Power & Majesty (23 page)

She laughed at him, a hard and mocking laugh. ‘Think you’re him now? Think you can walk back in here and play
the Power? We saw you bleed and whimper under Garnet’s fingers, Ash. You’re nothing to him.’

‘And what am I to you, Livilla?’ He squeezed her throat a little harder. ‘On your feet.’

She did it, lowering her feet to the floor and composing her face as she stood up. She trembled with the pain of it, but did not stumble. To her credit, she did not try to lessen the pain by putting all her weight on the undamaged ankle. She knew the danger of obeying the shape of a King’s order without fulfilling the intent.

Ashiol released her. ‘Very good. Now put on something pretty and come to the square in the Shambles. We’re going to have a gathering of the Creature Court, and I want you to look your best.’

‘Why the square?’ she asked sullenly. ‘Why not here in the Haymarket?’

‘Because,’ said Ashiol, ‘if I have to spend another minute in this stinking hole of Garnet’s, I’m going to have to bite out somebody’s throat to get the taste from my mouth.’

He left her, and strode out the door.

‘You don’t want these rooms then?’ she asked in a plaintive voice. ‘I can stay here?’

Ashiol turned back, steeling himself not to look for the demme he had loved in this broken doll of a woman. ‘If I don’t kill you in the next day or so, sure. You can keep the rooms.’

Janvier was waiting, holding the trembling lad, Seonard, upright. As Ashiol came out of Livilla’s room, the two courtesi went straight to her side, ducking their heads to avoid meeting his eyes.

Macready and Kelpie waited a little further along the balcony.

‘Hell of a job you performed on Warlord down there, so you did,’ said Macready, his lilting voice indicating neither approval nor disapproval.

‘How do you feel?’ asked Kelpie.

Ashiol contemplated the question. ‘I can do this,’ he said. ‘It’s getting easier.’

‘What’s next?’ asked Macready.

‘Call the Creature Court together,’ said Ashiol. ‘I think it’s time they swore allegiance to their new Power and Majesty.’

H
eliora awoke with the wrenching thought that she didn’t know where she was. She slitted her eyes open, hoping to get some clue through a thin, eyelashed line of sight. The first thing she saw was chintz, and as she opened her eyes a little wider she recognised the armchair directly opposite.

She was still in Poet’s den.

‘I didn’t like to wake you,’ he said in an amused voice. ‘You looked so peaceful.’

Heliora lifted herself up on her elbows, wincing at the cracked feeling around her eyes and mouth and the sour taste on her tongue. She was stretched out on one of Poet’s lush couches, her body tight and hot inside yesterday’s costume. ‘How long was I asleep?’

Poet was at the window, his back to her. ‘Would you believe all day? It’s nearly nox.’

‘Cack.’

He shrugged. ‘We slept too. I assumed you’d wake when you were ready and make yourself scarce long before we were up and about. But you didn’t.’

She felt like an intruder. It was a long time since she and
Poet had been at all friendly, and their friendship had never extended to sleepovers. ‘Sorry. Looking into the futures yesterday must have exhausted me more than I thought. I haven’t slept so solidly in months.’

In the back cubicle of her flimsy tent in the Basilica, there were always noises to be wary of. Heliora slept light, an hour or two at a time. She hadn’t realised how long it was since she had felt truly safe.

But why the seven hells was she feeling safe around Poet? That made an entire lack of sense.

Someone had left a china washbasin and jug of water for her use. They looked a little silly on Poet’s mahogany tea table, but Heliora was grateful for them. She poured water into the basin and washed her face and hands, rinsing out her mouth several times and massaging her wet fingers through the short stubble of her hair. Her black wig was hooked on to the end of the couch, but she didn’t touch it.

‘Must be an interesting view out there,’ she said, noticing that Poet still stood at the window.

‘Maybe I’m just turning my back to be a gentleman,’ said Poet.

‘You?’ The sarcasm came out before she could stop it.

