Power & Majesty Read online

  ‘And what about the licence to trade, and the bond on the room we were to rent, and the silks I ordered from the Zafiran mercantile?’ Delphine demanded. ‘I’d pledged to cover all that with my inheritance from Grandmere, but Father won’t release the funds. He says he’ll have me declared incompetent if that’s what it takes. Every banker in Tierce is in his club. I have nothing!’

  Velody sighed and put her feet in Delphine’s lap. ‘Thimblehead. You have us. We’ll sort something out.’

  ‘And there’s always the Market Saints,’ said Rhian, murmuring into Delphine’s hair. ‘I’m sure you’ve frightened them into submission and they’re working on the problem even now.’

  ‘Read us something from Cyniver,’ Delphine commanded, toying with her other letters. ‘Cheer me up.’

  Velody blushed. ‘No. It’s private.’

  Rhian rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll stick my fingers in my ears and sing if it’s dirty. No reason why Delphine should miss out on the good stuff.’

  ‘He wants to marry me.’

  There was a long pause from the others. Then Rhian pounced, hugging Velody madly and squealing—Rhian, who had never squealed in her life.

  Still a little stunned, Velody raised her eyes to meet Delphine’s cool blue gaze.

  ‘Well,’ said her friend, a few moments later. ‘That’s you settled then.’

  The thing was, Velody thought, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be settled.

  5

  One day after the Nones of Cerialis

  Velody stared out the window of the rattling train all the way home, wishing she had brought some piecework to keep her hands busy. She kept going over and over the words in her head, trying to make sense of them.

  There had to be an easy way to tell your young man that you loved him, but didn’t want to marry him.

  Her neck itched where the apprentice collar had been removed yesterday. She was a qualified dressmaker, finally. Rhian and Delphine had been released with honours as well. She should be with them, celebrating, finding somewhere to live, filing a claim for a market stall. Instead, she was going home.

  She stepped off the train, the thick summer air blowing in her face along with steam and dust from the platform. The borrowed coat from Delphine was too warm for Tierce, which was further inland than Aufleur.

  Velody searched the platform. The crowd bustled with ladies in full-length gowns and gentlemen in those wide-brimmed hats she had almost forgotten about. Aufleur must be starting to feel like home, because the fashions there made more sense to her.

  Finally she spotted a dark head of curls and waved frantically to her brother.

  ‘Needles!’ Sage announced, catching Velody up in a bear hug. ‘Finally made it back, eh? Not too prissy for us? What are you wearing?’ He eyed her skirt with a wariness that was only half put on.

  ‘My knees are covered,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Only just, missy.’

  ‘Sage, I hate to break it to you, but I’m not the only demme in the world who has ankles.’

  ‘You’re the only one in this city who’s showing ’em,’ he muttered, taking her canvas bag from her as they walked along the platform, Velody’s smaller arm tucked into his larger one. He limped as he walked, but it was less noticeable than it had been the last time she came home for a visit.

  ‘How are you?’ Velody asked, checking him over. There was colour in his cheeks, though not as much as she was used to.

  ‘Well enough,’ he said, shying away from her questions. ‘Got some work at the clock factory. No heavy lifting.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’ He must be nearly thirty now, the eldest of them. She knew it had driven him up the wall to be stuck in the family bakery, surrounded by flour and hot ovens, having to put up with Papa’s way of doing everything, from turning the dough to stacking the shelves. ‘You enjoy it?’

  ‘It’s a living,’ Sage grunted. ‘It’s mine, anyway.’

  ‘And you’re not…’

  ‘Naught stronger than ale,’ he said in the heavy voice of a put-upon brother. ‘Still.’ Then he smirked out the side of his mouth at her. ‘Megora wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  ‘Oh, Megora is it?’

  Velody’s mouth was still open from the teasing laugh when she saw another familiar figure, a slender man with spectacles and a formal suit, standing uncomfortably by the station door. ‘Oh,’ she said softly. Cyniver. She hadn’t told him she was coming home, not wanting to give away any hint at what she had to say to him. Obviously someone couldn’t keep a secret.

