Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

No. Look at them. They were following me until you turned up, batting your pretty grey eyes and making them distrust me all over again. I’m the only one who knows how to save us.

  How? How do you know?

  Livilla struggled out of his grip just enough to speak. ‘He made a deal with them,’ she snarled. ‘Isn’t it obvious? He made a deal with the dust devils.’

  Velody didn’t know what to believe. ‘Is this true?’ she asked Garnet.

  He laughed again. ‘Your little Seer friend isn’t the only who hears voices in her head. I know the truth. I have always known. They tell me what we have to do to save the city, and it’s hard, and there will be sacrifices. Real blood-draining, bodies-falling sacrifices. But we will be free.’

  ‘How many sacrifices will they ask for before it’s not worth it any more?’ Velody demanded.

  Garnet smiled. ‘It’s always worth it.’ He looked past Velody, past all of them, to a lone figure at the edge of the lake. ‘Listen to her, if you won’t listen to me.’

  Rhian stood there wrapped in a heavy green shawl, looking sad. ‘Bazeppe will fall before the Ides of Saturnalis, and Aufleur will follow,’ she said.

  ‘No!’ Delphine yelled at her. ‘That’s just one of your stupid futures — it doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘What do we do to change it?’ Velody asked.

  ‘We can’t change it,’ Rhian said in an awful voice devoid of emotion. ‘That is the future; it’s all the futures.’

  ‘But there must be something we can do.’

  ‘Something I can do,’ said Garnet sweetly. ‘Ashiol’s gone, and you walked away, Velody. I’m the one who’s going to save us from our fate. Starting with the first sacrifice.’

  He released Livilla, letting her hover for a moment in the air, and slashed at her with the sword faster than she could move.

  There were screams. Velody felt numb as the blood arced through the air.

  Livilla looked startled, a line of red across the front of her throat. Then she fell, her body crumpling as it hit the lake.

  ‘So much prettier when she’s silent,’ said Garnet with some satisfaction.

  Animor washed over them all, thick and rich and real. It tasted like wolf and perfumed smoke, and Velody was giddy with the power of it before she remembered to be sickened. Saints, he had done it. Sacrificed one more thing that he loved. How long had he been listening to the voices from the sky?

  Light poured from the lake in a bright burst, turning the sky blue with its intensity before the nox closed in once more. Livilla had been powerful, and the taste of her lingered in the air.

  Warlord lay on the pavilion, his head down and his body very still, grieving even as he quenched the lost Lord. Velody could see the strands of power that he dragged into himself, as if wanting to keep as much of Livilla as he could.

  They were all quenching her, and there was so damned much of it. How had Livilla not become a King?

  Garnet’s laughter fell over them all, and he took off across the sky with trails of Livilla’s animor dragged in his wake.

  Velody couldn’t breathe for a moment. She didn’t know what to feel. She watched Macready wade across the lake to reclaim his sword, and she was still numb.

  Macready called to Kelpie and Crane and the three of them ducked under the water, searching. Macready came up with a string of pearls, finally, but no body.

  ‘There’s nothing to bury,’ he said flatly. ‘The lake has taken her.’

  Velody still felt nothing.

  Topaz started to scream. She was a small figure, sodden and wrapped in Delphine’s cloak, and she had no power and presence in this sad scene, muffled as she was by sentinel’s blood. Still, she screamed. Poet was by her side, and Delphine, but Topaz shook them both away from her.

  ‘You, this is your fault,’ she sobbed at Poet. ‘You let him do this. You were supposed to protect us!’

  Poet looked at her, seeming dazed, and she smacked him on the shoulder, in the stomach, crying so hard she could hardly breathe.

  Delphine tried to touch the child, who slapped her hand and bared her teeth. ‘Don’t touch me. None of you. You think you’re so special! Not one of you is any use that I can see. What do you do but rip at each other and show off all the time? I hate you all!’

  She ran away into the darkness, and was gone.

  Velody walked into her kitchen. The sentinels trailed after her, squelching in their wet clothes. Only Rhian was dry.

  ‘That little demme was right,’ Velody said. ‘We’re useless. We can’t even protect …’ She pressed her hands to her mouth, not sure if she was going to throw up.

