The Shattered City (36 page)

Why would she look for him? Ashiol could be Power and Majesty. She knew he could. He was the one who had taught her. He was perfectly capable of accepting his place. Garnet was wrong. He had a nerve, suggesting that Ashiol was unstable, or that he couldn't be trusted. Look what he himself had done with all that power.

Once she gave up on Garnet, Velody spent most of her time lying on the bed in her old room, gazing into the polished bronze hand-mirror that had been her grandmother's and thinking of home. When she finally saw a part of Aufleur that was familiar to her, it was nothing like what she wanted to see.

She saw Ashiol raving, Delphine crying, Rhian on the point of collapse, the sentinels bleeding, falling, dying. She didn't know if it was the past, present or future, but she knew now what she didn't want.

Garnet was right. Velody had to go back. There was no way she could do it without him, without his belief in how it could be done. She needed him for her very survival.

He still did not return.

 

Velody searched the city for Garnet. The Palazzo first, then other buildings in areas where she had seen him in the past. She returned to the baths regularly and saw no sign he had been there. She scoured the streets for more broken glass.

(He could be gone, really gone; she might be alone here.)

It was impossible. He would not be found until he wanted to be found.

Finally Velody returned to her mother's bakery, inhaling the dust and absence of bread as she entered, and found Garnet lying wanly on her sister's bed.

She smacked him on the shoulder, and the cold burned all the way up her skin. ‘Is this your idea of fighting for Aufleur?' she demanded.

Garnet opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘You judge me for giving up? I've been fighting my whole fucking life for Aufleur. You've had a few months of it, and you claim to be the expert.'

‘I would have had longer if you had let me,' she hissed. ‘If you hadn't stolen my animor when I was a child.'

‘Why yes, you would,' he said cynically. ‘Maybe then you'd be as tired as I am. This is it, Velody. You're on your own.' His skin was practically translucent, and his voice didn't sound like him any more.

‘You can't just give up,' she said, but it sounded pathetic, like begging the sky not to fall.

‘Of course I can. I'm the selfish one, remember? You're the saint.'

She opened her mouth to snap at him not to call her that, but Garnet's eyes were closed. He was still — well, not breathing, neither of them breathed here — but still present, even as he faded in and out of colour.

Velody was not going to wait around and watch him fade away. She went out of the bakery, slamming the door behind her. She began to walk, just for the sensation of doing something, of being here instead of fading into nothingness like everyone else.

She was so angry at Garnet she could spit. Where was that fire and venom that had taken control of the Court?
Where was the man who had conquered Ashiol and stolen his powers? Seven hells, she would settle for the boy who had kissed her on a balcony twelve years ago — he at least had an ounce of daring in him.

This Garnet would let himself disappear into the sky, and she hated him for it.

As she stood there, not knowing what to do next, Velody heard a breath of a sound across the silent, empty city. She stood still and listened, acutely aware of how silent she could now be without breath in her lungs or blood in her veins.

She thought she had lost it, but then it came back, again and again. Music. It was music. Not Garnet this time. Something else.

Velody followed the tune along the docks, then up the slope to the familiar temple that she remembered so clearly from her childhood. The temple of the Market Saints. It was a smaller, more homely, temple than its equivalent in Aufleur, but she knew now why she had always felt so safe when she and Rhian and Delphine went to Aufleur's temple to make their sacrifices.

The grand, carved doors at the front of the temple did not open — they were steam-powered, she remembered, and there was no water here, so no steam.

(Even the baths where she had first met Garnet were empty now.)

She had to walk around and let herself into the temple by the back way. The music was louder in here. Velody could hear the voices, children's voices singing. Even a word or two were familiar.

Cats and mice, creatures that crawl …

There was no fire, of course. A temple should have flames, but there was nothing in the public hearth but
old ashes and fragments of bone or burnt cloth. Velody circled the stone pillars of the inner sanctum, looking at each of the scarlet murals she remembered from her childhood. Finally, she stopped to sink her fingers into the dry ash.

Ferax, bat, come one, come all.

