Power & Majesty (28 page)

Her thoughts were already turning towards the politics and civil manoeuvring that the day would bring. There was no time to roll the mystery of Ashiol Xandelian around in her mind, as she had been doing since she was old enough to recognise that he was not like ordinary people. That other Ashiol, the nox version of her cousin, was an intriguing individual. The Duchessa d’Aufleur shouldn’t be tempted to get to know him, but Isangell couldn’t help wondering if that dark world of his was more interesting than the one she inhabited.

She only hoped he didn’t get himself killed before she had the chance to meet that other Ashiol.

It was a little after dawn when Velody returned home.

She stopped by the public baths first, with a handful of centi she had borrowed from Crane. Her dress was practically glued to her, there was blood and gunk in her hair, and by the time she came out of the water she was trembling as if she hadn’t slept in a week. She washed the dress too, rather than let the sky filth touch her skin again, and wore it home wet.

Now Velody stood in the doorway of the kitchen, hoping her friends wouldn’t hate her.

Delphine and Rhian were at the table with a pot of mint tisane, as if they had been sitting there for a long time. When they saw her, they both reacted hard.

‘What the buggering hells!’ said Delphine. ‘What happened to you?’

Rhian was at Velody’s side instantly. ‘Are you hurt?’ she said, then looked more closely at the state Velody was in. ‘Out of those clothes,’ she said firmly. ‘What were you thinking? Something dry, and then bed.’

It was so close to having the old Rhian back that Velody wanted to cry. ‘I’m supposed to be looking after you,’ she said weakly.

‘Doing seven hells of a job of it,’ snapped Delphine. ‘You heard the demme. Move it.’

The three of them went to Velody’s bedchamber, and she stood passively as Rhian stripped the wet dress from her and found her a thick, old-fashioned noxgown. Delphine brought linens to dry Velody’s hair, and then the three of them climbed together into Velody’s nest of quilts and blankets.

‘So,’ said Rhian, her head on Velody’s shoulder. ‘Got anything to tell us?’

Velody laughed, and it came out as a sob, but she managed to rein it in before completely falling apart. ‘A lot has changed this Floralia.’

‘No shit,’ said Delphine. ‘Come on, darling. Don’t we tell you all our secrets?’

Velody leaned back against the headboard, very aware that there were mice watching them from every corner and cranny of the room. ‘Not sure where to start, except…well, I found out why we can’t remember where we came from, before we started our apprenticeships. Because I can remember now. I remember everything. Your parents, Delphine, your aunt.’ She squeezed Rhian’s arm a little. ‘Your brother. My family. I don’t know if you’re going to believe me, but I want to tell you about Tierce…’

Delphine and Rhian listened as Velody poured out everything—the oaths and the dreams, the little brown mice, and the Creature Court. Of the sandstone walls of Tierce, of Cyniver and Delphine’s aunt. She was half-convinced that they thought she was crazy, or they would be angry about what she had done.

They didn’t say much of anything. They just listened. And finally, when her words ran together and her eyelids fluttered, they left her alone to sleep. Velody heard them murmuring together as they closed the door behind them.

She dreamed of Garnet.

M
acready had missed the beginning of summer this year. He had blinked twice and suddenly the sunlight was stretching later into the evenings, and nox no longer had that sharp chill to it. Considering how many noxes he saw from beginning to end, clambering on the rooftops with Velody or Ashiol or the both of them, you’d think he would have picked up on it earlier.

Everything was about Velody. There had been nothing but Velody for the whole of Floralis and a market-nine of Lucina. The sentinels and Ashiol were on constant alert for one or more of the Lords and Court to challenge Velody’s authority, either in the open or on the quiet, but no hint of an attack had come as yet.

Macready had been thinking about the Silver Captain lately. The world had been so different when he was alive. There were three healthy young Kings, one of them Power and Majesty, the other two supporting him. There were five Lords then as now, and more sentinels than the Lords and Kings put together.

