Reign of Beasts (28 page)

I
t was fifteen years ago, and the world had just changed irrevocably.

Ashiol lay on the cold marble tiles of the bathroom, awash in sensation. He was bruised, bitten, sticky, and his mind was such a jumble that he couldn't concentrate on anything, not the smell of Garnet's skin, nor the musky taste of come that still lingered on his tongue.

There was a mosaic pattern on the ceiling: a long-winged lizard chasing its own tail. He had never noticed it before.

Garnet made a small sound beside him and Ashiol rolled over, conscious suddenly of the puddles of oil spreading across the tiles, dripping into the now-cold bath. A glass bottle had broken in their first sudden lunge at each other, and it was a miracle that in all their clumsy fumblings neither of them had managed to cut himself.

This. Finally. They had come close on other occasions, there had been kisses and touches and the petting games that Tasha especially encouraged in them, but this was nothing less than momentous, and he knew that when they
looked back, it was this that they would name their first time.

They would have to be careful to hide it from Tasha: that her cubs had chosen a pretty bathroom in the Duc's Palazzo for the occasion of their first fuck, rather than one of the beds in her own den. Perhaps they would have to act out a similar scenario in future weeks, so she thought she was witnessing it. It wouldn't be difficult to pretend it was their first time. Ashiol was pretty sure they couldn't be good at it yet.

‘Did I hurt you?' he muttered, certain that all of Garnet's cries hadn't been of pleasure, but he had been wrapped up in the moment and hadn't been careful enough.

‘I'll live,' said Garnet in a low voice, and then winced when Ashiol lay his palm across the curve of his arse. ‘Ah, hands off.'

‘I did hurt you.'

‘Maybe I like it that way.'

He always talked like that, like nothing mattered, like he was as old and worldly as Tasha or Saturn.

‘Shut up,' Ashiol said into the nape of his neck, kissing and then licking with a flick of his tongue. ‘I'll let you do me next time.'

‘Ha, I bet.'

‘I will.' Ashiol nuzzled in against him, careful not to get too close. ‘You liked it when I held you down,' he added thoughtfully.

‘Pervert.' Garnet laughed, then arched back against him. ‘I liked all of it.'

‘Aye.' Nothing was going to be the same again, not now. ‘So,' said Ashiol, too pleasantly numb to move, though the cold was starting to leach through his skin. ‘Do we bother cleaning up? Or do we let the maids — you know? Figure it out.'

No servant would say a word to the Duc and Duchessa. He wasn't sure whether it made him squirm with
embarrassment or if it was even hotter, the idea of people knowing what he had been up to, even if they might not guess with whom.

‘We should just scamper out the window and away,' said Garnet. ‘How's that for the final “fuck you” to your fancy family?'

Ashiol laughed. ‘I'd have to come back sooner or later.'

‘No, really.' Garnet turned and gazed at him, his eyes intensely bright. ‘What's keeping you here? We have Tasha now, and the others. We're the frigging Creature Court. It's time to cut the ties. Leave the daylight behind.'

Ashiol wasn't sure how serious his friend was. ‘The daylight has its uses. Why give up everything we have here when we can have both?'

Garnet's eyes did that icy thing that showed he was angry. ‘Because I don't want to be your fucking manservant any more,' he said, as if Ashiol was stupid.

Which, aye, he was. Quite obviously.

‘That was never real,' Ashiol said, treading carefully now he knew he was in dangerous territory. ‘It was just an excuse to keep you with me.'

‘Real enough when I have to take dinner in the servants' hall,' Garnet said, half-spitting the words.

‘I didn't know it bothered you.'

He should have known. Everything bothered Garnet; he nursed every splinter until it was a bloody great stake through the heart.

‘It doesn't bother me,' Garnet said, defensive now and probably lying. He shrugged a shoulder and then smiled one of those secret smiles of his, flashing from anger to sweetness far too fast. ‘Most days, anyway. But there's nothing for me here except you, and I have you there as well. Don't I?'

‘Of course you do,' said Ashiol, and it felt more of a pledge than any oath he had made to Tasha. ‘I'm yours.'

This time Garnet's smile was better. Warmer.

‘I'll go soon,' he said. ‘To the Creature Court, completely.
You don't have to. But if you want to keep a foot in the daylight, you're going to need to hire a new valet.'

‘I can live with that,' said Ashiol.

Part of him wanted to order Garnet not to leave him, to stay with him for both the daylight and the nox. He knew better. He hadn't been able to get away with ordering Garnet to do anything, not since they were twelve years old.