Sensations of any kind were a luxury in this strange and empty version of Tierce. There was no heat in the ashes, but they felt scratchy and soft against her palms. Velody pulled her hands out and drew grey smudgy lines up and down her arms, then across her cheekbones, nose and forehead.

As nox grows dark, we come, we feast …

Velody could not say whom she was mourning with this ritual. Not Garnet, who deserved no pity from her. Not herself — she was still here, still present in her mind and body, though neither of them felt overly familiar any more.

She combed her fingers through her dark hair, streaking it with ash, and then plunged her hands into the grate again.

This time she felt something. Her palm brushed against a nub and she seized the object, pulling it out and blowing the ashes from it.

Dance with the cabaret of beasts …

It was grey and charred and old and stale, but as Velody scratched at it with her nails she saw dry crumbs the colour of gold. When she brought it close to her face and inhaled, she almost smelled it.

A honey cake, thrown into the fire for sacrifice.

 

Velody walked back to the bakery, the stale and ash-covered honey cake pressed into the folds of her silk
skirt. The song had faded, but when she concentrated she could hear snatches of it in the still air. She walked so fast that she could almost hear her heart beating, could almost feel the rasp of cold air in her lungs.

(Almost, almost.)

There was no food in this city. Hardly surprising, as they had no need to eat. The bakery was empty of flour or grain or yeasts or sugars. It had all faded away as surely as the people of Tierce had faded away.

Why had it faded? If they had no need of food, why should it not be here, lying around as pointlessly as the clothes or the blankets? Velody opened the door of the bakery with a loud rattle, and took the stairs as fast as she could. ‘Garnet!'

Was she too late?

(Did she want to be too late?)

Velody hurried into the room she had shared with her sisters, and he was there, the outline of him still grey and visible on the bed. She flung herself at him, straddling his narrow chest with a leg flung on either side of him. ‘You can't go yet,' she insisted. ‘Not if there's a way we can be real enough to fight this.'

She drew out the honey cake and broke it in half. Crumbs and ashes fell on to Garnet's unmoving face.

Velody bounced impatiently. She could feel the ridges of his ribs beneath her. He was here, and he was real. No excuses. ‘Open your eyes, damn you. Or you're exactly the coward Ashiol always said you were.'

Garnet's eyes came open, and she shoved half the honey cake to his mouth, even as she brought the other half to her own.

It was like eating grit and woodshavings. The cake was so dry that it scraped her mouth and tongue, and
she could barely swallow. She had not eaten or drunk a thing since she came to this place.

(Water, they had taken most of the water too, whomever had brought them to this place. She had no doubt that it meant something. Water was life, wasn't it? So many of Aufleur's rituals had been about blood, water, fire, food.)

Garnet coughed, and struggled to swallow. ‘You're crazy.'

‘I must be, since I'm trying to save your life,' Velody said, cramming more of the stale cake into her mouth, forcing herself to chew and swallow. She felt different. Almost alive.

Garnet's eyes flashed and he took another bite of the cake, chewing slowly, licking crumbs from his lips.

Velody thought that she actually could hear her heart beating this time. Or maybe it was his heart. Garnet ate obediently, even the parts of the cake that were covered in ash, and then he tipped his head up to lick Velody's fingers clean. Velody stared down at him, and he gave her a lazy look. He wasn't grey any more, or translucent. He looked like Garnet.

He sat up in a hurry and she jolted, realising too late that she was sitting in his lap. Garnet smiled, and for the first time Velody seriously imagined what he looked like in his Creature form, with the pointed teeth of a gattopardo. ‘You have no idea what you have done,' he said in a low voice.

‘Don't make me regret it,' she warned, but barely got the sentence out before he pounced, mouth dry on hers at first, and then warm and wet.

Velody kissed him back. Never mind that this was Garnet, the bright-eyed boy who had been in her
dreams since she was fourteen (damn him). Never mind that this was the tyrant who had taken Macready's finger and Ashiol's heart, who had made the Creature Court so fearful.

