank. Surely Emmanuelle wouldn’t have read this cover to cover? But of course she had.

It was tiring work: poring through diagrams adorned with spidery handwriting, and through paragraph after paragraph of nearly incomprehensible jargon, struggling to make sense of the subject. There were sicknesses and symptoms, and the results of experiments, and everything merged and ran together in her mind, like ink on wet paper….

She woke up with a start. There was someone else in the room — her hand, fumbling, found the amber pendant, released its power into her before she could think — and then, in the growing light of magic, she saw it was only Selene.

The ruler of Silverspires looked awful. There was no other word. She was disheveled, and there was something wrong with her clothes. It took Madeleine a moment to realize that the black jacket hung slightly askew, and the shirt was slightly creased: negligible, except that Selene would rather be dead than be seen with a less than perfect outfit.

Selene exhaled when she saw Madeleine. “Oh. It’s you.” She sounded disapproving.

Madeleine put the book she’d been reading back on the precarious pile at the bottom of her chair. “I thought I’d keep her company,” she said, obscurely embarrassed, as if she’d been a child again, caught out when stealing jam from the communal kitchens. “In case—”

“In case it came back?” Selene shook her head. “It’s gone.”

“What do you mean?” Madeleine asked.

Selene massaged her forehead for a while. “I know the signs. It’s not Philippe who is doing this. It’s something… some power he’s the catalyst for. He let something loose in Silverspires. Something… deadly, and it’s still loose.”

“I don’t understand.” Slowly, stupidly.

“It’s gone. For the time being.” Selene came in, and watched Emmanuelle for a while. Her face did not change expressions; but her body seemed to sag a fraction, as if something had given out within her. “She doesn’t look good.” She pulled a chair, and sat down, watching her lover with that same curiously impassive face.

“Where were you?”

Selene didn’t look up. “Negotiating with the other Houses,” she said. “Making sure they didn’t blame Silverspires for this mess, and that it won’t find us defenseless when it comes back.”

“Comes back?” Madeleine asked slowly, stupidly; feeling as though she and Selene walked in entirely different worlds.

“You didn’t think it’d stop now, did you? That’s why I asked Asmodeus what he’d do, if it turned out Philippe was alive.”

“I thought you wanted to question him yourself.”

“Question him?” Selene’s face still did not move, but her hands clenched. “I would like to, though Asmodeus will find him first. In the meantime, I do know that powers like that don’t die fast, or easily. No, it will be back.”

“But you don’t know what it is,” Madeleine said. She’d shared everything she had with Selene; and Selene still hadn’t found anything. Emmanuelle had been looking; but… “You don’t know what killed Oris or why.”

“I know it’s threatening the House. That’s enough for me. Do I need detailed motivation? No. Detailed motivation for whoever summoned that power would be nice, but isn’t necessary, either. The motivations are always the same, after all.”

“One of the other Houses—”

“Oh, it’s one of the other Houses,” Selene said, sharply. “Who else in the city has that kind of power? I would guess it’s Lazarus. But I’ve already done what I can with them. If they will not negotiate or align themselves with me”—her face was hard—“then there isn’t much I can do, save prepare us for more attacks. I will not lose this House. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know you won’t lose the House,” Madeleine said. “But we need more than that.” The words were out of her mouth before she could think; the light in Selene’s eyes shriveled and died.

“You don’t trust me, do you?” Selene asked. Her tone was mild, almost curious; but her gaze had the edge of a blade — asking Madeleine whether she would dare voice her doubts and her fears, whether she would face Selene’s anger.

Madeleine knew she couldn’t. She was an alchemist; not a ruler, and certainly not even close to Selene in terms of power. She spread her hands in a gesture that was as unthreatening as she could make it. “It’s not that. It’s—” How could she make Selene understand? “Forget it. I meant nothing.”

“You didn’t,” Selene said, but she didn’t speak again. She watched Emmanuelle with the intensity of someone dying of thirst in a desert. Clearly not a moment Madeleine should intrude on; and so she went back to her books, straightening out the stack, and prepared to go back to her laboratory.

But, when she got up, the pile of books precariously balanced on her arms, Selene was up as well. Already?

“You’re leaving?”

Selene shrugged. “I have something else I must do.”

