The House of Shattered Wings

SEVEN. A DARKNESS WITHIN THE HOUSE

HOUSE Lazarus stood a few hundred meters west of the Grands Magasins, though the contrast could not have been greater. The House had cleared its own surroundings. The streets were grime-splattered, the buildings stained with the black of magical residue, but everything was clear of debris: the railings freshly painted a shade of dark green, the clock on the frontispiece on time and chiming the quarter hours, and every window of the building decorated with elegant baize curtains. There were even a few cars parked in the large plaza in front of the House — though, judging by their worn-out appearance, they were more likely to belong to minor Houses or wealthy independents. Then again, Madeleine wasn’t sure how she’d have reacted, if she’d seen one of House Hawthorn’s big limousines parked in front of the House.

She’d taken one of the city’s large omnibuses; clutching the bag with the tools of her trade against her, enduring the suspicious gazes of her neighbors as they wondered why a House-bound would bother to take a horse-drawn, communal vehicle.

There were no guards at the main entrance; or, to be more accurate, no one who challenged her as she made her way under the wide arches of the House’s central building. House Lazarus prided itself on welcoming anyone in need, though that didn’t mean anyone could go wherever they wanted within the House. The relaxed attitude hid powerful defenses. Every House was a fortress guarded by spells and men. They had to be; otherwise they wouldn’t last long in the city.

The lower floor of House Lazarus was a wide, airy hall. The founder, Eugénie, had wished for it to be a place of sharing where the entire House could congregate, Fallen and mortals alike. In design it somewhat resembled the nearby Saint-Lazare station: a series of metal arches supporting a low roof, and long trestle tables where the rails would have been — each table divided in several segments where people dispensed anything from food to medical help. It was the heart of House Lazarus’s network of safe houses, the place everyone received their supplies or their attribution of beds or rooms, according to their needs. Philippe, apparently, had gone through there, too, which was unexpected; and even more unexpected was that he knew Claire. What was their relationship, exactly?

The queues were as busy as ever — watched over by what seemed like an army of guards. As Madeleine made her way to the right — where stairs led to the more private part of the building — there was a commotion — a scuffle, a burst of magic, and a brief scream, soon cut off. Someone had tried to cut ahead, or to steal something; and now lay dead on the floor. Claire ran a tight House, where there was no place for disorder.

Madeleine approached the guards leaning casually against the metal pillars — they tensed, slightly, when they saw her. “I’m from House Silverspires, and I need to see Lady Claire,” Madeleine said, without preamble. Diplomacy had never been her forte, and she wasn’t about to try it now.

The left-hand guard looked her up and down. He had opened his mouth for a dismissal, when his neighbor nudged him. “She’s their alchemist, Eric. Don’t you think—”

Eric bit back an obvious swearword, and gestured her toward the foot of the staircase. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll send someone for Lady Claire. But she’s busy, mind you — and I’m sure she has no time for the likes of you, alchemist or no alchemist.”

Madeleine sat down on the first step, clutching her bag. It was silly, but the weight of familiar tools reassured her. Going to another House was very much entering enemy territory, even if House Lazarus was friendly by House standards.

She tried not to think of Oris — of his face, shrunken and distorted in death; of her hands, saving flesh and nails and blood; parting skin to reveal red, glistening muscles underneath, peeling back everything that had made him — and nowhere could she see his smile, or his infuriating habit of hovering nearby, or the way he’d had of taking tea in the laboratory, drinking the dust-covered liquid as if nothing were amiss….

She would not cry. She had spent all her tears on Elphon, a long time ago; had crawled away from Hawthorn, her wounds weeping blood. All her grieving was done, a thing of the past — or should have been of the past.

Oh, Oris…

Now, when Madeleine looked up in her laboratory, she saw Isabelle; reaching for a bowl or a mirror with a frown on her face; carrying a precariously balanced pile of books from one end of the room to the other — trying to put order in Madeleine’s things, she’d said with a smile.

She meant well, and yet Madeleine wanted to scream at her; to shake her until she understood whose place she was taking, whose memories she was driving out. It was unfair and unkind, but she couldn’t help it.

The walls of the staircase had been painted with a long frieze, which seemed to depict the history of the House from its founding. It was a short history, as Lazarus was barely older than the Great War, and a painful one — Eugénie had died in one of the first skirmishes, almost causing the House to vanish before it could even find its place in the hierarchy of the city. But Claire and her predecessor had worked miracles.

“Miss d’Aubin?”

