Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  PART V

  Demoiselles Are

  Nothing But

  Trouble

  13

  I was the one who brought Livilla to Tasha. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

  Three-quarters of a year had passed since I first fell sick (since Tasha made me hers) and I hadn’t been back to the Vittorina Royale in all that time.

  Saturn took an interest in me still, and Tasha let him. That was part of a deal between them. He took me with him sometimes when he went out during daylight. He bought and traded books, and supplied dusty leatherbound volumes to the city librarion as well as to some private collections — at the Palazzo, or in other fine houses. He made me practise my reading, reminding me that someday I might want to know how to read a script if I wanted the theatre life back. I humoured him in that, trying to mimick his perfect copperplate handwriting.

  ‘Knowledge is power,’ he told me once. ‘Books have far longer memories than people do.’

  I knew he was wrong. Power was blood and heat and claws and Tasha’s smile of triumph when someone did exactly what she wanted. Books had nothing to do with anything real.

  The first time I saw the sky fall, I was so busy trying to figure out the trick of it, I almost got myself killed. Even after I saw Garnet’s arm slashed and blackened from a cloudwight, I remained convinced that it was all some kind of grand performance. No one would do this for any other reason.

  Only question was: who was the audience?

  I got used to it, though. It became as normal to me as a pantomime. After a battle, the cubs were usually wired, bright eyed and fierce. They would swap war stories, teasing each other over who had slaughtered more devils, who had flown higher or harder, who was the best.

  Tasha loved them at these times. She would loll on cushions, laughing throatily as they attempted to outdo each other. The prize, of course, was her. When one of them had suitably impressed her, she would drag him into the bedroom for a personal reward.

  When Tasha wasn’t watching, the mood among the cubs was darker and their cups ran deeper. Sometimes Garnet wouldn’t return straight away from battle, but would turn up hours or days later, high as a kite, jumping at shadows or laughing hysterically at nothing. More than once, one of the other cubs distracted Tasha while the rest of us went to drag him out of some seedy club. I didn’t understand how he could be part of this life when he hated it so much. But then Tasha made him stay home with me one nox because his arm was wounded, and I saw the impatience in his face, the frantic movement of his foot bouncing back and forth, and I realised that he hated to be left behind even more.

  It gets into your blood, this sky of ours. It captures your soul.

  They wouldn’t let me fight yet. Not even Tasha was that much of a monster. They teased me about training me up to dance the sky, but I knew they thought of me as a pet rather than truly one of them.

  Also, I suspected that Tasha thought if I spent much time in the city above, I might run away.

  It was a bad season. Nox after nox, that familiar tug came and Tasha and the cubs went running out to save the city. Garnet’s arm didn’t heal well, and on the third nox in a row of being left behind, he cracked.

  ‘Come on, little rat. Let’s see what’s out there.’

  We scampered along tunnels, emerging from the lock where the canal ran out of the side of a hill.

  ‘Stay low,’ said Garnet, already fierce and bright eyed, as if he’d been taking something. Perhaps he had and I’d missed it. ‘Don’t want the lioness to know what we’re about.’

  We both shifted into creature form and ran up the slope together, my rat bodies keeping close to the paws of the two gattopardi. One of them limped badly, but I knew better than to refer to it. He was still angry he’d been caught in such a way.

  Being outside made my skin tingle. I had been underground so long, and had no idea how much I’d been craving the sky. It called to me. To Garnet, too. As we crested the hill, he let out a sound halfway between a growl and a cry of triumph.

  The sky was full of lights and colours and shapes swooping back and forth. Garnet’s eyes glowed with it. Something smashed into a nearby bush and exploded into flames and sparks, and Garnet leaped towards it rather than away, savaging the bush with his teeth. Something bright and cold squirmed in his jaws and he took off into the sky, dragging it with him.

  I was alone. Part of me wanted to go after him, to see what it was really like up there. To please Tasha, and make her realise how useful I was. To be part of the family. On the other hand, this was the first time I’d been alone and free in the best part of a year.

