Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  I breathed in the scent of the lioness, and tucked the silk cloth into my pocket. ‘You don’t know what I want,’ I told him.

  I left the theatre that nox after the show ended and I could smell her in the alley out the back. Tasha. The scent of her was so strong and certain, I didn’t have to inhale from the silk cloth in my pocket to be sure of it.

  I followed her scent up the Via Delgardie and all the way to the Lucian district, which was still full of people at this time of nox — their musettes and theatres stayed open later than ours. I tracked her through a maze of side streets, and then she disappeared somewhere near the Circus Verdigris. Only she didn’t disappear, her scent went in and down between buildings, somewhere I couldn’t follow.

  ‘Good enough,’ said a voice. A dark lad slipped down off a wall to face me. He was as tall as Garnet, broader in the shoulders, and he wore his fancy clothes better. Another came out of the darkness, a blond lad with curly hair, and then Garnet himself.

  ‘Bring him down to her,’ said Garnet.

  The lads grabbed me and hauled me down into the darkness, into a space between buildings that I’d never seen for myself, down a path that shouldn’t exist, deep into the undercity of Aufleur.

  I didn’t fight. This was what I wanted.

  Tasha had a sort of den deep in the ruins beneath the real city. It was cozy, lit with oil lamps, and her scent was everywhere.

  ‘Impressive,’ she said, stretched lazily across a bed covered with cushions. ‘See how the little rat burrows. One of us, boys. You can taste it on his skin.’

  ‘What do you want with him?’ demanded the dark lad, whom the others called Ash. ‘He’s a sprat. Is he going to hang around and pour drinks for us for the next five years?’

  Tasha grinned. ‘Not that. I have a better idea.’ She reached out and took my chin in her hand. ‘Do you want your revenge against Saturn, ratling? Do you want to know all his secrets?’

  I forgot that I blamed her for Madalena’s death, forgot that I had to be back at the theatre by sun-up or the stagemaster would beat me, forgot that she was a lion. I just leaned into her, trusting her, because there was something about her that reminded me of what it was like to have a mother, of how it felt to be loved.

  Tasha embraced me lightly, as Madalena had sometimes when she was feeling her years. ‘Do you like me, little rat?’

  ‘You smell of sunshine,’ I muttered, half out of my senses. I had no idea what was happening, but everything about her drew me in, making me trust her.

  Tasha laughed. ‘Hear that, my cubs? The boy’s a poet.’

  And she tore me into pieces.

  PART II

  A Surfeit of Kings

  4

  One day after the Ides of Bestialis

  Sunlight shone into the broken theatre through holes in the walls and the sagging ceiling, catching motes of dust. The last of the bodies had been carried out by daybreak, but the place still smelled of death.

  Isangell, the Duchessa d’Aufleur, had awoken to the news that there had been a disaster in the Vittorine. The Proctor of that district was overwhelmed by distraught and protesting citizens, and had sent to the Palazzo begging for more lictors to protect himself and his family.

  The day after an Ides was traditionally nefas: ill luck. It was hard to argue with that tradition on a morning like this.

  Isangell stepped into the ruined theatre, shivering at the sight of the damage. Broken glass was everywhere, thick slabs of it, some of the edges still black and crimson with dried blood.

  ‘We will need to perform a cleansing ritual,’ said the Matrona Irea in a solemn voice. By virtue of her senior position in the Priestesses of Ires, she was the only woman apart from Isangell herself who served as one of the City Fathers.

  The Master of Saints, an elderly thin man with a hooked nose who had terrified Isangell when she was a child, snorted. ‘Raze it to the ground,’ he suggested. ‘No amount of ritual can return fortune to this place.’

  ‘A blood sacrifice could do it,’ grunted Brother Typhisus of the Silver Brethren.

  ‘Hasn’t there been blood enough?’ demanded Matrona Irea, and promptly launched into a lecture about the healing properties of honey cakes and blessed water while the other priests scoffed at her.

