Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Is this true? she asked the invader in her head. Is that what we’re here for? Can books make a difference?

  There was a silence. Possibly, Heliora said finally.

  Isangell frowned. Don’t you know? I thought you knew everything! Isn’t that what being a Seer is all about?

  I, said Heliora, and then stopped. I don’t know. I’m only a piece of the Seer, and there isn’t much of me left. It’s getting dark.

  Dark, no, not that. It was getting light. Isangell ran to the window and drew back the heavy velvet curtains, managing to keep her eyes turned away from the fallen body of her mother.

  ‘It’s dawn. That means it’s all over, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Until nox comes again,’ muttered Kelpie, still pawing through the books. ‘Gives us time to breathe. Regroup. Read.’

  Isangell could not take her eyes off the city below. As the sky lightened, she could see straight down the hillside. There were fires in the Forum, and she could see damaged buildings from the River Verticordia all the way across to the Lucretine.

  ‘We can breathe,’ she said softly.

  Bolts of blazing light streaked through the early morning sky and blasted the Church Bridge into pieces. Isangell gasped.

  Kelpie dropped the books and came to join her at the window, her shoulder pressing firmly against Isangell’s. ‘Oh, hells,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Not that.’

  They stood there for some time, watching the sky hurl bolt after bolt at the city as it faded from black to pale grey and then a soft winter blue.

  Day was here, and the battle continued.

  52

  Via Silviana was too far away. They weren’t going to make it. The streets were too long, and the devils and angels were getting stronger. Velody’s muscles ached as she fought her way down Duchessa’s Avenue, heading south. She had been in chimaera form too long and the battle rage had died into something dull and hard.

  She had lost track of everyone. Macready and Delphine were together, using their swords to keep the devils at bay, and she could feel Ashiol’s presence nearby. But Poet and Livilla (if that really was Livilla) and the salamanders could be anywhere by now. She hadn’t seen Crane for some time. Rhian. She couldn’t think about Rhian or the panic would overwhelm her.

  Warlord flew with them for a while, but then the storm took him and his courtesi, dragging them back into the maelstrom of rain and light and battle, and Velody did not see them again. Shade remained, looking around sometimes as if hoping Poet would join them soon. The boy, Zero, flew at his side, and Lennoc stayed near enough to keep an eye on them both, though not so close as to make Shade angry at him.

  We protect those whom we love first, Velody thought guiltily, well aware of how many people she hadn’t saved today.

  They had to make it to the dawn. Aufleur was holding fast. They had another day’s grace, surely. The city was not yet tearing itself up by the roots as Bazeppe had done (though when Bazeppe had gone it had been fast, so breathtakingly fast).

  Home drew her like a lantern in the darkness. Dawn came, finally, and Velody felt as if she could eat that light with a spoon. Light. Morning. Home. Safety.

  The skybolt burst the street in front of them into pieces of stone and rubble. Velody hit a wall, shaping back into her own form in the shock of the blast, and blinked blood out of her eyes. The sentinels had leaped clear of it.

  A rolling wave of animor swamped her before she even saw clearly who had been hit. Lennoc’s power surged through her blood and, as Velody was gasping from the aftershock of quenching him, Zero’s power swiftly followed.

  Blinking away tears, she saw that Shade was on the ground, alive still. He resisted as she tried to draw him to his feet.

  ‘It’s morning,’ he muttered. ‘It’s supposed to be over.’

  Oh, saints, he was right. The sky was lightening and there were still deadly bolts raining down on the city. Velody choked back a sob.

  ‘Keep moving,’ she told him. ‘Just … keep moving.’

  He gave her a desperate look and she grabbed him around the wrist, pulling him away from the bodies of Lennoc and Zero.

  Dawn was here and the battle continued. How could she pretend they had hope now?

  Someone was screaming her name.

  Velody stumbled through the dust and rubble to find the familiar curve of her alley. Delphine stood by the gate, yelling.

  Ashiol swooped down from above, shaping from chimaera to Lord form as he dropped out of the sky. ‘Get inside,’ he ordered roughly. ‘The nest should protect us, for a while at least.’

