Power & Majesty (19 page)

Ashiol didn’t seem interested in what Macready was implying. ‘It was her time.’

‘Awfully convenient for you, so it is.’

That was one comment too many. Ashiol turned dark eyes on all three of the sentinels, daring them to question him further. ‘And your point is?’

Macready smiled a sick little grin. ‘Oh, nothing at all, high and brightness. Were you wanting us to join yourself and the lass at dinner?’

Ashiol gave him a disdainful look. ‘The place I’m thinking of, you couldn’t afford.’

Velody couldn’t bring herself to put her theatre dress back on. When she looked at it, she remembered being trapped in that dressing room with hundreds of white rats. Still clutching Crane’s scratchy woollen cloak around her bare body, she hurried upstairs to splash water on her face and arms, and to find another dress. She chose one of her favourites—a comfort frock made of soft grey wool.

It seemed wrong to be dressing to go out without the usual argument with Delphine about which extravagant perfume she should dab behind her ears, or which shade of cosmetick she should paint on her eyelids and lips. Velody hated artificial scents and powders. After a moment’s thought, she rummaged in her wardrobe for a long, silky coat that she had put away this season because it didn’t match the new hemlines. If she went through any more strange transformations this nox, she didn’t want to rely on the chivalry of others to cover her nakedness in a hurry.

That was the first time she had let herself think about it all. She had to sit on the bed for a few minutes, controlling her breathing.
What’s happening to me? What am I turning into?

Ashiol had the answers. He had promised her an explanation, and dinner. She wasn’t sure which of the two she was more desperate for. Her stomach felt scrapingly bare.

On her way downstairs, she saw that Rhian’s room with its broken bolts had been abandoned. Delphine’s door was slightly ajar and the two were inside, sitting on Dee’s bed and talking in low voices. Velody hesitated, then pushed the door a little further open. ‘I’m going out,’ she told them.

Both looked at her in surprise. She wanted to tell them what was happening to her, but how could she? She didn’t understand it herself.
Those men who attacked us this nox, I’m just like them.

‘The Ducomte has promised to explain all this to me, or as much as he can. I need those answers.’ It seemed wrong to call him by name, Ashiol, as if he were just an ordinary person. The title seemed safer.

‘Be careful,’ said Rhian.

Delphine didn’t say anything, but her eyes were reproachful.

Velody nodded, and closed the door behind her. With Crane’s cloak tucked under her arm to return to him, she went downstairs to go to dinner with the Ducomte d’Aufleur.

T
here weren’t that many hot food places open for dinner this late. Ashiol took Velody to a quiet bistro near the crest of the Vittorine, which still had its lanterns lit. It looked like one of those cheap nox cafés that appeared near theatres and musettes, down to the grimy walls and the melodic strains of a piano player messing around. There were a few clues to the fact that this place was not cheap though: the smooth and expert politeness of the waiter, the pristine cleanliness of the white paper tablecloths, and the fact that there was no menu.

‘Beef,’ Ashiol ordered, his fingers measuring the size of the steak he wanted. He nodded to Velody. ‘Both.’

The waiter nodded and whisked away so fast that he made Velody dizzy. The brisk walk up the hill had sapped her of energy. ‘I don’t get to order for myself?’ The thought of red meat—such a rare and expensive luxury—made her stomach uncurl with anticipation.

Ashiol tilted his head towards her. ‘What would you like to drink, Velody?’

She was half-tempted to ask for an ansouisette, but it probably wasn’t a good idea to drink anything that could
make her head feel any stranger than it already did. ‘Water,’ she said.

‘Red wine is more traditional with beef,’ said Ashiol, and she had a suspicion that he was making fun of her.

‘You asked what I wanted.’

‘So I did.’ He waved over another waiter to order jugs of water and red wine. ‘And now,’ he said, when they were both settled with a glass and there were no hovering waiters within earshot, ‘what do you want to ask me?’

Velody took a deep breath. ‘Everything.’

‘I can’t promise everything.’

‘Start with something simple. Who
are
you people?’

Ashiol savoured his wine for a moment, then set the glass down. ‘We are the Creature Court.’

‘Which means?’

Ashiol sighed. ‘It’s complicated, but I’ll do my best.’ He thought about it for a long while, as if arranging it all in his head. Then he nodded and began. ‘Poet and Dhynar—that is, the Orphan Princel and the ferax—are both Creature Lords. There are five Lords in the city now, so I’m told. I’ve been away a few years and I’m a little out of touch. Each Lord is served by a number of courtesi. The Lords themselves are supposed to serve the Creature Kings.’

‘And that’s you,’ Velody said.

Ashiol nodded, though there was a hesitation as if this was not entirely the truth.

‘Poet and Dhynar are your creatures.’

‘No…no,’ he protested. ‘It’s not like that.’

‘What is it like, seigneur Ducomte? If they serve you, then they attacked us in your name.’

‘I don’t have any control over what they do!’ He almost knocked over his wine glass with his fist.

The waiters were sending alarmed looks in their direction. Velody could see why, even if there were no other customers to be disturbed. When Ashiol was angry, his whole body spoke of violence. She shrank back into her chair.

