The Shattered City (7 page)

Oh, aye, I was a demme now. Cap insisted upon that. The Lords, Court and retinue could all see exactly who I
was. Hiding anything about myself was an insult to them. I could shave my head and spin knives and still let my boobs stick out the front (when they weren't tucked away behind the leathers).

It was an odd sort of feeling. Freedom. Respect. All new tastes in my mouth. Then, the year I turned sixteen, everything changed.

 

Macready was getting too old for this shit. The thought of waiting around for a horde of babes in arms to come into their own as sentinels made him want to jump off a fecking bridge.

Though to be fair, most conversations with Delphine made him feel that way. It was a long time since a demme had got under Macready's skin like this. There was nothing easy about Delphine. She grated against him — and every time he thought he was making progress, she slid away.

It reminded him of learning to fish in his gramp's favourite trout stream back home. Just when you thought you had landed a beauty, it would slip and slide right out from under your fingers.

Being a sentinel was not something you chose, not something you could just walk away from. It was a sacred trust, and it burrowed into your heart like a mouse chewing its way into the walls of a house. Macready was stuck. He hadn't been able to walk away when Garnet started sending his people to their doom, when the Haymarket was awash with blood. He hadn't walked away when Garnet cut his fecking ring finger from his hand, in punishment for one drunken insult. How could he leave now, when the Court might actually have a hope of bettering itself?

So here he was, trying to save Delphine and turn her into a sentinel. Rhian had sided with him at least, agreeing that a visit to the Seer sounded like a good way to sort Delphine's future out once and for all. She had even agreed to step outside with them for the second time in the same market-nine, and that had been a master stroke, so it had. Delphine could not argue with it when she knew it cost Rhian so much more to make the trip.

Macready and Delphine had one thing in common, at least, and that was concern for Rhian. The lass grew nervous as they made their way through the crowded Basilica. She flinched when people brushed against her, and her friends walked on either side of her, trying to keep it from happening.

‘Almost there,' Macready said, hoping to soothe. They circled a row of hot meat and cold pottage stalls until they finally reached the colourful, gaudy tent of Madama Fortuna.

A sign hung on the outside, declaring that the fortune-teller was not seeing customers today. A few offerings of centimes, tied posies and honey cakes had been left outside the tent. Ha, Heliora had a few satisfied customers, then. Good for her.

‘Heliora,' Macready said against the tied door flaps of the tent. ‘Are you there, my lovely? I've visitors for you.'

There was silence, and then a huff from inside. A slender hand slid through the slit to untie the flaps and let them fall open. ‘I'm not working today, Mac,' said the Seer of the Court. She looked as much the urchin demme as she ever had, with her head lightly shaven and her bare feet sticking out from under a thin cotton tunic.

‘Special occasion,' he suggested, and gave her a hopeful grin.

Hel gave him that suspicious glare, the one he liked to think was reserved, all special like, for him alone. Finally, she stepped back to let him and the lasses through. The tent flap fell closed as they came inside the space, which was stuffy with incense smoke. ‘Stray lambs?' Hel said sarcastically.

‘New blood,' Macready informed her.

That did interest her, and Hel turned her strange, luminous eyes on Delphine and then Rhian, staring at them both until they glanced away, uncomfortable with her scrutiny. ‘Not that one,' she said finally, dismissing Rhian. ‘But you …' Her eyes widened as she took in everything about Delphine. ‘Saints and devils. This is the one who —'

‘That's not public knowledge, so,' Macready said sharply. ‘Only the Kings and sentinels know it.' And Poet, feck it all. He had to get Delphine to accept her place as a sentinel before that bastard decided to use the information against her.

‘Seer's privilege,' Hel said, eyes still fixed on Delphine. ‘I won't tell. What a joke.' She laughed, high and loud. ‘What a choice.'

‘I don't think I like your tone,' Delphine said haughtily.

‘I don't suppose you do,' said Heliora. ‘It does tend to upset people, when I mock the life and death situations they've got all tangled up in.'