  Her home was a nest now. Velody nodded dumbly and turned into the gate, still pulling Shade behind her.

  Macready was the first person she saw. ‘Where’s everyone else?’ she asked him.

  ‘This is it,’ Ashiol said grimly.

  The kitchen felt wrong as Velody stepped into it. Rhian was not here. Several children huddled in the corner, some still falling in and out of salamander shape. An older demme, the one who had been Priest’s courtesa once upon a time, seemed to be in charge of putting out small fires as they occurred.

  She looked up hopefully. ‘Is Topaz here?’

  Velody shook her head quickly, and forced Shade to sit down.

  Clara, Warlord’s greymoon courtesa, made as if to stand, but Macready pushed her back down next to Shade. ‘Once you’re here, you stay,’ he barked, and then strode out into the storm himself, passing Ashiol on the way.

  Velody could not sit. ‘This isn’t right,’ she said. ‘We can’t just hide away and let the city fall around us.’

  ‘The dawn didn’t stop the battle,’ Ashiol said harshly. ‘The sky’s a deathtrap. I just saw Mars burn up trying to make it to the south wall with some of his courtesi. There’s no escape.’ He sounded unemotional, like he was reporting something he had read in the newspaper.

  Clara made a small noise, pressing her hands to her mouth. Shade looked at her but did not react.

  ‘Rhian is out there,’ Velody said wretchedly. ‘Kelpie. Isangell.’

  ‘I’m sure they would be delighted if we got ourselves killed in sympathy,’ Ashiol snapped.

  She wanted to touch him, but if they did, one of them, or both, might fall to pieces.

  ‘Underground,’ she said finally. ‘Can we shelter underground?’

  Some of the others could have made it to the Arches. There was hope, surely. Where there was life …

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ashiol, and he looked so bleak.

  Don’t touch, don’t touch.

  ‘Where are the sentinels?’ Velody asked.

  Shade opened his mouth and blood poured out of it, onto the kitchen table.

  Macready caught Delphine as she headed for the alley, stepping over the rubble in that fecking skysilver frock that stood out like a beacon.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going, lass?’

  ‘Back out there, of course,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘We need you here — the Kings, and any other survivors who make it this far. Can’t seal the nest properly without you.’

  Delphine set her chin. ‘My army, Mac. I brought them into this. I made them fight; made the Smith come out from the safety of his forge. You think I’m going to leave them now so I can hide out in a safe little nest? Not going to happen.’

  ‘They’re all fecking gone, love,’ he insisted, forcing himself to feel nothing. Time for that when dawn came, the real dawn, not this false sunshine that ebbed across the sky, pretending the all clear. ‘The Smith burned and died, I saw it happen, and half your toy soldiers with him. The rest of them can look after themselves, or they can’t. Our duty is here, with the Kings.’

  She wasn’t giving up. ‘But my army —’

  ‘Cannon fodder,’ he said brutally. ‘They were never going to be anything else.’

  ‘I won’t leave them to die.’ She smacked him hard against the cheek and he took it, appreciating the sensation for what it was. The noise of the storm and the batt
le (hard to separate the two, they were part of the same thing, a whirling cloud of death and danger) grew louder.

  ‘They’re already dead,’ Macready shouted at her.

  The wind howled around them, tasting of snow and light and blood.

  ‘We were going to save the city,’ Delphine screamed. ‘What’s the point of being a sentinel if we can’t save everybody?’

  A deep crack ran along the alley, as if this was the line where the city was being torn in two.

  ‘Jump,’ Macready yelled, and all but threw Delphine across the crack, towards the nest and safety.

  Too fecking far away.

  Velody let Shade drink from her wrist, willing him to heal even as she scolded him for not telling her he had been wounded in the blast. Her animor was slow and difficult to work, and it took far too long to bring him back.

  ‘He doesn’t care,’ Clara said flatly. ‘Why should he live? Our Lords are dead. There’s nothing left.’

