Reign of Beasts

Part I

The First Saturnalia

1

Boy

They called me Boy back then. The spruikers, the stagehands, the tumblers, the columbines, the songbirds, the masks. Even the other lambs of the crew, the ones who were younger than me. If I had a real name, it was long forgotten .

Madalena called me Baby. That wasn’t my real name either, but it made me feel special. I would sit on her dressing table, swinging my legs, while she painted her face with cosmetick and told me stories of the old days, of the Pearls Beyond Price, of the songs they used to sing. I’d stay with her for hours: the only one who wanted to listen, the only one who didn’t whisper behind her back about how she was pushing forty and maybe it was time for a new stellar to take her place. I didn’t care about any of that cack.

Oyster wasn’t much of a town. What do you expect from a place called Oyster? It was shellfish, shellfish and more shellfish. Folks came from all over to buy crab and mussels and, oh aye, oysters from our pier. Most families in Oyster had a boat, or crewed a boat, or were waiting for a place on a boat. The rest of them shucked the oysters or worked the market. The whole town smelled of salted shell.

Then there was the Mermaid. She was an old musette, peeling paint and shabby curtains, but she was ours, and she was famous, even more famous than the shellfish to the right kind of people. They came from all over to see the show in oyster season.

We were the lambs from the Mermaid. We didn’t have to go to school, not even in summer when the musette was closed because the oysters were too scarce for us to pull decent audiences. Every young cove and demme in town wanted to be us. We didn’t stink of fish. Just cosmetick grease.

Only the luckiest lambs in town got a chance to join the troupe. The stagemaster took on one or two every season, and half the time they wouldn’t make it through — they’d rip a costume or drop a piece of scenery or prove to be no good at the tumbling and gurning between acts. The failures would be booted out swift as you like, back to the life of boats and markets and shellfish that was all Oyster had to offer them.

I was eight years old when I heard the name ‘Aufleur’ for the first time. It was the month of Fortuna, nearly winter, when the oysters are their meatiest. I’d been sent to fetch supper for the stagemaster and when I got back, Madalena was having one of her turns. I could hear the screams from the street.

As soon as I stepped backstage, I was seized by a mob of columbines, all spindly arms and fluffy tulle, surprisingly strong.

‘Here he is!’

‘It’s the Boy!’

‘Where have you been?’ barked the stagemaster. ‘Get up there, Boy, she listens to you. Talk some sense into the daft old haddock.’

I was pushed and shoved up the rickety steps to the stellar dressing room. It stank of gin and lime. Madalena had turned to her favourite activity in dark times — destroying one of her costumes. This was, I happened to know, her least favourite frock, with a murex fringe that made her look like a reading couch. She ripped it with savage glee, her false fingernails breaking off under the strain.

‘Raddled, am I?’ she screamed as I closed the door. ‘Past my prime?’

‘Did they say that?’ I asked in a low voice.

‘Might as well have! They want Adriane to play the Angel at Saturnalia. That’s my role! The stellar role. They’re raising her up to replace me!’

I’d heard rumours, of course. Whispers in the props room and the ticket booth. Madalena had too many years under her jewelled brassiere for anyone who knew how to count, and everyone knew that Adriane had been in and out of the stagemaster’s loft above the box office at odd hours, emerging with her hair messed up and her knickers showing.

Aye, I knew what that meant, too. I was young, not stupid.

No one said to my face that Madalena’s star was falling; they wouldn’t, knowing she was the closest I had to a mam. I still heard the whispers. I wasn’t going to be the one to break Madalena’s heart, though, so I lied to her, bare-faced lie after lie, about how the Mermaid was nothing without her, no one would buy a ticket without her there, how she looked better than Adriane anyhow, and audiences liked a demme with meat on her bones.

Hard work for an eight-year-old, but I’d been born and bred to the stage. There are no better liars than mummers or masks. I’d been around the crew long enough to know the book by heart.

Madalena let me soothe her with my borrowed words, this time.

