The House of Shattered Wings

by Aliette de Bodard

  Aragon looked about as uncomfortable as she felt; the swallowtail hung awkwardly on his large frame, and his shoes made ominous squeaking noises as he walked. “I didn’t see Isabelle,” Madeleine said.

  “She’s with Emmanuelle,” Aragon said, pointing ahead. “Shall we?”

  Selene had opened the great ballroom of Silverspires for the occasion, though even the scented candles couldn’t quite disguise the smell of humidity. People in evening wear moved past in a blur of colorful clothes. Madeleine caught a glimpse of Laure and her husband, Gauthier; Alcestis and his lover, Pierre; Asmodeus and Samariel standing together; Claire and her usual escort of children, though for once they seemed to be behaving—and, as Aragon maneuvered to reach the buffet, she saw Elphon, laughing politely at something Father Javier said; and she felt as though someone had dug nails into her heart.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said to Aragon.

  Aragon turned, proffering two canapés. “Of course,” he said.

  “Can the dead come back to life?”

  “You’re asking this of a doctor?” His face was grave. “I’ve seen enough corpses on slabs to know that they won’t get up and walk, except perhaps at the Resurrection we’re all promised.” He believed in God; though his belief was—like that of many Fallen—more doubts and questions than confident, careless faith. “Is this about Oris? I’m sorry he’s dead, but—”

  “No, it’s not that,” Madeleine said. “I’ve seen—I’ve seen someone, Aragon. Someone who should be dead. He walks and talks like you or me, except he doesn’t remember anything.”

  “Hmm. This sounds like a conversation we shouldn’t be having in the middle of a reception,” Aragon said.

  “Here? Everyone is busy finding out who knows what, and who is allied to whom. I don’t think anyone has time to spare for a doctor and an alchemist. And even if they did, it’s hardly secret business.” Unlike the other worry at the back of her mind.

  “There’s a legend in the Far East,” Aragon said. “Tales of rebirth and of a potion of forgetfulness that makes you oblivious to your past lives. You’d have to ask Philippe.” His tone implied, quite clearly, that he didn’t believe in any of it.

  “I don’t want to ask Philippe,” Madeleine said. “I’m asking you.”

  “Then all I can tell you, as a doctor and a Fallen, is that it’s impossible. This person—is he a mortal?”

  “No. A Fallen.”

  Aragon sighed. “No one knows what happens when Fallen die. We’re not exactly in the official texts. Humans get sorted out into Heaven or Hell. We probably do, too.”

  Or perhaps you’re reborn, she thought, chilled. Perhaps God doesn’t want you back in the City, and can’t bring Himself to send you to Hell. Perhaps you keep being incarnated, time and time again, until you get whatever you were supposed to get right.

  But if that was the case; if Fallen could indeed be reborn on Earth, then why Elphon? Why now?

  * * *

  PHILIPPE had not expected to enjoy the evening; and in this at least, he wasn’t disappointed. Emmanuelle, with the help of what seemed like an army of valets, had fitted him into formal clothes: a stiff suit and equally stiff trousers, which had obviously belonged to someone shorter and with much larger shoulders. He was . . . exposed, and not only because his white socks were amply visible below the hem of trousers that were too short.

  He was the only Viet in a sea of white faces: Emmanuelle herself seemed to have vanished, though of course she’d be doing Selene’s bidding, flattering the various players among the Houses, smiling at who needed to be smiled at. It was something he’d done, once, in the Jade Emperor’s Court; smiling at Immortals, gracefully mingling with the newly ascended. Now things were different, and he had no desire to make any kind of effort at indulging his captors.

  He sidled toward the buffet, helping himself to a mouthful of bland food. He missed fish sauce more than he’d thought possible, but here in Paris only an ersatz version of it was available, at a price so expensive he couldn’t afford it anyway. There would be a dinner later, in the ballroom, where Selene had had huge round tables taken out of storage; draped with embroidered cloth and adorned with the best silverware of the House. The seating plan was on a wooden board at the other end of the room: separate tables for the children of course; and then a careful selection of groups that would not give offense to anyone, while still allowing fruitful exchanges. Not that he was interested at the moment; he’d find out soon enough where he was placed, and probably wouldn’t enjoy the dinner any more than he’d enjoyed the cocktail party.

