OLD FRIENDS
THE night had not ended well; and the morning had not started well, either. Selene sat in her office, staring at the papers strewn on them; at the memoirs of journeys in Indochina she’d been reading, back when her only worry had been how to best use Philippe for the good of the House—in hindsight, how much simpler those times had been, such easier moments compared to the tangle that awaited her now.
A tinkle of beads announced Emmanuelle’s arrival from her private quarters. She was holding two coat hangers. One was a long black dress with straps; the other was a swallow-tailed suit with straight trousers. “Which one do you want?” she asked.
Outside the room—in the ballroom, where Father Javier was making them wait—stood the heads of every House, all with the same intent: to hear an explanation for the evening’s events, and to see what concessions they could wring out of her for failing to protect her guests. Damn this stupidity of a conclave, for putting her in that impossible situation. “Did you hear anything from Aragon?”
Emmanuelle grimaced. “Samariel’s alive, but just barely, Selene. Aragon said there was nothing much to be done. Just make him comfortable—”
No miracle, then, but then, why had she thought there would be one? God seldom visited those on Fallen; the thought was so old by now that there was little bitterness left in it. She hadn’t prayed in years, not since she was Isabelle’s age, in fact. “And Philippe?”
“Confined to his rooms,” Emmanuelle said. “In any case, he can’t leave Silverspires. But I highly doubt Philippe would kill Samariel. What possible motive could he have for that?”
Madeleine and Isabelle, now both back in their rooms, had both reported to Selene about seeing the shadows in the laboratory, identifying them beyond doubt as responsible for the killings; and Isabelle had been adamant the original warning had come from Philippe. But it meant nothing—a warning moments before Samariel was attacked was utterly ineffective, and Selene couldn’t decide if that had been deliberate.
“I don’t know,” Selene said. “But he was with Oris, too. In any case, that’s not what’s most important now.”
Two things mattered now, both for the protection of Silverspires. The first, to prevent whatever it was from killing again. She had people searching the House from top to bottom; and Madeleine and Isabelle gathering the strongest artifacts and breath-infused mirrors, distributing them among the dependents of the House—whatever it was that was roaming the corridors, it had killed six people and left another one at the doors of death. Javier was coordinating search parties, trying to see if its lair lay within the House. But all of this would be for nothing if she couldn’t achieve the second thing—to placate the other heads of Houses before they took Silverspires apart as retribution for Samariel’s wounding.
“The Houses?” Emmanuelle asked. She raised her coat hangers again. “Tell me how you want to dress.”
Selene shook her head. “Not like this.” Those were the clothes of the past, the formal evening wear of the days before the war. There was no need to recall any of that today. “Bring me the turquoise dress. And the rest of the ensemble.”
After she was dressed, she looked at herself in the mirror: over the turquoise dress, she’d put on a long, embroidered silk tunic that closed at the neck with a single clasp. The tunic, made in Indochina and traded through Marseilles, was a vivid scarlet, embroidered with birds and plum flowers; and it came with a matching shawl of silk so fine it was almost transparent: like many things, a statement of wealth and power in a ruined world.
As if that would fool anyone but the weakest Houses. . . .
She let the shawl settle in the crooks of her arms, and peered critically at her reflection.
“You look dazzling,” Emmanuelle said.
“Ha,” Selene said. She didn’t feel dazzling; she felt small and frightened. “It’ll have to do.”
Emmanuelle reached out, and put a kiss on Selene’s lips. “You’ll do fine. I’m sure you will.”
She had to; there was no other choice. Squaring her shoulders, Selene went out of her office, to meet the heads of the other Houses.
* * *
THEY were all waiting for her in the ballroom, amid the cadavers of last night’s excesses: the tables lying bare without their magnificent clothes, the empty bottles and the glimmer of shattered glass, the faint smell of food and perfume, their mingling turning vaguely sickening.
Guy of Harrier, portly and his brown hair slick, with red highlights; Andrea, his wife, her dark eyes shining in the paleness of her face. Claire of Lazarus, for once without the posse of children that accompanied her—no, that wasn’t true; there was one with her, a little girl dressed in a formal suit, the vivid blue in sharp contrast to the darkness of her skin. Bernard of Stormgate. Sixtine of Minimes; and a sea of other minor Houses, yapping terriers she hardly paid attention to in normal times—save that even terriers could turn nasty, once they had smelled blood.