‘I didn't mean to kill anyone,' Delphine flared up. ‘It just —'

‘Happened?' said Heliora. ‘Funny how it works like that the first time. I had headaches for ages, out of nowhere. I was living on the street so just figured I'd picked up something that was going to kill me. Turned
out it was the other way around.' She and Macready shared a grin of old comrades. She still thought like a sentinel sometimes — he liked that about her. ‘I didn't put it all together until after I followed one of the Court home and found myself caught up in their games. My first kill was five months in, and it took me a year to get over it. What a baby I was.'

‘I don't get headaches,' Delphine said in a quiet voice.

That made Macready snort. How would she know, beneath the hangovers?

‘It's different for everyone,' said Heliora. She dropped cross-legged to her carpet. ‘I'm thinking of redecorating, Mac. What do you think? The Zafiran craze has to wind down soon, and I like to be ahead of the game. Maybe something Islandsish. I could be a redhead. Curls, cleavage, bit o' an accent. Do ye no think it's a bonny plan?'

‘I promise to roll in my grave if you do, my lovely,' Macready said, pleased to see she still had some tease in her, even if she was butchering his mother tongue to do it. She'd been so serious lately. ‘I'd have to strangle meself first, but that should not be a problem at all.'

‘Excellent,' Heliora said shamelessly. ‘I so look forr'd to that, so I do.'

‘That's it?' Delphine burst out. ‘Is that all you have to say? I thought you were going to help me.'

Heliora gave her an almost sympathetic look. ‘I can offer you a cup of tea, I suppose? Though I'm almost out of the good stuff.'

Delphine looked accusingly at Macready. He put up his hands. ‘What did you expect, lass? A book of instructions? Our Hel has a few tricks up her sleeve, but she can't solve all the mysteries of the universe at once.'

‘I suppose you want me to look in the futures for her,' Heliora said, the humour draining out of her voice.

Macready blinked. ‘I wouldn't go that far.' It wasn't the futures that bothered him so much as the aftereffects. There was something not right about having to frig a lass to bring her back to her senses, especially when you were the one who had caused her to lose them in the first place.

She was choosy, Hel. Macready knew he was one of the few coves she had trusted with that particular task. Didn't make him any more comfortable with it, and he was sure as hell not going to do it in front of this particular audience.

‘Prude,' Hel mocked him, though her shoulders relaxed more at his refusal. ‘What do you want, then? A reading? I can tell what she is from here. I can taste it on her skin. Can't you?'

‘She doesn't trust my word,' he said simply.

‘More fool her.'

‘Stop talking about me as if I wasn't here!' Delphine snapped. ‘I know what Macready thinks I am. I think he's wrong.'

‘I know what it is to be a sentinel,' said Heliora. ‘You might not have been one a month ago, but it screams out of you now. You glow with it. Accept it, or it will drive you mad. That's how our world works.'

‘Not my world,' said Delphine instantly.

Heliora's smile was deeply unpleasant. ‘Time to get used to the idea that it is.'

‘Who is this wench?' Delphine demanded of Macready.

‘This, lass, is Heliora, Seer of the Creature Court. Our eyes and our voice. What she doesn't see isn't worth knowing about.' Macready exchanged glances with
Rhian, cheered by her encouraging smile. ‘So, next step is to get Delphine some swords of her own, aye?' The sooner the better.

Delphine gave him the dirtiest of looks. ‘I haven't agreed to anything.'

The Seer shrugged. ‘It's only a matter of time.'

 

Kissing boys was easy enough. Boys who weren't Ashiol Xandelian, anyway. There were plenty of boys right there among the sentinels, and I kissed a lot of them.

We weren't the slappers that the Creature Court was with each other (everyone knew Tasha frigged all her boys, sometimes at the same time) but the camaraderie in the sentinels still turned to comfort and shared body heat pretty fast.

Tobin was a sweetie, a couple of years older than me and the month I turned sixteen, I allowed him to rid me of my maidenhead. Our fling didn't continue past that one time — we both liked our duties far more than each other, and besides, I only had eyes for one lad. The one who was busy frigging anyone and everyone in the Creature Court except me.

Somewhere along the way, we'd become friends, me and Ash. The game of trying to seduce him had become exactly that — he would tease me as if he were my brother, and I would mock him right back. Sometimes it made me love him more, sometimes it made me hate him. That was the year he frigged me for the first time, but I'm getting ahead of myself. By the time that happened, I wasn't a sentinel any more.