  “You look . . . lost,” a familiar voice said in his ear.

  Philippe looked up, to see Samariel.

  He hadn’t changed—he wore formal clothes in gray and silver with effortless elegance, and his face was creased in that wide, perpetual ironic smile. But, of course, Philippe wasn’t supposed to have met him at all: he was meant to know him distantly perhaps, as one knew the heads of Houses, but that was all.

  “I’m not used to this kind of event,” he said.

  “Indeed.” Samariel inclined his head, gravely. “To be fair, most people here aren’t. The last such conclave—”

  “Was a disaster.”

  Samariel’s lips tightened. “Rather, yes,” he said. “You weren’t there, I take it?”

  “I was brought in . . . afterward,” Philippe said. When the war had gone badly, when the Houses had needed all the bodies they could spare, and had bled their colonies dry to provide soldiers for the slaughter.

  Parasites, all of them; smiling and bowing in their lace clothes from another age; subsisting on blood. For this, Hoang had died, and Ai Linh, and Phuong, and the rest of his unit. The lot of them could go burn in the Christian Hell.

  Except, of course, that it wouldn’t bring back the dead, or free him from this captivity.

  “Count yourself fortunate, then,” Samariel said. He laid a hand on Philippe’s shoulder, casually sliding it down to his wrist; like the last time, his touch was as cool as frost, but there was warmth at its core, slowly rising, burning fire held in a fist of ice. “It’s a shame, really. I was told the view from the Hôtel-Dieu was beautiful, but I was given a room in the Old Wing.”

  “The Hôtel-Dieu is a hospital,” Philippe said, not sure where Samariel wanted to go.

  “A ruin.” Samariel’s voice was grave, but he said nothing more.

  At length, Philippe spoke up, voicing only what was expected of him. “So, where did they put you up?”

  Samariel’s smile was wide and sharp, like broken mirrors. “The North Wing. At the end of the corridor on the ground floor, the first one on your right when you enter from the street.”

  Philippe nodded. “Not such a great view. You should go out more: in Notre-Dame, or around the market plaza.”

  “Oh, indeed.” Samariel’s fingers rested, lightly, on Philippe’s wrist, like the points of claws. “That’s an idea. But at night, I think it best that I stay there, and enjoy what might happen in the House. Silverspires is . . . such an interesting place.” He smiled again, and withdrew his hand; and wandered away as if nothing had happened. But he’d been clear; too clear, in fact—Philippe turned around, unsure if anyone was watching. There was only the usual crowd. A middle-aged woman—Lazarus’s alchemist, Anna, if he recalled correctly—was talking earnestly to a tall, red-haired Fallen from House Harrier, but neither of them appeared to have paid attention to him.

  Where was Isabelle—? No, he didn’t need to worry about her: her presence was a white-hot brand at the back of his neck, the same link that had drawn her to him when he met Samariel for the first time; the awareness that they were bound together even more tightly than he was bound to the House. He found himself walking through the crowd, until he reached a corner of the room; where she stood talking to Claire, a frown on her face.

  Unfair. She w
as no match for Claire.

  Claire was dressed in a low-cut black dress with golden flecks and the outline of a deer: a revealing confection that was meant for a much younger woman, but trust Claire to carry it off. She positively glowed—with a bit of Fallen magic, quite probably, and also with a sharp happiness that made him wary. All the heads of Houses looked like tigers who’d just caught prey—which boded ill for Silverspires.

  He shouldn’t have cared; not about a House that kept him prisoner, a House that he’d agreed to betray. But if Silverspires fell it would be like House Draken all over again: running away in the darkness and clutching his wounds, hunting in the blackened streets of Paris for food and magic and knowing that the Houses held all of it. “Lady Claire,” he said, bowing.

  Claire smiled. “Why, Philippe. How . . . uncharacteristic of you to interfere in another House’s affairs.”

  Still angry at him, then; but he wasn’t surprised.

