Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Garnet entered like Harlequinus in the final act, power pouring off him. He ignored me and strode straight to Livilla, drew her up off the couch and kissed her until she could hardly breathe.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked. ‘You feel —’

  ‘Sick, hot, weak, marvellous, tremendous?’ Garnet teased her. ‘I’ve never felt better in my life.’

  He danced her around the rooms, humming a song he’d picked up somewhere.

  ‘You quenched someone,’ Livilla said, pouting at him. ‘You didn’t share!’

  Garnet mimicked her sulky expression. ‘Ask our lovely Tasha if there was a death call this nox.’

  ‘You’ve eaten someone,’ Livilla protested. ‘You must have.’

  ‘Me?’ he laughed. ‘I’m just naturally talented and wonderful, you know.’

  As he danced past me, I felt the throbbing pain in my back ease. I stared up at him in alarm. ‘You’re not supposed to —’

  ‘Leave Tasha to me,’ he carolled, kissing Livilla again, rougher than before. ‘Call that a gift from a little brown mouse.’

  I thought he had finally run mad.

  Tasha knew what he’d done before she even stepped over the threshold. She was alone, no sign of Ashiol or Lysandor. She must have left the battle early, as soon as she felt Garnet healing me.

  ‘Get up,’ she demanded, dragging me out of bed so that I fell on the floor. ‘This is what I do to disobedient little boys,’ she added, eyes fixed on Garnet as she pressed her palm against my back, burning a handprint of animor between my shoulder blades.

  I screamed, too shocked with the pain to do anything else.

  ‘Stop it,’ Garnet snapped, dragging her away from me. ‘I did it; punish me.’

  ‘Believe me, I will,’ she snarled, baring her teeth at him. ‘I am your Lord and you will not forget that. Cub.’

  Garnet shoved her hard, knocking her to the floor. ‘For now, perhaps,’ he said, standing over her. ‘But I won’t be your courteso forever. I’ll be a Lord and then a King, and you can never be anything more than you are now. Woman.’

  Tasha screamed soundlessly at him and shaped herself into the lioness. She pounced and bit, and he let her tear at him, laughing helplessly though the pain must have been overwhelming.

  ‘You can’t kill me,’ he said finally, pale and shuddering under her teeth. ‘You don’t dare quench anyone. Not if you don’t want to end up like Samara.’ We all knew the story of the female Lord who tried to be a King and burst apart from her own power. Women could not be Kings.

  She shaped herself back into Tasha, golden and naked, pinning him to the ground. ‘I can kill you without quenching you,’ she gasped.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ said Garnet. ‘You don’t have it in you to hold back, you know that. You can’t trust yourself.’

  Tasha turned away from him and punched the wall in anger, enough to scrape her knuckles bloody. ‘You are mine. You will not speak to me like I am the dirt under your fingernails. I own you, boy.’

  ‘Aye, you do,’ Garnet said, and there was blood in his mouth now. ‘But we are here because we love you, not because you own us. I want you to swear an oath that you will not raise a hand against one of us again.’

  His eyes were serious. Had he meant this all along?

  Tasha laughed hollowly. ‘Who do you think you are?’

  Garnet stood up then, which was a surprise to me, even through my distracting haze of pain. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, shouldn’t have had it in him with his body torn and bitten raw, but he had managed to boost his power somehow. He wasn’t a Lord yet, but he wasn’t far off being Tasha’s equal.

  ‘Swear the oath,’ he said dangerously. ‘Or I will leave and take them with me when I become Lord. They love me more than they love you.’

  Livilla and I both avoided Tasha’s sudden, penetrating gaze. It was true. Tasha was glorious, but Garnet was ours. If we had to choose, we would choose him, even if we hated ourselves for it.

  He wouldn’t make us choose, would he?

  ‘I will destroy you for this,’ Tasha whispered.

  ‘You can try,’ Garnet replied. ‘But I’m not Saturn. I won’t go down so easily.’ He pressed a hand against his chest and blood oozed through his fingers. ‘Swear the oath, Tasha. You will not deliberately harm any of your courtesi. Not a hair on their heads.’

  ‘You’re a fool,’ she whispered.

