Power & Majesty (18 page)

‘I see.’ Hard to forget the sight of him crashing into the dressing room, blood dripping from his teeth and tongue, swooping Delphine up into his arms as if she were a fainting damsel in a romantic play. ‘So this is you on a good day?’

‘Pretty much.’ He eyed the knife, and backed towards the kitchen as Velody advanced on him. ‘We need to talk.’

‘Talk.’ She almost laughed at that. ‘What do you think we have to talk about, my Lord Ducomte? The state of politics today? The sociological significance of fertility festivals? Or perhaps you’d like to tell me exactly
why
those creatures came after me and my friends?’

They were in the kitchen now.

‘I don’t know how they found out,’ Ashiol said, almost at the open back door. ‘They weren’t supposed to know about you—not yet anyway.’

‘Weren’t supposed to know what?’ she snapped as Ashiol stepped backwards through the door, stumbling a little on the first step before finding his feet. She kept him moving until they were in the alley beyond the backyard. ‘Weren’t supposed to know
what
about us?’ she repeated.

Macready and Kelpie were waiting further up the alley. Their friend Crane was between them, on his feet despite the nasty injuries, his face swollen. Velody tried not to remember how damned pretty he had been before the assault, tried not to feel guilty about what the ferax had done to him.
This is their fault, not mine.

Ashiol stopped moving, his dark eyes almost daring her to advance on him further. ‘I didn’t know for sure,’ he said calmly, a far cry from the manic explosion of words he had thrown at her the nox before. ‘I needed to be certain.’

‘Certain of what? Why are you all so interested in a florister, a ribboner and a dressmaker?’

There was something in Ashiol’s face that brought Velody closer to the truth. ‘It’s not Delphine or Rhian. It’s me you’re all after. What is it you think you know about me, seigneur Ducomte, that I don’t know myself?’

Ashiol’s eyes flickered.

Velody squeezed the leather-wrapped hilt of the knife and touched the shimmering silver blade to the skin of her left hand. The pain was unbelievable, a fierce burn that brought her to her knees before she was able to pull the thing away. She gasped, trying to regain a halfway normal breathing pattern so she could find her voice.

‘If this knife doesn’t work on humans, what the
frig
am I?’

She could see—damn it, could
smell
—that he was about to lie to her, to say something vague and uninformative, that he was trying like anything to avoid telling her the truth. With a scream, she launched at him, the knife still in her hand.

Ashiol’s watchdogs were good, she had to give them that. When it was over, the knife was on the ground and Velody was pinned to the wall by all three of them. Kelpie was the first to peel off, checking that Ashiol was all right. Crane was the next to go, muttering about how many ribs he thought he had broken before that little scuffle, let alone after.

‘You may not believe me, but I am sorry about this,’ Macready gabbled in her ear, still holding her fast. ‘I know you’ve been through a lot this nox, but we couldn’t let you kill him, so. It’s our job to protect him. He belongs to us in the same way that your Rhian and your Delphine belong to you.’ He relaxed his hold on her a little, leaning back so that their bodies were not quite so close. ‘The funny thing is, lass, if you are what he thinks you are, we’ll have to protect you too.’

Velody looked past Macready to Ashiol, who was dabbing blood from his cheek. She had got in one cut, at least, in her wild and slashing attack. ‘What am I?’ she asked him.

Ashiol looked at the blood on his fingers, and licked it.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, and this time it wasn’t a lie. ‘I want to find out though.’

Rage surged through her, a burning anger. ‘No more games,’ she said as heat prickled across her skin. ‘No more games, Ducomte! Tell me what I am!’

She felt her body shifting explosively within her skin, as if it was not quite hers any more. She was breaking apart, tearing into a thousand separate pieces.

Macready threw himself aside, shielding his eyes as Velody burst open, her body flying apart and finding new, small shapes to climb into. Suddenly she was everywhere, inside hundreds of tiny warm bodies with tiny unblinking eyes.

Little brown mice
, she thought hysterically.
Saints and angels. I’m little brown mice.