Something — what could be more important than Emmanuelle? “You should be with her,” Madeleine said.

“You presume.” Selene was looking through Madeleine again, as if she didn’t really matter. “It was good of you to sit with her, but don’t think this entitles you to familiarity.”

What was it that they’d whispered, at the banquet she’d attended? Something about decline, and Silverspires being inescapably weak? It had been a terrible thing to say, but perhaps it was the truth; perhaps Selene’s vacillating leadership wasn’t what the House needed, after all.

“You’re right,” she said, bowing to Selene. “I apologize.”

But doubt, like a serpent’s fang, remained buried in her mind, and wouldn’t be excised.

* * *

PHILIPPE’S dreams were dark, and confused. He lay in a covered bed, watching light filter, opalescent, through a ceiling that kept shifting — there was a face bending over him, almost human, except that it had green, scaled skin, and a thin mustache, and teeth that were too long and sharp — there was another light, sickly gray, and a voice saying words he couldn’t quite focus on, but with a lilt that was familiar, that ached like a wound in his heart….

Attendants moved soundlessly beyond the veils that hung over the bed: men with pincers instead of hands, with scales and fish tails, with hair the color and hardness of mother-of-pearl, everything billowing in currents he couldn’t see.

I was there once, he thought, struggling to dredge thoughts through the morass of his brain. Swimming through pagodas of coral and algae, in gardens of basalt where volcanoes simmered, making the water warmer for just a moment; going over bridges with fish swimming under the rail, watching octopi nestle on gongs and drums, calling the faithful to worship…

He had been there once: a familiar memory, except that it wasn’t quite what it should have been. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but there was something — something he should have remembered.

As the fever sank down to a whisper, he saw more and more: the patches of dead scales on the skin of the attendants, that same oily sheen on the mother-of-pearl; the curious deadness in their eyes; the broken nubs of antlers at their temples.

Beyond the veils, the darkness waited. In every reflection on dull nacre, shadows lengthened, stretched, gathered themselves to leap, and he lay on the bed, too powerless to stop them — and every now and then Morningstar’s dreadful presence would press against his brain until he thought his head would burst. He wouldn’t actually see the Fallen, merely guess at the massive silhouette, sitting quietly just beyond the bed: watching, reproaching him for not using his powers, for being weak; for being all but dead, lost to the world.

One morning, or evening, he woke up, and his head was clear. He lay in bed, too spent to move; but alive, and not hovering on the cusp of Hell. His ribs had been bandaged, and smelled of camphor and mint; his hands likewise, and though flexing his fingers was mildly painful, it was nothing like the excruciating pain he’d once had.

“I thought we had lost you,” a voice said. The curtains of the bed parted, and a woman bent over him.

She was the same one he had seen by the bridge: dressed in a five-panel tunic, the pearl under her chin shining faintly in the gloom. Deer antlers protruded from her temples, and scales mottled her skin, here and there — here and there flaking off, like dried skin.

Dragon.

“There are no dragon kingdoms in Paris,” he said, slowly. “You don’t… You don’t need a dragon king to oversee the floods and the rains. You don’t receive prayers and offerings from anyone. How can you possibly—? How can you possibly live?”

The woman smiled, revealing sharp teeth. “You’re not the only one to have traveled far from the land of your birth,” she said. She opened her hand, to reveal three sodden incense sticks: they smelled like the rot of the Seine, with a faint afterodor of burned incense. “And there are still those who offer prayers, to stay the wrath of the Seine. Hawthorn, for instance, is built on low ground, and they have cause to fear floods.”

It was all too much to take in: that, and his near escape, and the visions he’d had…. He closed his eyes, willing himself to breathe slower. “What’s your name?”

“Ngoc Bich,” she said. Her voice effortlessly put the accents on words, giving meaning to things he hadn’t heard in years.

“Jade,” he breathed. “It’s a pretty name.”

Ngoc Bich made a face. “Father is very traditional,” she said. “At least it wasn’t ‘Pearl’ or ‘Coral.’”

“You knew my name,” he said. Not the one House Draken had given him on the conscription grounds; but the one he’d worn, all those years ago when he was a child, which still rang true even though he hadn’t used it in decades. “My real name.”

