Power & Majesty Read online

  Kelpie gave him the I can’t believe you’re this stupid look that reminded him painfully of another time, before anyone had ever bowed to him and called him a Creature King. ‘You are.’

  The world crashed in on him again, a mess of images and ideas and animor and panic. He was vaguely aware of fighting, screaming and letting power tear out of his skin in a long fierce howl. When he came to himself again, Kelpie was kneeling on his chest with her arms tightly braced against his.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, noting a new swelling along her jawline. ‘Did I do that?’

  ‘Hard to tell,’ she said, breathing hard. ‘It might count as self-inflicted. You weren’t ready to hear the truth.’

  ‘I’m not ready for any of this,’ Ashiol growled. ‘Get off me.’

  Kelpie slid off his body and crouched near the foot of the mattress.

  Ashiol sat up, stretching. ‘Takes a while to get used to. I haven’t tasted animor for so long, and suddenly I’m a Creature King again. Screws with the head.’

  There was something else, another source of power. Ash looked down at himself and plucked at the half-finished black shirt he wore, then ran his hands down both thighs to touch the leather breeches. There was energy in every stitch and thread, particularly concentrated along the seams.

  ‘Where in the seven hells did I get these clothes?’

  Kelpie snorted. ‘The dressmaker. Perhaps she was offended by that godawful Floralia suit the Duchessa made you wear. White never was your colour.’

  Ashiol pressed his palms into the leather of his new breeches, trying to remember some of what he had said to that dressmaker. He couldn’t get past the thought that among the rantings and ravings had been the seed of something very, very important.

  ‘How many Lords at Court?’ he rapped out in his best businesslike voice.

  ‘Five,’ said Kelpie. ‘Priest, Livilla—’

  ‘No Kings other than Garnet?’ He cut her off deliberately, not really caring to know which of his old companions still played the game of the Creature Court. He knew the worst of it. Garnet is dead and Livilla’s alive…

  ‘Just you now,’ said Kelpie.

  There was trust in her eyes, and loyalty if he chose to see it. Ashiol deliberately shut that thought away. This was going to be hard enough.

  ‘Good,’ he said. There wasn’t enough room to stand up in the space, so he started crawling towards the trapdoor that led down and out. ‘Then there will be no one strong enough to stop me from leaving.’

  ‘Leaving the nest?’ she asked as Ashiol released the blood seal on the trapdoor and shoved it open, lowering his legs into the narrow exit.

  ‘Leaving Aufleur,’ he said, and jumped.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ Kelpie yelled after him in the street.

  It was early enough that there were few people around; in another hour or two the streets would be flocking with daylight folk making the pilgrimage to the Sweetheart Saints, exchanging paper hearts and sugarplums as if their lives depended on it.

  ‘Watch me,’ said Ashiol.

  His bare feet smacked against the rough cobbles. Where the saints and devils did I leave my boots? The cat in him was more than happy to walk barefoot, but the man had to be aware of loose stones and blisters. In the country, he could go barefoot all day if he avoided his mother’s disapproving stare; it was less than practical in the city.

  ‘I’m going to the Palazzo to apologise to Isangell,’ he said, ‘and then I’m out of here. This isn’t my city any more, and I’m damned if I’m going to play the big chief monster over all the little monsters.’

  That struck a chord with him even as the words spilled out of his mouth. He had raved about being a monster last nox. He must have known then that Garnet was dead—at least, a part of him had known. I bet I confused seven hells out of that little dressmaker.

  They were in the Margarethe district, surrounded by peeling paint and falling-down shops. Ashiol headed north, using the pinnacle of the Church of the Lares to guide him through Giacosa and towards Via Ciceline. If he had to walk barefoot back to the Palazzo, he was damned if he wasn’t going to take the easiest route.

  Kelpie kept up with him easily, her own sturdy boots keeping her feet protected. Ashiol tried not to resent her for it.

  ‘You can’t leave us,’ she said.

  ‘Can. Will.’

  ‘But we need you!’

  ‘You think I have an obligation to this city? To the Court? They chewed me up and spat me out.’

