Reign of Beasts (9 page)

‘So I hear.'

‘Base insults? Does it come to that?'

‘No. I don't have time for insults. I've wasted too much time trying to make you into a Creature King and you were just a demme all along. Ready to tumble on her back at the first sight of a pretty face.'

Anger poured off him. He wouldn't be Ashiol if he didn't taste of anger. But he seemed to be genuinely hurt as well. Velody was startled by that. It was almost funny.

‘Are you seriously judging me for who I bed? Is there anyone in the Court who hasn't had a taste of you?'

Oh, that anger of his — she had forgotten how it felt when his animor flared with it. If Ashiol was anything right now, it was serious.

‘You knew what he was,' he spat. ‘You knew what he did. You let him in and you brought him back. Did you think we would say thank you for it?'

Velody shook her head slowly, careful to keep a good distance from him, ready to change in an instant if he attacked her. ‘I didn't know anything about Garnet except what you told me, and I'm not sure I trust you any more. I don't know who you are, Ashiol. You're the one that turned this into a fight.'

That's the demme,
Garnet said in her mind.
We'll take him down together. He can't fight us both at once, not if we team up.

Then what?
Velody demanded.

Garnet laughed in her head, filling her up.
Then the city is ours.

Yours, you mean.
It was her own fury she could taste now.
I'm sick of you both thinking that you're more than me,
that what I believe doesn't count for anything. I was a better Power and Majesty than you ever were, Garnet.

Prove it, little mouse. Let's see the colour of your claws.

Ashiol blurred in front of her, and Velody leaped towards him, attacking rather than defending. She was angry enough at him that her animor surged ahead of her, hot and lashing out.

He went chimaera, and she did, too, muscles expanding outwards, wings unfurling. She sank her teeth into the side of his neck and her claws into his chest. He raked his claws down her back and they rolled, bestial and fierce, on the cobbled street.

A noxcab rattled past, barely missing them, the black horse hooves coming within inches of Velody's wings. She hissed and let out a mighty shriek, slamming Ashiol back on the ground, pinning him down.

You're so hot when you're murderous,
Garnet said.

Shut up!
Velody yelled at him, concentrating on her body and Ashiol's, keeping her weight on him, keeping him down. If she could only come up with a plan, but the chimaera didn't think; it fought and it bit and it lashed out.

Pain cut through her as he freed his claws and thrust them into her thick hide. They rolled and wrestled and she found herself under him, then on top again, bleeding in too many places. Battle-rage was scarlet and bright in her mind, but she hurt, and it was all she could do to roll back and protect her throat from his snapping jaws.

She became aware of voices behind her: Delphine and Macready and Crane.

‘You can't let him do this,' said Delphine in distress.

‘Feck that,' said Macready. ‘We need her to win fairly. She has to, or all this is for naught.'

Velody could feel others nearby. She was certain that Warlord was watching, and there was a sniff of Livilla, and Poet … Where was Poet? Why had he chosen Garnet out of all of them? It made no sense to her.

Ashiol dug his claws harder into her and she howled, shifting back into Lord form. Ashiol changed, too, his body covering hers. How had he ended up on top?

He stared at her, breathing hard, and for one moment Velody wondered if this was sex rather than a fight to the death. The fact that it was so hard to tell pretty much summed up the Creature Court.

Not to the death, not that, it's not what I'm supposed to be doing, I am not that Power and Majesty, I never will be!

She could feel Ashiol hard against her stomach, and for a moment, just for a moment, he let her inside his head, inside his thoughts. All she saw was a mess of heat and hurt and memories. Saints. He really believed that she and Garnet had teamed up against him, that they wanted his death.

‘This isn't right,' she gasped. ‘This isn't how we're supposed to be.'

Then there was pain, deep into her gut, a burning, roiling sensation, and his hand was — a claw, he still had a claw, he had gutted her, and he was crying, why was he crying? What had he done to her, what had she let him do?

Delphine screamed and landed on Ashiol, plunging her skysilver dagger into the side of his neck. He choked on his own blood, sliding sideways, slumping to the cobbles.

Velody's vision swam. She saw Garnet over her, leaning down, a horrible smile on his face.

‘Sweet,' he said. ‘A marriage made in hells. You know the story, don't you? It was an old musette favourite. The angel lay with the devil, and the devil lay with the saint, and they made a marriage all together, bathed in blood. And they went away, never to bother us again, as long as we light their candles and wear their garlands and sing, sing, sing.'

Velody slid into unconsciousness, not able to listen any more.

I know the stories,
Garnet said in her head.
I know what we are supposed to be. I know the truth.

M
acready dragged Delphine away from Ashiol's bloodied body. ‘Crane, get to him first,' he ordered.

Garnet stood a little away from them all, smiling like a bloody stained-glass saint. ‘No,' he said calmly. ‘I am the Power and Majesty. I say you will not let them live.'

‘We're the sentinels of the Kings and that isn't a fecking order we'll obey,' Macready said in a growl. ‘Kelpie, see to Velody. Crane, take Ashiol.' Delphine was limp in his arms, shaking madly, crying, gasping for breath.