Asmodeus, though, wasn’t there. Should she wait for him? He was no doubt at Samariel’s bedside; praying, perhaps, though the idea of the head of Hawthorn praying for anything at all was ludicrous.
One of the faces staring at her—or perhaps all of them; it wasn’t unheard of—was responsible for this. One of them, or several, was working to undermine the House, utterly destroy it. She’d find them; and make sure they couldn’t harm Silverspires anymore.
They were getting restless, all of them; still politely waiting for whatever she had to say—again, amusing to see how courtesy still held sway, even in moments like those, when they hung poised, once again, on the edge of a feud that could lay waste to the city.
“You know why we’re gathered here,” she said. A dozen faces swung to look at her, silent, watching. “There has been . . . an incident.” She raised a hand to forestall the inevitable outcry, and said, infusing her voice with the strongest spells of charm she could conjure, “Lord Samariel is at death’s door. Something attacked him in his bedroom. We’re not quite sure what yet, but rest assured that we’re investigating. Silverspires will not tolerate this breach of the peace.”
“Won’t you?” The speaker was Claire, as impeccable as always. “There have been other deaths, and you haven’t done anything. One might think you remarkably inefficient, or insufficiently motivated, or both.”
Selene went for bluntness. “I don’t take the deaths of dependents lightly, and you know it.”
Claire did not bat an eyelid. “I’d hate to see what you do when you take things lightly, then.”
“It’s abundantly clear that you need our help,” Guy of Harrier said. “With Silverspires’ declining status—”
“We’re not dead yet,” Selene said, more sharply than she’d intended to.
Claire’s thin, self-satisfied smile was more than she could bear. It was because of the three of them—Harrier, Hawthorn, and Lazarus—that she was here now; that she had to defend her House’s failure to protect its guests, to justify why her wards and magical protections had failed to stop whatever roamed the House.
“The young man is involved, isn’t he?” Sixtine of Minimes asked. “The Annamite, the one they found in Samariel’s bedroom.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Guy said. “He’s human, nothing more. How could he do this?”
“He’s human, yes,” Claire said. “It just means he has no innate magic. With the proper artifacts, a bit of angel essence—”
This was too much for Selene. “You know we don’t use angel essence in this House.”
Claire’s gaze was frank, untroubled. “Oh, don’t you?”
She sounded as though she meant something specific, but Selene wasn’t about to let Claire catch her off balance. “I have no interest in your games.” They needed to find the means of murder. Shadows. A dearth of magic, or an excess of it, Madeleine had said; and Aragon had confirmed, once given access to the other bodies Claire had been keeping.
Not that it helped, of course. Neither Selene nor anyone in the House knew of any creature, weapon, or spell that killed that way. She had Emmanuelle digging into the archives; and of course Aragon was examining Samariel right now, trying to find something, anything that would get them out of this mess. Selene said, “If the question is whether a human could have done this—then the answer is yes. Everyone here—human, Fallen—is a suspect.”
There was silence, in the wake of her words. Then, as what she had said sank in, a babble of protestations rising to a deafening pitch: “—surely you don’t mean—” “—this is an outrage—” All things she had expected and counted on. She raised a hand and cast a spell of dampening: a cheap trick, but one that never failed to have its little effect. All sounds around her hand gradually sank to a murmur, in a spreading wave of silence.
“You came here,” she said. “All of you. You forced your way in, claiming you would help us find our attacker, and then you have the audacity to complain when someone else dies. I know you. I know you all—Guy, Claire, Sixtine, Andre, Viollet.” A further shocked hush. She had them now; she had to seize the moment, while they were still cowering in fear, and gazing suspiciously at their neighbors. If she could break their fragile alliances . . . “None of you are above killing to further your plans. None of you would weep if Silverspires paid reparation for your murders, and sank into obscurity.”
Silence spread in the wake of her words. Then someone clapped: slowly, deliberately, the sounds echoing under the stuccoed ceiling of the ballroom, each one as sharp and as penetrating as a bell tolling for funerals.
“Such a pretty speech,” Asmodeus said in a slurred voice. He detached himself from the pillar he had been leaning on; and came forward, toward Selene, blowing the acrid smell of orange blossom and bergamot gone sour into her face. She didn’t flinch. One could not afford to, with Asmodeus.
