Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  He jumped to his feet and pushed the bedroom door wide open. The bed was empty and rumpled. No sign of the Seer. (Rhian, he had to remind himself, not Heliora, who was gone to her grave.)

  Isangell joined him in the doorway. ‘She was here a moment ago.’

  ‘Looks like you put bars on the wrong windows,’ Ashiol said with some satisfaction. He turned away. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Without doing anything? Without explaining anything?’

  ‘Believe me, gosling, you don’t want to know.’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ Isangell snapped. ‘I’m not one of your animals. This game you play is getting serious, Ash. Real people are being affected by it.’

  He gave her a fierce, empty smile. ‘The game was always about real people. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to bring them to heel.’

  5

  The Lady Livilla’s rooms had no windows. Topaz and Bree shared one room and the rest of the lambs from the Vittorina were crammed into another. Livilla had her own. Each room was connected to a balcony that overlooked a wide concrete courtyard with a canal running through it — and no sight of the sky, no hint whether it was daylight or nox. Topaz had learnt fast that you didn’t ask Livilla questions, not if you wanted the smile to stay on her face. The lambs were good at keeping her sweet, cooing over her costume closet and delighting at the cakes and fruit she provided for them. They hadn’t eaten so well in all their lives.

  Topaz still did not understand why she was here, or what this ‘Creature Court’ expected of her and the others. All she knew was that Lady Livilla was kind, and protected them as the Orphan Princel had not.

  They had a roof over their heads and meat in their bellies. It was enough to secure the loyalty of a bunch of theatre children.

  The Orphan Princel was their first visitor. Topaz knew it was him when she heard his voice down below, singing the lead of the Bestialia chorus.

  Livilla, busily dressing up the children, waved a hand. ‘Send him away,’ she said.

  ‘Go on, then,’ said Bree, still determined to show Topaz which of them was higher in the ranks.

  You may act the stellar, lovie, but you’ll never rise out of the chorus, Topaz sniped silently, and went out onto the balcony.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Orphan Princel, a sad smile crossing his face. ‘That answers one of my questions. What are you doing here, Topaz?’

  ‘The Lady gave us a home,’ she said defiantly.

  She owed the Princel plenty, but he hadn’t been the one who looked after them when the theatre came down in pieces, when Bart died. He hadn’t even glanced in the direction of the lambs. He had known what they were all along, and had done nothing to prepare them for this world of animal shapes and blood and threats.

  ‘Send Lord Livilla out to speak to me,’ he said.

  Time was not one of the lambs would have dared deny his request. He was the stellar, and everyone knew that stellars got what they wanted. Not us, though. Not this time.

  ‘Did you know?’ Topaz demanded, no longer caring that he’d been the one who had brought her to the stage, had cared for her so tender when she was hurt. ‘Did you know I had a mess of crawling lizards inside me? Did you know what all of us are?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, and there was a world of hurt behind the small glass circles of his spectacles. ‘I tried to give you a place to be safe —’

  ‘We’re safe here,’ she snapped. ‘No stones raining down to smash us dead. Bart’s gone, you know that? Do you even remember which one he was?’

  ‘Send Livilla down,’ the Princel said again, nice as pie.

  ‘She don’t want to see you!’ Topaz yelled. Why couldn’t he get angry like a normal person?

  A second man stepped out of the shadows and just the look of him made her shudder. He was wrong, like the Princel was wrong, like Topaz and the Lady and Bree and all of the lambs, too. His wrongness shone out of his bright white skin. He had red hair, and he wore a flash suit, all scarlet and velvet like he was a stagemaster.

  ‘She’ll see me,’ he said, in a voice that carried all the way up from the courtyard to her bones.

  Topaz opened her mouth, but Lady Livilla came out, stood at the balcony with eyes as dark as a blackout.

  ‘Hello, Garnet,’ she said, all cool, though there was a tremble in her throat that Topaz was close enough to see. ‘You made it back.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the scarlet seigneur. ‘I might have expected a warmer welcome, my love.’

  ‘I have more things to think about than whether you’ve decided to be alive or dead,’ said the Lady.

  ‘So I hear,’ said Seigneur Garnet, sharing an amused look with the Orphan Princel. ‘Kidnapping children, Livilla? Really?’

