“Your dependent? Oh. Madeleine. Emmanuelle told me something of this.” She wasn’t clear on the sequence that had brought Madeleine back, or what she had been doing in the cathedral — probably running after Isabelle again — whatever her other faults, one had to grant her loyalty to her apprentices. “That’s fine by me.” Not that she was in a position to raise any objections. But still… “Asmodeus?”
“Yes?” he said, halfway to the door.
“I need to know where you stand.”
“Why, where I have always stood.”
“You know what I mean.”
He turned then, his eyes unreadable behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “What do you want, Selene?”
“You know what I want. Space and time to rebuild, without having all the Houses at my throat.”
Asmodeus smiled. “You lost a game, Selene, not the war. The days of destroying Houses are over. What would I gain by gutting Silverspires?”
“You seemed quite happy to help,” Emmanuelle said, quite pointedly.
“To help you fall? Of course,” Asmodeus said. He put on his white gloves again, taking an exaggeratedly long time; finger by finger, with the elegance of a pianist stretching before a concert. “As I said, my position hasn’t changed.”
“I’m sorry,” Selene said, finally. “About Samariel.”
His face didn’t move. “We declared the matter closed, I should think. But thank you.” He turned again toward the door. “I won’t interfere, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I see,” Selene said. She didn’t. She didn’t understand him at all; never had.
Emmanuelle, as usual, was blunter. “Why?”
“Consider it… a whim,” he said. “But should you rise too high, Selene, it will be my pleasure to help you fall again. Farewell, until next time.” And he left, sidestepping roots as if they were mere inconveniences.
“Do you think we can trust him?” Emmanuelle asked.
Selene took her lover’s hand, and squeezed it. “Probably not,” she said. The future stretched out in front of her: sorting and clearing the rooms of the House, and rebuilding from scratch what needed to be rebuilt, with the presence of Morningstar always in the background, a mute reminder of what she had done, as head of the House; no better or no worse than what he had done. Perhaps Philippe was right, and perhaps all Houses were equally bad — perhaps they did, indeed, deserve to be wiped from the surface of the Earth.
But this was her House, her dominion, and she would fight tooth and claw for it until her dying day.
* * *
MADELEINE’S dreams were dark, and tormented — images flashed by, memories of lying in the darkness emptying herself of all blood; of Elphon’s death; of Isabelle, stumbling backward with her eyes staring at nothing — falling, again and again, into the maw of darkness, and never managing to wake up.
There were footsteps in the distance; a warmth that enfolded her like a fire in winter; someone lifting her, the steady rhythm of their walking as they carried her.
“Where—” she whispered.
“Shh,” Asmodeus’s voice said. “We’re going home, Madeleine.”
And she ought to have been scared or angry or grieving — but all she felt, sinking back into darkness, was relief that she was no longer alone.
* * *
PHILIPPE buried Isabelle near the Grands Magasins. He waited until night had come, so that no one would see him. Then he moved khi currents of earth to create a makeshift grave beneath the cobblestones — into which he lowered her body, and the wings she had borne.
He closed the grave, and stood for a while, staring at the undisturbed earth that was her final resting place.
The curse was still within him; the pull of the darkness that had once doomed him. He had been a fool to think that he would ever be free of it: it was his burden to bear, just as her silence in his mind was his, forever and ever, through the ages of the world; a reminder of the task he had set for himself, walking away from the ruins of Silverspires.
He had seen Morningstar; not the phantom of his nightmares, not through Nightingale’s bitter memories; but as a living, breathing soul.
Somewhere in this city — somewhere in this teeming mass of Houses and gangs and other factions — was a way to resurrect the dead. And he could wait until Quan Am finally saw fit to grant Her mercy to a Fallen and give Isabelle the blessing of reincarnation — knowing that she wouldn’t reincarnate here, or now, or any place that they would have in common — or he could go out and look for that way; and return to Isabelle what had been stolen from her.
“Fare you well, Isabelle. Wherever you are. I hope we meet again.”
He knew they would.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOVELS, of course, do not happen in a vacuum; and this one went through a number of iterations!
I owe big thanks to Trish Sullivan and Steph Burgis, who have read multiple drafts of this, and supported me along the writing journey.
Many thanks as well to Alis Rasmussen, Kari Sperring, and Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein, for convincing me not to set fire to the entire manuscript while we were in Brittany together. D. Franklin read the book (and other things) in record time and kindly discussed possible fixes with me. My writing group, Written in Blood (Genevieve Williams, Keyan Bowes, Traci Morganfield, Dario Ciriello, Doug Cohen, and Chris Cevasco), provided much-needed critiques right before I submitted the manuscript. Leticia Lara, in addition to being generally awesome, provided some much-needed feedback (and the much-needed feeling that this could be a real book!).
C. L. Holland came up with the awesome title during our brainstorming sessions on Twitter. Joe Monti very kindly gave me advice on publishing and promotional efforts.
I would also like to thank Elizabeth Bear, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Ken Liu for their advice and general support.
Many thanks to John Berlyne, John Wordsworth, and Stefan Fergus for making the right encouraging sounds on the first scenes of this; and the right comments on how best to revise this once I was done with the hard slog of writing it. My editors, Gillian Redfearn at Gollancz and Jessica Wade at Roc, are awesome, and their suggestions really helped put this book into (I hope) much better shape than the one I handed in. Many thanks as well to the Gollancz and Roc teams for their work on the book, and putting up with my newbie questions.
Finally, this book would not have happened if not for the support of Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, who listened to me vent about my inability to produce something I had faith in, and convinced me to put together an old idea of ground angel bones as magic and my abortive urban fantasy set in Paris — and who was beside me at every stage of the process. I could not have finished this without her.
And, as always, thanks to my husband, Matthieu; my son the snakelet (mainly for not crashing my laptop too much when I was revising the manuscript!); my sister for the general support, laughter and geeking over books; my parents and paternal grandparents for the love of reading — and a special thanks to my Ba Ngoai for the myths and legends that underpin the Seine.