Aliette de Bodard: The House of Shattered Wings

He smiled; a knife’s width between two bloodred lips. “I take it. Have you understood nothing about me yet, Madeleine? You were the one who promised me a return. I’m merely giving you now what you would have had then.”

Hawthorn was fast and impatient, nothing like the steady, reassuring presence of Silverspires, the background to her life for the past twenty years. Had it always been like that? She didn’t even remember losing her link to Hawthorn — she remembered kneeling in front of Selene, being welcomed into Silverspires; but with the gloss of things long past, almost as if it had happened to someone else.

Asmodeus smiled. “A week. Run along, Madeleine. I’ll know where you are.”

But he always had known, hadn’t he?

“Here.” He threw her something. She caught it by sheer reflex: a familiar warmth spread to her fingers. It was a small ebony box, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and she knew what it contained.

“Why?” she asked.

“I would hate it if you got yourself killed,” Asmodeus said. His face was unreadable. “But don’t think this is a license to continue this foolish addiction. Merely… a convenience, until you come back.”

Until she came back. If she ever did. But she’d survive; she’d proved she didn’t have the recklessness or bravery needed to endanger her life.

She walked out behind Isabelle, with the shadow of Hawthorn at her back and the House’s presence in her mind, knowing that she would never again be rid of it.

* * *

SOMETIMElater — much, much later, when the sun had started to alter its course downward and the light darkened to late afternoon — Philippe must have reached the Seine, crossing the ruins of the Halles, each pavilion clearly delineated in its rectangle of charred ground. He stood, breathing hard, before the Pont-Neuf, in the shadow of the Samaritaine, hearing distant noises of laughter and feasting from the House that occupied its grounds.

Ahead, in the dim light, was House Silverspires. It looked different somehow, less threatening; he wasn’t sure how; but then… Over the ruined towers of Notre-Dame, burned until only the charred shell remained, something else had spread. In the darkness, it was hard to be sure, but…

No, his vision hadn’t betrayed him. It was the crown of a huge banyan tree: the towers and the buildings were its buttresses, and its aerial roots seemed to dig deep into the House itself. A banyan. For botanists, a strangler tree; for Buddhists, the symbol of the Buddha’s preaching. His people had a different legend about the banyan, though; about Cuoi, the boy who had once seen a tiger mother lay her dead cub in the hollow of the tree, and feed him the banyan’s leaves until he had sprung back to life.

A banyan meant rebirth; meant the dead walking the earth once again. Meant that ghosts, perhaps, could be brought back into this world, given enough power; and how much power would there be, in the death of an entire House?

Selene had no means to know this. But did he truly want to warn Selene? Did he truly want to save Silverspires?

No. He didn’t. But… Isabelle wouldn’t leave the House; and neither would the curse — and if saving the House was the price of helping her, then he would pay it.

In the river, dragons flowed like the wakes of boats, sleek and elegant and deadly, and so removed from anything in the world of mortals. One of them looked up at him with intense eyes, the color of dull nacre; he thought he recognized Ngoc Bich, with her broken antlers, but he couldn’t be sure. Come with us, Philippe. Do you truly think you belong here? In any House, in any gangs?

Come with us.

Their song was close to one he’d heard once; to the music that had always played in the background of the Jade Emperor’s Court: he could almost imagine himself bowing to a courtly lady, acknowledging an official’s respects, back in a world where he knew exactly his place, and how to behave according to it. He only had to find the staircase again; to sink below the waves of the Seine and be lost forever to the mortal world — and it wouldn’t be home again; it wouldn’t even be the status of Immortal he’d once craved, but it might be something close enough, even with ruin encroaching upon the kingdom. He’d be her consort, and was that such a bad thing?

Come with us .

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

Come with us.

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morningstar? But Morningstar was dead. Surely…

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