The Shattered City

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  ‘No, she belongs to you, and I don’t take gifts unless I know their price.’

  ‘I only give away my lasses on very special occasions,’ he said, face darkening a little as he remembered gifting Velody with his Jeunille after Dhynar’s first attack. He had all four blades back now, and wouldn’t lose them again in a hurry. ‘Saints, lass, it’s just play.’

  ‘Is it?’ Delphine weighed the sword thoughtfully and then extended her arm, the glowing tip dancing near his chest. ‘You want me to give up everything good about my life to take part in this mad charade that’s already swallowed Velody whole. That’s not my idea of play.’

  Macready still remembered the Silver Captain talking him through what it was to be a sentinel, detailing their rules and rights and responsibilities.

  ‘We are their hands,’ the old man had said on a cold day near Saturnalia, walking the bounds with his newest recruit. ‘We do whatever we can to keep the bastards on their feet. We are their minds — the saints know, they can’t do their own thinking. Half-mad, the bunch of them.’

  Macready had chuckled at that one, not knowing then how true it was. ‘If we are the hands and minds, Cap, what do they provide, the Lords and Court?’

  ‘Hearts and souls, boyo,’ the Captain had said. ‘They’re our reason for breathing in and out, and don’t you forget it.’

  Somehow, Macready didn’t think the patriotic spiel was the right tack for Delphine.

  Macready stepped forward deliberately, bringing Alicity up to counter Tarea. The swords made a small noise as they met, not quite metal on metal. The air took on that odd scent of steel kissing skysilver. Delphine stepped back — good distance work, he noted. He had no idea if it was her dancing that gave her that, or the sentinel soul inside her starting to emerge, but he was glad of it.

  Any sign that he wasn’t pushing the point because he fancied her rotten was a good thing.

  ‘I can’t fence,’ Delphine insisted.

  ‘You’re doing fine.’

  ‘I don’t want to do fine.’ She dropped Tarea so fast that Macready almost fell forwards, off balance. ‘I don’t want this, Mac. You said you were going to show me how special it was to be a sentinel. I don’t see anything. I don’t feel it. I’m not convinced.’

  Macready was no Silver Captain, that was for sure. The old bastard would have had her in uniform already. He had been so sure he could do this, that he could sell it to her. But Delphine was a tough customer. ‘This place is sacred to us. Every sentinel has walked this ground, practised their blades. Prepared for their destiny.’

  ‘The Killing Ground,’ she said, a false lightness in her voice. ‘Have they all killed, Mac? Is that the special detail you’re leaving out, of this little club of yours? And forgive me for being tactless, but this army of sentinels you like to wax lyrical about — so glorious, so loyal, so brave. Not exactly alive, most of them, are they?’

  A sharp cut, that one. ‘Not exactly,’ Macready said. Damn it, he should be better at this. Where were his reinforcements?

  ‘I don’t want this,’ Delphine said again, sounding at least faintly regretful. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t. Take me home.’ She leaned down to pick up the sword she had dropped.

  This time, when her hand wrapped around the hilt, heat poured out of it, and Macready’s reinforcements made themselves known.

  The grey sands rippled underfoot. The sunshine, just for a moment, became cold and false. Delphine shivered once as she straightened up. Her hand clenched hard around the sword, which was glowing fiercely.

  Misty figures filled the arena. They fought, blocked, jumped, laughed. Training exercises, challenges, outright duels. The sentinels, the real thing. Macready hadn’t seen this light show in years. Part of him had wondered if it was gone forever, if Garnet had destroyed the heart of the Killing Ground even as he demoralised those of them who were left.

  But here they were, large as life. Zyler and Rory, messing around with mock-blows and knife lunges, cracking each other up with their attempts at witty banter. Tobin getting in on the act, showing off for Heliora. Ilsa, so damned superior as she watched them, knowing her blade skills were better than any of them, but not bothering to demonstrate.

  There was a younger, less battleworn Kelpie, holding Andronicus in a headlock because of some smart-arse thing he had said about demmes and sharp edges, beating him with the side of her hand until he yelled ‘peace’.

