The House of Shattered Wings

Claire looked at her, her gaze as sharp as spears, but said nothing. Instead, she gestured, and her assistant opened another drawer.

“He was homeless,” she said, as the third body slid into view. “Slept in the ruins of Saint-Eustache. He died in the wreck of Les Halles.”

Jean-Philippe d’Hergemont—his family, minor nobility, had been ruined during the Great War. Madeleine remembered chatting with him; giving him a charged mirror on Selene’s orders. He’d carried one of the loaves from the kitchens, awkwardly balancing it in arms full of the old clothes Choérine had pressed onto him.

Another of Selene’s informants.

“He didn’t have a tracker disk,” Claire said. She was still watching Madeleine, and Madeleine struggled not to show her rising anxiety. Someone was killing Silverspires informants. Someone was . . .

She couldn’t afford to show weakness. She couldn’t afford to reveal said weakness to Claire—Selene would have her head, not to mention the disastrous effect this would have on the House.

She took a deep, trembling breath; hiding her confusion beneath a forced cough. One good thing about having wrecked lungs was that she could fake one quite easily. “He died like the others, didn’t he?”

“Of course,” Claire said. She smiled, like a grandmother amused by one of her grandchildren’s tricks; except there was no warmth in the look whatsoever. “Look at the next one, will you?”

Madeleine braced herself—tried to prevent her hands from clenching, aware all the while that Claire probably read her like an open book. But she had to try. If there was a chance, any chance, she could hide how flustered she was—what she knew, the secrets she couldn’t afford to share . . .

The next corpse was a man again, much younger and with an arm missing—and she knew him, too. Jacques Rossigny, one of the ravagers on the banks of the Seine, living off what he scavenged from the angry river; and on his work as informant to Silverspires.

By now Claire’s smile was as sharp as that of a tiger sighting its prey—filling Madeleine’s entire field of view, quenching the breath in her lungs.

“I don’t know him,” she said, forcing the words out between clenched lips.

Claire’s gaze didn’t waver; but she didn’t produce a tracker disk, or anything that looked as though it might bite. Her smile abated a fraction, but it didn’t make her less worrisome. What was she up to? How much did she know?

“Here’s the last one,” Claire said, as her assistant opened the last drawer.

And the last . . . the last was an older woman; a Senegalese-French, Marie-Céleste Ndiaye, the owner of a bookshop in the southwest, near Hawthorn—who usually came in toward the end of the night, carrying one or two tattered books as if they were treasures.

Claire didn’t bother to throw the tracker disk this time; she merely handed it to Madeleine. “Harrier. Infused with Guy’s rather distinctive brand of magic,” she said, casually. “Do you see, now?”

“No,” Madeleine said, reflexively. Five dead. Five of Selene’s informants, their identities unknown to anyone but the Houses who employed them. It couldn’t be a coincidence; but only someone from Silverspires should have known the identity of all five.

Claire’s voice was thoughtful. “One of these is a dependent of yours. I assume Selene knows he’s dead by now, but not the circumstances in which he died.”

“The others belong to other Houses,” Madeleine said; the words a reflex, driven out of her before she could think. Of course House Silverspires was the target. Of course the corpses were all theirs—from the five in Claire’s morgue to poor Oris. “And you could have sent a message.”

“Perhaps I should have.” Claire was silent for a while. At length, she picked up the tracker disks, one by one. “It’s a fragile city. A careful balance of magic, to protect all against a resurgence of the Great Houses War, and all of us seeking to change it, to grasp what advantage we can. We wouldn’t fight the war again, of course; but if we can have a chance, even a small chance, of making others tumble down—if we can humble down our rivals, even our allies . . . we would seize this opportunity in a heartbeat, and never even look back.”

“I’m not interested in your games.”