The Shattered City (15 page)

‘Am I not?' he said, smirking. ‘Food and water are all I need to keep going, but that's boring and oh so easy to get hold of. Sex does little for me, and you're hardly my type. Power … well, you have me there. I do like power. But I'm at a loss as to what you could give me that I couldn't just take.'

‘Is it more fun to take?' Heliora challenged, then wished she hadn't asked him that.

‘Always,' said Poet, eyes hard on hers.

She was at a loss. People
always
wanted what Heliora had to offer. They wanted her futures, her visions. They wanted affirmation of their own desires. The Seer had currency, damn it, and he was mocking her to pretend otherwise. ‘You're lying,' she said finally.

‘Is it so hard to believe that I'm a satisfied person?' Poet sat on the couch, easy and relaxed. ‘Garnet wanted to use you, to get validation of his insane rule. I think part of him thought he could control the future if he could control you — so of course he wanted your visions. Wanted to frig you, too, I wouldn't wonder. Whereas our darling Ash … you gave both up freely to him, whether he wanted them or not. What is it that you think you can offer me?'

‘I don't believe that you're immune to wants,' Heliora said, stepping closer to stand over him. ‘I think you're trying to torture me. Making people squirm might even be up above food and frigging on your list of needs.'

‘But not power,' Poet said softly. ‘Never above power. Top of the list every time.'

That was what he needed then. What he wanted. Heliora had to give him something (or take something
from him) that was worth more than the power he held over her with the oblivion. She moved, straddling his lap experimentally.

Poet laughed openly at her. ‘So predictable.'

‘Hush,' she said. ‘I'm concentrating.'

It was a long time since sex had been anything but an end result for her. A cure for being lost in the futures. This was far from recreational, but it was different.

Poet was watching her with curious rat eyes, like she was a song lyric he wanted to learn, but didn't entirely like.

Heliora didn't want to kiss him, at all. She sat poised on his lap, waiting for some reaction, but he wasn't moving. She wanted to make him moan, or at least twitch. She wanted to prove that he wasn't made out of Shambles stone, cold and dry.

‘Never mind a price,' she said calmly, wriggling her hips a little. ‘How about a bet? I can do anything to you, and if you make a sound, you supply me with oblivion between now and Saturnalia, no cost.'

Poet leaned back against the cushions of the couch. ‘You're very sure of yourself.'

Heliora gave him a biting smile. ‘I'm very good.' She had played these games before, when she needed to distance herself from someone. Ironic that she was now using them to draw Poet in.

‘What's my prize?' Poet asked. ‘This is what we come back to, Hel. You have nothing that I want. Nothing worthy of a wager.'

‘If you win, I will speak the futures to no one but you,' she said, voice shaking only a little.

He laughed at that. ‘Doesn't that go against the duties of the Seer?'

‘I don't give a frig about duty, or Ashiol or her high and mighty Power and Majesty,' Heliora spat. ‘I'm dying. I just want to get a decent nox's sleep.'

‘You're not dying, petal,' he chided her. ‘You're going to die. Two separate things.'

She gave him a dirty look. ‘Think how much it would annoy Ash if you won.'

There was something unrecognisable in Poet's eyes. ‘Fine.'

‘Any last words before silence begins?' she asked as she slid off his lap to her knees.

‘Wait,' he said, and she glanced at him. ‘You said you could do anything to me. I don't fancy having pieces sliced off.'

‘I thought you liked that sort of thing.'

‘Not when someone else does it.'

Caught off guard, she laughed. ‘No blades,' she agreed. ‘Maybe nails, maybe teeth. I won't draw blood.'

Poet nodded amiably. ‘Silence starts now,' he said with a smirk.

The reason for the smirk was evident as she unlaced his trews. He wasn't even hard. Maybe it was true — sex did nothing for him. In which case, she was embarrassing herself for no gain.

Poet made no sound as she touched him, a soft stroke of her fingertip, then her palm cupping him gently. She sucked on her fingers to trail wetness around his shaft, coaxing his body into wanting her.

Human after all, she decided as his cock began to harden under her touch. She risked one look up and saw amusement, detachment. Nothing else.

When Heliora wasn't falling back in with Ashiol, most of her lovers were sentinels. They were saner on the
whole than the rest of the Creature Court, and enjoyed frigging without the distractions of animor, blood and the power struggles which took up so much of the time of the Lords, Court and Kings.

