The docks made everything sound wrong (water, there was no water lapping against the pier, just more of that nothingness that hurt the eyes), and it took a long time before Velody could make sense of the echoes.
She found herself at the entrance to the bathhouse at the corner between the docks and her home, and yes — the singing was coming from in here. Velody walked nervously through the frigidarium, and the demoiselles’ pool, finally ending up at the caldarium. Here, among the stone arches, there was water. It steamed, and how was it possible to have this source of heat when there was nothing else in the city?
The song had stopped, leaving her with no trail, but as she stumbled forward into the hot and clammy room, she saw him.
A man half-floated lazily in the water, naked and muscled. As Velody watched, he turned his head. The wet hair made it look darker, but his skin stood out, pale and bright beneath the red.
Now would be a really good time to start breathing again.
He smiled a slow smile of recognition. Maybe a flash of hunger. It made her shiver. ‘Velody,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
Garnet. Holy saints and angels. It was Garnet.
Time passed.
Velody was regretting now that she had done nothing to mark her days here, but what exactly was she supposed to record? There was no daylight, no nox. No waterclocks, nothing but her heartbeat.
She wasn’t even sure that her heartbeat could be trusted. Some days, she couldn’t hear it at all.
It felt like she had been here a long time, but perhaps it was one of those dreams which gave you an entire epic story in the time it took to blink asleep and awake again.
Velody had considered marking the wall of her old room above the bakery every time she slept. But time went on and she realised that she didn’t sleep. Sometimes when the weariness overtook her she would lie on the cool, musty covers and remember the room as it had been, full of the giggles and whispers of her sisters, but somehow she never managed to slip into any kind of darkness. She was relentlessly here.
She could possibly record the number of times she avoided Garnet; that might be worth remembering.
This was her life now. She avoided Garnet when she could. Spent her time walking the canal paths of the city. She had no hunger, no thirst. No animor.
One of Velody’s favourite places to wander was the city Museion, an edifice of stone and pillars that she had never even known existed in her old life as a baker’s daughter in Tierce. She could spend hours (minutes? days? no way of knowing) walking through the many grand halls, looking at the paintings and statues and costumes.
The hall of costumes almost broke her heart. So many lovely dresses, fine suits, representing decades and centuries of history. Velody touched the fabrics, the edgings and bindings, telling herself that as long as she could feel the difference between silk from Isharo and silk from Camoise, she was still a real person who actually existed.
On her third visit, she stripped off the grey funeral dress she had taken from the bakery and slid an antique emerald-green gown over her body, fastening the clasps with shaking hands. Why not? The city was empty of everyone but ghosts.
She still felt like a thief as she walked out of the Museion.
Garnet waited for her, legs dangling casually as he lounged on the plinth of a great granite statue. ‘That colour suits you,’ he said lightly. ‘You look like a King. If Kings wore frocks.’
‘They do these days,’ said Velody.
‘So they do.’ Garnet surveyed her thoughtfully. Her skin prickled under his gaze. He wasn’t the long-limbed boy she had dreamed about for so many years. There was nothing romantic about him. He was lean and hard; all angles. His skin was pale, and his hair a coppery shock. She had expected it to be longer — in her later visions of him he had worn it back with a ribbon.
She remembered it falling loose around his shoulders as he kissed Ashiol, mouth dragging down his neck and teeth fastening onto his collarbone. But that wasn’t Velody’s memory and she forced it away, before Garnet could see it in her face.
‘Why do you keep running away from me?’ he said. ‘I can’t hurt you now.’
That ‘now’ was significant — a reminder that when they were alive, he would have hurt her without a second thought.
Velody lifted her chin. ‘I don’t need anything from you.’
‘Not even company?’ he said mournfully. ‘Aren’t you a little worried that you might go insane with no one to talk to in this broken, dead city?’
‘Is that what happened to you?’
Garnet flashed his bright white teeth at her in a grin. ‘Not yet.’
‘Then I’ll take my chances. It’s a fair bet that my mental state was better than yours to begin with.’
‘You make a good point.’ He swung his legs back and forth. ‘What do you miss the most, ladyking?’
Home, my friends, my hearth, my work …
‘What do you miss?’ Velody flung at him. ‘Ruling the Creature Court? Torturing your friends? Fighting for your life every nox? I don’t want to talk to you, Garnet. You should have stayed dead.’
He shrugged as if giving up, and slid down off the plinth to land neatly on his feet. ‘Sadly, that’s harder than it sounds. Trust me, little mouse. A few more endless days of this and you’ll be wishing for your own death, not mine.’
‘Something to look forward to,’ Velody said unsteadily.
She walked away, and made it to the edge of the courtyard before Garnet yelled after her: ‘You’re just like me!’
Not that, never that, no, no, no.
Velody started smashing glass. There was something satisfying about it. The city was so damned silent, and the noise cut through everything, harsh and clear and perfect.
She broke every window in her family’s bakery, watching the arc of smashed glass fly out into the street, or the canal behind the house. When there were no windows left, she went to the next house, and the next. So many windows, so little time. For the first time in forever, she felt something pulsing through her — not quite a heartbeat, not quite animor, but something.