To feel anything for the first time in so long was amazing, and her body wanted more of it. They kissed messily, hands touching each other everywhere, and yes: there was blood in her veins, saliva in her mouth. Her breasts ached, her stomach twisted up in cramps, her feet began to hurt from all the walking she had done today.

‘You've undone me,' Garnet breathed. ‘I was ready to let go.'

‘I need you,' Velody told him. ‘We're going to get back there, and I can't do it alone.'

‘Ashiol will hate you forever,' he said with a tight smile.

‘I'll risk it.'

Garnet kissed her again, and Velody's blood cried out for him. Oh, yes. Heat sparked between them in the places where their skin touched.

They felt it in the same moment. Garnet looked at her, eyes wide in triumph and exultation. Velody mirrored it right back at him. Whole, they were whole.

Animor, pulsing through their veins, better than food or blood or sex. The essence of everything.

Velody exploded into little brown mice, scampering across the bed and floor and walls. Paws and tails and fur and oh, it was glorious. She wanted to run forever, to climb and bite and fly.

Finally she returned to herself, naked and gasping for breath (breathing, she was breathing). She sat on the floor, leaning back against the bed, and once the sheer novelty of breathing had worn off, she saw that he was watching her, and that he was not Garnet any more.

The gattopardo crouched on one of the other beds, his tail swinging slowly back and forth. A large, spotted cat with eyes like liquid amber. Velody found herself lost in his gaze, almost hypnotised by that deep colour. He stood and stretched, then stepped down towards her with an easy gait. Did wild animals swagger? This one did.

Velody stayed perfectly still as the gattopardo crossed the floor and placed one paw on her thigh. She braced herself for the impact of claws, but he was gentle. A second paw followed the first, and the gattopardo nestled his face against the heat of her body.

She should move. She really should move because he was licking her now, that rough scarlet tongue lapping its way over her stomach, up to her breasts. Velody gasped once as the gattopardo grazed her nipple with that tongue, hot and scratchy.

She took hold of him by the sides of his neck, dragging the large powerful cat face up to hers. ‘Change,' she commanded. ‘Now.'

The gattopardo smiled with all of his teeth, and then he shaped himself back into Garnet, mortal and lean and every bit as naked as Velody.

She was still holding his face in her hands, and dragged him in to kiss her, generating that heat again. Her heart beat louder in her head. Her pulse sped up. Oh, yes. She could feel her animor racing to every inch of her body. What Ashiol had said about sex and the Creature Court was, it seemed, entirely accurate.

The song was back, filling her ears. Velody knew it now, an old Bestialia rhyme, though the voices and beats of the music gave it more the air of a musette number. It felt real, as if it was calling her home.

Everything was real.

Garnet growled against Velody's mouth and pressed her more firmly against the bed. She could feel every plane of his body, every muscle against her softness, the hardness of his cock pressing urgently against her thigh.

Velody let out a sound, wanting him.

Garnet pulled his mouth from hers and kissed down her throat, leaving sucking bites there, and across her breasts. She writhed under his touch, letting him play, revelling in the fact that this was her body, it was here and real and no one was fading into the sky.

Not today.

He mapped out her body with his tongue and teeth. Velody rolled over, arms braced against the bed, and felt him cover her body with his from behind, teeth grazing her neck, shoulders, spine. His fingernails traced the softness of her stomach, dug more fiercely into her hipbones, and finally parted her legs.

Velody cried out once as he thrust into her from behind. She was so wet by now that he slid in easily, long and hard, filling her entirely. She pushed back against him, and he fucked her with the ruthless efficiency of the animal he was.

The animals they both were.

Her power lit up inside her body like a temple fire, the dry honey cake churning in her stomach, and it didn't matter that they were trapped in an empty city without even ghosts to show them the way home.

They had this. Blood and animor and sex and life. It would bring them home.

T
hey talked for hours, well into the morning. Ashiol lay on the couch and Heliora sat beside him, just out of reach, her eyes steady on his. He told her everything; most of it she had heard before, but it tumbled out as he tried to make sense of it all. Losing her, losing Velody, losing Garnet, losing himself.

