Power & Majesty (40 page)

V
elody dragged her sketchbooks and favourite fabric swatches up into her room to work in the quiet, gathering ideas for the Duchessa’s gown. Only when it was so dim she had to light a lantern did she realise that nox was upon her.

That, and the tingle in her veins. She tried to ignore it at first, continuing to sketch out the bell shape of a skirt, but her hand was trembling so greatly that she had to drop the charcoal. Animor. How had she survived without it for so long? Her skin glowed as the power lit up her blood from within. The sky was open to her and the world was her own. She was herself again, burning brightly.

Velody gazed upon her sketchbook with flinty eyes. Scribbles. What did they matter? Only the sky mattered; the sky and the city and the Creature Court.

Ashiol was nearby, and getting closer. She could sense his presence like an intense beacon, far more compelling than when she had been limited to the half-blind senses of the sentinels. She slipped from the bed and went to the window.

Crane entered the yard, two blue-wrapped sword hilts on his back. He glanced up at her, grinning like the boy he
was, delighted with his new toys. Her eyes flicked past him. He wasn’t important.

Ashiol was behind him, and his eyes promised something marvellous. He looked briefly up at the sky. Velody followed his gaze. The sky was quiet. If ever she had wanted a catastrophe to fall from above, it was this nox. The power hummed in her ears, so sweet and silken that she longed to put it to good use.

‘Are they ever going to leave us alone?’ Delphine complained at the doorway. ‘The house is full of them. I can’t believe you had to hide up here to work. They’re not living with us now, are they?’

Velody turned. For a moment, she saw everything through animor, which made Delphine a bright silver stain in the doorway. Velody concentrated until she could see her friend’s silhouette, her facial features, the detail of her clothing. ‘Are you going out?’

‘I won’t be trapped in here like a mouse in a cage,’ Delphine said petulantly. ‘So the streets aren’t safe—big surprise. I’ve got somewhere to be.’

She was wearing silver, a shimmering dress of glass beads on white fringe layers, and a skullcap of fine metallic lace. Her dancing heels were lethally steep. Her cosmetick was aggressively perfect, her face so primped and refined with heavy lines of kohl in the Zafiran fashion that she hardly looked like Delphine at all.

‘Some of them might hunt you down, hurt you in order to hurt me,’ said Velody. It was a struggle to form the words, let alone phrase them in her own voice. The animor was screaming in her head and heart and flesh, desperate to be spilled out into the sky.

‘Then you’ll just have to be hurt,’ said Delphine.

Velody blinked, and suppressed the staggering power a little. ‘Are you angry at me?’

‘I’m angry at the world. Don’t mind me. A cocktail or three will make me lovable again.’

Velody tried to think of the right thing to say, but it was
so hard to focus on the daylight world when the nox was calling to her. ‘Be careful,’ she tried, and knew that she sounded distant and insincere.

‘Why bother?’ replied Delphine, and flounced out.

Velody breathed out with a rush of relief as she was left alone. The air was a multitude of colours, bouncing before her eyes. She peeled off her dress and boots and underclothes, and stood naked before the window.

Ashiol was below, staring at her with darkened eyes. Velody barely even noticed Crane, his mortal form dimming his image so that he was a blur before her eyes. Ashiol was sharp and defined, his every breath and heartbeat visible to her. The faded lines from the skysilver net were faintly evident on his face and skin beneath his clothes.

Velody opened the window and threw herself into the sky, shaping herself into her glowing Lord form as she flew upwards. She did not care whether or not Ashiol followed her. The sky was hers.

The best clubs weren’t in the usual places, the trendy hot spots of Aufleur. The new fashion was to be unfashionable, to make a happening happen where everyone might least expect it. Bars and house parties were out. Instead, the best music and dancing and drink and potions could be found in unheralded nooks of ageing industrial areas, in streets no one knew the name of, in places where the best sets would not normally be seen dead.

This nox, the club had taken over a cramped cellar belonging to a musty old bookshop. Coloured glass lanterns flickered in the darkness, sending strange gold and scarlet shapes to dance along the bare walls. The air smelled of gin and aniseed and sweat.

Delphine was dancing and, for once, she was not enjoying herself. Her arms ached from her afternoon of knife and hand-to-hand exercises. All the time she was training with Macready, deflecting his blows and learning
how to twist and kick out of his firm grip, part of her had been thinking about this nox. She had been looking forward to it as her only chance to get rid of the twist of anxiety that had built up in her stomach.