I
sangell was surrounded by maids, pinning up the overly elaborate gown she would be wearing at the ceremonies today. The colour was insipid and the corsetry far too old-fashioned, but that was what came of allowing her mother to have a say in commissioning so many of her dresses for public appearances. At least she had Mistress Velody's flame dress to look forward to, for the Chief Day of Sacrifice tomorrow.

As if the thought of her mother had conjured her into existence, Ducomtessa Eglantine bustled into Isangell's chambers, like a puffed-up toad in taffeta, seething with righteous indignation. Or gout. ‘Isangell, we have to talk.'

‘I am busy, Mama,' Isangell sighed, wincing as one of her maids pinned the sleeves too tightly. ‘The opening ceremonies begin in less than an hour, and we haven't even started on my hair.'

‘Out, all of you,' Eglantine commanded the maids. ‘My daughter and I must speak in private.'

To Isangell's frustration, the maids obeyed her mother, emptying the room faster than they ever moved for her commands. ‘Mama, what do you think you are doing?'

‘Servants talk, Isangell.'

‘Yes, they also fix hair, which was what I was hoping for this morning. I wasn't aware you had an interest in idle gossip.' Isangell did not want to encourage her mother in this behaviour, but if she didn't allow her to speak her mind quickly, she would not be ready in time for the ceremony. ‘What is troubling you?'

‘Ashiol,' her mother said with great import. ‘Do you know he has been ordering imperium from the kitchens? At breakfast time! Something has to be done about him, Isangell. It's exactly as it was before.'

‘I have made my stance on my cousin perfectly clear,' Isangell sighed. Imperium in the morning was not a good sign, but she was damned if she would let her mother be right about this.

‘You are entrusting the safety of this city to a drunkard and a madman,' Eglantine exclaimed. ‘You must put aside this foolish notion of delaying your marriage and allowing your cousin to remain as your heir. If the City Fathers hear of his antics and suspect you are allowing your childhood loyalties to cloud your judgement, they would be honour bound to support one of the other Families to rise against you, and our family will lose everything.'

‘I was not aware that any of the Great Families of Aufleur were completely lacking in drunkards and madmen,' Isangell said sharply.

‘Don't be facetious. This is a serious matter. You were a child when Ashiol was last in this city. You know nothing of his reputation.'

Isangell sighed heavily. Why did everything have to be a battle? Her mother was not in the least bit interested in her response now; she was merely ranting to herself.

‘… Roaming the streets, seducing women, and his — friendship with that country manservant was hardly proper at all. I always had my suspicions about them. You know Ashiol was questioned in the disappearance of the Zafiran ambassador's son. Nothing was ever proven but only because your grandpapa did his level best to hush it up …'

‘Mama,' Isangell snapped. ‘I have taken note of your concerns, but I have a busy day ahead of me, and I cannot walk into the Circus Verdigris looking like a half-dressed actress. I will take your concerns into account, but for now you must leave and send my maids back in to me.'

‘You will consider accepting a husband from one of the Great Families?' her mother rapped out, eyes gleaming.

‘I will consider all options.' Damn it all. Isangell had been so relieved to find an excuse to put off her inevitable marriage, and not only because she had no wish to insult all but one of the Great Families in a single blow. The thought of juggling a husband along with her other duties was beyond irritating, never mind the fact that everyone would expect him to share her rule. ‘But not today.'

‘He is not the man you think he is, Isangell,' her mother said with the fervour of a fanatic.

Isangell was certain Ashiol was not the man her mother thought he was either, but she knew better than to say so at this moment, when she was on the verge of
escaping the conversation. ‘I shall think on it,' she said gravely, and was rewarded by her mother — finally — making her exit and sending the maids back in, scurrying and apologetic.

Not the best way to begin a day where every augury was a symbol of the city's fortunes. If Isangell's mother was an omen it would be a black crow, cawing its displeasure at the world. Eglantine always thought the worst of everyone, Ashiol especially.

