Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Poet crawled to his side, and Garnet messed up his hair. ‘Not long now.’

  ‘You couldn’t have taken the fucking knife out before you gave him the animor?’

  Garnet shook his head slowly. ‘Sky would have taken back control. It’s okay. Doesn’t hurt or anything.’

  ‘Liar.’

  It was a painfully private moment, but Topaz couldn’t look away from them. They both looked so small and hurt. She reminded herself of how much Garnet had hurt others and felt less bad about watching.

  ‘If you pull the knife out of me,’ Garnet said after a moment, ‘it’d be faster.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’ Poet’s face had crumpled at the thought of it.

  ‘No, ratling. You know me. Always outstayed my time on stage.’

  Poet started to cry quietly, and when he turned to kiss Garnet briefly on the mouth, his face was wet with tears.

  ‘Better than last time,’ Garnet decided. He started to cough and his body shuddered.

  Topaz left them alone. She ducked back into the kitchen and found Kelpie there, sitting next to the unconscious Macready with an unreadable expression on her face.

  ‘Is he dead yet?’ Kelpie asked quietly.

  ‘Getting there,’ said Topaz.

  Kelpie nodded, patted Macready’s limp hand once, and then went to join the others outside.

  A few minutes later, Poet joined Topaz in the kitchen. His face was dry and he was as poised and together as always. ‘Still here, are you, little fireball?’ He held a hand out to her. ‘Shall we go see what kind of mess those reprobates have made of the sky?’

  She squeezed his hand and they went out to the yard together. The sky was blue. Not scary battle blue, just … blue. It was a clear sort of day for the middle of winter. No clouds, and a deep chill on the air.

  ‘Is that it, then?’ Poet remarked, too loudly. ‘I was expecting fireworks. An ovation at the very least, possibly a parade. If I’d been given enough notice, I could have composed a song for the occasion.’

  ‘Maybe the war didn’t stop,’ the blonde sentinel said. ‘Maybe none of us can see it any more. It’s just Rhian out there on her own for eternity, fighting the sky, and we’re blind to it.’

  ‘Lovely thought,’ someone said sarcastically. Topaz wasn’t sure who.

  ‘It’s the Saturnalia,’ said the one they called the Duchessa. She was sitting on a broken piece of wall, leaning against Kelpie.

  ‘Are you suggesting we exchange gifts?’ Ashiol said acidly. He was still holding Velody’s hand.

  The Duchessa gave him a dirty look. ‘It’s the second day of Saturnalia. There are rituals to perform. Songs in the Forum. Lights on the lake. If we keep the rituals, then perhaps …’ She gave a helpless shrug.

  ‘Perhaps the city will heal,’ said Kelpie.

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ said Velody, looking around at the wreckage of the street.

  ‘We can sing,’ Topaz volunteered. When everyone looked at her, she ducked her head, annoyed at them all. ‘Well, we can,’ she muttered.

  The other lambs nodded, though they were all as reluctant as ever to speak.

  ‘Of course you can,’ said Poet, his hand cool in hers. He managed a half-smile down at her. ‘Everyone can sing. That’s what the Saturnalia is for. Singing, and roasted nuts, and hot bean syrup. I can taste it already.’

  Some time later, the sky started raining rose petals.

  On the third day after the world ended, the city healed.

  Isangell had performed every arcane Saturnalia rite the city had ever observed, and many they never had. She and Kelpie had combed the librarion for ancient texts and used everything that they found to celebrate the festival. They all thought she was crazy, Isangell was well aware of that. Not only the ragged survivors of the Creature Court, but every living person she found in Aufleur was given a ritual to perform.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that any more,’ Ashiol told her, impatient with her attempts at festivity, at staging a Saturnalia pageant around the few undamaged streets of the city. ‘There’s no animor left. We’re on our own.’

  ‘Would you rather do nothing?’ Isangell demanded.

  Velody helped, and Poet, and the children. Even Livilla seemed to enjoy a chance to do something, no matter if it was hopeless.

