Power & Majesty (37 page)

T
he pain tore in burning rivulets across the surface of Ashiol’s skin so that he could not move even a fraction without starting a chain reaction of white-hot agony. He knew this pain. Not quite an old friend, but certainly a comrade of long standing. He could endure it. He had endured it before.

His eyelids screamed as he forced them open. He was in a cage in Poet’s loft—he remembered the cage, but it had been a feature of the Haymarket when he saw it last. One of Garnet’s toys. Velody sat cross-legged in the mouth of the open cage door. Her elegant evening gown was stained with blood. Crane’s blood, and her own. Kelpie crouched near Velody, unusually close. Heliora sat a little further back from the others, watching the room with wary eyes. Had he been unconscious long enough for these three to become allies?

‘I’m in the seventh hell,’ he muttered. ‘The one with all the demoiselles.’

‘Can you stand?’ asked Velody.

He could not taste her. For a moment, he was paralysed by the fear that he had lost it again, that his animor had
been ripped from his veins by another cruel master. But no, he could still feel his own power pulsing beneath his skin. It was Velody who was empty.

‘So,’ he managed through cracked and blistered lips, ‘that’s why Kelpie hasn’t been allowed to give me her blood and spare me the pain. Good decision.’

‘I knew you’d like it,’ said Velody, her voice shaking only a little. ‘Ash, the sky’s falling.’

His voice was a rasp in his throat, but he mouthed the words, ‘How bad?’

‘Worse than when Garnet was taken,’ said Kelpie.

‘We have four of the Lords and their courtesi in the sky already,’ said Velody, sounding strangely in charge.
Idiot. Of course she’s in charge. Who else could be at a time like this?
‘When I last saw Poet though, he was barely holding on.’

She rubbed at a small black smear on the side of her face. Ashiol recognised it as the glutinous substance they called star tar. That hideous muck only oozed through the cracks in the sky during the worst of battles. She was right. It was bad.

The pain made every thought a little slower than usual. ‘You’ve lost your powers,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Velody impatiently.

‘So how did you put four Lords in the sky?’

Velody’s smile broke open and her eyes danced. Had he ever seen her look so totally alive before? ‘I asked them nicely.’

Ashiol laughed, and that was the worst pain yet. He kept laughing until the shock waves in his body forced him to stop. ‘I can stand,’ he said, hoping it wasn’t just bravado.

He could, though it took all three women crowding into the cage to help him to his feet. He couldn’t help noticing that, even as she assisted, Heliora’s face was constantly turned away as if she expected him to hit her.

On his feet, there were new waves of pain and it was a few moments before he recovered enough to speak. ‘Which Lord is not in the sky?’

‘Dhynar,’ said Velody.

He looked closely at her. Through the shimmery gown he could see a shadow of the skysilver blade that had punched a hole through her stomach. He reached out, his fingers finding the rent in the fabric. ‘He’s dead then.’

Velody tilted her head up to his, her steady hands still supporting him from the front even as Kelpie and Hel held him up from behind. ‘Kelpie gave him a taste of skysilver blade, but I made her give him blood to keep him alive. Like me, he’s powerless for a day or so.’

‘I would have killed him,’ he said. It came out as a rebuke, which wasn’t quite what he intended. It was hard to think past the pain and the rage. He had been stupid enough to leave Velody vulnerable to the Court.

Her chin went up defensively. ‘I think we’ve established that I’m not you, Ashiol. Wasn’t that the whole point of making me Power and Majesty?’

There wasn’t a breath of animor about her and yet she was more Power and Majesty than he had ever imagined.
I got it wrong
, he thought numbly.
I got it wrong
,
and almost got her killed.

He managed a step or two, and waved the women off him so he could do it on his own. He made it out of the cage, careful not to touch the bars that still had skysilver wire wrapped around them. He staggered after another few steps, but stayed on his feet.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Kelpie behind him. ‘Velody, he’s not up to it. You can’t expect him to fight the sky in this condition, Creature King or not.’

‘We haven’t any choice,’ Velody snapped back. ‘The only way to cure his pain is to make him
not
a Creature King right now, and I need him in the sky.’

‘Let those bastard Lords suffer up there without his help,’ said Kelpie.

‘And let the city fall?’ Velody responded angrily.

‘Shut up, both of you,’ Ashiol commanded. It was taking all his energy to control the pain. The last thing he needed
was to be surrounded by bickering. His head felt fuzzy and strange, but for the first time since waking in the cage, he remembered drinking tea with Heliora. He swung around fast, his eyes blazing into hers. She looked utterly miserable. ‘You betrayed me,’ he said.