  Macready’s heart stilled as it always did when he first caught sight of the ghostly Silver Captain, marching into the middle of it all, barking orders. No one could replace the old man. No one could even try.

  ‘We were more than a gang, more than one arm of the Creature Court,’ Macready said, his voice faltering. He could see his younger self, less battered around the edges, without the scar and missing ring finger. ‘We were a family. We were strong and mighty, and we could be that again, lass. With your help, if we can resurrect the old spirit of what the sentinels were … we can make Velody great. We can do more than save the city by the skin of our teeth, we can make Aufleur fecking glorious.’ There he was, heart on his sleeve, wanting her to understand what he was offering, and what he was asking of her.

  Delphine’s face was impassive as the ghostly sentinels around her danced their dance of blades and feet and hands.

  ‘You’ll have your own family back, too,’ Macready said, almost as an afterthought. ‘The memories of them. When you’re a sentinel for real … once you accept it, the forgetting won’t work on you any more. You’ll remember everything you lost about Tierce and your childhood.’

  In one fluid motion Delphine threw Alicity to him, hilt-first.

  Macready caught his sword, troubled by the anger he could see in her face. ‘Lass, I didn’t mean …’

  ‘I hate you,’ Delphine said, and walked away.

  He should have gone with her. A demoiselle on her own in the nox streets of Aufleur, without even a weapon? Dangerous and stupid. But Macready was stuck to the spot, eyes caught by the fading images of the family who had taken him in, twenty fecking years ago.

  Only when the last of the ghosts had entirely dissolved did he run after Delphine — and by that time, of course, the lass was long gone. He’d spent enough time playing games with her. There was a battle that needed him.

  Delphine was so angry she could spit. How dare he? How dare he dangle her memories of her life before Aufleur as some kind of candied sweetmeat, to entice her to do what he wanted? Those were her memories, and he had no right to offer them to her.

  It was still raining blood, and the sky was full of colours and shadows and bright, blazing moments of light. Delphine kept her head down as she hurried through the streets, ignoring it all. It was not her world. It was not her problem.

  She kept thinking that right up to the point that she reached the yard behind her house, and found it full of monsters.

  Delphine had blood in her hair, trickling down her neck with the rain. She was angry and tired, and she really did not need this. But she had little choice.

  Poet, the Orphan Princel. She knew that one. He lounged on her back step, with a ragged boy sitting at his feet. The gorgeous dark one, whom Velody called Warlord, he stood with his back to the kitchen door, wearing a ripped red silk shirt the same colour as the blood that fell from the sky. He smiled at her, the kind of smile she was used to from clubs and parties. I want to fuck you, I want to hurt you, I want to show you what a worthless scrap of skin with tits you are. That kind of smile. She knew well enough to keep away from those men, no matter how self-destructive she was feeling, but it was hard to do that when he was on your doorstep.

  There were others in the yard, young men and a woman, dressed to match the Warlord. They kept to the shadows, but Delphine could feel their threatening presence.

  ‘What do you want?’ she demanded, giving them her best aristocratic accent. She could play the entitled demoiselle with great confidence, when she had to.

  ‘We want to look upon t
he daylight demme who killed one of our own,’ said Poet in that soft, lovely voice of his. ‘Have you met Warlord? He was allied with Dhynar Lord Ferax. It is his duty to avenge the furry little bastard.’

  Delphine wished Macready was here, and promptly hated herself for being so weak. ‘If you have a problem with the Ferax Lord’s death, take it up with your Power and Majesty,’ she said coldly.

  Warlord spoke next, his voice deep and rich. Power shone out from him, so that he glowed in the darkness. ‘If you are not one of us, the rules do not apply,’ he said. ‘Our Power and Majesty cannot protect you. Nothing can.’

  ‘And who says I’m not one of you?’ Delphine flung at him. Macready thought so, and he was always right, damn it, though she wanted to believe otherwise. She reached inside herself, remembering how it felt to stand in the Killing Ground, how it felt to have one of Macready’s skysilver blades in her hand.

