Reign of Beasts (7 page)

S
ome might reckon I deserved what I got, for being daft enough to trust Tasha like that. You might even have put together that Madalena was more likely to have been torn apart by a demme who changes into a lion than a Lord who changes into birds. Aye, I was gullible, but that's beside the point. I was already lost. I was sick for months, through Aphrodal and Floralis, sweating and feverish, drowning in crazy dreams. Tasha didn't send me back to the theatre; she tended me, whispered motherly words into my ear. By the time I was right again, I was used to doing what she said, even if it was just opening my mouth for the soothing syrup, or turning my head so she could take the soaking pillow out from under me.

I was hers. There was naught for me back at the Vittorina Royale. I'd been gone too long and without Madalena to be sentimental about me, I'd have been replaced within a week. Not much point going back to Oyster, either. The only family I'd ever known was the Mermaid Revue.

Once, before my fever broke, I saw Bad Cravat sitting in a corner of my room, watching me. He was on his own, which was unusual. Tasha normally didn't let anyone else in unless she was there too, so either she was with me or I was alone.

Garnet, his name was. I remembered that. He was a mite taller than he had been, but fitted his fancy clothes no better than before. He'd be of age in a year or two, maybe. He was also drunk off his face. I was hazy, but I could smell it on him. He was talking, muttering to himself like he didn't expect me to hear him. I was just there. It was all manner of nonsense about skies and blood and burning that made me think he had more than gin in his cup.

I stirred, and he looked at me in surprise. ‘You're awake.'

My throat was too dry and hot to do more than croak. He brought me honey water, dripped it into my mouth a bit at a time, fumbling with the glass.

‘Welcome back to the land of the living, little rat.'

‘I dream of rats,' I said when I could push out the words. ‘Big white ones. Clambering everywhere. I dream that all the time.'

‘Doesn't surprise me,' said Garnet.

Even that small amount of talking was enough to wipe me out. I closed my eyes again, and when I opened them, he was gone.

I got stronger after that, a little at a time. Tasha babied and cosseted me in a way I'd always wanted from Madalena. She called me her Poet, which I didn't understand, but it was better than Boy or Baby. She delighted in my memory, packed with a lifetime of overheard plays and pantomimes, and as I recovered she made me recite stage verse to her until my voice went dry again.

I'd do anything to please her. Anything.

If the fever had harmed my voice, I have no doubt she'd have thrown me to the street. Or perhaps not. She knew a secret about me, after all. Something even I didn't know yet.

One morning I woke up and couldn't think straight. It was like my mind was in a bunch of tiny bodies, all paws and tails and noses, running in a hundred different directions at once.

You see where I'm going with this, don't you?

I climbed the walls, clung to the wooden eaves, hid under the bed, and when I realised what was happening — I was rats, big white rats, dozens of them — I was so shocked that I fell back into my human body and crashed to the floor, bruised and bloodied and panicked.

Tasha came in, but I was screaming and crying and grabbing and she got bored fast. She shoved me down and walked away. ‘Deal with it,' she snapped as she left.

Three young seigneurs stood in the doorway looking at me. Garnet and the two others, one dark, one golden.

‘What's happening to me?' I yelled at them.

Garnet came, pulled me up on the bed, found another of the seemingly endless pairs of pyjamas that Tasha liked to dress me in.

‘Rats,' he said with a sigh. Not drunk this time. ‘Either of you pricks got a good way to explain it to him?'

‘I can't change in front of him,' said the dark one. ‘Cats might send the poor bugger completely over the edge.'

The golden one shrugged. He unbuttoned his shirt, kicked off his breeches, and then … changed. I had seen stage tricks before, and this was no trick. I was too close to fool myself this was anything other than a fellow shaping himself into a large furry creature. He was gold and brown and lithe, and his pelt slithered over his muscles as he padded towards me. My fingers stilled on the pyjama buttons as I gazed in a mixture of horror and awe at the amazing creature.

He licked my face, and the other lads cracked up at my horrified expression.

‘Nicely explained, Lysh,' the dark one said, shaking his head.

Garnet sat by me, one hand caressing the furry head of his friend. ‘This is Lysandor. He's also a lynx. See his tufty ears?' He tugged at the pointy tufts of hair that looked a bit like devil horns. ‘I'm Garnet. I'm gattopardi. Two of them. A
bit like our friend here, but smaller, shinier. Better looking.' Lysandor the lynx snorted and Garnet cuffed him lightly. ‘The smart-arse back there is Ashiol. Plain old house cats.'

