The Shattered City

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  This Garnet would let himself disappear into the sky, and she hated him for it.

  As she stood there, not knowing what to do next, Velody heard a breath of a sound across the silent, empty city. She stood still and listened, acutely aware of how silent she could now be without breath in her lungs or blood in her veins.

  She thought she had lost it, but then it came back, again and again. Music. It was music. Not Garnet this time. Something else.

  Velody followed the tune along the docks, then up the slope to the familiar temple that she remembered so clearly from her childhood. The temple of the Market Saints. It was a smaller, more homely, temple than its equivalent in Aufleur, but she knew now why she had always felt so safe when she and Rhian and Delphine went to Aufleur’s temple to make their sacrifices.

  The grand, carved doors at the front of the temple did not open — they were steam-powered, she remembered, and there was no water here, so no steam.

  (Even the baths where she had first met Garnet were empty now.)

  She had to walk around and let herself into the temple by the back way. The music was louder in here. Velody could hear the voices, children’s voices singing. Even a word or two were familiar.

  Cats and mice, creatures that crawl …

  There was no fire, of course. A temple should have flames, but there was nothing in the public hearth but old ashes and fragments of bone or burnt cloth. Velody circled the stone pillars of the inner sanctum, looking at each of the scarlet murals she remembered from her childhood. Finally, she stopped to sink her fingers into the dry ash.

  Ferax, bat, come one, come all.

  Sensations of any kind were a luxury in this strange and empty version of Tierce. There was no heat in the ashes, but they felt scratchy and soft against her palms. Velody pulled her hands out and drew grey smudgy lines up and down her arms, then across her cheekbones, nose and forehead.

  As nox grows dark, we come, we feast …

  Velody could not say whom she was mourning with this ritual. Not Garnet, who deserved no pity from her. Not herself — she was still here, still present in her mind and body, though neither of them felt overly familiar any more.

  She combed her fingers through her dark hair, streaking it with ash, and then plunged her hands into the grate again.

  This time she felt something. Her palm brushed against a nub and she seized the object, pulling it out and blowing the ashes from it.

  Dance with the cabaret of beasts …

  It was grey and charred and old and stale, but as Velody scratched at it with her nails she saw dry crumbs the colour of gold. When she brought it close to her face and inhaled, she almost smelled it.

  A honey cake, thrown into the fire for sacrifice.

  Velody walked back to the bakery, the stale and ash-covered honey cake pressed into the folds of her silk skirt. The song had faded, but when she concentrated she could hear snatches of it in the still air. She walked so fast that she could almost hear her heart beating, could almost feel the rasp of cold air in her lungs.

  (Almost, almost.)

  There was no food in this city. Hardly surprising, as they had no need to eat. The bakery was empty of flour or grain or yeasts or sugars. It had all faded away as surely as the people of Tierce had faded away.

  Why had it faded? If they had no need of food, why should it not be here, lying around as pointlessly as the clothes or the blankets? Velody opened the door of the bakery with a loud rattle, and took the stairs as fast as she could. ‘Garnet!’

  Was she too late?

  (Did she want to be too late?)

  Velody hurried into the room she had shared with her sisters, and he was there, the outline of him still grey and visible on the bed. She flung herself at him, straddling his narrow chest with a leg flung on either side of him. ‘You can’t go yet,’ she insisted. ‘Not if there’s a way we can be real enough to fight this.’

  She drew out the honey cake and broke it in half. Crumbs and ashes fell on to Garnet’s unmoving face.

  Velody bounced impatiently. She could feel the ridges of his ribs beneath her. He was here, and he was real. No excuses. ‘Open your eyes, damn you. Or you’re exactly the coward Ashiol always said you were.’

  Garnet’s eyes came open, and she shoved half the honey cake to his mouth, even as she brought the other half to her own.

  It was like eating grit and woodshavings. The cake was so dry that it scraped her mouth and tongue, and she could barely swallow. She had not eaten or drunk a thing since she came to this place.