  ‘None of us liked Livilla,’ Macready said gruffly. Kelpie elbowed him. ‘What? Afraid of the truth? She annoyed the hell out of all of us. You especially. She was a crazy bitch who didn’t give a damn about any of us —’

  ‘Shut up,’ snapped Delphine. ‘Just shut up. Is that how you’ll talk about me when I’m dead?’

  ‘I’m sure I could think of a few more original words.’

  ‘No one else is going to die,’ said Velody.

  Macready laughed unpleasantly. ‘Do you not listen to our Seer? We’re all dying. Bazeppe first; and when the clockmakers have vanished off the face of the earth, it’s our turn.’

  ‘Why don’t you just have a drink?’ Delphine said sweetly. ‘Make it all go away.’

  ‘Oh, you’re a fine one to judge,’ Macready said, his voice rising. ‘A real expert on making the pain go away, aren’t you, lass?’ He leaned in towards her, his face hard. ‘I can still smell him on you,’ he hissed.

  Delphine looked as if he’d hit her. ‘I’m not the one who went looking elsewhere,’ she replied.

  Velody didn’t have time for this, for any of it. She didn’t care about the stricken expression on Delphine’s face, and she really didn’t want to know why Crane looked like he’d been caught stealing from the poor box, or why Rhian was refusing to look at anyone. She could feel their emotions, all of them, prickly and savage, beating against her skin, and she wanted none of it. She stretched her back, and was so tired that her body protested even that movement. More than anything, she wanted to break into a thousand pieces, run away from this rabble of sentinels and sleep the calm, unhurried sleep of a heap of mice. But there was work to do. Always work to do.

  ‘I’m going to Bazeppe,’ she said. They didn’t hear her at first, so she raised her voice. ‘I said, I’m going to Bazeppe. I’m going to find Ashiol and bring him home. And … if we save that city, then that future is broken and Aufleur will be safe.’

  ‘No,’ said Macready, turning away from Delphine, returning to thoughts of duty. ‘It doesn’t work that way, lass. You’re needed here.’

  ‘To stand by and watch as Garnet murders the Court, one by one?’ Velody asked. ‘I don’t think so. We need Ashiol.’

  ‘What the hells do you think he can do that you can’t?’ Macready asked, his voice cracking. ‘He abandoned us. He walked away from all this —’

  ‘We all walked away,’ Velody snapped at him. ‘We all gave up. I can’t fight Garnet without Ash.’

  ‘Ashiol doesn’t want to fight Garnet.’ Kelpie spoke up from the doorway, breaking her usual stony silence. ‘He doesn’t think he can.’

  ‘Well, he’s better than that,’ Velody declared. ‘We can do anything, we can survive this, we only need something to believe in. Something bigger than our own petty concerns. If you can’t believe in me, then … I’ll create something you can believe in. For that, I need Ashiol.’

  Garnet had given her the answer. He had worked so damned hard to keep her and Ashiol apart.

  ‘The sacred marriage,’ said Crane, and his eyes met Velody’s. Her heart turned over a little at the tone in his voice — as if he was working so hard not to be hurt.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. But I have to try. If Ashiol and I working together frightens Garnet so much, we have to try.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Kelpie said une
xpectedly. ‘If you want me to.’

  Velody was not surprised. If there was a musette melodrama breaking out between Macready and Delphine, Delphine and Crane, Macready and Rhian, then Bazeppe was looking like a pretty fine option.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to Kelpie. ‘I would be glad to have you.’

  PART IX

  The Stagemaster

  29

  ‘Poet,’ whispered a voice, down low. ‘Poet, wake up.’

  Four years had passed since the deaths of Tasha. The other cubs had matched Garnet’s Lordship frighteningly fast, as if it were a competition between them. Two years ago, Garnet had become a King, and then Ashiol, and then Lysandor. One year ago, Ortheus and Argentin had been killed in a skybattle that ended a hair’s breadth before the city was eaten whole. I was sixteen now, and Garnet … Garnet was Power and Majesty.

  My bed was in the cupola up high in Priest’s cathedral. I hadn’t wanted to go to him, had refused to take another Lord when Garnet first became King. But a courteso can’t survive on his own in the Court. Sometimes stupid loyalty really is stupid. I was still skinny and not the most powerful; the other courtesi thought they could frighten me into choosing their various Lords as a master, and I had been beaten bloody more than once.