With Rory and Tobin, even her brief liaison with the Silver Captain (damn, that man could kiss like he knew how), Hel had been able to drown herself in the sensation of being herself, not just the Seer. The Heliora who might have stayed a sword-monkey, had she not been called to a higher purpose. More recently, on occasion, there had been Macready, reliable though hardly romantic. It worked for both of them — calm and grown-up and uncomplicated. She rarely thought of him when he was not there.

Heliora had never been angrier than the day Raoul died and the powers of the Seer transferred to her. Bloody man, what was he thinking? How had he thought she was the one?

Then Garnet took their blades away, and the sentinels started dying. Her world had crumbled — or her illusions about it had.

Heliora closed her lips around Poet's half erection, feeling him grow in her mouth. It was eerie how silent he was — not even his breathing had changed. He honestly thought that he could get the better of her. Perhaps he hadn't realised that power was a very individual thing. Some people gave power during sex, some people took it.

More fun to take
, Poet had said. Heliora grasped his shaft, squeezing in gentle pulses as her mouth coaxed him harder. She would show him what taking really meant. Possibly it was the most perfunctory blowjob in the history of the world, but that was not significant.
The point of the exercise was not to make it particularly good. It was to make him cry out.

Finally Poet jerked in her mouth, once, twice, and the heat of him flooded her tongue as he spilled easily into her. She raised her eyes to his, only just manageable from this angle. He was smug, and silent.

She swallowed.

Images hit her fast and frenetic, snatches of a broken childhood, the smell of oysters and seabreeze. White rats spilling out across a city alley. The shudder up her arm as she plunged a walking stick through the body of a man. A top hat, falling to the floor. The smooth gold chain of a pocket watch. A blowsy woman in a red gown, drunk and leaning over a backstage balcony, howling about her betrayal. Mermaids and pearls, mermaids and pearls. And then a man, sleeping in tangled sheets, his face hidden, but she didn't need to see his face to know exactly who he was.

‘No,' Poet roared, standing up in a rush, knocking her over. ‘You can't have that!'

‘Too late,' said Hel, wiping her mouth. ‘I took it.' She had his secrets now, the parts of him he most wanted to hide inside himself. Knowledge was power.

‘That was not yours to see,' Poet said, shaking with anger.

Heliora stood up slowly. ‘You're the one who assumed I was offering sex because I had my mouth around your cock. Still think no one can touch you, Boy?' She used the name deliberately, knowing it had meaning to him.

‘Get the frig out of here,' Poet snarled.

‘I won the bet,' she reminded him. ‘You cried out.'

He turned and went to his stove corner, crashing through cupboards until he came up with a vial. It
glittered, full of the silver liquid. ‘Take it. That should do you a month. If you're still alive halfway through Cerialis, I'll send you another.' His voice was terrible, face paler than usual. ‘Don't come back here.'

Breaking Poet was a strange, unreal thing to have done. It made so little sense. And yet she knew him now, in a way she never had before. Boy. Baby. Orphan Princel. Poet.

She knew that he had not killed Livilla's boys, that he knew nothing of their deaths. He genuinely believed that Warlord had done the deed. It was a small piece of what she had taken, but it was important to know.

He was a murderer — she could still feel her hands closing around an old man's throat from the memory — but not today.

And, oh yes. She knew who he loved most in the world, and why he had hidden that for so long. He really was still a frightened boy, wanting to be looked after. She would never be scared of him again.

Heliora took the vial. She said nothing. No reason to thank him. She had earned her prize.

She went downstairs and let herself out of the little grocer's shop. She had brought no lamp this time, so the narrow streets of the Shambles were a dark maze as she made her way towards the upper world.

She came up in the wrong place, a street she didn't know, far from her home in the Basilica, and broke down crying, leaning against a wall as her body was racked with sobs.

Here she was. It wasn't Poet's memories that lingered with her now, it was the look on his face when he realised she had seen them, all of them. His whole story, laid out in a single swallow.

She was as much a monster as any of the Creature Court. It wouldn't be just the futures she needed to blot out next time she used a drop of oblivion.

She had to pull herself together. Had to stop being a ridiculous demoiselle about this. She had done what she needed to do, got what she wanted. Breathe, she had to breathe. She had to get back her control. Only then, away from him, calming herself with steady breaths, could Heliora come to terms with what she had learned.