  (Water, they had taken most of the water too, whomever had brought them to this place. She had no doubt that it meant something. Water was life, wasn’t it? So many of Aufleur’s rituals had been about blood, water, fire, food.)

  Garnet coughed, and struggled to swallow. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I must be, since I’m trying to save your life,’ Velody said, cramming more of the stale cake into her mouth, forcing herself to chew and swallow. She felt different. Almost alive.

  Garnet’s eyes flashed and he took another bite of the cake, chewing slowly, licking crumbs from his lips.

  Velody thought that she actually could hear her heart beating this time. Or maybe it was his heart. Garnet ate obediently, even the parts of the cake that were covered in ash, and then he tipped his head up to lick Velody’s fingers clean. Velody stared down at him, and he gave her a lazy look. He wasn’t grey any more, or translucent. He looked like Garnet.

  He sat up in a hurry and she jolted, realising too late that she was sitting in his lap. Garnet smiled, and for the first time Velody seriously imagined what he looked like in his Creature form, with the pointed teeth of a gattopardo. ‘You have no idea what you have done,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Don’t make me regret it,’ she warned, but barely got the sentence out before he pounced, mouth dry on hers at first, and then warm and wet.

  Velody kissed him back. Never mind that this was Garnet, the bright-eyed boy who had been in her dreams since she was fourteen (damn him). Never mind that this was the tyrant who had taken Macready’s finger and Ashiol’s heart, who had made the Creature Court so fearful.

  To feel anything for the first time in so long was amazing, and her body wanted more of it. They kissed messily, hands touching each other everywhere, and yes: there was blood in her veins, saliva in her mouth. Her breasts ached, her stomach twisted up in cramps, her feet began to hurt from all the walking she had done today.

  ‘You’ve undone me,’ Garnet breathed. ‘I was ready to let go.’

  ‘I need you,’ Velody told him. ‘We’re going to get back there, and I can’t do it alone.’

  ‘Ashiol will hate you forever,’ he said with a tight smile.

  ‘I’ll risk it.’

  Garnet kissed her again, and Velody’s blood cried out for him. Oh, yes. Heat sparked between them in the places where their skin touched.

  They felt it in the same moment. Garnet looked at her, eyes wide in triumph and exultation. Velody mirrored it right back at him. Whole, they were whole.

  Animor, pulsing through their veins, better than food or blood or sex. The essence of everything.

  Velody exploded into little brown mice, scampering across the bed and floor and walls. Paws and tails and fur and oh, it was glorious. She wanted to run forever, to climb and bite and fly.

  Finally she returned to herself, naked and gasping for breath (breathing, she was breathing). She sat on the floor, leaning back against the bed, and once the sheer novelty of breathing had worn off, she saw that he was watching her, and that he was not Garnet any more.

  The gattopardo crouched on one of the other beds, his tail swinging slowly back and forth. A large, spotted cat with eyes like liquid amber. Velody found herself lost in his gaze, almost hypnotised by that deep colour. He stood and stretched, then stepped down towards her with an easy gait. Did wild animals swagger? This one did.

  Velody stayed perfectly still as the gattopardo crossed the
floor and placed one paw on her thigh. She braced herself for the impact of claws, but he was gentle. A second paw followed the first, and the gattopardo nestled his face against the heat of her body.

  She should move. She really should move because he was licking her now, that rough scarlet tongue lapping its way over her stomach, up to her breasts. Velody gasped once as the gattopardo grazed her nipple with that tongue, hot and scratchy.

  She took hold of him by the sides of his neck, dragging the large powerful cat face up to hers. ‘Change,’ she commanded. ‘Now.’

  The gattopardo smiled with all of his teeth, and then he shaped himself back into Garnet, mortal and lean and every bit as naked as Velody.

  She was still holding his face in her hands, and dragged him in to kiss her, generating that heat again. Her heart beat louder in her head. Her pulse sped up. Oh, yes. She could feel her animor racing to every inch of her body. What Ashiol had said about sex and the Creature Court was, it seemed, entirely accurate.