‘The oath, I think,' Garnet said sweetly.

Warlord stepped out of the shadows. ‘To the victor the spoils. I pledge allegiance to Garnet as Power and Majesty.'

Poet, too. ‘I pledge allegiance to Garnet,' he said, eyes bright as he stared at Garnet.

Lennoc was there, his face unreadable. ‘I pledge allegiance to Garnet, Power and Majesty of the Creature Court. Long may he reign.'

‘Bastards,' Macready said in an undertone. Garnet wouldn't stop fecking smiling and it made Macready's left hand ache, where his ring finger used to be.

Livilla walked down the street dressed in rich blue robes with white trim, like she was the saint of everything. A trail
of children followed her, clinging to her cloudy skirts, giving off the stink of newfound animor.

‘I suppose you want me, too,' she said, head tilted to one side. ‘Or have you oaths enough, my King?'

‘Oh, I always want you, honey sweet,' said Garnet, reaching out a hand. She allowed him to kiss it, watching him carefully the whole time. ‘How can I resist you and your little monsters?' he added.

‘It will be different this time, Majesty,' Livilla said in a stern voice.

‘Of course,' he replied, sounding utterly sincere, and they kissed for a long time.

Holding hands, Garnet and Livilla stepped over Ashiol's and Velody's bodies and continued together down the hill. The other Lords and Court followed them in a stately procession.

‘Sentinels,' Garnet called behind him, as if it was an afterthought. ‘If any of you heal those two, you may consider yourselves banished from the Creature Court.'

‘That's not how things are done,' Macready yelled after him.

They looked back, all of them, Garnet, the Lords and Court, blank-faced.

‘Imagine how much I care,' Garnet said.

Velody was making a low noise, not quite a whimper. Her body was shuddering and there was blood, too much blood. Ashiol had stopped moving some time ago.

‘Then I'm not a sentinel any more,' Delphine said, shucking off her skysilver sword and tossing it to the street with a clang that made Macready wince. She leaned over Velody, thrusting her wrist to her mouth, trying to make her feed. ‘How do I do this?' she wailed finally.

Crane got to her before Macready did. He sliced into Delphine's wrist with his steel knife and let her drip the blood slowly against Velody's lips. Delphine buried her face in Crane's chest as she did it.

I should be doing that,
Macready thought. He should be helping Delphine, but he couldn't move. He'd been nothing but a sentinel for twenty years, it was in his blood and his bones, and he was damned if he would let Garnet take it away from him.

Still holding Delphine, Crane cut his own wrist and put it over Ashiol's mouth. Their choice had been made. The Kings would be saved, and still Macready had not picked a side.

He didn't have to pick a side. Crane and Delphine had saved him from that choice. Ashiol and Velody would live.

A little way down the hill, Garnet stood watching them, the Lords and Court arrayed behind him. ‘Take off your sword,' he ordered Crane.

‘Is he alive?' Kelpie asked in a whisper.

Like Macready, she was still on her feet, not moving one way or the other. Like Macready, she would rather die than give up being a sentinel, but that wasn't an option available right now.

Ashiol looked bad. He wasn't responding to Crane's attempts to feed him. The cobbles were sodden with his blood.

‘Kelpie, take my sword off,' Crane said, not moving from where he kneeled.

‘You don't have to do this,' she said hopelessly.

‘Take it off,' the lad snapped.

Not a lad any more, oh no. More of a man than Macready, so he was.

Kelpie slid Crane's skysilver sword from his back and laid it on the cobbles beside Delphine's. She was crying, tears sliding down her face, her breath coming in short bursts.

Ashiol gave a choking gasp, and began to suck on Crane's wrist. Alive. Holy feck, alive. Powerless, but saved.

Kelpie squeezed her eyes shut and started walking down the hill towards Garnet. Away from them.
Oh, lass.
Macready watched her go, understanding her choice, still not sure if he was going to follow or not.

Velody was feeding properly now, suckling at Delphine's wrist. Crane let his skysilver knife join the sword on the cobbles and returned his attention to Ashiol, not even looking at Macready and Kelpie. As if they had no decision to make, as if it was obvious what they would do. Crane was taking charge, saints help him. He drew Delphine's skysilver knife out of the side of Ashiol's neck and put it with the others. No blood ran free. For now, Ashiol was as mortal as the rest of them and the skysilver could not touch him.

Kelpie looked back at Macready only once, and he saw the despair in her face. She was not choosing Garnet over Ashiol. She was choosing to keep the oath she had made the only way she could, just as Crane and Delphine were keeping theirs. He understood. Better than she might think.

Macready hated Garnet. Hated him. The thought of leaving Ashiol and Velody in the street to follow that colossal arsehole was revolting to him. But the swords were his. He didn't know how to function without being a sentinel. He couldn't give it up.

He had served Garnet before. He could do it again. Couldn't he?

