The Shattered City (24 page)

She did not like the chill tone of his voice. ‘But all this —'

‘It's not usually a pretty play,' he said hoarsely. ‘It's death and power and rivalries, and …' He broke off, as if the very sight before them was alien to him. Wasn't
Isangell supposed to be the one who felt out of place here? ‘Your mother fears me for good reason. You'd be better off if I kept away.'

‘I don't believe that,' she said, determined to prove her loyalty to him.

‘You were too young to remember last time. Before I went away.'

‘I wasn't a child!' She had been fourteen. Ashiol was older and mysterious and the grown-ups were always worried about him, but he was charming and he danced with Isangell and her friends at parties, when he turned up. Then one day the grown-ups weren't just worried about Ashiol any more, they were afraid for him, and he was locked away in his rooms. Then he was gone — back to Aunt Augusta and Diamagne — and Isangell didn't see him again for five years. ‘You were sick,' she said uncertainly. ‘And they sent you away.'

He looked so bleak. ‘Is that what they told you?'

Isangell was a demoiselle of the world now. She could absorb new information. ‘Was it the drink?'

‘It was the Creature Court.' Ashiol was staring at the arena, but Isangell didn't care what the latest act was. She was watching him. ‘I lost it all. Purpose, power, love. I tried to hang myself. Made a botch of trying to fall on a sword. I would have done anything to make it stop.'

Isangell's hands were curled so tightly into the basket that she could feel the wicker biting into her palms. It hurt, but she did not care. ‘But you didn't succeed.'

‘No. I did not succeed.'

‘And now?'

Ashiol turned to look at her, really look at her, and his smile lit up the world. ‘And now I have something to live for again.'

V
elody's skin felt tight all over. Poet had raided the entire backstage of the Vittorina Royale to clothe the Court for this production. Her own role in the performance was to be mercifully brief, which was for the best considering she had to spend so much time getting everyone else in the right place.

She wore a scarlet frock that smelled of cigar smoke and brandy and mothballs. She also wore a high crown made from bamboo and silver paint, and (against her better judgement) a long, fair wig made from silk and horsehair. It scratched horribly.

Impersonating the Duchessa was a step too close to impertinence for Velody's comfort, but Poet had insisted. The ‘sacrifice of the Duc' was essential to any traditional circus, and if ever tradition had been important, it was today.

As Poet rightly said, if anyone should play the
Duchessa in this scenario, it should be Velody. She still felt uneasy about it.

Readying herself, she rounded the billowing corner of the tents they were using as dressing rooms, and came upon Poet. He was sitting on a stool by himself, gazing into what looked like a small compact mirror. As Velody stepped closer, she saw that it was the broken glass of a pocket watch.

How odd. She had never seen such an object in Aufleur — there was too much superstition about clockwork. The proctor of the Vittorine had once tried to replace the waterclock in the Piazza Nautilia with one made of clockwork, and the people had risen up against it, claiming it was ill-fortune.

A pocket watch, though. Her grandfather in Tierce had owned one like that — on a gleaming brass chain. She had not remembered it until that moment. Sage, too — there was a memory about her brother Sage and clocks, but she could not hold on to it. ‘Poet,' she said now. ‘I'm ready.'

He flicked the watch closed and put it away in a pocket. That odd smile was back on his face — the one that said he had happy secrets. ‘Stage fright?' he teased, pulling out the cosmetick pens to wipe a line of bright scarlet across Velody's mouth.

‘Hardly,' she said, which was not entirely true. ‘You seem to be having fun.'

‘Well, it's inspiring, all this Creature Court camaraderie. It's giving me all sorts of ideas for the new season of the Mermaid Revue.'

‘Glad it's proved useful,' she said dryly.

There was a full-length mirror beside them, set up so that each performer could check their costume before
they went out onto the stage. Velody looked at their shared reflection, and Poet's eyes flicked over hers before he straightened her hem. ‘You'll do,' he said.

She moved away from the dressing tents. When she looked back, she saw that he was gazing into that mirror, as if he was expecting to see someone other than himself staring back.

Crane passed Velody as he came off stage. ‘You look terrible as a blonde,' he said.

‘That's what they tell me,' she replied, straightening her wig. Just a few more acts and it would be her turn to go on, and this whole sorry mess would be over.

Ritual is important
, she reminded herself every time she started to feel silly.
Ritual is everything.
After all, this had been her idea.

It would be over soon.

 

Ashiol could barely tell who was who beneath the masks — the arena was full of false saints and devils in bright costumes. There were not as many mimes, tumblers or dancers as usual at these events, but that was hardly surprising. The Creature Court had to play to its strengths.

