The Shattered City

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  ‘Don’t lose heart, petal,’ Poet said, sounding amused at her. ‘I have more than one interesting substance to share with you.’ A shelf above his stove yielded a small glass vial. ‘A couple of drops of this in your evening milk will have you deep under for a whole nox — or day, if you prefer.’

  Heliora looked at him, resisting the urge to snatch. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you really care? Its name is something long and complicated in Zafiran. On the street they call it oblivion.’

  ‘Sounds like the kind of potion that’s hard to give up,’ she said warily.

  Poet shrugged. ‘What do you care? You’ll be dead by Saturnalia. Hardly time to form a habit.’

  His words were a knife to the gut, but it was a fair point. ‘What do I have to do for it?’

  Putting herself in his hands — she hated that. But Heliora had known when she came here she would be trading favours with him. She just hadn’t known how great a favour … At least she had something over on him. ‘I take it keeping quiet about your brighthound is worth something?’ she offered.

  ‘Oh, Heliora,’ Poet breathed. ‘You’re going to have to come up with something better than that.’ He held the vial tantalisingly out of reach. ‘Lucky for you, the first taste is free.’

  Heliora was drowning. Every time she closed her eyes, she found herself in the Lake of Follies, fighting against the futures until her mouth and lungs bubbled up with water and she slid down underneath. The water was layered with rose petals so thick that no light shone through from above. The blackness was terrifying and inviting.

  It was over. There was something comforting about it being over.

  Heliora awoke, not for the first time, on Poet’s couch, the taste of lake water and rose petals still cloying her mouth. She heard movement and the clink of a spoon against a cup. When she arched her neck up to see who was there, she recognised another of Dhynar’s former followers. Shade, the darkhound courteso.

  ‘Good morning, Seer,’ Shade said politely, and presented her with a cup. ‘My Lord said you might like this when you awoke.’

  She took the tea, inhaling its comforting fragrance. ‘Thank you. How long did I sleep?’

  ‘Too long,’ said Shade.

  The oblivion worked, then. She would have to keep up the supply, no matter what it cost her. Dreams of drowning were better than the state of living death she had been walking through in recent days.

  The tea was too hot, but Heliora sipped it anyway, enjoying the way it burned tartly against her lips. ‘Why him?’ she asked. Perhaps inappropriate, but the question had been on her mind since she first saw that Poet had taken in Dhynar’s former courtesi. ‘It’s not just the Lord who gets in first, or the one with the strongest arm. Why did you and Lennoc choose to come to Poet, of all of them?’

  He would be their third master. A better question might be why they had chosen the boy Dhynar as their second after Lief’s death. Shade and Lennoc were older, wiser, more accustomed to sanity.

  ‘He has a sweet voice, and he promised many things,’ said Shade, but there was a flatness to his words that suggested he was not being entirely truthful.

  ‘Oh, he has a sweet voice all right,’ Heliora agreed ruefully. What was she doing here? Putting herself in Poet’s hands again. She was as bad as these courtesi, choosing the wrong master. At least Ashiol made sense to her. Poet was a blank page. ‘Are you sure you can pay his price?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll pay as high a price as you, demoiselle Seer,’ Shade said politely, then turned and left the room, leaving Hel staring after him.

  Damn. He probably had a point.

  She was hungry in a way she rarely was, her stomach clawing at her. She needed something. She rose and went to Poet’s stove, finding nothing but the warm kettle. No food smells. What did they live on down here, moss and mushrooms?

  Obviously Poet liked his meat fresh-caught and still wriggling, but that was no help to her. Heliora opened a cupboard and found a few apples. She took one and bit into it — still a little too green, it burst sharply on her burnt tongue.

  The door opened and she jumped as Poet came inside. Ridiculous, to feel guilty for taking an apple without asking. Still, he smiled at her as if he planned to eat her for supper. Her caution was hardly unwarranted.

  ‘Thank you for the tea,’ she said, taking another bite defiantly.

  Amusement flickered over Poet’s stupid, schoolboy, open face. How did he manage to look so wholesome and innocent? Those ridiculous spectacles of his. Heliora had to keep reminding herself that he was a monster.

