Power & Majesty

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

‘Why would I do a thing like that?’ Macready replied incredulously.

  She tilted her head, making her silver headdress sparkle. ‘It got me here, didn’t it? Alone with you, in your nest? Cosy.’

  ‘You’re not my type,’ Macready assured her. ‘Fancy something to eat? I’ve got some apples around here somewhere…’

  Delphine gave him a knowing look. ‘So what is your type?’

  ‘Unavailable.’

  ‘Oh, you like the prim and buttoned-up variety. Or do they have to have husbands at home?’

  Damn it all, she was still flirting with him. This was not the plan. ‘Both, ideally.’

  ‘So someone like me wouldn’t be of any interest at all?’ Somehow, without moving a muscle, she had slid her dress a little way off her shoulder, and had bitten her lower lip so that it was swollen and inviting…

  Macready reached out a firm hand (look, Ma, no tremors) and pulled her frock back into place. ‘If you valued it more, it would be a tempting offer, lass.’

  Delphine’s warm blue eyes turned instantly cold. ‘Fine,’ she said angrily. ‘You won’t mind if I go home.’ She stepped around him, towards the door.

  ‘I’m not trying to trap you, lovely. There are real dangers out there.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she flung at him, scrabbling at the wall for the way out.

  With his luck, the silly bint would probably find the catch. Macready grabbed for her arm. ‘Stop that. Don’t be a little idiot.’

  ‘Don’t touch me.’

  ‘You were keen enough to be touched a minute ago!’ Oh, and wasn’t that exactly the wrong thing to say?

  ‘Let me out of here right now,’ she threatened, ‘or I’ll scream so loud that the whole city will know you’re keeping me here against my will.’

  ‘Dhynar’s out there,’ Macready said desperately. ‘I can’t let you out while he’s prowling. He’ll hurt you to get at her.’

  Delphine stared at him. ‘Back to Velody, are we? It’s always about your precious Power and Majesty. Is she unavailable enough for you, Macready?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘I’m not part of these stupid Court games you play, I’m not part of that world. I’m going back to the club where my real friends are!’

  Delphine lunged for the wall again, and Macready was horrified to see that she was close to the catch that would open the nest up to the alley outside. He grabbed for her, trying to hold both arms back, but she twisted and wriggled. Her elbow met his jaw in a move he had only taught her that morning, and he skidded back, falling.

  He was still gripping her wrists though, and pulled her with him as he fell. It was his skull that cracked painfully on the wooden boards, and he rolled fast to pin her to the floor beneath him. They were both breathing hard. Macready tried desperately to think of the right thing to say to convince her to listen to him, to make her believe that he was trying to protect her. Instead, he gazed at her angry eyes and cosmetick-flecked eyelashes. Saints and devils, he thought as his mouth closed over hers and Delphine responded passionately with teeth and tongue. Do I never learn?

  He could feel the contours of her body under his, her beaded party dress like rough, flimsy cobwebs under his hands, the heat of her as she writhed under him.

  The heat was coming from Macready too. He was hot and hard, and already possessed her with his hands and mouth. It would be so easy. A few lacings here and there, her dress pushed up another inch or two on her thighs, and she would be his.

  An image of that drunken idiot in the alley flashed into his mind, followed by a chilly thought. I’m supposed to be rescuing this lass.

  That was enough to bring him to his senses. Even as Delphine’s hands wormed inside his shirt to touch his skin, he pushed himself away from her.

  She looked stricken for a moment, then flushed and angry. ‘What’s your problem, Macready?’

  ‘Not a good idea, lass.’

  ‘That isn’t the impression you gave me a few seconds ago.’ She sat up like a pouting child whose favourite doll had been snatched from her. ‘Are you afraid your precious Power and Majesty would think less of you if she knew you were frigging me, or would you just think less of yourself?’

  Oh, this one would be a peach to wake up to in the morning. ‘Neither,’ he said, trying to salvage the situation. ‘But you’d think less of yourself, sweetheart, and I’m not sure that’s what you need right now.’

  Delphine’s blue eyes flashed angrily. ‘Who the saints are you to tell me what I need?’

