The Shattered City

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  But it wasn’t going to work. She could feel tight pressure building up in her ears. A storm was coming, and not the kind of storm they were used to.

  We’re coming, and you cannot stop us. The dust will fall.

  Poet sang an operatic ballad of clowns and dead demmes, surrounded by a cabaret of grinning devils and horrified saints. It was grotesque and brilliant, and Heliora could not stand to look at him. She knew too much about him now, knew why he still clung to the theatre even though the Court had taken hold of him so early.

  His broken childhood and fractured teen years were piled up in her head, along with the voices of Seers past, and the futures that were always digging at her for a way through. It was so damned noisy inside her head. We are dust. You cannot stop us.

  The climax of the gruesome pantomime came when a false Duchessa stepped out from behind the tent cloths, artificial golden hair blowing in the breeze that whipped through the arena.

  That wasn’t right at all. There was not supposed to be wind here. This was the Killing Ground. The sacred space of sentinels. Nothing moved here, nothing lived. Sand and sunshine and emptiness were all it had to offer.

  A retinue of sentinels gathered around the false Duchessa. Not Macready or Kelpie or Crane, but sentinels long dead, so pale and translucent that Heliora could not bear to look at their faces.

  Perhaps it was they who stirred Velody’s cornsilk wig and the hem of her gown. Ghosts all.

  ‘I always hated this part,’ Isangell confided to Ashiol. ‘They would bring in some ageing clown playing Grandpapa, and the fellow couldn’t resist playing it for cheap laughs. When Grandmama was Regenta, I swear they brought in the same man in a padded dress.’

  Ashiol had forgotten about the sacrifice of the Duc. This wasn’t right. Even play-acting at killing Velody made his skin go cold. ‘Poet,’ he muttered beneath his breath. ‘You go too far.’

  Macready was convinced this was madness, so it was. A fine day indeed when they had to resort to this kind of pageantry. Were their lives not colourful enough?

  He had played the game at Velody’s behest, dispatching animals with false kills when called upon (though the lad Crane made a better show of it; the young cove was relishing his chance to playact). This was too much, though.

  It didn’t fecking matter that steel couldn’t hurt those of the Creature Court when they were in their full power. Macready was a soldier, and using real blades for a circus went against everything he had been trained for.

  ‘Aim for the heart,’ Poet informed him with a twist of his mouth that suggested he was enjoying this all far too much. ‘The lack of blood is a shame, but Velody refused to have her throat bitten out in public, bless her.’

  Macready wanted to refuse to do this, but he didn’t trust any of the rest of them to do it properly if he walked away.

  Duty was a bitch, some days.

  The entire Creature Court was on show, some as animals, some as people. Heliora chewed her lip as Velody-as-the-Duchessa made her slow promenade around the circle of sand and then stood in the centre, surrounded by dead sentinels, ready for the slaughter.

  It was a fine ritual, but it wasn’t ritual enough. It wasn’t real enough.

  ‘It’s getting dark,’ Rhian said in a low voice, wrapping her shawl more closely around herself.

  ‘No,’ said Heliora. ‘This is the Killing Ground. The sun never goes down here. It’s always daylight.’ But Rhian was right. The colour was draining out of the sky.

  Heliora looked down to the arena where Velody stood waiting for her mock execution. Macready was there now, his steel sword bared and ready for the final blow. ‘Oh, saints, devils, frig it.’ She had seen none of this. Surely all the rules of the Creature Court and sentinel history being broken was worthy of a vision or two. Had the Oblivion dulled her powers so much?

  Macready slid the steel sword harshly between Velody’s ribs, a killing thrust if ever there was one, and darkness fell.

  Velody did not feel the bite of steel as Macready ran his sword into her, just the usual numbness of metal ignoring the reality of her body. But then the Killing Ground went black, and her chest burned bright and fierce. ‘Oh, saints,’ she gasped, and fell to her knees with the shock of it. ‘Mac!’

  ‘What, Velody?’ His hand still on the blade made it move inside her and she cried out.