  Her face went savage at that. ‘Not fair. You know—’

  ‘Yeah, I know how it works. All Kings are equal, but the Power and Majesty is the most equal of them all.’ Ashiol’s words were coming out in quick, sharp slaps as he walked along. ‘But I wasn’t a King in the end, was I? Those last few months I was a tortured pet.’ He glared at Kelpie. She was keeping pace with him but avoiding his gaze. ‘Do you have any idea of the pain and humiliation that bastard put me through?’

  ‘We saw,’ she said in a ragged voice. ‘We all saw.’

  ‘And felt sorry for me, no doubt. Perhaps even wept a tear or two in my name.’ He grabbed her arm, pulled her close to him. ‘After Garnet stripped my animor and threw me out that last time, I went to the Palazzo, but they couldn’t help me either. I was seriously crazy, not just Court crazy. After I tried to kill myself the second time, they sent me home, out of the city. It took me years to make it up to my family, to heal, but I damn well did. I only came back to this frigging place because of Isangell.’ Because my mother told me to face my fears. ‘But it was a mistake, and I am out of here. Right now.’

  Ashiol tried not to think of the Diamagne estate, of his mother and brothers and sister. The home that had kept him safe these last five years. It seemed wrong to think of them here in the city that had nearly destroyed him.

  ‘The daylight Duchessa?’ Kelpie said scornfully. ‘A pretty little noblette who thinks she has something to do with ensuring the safety of this city. What’s so special about her that you’d face the Lords and Court again to be near her?’

  ‘She needs me,’ said Ashiol. ‘She thought I could help her, that I would stand by her side and be the brave big brother she never had.’ His mouth twisted angrily. ‘I ignored her pleas for months because I was afraid of Garnet. I finally got up the courage to come back and be a part of her life, and look what I’ve done to her!’

  ‘A little public embarrassment, a ripped party dress. So what? It’s hardly important.’

  ‘If it isn’t, what is?’ Ashiol demanded. ‘If we’re not saving the city for the daylight folk, then what are we saving it for? Ourselves? This sorry, fucked-up mess of a Creature Court?’ He released his hold on her and started walking again.

  ‘And what about saving the city?’ Kelpie demanded, racing after him. ‘Aufleur will fall without a Creature King.’

  ‘So find one.’

  ‘There’s you, Ash, there’s only you!’

  ‘Then maybe the city should fall. A failed King is worse than no King at all, Kelpie. I’ll never be anything but a failed King to the Court. How can I command them when they remember the scars Garnet gave me, the whimpers and moans that came out of me when the lash fell and the claws tore and the knives bit?’

  ‘You’re afraid.’

  ‘Not denying that.’

  ‘What are we going to do without you?’ It was a wail of desperation.

  Never seen Kelpie humble before. Really doesn’t suit her. ‘Find the King that the little dressmaker is covering for,’ he said. ‘Find out why she’s lying and you’ve got your man.’

  ‘And if she’s not lying?’ Kelpie demanded.

  Ashiol swayed. The lingering effects of being power-drunk on animor had blinded him to that one single, simple possibility. He staggered to the side of the street and sat on the pavement, his bare feet resting in the gutter. ‘My scars,’ he said softly. ‘Kelpie, did you ever see my scars?’

  She made a disgusted noise. ‘Of course I saw them
.’ She knelt at his side. ‘I’ve shared blood with you, Ash. The sentinels may not be of the Creature Court, but we’re not daylight folk either. I’ve seen your scars.’

  ‘So has she.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘At the parade, Kelpie. The dressmaker saw my scars when no one else did. She saw them as they ripped themselves off my face and body. She said so last nox. That makes her one of us.’

  ‘A sleeper.’ Kelpie’s voice was disbelieving, but she hesitated before she said the words.

  ‘What is she, mid-twenties?’ he guessed. ‘It’s not unknown. Priest was near thirty when it came to him.’

  ‘So he says anyway,’ said Kelpie.

  Ashiol ran his fingers along the seams of his shirt, feeling the delicious tingle of power from the tiny, perfect stitches. ‘I was off my face with the animor last nox—I could have been in the same room as another Creature King and not known it. But women can’t be Kings. Damn it all!’ He exploded to his feet, mind speeding up. ‘How stupid am I? I should know by now that you can never trust the rules.’

  ‘What do you need?’ Kelpie asked.