  Sage jabbed her with an elbow, looking far too pleased with himself. ‘I told Mam you were taking the later train. Reckon you’ve got an hour—and if she finds out, you tell her I was with you every step of the way. Sisters need chaperones, to keep their reputations nice.’

  ‘You’ve done this sort of thing before,’ Velody said dryly, now knowing how it was her sisters managed to get away with what they did.

  ‘Just call me an old romantic,’ said her brother.

  Cyniver and Velody walked along the docks slowly, getting closer and closer to Cheapside, listening to the cries of the boatmen as they steered their wares back and forth.

  ‘Everything’s so bright here,’ she said softly. ‘I’d forgotten.’

  ‘It’s the stone,’ he said in the voice that meant he was about to start lecturing on something he had learned from a book. She had missed that about him. ‘They don’t have any sandstone mines near Aufleur, that’s why all the buildings are so dark. Brown and grey and black.’

  ‘I’ve been gone so long,’ she said.

  Cyniver said nothing for a few moments, and they just walked.

  ‘You can say no,’ he said finally. ‘I won’t be heartbroken. Well, I will. But I don’t want you to say yes just to be nice.’

  Velody did her best not to laugh at how earnest he was. ‘I want to say yes,’ she said. ‘Not to be nice; I really do. But I can’t leave Aufleur. Not to get married. My life’s just starting. I’ve worked so hard for it all. I want to live with Delphine and Rhian and make dresses.’ She sighed, not wanting to make eye contact.

  ‘So,’ Cyniver said. ‘You’re choosing a city over me.’

  Velody was a little startled at the dry note in his voice. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘It had better be the city, then.’

  She blinked. He didn’t seem overly upset. ‘What do you mean?’

  Cyniver took both her hands in his. Her palms were still sticky from the train, but his skin felt cool. ‘I mean, there are bookbinders in Aufleur. I can get a good recommendation—I’m sure I could find work. Better than that…I don’t want to bind books my whole life. I want to draw buildings. Design new buildings. They don’t have to be made of sandstone. Grey bricks will do just as well.’

  She had forgotten how sweet he was. How had she forgotten that?

  ‘You’re coming with me?’ Velody whispered.

  ‘Of course. And maybe…if you don’t want to get married yet…then in a year or two…’

  She flung her arms around him, face buried in his neck. ‘Maybe,’ she said in his ear. ‘In a year or two. Yes.’

  Dame Threedy from next door was walking past with a basket of fish and pretended not to see them, though she walked faster until she was around the corner and away. Mam would have heard about this before Velody got herself home.

  ‘You’d better give me the ring,’ she sighed. ‘It will distract them nicely.’

  6

  Ides of Cerialis

  Things were coming together surprisingly well. Delphine, it turned out, had an aunt who thoroughly disapproved of a demoiselle being disowned for daring to work for a living. Aunt Marcialle declared that her own first marriage had been ‘an appalling exercise’ and that as Delphine was the first Ingiers woman in three generations to ‘show an ounce of gumption’ she was going to support her bid for freedom. She had given Delphine a house.

  It was a small house on Via Silviana, with two ro
oms below—the shop-workroom in front and kitchen at the back—and three above, with a wash-pump in the tiny yard behind. It was sandwiched into a street full of similar little shops and residences only two blocks from the Piazza Nautilia (with the best public baths in the city) and two streets away from the bustling merchant district of Giacosa. All this, and no rent to pay. It could be a shop one day, if they earned enough from the market to set it up.

  Too good to be true, Velody found herself thinking one nox as she put the finishing touches on a brown and gold harvest tunic by lantern light. She squashed the thought almost as soon as she had it, but the damage was done. If the saints tumbled this into our laps, what do they expect in return?