Maud was here, in a new emerald fringe dress. Villiers was here too, and Peggy, and the adorable Lars whom Delphine had been trying to get to notice her for months. The cellar was full of the bright and crazy kinds of people that she loved to play with, and some she had long considered to be her friends, but it wasn’t the same any more. All she could think about was being grabbed by the grinning ferax man who treated her like so much refuse. As the musicians raised their beat and she danced faster, she remembered the way her blood had chilled when she thought that Macready was dead.

Bloody Macready. He was the reason she hadn’t picked up a drink this nox. Wasn’t he? She preferred to think that her new sobriety was a reaction to finding out about the terrors that lurked in the streets and in the sky above, but that was hardly realistic. Drowning in spirits and dancing with strangers had been her favourite way of dealing with danger and fear back in the long and horrible months after the attack on Rhian. Why would she break the pattern now?

Had Macready made the difference? Delphine hated it if it was true. She hated him—his smug little Islandser accent, and the glint in his eye that said…She had no idea what it said. It wasn’t a look she was used to seeing in the eyes of men. Nothing to do with desire or greed.

I believe in you, Delphine.

How could you possibly?

No one had noticed she wasn’t drinking. She was acting the way she always did, dancing as if she had already lost all hold over herself. She was a fake, showing them all the wild and abandoned Delphine they expected so that she could hide her own whirling thoughts from them.

How long had she been faking this other Delphine?
That thought startled her. The walls were pressing in tightly and she was overwhelmed by the urge to escape. She let an expression like nausea cross her face, and used it to twist away from Villiers without explanation.

When she found the stairs up to the bookshop, Delphine kept going higher and higher, into storerooms and up until she found herself pushing open a door and stumbling out into a forgotten flat space that might once have been a roof garden. All that was left were a few half-dead vines and a rickety railing, but it was open to the sky and she could breathe again. Delphine stood at the roof’s edge and kicked off her beaded high heels, watching them clatter into the street below. No one yelled.

A ventilation shaft led from the cellar up to here, and she could hear the laughter and piano music almost as loudly as when she had been among the pressing bodies. It was better here. Delphine gulped in the nox air, both hands gripping the railing as she gazed into the sky. She stood for what felt like hours, until she could assemble a rational thought or two.

It was frustrating to know that there might be a whole new world of madness up there between the drifting moonlit clouds, but she would never see it. She squinted into the sky. Was Velody up there, struggling to keep the city in one piece?

‘It’s a quiet nox, my lovely. In case you were wondering.’

Delphine deliberately didn’t turn around, even when Macready tossed her recovered shoes at her feet.

‘Lost something?’

‘Me,’ she said wretchedly.

‘Ah, now I can’t have that.’ Macready joined her at the railing, his face sombre. ‘You look the same as you ever have.’ He eyed her up and down, sniffing the air pointedly. ‘A little less gin-soaked than I’m accustomed to, so it seems.’

‘Lost the taste for it.’

He looked faintly startled, and a little smug. ‘But that’s grand.’

‘No, it isn’t!’ She turned on him angrily. ‘I’m trashy and out of control. It’s what I do. I don’t have anything else except my work, and what the seven hells is that? Stitching ribbon after ribbon for empty festivals.’

Macready gave her an odd look. ‘You’re bright and you’re beautiful, lass. You can be anything you want.’

‘I just wanted to dance,’ she said, sounding pathetic. The filtered piano music filling the nox air was a particular torture, one of her favourite songs.

‘Well, then,’ said Macready, ‘that’s easily fixed. You can dance with me.’

‘You can dance?’

‘I’m an Islandser,’ he laughed. ‘Dancing is in our blood.’

She nodded her head to the ventilation shaft and the cheerful jazz music. ‘Even to this?’

He winced, but rallied. ‘Even to this newfangled noise, my sweet, I can make the effort.’

Strangely, she was cheering up. ‘You’re too young to be such an old grouch.’

‘You’re too young to be such a cynical hag, so you are,’ he countered. ‘Will you dance with me, lass, or break my heart?’

‘I can do both.’

‘Works for me.’

He held out his hand and she took it. The world shifted a little.

V
elody danced the quiet sky and Ashiol watched her. There was no doubt now. She was Creature Court. Her sheer exultation at the return of her animor put him to shame. She embraced the whole thing as he hadn’t since he was a teenager.
Since Garnet and Lysandor ran at my side, brothers at arms, complete…

Last nox had unsettled him. Ashiol still hadn’t mourned for Garnet, for the man and King who had been his in all senses of the word.
Broke me, twisted me into something harsh and scarred.

Now Garnet was in his head all the time. He had seen him in Velody’s eyes, and he could think of nothing else. Garnet was dead. Swallowed by the sky.

Ashiol could still smell him on his skin, if he let the memories last too long.