‘Fuck you,' said Ashiol, without any heat. ‘What's your name, lamb?'

‘Poet,' I said in a low voice.

Lysandor was warm. I wanted to bury myself in his fur and go to sleep.

‘No,' said Ashiol. ‘What was your name before you came here? Before Tasha got her talons into you?'

‘Poet,' I said again, rebelliously.

‘Knows his own mind, doesn't he?' said Ashiol, sounding almost impressed.

‘I'm surprised he has any mind left after what she did to him.'

‘Shut your mouth,' Ashiol said. ‘He doesn't know.'

I wasn't stupid. They were talking about me like I wasn't there, but that had happened a lot back at the Mermaid and the Vittorina Royale. I'd learnt to understand what adults said, even when they weren't saying anything at all, and these were far from adults. I sat up straighter. ‘Where are we?'

‘We're safe,' said Ashiol, and this time it was Garnet who snorted. ‘Underground,' Ashiol added, giving his friend a dirty look.

‘Still in the big city?'

‘Under it,' said Garnet. ‘What do you remember, little rat?'

I ran my hands through my hair. It was longer than ever before. The stagemaster hated it when our hair fell in our eyes — he docked the wardrobe mistress's pay if she didn't chase us around with her snippers every month — even the demmes. Long hair was no use if you were a lamb, and even if you made it up to the better roles, short hair made it easier to slap a wig on. No lice, either. But these boys all had longish hair, and now mine was, too. I kind of liked it.

‘I've been sick,' I said.

‘Aye, but do you remember what made you sick?' Garnet pressed.

‘Stop it,' said Ashiol.

‘You can't approve of what she did.'

‘It's done now, and she's our Lord. It's none of our fucking business to approve or disapprove of what she does.'

‘I never realised you were such a good little servant, Ashiol. Almost like you were born to it.'

Their faces were ugly as they sniped at each other. I ignored them, scratching Lysandor behind his ears. I didn't know if he wasn't changing back because he couldn't yet or because he wanted to stay out of the argument.

‘Is this why I'm sick?' I asked, interrupting them. ‘I mean … is this part of the sickness? Is it catching?'

I had a horrible vision of all the lambs back at the theatre turning into creatures, crawling around and nibbling at the stage machinery, while the stagemaster howled and yelled until he turned into a giant bear or a walrus or something.

Definitely a walrus.

‘You're not sick,' said Garnet. ‘I mean, not really. Once your body adjusts, you'll be fine.'

I tugged more firmly on Lysandor's ears. ‘You're saying this is normal? It's not going to go away?'

The two lads looked at each other, and I knew the truth. This was it. Forever. I was never going back to the Vittorina Royale.

White rats.

I
t was a while before I found out about the rest of it. Tasha was keeping me hidden, I figured that out pretty fast. The lads — the cubs, she called them — were always getting summoned away for one thing or another. I wasn't allowed outside the den. It was a stone building, like one of the sea cottages back home, but always dark unless there were oil lamps burning.

If I asked too many questions, Tasha would leave me without a lamp. I never minded, though. Maybe it was the rat in me, or maybe it was just all those years climbing around backstage, but I had pretty good vision in darkness. Sometimes, when they were gone and I was feeling itchy-footed, I'd go exploring. There were tunnels all around us, but most of them led nowhere, or to ruined buildings and rockfalls. Once I found my way into a massive tunnel with a canal running through it, and followed it far enough to see a cathedral as fancy as any theatre. I knew I was underground by then. I just didn't know why.

Then one nox — Tasha and the cubs said ‘nox' when they were awake and ‘daylight' when they wanted to sleep, though I could never figure out how they could tell the difference — Lord Saturn found me.

I felt him coming before I heard him. I'd started doing that with Tasha and the cubs — like an early warning system that let me scamper back to the den and act like I'd never been anywhere. This was different, I knew. It was like something crawling over my skin.

He stepped into the den, all tricked out in his fancy top hat and morning coat, and stared at me. I tried to hide, but he lashed out his hand, pulling me out from behind our little stove. Madalena's murderer.

‘My word,' he said, staring at my dirty face. ‘I know you. You're the theatre boy.'

‘Poet,' I said sullenly. ‘My name's Poet.'

‘I don't care what she named you, wretch, what are you doing here?' He stared into my face as if trying to see some great truth.

There was a knife near the stove — Lysandor had been slicing bread before Tasha got the call and went swooping out with the cubs in her wake. I didn't even think. Everything came rushing back, all my old anger, and I seized the hilt and drove the blade hard into the man's chest.

That was it, then. I was a killer now.