The world was new. Ashiol didn't know if he should take the potions or not. He didn't know if it would make a difference. He sure as hells didn't know if he could make it as Power and Majesty.

‘I always thought you could,' said Hel. ‘You were the one who wanted to run and hide. Everyone else believed in you.'

Ashiol hadn't thought of it that way. ‘Don't you think it will break me?'

‘It breaks us all, sooner or later. I think I broke a long time ago, and it's only starting to make sense to me now.'

‘But it will make sense? Eventually?'

‘I hope so. Sometimes hope is all we have.'

Ashiol rolled the vials around his hand. ‘If I take these, will you disappear?'

‘Try it,' Hel suggested.

He swallowed both potion doses, then the three sticky green pills. Nothing seemed to happen straightaway, but when he tried to move, his hands felt slower than usual. It took him a long time to make it to the bed, and once he was there it was pretty clear he wouldn't be going anywhere for some time. ‘Stay with me,' he said, panicked when he couldn't see her.

‘I'm here,' said Hel, stepping into his line of sight again. ‘I'll stay as long as I can.'

 

Ashiol dreamed of mirrors, of broken glass and singing children who blinked bright-eyed behind animal masks. He woke with a dry, rasping throat, and the first thing he saw was Heliora. The old Hel would have curled up in that fancy chair beside his bed, bare feet tucked under her. Death had brought a new sense of gravity to her. She sat straight-backed, holding her body as if poised to flee at any moment. Her eyes were on him as he awoke.

‘You're still here,' he said, not quite believing it.

‘Someone has to be,' she said, hands folded oddly in her lap.

‘I thought I made you go away.' His voice cracked a little. ‘Don't leave me again.'

She looked confused and hesitant. Was it wrong to tell a ghost they were dead? Would it make her vanish? He was desperate to hold on to her, to make her stay. Ashiol reached out his hand, and she took it. ‘I should have saved you, Hel,' he whispered.

She let out a breath in a heavy sigh. ‘Oh, Ashiol,' she said, and it was wrong, all wrong, because why did she sound sorry for him? Was he so pathetic that even a dead demme took pity on him?

The outer door clicked closed and one of Isangell's mousy maidservants came into the rooms. Ashiol could hear her bustling around, tidying and primping the sitting room. He looked at Hel, wanting to say so much more, but it was important now that he pretended to be sane. The maids were spying on him for Isangell, obviously, and she would give everything she knew to Macready.

He had to hide Hel from them all, or they would find a new mix of potions that really would make her go away.

The maid entered — he knew her by sight; there were only a few whom Isangell trusted with his care. In truth it was probably more likely that only a few were willing to enter the rooms of the mad Ducomte.

‘Coffee, seigneur?' she asked.

Ashiol nodded abruptly. It had become habit not to speak to them. Anything he said would be taken back to the precious Duchessa, and that might be the last straw, the piece of evidence she used against him. Animor or not, being in this place made him so fucking powerless.

The maid brought in a tray, and poured coffee silently into a fine cup. She knew not to add honey or spices to it, so she must have served him before. She met his gaze briefly as she handed him the cup. ‘And for the demoiselle?'

Ashiol stared at her. ‘What did you say?'

The maid flicked her eyes in the direction of Hel, and then stepped back, made nervous by the tone of his voice. ‘I meant no offence, seigneur.'

‘Thank you, no,' said Heliora, speaking clearly.

The maid nodded, bobbed her head again, and fled the room.

Ashiol's hand was shaking so hard he barely got the rattling cup to his dresser in time. ‘She can see you?'

Hel looked uneasy. ‘There's something I have to tell you.'

But he was up and out of bed, kneeling at her feet. He laid his hands on one knee, and then the other. She was warm. ‘You're really here.'

‘I know it pleases you to think so —'

‘She saw you.' Ashiol pulled her to the ground in one swift tug, pinning her body to the chair with his own. ‘Do you know what it's been like? I can't taste food in my mouth, I can't set foot outside these fucking walls without thinking I'm going to die, but every day I stay trapped in here makes me feel like I have to scrape my skin off just to keep breathing. I don't feel real in my skin, I'm lost, and you're dead, you're dead …'

Hel let out half a sob and pressed her mouth to his. He kissed her, and she tasted raw and warm and wrong; not like his Hel at all. But she wasn't cold — that was the main thing.

