Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  But he knew.

  Garnet yelled and bucked and laughed, and it wasn’t his own laugh. As the chains fell away and he pulled free of them, bright colours shone out of his eye sockets.

  ‘Conquest!’ he shrieked in a voice nothing like his own.

  ‘The sky,’ Ashiol said, sickened by the thought of it. ‘They put the sky inside him.’

  Garnet howled, flinging his limbs around with abandon. Lightning and thunder crackled around him, coming from him, not from above. He blasted the statue of Iustitia into fragments.

  ‘So,’ said Velody softly. ‘Do we fight, or do we run?’

  She took his breath away. How could she be so calm? She was a frigging dressmaker and she put Ashiol to shame with what a coldhearted warrior she could be.

  ‘Fight,’ he said, though he meant ‘run’. He wanted to run with every fibre of his being, every drop of animor in his body. But where could they run to?

  Velody nodded, and he saw her preparing herself to do it, to attack whatever Garnet had become, no matter what the cost was. Ashiol had never loved or hated her more than in that moment.

  Half the Forum was on fire and Macready couldn’t see a damned thing. Smoke and steam filled his eyes, and a smear of blood he couldn’t get rid of no matter how many times he wiped his face clear.

  The devils kept coming, and the angels were worse.

  Macready was using Ilsa’s sword, because his had vanished into the lake back when Garnet killed Livilla, and it felt wrong in his hand, but what did that matter, anyway? His real sword had been eaten by devils months ago.

  There had never been a battle like this. The Lords and Court hadn’t even managed to get into the sky. It was dirty and vicious and fought entirely on the ground.

  You wanted this, feckwit that you are.

  He saw the Smith, massive figure that he was, beating back angels with a hammer and gleaming broadaxe, surrounded by Delphine’s fops and flappers. A fireball burst out from behind the black clouds and obliterated them all. The air was full of acrid, choking smoke and it felt as if the city itself was screaming.

  Macready slashed his way through three devils, and was on his hands and knees near the arch at the mouth of the Forum, wheezing for breath and readying himself for the next assault, when he saw the body. There had been bodies aplenty in this battle — dozens of Delphine’s false sentinels had been sliced down in the first few minutes, choking on dust or steam. But this one was different.

  This one was Crane.

  The lad lay still, his torn brown cloak covering half of his body. His blood pooled on the grey paving stones and that pretty face of his looked nothing but surprised. No one was home.

  A dust devil swooped down, smiling with grainy yellow teeth as it reached for Crane’s fallen skysilver sword. Macready roared at the saints-forsaken monster, hurling himself towards it. He scooped up Crane’s sword as he ran, so that he had a long skysilver blade in each hand, and fecking hells, this was more like it.

  He wasn’t thinking straight, his head full of blood and war and his dead lad, and instead of just cutting the fecker to pieces, he ran it down, chasing it out of the Forum and down the wide Duchessa’s Avenue, away from the screams of battle and flashes of flame.

  The devil was ahead of him, mocking him, right up to the moment that he chased it into the wet mud the drained Lake of Follies, which was decorated with strings of Saturnalia lanterns, bright red and green and gold. The devil screamed as it touched the mud and exploded into a spray of fine wet droplets.

  Macready choked back a sob, and then another. One more devil down. Only one. So many left to go.

  Too exhausted to properly lift both swords, he turned to go back to the battle, but a sound stopped him. A ripple ran across the floor of the lake, and then another. The mud shuddered and began to swirl, slowly, and then with intent, forming a whirlpool.

  Macready stepped back, gripping the hilts of both swords. ‘Whatever the feck you devils have to throw at us now, bring it on!’ he yelled at the lake.

  The mud swirled and spun and shrank into itself until it was a column of darkness twisting in the centre of an empty lake bed. As Macready watched, the column spun hard into the slender figure of a demoiselle holding a sword. She stood there for a moment, then walked across the lake bed towards him. She wore a short red flapper frock, which danced with lights that matched the Saturnalia lanterns.