  Isangell ignored the three of them, walking further into the theatre. She had dreamt of such places as a child, had begged her mother to let her attend a pantomime or a harlequinade. She’d had a book full of columbines in pretty gowns like flower petals, and had imagined quite seriously running away to sing and dance with the theatricals. Her mama had informed her in a haughty voice that musettes and columbine halls were not for respectable people. The closest Isangell had been to such shows in her childhood were the circuses at the sacred games, with an occasional tumbler, songsmith or dancer thrown in between the many ritualised fights and battles.

  When she was older, she had disguised herself as a commoner and snuck into performances at the Argentia and some of the other musettes. It was a delicious secret, one she had shared with no one but her dressmaker.

  This was awful. Broken statues and blocks of stone, all a strange buttery colour, had smashed one of the balconies, and lay scattered across the stage.

  Isangell pulled herself up onto the stage, feeling as if she did not belong there. She wasn’t about to burst into song in front of the priests and her other retinue, but she was still going through the motions of some sort of performance.

  The Proctor arrived, a blustering, bearded man surrounded by lictors.

  ‘High and brightness!’ he greeted her, breathing hard. ‘Grateful as I am for your support, I require further assistance. The people are talking of ousting me from office. Some measure of funding to restore and improve the safety of public buildings would go a long way to —’

  Isangell turned away from him. ‘Did you hear that?’

  She hurried into the wings, ignoring his protests, stepping over broken pieces of scenery and a heap of scattered animal masks.

  ‘Is someone still here?’ she called.

  A small noise cut through the silence, like a child’s whimper.

  ‘Hold on, I’m coming for you!’ Isangell pushed further in, hearing a couple of lictors come after her, protesting.

  She pulled back an expanse of canvas that covered a row of wooden nooks and looked inside. A grown woman sat hunched there, knees drawn up to her chin, eyes wide and frightened like a child’s.

  ‘I know you,’ Isangell said as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. ‘You’re … you were looking after my cousin. You’re one of them.’

  She did not dare say the words ‘Creature Court’ aloud with so many senior priests within earshot.

  The demoiselle stared blankly out of her hiding place, not seeming to recognise her at all.

  ‘Rhian,’ Isangell said, hoping she remembered the right name. ‘Demoiselle Rhian. Are you … can I help you?’

  She gasped as the other woman’s hand lashed out, squeezing her wrist painfully tight. ‘You,’ said Rhian, eyes wide and bloodshot, lips flecked with saliva. ‘You have to tell them. The sky is coming. We will be the last city to fall, but we will fall.’

  ‘Let me get you a dottore,’ Isangell pleaded, trying to pull her wrist free.

  ‘Not long now,’ Rhian said, her whole body shuddering. ‘Everything ends at Saturnalia.’

  Velody burrowed out of her usual nest of blankets. The air was cool as she placed her bare feet on the floor. She still wore the ragged underskirts from the ridiculous museion dress she’d had on when she crossed over from that other place, the empty Tierce that hung in the sky. The dress itself lay over the corner of her bed, already fading. It wasn’t bright emerald green any more, but a muted grey colour. The fabric crumbled like dried leaves. Velody took a deep breath, remembering the pain as Ashiol dragged her through the ceiling of that theatre, the screams of the wounded beneath them.

  Velody went to her wardrobe, reaching in for where her work dresse
s always hung. She felt nothing but air. The wardrobe was empty. Further investigation revealed her clothes packed neatly in boxes at the bottom.

  They didn’t think I was coming back. Well, how could they?

  Everyone had thought her dead. She wasn’t entirely sure they were wrong. She should be glad her clothes hadn’t made it to a market stall already.

  Months passed here while I was in a city that no longer exists, lungs not breathing, heart not beating, with a man everyone knew to be dead. Garnet. Oh, saints. The cruellest Power and Majesty in the history of the Creature Court, and she had brought him back.

  Velody dressed with shaking fingers on the buttons, and finally got up the courage to leave her room. Her step on the stairs was quiet and she saw Macready and Delphine before they saw her. They were bundled together into a chair in the workroom, his hands in her hair, her legs across his, as they talked together in low voices. A couple, then. What else had she missed while she was away?