“Of course. Did you think you needed incense sticks to send prayers?”

“I didn’t pray to you,” Philippe said, obscurely embarrassed. In daylight the room was no longer diaphanous or mysterious; he could see the darker patches on the walls, the places where pollution had eaten away at the coral; and Ngoc Bich’s face, painted over with ceruse, couldn’t hide the places where her skin had entirely sloughed off, revealing the pristine ivory of her cheekbones. They were under the Seine; and like the Seine they were tarred with the pollution of the Great War, the cancer that had penetrated everything in the city.

Fallen again, corrupting everything they touched. He’d been part of that war, too — under orders, yes, but that didn’t make him less guilty of what had happened. “I didn’t know—” he said.

Ngoc Bich reached out, and closed his hand over the sodden incense sticks. Her smile was wide — like that of Asmodeus, that of a predator, but a very different one — someone who knew, without doubt, her place; and who was secure in her power, there at the center of everything. “When you crawl bleeding under the Heavens, all prayers are sincere.”

She was… old, not ageless in the way of Fallen; but with the weariness of someone who had seen too much, endured too much. “Ngoc Bich—”

“I’m not the one you should worry about, Pham Van Minh Khiet. Think of yourself, first.” She pulled the curtains back from the bed, and sat on it. “You can sit up.”

Philippe tried. He could; but it was an effort, and it was so much more comfortable to sink back against his pillow, staring into Ngoc Bich’s face.

“You should be mostly healed.”

Her prevarication was all too clear. “Mostly?”

Ngoc Bich grimaced. “The wounds, yes. The rest of it… I’m not sure what you have in your heart.”

He wasn’t sure either. A curse, a vengeance; something too strong to be exorcised, even by the magic of a dragon princess, it seemed. A dead human’s vengeance, slow and implacable and which would not be turned aside, since there was no reasoning with those that had gone on.

Then again, he was free of Silverspires now. He didn’t have to care about any of this. It should have filled him with joy; but like Ngoc Bich he merely felt weary, burdened with something he couldn’t name. He’d always known the Houses were corrupt, that they maintained their power on death and blood; but to casually betray their own… “I owe you a debt.”

“As I said—” Ngoc Bich closed her hand around his again. “Don’t think about it now. It’s not as though there is much here, in the way of entertainment.”

He was thinking about it, trying to remember old protocols, old rules. Dragon kings were old and wise, and lethal; and here he was in one of their courts, powerless and without even the clothes on his back. “I ought to pay my respects to your father.”

“Of course.” Ngoc Bich shrugged. “When you can walk. There’s not much hurry.”

“No.” Fragments of half-remembered lore wormed their way through Philippe’s brain, burning like molten metal. “This is his kingdom, and I’m here as a visitor.” An ambassador from the world above, he supposed, save that he no longer had any status they would recognize. “I should come to him bearing gifts: tree wax and hollow green weed and sea-fish lime, and a hundred roasted swallows, all the precious things from the mortal world, laid at his feet with the jade and the pearls….” Snake pearls and deer pearls, and all the rarities that would speak to animals; and those shining with the luminescence of the depths; and the one that, put in a rice jar, would fill it up again with the fresh crop of the latest harvest, smelling of water and jasmine and cut grass….

There was something else, too — something he ought to have remembered, precautions to be taken before entering a dragon kingdom. He was sure there were cautionary tales, the kind he’d heard ten thousand times as a child — except that his mind seemed to be utterly empty — wiped out of everything.

“You need rest,” Ngoc Bich said, gently; and drew a hand over his face; and darkness stole across him with the same gentleness as when it stole across the sky, and he sank back into confused dreams, struggling to name what he should have remembered.

* * *

MADELEINE was in her laboratory, cleaning out the artifacts drawer, when a knock at the door heralded the arrival of Laure, two kitchen girls, and Isabelle.

Laure must have seen her face. “Isabelle didn’t feel like going alone through the corridors, and I have to say I can’t blame her.”

Madeleine opened her mouth to suggest that Laure had better things to do in the kitchens; and then closed it. Laure obviously knew. “While I’m at it,” Laure said, putting a basket precariously balanced on one of the tables, “here’s the sourdough bread.” She smiled at Isabelle — like a stern mother. “Your dough is a mess, but it’s getting better.”