A few days later, when the stagemaster announced to the cast that Adriane would play the Angel, Madalena bit her lip so hard it almost bled. We all braced ourselves for a new bout of screaming, but she said nothing. She bowed her head and let the axe fall.

There was no bigger audience than the Saturnalia crowd. We always put on a special show from the Ides of Saturnalis through to early Venturis. The house came from as far away as Aufleur, the city to the north, and Bazeppe, far to the south. Some were brightly dressed Lords and Ladies, on pilgrimage to our town to eat oysters fresh with creamy mayonnaise. They were still licking their fingers and dropping the shells as they paraded into the Mermaid.

It was the same show every year: saints and angel, harlequinade, pantomime with saucy songs, cabaret of monsters. That last one was why the stagemaster was picky about his lambs, because it was us who performed it, done up in animal costumes and pretending to be fierce. It was a game, like everything else about Saturnalia: a festival of topsy-turvy. I sometimes think that was why Madalena gave in on the Angel role. She feared people might see her as another Saturnalia joke — the ageing dame pretending to be an ingenue.

It was the Kalends of Saturnalis and I was in the streets with Kip and Benny, pasting up the broadsheets for the show, when his Lordship came upon us. He was beautiful. No other word for it. I’ll never forget how beautiful he was. His face was soft like a demme’s, and he had long hair all hung about his shoulders. He wore a high top hat like the fancy toffs who paid three silver ducs to see the show from a private box, even though everyone knew the view from the dress circle was better. He had a long coat, and wore a chain at his throat. I couldn’t figure if he was a theatrical or a genuine toff, and was so busy trying to work it out that I stared at him too long and Kip elbowed me in the side.

‘Are you young seigneurs from the theatre?’ he asked, and we preened, all three of us, to hear him saying ‘theatre’ about our lowly musette.

‘Aye, sir,’ said Benny, and Kip nodded along. I kept staring.

His Lordship smiled, and no matter how highborn he sounded, I knew in that moment he was an actor like us. Just another mask with something to sell.

‘Is it a good show, your Saturnalia revue?’ he asked next.

Kip and Benny fell over themselves to get out the usual patter: ‘You won’t see anything like this in your big city, squire; folks come from all over to see it; don’t you know our columbines were trained by the Duchessa of Bazeppe herself; don’t you know our cabaret of monsters act has been stolen by every musette north of here...’

He tired of the gabble eventually, and turned to me. His eyes were deep like coloured glass, all green and blue and maybe yellow if I looked hard enough. ‘What do you say?’ he asked.

‘There ain’t better,’ I said, my voice coming out clearer than I’d expected.

The Lord smiled. ‘Excellent to hear. You had best introduce me to your stagemaster, then. I wish to arrange a private show.’

The day after the Kalends is ill luck for a performance, and we still had more that a market-nine of rehearsals to go, but his Lordship showed the stagemaster enough coin that he got his show, straight away. The columbines and songbirds complained, shrill gulls that they were. The masks weren’t any happier, but they knew better than to make a flap. Adriane wasn’t safe enough in her Angel costume to make a fuss, and Madalena stayed quiet for once. No shrieking; she watched the rest of them hop about.

The stagemaster quelled all complaint with one short speech. ‘This mad toff has forked over enough shine to see the ceiling refurbished twice over. There’ll be spare for a meat dish a day and new costumes this winter, so shut the fuck up about it.’

There was plenty of salt tossed around backstage to keep what luck we had left all in the right places.

We started with the cabaret of monsters, us lambs peering through our masks as we sang, trying to make sense of our audience of one. His Lordship sat smack in the middle of the dress circle and watched us hard, like a cormorant waiting to snatch a fish out of the water. He sat through hours of our best acts and never clapped once.

We did pretty well, I thought, though Adriane was so nervous she tripped over her pearl-crusted hem and sang half her notes too thin. Madalena did her best with her smaller part as Mother Sospita, with only half a song and a dozen lines to speak. At least the stagemaster had the grace not to push the role of Ires the Crone on her.