  Garnet raised his voice. ‘Poet. Livilla. We’re leaving. Celeste Lord Owl will take us in.’

  ‘You can’t threaten me,’ Tasha spat.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Garnet. ‘You are the one with something to lose. You owe everything you are to us. Swear the oath, Tasha. You can hurt us as indirectly as you like, but no more pain from your hands to our bodies. We have suffered your tantrums long enough.’

  Her eyes blazed at him, but she swore the oath. Garnet fell to the couch halfway through, and I saw an expression flicker across her face as she considered ending him once and for all. But she didn’t. Instead, she promised not to hurt any of her courtesi with her own hands from that nox onwards.

  Ashiol and Lysandor came in later, punchy and high-spirited from the battle. None of us told them what had happened. At least, Livilla and I never did. I think Garnet kept his mouth shut, too, even from his closest friends.

  Tasha brought a cage into the den, and coils of skysilver wire from the Smith. If one of us displeased her, she would order us to bind one of the cage’s bars in tight skysilver coils, smirking as it burned our palms and fingertips. Even Garnet did it when she told him to, though he knew she couldn’t enforce the order. He seemed to enjoy it, or was good at pretending so. Once the bars were all wrapped in skysilver, the cage made an effective prison for recalcitrant cubs. I don’t think Ashiol or Lysandor ever knew why she had changed her methods of inflicting pain.

  20

  Two years later, Tasha broke the oath.

  The cubs were nineteen now, and Tasha was the most powerful Lord of the Court. Livilla and I added to her numbers, but it was those three young men with their fierce, devastating animor that showed the rest of the Court that Tasha was someone to be reckoned with.

  Ortheus the Snake King, our Power and Majesty, adored her. She had replaced Saturn as his favourite. Perhaps it was knowing she could never be a King that made him trust her so greatly, but it didn’t matter why. She stood at the snake’s side and served him well.

  Argentin, the other King of the Court, tolerated Tasha with something like amusement. She had spent years trying to seduce him and he merely laughed at her. Of all the Court, he was the only one I saw who acted like a monk. If his taste was demmes, young boys, or Ortheus himself, we never saw it.

  Tasha allowed both Kings to order her courtesi around as much as they chose. She took particular delight in letting the Power and Majesty hurt or punish us in ways she no longer could herself. Once, Ortheus ordered Garnet to be beaten bloody on the floor of the Haymarket. Ashiol expected Tasha to protest, or offer some kind of bribe to prevent it, but she did nothing.

  Garnet grinned through the pain, knowing she had bested him, and yet … he had beaten her, too. She had to go to such lengths to hurt him.

  It was only a matter of time.

  Heliora was Seer now, new and raw. The first time she fell into the futures, it was Ashiol’s job to frig her back to her senses. He did it because he had to, because Ortheus had ordered him, and because he cared about Hel, just a little. Tasha allowed that — she never saw Heliora as a threat, just as she’d never seen Livilla as a threat. Maybe because they were both street trash, or at least had started out that way. Maybe because neither of them was likely to become a Lord. Heliora was stuck being a Seer for the rest of her life, and Liv had little ambition.

  It was Celeste who provoked Tasha’s jealousy, and her hate; Celeste who had become a Lord upon the death of Saturn and drew Lysandor’s eyes everywhere she went; Celeste who was loved.

  I don’t know if Orth
eus knew all this, if he had planned events to unfold the way they did, but one day he called a Court for us all to hear Heliora speak the futures — and nominated Lysandor to be the one to bring her back.

  Everyone tensed at that, except Tasha, who thought the idea was amusing.

  Ashiol glared with suppressed fury. He loved Lysandor, but Hel was his to protect. Heliora herself, preparing for her visions, didn’t look happy. Lord Celeste blazed with anger, though she didn’t show it on her face.

  Garnet reached out, quite casually, and took my hand. He was holding Livilla’s on his other side. For comfort? To know exactly where we were? I had no idea, except that he was watching the whole Court with the alert eyes of a gattopardo ready to pounce.

  ‘No,’ said Lysandor. He stood up.

  ‘I am your Power and Majesty,’ said Ortheus, who had not been defied in a long time. ‘You will do as you are told, cub.’

