Madeleine approached the guards leaning casually against the metal pillars — they tensed, slightly, when they saw her. “I’m from House Silverspires, and I need to see Lady Claire,” Madeleine said, without preamble. Diplomacy had never been her forte, and she wasn’t about to try it now.
The left-hand guard looked her up and down. He had opened his mouth for a dismissal, when his neighbor nudged him. “She’s their alchemist, Eric. Don’t you think—”
Eric bit back an obvious swearword, and gestured her toward the foot of the staircase. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll send someone for Lady Claire. But she’s busy, mind you — and I’m sure she has no time for the likes of you, alchemist or no alchemist.”
Madeleine sat down on the first step, clutching her bag. It was silly, but the weight of familiar tools reassured her. Going to another House was very much entering enemy territory, even if House Lazarus was friendly by House standards.
She tried not to think of Oris — of his face, shrunken and distorted in death; of her hands, saving flesh and nails and blood; parting skin to reveal red, glistening muscles underneath, peeling back everything that had made him — and nowhere could she see his smile, or his infuriating habit of hovering nearby, or the way he’d had of taking tea in the laboratory, drinking the dust-covered liquid as if nothing were amiss….
She would not cry. She had spent all her tears on Elphon, a long time ago; had crawled away from Hawthorn, her wounds weeping blood. All her grieving was done, a thing of the past — or should have been of the past.
Oh, Oris…
Now, when Madeleine looked up in her laboratory, she saw Isabelle; reaching for a bowl or a mirror with a frown on her face; carrying a precariously balanced pile of books from one end of the room to the other — trying to put order in Madeleine’s things, she’d said with a smile.
She meant well, and yet Madeleine wanted to scream at her; to shake her until she understood whose place she was taking, whose memories she was driving out. It was unfair and unkind, but she couldn’t help it.
The walls of the staircase had been painted with a long frieze, which seemed to depict the history of the House from its founding. It was a short history, as Lazarus was barely older than the Great War, and a painful one — Eugénie had died in one of the first skirmishes, almost causing the House to vanish before it could even find its place in the hierarchy of the city. But Claire and her predecessor had worked miracles.
“Miss d’Aubin?”
Madeleine got up, staring at a young girl dressed in the brown and green of the House. “Lady Claire will see you now.”
She’d expected Claire to receive her in her salon; in rooms that would show her exquisite taste, making it clear that she might be younger than Fallen, but that she still knew exactly how to impress her visitors.
But instead, her guide took her downward, into the bowels of the House, into a maze of unadorned, identical concrete corridors, their walls shining with moisture; the weight of the entire House seemed to be pressing down on her. Damn it, she hated enclosed spaces, and modern enclosed spaces even more.
The corridors narrowed; the doors became thicker and thicker — and the noises that filtered from within became moans and cries and screams — petering out into utter silence. The cells, where those who had displeased Claire awaited her pleasure — and she doubted Claire was ever pleased. It was easy, in the light of day, to forget that Claire was ruthless; that it took ten, fifteen times the cruelty of a Fallen to run one of the greatest Houses in Paris when one was mortal.
Madeleine kept her bag against her, trying not to show the emotions on her face — by her side, the young girl did her the courtesy of not saying anything; though she had little doubt everything would be reported to Claire, eventually.
The silence grew and grew — and there was a faint smell of blood, like a charnel house, filtering through the doors — and then nothing, which was scarier than anything she’d seen or heard before. Finally they reached a door of rusted metal, and her guide gestured for her to enter. “Are you sure?” Madeleine asked, and the girl nodded.
Inside, it was dark; the only illumination coming from an exposed bulb in the center of the room, which cast wavering shadows on the walls. The back wall was occupied by a series of square drawers; and, suddenly, Madeleine knew exactly what she was staring at. “The morgue?” she asked, aloud.
“Good.” Claire’s voice came from behind her — she hadn’t expected that, and almost jumped out of her skin when the other woman spoke up. “You’re fast on the uptake. But then, you always were.”
“What the blazes was that for?” Madeleine asked. “Love of drama?”
“Partly.” Claire came into view. She wore a grubby lab overall, over a knitted woolen jacket. Behind her was a Fallen in the same kind of overall, carrying a clipboard. “I wasn’t expecting you here, Madeleine.”
Madeleine shivered. She shouldn’t even be there; Selene’s warning was all too present in her mind. “When we last met, you dropped some cryptic warnings.”
Claire smiled, though the look didn’t reach her eyes. “Cryptic? I thought I was being very clear.”
“You wanted us to tell Selene about your murders,” Madeleine said, remembering what Philippe had said. “Why?”
“Why? Why are you here, Madeleine?”
“Because I need to know more about your corpses.”
“Someone died at Silverspires,” Claire said. She put both hands on the wooden table in the center of the room, leaning on it as if she could drive it into the floor. “A Fallen, by all accounts.” Her face darkened, slightly. “I’m sorry for your loss. I genuinely am. But I hoped someone would follow through on my warnings. I didn’t think it was going to take a death before that happened.”
“Oris died a handful of minutes after you gave your warning,” Madeleine said. “Even if we’d heeded your warning, there was no time.”
Claire’s face darkened; she looked genuinely angry. “I am not responsible for his death. I couldn’t possibly have known when it would occur, or even that it was going to occur at all. Can you believe me?”
She wasn’t sorry. Madeleine didn’t think Claire would grieve for anything or anyone that didn’t concern her. But her anger seemed genuine.
“You know something,” Madeleine said.
“No more than what I pick up.” Claire smiled. “But sometimes, it’s enough. Come here, Madeleine. Let me show you what we gather on the streets.”
The box at the end of the morgue opened up with barely a noise, sliding on oiled rails; showing the face of the corpse inside, his eyes staring listlessly at the ceiling. For some incongruous reason, Madeleine found herself thinking of dead fish at the market: he had been kept on ice, but for so long that decay had settled in, bloating the shapes before her until he hardly seemed human anymore. Not that it would have mattered: she was used to corpses, so much that they were now like old friends, and she flirted close enough to death that it held no fear anymore — save that of the Resurrection, when she would have to face God and number her many sins. Pride. Despair. The vanity of second-guessing God’s plans for the Fallen, raging at their unfair abandonment.
The face… The face, bloated and decayed almost past recognition.
She knew that face. She’d seen that man — she foundered, for a moment, struggling to recall his name. Théodore. Théodore Ganimard. She’d seen him in passing, going in and out of Selene’s office at odd hours — part of the network of spies and informants that kept Selene apprised of what was going on in the city: Madeleine knew most of them — a side effect of being up at odd hours herself.