Isabelle made a face. “You said that the last time.”

“That’s because it takes time to get genuinely better,” Laure said. “Now I’ll be off. You two have things to discuss.” The kitchen girls left with her, leaving Madeleine staring at Isabelle. From the covered basket wafted the tantalizing smell of warm, just-baked bread.

“Am I… Am I disturbing you?” Isabelle asked.

“No, hardly.” Madeleine laid a small wooden box at the end of the line. There was a small fragment of skin trapped inside, its magic almost spent. “I thought I’d catalog everything. If there ever was a time when we needed magic…” The heat of the artifacts’ magic played on her fingers, as if she stood close to a flame in the heart. This was the bedrock of Silverspires: the power that made Asmodeus and Claire and Guy recognize Selene as their equal; the power that kept them all safe.

Except that it was all useless, wasn’t it, if Selene couldn’t keep things together?

“Emmanuelle is a bit better,” Isabelle said. She wore men’s clothing, an unusual occurrence for her: a tweed jacket and creased trousers, and a stiff white shirt that looked as though it’d come straight from the laundry. “Aragon said the worst of the infection appeared to be over, but he didn’t sound very confident.” She didn’t sound very confident, either — she kept worrying at the gap between her fingers, quickly, nervously.

“He’s a doctor. They seldom commit to anything.” She wished she could believe her own lies: it would have been so much easier, so much neater. So much more reassuring, without Emmanuelle’s life hanging in the balance, and everything that made Silverspires slowly unraveling like frayed clothes. Damn Asmodeus and his intrigues; and Philippe and his pointless grudges.

“I guess they do,” Isabelle said.

Madeleine hesitated for a moment. “Does Emmanuelle remember—”

“What she said before she went under? I asked.” Isabelle flushed. “She didn’t, not exactly. She looked at her hand again, and said she’d have a look in the books she’d been cataloging recently.”

“I had a look already,” Madeleine said. “But I suppose she’d know best.”

“She said she’d have them brought to her and try to work on them.” Isabelle forced a wan smile. “Always working, isn’t she?”

“She is.”

Isabelle took a deep breath, and opened her hand. “I found this.”

It was a flat, black thing — an obsidian mirror, the sort of old-fashioned artifact that had been dated even before the war. Madeleine took it, absentmindedly; and then almost dropped it. It was… malice, viciousness, hatred — whispers that she was worthless, that Silverspires was worthless, doomed to be carried away by the wind — black wings, blotting out the sun, that same slimy feeling she’d got when the shadows filled the room… “What is this?”

Isabelle blushed. “It was under the throne. In the cathedral. There was a paper with it.” She took a deep, trembling breath; held it for a suspended moment. “All that you hold dear will be shattered…”

Madeleine’s fingers worked around the curve of the mirror — seeking the catch, the point of release. There was nothing; just that terrible sense of something watching her, darkly amused at her feeble attempts; that faint odor of hatred that seemed to lie like a mist over the smooth surface. “I can’t open it,” she said, finally. “It feels like an artifact, holding some kind of angel magic — breath, perhaps?” One she would have liked to hurl down the deepest ravine in some faraway country; and even then, she wouldn’t have felt safe.

Isabelle picked it from Madeleine’s hand with two fingers, and laid it back in a handkerchief — careful never to leave her skin in contact with it for too long. It was as bad for her as for Madeleine, then. “I thought you could… Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” Madeleine said. “It’s connected to the shadows, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Isabelle said. “You can’t open it.”

“I can’t open it now. It’s locked,” Madeleine said. Not that she was keen on releasing whatever was inside it — whatever remnant of darkness still clung to its innards…. “It doesn’t mean that, with a little work or a little research or both… Can you leave it to me?”

“Of course.” Isabelle’s face hardened again — as changing as the sky on a spring day, when clouds pushed by the wind could blot out the sun in a heartbeat. When she spoke again, her voice had a determined, harsh tone Madeleine had never heard from her before. “Madeleine?”

“Yes?”

“I think we should go and help Philippe.”

