The House of Shattered Wings

SELENE was in her office, trying to sort out her paperwork. She was worried, though she’d said little to anyone but Emmanuelle: something was happening with her informants.

Like every House, Silverspires had a loose network of spies and informants, ranging from dependents to more punctual services. They reported infrequently to Selene; sometimes a week elapsed before she heard from them.

One day before the Great Market, she’d lost Théodore Ganimard. She’d sent Javier to investigate, but the body was gone and the tracker disk unresponsive. It hadn’t been a surprise, per se—bodies and enspelled artifacts were valuable commodities in a wasted city—frustrating that she should be unable to take better care of her dependents, but business as usual in a dangerous environment.

Now, though, in the wake of Oris’s death . . .

The previous night, Hortense Archignat and Jean-Philippe d’Hergemont had failed to report in. Neither had been proper dependents, and Hortense had worked for Hawthorn in addition to Silverspires. There had been no warning from either of them, but Selene hadn’t expected one.

Being an informant was dangerous, and not an occupation for a long, happy life. But three in three days was too many. Something was up.

Selene finished tidying up her paperwork, and was considering sending for Javier—when a knock at the door made her look up.

It was him. “That was quick,” Selene said; but then she saw Javier looked pale and ill at ease in his clerical clothes. “What is going on?”

“Selene, there are people here—”

And she had other things on her mind. “I said I didn’t want to be disturbed,” Selene snapped. “Tell them to come back later.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be possible,” a voice said behind Javier.

It was low, and cultured; and its owner leaned against the doorjamb with the ease of someone checking out a home for purchase, his arms crossed over the gray and silver of his elegant jacket. Selene’s heart sank in her chest.

“Asmodeus. That is an unexpected surprise.” Unexpected, and wholly unpleasant.

The head of House Hawthorn bowed to her, his top hat in his hand; though there was nothing of submission or respect in that gesture.

“Did you come here alone?” she asked.

“Hardly. My delegation is waiting in the antechamber. I thought it best our business remained private.”

“I didn’t know we had business,” Selene said. And she had little wish to stay with him any longer than she should have. Asmodeus was a thug; he’d had the ruthlessness to cut himself a bloody path to the supreme position in his House, but that hardly made him respectable material.

“We do.” Asmodeus turned to Javier, who was still standing, petrified, in the doorframe. “Run along, little man. This is business for the powerful.”

Javier went pale. He glanced to Selene, who shook her head. Thankfully, Javier got the message and left, though he looked as though he’d swallowed rotten meat.

Selene said, “Now that you’ve finished being unpleasant . . .”

Asmodeus gently closed the door. Now it was just the two of them, and he made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t quite pinpoint. He had the smooth, ageless beauty of Fallen: bright eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses; and thin, long fingers that seemed to belong to some kind of insect rather than a former angel. “There are rumors, Selene.”

“Rumors?”

“About deaths.” Asmodeus smiled. He came forward to lean on her desk with both hands, entirely too close to her; his perfume of orange blossom and bergamot thrust into her nostrils like the tip of a blunt knife—acrid and suffocating.

Oris. Théodore Ganimard, perhaps. Selene kept her face smooth, expressionless. How she ached to throw him out of her rooms, but he was too important for her to afford this misstep. “Deaths are nothing unusual.”

“Six deaths,” Asmodeus said. “Five humans, one Fallen.”

“And?” She was primed by Claire’s message, as relayed by Madeleine at the autopsy—but Madeleine, disastrously untrained in House politics, had probably not paid enough attention to every nuance of Claire’s words. Now Selene felt like a fish out of water, but she wasn’t about to reveal that to Asmodeus. “This is hardly a city without casualties, especially considering what we’re reduced to today.”

“The rumors, Selene, are that Silverspires is linked to those deaths.”

“I fail to see—”

“Théodore Ganimard,” Asmodeus said. “Jacques Rossigny. Yours, weren’t they?”

Théodore was dead. Jacques wasn’t due to report for another four days.

Selene kept her face perfectly still; her hands remained open on the desk, her entire body at rest. “I fail to see what you’re talking about.”

“Then you should get better informants.” Asmodeus’s smile was sharp, wounding. “They’re both dead. And before you ask—no. I didn’t kill them.”