She was worried. And if Selene was worried, then Madeleine was scared out of her wits.
EIGHT. THE CONCLAVE
TWO days after Asmodeus’s visit, the Houses arrived at the conclave much as Madeleine had expected: in full force, with delegations of twenty or more people resplendent in their uniforms, wearing their insignia like a badge of honor. Selene welcomed them all, standing on the parvis of Notre-Dame: bowing gravely to the stiff countenance of Guy from House Harrier, and the freezing gaze of his wife, Andrea; the arrogant smile of Asmodeus from House Hawthorn; the expressionless face of Claire from House Lazarus — and the minor Houses, Stormgate, Minimes and Shellac and a host of other obscure names, living on the scraps the other, bigger Houses left them.
The presence of the House’s alchemist was not required — so Madeleine found herself a place from which to watch the proceedings, in a disused room on the second floor of the Hôtel-Dieu. She took Isabelle with her, though the young Fallen’s attention was half on a compact mirror she was infusing: she’d been trying to trap her breath into it for the past half hour, without much success so far.
Good. Madeleine had no need to take part in the proceedings of that nest of wasps — at least, not yet, not so soon. Though of course she was lapping it all up — pathetic, really, to want to be part of the game that had undone her already. She was no Fallen or great magician, and her competence as an alchemist did not make up for her lack of raw power.
Among the delegation from House Hawthorn was the face Madeleine had been seeking: Elphon walked next to the young woman Madeleine had already seen. He showed only the curiosity she’d expect of an infant Fallen; no spark of recognition or any indication that he had been to Silverspires before, in another life, when he still knew and cared for Madeleine. He was dead. She was sure of it — his blood warm and sticky on her hands, her holding him as the life drained out of him. And the dead didn’t come back to life. They couldn’t.
“They look like they’re from another time,” Isabelle said. She’d closed the compact mirror, and was looking at the courtyard, where the Hawthorn delegation had finished the welcome formalities. Asmodeus led his lover, Samariel, by the hand, to stand on the steps — his face turned upward to look at the sun; and, for a moment, Madeleine could have sworn that his gaze found her, impaling her like a gutted fish on a spear. Impossible. He couldn’t know, or care, that they were up there. She was safe. She was safe in Silverspires. But, at the back of her mind, there was always the same unspoken fear; that he would come back for her one day, to finish what he had started when he’d killed Elphon.
“They’re all dressed like the pictures before the war,” Isabelle said. Top hats and swallowtails and shirts pressed so earnestly they were as stiff as planks.
“You’ll find many of them are still living in a world before the war,” Madeleine said, more angrily than she’d intended. “Believing nothing is wrong with the city.”
“Emmanuelle showed me the pictures,” Isabelle said. “She said it was a golden age.”
“I’d say the gilding was rather thoroughly shattered,” Madeleine said, more forcefully than she’d meant to.
“I suppose so.” Isabelle unfolded her mirror again, and went back to her ritual of trapping her breath within. “I can’t do it,” she said after a while.
“I’ll show you again,” Madeleine said. She rose, and set both hands on either side of Isabelle’s, feeling the lambent coolness of the Fallen’s flesh, the trapped magic shimmering within. “Like this,” she added, drawing on small scraps of magic. She wasn’t on angel essence; too dangerous, with Selene on the prowl for any offense she could use — and she missed its fire; missed the ease of casting spells.
It should have been a small spell; but, senses dulled, she overreached. Something cold and vast squeezed her entire body, leaving her drained of energy. Her hands fell back limp, and it was all she could do not to fall to her knees. Instead of being dulled, the compact mirror’s surface went the black of tarnished silver, flipping fully open in Isabelle’s hands. “Oh,” she said.
“Sorry,” Madeleine said, fighting back a fit of coughing. “I — didn’t—”
The mirror was — no, not quite black, but shot through with slowly moving patterns, like magma in a live volcano — which was probably the feeling it’d leave any magician who attempted to use this much trapped power.
Isabelle closed the clasp, and then opened it again. All the blackness fled upward, straight into her nostrils. For a brief moment she was outlined in the same darkness as the mirror’s surface, and then the magic was back within her. “I see,” she said. She closed both hands around the mirror, and breathed; and this time the mirror’s surface lightly frosted over. “I see.”
She didn’t even appear out of breath. The world was unfair. Magicians and witches could only cast small spells on their own magic, or run the risk of being exhausted into a comatose state by their own workings; and here was this child with more power in her left fingertip than anyone in the whole of Paris. “Well-done,” Madeleine said, quashing the twinge of jealousy before it could overwhelm her. She had enough to do without that to bother her. “We’ll move on to nail trimmings next time.”
Isabelle closed the mirror. “Madeleine?”
“Yes?”
“You hate me, don’t you?”
What—? “Where did that come from?”
“I’m not a fool,” Isabelle said, gently. She handed the mirror to Madeleine. “It’s easy for me, but not so much for you — and I don’t age, whereas—”
Whereas Madeleine was, to say the least, far from the days of her youth. “You’ve been talking to Emmanuelle? She means well, but long life isn’t why I envy you.” She was too busy drugging herself into an early grave anyway.
“But magic?” Isabelle asked, with Selene’s knack of putting her finger on what hurt. “You envy me that.”
“No,” Madeleine said. “At least, not that way. When I see you — I do envy you, because things come so easily to you, because you’re never tired. But it’s not easy, being a Fallen. I can leave this House and wander the streets, and no one will pay me a second glance. You—”
Isabelle grimaced, worrying at the hollow of her crippled hand with the fingers of her intact one. “I wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Not unless you had enough magic to defend yourself. And even then.” Most Fallen didn’t really go beyond the boundaries of their Houses. The fortresses ran both ways.
“And you have God’s grace,” Isabelle said.
That would have implied faith in God, which Madeleine had lost. Her God was impersonal, uncaring, sometimes outright cruel. “I guess. Shouldn’t you be asking Javier about this?”
Isabelle snorted. “Javier lost his faith. And he doesn’t like Fallen.”
Javier was… probably not the best help Isabelle could have found — as she said, he could be rather abrasive and snobbish. “Rather a contradictory position,” Madeleine said. “There must be other people, nevertheless—”
“Yes,” Isabelle said. “But I’m asking you.”
Oh dear. In Isabelle’s eyes was the same admiration Oris had once had for her; the same devotion that had ignored everything she was, everything she was capable of doing. She couldn’t — couldn’t be any kind of role model or giver of wisdom. Not again. And yet… “I don’t have answers.”
“I know,” Isabelle said. “But it’s enough that you try to give them, when you can.”