The House of Shattered Wings

by Aliette de Bodard

  “What gifts? I already told you—”

  “Fallen magic isn’t welcome here,” the taller guard said. He hefted his spear; his grip on it was white. “Play your power games above the surface, but don’t bring them here. There has been enough destruction, my lady.”

  “I told you,” Isabelle said, “I’m just here to find a friend, and then I’ll leave.”

  “Your friend enjoys the hospitality of the king.” The guard smiled at that, a not entirely pleasant expression, as if he’d remembered a joke at their expense.

  “So he is here,” Madeleine said, aloud.

  “Of course,” the guard said. “It’s hardly a secret.”

  Isabelle was obviously getting nowhere; not that Madeleine was more gifted in diplomatic matters, but by comparison . . . “Who rules here? The king?”

  The two guards looked at each other, and then back at her. The pearls under their chins pulsed, faintly, to the rhythm of Isabelle’s light. “The king is . . . indisposed.”

  “Then his son,” Madeleine said. “Or his daughter.” She tried to remember the little she knew about Annamite society, but her thoughts slid away from her. Damn this place—she could barely focus here. “A prince? A princess? Take us to them.” She bent toward the guard, letting the magic trapped within her roil to the surface. “Or do you want us to bring the devastation of the surface world your way?” It was a lie, of course; judging by the rank darkness of the waters, and the unhealthy look of the guards, the surface had already intruded. The pollution of the Seine had spread to the underwater kingdom.

  The guards looked at each other again, and then back at Isabelle—who waited with arms crossed on her chest, the water around her getting warmer with every passing moment. The taller one swallowed, a sound that rang like a gunshot underwater; resonating for far longer than it would have on land. “We’ll take you to Princess Ngoc Bich.”

  The palace turned out to be a maze of courtyards with small buildings. Everything was open and airy, the roofs resting on lacquered pillars, and the gardens filled with water lily pools, and a distant music like drums or gongs, moving to the same slow, stately rhythms as the touch on Madeleine’s thoughts. At last, they reached a squatter, larger building; its windows slit faience, drawing elegant characters in a long-forgotten script. They entered it, and found themselves in darkness. Gradually, as they walked forward, Madeleine’s eyes became used to the dim light, and she was able to make out the room.

  It was huge and cavernous; in a palace made of coral and mother-of-pearl, something that seemed to hearken to a more primitive time, its walls carved of black rock, its floor skittering sand instead of square tiles.

  At the center of the room was a throne, raised on steps covered with ceramic tiles: a riot of blue and yellow and other vivid colors, painted in exquisite, alien detail, under a delicate canopy of glass, though there, too, rot clung to the tiles, and unhealthy-looking algae had crept over the painted characters and landscapes. On the throne, a golden statue of a man, seated, dressed in ample robes and looking straight at them. Like the guards, he had a pearl at his throat, and a thin mustache, and a scattering of scales on his cheeks.

  “The Dragon King,” Isabelle whispered.

  There was another, similar dais a bit farther down; still being erected, with workmen carrying in tiles and wooden planks. An artisan was working on a matching throne, carefully laying gilt over the intricate wooden carving. He was doing so under the gaze of a woman, who turned as they came in. “What do we have here?” she asked. She smiled, but it was a thin, joyless thing: a veneer of courtly politeness that ill masked her annoyance.

  “They said they wanted to see you, Your Majesty,” the taller guard said.

  The woman—Ngoc Bich—looked at them, carefully, like a hound or a wolf, wondering how much of a threat they were. “Visitors. It’s not often that we have them.” She wore white makeup, which didn’t cover the places where her skin had flaked off; the bones poking through her flesh were an obscene, polished ivory on a background of vivid red. “Fallen. And”—her gaze rested longer on Madeleine, and she smiled again—“not Fallen, but partaking of their magic. You shouldn’t, you know. It’s a cancer.”

  Madeleine certainly wasn’t about to be lectured by anyone, least of all a dragon princess from some nebulous, unspecified realm that kept grating on her nerves—never mind that they’d stepped into that realm and were at her mercy. “I’m quite all right, thank you.”

