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

he’d felt then, watching the Fallen come and take anything they wanted—and destroy what was of no use to them. “I didn’t come here by choice,” he said at last. “And it’s not choice that keeps me here, either. I don’t know how much you’ll believe of what they teach you. But—if you can, remember that.”
    Isabelle looked at him, uncannily serious for once. “I didn’t come here by choice, either,” she said, dropping her piece of dough into another basket. “And I’ll try to remember.”
    She meant it—he could tell from the sense of stubbornness he got from their link—and yet she probably wouldn’t remember. He was guessing that even Selene had started out this young, this earnest, this naive—and look at what she was now.
    â€œPhilippe?”
    â€œYes?” He peered at the dough, drew a cloth over both baskets. It was the kitchen’s slack hour. The kitchen boys and girls had scattered, some of them playing cards in a corner, some of them listening to Laure telling a fairy tale about a Fallen who was unable to pay the price for summoning a manticore—the kitchen staff was rapt, listening to Laure’s elaborate descriptions of blood, gore, and disembowelment as if their lives hung on it. Isabelle and he were alone around the large table, surrounded only by the preparations for this night’s dinner.
    â€œYou’re not mortal, are you?”
    He’d had some inkling she was going to ask an awkward question—it was the only reason he didn’t drop the cloth. His first instinct was to lie, to deny as he’d denied Selene. She was Fallen; he couldn’t trust her.
    But then again . . . he felt her presence at the back of his mind; her curiosity, tinged by no afterthought of greed or thirst for knowledge she could use against him.
    Such a child, and the thought was like a fist of ice closing around his heart. “I was mortal once,” he said, exhaling. Now he was . . . not Immortal anymore, and not mortal, either; he hadn’t aged since being thrown out of the Jade Emperor’s court—some remnant of what he’d achieved still clinging to him, as did the magic he’d mastered. It probably didn’t make any difference. Selene knew, or suspected, that he was no young man. “Before I ascended.”
    â€œThere are others like you?”
    â€œIn Paris?” There were other former Immortals in Annam—it wasn’t as though the Jade Emperor had been particularly tolerant or compassionate. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.” During the war, he’d caught glimpses of other creatures from French books, sphinxes and golems and chimeras—made with magic, his sergeant had said, curtly and in a tone of voice that discouraged further questions—and he’d fought colonials who weren’t Fallen or witches, and yet moved a little too fast, a little too smoothly out of the path of danger.
    There
were
others; from other countries, other magics that weren’t Fallen. But he would have known, or suspected, had he crossed another former Immortal from Annam—it was something in the way they moved, in the way they held themselves, the imprint of the Jade Emperor’s Court that persisted long after they’d been cast out. “You don’t have to worry about an invasion of us, if that’s the question.”
    Isabelle snorted. “Very funny.” She pushed the baskets aside. “We’re done, aren’t we?”
    â€œI guess?” They both had lessons with Emmanuelle—and not Choérine and the children, because they were too old. But their next lesson wasn’t for a few hours yet. “You can come back later and ask Laure about the ovens, if you want the bread.”
    Isabelle shrugged. “Maybe. Let’s explore the House.”
    â€œI—” The last thing he wanted was to