At the end, when we were arrayed on stage waiting for some sign of approval, his Lordship stood up and leaned over the balcony. ‘Do it again,’ he said in a chilly voice. ‘Only this time, the one with the voice will play the Angel.’ He pointed directly at Madalena. Adriane looked as if she had been slapped.

His Lordship turned and climbed the next set of stairs to the gods, the seats so high that we rarely sold them out. Those who liked a cheap ticket preferred the pit, where they had to stand but at least they could see whether the tumblers were coves or demmes. Our patron sat up there, chin in hand, as we went through the entire performance again, act by act, exhausted though we were. Madalena sang her heart out, the performance of her life, every gesture aimed skywards at her handsome benefactor.

Days later, we learned the true story of what his Lordship wanted of us. We were going to Aufleur. To this day I don’t know how much his Lordship paid, but it was enough to make the stagemaster sweat and stutter like it was his first audition when he explained it to us.

The Lord had hired us, every mime and painted prop. For the first time in twenty-five years there would be no Saturnalia revue at the Mermaid in Oyster. Instead, we were to perform at a theatre in the city, a city so large most of us could barely imagine it.

We were taking the show to Aufleur.

Madalena was beside herself with excitement. She queened it over the masks and columbines, secure once more as the stellar of the company. Adriane made several visits to the stagemaster but he wouldn’t budge. The Lord’s coin pouch meant more to him than anything she kept in her cotton knickers.

I’d never been on a train before, nor had the other lambs. Me and Kip and Benny and Ruby-Red and Liv spent the whole journey staring out the windows, dizzy with the strangeness of being outside Oyster, loose in the world.

We piled off at the other end, staring at the sight before us, the high dark buildings and domes, the finery of it all. Aufleur. The big city.

The Vittorina Royale had been a fine theatre once, there was no doubting that. But she had been abandoned for years when we first clapped eyes on her. I still remember the crestfallen look on Madalena’s face when she realised the grand city stage she had been imagining was just as old and rundown as the Mermaid. But then we walked inside, through the house, and Benny tugged my arm, pointing up at the ceiling. I swear I stopped breathing for a moment — I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life. The ceiling was all mirrors and gilded saints, and when the lanterns were lit it gleamed above the stage like a sky full of stars.

‘The Vittorina may be getting on in years, but she’s a queen worthy of the best,’ his Lordship said, and Madalena simpered at his words.

I suppose you’ve noticed I never named him. He told us he was ‘Lord Saturn’ — the same as the saint of revels. Seemed unlikely, but no one in theatre has the name they were born with.

‘Where’s your bean crown, then?’ Ruby-Red asked him cheekily.

‘Left it in my other coat,’ he replied, pulling a face and making the young ones laugh. Such a quick tongue, that one.

We moved into the Vittorina, making her our own, figuring out the ropes and tunnels and secret corners. We had from the Nones to the Ides to pull the show together, and we sweated to make it happen. He decided at the last minute that his private performance would be the dress rehearsal, the nox before the Saturnalia festival itself, which gave us an extra day, but it was still a scramble — and it meant performing on another nefas day which none of us liked at all.

Ill luck already dogged us. Props broke, costumes were lost, and it turned out that Aufleur had some daft law that restricted horses and wheeled vehicles during daylight hours, so we had to transport everything we owned across three districts in dodgy hand carts.

Matthias fell sick, a hoarse cough that racked his body and took his appetite. That left us without a merchant’s son, and the stagemaster lined up the lambs, demanding that one of us take his place.

‘Baby should do it,’ said Madalena.

‘The lad’s too young,’ the stagemaster said in disbelief.

She stretched and smiled. ‘He has the voice of a princel, if you give him a chance.’

Madalena was happier here. She really thought this was her big break, her dream come true, singing to fine toffs in a city instead of in our own little musette back home. I missed the smell of salted crab and the sound of the sea.

The stagemaster reluctantly agreed that my pipes were up to the role of merchant’s son, but I was too short to fit Matthias’s costume so he made Kip do it instead. I tried not to care too much. There would be other roles. I minded more that Madalena was head over heels in love with the toff who called himself Lord Saturn, and she was going to get her heart broke clean through.