It took a moment for all the words of that sentence to realign themselves in Madeleine’s mind. “He’s dead,” she said. “They found the trail of blood leading into the Seine, and there’s probably a corpse somewhere, playing with the fishes.” If Selene was right, the thing he’d let loose was still in Silverspires; but it didn’t mean that Philippe had survived — Asmodeus’s attentions had been thorough, and unpleasant.

Isabelle shook her head. “There is — I don’t really know how to explain it, but there is something in the Seine. Somewhere.” She played with her hands — the fingers of the good hand in the crippled one, worrying at the hole.

She was tied to Philippe; inextricably linked somehow, though in the days before the banquet their relationship had seemed more strained than before. She couldn’t help defending him; to her, it would be as natural as breathing.

Whereas as far as Madeleine was concerned, Philippe could go hang. “Let me be clear. He wounded Emmanuelle. He was the catalyst for something that killed Samariel. Something that wrecked the House. And you somehow think it’s a good idea to go find him wherever he’s hiding?”

Isabelle flushed scarlet. “I don’t know what happened. I think it’s connected to him, but he’s not controlling it. He’s not doing any of it.”

“That’s great comfort, but no. If he’s alive somehow—”

“He is. I know it. And he could help Emmanuelle.”

Unlikely. He was the one who’d harmed her, after all.

“I wasn’t doubting your ability to find him,” Madeleine said. She sighed, and massaged her brow, feeling the beginnings of a headache. “Selene should be the one to find him, not us.” Just look at them. One washed-out alchemist, and one young Fallen too naive to see the political implications of the fight she was dragged into. Hardly the elite group of magicians it would have taken to keep Philippe’s magic at bay.

“Selene won’t go,” Isabelle said.

“You asked?”

“I had to,” Isabelle said. She bit her lip. “But she said no. She has too much to do; and she hates Philippe.”

“With reason,” Madeleine said. She didn’t much care for Philippe, either; even before the conclave, he had been surly and uncivil.

Isabelle bit her lip. “He — he promised to look after me. He wouldn’t attack me.”

“He cut off two of your fingers. That’s hardly—”

“That’s the past,” Isabelle said, more forcefully than Madeleine had expected. “Before he came to the House. And he’s… not himself now.”

“Which doesn’t excuse what he has done. If he has done it,” Madeleine said, grudgingly. She was willing to grant that all of it was a bit much for a young man; even if said young man was older than he appeared. Whoever had killed Samariel had known the effect it would have, and that spoke of familiarity with the city and its fragile equilibrium of warring Houses; something Philippe had been demonstrably uninterested in. “But I still don’t understand why you want to go running after him. You’re not—”

“In love with him?” Isabelle smiled. “I saw the thought cross your mind. Of course not, Madeleine. I know what I am.”

“Fallen doesn’t mean emotionless.”

“Oh, no. I mean that he’s still in love with his country above all else, and I–I’m still trying to figure out how things work.”

“That would certainly give you a head start on how things work,” Madeleine said, suppressing a smile; and raised a hand to forestall Isabelle’s objections. “But never mind. If it’s not that, then…”

“We’re friends,” Isabelle said. “He made a promise to look out for me, and I can’t do any less.”

“It does you credit,” Madeleine said, slowly. “But—” But what you want is insane, she wanted to say. To go wherever she thought Philippe was, to confront what had killed Samariel and Oris and countless others…

“Don’t you want to understand what’s going on?” Isabelle asked.

No. She had no desire to; but then she thought of Oris, lying cold and naked on the slab as she took him apart — the only thing she knew how to do anymore. “I want justice,” she said. “But I’m not sure how this would help me.”

“Because it’s not over,” Isabelle said, at last. “It never was. Look at Selene. She’s known, all along. She watches the darkness, knowing that it will return.”

“It?”

“Whatever killed Samariel. Whatever killed Oris. It’s not Philippe,” she said, again, her voice low, urgent. “You know it’s not, Madeleine. Behaving as though it’s him — that’s just refusing to acknowledge the truth. And that will kill you. That will kill all of us.”

“I—” Madeleine took a deep, shaking breath. She could go on as she had always gone; keep her head down and inhale angel essence until all grief, all memories had been dulled to nothingness, wasting Morningstar’s gift of life as she had wasted everything else. Or, before it was too late, she could do one last, small thing for Oris’s memory.

“Let’s go,” she said. “Quickly, before I change my mind.”