Once, he’d moved like a sated cat; now his movements were still fluid, but quickened with a manic impatience. He had taken off his horn-rimmed glasses: he held them in one hand, toying with them absentmindedly, except that Asmodeus never did anything absentmindedly. The gaze he turned on Selene was still amused, but underneath it all she could guess at the controlled fury.
“You’re drunk,” she said, coldly. “Go back to where you came from.”
“My lover’s deathbed?” Asmodeus’s smile was terrible to behold, sharp and fractured and incandescent. “Let us speak of Samariel, shall we? Humans expect to die in their beds; Fallen do not. Should not.”
“You know I don’t condone what was done to him,” Selene said. “We are looking into it.”
“You’re investigating? There’s no need for investigation. The culprit was found, surely.”
“Philippe?” Selene forced herself to laugh. Emmanuelle had been right: in the end, she couldn’t be sure what Philippe could and couldn’t do; and among the strange magics he could call on, perhaps one of them had the power to end Fallen lives. “I’m not in the habit of condemning people on hearsay. Unlike you.”
“We’ve gone past hearsay,” Asmodeus said, gravely. He dwarfed her in size; and the power that ran through him limned him in gray light, almost drawing the outline of wings, reminding her of Morningstar at his angriest—when she hadn’t been quick enough with his lessons, or when she had forgotten the wards that kept them all safe. But, compared to Morningstar, Asmodeus was pale and insignificant, a candle to the unclouded sun. She could handle him. “Discovering an attack is not the same as being the attacker. Even so, I’ve had him confined to his room.”
“Like a disobedient child?” Asmodeus laughed. “Not enough.”
Selene stood her ground. After all, she’d had plenty of practice. “Until I find otherwise, that is all I will do. Rest assured that if I find him guilty, nothing in this world will protect him from my vengeance.” She said this with a lightness she didn’t feel; after all, the young man had absorbed one of her strongest spells and emerged unscathed. She very much doubted he would come meekly or quietly.
“Not enough,” Asmodeus said. “Not timely enough. I have taken my precautions already.”
“Precautions?”
“You were always too squeamish, Selene. The House has far better holding facilities than rooms with guards. Confined to his room?” He snorted. “As if that would ever be enough.”
“You—” Selene took in a deep breath, forced herself to speak quietly. “You’ve moved him to the holding cells.” They hadn’t been used in almost twenty-five years—even before Morningstar disappeared, he had been mellowing, and whatever he had been doing down there had ceased. Selene remembered, with icy clarity, going down there to clean them up; finding sharp instruments on which blood had dried like rust; and breathing in the stale odor of body fluids.
“As I said—” Asmodeus smiled. “Your master had many flaws, but he wasn’t squeamish.”
“Neither am I,” Selene said.
“Then prove it to me.”
“This isn’t a contest,” Selene said. But it was, and Asmodeus had won the first round: he had broken her authority in her own House. “And I should think you’ve done enough, haven’t you? Or perhaps you want to hop over to Lazarus, too, and see if you can improve their wallpaper?”
Claire’s head came up sharply, but she said nothing. Nevertheless, even drunk or on whatever drugs he was on, Asmodeus was smart enough to recognize he couldn’t push things much further. “I’ll leave you to it then,” he said, bowing very low.
Yes, leave her to it. As if she had the faintest idea what to do next.
* * *
MADELEINE sat by Samariel’s bedside. She wasn’t sure why, in truth—she’d gone in to talk to Aragon, and the doctor had irascibly wandered off, looking for some instrument or another; and she’d been struck, all of a sudden, by how terribly alone Samariel must be. It was exceedingly foolish: he’d had no need of her while alive and would probably have mocked her at every opportunity, and he was Asmodeus’s lover. By staying there she was making sure that, at some point or another, Asmodeus would wander back in and find her; and then she didn’t know what would happen, when the knot of fear in her belly spread to all her limbs, and she stood in front of Elphon’s murderer, of the Fallen who had turned Hawthorn into a bloodied ruin. The smart thing would have been to get up and slip away while Aragon was gone.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do so. She sat in the chair she’d pulled up—the same chair she’d have used, in other times, to collect an entry toll—and watched the dying Fallen. It was unclear by what miracle he clung to life; the thing in the bed seemed hardly human-shaped anymore, the body slick and fluid in a way no body should be, with just the ghost of its old face staring up at her—with dark, bruised circles under his eyes and the bones of the face bulging from beneath the translucent skin.