She felt alive.
When she was done with that street, she worked on another, and then another. The destruction was compulsive, and what else did she have to do? She made her way out of Cheapside and into more affluent districts, leaving a streak of damage in her wake.
Broken pieces of everything.
Some time later, she found a street she had never set foot in before. It was an avenue lined with trees (no leaves, just bare branches — nothing was allowed to live here): the kind of place where Delphine and her fancy family might have lived.
Every window was broken. The street was awash with glass. She stared at it, knowing she had never been here before, wondering how … but of course. She wasn’t the only prisoner in Tierce.
You’re just like me, Garnet had told her. Apparently, it was true.
Glass crunched under her shoes. Velody crouched down, picking up a long sliver. It had an edge to it, like a knife.
She thought of Rhian, of that horrible Lupercalia, blood dripping from her slashed wrist. Velody had always thought that there was no despair, nothing that could make her do something like that to herself. Even when the Creature Court had driven her to the edge, she had never thought of this.
But she had to do something. Had to remind herself that she was real.
Velody held the glass against her wrist, pressing it brutally against the skin.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said that voice, coming out of nowhere. She looked up and found Garnet lounging against a wall as if he had been watching her for some time.
(Well, what else did he have to do?)
‘Wouldn’t you?’ said Velody.
‘Believe me, little mouse, you don’t want to know the answer to that particular question.’ He sounded calm and reassuring, which was disturbing beyond belief.
‘I don’t trust you,’ she said clearly and stabbed down at the skin.
>
She didn’t bleed. There really was nothing in her veins. Velody stared at the ragged gash in her wrist, wanting some sign that she was alive. Even the pain was dull, and the moment she stopped concentrating on it, it was nothing at all.
Garnet came to her, one hand wrapping around the empty wound on her wrist, another taking the glass from her hand. She let him. ‘Fancy a reason to live?’ he asked in a low voice.
That made Velody laugh. ‘Think a lot of yourself, don’t you?’
Garnet laughed too, and for once she didn’t think it was an awful sound. ‘You should be so lucky. I’m offering something better. Almost as good as breathing.’ He leaned in, mouth on her ear. ‘Break all the windows you like, but keep the mirrors in one piece. We’re going to need them.’
29.
Mercatus
Seven days before
the Kalends of Bestialis
Rhian loved the swordplay. She had not expected to, but there was a pleasure in reminding herself that she was physically strong, and that she could do something other than bind flowers and ribbons together. In another life, she might have been a carpenter or a builder, someone with clever hands and muscular arms who worked with the sun beating down on her head.
For now, she had this.
Macready trained with Delphine every other afternoon, and every single time she would act surprised that he had turned up, and pretend there was some work that had to be finished first. She liked to make him wait — her way of keeping him in his place. Delphine never did like anyone thinking she was at their beck and call.
Macready never let on whether it bothered him; not to Rhian, anyway. He just grinned and asked her out into the yard instead. They could usually get in a good hour or so of a lesson before Delphine made her grudging appearance.
Rhian tried not to resent her for having everything, for the best hour of her day being contingent on Delphine’s borrowed sword and her borrowed man.
‘Stay with us,’ Macready called as Rhian headed for the house.
She shook her head and smiled. She had promised an old friend she would supply two trays of cupboard wreaths and nosegays for the final day of the Great Market, and that was as fine an excuse as any to close the door on their banter and flirting.
You worry too much about what people think of you, said Heliora as Rhian shut herself away in the workroom again.
‘It matters,’ Rhian said impatiently. She only ever replied to the dead Seer’s goading when she was tired or melancholy. The rest of the time, she could shut her away. ‘Of course it matters. Velody and Delphine are all I’ve ever had.’
That’s not true, said Heliora. You had a brother. Parents.
‘I don’t remember them,’ Rhian said quickly. ‘You know I don’t remember them.’
Interesting, that, Heliora mused. You were touched by animor and Court before Velody ever was. So why don’t you remember Tierce and your family? Maybe if you just opened yourself up to your powers, you could see them again. Let them back into your memory …
Rhian took down bunch after bunch of roses and lilacs she had dried by hanging them upside down from the ceiling and laid out her tools, concentrating on staying here in this moment, not allowing Heliora’s voice to push her into the futures. ‘So I can hurt with the losing of them? No. I don’t need those memories. I don’t need any of this. I don’t need anything but —’
Delphine and Velody was her usual answer, but Velody was gone, and Delphine was unreliable as all hells, and Rhian had never felt more alone in her life.
She won’t leave you alone, Heliora said softly.
‘She doesn’t know what I’ve done,’ replied Rhian.
I know what you’ve done and I’m not going anywhere.
‘Very reassuring,’ Rhian sighed.
Another time, later in the month, when Delphine and Macready were training in the yard, and Rhian had no tasks to be done, she shut herself away in her room, ignoring the clash of swords and laughter from below. Heliora asked her: What frightens you most?
‘You know what frightens me,’ Rhian replied. She hated the end of the month, when there were rarely festivals to keep her busy. She needed to work.