  Cyniver was coming to Aufleur soon. Whenever Velody thought of him, her stomach melted just a little. He had already made inquiries about work with the best bookbinders in the city, and had insisted their betrothal could be as long as she liked. Or he could move into the house straightaway if she would marry him now…

  Velody had loved other boys here and there, nothing as serious as this. But she had never been able to imagine herself married. She could imagine being married to Cyniver.

  On the few occasions they had managed to spend the nox together, she did not dream.

  Velody could never remember her dreams, except for brief impressions—herself, walking in a noxgown. Sometimes she was underground, in an odd ruined city. Sometimes she was running. Sometimes she was up high, staring at the sky, at the stars, at other colours…

  There were some mornings she almost caught a real memory of her dream—a snatch of dialogue in a familiar voice. A laugh that made her shiver, or hardened her nipples for no sensible reason.

  Yes. Marrying Cyniver would solve that too. With him at her side, the dreams would be gone.

  That nox, her dream was different. She was not in Aufleur, for a start. She was in her noxgown, running through the places of Tierce. She could not find any of the streets she knew. Where was Cheapside? Where were the docks? Where was her family’s bakery? Bolts of light fell from the sky, smashing the boats and the canal walls to pieces. She looked up and saw shapes, like people only not, flailing against glowing tendrils of fire and ice. It was as if the sky itself was attacking the city. One by one, the figures in the sky vanished in bursts of light, until they were all gone. No one left to defend us. Defend us from what?

  As Velody ran, the golden buildings peeled away from the cobblestones and were dragged into the sky. She stared in horror as the bridge broke into pieces, each of them sucked upwards with a hideous noise.

  She could hear screaming, and it could be anyone, but her heart told her it was her brothers and sisters, being swallowed by the sky.

  A body fell hard in front of her, a woman in black leathers who burst apart into a scattered heap of dead black rats.

  Velody woke with a start. She had fallen asleep in her chair. The harvest tunic slipped to the floor as she leaped up and ran to the kitchen door.

  She was still in Aufleur. It was just a dream. She knew that. And yet when she unlatched the door and stepped outside in her bare feet, she expected to see…something. Some sign that a city had been torn up by its roots and destroyed.

  I have to remember this dream, she told herself fiercely. I have to remember, I have to remember.

  How could she forget the sight of Tierce—the city of her childhood—being ripped apart like it was made of paper?

  She stood there, shivering in the darkness, holding on to what she knew.

  ‘Velody?’ said a voice, some time later. Rhian came out, carrying a quilt with her. ‘What are you doing out here? It’s only just dawn.’

  Dawn. The dreams always disappeared in daylight. Velody turned, opening her mouth to tell Rhian: Tierce. Something has happened to Tierce. My family…your family…Cyniver…

  ‘Your brother,’ Velody said finally. Yes, that. Focus on Cyniver, on his gentle hands and that smile he hid behind his spectacles when he was amused. Remember. She did not know why it was so important, only that it was.

  Rhian looked confused. ‘I don’t have a brother.’

  Velody stared at her as the courtyard lightened slowly around them both. Rhian didn’t have a brother. Of course she didn’t. None of them had families—not Delphine, nor Rhian, nor Velody. It was one of the things that bound them together—they had no one else.

  ‘I forgot,’ she said in wonder.

  ‘Were you dreaming?’ Rhian asked with an odd look on her face. ‘Whatever it was, Velody, it wasn’t real. You’re working too hard.’

  ‘That must be it,’ Velody agreed. She allowed Rhian to lead her back inside.

  Days later, when she found a collection of letters written to her by a man named Cyniver from a city called Tierce, Velody threw them away without hesitation. The words meant nothing to her.

  7

  Garnet

  Tierce was not our fault. It was not our Court, not our city. We had our own battles to fight.

  Ashiol came to find me after Tierce fell. He sat beside me on the wall, our legs swinging as if we were boys and courtesi again. As if we were friends. ‘Quiet nox,’ he said, the bastard. Waiting for me to say the true thing, to acknowledge what had happened.

  ‘Aye,’ I agreed. ‘But if the sky wasn’t quiet right after eating an entire frigging city, what hope would we have?’

