Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  ‘We’re done, aren’t we,’ she said softly.

  ‘She’s getting better.’

  ‘No. I mean, yes, of course she’s getting better. She’s going to be fine. But I don’t think we are.’

  Macready let out a very long sigh. ‘Aye,’ he said, meeting her eyes just for a moment. ‘We’re done.’

  Delphine leaned over and kissed him swiftly on the top of his head, and left the room before she could change her mind.

  18

  Fortuna;

  two days before the

  Kalends of Saturnalis

  The sky was falling. Five days after they’d saved her life, Kelpie still hadn’t opened her eyes, and the sky was falling. Velody left the little shop in Via Silviana, heading for the Lucretine. She walked up and over the hill until she reached the Gardens of Trajus Alysaundre. The sky was calling to her, luring her to fight and dance. Her whole body ached with staying on the ground. Flashes of scratchlight arced across the blackness.

  ‘Coming back for more?’ said a musical voice. ‘Really, Velody, isn’t that a little pathetic?’

  She turned and saw Poet stepping out of the trees. ‘Funny, but I always thought you were on my side,’ she said conversationally.

  ‘That was naive of you. I’ve always been on my side. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘If they did, they were wrong. It was his side you were on. We all missed that, on account of him being dead. Only he wasn’t dead. When he came back, you weren’t surprised. Why?’

  ‘Mirrors,’ said Poet simply. ‘Call yourself a real demoiselle? Obviously you haven’t spent enough time gazing at your own reflection.’

  ‘He talked to you,’ she breathed. ‘When we were in Tierce.’

  ‘I was the only one who was listening. The only one who didn’t give up on him.’

  Poet lifted his pocket watch out of his coat and tossed it back and forth. ‘Pretty, isn’t it? I gave it to him, years ago. After the sky swallowed him, he was still able to speak to me through it. After that, it was just a matter of keeping my eyes open in the right places — and my ears, of course. He needed the right song to bring him home.’

  Velody stared at him, remembering the song, the cabaret of monsters, and then the damage that had wrecked the theatre when she and Garnet came back through the cracks in the sky, the bloodshed. No wonder Garnet had been so certain he would make it back.

  ‘Has he rewarded you for that loyalty? You brought us through, you saved his life. What has he done for you?’

  Poet got an odd smile on his face. ‘What have you done for me, little mouse? I don’t see gratitude shining out of any of your prominent parts.’

  ‘He’ll hurt you. Ashiol loved him, trusted him, and look what Garnet did to him.’

  ‘You can’t protect us from everything, you know — or anything, as it happens. You’re not our Power and Majesty.’

  ‘I can still be your friend.’

  A look of annoyance crossed Poet’s face. ‘Don’t do that. We don’t like you. This isn’t a social club. It’s death and war and blood and we don’t have time to stand in a healing circle and chant happy songs.’

  ‘You’d better be getting back to it, then,’ she said.

  Poet smiled at her. ‘You miss it. You know you do. For all your prissy, saintlier-than-thou ways, you want to be dancing and fighting and fucking with the rest of us. How much is it killing you that we don’t need you any more?’

  He shaped himself into rats, his body disassembling itself neatly and pouring away into the shadows before Velody could say, ‘You need me more than ever.’

  She said it anyway, in the silence, and felt stupid for it.

  The sky opened up in a bright burst and shapes flooded out, darting across the darkness, bright and glittering. Saints, they were dust devils. Velody flew into the sky without thinking, intercepting one only a few feet from the hospice on the Octavian. The devil grinned at her, eyes shining silver, and snapped its jaws in her direction. She reached out, protecting her hands with the glow of animor, and snapped its neck. It shattered into motes of dust that scattered down to the hill below and didn’t reassemble.

  ‘Nice work,’ said a voice behind her.

  Velody turned, and saw Garnet. He hovered before her, wearing a loose shirt that fluttered in the air.

  ‘I didn’t think we were on speaking terms,’ she said, and then saw another two devils behind him, bearing down on them both. She dived for one as Garnet turned and seized the other, tearing the creature into pieces.

