The Shattered City Read online

  Poet bowed his head gracefully to them, and walked away from the temple.

  ‘You don’t think he heard?’ Rhian asked in a choked whisper.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Macready said, sounding grim. ‘He heard, all right. We’re in trouble, lass.’

  Via Silviana was being prepared for a street party as Ashiol and Velody approached. The various shopkeepers and families who were her neighbours were setting up a roast spit, and long tables for food and drink. A small gang of flute demmes were practising badly on the street corner.

  ‘Mistress Velody!’ cried a friendly voice, and the red face of the local baker emerged from behind a lopsided festival drapery. ‘We’re celebrating this nox. Will you join us?’

  ‘I’d be honoured, when my day’s work is done,’ she said politely. ‘What’s the occasion?’

  ‘My boy, Giuno, takes his man’s robe today,’ said the baker with obvious pride. ‘Glad to have you share meat and wine with us. And your man,’ he added politely.

  Velody felt a laugh stick in her throat at the thought that anyone might think Ashiol was her paramour, but she did not correct the baker. What other explanation was there for his regular visits? As long as no one in Via Silviana knew enough to recognise him as the Duchessa’s cousin, there would be few questions asked.

  ‘I like meat and wine,’ said Ashiol with a gleam in his eye as the baker ran off to shout at some boys about oiling the spit. ‘Is that goat I smell?’

  ‘You’re not invited,’ she said firmly, unlatching the front door. They were using it more now that Rhian was improving.

  ‘The seigneur most definitely included me in the invitation.’

  Velody hovered on the threshold, wanting to get rid of him. ‘Under false pretences. He thinks you’re wooing me.’

  Ashiol smiled, and oh dear, it did terrible things to her stomach when he smiled like that. ‘I can woo.’

  ‘I’d really rather you didn’t.’ Velody heard Delphine shouting from inside the house. ‘Oh, hells.’

  There was no getting rid of Ashiol now. He followed her to the kitchen, where Delphine was — surprise, surprise — having a shouting match with Macready.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Velody demanded.

  ‘Your lass is impossible,’ Macready said, throwing up his hands in disgust.

  ‘Of course she is — she’s Delphine,’ Velody said calmly. ‘It’s hardly worth shouting about.’

  ‘Your little friend here,’ said Delphine, deliberately stressing the word ‘little’, ‘is trying to bully me into being one of his sword-swinging numbskulls, and I won’t do it.’

  ‘Poet knows who killed Lord Dhynar,’ Macready said, addressing Ashiol and Velody more seriously.

  Velody shivered. For a moment, dark shadows seemed to cover the world, shrouding all of them in blackness. She blinked rapidly, and the darkness receded. No one else seemed to have noticed anything odd. Ashiol was barking questions at Macready, who was getting defensive, and Delphine looked as if she was about to explode.

  ‘Do we have to get Delphine out of the city?’ Velody asked in a low voice.

  That got a reaction at least. ‘Is that your answer to everything?’ Delphine hurled at her. ‘No, Velody. First you want to run away from all this, then you want to stay, and you expect us to fall in with whatever you decide. I have a life here. I’m staying put. And that life has nothing whatever to do with swords and rodents!’

  She stormed off towards the stairs. Rhian sighed, and followed her. ‘I’ll see if I can calm her down.’

  Velody waited until Rhian was also upstairs and out of earshot. ‘Is Poet a danger to us?’

  ‘He’s a danger to everyone,’ Ashiol said darkly. ‘You never know what’s going on in his head. If he has this information on Delphine, rest assured, he will use it when it best suits him.’

  Velody sighed, and looked at Macready. ‘Would becoming a sentinel really make her safer?’

  ‘Aye, well that does depend on your definition of the word “safe”, so it does,’ Macready admitted. ‘But if she’s one of us, then there are rules to protect her actions. If she’s not …’

  ‘You wouldn’t really leave?’ Ashiol interrupted.

  ‘No,’ Velody sighed. She had tried to leave. Had tried to take Delphine and Rhian away from Aufleur, and put the world of the Creature Court behind her. But that was before she fought and won against the corrupted shade of Dhynar, Lord Ferax. Before she accepted her role as Power and Majesty of the Creature Court.