Madeleine got up, staring at a young girl dressed in the brown and green of the House. “Lady Claire will see you now.”

She’d expected Claire to receive her in her salon; in rooms that would show her exquisite taste, making it clear that she might be younger than Fallen, but that she still knew exactly how to impress her visitors.

But instead, her guide took her downward, into the bowels of the House, into a maze of unadorned, identical concrete corridors, their walls shining with moisture; the weight of the entire House seemed to be pressing down on her. Damn it, she hated enclosed spaces, and modern enclosed spaces even more.

The corridors narrowed; the doors became thicker and thicker — and the noises that filtered from within became moans and cries and screams — petering out into utter silence. The cells, where those who had displeased Claire awaited her pleasure — and she doubted Claire was ever pleased. It was easy, in the light of day, to forget that Claire was ruthless; that it took ten, fifteen times the cruelty of a Fallen to run one of the greatest Houses in Paris when one was mortal.

Madeleine kept her bag against her, trying not to show the emotions on her face — by her side, the young girl did her the courtesy of not saying anything; though she had little doubt everything would be reported to Claire, eventually.

The silence grew and grew — and there was a faint smell of blood, like a charnel house, filtering through the doors — and then nothing, which was scarier than anything she’d seen or heard before. Finally they reached a door of rusted metal, and her guide gestured for her to enter. “Are you sure?” Madeleine asked, and the girl nodded.

Inside, it was dark; the only illumination coming from an exposed bulb in the center of the room, which cast wavering shadows on the walls. The back wall was occupied by a series of square drawers; and, suddenly, Madeleine knew exactly what she was staring at. “The morgue?” she asked, aloud.

“Good.” Claire’s voice came from behind her — she hadn’t expected that, and almost jumped out of her skin when the other woman spoke up. “You’re fast on the uptake. But then, you always were.”

“What the blazes was that for?” Madeleine asked. “Love of drama?”

“Partly.” Claire came into view. She wore a grubby lab overall, over a knitted woolen jacket. Behind her was a Fallen in the same kind of overall, carrying a clipboard. “I wasn’t expecting you here, Madeleine.”

Madeleine shivered. She shouldn’t even be there; Selene’s warning was all too present in her mind. “When we last met, you dropped some cryptic warnings.”

Claire smiled, though the look didn’t reach her eyes. “Cryptic? I thought I was being very clear.”

“You wanted us to tell Selene about your murders,” Madeleine said, remembering what Philippe had said. “Why?”

“Why? Why are you here, Madeleine?”

“Because I need to know more about your corpses.”

“Someone died at Silverspires,” Claire said. She put both hands on the wooden table in the center of the room, leaning on it as if she could drive it into the floor. “A Fallen, by all accounts.” Her face darkened, slightly. “I’m sorry for your loss. I genuinely am. But I hoped someone would follow through on my warnings. I didn’t think it was going to take a death before that happened.”

“Oris died a handful of minutes after you gave your warning,” Madeleine said. “Even if we’d heeded your warning, there was no time.”

Claire’s face darkened; she looked genuinely angry. “I am not responsible for his death. I couldn’t possibly have known when it would occur, or even that it was going to occur at all. Can you believe me?”

She wasn’t sorry. Madeleine didn’t think Claire would grieve for anything or anyone that didn’t concern her. But her anger seemed genuine.

“You know something,” Madeleine said.

“No more than what I pick up.” Claire smiled. “But sometimes, it’s enough. Come here, Madeleine. Let me show you what we gather on the streets.”

The box at the end of the morgue opened up with barely a noise, sliding on oiled rails; showing the face of the corpse inside, his eyes staring listlessly at the ceiling. For some incongruous reason, Madeleine found herself thinking of dead fish at the market: he had been kept on ice, but for so long that decay had settled in, bloating the shapes before her until he hardly seemed human anymore. Not that it would have mattered: she was used to corpses, so much that they were now like old friends, and she flirted close enough to death that it held no fear anymore — save that of the Resurrection, when she would have to face God and number her many sins. Pride. Despair. The vanity of second-guessing God’s plans for the Fallen, raging at their unfair abandonment.

The face… The face, bloated and decayed almost past recognition.

She knew that face. She’d seen that man — she foundered, for a moment, struggling to recall his name. Théodore. Théodore Ganimard. She’d seen him in passing, going in and out of Selene’s office at odd hours — part of the network of spies and informants that kept Selene apprised of what was going on in the city: Madeleine knew most of them — a side effect of being up at odd hours herself.

