Reign of Beasts (36 page)

D
elphine 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 splashed 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.

She left Velody's side and came to him, shaking back that oddly natural brown hair. ‘Driving you crazy, isn't it, my cat? You never liked to be contained for long.'

‘There could be other survivors out there,' he said, trying not to remember the sight of Mars burning up before his eyes.

‘Yes,' Livilla said. ‘It's an excellent excuse. Shall we tell them that, or just slip away?' He must have given away his surprise in his face, because she laughed at him. ‘I've been at this almost as long as you, dearling. I won't die in a cage.'

Velody was distracted with the wounded. She might not even notice they had gone, for a while. It wasn't her that they would have to convince, in any case. Delphine stood with her back to the door, arms crossed and a defensive look on her face.

‘No,' she said as Ashiol and Livilla sidled up to her. ‘I'm not opening it again. Everyone I love is in here and I won't endanger them so you can pretend to die heroically.'

Ashiol had never liked her. ‘You'll be rid of us, at least,' he suggested.

Delphine gave him a dirty look. ‘Don't think I'm not tempted. This is a new world order, Ashiol Xandelian, and
I don't give a flying frig how many titles you people make up for yourselves, or who is claiming to be Power and Majesty now or for eternity. I answer to Velody. Take it up with her.'

Ashiol opened his mouth to continue arguing, but a familiar cry from outside the door snapped him to attention. ‘There's someone out there,' he said.

 

Isangell sat on the floor of the kitchen beside the twisted form that the others insisted was Rhian. ‘The others' included not only Kelpie and Delphine but the voices in Isangell's head.

Ashiol was here and he was alive and she was damned if she was going to admit to him that he had the right of it — that she was part of this sorry mess of a Creature Court.

Is that what is going to happen to me?
she asked the voices, looking down at Rhian. The former Seer was partly formed from marble and partly from granite, with plant roots twisted wetly around her limbs. Her face was barely recognisable as human.

Not at all
, said the voice she had come to distinguish as belonging to Rhian.

But if I'm the new Seer …

You're not.

Isangell blinked.
But the voices, and the visions …

I lied to you. I'm sorry about that. It's true that Heliora made the error, that the Court was calling you and not me to be the Seer. But once it came to me, there was no changing that. I am the last Seer of the Creature Court. But I am something else, as well, and the futures were getting in the way of that. I needed to get rid of being Seer for a while.

So you passed it on. Will I be stuck with it forever?

When the time is right, you can give it back. I'll tell you when. And you'll be free of it, Isangell. I promise.

The other voices were sounding fainter and fainter in the background of Isangell's mind.

Don't trust her,
Heliora said suddenly.
What she's doing, it's not right …
But then her voice was overwhelmed by others, voices and visions, and try as hard as she could, Isangell could not hear Heliora again.

 

Velody could not heal Macready. He remained unconscious, and though she had stopped the bleeding everywhere she could, his left leg was still a mess.

The nest numbed more than her animor. The sounds of the storm were dampened in here. The mice were mostly quiet inside her. But if she concentrated, pushing her senses beyond the thick, blanketed walls of the nest, she could hear the screams of the city.

Quite clearly, a single voice cut through her like a knife.
Time to pay back what you owe, little mouse.

Velody looked up and around.

Ashiol was shouting at Delphine, threatening her. ‘Open the door! Can't you hear them? They're right outside.'

Delphine shook her head resolutely. ‘We can't risk everyone.'

Ashiol turned to Velody as if seeing her for the first time in hours. ‘You can hear it, can't you? Poet is outside. Make this bitch let him in.'

Livilla gave a hollow laugh. ‘After all this time you expect us to believe you would risk everyone to save Poet?'

‘Garnet is with him,' Velody said steadily, staring Ashiol down. ‘The sky infected him, you know that. For all we know, it's taken Poet, too.'

‘Is that who you are now?' Ashiol accused. ‘Saint Velody, who saved Poet from my claws, who saved Garnet after he was swallowed by the sky. Now you'll let them burn?'

‘Would you risk everyone in this room to save them?' Velody shot back, hating that she was on this side of the argument. She owed Garnet for saving her neck back in Bazeppe, before the city fell.

Ashiol did not reply, but his face said everything.

Velody spoke quietly to Delphine. ‘Let them in.'

‘Let the enemy into the one place in the fucking city we've managed to keep secure?' Delphine said in amazement. ‘I betrayed my own army to bring you all here, to keep you safe. But saints forbid we abandon the man who left you both in a pool of your own blood!'