  Accepting she belonged to them was one thing. Accepting that Delphine might also belong was altogether different. ‘I’ll talk to her,’ she offered. ‘If she won’t see sense, I’ll talk to Poet.’

  ‘You can’t just negotiate with the Lords over tisane and finger sandwiches,’ Ashiol warned. ‘We’re warriors. Animals. Offer the hand of friendship, and we bite.’

  Velody gave him an impatient look. ‘No one is getting bitten. Not today.’

  Delphine was so angry she couldn’t see straight. She pulled dress after dress out of her wardrobe, flinging them on the bed regardless of the fact that Rhian was sitting there. ‘I am tired of you making all the decisions,’ Delphine snapped, not turning around as Velody joined them. ‘First you want us to hide from this Creature Court of yours, then you want to make friends with them, then we’re running away and leaving our house, then we’re staying here so you can do your duty by them. I’m done with it, Velody. This is my life, and you don’t get to order me around.’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ Velody asked.

  Delphine flung herself around, staring. That was a very good question. ‘I heard you come in.’

  ‘Among all that shouting and muttering and clothes throwing? You must have very good ears.’

  ‘I’m not one of them,’ Delphine said, disgust dripping from her voice. ‘You may enjoy running around pretending to be little brown mice and fighting invisible things in the sky and jumping off roofs but some of us are normal!’

  ‘I didn’t like this any more than you did when I first came into my power,’ said Velody. ‘But you can’t fight it, not without driving yourself crazy.’

  ‘I stuck a sword into someone,’ Delphine said, feeling the fight go out of her. ‘Anyone could have done it.’

  ‘I don’t think I could,’ said Velody. ‘Not even to save a friend. Maybe you’re special.’

  Delphine wanted to lash out and hurt Velody. It was the best way to make her go away and shut up and stop being all saintly and helpful. ‘Is that what you think you are? Special? They’re using you, all of them. Ashiol Xandelian threw you to the wolves so he didn’t have to be their leader. The rest of them only pretend to worship you. It’s the power they want. The minute you do something they don’t like, they’ll tear you to pieces. What are we supposed to do then, me and Rhian?’

  Delphine saw Velody’s face crumple, and knew she had hit home. ‘Some of us have hopes and dreams and a real life right here at ground level,’ she added, grasping the nearest frock. It would do, for a local street party. ‘You should try it some time.’

  2.

  Velody came back downstairs to discover that Ashiol and Macready had left, thank the saints. With Delphine sulking upstairs and Rhian retreated back into her own room, the workshop was quiet.

  Velody had work to do. The Duchessa’s flame gown needed to be altered to fit perfectly, and there was a waistcoat waiting to be trimmed. These two projects had been her saving grace over the last few nundinae. When everything else got too much for her, when the darkness clouded her judgement, she could sit and work. Sewing made the shadows go away.

  Velody had noticed actual dark shadows on her hands sometimes, odd little blots that were gone as soon as she looked at them closely. Since she had taken Dhynar’s ugly, corrupted shade into herself, those shadows appeared more often. Sometimes they were accompanied by stabbing headaches, or a heaviness to her shoulders. She snapped more, and retreated into dark moods when she was unhappy. Once, she
thought she saw a black web covering both her arms, and jumped right out of her chair in horror, though her skin was flawless again when Rhian or Delphine asked her what was wrong.

  Ashiol had told her that being a part of the Creature Court meant madness and monstrous behaviour. Velody refused to believe that she was so weak that wielding animor would have such an effect on her. Every time she jumped at shadows or felt the uncharacteristically fierce anger welling up inside her, or heard Dhynar’s laughter bubbling out of the corner of the room, she would work on the waistcoat, or the Duchessa’s flame gown, allowing her dark thoughts and panic and even her animor itself to bleed into the embroidery stitches and the rich damask and tapestry fabrics she had used.

  Thank goodness she had this. If there was only the Creature Court in her life, she would most definitely have gone mad by now.

