3
We stayed through Venturis and Lupercalia. Adriane had learnt from the best. Whenever the stagemaster started making noises about heading back to Oyster, she’d scream like a fishwife and besiege him in his office until he gave in, over and over. One more show. Then another. Hardly anyone in the city had seen our old revues, so we had enough material to do something new every month.
The year turned.
My eighth birthday came and went, and I didn’t say a word about it to anyone. Madalena had been the one who remembered it each year, with a new shirt if she was flush and a handful of sweets if she was down on her uppers.
Ruby-Red turned twelve and made it into the columbine chorus. Matthias got sick again, and the stagemaster gave more of his roles to Kip. Benny left, because the boot factory paid more than the stagemaster ever would. Half the columbines ran off to other theatres, but half of those came back again, regretting it. There were always new demmes lining up, hungry to see their star rise.
Saturnalis came around again and we’d been in the big city a year. The stagemaster didn’t talk about us going home any more. We were stuck with each other.
We had a packed house on the eve of the Saturnalia. It was a new revue for once, though the play was still saints and angel — we’d started a fashion there and half the musettes in the Lucian were putting on similar shows. Adriane was pregnant and still pretending she wasn’t. The costumes had been let out three times, but we all knew better than to joke about it where she could hear. I had a solo of my own in the pantomime, playing a capering orphan with a secret past. The stagemaster said I had a gift for comedy.
Lord Saturn bought a ticket that first nox. He didn’t bring any of his chorus. Just sat there in the front row of the dress circle as if nothing had ever happened. The stagemaster threw out a line in his introduction about our private benefactor and Saturn bowed his head while all the fine demmes and seigneurs peered at him, muttering.
I knew Aufleur pretty well now. Pasting posters for a year will do that for you. I’d got better at tracking people without being spotted, too. I’d been practising, waiting for my chance. I was quick and quiet. This time, I was going to find out his secrets. So I followed him home.
I’d never been up on the Balisquine before, the hill where the Duc lived. The vigiles would cripple any lamb they caught up there with a paste brush, and I knew about the lictors, too — axes, they carried. Didn’t want to get on the wrong side of them. Saturn walked quick, like he had somewhere to get to or something to hide. I could see the flickering lamps of the Duc’s Palazzo, but he didn’t go near it, which was a relief.
I scampered after him and crested the hill, looking across to a ruined old tower. There were white birds everywhere. Owls, all snowy white, all sizes. I’d never seen an owl properly before, just heard the occasional hoot or seen a silhouette over the city. They were beautiful in the half-moonlight. Bright as anything.
Saturn walked towards the tower, casting off his top hat, his long coat, his boots. Then he … changed. Flew apart into pieces and became all feathers and air, beak and claws. Hawks. I knew the shape of them from the bird-puppeteer who used to fill in between the tumbling spots back at Oyster. Saturn’s hawks were larger, though. Sharper. He flew in a cloud around the owls, and then they all vanished into that ruined tower, down, down.
I walked slowly across the grass and reached out to grab the brim of his hat as if it might not be real. I waited, but he didn’t return.
Hells, yes. I stole his clothes.
After that, every time I got a half-day off, I’d go up on the green around the Balisquine and lie in wait for his Lordship. Sometimes I saw the owls, sometimes the hawks, but never a real person. Not until sometime late in the month of Martial, with the cold of the city starting to ebb into spring.
‘You again,’ said the voice, and it was Bad Cravat, who still hadn’t learnt how to tie a piece of silk like a gentleman. His suit was ill-fitting, too, and the wrong colour for his red hair. The wardrobe mistress would despair of him. He tried to speak like a gentleman, but his hands had seen rough work. He couldn’t fool me.
‘What do you want up here, ratling? Looking for another top hat to steal?’
‘You know what I want,’ I said boldly. ‘I want Saturn. I want the … bastard’ — I’d never said the word before; the stagemaster washed our mouths out if he caught us being coarse — ‘who killed Madalena. Who let her be ripped apart by animals. I know enough to know that’s not supposed to happen in cities!’
A look crossed his face. ‘Was she dear to you, lad?’
‘Don’t you lad me, you’re not that old,’ I said. He wasn’t nearly of age, I could tell that. ‘She was the closest thing I had to a mam, and I want answers.’
‘Get away from here,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Don’t come back.’