  I scampered back to where my clothes lay near the lock, and changed into boy shape. I didn’t know where I was, but this looked like a main street, and everything in Aufleur was connected. I followed the street around until I spotted a familiar piazza, and kept going.

  All the way to the Vittorina Royale.

  The shops and houses along Via Delgardie were lined with boughs of green and I realised it was Saturnalia. Had I really been underground so long?

  Finally I found myself standing in front of the theatre. It was too late for the lanterns to be lit, and the whole place seemed smaller and grimmer than I remembered.

  Aye, I was such a wise old man at nine years old.

  I crept around to the alley where Madalena had been found, and let myself in at the back, making my way past the dressing rooms and scenery. It smelled like home — of gin and cosmetick and the detritus of an audience. I made it to the stage, and found it set for the last scene of a saints-and-angel, with satin orange-blossom wreaths tossed over every prop. No one was about.

  For so long this had been my world — the Mermaid back home, and then the Vittorina: layers of facade pretending to be something grand and exotic.

  I’d always thought the theatre was my future. My dreams had been shaped by it — I wanted to be a mask, a songbird, a gaffer, a harlequinus, a tumbler …

  My new world was smaller, darker, or at least it had been until I realised what the sky had to offer.

  Standing on that stage, I remembered a song that Madalena used to sing to me. It was a number from the old days, when she and my mother dressed up as urchin boys and sang their guts out, turning the audience from laughter to tears on the change of a verse. I sang it there and then, remembering the steps, running through the old routine. My voice knew how to project to the gods. I could do this. I could live this life.

  Halfway through, a creature padded into the theatre, then another. I half-expected a pair of gattopardi, and my voice faltered, but it was two half-grown wolves, ragged and matted. Come to bring me home, no doubt. I didn’t know how many Lords and Court were out there — I’d only met Tasha and the cubs, Saturn, Celeste and the snake man they called Power and Majesty.

  I finished the song, then slid off the edge of the stage. ‘Are you one of them?’

  Two pairs of deep, miserable yellow eyes stared back at me, and then they shifted into each other, forming a naked demme only a few years older than myself — old enough to be a columbine, but only just. She looked half-starved and she was shaking. I didn’t have the words yet for what she was — I’d heard the others talk about animor, courtesi, and the meanings hadn’t settled into my head like something that mattered — but I knew she was like me. Like Tasha and Garnet and the rest. I could feel it.

  I reached out my hand to her and she flinched back. I recognised her then, though she had grown a bit in all directions since I’d seen her last. Liv. Saints, it was Liv. There were bruises all down her side. Someone had been beating her.

  ‘Is this your first time?’ I asked her.

  She said nothing, just shivered all over. It reminded me of that fever I’d had, though she seemed cold and not hot.

  I could have gone two ways. I had a choice. I could have taken her backstage and thrown her on the wardrobe mistress’s mercy, hoping the real world could make her better. But those bruises made me think that maybe she neede
d something else, a new life.

  I took her to Tasha.

  Livilla. I hadn’t even known that was her proper name. She was just Liv to me, the one who wasn’t as pretty as Ruby-Red, and didn’t talk as much as Kip and Benny, and could sing when she thought no one was looking but clammed up when she had an audience. She was broken and sad, and skinny and ugly enough that Tasha didn’t see her as a threat. At first, she withdrew from the rest of us, but the cubs treated her like a princessa and eventually she warmed up to that. No one at the theatre had thought she was anything special.

  On the third day of Saturnalia, Ashiol brought her a sugar pig from the market, and she sucked every crumb of sweetness from it, rolling it around on her tongue like she’d never had such a feast.

  On the fourth day of Saturnalia, Garnet and Lysandor brought paper sparrows to make her smile, and heaped her lap with them.

  On the fifth day of Saturnalia, I snuck back into the Vittorina Royale and stole her a dress. It was red and shiny and I thought maybe it belonged to Adriane, if she was still there and a stellar and not off having babies or whatever. When Livilla smiled at me, her mouth was red and shiny, too.

  The older boys became quite stupid over her — enough that it began to irritate Tasha — but Livilla liked me best. I enjoyed someone else being the pet for once. She would let me brush her hair and fetch things for her.