Isangell had to trust that she could rely on her cousin to stand between her and the line of potential consorts, no matter how unreliable everyone — including Ashiol himself — said that he was. She had no other option, for now.

 

The streets were thick with Victory banners, red-gold finery, and the buzz of Sacred Games. Everyone had been to one of the performances at the Circus Verdigris, or planned to, and they poured through the streets, fingers sticky with melon and mouths wet with cordial.

What a fucking joke. Ashiol wanted to grab the sticky revellers, demand to know exactly what victory they thought they were celebrating.

A long-ago war, so old that no one alive had fought in it. A myth passed down for decades. They knew to thank the saints and angels, to thank the devils themselves; they knew the war had been won, or at least had ended, and they gave offerings to the hounds of war on this day. Don your red satin, watch a carnival act or two and suck down the sugar water. Pretend you know what it all means.

‘You didn't win anything,' Ashiol wanted to tell them. ‘You didn't end the war. You just made it invisible. None
of you see it, none of you know. But we fight it. We die for you, fucking ungrateful parasites that you are. Stop buying ribbons and fancies and look at the world around you.
See us
.'

They would think he was crazy. Many already did think that. The mad Ducomte. No one knew why the Duchessa Isangell had chosen him, of all her cousins, to stand at her side.

She was as blind as the rest of them. What exactly did she see in him?

Ashiol had made it through two days of Sacred Games so far without throwing a public tantrum. Judicious quantities of imperium had assisted with that. He was doing his best to avoid reflective surfaces, and there had been no further hallucinations. Not yet, in any case.

Fuck, his mouth tasted foul. He needed another drink. Ashiol ran his hands over his face, almost — for a fraction of a moment — feeling the scars he had borne for five years. Scars he hadn't been able to see for most of that time, though there were days when he had looked at his hands and they crumbled under his gaze, crusted and broken.

He breathed, reminding himself that he had his animor back. He was whole again. Whatever else he had to deal with, there was that. This city pumped blood into his veins. He wouldn't leave Aufleur again.

He had been avoiding Velody since the nox he had seen Garnet. She was probably still angry at him for not managing to fight the sky with her, and if he kept away, he wouldn't have to deal with it.

It was daylight, and that meant Ashiol's duty was to Isangell, not to Velody. He would do his best, in any case.
After the public ceremonies of the Victory of Joy, Ashiol returned to the Palazzo. He had a bath, changed out of the ridiculous festival finery, and drank a very precise measure of imperium to keep him going before he joined Isangell in her rooms.

Isangell raised her fair head as he entered. ‘Oh, you're here. Good. We need to consolidate the schedule for the rest of the Sacred Games.'

Ashiol winced.

‘It won't be that bad,' his cousin chided him.

‘Anything that requires use of a schedule is automatically bad.' He wasn't slurring. The trick was just enough liquor to make the situation manageable; not so much that he bumped into furniture.

‘That's Felicitas for you. I couldn't keep track of all the ceremonies and traditions without a map and a timeline.'

‘Do I get to sacrifice any more sheep?'

‘You're supposed to,' she sighed. ‘I'm not sure that it's such a good idea.'

‘I enjoy a good sacrifice.'

‘Yes, and that's the problem — you enjoy it rather too much. It alarms the priests. You looked positively feral today, and there were complaints about — you know.'

‘It was an accident.'

‘Licking blood from your fingers is hardly an accident. It's not the best way to endear you to the people of Aufleur.'

He shrugged, lowering himself into one of her pretty wicker chairs. ‘Surely my job is to make you look more respectable in comparison.'

‘I wasn't aware my respectability was in doubt, Ashiol. Do you take nothing seriously?'

‘Not if I can possibly help it.' This persona had held him in good stead — an indolent nobleman who took no responsibility. Last time he had lived at the Palazzo, it made for a useful explanation every time he spent a nox on the rooftops, or battling the bloodthirsty politics down below.

Ashiol the wastrel, the drunkard, the addict, the debaucher. Such an easy façade, especially as it wasn't entirely a lie.

But here was Isangell, who had never seen him as a wastrel no matter what vile things were said about him between the elders of their family. She saw him as her big cousin, her hero, and now she expected him to be that.