  She propelled herself up off the floor. Macready prepared himself to fend off an attack, but Delphine took off running for the way out—and damn it all if she didn’t find the catch in her scrabblings this time. She fell through the wall and was gone.

  Macready ran back to where he had placed his sword harness and daggers, grabbing the two skysilver weapons. If Dhynar was still lurking out there, he would need to be armed.

  The delay cost him. When he burst out of his nest into the alley, there was no sign of Delphine. He couldn’t even smell her perfume. The scent of ferax hung in the air though. This time it was mingled with the scent of hounds and cats. Dhynar was nearby, and so were his four courtesi.

  ‘Feck!’ Macready swore.

  52

  The sky burst open in a sharp explosion of blood that engulfed Poet, wrapping itself stickily around his skin.

  Velody, protected mostly from the blast by his body, received only a spattering over her hair and arms. She grabbed Poet by his flimsy burnoose and threw him through the air behind her, then reached out to the gaping source of the explosion.

  It crackled and spat at her, and the flecks of red liquid on her skin began to frizzle and burn. Behind her, she heard Poet cry out in agony. She tapped into the glowing animor within her, pouring a steady stream of it into the open hole in the sky. The hole swallowed the animor easily, and only a few ragged fronds of sky around the edge began to heal despite the heavy onslaught of her power. The gaping wound bulged and bubbled, as if it were about to explode again.

  Velody went chimaera. Tapping into her animor after a single day of mortality had been heavenly, but this was beyond the seven heavens, beyond anything saints or angels had to offer her. Her body exulted as her wings beat the air, her scales slithered out to protect her spiky skin, and her talons extended into the dark mass of the skywound itself, scorching it with the highest power of all. The power that was hers to wield.

  Bone-thin bolts of blue light flew from her claws and spikes and skin, slamming into the skywound again and again. It screamed as if it were a living thing—or something screamed, deep within that seething space—and slowly the sky began to heal over it, like fresh skin after a burn. The bubbling, bloody hole shrank into itself until it was only the size of Velody’s head, then her heart, then her hand. Finally it was only a fingernail-sized speck of redness.

  She threw another burst of animor into it, relentlessly holding the pressure of her burning light against the bloodstain until the hole dwindled to a spot, and finally vanished. Even then, Velody held her burning animor over the place where it had been, sealing the sky over tenfold, reluctant to stop until she was certain it was gone.

  Only then, in the blissful silence, did she realise that the skywound had been singing to her as well as Poet. Its persistent hum had hung in her ears throughout the entire battle, tempting her to come closer, to surrender peacefully to its bloody siren call and allow herself to be swallowed. She had been fighting that too, without even realising it.

  She relinquished her chimaera shape in a rush, reshaping herself as Velody in Lord form, glowing brightly in the darkness. She looked around for Poet.

  He had not fallen, which was a mercy at least. Still covered in the sticky blood from the skywound, he hung in the air as a huddled mass, cringing and moaning to himself. His skin, where it was visible beneath the coating of blood, was bone white.

  ‘What can I do?’ Velody demanded. She snapped her fingers in
front of his face, trying to get his attention. ‘Poet, tell me how I can help you!’

  As she watched, the dark skyblood moved as if it were alive, forming a pattern like a spider web, fringed and ominous. Poet’s eyes fluttered but he did not register her presence. She reached out to touch him and he jerked backwards, away from her, whimpering.

  ‘Touching him would be a very bad mistake,’ said a rich, accented voice. A masculine figure dressed in bright Zafiran silks rose up from beneath them, his sandalled feet expertly treading the sky. Warlord smiled at Velody, an entirely unfriendly smile. ‘I came for the drink I was promised. But I see you are busy with blood of a different kind.’

  ‘I suppose it’s not in your interests to help Poet survive this,’ Velody said sarcastically.

  Warlord ran his dark eyes thoughtfully over the bloodied, moaning figure. ‘This alone would not kill him, only weaken him,’ he said. ‘It is true that it makes him more vulnerable, which is not displeasing to me. I could kill him now, I imagine, without him lifting a paw to stop me.’ He turned his dark eyes on Velody and she forced herself not to shiver under his gaze. ‘You, however, would protect him from me, would you not?’