For a moment, anger crossed her face. Then she retreated into a different expression, the insolent brat with nothing to hide. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘We’ll talk about that later.’

She shrugged, pretending not to care. ‘If you like.’

Ashiol flexed the animor within him, and that flare of power made the burn lines on his skin scream harder. Skysilver loved to torture animor. The more powerful you were, the harder it hurt.

‘You will be careful,’ said Velody. ‘You won’t take any unnecessary risks up there?’

Ashiol gave her a dirty look. ‘You know better than to ask something like that.’

‘You can try not to get killed at the very least.’

‘I’ll see what I can manage, Majesty,’ he said, not quite mockingly.

Velody obviously knew he was making fun of her and opened her mouth to retaliate. Ashiol changed quickly, shaping his body into his horde of cats and streaming in a long caravan of fur towards the trapdoor. Saints and angels, it
hurt
. Power blazed like scalding syrup across his skin as he burst out of the attic, leaving the three demmes behind.

Talking about him, no doubt.

P
ain thudded through Macready as he awoke. Beyond that, the first thing he was aware of was the heady combination of Rhian’s rose-scented skin and Delphine’s extravagant perfume.

‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘What’s a man done to warrant this kind of close attention from a pair of wenches?’

Delphine’s bright blue gaze shone at him, so bright it hurt his eyes. ‘We thought you were dead,’ she said.

‘Eh, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.’ He switched his attention to Rhian, but she avoided his gaze.

‘I’ll bring you some heal-leaf tisane,’ she muttered, drawing herself away and moving to the kitchen.

‘She bandaged you up and made poultices,’ said Delphine. ‘I just watched. I never knew she was so good in an emergency.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, she used to be. I’d forgotten.’

‘So you’ve just been sitting there, pining for me to awake?’ Macready teased her.

Delphine made a face. ‘This happens to be the warmest room in the house.’

Macready stirred a little, testing his arms and legs. An image of the courtesi creatures descending on his helpless
body with their claws and fangs and beaks shuddered through his mind for a moment, but he shook it away. He couldn’t move his limbs much, but there was a reason for that. Someone had tied him down. ‘What’s this?’

Delphine rested her chin on her hands, looking rather pleased with herself. ‘Kelpie warned us that our only chance of making you rest until you were fully healed was to tie you to the bed.’

‘Indeed?’ It wasn’t even a bed, but a hard couch in Velody’s workroom. He struggled a little against the bonds, but they were secured tight.
Garland-makers
, he remembered. Of course they would be good with knots. ‘You’d better tell me what’s been going on, had you not?’

Rhian returned with a steaming cup of something herbal that didn’t smell entirely nice. ‘Your blades are with Velody,’ she said, more confident than on the previous occasions he had met her. Having a grown man tied to a couch was doing wonders for her self-esteem. ‘She thought that was particularly important for you to know.’

‘All right, then,’ said Macready, doing his best to sound non-threatening. ‘Now you’ve unmanned me twice over, is there anything else you want to tell me? Like what in the seven hells has been going on since I was taken out?’

‘You want to know everything?’ asked Delphine.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, lass.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Well, for a start, Velody almost got killed with that skysilver dagger of yours…’

When he woke for the second time, Macready felt stronger and less groggy. There was a different scent in the room, overriding the lingering traces of Delphine and Rhian. He shifted, and gasped a little as his battered flesh came into contact with the ropes. ‘Would it be too much trouble to untangle this poor prisoner, Majesty?’

Velody was barely visible in the darkness. ‘I suppose I can trust you to stay still now?’

‘No one to chase now you’re well and safe,’ he replied,
keeping his voice low so they didn’t wake Crane, who was cocooned nearby in a makeshift bed of two armchairs and several blankets.

Velody untied the knots. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Like a man mauled by wild animals and put back together with a very blunt needle. Yours, I expect.’

She touched his face in that casual way she had developed, brushing his curls back out of his eyes. He was glad of that, as a stray lock had been itching his nose for some time.

‘Delphine and Rhian looked after you?’ she asked.

‘I wasn’t much of an entertaining invalid, now you come to mention it. Both of them went to bed hours ago, so they did.’

She drew his two daggers from a makeshift belt she wore over her bloodstained dress. ‘You’d better have these back.’

‘Much obliged, Majesty. My other lasses?’