One particularly garish scarlet devil proved his identity by bursting into a flock of bats, his costume falling empty to the sands.

Isangell said nothing, sitting there with her eyes on the arena and her hands folded tightly around the basket of flowers in her lap. The silence between them was palpable after his revelations. Still, it was best she knew. He should have told her long ago, back when she first asked him to come back to the city.

Still. If he had never come back, he would not have
his power again, would not have a place in the Court. They might not have Velody as Power and Majesty, and hope for the future. All those things.

The sky over the Killing Ground was a paler blue than usual. That was wrong, so many kinds of wrong. It was always day in the Killing Ground; it never changed.

Heliora, still seated below him with Rhian and Delphine, turned and looked directly at Ashiol. Her face was grim.

Oh, fuck. It wasn't going to work. They were wasting their time. The sky was going to throw everything it had at them this nox, and the city was not going to heal.

 

Heliora wanted to scream. It had been almost fun at first, watching the Creature Court perform an elaborate pantomime of costumes and morbid humour. She could feel how much they were enjoying themselves. They spent their whole lives in the shadows and the nox; how could they not relish a chance to play themselves in front of an audience, however select?

But it wasn't going to work. She could feel tight pressure building up in her ears. A storm was coming, and not the kind of storm they were used to.

We're coming, and you cannot stop us. The dust will fall.

Poet sang an operatic ballad of clowns and dead demmes, surrounded by a cabaret of grinning devils and horrified saints. It was grotesque and brilliant, and Heliora could not stand to look at him. She knew too much about him now, knew why he still clung to the theatre even though the Court had taken hold of him so early.

His broken childhood and fractured teen years were piled up in her head, along with the voices of Seers past,
and the futures that were always digging at her for a way through. It was so damned noisy inside her head.
We are dust. You cannot stop us.

The climax of the gruesome pantomime came when a false Duchessa stepped out from behind the tent cloths, artificial golden hair blowing in the breeze that whipped through the arena.

That wasn't right at all. There was not supposed to be wind here. This was the Killing Ground. The sacred space of sentinels. Nothing moved here, nothing lived. Sand and sunshine and emptiness were all it had to offer.

A retinue of sentinels gathered around the false Duchessa. Not Macready or Kelpie or Crane, but sentinels long dead, so pale and translucent that Heliora could not bear to look at their faces.

Perhaps it was they who stirred Velody's cornsilk wig and the hem of her gown. Ghosts all.

 

‘I always hated this part,' Isangell confided to Ashiol. ‘They would bring in some ageing clown playing Grandpapa, and the fellow couldn't resist playing it for cheap laughs. When Grandmama was Regenta, I swear they brought in the same man in a padded dress.'

Ashiol had forgotten about the sacrifice of the Duc. This wasn't right. Even play-acting at killing Velody made his skin go cold. ‘Poet,' he muttered beneath his breath. ‘You go too far.'

 

Macready was convinced this was madness, so it was. A fine day indeed when they had to resort to this kind of pageantry. Were their lives not colourful enough?

He had played the game at Velody's behest, dispatching
animals with false kills when called upon (though the lad Crane made a better show of it; the young cove was relishing his chance to playact). This was too much, though.

It didn't fecking matter that steel couldn't hurt those of the Creature Court when they were in their full power. Macready was a soldier, and using real blades for a circus went against everything he had been trained for.

‘Aim for the heart,' Poet informed him with a twist of his mouth that suggested he was enjoying this all far too much. ‘The lack of blood is a shame, but Velody refused to have her throat bitten out in public, bless her.'

Macready wanted to refuse to do this, but he didn't trust any of the rest of them to do it properly if he walked away.

Duty was a bitch, some days.

 

The entire Creature Court was on show, some as animals, some as people. Heliora chewed her lip as Velody-as-the-Duchessa made her slow promenade around the circle of sand and then stood in the centre, surrounded by dead sentinels, ready for the slaughter.

It was a fine ritual, but it wasn't ritual enough. It wasn't real enough.

‘It's getting dark,' Rhian said in a low voice, wrapping her shawl more closely around herself.

‘No,' said Heliora. ‘This is the Killing Ground. The sun never goes down here. It's always daylight.' But Rhian was right. The colour was draining out of the sky.

Heliora looked down to the arena where Velody stood waiting for her mock execution. Macready was there now, his steel sword bared and ready for the final blow.
‘Oh, saints, devils, frig it.' She had seen none of this. Surely all the rules of the Creature Court and sentinel history being broken was worthy of a vision or two. Had the Oblivion dulled her powers so much?

