‘I’ve never seen him in such a state.’
‘You’ve led quite the sheltered life, then.’
‘Not at all,’ Isangell snapped, and then reconsidered. ‘Well, yes. Obviously. But Ashiol has never lost control like this before.’
‘As you say, ladyship,’ Macready said, so polite that it hurt, even if he had no idea of formal terms of address and protocol. ‘Could you see your way to pointing us in the direction of his quarters? Your man here needs to sleep it off.’
Isangell nodded slowly. Getting Ashiol out of the way before her mother saw the mess he was in was an absolute priority. ‘I can take you there. It isn’t far.’
‘See, you’re making yourself useful already,’ Macready said with a lopsided grin. ‘I knew it would be worth my while to strike up a friendship with you.’
Isangell led the way, while Macready and Delphine dragged along a muttering but compliant Ashiol. Luckily, they met no one in the corridor except servants low enough in rank to avoid the Duchessa’s gaze and pretend they had seen nothing.
Once Ashiol was sprawled out on his bed, he quietened and quickly fell asleep, though that might have had something to do with a small vial Isangell saw a flash of in Macready’s hand before he made it disappear. Isangell sat on the edge of her cousin’s bed. He looked far younger and more carefree than when he was awake. She had watched him becoming more and more distant over the last few nundinae, and had simply hoped he would mourn and pull through his grief. He never wanted to speak of anything, the few occasions she had tried. ‘This is about the woman who died.’
‘Two,’ said Delphine in a low voice, from where she was standing with her back to the window, as if trying to put distance between herself and the rest of them. ‘Two women died.’
Isangell nodded. She remembered every step of that walk back to the Palazzo, with Ashiol holding the wrapped body of his friend. She still had no idea really who that demoiselle was, or what she meant to him. She knew more about Ashiol now than she ever had in her life, and yet he seemed even more of a mystery.
‘Right,’ said Macready after allowing her only a moment of quiet reflection. He clapped his hands together in a businesslike manner. ‘You’re just the lass to arrange things for us. We’ll be needing food and the like delivered here, though none of your Palazzo servants will be allowed beyond the outer door. We may be here a day or two, maybe nundinae.’
Isangell blinked. ‘Nundinae? How long is it going to take him to sober up?’
Macready looked uncomfortable.
Isangell tensed, as the old fear returned to her. ‘That babble, the look of him … that was the drink, was it not?’
‘He’s been drinking a long time,’ Delphine spoke up, not meeting Isangell’s eyes. ‘We don’t know everything else he’s been taking. The only sure method is to let it all wear out of him.’
‘And then we get to see what’s left behind,’ said Macready, sounding far too grave. ‘I’ve seen him like this before, your ladyship. Chances are he’s a wee bit broken. But he’ll mend, never you mind that. The mind’s not as fragile as people tend to think. It can mend clean.’
‘Are you saying he’s mindsick?’ Isangell demanded. ‘Mad?’
‘Of course not,’ said Macready, sounding outraged. ‘Mad, the very idea!’ He paused. ‘He’s not entirely sane right now, it has to be said.’
‘A bit broken?’ she repeated.
‘Exactly.’
I will not hyperventilate. ‘Our grandfather went mad,’ Isangell said. ‘The family complaint, we call it. It came and went, but in his last few years, the dottores could do nothing more for him and they locked him away.’
‘Don’t worry your head about it,’ said Macready. ‘We’ve seen your man through times like this before. We can do it again.’
Isangell looked to the demoiselle. She was not sure whether she was hoping for some kind of reassurance or confirmation, but Delphine’s face was flat and unmoving. ‘How can I help?’ she asked.
‘Look in from time to time if you’ve a mind to it,’ said Macready. ‘It will cheer him, right enough, to see that pretty face of yours. Make me climb mountains, it would.’
Isangell almost blushed — the flirting habits of the sons of the Great Families were nowhere near as competent as this. ‘You won’t leave him alone?’
Macready shrugged and smiled. ‘Aye, what’s that servant that Lords have? The one who lays out your clothes and polishes your buckles?’
