The House of Shattered Wings

TWO. ESSENCE OF LOSS

MADELEINE d’Aubin, alchemist of House Silverspires, had seen more than her share of prone bodies brought in at the dead of the night: she slept little these days, in any case, spending her nights in her laboratory, remembering the past and what it had cost her.

She arrived in one of the largest rooms of the admissions wing of Hôtel-Dieu, the House’s hospital: row after row of metal beds, all unoccupied save two. Two doctors in white blouses hovered by the new arrivals’ side, and her assistant, Oris, was waiting for her, leaning against the wall and trying to appear casual; though his face was sallow in the dim light.

She nodded at Oris and went to his side, pulling a chair so she could sit. Madeleine dropped her heavy shoulder bag onto the floor, and settled down to wait in silence.

The room was dusty and the air dry, and her wasted lungs wouldn’t take it: a cough welled up. She desperately tried to quench the trickle that was going to become a cough, but it was never enough. The bout that followed racked her from head to toe — she was going to choke to death, never finding fresh, wholesome air again.

At last she sat back, wrung out, enjoying the sweetness of uninterrupted breath. One of the doctors — Aragon, surely — was looking straight at her with disapproval. Madeleine waved a hand, letting him know it was nothing. She’d lied about it; told him it was too much breathing the Paris air, of the areas around the blackened flow of the Seine — he’d seen so many combatants with the same problems that he’d been all too ready to believe her. She was not proud, but she was safe. The last thing that’d occur to him, prim and proper as he was, would be to question her; to realize how wasted her lungs were, and the true cause of such extensive and fast-progressing damage.

At length, the doctors peeled away from the beds, and one of them removed his mask. Madeleine found herself staring at Aragon’s sharp features. The Fallen doctor looked, like Oris, on the verge of exhaustion, his skin pale and beaded with sweat, his graying hair slick against his temples.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Madeleine asked, after the brief pleasantries were over. Unlike her, Aragon was paid for his work, not a dependent of the House, or bound in Selene’s service.

Aragon shook his head. His colleague had left the room already, no doubt heading for the comfort of his own bed. “For something like this? You know she wouldn’t let me sleep.” He shook his head, amused. “In any case”—he spread his hands—“I don’t have much to say. Both healthy, neither carrying horrible contagious diseases or hair-trigger spells. You can collect your toll from them.” There was something — some hint of anger in his poised demeanor? — some feeling she couldn’t quite place. But she knew enough not to ask him; he would just shake his head with infuriating politeness and assure her that nothing was wrong.

“I see,” Madeleine said. “Thank you.”

Aragon made his way toward the door. He paused as he crossed the threshold, looking back at the bodies on the bed, as if he were about to say something more, but then shook his head and moved on.

Now it was just her and Oris. Madeleine glanced at the beds: a girl shining with the residual light of newborn Fallen, and…

“Who’s the young man?” she asked. He didn’t look Fallen, but why would Selene ask her to take care of a human? There was no entry toll for humans, or at least none that an alchemist could collect.

“I don’t know,” Oris said. “But Lady Selene was quite clear that you had to take care of both of them.”

“We,” Madeleine said, absentmindedly. “You’re an alchemist as well, you know.” She still held hopes that, one day, Oris was going to outgrow his maddening shyness. For God’s sake, the boy was Fallen, with enough magic to start his own House if he had to, yet he crept through life as if he didn’t quite belong anywhere.

She moved to the Fallen first. At least she was used to dealing with those, though it had been many, many years since she saw one so young, just hours from her first manifestation, with the scars of her Fall still visible: the ribs that were slowly knitting themselves back together, the limbs that didn’t quite seem to be at the proper angles yet, the face with its high cheekbones and features that seemed to be subtly, slowly shifting even as she looked as it. Madeleine gently turned her over. The telltale signs were there: the large V-shaped scar spread across the back, where Aragon had cleanly cut off the mangled, irretrievable wings — the scar would fade a little in time, but never completely heal — the hint of ribs below the translucent skin; and the weight, much, much lighter than a human body of the same size, with fluted bones that would take much less effort to shatter.

By the Fallen’s side was a small tray, in which someone had set out three vials of blood that shone with the characteristic rippling, soft light; and two severed fingers, obviously hacked away by someone who hadn’t the time for finesse.

“Lady Selene wasn’t the first on the scene,” Oris said, apologetically. “I’ve taken the liberty of setting the blood aside; I don’t know what you want done with the fingers.”

