The Shattered City

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  ‘Less of a monster than you, apparently.’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Heliora, covering herself with a sheet. ‘Both of you. You don’t have to protect me, Mac. I make my own choices.’

  ‘This isn’t like you,’ said Macready, sounding strangled. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ The buzzing was back in Ashiol’s head, and nothing made any sense. Macready and Heliora had a history, did they? ‘You never had any qualms about us frigging the same demme before.’

  Macready hit him. Ashiol didn’t expect it, and the blow was a fierce pain hard on his jaw. He lunged for Macready, not even bothering to summon animor. He could beat him with his bare hands, no other powers required.

  Hel thrust herself between them, sheet still wrapped around her body. She pushed Macready back with one hand flat against his chest. ‘Mac, stop it. He thinks I’m Heliora!’

  Time froze. Ashiol stared at her, but she only had eyes for Macready. ‘Oh, lass,’ the sentinel said quietly. ‘What have you done?’

  It was his Hel. How could it not be? It looked like her, sounded like her (the way she held herself was wrong, he had known that from the start). If it wasn’t her, that meant she was really dead.

  Ashiol roared, lunging at the woman, hands tight around her throat. ‘Who are you?’ If this was one of Livilla’s games, he was going to kill her. Right here, Isangell’s carpets be damned.

  ‘My King, no!’ yelled Macready behind him, and his hands closed over Ashiol’s, trying to pull him back.

  Ashiol was giving no quarter this time. His hands burned with power. He squeezed her neck hard.

  There was a scream, but it came from behind him. Another demme joined them, sharp nails digging into his wrists. Delphine.

  ‘Ashiol!’ she shrieked like a fishwife. ‘Stop it. Are you crazy? It’s Rhian!’

  Ashiol rocked back on his heels, hands still on her neck. Heliora stared back at him, wide-eyed and shaking. Not Heliora. He forced himself to see past the hallucination, to acknowledge that this demme was taller, differently built, in no way the same as the one he had loved. He reached out slowly and touched her hair. Red. It was red.

  ‘Yes,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Apparently I am still quite mad.’

  ‘What did he do to you? What did he do to her?’ Delphine was shrill enough to drill holes in his skull with her voice.

  Heliora was dead and there was nothing for him here. Ashiol dropped his hands, stepped back, and shaped himself into cats.

  ‘No, wait!’ Macready called out, but it was too late.

  The gang of black cats swarmed out of the room, out of the Palazzo, and away.

  While Delphine and Macready were chasing after Ashiol, Rhian dressed slowly and left the Palazzo. No one tried to stop her. No one even seemed to see her.

  She walked down the side of the Balisquine hill, heading home, for once not stopping to wonder at what might happen if someone accosted her; if she might kill again, just to be left alone.

  Well, said Heliora, in her head.

  Don’t talk, Rhian thought numbly. Not a word.

  I didn’t see that coming.

  Rhian couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe.

  That good, was it?

  It occurred to Rhian that if she used the main roads, it would be easier for Delphine and Macready to catch up with her. She veered off into a side street, and then another, and found herself climbing the Lucretine hill, surrounded by houses she did not know. ‘It was you,’ she muttered beneath her breath. ‘He saw you inside my head. He wanted you.’ But Heliora had not been there, not in that moment, when Rhian chose to let him believe in his hallucination. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ she said finally.

  Heliora’s voice sounded different in her head, now. Ugly, and accusing. Who’s the rapist now?

  Rhian slipped on the gutter and stumbled. ‘Don’t say that! You don’t understand.’

  A couple of children stood in the street, staring at her. Of course they were staring. She was talking to herself. Rhian pulled her shawl over her head and hurried her step, desperate to get home.

  Heliora was silent in her head.

  Ashiol kept running until his paws ached. He dug rats out of a rubbish heap somewhere near the Alexandrine, chased them down one by one and tore them to shreds, licking the blood from his furry chins. He scrambled up the hillside, among the old abandoned terrace gardens. He collapsed finally, a blur of black shadows spread out in a wide patch of hot morning sunshine.

  When he woke, he was human and naked and the sun wasn’t warm any more. He wasn’t alone, either.

