Power & Majesty

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Macready briefly considered beating his own brains out on the nearest wall, but settled for a nearly inaudible groan.

  It was cold on the rooftops, but the view was amazing. Velody could see down the side of the Vittorine, clear across to the other hills of Aufleur and all the dimly lit houses, shops, temples and public buildings in between. There were hardly any lanterns burning at this time of nox, just a flicker here and there of someone working into the small hours, larger glows in the late nox theatres and drinking clubs, and the occasional tiny bob of a lampboy leading a customer home along the darkened streets.

  Her silk coat wasn’t much protection up here and she shivered.

  ‘You asked me why we exist,’ said Ashiol, his gaze on the view below and around them. ‘What we’re here for.’

  ‘I thought you were avoiding that question.’

  ‘I asked someone else that same thing once. I came to the city when I was thirteen. My Uncle Artorio was the heir of Aufleur, but his only child—our Duchessa now—was young and sickly. That put me squarely in the frame as the backup heir, so the Old Duc hauled me out of my mother’s estate in Diamagne and brought me to the city to learn my duty as a scion of the house of Xandelian.’ A thin smile. ‘I think he regretted that action for the rest of his life, my grandfather.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Garnet came with me—it was the only condition I had asked for, that my friend join me. So there we were, two country boys in the big city with one big secret. What we weren’t prepared for was how different it was for us here. Animor is stronger in cities, and we almost drowned in our own power. Tasha found us within two days. Smelled us coming a mile off, and put everything she had into luring us out of the Palazzo and into her world, under the city. It didn’t take much. She was…an enthralling woman. We were more than happy to be seduced.’

  ‘Was she the Power and Majesty at the time?’

  ‘No woman has ever risen above the rank of Lord. Tasha was the closest thing the Court ever had to a female leader, but only because she had our then Power and Majesty twisted around her little finger and half the other Lords on a leash. Garnet and I were hers, body and soul. Her courtesi.’ He was distant for a moment. ‘A few weeks after we joined her, on a roof like this one, I asked Tasha what was the point of us? Why did we have these strange powers? She just grinned her lioness grin at me and pointed at the sky.’

  Velody shivered. ‘The skywar? That was so long ago, if it happened at all.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Blistering fire raining from the sky, explosions and devils and stabbing shards of ice. A city of people sheltering underground, rebuilding their lives despite the horrors that screamed down from above. It was the stuff of legends, ancient history, stories that had grown bigger in the telling. But the truth, Velody, is that the skywar never stopped. It’s hidden from the daylight folk, but we of the nox are still fighting that war. It’s our job to protect the city that can’t protect itself.’

  ‘How can there be a war?’ asked Velody. ‘How can we not know?’

  ‘Two days ago, just before dawn, while you and your friends were watching the Floralia parade, the Creature Court were fighting a war on the rooftops. Garnet died. I got my powers back, and you—you got yours too. You don’t believe me?’

  ‘How can I? I live in this city. Surely I would have noticed it being blown down around me on a regular basis!’

  ‘You belonged to the daylight then.’ He shrugged. ‘I did too. For the last five years…Garnet stripped me of my animor and I’ve been living as a daylight drone. Difference is, I knew about the secret world going on over my head and under my feet, even if I couldn’t see it or touch it.’

  Velody shook her head, feeling like an idiot. ‘Here was me thinking you were starting to make sense. What do you want with me?’

  ‘I want you to learn how to use your powers,’ he said simply. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Suspicious.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘I mean in your body. How do you feel?’

  ‘Like I could run forever,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘I think I’m drunk on red meat.’

  His grin lit up his whole face, making him look almost boyish. ‘Excellent. Let’s play.’

  Shaping herself into a few thousand small brown mice, it turned out, was not as easy as it had seemed in that alley. When not furious, Velody needed time and effort to coax her body to take on those little creature forms. It didn’t help that Ashiol kept switching into his own gang of creatures. It was just wrong for cats and mice to be intermingling on the rooftops of the city.