  ‘They’re more fragile than the last gang of these we faced,’ she said with a gasp. ‘Keep them away from your new skysilver collection. That’s how they get solid. They’re almost impossible to kill in that form.’

  ‘Thank you for keeping me informed,’ said Garnet with a thin smile.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so pompous,’ Velody said impatiently. ‘I don’t want the city to get swallowed any more than the rest of you do.’

  She turned and swooped back down towards the Gardens of Trajus Alysaundre. She could feel him following her, and when her feet touched down on the grass, he wasn’t far behind.

  ‘What do you want from me now?’ she demanded. ‘Plan to rip me apart with your own hands? I think Poet’s around here somewhere if you still like to make others do your dirty work.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Garnet, ‘I want to marry you.’

  Velody had thought the Court had no more surprises, but Garnet’s words shocked her so deeply that she could no longer feel her arms and legs. ‘You want to what?’

  ‘Marriage. Hands joining, bands of bronze and silver. We can slaughter a sheep for the augury, if you like, though you have no father living to demand it.’ Garnet paused and gave an odd little smile. ‘Mine’s still alive, I believe, but we don’t want to invite him. Miserable old bastard, he’d only drink us out of wine and gin and try to rape the bridesmaids.’

  ‘You’re still crazy, then,’ Velody said when she’d recovered her breath. ‘I’d been wondering about that.’

  Garnet shook his head slowly. ‘I just finally started listening to the voices in my head. Well, other people’s heads. Our new Seer has been most useful in that regard.’

  ‘Rhian,’ Velody said quietly. Oh saints, was that where Rhian had been going? Velody hadn’t asked, hadn’t wanted to know, but this …

  Garnet’s smile became decidedly more predatory. It made Velody want to bite a piece out of him.

  ‘Our last Seer was so obstructive,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t do a thing I wanted, no matter how much I … asked nicely. This one, though, can’t get enough of the Court and our amusing little ways. So very helpful and instructive. A real trooper.’

  The thought of Rhian in Garnet’s hands after everything Velody had done to protect her … it had her boiling over. He smiled more fiercely the angrier she got, as if he could feel it. Well, perhaps he could.

  ‘You need to leave her alone.’

  ‘Oh no, little mouse. She’s mine now, not yours. Did you know that the Seers have the voices of every other Seer in their heads? I didn’t, not until our Rhian explained it to me. We’ve been working together, listening to what those voices have to say. There’s a history there, the whole past of the Creature Court, and it’s fascinating. We’ve had it wrong for so very long.’

  ‘Is that what’s brought on the sudden desire for matrimony?’ Velody said, hardly able to believe it.

  Garnet nodded, looking so smug. ‘Power and Majesty,’ he said, as if testing out the words, ‘such an odd concept. Why have more than one King if we only need one leader? All it does is create paranoia, strife, internal battles.’

  ‘Only when there’s no trust,’ Velody said sharply. ‘Ashiol and I managed fine on our own until you came back.’

  ‘But it was close to the surface, his fear of what you could do,’ Garnet chided her. ‘He turned against you so fast, it was almost as if he’d always hated you, don’t you think?’

  She shook her head, refusing
to believe it, though she could still feel the anger pouring out of Ashiol and the painful burst of his claws twisting in her stomach. He had turned against her far too easily.

  ‘Power and Majesty,’ Garnet said again. ‘We’ve been working, Rhian and I, to see into the past instead of the futures. And we discovered the truth. The Court were never supposed to have one King over all the others. The Power and Majesty was a pair of Kings. A sacred marriage.’

  Velody laughed. ‘You expect me to believe that you would share power with me, equally?’

  ‘Why not?’ His eyes were bright, his voice fierce and, oh saints, he was serious.

  ‘Why me?’ she said finally. ‘You’ve loved Ashiol longer. Don’t tell me with your history that you’re hung up on marrying a demoiselle.’

  ‘Believe me, I have no wish to implant little baby gattopardi in your womb,’ said Garnet. ‘Ashiol’s gone, and he’s not coming back. Leaving the Creature Court is his pattern; he can’t be relied upon.’

