Power & Majesty (20 page)

Ashiol laughed. ‘You were hungry. I told you so.’

‘I’ve never been
that
hungry before.’

‘Shaping takes a lot out of you, particularly the first time. If you hadn’t dosed up on meat and blood, you would have been flat on the floor inside an hour, probably for days.’

She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘And you knew that.’

‘Aye.’

‘What does the red wine do?’

‘Tastes good. And it helps you relax.’

‘Why do I need to relax?’

Ashiol finished his glass, smacking his lips. ‘Because I’m going to be telling you some things later that will make you feel very stressed. Do you want dessert?’

‘What essential nutrients will that provide?’

‘None, but it might keep you from gnawing your way through the table while I finish my dinner.’

Velody sighed, and suppressed the urge to lick her skillet clean. ‘I’ll stick to the wine.’

I
n the alley outside the bistro, Macready argued with Crane. ‘You should be at home, laddie-buck. Your face is starting to look like my mam’s best minced lamb porridge.’

‘Thanks,’ said Crane, pulling his cloak tightly around him. It was nearly summer, but the nox air was still chill on the skin.

‘You don’t need to be here.’

‘Yes, I do.’ Beneath the bruising and swelling that turned the young man’s face into something both horrible and unrecognisable, his expression was resolute. ‘I couldn’t leave her alone with him. We don’t know how stable he is.’

‘And what am I, chopped kidneys?’

‘You know what I mean. It’s not like that little episode the other nox was the first time he’s gone crazy on us.’

‘And if he does it will take at least two of us to hold him back,’ sighed Macready. ‘Aye, lad. I know what you mean.’

He also knew that if Ashiol was really trying, he could kill them both in a heartbeat. Crane knew that too.

‘I can sleep later,’ Crane said stubbornly. ‘Right now, I want to be near her.’

Macready gave his younger partner a quick look. ‘Choosing sides already?’

‘She doesn’t know anything, and he’s throwing her into a scorpions’ nest. She needs us more than he does.’

‘Is that so?’

‘We have to learn how to balance our loyalties again. It’s a long time since we’ve had more than one King in the city.’

‘A few days ago, our Ashiol entered the city and Garnet sent you to spy on him,’ said Macready, who had certainly not forgotten that particular detail. ‘Not so long ago, it seems to me.’

Crane looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t say it was easy. The balancing.’

Macready clapped his hands together to warm them up. ‘Saints and angels, how long does it take to gnaw your way through a side of beef?’ He cast a dirty look at the bistro.

‘Jealous?’

‘Last bit of steak I got my teeth into, lad, was boiled and sliced and baked in wet pastry. Of course I’m fecking jealous.’

There was movement in the bistro. From their position, they could just see Ashiol getting to his feet, helping Velody on with her long coat. ‘Cosy,’ Crane said. ‘Just like any other couple honouring the Sweetheart Saints.’

Macready looked at the lad. ‘You wouldn’t be interested in the demoiselle yourself at all?’

‘I’m
worried
about her. She doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into.’

‘Neh, she’s strong, that one. Even before she went monster on us, she was the self-reliant type. If you’re feeling protective, look to those lasses of hers.’ Macready had not forgotten the sight of Delphine crumpled and white against the wall, nor the torment on Rhian’s face as she crawled into Velody’s arms. Those were the ones who needed looking after. Damaged, both.
And not your responsibility, Mac.

‘Kelpie’s keeping an eye on them,’ Crane said, his gaze on Velody as she left the bistro, her arm tucked awkwardly into Ashiol’s.

‘Not exactly what I meant,’ said Macready.

They waited a pace or two after the Kings had passed their alley, then set off after them. There was no place for chat now, not if they were to stay unnoticed by Ashiol. He had told them to go home, to curl up in their nests and rest, leaving Kelpie—the only one who had slept in the last two days—to play sentry in Via Silviana.

Despite the distance, Macready and Crane could hear something of what was being said up ahead in the quiet street.

‘I have another question,’ Velody said, her voice a little muffled as she pulled up the collar of her coat to keep out the cold.

‘Go ahead,’ said Ashiol. He sounded almost chirpy, Macready thought. Must have been one hell of a steak.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why Creature Lords and Creature Kings and Powers and Majesties and courtesi and sentinels? Why rats and mice and feraxes and cats and perfectly ordinary people turning into big black flapping monsters? What’s the point of it all?’