Saturn looked confused rather than angry or hurt. He reached down and prised my fingers from the hilt, then drew out the knife and flung it hard against the nearest wall. There was no blood. What was he?

He stared hard at me, and it was as if he had a hand inside me, fingers prodding at my bones, squeezing my heart so hard I couldn't breathe.

‘Stop it!' I yelled, and did the only thing I knew how to do when cornered. I exploded into white rats.

It was a mistake, because he was hawks, and they had the better of me. When he changed, too, I panicked, scurrying and cringing, and those beaks came down, terrorising me back into my human form, skinny and shuddering.

There was a long pause, in which I heard the rustling of clothing, and then Saturn wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. ‘Tasha,' he said in a disgusted voice. ‘She should never have done this to you, boy.'

‘I didn't have nowhere to go,' I snivelled. ‘Not after what you did to my …' But there was no word for what she was to me. ‘Madalena!'

‘Madalena?' he said, and I hated him for the lack of recognition in his voice. ‘The actress?'

‘She wasn't no mask,' I said scornfully. ‘She was the stellar. Our stellar. She looked after me. You made her play the Angel in our revue. And you killed her.'

‘Killed her? She went back to that little town, didn't she? I saw she was no longer in the show, but I never thought …' His voice went chill. ‘Dead, you say?'

‘Ripped apart,' I said softly, not sure what to think. He sounded genuine but he'd always been an actor and a liar, hadn't he? ‘By animals.'

Saturn looked sadly at me and finally I knew the thing I had been trying not to know for so long.

‘Come with me,' he said. ‘I'll get you home.'

I pulled on the shirt and ragged trews — Tasha had given them to me. Everything I had was hers, really. Even the little mug I drank my tea out of. I laced my boots.

‘Lord Saturn,' said a voice at the doorway. ‘What are you doing?'

Garnet. It was Garnet, and my heart hurt to see him, because he'd always been my friend, more than the others.

‘I am taking this boy,' said Saturn. ‘You won't stop me, courteso. Your mistress has done badly by him — he should never have been brought here.'

‘You can't just take him,' Garnet snapped. ‘He's ours now. He's
family
.'

‘Yours?' Saturn said in disbelief. ‘Will he still think so when I tell him what you did to his mother? All of you?'

I looked at Garnet then and saw it in his eyes.
Gattopardo. Lynx. Lioness. Maybe even plain old house cats. ‘Madalena,' I said softly.

‘I brought your company to Aufleur, to the Vittorina Royale, as a gift for Tasha,' Saturn told me. ‘She has a liking for grandiose gestures, for elaborate gifts. It was a mistake. She is easily bored, and she was jealous of the actresses. I got so angry at her, after all the trouble I had gone to. We fought …'

‘She told you not to come back,' Garnet drawled. His eyes looked sort of … dead. Cold. Different from how I was used to seeing him. ‘And you went straight out and consoled yourself by seducing the actress you had sworn to her you didn't even fancy.'

‘I didn't know she knew about that,' sighed Saturn.

‘She always knows,' Garnet hissed. ‘There are no secrets from Tasha. You know what she's like. How could you do it?'

‘Am I really the one on trial here?' Saturn flung back at him. ‘After what she did to that poor dame?'

‘You're not taking him,' Garnet said, resolute. ‘Poet is ours.'

Saturn got taller and wider and brighter all at once. He let out a cry like a dozen hawks, and then he held up one palm. Garnet fell as if struck in the chest.

‘When you are grown and a Lord, you may challenge me,' said Saturn between clenched teeth.

He held his hand out to me and we left together.

He took me along the tunnel with the canal in it, past the cathedral and on into a large space like a dockyard, only with no ships in sight.

‘My Power!' he called. ‘Majesty!'

A shadow fell over us. I looked up, to the balcony above, and saw a shape. At first I thought it was a monster, and then I thought it was a Camoiserian paper dragon, the kind that the dancers carried through the streets. It wasn't any of those things. It was a snake, as thick as the canal
itself, and it slid down the poles to the floor and slithered towards us. I was so scared I couldn't do anything but clutch at Saturn's coat.

The snake rolled itself into a coil and shaped itself into a man. He had a soft stomach and a bald head, and he gave me a look like he knew everything that I'd ever thought.

‘I didn't realise you had a taste for children, Saturn.' His tongue still had something of the snake to it, a thin lisp.

‘Tasha had him,' Saturn said. ‘She brought him over as a courteso despite his age. She goes too far, Power. She will challenge you next.'

