38
‘You should be in the sky,’ said the little demme, looking clearly at Ashiol with Lysandor’s eyes. He was unnerved by her. Children in the Creature Court were wrong somehow pieces of two separate worlds that should not fit together.
‘I know,’ he told her. ‘It’s a long nox ahead of us, though.’
‘It’s the last,’ she said, her voice freakishly adult.
He gave her a second look at that. ‘Are you their Seer?’
‘Bazeppe doesn’t have Seers, or sentinels, we have no need —’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘You have your saints; much good they are doing you now.’
‘They are doing exactly what they are supposed to do,’ the little demme told him, and then pouted. ‘I want a pastry. Do you have pastries?’
‘No,’ he said, rocking back on his heels. ‘I’m not much use, am I?’
‘Not much,’ she agreed frankly. ‘Papa always made it sound like you were something special. I thought you’d be taller.’
There was a sound behind them: a creaking wheeze and a slow, familiar ticking sound, then another, and another.
Lucia clapped her hands. ‘They’re back!’ she said delightedly.
Ashiol turned to see the clockwork saints on their feet again, slowly moving, rotating their joints to allow the dust to pour free from them. ‘Amazing,’ he said.
‘There!’ roared Peg. ‘That bleeding sky can’t keep us down for long, can it?’
Had the plan of Priest and the dust devils failed so easily?
‘Don’t go near them,’ Ashiol warned.
‘We don’t have to,’ she said, giving him an odd look. ‘Time to give our fighters a break from the battle!’
She made several rapid-fire gestures at the clockwork saints, who returned her signs and took off, out of the door and into the nox sky.
‘You trust them very easily,’ Ashiol said in surprise.
Peg gave him an unfriendly look. ‘The only traitor we’ve ever had in this Court was your man Priest. He’s gone now. His attempt failed. Back to normal.’
Ashiol looked up to the rafters where Kelpie and the silversmith, Bett, were mending the skysilver layer in the roof. Kelpie seemed relaxed, laughing as they secured the panels. How long was it since she had been asked to do something that was of practical use and not in some way degrading to her sense of honour?
‘Where do they come from?’ he muttered.
‘Silly,’ said Lucia. ‘The saints come from the same place as animor.’
To prove her point, she shaped herself into a small pile of puppies and cuddled back down onto her blanket.
Ashiol stared at her for a long time. In the many years since he had first tangled with the Creature Court of Aufleur, he had never once thought to ask where animor came from.
A great shout went up across the sky. ‘It’s the saints. The saints are back!’
Celeste laughed delightedly. She threw back her head to look at Velody. ‘It’s all right now,’ she said.
The clockwork saints, a dozen or more of them, came tearing through the sky. Velody hovered there and watched as they caught skybolts and fought light tendrils with dazzling precision. ‘They’re good,’ she agreed.
‘Thank the angels. Now Lysandor can go back to Lucia,’ Celeste said.
Indeed, several of the Lords and Court were flying back to the Emporium, many of them nursing injuries. Velody saw Lysandor among them, waving at Celeste as he went.
‘They’re just going to leave the saints up here?’
‘Of course. They’re far better at fighting the sky than we are.’ Celeste blasted a cloudburst with her animor and it exploded close enough that a wave of cold air swept over them both. ‘I usually stay out here most of the nox. Power and Majesty, you know. It’s expected. But we can hold the sky with only one or two of the Court attending me and the saints at any one time.’
The sky had been raging only a few moments ago, but now it seemed clear.
‘Is that it?’ Velody asked. ‘Is it over?’
‘Seems to be,’ said Celeste, and frowned. ‘That’s odd.’
The clockwork sentinels in the sky all drifted together in a formation and started to fly down towards the Emporium.
‘Hey, come back,’ Celeste yelled at them. ‘You’re not off duty yet. The sky could bubble again.’ She tried making her command signs at them, but not one even turned its head in her direction.
Velody felt a sudden cold wash of premonition. ‘We have to —’
An explosion rocked the sky. Skybolts flew from the hands and eyes of the clockwork saints, striking the Emporium roof in one controlled blast. The building crumpled under the pressure, and collapsed.
Celeste started screaming.
There was chaos everywhere, dust and smoke and the sound of creaking metal. Velody’s hands dissolved easily through the first layer of roof, but she leaped back with a jolt of pain when the skysilver reinforcement burned her. The place didn’t even look like a warehouse any more, just mess and rubble.
A few members of the Clockwork Court had been thrown some way from the Emporium, or hadn’t made it there before the explosion. The clockwork saints were nowhere in sight. If their intention was to destroy the Clockwork Court, why hadn’t they stayed to finish the grisly business?
‘You can get in there,’ Celeste said urgently. ‘You’re mice. My daughter is under that wreck.’
Velody nodded and shaped herself into thousands of tiny bodies, each scrambling into the wreckage. It was hard going. The skysilver masked everything, and the few times she opened her animor up fully to listen for survivors, the reflected pain and screams and moans were too much for her senses to deal with.
It was dark and she had thousands of tiny throats choking up with dust and the smell of death. Every time she found a body, alive or dead, she sent a short burst of animor up and out of the wreckage like an arrow of light, alerting the rescuers. It went like that for hours.
Sometime near dawn, they found Kelpie. Her body was twisted and broken, and Velody thought at first that she was dead, but it was another demme’s arm wrapped around her waist that showed no pulse.
