The Shattered City (14 page)

‘Where is Isangell?' Ashiol demanded as Velody and the sentinels crowded in behind him.

‘Oh, Ash, it's too funny. The one demme you actually care about also happens to be the most important person in the whole city? That's the kind of thing people write ballads about.' Livilla tilted her head to one side. ‘Someone should really write a ballad about me. Don't you think?'

‘I'm not going to ask you again, Liv.' He imagined breaking her open to get the truth. He would if he had to, she knew that. Would she push him that far?

‘Here's the really funny thing,' said Livilla, in her sweet-as-teacake tone that didn't fool him for an instant. ‘You came back for her. Not for us, for the Creature Court, not to stand at Garnet's side where you belong. Not to save the city. You came back here to play courtier to the pretty daylight Duchessa. What exactly does she have that we don't?'

‘Apart from a soul?'

Her expression changed. ‘Cheap shot, my King.'

‘What have you done to her?' Ashiol roared. He felt a cool hand on his arm and knew it was Velody without looking. Her calmness drove him crazy at times, but still managed somehow to make him feel … less like shouting.

‘Let me try,' Velody suggested, and walked over to Livilla, seating herself in one of the fancy lace-metal chairs. ‘We found Warlord,' she said, those calm grey eyes of hers holding Livilla's. ‘He was attacked. We don't know how yet — he wasn't able to tell us much. But we don't think he was the one who took your boys from you. You have both been victims here.'

Ashiol wanted to challenge her. Who was she to say
that Warlord was innocent? There were so many possibilities. Velody's words were having an effect on Livilla, though, so he kept his mouth shut. For now.

‘Are you sure?' Livilla said in a baby voice, small and vulnerable.

‘Yes,' said Velody.

Ashiol admired her ability to lie like that, to make it sound like the world was a sane place, and she had an assured place in it. He almost believed her, and he knew she was making it up.

‘Will he be all right?' Livilla asked, sipping her tea. So very civilised.

‘We hope so,' said Velody. ‘But he will need some time to recover. His courtesi almost lost him, but they gave him blood; it should be enough.'

Livilla started to cry, tears blobbing down her face as if she were a child. Her whole body shook, and she tried to put the cup down, but it slid off the table and spilled on the grass. Velody comforted her like she was Rhian or Delphine, hugging the viper and murmuring words of kindness to her. Demmes. Ashiol wasn't sure he understood them at all. ‘Do you think he still loves me?' Livilla wept into Velody's shoulder.

‘I don't think he has changed,' said Velody in a moment of pure diplomacy. She pushed Livilla's long black fringe back out of her eyes. ‘Where is the Duchessa?'

‘We were having tea, but she ran away,' said Livilla, using that little demme voice of hers, the one that always made Ashiol want to slap her. ‘I don't think she liked me very much.'

Ashiol turned to throw orders at the sentinels, but Macready held up his hand. ‘Do you hear that, my King?'

It was a soft sound, barely there at all, but when Ashiol paid attention to it he could tell it was a demoiselle singing. He nodded abruptly and turned around, leaving the walled garden.

Beyond the jasmine hedge was the ridiculous maze, everything that Grandmama's garden was not. A veritable zoo of topiary animals, bright and exotic blooms, hedges of twelve different varieties and heights.

Yes. Isangell. He could hear her singing.

The others were following but Ashiol ignored them, following the path around, two rights and then a left, the pattern repeated. Here, nearly at the centre, was the avenue of saints and angels, glowing in the finest Atulian marble, and black basalt from the mines of Stelleza. There were alcoves along the edges and there — that one — that was where Ashiol had kissed Garnet for the first time, an awkward question of a kiss, half-expecting the other boy to thump him.

Gone, he's gone. He was gone long before he died. Move on.

What the hells was wrong with Isangell? Why was she singing? What had Livilla done to her? Ashiol rounded the corner into the centre of the maze and saw her, finally. His throat rasped dry.