  Nox fell over Via Silviana, the sky darkening, and Ashiol stood guard outside Velody’s house as her neighbours prepared for their festival. The music began, and the air filled with the scent of roasting meat.

  There was no reason for him to stay. There were rooms waiting for him at the Palazzo, meat for every meal if he wanted it. He could rest and eat — the sky might have a battle to throw at them, but not yet, not for hours, perhaps.

  Here he was, hanging around a demoiselle’s door like a fool, because he did not want to be anywhere else. She had no need of his protection. Still, he loitered.

  The crowd built up, friends and family and complete strangers toasting the boy who had come of age. It was an odd sensation, to witness such merrymaking. Ashiol had taken his man’s robe in a formal ceremony presided over by his stiff, icy grandparents, with a sip of watered wine and gifts that befitted the son of the Ducal family. He and Garnet had stolen cups of beer later, and … but, no. He was not going to think of Garnet this nox.

  He did not plan to drink, either, not with the sky on the verge of breaking open, but a group of laughing revellers planted a cup in his hand. There would be no harm in a mouthful or two …

  Velody’s friend Delphine ran out of the house to join the party, and Ashiol turned swiftly away, not wanting her to see him. Hysterical demme — for all he knew she would start shrieking again the moment she clapped eyes on him.

  He found himself near the spit, which was no hardship, and ate several slices of barely charred goat with his fingers before he caught sight of his own reflection in a shop window. He looked old, he thought, greasy fingers brushing against the thread of silver in his dark hair. No one lived to get old in the Creature Court, but that didn’t mean they did not feel their years.

  There was a flicker in the glass, and Ashiol blinked. No, not that. Not now. He turned and stumbled along the street, away from the window. But there were shops along the whole stretch, and he saw it in each of them. No longer just a flicker, or an impression.

  Away from the crowd, where the tables and dancers trickled to nothing, Ashiol stood transfixed, his eyes locked on a face that was not his in the reflection of a closed-up haberdashery. Garnet, more than two months dead, smiled the smile of the morally righteous. ‘Admit it. You missed me.’

  This wasn’t just seeing things, a flicker of a bad memory. This was a full-blown hallucination, and that was a very, very bad sign. Not now; he couldn’t afford to lose his mind here and now. ‘Dead is a good look for you,’ Ashiol said, forcing his tone to be light. (Who exactly was he trying to fool here?) ‘Or I should say, not torturing me is a good look for you.’

  There were no words for this. For the sight of a man he hadn’t seen in five years. Lover, brother, best friend. Madman. King. Garnet.

  Garnet had always been pale; that shock of red hair over porcelain-light skin. Ashiol used to tease him that he was the one who should have been born an aristocrat, with looks like that. Garnet’s eyes, though … they were not familiar. The light in them was wrong, and try as he might, Ashiol couldn’t make them look real from any angle.

  Not real, not here, that’s why. Don’t get fucking stupid.

  ‘I like the new demme,’ Garnet said now, his fingers flicking back and forth in an absent-minded pattern. He had always talked with his hands, apparently unconscious of the way they moved and danced and told a different story to his words. ‘Vel-o-dee. Can we eat her yet?’

  ‘You created her,’ Ashiol said. ‘You sucked the animor out of her when she was fourteen years old, you bastard. You used Velody’s animor to build your power higher than me, higher than anyone. We’re reaping what you fucking sowed.’

  He wanted to smash his friend in the face, to beat him, to finally let the hate take over. He didn’t have to be loyal any more, didn’t have to hold back.

  Garnet’s face was perfectly framed by the window, beside Ashiol’s darker hair, skin tone, eyes. ‘That’s what kills you, isn’t it? You finally figured out how I beat you — how I cheated — and you can’t strangle me. Can’t hurl yourself at me in one of those charming fits of rage before I put you into the ground, all over again.’ The vision of Garnet brushed his lips against Ashiol’s ear lobe, and for a moment he could almost feel the touch. ‘Exactly how much do you want to bring me back, just so you can kill me all over again?’

