Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Kelpie looked back at Macready only once, and he saw the despair in her face. She was not choosing Garnet over Ashiol. She was choosing to keep the oath she had made the only way she could, just as Crane and Delphine were keeping theirs. He understood. Better than she might think.

  Macready hated Garnet. Hated him. The thought of leaving Ashiol and Velody in the street to follow that colossal arsehole was revolting to him. But the swords were his. He didn’t know how to function without being a sentinel. He couldn’t give it up.

  He had served Garnet before. He could do it again. Couldn’t he?

  Velody cried out, a low, quiet sound like she was struggling with a bad dream.

  Garnet spoke to Livilla and she sent several of her child courtesi to scamper up the street and pick up the fallen weapons, warning them to only touch the leather-wrapped hilts. One lad was too small to lift Crane’s sword properly and dragged the tip awkwardly on the ground. The sound scraped Macready’s heart.

  ‘Mac,’ Delphine said in a small voice, so small. She had finally noticed that he hadn’t chosen his side.

  Feck. Feck. Feck.

  Ashiol would live. Velody would live. They didn’t need him to give anything up. Macready could stay on the inside, keep an eye on Garnet. A dozen justifications for that choice rose up in his throat, choking him.

  One of Livilla’s lambs was watching them. A dark-skinned demme on the edge of growing up, her hair in short twists against her scalp, her eyes wide and watchful. The thought of what the Court could do to her was enough to resolve him to this: the final moment of letting go. Macready took his sword off and held it out to the little lass, hilt first.

  Giving up his blades the first time Garnet had demanded it had been a sacrifice, and it had burnt in his gut. Losing those original skysilver blades to the dust devils had been another loss, another wound. This time it was oddly freeing. No more of it. He could walk out of Aufleur any time he wanted. He could go home, visit his sisters and those tribes of babbies they had. He wasn’t going to do any of those things, but he could if he wanted to.

  ‘The Creature Court,’ he said loudly to Garnet, ‘can suck my fecking balls.’

  Garnet smiled like ice, and turned away. The Court went with him, down the side of the Lucretine towards the Arches. Kelpie went, too, and so did the skysilver blades, grasped in the hands of the child courtesi.

  Ashiol shuddered wildly and sucked in a breath, then another. He rolled over, spitting blood clots onto the ground.

  ‘You,’ he muttered to Delphine. ‘No more. Stabbing me.’

  ‘Stop making me,’ she retorted. ‘Velody is mine and you can keep your grubby hands off her. No more fighting.’

  Ashiol laughed weakly. ‘Have you met us?’

  ‘I don’t have to be on your side any more,’ Delphine told him with some satisfaction. ‘I’m not a sentinel.’

  It hurt Macready how much she relished her own words.

  Ashiol blinked. He looked at Crane, then Macready. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Garnet gave us a choice, and we chose you,’ Macready said in a flat voice. ‘You’d better be fecking worth it, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘Where’s Kelpie?’

  Macready avoided Ashiol’s gaze. There was no reason why he should be embarrassed about Kelpie’s choice, except that he had almost made the same one.

  Velody groaned and awoke, her whole body shuddering. Ashiol turned to her, one hand sliding over her ripped dress to rest upon her bare stomach. ‘Velody …’

  She shrank away from him, reacting hard. ‘Don’t touch me. You tried to kill me.’

  That gave Ashiol pause, but only for a moment. ‘I didn’t want that. I was confused. You were on Garnet’s side.’

  ‘When have I ever been on anyone’s side but yours?’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Hands off.’

  Ashiol lifted his hand away and sat up slowly, rubbing his bloodstained fingers through his hair without seeming to notice. There was a ragged cut and scrape on his leg that hadn’t healed, probably caused by something mundane like falling hard onto the edge of a paving stone.

  ‘You brought him back,’ he said. ‘Garnet. This is what he does to us.’

  ‘He wasn’t the one with claws in my stomach,’ Velody snapped back.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Crane, sounding his age for once.