Isangell sat in ladylike fashion on the back of a giant topiary snail. She still wore the flame-coloured festival dress from the previous day, her feet hanging bare and her hair tangled in its matching garland. Her eyes were … not right. No, not his gosling. He was the crazy one, everyone knew that. Please, let it not be happening to her too. Ashiol would strangle Livilla in cold blood if she was responsible for this.

Isangell broke off her song when she saw him, and
gave him a searching look. ‘You have returned, cousin dear. Was I really all that terrifying?'

‘Isangell,' Ashiol said in a quiet voice. ‘You should come inside.' Had he done this to her?

‘But then I won't be able to see the stars,' said Isangell, tilting her head to one side. ‘I want to be here when they all blink out.'

‘It's morning,' said Ashiol. ‘We can't see the stars.' Daylight, they were supposed to be safe in daylight, nothing bad happened then.

‘Can't you?' said Isangell. ‘I can see them. Every single star. But they're going to go out soon.' She giggled, and that was not Isangell's laugh. Nothing like it. Not crazy, perhaps. Drugged.

Ashiol turned on Livilla, who was busy looking innocent. ‘Potions, yes? Some of your fucking party powders? Tell me right now what you did to her.'

Livilla laughed. ‘That's the amusing thing, darling. I didn't do a damned thing to your honey cake. She was broken when I found her. I like her like this, though. Far more entertaining than the dried-up little virgin I was expecting.'

‘Why don't I believe you, Liv?' said Ashiol.

Isangell slid off the topiary snail and tumbled to the ground with a cry. Ashiol reached down to pull her to her feet.

‘No,' said Velody sharply. ‘Don't touch her.'

‘What?' Ashiol demanded, his hands hovering only inches from Isangell. ‘What is it?'

‘Look at her back.'

Isangell stood up on her own, made a slow, teasing pirouette and then sank into a curtsey. ‘My dressmaker!' she said delightedly. ‘Ashiol, have you stolen my
dressmaker? She's very lovely. If you want to marry her, I won't mind a bit. I'll throw may at your wedding. And sugared violets.'

The flame-coloured festival gown dipped low enough at the back that the thick black spiderweb inked across Isangell's skin was clearly visible. It flickered as Ashiol looked at it.

He knew what it was. Not the family complaint, then, nor potions and powders. Noxcrawl. The fucking sky had taken Isangell.

 

The webbed pattern on Isangell's back was dreadfully familiar. ‘My hands,' Velody said in horror, remembering what Warlord had said to her. She had feared that perhaps she was losing control of her memories or her body, but this … she had not seen the possibility of this. ‘Ashiol, I think this is my fault.'

Ashiol turned to her, the anger radiating out of him. ‘What have you done?'

The Duchessa giggled as if she had been swallowing ansouisettes or party powders by the dozen.

‘I made her that dress,' Velody said, the words coming out slowly as she thought about it. Everything was beginning to make sense, the horrible truth of it. ‘The dress she's still wearing. I think — it's poisoned with something from the sky.'

‘It's noxcrawl,' said Ashiol dismissively. ‘That much is obvious. When did you touch noxcrawl?'

‘Poet,' said Velody. ‘He was covered in the stuff. He half-drowned himself in the lake to get rid of it. Warlord and I helped him … it was a month ago.'

‘The lake should have cleansed it all,' Ashiol said impatiently. ‘Even if you got some on you …'

‘I saw webs like that, on my hands. Shadows, sometimes.' Velody stared at the dark, spreading pattern across the Duchessa's back. Her skin flushed with heat as she admitted it, finally. ‘Darkness out of the corner of my eye. I thought it was normal, that it was the animor inside me. But I've been seeing shadows for some time.'

‘You should have told us, Majesty,' Macready said in a pained voice. ‘That's not an everyday complaint.'

‘Why hasn't it just swallowed the Duchessa?' Crane broke in. ‘When — when the Captain died …' and he broke off.