  “We’re not.” Ngoc Bich’s hand trailed, encompassed the entirety of the place; the pervasive rot, the workers with their mottled skin; the golden man on his golden throne. “You’d do well to remember it was angel magic that did this.”

  “Precisely.” Isabelle’s smile had the sharpness of a knife. “We’ll be on our way when we have what we want.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Ngoc Bich said. “If you came here following your head of House, you’ll be sadly disappointed. He left some time ago.”

  “We’re not here—” Isabelle started, but Madeleine cut her off.

  “What do you mean?” They’d only had two heads of House, and only one Fallen who had manifested as a man. “Morningstar came here? When?”

  “Some years ago,” Ngoc Bich said. “It’s hard to keep track—time wanders and meanders here, away from the mortal world.” She paused, made a show of remembering—clearly she had no need to do so, even to Madeleine’s untrained eyes. “Twenty years ago.”

  Just before he had vanished for good. “I don’t understand,” Madeleine said. “Why was he here?”

  Ngoc Bich smiled, showing the fangs of a predator. “Because like speaks to like. Power to power. He wanted power like a dying man wants life.”

  “Your power,” Isabelle said, flatly.

  “Anything that would have helped him,” Ngoc Bich said. “There was a ritual he wanted to attempt; something he needed my help for. He wanted to keep his House safe, you see.” She smiled, again—a wholly unpleasant expression.

  “From what?”

  “A threat.”

  The shadows. The ones Philippe had brought into the House. “Shadows? The shadows that kill. What are they?”

  “I don’t know.” Ngoc Bich shrugged. “He left when I couldn’t give him what he wanted. He was going to attempt his spell without my help. I presume it worked—you’re still here. The House is still here.”

  Still here—such a casual assessment, failing to encompass Morningstar’s disappearance; the gentle decline of Silverspires; and the quicker, bloodier deaths of the previous days. “What spell?” Madeleine asked.

  “A beseeching.” Ngoc Bich’s voice was emotionless. “An offering of himself as a burned sacrifice, to safeguard his House and forever be delivered from darkness.”

  None of it made any sense to Madeleine. She was going to ask more, but Isabelle finally lost patience.

  “The past is all well and good, but it doesn’t concern us,” she said to Ngoc Bich. “You know that’s not why we’re here, or what we want.”

  “Which is—?”

  “Philippe. And you know exactly who I mean. Don’t lie.”

  “I have no idea what you mean.” Ngoc Bich turned toward one of the workers, who was dragging a wooden statue of some god with a halberd. “I gave you enough, I feel. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  “I won’t.”

  Madeleine drifted away from the conversation. There was something about the first dais that attracted her gaze, and she wasn’t quite sure what; but the angel magic sang in her veins and in her bones, drawing her irremediably to the golden throne and the figure seated on it.

  It was a good likeness—idealized in the way all statues were; but staring at the broad, open face creased in its enigmatic smile, she could almost get a sense of who he was—no-nonsense, disinclined to be patient or diplomatic, with the sharpness of a razor. So why the dais, and why
the statue? She knew little of Annamite customs, but this looked like a throne room; except were throne rooms meant to be this subdued, this somber? Something was . . . not quite right.

  At the back, behind the dais, was what looked like a secretary of wood inlaid with gold tracings, adorned with two large porcelain vases, and a large three-tiered bronze container with elaborate handles, and a crouching lion at the top of its dome, and two incense sticks in a hollow halfway up the structure. Two bowls held bananas and mangoes, and a candle burned on the right side. An altar, though she didn’t know to what god: there was a red sign with characters over it, but of course Madeleine couldn’t read it.

  Madeleine found herself reaching for the fruit, stopped herself just in time. Instead, she nudged her stolen angel magic to life, willing it to pick up what scraps of meaning it could from the table and from the emotions that had to be roiling in the room.