Apart from Delphine finding out that you’re a bloodthirsty murderess who can turn men to stone.
‘It’s not a joke,’ Rhian said furiously. ‘It’s not funny.’
I died before my twenty-seventh birthday, Heliora drawled. How’s that for a joke?
‘Don’t make this about you,’ snapped Rhian. ‘You’re not even real. The real Heliora died in the street with a sword in her hand. You’re just an echo of her.’ There was silence after that, and she jumped up almost in fright at the thought that Heliora might have left her alone. ‘Are you there? Come back!’ More silence. ‘I need you,’ Rhian said wretchedly.
Of course you do, said Heliora, sounding smug.
Rhian sighed and flopped back on her bed. ‘Don’t do that again.’
You care about what Macready thinks, Heliora went on. You let him put a sword in your hand. You let him get closer to you than any other man. You think he won’t burn? He’s not a Lord or a Creature King. Just another man. Or is it that you trust him not to touch you, not to take advantage? Do you think he’ll never make you angry enough to be a danger to himself?
Rhian wished Heliora was here, really here, so at least she had someone to direct her glare at. ‘I hardly think about Macready at all,’ she said.
Interesting, said Heliora, in a tone so knowing that it made Rhian’s cheeks flame red. Shall I tell you who my favourite lover was?
Was this Rhian’s life now? Gossiping with a dead person who had taken up residence in her head? ‘I think I can guess.’
Oh, not Ashiol; I grew out of him years ago. He’s good — no denying it — and I spent my younger years adoring him like an idiot. But a demme gets tired of frigging a man whose head is elsewhere. Half the time I wasn’t sure if he remembered which one I was.
If Rhian needed any further evidence that this voice in herself was something she was not imagining, there it was right there. ‘You’re so blunt.’
Well, I’m dead, said Heliora. That tends to knock a few corners off.
There was a long silence after that, during which Rhian most definitely did not ask Heliora to identify her favourite lover.
Macready, said Heliora.
Rhian put a pillow over her own head. Smothering herself was a valid option at this point. ‘I don’t want to discuss this any more.’
Because it’s about frigging, or because it’s about Macready? You can’t avoid it. Sex is deeply tangled in the power of the Creature Court — for the Seer most of all.
Rhian clenched her hands into fists. The rules had to be different for her. There was no other choice.
Heliora continued as if she had voiced that thought aloud. Haven’t you got it by now? There are no rules. So why does it bother you that I used to frig Macready?
The shift from one topic to another bothered Rhian. It felt as if Heliora was trying to trick her into an admission of some kind. ‘It doesn’t bother me. It’s irrelevant.’
Is that what it is?
‘He’s my friend. The first male friend I’ve let myself have since … I don’t want to think about him that way.’
Worried that if you do, you’ll end up frying him to a crisp?
‘That’s not funny. Why do you joke about that? Why do I let you?’
It’s been nearly two years since all that happened, Rhian. If you can’t find humour in tragedy, you’ll end up as crazy as the rest of us. Jumping at shadows, overreacting to every male glance, living some kind of half life … oh, wait!
Rhian was angry now, so angry she could almost hear the crackle of flames. Was that smoke she could smell? Where was it coming from? ‘Don’t laugh at me. Don’t you dare laugh at me.’
Mockery is all I have left.
‘I want you out of my head!’ Rhian cried. Saints, her hands — what was happening to her hands? S
he fell on her knees beside the bed, staring at her fists. They were grey and rigid, like the stone that she had turned those men into. Then, as she watched, water ran over her stone fists, and she could move her fingers again. The water dried from her skin rapidly and when she opened her hands wide, dust fell from her palms to shimmer across the floor. ‘Heliora!’
It’s no use asking me, said the Seer, sounding far away now. That’s never happened to me.
‘It’s not part of being a Seer?’ There it was — the only hope that she might finally have an answer to who and what she was, gone on the wind. Rhian’s hands felt like flesh now, but they were still far too cold.
I don’t know what you are, said Heliora.
Could she hear the noise Rhian was making as she fought to stifle a sob of terror? Could she feel the tears run down her face? Rhian did not know. But Heliora kept talking, as if nothing had changed, filling the room with words until Rhian had recovered enough to stand again, and breathe.
I didn’t tell you why he was my favourite. He was the most honest of any of them — never said a word he didn’t mean, never pretended to care about things he couldn’t be bothered with. We were barely even friends, just convenient to each other. But when he was there, he was really there. He paid attention like I was the only person in the world, and he didn’t let up until we were done. There was an intensity to him — the same thing you see when there are blades in his hand and a battle in the wind …
That was better. Nothing to do with Rhian. She could stand tall and pretend that they were two ordinary demmes, talking about some fellow, as if the world was not a darker place than it had been only a few moments ago. ‘You’re saying he makes love like he fights?’ she said lightly, some time later.
All duty and detail, said Heliora, and Rhian could hear the smirk in her voice. Believe me — in bed, dutiful doesn’t mean dull.
A few days after that, Macready brought Rhian a sword. He produced it as if it was nothing special, just an afterthought. ‘This should make things easier, love.’
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