that, or just slip away?’ He must have given away his surprise in his face, because she laughed at him. ‘I’ve been at this almost as long as you, dearling. I won’t die in a cage.’
Velody was distracted with the wounded. She might not even notice they had gone, for a while. It wasn’t her that they would have to convince, in any case. Delphine stood with her back to the door, arms crossed and a defensive look on her face.
‘No,’ she said as Ashiol and Livilla sidled up to her. ‘I’m not opening it again. Everyone I love is in here and I won’t endanger them so you can pretend to die heroically.’
Ashiol had never liked her. ‘You’ll be rid of us, at least,’ he suggested.
Delphine gave him a dirty look. ‘Don’t think I’m not tempted. This is a new world order, Ashiol Xandelian, and I don’t give a flying frig how many titles you people make up for yourselves, or who is claiming to be Power and Majesty now or for eternity. I answer to Velody. Take it up with her.’
Ashiol opened his mouth to continue arguing, but a familiar cry from outside the door snapped him to attention. ‘There’s someone out there,’ he said.
Isangell sat on the floor of the kitchen beside the twisted form that the others insisted was Rhian. ‘The others’ included not only Kelpie and Delphine but the voices in Isangell’s head.
Ashiol was here and he was alive and she was damned if she was going to admit to him that he had the right of it — that she was part of this sorry mess of a Creature Court.
Is that what is going to happen to me? she asked the voices, looking down at Rhian. The former Seer was partly formed from marble and partly from granite, with plant roots twisted wetly around her limbs. Her face was barely recognisable as human.
Not at all, said the voice she had come to distinguish as belonging to Rhian.
But if I’m the new Seer …
You’re not.
Isangell blinked. But the voices, and the visions …
I lied to you. I’m sorry about that. It’s true that Heliora made the error, that the Court was calling you and not me to be the Seer. But once it came to me, there was no changing that. I am the last Seer of the Creature Court. But I am something else, as well, and the futures were getting in the way of that. I needed to get rid of being Seer for a while.
So you passed it on. Will I be stuck with it forever?
When the time is right, you can give it back. I’ll tell you when. And you’ll be free of it, Isangell. I promise.
The other voices were sounding fainter and fainter in the background of Isangell’s mind.
Don’t trust her, Heliora said suddenly. What she’s doing, it’s not right … But then her voice was overwhelmed by others, voices and visions, and try as hard as she could, Isangell could not hear Heliora again.
Velody could not heal Macready. He remained unconscious, and though she had stopped the bleeding everywhere she could, his left leg was still a mess.
The nest numbed more than her animor. The sounds of the storm were dampened in here. The mice were mostly quiet inside her. But if she concentrated, pushing her senses beyond the thick, blanketed walls of the nest, she could hear the screams of the city.
Quite clearly, a single voice cut through her like a knife. Time to pay back what you owe, little mouse.
Velody looked up and around.
Ashiol was shouting at Delphine, threatening her. ‘Open the door! Can’t you hear them? They’re right outside.’
Delphine shook her head resolutely. ‘We can’t risk everyone.’
Ashiol turned to Velody as if seeing her for the first time in hours. ‘You can hear it, can’t you? Poet is outside. Make this bitch let him in.’
Livilla gave a hollow laugh. ‘After all this time you expect us to believe you would risk everyone to save Poet?’
‘Garnet is with him,’ Velody said steadily, staring Ashiol down. ‘The sky infected him, you know that. For all we know, it’s taken Poet, too.’
‘Is that who you are now?’ Ashiol accused. ‘Saint Velody, who saved Poet from my claws, who saved Garnet after he was swallowed by the sky. Now you’ll let them burn?’
‘Would you risk everyone in this room to save them?’ Velody shot back, hating that she was on this side of the argument. She owed Garnet for saving