face. ‘Little bastards,’ he muttered. ‘Shade almost lost an eye.’
‘Maybe if you’d protected us lambs like you promised, we’d be on your side now,’ Topaz yelled to him. No point in being polite any more.
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ said Garnet, tending to Poet with a light cuff around the temples, then tugging him closer by his hair to examine the small wounds. ‘They’ll fall into line when their leader is sacrificed. The lake will run red with blood, and the lambs will either flee or serve me as they should serve the Power and Majesty.’
Topaz went very still. ‘You have Lord Livilla?’
‘You, Topaz,’ called out Freddy. ‘They want to sacrifice you! I told ’em we’d see ’em hanged first.’
Topaz shook her head quickly. ‘Get word to the others. They’re not to do anything foolish, not for me. Better you all run while you can.’
‘You show great confidence,’ said Garnet. ‘The boy will tell his friends nothing unless they join you both in custody.’
Topaz stared hard at Freddy and then pushed him with her … Livilla and Bree called it ‘animor’, though she thought of it as her fire. Freddy jolted as if he was about to throw up, then shaped himself into hundreds of tiny lizards. He skittered across the floor and was gone.
Poet and Garnet stared at Topaz in amazement.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Poet said.
‘I made him into a salamander,’ Topaz said boldly. ‘Sacrifice me all you like. Do it twice if you want to. I’m not the only one, you know. We can all do it. I taught them.’
Poet and Garnet exchanged hurried words. ‘I told you she was valuable,’ Poet urged. ‘She’s changing the way the Creature Court works.’
‘Too late for that,’ said Garnet. ‘Keep her unconscious until the ritual. The sky needs blood.’
‘Sacrifice,’ Livilla said bitterly. ‘So wrong. We don’t take part in rituals.’
Delphine stared at her in dislike. Why was this wretched woman even allowed in their house? ‘That’s just for the plebs and peasants of the daylight world, is it?’
‘Frankly, yes,’ sneered Livilla.
‘Bollocks,’ said Macready. ‘The Creature Court can’t scratch their backsides without some kind of fecking ritual. You just bite and kiss and flirt with each other instead of baking honey cakes and tearing the guts out of an animal.’
Delphine was silent. She didn’t need Macready’s help in this conversation, and the last thing she wanted was to feel grateful to him. He had been kissing Rhian. She didn’t want to think about that.
‘Our rituals aren’t empty,’ Livilla said sharply. ‘They’re to prove loyalty, to make our power stronger. Executing a barely blooded courtesa is beyond anything Ortheus would have done. Anything Garnet would have done before your Velody brought him back.’
‘Oh ho,’ said Macready with a laugh. ‘Her fault, is it? That he doesn’t fancy you any more?’
Livilla hissed between her teeth. Delphine felt her own cheeks colour, damn it. Was that it? She’d thought they’d ended what they had because they had nothing left to give each other; because she was a fucking failure as a nurturing demme-friend and he was a selfish wreck. Not because Macready liked someone else better.
Velody and Rhian returned from upstairs. Rhian was so pale you could almost see through her to the staircase beyond. How could Macready fancy her? She didn’t even know what to do with a man. Though that had been a lie. Anyone who could tumble with Ashiol Xandelian wasn’t a shrinking violet. What else was a lie? How long had this Macready and Rhian thing been going on?
‘Rhian doesn’t know where the sacrifice will take place,’ Velody said.
‘So what are we going to do?’ Crane asked.
Delphine made a rude noise. ‘How can she not know? She saw it, didn’t she?’
‘I’m right here,’ Rhian said mildly.
Delphine met her friend’s gaze, finally letting herself feel something. Anger. Resentment. ‘If you saw it, then you know where it happened.’
‘No. I’m sorry. It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Then, by all means, tell us how it does work.’
‘Delphine,’ Velody said firmly, ‘stop being such a bitch. We don’t have time for it.’
‘I saw Topaz’s body falling into water,’ said Rhian. ‘Believe me, I’ve tried to see it more clearly. But that’s all I know.’
‘The sluice,’ Kelpie said grimly. ‘In the Haymarket. It’s swallowed its share of dead bodies.’
‘The lake,’ Livilla suggested. ‘Garnet’s always had a thing about that lake.’
‘Come to that, there’s a whole fecking river wrapped around this city,’ Macready said. ‘We’ll have to split up.’
Delphine attempted to put the thought directly into Velody’s head that