  As dawn lit up Isangell’s bedroom on the morning of the fifth day of Saturnalia, she awoke to hear the voice of her mother berating Kelpie for having the ill manners to sleep on Isangell’s couch. She blinked awake and looked at the smooth ceiling over her bed, which had been badly cracked the nox before.

  ‘It worked,’ she said softly to herself. Ashiol had been wrong.

  Isangell barrelled out of her room, hugged Mama, and then heartlessly abandoned Kelpie to run out into the Palazzo itself.

  For days it had been a crumbling tomb filled with the scent of death and decay. There had been an awful silence about it, as if the whole place had been waiting for its mistress to declare it was time to fall to dust.

  Isangell saw one servant, and then another. As she rounded the corner of the corridor, she ran full pelt into a small huddle of ministers and priests, who looked very alarmed when she kissed each of them on the cheek.

  The Palazzo had not emerged unscathed. One of the kitchens was smashed beyond repair, and the Old Duc’s atrium. The ballroom still looked as if it had collided with several temples, and dozens of bodies lay in a cleared area of it, prepared and ready for burial.

  Isangell ran up staircase after staircase until she came to the picture window that offered the best view of the city. A long scar ripped through Aufleur, and both the Forum and the Lucretine hill had taken some damage, but nothing like the destruction that had been there before. It was not perfect, but the city had given her one last gift.

  Ashiol found her some time later. ‘A petition for thanksgiving ceremonies for making it through the return of the skywar,’ he said, handing over a silver-sealed scroll. ‘I’ve never been so glad to be accosted by priests in my life.’

  Isangell accepted the scroll and hugged it to her. ‘I had given up hoping.’

  ‘No, you hadn’t,’ he said firmly, holding her eyes with his. ‘That’s why you’re so good at this. Grandmama wouldn’t have given up, either.’

  Isangell laughed and hugged him. ‘I was right.’

  ‘Yes, you were.’

  ‘This city is never, ever skipping another festival. Not one. We might even start new ones.’ She could feel him shifting, holding himself back from telling her not to bother, that the time of festivals and animor and the Creature Court was over. ‘Ashiol?’

  He pulled back out of the hug. ‘I didn’t say anything. You’re the Duchessa.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, grinning stupidly. ‘I really am.’

  When she finally returned to her rooms, she found that her mother had set up camp there, fortified by a large tea tray, a harried-looking Armand and a stack of invitation paper. Kelpie hovered by the window with a desperate expression on her face.

  ‘Do you really think it’s appropriate to have a female lictor?’ Mama grumbled, having made sense of Kelpie the only way she could.

  ‘Very appropriate,’ Isangell said, shooting a grin at Kelpie. ‘I have the perfect dressmaker to sort out her livery.’

  Kelpie stuck her tongue out where Mama could not see.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, Armand,’ Isangell said, sitting down primly and pouring herself a cup of tea. ‘I’d like you to take a letter to my Aunt Augusta of Diamagne.’

  Armand nodded, preparing himself to make notes. ‘Of course, high and brightness.’

  Isangell smiled. ‘I’d like to suggest that she visit the city with her children — apart from the current Baronne di Diamagne, of course — so that I may choose an heir from one of my cousins.’

  Mama almost dropped her teacup. ‘Isangell, what on earth?’

  Isangell had been hoping so greatly that she would have a chance to make this speech. She had practised
it late every nox, her own ritual to add to the Saturnalia revels.

  ‘It’s rather simple, Mama,’ she said, folding her hands in her lap. ‘I won’t marry without love, and love is complicated. It may take time.’

  She risked a brief glance at Kelpie, who was trying not to laugh out loud.

  Mama’s hands shook, and she carefully put her cup down. ‘Not Ashiol, though?’

  ‘I think we all know he’s not cut out for leadership,’ Isangell said gently. ‘I need an heir who is actually willing and able to do the job. What do you think, Mama? Is it not an acceptable plan?’

  Her mother gave a good impression of someone who had been chewing a lemon. ‘A tolerable plan,’ she conceded finally.

  ‘You hear that?’ Isangell teased Kelpie later, when her mama and the servants were gone. ‘A tolerable plan. I finally won an argument with her!’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Kelpie, leaning forward to kiss her softly on the side of the neck in that way that made Isangell shiver with happiness every single time. ‘When are you going to tell her the rest of it?’