  ‘No fecking idea,’ Macready muttered.

  The nests. Would they be able to get into their nests without skysilver? Would they still be able to share a fraction of the Creature Kings’ instincts? Or were they mortal already, shut out of the Court forever?

  Velody stood, with Delphine’s help. ‘Duel to the death,’ she said to Ashiol in a withering voice. ‘You utter child.’

  ‘Resolved the issue, didn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Aye,’ Macready said sharply. ‘You got what you wanted, my Lord Ducomte. You can waltz off into the sunrise now you’ve successfully made someone else Power and Majesty. Good candidate you picked for it, too; a fine nox’s work.’

  He was angry at them all, at the world, at this saints-forsaken city.

  A shadow crossed Ashiol’s face. ‘It’s done now,’ he said.

  Macready laughed without humour. ‘As ever, we’re the ones who live with the consequences, my King.’

  There was no fight left in Ashiol. ‘I have no more call upon your loyalty,’ he said. ‘You’re free of it, all of you. I wish you well.’

  He turned and walked away, limping, over the crest of the hill.

  ‘We can’t let him go like that,’ Crane said in a low voice.

  ‘Fecking well should,’ Macready muttered. ‘He’s a cat, they’re practically immortal.’

  ‘He’s human right now.’

  It would take at least a day for the sentinel blood to fade from Ashiol’s body, and his animor to return.

  ‘Aye, and a Ducomte with a Palazzo to live in,’ snapped Macready. ‘My heart bleeds for him. How will he manage to survive?’

  He turned to Velody, sliding an arm around her waist. ‘Let’s get you home, lass. Nothing else we can do now.’

  The sky could fall, the city could be swallowed, and there wasn’t one of them could do a blasted thing about it.

  12

  Three days after the Ides of Bestialis

  Velody could hardly breathe, could hardly think. She had done this. Once again, she had wrought destruction on the Creature Court. She could no longer remember anything good or rightful she had done since she’d stepped into their world.

  The sentinels were shattered, all of them. Kelpie had turned to Garnet’s side. Ashiol was gone. Velody didn’t even have her animor, not as long as she had the taste of Delphine’s blood between her teeth.

  It was early morning when they let themselves into the house, which was quiet and still. No fire burned in the stove.

  ‘Rhian must be asleep,’ said Delphine, leaning against Macready. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘You were happy enough to give up your swords,’ Macready muttered. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘The next big festival is the Pomonia,’ Delphine said, sounding horribly gleeful about it. ‘You can hold the green satin while I cut ribbons.’

  Macready swore at her and stamped his way upstairs. They heard a door slam above.

  Velody came very close to telling Delphine not to tease him, but shut her mouth. Who was she to comment on their relationship? Macready wasn’t her sentinel any more.

  Delphine didn’t seem to care that she had upset her man. ‘At least this whole wretched game is over,’ she said, shrugging. ‘We can go back to our lives.’

  ‘If you believe that, you’re stupider than everyone thinks you are,’ Crane said angrily.

  Velody had never heard him be so rude to anyone.

  Delphine put her hands on her hips, giving Crane a dirty look. ‘Take out the rubbish, will you, Velody? I think we have our full complement of sponging, non-rent-paying guests.’ She flounced up the stairs after Macready.


  Crane looked faintly ashamed of himself. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Velody.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she told him. ‘We’ve all said and done things worthy of regret this nox.’

  It was all so huge. Velody had no idea how to deal with this, no way to understand it.

  ‘Has this ever happened before?’ she asked. ‘Kings and sentinels exiled from the Court?’

  ‘It happened to Ashiol,’ Crane reminded her. ‘Reinforced with enough damage to make him stay away for five years. No sentinel I’ve ever heard of gave up his swords.’

  Velody rubbed her stomach. The skin was smooth over the wound that had almost let her life leak away onto the cobblestones. She had really thought she was going to die this time around, and part of her had welcomed it, reaching out for Sage and her family, hoping for peace and rest.

