55
Velody felt hot and cold all at once. She gave everything to Ashiol and took the animor he channelled back into her skin. She had never felt so alive and alert. The world was brighter than it had ever been before.
‘Now you have to return it,’ said a soft voice.
Velody broke the kiss, but she could not take her eyes off Ashiol. He was glowing, all dark and shiny, and smiling so stupidly at her that it was hard to pay attention to anything else. Eventually she realised it was the Duchessa who had spoken.
‘We did that,’ said Ashiol, and even his voice was beautiful, like power and sex and ciocolata all poured into one. He had never sounded that good before.
‘Not to each other,’ Isangell said patiently. ‘You have to give it to Rhian.’
Velody turned then, still in Ashiol’s arms, and looked. She had been keeping away from the twisted statue that lay prone in the corner of her kitchen, not wanting to believe that was all that remained of her friend. But it was Rhian, when you looked at it. Her face was unmistakeable, even if she was half stone and half wood, with rose vines wrapped around her thorny ankles.
‘Why Rhian?’ she asked.
‘Because she was never supposed to be the Seer,’ said Isangell. ‘Or a sentinel, or King, Lord, Court. She is something else. She is the seed of destruction.’
‘How can we know this is the right thing to do?’ Ashiol asked.
Isangell gave a small smile, her eyes distant. ‘You have to trust your Seers. This is what they are here for, all this time. Give her everything, and Rhian will save the city.’
Velody hesitated too long. She felt Ashiol’s fingers curl into her own as he held her hand.
‘We have to trust,’ he said.
As Velody watched, Ashiol poured everything he had into Rhian. Light burst out of her, haloing her twisted body as he filled her with the animor of the Creature Court.
Isangell held out her hand, too, and something silver shone out of her fingers, streaming into Rhian’s body. Isangell crumpled into a faint and Kelpie leaped forward to catch her.
Rhian stood up. She was still stone and plant and water and sun, roses and wood and light and dust, but she was human, too, and whole. More whole than she had been in a very long time. Velody stared at her, feeling Rhian’s power. The animor was there — from Ashiol, Poet, Garnet, so many of them. The flame of the salamanders.
When Rhian held a hand out to her, though, Velody hesitated. ‘We can do it together,’ she said.
Rhian shook her head. ‘I am the last weapon. Forged by the Smith of Tierce before she fell into the sky. Placed here to be the final redemption. It is up to me to heal the shattered sky once and for all, and to give back what was stolen. To make amends and end the war. It’s time to lay down your burden, Velody. This is my task.’
No. Velody couldn’t do it. It was all right for Ashiol, who had never wanted the responsibility of being Power and Majesty. But she had taken on that duty, and she could not relinquish it now.
‘You can’t sacrifice yourself to the damned sky,’ she said, unable to stop her voice from shaking. ‘That never works. I tried, remember? I won’t let you.’
‘You’re so used to protecting everyone,’ said Rhian, her voice so very confident. ‘But you can’t fight this battle for me.’
‘Yes, I can,’ Velody yelled at her. ‘It’s the only way.’
They were all looking at her like she was the crazy one, hoarding power for herself. Like she should just give it all up and trust Rhian to save the city. Rhian had barely left this house in nearly two years.
‘It’s a trick,’ she added. ‘Garnet, the sky, all of it. How do we know it’s not a trick? We’ll lose you and get nothing back. They want us to give up all the animor and be left defenceless!’
She felt Ashiol’s hand rest against her shoulders, and it was a shock to get no spark from him, no sense of his power. He had given it all up. How could she be the last one standing?
‘We’ve been fighting for years,’ he said. ‘Centuries, maybe. What if not fighting is the only way to end the war?’
‘Don’t you dare be on her side,’ Velody choked.
Rhian was what she had been fighting for. She would not lose her like this.
‘You heard it from Garnet’s mouth,’ Ashiol said softly into her ear. ‘The animor was never ours.’
‘You don’t have to trust Garnet, or the sky, or any of them,’ Rhian said. ‘You have to trust me. Do you?’
Velody took a deep breath because Rhian had once been the most reliable person that she knew. Someone whose strong hands had built their kitchen table, whose even temper had kept things calm between Velody and Delphine.
With something like a sob, she let go of her animor. It fought, not wanting to leave, and she had a vision of hundreds of blindingly bright mouse bodies streaming from her and into Rhian.
Then it was over and Velody felt nothing but empty.
‘Open the door, please,’ said Rhian in a voice that was familiar but radiated power.
Delphine had tears running down her face as she released the catch on the door. Suddenly the kitchen was full of sounds again, of crashes and breaking stone and icy rain hitting the broken, rubble-strewn remains of their courtyard. ‘Give them hells,’ she said.
Rhian stepped out into the yard, glowing more brightly, new vines springing up where she walked, pushing their way through the stones.
Velody stood still, unable to move until Ashiol tugged her by the hand and led her outside, where the battle still raged. The rain felt like ordinary water on her skin. Daylight. She was daylight. They were all entirely human; all of them except Rhian.
Her friend smiled at her, looking for a moment just like that demme who had wanted to be a florister when she grew up.
‘Take me back to Tierce,’ she said. ‘When it’s over.’
As the scrappy remains of the Creature Court emerged from the kitchen one by one, Rhian rose into the air, glowing brighter and brighter, and then flew straight up into the sky like an arrow. For one long moment, everything was achingly, painfully white from one edge of Velody’s vision to the other.
The rain stopped.
Rhian had not felt so much like herself in years. Strength flooded her body; the kind of strength that used to haul heavy loads of stems and branches, that had built their kitchen table and mended the broken furniture they had refurbished when making their house a home.
The whole city spread out beneath her, wide and scarred and aching. Buildings lay in rubble, hills had become mudslides, there were fires and floods in every street.
She felt the dust devils become aware of her, and then the steam angels, and all the other faceless, voiceless creatures of the sky. She was blazing like a beacon, like a thousand skysilver blades flashing all at once. They smelled her, tasted her. They wanted her dead.
See me, she cried across the city to them. You think you can take us? Think we’re easy meat? That we will crumple like Tierce, like Bazeppe? You think we are not defended?
She could feel Velody inside her, and Ashiol, and Garnet, and Poet, and Livilla. So many other faces and voices and songs. After holding the Seers inside her for so long, it seemed almost easy to take the whole Creature Court, those who had died and those who lived.
They rampaged inside her, a tumbling mess of cats and mice and wolves and gattopardi, of rats and salamanders and hounds, of panthers and bats and feraxes and birds and lions.
She was Warlord, she was Lennoc, she was Priest, she was Dhynar, she was Lief, she was Saturn, she was Ortheus, she was Tasha, she was sentinel and Seer.
Rhian stopped, finally, so high that a human could barely breathe, surrounded by a thousand different fractures in the sky. They swarmed to her, devils and angels and skybolts and gleamspray. She smiled politely at them as they closed in around her body.
‘My name is Rhian,’ she said aloud. ‘On behalf of the city of Aufleur, I am here to negotiate a truce.’
Her body burst apart into salamander flames and she took every f*cking one of them with her.
This time, the sky would mend clean.