  Eventually, Garnet had snarled at me, and bitten me lightly on the back of the neck, leaving marks. ‘I can’t protect you now, ratling. Old oaths don’t matter.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a courteso,’ I’d blurted to Priest when I placed myself at his feet. ‘When I’m a Lord, I don’t want to have courtesi under me. It’s a stupid system. It doesn’t work, and it just brings … pain.’

  Priest had blinked slowly, then lit a cigar. ‘You stay out of my way, boy, and I’ll stay out of yours.’

  We got along all right, after that. He had no interest in frigging me, and I had no interest in frigging his other courtesi, all pretty young demmes.

  Eight years in the Creature Court and I was still alive; that made me a veteran.

  We weren’t a family any more, not as we had been. The King cubs lived separately: Lysandor with Celeste in the Eyrie; Ashiol in his own territory, the museion; Garnet had taken over the rooms above the Haymarket. Livilla was there too, along with Mars, the courteso she had inherited from Ash. She liked to play the part of consort to Garnet’s Power and Majesty, but they fought dreadfully sometimes, and everyone knew she fucked Ashiol any time she could. It didn’t seem to bother Garnet, but then Ashiol went to his bed on a regular basis, too.

  ‘Poet,’ the voice hissed again.

  I muttered in complaint, but someone shoved my spectacles onto my face. I blinked until he came into focus. Lysandor.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

  He looked miserable and tense. ‘I wanted to give you a chance. I know you have Priest to protect you, and he probably thinks he can —’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘We’re leaving. Me and Celeste.’

  Garnet had shown his dislike of Lysandor’s attachment to Celeste from the second he became Power and Majesty. He hated any allegiances the Court had with each other outside those of formal oaths. I suppose once you start playing the tyrant, it’s easy to assume everyone’s out to get you.

  ‘Leaving where? You’re not abandoning the Court?’

  ‘We have to go,’ Lysandor said miserably. ‘Garnet’s getting more unstable, don’t you see that?’

  ‘You swore an oath,’ I said furiously. ‘Do you want to end up like Tasha?’

  ‘I want to get out of this fucking city with my head still attached to my body,’ Lysandor flared.

  I sat up, peering at him in the near-darkness. ‘Go. Don’t tell me any more. If he finds out I knew, he’ll kill me.’

  ‘Is a monster like that really worth your loyalty?’

  Anger flashed inside me. No one insulted Garnet to my face, not even one of the former cubs. I wouldn’t accept it.

  ‘You loved him before I did,’ I flung at Lysandor. ‘You belonged to each other before I came along. How can you give up on him now?’

  ‘Celeste is pregnant.’

  Now that was a shock. ‘She can’t be. That doesn’t happen.’

  Livilla had been convinced a year back that she was pregnant to Ashiol, but it came to nothing, and that was the closest thing to a scare anyone in the Creature Court had had in years. Most of them took the lack of pregnancies as an excuse to act like the animals they were, bedding anything that moved.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lysandor whispered. ‘I know it’s not supposed to happen, but it has. She says it’s definite. So don’t you see? If Garnet finds out, it’ll be one more thing someone has that he doesn’t. He’ll kill her because of it, or me, or both of us.’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ I said, because my first reaction was that it couldn’t be. But he rolled his eyes at me and I had to admit he was right. ‘You didn’t tell anyone else about this, did you?’

  Lysandor hesitated. ‘I wanted to give Livilla a chance, too.’

  I stared at him in horror. Liv wasn’t the scrappy little wounded columbine any more, just as I wasn’t the theatre urchin. ‘For fuck’s sake, we’re not lambs now. She’ll never take your side against Garnet. She’ll tell him!’

  Screams cut through the silence outside. Livilla, it seemed, had already spilled the news.

  Lysandor was still for a moment, then he shaped himself into lynx form and hurtled down the spiral staircase.

  I pulled on breeches and shirt and followed him, meeting Priest on the stairs.

  ‘Such a commotion, dear boy,’ he said, his tone not quite light enough to belie its warning tone.

  ‘Garnet’s about to slaughter Celeste, my Lord,’ I said breathlessly.

  ‘Well, then. Let us proceed towards the show at a reasonable pace.’

