Reign of Beasts (Creature Court) - By Tansy Rayner Roberts Page 0,24

and nibbling at the stage machinery, while the stagemaster howled and yelled until he turned into a giant bear or a walrus or something.

Definitely a walrus.

‘You’re not sick,’ said Garnet. ‘I mean, not really. Once your body adjusts, you’ll be fine.’

I tugged more firmly on Lysandor’s ears. ‘You’re saying this is normal? It’s not going to go away?’

The two lads looked at each other, and I knew the truth. This was it. Forever. I was never going back to the Vittorina Royale.

White rats.

9

It was a while before I found out about the rest of it. Tasha was keeping me hidden, I figured that out pretty fast. The lads — the cubs, she called them — were always getting summoned away for one thing or another. I wasn’t allowed outside the den. It was a stone building, like one of the sea cottages back home, but always dark unless there were oil lamps burning.

If I asked too many questions, Tasha would leave me without a lamp. I never minded, though. Maybe it was the rat in me, or maybe it was just all those years climbing around backstage, but I had pretty good vision in darkness. Sometimes, when they were gone and I was feeling itchy-footed, I’d go exploring. There were tunnels all around us, but most of them led nowhere, or to ruined buildings and rockfalls. Once I found my way into a massive tunnel with a canal running through it, and followed it far enough to see a cathedral as fancy as any theatre. I knew I was underground by then. I just didn’t know why.

Then one nox — Tasha and the cubs said ‘nox’ when they were awake and ‘daylight’ when they wanted to sleep, though I could never figure out how they could tell the difference — Lord Saturn found me.

I felt him coming before I heard him. I’d started doing that with Tasha and the cubs — like an early warning system that let me scamper back to the den and act like I’d never been anywhere. This was different, I knew. It was like something crawling over my skin.

He stepped into the den, all tricked out in his fancy top hat and morning coat, and stared at me. I tried to hide, but he lashed out his hand, pulling me out from behind our little stove. Madalena’s murderer.

‘My word,’ he said, staring at my dirty face. ‘I know you. You’re the theatre boy.’

‘Poet,’ I said sullenly. ‘My name’s Poet.’

‘I don’t care what she named you, wretch, what are you doing here?’ He stared into my face as if trying to see some great truth.

There was a knife near the stove — Lysandor had been slicing bread before Tasha got the call and went swooping out with the cubs in her wake. I didn’t even think. Everything came rushing back, all my old anger, and I seized the hilt and drove the blade hard into the man’s chest.

That was it, then. I was a killer now.

Saturn looked confused rather than angry or hurt. He reached down and prised my fingers from the hilt, then drew out the knife and flung it hard against the nearest wall. There was no blood. What was he?

He stared hard at me, and it was as if he had a hand inside me, fingers prodding at my bones, squeezing my heart so hard I couldn’t breathe.

‘Stop it!’ I yelled, and did the only thing I knew how to do when cornered. I exploded into white rats.

It was a mistake, because he was hawks, and they had the better of me. When he changed, too, I panicked, scurrying and cringing, and those beaks came down, terrorising me back into my human form, skinny and shuddering.

There was a long pause, in which I heard the rustling of clothing, and then Saturn wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. ‘Tasha,’ he said in a disgusted voice. ‘She should never have done this to you, boy.’

‘I didn’t have nowhere to go,’ I snivelled. ‘Not after what you did to my …’ But there was no word for what she was to me. ‘Madalena!’

‘Madalena?’ he said, and I hated him for the lack of recognition in his voice. ‘The actress?’

‘She wasn’t no mask,’ I said scornfully. ‘She was the stellar. Our stellar. She looked after me. You made her play the Angel in our revue. And you killed her.’

‘Killed her? She went back to that little town, didn’t she? I saw she was no longer in the