  She felt Macready move nearer, and another jolt of the sword. ‘It’s stuck. Are you — feck, you’re bleeding.’

  Velody choked as blood filled her mouth. It was all so fast. The pain shot through her body. She could feel his hand shaking on the hilt, and she was cold all over. ‘Don’t move the blade,’ she gasped. ‘I’ll bleed out faster.’

  Everyone around them was noisy, protesting the darkness, but none of the Lords and Court had realised Mac and Velody’s predicament.

  ‘Can you shape?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think so, not if steel cuts me …’

  ‘Try it, for devil’s sake.’ Macready was all but yelling at her, and every time his hand shook, the pain burst through her senses all over again.

  Velody closed her eyes, reaching past the pain and the reality of the sword hard and scraping inside her body, and shaped herself. Becoming the mice had become so natural to her now, it was like breathing. She scattered across the sand, a horde of little brown creatures, all breathing, none of them bleeding. Safe.

  It hit her like a skybolt, crashing into her hundreds of little minds and overwhelming her completely. In that moment, she saw not just the futures, stretching out in many different flickering directions like ribbons on a parade float, she also saw one very particular future, glowing like a beacon.

  Velody watched with her many beady little eyes, fascinated by the vision. So that was it. That was how it had to be.

  That was how it ended.

  When she came back to herself she was lying on the sand, naked and gasping and Velody again. The sun was bright, blazing down on her in that sinister Killing Ground way. Velody rolled and found the gown she had been wearing as the false Duchessa. She stared at the fabric in her hands for a moment, and then someone was helping her slide it over her head. She gazed at Macready, who looked devasted.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she told him, grasping his hands. ‘Really. No damage. I need Heliora. Where is our Seer?’

  ‘Hel!’ Macready yelled, too loudly, and Heliora ran forward from the tiered seats.

  The Seer looked smaller than Velody remembered her. That might have something to do with Ashiol coming up behind her, tall and glowering in that dark, threatening way that Velody recognised as concern. ‘I’m here, Majesty,’ said Heliora.

  ‘How do you do this every day?’ Velody gasped. ‘My head feels like it’s going to break apart like a melon.’

  ‘Are you in one piece?’ Ashiol asked, eyes roaming all over her. He leaned in, as if perhaps he could smell whether she was hurt or not. ‘We’re going to need you in the sky.’

  ‘Did it work?’ Macready blurted. ‘Will the city heal now?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Ashiol. ‘We haven’t closed the games yet. Hel?’

  The Seer shook her head once. ‘I can’t tell. I can’t see anything, Ash.’ The panic in her voice was evident.

  I saw it. Velody had no idea why she had not spoken the words aloud, but … she had seen the answer to that question, and so much more. She had seen everything. She knew what she had to do. For once, she wasn’t hovering on the outer edge of the Creature Court, lost in the sea of tradition and hidden knowledge and rules no one had told her about. She could finally be Power and Majesty, could finally embrace what that meant.

  Had this happened to Garnet? Had he known?

  Ashiol was talking, something about how they were going to have to trust that the circus had restored something to the city. ‘Velody bled all over the sand; we shouldn’t need to bother cutting a lamb’s throat. Isangell, do it now!’

  The Duchessa was speaking then, old rote words flung to every
edge of the arena, and Velody felt it; she could feel the city closing in upon itself, the unbearable rightness of the sacrifice and the festival, and everything being as it should be.

  ‘That’s it,’ she whispered. ‘We did it.’

  ‘You did it,’ Ashiol said, giving her an odd look, and then he drew her to her feet and kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, not their usual lunging and grabbing, and when it was done, her blood was all over his shirt.

  Ashiol turned, then. ‘Delphine, Rhian, can you escort the Duchessa back to the Palazzo?’

  ‘They are not yours to order, Ashiol,’ Velody said, not quite letting go of him. ‘They are not part of this.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have invited them then,’ he snapped, threading his fingers impatiently through his hair. She wanted to push his hands away, and tidy him up.