  Shade moaned and turned on his side, spitting out some of his own blood mingled with Velody’s. ‘Poet’s not dead,’ he said in a rasp. ‘I know it. He wouldn’t go so easily.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Velody said, thinking of Garnet. Regardless of whether he was on their side or that of the sky, it was impossible to imagine he had succumbed to his wound. This was the man who could not stay dead, even when swallowed by the sky.

  A loud cracking sound reverberated through the house and the floor rumbled. It felt for a moment as if a hillside had come down on top of them, the ceiling pouring dust into the kitchen even as the nest held tight.

  Ashiol went to the door, scrabbling for the trick to open it, but when the wall unblurred to let him through, there was nothing but more stone and brick on the far side.

  ‘Street’s come down,’ he said. ‘The entrance is blocked.’

  Velody went to his side and they worked to dig through the barrier with their animor, but she found her power as slow and clumsy as it had been when trying to heal Shade. ‘What’s wrong with us?’

  ‘The nest stifles our powers,’ said Ashiol. ‘We don’t need animor while we’re safe, remember? If an older, better sentinel had made this one it wouldn’t be so bad, but Delphine’s still a beginner.’ He pulled back, stretching his fingers painfully. ‘Don’t suppose you have a pickaxe in the house?’

  Isangell had never greeted a Saturnalia dawn with such despair. She drew in a shaking breath as she stared down at her ruined city spread out beneath the Balisquine.

  It’s good, said the voice in her head.

  How could this possibly be good? Isangell thought back.

  I never saw this future. A battle that burns through the morning. None of us have ever seen this. It’s new.

  And that’s a good thing?

  I don’t know, said Heliora. But it’s new, and that means there’s hope. All is not lost.

  Isangell shook her head in irritation. You’ll forgive me if I find that difficult to believe. If new is so very important, why are you still here? You died.

  That’s a very good question, Heliora said after a short while. You’re not like the others.

  That’s because she isn’t one of us. Another voice broke into the cacophony in Isangell’s head. I’m sorry about that. But you should know by now what a liar I am.

  Rhian, said Heliora. Are you … are you dead?

  Not yet. I couldn’t make it all the way to the Palazzo, though. Had to send Kelpie ahead.

  If you’re not dead, what are you doing in here?

  Please stop treating me like I’m not a part of this, Isangell broke in. It’s my head you’re using like some kind of coffee house!

  Can we take all the apologies and explanations as read? suggested Rhian. We’re running out of time. Does Kelpie have the book?

  Isangell lifted her head. ‘Kelpie?’

  The sentinel was sitting with her back against a broken bookcase, an elderly volume teetering on her knees. ‘Did you know that you have a whole shelf of books about the festivals of Aufleur and the history of the skywar?’ she said in disbelief. ‘How did Ashiol not know this?’

  ‘They’re books,’ Isangell said in simple explanation. She didn’t think Ashiol had ever opened a book in his life. ‘What do we do now?’

  Hold tight, Rhian said inside her head. The cavalry is coming.

  The library shook and buckled as if the Palazzo was coming apart all over again. The wall burst open in a shower of heat and sparks, and two figures stood there: an oddly familiar woman in a red frock like swirling water, and a very young brown-skinned demme with flames flickering along her arms and legs.

  Isangell blinked. ‘Did we take tea once?’

  ‘Not you,’ Kelpie said in astonishment, clutching one of the books to her stomach as if she feared it might be snatched away from her. ‘Can’t you even die like ordinary people?’

  Livilla gave a wolfish smile. ‘Is that any way to speak about your rescue party, dearling?’

  53

  The second day of the Saturnalia

  Three days after the Ides of Saturnalis

  Delphine was underneath half of Via Silviana, and the other half of the street was apparently lodged in her throat. She tried to move and cough, and realised with a sudden scrabbling fear that she could do neither.

  Surely her chest wouldn’t feel so heavy or so sore if she was dead?

  ‘Up you come,’ said a voice that sounded reliable, and Delphine gasped in a deep whoosh of air as the weight was relieved and she could breathe again. Everything hurt. Was that a good thing?

