show, but I never thought …’ His voice went chill. ‘Dead, you say?’
‘Ripped apart,’ I said softly, not sure what to think. He sounded genuine but he’d always been an actor and a liar, hadn’t he? ‘By animals.’
Saturn looked sadly at me and finally I knew the thing I had been trying not to know for so long.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you home.’
I pulled on the shirt and ragged trews — Tasha had given them to me. Everything I had was hers, really. Even the little mug I drank my tea out of. I laced my boots.
‘Lord Saturn,’ said a voice at the doorway. ‘What are you doing?’
Garnet. It was Garnet, and my heart hurt to see him, because he’d always been my friend, more than the others.
‘I am taking this boy,’ said Saturn. ‘You won’t stop me, courteso. Your mistress has done badly by him — he should never have been brought here.’
‘You can’t just take him,’ Garnet snapped. ‘He’s ours now. He’s family.’
‘Yours?’ Saturn said in disbelief. ‘Will he still think so when I tell him what you did to his mother? All of you?’
I looked at Garnet then and saw it in his eyes. Gattopardo. Lynx. Lioness. Maybe even plain old house cats. ‘Madalena,’ I said softly.
‘I brought your company to Aufleur, to the Vittorina Royale, as a gift for Tasha,’ Saturn told me. ‘She has a liking for grandiose gestures, for elaborate gifts. It was a mistake. She is easily bored, and she was jealous of the actresses. I got so angry at her, after all the trouble I had gone to. We fought …’
‘She told you not to come back,’ Garnet drawled. His eyes looked sort of … dead. Cold. Different from how I was used to seeing him. ‘And you went straight out and consoled yourself by seducing the actress you had sworn to her you didn’t even fancy.’
‘I didn’t know she knew about that,’ sighed Saturn.
‘She always knows,’ Garnet hissed. ‘There are no secrets from Tasha. You know what she’s like. How could you do it?’
‘Am I really the one on trial here?’ Saturn flung back at him. ‘After what she did to that poor dame?’
‘You’re not taking him,’ Garnet said, resolute. ‘Poet is ours.’
Saturn got taller and wider and brighter all at once. He let out a cry like a dozen hawks, and then he held up one palm. Garnet fell as if struck in the chest.
‘When you are grown and a Lord, you may challenge me,’ said Saturn between clenched teeth.
He held his hand out to me and we left together.
He took me along the tunnel with the canal in it, past the cathedral and on into a large space like a dockyard, only with no ships in sight.
‘My Power!’ he called. ‘Majesty!’
A shadow fell over us. I looked up, to the balcony above, and saw a shape. At first I thought it was a monster, and then I thought it was a Camoiserian paper dragon, the kind that the dancers carried through the streets. It wasn’t any of those things. It was a snake, as thick as the canal itself, and it slid down the poles to the floor and slithered towards us. I was so scared I couldn’t do anything but clutch at Saturn’s coat.
The snake rolled itself into a coil and shaped itself into a man. He had a soft stomach and a bald head, and he gave me a look like he knew everything that I’d ever thought.
‘I didn’t realise you had a taste for children, Saturn.’ His tongue still had something of the snake to it, a thin lisp.
‘Tasha had him,’ Saturn said. ‘She brought him over as a courteso despite his age. She goes too far, Power. She will challenge you next.’
‘Not I,’ said the snake man, smiling. ‘You, perhaps. She is ambitious, but she knows her limits.’ He peered down at me and I got that feeling again, like something was poking around my insides. ‘I’m surprised the lad survived it. Are you well, boy?’
I resisted the urge to correct him, though I was not happy about being ‘Boy’ again. ‘I was sick, seigneur. I had a fever.’
‘She can’t be trusted,’ Saturn said. ‘She murdered this boy’s mother — a daylight dame — because I had a dalliance with her.’
‘Indeed?’ The snake man looked far from surprised. ‘That should teach you to keep your distance from the daylight, should it not?’
‘Majesty!’ shrieked a voice, and Tasha strode into the yard. ‘The