  ‘We’ll do it,’ said Delphine. ‘Look after yourself, Velody,’ she added in a rush, as if embarrassed. Then she turned and gave the Duchessa a small curtsey. ‘We haven’t formally met, but I believe I’m your new private secretary.’

  Rhian smiled. ‘All of you, look after yourselves,’ she echoed, and was it Velody’s imagination or was she looking directly at Macready? ‘Look after each other.’ Rhian went to join Delphine and the Duchessa.

  Velody closed her eyes. It was still there, that beacon future, bright and fierce. She could see everything. It all made so much sense that she ached with it. ‘Heliora should go with them,’ she said.

  Ashiol looked at her as if she was crazy. ‘Why?’

  Because that’s where she is when the sky breaks open. ‘The Duchessa may be a target again, when the battle comes. The nox knows her now. Neither Rhian nor Delphine are experienced in the ways of the Creature Court.’

  ‘I may as well be useful,’ Heliora agreed.

  Swords, they were going to need swords, too. Velody looked up and saw Crane watching her steadily. He knew there was something going on with her, even if no one else did. Velody just gazed at him, their eyes locked together, hers silently pleading. Crane broke first. ‘Come on, Heliora. You know you’ve been dying to play sentinel again. I’ll show you how it’s done.’

  Heliora laughed suddenly. ‘Are you going to share your swords with me, pretty boy?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ Crane gave Velody one last meaningful look before he and Heliora went over to join the Duchessa’s makeshift retinue.

  Thank you, thank you. I’m sorry.

  Velody looked back to Ashiol. He didn’t seem to know what she was up to. He just looked like he usually did — sexy and hungry and ready for battle. ‘We should go,’ she said.

  Ashiol nodded once and turned to the untidy stage tent. ‘Lords and Court! Attend your Power and Majesty. The circus is over … but we have an encore to perform.’ He turned back to her, eyes glowing. ‘Together,’ he said, with an intensity that surprised her.

  If only that were true. ‘Together,’ Velody agreed, tasting the lie on her tongue.

  20.

  The sky was a bright, angry red. Velody, with Ashiol at her side and the Lords and Court at her back, emerged from the tunnels into the city above to find that nox had fallen early and the moon was rising, full and perfect, glowing with scarlet light.

  ‘Hard to see how that could be a good omen,’ Poet said in a quiet voice.

  ‘Never seen it like that before,’ said Warlord.

  ‘There are no cracks,’ Livilla said. ‘No points of weakness. Apart from the colour, the sky looks quiet. Where are they going to come from?’

  ‘Everywhere,’ Priest said. He spoke so rarely now that it was easy to forget he was there. Velody noticed that the other Lords were still reacting uncomfortably to him, unwilling to entirely believe that he was the same man he had always been. ‘They will take our sky apart and start on the city, brick by brick.’

  Lennoc just stood there, glowing in his unfamiliar Lord form, and said nothing.

  ‘If we can just get through this nox,’ Velody said in a steady voice. ‘The circus did its work, we’ll have the protection back and the city will mend itself at dawn.’ She didn’t know how she managed to sound so confident, but someone had to be.

  ‘Also there will be fairies who leave cakes on our pillows in exchange for our baby teeth,’ Ashiol growled. ‘So that’s all right, then. Here it comes.’

  The sky began to crumble, from edge to edge. The moon brightened in the darkness. Now.

  A long tearing wound sliced across the sky, and dark shapes bled out of it.

  Velody called the Creature Court into the sky, and not one of them hesitated to answer her battle cry.

  This is how it starts, and this is how it ends.

  The sky was angry. That was just fine with Ashiol because he had gone so far past angry.

  Fucking fucking fucking Aufleur. This city had been biting and gnawing and chewing at him since he was a boy, destroying any chance he might have had at a normal life, and what did he have to show for it?

  Another battle. A red moon. Fine dust pouring out of cracks in the sky, drifting on the breeze with an odd kind of beauty to it. Velody. Always Velody, floating there in the sky beside him, brave and uncompromising as she watched the dust fall. Damn her to the seven hells too.