Garnet kissed him suddenly, a rough crush of his mouth to Ashiol's, and the scent of him almost had them falling to the floor again. Not just sex and skin and oil, but the flare of animor, of gattopardo and cat recognising each other. Ashiol felt hot and urgent all over again, and when he reached out a hand he felt an answering hardness in Garnet's cock.

‘Bed this time,' Garnet said, his old bossiness returning.

‘I thought you were sore.'

Garnet grinned wickedly. ‘It's your turn, remember? Let's mess up those pretty linen sheets of yours. Make some more work for the maids.'

Later, dizzy and hurting and so deeply in love that he couldn't think straight, Ashiol thought to remind Garnet that they would have to put a show on for Tasha.

‘You think she doesn't know?' Garnet muttered back, groggy and half-asleep. ‘You yelled loud enough they probably heard you in the Haymarket.'

The smell of death filled the room suddenly, swamping Ashiol's senses. He struggled to breathe, and saw a third figure lurching towards them in the lantern light.

Livilla's skin was rotting off her in places and the smell was unbearable. She was quite definitely dead, and she leaned over the boy lovers, crooning, ‘I told you I wanted to watch.'

Ashiol woke up. He breathed hard for a moment or two, readjusting to his surroundings. He was half-lying on a window seat in his mother's library, crushing her favourite cushions. The air was scented with tea.

He had bathed twice, and gargled mint and water until he could no longer taste whatever cack the Duc-Elected had poisoned him with, or the grit of the road, or the soul of a dead city. His mother had offered him brandy but the scent of it sickened him. That probably wouldn't last.

The house was decorated for Saturnalia, all greenery and silver angels and red paper hearts. He had to count the days to be sure it wasn't actually here yet. Eight days to go.

The door opened and Augusta Xandelian walked in. Ashiol's mother was such a neat, respectable matrona. Ashiol had always marvelled at the fact that he had never seen her untidy, not even when she was gardening or surrounded by children. Her hair had far more grey in it than when he had seen her last, only half a year ago. She seemed happy enough here, widowed and still mattering to all of her children as they reached adulthood one by one.

‘Mistress Celeste and her daughter are settled in a room upstairs,' Augusta said gravely.

‘Look after them, will you?' he asked, lowering his feet to the floor.

He felt a little shaky, more from the two days of walking it had taken to get here than anything else, though it wasn't unlikely he was still suffering the after-effects of those damned potions.

‘You're not staying, then?' said Augusta.

She was working so hard not to let her disapproval show, but he could feel it radiating out of her. Perhaps that was deliberate on her part. She had always been an annoyingly subtle sort of woman.

‘We're needed in the city,' he said.

‘You and those demoiselles.'

It was also clear what Augusta thought of Velody and Kelpie, who looked like the ragged war veterans they were and had no adorable moppet to distract her with.

‘Isangell still needs me.' A convenient excuse as well as being exactly the truth.

‘You should never have left us, dearling,' Augusta said crisply.

‘Perhaps.'

Ashiol went to the mantel, which held no less than three of his dead stepfather's clocks. Tick, tick, tick. He reached out abruptly and stopped one of them, wrenching at the hands. The others continued to beat time.

‘What are you doing?' Cross at him, Augusta stepped forward to slap his hand away.

‘Diamagne did love his clocks,' said Ashiol, and he had always known there should be a legitimate reason to dislike his mother's second husband, hadn't he? ‘Where was it he got them mended when ungrateful stepsons broke them?'

Augusta huffed, and opened her mouth, because she was not the sort of lady who let a question go unanswered when she knew the answer perfectly well. Then she closed her mouth, because she did not, it seemed, know the answer at all. ‘I don't remember.'

‘You've never forgotten a thing in your life,' Ashiol said dismissively. ‘Least of all something to do with Diamagne.'

‘It's on the tip of my tongue.'

‘No, it isn't.' He sighed. ‘It doesn't matter. I was just testing a theory.'

Bazeppe was gone. Bazeppe had never existed. Bazeppe was forgotten by everyone of the daylight.

‘Will you stay for dinner at least?' asked his mother.

‘Is there meat?'

‘There's always meat, dearling. One benefit of living in the country.'

‘We would be glad to stay for dinner.'

His mother waited, and raised her eyebrows.

‘Maybe a day or two,' he conceded. ‘I'll see what the others think.'

‘As you say.' She looked amused that Ashiol might listen to anyone but himself.

When she left him, Ashiol threw himself down on the sofa like he was a child again, his feet piled high on cushions.

Livilla was dead, and inside his mind. That wasn't a good thing. He could feel himself slipping into dark thoughts, the kind that helped no one. He could not afford to lose his hold on reality, not now.