  Had he killed those two boys? Did she care?

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ Poet asked. Oh, so polite.

  ‘Yes. You were right about the oblivion.’ Heliora took another bite of the apple, sucking down the sour juices, not wanting to stop or give him any sign of how unsettled she was.

  ‘You will be wanting more, then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heliora said fast, before she could come to her senses. ‘We have not yet discussed payment.’

  ‘Ah, there’s the problem,’ Poet said with a smile that was almost sad. ‘I have no needs you can provide.’

  Fear stabbed her — the thought that he had been teasing, that he wouldn’t allow her any further doses. She wouldn’t show him that fear, though. ‘Please,’ she scoffed. ‘You’re the same as the rest of them. You need food, sex, power. You’re not special, Poet.’

  ‘Am I not?’ he said, smirking. ‘Food and water are all I need to keep going, but that’s boring and oh so easy to get hold of. Sex does little for me, and you’re hardly my type. Power … well, you have me there. I do like power. But I’m at a loss as to what you could give me that I couldn’t just take.’

  ‘Is it more fun to take?’ Heliora challenged, then wished she hadn’t asked him that.

  ‘Always,’ said Poet, eyes hard on hers.

  She was at a loss. People always wanted what Heliora had to offer. They wanted her futures, her visions. They wanted affirmation of their own desires. The Seer had currency, damn it, and he was mocking her to pretend otherwise. ‘You’re lying,’ she said finally.

  ‘Is it so hard to believe that I’m a satisfied person?’ Poet sat on the couch, easy and relaxed. ‘Garnet wanted to use you, to get validation of his insane rule. I think part of him thought he could control the future if he could control you — so of course he wanted your visions. Wanted to frig you, too, I wouldn’t wonder. Whereas our darling Ash … you gave both up freely to him, whether he wanted them or not. What is it that you think you can offer me?’

  ‘I don’t believe that you’re immune to wants,’ Heliora said, stepping closer to stand over him. ‘I think you’re trying to torture me. Making people squirm might even be up above food and frigging on your list of needs.’

  ‘But not power,’ Poet said softly. ‘Never above power. Top of the list every time.’

  That was what he needed then. What he wanted. Heliora had to give him something (or take something from him) that was worth more than the power he held over her with the oblivion. She moved, straddling his lap experimentally.

  Poet laughed openly at her. ‘So predictable.’

  ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘I’m concentrating.’

  It was a long time since sex had been anything but an end result for her. A cure for being lost in the futures. This was far from recreational, but it was different.

  Poet was watching her with curious rat eyes, like she was a song lyric he wanted to learn, but didn’t entirely like.

  Heliora didn’t want to kiss him, at all. She sat poised on his lap, waiting for some reaction, but he wasn’t moving. She wanted to make him moan, or at least twitch. She wanted to prove that he wasn’t made out of Shambles stone, cold and dry.

  ‘Never mind a price,’ she said calmly, wriggling her hips a little. ‘How about a bet? I can do anything to you, and if you make a sound, you supply me with oblivion between now and Saturnalia, no cost.’

  Poet leaned back
against the cushions of the couch. ‘You’re very sure of yourself.’

  Heliora gave him a biting smile. ‘I’m very good.’ She had played these games before, when she needed to distance herself from someone. Ironic that she was now using them to draw Poet in.

  ‘What’s my prize?’ Poet asked. ‘This is what we come back to, Hel. You have nothing that I want. Nothing worthy of a wager.’

  ‘If you win, I will speak the futures to no one but you,’ she said, voice shaking only a little.

  He laughed at that. ‘Doesn’t that go against the duties of the Seer?’

  ‘I don’t give a frig about duty, or Ashiol or her high and mighty Power and Majesty,’ Heliora spat. ‘I’m dying. I just want to get a decent nox’s sleep.’

  ‘You’re not dying, petal,’ he chided her. ‘You’re going to die. Two separate things.’

  She gave him a dirty look. ‘Think how much it would annoy Ash if you won.’