  He was handsome, this Warlord, but there was a hardness that made him less than attractive to Velody. As with the others, she could not help but think, What kind of person was he before the Court poisoned his soul? What kind of man would he have been if the boy had not been taken by the monsters? ‘It does not suit me for him to die this nox,’ she said.

  Warlord looked intrigued. ‘You seem ruthless enough, Lady Power. I wonder if you are?’

  She wrapped the lingering presence of the chimaera around her naked body. ‘Last nox I promised you a price of blood, which I will pay. This nox I offer no bribes, no gifts. I am your Power and Majesty, and you will show me how to save Poet from this blight.’

  ‘Such knowledge is valuable,’ the Warlord said.

  She glared at him, allowing her animor to glow from her eyes. ‘So is my friendship.’

  He acceded with a bow, after a very long moment of consideration. ‘As my Lady demands.’

  Between them, Velody and Warlord carried Poet to ground level without laying hands on him. They dragged him down out of the sky by wrapping tendrils of animor around his wrists and ankles.

  They came to earth near the Lake of Follies. It was late enough that the last of the revellers had abandoned the lakeside, with only a few stray garland and ribbon fronds clinging to the empty pavilions.

  Poet still twitched and moaned within the blood that stuck to him. He did not react when they lowered his curled body over the water.

  ‘Are you saying we can just wash it off?’ Velody asked.

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Warlord. ‘But it’s a good place to start.’

  With a snap, he withdrew the animor he had been using to hold Poet’s top half in midair. Poet’s head and shoulderblades smacked back against the water and went under.

  ‘Won’t it pollute the lake?’ Velody was still holding Poet’s feet with her own animor.

  Warlord grimaced. ‘You mean, more than the toffee apples, ribbons and other festival paraphernalia that gets dumped in here nearly every nox? Watch and learn.’

  Velody peered into the water. Beneath the surface, Poet clawed free of the skyblood that matted his hair and clung to his skin. It fell away from him like old paint peeling under turpentine, rising to the surface of the lake in strips and flakes. His skin glowed with a black cobweb pattern, mimicking the lines the blood had marked upon him, and then that was gone too. His skin was pinker than usual, as if he had been scrubbed fiercely.

  ‘Does water always have that effect on the…sky substances?’ Velody asked.

  ‘It’s not exactly an ordinary lake,’ said Warlord. ‘The Lake of Follies isn’t the frivolous ornament that everyone thought it was when Trajus Alysaundre poured half the city’s grain budget into building it.’

  Velody wanted to ask more, but Poet started struggling against her bonds and she dropped his feet. He bobbed up, sputtering water into the air. ‘Yagh, that piss burns like acid.’

  ‘You were lucky,’ Warlord said seriously.

  ‘Don’t do me any favours,’ Poet shot back, still scraping the blood from his limbs and clothes. He managed a watery smile at Velody. ‘Give me a hand out of this birdbath, pretty lady?’

  ‘Not until I’m certain that you’re clean, inside and out,’ she said firmly.

  ‘You’ll be waiting a long time,’ Warlord muttered.

  ‘This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,’ said Warlord, looking around Velody’s stark backyard.

  She sat on the back steps, refusing to compromise. ‘As soon as this is done, I’m going straight to bed. I’m not going to walk all the way to the undercity just so you can sit on your favourite cushions and use your favourite crockery while you drink my blood.’ She held out a small pewter cup that Delphine had won in a darts match between the Guild of Ribboners and the Guild of Spinners an age ago. ‘I think this qualifies as a goblet, no?’

  ‘I accept the conditions,’ said Warlord, sounding suspicious.

  ‘He still doesn’t think you’ll do it,’ said Poet, an exhausted and damp figure leaning against the back fence. ‘He’s waiting for you to break your word.’

  ‘Doesn’t know her very well then,’ grunted Crane, who stood in the kitchen doorway.

  Velody took Crane’s skysilver dagger and sliced down into her left wrist. The blade burned against her veins, and she felt a hollow numbness swim in her head.

  ‘Steady,’ said Crane. He sat behind her on the steps, cradling her as the blood ran into the goblet.

  Warlord and Poet both stared at the trickle of blood, unable to take their eyes off it.