Garnet. The man in the bed had been Garnet. Did that make a difference? Did it matter? Garnet was dead. Why then did he blaze inside Poet, so brightly? What were the futures trying to tell her?

She was so weakened and distracted that the mere thought of the futures summoned them into her head. They hit so hard that she almost threw up in the street. All thoughts of Poet flooded away. Heliora could see a thousand worlds unfolding in front of her, so many possibilities, and she could not see the pavement under her feet.

She had no one to help her, no one to make it stop, and all she could do was hope this wasn't the day that the futures would break her.

Minutes, hours later, she came back to herself, a huddled figure in an empty street. She pulled herself slowly upwards, hanging on to the wall, shaking wildly and trying not to let herself fall. The end was coming, spiralling towards her, black and promising beyond all those futures. She had to make a choice, and soon.

In the meantime, she had a vital message for the Kings of the Creature Court.

A
shiol's animor flashed hot and violent against the inside of his skin. He wanted to hit things, break things.

‘We're not allowed to play in here!' Isangell teased as Ashiol led the way to the Eyrie, a ruined tower on the side of the Balisquine. ‘It's haunted.'

‘That it is,' said Ashiol grimly. The Eyrie had been Saturn's territory, another of the Lords who had come to a bad end. Not that any of them died in their sleep.

Kelpie was right. If Priest and Isangell were both spoiled by the sky, then there was every chance Isangell could also be turned into a weapon. He needed her to be contained, away from anyone she could hurt, and he could not count on the sentinels to guard her, not now that they had rebelled against duties that did not directly involve the Kings.

‘Isangell,' he said in a more gentle tone. ‘I need you to go into that room.' He pointed to one of the few intact rooms, at the top of a crumbling staircase.

‘But I want to stay with you,' she purred, snuggling against him.

Ashiol gave Velody a helpless look, and she moved into action. ‘There are more dresses for you, high and brightness. Just inside the room.'

‘I like this dress,' Isangell pouted.

‘Didn't you say you wanted to bob your hair?' Velody added in a moment of brilliance. ‘They're waiting for you, right in there.'

Isangell squealed with delight and darted inside.

Ashiol pushed the door closed with a satisfied clang, and infused the wood with his animor. He couldn't do much to affect the steel lock, but the wood quivered under his touch, and artificial branches sprouted free of it, holding the door tightly in place. It would never hold one of the Court, but his cousin was — in physical form at least — still human.

‘Let me out!' cried the Isangell-thing from within the cell.

Ashiol turned away, ignoring her. They heard her outraged screams for the entire time it took them to climb down the long staircase, to the base of the tower, and then along several winding tunnels.

‘Can Livilla take down Priest by herself?' Velody asked as they came out in the Arches.

Ashiol shrugged one shoulder. ‘She won't. She's mad as hell, but not stupid. She likes to have others do the heavy lifting.' He stretched his animor out in all directions and found Livilla nearby in her wolf form, her tongue lolling out as she hid from them.

‘More likely she'll follow us and wait until we have Priest at our mercy before she bothers to get involved,' he added, particularly loudly.

‘Do you think Priest is working alone?' Velody asked.

‘He has his three courtesi,' Ashiol said, though he didn't think much of them. ‘Warlord's down, and we mostly know what Livilla's up to. But then there's Poet.'

‘Would Poet side with Priest if he was crazy?'

Ashiol just looked at her.

‘You know what I mean,' Velody said crossly.

‘I've given up guessing what Poet might do.'

They followed the canal path along to Priest's cathedral, imposing and silent. Ashiol smashed the doors open with such force that they all but broke from their hinges. Whatever was happening to Isangell, they could deal with it later. Priest (if it really was Priest) was carving his bloody way through the Creature Court, and stopping him had to be their first priority. ‘Search the place,' Ashiol ordered, and the sentinels spread out, checking the ante-rooms and climbing the high stairs into the upper reaches of the cathedral, skysilver blades at the ready.

‘No sign of any birds,' Macready finally called down from above.

Velody started in on those bloody questions of hers again. ‘Where else would he go? How would he keep his courtesi safe?'

‘You're assuming that there's any of Priest left at all,' said Kelpie, the first of the sentinels to return from above. ‘Noxcrawl is liquid evil. If the sky is inside him, he might have little say about what his body's up to.'