  ‘You’ve got the story wrong,’ said Livilla, hands on hips. ‘These courtesi were unclaimed. I rescued them from the theatre and they are mine to love and protect.’

  The Princel’s cool expression cracked at that. ‘Courtesi? All of them? Livilla!’

  ‘Don’t pretend to be shocked,’ said Livilla. ‘You knew exactly what those children were. You knew exactly what that little song of theirs would do. As soon as Garnet came swanning back through the sky like he never left us, you abandoned those children without a thought.’ She preened a little. ‘They trust me.’

  ‘They shouldn’t,’ declared the Princel, looking shaken. ‘Did you force out their powers? They’re children!’

  Livilla arched her eyebrows like a pantomime dame. ‘Does this evoke traumatic memories for you, Poet? Are you going to cry?’

  ‘You really are a stone cold bitch.’

  ‘Right back at you, dearling,’ said Livilla, dismissing him. Her attention was squarely on the other fellow. ‘These rooms are mine. Velody let me have them, and Ashiol too. You’re not the Power and Majesty any longer, Garnet. And since you returned arm in arm with Velody, you are nothing to me.’

  Seigneur Garnet laughed at that. ‘Accusing me of infidelity, Livilla? You, of all people?’

  ‘I’m not accusing you of anything,’ Livilla said frostily. ‘I know what you are. You’re going to have a war on your hands if you try to take power again. That means you can’t afford to piss me off.’

  ‘You’re not choosing Ashiol over me,’ Garnet said disbelievingly.

  ‘I’m not choosing any of you. My courtesi were slaughtered by one of our own and no one was there to stop it from happening. No one gave a damn, because it happened to me. If anyone tries to take my lambs from me now, I will bring you all down.’

  She turned dramatically and disappeared back into her rooms.

  Garnet looked as if he had been bludgeoned about the head.

  ‘Topaz,’ said the Orphan Princel in his melodic voice, ‘you can’t trust her. What she did to you and your friends —’

  ‘I don’t know what she did to the lambs,’ Topaz interrupted him. Livilla’s antics had made her feel bold. ‘I know what you did. You used us. When I turned into lizards in an alleyway, she was there to look after me. Where were you?’

  ‘Many things happened last nox,’ he said, frustration dripping from him. ‘Important things.’

  ‘Aye, I figured it was something like that,’ she said sharply. ‘We don’t need you. Push off.’

  Without waiting to see if he did so, she went back inside to Livilla and the lambs.

  Courtesi. It was an odd sort of word. She supposed she would find out what it meant, eventually.

  The horde of black cats that was Ashiol poured into the abandoned cathedral at the edge of the Forum and swept down the staircase. He shaped himself into naked human form, startling a courtesa who was arranging tea and sandwiches on a tray. ‘Oh!’ she protested.

  ‘My apologies, Damson,’ he said briskly. ‘He in?’

  ‘He’s not seeing anyone,’ she said, and gestured discreetly without saying anything more.

  Ashiol strode into the room she had indicated. Priest sat in a large, overstuffed armchair, smoking a cigar while his other remaining courtes
a, Fionella, laid waistcoats and soft shirts into a large trunk that sat on the four-poster bed.

  Ashiol eyed the scene. ‘Going somewhere?’

  ‘My boy,’ said Priest, his voice rather less booming than usual, ‘your timing is impeccable as ever.’

  He nodded to Fionella, who drew an embroidered dressing gown from the trunk she was packing and held it out for Ashiol to shrug into. He did so, even going to the trouble of belting it for the sake of his host’s pretence of modesty. ‘How are things with you, Priest?’

  ‘Ah, Ashiol. Don’t pretend you care.’

  ‘I’ve been preoccupied,’ Ashiol said vaguely.

  The Pigeon Lord was not looking his best. He had lost some weight around the face and it made him look flabby and older than his years. Ashiol had been Priest’s courteso once, in the few months between Tasha’s death and his own ascension to Lord. They’d got along well enough.

  ‘Why is your courtesa packing a trunk?’ Ashiol asked.

