The Shattered City Read online

  Darkness fell more solidly around her, and there would be no battle this nox; she was sure of that now. Still, she felt that shiver of a premonition she had spoken of with Ashiol days ago. She could not get over the thought that something was coming, something bigger and badder than she had seen before.

  When Velody looked down at her hands, that spidery pattern was back, violently dark against her very pale skin. She felt a crushing weight on her chest, the air itself squeezing tighter around her.

  Work, that was what she had to do. She would go below and finish the trim of the dress for the Duchessa, and when her needle finally stopped moving, she would feel better. More human. More herself.

  Perhaps by the time morning came, she would be able to sleep without dreaming of dead men.

  4.

  Heliora

  How did it start, for me? I followed him home.

  I was eleven and living on the streets (that is a story you will hear more than once, so many of us started out this way). I was a thief and a stray, and I put every spark of strength I had into pretending I was a boy.

  Being a demme is all bad, on the streets. You get used up and thrown aside or you have to spend half your beggings on cosmetick so you can at least get paid to whore. I preferred stealing.

  One day there was this lad, dark-haired and glowing. A complete shiny-blood; you could see it in his eyes and his swagger. He had no right to be hanging around Cinquilene — what the frig did he think he was up to? Only the dirt and the rats lingered here.

  I could see bulge of his purse as he joked with his — companion? Manservant? Wretched toff. I wanted to hurt him, wanted to wound him. Wanted to see his mouth gape in surprise when he saw his purse had been lifted by a sneak ten times faster than he was.

  But I didn’t steal it. Instead, I followed him home. I expected he would make his way to a fine Great Family house — high on the Avleurine, or the Alexandrine, where the shiny-bloods gather to count their coin. Instead, he wandered deeper into the maze of slums and streets jammed between the Avleurine hill and the Lucian theatre district.

  They were chattering all the time, those lads, though I only had eyes for the dark one, even then. The manservant was as full of himself as his master, and they cuffed and pawed at each other, sniggering as if they had some great secret.

  An alley turned into a tunnel, and still I followed, down into the depths of a place I had never known existed, underneath the city itself. We walked down in darkness until we passed a ruinous heap and, beyond that, the quiet cobbled streets of a silent underground town, all empty streets and abandoned shops, like the breath had been sucked out of it.

  The Shambles, yes, I know that now. At the time it was like I had stepped into another world. Which of course I had.

  ‘Oh look, it’s Tasha’s cubs,’ said a mocking voice, cutting through the cool air of the underground stone city. My boy (I already thought of him that way, pathetic but true) tensed as a lithe older lad leaped down from the roof of a ruined awning to land on his hands and feet as if they were paws.

  ‘Get stuffed, Barthol,’ said the red-haired manservant, doing his best to sound unimpressed.

  ‘You’re not anything,’ said the older lad, sneering down at him. ‘Not worth a centi, either of you. Someone should teach you respect for your betters.’

  ‘There are two of us and one of you,’ said my boy, dark and glorious. ‘If you want to chuck your weight around, try picking on someone smaller.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Barthol with a wicked grin. I saw them before the lads did — figures melting out of the shadows, a whole gang waiting to pounce. ‘You seem small to me.’

  I could do nothing — if the servant was less than a centi, then I was less than the dust on their shoes. I wasn’t even sure why I cared, except I had followed a pretty fellow down a dark street only to watch him be beaten to death.

  I’ve always had excellent timing.

  The fight was brutal and ugly — six against two, fists and nails and blood. I could barely stand to look at the sight of it. I should have run away, should have clambered my way back up to the safety of the world I knew. I remember how it ended, though. There was a feeling that washed over the streets, of cold and despair. I shivered in my thin rags, and every one of those bloodstained boys hesitated and drew back.

  He stepped into sight. A stately, wide-shouldered man wearing silks and velvets, every inch of his costume decorated with pearl buttons. His head was shaved, and shiny like a snake. Power resonated from him; not only the power that makes rich men cruel, but something deeper. He travelled with an entourage, and a dismissive flip of his hand made it clear that he intended them to obey even his silent orders.