  Tasha flinched at the use of that name.

  Lysandor gave an odd sort of smile. ‘I believe the Seer would be better eased from her burdens by someone whose body she trusts. She should be honoured for the unique role she has, not passed around like a meat dish for everyone to taste.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Ortheus. His head moved back and forth, small darting movements, as he weighed up Lysandor’s stance, the cadence of his voice, any weaknesses he might betray. ‘Have you any further advice to give me, courteso?’

  ‘I apologise for my inability to perform your request, my Power,’ said Lysandor, and even Garnet winced at that one. To say ‘request’ when all knew it had been an order … We would be lucky if Lysandor got out of this alive.

  ‘How charming,’ said Ortheus. He never raised his voice. That was part of what made him such a chilling master. Like the snakes he could shape himself into, he was calm right up to the moment he struck out. ‘You know I will punish you.’

  ‘I expected as much, my Majesty,’ said Lysandor.

  Ortheus laughed. Many of the Court relaxed at that point, laughing along with him, or at least smiling. I didn’t smile, nor did Garnet or Ashiol. Livilla laid her head on Garnet’s shoulder, shivering.

  ‘You amuse me, courteso,’ said our Power and Majesty. ‘But I don’t believe for one moment that you are refusing the Seer’s body out of some doomed sense of honour. Tell me the truth. Why will you not frig her?’

  Lysandor met the Snake King’s eyes. ‘I love another,’ he said simply.

  Celeste breathed out, and for a few seconds that was the only noise we heard. That, and each other’s heartbeats.

  ‘There is no law, after all, that we should all mate like animals,’ commented Argentin lightly. Argentin rarely spoke except to add weight to the pronouncements of our Power and Majesty.

  Ortheus didn’t laugh this time. He seemed intrigued, as if Lysandor had said something he really couldn’t understand. Then he shrugged, just once. ‘Cat. Come and sit by the Seer. She will need you shortly.’

  As Ashiol crawled forward to Heliora’s side, Ortheus looked at Tasha. ‘Discipline your boy.’

  Tasha could not appear weak before the Court. As she strutted towards Lysandor, my eyes were on Garnet. He looked half-sick, half-delighted with himself, his eyes unnaturally bright. He gripped my hand so hard it hurt. I wondered if he was on something, but I hadn’t seen him take a single powder or potion since the nox he’d forced Tasha to make that oath. Power was a better drug, it seemed.

  Looking at him then, my eyes locked on his face as Tasha made Lysandor scream, I realised this was what he had intended all along. He had known that, sooner or later, this oath would conflict with Tasha’s service to the Power and Majesty. Garnet was responsible for what was happening right now. He had turned Tasha into an oathbreaker.

  Our walk back through the tunnels was slow and uncomfortable. Lysandor had been healed enough that he could leave the Haymarket on his own two feet; he limped a little on the uneven ground. Tasha’s anger was tangible, bouncing off the walls around us.

  We were a few steps from the den when we all felt the sky boiling above us, the beginning of a battle.

  ‘Go, all of you,’ said Tasha, eyes fastened on Garnet. ‘We will follow.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Ashiol asked, but Lysandor tugged on his arm, knowing better than to question Tasha when she was in that kind of mood.

  Livilla and I, knowing the truth, exchanged glances and followed the cubs up through the pipes into the city. Neither of us looked back, and I know we half-expected that we would not see Garnet again. He had gone too far.

  The battle distracted us. The sky was so bright with screechlight and gold flashes that it could have been daylight. We ducked and weaved through the threads of power, small wounds opening in the sky faster than we could seal them off. I was new enough to fighting that I let it take me over completely, laughing and buzzing with the glee of it as I dodged death and burning over and over. There is truly no feeling like it in the world. Nothing as good, nothing as terrible.

  No, that last part isn’t true. There is something worse. I felt it that nox. A loss I couldn’t begin to explain, or understand.

  Ashiol was hit by it first. He almost fell out of the sky, and I thought he had been hurt. He let out a cry that pulled us to him, Lysandor, Livilla, me. We were all in animal form, circling around him in our many shapes of rat, wolf, lynx. Ashiol shaped back, human instead of black cats.