He turned his head and grinned at her. ‘First time for everything. Come and see the show, my lovely.’

She joined him at the window. From here, you could see across into the small town square—more of a lopsided triangle really—that rested in the heart of the Shambles. People were beginning to gather there—courtesi for the most part, but Heliora recognised Priest among his gaudy retinue, the ferax cub, and a subdued-looking Warlord.

‘Clan’s gathering,’ said Poet, sounding light about it. ‘Conveniently near my threshold.’

‘Is this the first time since…’

‘Garnet died? Oh, yes. Someone’s making a claim.’

His voice was low with a dangerous thrum to it. Heliora shivered at it, though she wasn’t entirely sure that it was a bad shiver.

‘Are you joining them?’

‘Oh, sooner or later. Why give up the advantage of being able to watch them from up here?’ He looked at her. ‘Do you want to borrow some clothes?’

Heliora jingled her limp Zafiran garb self-consciously. ‘Do I look that bad?’

‘Never that, gipsy rose. Just thought you might like to dress up. Everyone else is in their festival best.’

Below the window, two dark boys in leathers and lace carried a litter on which Livilla reclined, pouting in a glamorous ensemble of silver studs and soft black satin.

‘Ouch,’ said Hel dryly. ‘Have you got anything to compete with that?’ She eyed Poet up and down. She wasn’t quite as narrow around the body as he was, but they were a similar size. ‘Although drag isn’t really my thing.’

‘There are some dresses and so forth in the attic,’ he said offhandedly. At her quizzical look, he added, ‘Women do stay over from time to time, you know.’

‘And leave their clothes behind? How quaint. I thought you only liked boys.’

‘I like everyone, Heliora.’

And there was that shiver again, only it was going to places she didn’t want to think about. ‘I’ll take a look at those dresses.’

It was ridiculous how important it was to dress up for these occasions. Most members of the Creature Court were quite happy to wander around naked for most of the time, but there was something about glamour and warpaint that provided a form of armour against the rest of them.

For Heliora, it was perhaps most important of all, because, as the seer, she wasn’t quite one of them.

In the attic, Poet’s two courtesi—the small Zero and the large Halberk—were in quiet conversation. At her appearance, they left without saying a word. Either they were being polite, or she had just been snubbed.

A chest in the far corner was filled with various female
fripperies. Costumes, she realised, and that made sense considering Poet’s theatrical hobby. For the first time, she wondered what kind of lovers he pursued, and what kind of lover he would trust enough to bring down here.

Then she shivered, wondering why the women who had owned these clothes hadn’t needed them to go home in. There were stories about Poet. He played the gentleman most of the time, but weren’t gentlemen the most dangerous men of all? All those pretty manners, but you could never tell what they were thinking behind them all.

Still, it was no worse than a thousand other things she had witnessed as part of the Creature Court. They might be lunatics, but they were her lunatics.

Maybe that’s how I die
, she thought suddenly.
Maybe Poet takes a fancy to me and slices me up in a back alley somewhere.

Slumbering the day away, Heliora had briefly forgotten that she was going to die soon, but now it was back, clear as a musical note. She wasn’t going to see Saturnalia, so what the hells did it matter what she wore?

It always mattered what you wore.

Heliora stripped off the jangling mass of Zafiran gauze that was part of her Madama Fortuna wardrobe, and sifted through the clothes to find something suitable for the seer of the Creature Court. She bypassed the black leather and satin ensembles with ease—everyone down there would be wearing that kind of trash. The seer should look different, if only to remind them all that she didn’t pose a physical threat, that she was the only one who wasn’t worth duelling.

She was too slender for most of these costumes—Poet obviously liked his women bouncy. Finally she found a white lace petticoat that she could wear like a dress if she knotted a sash around her waist, and a wide green shawl that might possibly keep her warm.