Claire laid something by the body’s side, negligently. “He had this on him.”

It was a heavy, polished disk of wood: a minor artifact, used for tracking down whoever bore it; except that on the wood’s surface were engraved the arms of Silverspires: the sword of Morningstar against the silhouetted spires of Notre-Dame. Madeleine had one exactly like it in her trouser pocket. “A tracker disk,” she said numbly. Once, it would have pulsed to the rhythm of magic, but the wood was blackened and charred; and the magic quite gone from it.

“They are given to dependents of Silverspires.” Claire’s face hadn’t moved.

“He…” He was dead with the disk on him, and it didn’t matter anymore whether Claire knew. “He was one of our informants.”

Claire nodded. “I thought so.” Behind her, the assistant made a note on the clipboard — his broad face creased in thought.

On the marbled skin of the corpse were the same marks she’d seen on Oris’s forearms: the perfect circle with a sharper wound in the center. They’d have been smudged with blood once, but now that everything had been cleaned, nothing was left but the imprint of the wound. Fangs, Aragon had said. Snakebites. But no snake had just one fang — and why strike someone repeatedly?

She foraged in her bag by touch; found a sealed mirror, and undid the clasp while keeping her eyes on the corpse’s face. The angel breath was like fire in her nostrils; descending into her wasted lungs and wringing them from the inside out — she was bent over, gagging and coughing with the strength of it, already longing for something else the mirror couldn’t provide, for the sheer potency of angel essence….

She looked up through eyes streaming with tears. The corpse in front of her was shining. There was no other word. Every wound was outlined in a thin, scattered radiance: not the furious blaze of infant Fallen, or even the stately glow of mature ones like Selene and Emmanuelle, but faint and faded like glow worms. “Magic?” she asked. “This was done by a spell?”

Claire, who had been watching her in silence, shook her head. In Madeleine’s new sight, she shone, or rather, the space between her breasts did. An artifact within a locket, hidden under her clothes; not a surprise, for the mortal head of a House.

Madeleine whispered the words of a spell, willing the magic to show her how they had died. Nothing happened. For a moment she feared she’d cast the wrong thing; and then the corpse lit up like a bonfire, washing the entire room in radiance. Claire cried out, and then there was darkness again, shot through with painful afterimages.

“Magic killed him,” she said, slowly, hoarsely, forcing the words through what felt like a mouthful of burning sand. “Like being burned. A blast of Fallen power so strong it stripped him bare.” And blasted the tracker disk, too, rendering it unusable. The human body wasn’t meant to hold Fallen magic; in the long run, people who absorbed too much angel — or too much angel essence, or both — died.

Claire said nothing.

“The Fallen who died in Silverspires—” Madeleine said, the words torn out of her mouth before she could think them through. “—he died when his magic was taken away from him.”

Claire nodded. She didn’t seem surprised. She reached out, and gently folded the sheet back over the corpse. “You’ll want to see the others, too,” she said.

She opened another drawer: a woman, with the same dead eyes staring upward at Madeleine, filmed over by the haze of death; the same mysterious circle wounds.

Madeleine knew her, too. Hortense Archignat, another of Selene’s informants.

Gritting her teeth, Madeleine whispered the words of the spell again, bracing herself — and felt the same blaze of magic spreading from the wounds, incinerating the internal organs and then dying down to that sickly glow.

“Something…” She breathed in, willing her heart to stop hammering against her chest. “Something that kills. Humans, by overwhelming them with magic until their bodies shut down. Fallen—”

“With the reverse,” Claire said. She threw something on the body, negligently — but of course she never did anything negligently. “She had this on her.”

Another tracker disk — Madeleine reached out, expecting to see the arms of Silverspires, but the engraving on it was a hawthorn tree circled with a crown. “Hawthorn,” she said. Some informants made ends meet by working for several Houses, and Hortense Archignat must have been one of them. The heads of Houses might not like this state of affairs — or trust them with their secrets — but they were pragmatic enough to make use of what tools they had. “I don’t understand—” she said, hoping to hide her confusion.

Claire looked at her, her gaze as sharp as spears, but said nothing. Instead, she gestured, and her assistant opened another drawer.

“He was homeless,” she said, as the third body slid into view. “Slept in the ruins of Saint-Eustache. He died in the wreck of Les Halles.”

