The Shattered City

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  ‘Isn’t it obvious, my boy? I’m looking for the Seer.’ Priest tilted his head thoughtfully to one side. ‘She’s a slippery little thing, I can’t find hide nor hair of her. I’d demand you produce her, but if you had possession I doubt you’d have that shocked look on your face. She’d have seen this coming, and told you everything.’ He laughed. ‘Clever creature that she is, she’s a challenge to find.’

  Heliora’s tent was in pieces, her belongings scattered across the Basilica floor.

  ‘Priest,’ Velody said now, trying to sound calm and assured as she stepped forward to stand at Ashiol’s side. ‘This isn’t you. This isn’t what you want. The sky is controlling you, but you don’t have to let it.’

  Priest laughed a big belly laugh. ‘My dear demme. You surely don’t think that you’re dealing with Priest any more? He’s long gone.’

  ‘Who are you, then?’ Velody asked.

  Priest smiled. ‘Ask the dust, my sweet. When the dust falls, you will all die.’

  ‘What does that even mean?’ Velody demanded. ‘“When the dust falls?”’ But if this was not Priest, what was he? A dozen people of the daylight lay dead, and more had been wounded, for no reason but being in this creature’s way. It made no sense.

  ‘Where’s Poet?’ Velody asked.

  Priest smiled expansively. ‘Lost another Lord, have you? How careless. You’ll hardly have any remaining by the time we arrive.’

  Velody turned her eyes up to the birds that still flocked around him. Priest smiled as he followed her gaze. ‘A pretty retinue, but I suspect they have outlived their usefulness.’ He held up a hand, and one of the gulls burst into a mess of blood and feathers. A sparrow next, and then a plover. The other birds shrieked pitifully and rose up to flap against the domed Basilica roof, but there was no way out.

  ‘Stop it,’ Ashiol roared, enraged. ‘You’ll cripple them. And —’

  ‘Myself?’ Priest said with a smirk. ‘I am well aware whom I am crippling, little King. Flesh and meat bodies mean very little to me, I assure you. We are dust. We will not be denied, nor slowed. Mourning the meat left behind is your distraction, not ours.’

  One more bird exploded into a mess of guts, and Velody’s vision tunnelled darkly down into itself. She changed without thinking about it, shaping herself into the fearsome chimaera. But Ashiol was faster, and he reached Priest first.

  Priest held up one large hand, and Ashiol’s body froze in mid-air. Priest flexed his fingers, and Ashiol changed: from glowing Lord form to winged black chimaera, then a horde of cats. Lord — chimaera — cats — over and over, like it was some kind of game.

  ‘You didn’t think I was limited to Lord Pigeon’s powers, did you?’ taunted Priest.

  Velody could not move. Her clawed feet scrabbled uselessly in the air. She wanted to scream, wanted to tear the creature limb from limb. The thing in control of Priest was toying with Ashiol, and then it would move to her, and how could she defeat it if she could not move?

  Priest smiled at her. ‘Wait your turn,’ he chided, and made a slashing motion with his hand, making Ashiol twist and scream with pain as he hovered in the air.

  Velody closed her eyes, hating herself for being so weak, but why should she watch Ashiol’s pain if she could not move to help him?

  She could hear other sounds in the Basilica. There were Crane and Kelpie, helping the last few stallkeepers and wounded daylight folk to make their way to the exits. Poet. They had found Poet. She opened her eyes and saw the Rat Lord being lifted gently out of the wrecked remains of Heliora’s stall. His wrists and ankles were shackled with skysilver, and he was battered and bruised down his face and half his body.

  ‘Sentinels to the rescue,’ he said through swollen lips as Crane unchained him. ‘Aren’t you useful little helpers.’

  ‘This is your fault,’ Kelpie snapped. ‘Kill the Seer indeed.’

  ‘I thought it would be a fine distraction,’ said Poet, spitting blood. ‘Not to mention a bright beacon to lure in our Ashiol. I wouldn’t worry about Madama Fortuna, she can take care of herself.’ He tried to stand up, wobbled, and then sat down again in a hurry. ‘Well, that was fun.’