A long red-blonde wig caught her eye, and she shucked it on without thinking about who had worn it before her.
Feminine was good, because it made her unthreatening. That was why she chose white and green in contrast to their usual bold blacks, silvers and scarlets; bare feet to their spike-heeled boots. Still, she felt an inner longing to dress as Kelpie did, as Hel herself had in the old days when she ran with the sentinels. Combat breeches and jacket, her stubble-short hair bared to the sky. She missed the blades that had once been hers.

Slowly, Hel took off the wig. The dress and shawl could stay, but why shouldn’t she look like herself for once?

With all this attention to her wardrobe, she hadn’t noticed much of anything else about the attic room—there were two narrow beds that must belong to his courtesi, but no hint of where Poet slept the days away.

As she turned to leave, Heliora saw the cage. It was tall and sturdy, wide enough to house four men of Halberk’s size. Inside, a light mattress piled with pillows and coverlets suggested someone made a nest there on a regular basis. The cage was built of iron, but the most interesting feature was the wire that was wrapped tightly in a coiling sheath up and down every bar. Even if the glow of the stuff hadn’t warned her, the fact that Heliora could only feel smooth iron when she laid her hand against it told her that the bars of the cage were wrapped in skysilver wire.

Skysilver was rare. Collecting so much and drawing it into wire would have taken years—decades. It looked old, and she wondered who had owned it before Poet. Which Creature Lord had been crazy and clever enough to come up with a cage that would imprison one of the Creature Court as well as anyone who belonged to the daylight?

More than that, she couldn’t help wondering why Poet was sleeping in here. Was it to protect him from assassination attempts from the other Lords, or was it to protect someone from him?

Poet was still at the window when Heliora came down from the attic—but he had taken the time to swathe
himself in an over-sized tailored jacket with rich embroidery. It made him look like the Orphan Princel in borrowed finery.

‘Ready to go down?’ she asked.

He eyed her bare head with a slight smile, but made no comment about her appearance. ‘You might prefer us to arrive separately. Imagine the fuss if they think the seer has attached herself to the retinue of one of the Lords.’

‘It’s not like I could play favourites if I wanted to,’ Hel said lightly. ‘We’re all doomed, as ever.’

Something in Poet’s face told her that he didn’t see the humour. He gestured at the window. ‘He’s down there.’

‘Ash?’

Poet sighed. ‘I was so damned desperate to keep him in this city, to stop him running out on us. Now I’m not sure it was such a good idea.’

Heliora moved to the window. ‘What do you mean?’

She could see Ashiol standing in the square, remote from the rest of them, flanked by Kelpie and Macready.

‘See the look on his face?’ said Poet.

‘Garnet,’ she breathed. ‘That expression, those eyes, it’s Garnet all the way. He must have made up his mind to stay and be the Power and Majesty.’

Poet’s voice cracked a little. ‘He won’t be our Ash any more.’

Heliora gave him a fierce look. ‘Did you only just figure that out? I’ve seen the futures, Poet. We don’t have many options here. This is one of the better ones.’

‘Is it?’ he asked. ‘Is it really?’

No
, she thought, remembering the countless futures that had screamed through her head.
This isn’t one of the better ones. This is how most of the worst ones start out.

‘Yes,’ she lied firmly, looking him in the eye. ‘Now let’s get down there before he has us executed for being late.’

V
elody couldn’t sleep. Her fingers ached from the needlework she had devoted herself to all afternoon and all evening, and her mind simply would not shut off. She stared at the ceiling, thinking of needles and knives.

Most of all, she was resisting the urge to throw off her noxgown and run naked on the rooftops. Saints and angels, what was she turning into? What had Ashiol Xandelian done to her?

Somehow, the idea of him, just the intrusion of his name into her thoughts, was enough to get her on her feet and to the window. She ran her eyes over the crested roof, judging how easy it would be to leap from here to the neighbour’s guttering and along the skyline.

One nox playing on the rooftops with a rebellious royal and you’re already thinking like a cat-burglar from the newspaper serials.