Priest was dead, too. Poet had fallen in with Garnet. Lysandor had been found and lost again. Celeste was … not his to command. There were hardly any pieces left of the Creature Court that Ashiol recognised.

How much easier would it be just to curl up as a cat and stay here for the season? He could let his mother dress Velody like a doll; let one of his brothers fall in love with Kelpie. Sit in the grass and snooze in the sunshine. There was always meat on the estate and wine. They could wait until Ashiol's family no longer remembered what the word ‘Aufleur' meant. Let the cities fucking fall.

‘There you are,' said a voice, and of course it was Velody. She looked tired, but Ashiol's mother or her maids had given her access to a fresh dress and something approximating a bath.

‘Come here,' he said, and stretched out a hand. She came close enough for him to notice how good she smelled.

‘Oh, your mother would like that,' she said dryly. ‘Canoodling on the couch with a lowly dressmaker.'

‘Canoodling, is that even a word?' Ashiol tugged her closer and Velody half-fell on top of him. He liked that smile of hers. He hadn't seen nearly enough of it.

She breathed out like a sigh as he touched her, and relaxed for a moment, her head resting on his chest, the weight of her body firm on him.

‘We're going back, aren't we?' she said.

‘Of course we are.'

‘I need to tell you something.'

He tensed.

‘Nothing bad, I think.' She raised her head and he looked into her grey eyes. ‘Someone helped me, when I needed to get Celeste out of the city. Shared their power with me. It's the only reason we survived.'

Ashiol frowned. ‘That's not a normal skill.'

‘It was Garnet. He heard my plea from across the country. He shared.'

‘Garnet doesn't like to share.' Ashiol cupped her breast in his hand. Not for any particular reason. It helped him to think. ‘Is this the part where you tell me there might still be hope of redeeming him?'

‘I don't know,' said Velody. ‘I just thought you should know. He's the reason Celeste and I got out of Bazeppe alive.'

Ashiol blew out a breath. ‘Something to think about. Does this dress come off?'

She laughed and wriggled out of his grasp. ‘Not in your mother's library, it doesn't!'

For a moment, Ashiol was overwhelmed by calmness. It was a strange sensation. Pleasure, happiness. For one moment, before the impossibility of what they had to do swept back over him, he felt good.

It lasted just long enough to chase Velody out of the library and up the stairs to his rooms, where he proceeded to fuck her breathless before they even reached the bed.

I
t was nearly noon. The sack was heavy, and Delphine was very proud of herself for lugging it all the way underground without asking anyone for help. Not that the other options were all that tempting. Macready would ask too many questions, and that would mean they were actually having a conversation, and if they were going to have a conversation after all this time, Delphine was firm that she didn't want it to consist of him telling her how wrong-headed she was.

Then there was Crane, but since their tumble in the Haymarket, he had shown a distressing tendency to want to carry things for her and be extra polite, and while Delphine was usually the sort of person to take advantage of that sort of thing, in this instance it made her feel something not too far off guilt.

So, risking her own fingernails it was. She found the secret tunnel near the river and climbed down into the sunshine and desert of the Killing Ground. She wasn't used to being there on her own, and for a moment she felt entirely unwelcome.

The ghosts took an interest in her, drifting stickily around her arms and legs. They were drab creatures, and she never looked closely enough at them to see details such as faces and clothes. She had done that once and realised she was looking at a much younger Macready, even down to the hand with all digits intact. It creeped her out so much that she avoided looking at them in any detail after that.

‘Sentinel,' she reminded them crossly, as if they might have forgotten. ‘I belong here, so shut up.'

She lugged the sack across the sand. It wasn't only the weight that made it difficult to shift. She could feel the contents of it prickling at her, calling to the blades that she wore again, concealed under a swirling cloak.

She hadn't worn her brown sentinel's cloak for some time. No particular reason, except that it felt heavy with obligation, and besides, brown wasn't her colour. She had pinched a length of blue wool from Velody's stash and sewn it into a cloak herself, hemming it on the metal sewing machine that she had given Velody years ago when they were apprentices. It was nice to know she still had the skills to sew something larger than a handful of ribbons. Once upon a time, Delphine had been determined to be a dressmaker, before she realised Velody was better at it.

Delphine really hated being second best at anything, and it was well past time she stopped being resentful at being the newest sentinel, the one who knew least about anything, the one they tried to protect. It was her time to shine.

She reached the door of the Smith's forge and knocked on it. There was silence for a long time, though smoke belched through the crack under the door.

Several more knocks elicited no response. Finally she tried to wrench the door open on her own, but pain shocked through her arm with a flash of light.

‘Ow!' she screamed indignantly.

No response.