Velody looked at Delphine. ‘Letting them die is not who we are,' she insisted. ‘It took me long enough to drill that into the Creature Court. I can't become the monster now, in the last moments.'

Delphine released the catch.

A blast of rain and ice-cold wind burst through the doorway and two half-dead figures stumbled forward, crashing on the floor. Poet had burns down half his face and body, and he was hanging onto the limp, bloodstained figure of Garnet as if he had forgotten how to let go. Garnet's body glowed with light, and waves of cold poured off his skin.

Delphine closed the door up again. ‘Of course, that does mean we're shut in here with him,' she said pointedly.

‘You still have the cage,' Poet gasped. ‘Don't you?'

Ashiol was almost gentle as he prised Poet's fingers away from Garnet. ‘You would have made it faster if you'd left him there,' he said.

Poet laughed. ‘The thought honestly never occurred to me.'

‘That was your first mistake.'

W
ith Kelpie's help, Velody dragged the ice-cold body of Garnet into the workroom, where they locked him in the skysilver cage.

‘Is there anything left of him in there?' Kelpie grunted as they finally slammed the door closed.

‘Sadly, yes,' said Velody, staring through the bars. ‘It would be much easier if there wasn't.'

‘Don't you dare even hesitate,' Kelpie added fiercely. ‘If it takes sacrificing him to save the others, to save Ashiol or the Duchessa or even that bratty blonde flapper of yours, you do it.'

‘Yes,' said Velody. ‘I will.'

Garnet's eyes blazed with all the light of the sky. ‘Ah, Kelpie. You were always my favourite.'

‘I'm shocked you remember my name,' Kelpie spat.

The others came into the room, a few at a time, gathering around the cage.

Garnet only had eyes for Ashiol. ‘It's come to this, my cat. So sad.'

‘Don't pretend you're him,' said Ashiol furiously. ‘I know what you are. The sky. The enemy.'

Garnet laughed. ‘And if I am?'

‘You've been doing this for centuries,' Velody said softly.
‘Attacking us. Wearing down our defences. Why? What was it all for?'

Livilla snorted. ‘Don't tell me you plan to negotiate with them.'

‘What else is there to do?' said Poet, who was barely on his feet. He shivered despite the blanket someone had wrapped around his shoulders. ‘Don't you see? We've never been able to beat them, not really. Now we have a chance to talk to them. Maybe that's the only way to stop the war.'

‘War,' Garnet repeated, still sounding amused. ‘Is that what you call it?'

‘What is it to you?' Ashiol growled. ‘A game? Some idle amusement?'

Garnet leaned towards the bars, close enough to kiss. ‘Not play. Justice.' His eyes glowed like skysilver. ‘You are the thieves. We hunger for what you stole.'

‘This war has been going on longer than any of us have been alive,' said Ashiol.

‘Your kind. You stole the light from us and we want it back.'

‘Animor,' Velody realised. ‘It came from you.' Yes, she had known that part of it, deep in her bones. If the skysilver was a side effect of the cracks in the sky, then the animor must be as well. ‘We don't have a history. We don't know what happened, but it was so long ago.'

‘But we do have a history,' Kelpie said. She shrugged and looked embarrassed when everyone stared at her. ‘At least, the Daylight Ducs had a history. The librarion in the Palazzo is full of books about the skywar: when it started, how they fought it, old rituals of the daylight. The early Ducs each had a team of lictors called the Sentinel Court to defend his body from the sky!'

‘Put that book away, sentinel,' Poet said impatiently. ‘If there was anything important there, Lord Saturn would never have left it for daylight folk to read.'

‘I would have thought it was the perfect hiding place,' Isangell observed.

‘Saturn and his books,' Ashiol said, sounding scornful. ‘What good did they do him?'

‘I'm missing something again,' Velody sighed. ‘Who was Saturn?'

‘Poet's first kill,' said Ashiol.

Poet gave him a venomous look. ‘Saturn was one of us, the Lord of Hawks. He worked as a bookseller with all the librarions, and gathered every scrap of history he could find — every reference, every story about the Creature Court and the skywar. He had a theory that Aufleur and Tierce and Bazeppe were built upon weak points in the world, and that the weight of the cities broke something between us and the sky. Perhaps that's how animor came into our world.'

‘You broke the sky, you stole our light,' snarled Garnet, pacing the cage. ‘Thought you could hide your crime.'