The same thing they always did with any detached body parts. Madeleine sighed, but made no comment. “Will you see to the young man, please?”

She had no illusions; she’d be required to point out precisely what needed to be done to Oris in a moment or two, but at least it got him out of the way. Madeleine went back to her shoulder bag and withdrew her equipment: a handful of treated mirrors, a set of sterilized scalpels, a series of containers with primed preservation spells, and one last thing: a small black box, which, at a casual glance, seemed nothing more than a woman’s private vanity, a container for some small item of jewelry like a ring or a brooch. This last she hid under the mirrors, after throwing a glance to make sure Oris wasn’t looking at her.

Time to perform her role, then.

She went back to the Fallen’s side and set the mirrors, one by one, by the nose and mouth, waiting until the breath had misted them over — and the glass seemed to shine with reflected light. She closed them after she was done, muttering a brief incantation to seal them, ensuring that the magic would remain trapped in them without decaying. Then she trimmed, one by one, the long, clawlike nails on the fine hands, and similarly collected the trimmings in a box which she sealed. Any stray hairs she also took, and dealt with in the same fashion.

Madeleine worked almost without thinking; she’d done it for so many years it had become routine. The younger the Fallen, the more potent their magic — the closer their link to the City they had Fallen from and the grace of God. And this Fallen was an infant, hours from her manifestation in the mortal world. House Silverspires, like all Houses, knew the value of preserving some of their earliest leavings. Not everything; that would have been tantamount to what the gangs did, taking Fallen bodies apart before they grew strong enough to retaliate — though there were also rumors of spells strong enough to negate Fallen magic, and places where they were kept in cages or in chains like sheep or dairy cows. Silverspires was not one of those places, thank God.

Madeleine reached for the fingers next, and for her scalpels. She carefully scraped the flesh free from the delicate bones underneath. So far, she’d done what was expected of her: preserve magic where it could be preserved.

And, as expected of her, she sealed the flesh in one of the containers set aside for this purpose.

That only left the bones.

Selene’s instructions on this had been clear. Bones should be burned, nothing of them preserved. Bones could be used, with a little chemical expertise, to manufacture angel essence; and angel essence was forbidden in the House. Not because it was more refined and powerful than preserving Fallen’s leavings; but because — as Madeleine knew all too well — it was highly addictive, and Selene wouldn’t support junkies in Silverspires.

Bones should be burned. Always.

Madeleine’s hands were shaking. She thought of the heady rush of power spreading from her lungs to her entire body, a sweet, sweet sensation that made her feel that she, too, was in the City, that she was the equal of a Fallen: what did it matter that the stuff was eating away at her lungs? She hadn’t come to Silverspires for a long life.

Madeleine threw a glance at Oris. He was still busy cleaning the young man up for her inspection, and unlikely to look up from his task.

Good.

Casually, in one practiced movement, Madeleine removed one of the bones from the tray and slipped it in the small box. There was enough there to last her a few months, if she was careful, if the need didn’t come on her too often…

She said aloud, keeping her voice even, “I’ll go and burn the bones in the incinerators.”

Oris nodded. He trusted her. He shouldn’t have, but he always did.

All the way to the incinerator and back, Madeleine kept expecting something to happen: some orderly jumping from one of the other deserted rooms, some nurse taking a break in the ruined cloisters, inquiring what she was doing. But nothing happened. There was only the silence of the night; and her own conscience.

Ah well. She’d never had much of one in the first place. Silverspires wasn’t her refuge; it was the place where she would die, and she’d known as much since the night Morningstar carried her into the House.

If she was caught, though… Selene wasn’t merciful. It’d be back on the streets of a city that had grown alien to her, with no easy means of sustenance — another kind of death by inches, far more unpleasant and painful than the one she’d chosen for herself.

But she wouldn’t be caught. Not if she was careful, and she always was. Selene need never know what she did; Aragon would likely figure it out at some point, but she would deal with that then.

Good.

In the admissions room, Oris was fussing around the young man. He raised his gaze when she arrived. “Madeleine? May I use your mirrors?”

Madeleine nodded. She wished she could muster some anger at his lack of initiative, but she had none, too relieved he hadn’t questioned her further. She turned back to her patient, and to the last thing that needed to be done.