Velody had no frigging idea what she had done to him. There she was, swooping and spinning indulgently through the sky, shaping herself from chimaera to Lord form to her hordes of little brown mice, then back again. Part of him hungered to join her, to be part of that madness. But he held back, watching his Power and Majesty glorying in her own power.

‘Ever seen anything so beautiful?’ someone asked behind him.

Ashiol barely resisted a growl. ‘Poet.’

‘Not forgiven me yet, kitten? Ah, that’s a shame.’ The Rat Lord emerged over the crest of the roof, clad in one of the whispering white silk burnoose garments that were fashionable in the city at the moment with the new Eastern craze. ‘We need to talk, you and I. Can’t do that while you’re hissing and spitting. Would you feel better if I let you bite me a few times, for the sake of equality?’

‘Maybe drugging you, wrapping you in a net that burns your pretty skin to shreds, and sticking you in a cage of skysilver might redress the balance,’ suggested Ashiol.

‘Perhaps it would,’ agreed Poet. ‘But that would make you a monster, and isn’t that the very reason you chose not to be Power and Majesty?’

Right now, with Garnet in Ashiol’s head and the shade of Tasha not far away, it was hard to look at Poet without seeing the eight-year-old boy screaming as his animor was released before its time.

‘
You
don’t mind being a monster.’

Poet lifted his eyebrows. ‘Old news, kitten. I’m on the side of the angels now. Try to keep up.’

Ashiol said nothing.

Poet took this as encouragement to come over the roof and sit beside him, dangling his bare feet in the gutter. ‘Heliora’s hurting,’ he said after a silence that was either seething or companionable, depending on your point of view.

Ashiol grinned bitterly. ‘If you look closely enough, you can still see the map of scars on my skin from that fucking net. I don’t need to look. They still burn.’

‘Not that kind of hurt,’ Poet said, rolling his eyes. ‘Everyone knows about your pain threshold, kitten. We’re not impressed. Our seer is in agonies of the heart, and all over you.’

Ashiol said nothing. Sooner or later, Poet would reveal
whatever he had come here to tell him, and he wanted it sooner.

‘She tried to kill herself this morning,’ said Poet in a voice so light that he might have been remarking on the weather.

That got to Ashiol, but he was damned if he would let Poet see it. By ‘tried’ he assumed an unspoken ‘and failed’, which was something at least. ‘She’s doomed anyway,’ he said. ‘Dead by Saturnalia, she’s seen it herself.’

‘Ouch!’ Poet exclaimed. ‘Nice. Now I know what all the demoiselles see in you, you charming devil.’

Ashiol clenched and unclenched his fists.

Poet clicked his tongue. ‘Go to her, you fiend. Forgive her before you lose her altogether.’

‘What exactly are you getting out of this friendly advice?’ demanded Ashiol. ‘Since when have you cared about Heliora?’

‘All of the Court are obliged to see to the needs of the seer,’ said Poet primly. ‘In a technical sense, of course. To be honest, I’m hoping that if she thinks she’s back in your good books, she might stop trying to seduce me. The woman’s a menace.’ He nodded up at the whooping, tumbling figure of Velody. ‘I can keep an eye on our Lady this nox if you really think she needs it.’

‘And I should trust you
why
?’

Poet leaned back on his elbows. ‘I have everything I want. Enjoy the sight, kitten. I’m frigging content.’

Every instinct told him that Poet was manipulating him into something, but Ashiol’s obligations to Heliora went far beyond those of a Creature King to the seer.

Poet’s eyes followed Velody as if she were the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. ‘She regretted it the moment she betrayed you,’ he said. ‘If you can call that a betrayal. Your beloved brat only wanted to release you from all this.’

If there was anything Ashiol hated more than Poet, it was Poet being right. ‘I’ll be back,’ he muttered, levering himself up off the roof.

‘As you like,’ said Poet. ‘I’m sure the Majesty and myself can manage without you for an hour or two. She can take care of herself, animor or no animor. Surely she’s proved that by now.’

Ashiol shot him a look of pure loathing, and went to find the seer.

How had Macready ended up with this lass in his arms? Dancing to cheap jazz music on a rooftop with Delphine pressed hard against his body was the last thing he had expected to be doing this nox.

The slow song was a relief, as he couldn’t keep up with the rapid steps she came up with for the faster, crazier numbers. As she tried and failed to teach him though, he had discovered how much he liked the sound of her laugh. Now the music was slow and measured, and he had her in his arms as they moved back and forth on the rooftop. He inhaled and caught a faint smell of roses—but no, that was Rhian’s scent still mingled with Delphine’s own. A borrowed scarf, perhaps? Delphine’s scent was richer, a purchased glaze of unguents and potions he wouldn’t dare guess at. The perfume was worth every centi she had spent on it—the smell of her lifted his blood and sped up his pulse.