  They moved into action, three of them, drawing swords from their backs and advancing upon the spitting pile of boys.

  I was awed. There was nothing but dim lamplight down here, and yet I swear I saw daylight gleaming from their blades. They moved in formation, so secure in their own power and competence. I had handled a knife half my short life, but I had never owned such a thing as those swords.

  In that moment, I forgot the shiny boy. I knew nothing but envy. I wanted to be like them, those coves and demmes with the shiny blades.

  But I ran away. Of course I ran. I had never been brave, my first eleven years. I spent my whole life in hiding. I did not forget those soldiers, though, in their leathers, silver sigils stamped into collars and straps. They wore their hair cropped close to their heads, even the woman. They were so strong and fine.

  Three days later, the boy found me. I had stolen several apples and sat pressed against a stinking wall behind an old theatre in the Lucian, determined to eat them one after the other before someone caught me. My jaw was sore and dripping with juices when a hand lashed out and slapped me, sending me sprawling to the ground.

  When in doubt, cringe and whine. Let them hurt you as hard as they can, and hope they will stop before it gets too bad.

  ‘You saw things you should not have seen, brat,’ he said. And saints help me — when he spoke, he sounded like a cat purring in your lap. (It makes me laugh now to think how young Ashiol was then — never mind my tender years; he was such a baby!)

  I glared at him from my place on the ground. I had dropped an apple, bruised it, and that made fury well up inside me, despite my fear. ‘Can’t help that, can I?’

  ‘Thank you, courteso, I will take it from here,’ said a clipped voice.

  The boy Ashiol bristled at that. ‘You’re not my frigging Lord and master, Nathanial.’

  The other man was older, with a steady jaw and clipped-short hair. He wore leathers with silver — one of those soldiers I had admired so much! ‘And you’re not mine,’ he said calmly. ‘I needed you to find her, but your part in this is done.’

  Ashiol had a right sulk on him. ‘Maybe my mistress would like to see her first …’

  ‘Hands off, boyo,’ said the soldier. ‘The Power and Majesty takes precedence over your precious Lord. Any idiot can see she isn’t Court. But she noticed us, and that means she might very well be something else.’

  Panic welled up in me. They knew I wasn’t a lad. How could they know? I’d been binding my breasts since they started to curve, and I’d only had a couple of bleeding times. They shouldn’t know so much. He leaned over me, the Silver Captain, blocking my view of the shiny boy. ‘Would you like to learn how to use a sword, demoiselle?’ he asked me.

  Oh. Well. If he was going to put it that way …

  It was the Parilia, festival of shepherds, and the entire Basilica smelled of damp fleece and the entrails of sheep. Few were interested in a fortune-teller who used cards and crystals, not when there were bloodier auguries to be drawn. Heliora abandoned her Zafiran wig and costumes in her tent to go for a walk. Fresh air, and the summer sun. Nothing like the simple pleasures in life to remind you that you were going to die soon.

  After some time wandering around, Hel ended up near the Lake of Follies. A grand Palazzo
had once been built on this spot in honour of the first Duc d’Aufleur: an edifice so ornate and expensive that it all but financially crippled the city at a time when they were struggling to convince the population it was safe to live above ground. Then the skywar came back, and the Palazzo was crushed by boulders of ice and fire. The Duc’s son bowed to the popular belief that it was his father’s hubris that had brought the disaster upon them, and he hauled down the wreckage in favour of a decorative lake. It was said half the riches of that fallen Palazzo were still buried in the lake bed, and many a drunkard had drowned trying to prove that myth.

  Of course, those of the daylight also thought that the skywar itself was a myth, or at least that it was a chapter of history that had been closed long ago. They all knew the stories, but they believed that the war had ended as mysteriously as it had begun.

  Only the Creature Court knew the truth. The Kings, the Lords and their courtesi, the sentinels … and the Seer.

  Not a day passed when Heliora did not wish she was as ignorant and blind as the rest of them. Imagine how blissful it must be to see only the everyday ugliness of the world. To not fear a burning, blazing, freezing, twisted death.