  On the seventh day of Saturnalia, Tasha discovered that Lysandor was bedding Saturn’s courtesa Celeste, and all the seven hells broke open.

  14

  Everyone knew how it worked. The cubs shared Tasha’s bed whenever she wanted. Saturn did as well, if the two of them weren’t feuding. Tasha could have anyone she wanted, as many as she wanted. But she didn’t share. Even I understood that.

  I woke up that day to the sound of screaming, and discovered that Livilla had crawled in with me again. She felt safer with me than with the cubs, who wanted more from her than comforting warmth. My first thought was that Madalena was having another of her fits, then I remembered that Madalena was dead.

  The screaming didn’t stop when I sat up and looked around.

  ‘Is it her?’ Livilla asked.

  She never said Tasha’s name, nor ‘my Lady’ or ‘my Lord’ like the cubs. She still hadn’t been up on the rooftops with us, either, not yet. All she knew was that we were different, and that no one was going to hurt her here. (I hadn’t admitted to her yet that maybe that part wasn’t true — she’d learn soon enough.)

  When I nodded, she made a small noise and burrowed deeper in the blankets. I didn’t blame her.

  I crept out into the main room and saw Lysandor, naked and bleeding. Three long claw marks had laid his belly open and he was whining like a wounded animal.

  ‘And you,’ Tasha blazed at Ashiol and Garnet, who hung back out of the way, making no move to help Lysandor, ‘did you know about this betrayal? This disgusting breach of trust? Did you know he was frigging that bloated owl-wench?’

  They protested their innocence, but we all knew they were lying.

  ‘Come forward,’ said Tasha. Both obeyed. ‘Put your hands on him,’ she ordered.

  Ashiol did it first, hesitating only a little. Lysandor cried out at his touch. Garnet gritted his teeth and did the same.

  Tasha smiled horribly. ‘Hurt him, and I’ll believe you.’

  Ashiol closed his eyes and sank his fingers into one of the wounds in Lysandor’s stomach, making him writhe with pain. Garnet kept his eyes open and drove his fingers in harder, forcing his friend to scream. His face didn’t show revulsion or pleasure. Just … nothing.

  I stumbled away, out of the den, thinking of Madalena and how I’d been living all year with the animals who’d torn her apart because she’d bedded Tasha’s sometime lover. It was the one thing I managed not to think about, most of the time. I wanted to be sick, but it wouldn’t come up. I pressed my head against the cool stone of the tunnel and waited to stop shaking.

  Some time later, I realised Saturn was standing over me. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. Celeste was with him, but she stayed in owl form. I didn’t blame her. If Tasha was that mad at me, I’d want to be able to make a quick getaway, too.

  ‘Well, boy,’ Saturn said. ‘Are you ready to accept that the demme is a monster?’

  I thought of him and Tasha drenched in each other’s blood and rolling around on the floor of the Haymarket, like half-killing each other was their way of loving.

  ‘We’re all monsters,’ I whispered. Truest thing I ever said.

  ‘Are you so desperate for a family? Go back to your theatre.’

  ‘I need to be here.’ I was miserable. ‘I don’t belong anywhere else.’

  ‘Boy,’ said Livilla, behind me. She wore an old shirt of Ashiol’s and nothing else. Her feet were bare on the dirty tunnel floor.

  ‘Poet,’ I corrected, angry at her for not bothering to remember. I wasn’t Boy any more. He didn’t exist.

  ‘Poet,’ she repeated. ‘I — what happened to Lysandor?’

  ‘He broke the rules,’ I said, staring at Saturn, who walked past me and into the den. I didn’t know if he was going to punish Tasha or join her in making Lysandor scream.

  Livilla came to sit next to me and let me rest my head on her shoulder. Celeste shaped back into human form and sat with us, her pale skin gleaming in the near-darkness.

  ‘Lord Saturn wants Lysandor,’ she said quietly, miserably. ‘He wanted me to seduce him away from her. Everyone thinks Tasha has too many courtesi, too much power.’