  ‘Heliora.’ Ashiol turned to her, breathing fast. Slow your thoughts, damn it, don’t lose it again. You need to be sane. ‘Tell me she’s still alive.’

  ‘I haven’t heard otherwise.’

  ‘Well then.’ The possibilities surged through Ashiol’s mind. If the dressmaker had made the clothes he now wore, had she also made Isangell’s dress? Saints, if that was possible, what else was?

  ‘Still the Basilica?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Ashiol said nothing more, saving his breath as he strode past the Church of the Lares and on into Via Ciceline. This was part of the affluent Centrini district and there were more people on the streets here, already tipsy with the wine offerings for the Sweetheart Saints. It was a bright new day, and shopfronts were unfurling their signs to welcome eager customers inside.

  ‘Do you have any money?’ Ashiol asked as they passed a stretch of quality cobblers.

  ‘Not enough to buy boots.’

  ‘Damn.’

  No cabriolets were allowed in the city during the day. Ashiol could do nothing but offer silent thanks to the city planners two hundred years earlier. At least they had designed the main streets of Aufleur to run around the hills. He walked faster.

  The streets were busier along Via Ciceline as the good citizens of Aufleur jostled each other to buy sweetheart tokens and religious offerings as well as their usual purchases. After his battered feet were trodden on for the third time by a little old dame with laden shopping baskets, Ashiol veered off into one of the side streets. These were only marginally better, but at least he was near the Gardens of Trajus Alysaundre now, with the possibility of walking on soft grass—assuming the raw skin of his soles didn’t find broken wine jugs and thorny rose garlands scattered across the lawns.

  Cats didn’t care about such things. It was five years since he’d thought like a cat.

  With Kelpie still trailing him, Ashiol headed up the narrow stone steps to the first grassy bank of the gardens that had once held the decadent public baths set up in honour of the third Duc d’Aufleur, Trajus Alysaundre. The gardens were now shabby curves of greenery punctuated by ruined stone walls and the broken remains of skeletal pools, the marble tiles long since scraped away and—most likely—sold at a profit.

  ‘Ash…’ Kelpie said in a warning voice as they passed the first of the ruins.

  He nodded and kept walking, eyes ahead. The scent of ferax was familiar, and telling. ‘Dhynar made Lord?’

  ‘Two years ago.’

  ‘Courtesi?’

  ‘Four.’

  Ashiol’s eyebrows went up. ‘Interesting.’

  A moment later they were on him, hard and fast. A pack of hounds, black mixed with white, had him on the ground, paws scrabbling and teeth snapping. He twisted under them, punching dog bodies with his fists even as he summoned the animor within him.

  I remember how to do this. Really, I do. It goes like this.

  Ashiol exploded out from within the mass of darkhounds and brighthounds, escaping his clothes by shaping himself into a dozen street cats. When he was free of the confines of cotton and leather he changed again, burning the hounds as he shaped his feline bodies into something else—something dark and menacing, with teeth and claws and wings and the taste of power on the back of his skin. Chimaera.

  Two ferocious golden stripecats joined the brawl, half the size again of the dogs, and three lean and silver slashcats. They tore at him with claws and teeth, but he rose above them as if they were nothing. I am King. I am more than you.

  He didn’t need to strike them with his power, to burn them with flashes of light and pain. He didn’t need to reach inside them and twist their lesser animor with his own until they gasped voicelessly for mercy from their King. He didn’t need to leave them as a pile of bloodied, barely breathing bodies heaped up against the ruined stone baths. He did it anyway.

  When it was over, there was only the ferax. Its lithe red body stood balanced on one of the crumbling stone walls. Its eyes glittered as it surveyed its fallen servants and the creature who had defeated them. It was more powerful than the hounds and cats combined, and it was barely as long as a human’s right arm.

  ‘Where’s the rest of you?’ growled the chimaera creature that was Ashiol.

  A second ferax, slightly redder of coat, joined the first. After a moment, two more jumped up to join them. A fifth, smaller than all of them, slunk up last.

  Ashiol breathed out, and unwound from the chimaera to become himself again—the taller, harder, sharper Lord version of himself whose every skin cell sang with darkness and power and animor, but himself nevertheless.