There was a long pause, during which Macready had to stop himself from sniggering.

‘Good question,’ said Ashiol.

‘Can you answer it?’

‘Give me a minute.’ Ashiol changed direction, his leather coat—Poet’s coat—swishing as he dragged Velody into a side street. ‘Better yet, I’ll show you.’

‘Show me what?’

The lass was half-laughing, which had to be a good sign, Macready thought. He never again wanted to see that terrible look on her face when she had lunged at Ashiol with murder in her eyes and Jeunille in her hand. Perhaps
she was starting to see the man as an ally rather than an enemy. It was the worst mistake she could make, but the lass wasn’t to know that.

Crane surged ahead after them, too hasty. Macready grabbed the lad’s sleeve and together—
gently, my lad
—they both peered around the corner.

Velody was all the way laughing now. ‘You
can’t
be serious.’

She and Ashiol stood at the corner of a solid-looking building with expensive copper piping up one side of it. Macready assessed the climbing potential of the wall and the roof, then grinned to himself. To think his mammy had wanted him to take up a respectable trade, like carpentry or butchery.

‘An easy climb,’ Ashiol protested.

‘I can’t go around climbing onto people’s roofs! I’m wearing a dress. And it’s…undignified!’

‘Trust me,’ said Ashiol, cupping his hands for her to put her foot into. ‘If you’re going to understand our world, you have to spend some time on rooftops. I promise not to look up your skirt.’

Looking dubious about the whole situation, Velody placed her boot in Ash’s hands and launched herself upwards, hands grasping at the piping.

Macready covered his face with his hands. ‘I can’t watch. Did she fall?’

‘She’s doing fine,’ said Crane, a note of wonder in his voice. ‘Not bad at all.’

Macready removed his hands from his eyes and stared at Crane’s bloodied and swollen face. ‘Don’t you topple for her,’ he warned, trying to ignore the feeling in his stomach that told him this was all, already, inevitable. ‘She’s so far above you that you can’t touch her shoes. There’ll be tears before bedtime, and during, and after.’

‘Sorry,’ said Crane, as Velody made it safely to the roof. ‘What did you say? I missed it.’ He smiled proudly. ‘Did you see how easily she got over that tricky bit of guttering?’

Macready briefly considered beating his own brains out on the nearest wall, but settled for a nearly inaudible groan.

It was cold on the rooftops, but the view was amazing. Velody could see down the side of the Vittorine, clear across to the other hills of Aufleur and all the dimly lit houses, shops, temples and public buildings in between. There were hardly any lanterns burning at this time of nox, just a flicker here and there of someone working into the small hours, larger glows in the late nox theatres and drinking clubs, and the occasional tiny bob of a lampboy leading a customer home along the darkened streets.

Her silk coat wasn’t much protection up here and she shivered.

‘You asked me why we exist,’ said Ashiol, his gaze on the view below and around them. ‘What we’re here for.’

‘I thought you were avoiding that question.’

‘I asked someone else that same thing once. I came to the city when I was thirteen. My Uncle Artorio was the heir of Aufleur, but his only child—our Duchessa now—was young and sickly. That put me squarely in the frame as the backup heir, so the Old Duc hauled me out of my mother’s estate in Diamagne and brought me to the city to learn my duty as a scion of the house of Xandelian.’ A thin smile. ‘I think he regretted that action for the rest of his life, my grandfather.’

‘What happened?’

‘Garnet came with me—it was the only condition I had asked for, that my friend join me. So there we were, two country boys in the big city with one big secret. What we weren’t prepared for was how different it was for us here. Animor is stronger in cities, and we almost drowned in our own power. Tasha found us within two days. Smelled us coming a mile off, and put everything she had into luring us out of the Palazzo and into her world, under the city. It didn’t take much. She was…an enthralling woman. We were more than happy to be seduced.’

‘Was she the Power and Majesty at the time?’

‘No woman has ever risen above the rank of Lord. Tasha was the closest thing the Court ever had to a female leader, but only because she had our then Power and Majesty twisted around her little finger and half the other Lords on a leash. Garnet and I were hers, body and soul. Her courtesi.’ He was distant for a moment. ‘A few weeks after we joined her, on a roof like this one, I asked Tasha what was the point of us? Why did we have these strange powers? She just grinned her lioness grin at me and pointed at the sky.’

