Power & Majesty (17 page)

T
here were no nox cabs, of course. The horse-drawn cabriolets that were only allowed in the city between twilight and dawn tended to congregate near the Forum, and there was never one around when you wanted it. Velody and Delphine stuck to the main streets, not even stopping at the Piazza Nautilia to hire a lampboy. Neither of them spoke until they reached the slender alley that ran behind Via Silviana.

‘Who were they?’ Delphine finally rasped.

‘I don’t know,’ said Velody. ‘I don’t want to know. Let’s just get home to Rhian.’

‘They were the ones who broke in last nox.’

‘Some of them, yes.’

Velody was furious at herself. Delphine might be stupid enough to accept an anonymous, extravagant gift, but Velody should have been more wary.

‘What do they want from us?’ Delphine asked.

‘I don’t know that either.’

Delphine took a deep breath. ‘That
was
the Ducomte d’Aufleur who carried me out of the theatre, right? The one with blood all over his chin?’

‘Uh-huh.’

They were almost at their kitchen door now. Velody had never been so pleased to see it in her life. Twenty more steps, now fifteen…

‘Fine,’ said Delphine. ‘Just so long as I know. Oh, help!’ She tumbled forward without a scream. Neither of them had any scream left in them.

Velody looked down, squinting in the low light to see what Delphine had tripped over. It was a body.

‘A tramp,’ Delphine said. ‘Is he dead?’

Velody reached out to touch the shoulder, her hand encountering rough wool. ‘He doesn’t smell like a tramp.’ The fallen figure was warm, though he didn’t stir at her touch. Certain that nothing more could frighten her this nox, she rolled him slowly onto his back.

His face was bloody and battered, so bad that it was a miracle he still breathed. Velody touched his pale hair, certain now that she didn’t have to see an unmarked face to know who he was. He was the brown-cloaked young man whose face—before this brutal battering—had resembled that of a stained-glass saint. He groaned softly at her touch, but didn’t open his eyes.

‘I don’t know who they are,’ Velody muttered. ‘I don’t know which of them are protecting me and which are attacking. I’m not sure if they know themselves. But it’s not good that he’s out here.’

‘Why not?’ Delphine asked, her eyes wide with fright.

‘Because it means that whoever did this to him is probably in there.’ Velody looked up at their kitchen door.

She didn’t even realise that she had got to her feet and was running until she was inside the kitchen, the door having crashed open at her touch. That was wrong too. It should have been latched—it was always latched. ‘Rhian?’ she yelled hoarsely into the house, and heard nothing.

Delphine was close behind her. ‘They couldn’t have got here first. We came straight here.’

‘Not them,’ said Velody. ‘Maybe someone worse than them.’

There was no one in the workshop, not even a glowing coal in the grate. There had been no point in setting a fire with both of them out for the evening, as Rhian would be upstairs behind her bolts and locks.

They ran up the stairs together. Seeing Rhian’s door torn off its hinges was a punch to the stomach.

Delphine made it to the doorway first. Half a step behind, Velody had to look around Delphine to see the scene within the room.

Rhian sat on the bed, stiff and terrified. A man sat behind her, cradling her hard against his chest, a fierce smile on his face. He wore festival clothes, bright and merry, a lopsided white garland on his reddish-brown hair and sweetheart embroideries on his cuffs.

‘Hello, Velody,’ he said. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you at last. I just know we’re going to be good friends.’

Velody did not move, relieved that Rhian was, at least, alive. The sight of a man in her private sanctum though, the chill horror in her eyes as he held her body to his, was unbearable.

Delphine was not thinking so clearly—or, perhaps, was thinking more clearly than Velody. ‘Monster!’ she screamed, throwing herself at him with her nails outstretched, her eyes blazing with rage. He flicked a hand in her direction and she flew back, as if a solid blow had connected, crashing into the wall.

Velody could not move to Rhian’s defence. She could barely speak. ‘Which animal are you?’ she asked, and was only half-aware of how together she sounded.

‘Ferax,’ he said, naming the urban fox that plagued parts of the city.
Almost as bad as rats, they say
, she found herself thinking, and resisted the urge to laugh. ‘Which animal are you, Velody?’