  There was . . . hope, and love, and awe—and a sense of loss, of grief so powerful it overwhelmed everything else. The red sign over the table—no, not a table; an ancestral altar—the red sign said THE KING OF DRAGONS, THE EMPEROR OF GREAT VIRTUE, ADMIRABLY FILIAL, LONG-LIVED AND PROSPEROUS, ADMIRER OF THE ARTS, DESTINED TO UNIFY THE WARRING PEOPLE, and the fruit and the candles were offerings, so that the soul of the dead might look kindly upon their descendants. She had a vision, for a split moment, of a younger Ngoc Bich bowing before the altar, lighting a stick of incense; saw the tears streaming down her face. Which meant—

  Which meant this wasn’t a throne room.

  It was a mausoleum.

  Which meant—

  Her heart in her throat, Madeleine looked at the second dais; and found, among the artisans, one working on a second red sign, carefully filling in the outline of characters with golden paint. THE PRINCE OF DRAGONS, PHAM VAN MINH KHIET PHILIPPE, ADMIRABLY FILIAL, BLESSED WITH HEALTH AND CONTENTMENT, WHO WAS BORN IN THOI BIEN IN TIMES LONG GONE BY, AND CAME TO US FROM SILVERSPIRES.

  Philippe.

  There was no time. Isabelle was still embroiled in her bitter argument with Ngoc Bich, futilely trying to get her to admit where Philippe was.

  Whereas Madeleine knew.

  She drew her power to her like a mantle, and ran toward the dais.

  SIXTEEN

  THE DRAGON KING

  PHILIPPE woke up in darkness, and remembered the stories about dragon kingdoms.

  There was always a princess in those stories, and an absent king; and a fisherman who found, by mistake, entry into the dominions of dragons; who rescued the princess in her shape as a human or a fish, who performed a service for a beloved general, who threw back a bauble that turned out to be invaluable treasure. The stories were all the same, and they all ended the same way: the fisherman met the princess and was smitten by her unearthly beauty; and married her, ruling by her side as a human consort. In some stories, they came back to land and founded a human dynasty.

  This was not one of those stories.

  He was lying on something dark, and damp—the smell of rot was more pervasive here, wherever they had brought him; and there was another smell, a sharp, unpleasant one that brought tears to his eyes.

  Cave. It smelled like a cave; like the temples of the Five Elements Mountains in Annam, the smell of incense drifting over that of dampness. He tried to rise, but an unbearable pain flared in his wrists and ankles, pulling him back to his bed. It wasn’t rope they had bound him with—spikes, nails?

  He tried to see the khi currents in the room: water, of course, and a hint of wood, but all of it was claimed for. He tried to call some of them to him; to soothe his wounds, to pull the spikes from his limbs; but the currents remained where they were, obstinately pointing leftward, where Ngoc Bich or the dragons were, no doubt. He needed to—he tried to sit up again, but the pain was too much; he didn’t have the guts to pull the things from him, not in his weakened state.

  Within him, the darkness rose. Philippe could guess at the shape of Morningstar, crouched against one of the far walls, ready to impart his fake wisdom, his platitudes about power and its uses—it struck Philippe, suddenly, that his human self might well be older than Morningstar, that all the Fallen’s so-called wisdom might well be nothing more than the fraud of a youngster—a darkly amusing thought, save that it was all so terribly tempting to prolong the vision for a little longer, to feel Morningstar’s terrible, seductive presence, that hunger of a moth for a flame, that easy magic that would reduce his bonds to dust, if only he reached for it. . . .

  He needed to . . . Ancestors, he wasn’t that much of a fool—not a Fallen or one of the magicians, giving in to weaknesses like this—he’d risen to Heaven on abstinence and strength of will, and he could do it again. Just find the place, the perfect place within him where everything was quiet and still; with the pull of water, the memories of blue-misted mountains, the soft rocking of a boat in a river . . .

  “It’s stronger than you,” a voice said, next to him.

  What? Philippe almost backed away; and stopped himself in time, remembering what would happen to his body if he did.

  There was a man, standing by him—no, not a man, a dragon, with green skin and antlers at his temple, and a beard that fell in braids around the pearl under his chin. He looked for all the world like the images of Khong Tu in the temples, though he wore, not court clothes or scholar’s robes, but ceremonial armor. He was, quite unmistakably, dead, with the particular translucency of ghosts.