He was amused to see that she was wearing both his swords in harness. Luckily she wasn’t much taller than Macready, or she might have done herself a mischief.

Velody unbuckled the harness now, with a sigh of relief as she laid the two swords on the floor beside him. ‘I’m not sorry to see the back of these lasses of yours.’

‘Eh, they can be kind mistresses if you treat them right.’ At her serious look, Macready ventured a question. ‘All well in the sky now?’

‘Ashiol’s still battling—it’s bad, from what I can see. Kelpie’s up on the roof now, watching. I think I’d rather not know if the worst is coming.’

‘We’re to be swallowed in our beds before dawn then?’ He tried to speak lightly, but it was evident from her haunted eyes that it was a definite possibility.

‘I don’t know.’ Velody sighed, and the last pulse of energy seemed to sag out of her. She leaned forward, folding her face against Macready’s chest. ‘I just wish I could do something.’

He stroked the back of her head, holding her close for comfort. Strange to feel her so near and not taste the crackle of animor that usually lit her skin from within. ‘Now you know how we sentinels feel, watching the Great and Mighty fight our battles for us nox after nox.’

She tilted her head back, her eyes finding his in the near-darkness. ‘Now I know how the Creature Court felt all these market-nines while Ashiol and I kept them out of it. No wonder they were all so angry at me.’

‘You won’t be letting that happen again,’ he assured her. ‘You know better than to let our Ashiol make your decisions for you again, do you not?’

It was an important question, and he waited anxiously for her answer.
Keep Ash’s hands off the reins, lass. You’re doing fine.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’ve had a taste of what it really is to be a Power and Majesty, Mac. I won’t let that go again, not in a hurry.’ She grinned suddenly, making an absurd face. ‘Look at me, all puffed up with my own importance and I haven’t even tortured anyone yet.’

‘There’s still time,’ he told her. He pulled his hand back from her hair. His joints were stiffening up again and his muscles ached as if he had been running all day and nox. ‘If you don’t mind, Majesty, I could do with a wink or two more o’ sleep now. If the city falls before daylight, I’d rather not know about it.’

‘Of course.’ She drew away from him, pulling up the blankets that Rhian and Delphine had left for his comfort. ‘If we’re still here in the morning, I’ll make you breakfast.’

He smiled, his head already descending muzzily into sleep. ‘Ah, love, I’ll hold you to that promise.’

The city would not fall. Not this nox. Macready just plain hurt too much to expect the luxury of oblivion. He’d settle for an hour or two of troubled and broken sleep.

A
fter Velody and Kelpie left, Heliora stayed in Poet’s attic for a long time. Where else did she have to go? The seer was no use during full skybattle.

What use had she been at all in recent times? Garnet was swallowed by the sky and she hadn’t seen it coming. And now she had betrayed Ashiol.

If she returned to her pavilion in the Basilica, Ashiol would come to her when the battle was won, assuming it could be won. She would have to explain why she had been convinced so readily that he and Velody should be separated, so that she could come into her own as the Power and Majesty. So that Ashiol could be free. Somehow, she didn’t think that he would be all that understanding.

Heliora paced the attic frenetically. Her impending death had affected her more deeply than she had guessed. Every choice she made took on an air of urgency, even desperation.

I wish I could just get it over with.

A true and loyal seer would appreciate this chance to train a successor, to prepare the Court for the time when she was gone. But Heliora had long since lost any sense of
loyalty to the Creature Court, and any sense that she was of value to them.

She would die, and few would even notice her passing.

She climbed down from the attic, glad to leave the looming shape of the creature cage behind, but her feet froze on her when she tried to leave the grocer’s shop. The streets of the Arches were dark and the sky was falling. She climbed the stairs to Poet’s cosy living space, and curled up in one of his sumptuous chairs. She should not be here, but where else did she have to go? Would Poet be furious that she had helped Ashiol escape? Would he take his anger out on her?
Is that how I die?

Velody had been a revelation. Heliora had viewed her as an abstract concept, the first female Power and Majesty that anyone had ever heard of. She had seen a thousand different Velodys in the future, killing and dying and turning inside out with power. Some were benevolent ruling ladies, others were vicious monsters. This Velody was just a woman. How could she be the brightly burning figure of Heliora’s visions?
It doesn’t matter, I suppose. I won’t be here to see it happen.

It was all too much to bear. Too much to think about. Heliora was crushed and wrung out, beyond the point of endurance. There was only half a year until Saturnalia, and she could be taken any time between now and then.