  There was something unrecognisable in Poet’s eyes. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Any last words before silence begins?’ she asked as she slid off his lap to her knees.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, and she glanced at him. ‘You said you could do anything to me. I don’t fancy having pieces sliced off.’

  ‘I thought you liked that sort of thing.’

  ‘Not when someone else does it.’

  Caught off guard, she laughed. ‘No blades,’ she agreed. ‘Maybe nails, maybe teeth. I won’t draw blood.’

  Poet nodded amiably. ‘Silence starts now,’ he said with a smirk.

  The reason for the smirk was evident as she unlaced his trews. He wasn’t even hard. Maybe it was true — sex did nothing for him. In which case, she was embarrassing herself for no gain.

  Poet made no sound as she touched him, a soft stroke of her fingertip, then her palm cupping him gently. She sucked on her fingers to trail wetness around his shaft, coaxing his body into wanting her.

  Human after all, she decided as his cock began to harden under her touch. She risked one look up and saw amusement, detachment. Nothing else.

  When Heliora wasn’t falling back in with Ashiol, most of her lovers were sentinels. They were saner on the whole than the rest of the Creature Court, and enjoyed frigging without the distractions of animor, blood and the power struggles which took up so much of the time of the Lords, Court and Kings.

  With Rory and Tobin, even her brief liaison with the Silver Captain (damn, that man could kiss like he knew how), Hel had been able to drown herself in the sensation of being herself, not just the Seer. The Heliora who might have stayed a sword-monkey, had she not been called to a higher purpose. More recently, on occasion, there had been Macready, reliable though hardly romantic. It worked for both of them — calm and grown-up and uncomplicated. She rarely thought of him when he was not there.

  Heliora had never been angrier than the day Raoul died and the powers of the Seer transferred to her. Bloody man, what was he thinking? How had he thought she was the one?

  Then Garnet took their blades away, and the sentinels started dying. Her world had crumbled — or her illusions about it had.

  Heliora closed her lips around Poet’s half erection, feeling him grow in her mouth. It was eerie how silent he was — not even his breathing had changed. He honestly thought that he could get the better of her. Perhaps he hadn’t realised that power was a very individual thing. Some people gave power during sex, some people took it.

  More fun to take, Poet had said. Heliora grasped his shaft, squeezing in gentle pulses as her mouth coaxed him harder. She would show him what taking really meant. Possibly it was the most perfunctory blowjob in the history of the world, but that was not significant. The point of the exercise was not to make it particularly good. It was to make him cry out.

  Finally Poet jerked in her mouth, once, twice, and the heat of him flooded her tongue as he spilled easily into her. She raised her eyes to his, only just manageable from this angle. He was smug, and silent.

  She swallowed.

  Images hit her fast and frenetic, snatches of a broken childhood, the smell of oysters and seabreeze. White rats spilling out across a city alley. The shudder up her arm as she plunged a walking stick through the body of a man. A top hat, falling to the floor. The smooth gold chain of a pocket watch. A blowsy woman in a red gown, drunk and leaning over a backstage balcony, howling about her betrayal. Mermaids and pearls, mermaids and pearls. And then a man, sleeping in tangled sheets, his face hidden, but she didn’t need to see his face to know exactly who he was.

  ‘No,’ Poet roared, standing up in a rush, knocking her over. ‘You can’t have that!’

  ‘Too late,’ said Hel, wiping her mouth. ‘I took it.’ She had his secrets now, the parts of him he most wanted to hide inside himself. Knowledge was power.

  ‘That was not yours to see,’ Poet said, shaking with anger.

  Heliora stood up slowly. ‘You’re the one who assumed I was offering sex because I had my mouth around your cock. Still think no one can touch you, Boy?’ She used the name deliberately, knowing it had meaning to him.

  ‘Get the frig out of here,’ Poet snarled.

  ‘I won the bet,’ she reminded him. ‘You cried out.’

  He turned and went to his stove corner, crashing through cupboards until he came up with a vial. It glittered, full of the silver liquid. ‘Take it. That should do you a month. If you’re still alive halfway through Cerialis, I’ll send you another.’ His voice was terrible, face paler than usual. ‘Don’t come back here.’