  ‘You exiled him!’

  ‘A mere excuse. He could have stayed; he could have fought me. He gave up, then and now. I want you, Velody. Partner, lover, King.’ His face softened and, oh, he looked like that vulnerable madman she had begun to like in the empty city of Tierce. ‘We could be beautiful together. We might finally win.’

  ‘Win what — the sky war? There isn’t a victory line, Garnet. It doesn’t stop. All we have is survival.’

  ‘That’s because we’ve been doing it wrong, don’t you see?’

  She couldn’t believe him. He was mad, or trying to trick her. There were no other options here. ‘I see more lies. I don’t trust you — I can’t. The idea of marriage is laughable.’

  Anger flashed across his face. ‘You think you’re too good for me?’

  ‘I think you goaded Ashiol and me into half-killing each other, and I believe you’d do it again in an instant — not even to protect yourself, but to amuse. I think you’re fucked up. I think you waited until Ashiol was gone before you told me this, because you’re scared we’ll band together and exile you.’

  ‘Ashiol isn’t the marrying kind,’ Garnet sneered.

  ‘Neither am I,’ Velody said simply.

  She turned and walked away from him, more slowly than she would have liked. She wanted to run.

  As she left the park, she could have sworn she saw a white tail whisk away into the shadows. The bushes had ears, then. Little rat-shaped ones.

  She had to talk to Rhian.

  Macready had been sleeping on the floor of Velody’s room, not wanting to leave Kelpie’s side while she still suffered from her fever. It temporarily solved the problem of where he was going to live now that he wasn’t a sentinel or a live-in lover.

  Delphine didn’t act any different now that they were no longer whatever they had been. It was as if it had never happened. He didn’t know whether to be heartbroken or relieved.

  He was still drinking more than he should, and still hiding it. There were two flasks secreted under Velody’s bed that no one knew about.

  ‘Mac,’ said a voice in the darkness.

  He awoke with a grunt to see Kelpie upright in bed, the light of an oil lamp flickering against the walls. She gave him an odd smile and stretched the muscles in her shoulders and arms. ‘How long?’

  ‘Forever,’ he said, breathing out in a rush. ‘Oh, lass.’

  ‘I’m all right.’ She pulled away from his gaze, her eyes not meeting his. ‘It was stupid.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I just wanted to hold on to —’

  ‘I know. Lass, there’s nothing you need to say about it. Dead and done. Only not dead, thank feck.’

  Her hair was falling around her face, a rare thing for Kelpie, like she was trying to hide behind it. ‘Wouldn’t blame you for hating me.’

  ‘You think giving up the sentinels was a decision that came easy to me?’ Macready demanded. Her face closed up and he fell over himself to assure her. ‘No, I meant nothing bad with that. I could never hate you for doing what I wanted to, for trying to hold on to it all. Hells, lass, I could never hate you at all, don’t you know that? I don’t want to hear another word about it.’

  Kelpie smiled, a rarer thing. ‘The good news is that the poison came from Livilla and was meant for Garnet,’ she said, faking lightness.

  ‘Eh, is that not the best news I’ve heard all year,’ Macready teased. ‘It’s a fine, fine thing when a woman that vicious takes against a man we loathe. Chances are high she’ll succeed next time.’

  Kelpie nodded slowly. She was too thin, he’d have to do something about that. None of that fecking herbal soup they were always eating around here; the lass needed meat on her bones.

  She tilted her head to one side. ‘Do you hear shouting?’

  Oh aye, he did at that. Never a good sign around here.

  Kelpie slid out of bed in only knickers and a breastband, and Macready averted his eyes as she flashed her hipbones at him. Someone had brought her old clothes back from the laundry down the street and left them neatly folded on the dressing table. She pulled on her trews, cinching the belt a notch or two tighter than usual, and dragged a shirt over her head.

  ‘Let’s go see who Delphine’s screaming at this time,’ she said.

  It wasn’t Delphine. Delphine was nowhere in sight. Macready knew from the top of the stairs that it was Velody. Her voice went straight to his skin, every time. His King.