Ashiol brought himself under control. ‘You have to understand,’ he said. ‘The Lords answer to the Kings—if we give them an order and back it up with threats, or take a blood oath, they will usually obey us. But they are their own creatures and they follow their own rules. They are very dangerous, even to me.’

Velody shivered, remembering the Orphan Princel—Poet—as he advanced on her, and the look in Dhynar’s eyes as he held Rhian in his arms. ‘You’re just gangs then? No control over each other, no real hierarchy?’

‘The Kings are supposed to be the masters of the Lords, but the Lords grant little in the way of allegiance,’ said Ashiol. ‘That’s why the Kings have the sentinels to serve and protect them. That’s Macready, Kelpie and Crane. The sentinels are not of the Court, but they’re not quite daylight folk either. In between. One of the Kings is chosen to rule over us all, by right of challenge. He keeps the Lords in line. We call him the Power and Majesty.’

‘And that’s you?’

‘No!’ He was awfully quick to deny it. ‘Garnet was the last Power. He died recently, at the same time as the Floralia parade. He…took my powers from me years ago, and they all came crashing back when he died.’ He smiled, but without humour. ‘Have you ever seen anyone hopped up on hot ice or sainthood?’

Velody had been to enough bad clubs with Delphine to recognise the names of the party drugs he referred to. ‘More than I’d like.’

‘Well, a major dose of animor after a five-year drought had a similar effect on me. Hence the babbling lunatic who tore the Duchessa’s dress and came after you in the middle of the nox. I’m sorry about that, by the way.’

Velody drained the last of her water. She was unbelievably thirsty.
Garnet
. Something in that word, that name—it meant something to her. She had thought as much the previous nox when Ashiol had been rambling.
An image flitted through her mind briefly, a laughing youth falling naked from the sky, but then it was gone.

Ashiol leaned forward and refilled Velody’s glass from the jug.

‘But you are going to be the Power and Majesty now, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘You can take control of the Creature Lords, keep them away from us?’ This was really what she wanted to know.

‘I’m not the only Creature King in this city. There’s one other, who might be more suited to be Power and Majesty.’ He was watching her carefully.

‘What happened to me in the alley?’ she asked, deliberately switching the subject to make him think she was satisfied with his answers so far.

‘You came into your power. Unusually late, but stronger for it.’

Velody thought of the Floralia parade, of the light that had invaded her, and the colours in the sky, and the Ducomte screaming as scars poured off him, scars that no one but she could see…

‘Why didn’t
I
start babbling like a lunatic?’

The steak arrived, sizzling on large skillets. Velody stared at it. The meat was rare, oozing with blood. ‘I can’t eat that,’ she said, her stomach turning over.

‘Would the demoiselle prefer something else?’ asked the waiter.

‘No, the demoiselle would not,’ said Ash.

Velody glared at him as the waiter moved docilely away. ‘I’ve been out with men like you before,’ she accused. ‘Like to be in charge, don’t you?’

Ashiol looked amused. ‘This isn’t a date.’

She picked up a knife and fork to cover her embarrassment. ‘Forgive me if I got the impression I was being seduced.’

Ashiol began sawing into his steak. Blood spurted from it, splashing the bright white paper tablecloth. ‘I thought I was being generous. Answering all your questions.’

‘You still haven’t told me why Poet and Dhynar attacked me and my friends.’

He crammed a slice of meat into his mouth and licked his lips. ‘That isn’t one of the questions you asked me.’

‘Did you send them after us?’

‘No.’

‘How can I believe you? I don’t know anything about you except you’re a mad, rich aristocrat who likes eating meat with a pulse!’

Ashiol chewed and swallowed the rare flesh with evident enjoyment. ‘If you don’t believe anything I say to you, Velody, what is the point of asking me questions?’

She glared at him, and then at the revolting mess on her plate.

‘It isn’t compulsory,’ said Ashiol.

‘Eating steak?’

‘Turning into a babbling lunatic. You asked me why you didn’t, in the alley. Or even at the Floralia parade. It’s not a common response. You don’t have to worry about going mad.’

‘That’s something, I suppose.’ Velody cut a slice from her steak, but the welling blood made her feel faint. She laid the utensils down again. ‘So I’m one of you. Your Court. I’m like you.’

‘I don’t think you’re quite like anybody.’

‘Do I have to be part of this? Can’t I make it go away?’

‘No, you can’t.’

‘I’ve lived twenty-six years without turning into a pack of little brown mice. Why can’t I just go back to how things were yesterday?’

‘I’ve never known anyone who could go back. Once the nox is under your skin, it’s with you forever.’

The savoury smells from her plate were driving Velody to distraction. Without looking, she speared a piece of meat into her mouth. It was hot but still raw in the centre and released a warm gush of blood over her tongue. The scent and taste of it flooded through her body and she was
shocked by how good it felt. She cut off another small piece and ate it, forcing herself not to gobble.

‘What was it like for you?’ she asked, to distract Ashiol from extending his patronising smile into a comment that might force her to stab him with her fork.