‘It wasn't us,' Velody said in frustration. ‘Centuries have passed. You've shattered two of the cities, and all but destroyed this one. Haven't you punished our world enough?'

He gave her a vicious look, which, had she not known about the possession, Velody would have described as ‘all Garnet'. ‘Not nearly. Everything you have, everything you are, belongs to us.'

‘Tell us,' Velody pleaded. ‘We want to understand.'

Garnet stretched. ‘You want to die knowing exactly why you are all monsters? I am happy to oblige.' His voice took on a singsong quality, like he was staging a grand performance. ‘Once there was a world of light and spirit and goodness. All were loved and serene and content, except for three wicked creatures. They broke a hole in the sky, searching for other worlds, and for their punishment were doomed always to stay in that world they had discovered. Never to return home. But they were so angry and resentful
that they took the light of our world with them into this place, this unclean den of nox and daylight, of humans and steel and steam and clockwork.' His lip curled with disgust. ‘With the power they had stolen, they built cities. Three beautiful, impossible cities. Abominations.'

Velody shook her head. The story didn't fit, even if you discounted the obvious hatred for whomever those creatures had been. ‘That's not true. It can't be.'

She looked across at Ashiol who stood there with his mouth in a set line. Isangell had crept forward and was holding his hand. He didn't seem to mind.

‘Hush,' Garnet commanded. ‘I'm not finished. The creatures peopled the cities with daylight folk, playing with them like dolls. Mayors and priests and proctors and mad Ducs. Great Families,' he added, with a sudden grin at Isangell that made her flinch. ‘They gave them memories of a longer history, gave the world memories that these cities had always been there, that they meant something. When our people learned what the exiles had done, we came to take back the light and power. To take back what was ours.'

‘So you really have always wanted to destroy us,' Ashiol said calmly.

‘We wanted to destroy every stone of the false cities that were built with our light,' said Garnet, sounding almost reasonable. ‘But instead of falling on our mercy and returning what they stole, the exiles built themselves armies to defend their cities against the rightful vengeance of their people. They took creatures of this world and perverted them into Kings and Lords and courtesi. They took the silver that fell through the cracks in the sky and forged swords and knives for mortals to hold. They gave visions of the future to chosen ones and made them guide you. They built the Shadow Court, the Clockwork Court, the Creature Court, and you continue to act out their filthy work like the weapons you are.'

 

Topaz hung back as the adults talked to the cage. She did not care whether Garnet was from the sky or himself — she didn't want to hear him talk. She slipped back into the kitchen instead.

One of the sentinels, the one with a missing finger, lay there under blankets, looking like a dog's breakfast. Then there was the other body.

It looked like a woman, but was shaped from stone and root and dirt. It was wet to the touch, as Topaz found when she couldn't resist brushing a fingertip against it.

Its eyes snapped open.

Topaz jerked back in horror, but the statue's eyelids fluttered again and fell shut.

A large ginger tom cat wound his way through the table legs and curled up near the statue, purring.

 

Ashiol couldn't stand this, couldn't stand talking through Garnet like he was some kind of window into the sky. It made him sick to his stomach.

Velody was talking patiently about negotiation, about making some kind of deal, and every word out of her mouth was another stab to the chest. Negotiation be fucked. He wanted to fight something.

He moved away from the cage, to find Isangell following him. She looked battered and exhausted and more like their grandmama than he had ever realised.

‘I'm glad you're all right,' he said in a low voice.

She gave him an exasperated look and said nothing.

Poet was circling the cage, trying to talk to the creature inside Garnet's skin. ‘You've told this story before, haven't you? Through that damned watch. Did Garnet know all this?'

‘Oh yes,' said Garnet, smiling widely. ‘We spoke to him, many times, as we did with Saturn before him. He didn't take it very well, it has to be said.'

‘If your argument is with the exiles,' Delphine broke in, ‘then take it up with them, not us. If these creatures are so damned powerful, let them solve this mess. Where are they?'

Garnet met her gaze and seemed to bask in the muted glow of her skysilver dress. ‘The last one fell in battle this nox. You called him the Smith. It is of little account. You all still have what we want returned.'

‘So we'll return it,' Velody insisted. ‘We'll negotiate a treaty. Are you their leader? Can you speak for them?'

‘Leader,' their enemy said scornfully. ‘We are all as one.'

‘Then you can help us end the war,' said Velody. ‘The Smith and the others like him are gone, so you've had your vengeance.'

