They ran up the stairs together. Seeing Rhian’s door torn off its hinges was a punch to the stomach.
Delphine made it to the doorway first. Half a step behind, Velody had to look around Delphine to see the scene within the room.
Rhian sat on the bed, stiff and terrified. A man sat behind her, cradling her hard against his chest, a fierce smile on his face. He wore festival clothes, bright and merry, a lopsided white garland on his reddish-brown hair and sweetheart embroideries on his cuffs.
‘Hello, Velody,’ he said. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you at last. I just know we’re going to be good friends.’
Velody did not move, relieved that Rhian was, at least, alive. The sight of a man in her private sanctum though, the chill horror in her eyes as he held her body to his, was unbearable.
Delphine was not thinking so clearly—or, perhaps, was thinking more clearly than Velody. ‘Monster!’ she screamed, throwing herself at him with her nails outstretched, her eyes blazing with rage. He flicked a hand in her direction and she flew back, as if a solid blow had connected, crashing into the wall.
Velody could not move to Rhian’s defence. She could barely speak. ‘Which animal are you?’ she asked, and was only half-aware of how together she sounded.
‘Ferax,’ he said, naming the urban fox that plagued parts of the city. Almost as bad as rats, they say, she found herself thinking, and resisted the urge to laugh. ‘Which animal are you, Velody?’
Little brown mouse, she thought, and wondered why. ‘I’m a dressmaker,’ she said, and there were silk shears in her hand. Had she picked them up in the workshop? She couldn’t remember. ‘Step away from her, ferax, or I will cut out your heart and eat it while you watch.’
The awful thing was, she meant it. She had seen the bloodstains around the Ducomte’s mouth as he carried Delphine out of the dressing room, and something deep inside her had said, I could do that.
The ferax grinned as if this little exchange meant that—somehow—they were friends. ‘So you are one of us.’
‘I’m not one of anything.’
‘You must know that you belong with the beasts. You must have felt it.’
‘I don’t belong anywhere but here.’ Velody winced as he tightened his grip around the shuddering Rhian. ‘I belong to this house, to her and her.’ She pointed first at Rhian, then at Delphine.
‘Why will none of you leave us alone?’ She was so very exhausted, but she had to be alert now. She had to save Rhian. She had to make their house a fortress again. But how could they ever trust locks and bolts after this?
The ferax opened his arms and Rhian fell free of him in a desperate tumble, her elbows pushing away from him as she rolled, sprawled on the floor. Slowly, she scrabbled her way towards Delphine. Velody could not help but notice the painful way in which Rhian moved.
‘What did you do?’ she demanded in a fury.
The ferax stood up in a smooth movement, walking towards Velody. She gripped the silk shears, but something about his golden eyes made her hand relax. He was able to hold out his hand and take them from her. He touched her chin, gazing into her eyes with something almost—but not quite—like parental concern. ‘So,’ he said. ‘This is the one they would have as our King. Weak.’
‘Why is everyone always talking about Kings?’ Velody asked. She was so tired of not understanding the strange things that these people said. What kind of world did they belong to, that all this made sense to them? ‘There are Ducs and Duchessas and Ducomtes, Comtes and Baronnes and a hundred different kinds of noblemen up to the rank of Princel and Princessa, but we just don’t have any Kings. No one has had Kings for a hundred years, not even the Inglirrens or Islandsers.’
The ferax moved in closer. ‘Wishful thinking if ever I heard it,’ he said, and then he kissed her. His hands held her arms fast, and his grip was so pinchingly tight that she couldn’t struggle. The experience was entirely unpleasant, although she couldn’t help wishing he would put his wet tongue a little further into her mouth so that she could bite it off.
He flew away from her with a sudden yelp of pain, slamming to the floor, his whole body twitching. Velody looked with calm detachment at the knife in his shoulder. The hilt was quite ordinary, wrapped in strips of green leather. The blade was something else again—at least, the inch or two of metal that wasn’t buried in the ferax’s shoulder. It gleamed and shone, more fiercely silver than anything she had seen before. Tiny motes of light danced across the surface, although it wasn’t tilted at the right angle to catch the reflection of the single lantern in the room.
