* * *
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.”
Isabelle made a face. “You said that the last time.”
“That’s because it takes time to get genuinely better,” Laure said. “Now I’ll be off. You two have things to discuss.” The kitchen girls left with her, leaving Madeleine staring at Isabelle. From the covered basket wafted the tantalizing smell of warm, just-baked bread.
“Am I… Am I disturbing you?” Isabelle asked.
“No, hardly.” Madeleine laid a small wooden box at the end of the line. There was a small fragment of skin trapped inside, its magic almost spent. “I thought I’d catalog everything. If there ever was a time when we needed magic…” The heat of the artifacts’ magic played on her fingers, as if she stood close to a flame in the heart. This was the bedrock of Silverspires: the power that made Asmodeus and Claire and Guy recognize Selene as their equal; the power that kept them all safe.
Except that it was all useless, wasn’t it, if Selene couldn’t keep things together?
“Emmanuelle is a bit better,” Isabelle said. She wore men’s clothing, an unusual occurrence for her: a tweed jacket and creased trousers, and a stiff white shirt that looked as though it’d come straight from the laundry. “Aragon said the worst of the infection appeared to be over, but he didn’t sound very confident.” She didn’t sound very confident, either — she kept worrying at the gap between her fingers, quickly, nervously.
“He’s a doctor. They seldom commit to anything.” She wished she could believe her own lies: it would have been so much easier, so much neater. So much more reassuring, without Emmanuelle’s life hanging in the balance, and everything that made Silverspires slowly unraveling like frayed clothes. Damn Asmodeus and his intrigues; and Philippe and his pointless grudges.
“I guess they do,” Isabelle said.
Madeleine hesitated for a moment. “Does Emmanuelle remember—”
“What she said before she went under? I asked.” Isabelle flushed. “She didn’t, not exactly. She looked at her hand again, and said she’d have a look in the books she’d been cataloging recently.”
“I had a look already,” Madeleine said. “But I suppose she’d know best.”
“She said she’d have them brought to her and try to work on them.” Isabelle forced a wan smile. “Always working, isn’t she?”
“She is.”
Isabelle took a deep breath, and opened her hand. “I found this.”
It was a flat, black thing — an obsidian mirror, the sort of old-fashioned artifact that had been dated even before the war. Madeleine took it, absentmindedly; and then almost dropped it. It was… malice, viciousness, hatred — whispers that she was worthless, that Silverspires was worthless, doomed to be carried away by the wind — black wings, blotting out the sun, that same slimy feeling she’d got when the shadows filled the room… “What is this?”
Isabelle blushed. “It was under the throne. In the cathedral. There was a paper with it.” She took a deep, trembling breath; held it for a suspended moment. “All that you hold dear will be shattered…”
Madeleine’s fingers worked around the curve of the mirror — seeking the catch, the point of release. There was nothing; just that terrible sense of something watching her, darkly amused at her feeble attempts; that faint odor of hatred that seemed to lie like a mist over the smooth surface. “I can’t open it,” she said, finally. “It feels like an artifact, holding some kind of angel magic — breath, perhaps?” One she would have liked to hurl down the deepest ravine in some faraway country; and even then, she wouldn’t have felt safe.
Isabelle picked it from Madeleine’s hand with two fingers, and laid it back in a handkerchief — careful never to leave her skin in contact with it for too long. It was as bad for her as for Madeleine, then. “I thought you could… Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” Madeleine said. “It’s connected to the shadows, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Isabelle said. “You can’t open it.”
“I can’t open it now. It’s locked,” Madeleine said. Not that she was keen on releasing whatever was inside it — whatever remnant of darkness still clung to its innards…. “It doesn’t mean that, with a little work or a little research or both… Can you leave it to me?”
“Of course.” Isabelle’s face hardened again — as changing as the sky on a spring day, when clouds pushed by the wind could blot out the sun in a heartbeat. When she spoke again, her voice had a determined, harsh tone Madeleine had never heard from her before. “Madeleine?”
“Yes?”
“I think we should go and help Philippe.”
It took a moment for all the words of that sentence to realign themselves in Madeleine’s mind. “He’s dead,” she said. “They found the trail of blood leading into the Seine, and there’s probably a corpse somewhere, playing with the fishes.” If Selene was right, the thing he’d let loose was still in Silverspires; but it didn’t mean that Philippe had survived — Asmodeus’s attentions had been thorough, and unpleasant.
Isabelle shook her head. “There is — I don’t really know how to explain it, but there is something in the Seine. Somewhere.” She played with her hands — the fingers of the good hand in the crippled one, worrying at the hole.
She was tied to Philippe; inextricably linked somehow, though in the days before the banquet their relationship had seemed more strained than before. She couldn’t help defending him; to her, it would be as natural as breathing.
Whereas as far as Madeleine was concerned, Philippe could go hang. “Let me be clear. He wounded Emmanuelle. He was the catalyst for something that killed Samariel. Something that wrecked the House. And you somehow think it’s a good idea to go find him wherever he’s hiding?”
Isabelle flushed scarlet. “I don’t know what happened. I think it’s connected to him, but he’s not controlling it. He’s not doing any of it.”
“That’s great comfort, but no. If he’s alive somehow—”
“He is. I know it. And he could help Emmanuelle.”
Unlikely. He was the one who’d harmed her, after all.
“I wasn’t doubting your ability to find him,” Madeleine said. She sighed, and massaged her brow, feeling the beginnings of a headache. “Selene should be the one to find him, not us.” Just look at them. One washed-out alchemist, and one young Fallen too naive to see the political implications of the fight she was dragged into. Hardly the elite group of magicians it would have taken to keep Philippe’s magic at bay.
“Selene won’t go,” Isabelle said.
“You asked?”
“I had to,” Isabelle said. She bit her lip. “But she said no. She has too much to do; and she hates Philippe.”
“With reason,” Madeleine said. She didn’t much care for Philippe, either; even before the conclave, he had been surly and uncivil.
Isabelle bit her lip. “He — he promised to look after me. He wouldn’t attack me.”