  ‘I thought it was going to be hard to spring you out of the Palazzo for our date,’ said Poet, his legs dangling aimlessly from an overhanging tree branch. ‘You’re not even making me work for it, kitten.’

  ‘Sorry I’m not more of a challenge,’ Ashiol rasped in a dry throat. He closed his eyes again, tipping his hair back. ‘The sentinels have gone completely fucking insane.’

  ‘This is a new development?’ said Poet in mock-astonishment.

  ‘I’ve been seeing Heliora,’ Ashiol confessed, and opened his eyes. He could just see Poet’s face leaning forward out of the draping tree-fronds. There was nothing there but mild curiosity. ‘I talked to her. Touched her. Frigged another demme, thinking it was her. How’s that for insane?’

  ‘You’ve been crazier,’ suggested Poet.

  ‘Not lately.’

  ‘I find it fascinating that you’re so wrapped up in guilt and grief for what happened to our late lamented Seer, but you don’t seem to have a scrap of remorse about Velody.’

  Ashiol leaned up on his elbows, pushing down the anger that was his first response. ‘Velody made her own choices.’

  ‘She sacrificed herself to save this city.’

  ‘And Hel didn’t?’

  ‘What is it that broke you so badly, kitten? Not losing Heliora. Did you think about her for a minute, in the five years you were exiled? I think you don’t want to admit how angry you are that the little mouse threw herself into the sky.’

  ‘Glad that’s cleared up,’ Ashiol grunted. ‘You should moonlight as a dottore, with insights like that.’

  ‘I can’t help being brilliant. Come on, sweetpea. We have to get you dressed for the theatre. Naked is not the new velvet.’

  ‘I’m not going to your fucking show,’ Ashiol said darkly.

  ‘Don’t be such a tease. It’s the Bestialia Cabaret, the event of the season. Everyone will be there, and I’m not talking about the so-called Great Families.’

  That surprised Ashiol. He looked at Poet strangely. ‘How did you talk the rest of the Creature Court into that?’

  ‘How else? I offered an opportunity for them to frock up.’

  ‘You’re planning something in that devious head of yours.’

  ‘When am I not? Come on, kitten. Admit it. You’re curious.’

  As Ashiol hesitated, clothes fell around him. A silk shirt. Trews with beaded cuffs. One shapely boot, and then another. ‘This is just an excuse for you to dress me,’ he muttered.

  Poet laughed, sounding genuinely happy. ‘As if I needed an excuse.’

  33.

  The simple act of choosing a dress made Delphine feel as if she was living another life. A life in which Velody had not let herself be swallowed by the sky. It seemed wrong to be dressing for the theatre — the Vittorina Royale, no less — without Velody at her side.

  Delphine put on a sapphire-coloured frock that dripped with seed pearls, knowing that if Velody was there, Delphine would beg her to add a trim to glam it up — a little fringe, or some ribbons. Velody would do it, even if they were running late. Nothing was more important than the dress being perfect.

  Delphine’s hands shook as she tried to fasten the buttons at the back. She stepped out of her room, and saw Rhian’s closed door.

  It didn’t make sense. How had Rhian ended up tangled in Ashiol Xandelian’s bedclothes? She could barely
even look at a man. It was Ashiol’s fault, it had to be. If he hadn’t forced her, it was something else. Potions, perhaps? Something to hurl Rhian’s inhibitions to the wayside.

  It was enough to make Delphine bite through the walls. Men like him got anything they wanted, anything, no matter who they hurt along the way.

  Rhian couldn’t have changed so much in so little time. Could she?

  Velody would have known what to say. Velody would have listened to Delphine rant about this for hours until she let her out in the world again. Velody might have had half a chance of asking Rhian what had happened without sounding like a demonic fishwife.

  ‘I need help,’ Delphine called down the stairs. Macready came up from the kitchen and fastened the back of her dress with hands far steadier than hers. ‘Ready to go?’ she asked him, and he shrugged.

  Neither of them knew why this exhibition of Poet’s was so important, but the invitations had been inked in Poet’s own hand. They were all expected to be there — sentinels, Lords and Court. Seer.

