Reign of Beasts (4 page)

‘I know it was you,' Isangell said in a low hiss. ‘Your people. I'm not a fool, Ashiol. Whatever happened to that theatre was not natural. The place is full of bricks and stone that shouldn't be there.'

Ashiol hadn't known that. ‘What kind of stone?'

‘Soft and gritty to the touch. Yellow.'

The sandstone of Tierce. Holy fuck. Had the sky thrown back more than Garnet and Velody?

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' he said again. He had more to worry about than explaining a destroyed theatre to his daylight cousin.

‘Oh, really?' she said. ‘And I suppose you would be surprised to hear that fully half of the dead carted out of that theatre died not from blood loss or being crushed, but from the Silent Sleep? I find it very hard to believe the show was so especially dull as to cause that.'

Ashiol tapped his foot on the floor. It was almost nox. He had to get to the Lords and Court before Garnet had a chance to bully them or Velody a chance to be nice to them. Of course it mattered if the Silent Sleep was taking a firmer hold on the city, but he didn't have time for it to matter.

‘And then there's your Seer,' said Isangell out of nowhere.

Ashiol's foot stopped tapping. ‘What do you know about her?'

‘She's asleep in my bed. I found her tucked away in the wings of the theatre, ranting like a mad thing. Like you used to.'

‘Charming.'

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.'

T
he 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 courtesa, 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.'