She could so easily walk away at this point, but she had come all this way carrying the stupid sack, and besides, she had questions that required answers. Many answers.

She sat down with her back against the door, opened the sack and started pulling out the gleaming pieces of skysilver. She had spent hours collecting it, digging the stuff out of gutters and broken slate before the dawn healed the city. Some of it was melted into slag, and other pieces were still quite pointy and jagged, like lightning bolts frozen into existence.

When the door finally opened behind her, dampening the fabric of her blue cloak with steam, Delphine was attempting to build a little house out of the broken chunks of skysilver. She was rather proud of it. It had three floors, a roof and a chimney.

‘Coming in?' said the Smith.

Delphine looked up and up, tilting her head back. All she could see was his massive leather apron. ‘I brought you a present.'

He grunted at her, turned around and went back into the heat of his forge.

Delphine gathered up the pieces quickly, her fingers humming as she put them back into the sack, and went inside before he could change his mind.

‘I want to ask you some questions,' she told him. ‘Velody says you remember all the way back to the beginning of the Court.'

‘Many ask,' said the Smith, which didn't exactly suggest he was going to answer any questions, but nor did it refute the possibility.

Delphine hefted the sack up onto a dirty table and, after a moment's hesitation, scrambled up there as well, swinging her legs. ‘You told her that the first Power and Majesty was a woman.'

‘I say things,' the Smith said, after a long silence.

He was working on a sword, bringing the hot metal out of the coals and turning it as he clanged down his hammer. There were few pauses in which Delphine could make herself heard, and often there wasn't time for him to reply, so she had to wait until the next time the metal was reheating.

‘Do the rest of them know how much you know about the old days?' she tried, barely getting the whole question out before he started striking the metal again, filling the air with noise.

After the metal was glowing in the brazier again, she thought he wasn't going to answer as he continued the silence.

‘Few have patience enough to listen to history,' he said finally, eight words all at once.

Then nothing for at least an hour, no matter how many questions she hurled at him.

Sometime later, the Smith rested the finished sword in a barrel of water and came over to sort through the skysilver she had brought, his expert fingers flicking away the bits of gravel or tile or rust stuck to it.

‘Where does it come from, the skysilver?' Delphine asked.

It wasn't a question she had meant to ask, but it suddenly occurred to her that, really, it was something they should all be asking far more often.

The Smith looked at her and smiled. ‘Ah,' he said.

‘What, did I say something clever?'

Silence.

‘Has no one asked that before?'

‘They have asked.'

‘So what else haven't they asked? What question has no one ever asked before? What do you know about everything?'

He shook his head at her, and sorted in silence.

Patience did not come naturally to Delphine. Impulse was the sphere she was most comfortable with. But if the
rest of the Creature Court, with their short attention spans, had been too impatient to listen to anything useful the Smith had to say about their past … Someone had to listen to him. Someone had to figure out what the seven hells was going on, before Velody got all self-sacrificial again.

Home wasn't home any more. Velody was gone, and Rhian was crazy, and Macready had moved out. Saints only knew where he was living now — one of those musty little nests or something …

Where did Delphine have to go anyway? Why not stay and be useful? At the very least, she could think up new questions.

It felt like she had been there for hours. She wasn't hungry or thirsty, despite the steamy heat coming from the forge. The only way to measure time was the beat of the Smith's hammer, the number of times he turned a sword before he quenched it. Delphine dropped slowly into a trancelike state of beats and strikes. She remembered the clock in her hallway at home in Tierce chiming the hour. When she was little, she used to lean against its side and listen to the scratchy workings inside.

Thoughts of home and her forgotten childhood came to her from time to time, but she usually forced them out of her head, unwilling to let herself grieve for what she had lost. Now, with the heat so thick around her and the sound of the Smith striking a new piece of metal, she let herself wallow in that one single image of home, the home that had been eaten by the sky.

‘Aufleur doesn't have clocks,' she said dreamily. ‘Only those wretched dripping things. Why is that?'

‘The Daylight Duc thought they were cursed,' said the Smith.

So much information all at once was enough to startle Delphine out of her vision. ‘Which Duc?'

‘The first one.'

‘Huh. He was hardly supposed to be mad at all,' mused Delphine. And then, because she was tired and hot and these things made her flippant, she added, ‘Were the clocks cursed?'

The Smith turned to look at her. ‘Of course.'

‘There aren't any new sentinels,' Delphine said, after a while. ‘Who are these swords even for?'

‘The future,' said the Smith.

‘You're just assuming we're all going to get our blades eaten by dust devils on a regular basis? Or are you assuming we're going to drag a whole lot more sentinels into this wretched life?'