Velody rummaged in her wardrobe for the right clothes. Her workdress was tempting because of its ability to stand up to a bit of tile scrapeage, but she had to choose clothes that she was prepared to abandon if danger came and the little brown mice were the best escape route. Hard-wearing
or not, her workdress was her most indispensable item of clothing.

She found a shapeless black frock near the back of the wardrobe. It had been an impulse buy (she usually only wore dresses she’d made herself) and never fitted her as well as she had hoped; she had kept it because it was ridiculously expensive. She wouldn’t mourn if it was lost, but it was loose enough that it wouldn’t encumber her movements, and dressy enough to prevent embarrassment if she ran into any of the Creature Court.

Why was she thinking like this? She had definitely spent too much time listening to Ashiol. Appearance seemed to mean so much to his people.

Our people. Oh, saints.

Velody’s doubts vanished when her sandalled feet landed lightly on the edge of the roof outside her window. By the time she had taken a few running jumps to warm her stride along the length of Via Silviana, the blood was pumping joyously through her veins and she was half-flying with it.

No wonder they said that Aufleur was a fire trap, with so many terraced houses and shops and even the freeholds jammed up tight against each other. From Via Silviana Velody could leap and clamber halfway to the Piazza Giulia and the Church of the Lares without once descending to street level. She steadied herself for a moment and then started the real climb—layer after layer of welcoming roof tiles as she leaped and danced her way up the Lucretine hill.

The real Velody had been left behind. She was well and truly in Lord form now, her skin glowing white on the dimly lit hillside. She was larger and stronger, the dress clinging more successfully to this form than it ever had to her own. There was hardly any moonlight—the new moon was barely a sliver in the sky—but she could see like a cat, and it seemed impossible to put a paw wrong as she threw herself from roof to roof.

Mouse, not cat. I’ve got the eyesight of several thousand mice. No wonder I can see so far.

The view from the crest of the Lucretine was breathtaking, and Velody found herself laughing in long, half-hysterical sobs. It wasn’t much from there to start crying for real, hard crying, her whole body shuddering with it.

The roof she had ended up on was flat and smooth—a church, she realised belatedly—with ridged edges and an ornate cupola in the centre.

‘Velody,’ said a soft voice.

She jumped at the intrusion, only just restraining herself from screaming aloud. Even with her newly heightened eyesight, she couldn’t see whom the voice belonged to until he lifted himself up onto the roof and made himself known.

Crane. Sentinel. Friend.

The tears started again, quietly this time. He came closer, dropping near her in a crouch, but not touching her. ‘You seemed to be enjoying yourself,’ he said, sounding confused.
Nothing more uncomfortable than a young man faced with a crying woman
.

‘That’s why I’m miserable,’ she flung at him. ‘I don’t know who I am any more, what I am. Velody of the Vittorine at the Sign of the Rose and Needle, Via Silviana isn’t the kind of demme to get her kicks out of dancing up and down drainpipes in the middle of the nox.’

Crane shrugged. ‘You never know if you like something until the first time you try it.’

Velody wasn’t crying any more. She looked more closely at Crane. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I got my face beat in last nox, don’t you remember?’

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘I remember that you looked like something out of a butcher’s shop window, all scraped and swollen.’ His jaw was slightly reddish, and there was some swelling around his eyes the colour of old bruises, but he had healed at a startling rate. ‘I thought the sentinels were ordinary humans.’

‘We are.’

‘So how did you heal so fast?’

He paused as if he was trying to think up a lie, then shrugged a shoulder. ‘Ashiol did it.’

‘He can do that?’

‘He’s a Creature King. He can do anything.’

She wasn’t sure how to feel about that particular remark.

‘Why did you become a sentinel?’ she asked finally. ‘It seems like a thankless job.’

‘Entirely thankless,’ he assured her. ‘Especially back when Garnet was in charge.’

‘So why do you do it?’

‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted. What they do—the Creature Court and the Kings—it’s more important than anything else that happens in this city. It’s an honour to serve them.’

‘I haven’t done anything yet,’ she said lightly. ‘Is it an honour to serve me?’