She reached for the scalpels; and, carefully picking one out from the row of blades, made a small nick in the palm of the Fallen’s left hand, where the heart line would have been. Blood leaked out, red and lazy, sinking into the beaten earth of Silverspires. She braced herself for saying the binding words; but before her mouth could curve around them, the young man sat bolt upright in bed, clutching at his own left hand. “No,” he said. “Don’t — I may not be bound to the earth of this land, of any land—”

Oris, in shock, had taken a step backward, leaving Madeleine to say aloud, “What do you mean?”

The young man’s narrow eyes turned toward her, though it was clear he wasn’t seeing anything in this world. “I know what you want to do, alchemist,” he said, and there was a touch of malice in his voice. “Bound to the earth, bound to the House. Do you truly think you can have this one?”

“This one?” Madeleine said. “The young man, or the girl?” Either term, of course, was relative, since Fallen didn’t really have gender; or much that was human about them.

But the young man had fallen back on the bed, unconscious. “Don’t move,” Madeleine said to Oris. Someone had to keep a level head, and it would definitely not be her assistant.

She spoke the words of binding over the girl first, finishing what she had started. Blood and magic and earth, the oldest things, as the young man had said: a spell-oath to bind her to the House, to its welfare, though how had he known, and who was speaking through him? “By this, I bid you welcome into Silverspires; I give the House leave—”

She never got to the end. As she spoke each word, the resistance in the air grew, an expanding weight that pressed against her throat; and when she reached “leave” it was all she could do to force syllables between clenched teeth. There was… something vast, something infinitely larger than either of them — larger than the House, larger than the City — and it was somehow tied to those two, to either or both of them. She broke off then. “Oris, can you do the binding for me?”

She’d hoped that, since Oris was Fallen, he would have more power to draw on; but as he stumbled his way through the binding, he, too, met the same obstacle. She rose, and touched the young man’s hands; they were wet and clammy to the touch, and his complexion was paler than it should have been, for all that he was Annamite. “You’re doing this,” she said aloud. “Aren’t you?”

“Doing what?”

Madeleine whirled around, her heart hammering against her chest. Selene stood behind her.

The mistress of House Silverspires wore practical, no-nonsense clothing — even though the fashion she favored was that of fifty, sixty years ago, before the war, at the height of the Belle Epoque: a black swallow-tailed coat over black trousers, a white bow tie, and a simple sash of indigo crossing the white shirt. She had no hat, and her short, masculine bob of auburn hair shone in the light. Behind her was a crowd: Father Javier, the archivist, Raoul, Dr. Lesbros and two orderlies, and a dozen other people who worked in the kitchens and in the libraries and in the classrooms of the House: a sea of gazes unerringly trained on Madeleine.

Selene’s gray eyes were mildly curious, but as always with her, Madeleine was… awkward, gangly. Selene might not have been the oldest Fallen in the city, but her master, Morningstar, had been, before he had vanished; and as his favorite student she had picked up many of his mannerisms and sharpened them until it seemed nothing of Morningstar’s occasional, amused mercy remained.

Madeleine swallowed, feeling embarrassed and ill at ease. “It’s… not working well,” she said.

* * *

SELENE received the new arrivals for a private audience, as had always been the custom of the House: alone in her office, with her bodyguards standing at attention outside the room. She received them both at the same time — not what custom dictated — because, as Madeleine d’Aubin’s report had made clear, they would not be so easily parted.

The young man, Philippe, was stiff and prim. Madeleine’s exam had confirmed he was no Fallen, that he bore no scars on his back, nor possessed any characteristics that could be of use. His breath, sealed in Madeleine’s containers, had no magical properties; to all intents and purposes, he was what he appeared to be: a young man adrift in Paris joining a gang as his only way to survive.

His behavior, though, was nothing like a young man’s; but spoke of customs and manners from another culture, from another age. “Lady Selene,” he said. “I understand we both owe you our lives.” His face was calm, expressionless, nothing of anger or of shame in it. What was he, truly? Like nothing she had ever seen or heard of — and there was potential in that. Morningstar might have considered him a threat, but she wasn’t Morningstar; and, especially, she didn’t have the magic he had used to effortlessly keep the House safe.

“You are here because I was curious. Don’t mistake it for mercy on my part. I know exactly what you were doing.” Blood and flesh and severed fingers; no better than the gang thugs in the streets, a handsome face covering the mind of a savage.

Philippe gazed back at her, quite unfazed. “So, if not mercy… what can I expect of you?”

A sharp eye on him, for a start. An education, if it was not too late to bring him back to decency; to unravel who and what he was, and how he had come to be in Paris. And ultimately, how he could be of use to the House, to guard it against its rivals and make it flourish in the lean, famished times after the war. “From this House? A chance to mend your ways, I should say.”