Jean-Philippe d’Hergemont — his family, minor nobility, had been ruined during the Great War. Madeleine remembered chatting with him; giving him a charged mirror on Selene’s orders. He’d carried one of the loaves from the kitchens, awkwardly balancing it in arms full of the old clothes Choérine had pressed onto him.

Another of Selene’s informants.

“He didn’t have a tracker disk,” Claire said. She was still watching Madeleine, and Madeleine struggled not to show her rising anxiety. Someone was killing Silverspires informants. Someone was…

She couldn’t afford to show weakness. She couldn’t afford to reveal said weakness to Claire — Selene would have her head, not to mention the disastrous effect this would have on the House.

She took a deep, trembling breath; hiding her confusion beneath a forced cough. One good thing about having wrecked lungs was that she could fake one quite easily. “He died like the others, didn’t he?”

“Of course,” Claire said. She smiled, like a grandmother amused by one of her grandchildren’s tricks; except there was no warmth in the look whatsoever. “Look at the next one, will you?”

Madeleine braced herself — tried to prevent her hands from clenching, aware all the while that Claire probably read her like an open book. But she had to try. If there was a chance, any chance, she could hide how flustered she was — what she knew, the secrets she couldn’t afford to share…

The next corpse was a man again, much younger and with an arm missing — and she knew him, too. Jacques Rossigny, one of the ravagers on the banks of the Seine, living off what he scavenged from the angry river; and on his work as informant to Silverspires.

By now Claire’s smile was as sharp as that of a tiger sighting its prey — filling Madeleine’s entire field of view, quenching the breath in her lungs.

“I don’t know him,” she said, forcing the words out between clenched lips.

Claire’s gaze didn’t waver; but she didn’t produce a tracker disk, or anything that looked as though it might bite. Her smile abated a fraction, but it didn’t make her less worrisome. What was she up to? How much did she know?

“Here’s the last one,” Claire said, as her assistant opened the last drawer.

And the last… the last was an older woman; a Senegalese-French, Marie-Céleste Ndiaye, the owner of a bookshop in the southwest, near Hawthorn — who usually came in toward the end of the night, carrying one or two tattered books as if they were treasures.

Claire didn’t bother to throw the tracker disk this time; she merely handed it to Madeleine. “Harrier. Infused with Guy’s rather distinctive brand of magic,” she said, casually. “Do you see, now?”

“No,” Madeleine said, reflexively. Five dead. Five of Selene’s informants, their identities unknown to anyone but the Houses who employed them. It couldn’t be a coincidence; but only someone from Silverspires should have known the identity of all five.

Claire’s voice was thoughtful. “One of these is a dependent of yours. I assume Selene knows he’s dead by now, but not the circumstances in which he died.”

“The others belong to other Houses,” Madeleine said; the words a reflex, driven out of her before she could think. Of course House Silverspires was the target. Of course the corpses were all theirs — from the five in Claire’s morgue to poor Oris. “And you could have sent a message.”

“Perhaps I should have.” Claire was silent for a while. At length, she picked up the tracker disks, one by one. “It’s a fragile city. A careful balance of magic, to protect all against a resurgence of the Great Houses War, and all of us seeking to change it, to grasp what advantage we can. We wouldn’t fight the war again, of course; but if we can have a chance, even a small chance, of making others tumble down — if we can humble down our rivals, even our allies… we would seize this opportunity in a heartbeat, and never even look back.”

“I’m not interested in your games.”

“I know. What a pity. You’ll find, I think, that you need to play to survive, Madeleine; that you can’t go through life enamored of your artifacts and mirrors and scraping of bones.” Her voice was sharp, mocking — Madeleine froze at the reference to bones, but Claire couldn’t possibly know about the essence — couldn’t… No, she was going on, not touching on it again…. She couldn’t possibly know.

“If you don’t take control of your own life, other people will do it for you — with far less kindness and far less compassion than you would expect or deserve. The Houses shape Paris, and there is very little that isn’t caught in their nets. To attack them all… would be sheer folly.” A clink of wood against wood, as Claire played with the charred tracker disk; and the noise of the drawer as she closed it, gently leaning against it.

Madeleine struggled to see things the way Claire did — dead informants belonging to different Houses, killed by a spell no one had seen the like of. “Someone has found a way to power,” she said, slowly, lightly. The room felt too small, the air tightening around her as if it were going to crush her against the floor.

“Of course,” Claire said. “They always do, in this city. As I said — we all hunger for power; for what we grasp to haul ourselves to the top of the hierarchy, even if it’s just to crow over the ruins.”