  Velody slipped into the kitchen without disturbing them, expecting to see Rhian at the stove, making porridge or tea or something comforting. The kitchen was empty.

  ‘Where were you?’ said a voice behind her. Delphine stood in the doorway, her hand loosely held in Macready’s.

  ‘Tierce,’ said Velody, telling the truth without thinking. ‘What month is it?’ It seemed ridiculous that she had to ask.

  ‘Bestialis,’ said Macready. ‘The day after the Ides. Though most of the day is gone now, so it is.’ He looked Velody over as if she were the shade of her ancestors. ‘What do you mean, you were in Tierce?’

  Velody sat at the familiar old kitchen table facing them both, her hands flat against its comforting surface. It was such a difficult question, so complicated, and she was expected to answer without even a cup of tea inside her?

  Tea was a distant memory. She had consumed nothing since she’d thrown herself into the sky, except for that dried cake she had found among the ashes in the temple back in Tierce … and that brought back memories of Garnet’s body hot inside hers, which was the last thing she needed.

  Where was he now? She had last seen Garnet and Ashiol fighting in the lake, years of stored-up anger spilling out as they pummelled each other. Then they were gone, both of them, and she had no idea what Garnet might do next. Have I let a monster loose in the city?

  ‘Tierce is gone,’ said Delphine. ‘You told us that.’

  It had been true at the time. It felt like a million years since Velody had told Rhian and Delphine about the city of their birth, which they had all forgotten since it was swallowed by the sky in one of many battles, invisible to daylight folk.

  Velody nodded. ‘It’s really gone now. For a while it was … in a place between here and the other side of the sky. But it crumbled underneath us, we only just managed to escape.’

  Oh yes, she sounded insane. But Delphine had taken far more on trust this year.

  ‘And by “we” you mean Garnet,’ said Macready. There was a studied lack of accusation in his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Velody.

  ‘As you say,’ he said, and let go of Delphine’s hand so he could busy himself with lighting the stove.

  Velody could feel the distance he was putting between them. Many possible excuses ran through her head — he’s changed, he’s different, you don’t know — but she couldn’t say any of that to Macready. He and the other sentinels had suffered so greatly at Garnet’s hands, when he was Power and Majesty. Besides, Garnet had left her swiftly enough, as soon as they got back to Aufleur. There was no reason to trust him.

  Where is he?

  ‘Where’s Rhian?’ she asked instead.

  Macready and Delphine exchanged a glance.

  ‘I’ve been looking for her all day, so I have,’ said Macready. ‘She didn’t come home after the Vittorina Royale.’

  Velody’s throat tightened. ‘She was there? When the ceiling came down?’ What had Rhian been doing in a theatre? Was she so much better that she could go out in public like that instead of hiding within the walls of their home? ‘Mac, a lot of people were hurt —’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ he snapped. ‘She’s not dead. The Proctor’s men were all over the place today, carting bodies out of the theatre. She was not among them.’

  ‘She’ll come home,’ Delphine said softly. ‘She has nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Lot of good that will do her if she …’ Macready trailed off, looking uneasily at Velody. ‘Tea?’

  ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ she demanded. ‘I’m not a child to be coddled.’

  ‘No one’s saying that, lass. But no one wants to pile it all onto you at once.’

  ‘Rhian’s the Seer,’ Delphine said in a clipped voice. ‘I’ll have tea, please. Lots of it. With sugar.’

  Velody stared at her. First Delphine was a sentinel, and now this. They had spent so many months protecting Rhian from her own fears, and the very real threat of the Creature Court. Now she was one of them.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she said.

  ‘Well, of course it is,’ said Delphine.

  Ashiol was still shaking with fury when he returned to the Palazzo. Garnet was back. Velody had betrayed him. Poet had betrayed him. There was a conspiracy to put Garnet back in power and he was not going through that again.

  Garnet could not be allowed to take power again, not after the tyrant he had become, last time he ruled the Creature Court. Ashiol could not stand by, supporting his former friend through the madness and vicious cruelties.