  Velody could not hear them now, their voices drowned out as Ashiol’s screams filled the huge space. Priest made a casual gesture and Ashiol’s long black wings tore free from his chimaera body. His body sagged, finally silent as blood fountained from the stumps.

  The sentinels and Poet ran for cover as Ashiol was thrown in their direction. His body made a crunching sound as he hit the floor.

  ‘Your turn now,’ said Priest with a polite smile, turning his attentions to Velody.

  Pain, the pain was everywhere and then it stopped, Ashiol could not even scream now, his raw throat had nothing left, and he could feel nothing but numbness in his limbs. He managed one choking breath, but it would be far easier to float away and leave the rest of it behind.

  He heard the scrape of a knife and smelled blood. Kelpie’s blood. Automatically, he opened his mouth to suck, but there was nothing brushing against his lips.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Poet’s voice nearby. Fucking Poet. What did he know? ‘Making him mortal while there are bits missing? Not the best plan.’

  ‘Then what?’ cried Kelpie. ‘What can we do?’

  Ashiol felt a gentle touch against his forehead. Poet’s hands. ‘Let him die?’ said the rat. Then he caught his breath in a sound like a gasp. ‘Can you hear that? Whose voice is that?’

  ‘Believe me,’ Crane said in a low mutter; ‘it surprises none of us that you are hearing voices.’

  Ashiol was not only numb now, but cold. How could he be cold, if he could not feel his body?

  Poet was giggling maniacally now. ‘Oh, I’ve changed my mind!’ he howled. ‘Let him live. He’s going to get such a kick out of what comes next.’

  There was a wet sound, and Ashiol felt a pressure against his side as if Poet was lying near him. He could feel the vibrations as the little rat breathed exhaustedly.

  Ashiol breathed, one more time, and the familiar scent of Livilla flooded through him. He opened his eyes and saw her stunning naked body fill his vision. ‘This is what we are, now,’ she said in a soft voice, crawling over his broken chimaera body. ‘Apparently. Who’d have thought?’ She leaned down to press one kiss on his bruised mouth, then arched and twisted her neck. She already had one bite mark raw against the pale white skin. Ashiol growled quietly. He could smell her blood and he wanted it, but she was still too far away.

  ‘It won’t be enough,’ said Crane. ‘Not for this. Maybe if she was a King …’

  ‘I think,’ said the voice of Mars, surprisingly close, ‘you should never be surprised at what Livilla can do, when she puts her mind to it.’

  The blood came, after that. Ashiol closed his eyes and opened his mouth and let it drip inside him. He tasted Livilla and Mars first, then each of Mars’s courtesi in turn. Then Livilla again, so fucking sweet he wanted to drink her dry.

  It felt as if an eternity had passed, and then Ashiol was breathing without difficulty, his body still wrecked and sore all over again, but human and in one piece. Livilla and Mars were on top of him, kissing messily; blood was smeared everywhere and her legs were tangled around his waist. It seemed rude to interrupt.

  Ashiol moved eventually, his palms touching his own torso. There were jagged, barely healed lines across his body, puckered new skin and scar tissue where there had recently been smooth lines, but the animor of the two Lords had done its work.

  He turned and saw Poet lying beside him, wet with Ashiol’s blood, paying attention to none of them. He had a stupid grin on his face.

  ‘Where’s Velody?’ Ashiol asked, though his throat was still too damaged to produce more than a sound or two.

  ‘Up there,’ said Crane, sounding broken.

  Poet laughed weakly. ‘Of course she is.’

  In chimaera shape, Velody was invincible. Power coursed through her muscles, bolder and brighter than anythin
g she felt when she was in human form, no matter who she was kissing. Chimaera was strength and spirit and there was nothing the sky could do against her when she wore that skin.

  She could not move. Slowly, invisible hands lifted her high in the air, above the thing that wore Priest like a cheap suit.

  ‘One King down,’ the creature said with a friendly smile. ‘Only you left.’

  But it wasn’t true, she knew it wasn’t true; she hadn’t felt the burst of Ashiol’s animor demanding to be quenched, and as long as he was alive, there was hope for everything else. ‘I won’t let you do this,’ she said, the words pouring off her unfamiliar chimaera tongue. She wasn’t sure what language she was even speaking, but he understood her well enough.

