The House of Shattered Wings

“Of course. Did you think you needed incense sticks to send prayers?”


“I didn’t pray to you,” Philippe said, obscurely embarrassed. In daylight the room was no longer diaphanous or mysterious; he could see the darker patches on the walls, the places where pollution had eaten away at the coral; and Ngoc Bich’s face, painted over with ceruse, couldn’t hide the places where her skin had entirely sloughed off, revealing the pristine ivory of her cheekbones. They were under the Seine; and like the Seine they were tarred with the pollution of the Great War, the cancer that had penetrated everything in the city.

Fallen again, corrupting everything they touched. He’d been part of that war, too—under orders, yes, but that didn’t make him less guilty of what had happened. “I didn’t know—” he said.

Ngoc Bich reached out, and closed his hand over the sodden incense sticks. Her smile was wide—like that of Asmodeus, that of a predator, but a very different one—someone who knew, without doubt, her place; and who was secure in her power, there at the center of everything. “When you crawl bleeding under the Heavens, all prayers are sincere.”

She was . . . old, not ageless in the way of Fallen; but with the weariness of someone who had seen too much, endured too much. “Ngoc Bich—”

“I’m not the one you should worry about, Pham Van Minh Khiet. Think of yourself, first.” She pulled the curtains back from the bed, and sat on it. “You can sit up.”

Philippe tried. He could; but it was an effort, and it was so much more comfortable to sink back against his pillow, staring into Ngoc Bich’s face.

“You should be mostly healed.”

Her prevarication was all too clear. “Mostly?”

Ngoc Bich grimaced. “The wounds, yes. The rest of it . . . I’m not sure what you have in your heart.”

He wasn’t sure either. A curse, a vengeance; something too strong to be exorcised, even by the magic of a dragon princess, it seemed. A dead human’s vengeance, slow and implacable and which would not be turned aside, since there was no reasoning with those that had gone on.

Then again, he was free of Silverspires now. He didn’t have to care about any of this. It should have filled him with joy; but like Ngoc Bich he merely felt weary, burdened with something he couldn’t name. He’d always known the Houses were corrupt, that they maintained their power on death and blood; but to casually betray their own . . . “I owe you a debt.”

“As I said—” Ngoc Bich closed her hand around his again. “Don’t think about it now. It’s not as though there is much here, in the way of entertainment.”

He was thinking about it, trying to remember old protocols, old rules. Dragon kings were old and wise, and lethal; and here he was in one of their courts, powerless and without even the clothes on his back. “I ought to pay my respects to your father.”

“Of course.” Ngoc Bich shrugged. “When you can walk. There’s not much hurry.”

“No.” Fragments of half-remembered lore wormed their way through Philippe’s brain, burning like molten metal. “This is his kingdom, and I’m here as a visitor.” An ambassador from the world above, he supposed, save that he no longer had any status they would recognize. “I should come to him bearing gifts: tree wax and hollow green weed and sea-fish lime, and a hundred roasted swallows, all the precious things from the mortal world, laid at his feet with the jade and the pearls. . . .” Snake pearls and deer pearls, and all the rarities that would speak to animals; and those shining with the luminescence of the depths; and the one that, put in a rice jar, would fill it up again with the fresh crop of the latest harvest, smelling of water and jasmine and cut grass. . . .

There was something else, too—something he ought to have remembered, precautions to be taken before entering a dragon kingdom. He was sure there were cautionary tales, the kind he’d heard ten thousand times as a child—except that his mind seemed to be utterly empty—wiped out of everything.

“You need rest,” Ngoc Bich said, gently; and drew a hand over his face; and darkness stole across him with the same gentleness as when it stole across the sky, and he sank back into confused dreams, struggling to name what he should have remembered.

*

MADELEINE was in her laboratory, cleaning out the artifacts drawer, when a knock at the door heralded the arrival of Laure, two kitchen girls, and Isabelle.

Laure must have seen her face. “Isabelle didn’t feel like going alone through the corridors, and I have to say I can’t blame her.”

Madeleine opened her mouth to suggest that Laure had better things to do in the kitchens; and then closed it. Laure obviously knew. “While I’m at it,” Laure said, putting a basket precariously balanced on one of the tables, “here’s the sourdough bread.” She smiled at Isabelle—like a stern mother. “Your dough is a mess, but it’s getting better.”