The Shattered City (30 page)

‘Oh what, I forced you to take the powder?' Delphine snapped defensively. ‘You bought it, Ashiol. You offered it to me!'

‘Not the surrender,' he said, smiling viciously. ‘Velody. All your fault.'

Delphine felt as if she had been slapped. ‘Don't you frigging
dare
.'

‘She never belonged to us, not really. She was yours. You keep reminding us of that, but have you thought about what it means? She was tied to both of you. She gave up on the idea of defending herself, of being a part of the Creature Court, because she wanted to protect you.' Ashiol tilted his head, mouth twisting cruelly. ‘Were you worth it?'

Delphine bit her lip. She would not let him get to her. He was lashing out, trying for some kind of reaction. She would not give it to him.

Why was it him trying to hurt her, and not Macready? She had given Mac reason enough.

‘How does it feel to know that you killed her?' Ashiol said next, still with that horrible smile of his.

‘He doesn't mean it,' Macready warned, his hand brushing Delphine's arm.

Delphine shook him off, along with any comfort he intended. ‘The hells he doesn't.' She stepped forward, facing Ashiol. ‘The only reason you're trying to pass the blame to me is because you feel guilty!'

‘Oh yes,' he agreed with a snap of his teeth. ‘I killed her too.'

‘Delphine, shut up and back off,' Macready said in a low, worried voice.

She turned on him. ‘Me? Why am I the one who has to shut up when he's spewing vile accusations?'

‘He's not himself.'

‘I think he's exactly himself, same old arrogant, spiteful, selfish —' Delphine gasped as Ashiol grabbed hold of her. She froze for a moment as his arms wrapped around her waist. One hand reached out, tugging lightly at her short blonde hair.

‘Pretty colour,' he crooned.

Macready's eyes were on Ashiol like he was dangerous. Saints, of course he was dangerous. He was probably the most dangerous person in the city. ‘Perhaps next time, lass,' Mac said in a steady voice, ‘when I say someone is not himself, you'll be listening to me.'

‘Let go,' Delphine said, hating how small her voice sounded.

‘She's not the enemy, my King,' Macready said in a low voice, edging towards them, a little at a time.

‘Oh, but she is,' said Ashiol directly into Delphine's ear. ‘Can't you see how sharp she is? She'll cut you all to pieces, stitch you up like ribbons. It's what they do. We trust them, we believe them, and they smash us to pieces.'

Delphine slid her hand a little lower, and found the hilt of her knife. He was still holding her, too close, too close. Before Macready could call out to stop her, she drew her knife and slammed it hard into Ashiol's stomach.

‘For feck's sake,' Macready cried out, diving for them both as Ashiol fell. ‘That's skysilver, you stupid bint. It could kill him.'

Ashiol gasped, landing hard on his knees, Delphine's knife sticking out of his gut.

‘I know that,' Delphine said calmly. ‘Steel wouldn't have made him let go of me.'

Macready gave her a horrified look. ‘That's not what the blades are for!'

The last month had been full of sentinels telling Delphine how great an honour it was to wear the blades, how much it meant, all the time quietly ignoring the fact that they were still mourning their own swords and daggers lost to the devils of the sky rift.

Macready's new swords had grey-wrapped hilts, and the balance had been designed to take his missing finger into account, but he was evidently still uncomfortable with them. He never referred to them as ‘lasses', though Kelpie had accepted her own new blades as ‘sisters' all over again. As far as Delphine knew, Mac hadn't even named his new blades. Maybe that meant something, but she hadn't pushed. It was none of her business.

‘If he doesn't want to be stabbed he has to learn to keep his hands to himself,' she said.

Macready tended the wound, drawing the knife out despite Ashiol's cry of pain. He tossed it at Delphine without cleaning it first — a sure sign he was hacked off at her — and then drew his own steel knife to cut a vein for Ashiol. ‘Should have done this anyway,' he said matter-of-factly as Ashiol closed his mouth over his wrist. ‘Some of those potions and powders take them worse when there's animor in the mix. Mortal blood will quiet him some.'

Delphine cleaned her own knife and resheathed it. ‘He's not a child,' she said bitterly. ‘Why do you treat him like one?'

‘Because I've seen him like this before,' Macready said. Still too calm, still not hating her. Obviously she hadn't tried hard enough to hurt him. ‘I think there's more going on than the fecking surrender. And I don't want to be right.' He drew his wrist back from Ashiol's mouth,
oddly gentle, and lifted the bloodstained shirt to check that Ashiol's stomach had healed over. ‘How d'ye feel, my King?'

‘Lost,' said Ashiol in a distant voice.

‘Well, then. Better be getting you back to the Palazzo, eh? Somewhere quiet to rest your head?'