  He said nothing, for some time.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ I added viciously, when the silence started to gnaw at me.

  ‘Never said it was.’

  ‘Oh, no? And you haven’t come to tell me that Livilla is in pieces, and Poet’s drinking again, and half my sentinels are mourning their frigging families?’

  ‘No,’ said Ash. ‘I came to see if you were all right.’

  ‘I’m peachy.’

  ‘Can see that.’

  He tipped back his head, staring at those devil-damned benign stars. I can see him now, the image of him. I could trace around him with a finger. I remember exactly his tone of voice. How careful he was not to accuse even as he said, ‘Must have been something we could do. Heliora warned us weeks ago.’

  I hated him in that moment. There had always been moments of hating him. For all I loved him, I could never forget that he was the aristocrat slumming it in the streets, while the Creature Court had given me more than the daylight world ever could.

  ‘Our precious seer isn’t always right,’ I growled. ‘Do you know what she told me the other day? She said, “Ashiol will be the death of you.” What do you think she meant by that?’

  He actually grinned, the bastard. As if somehow I had changed the topic to a more amusing one. ‘Well, she’s not always right.’

  I wasn’t smiling. ‘This charming idea of yours, that we could have somehow done more to save Tierce from the sky even if it meant abandoning our own city to do so. Have you shared that thought with anyone?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said, sounding offended. ‘You are Power and Majesty. I’m yours. You know that.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, wanting to hurt him. Wanting him to show some bloody respect instead of mouthing the words. ‘If I ever hear you questioning my authority again—in public or private—I will bite your throat out.’

  He was remarkably quiet after that. When he finally spoke, after such a careful, thoughtful pause, he said, ‘If you can’t trust me, you can’t trust anyone.’

  Exactly my thoughts.

  Things tumbled differently after that. Tierce was the first real test of how much our Creature Court believed in me as Power and Majesty. Naturally, they were found wanting. You know the rest, I’m sure. You’ll have heard all the grotesque details. How Garnet became a monster. How every day that he was in power brought a new wave of mistrust.

  How I wrapped myself up in my own misery and suspicion, clinging to the few remaining people who were loyal to me.

  Ashiol was not one of them.

  I knew he worked against me, that he thought I was unworthy to lead the Creatur
e Court. After Tierce fell, he did not look at me the same way. None of them did. Conversations ended when I came near.

  I was the fucking Power and Majesty and they treated me like a child to be indulged lest his madness prove contagious. Every single one of them. They did not respect me as they had Ortheus. They looked to Ashiol instead—seeking his approval; his confirmation that I was not a total madman. I saw the tiny nods, the acknowledgement that he supported me, this time.

  I burned with it. The authority should be mine, not his. They trusted him more, loved him more. If I was truly to be the Power and Majesty, I would have to bring him down. Prove to them once and for all that I was the master.

  Is this what you want to hear? How I humbled him, humiliated him? That he still stood at my side after I made him bleed? Too much pride, both of us. When he would not stand down, would not let his discomfort even show in his face, I took it further.

  He became my prisoner. My toy. I hurt him and tortured him and it made sense at the time. He gave me no choice.

  Ashiol awoke in the dark room. He braced himself for the pain that always came first. The burn of the skysilver net, threading scorchlines in patterns over his skin. The deep hollowing ache of a blade in his ribs. Garnet’s fingerprints on his back or hands or feet, still glowing with light.

  There was nothing. No pain. He bent his body forward, letting the chains take his weight. They should burn too—steel wrapped in skysilver—but they did not. Ashiol licked his lips, and tasted blood that was not his own.

  ‘You were out of it,’ said a familiar voice in the darkness. ‘I only gave you a little.’

  His senses were dulled. Normally he would know Kelpie by her scent, and her taste as well as her voice. Ashiol could not feel animor pulsing through his veins. She had given him a taste of her own mortal blood and with it taken away both his power and whatever pain Garnet had inflicted upon him. He couldn’t remember. Was it a bad sign that he couldn’t even remember?