  She was clutching someone who turned out to be Kelpie. ‘Street fell on me,’ she managed to say when the world was the right side up again.

  ‘Good to know,’ said Kelpie.

  Delphine looked beyond her and saw Livilla — a new dust-smeared and heroic Livilla whom she was pretty sure she didn’t like any more than the last one. Livilla was holding something, an armful of stones and sticks and tree roots, and when Delphine realised what it was, her legs almost gave out from under her.

  ‘Rhian.’

  ‘She’s not dead,’ insisted another demme, a slender blonde whom Delphine struggled to place before realising that if her hair and clothes were tidier she would look a lot like the Duchessa d’Aufleur.

  ‘Then what is she?’ Delphine asked in a voice closer to a screech than she liked.

  ‘Inside my head,’ the Duchessa said. ‘She says it’s not over yet.’

  ‘Oh, I like that “yet”, full of hope,’ Delphine snapped back. She took a step and found it possible. Nothing was familiar. ‘What happened to the street?’

  ‘Some explosions south of the Lucretine brought on a landslide,’ said Kelpie. ‘We were lucky to find you. Are the others safe in the nest?’

  Delphine looked around, searching for a fencepost or something that separated her own house from the rest of this chaos. She saw a body flung flat on the ground some way from them, one leg twisted grotesquely out of sight. Her body reacted, knowing it was Macready even before her mind identified him. ‘Oh, no.’

  She leaped across the wide crevasse in the street and ran to him, breaking her nails on the stones that pinned him to the ground. She held her breath, remembering that boy in the Vittorina Royale and how quickly he had died once they’d pulled the stones clear. She might not love Macready any more, but that didn’t mean he was allowed to be dead.

  It began to rain, huge dollops of water that splashed on his dusty body. Delphine tried to check his pulse, but realised halfway through the process that she didn’t know how to do it. He was warm; was that good?

  ‘Let me,’ Kelpie said roughly, kneeling on the other side of him, running her hands over him with an air of confidence. ‘Alive,’ she said finally.

  Delphine started breathing again.

  ‘No offence, sweetlings, but we’re going to need to get undercover soon,’ called Livilla. ‘The rain is starting to burn.’

  Delphine could feel the heat of the water as it spl
ashed onto the back of her head and arms, but the sting she felt was nothing to what it would do to the Lords and Court.

  ‘Get to the nest,’ she yelled, letting Kelpie scoop up Macready.

  She looked around wildly, and then realised that she was a sentinel, stupid. She didn’t need to use her eyes to find the nest she had wrought out of that funny little shop she had lived in for so many years. The nest was hers — the house was hers — and she let the skysilver on her back draw her towards it.

  ‘There,’ she cried, pointing at a heap of rubble and broken remains of the next-door bakery.

  Topaz threw herself at the heap and tore it apart, throwing charred pieces of stone and brick aside until the kitchen was revealed, the warm light of Delphine’s kitchen.

  They ran inside, all of them, Delphine ensuring that she was last. As the rain gave way into a thick, pounding downpour, she sealed the nest behind them.

  Sealed off like this, apart from the storm and the war and the crumbling city, it was almost possible to forget everything that had happened. Ashiol leaned against a wall and watched them all gather into Velody’s kitchen, dusty and wounded and damaged. Not a group of people he would ever want to see in the same room. He made no move to greet Isangell or Kelpie. How broken was he that he felt nothing at knowing they were still alive?

  The city was calling him. It itched under his skin and hummed in his ears. You didn’t hide when the sky fell, not even during daylight. Not if you were Creature Court.

  Ashiol watched Velody as she tended Macready as best she could within these muffled walls. Saw her avert her face from the twisted statue of a thing that remained of Rhian. She took the time to give a word or a hand-squeeze to everyone, even Livilla.

  He had to get out of here. This was no time to nest.

  Of all people, it was Livilla who met his gaze and nodded in agreement. She looked so different shorn of her false black hair and coloured eyelashes, thick cosmetick and elegant props. Her smile was warmer, and there was humour in her eyes.