The creature smiled with all of Garnet's teeth. ‘Once this city is dust as the other two are dust, the war will end. The light will be back where it belongs, on our side of the sky.'

Isangell let go of Ashiol's hand and stepped forward. ‘We can't let you destroy another city full of people,' she said, speaking firmly. ‘There must be some agreement we can make to save everyone who is left.'

‘You people love to make sacrifices,' said the sky-Garnet. ‘By all means, sacrifice to us. Burn your honey cakes, wave your ribbons, build your statues. It is meat and drink to our world. But we will still eat you alive. We will not rest until every stone they placed, every weapon they forged, is destroyed.'

Ashiol was exasperated. Would these demmes do nothing but talk?

‘You can't negotiate with them,' he insisted. ‘Don't you get it? We're the weapons. The only way it will be happy is if we're all destroyed.'

‘Ashiol's right for once,' said Kelpie. He tried not to resent the ‘for once'. ‘The battle or storm or whatever is still going on while we make small talk with this … random piece of cloud. It's distracting us from the main event.' She
stepped closer to the bars, hatred all over her face. ‘Kill it and be done.'

Ashiol knew all of Garnet's moves, and he saw this one happening before he could stop it. Garnet's hand darted out to grasp the skysilver knife on Kelpie's left hip, and as she shifted back on one foot to keep it out of his reach, he grabbed the other knife, the steel one, and plunged it directly into his own chest. It slid in like butter — steel could not draw the blood of one of the Creature Court — and Garnet's face cleared. His eyes were suddenly far more hungry and alert.

‘Right then,' he said. ‘That's better. We can talk.'

‘What are you up to?' Velody demanded.

Garnet met Ashiol's gaze and raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

Ashiol sighed. ‘This is the real Garnet,' he said.

Poet nodded in confirmation.

Kelpie's face didn't change. ‘Not an improvement,' she sneered.

‘This won't work for long,' Garnet said quickly. ‘There's something about steel — it mixes up their signals. Back when they were speaking to me through the watch, putting a steel blade to my skin would shut them up for nearly an hour sometimes. It was the only way to get a decent sleep.'

‘Why should we believe you?' Velody asked.

Garnet gave her his best ‘bored now' expression. It twisted in Ashiol's stomach like the knife was sticking into him instead of his oldest friend. ‘If you can't contribute anything useful, little mouse, keep your mouth shut. The fucking army on the other side of the sky has been grooming me for years for this moment. This day. As long as they're inside me, they don't need to break paths through the sky any more. They can come through me.'

‘So if we kill you,' said Kelpie helpfully, ‘it's all over.'

‘A sweet thought, sentinel,' Garnet sneered. ‘But whatever they are is well and truly tangled up in my body.
They took my animor and put something else inside me. Something valuable. We need power, dearlings, raw animal power, enough to beat them back and seal the sky over for good. There's only one way to get that kind of power.'

‘The sacred marriage,' Velody said breathlessly.

Garnet snapped his fingers at her. ‘See, I knew you had to be smarter than the rest of them. It's really the only explanation for why they like you more than me.'

‘That's what happened last time,' said Kelpie, waving her damned book. ‘The old mad Duc married a flock of ducks or whatever, and the skywar went away. Only it didn't. We know it didn't. It shifted into the nox and the Creature Court were left alone, the only ones who could see the danger.'

Poet snatched the book from her and threw it against a wall. ‘Don't you get it? The book doesn't matter. Our history is false. Our whole fucking city is false. Nothing matters.'

‘That's hardly a useful contribution,' Delphine snapped, picking up the book and handing it back to Kelpie. ‘Why not let them make the sacred marriage? Better to try something than to die whining.'

‘They didn't do it right,' Garnet said. ‘Not the mad Duc. No one since the very first Powers and Majesties.' His eyes flicked in Ashiol's direction.

Ashiol swallowed.

‘How is it done?' Velody asked, all businesslike. ‘Is it documented in any of these books? Do the Seers know?'

‘The Seer is a pile of firewood in the kitchen,' Ashiol snarled.

‘No,' Isangell said. ‘I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. But the Seer is in my head right now.'

He stared at her. After everything else that had happened today, that shouldn't be the thing that broke his brain. ‘Heliora?'

‘Heliora and Rhian both,' Isangell admitted. ‘The Seers know all about the sacred marriage. They also say they're not the only ones. Better to ask the King who tried and failed.' She frowned, not understanding what she was saying.