Nurses and orderlies slipped in and out of the room, bringing clean sheets, taking soiled cloths and charts away—coming with syringes and injecting their contents into Samariel, though it made no difference to the husk on the bed.
Madeleine had a nascent headache, perhaps a side effect of having used Morningstar’s orb. It hadn’t been angel essence, but the sheer power that had coursed through her had been like nothing she’d felt before. In that moment, she’d been quite ready to believe Claire when she said all angel magic would kill magicians bit by bit; and now she had the magician’s equivalent of a hangover, with her tongue stuck to her palate, and a set of drummers that had taken up residence in her brain on a more or less permanent basis. Perhaps she should ask Aragon for an aspirin, though she could imagine his face if she did so.
“Still here?” Aragon came back with a tray of scalpels, which he laid by the bed.
“Yes,” Madeleine said. “I’m surprised they trust you with this, instead of Hawthorn’s doctor.”
“Oh, they’ve gone for Iaris. She should be here at any moment, but in the meantime . . .” Aragon shrugged. “I’ve done business with Hawthorn, too, and Asmodeus knows he can trust me.” He ignored the slight revulsion that went through Madeleine. “All the Houses are the same, Madeleine. You should know that.”
“I know,” Madeleine lied.
Aragon didn’t insist. “Mind you,” he said, “I’m sure not much trust is required to leave him into my care. It’s not like I can make him worse.”
“Do you—” Madeleine looked away from the bed, and back to Aragon. “Do you know what did this?”
“You mean the description? I thought you’d seen it.”
“Yes,” Madeleine said. “Shadows that move, that feel like they’re picking apart your thoughts. But that doesn’t tell me . . .”
“What it is?” Aragon asked. “Or how it can kill that way?”
On the arms, which hung limp and deformed, were the same marks Aragon had pointed out on Oris, the same marks Madeleine had seen on the other corpses: the perfect circles with a single dot in the middle, a livid blue against the paleness of the skin.
“I think it’s some kind of creature, a summoning or something.”
“Summonings are impossible,” Madeleine said. She thought of the shadows again, moving as though they were alive; of the hissing sound just on the cusp of hearing. “Aren’t they?”
“Summonings have a mind of their own, and rules of their own, which often end badly for the summoner. But you’re right, broadly speaking. There hasn’t been a successful summoning in centuries. There are legends, of course—people who went digging into the past of the city—the Middle Ages, the Greeks and Romans, even the prehistory—who summoned up harpies and unicorns and saber-toothed tigers.”
“And they’re untrue?”
“I . . . don’t think so,” Aragon said. “But they’re old. Even being generous with them, the most recent one would have been four hundred years ago, and the Fallen in question spent decades just preparing his ritual. We just don’t have the power—or the level of obsession—for this anymore. They require energy beyond even what a Fallen might produce; even with artifacts, even with essence.”
Madeleine tensed, but the words didn’t appear to be directed at her.
Aragon went on. “It does sound like a summoning—or a trained beast. Maybe a construct, modified with magic. It’s clear that it’s not human. Not, mind you, that anything human was capable of leaving those marks.”
A construct. That didn’t sound like a cheerful notion, either. Again, there were tales: memories of Fallen who had survived the war and seen constructs in action. There was a reason why no one dared to use them anymore.
“He doesn’t look the same as—” Madeleine swallowed. “He doesn’t look the same as Oris.”
“No,” Aragon said. “Oris didn’t look as though every bone in his body had shattered.”
“You said—you said Fallen bones couldn’t support the body.”
“No,” Aragon said. “They’re thin and built for flight. Like a bird’s. Hollow inside.” He tapped the head of the bed, thoughtfully. “Oris died when magic was removed from him. I think Samariel’s magic was removed for a much, much longer time.”
Madeleine would have felt sick, once upon a time. “More slowly perhaps,” she said. So he wouldn’t die all at once, but would linger for a little while. Except that no one, of course, should be alive in that condition.
“I don’t know what the shadows are,” Aragon said. His hands tightened around the bedstead. “I don’t know, and this is . . . alarming.” His face didn’t move, but Madeleine could read the fear in the depths of his eyes; in the hands that remained stubbornly clinging to the metal frame of the bed.
Aragon had never been afraid of anything or anyone. “You’re worried,” she said, slowly, carefully. It was . . . even worse than Selene being worried. Aragon was always detached and clinical—impatient sometimes, but certainly never scared.