“Silverspires doesn’t crave power at all costs.”

Claire smiled. Something was wrong. Something… “You don’t know much about what Silverspires does and does not do, do you? I imagine Selene finds it wiser to keep you in the dark.”

As she’d done, insisting Madeleine shouldn’t come here, but she’d been right — Madeleine shouldn’t have left all her protections behind — shouldn’t be here, trying to spar with Claire, who had so many more years of experience at this than her. Was Claire trying to rile her up? Madeleine didn’t have much pride to speak of. “Do you think I’m unhappy being kept away from the limelight? I’m not. To each her role.”

“Oh, Madeleine.” Claire’s voice was almost sad. “To each his or her place, and let no one question it? You are worth more than this.”

Something was wrong. Claire would never give her compliments unless there was something she needed from her. Something…

And then, with a lurch in her belly that seemed to turn the entire world upside down, Madeleine realized that there were only the two of them in the room. The assistant was gone — when had he left? She hadn’t paid much attention, engrossed by the corpses and what Claire was saying. A mistake. It could all have been innocent — a minor Fallen, gone because Claire had no more need of him.

Except… Except Claire had been stalling for time, hadn’t she — that rambling, lengthy tirade on power within the city, making small talk in a place where there should have been no need of it?

The assistant was gone, and no doubt he had carried a message — to whom, and what for?

She — she needed to get back to Silverspires. She needed to warn Selene; and she needed to warn her now.

“I need to go,” she said. “Thank you for showing me your dead. I’ll tell Selene to keep an eye out; I’m sure she’ll appreciate the attention.” She was babbling by now; utterly incoherent, her fear and worry all too visible, broadcast like a foghorn on a calm sea.

“So soon?” Claire hadn’t moved from where she stood, with her arms crossed on her chest, and that same satisfied smile on her face.

Keep calm. She needed to keep calm. She needed to… breathe, but the breath wouldn’t come to her clogged, wasted lungs. “You wanted me to warn Selene.”

“Perhaps I did.” Claire smiled. “Or perhaps I didn’t.”

No. Madeleine saw, suddenly, with painful clarity, that it had never been the point. Claire had wanted something from her; and she’d had it.

“If I were unable to read people, I wouldn’t have got to where I was,” Claire said, softly — with that same smile that Madeleine suddenly wanted to smash from her face. “And you’re so easy to read, Madeleine. Like a child.”

“You—” Madeleine shook her head. Nausea in her throat, sharp and acrid; the room seeming to compress around her — all the thoughts she was desperately trying to keep from showing on her face, in her voice. “You can’t—”

“Thank you. It was a pleasure to entertain you here, Madeleine,” Claire said; and her face seemed to fill the entire room, her voice like knives driven, again and again, into Madeleine’s ears until it was all she could do to keep upright.

She ran, then — tottering straight for the door of the cell with the memory of Claire’s thoughtful, smiling face indelibly etched in her mind — through the maze of corridors with barely any idea of where she was going, struggling to remember the way they had come — turning back once, twice, with the moans from the cells in her ear — panic rising, the breath rattling in her lungs, every false start, every wrong turn keeping her away from going back to the House in time; from warning Selene from whatever was going to happen….

Too late. Too late.

* * *

SELENE was in her office, trying to sort out her paperwork. She was worried, though she’d said little to anyone but Emmanuelle: something was happening with her informants.

Like every House, Silverspires had a loose network of spies and informants, ranging from dependents to more punctual services. They reported infrequently to Selene; sometimes a week elapsed before she heard from them.

One day before the Great Market, she’d lost Théodore Ganimard. She’d sent Javier to investigate, but the body was gone and the tracker disk unresponsive. It hadn’t been a surprise, per se — bodies and enspelled artifacts were valuable commodities in a wasted city — frustrating that she should be unable to take better care of her dependents, but business as usual in a dangerous environment.

Now, though, in the wake of Oris’s death…

The previous night, Hortense Archignat and Jean-Philippe d’Hergemont had failed to report in. Neither had been proper dependents, and Hortense had worked for Hawthorn in addition to Silverspires. There had been no warning from either of them, but Selene hadn’t expected one.

Being an informant was dangerous, and not an occupation for a long, happy life. But three in three days was too many. Something was up.

Selene finished tidying up her paperwork, and was considering sending for Javier — when a knock at the door made her look up.

It was him. “That was quick,” Selene said; but then she saw Javier looked pale and ill at ease in his clerical clothes. “What is going on?”