  Priest sighed and inhaled from his cigar with no evidence of enjoyment. ‘I think it’s time for me to be on my way. Pastures new and all that. I didn’t really mean to stay in Aufleur so long, but events overtook me. You know how it is, I imagine.’

  Ashiol stared at him. ‘You can’t leave.’

  ‘Can’t I? You made a fair enough job of it, even if you couldn’t stick it out longer than five years. I think you’ll find I have more staying power when it comes to exile.’

  ‘But why?’ Ashiol blurted, only to be met by an expression weighted with disapproval.

  ‘You ask me that?’ Priest said softly. ‘Have you so short a memory?’

  ‘Garnet isn’t going to take power again,’ Ashiol insisted. ‘I won’t let him. This time I’m going to do it right.’

  ‘Glad to hear it, my boy,’ said Priest heavily. ‘But I’m too old to make it through another battle of Kings. I don’t have the soul for it any more.’

  ‘But I need you,’ Ashiol said in frustration.

  ‘Need?’ Priest repeated. ‘What right have you to need anything from me? I’m tainted, boy, from the inside out. Those devils from the sky crawled under my skin, and turned me into more of a monster than I ever thought I could be. For all my crimes, I’ve never murdered in cold blood, not like I did with Livilla’s boys.’

  ‘It wasn’t you,’ Ashiol said, baffled that Priest would even think so. ‘We all know that.’

  ‘Do you now?’ said Priest in an angry rumble. ‘Has anyone informed Livilla of this obvious fact? Or my Bree, who trusted me more than life itself before the dust swamped my soul and took over my hands? I hurt her while that creature took possession of me, so badly that she would rather throw her lot in with the wolf bitch.’

  Fionella, the courtesa, was taking out her frustrations on the trunk, throwing things in more than packing them now. ‘You should leave,’ she said to Ashiol. ‘He won’t listen to you. He won’t listen to any of us.’

  ‘You’ll leave with him, though,’ said Ashiol.

  She did not meet his eyes. ‘I’ve lived in Aufleur my whole life. I’ve been a courtesa since I was fourteen … but yes, I will leave. Of course I will. Damson, too. My Lord Pigeon needs us.’

  ‘I need you,’ Ashiol said angrily. ‘All of you.’ He turned back to Priest, words tumbling over themselves in his urgency. ‘Garnet must have made some kind of allegiance with those dust devils. It’s the only explanation for how he got back here. Velody is in league with him. Poet, too. Velody is the one who gave your courtesa to Livilla — humbling you, punishing you for something that was out of your control. Hells, she gave you the tainted waistcoat in the first place. This is her fault, not yours.’

  Priest simply stared at him, his hand rocking back and forth to make curls of smoke from his cigar. ‘But you, of course, will fix it all. Make everyone better. With tea and currant buns for afters.’

  Ashiol did not smile. ‘Give me a chance. One chance.’

  ‘I don’t have anything left, boy. I’m tired.’

  No, it couldn’t happen this way. Surely Ashiol could convince Priest to stay. He needed the old man at his side.

  ‘I let you down, all of you,’ he said. ‘I stayed stupidly loyal to Garnet in the face of his madness. I should have taken him down years ago, become the Power and Majesty that the city needed. I should have stepped up when he died. I can’t change the past. But the future is ours, if you stand with me.’

  Priest glanced at Fionella, who looked back with one unmistakeable expression of longing before she turned back to the trunk.

  ‘I have tickets to Bazeppe, leaving tomorrow afternoon,’ he said finally. ‘You have until then to secure the support of the other Lords and Court. If they are with you, I will stay.’

  ‘And you’ll swear allegiance to me as Power and Majesty?’

  ‘I swore to Velody. To Garnet as well, come to that. I have no wish to die forsworn, boy.’

  ‘Velody and Garnet died. Your oath was severed by that.’

  ‘Prove to me it won’t do further damage to my soul and I’ll consider it. Now get out of here. We have packing to do.’

  6

  ‘Don’t go out again,’ said Delphine.

  She wanted Rhian found more than anyone, but Macready had been searching the streets all day. He had come back from the ruined theatre looking like a man half-dead. He didn’t look much better now, hovering between the kitchen table and the door.

  ‘Another hour, lass.’