Velody called together her many tiny bodies and found enough space to shape herself into Lord form. She used her animor to blast an opening into the air above, hurling back roofing and rubble. The clear air scraped against her human throat as she physically lifted Kelpie up and out of the crumpled Emporium and carried her away from the wreckage.
There was no sign of Kelpie’s blades on her body and Velody could not bear to touch more skysilver, so she bit hard into her own wrist to draw the blood she needed.
Someone grabbed her shoulder. ‘You can’t stop,’ Celeste said frantically. ‘There are still survivors in there. We need you.’
‘Go to hells,’ said Velody, and forced the blood into Kelpie’s mouth. ‘She’s mine and she matters. I’ve been saving your people all nox. This is my turn.’
Ashiol could not move. Every time he tried to stir, he felt skysilver burning into him. He tried to change, to shape himself into cats, but the cats refused to take his place. They didn’t like being trapped in the dark.
He tried to send to Velody, but everything was muffled by the skysilver and he couldn’t even sense her presence. Perhaps she was dead. Perhaps they were all dead.
Was this what it was like when you were swallowed by the sky?
He could sense other bodies and people around him, moans and the occasional cry. Dying here would simplify matters immeasurably.
Time stretched out, endless and numb around him. Nothing to do but think, and keep breathing. Thinking was one of the things Ashiol preferred to avoid. There was no escape under here from Livilla. He had adored her so much once upon a time. More than that, they had been family.
He could hear her singing, that sweet voice before she went all husky and controlled. She was like Poet, never ran out of songs to sing.
‘I’m not greedy, I’m not easy, I know what’s on my mind … it’s you and nobody else will do … you and the sky so blue …’
That was it, he couldn’t stay down here, not with Livilla singing at him. It was adding insult to injury, and he couldn’t kiss her silent or walk out in a huff because she was f*cking dead and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
Women whose bodies he knew more intimately than his own had to stop dying, that was all there was to it.
Somewhere, a child was crying.
Well, f*ck. So much for self-pity. Now he had to do something. He couldn’t move without pain, but that was of little matter. Pain was hardly a new thing to him.
Thanks for that, Garnet. You thought you were weakening me, but apparently you made me stronger …
They had cleared as much of the rubble as they could without bringing the rest of the building down upon what survivors might be left in there. It was nearly midday, though cold enough to still be nox. The last three bodies they had dragged out of the building were dead.
Velody had been back into the rubble several times. She could taste nothing but dust. It coated everything. Kelpie was still unconscious, but seemed to be healing. Lysandor lay some way off, breathing but damaged and slipping in and out of consciousness. Velody had donated far too much of her precious King’s blood to the survivors and was feeling light-headed and strange.
‘The building should have healed itself,’ Celeste said. Her voice was flat. She had stopped panicking and demanding anything. She had accepted that her child was dead. ‘The clockwork saints … as long as they are working, the city heals itself from the sky.’
‘They did this,’ said Velody.
‘Priest contaminated them? All of them? How could he do that?’
‘It wasn’t Priest. He’s dead and gone. But the things from the sky that were inside him — they could be anywhere.’
They were losing the battle. They couldn’t even see what they were supposed to be fighting. If they destroyed the saints, what next?
The daylight folk of Bazeppe wandered by at times, and a few gave a second look to the cluster of people around the fallen Emporium, but there was no urgency about them, no sign that they could really see what tragedy had occurred. Bazeppe was no different from Aufleur in that regard.
Kelpie stirred and moaned beside Velody, who squeezed her hand.
They were all cold and dusty and exhausted, and there was nowhere to sleep. Nox would come again, and what would come with it?
‘We have to get these people out of here,’ Velody said aloud, but no one heard her.
When Lysandor awoke, he had to be physically restrained from throwing himself back into the rubble after his daughter. Celeste sobbed as she forced him down, and he grabbed at her, face wild with agony.
It was all so painful and raw, and Velody couldn’t look at them. She had lost a family once, a whole city, and it hadn’t left a scar. She knew they were all dead, and she loved them still, but it felt ridiculous to miss them after so long not even remembering they existed.
‘This is why we don’t have families,’ croaked a low voice, and Velody saw that Kelpie’s eyes were open and watching Lysandor and Celeste mourn.
‘That doesn’t work,’ said Velody. ‘We just form new ones. It’s what humans do.’
‘What made you think any of us were human?’ said Kelpie, and then coughed, bringing up dust and blood.
The fallen Emporium exploded from the inside out. A dark, wild creature burst free from its centre, and the remaining skysilver reinforced roof and walls all fell into the foundations, sending up a huge cloud of dust and grime and soot.
The chimaera hovered there for a moment, clad in the ragged remains of Ashiol’s clothes. His eyes glowed red. Then he fell hard on the ground, a terrible sound coming out of him as he lay on his back and writhed. Velody could see scars and cracks all along his thick, black flesh and could smell burnt skin. The chimaera shuddered and was still.
She went to him, touched his shoulder. He cried out in a small voice. Slowly, she unwrapped the bundle of ripped cloth that hung across his chest and looked inside. Puppies, curled up as if in sleep. Four of them. Velody hardly dared check to see if they were alive, but then one cracked open a lazy eye and her feet went out from under her.
The puppies tumbled out of the bundle of rags and ran to Lysandor and Celeste, yapping weakly from throats still choked with dust and dirt.
Ashiol keened and shaped himself human. He was broken in far too many places and he shook with the cold. Velody put a blanket over him, though the touch of it made him scream with pain.
‘If he can do that,’ said Kelpie through her scraped and raw throat, ‘anything is possible.’