  Kelpie stumbled, weaker than expected, and he gave her his arm as they made it down the stairs together.

  Velody stood in the kitchen, red-faced and yelling like a fishwife. At Rhian. ‘How could you do it? You knew all this about the Creature Court, about me, and I have to hear it from Garnet of all people?’

  ‘You don’t belong to the Court now,’ Rhian said, and it didn’t sound like her voice, it honestly didn’t. She was cold and remote and broken in all new ways. What the feck had Garnet done to that lovely lass? ‘You walked away.’

  ‘I was carried away bleeding,’ Velody spat. ‘Are you honestly saying you owe him greater allegiance than me? After everything we’ve done for you?’

  ‘What have you done?’ Rhian retorted. ‘Could you protect me? Could you stop this happening to me? This was always going to happen. It’s not about you any more, Velody. It was never about you.’

  ‘Mac,’ said Kelpie in a low, warning voice.

  He saw it. A flicker of light running along Rhian’s shoulders and arms. Not animor. Something else. He could smell smoke in the air.

  ‘You can’t trust him, Rhian. That man will use you and spit you out. Look at what he did to the sentinels.’

  ‘Don’t bring them into it,’ Rhian said impatiently. ‘You’re just annoyed that Garnet knew something before you. Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through?’

  ‘He said you have their voices in your head. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask? The world moved on while you were gone, Velody. We had to live without you. It’s not fair to complain that we got good at it.’

  Velody was silent for a moment and then reached out a hand to Rhian. ‘I’m still the same —’

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ Rhian barked, stepping back against the cupboards, making them shake. ‘Stay away.’

  ‘I’m listening now. Tell me what’s happening to you.’

  ‘What was always happening,’ said Rhian, her voice breaking on the words.

  The kitchen door banged open and Delphine and Crane barged in, arms laden with shopping baskets. Whatever the lad had been up to since he and Macready had lost their swords, he seemed to have no qualms about playing footman to her ladyship.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Delphine asked, the laugh still in her voice.

  Macready had missed that sound. It was a long time since she’d been so merry around him. Hardly a surprise, miserable bastard that you are.

  ‘You might as well all hear,’ Velody said sharply. ‘Mac, Kelpie, please join us.’

>   Slightly shamefaced, the two sentinels entered the kitchen.

  ‘What’s up?’ Macready asked with false jollity.

  Rhian was hugging herself. The odd light had gone from her, but the smell of smoke still hung in the air.

  ‘Garnet wants to marry me,’ announced Velody in a grim voice. ‘And now I think we all need a drink.’

  PART VII

  Oathbreaker

  19

  Tasha let me fight the sky properly when I was ten. It scared the cack out of me, but I did it. The thing that kept me going was that I had killed Saturn and that made me as wicked as the rest of them. Most of the time I tried to forget that I was the one who’d done that, the worst of the monsters, but in the sky it was an odd comfort. It meant I could take care of myself. I could be something, someone who mattered.

  Things were different with the cubs. With Garnet. After Saturn, he fell apart, drinking hard and taking every potion and powder he could get his hands on. It was like he had given up. Total despair. Ashiol and Lysandor were run off their paws trying to keep it from Tasha: how bad things were, how far he had fallen. It was my fault, and I knew it. I was sick about it. Something about me and what I had done to Saturn was killing Garnet slowly, from the inside.

  Liv and I tried to help the others cover for him, but we weren’t much help.

  Livilla had decided she was in love with Ashiol, but whenever Garnet crooked his finger at her, she went to him instead, kissing and making up to him. She was trying to make Heliora, Ash’s pet sentinel, jealous, I think. Everyone knew Heliora was after Ash. The cubs were all of age now, but they still acted like boys.

  One nox something changed. Ashiol found Garnet off his face in the middle of a skybattle and sent him home. Somewhere between the Forum and the Arches, Garnet sobered up and then some.

  I’d got back ahead of him, Livilla half-carrying me after a scorchbolt had torn a layer of skin off my back. I was sick and sleepy, dazed from the pain, but Livilla wasn’t allowed to heal me until Tasha came back and decided whether I deserved it or not.