His eyes darkened for a moment. ‘Oh, yes.’

The pause after that became uncomfortable.

‘I should go back,’ said Velody. ‘Rhian has bad dreams. If she wakes and finds me gone…’

‘Stay a little longer,’ Crane suggested. ‘It’s a beautiful clear nox. Why not enjoy it a little?’

Velody looked sideways at him. ‘What, are you flirting with me now?’

‘Maybe. How am I doing?’

She leaned forward and patted his shoulder. It was hard not to like this one—the darkness and danger didn’t seem to touch his general enthusiasm for life. ‘You could improve your timing.’

A long silver dollop of something dripped out of the sky and hit the surface of the roof. It bubbled, eating a small hole into the stone.

Velody stared at it. ‘What is that?’

Crane got to his feet, the teasing note gone from his voice. ‘Slow rain. Don’t let it touch you!’

Delphine woke to the sound of Rhian screaming. She ran half-naked across the little landing to throw herself into Rhian’s room and her bed. It was rush to be able to simply open the door and scramble inside. Usually Delphine and Velody had to stand shivering outside Rhian’s door, calling out reassurances until Rhian recovered enough from her dreams to pad across the floor and unbolt her fortress.

This was better. Delphine hadn’t even lost the warmth from her own bed by the time she was under Rhian’s covers. ‘I’m here, honey. Don’t be afraid.’

Rhian clung to her friend in a desperate embrace. ‘I…oh…’

‘Don’t talk about it. You don’t have to say anything.’

‘I thought it was over,’ Rhian whispered, shaking with frustration as well as another kind of shock. ‘I thought I was getting better!’

Delphine had hoped much the same—that Rhian’s decision to leave her door unbarred was a sign that she was finally healing. Now they were back where they had started, with Rhian a quivering wreck after another hideous dream.

We should be safe in our beds. Not too much to ask, is it?

‘Where’s Velody?’ Rhian asked when she had calmed down enough to think clearly.

Delphine had been wondering that herself. They were usually both quick to wake when they heard Rhian’s screams. ‘She was so tired, perhaps she didn’t hear you.’ It was lame, she knew. Velody had the best hearing of them all, and though she slept as deep as a buried dog she was always up and alert at any sign of trouble.

Rhian pushed Delphine away and reached for her dressing gown, belting it tightly around her. She left her room like a sleepwalker.

Delphine grabbed a blanket off the bed to take with her, and winced at the cold feel of the floorboards under her bare feet.

Rhian pushed Velody’s door open and stared at the rumpled remains of the bed, then at the window. ‘She left it open,’ she said.

Delphine looked at the telltale crack of the window where it had been hastily pulled down. The negligence of it numbed her.
She
was the irresponsible one, the addled bint who stayed out late drowning herself in men and booze, so the door had to be left unlocked if not unlatched. Delphine was the one who came in at all hours, drunken and exuberant, the one who made Rhian so unhappy with her antics.

Velody would have scratched Delphine’s eyes out for forgetting to close a window properly, especially on the first nox that Rhian was brave enough to forgo her usual bolts and locks on her own bedroom door.

‘Is she with them?’ Rhian asked in a small voice.

Delphine shook her head, not trusting herself to say anything. She shut the window with a crunch.

‘What do they have that keeps dragging her back to them?’ asked Rhian.

‘I don’t know,’ answered Delphine. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not good for her.’

She had her suspicions—the tall, dark and magnetic figure of Ducomte Ashiol Xandelian was one hell of a start—but since when had Velody been the kind of woman to lose her head over a pretty man? She had been almost as much of a hermit nun as Rhian this last year.

‘Can I sleep with you?’ asked Rhian.

‘Sure.’ Delphine would agree to anything if it meant she could return to her cosy blankets and pillows.

They went to Delphine’s room together.

‘I’d like to send a message to Marie in the morning, to fix the bolts on my door,’ said Rhian.

‘I don’t blame you,’ said Delphine. ‘I might ask for a bolt or two myself.’