Little brown mouse
, she thought, and wondered why. ‘I’m a dressmaker,’ she said, and there were silk shears in
her hand. Had she picked them up in the workshop? She couldn’t remember. ‘Step away from her, ferax, or I will cut out your heart and eat it while you watch.’

The awful thing was, she meant it. She had seen the bloodstains around the Ducomte’s mouth as he carried Delphine out of the dressing room, and something deep inside her had said,
I could do that.

The ferax grinned as if this little exchange meant that—somehow—they were friends. ‘So you
are
one of us.’

‘I’m not one of anything.’

‘You must know that you belong with the beasts. You must have felt it.’

‘I don’t belong anywhere but here.’ Velody winced as he tightened his grip around the shuddering Rhian. ‘I belong to this house, to her and her.’ She pointed first at Rhian, then at Delphine.

‘Why will none of you leave us alone?’ She was so very exhausted, but she had to be alert now. She had to save Rhian. She had to make their house a fortress again. But how could they ever trust locks and bolts after this?

The ferax opened his arms and Rhian fell free of him in a desperate tumble, her elbows pushing away from him as she rolled, sprawled on the floor. Slowly, she scrabbled her way towards Delphine. Velody could not help but notice the painful way in which Rhian moved.

‘What did you do?’ she demanded in a fury.

The ferax stood up in a smooth movement, walking towards Velody. She gripped the silk shears, but something about his golden eyes made her hand relax. He was able to hold out his hand and take them from her. He touched her chin, gazing into her eyes with something almost—but not quite—like parental concern. ‘So,’ he said. ‘This is the one they would have as our King. Weak.’

‘Why is everyone always talking about Kings?’ Velody asked. She was so tired of not understanding the strange things that these people said. What kind of world did they belong to, that all this made sense to them? ‘There
are Ducs and Duchessas and Ducomtes, Comtes and Baronnes and a hundred different kinds of noblemen up to the rank of Princel and Princessa, but we just don’t
have
any Kings. No one has had Kings for a hundred years, not even the Inglirrens or Islandsers.’

The ferax moved in closer. ‘Wishful thinking if ever I heard it,’ he said, and then he kissed her. His hands held her arms fast, and his grip was so pinchingly tight that she couldn’t struggle. The experience was entirely unpleasant, although she couldn’t help wishing he would put his wet tongue a little further into her mouth so that she could bite it off.

He flew away from her with a sudden yelp of pain, slamming to the floor, his whole body twitching. Velody looked with calm detachment at the knife in his shoulder. The hilt was quite ordinary, wrapped in strips of green leather. The blade was something else again—at least, the inch or two of metal that wasn’t buried in the ferax’s shoulder. It gleamed and shone, more fiercely silver than anything she had seen before. Tiny motes of light danced across the surface, although it wasn’t tilted at the right angle to catch the reflection of the single lantern in the room.

‘Took something of a liberty there, I’m afraid,’ said an apologetic voice from the doorway, in Islandser brogue. Macready offered a shamefaced grin as Velody glared at him. ‘You wouldn’t have been enjoying that at all?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said in a hard voice.

‘Well, that’s all right, so. I’d have hated to interrupt such a tender moment if the pleasure was mutual.’

The ferax was curled in a ball, moaning.

Velody walked on unsteady feet past Macready to her friends. Delphine was conscious but huddled in on herself. Rhian sat with her back to the wall, her arms and legs as stiff as they had been when the ferax was holding her captive. Velody took Rhian’s hands between hers. ‘What
did he do to you?’ she asked, and couldn’t help but think of that horrible day over a year ago, of begging Rhian to tell them what had been done to her and that awful silence, worse than if they’d heard the grisly details.

‘Hit,’ said Rhian in a distant voice. Her face was swollen on one side. Velody hadn’t noticed that before. ‘Here…here…here.’ Her hand passed over her body, marking where the ferax had hit her. She managed a wan smile, being brave. ‘Nothing worse.’

‘That’s bad enough,’ Velody said. She wrapped her arms around Rhian’s trembling body, offering what little comfort she could.

After a long moment, Rhian hugged her back. ‘I thought it was happening again.’ Rhian started sobbing, her whole body convulsing against Velody’s. Delphine crawled towards them, adding her body to the awkward embrace.

There was no time for this, necessary though it was. Velody eased away from Rhian, allowing her to wrap her arms around Delphine instead. Only then did she look back up at Macready.