‘He's right,' Kelpie said, her words coming out flat and hard. ‘Noxcrawl doesn't work like this, all slow and sinister. It just takes.'

Ashiol seized Velody's arms, gripping her cruelly between his hands. ‘What else, then? Why is this different?'

‘I don't know,' she said angrily. ‘I don't know what's important, I only know what you tell me. Let go!' But she did know. She had some idea now, at least. ‘Dhynar,' she admitted, all in a rush. ‘When I swallowed his tainted shade, I don't think he truly left me. Whatever he had twisted into, at the end. I kept hearing his voice, his laugh.' She didn't want to look into Ashiol's accusing eyes. ‘I just thought it was
normal
. I've always had strange dreams, and you told me that animor turns us into monsters. I thought it was part of the process.'

Ashiol stepped close to her, too close, his eyes roaming over her as if she was a slice of roast goat straight off the barbecue. He licked his lips, and Velody felt how dry her own were. She let him touch her, a brush of his palm over her arm, and then her shoulder, and then he leaned in as if he was going to bite out her throat.

She stood still, and let him.

His mouth stopped short of her collarbone, and she could feel his hot breath against her skin. Then she felt something else — the slow invasion of his animor sliding against hers. He was exploring inside her, and though the only contact was between his mouth and her throat, she could feel him everywhere.

Noxcrawl
, Ashiol said inside her head. Velody's body ached all over, where he wasn't touching her.
It was here, I can taste the trail of it. And you have the stink of Dhynar's shade all over you.

‘Charming,' she said aloud.

Ashiol took her hands, lacing his fingers between hers. ‘Here. It's all concentrated here. Velody, what did you do?'

She could deal with anything if he kept his voice out of her head. If they all did. ‘I worked,' she said, and felt her lips crack and tasted the iron tang of blood on them. ‘I sewed. It made the darkness go away.'

‘Ah,' said Ashiol. ‘And you never thought to ask where the darkness went?'

The dress, oh, that beautiful dress. Velody reached out with a strand of her own animor and touched it tentatively, tasting it as Ashiol had tasted her. Now that her power was alive instead of being pushed away, the taint was obvious. The Duchessa's dress positively reeked of spoiled animor, of the seething noxcrawl and the death of Dhynar. ‘Oh, saints,' she whispered. ‘Priest.'

Livilla turned to her at that, and all pretence at civilisation melted away. She curled back her lip and growled, her teeth sharpening as if she was going to shape herself into the wolf she was. ‘What?' she said.

‘I made a waistcoat,' confessed Velody. ‘I used it like
the Duchessa's dress, to make the shadows go away. I didn't
know
.'

‘Priest,' snarled Livilla. ‘You promised him the waistcoat that nox, when you made your oath to me. You think
Priest
killed my boys?'

‘I didn't say that,' Velody said quickly.

‘It's not Priest,' Ashiol cautioned her. ‘It's the sky. It's always the sky.'

‘Then let the sky stop me from plucking every feather from Priest's demmes in retribution,' said Livilla, and she unhooked her dress, letting it fall to the ground. She was naked underneath it, and she glowed.

Velody had to stop this, before it became a bloodbath. ‘No,' she commanded. ‘It is not your place to stop Priest, or to hurt his courtesi. This is not the time for vengeance.'

Livilla growled again. ‘There is always time for vengeance,' she said, and shaped herself into the wolf, running away through the gardens.

Velody stilled, forcing herself not to look at Ashiol as if he might have the answers. She had to be the one to provide answers. She was the Power and Majesty.

‘I suppose,' said Kelpie quietly, ‘we should thank the saints that there has been no massacre here in the Palazzo, too.'

The Duchessa moved, and they all flinched. ‘I like you,' she announced to Velody with an adoring smile, and laid her head on her shoulder. ‘You make such beautiful frocks.'