  There were other stories about the lake. Babies would be named here in simple family ceremonies, and old men came to swear their sins away. The water was supposed to have cleansing properties, and half the city drank nips of it as a tonic to ward off the Silent Sleep. A useless tradition, if ever there was one. The Sleep was only a mystery to those of the daylight. If only they knew how miraculous it was how many of them actually survived each nox that the city was knocked down around them, only to rebuild itself at dawn.

  It made Heliora shiver, to be this close to the lake. She had seen many futures in which her death was within sight of this place.

  A skinny fellow in spectacles sat on one of the wooden piers, his trews rolled up and bare feet dangling in the water. Heliora considered walking past, pretending she hadn’t seen him, but a familiar voice called her ‘coward’ in her own head. So she walked out on to the pier, lowering herself on to the planking to sit beside him. He looked quite normal without his gaudy clothes and the theatrical cosmetick he often sported.

  ‘Burdens weighing on your soul, Poet?’ she asked him. ‘Or is it something more fleshly that you need cleansed?’

  ‘Sharp as ever, Heliora my dove,’ Poet drawled, splashing her with his feet. ‘You know me — always looking for somewhere innovative to hide the bodies.’

  As if she could ever get a straight answer out of him. No, it always had to be riddles. ‘Is the noxcrawl still bothering you?’ she asked, shifting imperceptibly away from him so that her hip did not brush his.

  Poet looked at her with a flicker of amusement. He was not fooled. ‘Noxcrawl,’ he repeated, as if he’d never heard of it. ‘You have been paying attention, haven’t you?’

  ‘I know you were covered in it in a skybattle a few market-nines ago,’ she said firmly. ‘I know — saints, Poet, that muck can be lethal. If even a pin prick of it remains on your skin …’

  ‘Not a prick,’ he said without a hint of irony. ‘Warlord and our precious precious Power and Majesty saw to that. If I had been any more thoroughly cleansed, I would have drowned three times over at the foot of this lake.’

  Couldn’t happen to a nicer cove, Hel thought to herself. ‘If you were cleansed so thoroughly, why are you here now? Not getting paranoid in your old age, are you, Poet?’

  ‘Nostalgic, perhaps,’ he said with a wicked look at her. ‘I feel calm here. It’s a good place.’

  Heliora shuddered. ‘The lake smells of death.’

  ‘That’s what I like about it.’ Poet smiled sadly. ‘Some of my favourite people in all the world are dead, you know.’ He pulled out a pocket watch with a long chain, toying with it between his fingers. It was familiar, though Heliora could not have said why. Clockwork was a rare sight in this city. ‘Do you miss the old days, Hel?’

  ‘Which old days?’ she asked sharply. ‘When the world was young and we were innocent? Those days never existed.’ Her first memory of Poet was as a child, nestled into that fucked-up family Tasha had gathered around her. Tagging along behind Ashiol and Garnet and the others. Too young, too knowing, too broken. Just like the rest of them. ‘I don’t think about the past at all,’ she lied.

  Poet gave her a smug look. She hated the way he always seemed to know what she was thinking. She spent enough time inside her own head, keeping the voices and the futures at bay. The last thing she needed was anyone else poking around in there.

  ‘Keep your feet wet,’ she said, standing up to return to the Basilica. Where else did she have to go? ‘You never know when the sky is going to throw something grotesque at you again. Anyone would think you deserved it.’

  Poet gave her an aimless wave, and tucked his pocket watch away as she walked off. ‘Stay as sweet as you are, Hel.’

  Heliora had reached the Forum when she realised where she had seen that watch before. It had belonged to Garnet.

  I never won my swords. I still burn about that. Sentinels don’t get measured for swords until their seventeenth birthday; man’s or woman’s robe aside, you don’t count as a grown-up sentinel until they’re sure you’ve stopped growing.

  A ridiculous system. I never gained another inch after my fifteenth birthday, and I know for a fact that Tobin grew three inches between getting his swords and the day he died; his reach was always a little off because of that. I wanted my swords more than anything, but the saints and devils who watch over the Creature Court had a different path for me.

