“Still here?” Aragon came back with a tray of scalpels, which he laid by the bed.
“Yes,” Madeleine said. “I’m surprised they trust you with this, instead of Hawthorn’s doctor.”
“Oh, they’ve gone for Iaris. She should be here at any moment, but in the meantime…” Aragon shrugged. “I’ve done business with Hawthorn, too, and Asmodeus knows he can trust me.” He ignored the slight revulsion that went through Madeleine. “All the Houses are the same, Madeleine. You should know that.”
“I know,” Madeleine lied.
Aragon didn’t insist. “Mind you,” he said, “I’m sure not much trust is required to leave him into my care. It’s not like I can make him worse.”
“Do you—” Madeleine looked away from the bed, and back to Aragon. “Do you know what did this?”
“You mean the description? I thought you’d seen it.”
“Yes,” Madeleine said. “Shadows that move, that feel like they’re picking apart your thoughts. But that doesn’t tell me…”
“What it is?” Aragon asked. “Or how it can kill that way?”
On the arms, which hung limp and deformed, were the same marks Aragon had pointed out on Oris, the same marks Madeleine had seen on the other corpses: the perfect circles with a single dot in the middle, a livid blue against the paleness of the skin.
“I think it’s some kind of creature, a summoning or something.”
“Summonings are impossible,” Madeleine said. She thought of the shadows again, moving as though they were alive; of the hissing sound just on the cusp of hearing. “Aren’t they?”
“Summonings have a mind of their own, and rules of their own, which often end badly for the summoner. But you’re right, broadly speaking. There hasn’t been a successful summoning in centuries. There are legends, of course — people who went digging into the past of the city — the Middle Ages, the Greeks and Romans, even the prehistory — who summoned up harpies and unicorns and saber-toothed tigers.”
“And they’re untrue?”
“I… don’t think so,” Aragon said. “But they’re old. Even being generous with them, the most recent one would have been four hundred years ago, and the Fallen in question spent decades just preparing his ritual. We just don’t have the power — or the level of obsession — for this anymore. They require energy beyond even what a Fallen might produce; even with artifacts, even with essence.”
Madeleine tensed, but the words didn’t appear to be directed at her.
Aragon went on. “It does sound like a summoning — or a trained beast. Maybe a construct, modified with magic. It’s clear that it’s not human. Not, mind you, that anything human was capable of leaving those marks.”
A construct. That didn’t sound like a cheerful notion, either. Again, there were tales: memories of Fallen who had survived the war and seen constructs in action. There was a reason why no one dared to use them anymore.
“He doesn’t look the same as—” Madeleine swallowed. “He doesn’t look the same as Oris.”
“No,” Aragon said. “Oris didn’t look as though every bone in his body had shattered.”
“You said — you said Fallen bones couldn’t support the body.”
“No,” Aragon said. “They’re thin and built for flight. Like a bird’s. Hollow inside.” He tapped the head of the bed, thoughtfully. “Oris died when magic was removed from him. I think Samariel’s magic was removed for a much, much longer time.”
Madeleine would have felt sick, once upon a time. “More slowly perhaps,” she said. So he wouldn’t die all at once, but would linger for a little while. Except that no one, of course, should be alive in that condition.
“I don’t know what the shadows are,” Aragon said. His hands tightened around the bedstead. “I don’t know, and this is… alarming.” His face didn’t move, but Madeleine could read the fear in the depths of his eyes; in the hands that remained stubbornly clinging to the metal frame of the bed.
Aragon had never been afraid of anything or anyone. “You’re worried,” she said, slowly, carefully. It was… even worse than Selene being worried. Aragon was always detached and clinical — impatient sometimes, but certainly never scared.
“Of course I am,” Aragon said sharply. “There is something that’s killing again and again in this House, with as much ease as a child snapping kindling sticks. I’d advise you to be worried, too.” He closed his eyes for a moment and then said, with a visible effort, “Sorry. It’s been a long night. You shouldn’t listen to my ramblings.”
But it hadn’t been ramblings — simply the truth; the mask of propriety and impassibility lifted to show her what lay beneath. “I’m scared, too,” Madeleine said. She’d seen it, felt it, and would give anything to never see or feel it again in her life.
“Don’t be,” Aragon said, but she couldn’t believe him anymore.
Her gaze drifted to Samariel’s face: the eyes were closed, but no one would have mistaken this for sleep. Likely he was too far gone to even hear them. Time to leave. “I’ll be back,” she said; and turned, and saw Elphon in the doorway.
Oh God, no.
The thundering of her heart must have been heard all the way into Heaven. Elphon, blissfully unaware of anything amiss, walked into the room and bowed to her. “We’ve met before, I think,” he said gravely.
Madeleine kept her voice level, but it took all the self-control she could muster. “We have met.” Not just once; every day of his life — they’d worked side by side in the gardens of Hawthorn, cut branches and tended flower beds together — how could he not remember?
“You’re the alchemist.” His gaze strayed to the bed; he sounded vaguely disapproving.
“Oh. No,” Madeleine said, shaking her head. “Of course I’m not here for that. Whatever happens to him, he belongs to Hawthorn.”
Elphon said nothing for a while. “I guess that’s one way of putting it.”
Aragon had disappeared — slipped out the door in Elphon’s wake, no doubt. Madeleine suppressed a curse. She should make her excuses and leave, too; but curiosity got the better of her. “Are there — no people from before, in Hawthorn?”
“Before?”
Madeleine shook her head. “I’m a refugee. Surely Asmodeus has told you that? I was in Hawthorn. Under Uphir.”
Elphon’s face froze. “Were you?”
She nodded. “I left the night of the coup.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t read Elphon’s expression. “Well, I wasn’t there, but to answer your question, there are people left from that time. Not many — I think not everyone swore fealty to Lord Asmodeus.”
Of course they wouldn’t, and of course he would ruthlessly remove them. Madeleine shook her head, trying to banish dark thoughts. Well, there was nothing for it. She might as well be honest. “You… look a lot like someone I used to know, once. Someone who died the night of the coup.”
“All Fallen look alike.” His face was haughty, distant.
“Yes, you’ve told me that before. But the thing is, he was called Elphon, too. And I knew him well, well enough not to mistake him for someone else. We… we worked together.” It seemed like such an inadequate way to encompass all that Elphon had meant to her; the exhilarating nights racing each other to the roof of the House; the quiet lunches that they’d had, hiding behind fountains and trimmed hedges; the night they had snuck down to the Seine, and watched the black waves lapping on the shore, trying to imagine that there, too, amid the polluted waters, there was magic and wonder. And, remembering, she measured the gulf between this other life and the one she had now. The river was dark and dangerous, like everything else in Paris: waters that would eat at your flesh, waves that would reach out, grab you from the embankments, and drag you under the choppy surface to drown. There was a power in the Seine, yes; magic and awe — not innocent wonder, but something as dark and as gut-wrenchingly terrifying as the God who had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah — a faction as strong as any House, ruthlessly destroying anything that intruded on its boundaries. Not even the major Houses dared to tangle with it; and yet she and Elphon had sat on parapets, dangling their legs over the black waters, and thought only of fairy tales….