“You’re not making sense,” Madeleine said. She carried her bag close to her, the weight of the artifacts a reassurance that she could handle whatever they happened to find. Isabelle hadn’t been forthcoming with any information; or rather, the little she’d given Madeleine had added up to no coherent picture. She should have been scared, if she’d had any sense; but the memory of Asmodeus’s fingers, still stained with blood — of being unerringly picked out from where she stood, as if he’d had eyes on the back of his head — left her no room to fear anything else.
The river. Everyone in their right mind avoided the Seine; and here they were, headed straight into its heart — to the frothing insanity it had become, corrupted by the remnants of spells and magical weapons. “Isabelle?”
Isabelle said nothing for a while. Her eyes were closed, and the low-key radiance that emanated from her body intensified — until everything around her, from the stunted trees to the broken benches, seemed slightly grayer, slightly less colorful. The light spread, slowly, softly, engulfing the embankment, the patches of dirty, foamy white on the river; the overcast sky above. Everything seemed limned in that curious illumination, everything somehow diminished, bereft of something vital.
“Speak to me,” Isabelle said, and her voice rang like a bell tolling for the dead.
There were stairs, leading down the embankment onto a small stone dock, where boats would sometimes moor. But, on the last step of the flight of stairs, a shadow caught the light: a hint of something that wasn’t quite there. “Speak to me,” Isabelle said.
The shadow solidified, became the outline of an Annamite pavilion: the elegant curve of the roof, the sharp, brittle brightness of lacquer, the flowing lines of calligraphy on the wooden pillars.
Impossible. This was Paris, not the colonies. There could be nothing like this here…. But Philippe had come to the city, and perhaps other things had. Madeleine found, by touch more than by sight, the pendant around her neck, filled with angel essence, let the warmth of its power wash over her until nothing of fear remained. Oris. She was doing this for Oris, and for Emmanuelle; and so that the Silverspires she knew could continue to exist.
Isabelle opened her eyes. They were white, filled with the same light that flowed out of her. “Come, Madeleine.”
The air changed as they descended the stairs. It was still clogged with the acrid smell of magic, burning the lungs, but it acquired a peculiar tang, something salty and electric that Madeleine could not place, until she remembered standing by a well in a disused garden, breathing in the smell of rain after the storm. It wove in and out of her lungs, until she felt almost — not healed; nothing could do that, but healthier, the damages of the drug covered by a thin coating of seawater and algae. Nothing should have been able to do that. And she could feel something else, something weaving in and out of her mind, fingers like the teeth of a comb, raking thoughts out of her almost as soon as they surfaced — she fought it, but it was a constant effort to keep everything in place without that alien tampering.
What was this place?
“It’s a dragon kingdom,” Isabelle said, as if she read her thoughts.
“Dragons don’t exist.” The insignia of House Draken had been a rearing dragon, but it was a mythical animal, nothing more. Summoning creatures was impossible.
“Maybe not. Maybe.” Isabelle had that peculiar smile again, half-amused, half-bewildered, as if she knew something but couldn’t remember how she’d come by that knowledge.
At the bottom of the steps, the pavilion had taken on body and heft: no longer a silhouette, it towered over them, its colors vivid in the gray light — red and gold and the deep brown of mahogany. Closer, though, it didn’t quite look as impressive: patches of mold and gray foam had eaten away at the paint; the lacquer, cracked and damaged, had flaked away; and the pillars smelled of rot and damp. So even that dragon kingdom, whatever it was, hadn’t been spared by the war. It made Madeleine perversely glad, that nothing had been spared; and yet…
And yet, what would it have been like, at the height of its glory? As blinding as Silverspires, a refuge for Philippe’s kind in the city: bright and welcoming and so terribly unsettling, with that odd tang in the air, that nameless feeling sinking its claws into her, digging into her brain like a worm; making her feel healed, making her feel whole.
Serenity, she thought, and the word was like ice in her mind. She couldn’t afford that, couldn’t let go of fear. It was what kept her alive, for what little time she had left. It was what kept her away from Asmodeus.
“It’s old,” Isabelle said, pausing, for a moment, with awe in her voice, before turning and walking straight on, between the two pillars. As soon as she’d set foot under the temple, her image wavered; became fainter, billowing like a water reflection in a windy day; disappeared altogether from view.
Madeleine looked up. The steps of the embankment, too, had vanished, and she stood within a circle of perfect silence; breathing in, breathing out, a salty taste like tears on her tongue.
Well, there was nothing for it. She reached for the pendant around her neck, opened it; and in a single, practiced gesture, inhaled the angel essence from it.
Fire, in her belly — light, radiating from her outstretched hands — she could do anything, challenge anyone, defend anyone and anything. Slowly, carefully, she rode the crest of the wave, soothing the magic within her until it lay quiescent, ready to be called on at a moment’s notice.
Then, without looking back, she stepped under the pavilion, and followed Isabelle into the dragon kingdom of the Seine.
* * *
SHE’D expected many things, but not a palace — a fragile assembly of courtyards and pavilions of nacre and jade, with marble steps and red-lacquered pillars — all spread below the hill on which she stood. Everything shimmered and danced; and the people moving in the various courtyards all but disappeared from sight as the waters around her shifted.
She could breathe, but that somehow didn’t surprise her; or at least wasn’t any more surprising than anything in the previous hour. As she walked, she felt again the place getting at her — soothing fright and surprise out of her, trying to make her feel at ease. No. She couldn’t.
Had to fight it, had to remain on her guard—
A flight of stairs cut into the hill led downward. They crunched underfoot, and she realized as she descended that she walked on thousands of fish scales — dark and dull, with none of the iridescence they should have had. Below her stretched a vast plain: a palace in the foreground, in the midst of a city arranged on a grid pattern, with narrow houses crammed together, and small silhouettes carrying water pails, fruit, and wooden boxes.
Everything was… charged, saturated with that curious energy of the embankment steps: something that wasn’t magic, that had no business healing or reviving, but that still soothed her hollowed lungs; that still sought to dig its way into her thoughts. The place set her on edge; or rather, it should have, but again there was that relaxing, soothing atmosphere about it that kept dampening down her fear.
At the bottom of the steps, Isabelle was arguing with two guards. As Madeleine walked closer, it became clearer neither of them was human. They had the same dull and dead fish scales on their cheeks, and thin, curved mustaches like catfish, though they shared Philippe’s dark complexion. Their eyes, as they turned to take her in, were like nothing she’d seen: pearly white, gleaming in all colors like bubbles of soap.
“And who is this?” the taller of the guards asked. Madeleine had expected him to speak Annamite; but he spoke French, without a trace of an accent. That odd magic that wasn’t magic again, translating for her benefit? Or, like Philippe, enough years spent in France or in its colonies to speak fluently?