We were a team then, so we were. The sentinels meant something other than damage control and clean-up crew.

The Captain had been a right bastard, true enough. He rode his sentinels harder than some Lords rode their courtesi, but there was a method behind it. The Captain hated the Creature Court, the whole lot of them, Kings included. Genuinely hated them. He watched them like dangerous children, noting their every move and counter move. He would not only have dug out what Poet and Priest were up to by now (not to mention Livilla, Dhynar, and Warlord) but he would have turned his attention to Ashiol and his motives, then to Velody herself.

‘We’re loyal to them,’ he would grunt at least once a day. ‘Don’t mean they’re loyal to us. Remember that, men.’

The sentinels were all men to the Captain, especially the women. The fact that nearly half his fighting force was female had been a source of deep pain to the old coot, and he had grimly ignored it whenever possible.

Say what you like about the Silver Captain, you never lost anyone on his watch. After he was gone—and that was the one thing Macready could never forgive Garnet for, if he lived a century or more—the rest of them had fallen so fast it was frightening. It was luck that had left Macready, Kelpie and Crane standing. Macready had no illusions it was because they were the best that the sentinels had to offer. His mammy would always say that her boy had a mean streak of luck in him. He preferred to think that it was that keeping him alive rather than any particular talent. Talent was a fickle mistress, but you could count on luck.

Macready had offered the captaincy to Kelpie at first, and she’d thrown it straight back to him. In the end, they’d agreed that neither would hold it. ‘We’ll wait until Crane’s of age,’ Kelpie had grinned.

Mac and Kelpie had never liked each other much until they were the only ones left. They had been hanging on to each other for so long now that it was impossible to bring like or dislike into it any more. She was his, just like those four gabbling sisters back home were his.

Crane was playing on the rooftops with the Kings this nox, and Kelpie had crashed out in her nest after two solid days without sleep. Neither of them had remembered what day it was. Why should they? It was stupid and maudlin to keep commemorating it year after year, but what else was there to do?

Macready lifted his mug solemnly, toasting the wiry, angry Silver Captain and the end of life as he knew it. Three years ago this nox. ‘Happy Vestalia, you old bastard,’ he said, and drank deep. The festival of virgins and peasants was tomorrow, which made it more appropriate to break a barley roll in honour of the Captain’s anniversary than to raise a mug, but what the hells. He felt like drinking. He could break a bread roll for breakfast.

Everything was changing in Aufleur. The daylight Duc’s death last year had pushed the changes along at a dizzying rate. Nothing like the death of an elderly monarch to make a society self-conscious about being modern, clever, fast.

Take this bar—the Pretty Princel on the riverside of the Lucian district. In the old days it had been the sort of place where the dregs of society went to drink alone, keeping a knife handy at all times. The sentinels had made a habit of gathering here after a hard nox because the Princel served drinks until sunrise, and because it was too grotty a hole for any of the Creature Court to wander into by accident. They liked their glamour spots, did the Lords and Court.

Look at it now! The walls were painted purple and rouge. Deliberately amusing frescoes and hangings had been chosen for the walls. There was a piano in the corner, and bright young things filled the place with laughter, dancing, new fashions. They ate oysters with triangles of bread and butter as if the recipe had only just been invented.

There was a gang of them in here now, four hours before dawn—coves in bright striped suits and demmes in beaded dresses, drinking flame-and-gin and taking
turns to tinkle the piano now that the hired player had gone home for the nox. Macready felt old just looking at them. He should have picked somewhere else for his drink, somewhere that had the feel of the old place even if it wasn’t exactly here. Too late now. He took another swig.

Hard to tell if they were a literary set, theatricals, or just good old social parasites. Everyone acted the same these days, the toffs and the trash alike. One of the coves sat at the piano, playing it with both hands as a cigarette twitched between his lips. The others exploded into gales of giggles, as if someone had said something frightfully funny. The melody was one of those uneven jazz things that were so popular nowadays.

