The Shattered City (37 page)

‘How else? I offered an opportunity for them to frock up.'

‘You're planning something in that devious head of yours.'

‘When am I not? Come on, kitten. Admit it. You're curious.'

As Ashiol hesitated, clothes fell around him. A silk shirt. Trews with beaded cuffs. One shapely boot, and then another. ‘This is just an excuse for you to dress me,' he muttered.

Poet laughed, sounding genuinely happy. ‘As if I needed an excuse.'

T
he simple act of choosing a dress made Delphine feel as if she was living another life. A life in which Velody had not let herself be swallowed by the sky. It seemed wrong to be dressing for the theatre — the Vittorina Royale, no less — without Velody at her side.

Delphine put on a sapphire-coloured frock that dripped with seed pearls, knowing that if Velody was there, Delphine would beg her to add a trim to glam it up — a little fringe, or some ribbons. Velody would do it, even if they were running late. Nothing was more important than the dress being perfect.

Delphine's hands shook as she tried to fasten the buttons at the back. She stepped out of her room, and saw Rhian's closed door.

It didn't make sense. How had Rhian ended up tangled in Ashiol Xandelian's bedclothes? She could barely even look at a man. It was Ashiol's fault, it had to be. If he hadn't forced her, it was something else. Potions, perhaps? Something to hurl Rhian's inhibitions to the wayside.

It was enough to make Delphine bite through the walls. Men like him got anything they wanted, anything, no matter who they hurt along the way.

Rhian couldn't have changed so much in so little time. Could she?

Velody would have known what to say. Velody would have listened to Delphine rant about this for hours until she let her out in the world again. Velody might have had half a chance of asking Rhian what had happened without sounding like a demonic fishwife.

‘I need help,' Delphine called down the stairs. Macready came up from the kitchen and fastened the back of her dress with hands far steadier than hers. ‘Ready to go?' she asked him, and he shrugged.

Neither of them knew why this exhibition of Poet's was so important, but the invitations had been inked in Poet's own hand. They were all expected to be there — sentinels, Lords and Court. Seer.

‘Thinks he's Power and Majesty or something,' was what Kelpie had said about it.

Crane had shrugged. ‘No one else is doing the job,' he replied in a low voice, the only thing any of them had heard him say in days. Now Ashiol was missing, and none of the sentinels had any excuses to be elsewhere. Turning up to the theatre might be their best chance to track him down again. Delphine's private opinion was that he was best lost, for good. It wasn't likely to endear her to the other sentinels, so she kept her trap shut.

But,
Rhian
.

‘I'll meet you downstairs in a minute,' said Delphine.

Macready nodded, and headed back down. He had been uncharacteristically sombre since the scene at the Palazzo. They were all in shock.

Delphine hesitated at Rhian's door. Barging in was against the rules of their carefully balanced household. But apparently there were no rules any more, and there was sure as hells no balance.

Delphine pushed the door open without knocking. She expected the bolts to hold true, jarring her arm, but the door opened easily.

Rhian sat at the window, straight-backed in the chair. She did not turn her head.

‘Are you coming?' Delphine asked, though Rhian was hardly dressed for the occasion.

Rhian made a small sound that might have been a laugh. ‘Because attending the theatre is such a normal activity for me.'

‘I thought —' Delphine bit down what she had been about to say. ‘You're part of this now.'

‘Velody's dark little world of imaginary beasts and toy soldiers. Yes, I am part of it, despite my best wishes. And I'm cured now, right? So everything is different.' Rhian sounded so bitter.

‘I didn't say that.'

‘You thought it.' Rhian did turn now, and there was such an awful look on her face that Delphine drew in a breath. ‘Ask me, Dee. Ask me how I knew what you were thinking.' Delphine shook her head, refusing to play that game. ‘I have voices in my head. Did you know that? All the Seers who ever lived. I can't hear all of them clearly, but that makes it worse. It's like having people standing right behind you, whispering. I can step outside the house now, but it costs me. Every time.'