A bubble of laughter welled up in Isangell’s throat. ‘A valet?’
‘Exactly. Think of me as your man’s valet.’
‘Well, I’ll do my best.’ Honestly, a valet. Who did he think he was going to fool? ‘Anything else?’
Macready turned serious. ‘A couple of strong-armed coves on the door wouldn’t hurt, lass. Make sure no one comes in here, no matter who they say they are. We’ve a few friends who will be useful — I can give you their names — but otherwise our man here should be kept away from the prying eyes of Palazzo folk, if you follow me.’
Aunt Eglantine, then, was not to be admitted. Not that Isangell hadn’t already come to that conclusion all on her own. ‘I will assign lictors to the doors,’ she decided. ‘Perhaps — some kind of password that you only share with those you trust to be near Ashiol?’
A shadow passed over Macready’s face. ‘Rose and needle,’ he said sombrely. ‘That will do, right enough.’
Ashiol would not suffer mirrors. At first he covered every polished surface in his rooms, and after the cloth slid off one by accident, he started breaking them instead.
Isangell quietly had them all removed, after that.
No one asked him why, but then no one was asking him much of anything these days. He had so many words in his head, and they would spill out at the slightest provocation, slashing and wounding and piling up until everyone else felt as crazy as he did.
At least, that was the logical explanation.
The sentinels took turns watching over him, as was their sworn duty. Funny word, ‘duty’. Ashiol wasn’t sure it meant what it used to mean. Kelpie was careful around him, like he was something fragile made out of glass or spun sugar. Macready and Crane were more stoic. You couldn’t see what they were thinking, either of them, though Ashiol could hear the tick tick tick of their brains in any case.
Delphine was the only one he actually liked to have there, because she wasn’t treating him like some invalid. She would huff and pout about having to waste her time on him, and if he was lucky he could goad her into some proper bitching and yelling.
Isangell never yelled. She was more of a ghost than any of them, a pale outline who jumped every time Ashiol said something remotely strange.
(It made him want to act extra crazy around her, every single time.)
‘It’s fer your own good,’ Macready insisted, when Ashiol found the bars on the windows, wrapped in skysilver wire.
‘Whose good?’ Ashiol snarled, pacing back and forth, not wanting to stay still. ‘I need to be out there. I need to breathe.’
‘You need to heal,’ Macready said. The sentinels were putting their faith in the powder pills that the Palazzo dottore had prescribed, but all they did was to bring down the mist. Ashiol could not move some days, after taking them. When he escaped the mist, he was exactly the same. Broken, and on fire.
‘The cats do not want to be caged,’ he said.
‘We’re trying to keep you safe, you fool.’
Ashiol waited. His time would come. ‘Are you sure all the mirrors are gone?’
Macready sighed. ‘Aye, my King. All gone.’
The first time that the sky woke up after Velody’s sacrifice, Ashiol almost tore his hands off trying to get out of that fucking room. ‘They need me,’ he snarled when Crane and Kelpie held him back.
‘They need a Power and Majesty,’ Kelpie snapped back. ‘Can you be that for them right now? If not, shut up.’
He liked that; it was the Kelpie he knew and not the h
esitant, protective creature who had sat at his bedside in recent days. Much though he provoked her, he could not get her to repeat it.
Even with no mirrors in the room, he could not avoid his reflection. Not when it grew dark outside, and there was a lantern burning in the room.
Do you trust me? said Garnet one evening, staring out of the reflection of the glass. The bars on the window made lines on his face, like the scars Ashiol once bore.
‘Why even ask the question?’ said Ashiol, barely doing more than mouth the words. He remembered this conversation. He remembered what it had led to.
Then trust me, his friend said, with exaggerated warmth. I’ll take care of it. I’m just sorry the sentinels didn’t feel they could come to me with their concerns.
‘They love you,’ Ashiol said, remembering how afraid he had been of making Garnet angry, back then, when the world belonged to them. ‘They are yours, absolutely. Their loyalty does not waver.’
Ours, said Garnet. Sentinels serve the Kings, not only the Power and Majesty. And they never let me forget it. His voice was chilly now.