I
t was a long time since Heliora had visited the Arches. As the seer of the Creature Court, she occupied a strange in-between status, one foot in the nox and another in the daylight.

When Ortheus was still the Power and Majesty, the seer had been expected to stay at his right hand, offering advice and opinions at every given opportunity. Heliora was presented with jewels and fine clothes and installed in living quarters in the Haymarket, Ortheus’s own territory.

His successor had offered no such incentives to stay nearby. Garnet had embraced the idea of a pet fortune-teller only until he realised that her interpretations of the cards and crystals were not always going to be the ones that he wanted. The seer’s grand rooms in the Haymarket were soon appropriated for Garnet’s lover Livilla, while Ashiol gave Heliora living quarters in his own territory.

After Ashiol went into exile, there was even less of a reason for Heliora to stay in the underground sanctum. Garnet did not object to her spending more of her waking—and, eventually, her sleeping—hours in the Basilica, as long as she made time for any member of the Court who wished to consult her.

It was several years now since Hel had last set foot inside the Arches, and nothing had changed. She found her way in by the Lock at the foot of the Lucretine, holding her long skirts out of the water as she skipped nimbly across to the concealed path that led down to the cobbled and concreted streets of Old Aufleur.

Most of the area was uninhabitable, ruined by neglect and rockfalls. Other parts had been demolished to make way for a sewer and water-pipe system more than a century ago. But the heart of the old city was still intact: an underground canal running south off the Verticordia, the remains of a small but stately cathedral, several warehouses, a few shambling alleys lined with old abandoned shops. The museion was still in one piece, and some rooms in the fallen Palazzo were habitable. There was even an ornate bridge that had been erected in honour of the very first Mayor of Aufleur in the days before the Ducs and Duchessas, when the people of the city had huddled underground in the hope of escaping the horrors that came from the sky.

There was no reason for any of the daylight folk to return to this place. For the Lords and Court, who still battled the sky, it was the only place they could feel remotely safe—at least long enough to sleep when sleep was needed.

Heliora avoided the tunnel that led past the cathedral to the Haymarket, making her way instead to the Shambles. It was too much to hope her presence would pass unnoticed among the Lords and Court, but with any luck they would ignore her. It was nox, in any case. Most of them were awake now and roaming the city above.

The only light down here was what you brought with you. Heliora had a long lantern hanging from a hooked cane that she had hired for two shilleins from a lampboy in the Forum.

The Shambles wasn’t completely dark. Lamplight glowed from the upper storey of a shop that still had the
name of its original proprietor—a grocer—painted in peeling letters above the door. Heliora set down her lantern cane at the door, and pushed it open. The old shop was full of shadows and little else. No one moved, but she knew she was not alone in here. ‘I’m a friend,’ she said aloud.

‘Are you?’ replied the voice of a boy. He was nearer to her than she had guessed. Heliora leaned into the darkness of the room.

‘They call you Zero,’ she said. ‘Not your real name though. Your real name is—’

‘Hey!’ The boy jumped forward, and she could just see the outline of his outraged face from the light of her own lantern streaming in through the open front door. ‘No need for that, demme! I didn’t do anything bad to you, now did I?’

‘I’m the seer,’ she said. ‘Has your Lord mentioned me at all?’

The boy’s face grew sulky. ‘You better go up.’

‘Thank you.’

Heliora made for the stairs she could see, heading up towards the crack of light that illuminated a closed door. As she pushed the door open, heat hit her full in the face.

An elderly cooking range was the main feature of the upstairs room, belting out hot air as it churned wood into flame. It must have been purloined from an abandoned baking shop and installed up here by the current occupant. No one sensible would design a house to hold a stove on an upper storey.

‘I like this,’ she said, moving towards it and holding her hands out to take the last cold edge from them.

‘Only way to get warm down here in the Arches,’ said her host. ‘Even in the height of summer everything is cold and damp.’

‘I remember that.’ Another reason to stay in the upper world. Having come to terms with the noxmare possibility
that the sky might fall at any moment, Heliora preferred to

live in the sunshine while she could. ‘How are you, Poet?’

‘Not wounded, demoiselle, nor dead.’