  ‘Oh,’ Isangell breathed, ‘I think we’ll ease her into it. Very, very slowly.’

  Also on the fifth day of the Saturnalia, Topaz and Poet went to survey the damage at the Vittorina Royale. The theatre was still a wreck, sticking out like a sore thumb along the street that otherwise was gleaming new, like someone had built it out of spun sugar.

  ‘Cities shouldn’t be this clean,’ Topaz muttered suspiciously. Even the pavement was bright white, sort of blinding.

  Poet was staring at the Vittorina like he hadn’t seen it in years. ‘It will take some fixing,’ he said finally.

  Topaz rolled her eyes at him. ‘Tell me something I don’t know. You have coin, don’t you?’

  ‘A centime or two,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well then, shut up and let’s start working.’

  She liked being rude to him. It it was the only time he looked like a real person instead of a plaster statue with a broken heart.

  Inside, the theatre smelled all musty and damp.

  ‘It can’t be done,’ Poet sighed, shoulders sagging as he saw how bad it was. ‘There’s no fucking ceiling. It’s gone too far. I’d be better off razing it to the ground and selling it off to housing developers.’

  Topaz wanted to kick him. Every time he got like this, her hope of a home for herself and the lambs went up in smoke. She opened her mouth to chew him out, and was interrupted by a voice singing from behind the mouldy curtains.

  Livilla danced her way out of the wings, wearing a slinky scarlet gown that was all sparkles and spangles. She carried a top hat in one hand and a cane in the other, and had jammed her head into a bright scarlet wig, all curls and shimmy.

  ‘How do you like me as a redhead, dearlings?’

  ‘What are you doing, Liv?’ asked Poet. He sounded tired.

  Livilla posed and primped for him. If she was here to screw around, Topaz would kick her, too. Bloody grownups, never stopped thinking about themselves.

  ‘Topaz and I had a chat,’ Livilla said. ‘We were thinking that you’re entirely unsuited to the position of stagemaster. All that shouting and organising things is dreadful for your throat, you know.’

  Topaz wanted to scream. That wasn’t what they had agreed to say. Poet looked pissed off more than tired now, and it wasn’t an improvement.

  ‘What do you suggest?’ he snapped. ‘Nice little apothecary business? Take my vows as a Damascine Virgin? Or shall I just find a nice wealthy seigneur to buy pretty things for me?’

  Livilla did another little dance, and put the sparkly top hat on her head. ‘Silly boy. I’m applying for the position. You’re going to be the stellar. Topaz can lead the chorus and sell tickets. I want to be stagemaster. Tell me I wouldn’t be frigging spectacular at it.’

  Poet blinked, and tilted his head to one side as he thought about it. ‘We’ll have to rename the theatre if we rebuild it,’ he said finally. ‘Bad luck to keep the same one.’

  Livilla’s teeth gleamed like she was a wolf on the prowl. ‘I thought Pearl Beyond Price had a nice ring to it,’ she said.

  Poet stared at her, and nodded.

  Well, that was all right, then.

  ‘I’ll get the lambs,’ Topaz said.

  They had a big job ahead, but at the end of it there would be something real, she hoped. Something they had built themselves, instead of falling into. There was a future in that.

  On the eighth day of Saturnalia, Delphine caught a train north. She had Velody with her, and Macready, whose leg still gave him pain from the street that had collapsed on him, even though the street itself was back where it had once been. Delphine had no idea how that worked, but she wasn’t going to argue the point, not when his face went all grey every time his foot stumbled against an uneven paving stone.

  Velody carried a small wooden box on her lap. Inside it was everything that remained of Rhian.

  They had found her on the roof some days ago, long after the rose petals had fallen from the sky. At least, they thought it was her. It was a long tangle of roots and branches wrapped around a stone arm that crumbled when they touched it. They had gathered what they could and cremated it. A small, hard stone had been left among the ashes, which might be bone, or diamond, or the biggest bloody rosehip imaginable.