Ashiol closed his eyes. ‘You’re imagining things.’ He had leaned over and kissed Garnet then, years ago, the first time they had shared this conversation. Garnet had kissed him back, sincerely, as if he still loved him.
Only days later, Ashiol had woken up screaming, his animor gone, gone, fucking gone, his skin bleeding from a thousand cuts. ‘Give it back!’ he howled. ‘Give it back!’
He blinked, and he was back in his room, palms slammed against the cold glass, and Garnet’s face still there in the reflection, smirking at him. ‘You’re not real.’
Can’t get rid of me, though, can you?
This much was true. ‘You should never have done that to me. Not me.’
Did you think you’re special? Poor little rich boy. You couldn’t give it up, could you? The fucking privilege you were born with that said you should be better than me. Stronger, taller. You didn’t mind me having things as long as you had more.
Ashiol felt the despair all over again. Garnet had always been angry, always had this kind of resentment bubbling at the surface, but it was only at the end that Ashiol realised how bad it was.
‘I always shared,’ he said in a low voice.
Garnet laughed, an awful laugh. Oh yes, you loved to share. Loved to be the magnanimous one, doling out rewards to the keeper’s son. Demonstrating all over again that you were greater, I was lesser. Do you not see that? I only came to this city because of you. Everything I had in my life was owed to you. His voice cracked on his final words. I lost my last battle because I couldn’t get you out of my head.
‘You were Power and Majesty, and I was not.’
You think I don’t know that? Garnet banged his own fists against the glass, and it seemed to rattle under his blows. An angry ghost indeed. I was Power and Majesty. That meant something, Ashiol, to everyone but you. Because you still saw the scraped knees and the beaten back. You still saw the boy so scrawny that everyone said, ‘How can that little thing be the keeper’s son?’ You knew my skeletons, and you never let me forget it.
‘No,’ Ashiol said hoarsely. ‘That’s not how it was. You became Lord before me. King before me. You were the Power and Majesty. If it was all some kind of twisted competition between us, then you won.’
Not yet, said Garnet. Not until I take everything away from you. Everything. For a start.
Fear shot through Ashiol, and he hated that. Even in death, Garnet was the person he loved most, and feared most. He slammed his fists hard against the window, wanting to break his hands, wanting to feel something other than this.
The glass shattered under his blows, and his hands smashed into the skysilver-wrapped bars on the outside. The pain shot through him, overwhelming everything else.
He could still hear Garnet laughing as the broken pieces of window fell away into the grounds below.
26.
Volcanalia
Eight days after the Ides of Cerialis
Macready wasn’t one for the musette. Pomp, cosmetick and clowns did little for him, and the only songs he had a yen for were the Islandser drinking hymns that reminded him of his red-faced uncles and cousins back at home.
He felt like a fraud as he strolled into the Vittorine Royale under the guise of a messenger with a parcel of Volcanalia sweetmeats for the Orphan Princel. Poet was on stage, playing at being a real person. Interesting. Macready slid on to one of the benches in the stalls, watching. They were rehearsing a large chorus number, with a dozen or so youngsters in bright, gaudy finery. Poet walked through all the dance steps, calling out instructions here and there, even exchanging a wry laugh or two as he demonstrated what each of them needed to be doing. After the second walkthrough he did it in real time, singing and dancing his number with the painted flowers in support.
Macready felt his blood chill. That lass — the one who joined in on the second chorus with a cheeky line or two about why floristers like their blooms stripped of thorns — there was something about her. A glow beneath her brown cheeks, a fierce light shining out of her dark eyes.
That lad, too, the tumbler. Both the tumblers, masked and near-identical, copying each other’s moves, mimicking Poet’s own choreography. No one had timing that good. It was as if they knew what he was going to do before he did it. Even when he performed the steps differently to the walkthrough.
Macready paid more attention after that, his gaze sweeping over each of the peacock children. Taking it in. Holy feck, what had Poet done?
They could sing, that much was for sure. But there was more to the song than there should be. He could almost feel himself being dragged into it, compelled despite the creeping worry that he had to get out of there before …
‘Sentinel,’ said a low voice behind him. ‘Enjoying the show?’