  ‘Because of us?’ Livilla said in surprise.

  I didn’t blame her. She and I were hangers-on, everyone knew that. We weren’t warriors like Ashiol and Garnet and Lysandor. We weren’t even allowed to fight the sky yet.

  Celeste shook her head. ‘He wants to break up the cubs. The other Lords fear them. The three of them are just so … powerful together. Powerful for Tasha.’

  ‘That’s because we’re a family,’ I said.

  The two demmes exchanged a look like I was a child and didn’t know any better.

  Saturn had tried to take me away before, but this was different. Garnet was already on edge. He needed Ashiol and Lysandor to keep him on his feet, to keep him strong. Tasha needed all of us — she wasn’t as strong as she pretended to be. She was just like Madalena — she screamed and fought when she thought people might have stopped loving her for a moment.

  She was screaming now.

  Celeste stood, and Liv and I followed her, creeping back to the den. Tasha was hurling objects at Saturn — plates and goblets and bronze lions. His cane lay on the ground near the entrance and I picked it up.

  ‘Jealous,’ Tasha shrieked. ‘All of you. Trying to destroy what I have, trying to peel my warriors from my side. You will never make my boys stop loving me.’

  ‘They don’t love you,’ Saturn scoffed. ‘You’re a vicious wench with a murderous streak and you drag them down to your level. You hide behind them because it’s easy, because they protect you. You are nothing without your army of corrupted children.’

  Tasha slapped him, claws out, and blood streaked hard against his face. ‘Get away from me,’ she hissed. ‘Never touch me again.’

  Saturn considered her, his beautiful face taking in all possibilities as he looked her over from top to toe. Then, after great deliberation, he punched her in the face.

  Everything went red. Garnet and Lysandor lunged for Saturn, with only Ashiol cool enough to hold them back.

  I got there first.

  Saturn turned, looking at me in bemusement. Blood blossomed on the front of his very white silk shirt. He opened his lips and blood flecked there too, filling his mouth. Only then did I notice the gleaming skysilver tip of his cane sticking out of his chest. It had been driven directly through his body from behind.

  Let me rephrase. I drove his cane into his back. I killed him. It was me.

  Saturn fell to his knees and slumped sideways. Celeste threw herself upon him,
holding fast. She didn’t scream as demmes always do in the theatre. She was silent, grasping her Lord, daring any of us to come close enough to touch.

  Tasha stared at Saturn. Blood ran out of her nose from where he had hit her. To my surprise, she stepped back, and made no objection when the cubs moved between her and the fallen Lord, as if protecting her.

  A rushing sound filled the cave when Saturn died. It hummed in my ears, along my veins and flesh. It made my skin feel bright. Celeste rocked with it, light filling her body and glowing out of her face. Some lashed out at the cubs. Livilla felt it and straightened up, looking pretty for the first time since I’d known her.

  My stomach felt hot and then cold, and I was taller, stretched thin. The rats inside me woke up and wanted to dance.

  Finally, Celeste stood up, still glowing all over. She leaned down and lifted Saturn’s fallen body into her arms as if he weighed no more than one of his hawks.

  ‘Congratulations, Lord of Owls,’ said Tasha in a mildly sarcastic voice, pushing the cubs aside to face Celeste.

  Celeste bowed her head briefly, dislike evident on her face, then walked away.

  I wanted to say something, but what was there to say? I had killed him, and I didn’t know why, not really, just that I had felt so hot all over when he punched Tasha.

  ‘Well,’ said Tasha when Celeste was gone. She looked at Lysandor. ‘Planning to abandon me for that trollop now she has a Lord form?’

  ‘No,’ said Lysandor, looking at the ground. ‘I know where I belong. I’m not going anywhere.’

  Tasha passed by Livilla, touching her hair, a rare moment of softness for her. Then she came to me.

  ‘Well, my darling Poet,’ she said, resting her hand on my head. ‘Look at you. I think it’s time we let you fight the sky. What do you say, my cubs?’

  Garnet glanced at me, and I couldn’t tell if he was disgusted or despairing or proud. Maybe all three.