Velody shivered. ‘The skywar? That was so long ago, if it happened at all.’

‘That’s what I thought. Blistering fire raining from the sky, explosions and devils and stabbing shards of ice. A city of people sheltering underground, rebuilding their lives despite the horrors that screamed down from above. It was the stuff of legends, ancient history, stories that had grown bigger in the telling. But the truth, Velody, is that the skywar never stopped. It’s hidden from the daylight folk, but we of the nox are still fighting that war. It’s our job to protect the city that can’t protect itself.’

‘How can there be a war?’ asked Velody. ‘How can we not
know
?’

‘Two days ago, just before dawn, while you and your friends were watching the Floralia parade, the Creature Court were fighting a war on the rooftops. Garnet died. I got my powers back, and you—you got yours too. You don’t believe me?’

‘How can I? I live in this city. Surely I would have noticed it being blown down around me on a regular basis!’

‘You belonged to the daylight then.’ He shrugged. ‘I did too. For the last five years…Garnet stripped me of my animor and I’ve been living as a daylight drone. Difference is, I knew about the secret world going on over my head and under my feet, even if I couldn’t see it or touch it.’

Velody shook her head, feeling like an idiot. ‘Here was
me thinking you were starting to make sense. What do you
want
with me?’

‘I want you to learn how to use your powers,’ he said simply. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Suspicious.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘I mean in your body. How do you feel?’

‘Like I could run forever,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘I think I’m drunk on red meat.’

His grin lit up his whole face, making him look almost boyish. ‘Excellent. Let’s play.’

Shaping herself into a few thousand small brown mice, it turned out, was not as easy as it had seemed in that alley. When not furious, Velody needed time and effort to coax her body to take on those little creature forms. It didn’t help that Ashiol kept switching into his own gang of creatures. It was just
wrong
for cats and mice to be intermingling on the rooftops of the city.

Once she had the knack, Velody felt dizzy with the possibilities. As an army of mice, she could leap and crawl and perform all kinds of strange acrobatics. She loved the challenge of coordinating so many bodies at once. It was like an elaborate form of patchwork.

They rested finally, several rooftops further down the hill from where they had begun, breathless and laughing, surrounded by animals. All the local cats had come to be close to Ashiol, and what seemed like millions of mice had scampered up walls and pipes in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Velody.

More than a glimpse, she realised as her brain settled back to being human rather than mouse. ‘Um, can we go back for our clothes?’

Ashiol was entirely comfortable in his skin, splayed out on the tiles as the cats nudged and rubbed up against him. ‘Let’s try the Lord form first. Then you won’t care about being naked.’

Velody tucked her knees up and covered her breasts with her hands, giving him a dirty look. ‘Is the Lord form the black one with the flappy wings and teeth and claws?’

He stretched out to scratch at the chin of a ginger tabby. ‘No, that’s the chimaera. The Lord form is the stronger, harder version of you. The one that glows with power and doesn’t care about being naked.’

‘Oh.’ A thought struck her. ‘If I can take Lord shape, does that make me a Creature Lord?’

He rolled over and stared at her. She wriggled uncomfortably until she realised that he really was only staring at her face.

‘The courtesi can only take Court form—turning into their creature,’ Ashiol said slowly. ‘The Lords can do that as well as taking Lord form. The Kings can do more.’

He hadn’t answered her question.

‘I just assumed everyone started as one of the courtesi and worked their way up,’ she said.

‘Not always.’ He was still looking at her strangely. She longed for the security of her long silk coat—hells, she would settle for a breastband and knickers right now. Anything to place between her bare flesh and his eyes. ‘You got your powers late, Velody. You passed the point of courtesa a long time ago.’

‘I suppose I’m glad about that.’ She shuddered a little. ‘From what I’ve seen of Creature Lords, I don’t particularly want to be in service to one of them.’

‘No.’ Ashiol still looked as if there was something he was waiting for her to figure out.

‘So are you going to show me Lord form?’ Velody asked finally. ‘I don’t think I can remember how to do it without you.’

‘Yes.’ He pushed the cats away and stood up. ‘You’re right. We haven’t got much of the nox left.’