  ‘You need to sleep,’ she told him sternly. ‘Velody is looking. Crane and Kelpie are looking.’

  She needed to sleep, too. She felt stretched thin all over. And she wasn’t going to admit that it would be easier to fall asleep with him beside her. Really. She wasn’t that attached.

  Mac took a breath, like he was coming up for air. ‘I remember what it was like for Heliora that first year she was Seer. She went half-insane with it. Did a lot of crazed things. You think Rhian can get through that unscathed? After everything she’s been through?’

  Delphine narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Are you lecturing me about looking after Rhian? I want her found as much as you do, and it’s not like you’re any good to her if you end up in a gutter.’

  Were they here already, with Delphine playing the nag to a wayward husband? It didn’t suit her.

  ‘I’ll manage, so I will,’ Macready said, and she could see that his thoughts were already out there. He was barely listening to her. ‘Stay here in case she returns on her own. Do you remember how to send a message?’

  Delphine rolled her eyes. He’d spent weeks going over and over how she could communicate with the other sentinels via old Tom, the cat who’d started lurking around the shop ever since Ashiol came into their lives. Sentinels could use the animals associated with any Kings, and she’d got the knack by her second lesson, though he kept reminding her of the techniques anyway.

  ‘I can use mice now, too,’ she said sweetly. ‘And — what creature does Garnet hold again?’

  She wished she could take the snipe back when she saw the look on Macready’s face.

  ‘Gattopardo,’ he said hoarsely. ‘If one of those turns up, bar the fecking doors against it.’

  And then he was gone, the kitchen door swinging behind him. Leaving Delphine behind, like she was some kind of housewife. What was she supposed to do, make soup?

  She stalked up to her room. Fine. She could get to sleep without a cranky Islandser in her bed. No problem at all.

  It was nox. Velody climbed the Lucretine hill, her feet bare on the stone-lined streets, searching for Rhian. She couldn’t help remembering the last time Rhian had gone missing, on the day of the Lupercalia, with the stink of leather and wine in the air. They had found her later, dishevelled and broken, and nothing in her life had prepared Velody for how helpless she had felt to know that Rhian had been raped. This was different. Velody had far more powers at her fingertips now. She could find Rhian, and ensure no one hurt her ever again. All she had to do was open he
r animor to the sky …

  ‘Lady,’ said a voice out of the darkness. The taste of his power was familiar a moment before his voice was. Warlord.

  He wore a gold silk shirt that made his skin seem even darker in comparison. The Creature Court lived underground. Honestly, where did they get their clothes? Velody had never seen a shirt made quite that way before, with slash cuts in the sleeves. Did he send home to Zafir for sartorial care packages?

  ‘You look better,’ she said finally, ‘than the last time I saw you.’ Drained, bleeding, exhausted, damaged, but still fighting.

  Warlord gave little away in his expression. ‘We have missed you.’

  ‘It’s good to be home,’ said Velody. ‘Have you seen Rhian — our Seer? Since the theatre?’

  He shook his head slowly, eyes fastened to hers. ‘I have not. Have you truly returned, Lady?’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said.

  ‘I mean, are you still our Power and Majesty? Or is he?’

  Velody had not thought about it. Everything had been such a rush of chaos since she and Garnet had fallen through the ceiling of the Vittorina Royale. She didn’t even know if he was still in the city, or if he was in any way the same person she had got to know in the broken city of Tierce.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she asked.

  Warlord laughed hollowly. ‘You ask me that, Lady? You have made us oathbreakers, all of us. We are obliged to serve you and Garnet both. Perhaps we should be grateful Ashiol never asked us for a third oath …’

  Velody blinked. ‘Has Ashiol not been the Power and Majesty?’ If it was Bestialis, she had been gone three months. ‘What has been happening while I was gone?’

  ‘I do not know much. The sentinels have been working to keep Ashiol away from the rest of us. I suspect he ran mad. It would not be the first time.’

  ‘I need to speak to him,’ said Velody. ‘And Garnet. I can’t answer your question until then.’

  Warlord looked unimpressed. ‘If you are going to be Power and Majesty, it will not be because of a conversation, Lady. It will be because you draw more loyalty than your rivals. Because the Lords and Court choose you, as we chose you before.’