The light-hearted banter was gone. The sight of Rhian weeping—the sheer devastation wrought by the ferax—had affected him. His face was hollow. ‘How can I help, lass?’

It was vaguely reassuring to see that these people were not all monsters. Velody looked at the crumpled ferax, then back at Macready. ‘You can leave, and tell me that none of you will ever be back again.’

Macready hesitated, and she knew he was deciding which lie to tell her.

The woman—Kelpie—appeared in the doorway beside Macready, bright-eyed and breathing hard, a sword in one hand that glittered with the same shimmering intensity as Macready’s knife blade.

‘Crane will live, if you’re interested,’ she said, mainly to Macready. ‘I found Dhynar’s hounds skulking around in the shadows. Made them whimper.’

‘Not now,’ said Macready, his eyes on Velody.

Velody stood over the ferax. Slowly, she reached down and pulled the knife out of his shoulder. It was jammed hard against bone and cartilage, and it took great strength to pull it free. The ferax moaned, still cowering from the weapon. Blood gushed out of his wound.

‘Don’t touch the blade,’ warned Macready. ‘It will burn you.’

Velody nodded slightly, indicating that she had heard him. She wiped blood from the shimmering metal on the ferax’s bright tunic and then touched the flat of the blade to his face. He howled and cowered from her. She pressed it harder against his skin. ‘Get up.’

Slowly, the ferax got to his feet. She ran the flat of the blade down his face, resting the edge finally against his throat. ‘Walk,’ she ordered.

Kelpie and Macready moved aside from the door to let them past, but Velody shook her head. ‘You two go first. I don’t trust any of you.’

‘Crane almost died protecting your house,’ Kelpie flared.

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? You’ve been watching our home, following us in the street. These…
creatures
didn’t start taking an interest in us until your pet Ducomte did. What exactly did he tell them about me and my friends to make us such interesting targets?’

Kelpie was prepared to argue the point, but Macready took hold of her elbow and steered her out of the room. Velody, still pressing the blade to the ferax’s neck, followed them.

Kelpie and Macready were halfway down the stairs, Velody and the ferax only a little way behind them, when the Ducomte Ashiol Xandelian d’Aufleur swept in from the kitchen as if he owned the place, high black boots ringing on the wooden floor and a long black coat swirling around his body. He took in the little tableau with a frown. ‘What happened here?’

Velody gave the ferax a sudden push with the knife. He cringed away from it so wildly that he fell, tumbling down
the stairs. Macready and Kelpie both pressed themselves to the sides so that he fell without taking them with him. As he hit the wooden floorboards at the bottom, his body split open into five or six red-gold furry creatures that darted around the Ducomte’s ankles and fled towards the open kitchen door.

Velody met the Ducomte’s eyes. She held up the shimmering knife by its green leather-wrapped hilt, noticing again the fascinating way in which it gleamed even in semi-darkness. ‘Will this knife do to you what it did to him?’ she asked.

He inclined his head slowly. ‘Yes, it will.’

‘Good. Then you won’t come back.’

‘You can’t keep it!’ protested Kelpie, genuinely shocked.

Velody weighed the knife. ‘Try and stop me.’

The other woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘I could take it off you in a heartbeat,’ she said. ‘Skysilver doesn’t burn humans; that blade won’t even scratch me.’

Velody hesitated, a question forming in her mind if not yet on her tongue.
Why did Macready warn me not to touch the blade if it has no effect on humans?

‘She can keep the knife,’ Macready said quickly. ‘She’ll need it more than I will.’ He glanced up at Velody, tipping an imaginary cap to her. ‘Her name is Jeunille. Take care of her, my lovely, and she’ll do right by you.’

‘You only just got them back!’ Kelpie wailed.

Macready shook his head. ‘Let it go, lass. You’ve no idea what we’ve done to these demoiselles.’

Without another look at Velody, he headed for the kitchen. Kelpie followed him.

Now it was just Velody and Ashiol. It seemed silly to keep thinking of him as the Ducomte, no matter how regally he might behave. She came down a step or two, pointing the knife at him. ‘You’re not ranting and raving quite as much as you were last nox. You seem relatively normal.’
And you’ve washed the blood from your face, I see. All very civilised.

Ashiol winced a little. ‘I wasn’t having a good day. I’m not usually a raving lunatic.’