“Selene, there are people here—”

And she had other things on her mind. “I said I didn’t want to be disturbed,” Selene snapped. “Tell them to come back later.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be possible,” a voice said behind Javier.

It was low, and cultured; and its owner leaned against the doorjamb with the ease of someone checking out a home for purchase, his arms crossed over the gray and silver of his elegant jacket. Selene’s heart sank in her chest.

“Asmodeus. That is an unexpected surprise.” Unexpected, and wholly unpleasant.

The head of House Hawthorn bowed to her, his top hat in his hand; though there was nothing of submission or respect in that gesture.

“Did you come here alone?” she asked.

“Hardly. My delegation is waiting in the antechamber. I thought it best our business remained private.”

“I didn’t know we had business,” Selene said. And she had little wish to stay with him any longer than she should have. Asmodeus was a thug; he’d had the ruthlessness to cut himself a bloody path to the supreme position in his House, but that hardly made him respectable material.

“We do.” Asmodeus turned to Javier, who was still standing, petrified, in the doorframe. “Run along, little man. This is business for the powerful.”

Javier went pale. He glanced to Selene, who shook her head. Thankfully, Javier got the message and left, though he looked as though he’d swallowed rotten meat.

Selene said, “Now that you’ve finished being unpleasant…”

Asmodeus gently closed the door. Now it was just the two of them, and he made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t quite pinpoint. He had the smooth, ageless beauty of Fallen: bright eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses; and thin, long fingers that seemed to belong to some kind of insect rather than a former angel. “There are rumors, Selene.”

“Rumors?”

“About deaths.” Asmodeus smiled. He came forward to lean on her desk with both hands, entirely too close to her; his perfume of orange blossom and bergamot thrust into her nostrils like the tip of a blunt knife — acrid and suffocating.

Oris. Théodore Ganimard, perhaps. Selene kept her face smooth, expressionless. How she ached to throw him out of her rooms, but he was too important for her to afford this misstep. “Deaths are nothing unusual.”

“Six deaths,” Asmodeus said. “Five humans, one Fallen.”

“And?” She was primed by Claire’s message, as relayed by Madeleine at the autopsy — but Madeleine, disastrously untrained in House politics, had probably not paid enough attention to every nuance of Claire’s words. Now Selene felt like a fish out of water, but she wasn’t about to reveal that to Asmodeus. “This is hardly a city without casualties, especially considering what we’re reduced to today.”

“The rumors, Selene, are that Silverspires is linked to those deaths.”

“I fail to see—”

“Théodore Ganimard,” Asmodeus said. “Jacques Rossigny. Yours, weren’t they?”

Théodore was dead. Jacques wasn’t due to report for another four days.

Selene kept her face perfectly still; her hands remained open on the desk, her entire body at rest. “I fail to see what you’re talking about.”

“Then you should get better informants.” Asmodeus’s smile was sharp, wounding. “They’re both dead. And before you ask — no. I didn’t kill them.”

“You said five human dead,” Selene said, slowly, carefully. “You didn’t name the others.”

Asmodeus smiled. “I didn’t, did I?” He raised a hand to forestall her when she opened her mouth. “You will ask why this matters. One of the other six — Hortense Archignat — was my dependent.” His smile opened yet wider. “And one does not casually hurt that which belongs to Hawthorn.”

No, one didn’t. She had to grant him that; he might be utterly ruthless, but anyone who pledged and kept fealty with him knew that Asmodeus was behind them, no matter what happened — he would fight tooth and claw for their well-being. It was the others — those in Hawthorn’s path — who feared him. “I haven’t committed any murders. Or ordered any committed. I’ve lost people, among them a Fallen.” Oris. Scatterbrained, gentle Oris, who had been meant for other times, for other places than postwar Paris. “What makes you think Silverspires is behind this? And where do these rumors come from?”

She didn’t expect him to answer that one; so she was surprised when he said, “I came alone, but I’m not on my own. I have Harrier and Lazarus behind me.”

Lazarus, untrustworthy and slippery as always. “Claire put you up to this?”

Asmodeus shook his head. “She was very… convincing, shall we say?”

She was going to have Claire’s head before the week was over. “Convincing about what?” These were dependents. Murders that would require an accounting. Houses vied with one another for power, but there had always been an unspoken truce between them: private feuds were acceptable, and so were murders, if they couldn’t be traced back to a House. If they could, though… “What do you want, Asmodeus? Compensation for them? I already told you: I’m not responsible.”