  I was loyal last time. I was so loyal I knelt down and let him carve me into pieces without raising a fucking hand to him. I can’t do it again. Can’t be that again. I will not serve.

  The only way to avoid it was to become the Power and Majesty himself. If only Ashiol had got his act together after Velody’s ‘death’ to demand the oaths from the rest of them. He didn’t have the luxury now to wallow in grief and irresponsibility. He was going to drag the Creature Court to him, kicking and screaming if he had to.

  He stood on the grass, staring at the bars on the outside of his windows, remembering how Macready had wrapped skysilver wire around them to ensure Ashiol remained imprisoned during his time of madness. There was no danger of that now. Ashiol’s thoughts were searingly clear for the first time in months.

  He had allowed Macready to cage him, had allowed himself to be domesticated by his own sentinels. Now he reached out, seizing the bars and letting the wire burn his palms as he wrenched it free. His animor gave him strength, but using it made the wire more painful.

  When he was done, the bars lying twisted and broken at his feet, he climbed in the window and threw himself onto his bed. His hair was still damp from the unexpected plunge into the lake during his fight with Garnet and he rubbed it impatiently against the quilt until it felt dry.

  He awoke later with Isangell’s milksop of a factotum leaning over him. ‘What do you want?’ Ashiol growled.

  ‘Her high and brightness requires your attendance,’ said the little squit.

  If his nose turned up any more at the state Ashiol was in, it would have to be pinned to the ceiling.

  ‘Would the Ducomte like to bathe first?’ he added.

  ‘No, the Ducomte would not like to frigging bathe,’ said Ashiol. ‘Bring me breakfast. Meat.’

  ‘I could ring for it,’ the factotum stuttered, reaching for the bell cord.

  ‘No,’ Ashiol snapped. ‘You. Fetch. Now.’ He leaped up and seized a random suit of clothing, tossed it on the bed. ‘Why are you still here?’

  When Ashiol reached the Duchessa’s rooms some time later, he had been partially sated by a pile of bacon, sausages and steak, having sent the cringing factotum back to the kitchens twice to restock the platter. He felt almost human.

  Isangell looked up as he entered. ‘I’m glad you used the extra time to make yourself presentable,’ she said dryly, her eyes sweeping over his bare feet and barely buttoned shirt.

  ‘You summoned
me, high and brightness?’ Ashiol replied, not bothering to press the usual sarcasm out of his pleasantries.

  ‘Oh, stop it.’ She was unusually sombre. ‘I went to the Vittorina Royale today.’

  ‘Did you enjoy the show?’

  ‘Ashiol,’ she said sharply, ‘it was the site of a terrible disaster. As well you know.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not up on the theatre gossip. Was the gipsy melodrama as dire as rumoured in the newspapers? The Orphan Princel isn’t as good as he used to be, you know. I hear he’s getting on a bit.’

  ‘I know it was you,’ Isangell said in a low hiss. ‘Your people. I’m not a fool, Ashiol. Whatever happened to that theatre was not natural. The place is full of bricks and stone that shouldn’t be there.’

  Ashiol hadn’t known that. ‘What kind of stone?’

  ‘Soft and gritty to the touch. Yellow.’

  The sandstone of Tierce. Holy fuck. Had the sky thrown back more than Garnet and Velody?

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said again. He had more to worry about than explaining a destroyed theatre to his daylight cousin.

  ‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘And I suppose you would be surprised to hear that fully half of the dead carted out of that theatre died not from blood loss or being crushed, but from the Silent Sleep? I find it very hard to believe the show was so especially dull as to cause that.’

  Ashiol tapped his foot on the floor. It was almost nox. He had to get to the Lords and Court before Garnet had a chance to bully them or Velody a chance to be nice to them. Of course it mattered if the Silent Sleep was taking a firmer hold on the city, but he didn’t have time for it to matter.

  ‘And then there’s your Seer,’ said Isangell out of nowhere.

  Ashiol’s foot stopped tapping. ‘What do you know about her?’

  ‘She’s asleep in my bed. I found her tucked away in the wings of the theatre, ranting like a mad thing. Like you used to.’

  ‘Charming.’