Ashiol seemed to think about this, then nodded. ‘Hel's there. I can talk to her.' He stood up in that instant and strolled away down the street.

Delphine stared after him. ‘That's not right.'

‘Aye,' Macready said grimly.

‘It's not just the powder?'

‘Hard to tell. The wanker hasn't been all the way sober or clean in the last month. But — aye. I think it's more.'

‘So what do we do?'

‘We, is it? Thought you were having second thoughts all over again.'

‘I was weak,' she said sharply. ‘Don't be so frigging judgemental. We can't all be perfect.'

That at least raised a smile from Macready. ‘Never said I was perfect, lass.'

‘It was implied.' She shook her head. ‘So what do we do — try to sober him up and see if he's still in one piece underneath it all?'

Macready patted her arm. ‘Go home, Delphine. I'll handle this.'

‘I can help!' she insisted without even asking herself if she wanted to. Damn it.

‘Can you?' Macready asked, without judgement in his voice. Not even a little. How did he do that?

‘I'm not Velody,' she said, sharper than she intended.

‘I don't expect you to be.'

‘Don't you?' She quickened her step until she was only
a few steps behind Ashiol. ‘I can help. I can be a bloody sentinel. Just don't expect me to be anyone other than myself.'

Macready gave her a sceptical look, but caught up with her so that they were both trailing Ashiol and his steady stride. ‘I'm pretty sure you're in no danger of being mistaken for her, lass.'

Ha, and wasn't that the truth. ‘You'd better do the talking if we run into the Duchessa,' said Delphine. ‘Last time we crossed paths, I tried to help sacrifice her to the sky.'

‘Eh, that was a month ago,' Macready said lightly. ‘Sure she won't hold a grudge.'

She bit her lip, willing herself not to laugh, not now. She didn't want to laugh. She didn't want to feel warm all over with gratitude that Macready seemed to have forgiven her.

It was deeply irritating, the power he had to make her feel good, and safe. Someone should put a stop to it.

I
sangell, the Duchessa d'Aufleur, had been fighting with dressmakers all evening, a ridiculous pastime. What did it honestly matter what she wore for the Volcanalia (except that she hated every idea they suggested, nothing felt right).

She was out of sorts with Armand, her mother and her maids as well. How hard was it for them to understand that she needed some minutes of each day to herself? She had taken to walking the corridors or slipping into the gardens to avoid them all; her rooms had long since ceased to be any kind of sanctuary.

There was so much to think about. Isangell circled her grandfather's rose atrium, wondering if she could risk hiding herself for a moment or two in the deep green shadows without being captured by one of her many tormentors. She paused when she heard a thump from within, and what sounded like muffled swearing.

Calling the lictors would be the sensible response, but
instead she opened the glass doors and stepped inside the atrium.

Two intruders stopped suddenly, allowing a third to slump on to the ground behind them. Isangell knew these people. The Islandser, and the blonde demoiselle named Delphine. What did he call them? Sentinels. The equivalent of lictors in that strange dreamlike nox world that had hold of Ashiol's heart.

These were the people who would have killed her, because one of their friends had a vision of the future. It was somewhat hard to look past that detail. Both sentinels were in a wretched state, flustered and dishevelled, though not as bad as the figure crumpled on the floor. He, of course, was instantly recognisable.

‘Your ladyship,' said the Islandser, looking as if he might be about to do something dreadfully awkward like bow or scrape.

‘Seigneur,' Isangell replied with frosty politeness, and then nodded her head in acknowledgement to Delphine, who looked uncomfortable. ‘I take it you have brought my cousin back to us?'

‘Somewhat the worse for wear, I'm afraid,' said the Islandser with a weak grin. ‘A little under the weather, do you see. He'll be back to his old self in no time, to be sure.'

Delphine muttered something like, ‘Don't bet on it,' but he ignored her.

‘I'm afraid I have forgotten your name,' Isangell said, eyes fixed on Ashiol. He was pale and muttering and looked far beyond drunk.

‘Macready, ladyship,' the Islandser told her. ‘Just passing through, trying to make sure your man here gets home safely.'

The atrium wasn't an obvious thoroughfare. Isangell stared at them both and then looked up, to where sunlight streamed through the open ceiling. ‘Did you come in by the
roof
?' Neither of them answered that and she was happy to let the question drop. ‘Has he been drinking?'

‘Among other things,' said Macready.

‘I've never seen him in such a state.'

‘You've led quite the sheltered life, then.'

‘Not at all,' Isangell snapped, and then reconsidered. ‘Well, yes. Obviously. But Ashiol has never lost control like this before.'

‘As you say, ladyship,' Macready said, so polite that it hurt, even if he had no idea of formal terms of address and protocol. ‘Could you see your way to pointing us in the direction of his quarters? Your man here needs to sleep it off.'