  The song was back, filling her ears. Velody knew it now, an old Bestialia rhyme, though the voices and beats of the music gave it more the air of a musette number. It felt real, as if it was calling her home.

  Everything was real.

  Garnet growled against Velody’s mouth and pressed her more firmly against the bed. She could feel every plane of his body, every muscle against her softness, the hardness of his cock pressing urgently against her thigh.

  Velody let out a sound, wanting him.

  Garnet pulled his mouth from hers and kissed down her throat, leaving sucking bites there, and across her breasts. She writhed under his touch, letting him play, revelling in the fact that this was her body, it was here and real and no one was fading into the sky.

  Not today.

  He mapped out her body with his tongue and teeth. Velody rolled over, arms braced against the bed, and felt him cover her body with his from behind, teeth grazing her neck, shoulders, spine. His fingernails traced the softness of her stomach, dug more fiercely into her hipbones, and finally parted her legs.

  Velody cried out once as he thrust into her from behind. She was so wet by now that he slid in easily, long and hard, filling her entirely. She pushed back against him, and he fucked her with the ruthless efficiency of the animal he was.

  The animals they both were.

  Her power lit up inside her body like a temple fire, the dry honey cake churning in her stomach, and it didn’t matter that they were trapped in an empty city without even ghosts to show them the way home.

  They had this. Blood and animor and sex and life. It would bring them home.

  32.

  Bestialia

  The Ides of Bestialis

  They talked for hours, well into the morning. Ashiol lay on the couch and Heliora sat beside him, just out of reach, her eyes steady on his. He told her everything; most of it she had heard before, but it tumbled out as he tried to make sense of it all. Losing her, losing Velody, losing Garnet, losing himself.

  The world was new. Ashiol didn’t know if he should take the potions or not. He didn’t know if it would make a difference. He sure as hells didn’t know if he could make it as Power and Majesty.

  ‘I always thought you could,’ said Hel. ‘You were the one who wanted to run and hide. Everyone else believed in you.’

  Ashiol hadn’t thought of it that way. ‘Don’t you think it will break me?’

  ‘It breaks us all, sooner or later. I think I broke a long time ago, and it’s only starting to make sense to me now.’

  ‘But it will make sense? Eventually?’

  ‘I hope so. Sometimes hope is all we have.’

  Ashiol rolled the vials around his hand. ‘If I take these, will you disappear?’

  ‘Try it,’ Hel suggested.

  He swallowed both potion doses, then the three sticky green pills. Nothing seemed to happen straightaway, but when he tried to move, his hands felt slower than usual. It took him a long time to make it to the bed, and once he was there it was pretty clear he wouldn’t be going anywhere for some time. ‘Stay with me,’ he said, panicked when he couldn’t see her.

  ‘I’m here,’ said Hel, stepping into his line of sight again. ‘I’ll stay as long as I can.’

  Ashiol dreamed of mirrors, of broken glass and singing children who blinked bright-eyed behind animal masks. He woke with a dry, rasping throat, and the first thing he saw was Heliora. The old Hel would have curled up in that fancy chair beside his bed, bare feet tucked under her. Death had brought a new sense of gravity to her. She sat straight-backed, holding her body as if poised to flee at any moment. Her eyes were on him as he awoke.

  ‘You’re still here,’ he said, not quite believing it.

  ‘Someone has to be,’ she said, hands folded oddly in her lap.

  ‘I thought I made you go away.’ His voice cracked a little. ‘Don’t leave me again.’

  She looked confused and hesitant. Was it wrong to tell a ghost they were dead? Would it make her vanish? He was desperate to hold on to her, to make her stay. Ashiol reached out his hand, and she took it. ‘I should have saved you, Hel,’ he whispered.

  She let out a breath in a heavy sigh. ‘Oh, Ashiol,’ she said, and it was wrong, all wrong, because why did she sound sorry for him? Was he so pathetic that even a dead demme took pity on him?