‘You’re not so bad at this type of dancing,’ she said lightly.

He turned his face towards her, wanting to say something, but the breeze brought another scent to him that made his body react with wary tension. ‘Ferax,’ he said beneath his breath.

Delphine was startled. ‘Here?’

‘Come on,’ he said, scooping up her fallen shoes before he grabbed her hand and pulled her back down into the bookshop.

‘We could stay here,’ she protested as they reached the front door. ‘He won’t come through a whole club of people to get to us, will he?’

It was a good thought, but…‘After last nox, he’ll be
monster enough to do anything, even slaughter a roomful of drunk jazz junkies.’

Macready gritted his teeth. He had been stupid to linger with Delphine instead of taking her home straightaway. He had
known
Dhynar would be out for retaliation this nox and that Velody’s pretty blonde friend might well have caught his eye. Not to mention that Macready himself was most definitely on the Ferax Lord’s list of unfinished business.

‘A whole room of people?’ Delphine repeated, not believing it.

‘He’s done it before,’ said Macready, and pulled her out into the empty street.

They ran for several blocks. Well, Macready ran as best he could, hustling a limping and complaining Delphine along beside him. It started to rain, a cool early summer rain that dampened the cobbles and slicked back Delphine’s hair beneath her silver-lace headdress.

The scent of ferax was all around, as if the young Lord had rubbed himself over every wall and fence to tell them that they were trapped. Where was the damned puppy? Though Macready could feel their pursuer everywhere, he could not hear him or see him.

Macready’s nearest nest was close, but this too was a danger. He had been heading this way last time, when Dhynar and the courtesi set upon him. They had known where he was going then and they would know it now. Especially if Macready and Delphine were being lured in a particular direction.

Still, the temptation of his nest, knowing they would be safe once they were inside, was foremost in Macready’s mind. He had learned his lesson last nox. Even as late as this, there were shopfronts open along Via Leondrine. The wide thoroughfare was bright with lampboys and passing trade. If they stayed on this main street until the last moment, there was a chance Dhynar would not pounce until the very last moment.

‘Where are we going?’ snapped Delphine, shaking her arm from his. After hurrying several blocks away from her friends without any sign of their pursuers, she had lost the initial burst of fear that Macready had inspired in her.

‘Be honoured,’ he said shortly. ‘You’re going to learn one of the secrets of the sentinels.’

Past the clockmaker’s and the hot-wine bar, Macready’s eye fastened on the narrow opening between shopfronts. It didn’t look wide enough to be an alley or a side street, and most people walked right past without even seeing it.

The smell of ferax was ever more powerful. It was all ferax, which made little sense. Where were the brighthounds and darkhounds, the stripecats and cats? Surely Dhynar wasn’t tracking Macready and Delphine on his own, without the help of his courtesi?

‘Now,’ Macready hissed suddenly, and even as Delphine opened her mouth to protest, he whisked her through the narrow opening in the street and pulled her along the back lane.

The back of his neck prickled as he remembered the mass of courtesi descending on him, snapping and scratching and swallowing bites of his flesh…

They were five steps from safety. Three. One. At a battered and dented stone wall, Macready plunged a hand out, palm up. ‘Get in,’ he urged Delphine.

‘There’s nothing there!’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Will you not trust me for once?’ He gave her a sharp shove in the small of her back, pushing her face first into the wall. She threw up her arms to protect herself, fell forward and vanished.

Macready followed her, sliding through the stones to the quiet place of safety on the other side. There was no scent of ferax here, and he sucked in the clean air gratefully. Had he really suspected that Dhynar might have breached this most ancient form of sanctuary?

Delphine was looking around at the small space. There was a stuffed mattress on the floor, a chair, a cupboard,
a few storage trunks. The space was shabby and spare, with little in the way of home comforts.

‘Where have you brought me, Macready?’

‘Somewhere safe,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘This is my nest.’

Safe, indeed. No one could find this place unless the sentinel who made it led them through the wall. Even if they watched him enter, they could never find the entrance on their own. Nests were designed to be inviolate, not for the sake of the vulnerably mortal sentinels, but so they could more effectively protect their Kings in times of danger.

But while the enemy could never find the entrance, they could certainly lie in wait outside the approximate area surrounding the door, ready to pounce as soon as the sentinel and his charges emerged. Macready had no doubt that this was what Dhynar had in mind.

‘Better make yourself comfortable, love,’ he advised Delphine. ‘We’ll be here until morning.’

He was a little disturbed by the light this brought to her eyes.