Of all the deaths she had seen for herself, all the moments that occurred before darkness and oblivion fell, one possibility stood out more bright and fierce than the others, blazing with light.
Let the futures take me. Die as I have lived. Leave the Court and the promises and the obligations. Never have to look Ashiol in the eyes and admit to my moment of weakness.

Heliora pushed her mind open to the sky, and fell forward into the futures.

Colours blazed before her eyes. She saw Dhynar killing a blonde flapper and laughing about it to his men. Warlord and Livilla, hands around each other’s throat, daring each
other to make the deadly squeeze. Priest ruling them all, in a sea of blood. Poet weeping and biting and giggling and singing. Ashiol sane, Ashiol insane, Ashiol ruling, Ashiol dying, Ashiol Ashiol Ashiol.

Heliora felt her body convulse even as her mind sped faster and harder into the no-longer-infinite possibilities of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…

Pain brought her out of it, a sharp crack across her face that sent her spinning back to the present version of herself, the body on the couch. For a moment she grasped a handful of reality, but then the futures had her again, swirling crazily into festival after festival and several darker, stranger futures in which there were no festivals at all and a cold light held sway over Aufleur.

Smack!
and Hel’s mind was dimly aware again that something was happening to her body. A third blow hurt her arm, and a fourth her stomach. She blinked back into the present long enough to register that she was on the floor and Poet’s familiar silhouette was bending over her.

‘Do you want to die?’ he grated. ‘Just let me know and I’ll leave you to it.’

Helplessly, still half-ensnared by the tangle of future possibilities, she tilted her head up to him, waiting for the bruising kiss, the suddenness of his body pressed against hers, pulling her back from the edge.

How long have I wanted that from Poet?
she thought in shock.

Visions of Ashiol’s death, of Velody’s destruction, of the blackness that came just before Heliora’s own obliteration, all blotted her vision. She felt Poet’s hands on her body, but could not see him any more. It was all the more shocking when he did not pull at her clothes, paw at her breasts, bite at her throat. Instead she felt him lift her, as gently as if she were a child, and then let go with a savage thrust that thudded her back to the floor. Her visions snapped away as her spine jarred and her head cracked against the carpeted floorboards. She stared up at him, so
stunned that she barely noticed that the futures had ceased to torment her.

‘I’m not Ashiol,’ Poet said with a sneer. ‘I’m not going to ravish you back into sensibility, whether you want me to or not. Do I need to hit you again?’

Her mouth was muzzy, and her head was worse, but she was grounded for now. Slowly, she shook her head.

‘Good.’

He leaned down to briskly assist her to her feet. Heliora’s whole body ached as he drew her upwards, then shoved her at the couch. She crumpled into it. Poet sat beside her. He wore battle dress—silks and leathers, all scuffed and filthy. He took some time over removing his boots, ignoring Heliora’s presence.

‘What happened?’ she asked finally. The skybattle was won. She knew that much now. There was nothing but quiet vibrations coming to her from the world above. ‘You seem more psychotic than usual.’

‘I lost a courteso,’ he said shortly. ‘Halberk. My bear. A lash tendril got him in the heart.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said after a moment.

Poet gave her a grim smile. ‘Why? You don’t care. I don’t care much. It’s just the way it is. What are you still doing here?’

She blinked at the question. ‘I didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

‘Wonderful. And were you actually trying to kill yourself, here on my good carpet? Or were you hoping your dark Ducomte would swoop in to save you at the last minute?’

Another difficult question. ‘I don’t know.’

Behind the glaze of his wire-rimmed spectacles, Poet’s eyes were hard and chilly. ‘I don’t console lonely women, Hel. It’s not my style.’

She had never seen him so bitter before. He was usually laughing at the world, and himself most of all. Heliora’s masochistic streak still tempted her to flirt with him.
‘So you’re not into rough sex, or consolation. What is it that you do like, Poet?’

He stared at her, and she was mesmerised by him. Slowly, he drew her mouth towards his and gave her the kiss of a tender lover. She tasted his tongue and teeth and the intense burn of his animor. One hand caressed her knee and moved around to the small of her back, pulling her closer into him. She responded with passion, her whole body awake to him.

An instant later, Poet had snapped away, pushing a distance between them again. His head tilted half-mockingly at her, even as the warmth drained from his eyes. ‘I like to torture people. Out you go, Heliora. Try not to throw yourself off a bridge on your way home.’