Macready finished his drink and decided not to order another. If they started singing, he’d have to go and punch one of them, and he wanted to avoid that. The Captain would have done it by now, which was the best possible reason to hold back.

One of the demmes raised her voice in song, matching the snappy beat of the piano music with sharp, cynical lyrics.

Macready was still.

Who was she? The corner was badly lit. All he could see was a slender lass with streaky make-up, an expensive dress and bobbed blonde hair. Nothing special about any of that. She was one of a thousand trashy flappers in this city. Her voice had caught him though—full-bodied and beautiful with a sharp line of desperation running through it.
That lass needs rescuing
, he thought, and almost laughed at himself. Like he needed to look for another person to save.

He tossed a shillein on the counter for another drink though. No particular reason.

The lass slumped away from the piano as if the song had drained all the energy from her. The others laughed and dragged her back. The striped suit at the piano began a duet and the lass shrugged, playing along. It was a funny
flirt of a tune and didn’t suit her at all. She sulked through the second half, and only recovered when another of the coves bought her a gin cocktail.

At the end of the song, as she tossed her bobbed hair back to slug down the drink, Macready finally saw her face properly. It was Delphine.

He hadn’t seen anything of Velody’s two demmes since before the nox that she claimed her place as Power and Majesty. Velody had made every Lord and their courtesi swear on their own blood, and hers, that Delphine and Rhian were off limits. Dazed with power and the aftermath of battle, each had sworn docilely. Macready hadn’t given much of a thought to Velody’s demmes since then—the Court were untrustworthy, but none of them would be stupid enough to break a blood oath. Velody’s friends were safe, so why think of them at all?

Delphine was thinner and harder than he remembered. Had she changed so much in the last month, or was she just a mean drunk? Hard to tell.

‘Beautiful, darlings, but does it mean anything?’ asked one of the striped suits in a lazy drawl.

Delphine lit a cigarette and gave him a dirty look. ‘If you start talking about Society again, Villey, I’m going home.’

‘Sorry for boring!’ he chuckled, and the others laughed along.

The cherry-pink striped suit at the piano grabbed Delphine and hauled her into his lap. She slumped against him, unresisting.
Saints, how drunk was she?

‘The ladies don’t like to hear about your philosophies, Villiers,’ said the suit. ‘Their brains are too small.’

‘Beast!’ said another demme, a redhead with a long cigarette-holder and a fringed dress so short she was barely fit to be seen in public. ‘He only has one philosophy and we’ve heard it so many times we can all recite it in unison.’

‘Nothing means anything!’ Delphine slurred. ‘We celebrate the great emptiness because we’ve nothing truly
important to care about. Life is too easy, milk and honey and lovely, lovely strawberries.’ She made kissy noises.

‘Festivals and ribbons,’ said the redhead. ‘We need something
important
to bring our lives into sharp focus.’

‘We need a war!’ Delphine screamed, and the redhead shouted it with her. They both collapsed into hysterical giggles.

Macready raised his mug slowly to his lips. Villiers was looking annoyed at the teasing. Was Delphine making trouble for herself? Macready reminded himself that all this was none of his business, but that kind of thinking had never worked for him. He would stick around now, to make sure she got home safely. This lot weren’t to be trusted.

Hard to see how his calm, sensible Power and Majesty had paired up with a mess of a lass like this one.

‘I don’t make fun of your singing,’ said Villiers.

‘Don’t be sour,’ said Delphine. ‘If you repeat yourself so often, how can we help but tease?’

‘I don’t know about the rest of you,’ said Cherry-Pink Stripes, ‘but I don’t want a war! I wouldn’t know what to do with one. I’m quite happy with a meaningless life, thanks very much.’

‘And that’s why no decent poetry has been written in a hundred years,’ sighed Villiers. ‘Men like you, Teddy, with nothing to write about.’

‘But there is a war,’ said Delphine in a clear voice. ‘Didn’t you know?’

Macready almost choked on his drink as the lass turned her head and stared straight at him.