  The five feraxes fell forwards from the wall, blurring together to form a single human shape. He was small, narrow of body and of face, his reddish-brown hair pulled back in a tail reminiscent of the bushy red tail of the ferax. Like Ashiol, he was more than human, eyes glowing and narrow, ears pointed, claws clenched and ready for action. ‘Welcome home,’ he said in a polite voice.

  ‘Dhynar,’ said Ashiol. ‘Is this a challenge?’

  The young man—frighteningly young—gave him a smirk. ‘If it was a challenge, surely I would have brought more power to the field?’ He motioned towards his pile of moaning, whining creatures. ‘They hardly made a mark on you.’

  There was sweat on Ashiol’s brow, and a line of blood dripped from a deep scratch on his left arm. ‘If this isn’t a challenge, Dhynar Lord Ferax, what the seven hells is it?’

  Dhynar was still grinning, as if this was nothing but a game. I remember feeling like that, Ashiol thought. I remember feeling immortal. But I was younger than him when I learned this life was more than power trips and pissing contests.

  ‘I heard a rumour,’ said Dhynar, ‘that you were home, but you were planning to skip out on your responsibility to replace Garnet as Power and Majesty. That you were going to leave our Court without a leader. How do you plead, Ashiol Creature King?’

  Ashiol offered no reaction, keeping his face blank. ‘How did you hear such a rumour, Dhynar?’ How stupid was I not to guess I was being spied on?

  ‘The streets have ears,’ said the young man. The grin peeled off his face. ‘You didn’t think we would let you leave, now, did you?’

  ‘This is not the way things are done,’ said Ashiol. ‘Lords do not make demands of Kings. Kings twist Lords into cringing pets until they agree to everything we want, everything we decide.’

  ‘So give some orders,’ said Dhynar. ‘Smash me into the wall, Ashiol. Make me bleed and make me obey you. Take your rightful place as the Power and Majesty. Just don’t leave us to fend for ourselves.’

  Ashiol moved, only dimly aware that Kelpie was crying out for him to stop. He seized Dhynar’s throat with his hands and flexed his claws into the flesh. He let his animor pour into the other man, burning as it tore his face from the inside out. When Dhyn
ar started screaming, Ashiol pulled away. He diminished back into his human form, shaking as he pushed the animor back into the deepest part of himself.

  Dhynar sagged to the grass, still conscious. The gashes in his face, neck and arms began to heal themselves, but the process was painfully slow. He twisted his face into a grimace, still able to manage a grin. ‘Don’t let our city fall into the sky,’ he said between cracked and bleeding lips.

  Ashiol picked up his fallen clothes and walked away. Kelpie stood at some distance, staring at him.

  ‘This is what you want me to stay for,’ he said angrily. ‘This is what you are happy for me to become. Garnet’s gone, so let me be the monster.’

  ‘We’re all monsters,’ she said.

  ‘And where was my sentinel when the fighting started?’ he blazed at her.

  ‘You didn’t seem to need my help.’

  ‘Not the point. Where were those Sisters and Nieces of yours, Kelpie? Are you saving your strength and your blades until you know whether or not I’m worth defending?’

  She looked at him as if he were crazy. ‘Have you noticed anything odd about me, Ash? Anything unusual?’

  He stared back at her. She was just Kelpie. Straggly hair pulled back into a horsetail, pissed-off expression, battered combat clothes, sturdy boots. ‘Where’s your cloak?’ he asked finally. ‘You always wear it in daylight, even in the height of summer.’

  ‘Clever man,’ said Kelpie. ‘Anything else?’ Deliberately, she turned her back to him.

  How had he not noticed this earlier? Too wrapped up in myself, that’s how. ‘Kelpie, where are your swords?’

  She swung back to face him. ‘Our beloved Power and Majesty decided that it made him look weak having armed sentinels at his back. Either that, or he was worried one of us would stick a knife in him. Garnet took our blades off us years ago.’

  Ashiol was finding it hard to take this in. ‘But you were in a skybattle yesterday.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kelpie. ‘We were.’

  ‘Doing what—serving refreshments?’

  ‘Mainly we were dodging skybolts and staying out of the way, when we could. Macready managed to break Livilla’s leg though, saving her life. We make ourselves useful from time to time.’