The House of Shattered Wings

“With the dead?” Philippe’s smile was terrible to behold.

“With my father,” Ngoc Bich said. Her voice was softer, almost pleading. “You have to see the . . . curse within you is not going away; not without help.”

“Oh, I know, believe me. A peach-wood sword, a drum and a gong for a proper exorcism . . . You don’t have any of this, do you?” He smiled again. “It didn’t work.”

“I saw,” Ngoc Bich said, sharply. She reached out, and touched the spikes in his wrists and in his ankles—they crumbled into thin dust, carried away by currents Madeleine couldn’t see. “I do what I can with the little I have. Like everything here, we’ve been much diminished.”

“Indeed. I wasn’t aware dragon kings could die.”

Ngoc Bich’s face, for a moment, became contorted with hatred. “He was the Seine,” she said, finally. “You know how it goes. The waters filled with oil, with chemicals; with spells and artifacts cast into them like so much chaff.”

Philippe pulled himself up with a grimace of pain. “I’m sorry. I . . . spoke without thinking. What . . .” He paused then. “What do you want with me?”

“What we always want, in the stories.” Ngoc Bich’s voice was sad. “A husband on the throne; a fair and powerful queen with a wise and enlightened king by her side . . .”

Philippe’s laughter was bitter. “Me, a wise king? You have the wrong person. You could have asked. You could have explained.”

“That your salvation lay with a ghost, and that the kingdom lay in disarray, with no king and no power? Would you have said yes? Would you have trusted me?” Ngoc Bich held his gaze, until he looked away.

Isabelle found Madeleine, steadied her. “How did you find this place? I could feel the power flowing through you—what did you do?”

“What you brought me along for, no?” Madeleine said, more sharply than she intended.

Isabelle’s gaze rested on her—how much could she see, or guess at? “I can see that,” she said. “We need to talk.”

“There is nothing to say.”

“Philippe tried that one,” Isabelle said, with a mirthless smile. “It didn’t work very well.”

What—what was her game? What did she want out of life? Madeleine made an effort to stand up straighter, and gave up as a bout of coughing racked her entire body. Everything spun and shone, slightly, with that yellow tinge that came before faints. Should have brought sugar; though sugar wasn’t going to patch up the Gruyère holes in her body. “Just stop asking questions. Please. I know you need to understand everything—”

Isabelle shook her head. “You misunderstand me. I’m not interested in knowledge. I merely need . . . leverage.” Again, that soft, sly smile that was too old to belong to someone like her. “If you find the right place, you can move the world.”

“And what would you do with the world?”

“Defend myself against it.” Isabelle’s voice was low, intense. “I lost two fingers. I will not lose anything else, not if I can help it. And you—you need to think on what you’re doing.”

“I am doing nothing but what is expected of me.”

“Were you?” Isabelle raised an eyebrow. “What was in that locket?”

A power you will never wield. “The most powerful thing in my laboratory. You said you wanted my help. Are you going to deny that it was useful?”

Isabelle grimaced. “It was, but—”

Madeleine made her voice as firm as she could. Selene would have seen through it in a heartbeat, but Isabelle wasn’t Selene. “We have more than enough worries without our being at each other’s throat.”

“Mmm,” Isabelle said. “A truce, then, for a while. It makes sense.” But she didn’t sound wholly convinced. It wasn’t the end of it, not by far; but Madeleine was too weary to do more.

*

PHILIPPE could see Chung Thoai: the Dragon King was standing beside his body, looking faintly apologetic. “You can’t see him, can you?” he said.

Ngoc Bich stared at the darkness by his side, in the opposite direction to Chung Thoai. “No.” Her eyes shone with tears. “I don’t speak to ghosts. The only thing I have is the khi currents. I don’t think he intended me to rule.”

“I did,” Chung Thoai said, but she couldn’t hear him.

“I’m sorry,” Philippe said, again; rubbing at his wrists, at the marks of the coral spikes. “But I would have appreciated a warning, all the same.” It wasn’t every day one found oneself nailed to a stone slab in a tomb, after all: some of his compatriots would have thought it bad luck, but he’d long since left all such considerations behind him.

Ngoc Bich shrugged. “We did what was necessary. What will you do now, Philippe Minh Khiet?”

“I don’t know,” he said.