The House of Shattered Wings

TWENTY-TWO. 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.

But on the stairs leading down to the river, the translucent shape of Morningstar stood guard, his wings sharply delineated against the night sky, his large sword held upward without apparent effort. And he could push past the Fallen — he was a ghost — no, worse than a ghost, a memory of a ghost that could no more stop him than a breath upon the wind — but, even in the depths of the dragon kingdom, Silverspires and its curse would still have him in an unbreakable hold. And, even as consort, even as Immortal, he would still remember Isabelle; and how he had failed her.

Come with us.

“Not yet,” he whispered to the encroaching night; and turned away from the stairs, to cross the bridge toward House Silverspires.

* * *

OUTSIDE, in the gray light of late afternoon, Madeleine turned to Isabelle. “Thank you,” she said.

Isabelle shook her head, pulling her toward a black car. “Don’t thank me. I need you, Madeleine — I gave Selene something, but it’s not what she needs — you have to come—”

“You make no sense,” Madeleine said, but she let Isabelle pull her toward the car, where Javier waited, a frown on his face. “Good to see you again,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She asked for explanations in the car; but Javier was distant, and Isabelle uncommunicative.

As they approached Silverspires, she held her breath. The cloud over it had now extended tendrils all the way into the cathedral; and there was something around the ruined towers, a canopy of… leaves?

“You have to explain,” she said, playing with the box of essence.

“I don’t have all the explanations,” Isabelle said. “But the House is dying.”

Dying? She’d left it in bad shape, granted, and Asmodeus had seemed so sure it was about to fall, but…

“Trust me,” Isabelle said, and half dragged her, half pushed her into corridors overrun by huge roots and branches. There was an open door; and before she could realize it was Selene’s office, now invaded beyond recognition, Isabelle had pushed her in.

It was empty; or almost so: Emmanuelle turned as they entered, surprised. “Madeleine? I thought—”

Madeleine felt the presence of Hawthorn in her mind, a weight dragging her down. “Emmanuelle? Where is Selene?”

“Overseeing the evacuation,” Emmanuelle said; and in the face of Madeleine’s blank stare: “You came in through the North Wing? If you’d gone to the other side, you would have seen everyone else. Everyone still alive, that is.”

“I—” Madeleine took a deep breath, struggling to balance her sense of panic. “I thought—”

“This is a dying House,” Emmanuelle said. Her smile was bitter. “But she hasn’t won yet, not if I can help it. Selene’s first duty is to her dependents, but I–I have no such compunction.”

Isabelle was looking left and right, frantically. “Where are they?”

“The wings?” Emmanuelle took a deep, slow breath; let it out again. “Morningstar took them and went inside, to open the way. You just missed him.”

Morningstar? But Morningstar was dead. Surely…

“Then I’m too late.” Isabelle slumped. “It can’t have worked, the power I infused them with. I brought Madeleine because she’d know how to do it properly. Emmanuelle—” She almost looked as though she was pleading, but without the tone that Madeleine would have associated with that. She looked and spoke as though she was head of the House.

Asmodeus had asked, “So you set yourself up as his heir, do you?”

The heir of Morningstar; but there was only one heir, and she was head of the House.

“That’s a dangerous position to occupy.”

Selene would be livid. Then again, Selene had no part in what they were now doing.

Emmanuelle said, “You got my message?”

“You know messages aren’t that clear,” Isabelle said. “Merely an intimation to come back, and that there was something here for me.”

“Yes,” Emmanuelle said. “Selene had a mission for you.”

Madeleine merely stood, and listened; everything sliding past her. The box Asmodeus had given her was warm in her hands. “It can’t be this easy—”

“Of course not. Morningstar… should provide you with time.”

“With a distraction, you mean,” Isabelle said. “Did Selene expect him to survive?”

Emmanuelle’s voice was low, bitter. “She did what had to be done.”

Isabelle said nothing for a while. At last, she said, and her voice was cold, and wholly unlike what Madeleine remembered, “Blood and revenge and death. She is truly head of the House.”

“Of course.” Emmanuelle sounded exhausted. She opened her hand: in it was a small, blackened thing. “You didn’t ask what Selene wanted of you. You will take this to the heart of the tree, and kill the curse. If it can still be done.”

Isabelle looked at it, intently. “Why are we not going through the parvis? That would be simpler, wouldn’t it?”

“Because the door of the cathedral is where we’re evacuating,” Emmanuelle said, “and we’d rather not have a fight conducted among our refugees.”

“I see.” Isabelle bit her lips. “It might work.”

“It might not,” Emmanuelle said.

“Of course it will. I will come back,” Isabelle said, carelessly. “But I have accounts to settle, first.”

With a ghost. With someone she had never known, except that this same someone had doomed Philippe; and turned the House she had always thought of as a refuge into — this.

Emmanuelle held Isabelle’s gaze for a while; at length, she nodded. “For the good of the House,” she said. She reached out into one of the drawers, and picked up a small knife. “Here. You’ll need this as well.” And as she handed the knife and the mirror to Isabelle, she added, “You’ve changed.”

“I’ve had to,” Isabelle said. She bit her lip. “Like wildfire — if I let go for even a moment…,” she whispered; and for a moment she sounded bewildered and lost, once more the Fallen Madeleine had taken under her wing. “I’m sorry, Madeleine. But you should go.”

Emmanuelle was already halfway to the door. “Madeleine?”

Madeleine remained standing where she was. She couldn’t have told what moved her now: the melody of Hawthorn within her mind, the memories of Isabelle; the pain in her hip and in her ribs that would never truly go away? “Try not to get yourself killed,” Asmodeus had said, knowing that she would be safe. She was not one for rash decisions. She—“I’ll go with you,” she said.

Isabelle smiled. “Are you sure?”

Madeleine shook her head. “No. But it’s as good as anything. But I wasn’t sure about the dragon kingdom, either, was I?”

Isabelle forced a smile. Charge in, and then see later. As if that had worked out well: the root of all their problems, Selene would have said, her voice acid.

But Selene wasn’t there, anymore; forced out of her own House and her own office by the magic of revenge. “Let’s go,” she said; and walked out of the room, refusing to look back.