  Once she had the knack, Velody felt dizzy with the possibilities. As an army of mice, she could leap and crawl and perform all kinds of strange acrobatics. She loved the challenge of coordinating so many bodies at once. It was like an elaborate form of patchwork.

  They rested finally, several rooftops further down the hill from where they had begun, breathless and laughing, surrounded by animals. All the local cats had come to be close to Ashiol, and what seemed like millions of mice had scampered up walls and pipes in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Velody.

  More than a glimpse, she realised as her brain settled back to being human rather than mouse. ‘Um, can we go back for our clothes?’

  Ashiol was entirely comfortable in his skin, splayed out on the tiles as the cats nudged and rubbed up against him. ‘Let’s try the Lord form first. Then you won’t care about being naked.’

  Velody tucked her knees up and covered her breasts with her hands, giving him a dirty look. ‘Is the Lord form the black one with the flappy wings and teeth and claws?’

  He stretched out to scratch at the chin of a ginger tabby. ‘No, that’s the chimaera. The Lord form is the stronger, harder version of you. The one that glows with power and doesn’t care about being naked.’

  ‘Oh.’ A thought struck her. ‘If I can take Lord shape, does that make me a Creature Lord?’

  He rolled over and stared at her. She wriggled uncomfortably until she realised that he really was only staring at her face.

  ‘The courtesi can only take Court form—turning into their creature,’ Ashiol said slowly. ‘The Lords can do that as well as taking Lord form. The Kings can do more.’

  He hadn’t answered her question.

  ‘I just assumed everyone started as one of the courtesi and worked their way up,’ she said.

  ‘Not always.’ He was still looking at her strangely. She longed for the security of her long silk coat—hells, she would settle for a breastband and knickers right now. Anything to place between her bare flesh and his eyes. ‘You got your powers late, Velody. You passed the point of courtesa a long time ago.’

  ‘I suppose I’m glad about that.’ She shuddered a little. ‘From what I’ve seen of Creature Lords, I don’t particularly want to be in service to one of them.’

  ‘No.’ Ashiol still looked as if there was something he was waiting for her to figure out.

  ‘So are you going to show me Lord form?’ Velody asked finally. ‘I don’t think I can remember how to do it without you.’

  ‘Yes.’ He pushed the cats away and stood up. ‘You’re right. We haven’t got much of the nox left.’

  27

  Eventually, they found their way back to their discarded clothes on the first rooftop. The sky was beginning to lighten and Velody was finally tired.

  ‘Is Tasha still around?’ she asked as she fastened her undergarments and slid her dress over her head. Strange, how quickly she had learned to cope with being naked in front of Ashiol, even in her ordinary body, without dying of embarrassment. Perhaps it was because he had the courtesy to pretend he didn’t notice any difference between her clothed and unclothed body, or even a difference between her body and a brick chimney. Perhaps he had been in the Creature Court so long that it really did make no difference.

  ‘Garnet killed her,’ Ashiol said, as he pulled on his breeches.

  Velody stared at him. ‘Was that when you started h
ating him?’

  He looked genuinely surprised that she might think so. ‘She was a cold-hearted, murdering bitch who deserved what she got.’

  Velody pulled on her coat and looked around for her shoes. ‘You were glad she was dead?’ It was hard to understand how these people worked. As soon as she started thinking of Ashiol as normal, he threw something new and alien at her.

  ‘I wouldn’t have killed her myself, but I understood why he did it. I certainly didn’t cry over her body. The problem was that Garnet was above us after that, a proper Lord while we were still courtesi. That changed everything.’

  Velody found one shoe wedged in a gutter and pulled it out. She couldn’t see the other one anywhere. ‘So killing Tasha made Garnet worthy of promotion? I don’t understand you people.’