  ‘Do you really think you have a choice? Power and Majesty. Such important words you people use, to make yourselves sound grand. You are nothing compared to sky and dust.’

  From here, so high up into the domed roof of the Basilica, Velody could see Ashiol’s fallen body. Could see the sentinels, and the Lords …

  Could see that Livilla and Warlord were giving their blood to save his life. Though no one had compelled them to do so.

  ‘Oh, you have no idea,’ she said, relief and pride filling every inch of her chimaera skin until she was ready to burst. ‘I got it right. This is my Creature Court, the way it’s supposed to be.’

  ‘You have taught the creatures to be weak like humans,’ the thing inside Priest said dismissively. ‘It is of no matter.’

  ‘You think humans are weak?’ Velody demanded, and then gasped because his invisible hands were squeezing her so hard that there was no air in her lungs, and it might not be pride she burst of after all. ‘You have no idea what we can do.’ She thought of Crane, of his sweet face and the look in his eyes when he kissed her. The way her animor had responded to him. She thought of Ashiol; of how close they had come once to frigging on the kitchen table; those dark eyes of his, and clever fingers, and the sleek hard lines of muscle in his body. He was not dead. Livilla and Warlord had saved him. There was hope for everything now.

  Finally she thought of another young man, a lifetime ago, clumsy and earnest and, oh, long-dead. He had fallen when Tierce was swallowed by the sky, but she still remembered how alive he had been once, the most human person that she had ever known.

  No matter how powerful you think you are, there is always more inside, untapped.

  All she had to do was let herself lose control.

  Velody’s animor exploded out of her, shining fiercely in all directions. The invisible hands fell away, burned by the brightness, and then she had Priest flattened to the floor, her teeth bared, claws ready to kill. ‘No more,’ she snarled through her beast’s throat. ‘No more blood, sky creature. Just this.’

  She was dark rage and blinding hate, and she could take him to pieces as easily as breathing.

  Priest had a distant expression on his face as he regarded her. A thick black web of noxcrawl crept up his neck, patterning over his chin. ‘Be my guest. My message has been delivered. Your Court is broken, and ripe for our conquest. I have done my work.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Velody said, and tore handfuls of animor out of his chest. She had meant to save him. She hadn’t wanted to believe that it could be this simple, that it boiled down to blood and death and sacrificing one Lord to save the rest of them.

  But her claws dragged more than animor out of his chest, and there was no way to separate out what belonged to Poet or Warlord, let alone Seonard or Janvier. Velody dug deeper, and blood sprayed out with the animor.

  Priest laughed, and it was worse somehow than the time that a blood-drenched Poet had been laughing hysterically, on the brink of death … and there was no reason for her to be thinking about Poet, surely.

  Except that he was there. White rats poured all around her, covering Priest’s twitching and bleeding body, and when he shaped back into a Lord it was unmistakeably Poet, a thinner and paler Poet, his hair spiky with Ashiol’s blood, now pressing his hands hard against the wound in Priest’s chest.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Velody gasped, shaken back into her own Lord form, glowing but human-shaped.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what he did to me. I’ll heal.’ His eyes were intense and bright without those odd round spectacles he usually wore. ‘Priest was my Lord once, and he was a good one; he is one of the good ones. He gave me a safe place to hide when I needed it. Velody. If you are really the Power and Majesty, the one we swore our oaths to, the one who was going to change everything, if any of that was true and the bright happy future is going to happen, then you have to save him.’

  ‘I don’t know how,’ she said.

  ‘Then start figuring it out, little mouse,’ Poet said, his voice light but meaningful. ‘None of us have faced this before. You get to be exactly as ignorant as the rest of us! But I’ve seen the future, and he’s in it, so think fast.’

  ‘Blood,’ Velody said a beat later. It always came down to blood, didn’t it? ‘Crane!’

  ‘I’m here,’ said a voice. Crane came to kneel next to Poet and drew his knife to make a neat slice in his arm. Barely even wincing, he let a few drops fall into Priest’s mouth.

  Priest bucked and made awful sounds. The noxcrawl web glowed fiercely on his skin and then faded from black to grey.

  ‘He’s bleeding more,’ Poet said, squeezing his hands harder into Priest’s chest. ‘Velody.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘We have to wait.’