  The dust scattered in wide arcs across the sky and then shaped itself into arms, legs, muscles, blades. A living foe.

  ‘Frig me sideways,’ Poet said in wonder. ‘Devils. After all this time. Devils.’

  Ashiol said nothing, but an old conversation with Garnet filled his mind and his memory. Always Garnet. Why do we always have to fight lights and fire and — all this insubstantial shit? Why don’t we ever get people to fight? Real enemies — warriors with faces to smash in, veins to bleed, swords to duel against? Where are the fucking devils?

  Someone had replied: Be careful what you wish for. For the life of him, though, Ashiol could not remember which of them it had been.

  ‘They could as easily be angels,’ Livilla breathed. ‘How can we tell?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what they are,’ Velody said, ‘we have to fight them, force them back. Or we lose everything.’

  Game on. Ashiol hissed low in his throat, the sound of a cat faced with an enemy far larger and more fearsome than he. Game fucking on.

  Fighting the sky had never been like this before. Velody slashed and burned her way through the army of dust devils, her chimaera form glowing with dark animor. Her blood felt hot and pounded inside her veins as she battled.

  ‘We’re not getting anywhere,’ Poet yelled from nearby. His hands and feet, glowing white in Lord form, dissolved the devils when he hit them, but they would simply reshape themselves elsewhere.

  The dust felt hot to the touch, and made Velody’s chimaera skin itch where it brushed against her. She let out a cry, the animor exploding in a burst of light from her throat, and the nearest devils vanished under her assault.

  There were always more.

  She blasted a second group of them, who had clustered around Poet. He emerged looking unflappable, as usual. ‘Much obliged, Lady Majesty.’

  ‘Ever a pleasure,’ Velody said, the words coming strangely out of her thick chimaera body. She could see Ashiol and Warlord fighting more of those things, surrounded by Warlord’s many courtesi. Livilla and Priest were further across the sky. Lennoc was doing well on his own, his slender brighthound bodies darting quickly back and forth, never letting themselves be caught.

  The devils stopped. All of them. A momentary pause, but it was noticeable. Their faces (if you could really say that those were faces) all turned inexorably in one direction.

  Velody whirled around to see what had caught their attention, and saw two figures on the roof of a temple high on the Avleurine hill. Kelpie and Macready, both with skysilver swords flashing.

  Warlord moved first, a dark streak across the sky, but then the devils moved, all of them converging at once upon the two sentinels.

  The devils were faster.

  Macready did
n’t realise the fecking devils were coming for him and Kelpie until it was too late and they were on top of them. He fought with sword and knife, the skysilver carving up the devil figures, though the dust kept reshaping into new bodies. The air was filled with howls and cries that didn’t seem to come from fecking anywhere.

  Kelpie went down first, under a wave of glittering bodies. Warlord swooped over them, blasting the devils back into the dust they came from.

  Macready stepped back, once and then again, until he was standing right over Kelpie, protecting her from the hordes.

  One of the devils seized Kelpie’s fallen Sister, waving the sword in something like triumph, and another dragged her knife right out of her hand.

  The devil holding the sword seemed harder somehow — leaner and sharper and more real. Macready feinted and lunged at him, and the tip of Tarea met resistance instead of gliding through an insubstantial body.

  Feck it.

  Velody was yelling at him from somewhere. ‘They want the skysilver!’

  ‘It makes them stronger,’ he yelled back.

  But then the dust came down around him, thick and fast, and there was no holding on to his blades, not when he could not see or breathe or …

  He let go. He hated himself for doing it, but damn it all. He wasn’t the Silver Captain. He wasn’t going to die, not here. He relinquished his blades and let the dust take him.

  For a moment, he couldn’t move; there was just heat and dryness sucking the moisture out of him, and his head was full of that bastard Garnet and the pain in his finger as it was severed from his hand …

  Some time later Macready coughed, and lifted his head from Kelpie’s chest. She was breathing too, but barely, the sound ragged and scraped. He looked up and saw the Creature Court close around several solid, real devils who no longer looked as if they were made only of dust and moonlight.