There were tears on her face. ‘I have to go,' she gasped. ‘Macready will be here soon.'

‘I don't give a frig about Macready,' said Ashiol, hands in her short hair, gripping her tightly. ‘I need you.'

‘Not me,' she whispered, but he kissed her roughly, drowning out anything she had to say. She was dead, after all. What were the chances it was something he would want to hear?

They took it slow. Hands and mouths and heat; so much heat Ashiol couldn't believe it. He laughed at one
point, because if he was going to frig a dead demme Tasha would be furious it wasn't her, but he got tangled up trying to explain the joke and Hel kissed him so sweetly to shut him up that he stopped talking and let himself fall into her.

Death smelled like roses, it seemed, or maybe he was just getting sentimental in his insanity. Hel grasped him as he slid into her, and he swallowed her moans into his own mouth.

Finally they were sated, their bodies pressed together under the sheets, and only then he thought to wonder if the maid had left, or if she was still plumping pillows in the other room, closing her ears to their cries.

‘You still haven't disappeared,' he said, mouth busy on her shoulder. She wasn't cold. Shouldn't she be cold? ‘Fine ghost you are. Anyone would think you wanted to stay.'

Hel half-turned under him, her fingers sliding through his hair. ‘Ashiol, I have to tell you …' She sounded sad.

The door opened and Macready stood there, startled and angry. ‘What the feck —' he demanded.

‘Get out of here,' Ashiol growled. ‘This is none of your business.'

‘Like hells it isn't,' Macready spat. ‘What the saints and devils do you think you're doing?'

‘Macready,' said Hel, her voice sounding broken. ‘It's not what it looks like.'

The sentinel's voice was rough. ‘Is it not, lass?' He glared at Ashiol. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, you selfish sod.'

‘Who do you think you are?' Ashiol roared. He rose up out of bed, ready to force Macready out if he had to.

‘Less of a monster than you, apparently.'

‘Stop it,' said Heliora, covering herself with a sheet. ‘Both of you. You don't have to protect me, Mac. I make my own choices.'

‘This isn't like you,' said Macready, sounding strangled. ‘I don't understand.'

‘What are you talking about?' The buzzing was back in Ashiol's head, and nothing made any sense. Macready and Heliora had a history, did they? ‘You never had any qualms about us frigging the same demme before.'

Macready hit him. Ashiol didn't expect it, and the blow was a fierce pain hard on his jaw. He lunged for Macready, not even bothering to summon animor. He could beat him with his bare hands, no other powers required.

Hel thrust herself between them, sheet still wrapped around her body. She pushed Macready back with one hand flat against his chest. ‘Mac, stop it. He thinks I'm Heliora!'

Time froze. Ashiol stared at her, but she only had eyes for Macready. ‘Oh, lass,' the sentinel said quietly. ‘What have you done?'

It was his Hel. How could it not be? It looked like her, sounded like her (the way she held herself was wrong, he had known that from the start). If it wasn't her, that meant she was really dead.

Ashiol roared, lunging at the woman, hands tight around her throat. ‘Who are you?' If this was one of Livilla's games, he was going to kill her. Right here, Isangell's carpets be damned.

‘My King, no!' yelled Macready behind him, and his hands closed over Ashiol's, trying to pull him back.

Ashiol was giving no quarter this time. His hands burned with power. He squeezed her neck hard.

There was a scream, but it came from behind him. Another demme joined them, sharp nails digging into his wrists. Delphine.

‘Ashiol!' she shrieked like a fishwife. ‘Stop it. Are you crazy? It's Rhian!'

Ashiol rocked back on his heels, hands still on her neck. Heliora stared back at him, wide-eyed and shaking. Not Heliora. He forced himself to see past the hallucination, to acknowledge that this demme was taller, differently built, in no way the same as the one he had loved. He reached out slowly and touched her hair. Red. It was red.