‘Took something of a liberty there, I’m afraid,’ said an apologetic voice from the doorway, in Islandser brogue. Macready offered a shamefaced grin as Velody glared at him. ‘You wouldn’t have been enjoying that at all?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said in a hard voice.
‘Well, that’s all right, so. I’d have hated to interrupt such a tender moment if the pleasure was mutual.’
The ferax was curled in a ball, moaning.
Velody walked on unsteady feet past Macready to her friends. Delphine was conscious but huddled in on herself. Rhian sat with her back to the wall, her arms and legs as stiff as they had been when the ferax was holding her captive. Velody took Rhian’s hands between hers. ‘What did he do to you?’ she asked, and couldn’t help but think of that horrible day over a year ago, of begging Rhian to tell them what had been done to her and that awful silence, worse than if they’d heard the grisly details.
‘Hit,’ said Rhian in a distant voice. Her face was swollen on one side. Velody hadn’t noticed that before. ‘Here…here…here.’ Her hand passed over her body, marking where the ferax had hit her. She managed a wan smile, being brave. ‘Nothing worse.’
‘That’s bad enough,’ Velody said. She wrapped her arms around Rhian’s trembling body, offering what little comfort she could.
After a long moment, Rhian hugged her back. ‘I thought it was happening again.’ Rhian started sobbing, her whole body convulsing against Velody’s. Delphine crawled towards them, adding her body to the awkward embrace.
There was no time for this, necessary though it was. Velody eased away from Rhian, allowing her to wrap her arms around Delphine instead. Only then did she look back up at Macready.
The light-hearted banter was gone. The sight of Rhian weeping—the sheer devastation wrought by the ferax—had affected him. His face was hollow. ‘How can I help, lass?’
It was vaguely reassuring to see that these people were not all monsters. Velody looked at the crumpled ferax, then back at Macready. ‘You can leave, and tell me that none of you will ever be back again.’
Macready hesitated, and she knew he was deciding which lie to tell her.
The woman—Kelpie—appeared in the doorway beside Macready, bright-eyed and breathing hard, a sword in one hand that glittered with the same shimmering intensity as Macready’s knife blade.
‘Crane will live, if you’re interested,’ she said, mainly to Macready. ‘I found Dhynar’s hounds skulking around in the shadows. Made them whimper.’
‘Not now,’ said Macready, his eyes on Velody.
Velody stood over the ferax. Slowly, she reached down and pulled the knife out of his shoulder. It was jammed hard against bone and cartilage, and it took great strength to pull it free. The ferax moaned, still cowering from the weapon. Blood gushed out of his wound.
‘Don’t touch the blade,’ warned Macready. ‘It will burn you.’
Velody nodded slightly, indicating that she had heard him. She wiped blood from the shimmering metal on the ferax’s bright tunic and then touched the flat of the blade to his face. He howled and cowered from her. She pressed it harder against his skin. ‘Get up.’
Slowly, the ferax got to his feet. She ran the flat of the blade down his face, resting the edge finally against his throat. ‘Walk,’ she ordered.
Kelpie and Macready moved aside from the door to let them past, but Velody shook her head. ‘You t
wo go first. I don’t trust any of you.’
‘Crane almost died protecting your house,’ Kelpie flared.
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? You’ve been watching our home, following us in the street. These…creatures didn’t start taking an interest in us until your pet Ducomte did. What exactly did he tell them about me and my friends to make us such interesting targets?’
Kelpie was prepared to argue the point, but Macready took hold of her elbow and steered her out of the room. Velody, still pressing the blade to the ferax’s neck, followed them.
Kelpie and Macready were halfway down the stairs, Velody and the ferax only a little way behind them, when the Ducomte Ashiol Xandelian d’Aufleur swept in from the kitchen as if he owned the place, high black boots ringing on the wooden floor and a long black coat swirling around his body. He took in the little tableau with a frown. ‘What happened here?’