It made Ashiol's feet itch, and his hair prickle. He needed to get out of here and kill something.

‘Don't you get bored with the rigmarole?' he asked, placing his booted feet on the low glass table. ‘Imagine how much you could get done if you weren't having to placate the city with a new ceremony every day.'

Isangell gave him another of those withering looks of hers. It was at times like this he recognised that she was, in fact, of the same ilk as his mother, who had always been able to see through him with a blink of the eye. ‘Festivals are Aufleur. A fine Duchessa I would make if I didn't perform my role as guardian, priestess …'

‘Figurehead.'

She sighed. ‘And that.'

‘Fifteen days of Sacred Games in one month,' he drawled. ‘Are you sure we need all of them?'

Isangell didn't say anything for a moment. ‘It is how it is,' she said finally. ‘I would be letting everyone down if I didn't do my duty.'

‘Ah, duty,' Ashiol groaned. ‘If you're going to bring duty into it …'

 

An interminable hour later, Ashiol escaped up a twist of stairs and through a tiny window to leap on to the tiles that roofed the Palazzo. Just to breathe for a moment, he wasn't going to … Oh, he was.

Careful to crouch out of sight of any servants passing through the gardens, he stripped expertly, balancing his soft leather boots against the gutters before he pulled himself into the shapes that gave him his freedom.

The world on four paws was a fine one indeed. It was dizzying at first to be spread between several cat bodies, agile and sleek, heartbeats racing. But then Ashiol was himself again, and set out in a swarm to hunt. He wanted to taste blood in his mouth, even the tiny splash of a sparrow or a mouse.

Mice. His body thrummed with them. He wanted to lick, taste, bite. It made being around Velody fiercely difficult at times, his many selves warring with themselves as to whether he wanted to eat her or fuck her.

Both at the same time, if he could manage it.

Ashiol leaped from the Palazzo into the air, tangling and falling and then running over cool green grass through the formal gardens, in search of meat and fight.

The scent of them drew him in — mice, mice — and he spread out, his many cat bodies alert to the senses they needed. The smaller creatures smelled him coming, tried to scatter. But no one could pounce like Ashiol. A swipe of paw, sharp bite of teeth, and the bodies lay twitching.

Each of the cats enjoyed their meal, taking the warm
carcasses apart with delight, sucking flesh from the bones, spitting wads of fur and tail into the grass.

The cats stretched, hunger sated at least a little. There were more needs to be met, after a morning of public ceremonies and far too long stuck indoors discussing schedules and rituals, after too many days without battle or the pulse of danger.

He needed to get laid.

The veins of the city lay open to Ashiol as he swarmed out into the streets. There were revellers, and food, and threads of panic, lust, joy, fear.

How did the daylight folk not go insane with so much inside their heads? At least those of the nox had animor to keep them contained.

His paws felt good on the cobbles, cool and proper. No need for boots in this form. Ashiol followed an easily remembered trail to a place not far from the Palazzo, to a familiar heartbeat who would be his if he asked for it. Easy.

The alley was narrow, between several townhouses belonging to the Great Families, but there was space enough for the cats that were Ashiol to trot three abreast. They reached the blank wall at the end of the alley and curled up, all of them, waiting. One cat remained on his paws, gazing expectantly at the narrow wall stones.

A door opened out of nothing, and Kelpie stood there. With the eyes of many cats, Ashiol saw human — familiar — home. She smelled like friend. The cats didn't care that she was glaring, that her rumpled tunic and trousers made it clear she hadn't been expecting company, or even that she had told him to his face that she was not going to do this again.

Human. Familiar. Home.

Ever the good sentinel, Kelpie stood back to let him past, waiting until every cat was safe inside before she sealed the nest.

Each of the sentinels had a few nests scattered across the city. For the first time, Ashiol wondered what had happened to the nests belonging to the many sentinels who had fallen in recent years. Did they vanish? Had the sentinels who were left behind taken them over? He could not ask while he was cats.

‘What's wrong?' Kelpie asked now, perching on the end of her bed, the only piece of furniture in the tiny low-ceilinged room. A tinge of fear swept through the room, just a little. ‘An attack? I thought you were at the Palazzo all day?'