  Delphine hadn’t slept well ever since the battle. She dreamed of her army of sentinels screaming at her, of the wind and the rain and the burn of skysilver against her palms.

  She had seen Teddy and Maud since the city had healed itself, though neither of them had recognised her as she passed them in the street. She had gone to Villiers’ apartment on the Octavian, only to find it closed up, a funeral notice on the door.

  The city was full of funeral notices. So many of the dead had returned, yet the daylight folk were well aware of this skybattle that had come down upon them after so long. People were wary and afraid. They had no way of knowing that it was over; that Rhian had sacrificed herself to bring an end to the war after so many years of silent, invisible deaths.

  Delphine hated everyone right now.

  The train was headed for Atulia, but they hopped off long before that, at a station that no one else seemed to think was worth bothering with. Fair enough, really, as it was the middle of nowhere.

  Macready was struggling to hide how hard it was to walk, but he refused to stay back in the city. He had missed the end of the war that had filled his whole life for so long. No fecking way he was going to miss the chance to say goodbye to Rhian.

  If you looked the right way, you could see there had been a city here. The river diverted for no sensible reason, and the old lines of canals lay the right sort of marks on the landscape. But it was all grass now, greyish green grass as far as the eye could see. The sky was grey, too, with the promise of snow. Macready could feel an icy bite in the air.

  Velody asked too many times if he needed to rest, and he bit her head off about it. She was reproachfully silent after that. Delphine pretended not to care by simply not looking at him, refusing to see the smashed-up leg and the way he leaned on the cane. He liked that better.

  Kelpie had done that, he remembered, back when he has lost his finger. She’d refused to acknowledge it had happened, and that had suited Macready just fine.

  Velody buried Rhian’s remains in the hard wintry earth, and they sat around in the cold air for a while, talking about her. Macready listened, mostly, as Velody and Delphine mixed up their fractured memories in one big soup.

  He could really go a cup of Rhian’s soup right about now.

  It was getting late, and they had to make it back to the train station before dark. They turned away, leaving her there, though everything in Macready’s soul screamed out that they couldn’t do that, leave her alone in the shadow of a city that didn’t exist any more. It was all kinds of wrong.

  As he strode out, his leg gave from under him and he heard an almighty CRACK that seemed to divide the world i
n halves, and he fell into blackness, swearing at himself for being so fecking stupid, for risking his chance to heal out of some misplaced sentimentality about a demoiselle who had never looked twice at him, not really.

  ‘Macready,’ a voice said from a long way away. ‘Wake up!’

  Velody. It was Velody, and he was lying in a field, and if he didn’t wake up, those two would have to carry him all the way back to the station.

  He opened his eyes and stared at the sky. Still alive, then.

  ‘Look,’ said Velody.

  Macready rolled over, cursing himself and the aches in his limbs. He saw Delphine capering around like a mad thing, and then he saw the tree.

  It was growing thick and strong, and, unless the demmes had moved him, it was right where they had buried Rhian’s remains.

  ‘That’s no ordinary tree,’ he croaked.

  Velody nodded, the wind blowing her dark hair all over the place. ‘I know.’

  ‘If she was a seed of destruction, now she’s something else,’ Delphine screeched into the wind.

  The tree was still growing. It wasn’t a trick of the light, it was a fact. As Macready watched, its branches snaked into the sky, and they weren’t all made from what you might define as ‘tree’. There was stone there, yellow stone, and tangled vines of roses, and a spray of white camellia flowers right here in the middle of winter.

  The ground rippled and roots bulged up at the base of the tree as if it had been there for fifty years.

  Delphine stopped dancing around and ran back to them as the earth swelled and brought forth stone: whole pillars and arches, a high mezzanine, and then another.

  Slowly they moved back, and then again, as the city of Tierce rebuilt itself before their eyes. Macready had been here once or twice in his youth and he knew it wasn’t the same city. The canals were in different places, the buildings not so high, and there had never been so many roses tangled around the gateways, let alone at this time of year.

  There were no people. They were long gone, swallowed by the sky. There were no souls to be returned here, no miracle family reunions. Macready saw that hope rise and die in Delphine’s face as the three of them explored this new place, the city that had grown back.