  Breaking Poet was a strange, unreal thing to have done. It made so little sense. And yet she knew him now, in a way she never had before. Boy. Baby. Orphan Princel. Poet.

  She knew that he had not killed Livilla’s boys, that he knew nothing of their deaths. He genuinely believed that Warlord had done the deed. It was a small piece of what she had taken, but it was important to know.

  He was a murderer — she could still feel her hands closing around an old man’s throat from the memory — but not today.

  And, oh yes. She knew who he loved most in the world, and why he had hidden that for so long. He really was still a frightened boy, wanting to be looked after. She would never be scared of him again.

  Heliora took the vial. She said nothing. No reason to thank him. She had earned her prize.

  She went downstairs and let herself out of the little grocer’s shop. She had brought no lamp this time, so the narrow streets of the Shambles were a dark maze as she made her way towards the upper world.

  She came up in the wrong place, a street she didn’t know, far from her home in the Basilica, and broke down crying, leaning against a wall as her body was racked with sobs.

  Here she was. It wasn’t Poet’s memories that lingered with her now, it was the look on his face when he realised she had seen them, all of them. His whole story, laid out in a single swallow.

  She was as much a monster as any of the Creature Court. It wouldn’t be just the futures she needed to blot out next time she used a drop of oblivion.

  She had to pull herself together. Had to stop being a ridiculous demoiselle about this. She had done what she needed to do, got what she wanted. Breathe, she had to breathe. She had to get back her control. Only then, away from him, calming herself with steady breaths, could Heliora come to terms with what she had learned.

  Garnet. The man in the bed had been Garnet. Did that make a difference? Did it matter? Garnet was dead. Why then did he blaze inside Poet, so brightly? What were the futures trying to tell her?

  She was so weakened and distracted that the mere thought of the futures summoned them into her head. They hit so hard that she almost threw up in the street. All thoughts of Poet flooded away. Heliora could see a thousand worlds unfolding in front of her, so many possibilities, and she could not see the pavement under her feet.

  She had no one to help her, no one to make it stop, and all she could do was hope this wasn’t the day that the futures would break her.

&nb
sp; Minutes, hours later, she came back to herself, a huddled figure in an empty street. She pulled herself slowly upwards, hanging on to the wall, shaking wildly and trying not to let herself fall. The end was coming, spiralling towards her, black and promising beyond all those futures. She had to make a choice, and soon.

  In the meantime, she had a vital message for the Kings of the Creature Court.

  12.

  Ashiol’s animor flashed hot and violent against the inside of his skin. He wanted to hit things, break things.

  ‘We’re not allowed to play in here!’ Isangell teased as Ashiol led the way to the Eyrie, a ruined tower on the side of the Balisquine. ‘It’s haunted.’

  ‘That it is,’ said Ashiol grimly. The Eyrie had been Saturn’s territory, another of the Lords who had come to a bad end. Not that any of them died in their sleep.

  Kelpie was right. If Priest and Isangell were both spoiled by the sky, then there was every chance Isangell could also be turned into a weapon. He needed her to be contained, away from anyone she could hurt, and he could not count on the sentinels to guard her, not now that they had rebelled against duties that did not directly involve the Kings.

  ‘Isangell,’ he said in a more gentle tone. ‘I need you to go into that room.’ He pointed to one of the few intact rooms, at the top of a crumbling staircase.

  ‘But I want to stay with you,’ she purred, snuggling against him.

  Ashiol gave Velody a helpless look, and she moved into action. ‘There are more dresses for you, high and brightness. Just inside the room.’

  ‘I like this dress,’ Isangell pouted.

  ‘Didn’t you say you wanted to bob your hair?’ Velody added in a moment of brilliance. ‘They’re waiting for you, right in there.’

  Isangell squealed with delight and darted inside.

  Ashiol pushed the door closed with a satisfied clang, and infused the wood with his animor. He couldn’t do much to affect the steel lock, but the wood quivered under his touch, and artificial branches sprouted free of it, holding the door tightly in place. It would never hold one of the Court, but his cousin was — in physical form at least — still human.