  I was a damned good sentinel. Cap and the others trained me well, gave me a purpose. Our job was to protect the Kings, to add to their power and glory. We had Ortheus, the Power and Majesty, and Argentin, the second King, his loyal friend. There were twelve of us sentinels, standing at their back, keeping them strong against the sky and against the Creature Court who was supposed to be just as loyal.

  Meanwhile, I never stopped fancying Ashiol. They all knew it. A running joke — the little street brat who wanted the shiny courteso for her own. Even his Lord, Tasha, found it amusing, and she was never one to share her toys. I don’t know if it was that I was too young or if Ashiol just didn’t want me, but he put up a merry fight against my attempts at feminine wiles.

  Oh, aye, I was a demme now. Cap insisted upon that. The Lords, Court and retinue could all see exactly who I was. Hiding anything about myself was an insult to them. I could shave my head and spin knives and still let my boobs stick out the front (when they weren’t tucked away behind the leathers).

  It was an odd sort of feeling. Freedom. Respect. All new tastes in my mouth. Then, the year I turned sixteen, everything changed.

  Macready was getting too old for this shit. The thought of waiting around for a horde of babes in arms to come into their own as sentinels made him want to jump off a fecking bridge.

  Though to be fair, most conversations with Delphine made him feel that way. It was a long time since a demme had got under Macready’s skin like this. There was nothing easy about Delphine. She grated against him — and every time he thought he was making progress, she slid away.

  It reminded him of learning to fish in his gramp’s favourite trout stream back home. Just when you thought you had landed a beauty, it would slip and slide right out from under your fingers.

  Being a sentinel was not something you chose, not something you could just walk away from. It was a sacred trust, and it burrowed into your heart like a mouse chewing its way into the walls of a house. Macready was stuck. He hadn’t been able to walk away when Garnet started sending his people to their doom, when the Haymarket was awash with blood. He hadn’t walked away when Garnet cut his fecking ring finger from his hand, in punishment for one drunken insult. How could he leave now, when the Court might actually have a hope of bettering itself?

  So here he was, trying to save Delphine and turn her into a sentinel. Rhian had sided with him at least, agreein
g that a visit to the Seer sounded like a good way to sort Delphine’s future out once and for all. She had even agreed to step outside with them for the second time in the same market-nine, and that had been a master stroke, so it had. Delphine could not argue with it when she knew it cost Rhian so much more to make the trip.

  Macready and Delphine had one thing in common, at least, and that was concern for Rhian. The lass grew nervous as they made their way through the crowded Basilica. She flinched when people brushed against her, and her friends walked on either side of her, trying to keep it from happening.

  ‘Almost there,’ Macready said, hoping to soothe. They circled a row of hot meat and cold pottage stalls until they finally reached the colourful, gaudy tent of Madama Fortuna.

  A sign hung on the outside, declaring that the fortune-teller was not seeing customers today. A few offerings of centimes, tied posies and honey cakes had been left outside the tent. Ha, Heliora had a few satisfied customers, then. Good for her.

  ‘Heliora,’ Macready said against the tied door flaps of the tent. ‘Are you there, my lovely? I’ve visitors for you.’

  There was silence, and then a huff from inside. A slender hand slid through the slit to untie the flaps and let them fall open. ‘I’m not working today, Mac,’ said the Seer of the Court. She looked as much the urchin demme as she ever had, with her head lightly shaven and her bare feet sticking out from under a thin cotton tunic.

  ‘Special occasion,’ he suggested, and gave her a hopeful grin.

  Hel gave him that suspicious glare, the one he liked to think was reserved, all special like, for him alone. Finally, she stepped back to let him and the lasses through. The tent flap fell closed as they came inside the space, which was stuffy with incense smoke. ‘Stray lambs?’ Hel said sarcastically.

  ‘New blood,’ Macready informed her.

  That did interest her, and Hel turned her strange, luminous eyes on Delphine and then Rhian, staring at them both until they glanced away, uncomfortable with her scrutiny. ‘Not that one,’ she said finally, dismissing Rhian. ‘But you …’ Her eyes widened as she took in everything about Delphine. ‘Saints and devils. This is the one who —’