“I want your assurance that this will cease. Let me give you the other names, Selene. Jean-Philippe d’Hergemont, Marie-Céleste Ndiaye.” He watched her; watched her face. Selene wasn’t about to give him any hint of her shock.

They were all hers. Shared with other Houses, sometimes, but all linked to Silverspires. She weighed the cost of admitting to that, against that of being thought guilty of the murder of dependents by three different Houses. It wasn’t a hard decision to make.

“Fine,” Selene said. “You want to hear me admit it, don’t you? They’re all mine. They all report to me. Or reported, since they appear to be quite dead. If anyone is owed compensation, I am.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Asmodeus said. “You could have—”

“Decided to clean house among my own informants? Be serious, Asmodeus.” She was — in deadly earnest, even if he was not. Someone knew exactly who her informants were, and had been killing them over the space of days. This was no joke.

Asmodeus smiled. “There are precedents, as you well know. Your House… has cleansed its own informers before. Those insufficiently loyal for your master’s taste.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Selene said, sharply. “We wouldn’t do this in our current situation.” They were small and diminished, and not about to turn on one another just for amusement.

Asmodeus looked at her for a while. “Perhaps you wouldn’t,” he said, and it was like a slap in the face.

“If you’re not behind this, you appear singularly inefficient at dealing with it. Again, you forget. You might be the common link, but other Houses are involved. I’m not losing another informant or a dependent because you can’t keep track of what is yours, and neither are Harrier and Lazarus.”

That stung. “We’re not powerless.”

“No, but you’re hardly… powerful.” His arms spread out, encompassing her office: the faded wallpaper; the mold on the stones, the single, flickering magical light above her. “You were once at the top of the hierarchy of power, weren’t you?”

As if she needed more reminders of what they’d lost.

“Why are you here, Asmodeus? To insult me?” He had two other Houses behind him, and that made him dangerous.

“Of course I’m not.” Asmodeus bent over her, blowing the pungent, sickening smell of flowers into her mouth. “You say you’re not responsible. You say you want it to stop. Fine. Then let us come here and help you investigate.”

“You want a conclave? You’re insane.” There had been one conclave of the major Houses, in days gone by. By the end of it, five people had died; every House had retreated, licking its wounds and vowing revenge on every other House; and the Great War had begun, swallowing everyone and everything in its maw.

“No,” Asmodeus said. “Pragmatic. It has to be one of the other Houses. With us all gathered in the same place, we’ll find out who is behind this.”

“It could be a rogue. Someone unaffiliated with anyone,” Selene said. Why did she think of Philippe, suddenly? It was absurd; the young man couldn’t be responsible for six deaths, and he hadn’t been there at Oris’s death. And yet… and yet, so much untapped power…

“No rogue has the power to do this,” Asmodeus said. “But fine; let us say it’s a rogue. Then every House will need to ally with each other to put him down.”

As if that would ever happen. “You mistake your desires for realities.”

“Desires?” Asmodeus shrugged. “I have no desire to ally with any other House. In an ideal world, Hawthorn would reign supreme, and every House would be our vassal.”

“You didn’t used to be that ambitious.”

“Don’t presume to know me.” He put his hand, almost gently, over hers; touched her on each finger as if playing some secret instrument. Bile rose in her throat.

“You go too far,” she said, withdrawing her hand.

“Or not far enough.” He moved away from her desk, and leaned against the wall, watching her: a predator through and through, a shark or a tiger or something more unpleasant still, lurking in the murk and fog, oozing out only to destroy others. “What do you say, Selene? Shall we have a conclave in Silverspires?”

She had little choice. She could have said no; which was the equivalent of admitting guilt; or worse, weakness — that the House wasn’t strong enough, not protected enough to welcome other Houses on its grounds, and to withstand their scrutiny. “It can’t end well,” she said. “You know this, Asmodeus.”

His smile was all sharp, pointed teeth. “You mistake me. Who says I want this to end well?”

* * *

WHEN Madeleine, out of breath after running from the omnibus stop, finally reached Selene’s office, she found Father Javier in the antechamber, his face dark. “You might not want to come in—” he said, but she’d already pushed past him.

Selene rose from behind her desk when she saw Madeleine. “I have other worries at the moment,” she said, and then she must have seen Madeleine’s face. “What is it?”

“We’re under attack,” Madeleine said; and in the cold, unfriendly silence that followed, told the entire tale of her expedition to Lazarus, and what she had learned.