‘Poet,' said Ashiol, dispirited. ‘If there's any of Priest in there, and he needs help, he would go to Poet.'
Or to me
, was what he did not say aloud. Priest had always been the one who valued civility above strength. The one that Ashiol had the hardest time thinking of as a monster.
If Priest had fallen to the sky, what would be left of the Creature Court?

Someone took his hand, sending a warm charge directly into his bloodstream. He looked at their linked fingers first, and then at Velody.

‘Heliora,' she said.

‘Yes,' he said. Finally, a useful suggestion. ‘Heliora.'

It was that, or wait for the bodies to start piling up.

 

There was no sign of the Seer at the Basilica, and Ashiol was too twitchy and irritable to wait. Velody brought him back to her house instead. She was sure there had to be a way to find Priest which didn't involve walking over every square inch of this city.

Ashiol had an idea, at least. As the sentinels clustered in the kitchen where the food was, he dragged Velody into the workroom to find him a map, and any scraps she had left of the waistcoat she had made for Priest.

She brought him all the spare pieces of the damask and velvet, even the embroidery threads she had used and the satin of the lining. Ashiol dropped most of them to the floor, but kept hold of a few scraps, pushing them into Velody's lap. ‘There,' he said, guiding her hand to the council map of festival locations in Aufleur. ‘Find him.'

Velody tried, she really tried, but she couldn't even feel the difference between the velvet scraps Ashiol had kept and those he had discarded, let alone get a sense of Priest's location from the paper broadsheet. Ashiol kept insisting she try again, so intense that she was a fraction away from pretending she felt something, just to get him to shut up.

Crane passed her a cup of mint and lemon, and a spark passed between them as their hands touched. He smiled shyly at her, and retreated.

‘That!' Ashiol declared.

Velody held her cup closer to her. ‘What?'

He pointed a finger at her. ‘You fancy him.'

Heat flamed on her cheeks. Crane had stopped to listen. ‘I do not. What has that to do with anything?'

‘No, it's good. Come back here!' Ashiol motioned briskly to Crane, who stepped back in Velody's direction. ‘Kiss her.'

‘No one is kissing me!' Velody insisted.

Ashiol seized both her wrists, jolting hot tea out of her cup. ‘You're holding back. No matter how powerful you think you are, there is always more inside, untapped. You need to access parts of your animor that you don't even know how to reach, and the best way to do that is desire. Touching. Kissing. Sex.' He could have been discussing the weather, or the wines of Atulia.

‘I'm not doing that, and certainly not in the workroom,' Velody hissed at him.

Ashiol smiled, not a nice smile or a desirable smile. The kind of smile that made Velody glad, so glad she had made that oath to Livilla, to keep herself from falling into bed with him. She was reminded all over again that cats eat mice. ‘Would you rather kiss Crane, or me?' he suggested.

She turned in a moment, seizing Crane by the collar and pulling him down to her level. Their mouths came together, clumsy at first, and then Crane apparently decided to make the most of it. He knew what he was doing, too. He pinned her to the chair, far more in control of this kiss than he had been the last time, a million years ago on a rooftop.

Velody kissed Crane back, hands tangling in his fair hair. She could feel the animor uncurl within her body, stretching outwards. She needed this, in so many ways. He was here and it was easy … A fine excuse, to make out with a boy because it might increase your power.

The worst thing was that she could already feel it — her animor came alive with every kiss, and something deep and powerful rose up inside her when he braved himself to brush a hand against her breast. Saints. No wonder Kings could take power from each other in this way. No wonder … everything.

Velody reached out one hand, and Ashiol tipped the velvet scraps and threads into her palm. Heat ran from Crane's mouth to her wrist, as if his kisses were all over her skin, under her skin, and she felt for a moment as if every mouse shape was wriggling inside her body. Her fingers tingled with every stitch she had made on that waistcoat. All that hand-sewing, because she wanted to keep her fingers busy, because that was the way that the best tailors worked. She might have saved the Court a lot of heartache and fuss if she had only used the dratted sewing machine.

She was hardly even paying attention to Crane, just to the sensations, and the way that the heat gathering in her body made her animor so very tangible beneath her skin.

For a moment the whole city opened up to her; the paper map rustled with a wind that came from nowhere, and Velody broke off the kiss to stab her handful of velvet scraps down on to the map. ‘There,' she said.

Crane was breathing fast and loud, or was that her? Her heartbeat was like a drum in her head. Did Ashiol care? Was he paying attention? Was she an utter wench for enjoying the thought that he had been watching?

