‘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 positive
ly 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.’
11.
Heliora
Raoul 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.
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