When she was done, she looked up. Selene hadn’t moved, and her face had not changed expressions. If anything, it was even colder. “You’re late,” she said. “And you disobeyed my express orders that you weren’t to go to Lazarus.”

That was all — all she had to say? After the information that Madeleine had brought her? After she’d ventured into enemy territory on her own with only trinkets for protection — after she’d spent ages examining corpses in a dark, dank basement with the head of a rival House — all Selene could think of was whether she’d followed orders? The arrogance of it, the casual anger…

“I don’t understand—” she said, because the other words would have damned her.

“You don’t have to understand,” Selene said. She pulled her chair, and sat, staring at the papers on her desk — looking, for a bare moment, disoriented and panicked, an odd, disturbing expression Madeleine had never seen on her face. Then she looked up again; and the familiar cool, arrogant mask was back on. “You missed Asmodeus.”

Madeleine took a deep, burning breath. So that was why Javier had been so agitated, and with reason. The thought of him so close to her… She willed her heart to stop beating madly against her chest. She was safe here in Silverspires. She would be protected against him and anything he could think of. “What did he want?”

Selene’s lips contracted; a rictus rather than a smile. “A conclave,” she said. “Considering that the six deaths are linked to us, he thinks he can help us find out who did it. Or help us fall further. Or both.”

A conclave. Every child in the city knew what a conclave meant, and how the previous one had ended — too many people with magical powers, too much pent-up rage and too many grievances. The Houses hadn’t meant to start a war; they’d just thought to use the opportunity to weaken a few rivals — except that the wrong people had died, compensation had been judged inadequate; and the fragile peace of the city had fractured into magical duels and assassinations that soon escalated into ranged battles and large-scale destruction spells.

A conclave wasn’t safe, by any stretch of the imagination. “How—” Madeleine stilled the trembling of her hands. “How bad is it?”

“As you said — we’re under attack.” Selene’s smile was mirthless. “By another House.”

“But you’ll have all the other Houses coming here….”

“Among which might well be the culprit. Yes. We’re invaded, and quite possibly compromised.” Selene didn’t move.

“Do you…” Madeleine hesitated. Selene’s wrath appeared to have abated, or to not be directed at her any longer. “Do you know who is behind it?”

Selene pushed her chair away from the desk. “No. The Houses forcing my hand for the conclave are Harrier, Hawthorn, and Lazarus, and it’s obvious that Claire is working in concert with Asmodeus. She got you where she wanted: to confirm that the bodies were all linked to us.”

Madeleine flushed. “I didn’t mean—”

“That’s why you weren’t to go into Lazarus,” Selene said, but without anger. In a way, that made it worse. “You’re an open book, and you know many of the secrets of the House. Dealing with Claire requires diplomacy and politics, neither of which you have mastered.”

Madeleine was silent for a while, and then thought of the shadow that had stalked Oris. It could have been a hallucination; it could have been induced by the angel essence — but the situation was desperate. On the off chance that it turned out to be of use, she owed it to Oris, if nothing else, to mention it. “There’s something else I haven’t told you,” she said.

Selene didn’t even blink. “Out with it.”

“Oris… saw something, sometime before he died. Two weeks, three weeks maybe? He came to me one night and said — there was a shadow in his room.”

“A shadow.” Selene clearly didn’t seem impressed. “Silverspires is full of them.”

Madeleine shivered; remembering what it had felt like to see it; to be touched by it. “It was… like wings unfolding where you can’t see them, but still blotting out the light.”

“And you think it killed him?”

“I don’t know,” Madeleine said. “I tried to look for it, but it didn’t come back, and Oris never mentioned it again. It might be unrelated. We might have been… imagining things.”

“Mmm.” Selene shook her head. “I don’t see how it helps us now.” She rose and came to stand by the window, staring at the spread of the plaza below them. “Anything else?”

Madeleine thought of Elphon, and then clamped the thought before it could show on her face. This could not have any connection to the matter at hand. “No,” she said.

“Good,” Selene said. “Talk about it with Javier, will you? He’ll set up security for the conclave, and it will be good if he can keep an eye out for your shadow.”

She didn’t reproach Madeleine, or consider that the hallucination might have been induced by drugs — she didn’t even ask how Madeleine had tracked the shadow. Probably she assumed Madeleine had used a potent artifact, but she didn’t even reprimand her for the unauthorized use of that.

She was worried. And if Selene was worried, then Madeleine was scared out of her wits.