  ‘He can’t wait.’ Poet gave her a stern look. ‘You’re supposed to be saving him. What good are you if you can’t save all of us?’

  Velody held her hand out to Crane, who gave her his skysilver dagger. She sliced her own arm and splashed a few drops of her King’s blood — Power and Majesty’s blood — against Priest’s lips.

  ‘Don’t let him touch you,’ Crane warned, but Priest had already grabbed Velody’s arm, dragging it down to his sucking mouth. Velody let him have two sucks and swallows before she drove the heel of her hand hard against his forehead, pushing him back and disentangling herself. Her wound burned where he had touched her.

  Poet kept holding Priest together for minutes afterward, then finally drew his hands away from his chest. The skin sealed over, pink and raw. ‘Well, that went well,’ he said brightly.

  Velody rocked back on the floor, so tired she could barely form words.

  ‘Don’t fret,’ said Poet, patting her on the shoulder. ‘The future was better than anything that doom-laden Seer has ever come up with. Everything’s going to be all right now.’

  Velody stared at him. He was different. More peaceful, almost happy, for all that he looked as if he had rolled around in Ashiol’s blood. ‘We thought he had killed you. Or that you had joined him.’

  ‘So sweet. You were worried.’ Nothing could wipe the smile off Poet’s face. He stepped back, still in his own strangely cheerful world.

  ‘Oh, a fine happy ending,’ Kelpie said, nodding towards the group of courtesi who had been Priest’s birds. The three of them clung together, miserable and hurt. Damson, the gull courtesa, was bleeding from one arm, and another courtesa was missing part of her foot. ‘Tell them how bright the future is, Poet.’

  ‘Where’s Ashiol?’ Velody asked.

  ‘He’s alive,’ said Crane gently. ‘Not moving so much right now.’

  ‘My Power,’ murmured Priest from the ground, sounding his own self. ‘Please …’

  ‘I know I’m just a sentinel, and my opinions are worth so much hogshit,’ said Kelpie, ‘but can I suggest we get that garment off him?’

  Velody swapped knives with Crane and used his steel dagger to slice the seams of the waistcoat, already torn open by the chimaera claws. For a moment it felt as if the threads were crying out in pain, and then they were silent. The rich tapestry fabric fell away from Priest in pieces. The shirt underneath had rotted away, as if he had been buried in it for months. The skin of his belly was bloodstained but there
were no scars or marks where the wounds had laid open.

  Priest seemed normal, but how could she be sure he was free of the darkness? Velody wasn’t even certain that she was. Something still roiled and burned inside her.

  ‘I appear to have missed some events of great import, my dears,’ Priest said now, surveying the trashed Basilica, the bloodstained floor and the many wary faces.

  ‘Murders and mayhem,’ said Warlord, who stood holding Livilla’s hand. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary.’

  Priest saw his courtesi clinging together and extended one hand to them. ‘My sweet birds.’ They did not come to him, and his face shifted into displeasure. ‘Have you stolen my demoiselles from me, Power and Majesty?’

  ‘You may have done that yourself,’ said Velody. If it was true that he did not remember, she did not want to be the one to explain to him what he had done.

  Priest looked at each of their faces, and settled finally on Poet. ‘You, my boy. You will not spare me the truth.’

  Poet sat on the rough ground of the Basilica floor, leaning back on his elbows. ‘No, old man,’ he said in a voice that had fondness in it, oddly enough. ‘Nothing will be spared. Not today.’

  Velody left them to it, and walked on shaking legs to where Ashiol lay still in a pool of his own blood. He met her gaze and then sighed, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Will he be all right?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s Ashiol,’ said Kelpie. ‘He’s never been all right. I don’t see why he’d start now.’

  15.

  Sixth day of the Ludi Sacris

  Two days before the Ides of Felicitas

  Delphine searched up and down the side of the Balisquine hill, finally spotting the overgrown ruined tower among a clump of scratchy bushes. She scrambled down the slope towards it, almost losing a shoe in the process. Damn that Ashiol Xandelian to the seven hells and back.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ demanded a sharp female voice, and the sentinel Kelpie stepped into view.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Delphine countered, teetering on the broken steps that led into the tower.