The House of Shattered Wings

“When he was there,” Isabelle said. “Now he’s dead, for all they know.”


Or merely gone; how to tell, without a body, without any messages? Not that it mattered much to him. Morningstar probably wouldn’t have much to say to him—though it was hard to ignore the voice in his mind that whispered that age should be respected, that the oldest Fallen in existence had to be wise, had to be knowledgeable, as his grandparents had once been—in a time so far away that even the bamboo bindings of its books had rotted through.

There was something . . . He paused before the throne, though every instinct he had was telling him to step back, to let the magic cool down to levels he could bear. But within the pinpricks of pain, there was . . . a note that shouldn’t have been there, a wrong tone in a poem, a slip of the paintbrush in a painstakingly calligraphied text.

“Philippe?”

He shook his head. “Not now, Isabelle.” The wrongness was coming from the throne, but not close to him. His fingers, fumbling, lingered along the delicate carvings, descended to the chair itself, the place Morningstar had been (and the power on his skin was worse, like a winter wind, like a crucible where swords were born)—probed into niches and hollows, but it wasn’t that, either. Where—?

It was below the throne, in the slight hollow between the four squat feet that carried it—once glued to it, but now it came easily undone under his touch. It was all wrong, anger and bitterness emanating from it like the howls of the souls in the Hell of Hunger.

“It hurts.” Isabelle’s voice was a thin thread of sound.

“It’s meant to hurt,” Philippe said, recovering his voice from where it seemed to have fled. In his hand, it looked like a heavy object wrapped in paper; carefully, he spread the paper flat on the ground, tipping out its contents. The paper was thin parchment, translucent and covered with spiky black handwriting; and the same feeling of darkness, of hatred, arose from it. The language wasn’t French, or Viet, or anything he could read.

“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. . . .” Isabelle’s voice was a whisper, but there was an echo, deep within: a hint of someone else speaking the words and imbuing them with the weight of cold iron.

“You understand it? How?”

“I don’t know,” Isabelle said, carefully. She laid her hand on the paper, following the curve of the words on the page. “I think it’s a Fallen thing. The language of the City, maybe . . .”

“I thought that was meant to be love,” Philippe said, attempting to summon some remnant of sarcasm, though it was hard, with the cloud of anger and hatred hanging thick around them.

“The love that drowned the Earth underwater and caused Noah to build the ark?” Isabelle asked, her voice flat. “That sent us tumbling down to Earth?”

“I don’t have answers,” Philippe said dryly. “A priest would probably tell you about atonement and forgiveness, but that’s your religion, not mine.” Not quite true: the Buddha also preached forgiveness, but Philippe couldn’t forgive. Not those who had torn him from Annam.

“I don’t even know what your religion is,” Isabelle pointed out, carefully folding the paper. Philippe searched her face, but there was no hint of reproach or sarcasm, merely a statement of fact. Her calm was uncanny: how could she not feel the magic roiling in the air, the pressure against their lungs, the irrepressible urge to pick a weapon and—? No. He was stronger than that.

“What was inside?” Isabelle asked.

It was a black stone disk, polished until he could see his distorted reflection in it; and it shimmered with the same power that was all around them. “Angel breath,” he said. “Trapped in a stone mirror.” And before he could think, he had reached out and touched the cold, shining surface—Isabelle cried out a warning, and then everything went dark.

He was in the House, but not in its ruins. Rich paintings and tapestries hung in the corridors, and the cathedral was whole, the graceful Gothic ribs arching into the vault; majestic and overwhelming, as it had always meant to be. Someone sat in the throne: a Fallen with pale blond hair that seemed to catch all the light streaming through the stained-glass windows. Unlike all the Fallen Philippe had seen before, this one had wings—not his real ones, but a metal armature that supported sharp, golden feathers, spreading out behind him like a headdress. Across his lap was a double-handed sword, his hand loosely wrapped around his handle; the sense of coiled power was almost unbearable, a pressure to abase himself, to bow down to age and power. . . .