  As she came closer, he recognised that the sword she held was his own, the one that had fallen into the waters on the Neptunalia. He didn’t recognise the demme at first. She had brown, tangled hair and a fresh-scrubbed face, and both of those things were wrong.

  ‘You seem to have your hands full,’ she said, when she was only a few feet from him. ‘I’ll hang on to this one, if you don’t mind. Things to stab. You know how it is.’

  ‘Livilla,’ he breathed. What the hells kind of world was it that let this demme survive when so many had died? ‘No,’ he added. ‘The wench is dead. They quenched her. No coming back from that.’

  She gave him a distant smile, as if he was completely unimportant. ‘They quenched me, all right. But do you know the really funny thing about the Creature Court?’

  She leaned into him and he could taste the animor pounding through her veins. She didn’t smell like Livilla — no perfumed smoke, no wolf — but she was real, not a creature of dust or steam. She was pure animor.

  ‘What?’ Macready said, struggling not to show his fear. If this was Livilla, whatever she had come back as was far more powerful than a Lord.

  ‘The rules mean nothing,’ she said, and kissed him on the forehead so he could feel how solid she was. Then she turned and walked up the avenue, holding his sword by its cloth-wrapped hilt.

  Her dress shimmered like water, and he wasn’t entirely sure that her skin didn’t do the same thing. She looked more real than Livilla ever had — no cosmetick or shiny dyed hair, no beads or baubles. But shadows followed her, fluttering like a wide pair of wings.

  ‘You’re one of them,’ he accused again. ‘A steam angel.’

  ‘You have no fucking idea what I am,’ she called. ‘Try to keep up, sentinel.’

  The fight had gone out of Macready. He followed this new Livilla back through the arch and into the Forum. Though his swords were at the ready, no one attacked him as he trailed her into the thick of the action.

  They found Garnet. He was laughing, spurting colours and light out of his mouth and hands, dazzled with his own power. A steam angel wrapped her arms around him, basking in triumph. Tasha. Feck it all, she looked exactly like Tasha.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ breathed Livilla, rising up behind the steam-angel version of her former Lord. Her shadow wings spread wide, and it wasn’t an angel she resembled, but the vengeful spirit of Justice, as she drew back Macready’s sword and slashed the angel into pieces.

  Garnet saw her, and for a brief moment seemed to recognise who she was. He smiled, as if this was another victory. ‘You came back in time to watch Aufleur burn.’

  ‘You think I’m going to sit back and let the city fall after all the work it took to get back here?’ Livilla said in disbelief. ‘Oh, lover. You never did pay enough attention to my wants and needs.’

  She slashed again with Macready’s sword and this time she caught Garnet in the chest. He fell, light streaming out from the wound, still laughing.

  ‘It doesn’t count as a sacrifice if it’s someone you hate, Livilla.’

  ‘This isn’t a sacrifice,’ she yelled at him. ‘It’s a mercy. Now lie down and die!’

  Ashiol stared at the scene unfolding before the backdrop of lights and explosions the smell of death and shattered stone. He knew it was Livilla, although he hadn’t seen her without bright cosmetick on her face since she was fourteen. She radiated power beyond anything he recognised, and yet he had no doubt that it was her.

  She looked older than the demme he had known, but without her usual mask, she looked less like a caricature of a musette
femme fatale, and more like a real person.

  ‘Livilla!’ he yelled. ‘We can’t fight each other, or the sky will win!’

  It didn’t sound like something he would say. They were Velody’s words. But Garnet was lying bleeding on the ground, damn it, and Ashiol would do anything to make her take it back.

  Livilla turned on him, power and confidence bright in her eyes. ‘Haven’t you been paying attention, Ashiol? Garnet is the sky. They took him long ago. If you want to save Aufleur, if that is what really matters to you after all these years, then I have just one piece of advice.’ She was glowing, the lights on her gown shining brighter and the darkness of her wings spreading out behind her body. ‘Run.’

  In that instant, she burst apart into water, a storm of rain and ice that swept the Forum from one end to the other.