  Though if she had wanted peace and rest, she should have stayed in the empty remains of Tierce and let the sky take her.

  ‘Do you think Garnet will come after us?’ she asked Crane.

  ‘If you stay in the city, then yes, sooner or later.’

  ‘And what are you going to do?’ she asked. ‘You can stay here. Don’t worry about what Delphine says.’

  Crane shook his head slowly. ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s time I had a go at this real world thing. The daylight life. I don’t think I can do that if I’m living here.’

  He had been a part of the Creature Court his whole life, had lost everything because of Velody.

  ‘Crane, I’m —’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, cutting her off before she could apologise. ‘We all made our choices. I wish I’d been strong enough to walk away from Garnet last time. This is for the best.’

  ‘I’m still sorry.’

  He gave her a flicker of a smile. ‘Do you think it’s too late for me to find something real?’

  Velody had spent months of her life in a timeless unreality that was still under her skin. She could smell that false Tierce every time she lost track of where she was.

  Reality. If it was an option for any of them, it was for this bright-eyed young man with his whole future in front of him.

  ‘It’s never too late,’ she said, and meant it.

  Delphine wasn’t sure how to do this. The supportive, caring, domestic partner wasn’t a role she’d ever had to play. And she couldn’t pretend to be anything but glad that she’d given up her swords, that this whole wretched, violent game was over. She had never wanted to be a sentinel; had only taken up swords because she felt she had no choice. Macready, she was pretty sure, felt differently.

  She opened her bedroom door and looked at him. He lay on her bed, so exhausted and broken that her heart turned over.

  Oh, no. No going soft. Not this demme.

  ‘If you’re going to feel sorry for yourself, you can sleep at the foot of the stairs,’ she said firmly.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Make me.’

  There was a thrum in his voice that made her skin prickle. This was the annoying thing about him. He had spent the last couple of months making himself indispensable to her. There weren’t many men who could make her wet with a word or two, said in a certain voice.

  Delphine pulled her dress over her head and kneeled on the bed next to him. ‘Or, you know, you could make yourself useful.’

  ‘Got anything in mind?’ Macready reached out, fingering the soft cotton of her breastband with his damaged hand.

  That was something, then. If they didn’t have sex, they might have to have a conversation about what they had done, what he had lost, and Delphine was happy to put that off until the world ended.

  ‘Frig me like you mean it,’ she said, her voice catching just a little. ‘I can make you forget this whole mess.’

  Macready gave her a cynical look. ‘No offence, love, but I don’t think you’re that good at it.’

  Oh. A challenge.

  Delphine gave him a shove back onto the bed. ‘You’re going to regret saying that.’

  Ashiol limped back to the Palazzo. He didn’t want to speak to anyone. Rage burned deep in his chest. He hated Velody, hated Garnet, hated Kelpie, hated them all.

  He climbed in the window to his rooms with more difficulty than usual and headed straight for the bath, where he sponged off blood and prodded with distaste at the long cut on his leg. It was nearly dawn. It would have to stop bleeding soon.

  ‘My Lord Ducomte?’ he head from the other room.

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Armand the factotum entered with his usual ‘something smells bad in here’ expression. ‘My Lord —’ He broke off when he saw the wound. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘Aye, you can get the hells out of here.’

  Armand rolled his eyes with prissy patience and began pulling bottles and jars out of the cupboard at the back of the room. ‘Beeswax tincture, and henwort to staunch the blood. You’ll need a leaf poultice to clean the wound or you’ll end up with a fever.’

  ‘Might be fun.’ Ashiol nevertheless let the factotum fuss over his leg and smear it with some cack that actually felt oddly good. ‘Did you want something?’

  ‘Her high and brightness needs you,’ said the factotum, making it clear by his voice that nothing could be of less use to Isangell than her troublemaking cousin.

  ‘You could tell her I’m asleep,’ Ashiol suggested.

  The factotum glared at him. ‘I can undo all this work in under a second.’