  ‘Thinks he’s Power and Majesty or something,’ was what Kelpie had said about it.

  Crane had shrugged. ‘No one else is doing the job,’ he replied in a low voice, the only thing any of them had heard him say in days. Now Ashiol was missing, and none of the sentinels had any excuses to be elsewhere. Turning up to the theatre might be their best chance to track him down again. Delphine’s private opinion was that he was best lost, for good. It wasn’t likely to endear her to the other sentinels, so she kept her trap shut.

  But, Rhian.

  ‘I’ll meet you downstairs in a minute,’ said Delphine.

  Macready nodded, and headed back down. He had been uncharacteristically sombre since the scene at the Palazzo. They were all in shock.

  Delphine hesitated at Rhian’s door. Barging in was against the rules of their carefully balanced household. But apparently there were no rules any more, and there was sure as hells no balance.

  Delphine pushed the door open without knocking. She expected the bolts to hold true, jarring her arm, but the door opened easily.

  Rhian sat at the window, straight-backed in the chair. She did not turn her head.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Delphine asked, though Rhian was hardly dressed for the occasion.

  Rhian made a small sound that might have been a laugh. ‘Because attending the theatre is such a normal activity for me.’

  ‘I thought —’ Delphine bit down what she had been about to say. ‘You’re part of this now.’

  ‘Velody’s dark little world of imaginary beasts and toy soldiers. Yes, I am part of it, despite my best wishes. And I’m cured now, right? So everything is different.’ Rhian sounded so bitter.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You thought it.’ Rhian did turn now, and there was such an awful look on her face that Delphine drew in a breath. ‘Ask me, Dee. Ask me how I knew what you were thinking.’ Delphine shook her head, refusing to play that game. ‘I have voices in my head. Did you know that? All the Seers who ever lived. I can’t hear all of them clearly, but that makes it worse. It’s like having people standing right behind you, whispering. I can step outside the house now, but it costs me. Every time.’

  Anger poured out of Rhian until the room filled with it. Delphine didn’t know if it was her new sentinel senses that made her feel the fury all the more strongly — or just the sheer weight of Rhian’s emotions. She wanted to reach out and hold her friend. She wanted to rip a hole in time and go back to the days when they were three hard-working apprentices, with time for laughs and honey cakes. She wanted to run until her feet bled, drink herself stupid and dance, dance, dance. More than anything, Delphine wanted to go back to being the screwed-up one, the careless one, the irresponsible one. Caring and trying just led to utter badness.

  Rhian continued, speaking in that awful voice. ‘I hate Velody for this. I hate her for bringing this world to us. The futures — you have no idea what it’s like. I can’t turn it off, can’t make it go away. This is what I was hiding from, all this time, and I didn’t know until she brought it home …’

  She broke off, as if that had been one secret too many.

  Delphine couldn’t help herself. ‘Where does Ashiol fit into this?’

  Rhian was very still after she asked that. ‘Another form of self-harm?’ she said finally, in the kind of voice that could be joking, only not.

  ‘I want to understand. For nearly two years, ever since … you’ve barely been able to be in the same room with a man. Even when you’re training with Macready, you don’t let him touch you. How do you go from that to —’ Delphine swallowed, not wanting to say anything hateful. Could Rhian read her thoughts this time, too? It was Ashiol Xandelian, for saints’ sake.

  ‘I wanted to see how much it had changed me,’ said Rhian. ‘The Seers, the futures. Am I still the same person? I don’t even know.’

  ‘But why choose him?’ Delphine blurted out.

  ‘Heliora is in my head,’ said Rhian. ‘Louder than the rest of them. I have conversations with her. He could see that, for some reason. He saw through my skin and he thought I was her. It was easy to — be her for a while.’ She let out a long breath. ‘For once, I wanted things to be easy.’

  Delphine couldn’t help making a face. ‘So what — Heliora wanted to frig him and you let her?’

  ‘That would be a nice excuse,’ said Rhian. She sounded so sensible about it. ‘But it wasn’t her, it was me. I chose him because — with him, I didn’t have to be afraid.’