Something was in his eyes: amusement, anger? He was oddly hard to read, closed off like no human or Fallen she’d ever met. “And why should I take up this offer?”

What pointless arrogance. “I think you misunderstand,” Selene said, and let a fraction of power brush against him; a cold touch to remind him of who he was facing. “You don’t have a choice. But if you did have one, I would point out that living in a House is much better than scavenging in the streets.”

“Being fed and fattened while you seek to untangle my deepest secrets?”

“You could always save me time and tell me what you are,” Selene said.

He shook his head. “As you said, your curiosity is all that’s keeping me alive at the moment, and I’m not foolish enough to sate it.”

She wanted to open him like a nut: here, in her House, at the center of her power, she could burst through his thoughts, drain every drop of blood from his body if she had to. Except, of course, that he was probably more than capable of defending himself against her. With difficulty, she controlled herself. What was it about the young man that made it so hard to keep her temper in check? “Have it your way, then. I’ll certainly have mine in the end.”

“Perhaps.” Philippe’s voice was shaking, and this time the anger was unmistakable. “So I am to be your prisoner?”

Selene had little use for his anger; and no pity for the riffraff of the streets. “For what you did — for the fingers you severed from her — the punishment would be death. You should count yourself lucky.”

Philippe’s lips quirked in what might have been amusement; but then his gaze turned to the young Fallen by his side; and much to Selene’s surprise he said, gravely, “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend things to turn out this way, but that doesn’t excuse me.”

It didn’t, Selene wanted to say; but she wasn’t the one with the grievance. The young Fallen gazed back at Philippe levelly, her hands in her lap, the left hand with its two missing fingers quite visible in the sunlight. She said nothing, until at length Philippe lowered his gaze, and fell silent.

Good. She might be innocent, but she was not altogether defenseless.

Selene said, a fraction calmer now, “I have set a spell on you that will prevent you from… wandering too far away from the House. I’d advise you not to tinker with it, or you’ll regret it.”

He looked as though he might laugh, then; and then shook his head, casting a glance in the Fallen’s direction. “Security and a bed; and a golden cage. I guess it will have to do, for the moment.”

She was no fool. Of course he would not submit, and would attempt to escape the moment her back was turned. But it was the best she could do. Her spell had taken long to set in: as with the binding to the House, it was as if something within him was resisting the very notion of magic. But with luck, she’d hold him long enough.

“Wait outside, will you?” she asked; and watched him leave, casual and at ease. One certainly wouldn’t think he was the prisoner here, and she the jailer.

She turned to the young Fallen, who stood, watching her warily, and said, in a much kinder voice, “None of this applies to you.”

“Then why am I here?” The young Fallen was quite recovered now, the unearthly light of her first hours gone. She appeared almost human, almost whole, except for the two fingers missing on her left hand. Her face in repose would never be called beautiful, but an innocence hung about her, a guilelessness that made Selene’s heart ache. She had been like this once, but such things never lasted for long; not in Paris.

“Because you’re one of us,” Selene said; and before the Fallen could voice a question, she added, “What do you remember?”

The Fallen’s face shifted then, became for a moment wreathed with soft light. “The City,” she whispered, and looked up into Selene’s eyes. “You remember, too.”

It was not a question. “Not as much as I once did,” Selene said. All she had were grainy, fuzzy images like old photographs; faces and voices that all seemed to merge together. “You have to be young to remember.”

Young, and innocent, and brimming with raw power. She envied that child, in that moment; who did not yet know bitterness, or how much the abandonment of God lay heavy on one’s shoulders.

What had her sin been, the one that had cast her out of the City? She’d wondered over the years — at what could be so grave that a God of forgiveness and love would condemn them all to this slow, agonizing path on Earth, with the wound of His absence lancing like salted knives — and known, in the darkness of her own room, that there would never be any answer.

“I Fell,” the girl said. And, bringing both hands up to stare at them: “I don’t remember why.”

“We never do,” Selene said, which wasn’t quite true. Morningstar had remembered; but Morningstar had been the first to Fall, the ringleader of the revolt in Heaven. “You’ll find out much of what you need to know over the coming months. We all do. You’ll—” She took a deep breath. “You’ll have to work out your own answers to what it means, to be Fallen. We have a priest here, Father Javier, if you think religion would help. And a library where you can find histories and books.” Emmanuelle would be glad to take her in hand, to show her everything that she needed to see. “As for me… there are three things I can give you, if you will have them. The first is help to come into your powers. The second is the protection of this House. Paris, as you will have gathered, is a dangerous place to be.”