Anger poured out of Rhian until the room filled with it. Delphine didn't know if it was her new sentinel senses that made her feel the fury all the more strongly — or
just the sheer weight of Rhian's emotions. She wanted to reach out and hold her friend. She wanted to rip a hole in time and go back to the days when they were three hard-working apprentices, with time for laughs and honey cakes. She wanted to run until her feet bled, drink herself stupid and dance, dance, dance. More than anything, Delphine wanted to go back to being the screwed-up one, the careless one, the irresponsible one. Caring and trying just led to utter badness.

Rhian continued, speaking in that awful voice. ‘I hate Velody for this. I hate her for bringing this world to us. The futures — you have no idea what it's like. I can't turn it off, can't make it go away. This is what I was hiding from, all this time, and I didn't know until she brought it home …'

She broke off, as if that had been one secret too many.

Delphine couldn't help herself. ‘Where does Ashiol fit into this?'

Rhian was very still after she asked that. ‘Another form of self-harm?' she said finally, in the kind of voice that could be joking, only not.

‘I want to understand. For nearly two years, ever since … you've barely been able to be in the same room with a man. Even when you're training with Macready, you don't let him touch you. How do you go from that to —' Delphine swallowed, not wanting to say anything hateful. Could Rhian read her thoughts this time, too? It was Ashiol Xandelian, for saints' sake.

‘I wanted to see how much it had changed me,' said Rhian. ‘The Seers, the futures. Am I still the same person? I don't even know.'

‘But why choose him?' Delphine blurted out.

‘Heliora is in my head,' said Rhian. ‘Louder than the rest of them. I have
conversations
with her. He could see that, for some reason. He saw through my skin and he thought I was her. It was easy to — be her for a while.' She let out a long breath. ‘For once, I wanted things to be easy.'

Delphine couldn't help making a face. ‘So what — Heliora wanted to frig him and you let her?'

‘That would be a nice excuse,' said Rhian. She sounded so sensible about it. ‘But it wasn't her, it was me. I chose him because — with him, I didn't have to be afraid.'

‘You should be. He's more powerful than any of them. And more broken. He's dangerous, the baddest of bad news.'

Rhian nodded. ‘Exactly.' She dropped her gaze for a moment, drooping in her chair. ‘Damn. I have to —
damn
.' After a moment, she stood and went to her wardrobe. ‘I have to wear a dress.'

‘The futures told you that?'

‘Whatever is going to happen this nox, I have to be there.' Rhian looked grim. ‘We all have to be there.'

A chill went over Delphine. ‘It's not just dinner and a show, then?'

Rhian pulled out a dress Delphine hadn't seen her wear in years — soft green fabric, something from their apprentice days. ‘When is it ever?' she said wearily.

Well, yes. She had a point.

 

Macready knew crazy, but this was a special kind of crazy. The streets were thick with masked people, celebrating the Bestialia. Cats and hounds, panthers and dragons. Real creatures and those of distant myth clashed together in false faces of paper and leather.

Bells. Everyone was wearing fecking bells, ribboned to ankle and wrist. The streets sang with the shrill, unhappy sound, ting ting ting ting.

Delphine caught the pained look on his face. ‘I used to make those damned things,' she said with a hint of that impish smile of hers. ‘But I decided they were a crime against the city. Now I don't work the Bestialia. Let someone else torture the masses.'

They escaped off the street, and into the relative sanity of the theatre. The Master of the House accepted their tickets without a word. ‘Only the dress circle,' said Delphine, still pretending this was some kind of lark. ‘We've come down in the world, a sad state of affairs.'

Macready looked from her to Rhian, who was following them like a shadow, her arms held stiff and tense at her side. ‘You're full of laughs this nox,' he said to Delphine, and it came out more cranky than he meant it to.

Delphine tossed her head at him. ‘I could scream or wail if you would prefer,' she said, with a hint of genuine upset in her voice. ‘Don't think I haven't considered it.' Then she was back to smiling and faking it, her best skills of shiny denial on display.

Macready's collar was scratchy. He didn't want to be here, dressed up and playacting. He didn't want any of them to be here.

Something bad was going to happen. That much was obvious.

They took their seats in the dress circle. Crane was already there. ‘Kelpie couldn't sit still,' he said, pointing out the other sentinel. She was on her feet near the area fondly known as ‘the pit', looking around the theatre as if she expected murderers to leap out of the shadows. Perhaps they would, at that.