He was relaxed here, wrapped in a dressing gown and surrounded by what could only be described as opulence. Strange to see so many antique paintings and rich furnishings crammed into a room that had once housed a humble grocer’s family.

The boy Zero came up the stairs and lifted a bubbling pot from the range, pouring some of its contents into a large clay tankard. ‘’S for Halberk,’ he muttered.

Poet nodded, and the boy scampered up another staircase to what must be an attic room, carefully balancing the mug.

‘Your other courteso is feeling under the weather?’ Heliora said politely.

‘Something like that,’ said Poet. ‘Our Ash bit his throat out this evening.’

‘Did he deserve it?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m lucky he didn’t start biting pieces out of me. What are you here for, Hel?’ Poet’s voice was hard, but only slightly suspicious.

Heliora sighed deeply. ‘I want a cup of tea.’

Caught off guard, he chuckled.

‘I’m serious. I know you have the stuff. You’re rolling in money from those theatricals you take such delight in. It’s as rare as a virgin in a brothel up in the daylight.’

Shrugging into a comfortable armchair, Poet waved towards a large wooden chest at the far end of the room. It was about the size of a packing crate, but far more ornately carved. ‘Help yourself.’

She opened the lid to discover that the chest was packed almost to the rim with finest Camoisean leaf. ‘Poet, this is a Duc’s ransom. This is three Ducs’ ransoms.’

‘What else am I going to spend my money on?’ he asked lazily. ‘If I bought jewels, Livilla would just sneak in and steal them all. The only threat to my tea supply is Priest, and at least he’s polite about it.’

Heliora found a worn copper kettle and a barrel of water to fill it from. While the kettle was heating on the range, she scooped a healthy helping of dried leaves into an elegant porcelain teapot. ‘You live well, for a rat in a hole.’

Poet smiled at her. ‘And you have refined tastes for a gipsy card-sharking whore.’

The niceties over, they sat in companionable silence and waited for the kettle to boil.

As the tea brewed in its pot, Heliora busied herself with cups, sugar and fresh cream that Zero had reluctantly fetched from the cellar at Poet’s yell. Only when the ritual was almost complete did Poet finally bring up the subject that was on both their minds.

‘So, my sweetness, what’s in the cards for the Creature Court? What does our future hold?’

Heliora poured the tea, slowly and precisely. ‘All manner of interesting things, half of them false.’

‘Do those interesting things include a demoiselle King?’

‘You know about that?’

‘Seven hells, Hel, every creature from Church Bridge to the Alexandrine has heard it by now. What’s Ashiol playing at?’

She finished pouring the second cup, and handed the first to him. ‘I don’t think even he knows what game it is.’

‘So you can’t tell me anything.’

Heliora clambered to her feet and found an armchair of her own. ‘What do I know? I didn’t even know you could have female kings.’

‘You can’t,’ said Poet, cradling the absurdly delicate china cup in his hands. ‘Tasha used to tell the story about a demoiselle Lord called Samara, mistress to the Power and Majesty who ruled before Ortheus. Samara killed the Power and quenched him whole, but the animor did terrible things to her. She was barely alive when they found her, a piece of wreckage with eyes and skin. There are other stories too, further back. No woman of the Creature
Court has ever reached a rank above Lord—and those who have tried died instantly.’

‘I saw it in the futures,’ Heliora said. ‘In some of them, this woman doesn’t come into her power at all. In others, she does, but…as you say, with the story of Samara. She is melted by the chimaera form, or simply crumbles from holding too much animor within her skin.’

‘Did you tell Ashiol about that?’

‘I tried. He only wanted to know about the futures where it worked, where she stood as Power and Majesty and he was able to escape the Creature Court once and for all.’

Poet took a deep swallow of his tea. ‘The question is, would we be better off with Ashiol gone?’

‘I suppose that depends on whether this dressmaker survives the future Ashiol wants for her.’

‘It’s a shame,’ sighed Poet. ‘I really was getting to like her.’