Her dressing room at the Vittorina Royale was no bigger than the one back home, though it had fancy giltwork around the mirror. I caught her gazing around sometimes like the room was a steak dinner. Something to be proud of, rather than something she’d been tossed by a cove who only wanted to impress some other lady.

Oh, aye. There was another lady. Of course there was.

2

Introducing: the Mermaid Revue at the Vittorina Royale

It was the nox before Saturnalia, and we were about to raise the curtain of the Vittorina Royale for the first time. The Lord told us we could open the doors to the general public from tomorrow, so Benny and I went out pasting posters like at home, except there were vigiles patrolling the streets here who’d give us a whack if they caught us pasting on public buildings .

We went as far as the Forum — a jaw-dropping place full of every kind of temple and building imaginable. Our posters were merry and bright and called us the Mermaid Revue, making us sound like some exotic troupe from the far south. But this show — the first show really though we all called it our second dress rehearsal to keep the bad luck at bay — was open to no one but his Lordship and his guests.

We peeped through the side of the curtain, watching them enter.

Lord Saturn wore that high hat of his, and a long coat that shone green and violet. He led his crew through to the dress circle — a gang of demmes and seigneurs dolled up to the nines. Liv and Ruby-Red giggled, laying bets on whether they were real aristos, another theatre troupe, or something a lot more scandalous. They always talked like that around me, assuming I was too little to know what they were on about.

I watched them, Lord Saturn’s crowd. Finely dressed, but only some of them knew how to wear the clothes. They weren’t aristos, that was for sure. They flocked around this golden demme with short curling hair and a frock more daring than anything a columbine would wear on stage. Her arms were bare, and you could see that she had taut muscles, like she knew how to haul scenery. That was no lady.

She was Saturn’s, though. You could see it in the way she moved, the way she laid her hand on his, the look on his face as he presented her with... us.

We were a trinket to please his demme. The worst of it was, she wasn’t even impressed. The whole time the saints-and-angel play went on, Saturn’s lady looked bored, like she was waiting for the real show to start. Some of her retinue applauded at the closing song, but she shrugged one golden shoulder and they stopped.

Madalena sung her guts out. She almost convinced me (who knew her better than anyone) that she was a real angel made of sugar and steam. When that half-applause stopped, she looked like she was going to slit her wrists.

The harlequinade was next — columbines dancing and Larius swanning about as Harlequinus in the middle of it all. Madalena was supposed to change costume for the pantomime, but instead she shut herself in her dressing room and refused to come out.

The stagemaster shouted at her through the door, and finally sent me up to talk sense into her. She said not a word, no matter what I cajoled through the keyhole.

The harlequinade ended and we sent on the tumblers, though they only had so many turns to run through and it would become obvious soon enough that we had no pantomime to follow.

The stagemaster sucked in a breath finally and called for Adriane to find a frock so she could cover Madalena’s songs. Adriane burst into tears, for Madalena had six separate numbers in the pantomime and she didn’t know the words.

When all seemed lost, Lord Saturn himself strode backstage and demanded that Madalena open the door for him.

When she heard his voice, she let the door fall open a crack so he could push his way in. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, a grand finale kind of kiss that left her cosmetick smeared across his face. ‘Sing for me,’ he commanded. Madalena turned as if hypnotised, fumbling for her costume.

We got through the rest of the show. Madalena performed the comic turns of the pantomime perfectly and vanished backstage again as the lambs trooped out for the cabaret of monsters.

Here’s the funny thing: Saturn’s golden lady, so bored through the whole proceedings, sat up and paid attention to us lambs in our animal costumes. I could feel her eyes on us — on me — as we went through our paces. When we took our bows, she stood and left without a word. A bunch of the young seigneurs followed her, chorus to her stellar.