The girl swallowed. “Madeleine told me… that I didn’t have that protection.”

“Not all of it,” Selene said, mildly. If the binding had taken, any attempt to put her in danger would have sent alarms rippling through the House; would have been as loud as a clarion call to anyone bound to Silverspires; but it hadn’t happened. Which meant they would need to keep an eye on her. “Be careful, will you? And we’ll find out why.” At least, she dearly hoped so, because she’d lose patience with Philippe very soon; and she doubted anyone in the House, save perhaps Aragon, had the forbearance to deal with him.

“You said three things,” the girl said, her large eyes on Selene’s face. “What’s the third one?”

Selene rose, feeling the weight of the earth against her bones: that odd, awful sensation that everything should have been lighter, easier on her. “Angels but touch the earth,” Morningstar had said, but his smile had been bitter as he said it — he who had felt the weight of age and loss more keenly than most, who had watched so many centuries pass by, patiently gathering his kin to him — as Paris grew from a small town to the bloated capital of an empire; and from this arrogant, conceited city to the devastated wreck huddled around the dark waters of the Seine. At least he’d disappeared before he could see how far the damage ran; how far the House he’d founded had tumbled.

Though, damn him, she still missed him: she’d wake up in the morning and remember that the House was hers, that he was not there to offer biting comments or advice; that he had walked out of the House twenty years ago and never come back. They’d searched for him, of course — turned the House upside down, gone into every nook and cranny, and never found anything, a body or a hint of where he might have gone — Selene didn’t even know if he was still alive or not, or if he was truly lost, truly beyond any meeting she might have dreamed of.

“Fallen have no parents,” Selene said, extending a hand toward the girl. “And no kin, beyond those that are willing to claim us. I will give you what my mentor once gave me: a name of your own.”

Morningstar had liked old-fashioned names, drawn straight from the pages of some of the obscure books he’d favored: Selene, Nightfall, Oris, Aragon; even Emmanuelle had been called Indigo before she changed her name.

Selene chose something far simpler. “Isabelle,” she said. “It was the name of a queen once. Wear it well.”

“Isabelle.” The young Fallen sat very still, repeating the name to herself as if testing it for suitability. Her gaze, for a moment, was disturbingly adult, as if Philippe had contaminated her. “It is a good name. Thank you.”

Selene nodded. “You have the run of the House. Use it well.”

She watched Isabelle leave the room. She heard voices outside, guessing that she’d be talking to Philippe. The link between those two concerned her; but if it was Isabelle’s choice, what right did Selene have to interfere?

“She’s strong, this one,” Emmanuelle said behind her.

Selene turned, only half-surprised. Emmanuelle had thrown open the curtain that lay between her office and her private quarters, and stood wreathed in the light of the lamps. “You should rest,” she said.

Emmanuelle walked into the room, and laid a hand on Selene’s cheek, briefly, affectionately. “I’ve rested enough for a lifetime. Or several of them. Have you given thought to the young man?”

“He’s no Fallen,” Selene said.

“He said he was born abroad.” Emmanuelle’s face was thoughtful. “Who knows what this might mean? There were other creatures in Annam, and other rules of magic — before the French came over and brought the word of God to those benighted shores.” Her voice was lightly ironic. Emmanuelle manifested as an African woman. Most people mistook her for a Senegalese, though they couldn’t place her in a precise ethnic group.

“I don’t know anything about Annam,” Selene said. They had people there, of course; got the occasional shipment of silk and rubber, but she hadn’t had any reason to focus her attention on the colonies. Travel after the war was slow, expensive — boats to Asia almost inexistent, and communications difficult and infrequent. Heavens, it had taken them ten years and an armed battalion to get back Calixta, and she’d only been stuck in London. Asia might have been another world entirely.

“Indochina,” Emmanuelle said, distractedly. “Once called Viet Nam. Annam is just one of the five regions, but everyone calls them Annamites anyway. Not that most French can make a difference between an Annamite and a Cochinchinese. He might just be one of the witches trained by French schools, you know.”

Witches, even Annamite ones, shouldn’t have been able to stop her magic. Perhaps younger, more remote areas retained a vitality that old, bloated cities like Paris never could recapture. Selene sighed. Either way, she would find out more about Philippe and his magic; and how best to use him for the good of the House.