Isangell nodded slowly. Getting Ashiol out of the way before her mother saw the mess he was in was an absolute priority. ‘I can take you there. It isn't far.'

‘See, you're making yourself useful already,' Macready said with a lopsided grin. ‘I knew it would be worth my while to strike up a friendship with you.'

Isangell led the way, while Macready and Delphine dragged along a muttering but compliant Ashiol. Luckily, they met no one in the corridor except servants low enough in rank to avoid the Duchessa's gaze and pretend they had seen nothing.

Once Ashiol was sprawled out on his bed, he quietened and quickly fell asleep, though that might have had something to do with a small vial Isangell saw a flash of in Macready's hand before he made it disappear. Isangell sat on the edge of her cousin's bed.
He looked far younger and more carefree than when he was awake. She had watched him becoming more and more distant over the last few nundinae, and had simply hoped he would mourn and pull through his grief. He never wanted to speak of anything, the few occasions she had tried. ‘This is about the woman who died.'

‘Two,' said Delphine in a low voice, from where she was standing with her back to the window, as if trying to put distance between herself and the rest of them. ‘Two women died.'

Isangell nodded. She remembered every step of that walk back to the Palazzo, with Ashiol holding the wrapped body of his friend. She still had no idea really who that demoiselle was, or what she meant to him. She knew more about Ashiol now than she ever had in her life, and yet he seemed even more of a mystery.

‘Right,' said Macready after allowing her only a moment of quiet reflection. He clapped his hands together in a businesslike manner. ‘You're just the lass to arrange things for us. We'll be needing food and the like delivered here, though none of your Palazzo servants will be allowed beyond the outer door. We may be here a day or two, maybe nundinae.'

Isangell blinked. ‘Nundinae? How long is it going to take him to sober up?'

Macready looked uncomfortable.

Isangell tensed, as the old fear returned to her. ‘That babble, the look of him … that was the drink, was it not?'

‘He's been drinking a long time,' Delphine spoke up, not meeting Isangell's eyes. ‘We don't know everything else he's been taking. The only sure method is to let it all wear out of him.'

‘And then we get to see what's left behind,' said Macready, sounding far too grave. ‘I've seen him like this before, your ladyship. Chances are he's a wee bit broken. But he'll mend, never you mind that. The mind's not as fragile as people tend to think. It can mend clean.'

‘Are you saying he's mindsick?' Isangell demanded. ‘Mad?'

‘Of course not,' said Macready, sounding outraged. ‘Mad, the very idea!' He paused. ‘He's not entirely sane right now, it has to be said.'

‘A bit broken?' she repeated.

‘Exactly.'

I will not hyperventilate.
‘Our grandfather went mad,' Isangell said. ‘The family complaint, we call it. It came and went, but in his last few years, the dottores could do nothing more for him and they locked him away.'

‘Don't worry your head about it,' said Macready. ‘We've seen your man through times like this before. We can do it again.'

Isangell looked to the demoiselle. She was not sure whether she was hoping for some kind of reassurance or confirmation, but Delphine's face was flat and unmoving. ‘How can I help?' she asked.

‘Look in from time to time if you've a mind to it,' said Macready. ‘It will cheer him, right enough, to see that pretty face of yours. Make me climb mountains, it would.'

Isangell almost blushed — the flirting habits of the sons of the Great Families were nowhere near as competent as this. ‘You won't leave him alone?'

Macready shrugged and smiled. ‘Aye, what's that servant that Lords have? The one who lays out your clothes and polishes your buckles?'

A bubble of laughter welled up in Isangell's throat. ‘A valet?'

‘Exactly. Think of me as your man's valet.'

‘Well, I'll do my best.' Honestly, a valet. Who did he think he was going to fool? ‘Anything else?'

Macready turned serious. ‘A couple of strong-armed coves on the door wouldn't hurt, lass. Make sure no one comes in here, no matter who they say they are. We've a few friends who will be useful — I can give you their names — but otherwise our man here should be kept away from the prying eyes of Palazzo folk, if you follow me.'

Aunt Eglantine, then, was not to be admitted. Not that Isangell hadn't already come to that conclusion all on her own. ‘I will assign lictors to the doors,' she decided. ‘Perhaps — some kind of password that you only share with those you trust to be near Ashiol?'

A shadow passed over Macready's face. ‘Rose and needle,' he said sombrely. ‘That will do, right enough.'

 

Ashiol would not suffer mirrors. At first he covered every polished surface in his rooms, and after the cloth slid off one by accident, he started breaking them instead.

Isangell quietly had them all removed, after that.