  The outer door clicked closed and one of Isangell’s mousy maidservants came into the rooms. Ashiol could hear her bustling around, tidying and primping the sitting room. He looked at Hel, wanting to say so much more, but it was important now that he pretended to be sane. The maids were spying on him for Isangell, obviously, and she would give everything she knew to Macready.

  He had to hide Hel from them all, or they would find a new mix of potions that really would make her go away.

  The maid entered — he knew her by sight; there were only a few whom Isangell trusted with his care. In truth it was probably more likely that only a few were willing to enter the rooms of the mad Ducomte.

  ‘Coffee, seigneur?’ she asked.

  Ashiol nodded abruptly. It had become habit not to speak to them. Anything he said would be taken back to the precious Duchessa, and that might be the last straw, the piece of evidence she used against him. Animor or not, being in this place made him so fucking powerless.

  The maid brought in a tray, and poured coffee silently into a fine cup. She knew not to add honey or spices to it, so she must have served him before. She met his gaze briefly as she handed him the cup. ‘And for the demoiselle?’

  Ashiol stared at her. ‘What did you say?’

  The maid flicked her eyes in the direction of Hel, and then stepped back, made nervous by the tone of his voice. ‘I meant no offence, seigneur.’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ said Heliora, speaking clearly.

  The maid nodded, bobbed her head again, and fled the room.

  Ashiol’s hand was shaking so hard he barely got the rattling cup to his dresser in time. ‘She can see you?’

  Hel looked uneasy. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

  But he was up and out of bed, kneeling at her feet. He laid his hands on one knee, and then the other. She was warm. ‘You’re really here.’

  ‘I know it pleases you to think so —’

  ‘She saw you.’ Ashiol pulled her to the ground in one swift tug, pinning her body to the chair with his own. ‘Do you know what it’s been like? I can’t taste food in my mouth, I can’t set foot outside these fucking walls without thinking I’m going to die, but every day I stay trapped in here makes me feel like I have to scrape my skin off just to keep breathing. I don’t feel real in my skin, I’m lost, and you’re dead, you’re dead …’

  Hel let out half a sob and pressed her mouth to his. He kissed her, and she tasted raw and warm and wrong; not like his Hel at all. But she wasn’t cold — that was the main thing.

  There were tears on her face. ‘I have to go,’ she gasped. ‘Macready will be here soon.’

  ‘I don’t
give a frig about Macready,’ said Ashiol, hands in her short hair, gripping her tightly. ‘I need you.’

  ‘Not me,’ she whispered, but he kissed her roughly, drowning out anything she had to say. She was dead, after all. What were the chances it was something he would want to hear?

  They took it slow. Hands and mouths and heat; so much heat Ashiol couldn’t believe it. He laughed at one point, because if he was going to frig a dead demme Tasha would be furious it wasn’t her, but he got tangled up trying to explain the joke and Hel kissed him so sweetly to shut him up that he stopped talking and let himself fall into her.

  Death smelled like roses, it seemed, or maybe he was just getting sentimental in his insanity. Hel grasped him as he slid into her, and he swallowed her moans into his own mouth.

  Finally they were sated, their bodies pressed together under the sheets, and only then he thought to wonder if the maid had left, or if she was still plumping pillows in the other room, closing her ears to their cries.

  ‘You still haven’t disappeared,’ he said, mouth busy on her shoulder. She wasn’t cold. Shouldn’t she be cold? ‘Fine ghost you are. Anyone would think you wanted to stay.’

  Hel half-turned under him, her fingers sliding through his hair. ‘Ashiol, I have to tell you …’ She sounded sad.

  The door opened and Macready stood there, startled and angry. ‘What the feck —’ he demanded.

  ‘Get out of here,’ Ashiol growled. ‘This is none of your business.’

  ‘Like hells it isn’t,’ Macready spat. ‘What the saints and devils do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Macready,’ said Hel, her voice sounding broken. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’

  The sentinel’s voice was rough. ‘Is it not, lass?’ He glared at Ashiol. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, you selfish sod.’

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ Ashiol roared. He rose up out of bed, ready to force Macready out if he had to.