He continued to work, ignoring her.

‘There's a lot of skysilver here. How many swords will it make?'

‘Enough.'

She reached out, brushed her fingertips over the metal, felt it fizzle under her skin. The Smith took firm hold of her wrist and moved it to one side.

‘You make each new sentinel their own particular sword,' she said in a low whisper. ‘A new sword and dagger every time. So why are you making swords now?'

‘It is what I do,' said the Smith, and there were centuries in his eyes.

‘What happens to the spare ones?'

He jerked with his head.

Delphine went to a door she hadn't seen before and opened it. A sea of swords hung before her, each perfect. One row after another. Steel, skysilver, steel, skysilver.

‘You could make a lot of sentinels with swords like these,' she said.

‘I imagine so,' said the Smith.

‘You never mentioned these to anyone before?'

‘No one ever asked.'

Delphine had come here hoping to learn something, anything, about the Creature Court's past that might give
them an edge in the battle against Garnet. This was far more than she had hoped for. Not the past at all, but the future.

‘I'm going to be right back,' she told the Smith, and darted out into the Killing Ground.

A thought struck her almost as soon as the sunshine did and she ran back into the forge before he could close the door behind her.

‘Since I brought you all that skysilver, do you think you could make something for me? Something important, but a bit different … I don't know. Can you make things other than swords?'

The Smith looked expressionlessly at her. ‘I can make anything.'

Delphine smiled fiercely. ‘Excellent. Wonderful. I'll draw you a picture.'

Best sentinel ever. Oh, yes.

 

The second time she left the forge, Delphine's cheeks were ruddy and hot, her hair was frizzled and she was bursting with energy. She had a plan, and it was a most excellent plan, and it was going to make Macready sick that he hadn't thought of it first.

‘Well, look at you,' said a voice across the desert floor of the Killing Ground.

Delphine whipped her head around and saw Garnet. His animor hit her as an aftershock and she staggered a little under his sheer presence. Power and Majesty and all that, oh yes. Not just an empty title.

‘You shouldn't be here,' she gasped. ‘Not unless —'

‘I am accompanied by a sentinel?' He smiled nastily at her. ‘Hello, sentinel. Though you're not, are you? You left that behind when you denied me. You walked away from your duties, just like the rest of them.'

‘The Smith recognises what I am,' Delphine flared. ‘Velody recognises me. I have my blades. Who are you to tell me I am not a sentinel?'

‘I am your Power and Majesty,' Garnet roared, his voice filling the desert space from end to end.

‘I don't care what you call yourself,' Delphine spat at him. ‘You're not mine.'

Garnet flew at her and she should have gutted him, it would solve so many problems, it wasn't as if she hadn't practised on Ashiol enough times, but he moved so fast and then she was on her back. She had a knife deep in his stomach, but he was laughing at her, giggling like a maniac. She had pulled the wrong knife. Left hand instead of right, oh saints, so stupid.

It was probably a good thing Garnet was going to kill her, as it would save Macready to doing it when he found out how idiotic she had been.

‘That tickles,' Garnet hissed in her ear.

Delphine screamed in his face and brought up her other hand, the one entirely lacking in knives, to claw at his eyes. He lifted her and threw her down on the sand hard, so that her whole body juddered under him. He was going to break her into a million pieces and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

‘I'm going to enjoy this,' he promised, and then it was his turn to scream as blood fountained over them both.

Delphine choked on it, spat the blood out, and was able to scramble free because Garnet was writhing on the sand, screaming.

She saw Crane standing there, all bloodstained and rumpled. He fell to his knees, dropping his skysilver sword in order to cut his own wrist with his steel knife blade.

‘No!' she demanded, furious at him. ‘Let the bastard die. He'd kill us all if we gave him half a chance.'

She had given him more than half today.

‘That's not who I am,' Crane said, gritting his teeth as Garnet grabbed the sentinel's wrist and suckled hard. ‘I'm a sentinel. So are you.'

Garnet's body was still shuddering in shock from the way the sword had sliced him open; his whole side was soaked in dark red.

‘He doesn't deserve us,' Delphine said, vibrating with anger as she recovered her blades. She wanted to wipe Garnet's blood off the front of her dress, but there was no way to do it here. Damn Crane and his heroics. ‘Anyone he kills after today is your fault,' she huffed.

Crane looked up at her, his eyes very calm. ‘The only kills I take responsibility for are my own.'

He took his brown cloak off and laid it over Garnet. Delphine wanted to smack him.

‘At least come away with me before he gets his strength back and guts you, like he was going to do to me half a minute ago.'

‘You could say thanks for saving you,' suggested Crane.