  Isabelle relaxed a fraction when he appeared, although she threw him a sharp glance that told him she hadn’t forgotten about her threat to inform Selene. The three days she’d given him had passed; he’d waited, fearfully, for Selene to turn up at the door of his room, but nothing had happened. Perhaps she already had told Selene; but if that had been the case, why was he still at liberty, and not imprisoned somewhere under the House?

  “I was asking Isabelle about happenings in Silverspires,” Claire said.

  Isabelle looked ill at ease—Philippe could guess the sort of sharp, pointed questions Claire would make, trying to see what Selene was thinking; where she could gain the advantage. And he wasn’t sure how much Isabelle knew—how much Emmanuelle and the others had told her.

  “I see,” he said. “I didn’t know it was such an interesting topic.”

  “Oh, Philippe. Everyone is talking about Silverspires tonight. And with good reason.” Claire smiled, that self-deprecating expression that made her look like a harmless old lady. It didn’t fool Philippe for one moment. “Wondering what Selene will have thought of to entertain us.” Her gaze wandered through the room, encompassing the faded peonies on the wallpaper; the dull color of the mahogany tables. She didn’t need to say what was on her mind.

  “People died,” Isabelle said sharply. “It’s not entertainment.”

  Claire smiled. “Of course not. Death is a serious matter.”

  Philippe doubted that she meant it. “What do you want, Claire?”

  Claire’s gaze narrowed. “You’ve changed, Philippe. I never thought you’d be quite so . . . domesticated. What do you owe Silverspires?”

  “A roof over his head. Protection,” Isabelle said, in a low but firm voice.

  “Gratitude?” Claire laughed. “That’s for the young and the naive. You’ll learn better in time, I expect.”

  Isabelle, pale and flustered, looked as though she was going to say something. Don’t, Philippe thought. He sought her gaze; locked with it. Go away, he mouthed. At least he was used to fencing with Claire.

  Thankfully, she took the hint. “I . . . have business elsewhere,” she said, and retreated through the crowd—Philippe saw Emmanuelle swoop from the conversation she was in and steer her toward the buffet. Good.

  Now it was just him and Claire, and Claire was smiling widely. “Your pet, Philippe? You didn’t use to be . . . so altruistic.”

  She’d asked him to join the House, seeing him as an asset worth having; even without knowing about his powers, she had seen a sharp, keen mind and the skills that had enabled him to survive on the streets for months. Like Selene, she’d seen him as a puzzle to be cracked; and as with Selene, he had refused her. She had never forgiven him. “She’s my friend,” Philippe said.

  “You didn’t used to have friends, either. Or should I say you were very bad with other people’s overtures?” Claire said. “So powerful, and yet so young and frightened. By the time she masters her own powers, they’ll have diminished so much she won’t be much use. Perhaps that’s the world’s way of making sure Fallen don’t rule us all.”

  “You mean, more than they do now? What part of the city do they not run? Lazarus?” It was unwise to bait her, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Lazarus is their equal,” Claire said. “If anyone is under siege—not, of course, that you’ll care; you never have—it’s you, Philippe.”

  He was going to say something—something smart, something biting—when he looked at her hands—wrinkled and pale, loaded with expensive rings—and the darkness rose within him—a flash of something that tightened in his flesh, until he was staring at Claire’s hands again—some of the same rings, but clearly the hands of a younger woman. She was holding the mirror; the polished pool of obsidian they’d found under the throne, except that the paper around it was brand-new, the ink still glistening in the light of a lamp Philippe couldn’t see . . .

  What?

  Another memory—another vision of the past? Had Claire handled the mirror at some point? She was mortal—no more than sixty, seventy years old, and the hands he’d seen weren’t those of a young woman.

  “You’ve been here before,” Philippe said, slowly, carefully—the vision with the mirror wavering, fading—replaced by something else, a haze that seemed to descend over the room, a thin layer where everything was pristine, everything cast in light . . .

  With all his strength, he willed the vision to go away—he couldn’t afford to let Claire see him distracted, to let her even guess at the enormity of what he was carrying with him.

  “Of course I have been here before,” Claire said. “Heads of Houses do visit other Houses.” Her voice was low, condescending; but she held his gaze—wondering what was happening.