  ‘No, you really don’t,’ said Ashiol. ‘Being a Lord isn’t something that the Court chooses to bestow on you. Garnet became a Creature Lord in the instant he quenched Tasha, just as he and I unwittingly quenched the old man back home. When one of the Court dies, their source of animor leaves the body to find a new host. If a member of the Court is particularly close, they get the biggest boost. Sometimes it expands their own source so greatly that it pushes them to the next level of abilities.’

  ‘Even if they’ve murdered someone to get it?’

  ‘We don’t think that way in the Creature Court. We’re not like you. We eat, fight, frig, survive. We value loyalty and the keeping of oaths, but sometimes you have to kill. It’s better than dying.’

  She thought it over. ‘I suppose it makes sense, in a horrible sort of way. People live and die but the power levels in the city stay the same, shared out in different ways. Does that mean that if there are fewer members of the Court, they are more powerful than when there are many?’

  ‘In the usual course of things. But there isn’t as much animor around as there used to be. We’ve lost courtesi, Lords and even a few Kings over the years. Once they leave the city, they’re gone from us. That’s what happened to Lysandor, one of my brother courtesi under Tasha. When Garnet’s reign got too hot for him, he left. Took Celeste with him, one of our more powerful Lords. We suffered from their loss. Not long after, they lost me, until now. And the sky swallows its share.’

  Velody had quite forgotten about her other shoe. She was mesmerised by him as he spoke of this strange, dark world.

  ‘When one of us is taken in battle—truly taken by the sky—then their body is obliterated. Every trace of their source of animor is destroyed instead of being shared around the Court. That’s what happened to Garnet. Only—the powers he stole from me were released.’ Ashiol looked at Velody strangely, his head tipped to one side as if an odd thought had occurred to him.

  ‘So,’ Velody said in a small voice, ‘whom did I quench to become a Creature Lord?’

  Ashiol swung on his leather coat. He had a surprisingly gentle look on his face. ‘You didn’t kill anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about. There have been sleepers before, who pick up motes of animor here and there without realising it. If no one is close enough to fully quench the power, it gets spread all around the city. It comes to us as naturally as breathing air.’ He leaned down and unwedged something from the gutter nearest him, then handed it to her. A little worse for wear, it was her other shoe. ‘You’re wrong about what you are, Velody. You’re not a Creature Lord.’

  ‘But you said I wasn’t a courteso.’

  ‘Courtesa, if you’re female. Courteso is male. And no, you’re not. You took three forms in that alley, remember? Creature, Lord and chimaera.’

  She pushed her bare foot into the shoe, wincing as it squished a little. She hated to think of what else had been stuck in that gutter. ‘You didn’t tell me what chimaera meant.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘What does it mean, Ash?’

  He sighed, sounding genuinely regretful. ‘It means you’re a King.’

  It seemed an unnecessary civility to walk a demoiselle home when she had the power to transform herself into a monstrous form that could save the city from destruction, but Ashiol had never managed to shake the habits of chivalry. It was perhaps the last remaining trace of his life as a son of the ducal house of Aufleur.

  That, and they still had things to talk about.

  Velody’s hands were shoved deep into the pockets of her long coat. ‘Really a King?’ she repeated, as if things might have changed in the five minutes or so since they had climbed down from the rooftops.

  She had torn the hem of her coat a little on a jutting piece of copper pipe. He wondered if she had noticed. ‘How often do you want me to say it?’

  ‘But you said there were no female Kings. You sounded very sure about it.’

  ‘It’s never happened before. There were stories of women who tried to reach that level and destroyed themselves, and every female Lord since has restrained herself from quenching. You can do it if you concentrate hard enough. But you are what you are, and you are definitely a Creature King.’

  ‘I have the same power as you?’

  ‘You might be more powerful,’ he admitted. ‘We wouldn’t know that without duelling.’

  She looked so small in that coat. ‘I’m not going to fight you, Ash.’

  When had she started calling him Ash instead of the more formal Ashiol? He liked it from her. The easy camaraderie that had grown between them on the rooftop was attractive and familiar. The first time he became a King, Garnet had got there ahead of him, and Lysandor had followed soon after. They were equals, brothers in matched power for three glorious seasons, until Ortheus died and they had to decide which of the three of them would be the new Power and Majesty.