  She had not admitted to him or herself how skysilver made her pulse race, how it made her feel taller and sexier and more beautiful than she had ever felt possible. Here, in her yard, she glared at the terrifying man, filling her body with the memory of skysilver, of holding it and wielding it and being part of it. She felt the taste of it at the back of her throat.

  The demme who wore Warlord’s colours moved first, grabbing hold of Delphine and licking her roughly across the side of the neck. ‘She’s a sentinel,’ she reported.

  Delphine pushed her away. ‘Excuse me — licking? Who said there could be licking?’

  Warlord stepped forward now, fury pouring off him, and for a moment she felt him inside her head, touching the memory of how she had driven Macready’s blade into the body of Dhynar. Delphine shook with it, and then Warlord released her, turning his fury on Poet. ‘What kind of trick is this, rat?’

  ‘She’s the one tricking you, not me,’ Poet retorted, backing up against the nearest fence.

  ‘If I killed one of her sentinels, the Power and Majesty would have good reason to destroy me,’ Warlord roared, and then shaped quickly into a large, black shape that radiated more power than he had as a man. Panther, oh, holy saints, it was a panther. Delphine had never seen one outside the Circus Verdigris.

  Poet shaped himself too, into a horde of white rats, and streaked into the sky with the panther pursuing him.

  The courtesi who remained in the yard looked warily at each other. Delphine cleared her throat. ‘I’m just going to go inside, then.’

  Poet’s lad moved aside from the foot of the step, to allow her to reach the kitchen door. Delphine unlatched it, let herself inside, and then closed the door hard, leaning against it.

  A sentinel. It wasn’t just Macready saying it now. It was them. She stood there for some time, working hard to erase every thought, every sensation that she had to do with the skysilver. She could damp it down, get rid of it; she could never think of it again.

  Except, of course, that she now knew that she might need to summon those thoughts back at a moment’s notice. Damn it all.

  Delphine went to bed.

  The best fun ever. Seonard’s words buzzed through Velody’s head as she fought the sky alongside Ashiol. The Lords and Court were there too, though she lost sight of Poet early on, and really she was paying attention to none of them except for Ashiol. When the bloodstars crackled past her hair, she caught them in her chimaera claw and listened to them pop as her animor burned them. She amused herself by matching the pace of the bolts of warlight, blasting them into dust only in the last moment before they smashed the spire of a church, or a wrought-iron balcony.

  It wasn’t a battle, it wasn’t even a dance. It was a game.

  Velody was still grinning when she and Ashiol finally made it down. They landed on a flat roof on one of the temples on the Octavian, and Crane was there waiting for them, with a dress for Velody to slip into. Was this a usual service to Creature Kings, she wondered, or did he just not like her bare in front of the others? He had brought clothes for Ashiol too, which at least made it seem less obvious.

  ‘Starting to enjoy yourself, are you?’ said Ashiol, breathing hard.

  Velody turned her smile up to him, before remembering that she was still supposed to be angry at how he had let her down last time. He had timed his return well. She was too buzzed from fighting at his side again to start an argument about what had happened days ago. ‘We’re good up there, admit it. When you turn up.’

  He ignored the dig. ‘Not good enough. Took some damage.’ He had a wound on his shoulder, a greyish slash that had puckered badly. Velody had her own little cuts and scratches, and her forearms were both warm with skyburn, but she found herself reaching out to his shoulder, wanting to heal the hurt. Ashiol flinched away and gave her an impatient look. ‘I didn’t mean damage to me. What difference does that make? The city took some blows. We can do better. Should do better.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, frowning. She moved away from him, to the edge of the temple roof, and surveyed the china-pattern of the city beneath her, trying to see which buildings had been hit. It was not yet dawn, when Aufleur would repair the damage.

  ‘My birds can give you a full report if you like, Majesty,’ offered Priest as he landed neatly on the edge of the roof with his courtesi gathered closely around him.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Velody, glad for the offer. This whole city was her responsibility, not just her personal family of broken monsters. She had to remember that. It was too easy to drop into thinking of it as a game.