Velody gave the ferax a sudden push with the knife. He cringed away from it so wildly that he fell, tumbling down the stairs. Macready and Kelpie both pressed themselves to the sides so that he fell without taking them with him. As he hit the wooden floorboards at the bottom, his body split open into five or six red-gold furry creatures that darted around the Ducomte’s ankles and fled towards the open kitchen door.
Velody met the Ducomte’s eyes. She held up the shimmering knife by its green leather-wrapped hilt, noticing again the fascinating way in which it gleamed even in semi-darkness. ‘Will this knife do to you what it did to him?’ she asked.
He inclined his head slowly. ‘Yes, it will.’
‘Good. Then you won’t come back.’
‘You can’t keep it!’ protested Kelpie, genuinely shocked.
Velody weighed the knife. ‘Try and stop me.’
The other woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘I could take it off you in a heartbeat,’ she said. ‘Skysilver doesn’t burn humans; that blade won’t even scratch me.’
Velody hesitated, a question forming in her mind if not yet on her tongue. Why did Macready warn me not to touch the blade if it has no effect on humans?
‘She can keep the knife,’ Macready said quickly. ‘She’ll need it more than I will.’ He glanced up at Velody, tipping an imaginary cap to her. ‘Her name is Jeunille. Take care of her, my lovely, and she’ll do right by you.’
‘You only just got them back!’ Kelpie wailed.
Macready shook his head. ‘Let it go, lass. You’ve no idea what we’ve done to these demoiselles.’
Without another look at Velody, he headed for the kitchen. Kelpie followed him.
Now it was just Velody and Ashiol. It seemed silly to keep thinking of him as the Ducomte, no matter how regally he might behave. She came down a step or two, pointing the knife at him. ‘You’re not ranting and raving quite as much as you were last nox. You seem relatively normal.’ And you’ve washed the blood from your face, I see. All very civilised.
Ashiol winced a little. ‘I wasn’t having a good day. I’m not usually a raving lunatic.’
‘I see.’ Hard to forget the sight of him crashing into the dressing room, blood dripping from his teeth and tongue, swooping Delphine up into his arms as if she were a fainting damsel in a romantic play. ‘So this is you on a good day?’
‘Pretty much.’ He eyed the knife, and backed towards the kitchen as Velody advanced on him. ‘We need to talk.’
‘Talk.’ She almost laughed at that. ‘What do you think we have to talk about, my Lord Ducomte? The state of politics today? The sociological significance of fertility festivals? Or perhaps you’d like to tell me exactly why those creatures came after me and my friends?’
They were in the kitchen now.
‘I don’t know how they found out,’ Ashiol said, almost at the open back door. ‘They weren’t supposed to know about you—not yet anyway.’
‘Weren’t supposed to know what?’ she snapped as Ashiol stepped backwards through the door, stumbling a little on the first step before finding his feet. She kept him moving until they were in the alley beyond the backyard. ‘Weren’t supposed to know what about us?’ she repeated.
Macready and Kelpie were waiting further up the alley. Their friend Crane was between them, on his feet despite the nasty injuries, his face swollen. Velody tried not to remember how damned pretty he had been before the assault, tried not to feel guilty about what the ferax had done to him. This is their fault, not mine.
Ashiol stopped moving, his dark eyes almost daring her to advance on him further. ‘I didn’t know for sure,’ he said calmly, a far cry from the manic explosion of words he had thrown at her the nox before. ‘I needed to be certain.’
‘Certain of what? Why are you all so interested in a florister, a ribboner and a dressmaker?’
There was something in Ashiol’s face that brought Velody closer to the truth. ‘It’s not Delphine or Rhian. It’s me you’re all after. What is it you think you know about me, seigneur Ducomte, that I don’t know myself?’
Ashiol’s eyes flickered.
Velody squeezed the leather-wrapped hilt of the knife and touched the shimmering silver blade to the skin of her left hand. The pain was unbelievable, a fierce burn that brought her to her knees before she was able to pull the thing away. She gasped, trying to regain a halfway normal breathing pattern so she could find her voice.
‘If this knife doesn’t work on humans, what the frig am I?’