  “The cathedral,” Philippe whispered, trying to ignore the way the entire room seemed to shift.

  All you hold dear will be shattered; all that you built will fall into dust; all that you gathered will be borne away by the storm. . . .

  “What of it?” Claire shrugged. “It’s a lovely place. Well, it used to be—like so many things, it’s fallen into disarray since the war. Selene should clean her House.”

  “Of what?” Philippe asked.

  Claire shook her head. “Of the rot at its heart.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he spat, but he did know. His gaze moved, to encompass the guests on the floor; the little knots of elegant conversation; the sea of colorful dresses and swallow-tailed coats; the expectant faces those of predators awaiting the right time to pounce, everyone gossiping and making careful approaches, trying to see who stood where.

  In his vision, the peonies on the wall were a vivid pink, a color so pure it almost hurt the eyes; the smell wasn’t that of humidity and mold, but the sharp one of new paint; and people in old-fashioned clothes mingled by a buffet much as this one—save that the room was brightly lit, and that he who cast such light was standing by the buffet, raising a jeweled glass to study the wine contained within, with the effortless grace and contained power that made him the center of attention. . . .

  No, not now. Not. Now.

  Philippe closed his eyes. When he opened them again the vision had receded, though a hint of Morningstar’s presence still hung over the room—a reflected, shadowy glory that only drove home how shabby everything had become. Claire was right; they had diminished so much.

  Good. They were his enemies, and he wouldn’t allow himself to forget for even one moment.

  Claire was gone, and he was alone in a slowly widening circle of people. Before anyone could engage him in more inane conversation, he moved toward the buffet, grabbing a cocktail piece at random: something with shrimp imported all the way from Brest or Guérande—the price of this alone would ruin Silverspires more surely than the rival Houses.

  Philippe was about to head over to the seating plan when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something creeping across one of the room
’s huge mirrors. When he turned, there was nothing. Puzzled, he took a few steps; and again something noiselessly slid past, this time in the facets of the empty crystal glasses. Nothing again when he turned; though this time, when he moved again, he was ready for it.

  He didn’t catch anything—just a glimpse out of the corner of his eye, of something flowing like darkest ink, something large and shadowy that spread wings as sharp as knives—and a sense of pressure against his throat, an irrational fear that clogged his chest with shards of ice. What—?

  He’d seen this before—a shadow, passing across the sun; the impression of huge wings over the ruins of the Préfecture—a memory of Samariel lifting his head to stare at the sky, as though it contained more than gray overcast. . . .

  That day, Oris had died.

  Forcing himself to breathe, he moved across the room, bumping into people in his eagerness to keep an eye on mirrors and glass. Every time he moved, the darkness seemed to flow across the room, in empty wineglasses, in mirrors, in spectacles, in diamond pendants and polished silver fob watches; but it disappeared as soon as he tried to focus on it. It was real—rising, searching, sniffing the air like a blind, monstrous worm—something that made the room seem smaller, its air a miasma worse than the polluted clouds near the Seine; something looking for a way in . . .

  He came to with a start. He was staring at the seating plan, his hand frozen over Selene’s name—she was at the largest table with the other heads of Houses, of course, but that wasn’t what mattered. Cautiously, he craned his neck to the left and then to the right: nothing but the glitter of light on wineglasses. The darkness was gone, as if it had never been.

  But it would be back.

  NINE

  A FALLEN’S LAST BREATH

  LATER, after the formal dinner was over, they had coffee and biscuits; and then, in groups of twos and threes, everyone headed for bed. The conclave proper—the assembly between the various delegations, where everyone would scrutinize the inner workings of Silverspires—would not start until the following morning. This was merely its opening salvo; that tense moment before battle was joined, when everyone checked the bullets in their guns and the readiness of their spells, knowing they would see use before long. Philippe was not a dependent of the House, and not privy to whatever had brought them all here; but what he’d gleaned from conversations was that it was serious business, and that several dependents might be taken aside for questioning by the other Houses. He didn’t envy them the company of a dozen overarrogant Fallen and magicians, all trying to ferret out the secrets of the House.