R
aoul the Seer was an odd fish. On the streets we'd have called him ‘touched' and left him to his own devices. In the Creature Court, he was everything. Ortheus (all hail the Power and Majesty) demanded that we treat him like some kind of precious flower. The Seer spent most of his time in the Angel Gardens, wandering around the overgrown weeds and herbs like it was some kind of paradise, talking to the dead.

I'd only been a sentinel for a few market-nines when I saw Raoul lose himself in the futures for the first time. He went from a quiet, mostly sensible exchange with Ortheus and Argentin to a full-on panic attack, babbling about everything he could see. Once he had run out of words, he ended up flat on his back, his whole body convulsing. Argentin leaned over him, murmuring, and it was only afterwards I realised what he had been doing — his hand pressed into Raoul's crotch, methodically bringing him off.

When the Seer gasped his release, the futures released him as well.

I'd known that the Court were all tramps and tarts, but that was the first time I'd seen how casual they were about frigging, like it was as ordinary a need as catching your breath.

Raoul liked shiny things. Beads and baubles, necklaces. The first bracelet I had ever owned was a gift from Tobin — his embarrassed way of thanking me for our awkward tumble. It was a thin, simple chain of silver and I treasured it because I had never had anything special like that. Only things I'd ever held before that glittered were stolen, and were on their way to be swapped for shilleins.

I wore my bracelet for three days before Raoul spotted it and put on that odd smile of his. Our Power and Majesty cleared his throat, and looked at me. Obeying Kings is what sentinels do.

I handed it over, and Raoul danced away happily with my bracelet gleaming on his wrist, along with the dozens of other pretties that he owned.

Raoul had been the Seer of the Creature Court for nine years. He used to be a clever fellow by all accounts, but consulting the futures for so long had left him simple in the head. Most of the time, anyway. When the futures hit him, or he delved deep into them at Ortheus's request, his voice took on a new timbre, an adult cadence. He became Ortheus's friend and equal in those moments, not his pet.

Nine years had done that to him. Next month I will have served the Court as Seer for ten.

One day I walked into the Haymarket to see Raoul standing on the metal railing. I think he had been waiting for an audience. Or maybe waiting for me. He swayed,
and I said nothing, too afraid that any word uttered by me would make him fall.

He didn't fall. He stepped into oblivion quite intentionally. The sound as he hit the concrete was sickening. I went to him, not sure what to do. He took several minutes to die, as I stood around and watched him breathe his last. Others came, and stared, and kept their distance. No one offered to share blood with him, to make it unhappen. As he choked and wheezed his way into death, my eye was caught by the gleam of silver, that one thin bracelet among so many baubles, the thing I hated him for.

The first thing I hated him for.

The Court looked at me oddly for days afterwards. I didn't know why. Witnessing death wasn't such a rare thing to any of us. The sentinels all but stopped speaking to me. Ashiol was unusually nice, letting me hang around and pester him instead of rolling his eyes or going off with Garnet and Lysandor like he usually did.

I had no idea what that son-of-a-bitch had done to me until it was too late. Simple-minded? That bloody Seer had known exactly what he was doing when he ruined my life.

This is the thing I never told anyone about Raoul's death: for days afterwards, my dreams were full of him, and not just images of him falling to his doom. I could hear his thoughts, a steady rattle in the back of my head. Sometimes I even thought I could hear other voices, other Seers, chattering away in there.

You understand why I kept this to myself.

 

The headaches were getting worse. Heliora could hardly sleep and when she did, the dreams dragged her out of sleep, gasping and sweating, her head full of the Lord and Court, and a bloody heap of corpses.

When she was awake, the voices in her head were louder than usual, drowning out everything else. The only thing that calmed her was the tea she had bargained from Poet. She had almost run her supply down to the last leaf.

Perhaps she wasn't going to die with Ashiol's hands around her neck, or beaten and abandoned in an alley by Poet. Perhaps she was just going to burn out. Seers had gone that way before, she knew their stories. If she didn't sleep soon …

Heliora was going to have to ask Poet a favour. Damn it.