Velody pulled her eyes from Crane and saw that Ashiol had his nose buried in the map. She should have known. He had been part of the Court too long to be moved by something as innocent as a kiss. (Not that the look in Crane's eyes right now was remotely innocent.)

‘The Circus Verdigris,' Ashiol said, leaping to his feet, bright with energy. Velody remembered that first time he had come to her, high on animor and clutching a handful of rose petals. Mad, he had been mad with power, so desperate to find the mythical King who would take his place and save him from being the Power and Majesty. He stared back at her now, impatient. ‘Come on, then. You too, sentinel. Let's go.'

Velody followed without pausing to think, catching up her long silk coat on her way out through the kitchen door, with the sentinels at her heels.

 

It was dark, and the sky did not yet show any sign of throwing a battle at them. The Circus Verdigris had been abandoned yesterday at the order of the Duchessa, and no one had bothered to pick up the debris. Velody could see discarded melon rinds, garlands and banners littering the grass and the seating area. She could also smell blood, from the moment they came near it.

Priest, though. There was no scent of Priest.

A wolf had been tracking them since Via Silviana, and now watched them silently as they descended into the grassy arena. The sentinels all had their skysilver blades bared.

The scent of blood was richer here, and Velody inhaled it giddily. Her stomach growled. Had she eaten today? She couldn't remember, but whatever she might have consumed, it was not enough. Meat. She needed meat.

‘Here!' shouted one of the sentinels, and Ashiol followed the cry in that loping run of his, as if he had forgotten he was not yet in the shape of cats. The other sentinels followed. Velody stayed stock still. She heard a low sound, a tiny moan, and ran lightly across the grass in the opposite direction to the others.

He was a small, crumpled figure beneath a tier of seats and a makeshift scaffold. Velody pulled away rubbish and a broken bench to get to him. He lay with his eyes open, shuddering, his whole body drenched in blood. For a moment, Velody thought it was Seonard, the wolf boy, but Seonard was dead. This was Poet's lad. Zero, they called him. She did not even remember what his creature was. Something rodenty, though not rats or mice. She would have remembered that. She extended her wrist to him, only just able to reach underneath the seats. ‘Drink.'

He flinched, as if expecting a killing blow rather than a lifeline.

‘Drink,' Velody said again, and braced herself as he reached for her, his teeth making a first, unsuccessful bite. The second time, he broke the skin, and she felt the blood fill his mouth, and his tongue flick over the wounds. It hurt more than usual.

She turned her head and saw, further along, another body lying on the grass. Moonlight gleamed on his bright white hair. Lennoc. What was he even doing here? The wolf was nearby, looking at the body, but making no move to help.

‘He's still alive,' Velody said, unable to move with Zero latched on to her wrist. ‘I can hear his heartbeat from here.' She could hear everything. Her animor was alert to the whole area. ‘Help him.'

The wolf shimmered, and shaped itself into the bare body of Livilla. She sat back on her haunches, her face wary. ‘Look at you,' she said in a musical voice. ‘Giving your precious King's blood to save Poet's courteso. No one saved mine. So why should I bother?'

‘Because you're a human being,' said Velody, gritting her teeth.

‘That's assuming rather a lot.' Livilla went, though, sliding her whole body over Lennoc. She sniffed his neck, licked it for a moment, and then began to laugh. ‘Oh, my. So many secrets, I don't know where to begin.'

Lennoc groaned and muttered something that Velody could not hear.

‘Don't blame me, darling,' said Livilla. ‘Apparently we're all saints these days. It's the new mode.' She lay her throat over him, and moaned with every appearance of pleasure as he bit her.

Ashiol appeared with the unconscious body of Shade in his arms, and the sentinels with him. Crane went to Velody, ashamed at having left her alone, and helped her remove her wrist from Zero's greedy mouth.

‘Priest is long gone,' Ashiol reported. ‘No sign of Poet either.'

‘Took him,' Lennoc said, when he drew back from Livilla with a blood-smeared mouth. His shirt was ripped, and a long ragged wound on his chest slowly began to close up as new strength coursed through him. ‘Priest took him.'

‘I take it Poet is your master now,' said Ashiol, sounding grim.

Lennoc wiped the blood from his mouth and licked the smear from his hand. ‘If he's still alive, he is.'

‘Not very good at keeping your masters alive, are you?'
Livilla drawled. She leaned back on her elbows on the grass, looking amused.