Lord Saturn stayed. I don’t know if I loved or hated him for that. He applauded in the empty musette. He showed up later at Madalena’s door with an armful of flowers. Her cosmetick was streaked and she was tired as hell, but he told her she was beautiful, and meant it.

Madalena’s smile, her real smile, not the one for the stage, was always something to see.

‘Put these in water for me, will you, Baby?’ she said, dumping the flowers on me as she strolled off with her new fancy man, arm in arm with him.

It was the last time I saw her alive.

There was an itch in my skin when I awoke. Nothing big, just a niggle, making me jig about impatiently as I went down to breakfast.

‘What’s up with you?’ asked Ruby-red with her mouth full.

‘Naught,’ I muttered.

We were opening for real this nox. The stagemaster spent half the day convincing us that the golden bitch knew nothing about theatre and we shouldn’t take her rudeness to mean three beans about how good our show was. We almost believed him.

There was enough to do that no one noticed until the afternoon that Madalena wasn’t there. Not in her dressing room, not sleeping late, not anywhere in the Vittorina Royale. Gone.

The itch grew fiercer.

By the time we raised the curtain, Adriane was cinched into Madalena’s angel costume and the stagemaster was red-faced and spitting.

We had a full house. It was the first day of Saturnalia, and nothing draws the crowds like a festival. Most of them were locals, and most of the centime seats went to other theatricals, out to see who had taken on the Vittorina Royale after so long without a performance in the old dame. It was the biggest audience we’d ever played for. Madalena wasn’t there.

When it was over and we were sweating cosmetick, dizzy with applause, already figuring out what parts we’d have to change for tomorrow, the stagemaster grabbed me by the collar. ‘Tell Herself when she shows her face that she’s fired,’ he growled. ‘We don’t need her. We’re going places.’

Madalena had never missed a performance before. Not once. I checked her dressing room. His Lordship’s flowers were already starting to fade.

The itch spread to my feet. I went walking, trying to shake out the bad feeling, but all that did was remind me how big this city was, how none of us belonged here.

It wasn’t me who found Madalena’s body. That would tie the story up nicely, wouldn’t it? If I sniffed out a trail of blood or used the devastating intellectual abilities of an eight year old to track her down. Instead, it was one of the columbines who found her in the alley behind the Vittorina Royale. Madalena was still wearing the bright scarlet and purple milkmaid’s frock from the pantomime. Her body had been ripped apart, as if by animals. Blood everywhere.

They didn’t let me see. Of course they didn’t. They tried to keep it from me, because I was a lamb and the only one in the whole damn troupe who really loved her. But I heard stories, each of them bloodier.

Wild animals. How the frig do you get yourself torn up by wild animals in the middle of a city?

But you know the answer to that question, or you wouldn’t be here.

The audiences kept coming. Even with Adriane’s reedy pipes. Apparently our kind of revue had been out of favour for years in the big city and the crowds were hungry for it now. They lined up to buy half a shillein’s worth of nostalgia — a nice way of saying we were old-fashioned but they liked us anyway.

No one spoke Madalena’s name aloud. That’s the way it is backstage. There’s none like masks for superstition. Once you’re gone, you’re gone. They were as silent about her now as they had been about my mam all my life.

I snuck into the stellar’s dressing room before they gave it to Adriane and stole the old poster Madalena had kept all these years of her and my mam, beaded up and laughing. Come to the Mermaid and See the Pearls Beyond Price.

I’d never asked her my mam’s name, waiting for the right time to get her brandy-sozzled and softened up about it. Too late now.

After the eight days of Saturnalia, the audiences trailed off. The stagemaster talked about heading home, eager to spend his Lordship’s gold, to be the big man in Oyster when he hired on for the refurbishments of the Mermaid. We’d be famous: the lambs who went to the big city.

The day to return kept getting put off, though. There was talk of sticking around through Venturis. Some of the columbines sneaked off to audition in other musettes — there wouldn’t be many of them coming back with us.