She was practised at going unnoticed in the Arches. In her young days as a sentinel, it was just what you did. You kept your steps quick and quiet, choosing back streets, shadows and stillness. You picked a time when they would be sleeping. Morning was best. You avoided crossing the path with the bratlings of the Court or their overblown Lords and masters. It didn't make her feel any less safe to know that one of them was murdering the others — the Creature Court had never been a happy family.

She stood finally in front of the old grocer's shop in the Shambles, and knocked quickly before she could change her mind.

There were footsteps, and when the door finally opened, she was faced with Poet in a pair of silk pajamas, peering over his spectacles at her.

‘Bringing your messages of doom in person now, are you?'

‘I come in supplication,' Heliora said, not hiding the irritation in her voice.

He smiled delightedly. ‘Excellent. Will there be bowing?'

‘No.'

‘Sexual favours?'

‘Definitely not.'

‘Shame, you'd look good on your knees.'

She brushed past him to the stairs. ‘With a charming patter like that … it's a good thing you're an actor of some repute, or you'd never get laid.'

‘Don't go up there,' Poet said suddenly.

Heliora turned, curious. ‘You don't want me here?'

‘You were not invited inside.'

She tilted her head at him. Usually he had at least the façade of manners. ‘What is it you don't want me to see?'

An impatient voice came from above. ‘Master, you're not supposed to open your own door …'

Heliora caught a flash of a familiar face and a shock of white hair before Poet waved the courteso away with an impatient gesture. ‘Lennoc,' she breathed. ‘Saints, you got the brighthounds.'

Dhynar had four courtesi when he died. The Creature Court — or Ashiol, at least — suspected all four had been taken by Warlord. But they were here. ‘You have been encouraging rumours that Warlord is starting some kind of mad rebellion with seven courtesi under his belt. Do you have the darkhounds and the cats too?'

‘Upstairs,' Poet said grimly. ‘Now.'

Heliora shot him a mocking look but proceeded up to the intense warmth of his sitting room. ‘Should I be worried that you're so keen to make the others fear Warlord, while you build your own power base? Are we talking actual machinations here?'

Saints, was he the killer? Did it even matter to her if he was?

‘Sweet as ever, Seer,' drawled Poet. ‘This supplication thing really isn't working out for you.'

‘It doesn't come easily,' she admitted, turning to face him. Now was as good a time as any to make her request. ‘I need more tea.'

Poet laughed as if that was the last thing he had expected her to say. ‘That's why you came to me? Addict.'

‘Apparently,' she conceded. ‘It's the only thing that helps me sleep. The dreams are … bad.' The headaches too, though she wasn't going to admit that particular weakness to him. He might be a murderer, but he was also her salvation.

‘Tea's no good for that,' Poet said. ‘Drink too much and it will have the opposite effect — keep your mind awake too late.'

Damn it, of course it had been too easy a solution, once she got past the humiliation of begging for what she wanted. Heliora slumped her shoulders, sinking into his couch. She had slept soundly enough here once before. It might be the safest place in the Arches, since Poet was unlikely to slaughter anyone where their blood might spatter his nice furniture.

Lack of sleep had obviously rendered her insane.

‘Don't lose heart, petal,' Poet said, sounding amused at her. ‘I have more than one interesting substance to share with you.' A shelf above his stove yielded a small glass vial. ‘A couple of drops of this in your evening milk will have you deep under for a whole nox — or day, if you prefer.'

Heliora looked at him, resisting the urge to snatch. ‘What is it?'

‘Do you really care? Its name is something long and complicated in Zafiran. On the street they call it oblivion.'

‘Sounds like the kind of potion that's hard to give up,' she said warily.

Poet shrugged. ‘What do you care? You'll be dead by Saturnalia. Hardly time to form a habit.'

His words were a knife to the gut, but it was a fair point. ‘What do I have to do for it?'

Putting herself in his hands — she hated that. But Heliora had known when she came here she would be trading favours with him. She just hadn't known how great a favour … At least she had something over on him. ‘I take it keeping quiet about your brighthound is worth something?' she offered.