‘Yes,' he said in a low voice. ‘Apparently I am still quite mad.'

‘What did he do to you? What did he do to her?' Delphine was shrill enough to drill holes in his skull with her voice.

Heliora was dead and there was nothing for him here. Ashiol dropped his hands, stepped back, and shaped himself into cats.

‘No, wait!' Macready called out, but it was too late.

The gang of black cats swarmed out of the room, out of the Palazzo, and away.

 

While Delphine and Macready were chasing after Ashiol, Rhian dressed slowly and left the Palazzo. No one tried to stop her. No one even seemed to see her.

She walked down the side of the Balisquine hill, heading home, for once not stopping to wonder at what might happen if someone accosted her; if she might kill again, just to be left alone.

Well
, said Heliora, in her head.

Don't talk
, Rhian thought numbly.
Not a word
.

I didn't see that coming.

Rhian couldn't think. She couldn't breathe.

That good, was it?

It occurred to Rhian that if she used the main roads, it would be easier for Delphine and Macready to catch up with her. She veered off into a side street, and then another, and found herself climbing the Lucretine hill, surrounded by houses she did not know. ‘It was you,' she muttered beneath her breath. ‘He saw you inside my head. He wanted you.' But Heliora had not been there, not in that moment, when Rhian chose to let him believe in his hallucination. ‘I don't know what I was thinking,' she said finally.

Heliora's voice sounded different in her head, now. Ugly, and accusing.
Who's the rapist now?

Rhian slipped on the gutter and stumbled. ‘Don't say that! You don't understand.'

A couple of children stood in the street, staring at her. Of course they were staring. She was talking to herself. Rhian pulled her shawl over her head and hurried her step, desperate to get home.

Heliora was silent in her head.

 

Ashiol kept running until his paws ached. He dug rats out of a rubbish heap somewhere near the Alexandrine, chased them down one by one and tore them to shreds, licking the blood from his furry chins. He scrambled up the hillside, among the old abandoned terrace gardens. He collapsed finally, a blur of black shadows spread out in a wide patch of hot morning sunshine.

When he woke, he was human and naked and the sun wasn't warm any more. He wasn't alone, either.

‘I thought it was going to be hard to spring you out of the Palazzo for our date,' said Poet, his legs dangling
aimlessly from an overhanging tree branch. ‘You're not even making me work for it, kitten.'

‘Sorry I'm not more of a challenge,' Ashiol rasped in a dry throat. He closed his eyes again, tipping his hair back. ‘The sentinels have gone completely fucking insane.'

‘This is a new development?' said Poet in mock-astonishment.

‘I've been seeing Heliora,' Ashiol confessed, and opened his eyes. He could just see Poet's face leaning forward out of the draping tree-fronds. There was nothing there but mild curiosity. ‘I talked to her. Touched her. Frigged another demme, thinking it was her. How's that for insane?'

‘You've been crazier,' suggested Poet.

‘Not lately.'

‘I find it fascinating that you're so wrapped up in guilt and grief for what happened to our late lamented Seer, but you don't seem to have a scrap of remorse about Velody.'

Ashiol leaned up on his elbows, pushing down the anger that was his first response. ‘Velody made her own choices.'

‘She sacrificed herself to save this city.'

‘And Hel didn't?'

‘What is it that broke you so badly, kitten? Not losing Heliora. Did you think about her for a minute, in the five years you were exiled? I think you don't want to admit how angry you are that the little mouse threw herself into the sky.'

‘Glad that's cleared up,' Ashiol grunted. ‘You should moonlight as a dottore, with insights like that.'

‘I can't help being brilliant. Come on, sweetpea. We
have to get you dressed for the theatre. Naked is not the new velvet.'

‘I'm not going to your fucking show,' Ashiol said darkly.

‘Don't be such a tease. It's the Bestialia Cabaret, the event of the season. Everyone will be there, and I'm not talking about the so-called Great Families.'

That surprised Ashiol. He looked at Poet strangely. ‘How did you talk the rest of the Creature Court into that?'