  Ashiol felt Velody’s hand slip into his. ‘Run!’ she shouted at him, and together they went chimaera and took to the sky, fighting a path through the devils and angels, leading the others out of the Forum.

  Topaz fell out of her salamander shape; the cold and ice of the storm was too much for it. She still had fire deep inside her body, and she used it to light a path through the darkness.

  The other salamanders had scattered. She could sense them. Some had followed the Kings, and others were hiding or wounded. She couldn’t feel Poet anywhere. Had he left them again?

  She came to the empty plinth that had held the statue of Iustitia and climbed it slowly, slipping a few times, until she was on her feet, the rain drumming around her. The sky was still falling. The devils and angels were still attacking the city. The rain felt like an assault against her skin.

  ‘You were supposed to run with the others,’ said a soft voice above her.

  Topaz looked up, and felt a comforting warmth wrap around her, like wings protecting her from the storm. ‘Don’t want to leave you again,’ she muttered.

  ‘Sweet child. You always had more faith than I deserved.’

  It was Livilla. Of course it was. She felt different, like the fire inside her had been replaced by something else: cool water and the crackle of an electric storm. But it was still Livilla.

  ‘You’re my Lord,’ said Topaz. ‘Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?’

  They had quite a view from up here. The rain was falling upwards, and when it struck the devils and angels, they screamed in pain.

  ‘I don’t think I’m a Lord any more, dearling,’ said Livilla.

  It was getting lighter. That wasn’t Topaz’s imagination. She could see the outline of Livilla now, and her real face beneath the mop of wet, tangled hair. She looked younger than Topaz had thought. More like an older sister than a mother figure.

  ‘Are you a King?’ Topaz asked.

  ‘Not that, either. I don’t know what I am. But I’m myself now.’ Livilla smiled a beautiful, sunny smile. ‘I’m not pretending to be less than I am. And I’m not afraid.’

  Topaz shivered, the salamander inside her not liking the icy bite of the rain.

  ‘Dawn is coming,’ she said. ‘So everything’s going to be all right. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Dawn is coming,’ Livilla agreed, and she leaned down and kissed Topaz’s cheek. ‘Let’s see if we can make it there in one piece.’

  51

  Isangell sat on the edge of her floral sofa, fingertips pressed to her temples. ‘I can see it,’ she said. ‘The battle. All of it. I can’t unsee it.’

  You might want to get used to that, Heliora advised her.

  Kelpie had left her swords crossed on the floor. She sat on the window sill looking miserable, though there was no way she could see out through the blurred seal that covered the glass. ‘Hate this,’ she muttered. ‘I should be there. I should be fighting.’

  ‘What’s the point of me being the Seer if I’m separated from the rest of them?’ Isangell asked, and they looked at each other.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kelpie said finally.

  ‘So open this nest of yours and let me out.’ Isangell didn’t know what to believe. But she could see soldiers with bright swords falling and dying, she could see her Forum awash with demons and angels, and there had to be something better to do than sit here and wait for it to be over.

  Kelpie shifted a little and then shook her head. ‘I can’t. I don’t know if it was Rhian or that bitch you have in your head, but I can’t move. I don’t have a choice.’ She was furious, her hands clenched into fists. ‘I never have a fucking choice. As if I might turn tail and run the second they test me. I’ve always been loyal!’ She was yelling at the ceiling now.

  Isangell stood. She could move. She still had a choice. The voices in her head tried to interrupt her, but she pushed them swiftly aside. She had been ignoring meaningless chatter from inferiors all of her life.

  ‘We will make our own path,’ she told Kelpie firmly. ‘We will get out of here.’

  She opened her mouth to say more, but was overwhelmed by the images of the battle, the taste of dust and the light in the sky, and something almost but not quite like that feeling in the air before snow fell.

  She saw a boy in a brown cloak fall against the arch of the Forum, and she knew him. She could not hide her reaction from Kelpie, who sat up straight and stared at her.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Crane,’ Isangell said softly.

  He meant nothing to her, except that he was one of those who would have killed her that nox because the wrong person had been named Seer. But he meant something to Kelpie, she knew that much.