Velody had eyes everywhere. She was scattered across the cobblestones, over the doorstep, up the walls. She could smell everything, from the sweat on the skins of the humans and Ashiol to the emotional pheromones that spilled out of them all. She wasn’t even sure that she was Velody any more.

That panicked thought made her pull herself together, literally. She formed a desperate image of her own body, her own skin, and poured herself into that shape. It wasn’t quite right. She was Velody, standing on two legs, but she was stronger, sharper, taller than ever before. She was powerful.

She still had the senses of the creeping creatures, could tell by the scents in the air that Macready, Crane and Kelpie were friends, they would not hurt her, they would protect her with their lives. At the same time she knew that Ashiol was not a friend. He was a rival. An equal. He could only be trusted up to a point. Everything about him
felt
threat
as Velody faced him down, and he too was shaping into a harder, more dangerous version of himself even as he pulled off his boots, shirt and trews, appearing naked and glowing before her.

Naked. Yes, she was naked too. Her garments had fallen away when she shaped herself into the little crawling things. For some reason, in this hard and powerful version of herself, she did not mind that she was clad only in her skin.

She buzzed with thoughts and ideas, many of them belonging to Ashiol rather than herself. In his mind, she could see the next stage, the shape he would have to throw himself into if she attacked him. In her own mind, she saw that she had one of those shapes too. She changed a second before he did.

Now they were in the air, huge and black and bursting with a blazing inner light that Velody recognised as raw power. Was this what they meant when they talked about animor? Whatever it was, it tasted sweet. She was winged and clawed and
mighty
. With this, she could protect Rhian and Delphine from anything.

It occurred to her that she had become a monster and she didn’t entirely care.

Thoughts tumbled in and around her, making a strange kind of sense. Velody wanted to fly screaming over the city, to show them all what she could do and what she could be. The scent of ferax still hung in the air, and she realised with ravenous glee that she could hunt the miserable creature down and tear him into shreds of blood and bone.

It was getting hard to stay in the air. Her wings hurt from the strain, and she had to lower herself to the cobblestones again. Ashiol descended nearby, his fiery red eyes watching her with a predatory gaze. He had not attacked, but held ready in case she did. She liked that he was being so cautious around her. She was a threat to him.

Once her feet hit the ground, Velody sagged. The monstrous parts of her body peeled away into nothing,
and she didn’t even have the energy to retain that stronger, glowing version of herself. She fell to the cobblestones in her ordinary body, breathing in long gasps as if this was the last time she would ever suck air into her lungs.

Something warm and scratchy covered her. She knew without looking that it was Crane’s brown cloak. When she recovered enough to wrap the thing around her and pick herself up off the ground, Ashiol was there with a steady hand to help her.

He, at least, had found time to dress himself again. How long had she been shivering and shuddering on those cold stones? Clutching the cloak more tightly around her body, she looked for the others. Crane, Macready and Kelpie were on their knees, heads lowered solemnly. To her.

‘What’s with all the bowing and scraping?’ she asked, leaning down to pick up her fallen dress, shoes and undergarments.

‘They’re on their knees because they’ve never seen anything quite like you,’ said Ashiol, pulling on his long leather coat. Where had he got that from—the musette? The boots weren’t his either. They smelled of Poet. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

Velody was about to say that she wanted nothing but to be left alone to sleep, but it wasn’t true. The exhaustion was gone, leaving her with an alert mind and, yes—an empty stomach. ‘Starving,’ she admitted, still waiting for Macready and the others to meet her eyes or start acting normal again. This prostrate humility wasn’t like them at all.

‘Good,’ said Ashiol. ‘Go get dressed again. I’ll take you to dinner, and make some attempt at explaining what in the seven hells is going on.’

Velody went inside the house to dress, and the sentinels exchanged meaningful looks. Macready moved first. He resheathed his skysilver dagger ‘Jeunille’, feeling a little
strange about taking her back so soon after he had given her away. He turned to Ashiol. ‘Are you sure you’ve done the lass any favours, man? Her life will never be her own again.’

Ashiol barely glanced at him. ‘You saw what happened. She came into her powers. I have a responsibility to show her how to use them.’

‘And you didn’t help those powers along at all?’