Macready knew how she felt. He wished he hadn't let himself get hemmed in here, between Delphine and the silent Rhian. He looked up, and saw every inch of the theatre reflected in a thousand mirrored tiles. Mirrors were creepy. He never liked the idea that something like you (but not quite like you) could look back out of them. Then there was the fact that their mad King had gone out of his way lately to cover or shatter every mirror he came across, ever since the sky and devils had taken Heliora and Velody.

‘Quite an entrance,' said Delphine under her breath.

Macready followed her gaze and saw Livilla making her way through the theatre in a trail of pearls and black feathers. It was odd seeing her without her lads at her beck and call, but the courtesa she had wrangled from Priest was frocked up to the nines, in a baby version of Livilla's own costume.

Livilla was escorted to a box, and found herself sharing it with Warlord. They were obviously in a fighting stage of their relationship, and both were stony-faced as they took their seats.

Nice, Macready couldn't help thinking. Trust Poet to cause trouble with the seating arrangements before the show even started.

The other private box held a sombre-looking Priest, his courtesi, and Lennoc. No sign of Ashiol yet.

The show had started already — some random act of tumblers and columbine dancers in gaudy petal skirts. The daylight audience were watching and cat-calling like it was any other performance. Half of them wore Bestialia finery, which gave the impression that the audience was full of creatures instead of demmes and coves.

‘It's not right,' Macready said over Delphine's head to the lad. ‘All of us here, among them. Poet's gone out of his mind at last.'

‘Poet's up to something,' said Crane, chewing on a chestnut from a paper cone. ‘But we have to be here, don't we, to find out what it is?'

Oh, aye. They were sentinels. This was their task — to wait and watch, and be there to rescue their beloved King from the jaws of the seven hells.

Regardless whether he wanted their help.

 

Ashiol sat up high in the wing, legs dangling from the struts that crossed over the stage. From here, he could see every piece of scenery, every scurrying stagehand, and even half the faces of the audience, if he craned his neck. A good position, and one he could leap from at any moment, should the need arise.

Also, the ceiling above him here was wood, not mirror, which meant he didn't have to scratch his own skin off to get away from it. ‘I gave you an actual ticket,' said Poet, amused as he joined him on the wooden strut.

‘Seats are too comfortable,' Ashiol said shortly.

‘And besides, you're hiding.'

‘I never said that.'

‘I'm not judging you, kitten. As long as you watch my show, I'm satisfied.'

‘Well, as long as you're satisfied.' Ashiol was bored with the banter. ‘Why are we here, Poet?'

‘So I can show off my lambs, of course.' Poet placed one finger to his lips. ‘The rest is a surprise for you all.'

Ashiol peered out at the audience. He had a fine view from here of Livilla and Warlord, sitting in a formal box and not speaking to each other. He could practically feel
the cold from where he was. ‘Because we all deal so well with surprises.'

 

Delphine had chosen the wrong frock for the theatre. It was a fine thing to wear while standing upright, but it slid in all the wrong directions as soon as she was seated. The neckline flopped wrongly, and she had to keep wriggling to stop it completely exposing her breasts.

Also, the boots she had chosen specifically to hide her knives in were dreadfully uncomfortable. There had been no way to bring her swords, as she refused flat out to wear that ugly brown cloak to the theatre. Macready had helped her conceal them nearby — though he disliked that she wasn't wearing them.

Delphine shifted back and forth, not really paying attention to the tumblers and columbines. She had seen it all before. She wanted to walk out of here, taking Rhian with her. No good could come of this.

Every lamp guttered and went out, making it as dark as the Shambles. Delphine reached out to take Macready's hand, then remembered they should be battle-ready, and reached down to take hold of her knife hilts instead.

‘It's part of the show,' Rhian said in a barely perceptible whisper.

Delphine did not let go of her blades.

The whispers started. Creepy whispers, children imitating animal noises. Cats, mice, hounds, birds, more predatory beasts. Delphine shivered. The whispers were everywhere. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she became aware of shapes slithering and creeping through the audience, heading for the stage.

‘Mesdames, demoiselles, seigneurs,' said a rich voice,
bursting out of the blackness. ‘Pray let me introduce the Bestialia Cabaret!'