  ‘You might have to,’ he said.

  Velody looked at him warily. ‘You said there were only two Kings in Aufleur.’

  ‘Glad to know you were listening. Yes, just two. You and me.’

  ‘So you are going to be the Power and Majesty.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  She laughed. ‘Well, it can’t be me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Are you serious? I’ve known about my powers less than a day. I don’t know the history, the ways of your people. I haven’t the faintest idea how to rule a court full of monsters and psychopaths.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ashiol. ‘That’s why I think you’ll be better at it than me.’ I can’t do it, Velody. It has to be you. This is the future Heliora saw. The good future. The hopeful future.

  ‘I can’t take it in.’

  Velody sounded near breaking point. Time to take some of the pressure off, if only for a short time. Ashiol didn’t want to ruin this by pushing too hard.

  ‘It’s a lot to understand. I wouldn’t have forced it on you so soon, but we’re running out of time. The Creature Court knows about you, and they’re not happy.’

  That was true enough, except for the part about not forcing it on her. Was he so desperate to avoid Garnet’s fate that he would sacrifice this demme to it? Yes, he was. Whatever kind of monster she became, it had to be better than what he knew he was capable of.

  ‘I can’t think,’ she said, hands clenching and unclenching within her deep pockets. ‘I need time, Ash. Space. I need to be left alone. For a while, at least.’

  ‘I’ll get you as much time as I can,’ he promised, and realised to his surprise that he meant it. Right now, he would walk into the mouths of the seven hells to give her a day or two of peace.

  They were nearly at Velody’s door.

  ‘Can you do that?’ she asked distractedly, and he could tell that he had already lost her, that her mind was turning away from their nox of roofplay as she neared the house. She was worried about her friends.

  ‘I think I owe you that much.’

  They were being followed, but he had expected that. Ashiol turned to the shadows and made a summoning noise. A lithe figure emerged on all fours, purring.

  ‘Oh!’ Velody was surprised, which bothered him a little. Was
she so out of tune with the nox that she thought all the cats had stayed up on the rooftops? ‘Where did he come from?’

  ‘I called him.’ Ashiol lifted the heavy ginger tom into his arms, holding him out to her. ‘I want you to keep him in the house.’

  ‘Will he stay?’ Reluctantly, she accepted the armful of cat.

  ‘He will if I tell him to,’ said Ashiol, staring into the creature’s large yellow eyes.

  Tom turned away, shamelessly snuggling against his new mistress. ‘This is instead of the sentinels?’ asked Velody. She sounded amused.

  ‘He won’t do much to protect you, but if you’re in trouble, tell him and I’ll hear you.’

  ‘We can do that?’

  ‘Try it yourself. You must have a local gang of mice competing to be your favourites?’

  She looked embarrassed. ‘I thought they were figments of my imagination.’

  Ashiol leaned in to scratch the ginger tom’s ears. ‘He’s the world’s worst mouser. I thought that made him an appropriate choice.’

  For a moment, her eyes were fully on him, not distracted by any other concerns. ‘Thank you, Ash. I appreciate you showing me what I can do. It makes me feel a little safer.’ She turned to go inside.

  ‘The sentinels are yours as well as mine,’ he called after her. ‘I won’t be able to keep them away from you altogether.’

  She waved a hand, resigned. ‘No men in the house.’

  ‘We can work with that.’

  At the door, she turned and said, all in a rush, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t be whatever it is you want. I don’t have the stomach for it.’

  ‘You’re stronger than you think,’ he said.

  Velody hugged the ginger tom closer to her. ‘I’m not. It may look like I’m the strong one, but it’s not true.’ She turned and went inside.

  Ashiol continued to watch the house after she had latched the door, long enough at least for Macready and Crane to catch up with him. ‘I seem to recall telling you two to get some sleep.’