  Lysandor’s mouth was open in shock. I still didn’t feel it, not really. The sky was so alight with fiends and animor that I was dazed. Then the sky actually shook, and I reached out for Tasha, as we always did when we were sick or hurt or scared.

  She wasn’t there. Saints and devils, she wasn’t there, and there was nothing but a void where she used to be. Darkness and nothingness.

  We fled the sky, all five of us, though some of the Lords screamed about our cowardice, and there would be punishment from the Power and Majesty later. We couldn’t think about that.

  Tasha was gone, Tasha was gone, Tasha was gone.

  We slid down through the pipes and tunnels, dropping onto the sandy floor of the den. Garnet sat there, knees tucked under his chin, covered in blood. I don’t think he was even aware that we were there, not at first.

  Tasha was a crumpled figure on the sand, her human torso twisted half in and half out of a pair of lioness’s back legs. There was blood on her, too.

  Livilla let out a cry and went to our Lord, throwing herself on her body. ‘What have you done?’ Her eyes were glassy and her skin pinker than usual; what little she had quenched of Tasha had hit her hard. ‘Garnet, what have you done?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Lysandor said in an awful voice. ‘He’s done exactly as Tasha taught us. Lived her lessons fully.’

  I hated Lysandor in that moment, that bastard blaming her for her own death.

  ‘I win,’ said Garnet, looking at Ashiol as if he was waiting for applause.

  Everything Garnet did had an audience in mind, and, with Tasha gone, Ashiol was the most important member of the audience. Box seat. Toffee apples. Curtain call.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Ashiol slowly. ‘Lord.’

  I looked at Garnet, trying to see it in him. He had always been good at keeping his power under wraps, only revealing the full extent of his abilities when it suited him. It was a useful skill in the Creature Court. He stood up now, unfurling his animor, and oh, yes. A Lord.

  Ashiol had realised before the rest of us, had acknowledged it, and yet he was still taking command, working out the situation.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We need a plan.’

  ‘No plans, no tricks,’ said Garnet, horribly calm. ‘It doesn’t matter what the rest of the Creature Court think. I’m going to look after all of you. I can do that now.’ He shone, brighter than ever before, pale as an angel.

  ‘Of course you are,’ said Ashiol impatiently. ‘Now. Here’s what we’re going to do …’

  We buried Tasha in the Angel Gardens, without telling anyone.
Ashiol was right about that part. It didn’t matter that Garnet was a Lord; once the rest of the Court knew that Tasha was gone, they would fall on us. The other Lords had hated her for having so many courtesi, for being Ortheus’s favourite. Our Power and Maesty would not extend that favouritism to us, we knew that much.

  Once the digging was done, and she lay buried under the earth, we just sat there, dirty and scared. They would find out. Of course they would find out.

  Only Garnet seemed unconcerned. He made the stone to mark her, imprinting the shape of a lioness on a fallen piece of masonry. ‘It’s just us now,’ he said. ‘We’ll keep the family together. I promise.’

  Ashiol and Lysandor looked at each other, and said nothing.

  21

  The sickness started that nox. The five of us were curled up in Tasha’s bed, not wanting to be alone.

  I awoke in darkness to hear Livilla sobbing, and it was a short while before I realised it wasn’t just an ordinary bad dream. She had the nox sweats, a high fever. Lysandor wasn’t looking good either, shivering as he and Ashiol talked in low voices about how to smuggle Livilla to a dottore.

  ‘I know one,’ I said. They looked at me, and now wasn’t the time to mention how hot my skin felt, or how everything seemed to be blurring before my eyes. ‘If he’s still there. He worked at an apothecary across from the Vittorina Royale. He was a bit of an old crook — I think we can … well, not trust him, but if we pay him enough he might keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘Garnet, go along with Poet to grab the fellow,’ said Ashiol flatly. ‘We can always see to his silence later.’

  ‘Is that an order?’ Garnet challenged him.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, we don’t have time for pawing the ground,’ Ashiol growled. ‘Argue the point later. Punish me later if that’s what you want. Livilla needs our help.’