  Philippe had had enough of ghosts, vengeful or not. “Look,” he said. “Wherever you came from—”

  “I didn’t come from anywhere. I was always here. Or nearly always,” the man said. He reached out, and touched Philippe’s wrists—Philippe couldn’t shift himself out of the way in time. A cold, oppressive feeling stretched from the dragon’s fingers, until the pain had been numbed away. “You’ll forgive me. I’m not what I once was.”

  “You’re—” Philippe looked again at the pearl, at the strength of its radiance; at the headdress with its nine five-clawed dragons. “Why couldn’t I see you before?”

  The man smiled. “Being there doesn’t mean being obvious. There’s . . . value in remaining hidden.”

  “You’re the Dragon King.”

  “The Emperor of Great Virtue,” the king said, forlornly. “There’s an awfully long posthumous name, but I’ll spare you that. Why don’t you use Rong Nghiem Chung Thuy?”

  No. One did not name the dead; especially not dead emperors. “Chung Thoai,” Philippe said, adroitly replacing syllables—it had been such a long time since he had to do this, his brain felt full of cotton. “If you wish.”

  The king smiled. “Chung Thoai, then. And you’re Minh Khiet?”

  “Does everyone here know my name?” Philippe asked, of no one in particular, and the king didn’t answer. There was no need to. “How about what I’m doing here? I’m not—” He stopped then, looking into the darkness. “I’m not dead yet, am I?” The boundaries between life and death were fluid, but surely he’d have known. Surely there would have been servants of the King of Hell coming with a mandate, to take his soul away?

  Chung Thoai shook his head. “No, but you’re close. It’s as I said: it’s stronger than you. Whatever it is you have within you.”

  A dead student’s revenge. A ghost’s last, angry thoughts; the ones that never dissipated. “I don’t want it, or need it,” Philippe said, acutely aware of how childish he sounded. But after all he’d been through, maintaining decorum wasn’t a priority.

  “I know,” Chung Thoai said. “That’s why you’re here. Because my daughter thought I could . . . exorcise it.”

  In all the tales, the Dragon King laid hands on the sick, on the deformed; brought them back to health, cleansed of the injuries evil spirits had caused. “And—?” Philippe asked.

  The king’s gaze was grave. “As I said—it is stronger than you. Stronger than even I, I
fear.”

  * * *

  UNDER the dais. That was where she needed to go—Madeleine resisted the temptation to send everything flying, since there would surely be awkward explanations to give afterward. She held at bay, effortlessly, the guards who tried to stop her, though the angel essence within her was faltering, unused to such demands. Her body would pay for it later, but she was used to it; inured almost.

  Show me.

  There was a passage, under the steps—hidden under three of the colorful tiles. She opened it with a gesture, and ran down—another set of steps, going downward into another vast cave, plunged in darkness.

  At first, she thought the man lying on the stone slab was Philippe; but he was older, and too desiccated to be anything but ancient. She hadn’t thought she could be creeped out by a corpse, whether Fallen or human; but this body wasn’t either. A tightened, pinched face that was almost featureless; a skin of a green like algae; and curved, sharp claws reminiscent of a bird of prey—this was the fluid alienness of Ngoc Bich laid bare; every unfamiliarity heightened until it seemed she was staring at the withered corpse of a monster.

  The Dragon King, the Emperor of Great Virtue. . . .

  God, how she hated this place.

  “Madeleine?”

  There was a second slab, behind the first: judging by its location, it was under the second dais. Philippe lay on it; or rather, was nailed to it with spikes of coral. His face was ashen, and the shadows around him stretched farther than they should have. Madeleine approached warily, remembering the mark on Emmanuelle’s hand. “Give me one good reason why I should free you.”

  “I’m not sure you should,” Philippe said. He said something else, in a language she didn’t recognize—Annamite?—it was clearly not addressed to her. She realized he was completely unaware of her presence.

  The angel magic died abruptly, leaving her weak and shaking, desperately trying to remain standing. Behind her, running steps: the guards, no doubt, coming to drag her away.

  “Wait.”