“Of course I am,” Aragon said sharply. “There is something that’s killing again and again in this House, with as much ease as a child snapping kindling sticks. I’d advise you to be worried, too.” He closed his eyes for a moment and then said, with a visible effort, “Sorry. It’s been a long night. You shouldn’t listen to my ramblings.”
But it hadn’t been ramblings—simply the truth; the mask of propriety and impassibility lifted to show her what lay beneath. “I’m scared, too,” Madeleine said. She’d seen it, felt it, and would give anything to never see or feel it again in her life.
“Don’t be,” Aragon said, but she couldn’t believe him anymore.
Her gaze drifted to Samariel’s face: the eyes were closed, but no one would have mistaken this for sleep. Likely he was too far gone to even hear them. Time to leave. “I’ll be back,” she said; and turned, and saw Elphon in the doorway.
Oh God, no.
The thundering of her heart must have been heard all the way into Heaven. Elphon, blissfully unaware of anything amiss, walked into the room and bowed to her. “We’ve met before, I think,” he said gravely.
Madeleine kept her voice level, but it took all the self-control she could muster. “We have met.” Not just once; every day of his life—they’d worked side by side in the gardens of Hawthorn, cut branches and tended flower beds together—how could he not remember?
“You’re the alchemist.” His gaze strayed to the bed; he sounded vaguely disapproving.
“Oh. No,” Madeleine said, shaking her head. “Of course I’m not here for that. Whatever happens to him, he belongs to Hawthorn.”
Elphon said nothing for a while. “I guess that’s one way of putting it.”
Aragon had disappeared—slipped out the door in Elphon’s wake, no doubt. Madeleine suppressed a curse. She should make her excuses and leave, too; but curiosity got the better of her. “Are there—no people from before, in Hawthorn?”
“Before?”
Madeleine shook her head. “I’m a refugee. Surely Asmodeus has told you that? I was in Hawthorn. Under Uphir.”
Elphon’s face froze. “Were you?”
She nodded. “I left the night of the coup.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t read Elphon’s expression. “Well, I wasn’t there, but to answer your question, there are people left from that time. Not many—I think not everyone swore fealty to Lord Asmodeus.”
Of course they wouldn’t, and of course he would ruthlessly remove them. Madeleine shook her head, trying to banish dark thoughts. Well, there was nothing for it. She might as well be honest. “You . . . look a lot like someone I used to know, once. Someone who died the night of the coup.”
“All Fallen look alike.” His face was haughty, distant.
“Yes, you’ve told me that before. But the thing is, he was called Elphon, too. And I knew him well, well enough not to mistake him for someone else. We . . . we worked together.” It seemed like such an inadequate way to encompass all that Elphon had meant to her; the exhilarating nights racing each other to the roof of the House; the quiet lunches that they’d had, hiding behind fountains and trimmed hedges; the night they had snuck down to the Seine, and watched the black waves lapping on the shore, trying to imagine that there, too, amid the polluted waters, there was magic and wonder. And, remembering, she measured the gulf between this other life and the one she had now. The river was dark and dangerous, like everything else in Paris: waters that would eat at your flesh, waves that would reach out, grab you from the embankments, and drag you under the choppy surface to drown. There was a power in the Seine, yes; magic and awe—not innocent wonder, but something as dark and as gut-wrenchingly terrifying as the God who had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah—a faction as strong as any House, ruthlessly destroying anything that intruded on its boundaries. Not even the major Houses dared to tangle with it; and yet she and Elphon had sat on parapets, dangling their legs over the black waters, and thought only of fairy tales. . . .
Kids, that was what they had been. Innocent, careless, stupid kids. “It was in another lifetime.”
Elphon’s face was set. “I don’t remember anything. Nevertheless, if what you say is true—”
“It is,” Madeleine said. “Why would I lie to you?”
“Then I have no doubt Lord Asmodeus has his own reasons.”
“Of course he has. He killed you!”
If she’d hoped to provoke some reaction, she was disappointed. Elphon merely shrugged. “As I said—Lord Asmodeus has his own reasons, and I have no doubt he would act in the best interest of the House. It’s not my business to inquire.”
In another lifetime, she thought, sadly. They had both changed, immeasurably; taking the bitter, salt-laden paths to this dying room, where they spoke to each other as strangers. “You’re right,” she said, finally. “Just as it’s not my business to inquire. Good-bye, Elphon.”
She left without looking at his face; afraid of what she would see, if she turned round.