  Ashiol felt calm for the first time in months, damn it all. His mind felt clear. Velody was not in league with Garnet. Garnet had the Creature Court. No one wanted anything of Ashiol … no one except Isangell. ‘Fine,’ Ashiol muttered. ‘I’ll see her. But I need a drink first.’

  ‘I’ll send up a vat of wine, shall I?’ the factotum said with surprising sarcasm.

  The Duchessa’s rooms were filled with trunks and maids. Ashiol, well fortified with two shots of imperium warming his stomach, watched for a moment as they went back and forth with armfuls of frocks and shoes and other fluffy items. ‘Are we moving house?’

  Isangell emerged from her bedroom, arms full of papers, looking harried. ‘Please don’t assume I have a sense of humour right now, Ash. This is all your fault.’

  ‘What am I being blamed for now?’

  She stepped closer, and he saw that she looked more tired than she should, shadows under her eyes. He was used to his cousin being loving and forgiving, not this … vibrating anger that was more like himself.

  ‘I am preparing for my visit with the Duc-Elected of Bazeppe to negotiate a marriage with one of his sons,’ she told him crossly. ‘Because the cousin who was supposed to stand in as my consort so I could establish my rule in this city before giving myself over to marriage has consistently let me down.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That.’

  ‘The City Fathers have been putting pressure on me about all these spates of bad luck in the city this year,’ said Isangell. ‘The theatre collapse was the last straw for them — and I’ve spent enough time with their various eligible sons to put me off wedding cake for life. This way, at least, we can forge stronger bonds with Bazeppe.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were serious about that.’

  ‘I don’t see any other option,’ she said sharply. ‘Oh, don’t blame yourself for a moment — it’s all my fault.’

  She went back to her packing, giving further instructions to several maids. Just when Ashiol thought she was done with him, she added: ‘Mama warned me. No one thought bringing you here was a good idea, or that it would solve all my problems. No one but me.’

  Now he felt bad. Bad, bruised and far too sober. Seven hells of a combination. ‘Isangell —’

  ‘No, let me finish.’ She dismissed the maids with an impatient wave and waited until they were all gone before she spoke again. ‘I put you in this ridiculous situation, expecting you to be strong for me, to play the hero. But that’s not what you do. Everyone could see it but me. I understand now. I’ve looked
past the veil of that Creature Court of yours. I saw your friend die. I might not be able to see everything that happens in that nox of yours, but I do know that nothing in this world matters to you like being a … Creature King.’ Her face was calm. ‘I don’t blame you for it, Ashiol. But I have to stand on my own two feet, and stop pretending you can be what I hoped. If that means I change my plans and acquire a husband to play public consort to me earlier than planned, then so be it.’

  Nothing in this world matters to you like being a Creature King. Her words were a cold knife to the neck. Ashiol had lost his chance to beat Garnet at his own game. Velody was unforgiving, and after the stunt he’d pulled he had little hope that she would be on his side. He’d tried to kill her. He was an idiot.

  He could still feel that slow burn of anger, the desire to kill the Lords and Court, one by one. To kill Garnet. It had regressed somewhat since the fight with Velody, but the bloodlust was still there. He did not know if it was part of his madness, or just a reaction to Garnet’s return, but he knew he could not unleash it again, not without killing someone he loved.

  They didn’t need him. The Lords and Court had chosen Garnet. After everything he had done, Ashiol couldn’t blame them. He’d had his chance, when Velody was swallowed by the sky, and he’d wasted all that time being weak. Being useless.

  ‘Let me come with you,’ he said impulsively.

  Isangell looked at him. ‘Aren’t you needed here?’

  ‘No,’ he said, almost laughing with joy at the revelation. ‘I’m not. You can’t go alone. This is too important. You need support, and I’ve given you little enough of that. Let me do this.’ The Creature Court were better off without him.

  She hesitated, as if not sure whether to believe him. ‘Pack your things, then. We have a train to catch.’