There was movement out the corner of my eye and I turned — just as a lion leaped out of the tower. Lioness, I should say. I’d never seen one apart from the mask Ruby-Red used to wear in the cabaret of monsters. This was the real thing. She was long and muscled and golden, and she was looking right at me. I swallowed hard.
She shimmered and shaped herself from lion to woman, all golden and glowing, eyes as yellow as her hair. Saturn’s woman.
‘Garnet,’ she said to Bad Cravat, ‘what have you brought?’ She was practically licking her lips as she looked at me. ‘Such a treat.’
‘He’s nothing,’ Garnet said. ‘Just a beggar child.’ Who had taught him to lie? He was as bad at that as he was at choosing his clothes.
‘Did you kill her?’ I blurted. The lion lady raised her eyebrows, sort of prowling around me. ‘Madalena. The Saturnalia before last.’
She laughed then, throwing her head back. ‘You expect me to remember who I killed over a year ago?’
Something clicked in my head, then. I didn’t care about anything; I was burning up all over. Madalena was sweet and never harmed anyone and all she wanted was to be a stellar forever, for people to love her.
‘The actress from the Vittorina Royale!’ I yelled. ‘The one who trusted Saturn to look after her! But he didn’t, did he?’
‘Tasha, he’s too young,’ warned Garnet, but she turned fluidly and slapped him, knocking him to his knees.
‘I decide who is too young,’ she said. Then she looked at me and smiled again, all teeth. I had thought she was beautiful, but she wasn’t, not really. She only believed that she was.
‘Come and find me this nox,’ she said, and reached out to pull the silk cravat from around Garnet’s neck. She rubbed it against her hair, her stomach, and passed it to me. It smelled of her, of perfume and lion and bitch. ‘Find me,’ she said again. ‘And I will answer your questions. Even those you don’t know you have.’
She shaped herself into a lion again and left us, her body gleaming in the sunlight as she trotted off down the hillside.
Garnet stood up, looking shaky. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Not the theatre. Keep going to whatever ten centime town you come from. This isn’t for you. You don’t want it.’
I breathed in the scent of the lioness, and tucked the silk cloth into my pocket. ‘You don’t know what I want,’ I told him.
I left the theatre that nox after the show ended and I could smell her in the alley out the back. Tasha. The scent of her was so strong and certain, I didn’t have to inhale from the silk cloth in my pocket to be sure of it.
I followed her scent up the Via Delgardie and all the way to the Lucian district, which was still full of people at this time of nox — their musettes and theatres stayed open later than ours. I tracked her through a maze of side streets, and then she disappeared somewhere near the Circus Verdigris. Only she didn’t disappear, her scent went in and down between buildings, somewhere I couldn’t follow.
‘Good enough,’ said a voice. A dark lad slipped down off a wall to face me. He was as tall as Garnet, broader in the shoulders, and he wore his fancy clothes better. Another came out of the darkness, a blond lad with curly hair, and then Garnet himself.
‘Bring him down to her,’ said Garnet.
The lads grabbed me and hauled me down into the darkness, into a space between buildings that I’d never seen for myself, down a path that shouldn’t exist, deep into the undercity of Aufleur.
I didn’t fight. This was what I wanted.
Tasha had a sort of den deep in the ruins beneath the real city. It was cozy, lit with oil lamps, and her scent was everywhere.
‘Impressive,’ she said, stretched lazily across a bed covered with cushions. ‘See how the little rat burrows. One of us, boys. You can taste it on his skin.’
‘What do you want with him?’ demanded the dark lad, whom the others called Ash. ‘He’s a sprat. Is he going to hang around and pour drinks for us for the next five years?’
Tasha grinned. ‘Not that. I have a better idea.’ She reached out and took my chin in her hand. ‘Do you want your revenge against Saturn, ratling? Do you want to know all his secrets?’
I forgot that I blamed her for Madalena’s death, forgot that I had to be back at the theatre by sun-up or the stagemaster would beat me, forgot that she was a lion. I just leaned into her, trusting her, because there was something about her that reminded me of what it was like to have a mother, of how it felt to be loved.
Tasha embraced me lightly, as Madalena had sometimes when she was feeling her years. ‘Do you like me, little rat?’
‘You smell of sunshine,’ I muttered, half out of my senses. I had no idea what was happening, but everything about her drew me in, making me trust her.
Tasha laughed. ‘Hear that, my cubs? The boy’s a poet.’
And she tore me into pieces.