‘How many gins have you had, little one?’ said Villiers, not taking her seriously.

Delphine lifted herself from Teddy’s arms and rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I’m telling the truth. The skywar has been back for years, raining death on the streets of Aufleur.’ She swung around on her high heels, advancing on Macready. ‘We could be under attack right now, and we
wouldn’t know a thing about it unless we suddenly dropped dead of the Silent Sleep. Isn’t that true, seigneur?’

There was a chill in her voice that stung Macready. He drank from his mug, trying not to show how bothered he was by those sharp, hurting blue eyes. ‘Whatever you say, lass.’

She faltered, and her voice rose an octave higher. ‘Would you deny it to my face? Are you a liar as well as a thief?’

One of the striped suits—not Teddy or Villiers, one with peppermint stripes on his breeches—skipped forward to grab her around the waist. ‘Don’t frighten the customers, Dee-dee. Come away and dance with me, you know you want to.’

She cradled her head against his chest as he guided her away from Macready, back to the others. Macready heard Peppermint Stripes hiss to the redhead, ‘What pills did you give her?’

She laughed at him. ‘Nothing she hasn’t had before, sweetling.’

Macready finished his drink and set it down purposefully, then circled the bar. Easy enough to find a dark corner where he could wait them out without being seen. It wouldn’t be long, by the look of it. Delphine’s outburst had shaken her crowd a little.

‘Kiss and make up, little one,’ said Villiers, taking her arm in a proprietary fashion. ‘I’ll see you home.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Teddy. He collected his hat and a feminine wrap from the stand at the door. ‘It’s on my way,’ he added, draping the filmy cloth around Delphine’s shoulders.

‘As you like,’ said Villiers, releasing her. An unfriendly look passed between the two coves before they broke apart.

‘Lisette’s tomorrow?’ called the redhead as she pranced up the front steps, tucked between Villiers and Peppermint Stripes.

‘See you there,’ agreed Teddy in a cheerful voice, steering Delphine out the back way.

Macready waited a few moments and then followed Cherry-Pink Teddy, just to be sure.

There was a narrow lane running along behind the Pretty Princel. Delphine had trouble negotiating it, even with Teddy’s arm around her waist.

‘Come home with me, darling,’ Macready heard Teddy say. ‘I’ll look after you.’

‘No!’ Delphine said, pushing him away. ‘You’d only want to fumble, and I’m not up for it this nox.’

‘Never stopped you before.’

‘Charming, aren’t you.’ Her words all ran together in one long drawl. ‘That’s exactly the right way to talk a demoiselle into bed.’

Macready couldn’t move from the doorway without making his presence obvious. Their every step took them further away from him.

‘Bit late to pretend you’re not a tramp,’ said Teddy. It was hard to tell if he meant to insult her, or if it was just the sort of thing this crowd said to each other.

Delphine didn’t take offence. ‘Don’t feel like being one now, that’s all.’

‘Not with me, you mean.’ He sounded disgusted.

She shrugged a shoulder.

‘Bored already?’

‘You said it, not me.’

Macready rolled his eyes. This lass didn’t need rescuing. Spanking, maybe. Teddy moved fast, pinning Delphine hard against the alley wall with his body. Macready was about to leap to the rescue when he realised that the bint was laughing.

‘What do you think you’re doing, you beast?’ she shrieked, not taking her attacker at all seriously.

‘Isn’t this the way you like it?’ Teddy grunted. ‘Fontaine told me about the first time he had you, Dee-dee. He showed everyone the scratch marks.’

Delphine wasn’t laughing any more. ‘You’re too
lightweight to play rough,’ she said in a voice worthy of a Duchessa. ‘Let me go. I feel sick.’

He let go, and she slid towards the ground. Chivalry was obviously ingrained deeply in Teddy for all his attempts to come off as a hard man. He leaped forward to catch her, just as she threw up violently. He was in exactly the right position to receive the full force of her vomit, down his pink-striped suit and soft silk shirt.