Velody cried out, a low, quiet sound like she was struggling with a bad dream.

Garnet spoke to Livilla and she sent several of her child courtesi to scamper up the street and pick up the fallen weapons, warning them to only touch the leather-wrapped hilts. One lad was too small to lift Crane's sword properly and dragged the tip awkwardly on the ground. The sound scraped Macready's heart.

‘Mac,' Delphine said in a small voice, so small. She had finally noticed that he hadn't chosen his side.

Feck. Feck. Feck.

Ashiol would live. Velody would live. They didn't need him to give anything up. Macready could stay on the
inside, keep an eye on Garnet. A dozen justifications for that choice rose up in his throat, choking him.

One of Livilla's lambs was watching them. A dark-skinned demme on the edge of growing up, her hair in short twists against her scalp, her eyes wide and watchful. The thought of what the Court could do to her was enough to resolve him to this: the final moment of letting go. Macready took his sword off and held it out to the little lass, hilt first.

Giving up his blades the first time Garnet had demanded it had been a sacrifice, and it had burnt in his gut. Losing those original skysilver blades to the dust devils had been another loss, another wound. This time it was oddly freeing. No more of it. He could walk out of Aufleur any time he wanted. He could go home, visit his sisters and those tribes of babbies they had. He wasn't going to do any of those things, but he could if he wanted to.

‘The Creature Court,' he said loudly to Garnet, ‘can suck my fecking balls.'

Garnet smiled like ice, and turned away. The Court went with him, down the side of the Lucretine towards the Arches. Kelpie went, too, and so did the skysilver blades, grasped in the hands of the child courtesi.

Ashiol shuddered wildly and sucked in a breath, then another. He rolled over, spitting blood clots onto the ground.

‘You,' he muttered to Delphine. ‘No more. Stabbing me.'

‘Stop making me,' she retorted. ‘Velody is mine and you can keep your grubby hands off her. No more fighting.'

Ashiol laughed weakly. ‘Have you met us?'

‘I don't have to be on your side any more,' Delphine told him with some satisfaction. ‘I'm not a sentinel.'

It hurt Macready how much she relished her own words.

Ashiol blinked. He looked at Crane, then Macready. ‘What happened?'

‘Garnet gave us a choice, and we chose you,' Macready said in a flat voice. ‘You'd better be fecking worth it, that's all I can say.'

‘Where's Kelpie?'

Macready avoided Ashiol's gaze. There was no reason why he should be embarrassed about Kelpie's choice, except that he had almost made the same one.

Velody groaned and awoke, her whole body shuddering. Ashiol turned to her, one hand sliding over her ripped dress to rest upon her bare stomach. ‘Velody …'

She shrank away from him, reacting hard. ‘Don't touch me. You tried to
kill
me.'

That gave Ashiol pause, but only for a moment. ‘I didn't want that. I was confused. You were on Garnet's side.'

‘When have I ever been on anyone's side but yours?' Her eyes flashed. ‘Hands off.'

Ashiol lifted his hand away and sat up slowly, rubbing his bloodstained fingers through his hair without seeming to notice. There was a ragged cut and scrape on his leg that hadn't healed, probably caused by something mundane like falling hard onto the edge of a paving stone.

‘You brought him back,' he said. ‘Garnet. This is what he does to us.'

‘He wasn't the one with claws in my stomach,' Velody snapped back.

‘What do we do now?' asked Crane, sounding his age for once.

‘No fecking idea,' Macready muttered.

The nests. Would they be able to get into their nests without skysilver? Would they still be able to share a fraction of the Creature Kings' instincts? Or were they mortal already, shut out of the Court forever?

Velody stood, with Delphine's help. ‘Duel to the death,' she said to Ashiol in a withering voice. ‘You utter child.'

‘Resolved the issue, didn't it?' he said.

‘Aye,' Macready said sharply. ‘You got what you wanted, my Lord Ducomte. You can waltz off into the sunrise now you've successfully made someone else Power and Majesty. Good candidate you picked for it, too; a fine nox's work.'

He was angry at them all, at the world, at this saints-forsaken city.

A shadow crossed Ashiol's face. ‘It's done now,' he said.

Macready laughed without humour. ‘As ever, we're the ones who live with the consequences, my King.'

There was no fight left in Ashiol. ‘I have no more call upon your loyalty,' he said. ‘You're free of it, all of you. I wish you well.'

He turned and walked away, limping, over the crest of the hill.

‘We can't let him go like that,' Crane said in a low voice.

‘Fecking well should,' Macready muttered. ‘He's a cat, they're practically immortal.'

‘He's human right now.'

It would take at least a day for the sentinel blood to fade from Ashiol's body, and his animor to return.

‘Aye, and a Ducomte with a Palazzo to live in,' snapped Macready. ‘My heart bleeds for him. How will he manage to survive?'

He turned to Velody, sliding an arm around her waist. ‘Let's get you home, lass. Nothing else we can do now.'

The sky could fall, the city could be swallowed, and there wasn't one of them could do a blasted thing about it.