The House of Shattered Wings

There was another, similar dais a bit farther down; still being erected, with workmen carrying in tiles and wooden planks. An artisan was working on a matching throne, carefully laying gilt over the intricate wooden carving. He was doing so under the gaze of a woman, who turned as they came in. “What do we have here?” she asked. She smiled, but it was a thin, joyless thing: a veneer of courtly politeness that ill masked her annoyance.

“They said they wanted to see you, Your Majesty,” the taller guard said.

The woman—Ngoc Bich—looked at them, carefully, like a hound or a wolf, wondering how much of a threat they were. “Visitors. It’s not often that we have them.” She wore white makeup, which didn’t cover the places where her skin had flaked off; the bones poking through her flesh were an obscene, polished ivory on a background of vivid red. “Fallen. And”—her gaze rested longer on Madeleine, and she smiled again—“not Fallen, but partaking of their magic. You shouldn’t, you know. It’s a cancer.”

Madeleine certainly wasn’t about to be lectured by anyone, least of all a dragon princess from some nebulous, unspecified realm that kept grating on her nerves—never mind that they’d stepped into that realm and were at her mercy. “I’m quite all right, thank you.”

“We’re not.” Ngoc Bich’s hand trailed, encompassed the entirety of the place; the pervasive rot, the workers with their mottled skin; the golden man on his golden throne. “You’d do well to remember it was angel magic that did this.”

“Precisely.” Isabelle’s smile had the sharpness of a knife. “We’ll be on our way when we have what we want.”

“Don’t tell me,” Ngoc Bich said. “If you came here following your head of House, you’ll be sadly disappointed. He left some time ago.”

“We’re not here—” Isabelle started, but Madeleine cut her off.

“What do you mean?” They’d only had two heads of House, and only one Fallen who had manifested as a man. “Morningstar came here? When?”

“Some years ago,” Ngoc Bich said. “It’s hard to keep track—time wanders and meanders here, away from the mortal world.” She paused, made a show of remembering—clearly she had no need to do so, even to Madeleine’s untrained eyes. “Twenty years ago.”

Just before he had vanished for good. “I don’t understand,” Madeleine said. “Why was he here?”

Ngoc Bich smiled, showing the fangs of a predator. “Because like speaks to like. Power to power. He wanted power like a dying man wants life.”

“Your power,” Isabelle said, flatly.

“Anything that would have helped him,” Ngoc Bich said. “There was a ritual he wanted to attempt; something he needed my help for. He wanted to keep his House safe, you see.” She smiled, again—a wholly unpleasant expression.

“From what?”

“A threat.”

The shadows. The ones Philippe had brought into the House. “Shadows? The shadows that kill. What are they?”

“I don’t know.” Ngoc Bich shrugged. “He left when I couldn’t give him what he wanted. He was going to attempt his spell without my help. I presume it worked—you’re still here. The House is still here.”

Still here—such a casual assessment, failing to encompass Morningstar’s disappearance; the gentle decline of Silverspires; and the quicker, bloodier deaths of the previous days. “What spell?” Madeleine asked.

“A beseeching.” Ngoc Bich’s voice was emotionless. “An offering of himself as a burned sacrifice, to safeguard his House and forever be delivered from darkness.”

None of it made any sense to Madeleine. She was going to ask more, but Isabelle finally lost patience.

“The past is all well and good, but it doesn’t concern us,” she said to Ngoc Bich. “You know that’s not why we’re here, or what we want.”

“Which is—?”

“Philippe. And you know exactly who I mean. Don’t lie.”

“I have no idea what you mean.” Ngoc Bich turned toward one of the workers, who was dragging a wooden statue of some god with a halberd. “I gave you enough, I feel. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“I won’t.”

Madeleine drifted away from the conversation. There was something about the first dais that attracted her gaze, and she wasn’t quite sure what; but the angel magic sang in her veins and in her bones, drawing her irremediably to the golden throne and the figure seated on it.

It was a good likeness—idealized in the way all statues were; but staring at the broad, open face creased in its enigmatic smile, she could almost get a sense of who he was—no-nonsense, disinclined to be patient or diplomatic, with the sharpness of a razor. So why the dais, and why the statue? She knew little of Annamite customs, but this looked like a throne room; except were throne rooms meant to be this subdued, this somber? Something was . . . not quite right.