  Ashiol roared, the anger hot and scorching inside him, and lunged. His hands collided with the glass, bruising badly. The cup he had forgotten he was holding broke into pieces, lacerating his palm.

  He licked wine and blood from his hand, feeling the tremble of his skin against his mouth. When he dared to look again, there was no reflection in the glass but his own face.

  Macready found Ashiol as he returned to the party. ‘There you are, laddie buck. Are we taking to the sky soon?’

  ‘Time enough for that,’ Ashiol said grimly, dropping the broken pieces of his wine cup into Macready’s hands. ‘I need another drink.’

  Or as many as it would take to forget the fact that he was losing his grip all over again.

  Velody dozed a little, in the armchair. No point in going to bed. The air pressed around her like a storm was coming, and she knew enough to recognise that the sensation had nothing to do with the weather. She dreamed of Dhynar, of the corrupt taste of his shade, haunting the streets of Aufleur. Of the power she had wielded to chase him down. She dreamed he was still inside her, trying to tear his way out of her body, puncturing her skin from within, using teeth and claws to dig an escape route through her belly.

  When she awoke with a gasp, the room was dark. The grate was empty — it was summer, after all. The sounds she heard were not the wailing cries of a ferax monster inside her skin, but a crowd singing drunken songs. The sky was going to fall, and the daylight folk were dancing and feasting. Why was she not surprised?

  Velody opened the front door and saw a blaze of paper lanterns in the street outside. The party had grown — it now reached from one end of the street to the other. It may have started as a local occasion to celebrate one lad reaching manhood, but word had spread across the lower Vittorine and the breadth of Giacosa that there was a party, and the newcomers had brought further provisions with them. Tables lined the gutters, groaning with donated food. Half the city was on her doorstep.

  She looked up, beyond the lantern light, and saw familiar streaks across the sky, a haze of green and then purple. The sky was not falling yet, but soon. She could feel the familiar spark of animor, colliding with her own. The Creature Court was here, nearby. That was a worry.

  Delphine was there too, dancing in the crowd, going from hand to hand as if she had not a care in the world. Velody had always envied Delphine’s ability to throw herself into the world like that. If the Creature Court was here, though, Delphine was in danger.

  Roast goat. Someone had said something about roast goat. Velody followed her nose to the spit, where two lads were slashing strips off the beast, layering them up on platters for the crowd. She found a dish of the rarest slices, oozing blood, and ate ravenously, licking her fingers.

  ‘Love a demme with an appetite,’ leered one of the goat la
ds.

  Velody wiped a smear of blood from her chin. ‘Don’t we all?’ Fresh meat was a rare extravagance, and her body thrummed with it as she turned back to face the crowd. The music slid under her skin, and she could feel Ashiol’s presence nearby. She could not see him in the crowd, but his animor sparked against her own, bringing mixed sensations of security and lust. You don’t want him, she told herself sternly. It’s the meat making you crazy.

  That line of argument was no more convincing than it had ever been. Her only chance was to fill her mind with that other man — the red-haired lunatic whom she had not laid eyes on since she was fourteen, though he had been in her dreams often enough. Garnet. Ashiol’s lover. The last Power and Majesty of the Creature Court. Thinking of him was the easiest way to push any desire for Ashiol Xandelian d’Aufleur out of her body entirely.

  Velody ate one last slice and then went looking for Delphine. She found her friend in the midst of the dancing, spinning around young Giuno, who looked as if all his Saturnalias had come at once. Delphine appeared healthier than she had in some time, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright. She grabbed at Velody’s hand, ignoring her current dance partner. ‘The uninvited guests belong to you, I suppose?’

  Oh, seven hells. Velody had hoped that the animor she had felt close by belonged to Ashiol, who could be trusted for the most part, but no.

  Poet was here, his slender frame wrapped in a costume far too theatrical for him — bright diamonds of scarlet and gold satin, a gaudy hat, and bespectacled eyes that saw everything. He moved through the crowd like some kind of cheerful dandy, flirting with demmes and boys equally. It was quite a pantomime, and might be amusing if you didn’t know just how dangerous he was. He knew about Delphine. What was he going to do with that information?