‘Not I,' said the snake man, smiling. ‘You, perhaps. She is ambitious, but she knows her limits.' He peered down at me and I got that feeling again, like something was poking around my insides. ‘I'm surprised the lad survived it. Are you well, boy?'

I resisted the urge to correct him, though I was not happy about being ‘Boy' again. ‘I was sick, seigneur. I had a fever.'

‘She can't be trusted,' Saturn said. ‘She murdered this boy's mother — a daylight dame — because I had a dalliance with her.'

‘Indeed?' The snake man looked far from surprised. ‘That should teach you to keep your distance from the daylight, should it not?'

‘Majesty!' shrieked a voice, and Tasha strode into the yard. ‘The Lord of Hawks has stolen my courteso. Give him back.'

She was blazing and beautiful and, even knowing what she had done, I felt drawn to her. I understood how Lord Saturn could love and hate her at the same time. She was power, down to the flesh and bone.

The cubs stood behind her, arms crossed, muscles on display.

‘A child,' Saturn said, his voice dripping with disgust.

‘Mine,' Tasha retorted.

‘He wasn't ready. What did you do to him?'

She arched her eyebrow. ‘I made him mine. If you are going to take him from me, you must expect a battle.'

‘Excellent,' said the snake man. ‘That is settled, then.'

Saturn looked at him in horror. ‘Power and Majesty, you can't be on her side in this.'

‘You presume much, Lord Saturn,' said the snake man, looking utterly relaxed. ‘I expect you to work for your privileges, like anyone else. The boy is one of us now. How it happened is irrelevant. Tasha Lord Lion cannot let an insult like this pass. You know that. If you want him, you must fight for him.'

Saturn looked down at me, and I let go of his coat, unsure what I was supposed to do.

Owls fluttered into the yard from every direction, white snowy creatures flapping and gliding down to form a bright white shape: a big woman with pale hair and dark eyes. She stood beside Saturn, as careless of her naked breasts as the columbines who changed their costumes backstage.

‘You were not invited, Celeste,' said Tasha with a glare at the newcomer.

‘Where my Lord needs me,' the pale-haired woman said with an easy smile.

‘Play on,' commanded the snake man.

I hung back, at the edge of the canal.

The fight was swift and vicious, and I was hardly aware of what it entailed. They flung handfuls of light across the canal, ducking and weaving to avoid each other missiles. Then Tasha was a lion, tearing and biting, and Saturn flashed into a storm of hawks.

Garnet changed first, hurling his two gattopardo bodies into the fray, and the hawks tore at him, claws and beaks drawing a hundred points of blood. Lysandor shifted into his furry lynx form and bit birds out of the air, spitting
them broken onto the floor. Celeste screamed into owl form, savaging his eyes and throat.

Ashiol was the last to change. He looked at me, head tilted a little to one side as if trying to work out if I was worth it. Then he was cats, and the hawks tore chunks out of him, too. Fur flew. Blood splashed.

I closed my eyes because I couldn't bear it any more. A large, slippery hand grabbed me at the back of the neck. ‘Watch them, little cub,' said the snake man. ‘This is for your benefit.' He smelled of cheap imperium.

I wanted to say that I was a lamb, not a cub, and I wanted to go home, but the words caught in my throat. The snake man — the Power and Majesty — squeezed my neck until I opened my eyes and stared.

They fought, tearing themselves to pieces. Lysandor broke first, rolling aside and into his human body, nursing too many wounds. Celeste reformed her body and then fell apart into owls again, unable to hold it all together. Ashiol slunk away one bloodied black cat at a time.

Garnet was cornered by several hawks, biting and snapping at them, but then one pecked hard at the back of his foot and he went whining to the corner, his whole body in convulsions.

Tasha shifted from lioness to human, rolling in the blood that smeared across the concrete floor. She laughed, tilting her head up to the ceiling, exposing her throat to the hawks. ‘Go on,' she said with great relish. ‘Savage me.'

Saturn shaped back into his human form. He reached a hand down to her and she tugged him down on top of her instead, laughing as he kissed her neck.

‘An important lesson, little rat,' the Power and Majesty said with relish. ‘You are of the least value of anyone in this Court.'

Well, that was nothing new for me, was it? Bottom of the pecking order.

Saturn and Tasha rolled together, petting and biting like the animals they were. Saturn looked up at one point, guilt crossing his face, but she dragged him back to her.

The cubs regained their breath, and then Garnet came over to me, holding out a hand. ‘You don't have to,' he said, and he looked as guilty as Saturn.

‘Aye, I do,' I said, because I understood them now. I took his hand and let him lead me back to the den.