No one asked him why, but then no one was asking him much of anything these days. He had so many words in his head, and they would spill out at the slightest provocation, slashing and wounding and piling up until everyone else felt as crazy as he did.

At least, that was the logical explanation.

The sentinels took turns watching over him, as was their sworn duty. Funny word, ‘duty'. Ashiol wasn't sure it meant what it used to mean. Kelpie was careful
around him, like he was something fragile made out of glass or spun sugar. Macready and Crane were more stoic. You couldn't see what they were thinking, either of them, though Ashiol could hear the tick tick tick of their brains in any case.

Delphine was the only one he actually liked to have there, because she wasn't treating him like some invalid. She would huff and pout about having to waste her time on him, and if he was lucky he could goad her into some proper bitching and yelling.

Isangell never yelled. She was more of a ghost than any of them, a pale outline who jumped every time Ashiol said something remotely strange.

(It made him want to act extra crazy around her, every single time.)

‘It's fer your own good,' Macready insisted, when Ashiol found the bars on the windows, wrapped in skysilver wire.

‘Whose good?' Ashiol snarled, pacing back and forth, not wanting to stay still. ‘I need to be out there. I need to breathe.'

‘You need to heal,' Macready said. The sentinels were putting their faith in the powder pills that the Palazzo dottore had prescribed, but all they did was to bring down the mist. Ashiol could not move some days, after taking them. When he escaped the mist, he was exactly the same. Broken, and on fire.

‘The cats do not want to be caged,' he said.

‘We're trying to keep you safe, you fool.'

Ashiol waited. His time would come. ‘Are you sure all the mirrors are gone?'

Macready sighed. ‘Aye, my King. All gone.'

The first time that the sky woke up after Velody's
sacrifice, Ashiol almost tore his hands off trying to get out of that fucking room. ‘They need me,' he snarled when Crane and Kelpie held him back.

‘They need a Power and Majesty,' Kelpie snapped back. ‘Can you be that for them right now? If not, shut up.'

He liked that; it was the Kelpie he knew and not the hesitant, protective creature who had sat at his bedside in recent days. Much though he provoked her, he could not get her to repeat it.

Even with no mirrors in the room, he could not avoid his reflection. Not when it grew dark outside, and there was a lantern burning in the room.

Do you trust me?
said Garnet one evening, staring out of the reflection of the glass. The bars on the window made lines on his face, like the scars Ashiol once bore.

‘Why even ask the question?' said Ashiol, barely doing more than mouth the words. He remembered this conversation. He remembered what it had led to.

Then trust me
, his friend said, with exaggerated warmth.
I'll take care of it. I'm just sorry the sentinels didn't feel they could come to me with their concerns.

‘They love you,' Ashiol said, remembering how afraid he had been of making Garnet angry, back then, when the world belonged to them. ‘They are yours, absolutely. Their loyalty does not waver.'

Ours
, said Garnet.
Sentinels serve the Kings, not only the Power and Majesty. And they never let me forget it
. His voice was chilly now.

Ashiol closed his eyes. ‘You're imagining things.' He had leaned over and kissed Garnet then, years ago, the first time they had shared this conversation. Garnet had kissed him back, sincerely, as if he still loved him.

Only days later, Ashiol had woken up screaming, his animor gone, gone, fucking gone, his skin bleeding from a thousand cuts. ‘Give it back!' he howled. ‘Give it back!'

He blinked, and he was back in his room, palms slammed against the cold glass, and Garnet's face still there in the reflection, smirking at him. ‘You're not real.'

Can't get rid of me, though, can you
?

This much was true. ‘You should never have done that to me. Not me.'

Did you think you're special? Poor little rich boy. You couldn't give it up, could you? The fucking privilege you were born with that said you should be better than me. Stronger, taller. You didn't mind me having things as long as you had more.

Ashiol felt the despair all over again. Garnet had always been angry, always had this kind of resentment bubbling at the surface, but it was only at the end that Ashiol realised how bad it was.

‘I always shared,' he said in a low voice.

Garnet laughed, an awful laugh.
Oh yes, you loved to share. Loved to be the magnanimous one, doling out rewards to the keeper's son. Demonstrating all over again that you were greater, I was lesser. Do you not see that? I only came to this city because of you. Everything I had in my life was owed to you.
His voice cracked on his final words.
I lost my last battle because I couldn't get you out of my head.

‘You were Power and Majesty, and I was not.'

You think I don't know that?
Garnet banged his own fists against the glass, and it seemed to rattle under his blows. An angry ghost indeed.
I was Power and Majesty. That meant something, Ashiol, to everyone but you. Because you still saw the scraped knees and the beaten
back. You still saw the boy so scrawny that everyone said, ‘How can that little thing be the keeper's son?' You knew my skeletons, and you never let me forget it.