Macready slid the steel sword harshly between Velody's ribs, a killing thrust if ever there was one, and darkness fell.

 

Velody did not feel the bite of steel as Macready ran his sword into her, just the usual numbness of metal ignoring the reality of her body. But then the Killing Ground went black, and her chest burned bright and fierce. ‘Oh, saints,' she gasped, and fell to her knees with the shock of it. ‘Mac!'

‘What, Velody?' His hand still on the blade made it move inside her and she cried out.

She felt Macready move nearer, and another jolt of the sword. ‘It's stuck. Are you — feck, you're bleeding.'

Velody choked as blood filled her mouth. It was all so fast. The pain shot through her body. She could feel his hand shaking on the hilt, and she was cold all over. ‘Don't move the blade,' she gasped. ‘I'll bleed out faster.'

Everyone around them was noisy, protesting the darkness, but none of the Lords and Court had realised Mac and Velody's predicament.

‘Can you shape?' he asked.

‘I don't think so, not if steel cuts me …'

‘Try it, for devil's sake.' Macready was all but yelling at her, and every time his hand shook, the pain burst through her senses all over again.

Velody closed her eyes, reaching past the pain and the reality of the sword hard and scraping inside her body,
and shaped herself. Becoming the mice had become so natural to her now, it was like breathing. She scattered across the sand, a horde of little brown creatures, all breathing, none of them bleeding. Safe.

It hit her like a skybolt, crashing into her hundreds of little minds and overwhelming her completely. In that moment, she saw not just the futures, stretching out in many different flickering directions like ribbons on a parade float, she also saw one very particular future, glowing like a beacon.

Velody watched with her many beady little eyes, fascinated by the vision. So that was it. That was how it had to be.

That was how it ended.

When she came back to herself she was lying on the sand, naked and gasping and Velody again. The sun was bright, blazing down on her in that sinister Killing Ground way. Velody rolled and found the gown she had been wearing as the false Duchessa. She stared at the fabric in her hands for a moment, and then someone was helping her slide it over her head. She gazed at Macready, who looked devasted.

‘I'm all right,' she told him, grasping his hands. ‘Really. No damage. I need Heliora. Where is our Seer?'

‘Hel!' Macready yelled, too loudly, and Heliora ran forward from the tiered seats.

The Seer looked smaller than Velody remembered her. That might have something to do with Ashiol coming up behind her, tall and glowering in that dark, threatening way that Velody recognised as concern. ‘I'm here, Majesty,' said Heliora.

‘How do you do this every day?' Velody gasped. ‘My head feels like it's going to break apart like a melon.'

‘Are you in one piece?' Ashiol asked, eyes roaming all over her. He leaned in, as if perhaps he could smell whether she was hurt or not. ‘We're going to need you in the sky.'

‘Did it work?' Macready blurted. ‘Will the city heal now?'

‘I have no idea,' said Ashiol. ‘We haven't closed the games yet. Hel?'

The Seer shook her head once. ‘I can't tell. I can't see anything, Ash.' The panic in her voice was evident.

I saw it
. Velody had no idea why she had not spoken the words aloud, but … she had seen the answer to that question, and so much more. She had seen everything. She knew what she had to do. For once, she wasn't hovering on the outer edge of the Creature Court, lost in the sea of tradition and hidden knowledge and rules no one had told her about. She could finally be Power and Majesty, could finally embrace what that meant.

Had this happened to Garnet? Had he known?

Ashiol was talking, something about how they were going to have to trust that the circus had restored something to the city. ‘Velody bled all over the sand; we shouldn't need to bother cutting a lamb's throat. Isangell, do it now!'

The Duchessa was speaking then, old rote words flung to every edge of the arena, and Velody felt it; she could feel the city closing in upon itself, the unbearable rightness of the sacrifice and the festival, and everything being as it should be.

‘That's it,' she whispered. ‘We did it.'

‘You did it,' Ashiol said, giving her an odd look, and then he drew her to her feet and kissed her. It was a
gentle kiss, not their usual lunging and grabbing, and when it was done, her blood was all over his shirt.

Ashiol turned, then. ‘Delphine, Rhian, can you escort the Duchessa back to the Palazzo?'

‘They are not yours to order, Ashiol,' Velody said, not quite letting go of him. ‘They are not part of this.'

‘You shouldn't have invited them then,' he snapped, threading his fingers impatiently through his hair. She wanted to push his hands away, and tidy him up.

‘We'll do it,' said Delphine. ‘Look after yourself, Velody,' she added in a rush, as if embarrassed. Then she turned and gave the Duchessa a small curtsey. ‘We haven't formally met, but I believe I'm your new private secretary.'