She could see—damn it, could smell—that he was about to lie to her, to say something vague and uninformative, that he was trying like anything to avoid telling her the truth. With a scream, she launched at him, the knife still in her hand.
Ashiol’s watchdogs were good, she had to give them that. When it was over, the knife was on the ground and Velody was pinned to the wall by all three of them. Kelpie was the first to peel off, checking that Ashiol was all right. Crane was the next to go, muttering about how many ribs he thought he had broken before that little scuffle, let alone after.
‘You may not believe me, but I am sorry about this,’ Macready gabbled in her ear, still holding her fast. ‘I know you’ve been through a lot this nox, but we couldn’t let you kill him, so. It’s our job to protect him. He belongs to us in the same way that your Rhian and your Delphine belong to you.’ He relaxed his hold on her a little, leaning back so that their bodies were not quite so close. ‘The funny thing is, lass, if you are what he thinks you are, we’ll have to protect you too.’
Velody looked past Macready to Ashiol, who was dabbing blood from his cheek. She had got in one cut, at least, in her wild and slashing attack. ‘What am I?’ she asked him.
Ashiol looked at the blood on his fingers, and licked it. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and this time it wasn’t a lie. ‘I want to find out though.’
Rage surged through her, a burning anger. ‘No more games,’ she said as heat prickled across her skin. ‘No more games, Ducomte! Tell me what I am!’
She felt her body shifting explosively within her skin, as if it was not quite hers any more. She was breaking apart, tearing into a thousand separate pieces.
Macready threw himself aside, shielding his eyes as Velody burst open, her body flying apart and finding new, small shapes to climb into. Suddenly she was everywhere, inside hundreds of tiny warm bodies with tiny unblinking eyes.
Little brown mice, she thought hysterically. Saints and angels. I’m little brown mice.
24
It was a long time since Heliora had visited the Arches. As the seer of the Creature Court, she occupied a strange in-between status, one foot in the nox and another in the daylight.
When Ortheus was still the Power and Majesty, the seer had been expected to stay at his right hand, offering advice and opinions at every given opportunity. Heliora was presented with jewels and fine clothes and installed in living quarters in the Haymarket, Ortheus’s own territory.
His successor had offered no such incentives to stay nearby. Garnet had embraced the idea of a pet fortune-teller only until he realis
ed that her interpretations of the cards and crystals were not always going to be the ones that he wanted. The seer’s grand rooms in the Haymarket were soon appropriated for Garnet’s lover Livilla, while Ashiol gave Heliora living quarters in his own territory.
After Ashiol went into exile, there was even less of a reason for Heliora to stay in the underground sanctum. Garnet did not object to her spending more of her waking—and, eventually, her sleeping—hours in the Basilica, as long as she made time for any member of the Court who wished to consult her.
It was several years now since Hel had last set foot inside the Arches, and nothing had changed. She found her way in by the Lock at the foot of the Lucretine, holding her long skirts out of the water as she skipped nimbly across to the concealed path that led down to the cobbled and concreted streets of Old Aufleur.
Most of the area was uninhabitable, ruined by neglect and rockfalls. Other parts had been demolished to make way for a sewer and water-pipe system more than a century ago. But the heart of the old city was still intact: an underground canal running south off the Verticordia, the remains of a small but stately cathedral, several warehouses, a few shambling alleys lined with old abandoned shops. The museion was still in one piece, and some rooms in the fallen Palazzo were habitable. There was even an ornate bridge that had been erected in honour of the very first Mayor of Aufleur in the days before the Ducs and Duchessas, when the people of the city had huddled underground in the hope of escaping the horrors that came from the sky.
There was no reason for any of the daylight folk to return to this place. For the Lords and Court, who still battled the sky, it was the only place they could feel remotely safe—at least long enough to sleep when sleep was needed.
Heliora avoided the tunnel that led past the cathedral to the Haymarket, making her way instead to the Shambles. It was too much to hope her presence would pass unnoticed among the Lords and Court, but with any luck they would ignore her. It was nox, in any case. Most of them were awake now and roaming the city above.
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