  She had controlled herself better in this battle, keeping her movements measured, not allowing the animor to push her own sensibilities and cautions out of her head. She wasn’t sure if it made her a better warrior, but it sure as hells made her feel less like throwing up after the battle was over.

  Priest sent his courtesi swooping across the city in feathered form. Velody dressed herself silently, not looking at Ashiol. He was in an edgy mood, and she didn’t want to provoke him further. He dressed himself too, though it seemed more of an afterthought than a priority. His thoughts were elsewhere.

  The gulls, plover and sparrows regrouped to perch on the head and arms of Priest, Lord Pigeon. ‘The worst hit areas are around the Portico Lattorio, and some warlight flattened the far side of the Avleurine,’ he announced after listening to the birds for a short while. He hesitated. ‘There was also — half a street in the lower Vittorine.’

  Velody swayed a little. That. She had never considered the possibility of that.

  ‘It doesn’t mean —’ Crane said hesitantly.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ she snapped, and took to the air, heading for the familiar green hill, covered in fine residences and surrounded by shopping streets. A black scar ran down the side of the Vittorine, charring mostly the pretty gardens. The middle of one street was torn up, the cobbles almost blistered. Via Silviana. Yes. Oh, it was.

  Velody’s eye followed the scar and the street, and she almost stopped breathing. One side of Via Silviana had been reduced to rubble. Her side. Her home.

  When Velody’s feet finally landed on the broken cobbles, beside the fallen sign of the rose and needle, she was managing to breathe but that was the limit of her abilities. The shop was gone, beneath a weight of torn stone and battered roof tiles. ‘Delphine!’ she yelled. ‘Rhian!’

  Cool hands seized her from behind, pulling her in closer. ‘It’s not real,’ Ashiol hissed in her ear. ‘It won’t last. The city will heal, it always does …’ Except when the battle lost is too grave, was the part she had heard him add in the past. The lack of it now was no particular comfort. There was the Silent Sleep, which those of the daylight thought was a random illness. Daylight folk could die from damage brought down by the sky, when one reality crashed into another. There were always imperfections in the healing brought by the dawn — especially when it came to people, actual people. Bricks and mortar mended more easily.

  ‘Macready,’ Velody said desperately, shaking Ashiol off her and ignoring Crane. Both of them were only interested
in keeping her out of the broken house. ‘Where’s Macready?’

  She saw a flash of hurt on Crane’s face, and irritation on Ashiol’s. Neither of them was any use to her.

  ‘Here, lass,’ said Macready, pushing his way past the Lords and Court who stood waiting for the kiss of approval from the Power and Majesty.

  ‘They were both at home?’ She didn’t know. How could she not know? Delphine could be anywhere.

  ‘Aye, I think so.’ His voice was flat, as if there was something he was leaving out, some source of guilt.

  ‘Is Delphine a sentinel yet?’ Velody demanded. ‘Will this hurt her?’ She had only just thought of this. Delphine might not be of the daylight any more.

  ‘It’s early, lass; I can’t say for sure,’ Macready said, glancing around as if to check the reactions of the others. Too late, Velody remembered this wasn’t common knowledge. She had just blurted Delphine’s secret in front of the whole Creature Court, though from the lack of reaction from Warlord and Poet, it was not a shock to all of them. ‘I’ve survived worse,’ Macready went on. ‘Crane and Kelpie too. It doesn’t take us the way it burns those of the Court.’

  ‘But you’re not daylight, either,’ Velody said, turning back to the house. Dawn was lightening the sky, and with it, the city was recovering. The stones rolled back into place. The buildings stretched and arched back towards the sky. Roofs straightened. Glass unshattered, peeling back a piece at a time into the frames of windows.

  ‘Only one way to find out, lass,’ said Macready.

  The bakery beside Velody’s shop made groaning noises as it reassembled itself with its iron chimneys and smashed clay ovens. Impossibly, the smell of baking bread began to emanate from it. The world was being restored.

  ‘Don’t think too much about it,’ said Ashiol, his body warm against her back. He wrapped his hand around hers, tangling their fingers together. ‘Hurts the head.’