  Loyalty is a terrible thing. These were my friends, my family, but the only people I technically owed allegiance to were Priest, my Lord, and Garnet, our Power and Majesty.

  By the time we got there, Celeste stood up to her knees in the canal that ran through the Haymarket, blood everywhere, her white dress soaked through with that awful redness. She had always been the cool, intelligent one, sarcastic, completely reserved. Now, she was screaming like a wild thing, her hair exploding around her into bright white feathers. Livilla’s wolves nipped at her ankles.

  Garnet was in a fury, his own shirt drenched in Celeste’s blood. He held a knife between finger and thumb, one of the sentinel’s knives, the hilt wrapped with leather and the blade gleaming skysilver. The sentinels were lined up on the bank of the canal, flat-faced. Celeste would get no help from them; their allegiance was to the Kings.

  She would get no help from me, either, though I had always liked her.

  Lysandor leaped into the water, growling at the wolves until they backed off.

  Celeste was clutching her white dress to her skin and I couldn’t see where the blood was coming from, but it made the canal run pink.

  ‘May you die alone and unloved,’ she shrieked at Garnet, shaking with fury. ‘You have no right to be Power and Majesty. You give us nothing and take everything!’

  ‘Lysandor,’ Garnet said, recovering his breath and his dignity. ‘Silence your woman. She talks too much.’

  The lynx let out a fierce cry and leaped for him. Garnet shaped himself into his two gattopardi, and they tore at the lynx before Ashiol stepped in their way.

  ‘Stop this!’ he yelled. ‘We’re supposed to be family. We’re brothers!’

  Garnet threw himself back into human shape, gasping for breath. ‘Not any more,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

  The lynx just gazed at him.

  ‘Go!’ Garnet yelled. ‘You’ll be back. You have nowhere to shelter. You have nothing but this. Nothing but me. Leave and you will be an oathbreaker. You wouldn’t dare.’

  Lysandor sent out his final message so furiously that we all heard it inside our heads. Anywhere but here. Any fate but you.

  Cele
ste burst into blood-stained owls and flew away down the canal. Lysandor turned and ran after her.

  We never saw them again.

  Lysandor had left me a legacy. I didn’t discover it until I returned to my cupola in Priest’s cathedral. A familiar carved chest lay at the foot of my bed. Saturn’s chest.

  I opened it slowly, breathing in the smell of sandalwood shavings and linen. Saturn’s clothes. I pulled out fine white cambric shirts, silk cravats, waistcoats and coats and breeches. A pair of boots that would never fit me, but the rest … A top hat, carefully cushioned by the other garments. A fob watch made of actual clockwork — a rarity in Aufleur, where mechanism was banned. Several volumes filled with sketches and tiny, perfect handwriting. Then, in a compartment right at the bottom of it all …

  Gold ducs. Hundreds of them. More money than I had ever seen. No wonder his Lordship had thrown so much at the stagemaster so long ago.

  There was a key in there, wrapped in a note in Lysandor’s handwriting. This opens a security box at the temple of Juno Moneta. We’ve taken our share, but Celeste says Saturn would want you to have the rest.

  Then a line written in an unfamiliar hand that must have been Celeste’s: Saturn said once that we had taken you away from your people and someday we would have to give you back. It’s your choice now, Poet. Stay, or go. But remember who you are.

  It was several market-nines before I got away from the Arches during daylight for long enough to visit my new security box. There was more gold there, stacked in so deep I could hardly see the end of it, and ownership papers not only to the Vittorina Royale but to the Mermaid Revue. Sheaves of paperwork. The company would have gone bust years ago, but Saturn had kept on supporting them, propping them up. A strange sort of loyalty to the theatre he had turned upside down for the sake of a failed Saturnalia gift to the woman he loved.

  Saints, he was still paying their wages. The bill was regularly siphoned out of this security box, despite the fact that the man who’d owned it was years dead.

  The theatre wasn’t my life any more. My life was fighting the sky, serving Priest, keeping Garnet sane. I had nothing else; needed nothing else. My voice was a conduit for animor; my performances for a private audience only. Tasha and Saturn and Lysandor were gone, but I still had Ashiol and Livilla. My Lord Priest. Garnet, Garnet, Garnet.