  ‘A goblet,’ said Crane, leaning his chin forward to rest it on Velody’s shoulder. ‘Why the saints did you have to volunteer a goblet? He’d have accepted a spoonful.’

  ‘Now you tell me,’ she said, and laughed.

  After a moment, Crane laughed with her, a soft and happy sound that sustained her while the goblet filled.

  Once it was brimming, Velody held the vessel out to Warlord, who brought it to his mouth, gulping greedily. Somehow, the sight of him drinking made her sick to the stomach where the loss of the blood itself had not. She swayed, and Crane held her tightly, closing his fingers around the still-bleeding cut.

  ‘Get out of my way,’ said Rhian, standing over them both with the kitchen lantern light behind her. Armed with bandages and a dish of hot water, she set to cleaning and wrapping Velody’s arm.

  Warlord drained the last drop from the goblet and threw it aside. His dark skin glowed as if sunlight was shining on it. ‘Seven hells,’ he gasped. ‘That’s a draught for the angels.’

  ‘Devils, surely,’ said Poet.

  Rhian finished bandaging Velody’s arm, and briefly laid her cheek against her friend’s shoulder. Velody inhaled the scent of roses and herbs that was so familiar to her.

  ‘You need hot, sweet mint, and something to eat,’ Rhian said finally. She cast her eye around the yard—to the bedraggled Poet, the protective Crane, and Warlord who had splashes of Velody’s blood clinging to his upper lip. ‘You are all invited to join us,’ she said quickly.

  Warlord and Poet exchanged a look, obviously puzzled.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Crane doubtfully. ‘Aren’t you?’

  Rhian turned without speaking further and went into the kitchen.

  53

  The scent of ferax overwhelmed Macready. He took a deep breath, forcing himself not to panic or to call out Delphine’s name. With his two skysilver lasses bared and ready, he moved further into the narrow alley.

  A bright ginger ferax trotted out to greet him, and it was a moment before Macready realised it wasn’t Dhynar but an actual ferax. Just as cats clustered madly around Ashiol when his animor was in full bloom, and mice hovered whenever Velody was near, so the ratbag urban ferax liked to be near the Creature Lord who b
ore their shape.

  ‘Go on then, my fine furry friend,’ Macready said lightly. ‘Take me to your man.’

  The ferax gave him one of those chilly ‘you are not important’ looks that animals were so good at, then turned and padded back the way it had come.

  Macready followed, expecting an ambush. He wasn’t disappointed.

  The first thing he saw as he rounded the curve of the alley was Delphine, limp like a broken doll on the ground. Dead, he thought, and his mind went numb at the realisation. Oh, my poor sweet lass.

  ‘Haven’t you had enough of me, Macready?’ teased the voice of Dhynar.

  ‘Aye,’ breathed Macready, his hands loosening and tightening on the hilts of Tarea and Jeunille. ‘So I have, my Lord. Time to put an end to it.’

  Brighthounds and darkhounds emerged from the shadows, staring at him. Golden stripecats and silver slashcats peered at him from various windowsills.

  ‘Sure about that?’ asked Dhynar. He came forward, stepping with distaste over Delphine’s crumpled body. He was clad in red leather, immaculate in his battledress.

  The cats and hounds shaped themselves into their Court form—dark-eyed Shade and albino Lennoc, seasoned veterans of the Creature Court, with the young and hungry Grago and Farrier only just behind.

  ‘Only your own courtesi this nox?’ asked Macready. ‘Hardly seems worth the trouble.’

  Dhynar smiled. ‘She didn’t scream, you know. Barely a whimper. They don’t build demoiselles like they used to.’

  I’m going to skin you alive and feed you to Priest’s bird women, Macready thought in a haze of anger. He forced himself to be calm. ‘Still the bully-boy tactics, my Lord? This is no playground. You think killing the Power and Majesty’s friend will win you points? She won’t be merciful when she sees the mess you made of that lass of hers.’

  Dhynar laughed. ‘You think I care about that bitch’s regard of me? She makes a mockery of the Creature Court.’

  ‘She humiliated you and you can’t take it,’ Macready said in disgust. ‘You made a blood oath that Delphine and Rhian would not meet harm at your hands. So easily forsworn, boy?’