I wanted to go home so bad, but not without Madalena. The stagemaster had her cremated at some temple outside the city bounds and set in a stone without even her name on it, because that cost too much. No one had said a word about calling the vigiles — musette folk don’t invite the law into our lives. Last thing we wanted was the city thinking we were trouble, maybe blaming us for other crimes.

I couldn’t go home without knowing who had killed her and why.

I tried asking in the Forum if anyone knew of a Lord Saturn, but they laughed at me. Turned out there were no Lords in the city. A flower-seller took pity on me and said if he wasn’t a Baronne or a Comte or even a Duc, then he was spinning a yarn.

‘Some chancer with a bean crown making a fool of you,’ she said sympathetically, and gave me a cake because she thought I was some scraggy street-orphan who had need of feeding. The cake was dry, but I still remember the taste of it.

As I headed back, I caught sight of a trio of seigneurs laughing and gaming in a corner of the Forum, by the Basilica. I knew them. They weren’t dressed as fancy now, but they’d been in our audience on the eve of Saturnalia — the golden lady’s chorus boys.

I followed them. When they split up near the main road, I followed the one with red hair because he’d be easier to track in a crowd. That, and he wore a bright green cravat tied badly, like he didn’t know how. I’d spent enough time picking up pins for the wardrobe mistress that I could feel a bit superior. I could have done a better job of it.

Bad Cravat led me up and down the Lucretine before he turned and caught me, one hand grasping my collar like the stagemaster did. ‘What are you, little rat?’

I should have been scared, right? He was bigger than me, though no older than Matthias, barely old enough to play leading man. But I wasn’t scared, I was angry, and I fair spat the words at him: ‘I want to see Lord Saturn. Take me to Saturn.’

His eyes flickered a bit, looking me over. I still had posters tucked into my belt — I’d been gathering them so we could re-use the backs for the new performances.

‘You’re one of those theatre pups,’ he said quietly. ‘Cabaret of monsters, aye? You were the ferax.’

It was uncanny that he knew me from that one performance, and me in a sweaty leather mask.

‘Take me to Saturn,’ I said again, brash and far too confident.

‘Oh, you don’t want that. Run back to your theatre.’

He released my collar and turned to leave, but I grabbed onto his belt. ‘Did he set them animals on her? Were they his?’

Bad Cravat’s face was all pale, sort of sick-looking, as he looked me over again. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘They were hers. Scurry home, ratling.’

With that, he prised my fingers from him and walked away. I tried to follow him again, but he turned into an alley and when I caught up he had vanished, like a stage trick.

3

Saturn and Tasha

We stayed through Venturis and Lupercalia. Adriane had learnt from the best. Whenever the stagemaster made noise 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 birthday came and went, and I didn’t say a word about it to anyone. Madalena was 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, and half of those came back again, regretting it. There were always new demmes and coves 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 Ides of Saturnalis. A new revue for once, though the play was still saints-and-angel — we’d started a fashion there. Half the musettes in the Lucian put on similar shows. Adriane was pregnant and still pretending she wasn’t. The costumes were let out three times, and we 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.

I knew Aufleur pretty well by then. Pasting posters for a year will do that for you. I’d got better at tracking people without being spotted, too. I practiced being quick and quiet, waiting for my chance. This time, I was going to find out his secrets.

I followed him home.

I’d never been up on the Balisquine before, the hill where the Old 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, 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.

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. It was Bad Cravat, who still hadn’t learnt how to tie a piece of silk like a civilised person.

His suit was ill-fitting, and the wrong colour for his red hair. The wardrobe mistress would despair of him. He tried to speak like a seigneur, 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 directly 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. ‘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 the one just gone.’

She laughed then, throwing her head back. ‘You expect me to remember who I killed over a year ago?’

I was burning up all over. Madalena 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. 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-eyed 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 bright-skinned lad with curly blond 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 few 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 leaned into her, trusting her. There was something about her that reminded me of what it was like to have a mam, of how it felt to be loved.

Tasha embraced me lightly, as Madalena did 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.

Part II

A Surfeit of Kings

4

One day after the Ides of Bestialis

Daylight

Sunlight shone into