Macready jumped. Poet was right there, leaning in from the bench behind, lips near his ear. ‘They’re all —’ he said. ‘Are they not?’ Saints and fecking angels, every single one of them.
‘Not yet,’ said Poet, looking naked without his spectacles, face white with cosmetick. He was made up like a harlequinus, down to the black-inked tear on one cheek. ‘But they will be, I think.’ He grinned fiercely, making a nonsense of the painted-on sad face. ‘Show business is all about spotting potential, don’t you know.’
Potential. A dozen or more children with fecking potential. Some could be courtesi. Some could be sentinels. The stage vibrated with their contained power. Not yet, not yet … How the devil had he found them all?
Macready’s mouth was dry. ‘I have a message from the Power and Majesty,’ he said. ‘You and Livilla are to be on watch this nox.’
Poet looked at Macready far too long. ‘Is that so?’ he said finally. ‘Our sweet Ashiol is still unwell, I take it? Unable to make his requests in person?’
It was an unconvincing lie. Macready knew it. The whole fecking Creature Court knew it. They didn’t get sick. They did not take wounds for long. But how else to explain Ashiol’s absence from the sky? There had been few battles since Velody’s sacrifice, and those very small, but there was still no excuse.
‘Won’t be long now,’ Macready said with false humour. ‘He’ll be back on his feet in no time.’ The Creature Court had been allowing this unbalance, because none of them had the powers of a King. He had known it was too good to be true. Any day now, they would pounce.
‘I’ll be going, then. Leave you to your …’ … cabaret troupe of children ripe to be swallowed up by the Creature Court, as soon as they came into their own. Bloody hellfire. If this was Poet’s game, then what might the other Lords be up to?
‘I’ll give the oath, you know,’ Poet said mildly. ‘Any time Ashiol asks for it.’
‘Aye,’ Macready sighed. ‘You’re a loyal cove, right enough.’
Her name was Topaz. She had started out as Gemimy, but that was too little and ordinary a name for the musette. Every demme who started out in a joint like this h
ad an eye to be a stellar someday, and you needed a name that gave you an edge. She reckoned ‘Topaz’ had to sit right with all them Rubies and Sapphiras in the company.
Topaz still couldn’t believe she was here, that those bright, bonny costumes in the shared dressing room were hers, and she was one of the lucky dozen chosen by the Orphan Princel to be his own personal cabaret troupe. The Princel’s Lambs, the company called them.
The Orphan Princel had spoken directly to Topaz once. Not just stage directions and choreography, which he gave to all the lambs. He met her gaze, eyes odd behind those funny spectacles of his, and said, ‘Your voice is as good as any of them, but you need to use it harder if you want to stand out.’
Topaz sung herself raw in the next rehearsal, and swore up and down she saw him smile at her for it.
Bart made it through to the last dozen as well. He was a tumbler, so stretchy and twisty that it sometimes made Topaz’s belly ache to watch him. He played the clown too much, and earned glares from the Orphan Princel more’n once for adding too much dumbshow to his act.
They had to know their place, after all. The lambs weren’t here to be stellars, not yet. They weren’t masks or columbines or songbirds, not in their own right. They were here to make the Orphan Princel look his best.
‘You’re good enough to be one of the real songbirds, Tope,’ Bart said lazily one afternoon backstage, in the shoebox of a dressing room they shared with the other lambs and casuals. ‘Your voice is as fine as that Madam Violet …’
‘Hush your mouth,’ said Topaz, squeezing herself into the new costume for the Bestialia chorus. She was going to be a cat, which she rather liked, in tabby velvet that showed off her hips. She was finally starting to look shapely now she was thirteen and eating regular. ‘I’m only a sprat.’
Topaz had her dreams, though, oh aye. Stellar dreams. The Orphan Princel was going to be the one to help her catch hold of them.
The dressing room filled up with the rest of the lambs, all scrambling for their Bestialia skins, and there was no time for any more daft talk. A good thing, too; the last thing she needed was word getting around that she was getting Ideas Above.
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