  ‘You should be. He’s more powerful than any of them. And more broken. He’s dangerous, the baddest of bad news.’

  Rhian nodded. ‘Exactly.’ She dropped her gaze for a moment, drooping in her chair. ‘Damn. I have to — damn.’ After a moment, she stood and went to her wardrobe. ‘I have to wear a dress.’

  ‘The futures told you that?’

  ‘Whatever is going to happen this nox, I have to be there.’ Rhian looked grim. ‘We all have to be there.’

  A chill went over Delphine. ‘It’s not just dinner and a show, then?’

  Rhian pulled out a dress Delphine hadn’t seen her wear in years — soft green fabric, something from their apprentice days. ‘When is it ever?’ she said wearily.

  Well, yes. She had a point.

  Macready knew crazy, but this was a special kind of crazy. The streets were thick with masked people, celebrating the Bestialia. Cats and hounds, panthers and dragons. Real creatures and those of distant myth clashed together in false faces of paper and leather.

  Bells. Everyone was wearing fecking bells, ribboned to ankle and wrist. The streets sang with the shrill, unhappy sound, ting ting ting ting.

  Delphine caught the pained look on his face. ‘I used to make those damned things,’ she said with a hint of that impish smile of hers. ‘But I decided they were a crime against the city. Now I don’t work the Bestialia. Let someone else torture the masses.’

  They escaped off the street, and into the relative sanity of the theatre. The Master of the House accepted their tickets without a word. ‘Only the dress circle,’ said Delphine, still pretending this was some kind of lark. ‘We’ve come down in the world, a sad state of affairs.’

  Macready looked from her to Rhian, who was following them like a shadow, her arms held stiff and tense at her side. ‘You’re full of laughs this nox,’ he said to Delphine, and it came out more cranky than he meant it to.

  Delphine tossed her head at him. ‘I could scream or wail if you would prefer,’ she said, with a hint of genuine upset in her voice. ‘Don’t think I haven’t considered it.’ Then she was back to smiling and faking it, her best skills of shiny denial on display.

  Macready’s collar was scratchy. He didn’t want to be here, dressed up and playacting. He didn’t want any of them to be here.

  Something bad was going to happen. That much was obvious.

  They took their seats in the dress circle. Crane was already there. ‘Kelpie couldn’t si
t still,’ he said, pointing out the other sentinel. She was on her feet near the area fondly known as ‘the pit’, looking around the theatre as if she expected murderers to leap out of the shadows. Perhaps they would, at that.

  Macready knew how she felt. He wished he hadn’t let himself get hemmed in here, between Delphine and the silent Rhian. He looked up, and saw every inch of the theatre reflected in a thousand mirrored tiles. Mirrors were creepy. He never liked the idea that something like you (but not quite like you) could look back out of them. Then there was the fact that their mad King had gone out of his way lately to cover or shatter every mirror he came across, ever since the sky and devils had taken Heliora and Velody.

  ‘Quite an entrance,’ said Delphine under her breath.

  Macready followed her gaze and saw Livilla making her way through the theatre in a trail of pearls and black feathers. It was odd seeing her without her lads at her beck and call, but the courtesa she had wrangled from Priest was frocked up to the nines, in a baby version of Livilla’s own costume.

  Livilla was escorted to a box, and found herself sharing it with Warlord. They were obviously in a fighting stage of their relationship, and both were stony-faced as they took their seats.

  Nice, Macready couldn’t help thinking. Trust Poet to cause trouble with the seating arrangements before the show even started.

  The other private box held a sombre-looking Priest, his courtesi, and Lennoc. No sign of Ashiol yet.

  The show had started already — some random act of tumblers and columbine dancers in gaudy petal skirts. The daylight audience were watching and cat-calling like it was any other performance. Half of them wore Bestialia finery, which gave the impression that the audience was full of creatures instead of demmes and coves.

  ‘It’s not right,’ Macready said over Delphine’s head to the lad. ‘All of us here, among them. Poet’s gone out of his mind at last.’

  ‘Poet’s up to something,’ said Crane, chewing on a chestnut from a paper cone. ‘But we have to be here, don’t we, to find out what it is?’