‘What was what like?’

‘Coming into your power. For the first time.’

‘Oh, that.’ Ash gulped down another mouthful of meat with a swallow of wine, and started slicing more. ‘I was eleven, nearly twelve.’

‘So young?’ The meat was so warm and moist that it tasted alive in her mouth.

‘It usually happens between eleven and fourteen, when we start growing into our adult body. I was living in Diamagne at the time.’ Velody allowed her confusion to cross her face and he grinned at her. ‘Don’t you know your royal history?’

‘That’s Delphine’s hobby.’

‘Ah. Well, my mother was the Old Duc’s second child, and I was born into one of those appalling arranged marriages that royals like to inflict upon each other. My mother was widowed young and found herself a nice country Baronne as her second husband. I was brought up on the Diamagne estate, with an ever-growing number of half-siblings.’

Velody was slicing her steak into larger and larger pieces, for the pleasure of tearing them up with her teeth. How had she never known before how good meat tasted when it was red and bleeding?

‘I can’t imagine you in the country,’ she said. ‘You seem so citified.’

‘I can hurl a hay bale with the best of them. My childhood was all very rural and idyllic, so naturally I was bored out of my skull. Garnet too.’

‘Garnet the Power and Majesty?’ Velody faltered as another memory invaded her—
hands holding her wrist, on a balcony, a kiss…

‘That came later. When we were growing up he was just the son of the cook and the groundskeeper, my best friend. We did everything together—hunting, fishing, setting fire to things. We were like brothers.’

‘How…idyllic.’

Velody was paying far more attention to the steak than to Ashiol. The pool of blood no longer repulsed her—on the contrary, she was quite happy to wipe her slices of meat into the warm red juices before putting them in her mouth.

‘We didn’t know what he was at the time, of course,’ said Ashiol, and Velody had a feeling she had missed part of the story, but didn’t like to ask him to repeat himself. ‘Just some elderly tramp who made his way to the estate to die. We didn’t even know his name. Later, when we knew all about the Creature Court, we tried to find out who he had been, but no one had heard of an old Creature Lord in Aufleur. He must have come from one of the other cities.’

Velody was trying to eat at a leisurely, ladylike pace. The urge to just cram the lumps of flesh into her mouth was terrifying. She had lost the taste for water and started on the wine. That was wonderful too, warm and red and spicy. Everything had taken on a rosy glow.

‘My mother insisted on bringing him in and giving him a bed,’ Ashiol went on, lost in his own story. ‘Garnet and I were being punished for something—’

‘Setting fire to something kind of something?’ Velody asked, to show she was paying attention.

‘Something like that. She set us to watch over him while she sent for the local dottore. While she was gone, the old man died.’

Velody paused in her chewing. ‘Of what?’

‘I don’t know. Being old? When they cleaned him for burial later they found so many scars on him it was surprising he was still in one piece. Anyway, he died, and something happened to Garnet and me. A power of some
kind ran through us both—so strong that we crashed into the wall. When we woke up, we were different.’

Velody realised to her horror that she was already two-thirds through the enormous steak, while Ash was less than halfway through his. She really was going to have to slow down. She drank some more wine, then carved another piece.
You only live once.

‘Different how?’ This was what she wanted to know, the real story of what they were.

‘Cats,’ said Ashiol succinctly. ‘They followed me everywhere after that. The estate filled up with all the local strays. They couldn’t get enough of me. I didn’t know why, until one day I got angry and turned into them.’

‘Into the cats?’

‘Not those cats, just into cats. I wasn’t all that tall then, so I became about eight or nine moggies, mostly black. These days it’s closer to fourteen, or fifteen if I’ve had a big dinner. I didn’t tell anyone at the time, not even Garnet. I discovered that in cat form, I could spread out, go to half a dozen different places at once.’

‘Let me guess—you used your new skill to eavesdrop on conversations and to spy on the upstairs maids?’

Ashiol grinned. ‘Well, I
was
twelve. Then the gattopardo arrived, and I found out that it wasn’t just me.’

Velody used a slice of meat to mop up some of the blood that was congealing on the plate. ‘What’s a gattopardo?’

‘Mountain cat, gold with white spots. No one had heard of them in our region. They’re only native to the far southern mountains in Camoise. We worked out that it must have been travelling for three months to get to us—or, to be precise, to get to Garnet. A month later, two more showed up, fawning over him the way the stray tabbies fawned over me. I told him the truth then, about being able to shape myself. I showed him how to do the same.’ His face went distant, troubled.

‘Wishing you hadn’t taught him?’

‘Wouldn’t have made any difference. Comes out sooner or later. Look at you.’

‘Mmm.’ A sudden thought struck her. She laid her knife down. ‘So I should have come into my power more than a decade ago. Why didn’t it happen before now?’

‘You got angry. That’s how it usually happens the first time.’ Ashiol frowned. ‘I don’t know why it didn’t happen earlier. There’s something strange about it.’

Velody reached for her knife again, only to realise that her skillet was empty except for a cool puddle of red moisture. ‘Oh, help. How did that happen?’