The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard Read Free Book Online Page A

she ever served what he’d touched—though she did present him with his baked loaf of bread every morning—but it was a way to pass time.
    â€œStill here?” Isabelle asked.
    Philippe shrugged. “As good a place as any.”
    Isabelle slid in next to him, dislodging a kitchen boy—who smiled at her, though she didn’t acknowledge him. “Want help?”
    He held out the dough to her. She took it in both hands, and started kneading in turn. “No, not like this. Here.” He moved, placed her hands, showed her how to do one stretch and one fold. “You turn, and then you do it again.”
    Isabelle frowned. Her hands moved, slowly, carefully.
    â€œFeeling it take shape yet?”
    â€œNo. I feel dough sticking to everything. You make it sound much simpler than it is.”
    â€œOf course.” He’d learned back in Annam, baking rice cakes he’d later steam in bamboo baskets—the dough, made with a mix of wheat flour and rice flour, had been sticky and translucent—but the kneading was the same. “Try again. You did volunteer.”
    Isabelle smiled, but didn’t speak. For a while there was nothing but her hands, folding and stretching and turning, again and again. Philippe watched the dough. “Almost,” he said. “See how it’s coming loose?”
    â€œMmm,” Isabelle said. “Emmanuelle’s been teaching me more about the history of the House. It’s the oldest one in Paris.”
    And they’d never let her forget it. “You’re done,” Philippe said, taking the dough from her.
    â€œHow do I know?”
    He took a piece of dough the size of a ball; stretched it, gently, until they could both see daylight through it. “It holds,” he said. He divided it in half and carefully shaped his half into a round, laying it in the floured basket by his side. “Try it.” And, to answer her, “The oldest House. That’s good. Old is safe.”
    Isabelle shivered. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
    Philippe shrugged. “It’s . . . not my world.”
    â€œNo.” Isabelle paused, gently prodded at her piece of dough—which refused to tighten up into a ball. “I don’t even know what it’s like, where you come from.”
    He started to say, “Different,” another platitude, and then changed his mind. “It functions on different rules. We . . . don’t have Fallen in Annam. Didn’t used to.”
    â€œBut they’re there now.”
    â€œThey were,” Philippe said. Who knew what was happening in Annam and the other colonies, after the war? Had the Fallen’s arrogant, brash magic finally faltered? Had the Jade Emperor finally decided to end the court’s isolation and interfere in the affairs of mortals once more? “And the Fallen carried their magic with them. It’s . . .” He paused then, wondering how much he would reveal to her. No more, he guessed, than what Selene would find in books. “The Fallen were powerful,” he said at last. “More powerful than any magical beings we might have had. It was . . . not pretty.” The guardian spirits of the villages had been slaughtered; the dragons, the spirits of the rain, had withdrawn to the depths of the sea, to the safety of their coral and nacre palaces; the mountain spirits had retreated to their most isolated peaks, licking their wounds; and the Jade Emperor had sealed the court, forbidding Immortals to approach mortals.
    And Philippe, of course, had had no refuge.
    â€œEmmanuelle said it was because Fallen magic was innately stronger. That it had been our destiny to conquer.” Isabelle shrugged. “She didn’t sound convinced.”
    She might not be, but there were plenty of others who would. Philippe said nothing. He stared at the dough, trying to ignore the memories; the powerlessness