  ‘Dead,’ Kelpie said, to be certain of it. When Isangell nodded, she turned away and rubbed her sleeve roughly against her face. ‘Damn it. I promised this fucking Court would never make me cry again.’

  Isangell wanted to touch her, to say some words of comfort, but what was there to say? Nothing she knew anything about had any meaning in this new world.

  The Palazzo shook from a direct blow, and she felt it break apart.

  ‘Saints, no!’

  Be brave, Heliora told her, and then the voices in her head fell silent, though the images did not. She felt every blow, every bolt of fire and ice that struck the building. She heard the screams of the revellers at the Saturnalia ball, saw them running and burning and dying. She heard the servants wail in fear as the walls crumbled.

  She saw every death.

  Isangell beat her fists on the door until pain shot through her arms, and then she was sobbing, crying out. She felt Kelpie draw her away from the door and they hung on to each other as the Palazzo fell to pieces.

  Her grandfather’s atrium. Her grandmama’s walled garden. The kitchens. The parlours. Room by room, it was destroyed, and the smell of death rose up through the cracks in the remaining walls.

  ‘This is what you saved me from,’ she whispered into Kelpie’s neck.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kelpie whispered, and there was nothing flippant about it. The demme sounded honestly sorry that she had saved Isangell like this, that they would know for the rest of their lives that they had survived while hundreds died.

  It felt like hours, and then it was over.

  Isangell raised her head and looked at Kelpie. ‘Now? Can you let me out now?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Kelpie.

  She stood on shaky legs and placed her palms against the door that was not a door. It shimmered and came apart.

  The first body they found was Armand, stretched across the hallway, crushed by a fallen beam. Isangell hardened her heart and stepped over him. There would be worse than this.

  Half the Palazzo was too badly destroyed to even walk through. There was rubble everywhere, and charred furniture. Dead bodies, too many to count or to mourn. The nox sky gleamed through the gaps where ceilings and other floors used to be. Colours still flooded across it. The battle was not over, though no more blows fell on this particular hill.

  The usual path to the main entrance was blocked, and they had to crawl and clamber their way through all manner of awkward spaces, slippin
g on blood-stained tiles and broken glass.

  Of all places, Isangell found her mother in the librarion. She and Kelpie were wading through fallen leatherbound volumes and smashed shelves when she saw a familiar skirt sticking out from behind a chair at an awkward angle. When she looked closer, she saw a foot.

  ‘Who is it?’ Kelpie asked when she saw her reaction.

  ‘Mama.’ Isangell could not say anything else, because the tears were coming thick and fast, and how could she face this alone?

  ‘The sky won’t take Ashiol,’ Kelpie blurted, as if it was the closest thing she could find to comfort. ‘Seriously, it’s tried, so often he should be dead ten times over, but he has nine lives for each cat, and that’s a lot.’

  Isangell could not feel anything but her own heart, beating too loudly. Two steps and she would see her mother’s dead body. Was she ready for that?

  ‘Let’s go find him then,’ she said abruptly, turning around and climbing over the mountain of books in the other direction. Thank the saints she was still wearing her Saturnalia costume. The gold trews and shirt might be foolish, but they were eminently more practical than what she usually wore.

  ‘I’ve never seen so many books,’ Kelpie said with a nervous laugh.

  ‘My grandfather collected them,’ said Isangell. ‘He loved to read about the history of the skywar and the early Ducs. The origins of festivals. That sort of thing.’

  Kelpie’s hand slipped and she stared at Isangell. ‘People … daylight folk wrote histories of the skywar? Of the festivals?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Isangell. She thought she could hear laughter inside her head and firmly pushed Heliora deeper down. ‘Why?’

  For the first time in hours, Kelpie did not look exhausted or miserable. Hope blazed out of her open face. ‘I think I know why we were supposed to survive here,’ she said. ‘We still have some use, after all.’

  Isangell stood and watched while Kelpie rummaged through the piles of books, checking the titles and discarding those of no interest. She looked like a woman possessed.