‘Oh, Heliora,' Poet breathed. ‘You're going to have to come up with something better than that.' He held the vial tantalisingly out of reach. ‘Lucky for you, the first taste is free.'

 

Heliora was drowning. Every time she closed her eyes, she found herself in the Lake of Follies, fighting against the futures until her mouth and lungs bubbled up with water and she slid down underneath. The water was layered with rose petals so thick that no light shone through from above. The blackness was terrifying and inviting.

It was over. There was something comforting about it being over.

Heliora awoke, not for the first time, on Poet's couch, the taste of lake water and rose petals still cloying her mouth. She heard movement and the clink of a spoon against a cup. When she arched her neck up to see who was there, she recognised another of Dhynar's former followers. Shade, the darkhound courteso.

‘Good morning, Seer,' Shade said politely, and presented her with a cup. ‘My Lord said you might like this when you awoke.'

She took the tea, inhaling its comforting fragrance. ‘Thank you. How long did I sleep?'

‘Too long,' said Shade.

The oblivion worked, then. She would have to keep up the supply, no matter what it cost her. Dreams of drowning were better than the state of living death she had been walking through in recent days.

The tea was too hot, but Heliora sipped it anyway, enjoying the way it burned tartly against her lips. ‘Why him?' she asked. Perhaps inappropriate, but the question had been on her mind since she first saw that Poet had taken in Dhynar's former courtesi. ‘It's not just the Lord who gets in first, or the one with the strongest arm. Why did you and Lennoc choose to come to Poet, of all of them?'

He would be their third master. A better question might be why they had chosen the boy Dhynar as their second after Lief's death. Shade and Lennoc were older, wiser, more accustomed to sanity.

‘He has a sweet voice, and he promised many things,' said Shade, but there was a flatness to his words that suggested he was not being entirely truthful.

‘Oh, he has a sweet voice all right,' Heliora agreed ruefully. What was she doing here? Putting herself in Poet's hands again. She was as bad as these courtesi, choosing the wrong master. At least Ashiol made sense to her. Poet was a blank page. ‘Are you sure you can pay his price?'

‘I don't think I'll pay as high a price as you, demoiselle Seer,' Shade said politely, then turned and left the room, leaving Hel staring after him.

Damn. He probably had a point.

She was hungry in a way she rarely was, her stomach clawing at her. She needed something. She rose and
went to Poet's stove, finding nothing but the warm kettle. No food smells. What did they live on down here, moss and mushrooms?

Obviously Poet liked his meat fresh-caught and still wriggling, but that was no help to her. Heliora opened a cupboard and found a few apples. She took one and bit into it — still a little too green, it burst sharply on her burnt tongue.

The door opened and she jumped as Poet came inside. Ridiculous, to feel guilty for taking an apple without asking. Still, he smiled at her as if he planned to eat her for supper. Her caution was hardly unwarranted.

‘Thank you for the tea,' she said, taking another bite defiantly.

Amusement flickered over Poet's stupid, schoolboy, open face. How did he manage to look so wholesome and innocent? Those ridiculous spectacles of his. Heliora had to keep reminding herself that he was a monster.

Had he killed those two boys? Did she care?

‘Did you sleep well?' Poet asked. Oh, so polite.

‘Yes. You were right about the oblivion.' Heliora took another bite of the apple, sucking down the sour juices, not wanting to stop or give him any sign of how unsettled she was.

‘You will be wanting more, then?'

‘Yes,' Heliora said fast, before she could come to her senses. ‘We have not yet discussed payment.'

‘Ah, there's the problem,' Poet said with a smile that was almost sad. ‘I have no needs you can provide.'

Fear stabbed her — the thought that he had been teasing, that he wouldn't allow her any further doses. She wouldn't show him that fear, though. ‘Please,' she
scoffed. ‘You're the same as the rest of them. You need food, sex, power. You're not special, Poet.'