Page 55 of The Devils

Before You Ask

‘The Imperial Bedchamber.’ Lady Severa swung open a magnificent pair of double doors. ‘As Pyrogennetos, this … was the place of Your Highness’s birth.’

‘So the Pope’s Oracles tell me,’ murmured Alex. ‘My own memory’s a little hazy …’ The cavernous room on the other side was where high-end brothel met cathedral to some evil god – all dark marble, gold leaf, and swags of silk the colour of a slit throat. Three great arched openings in the thick wall of the tower gave an almost impossible view of the western sky, clouds stained pink and gold by the setting sun.

Alex walked over, the breeze kissing her face, feeling a pleasant lurch in her stomach as the harbour came into view far below, ships drawing white letters across the dark page of the Aegean Sea. Almost made climbing all those steps worthwhile.

‘It’s quite a view.’ She turned back to consider the chamber. You couldn’t learn etiquette from Baron Rikard without developing some opinions on decor. ‘Though it does look a bit like the room where you’d bed a demon.’

‘Given Eudoxia’s reputation …’ Lady Severa considered the colossal bed. ‘Nothing would surprise me. I will give orders to render it less … diabolical.’ She snapped her fingers and sections of the panelling were swung open so sharply Alex flinched, ready to run for her life from some new monstrous legions.

Instead, four very unmonstrous young women glided through the doors, heads bowed. They might’ve been Alex’s age but came from a smoother-limbed and shinier-haired species. The one Lady Severa belonged to.

The rich.

From the range of skin tones, face shapes, and daunting jewellery, these four came from the rich in different corners of the Empire. None made any moves to attack. Unless you considered extreme demureness an assault. Which Alex did, a bit.

‘These are your handmaidens,’ said Lady Severa. ‘Athenais, Cleofa, Zenonis, and Placidia. All selected from unimpeachable families.’

‘Right.’ Until Alex ran into Duke Michael while being beaten for small change in a fish market, the closest she’d come to family was a back-alley fence and her battalion of child pickpockets. ‘Wouldn’t want anyone impeachable near the throne …’

‘If they displease you there is no shortage of other candidates—’

‘No!’ Severa’s tone was so careless Alex had a worry she might backhand any rejects out of the window and more than likely have their replacements in post before they hit the sea. ‘You all seem lovely.’ Not to mention tall. ‘I’m sure you’d make … much better … princesses than me …’ And she petered out into awkward silence.

‘Then, ladies, consider this a probationary period. You have seven days to make yourself indispensable to Her Highness.’ The girls bowed even lower, chins to throats, falling in behind Severa as she led Alex on the lengthy voyage across the room, further chambers glimpsed beyond open doors, dizzying hints of tapestries and paintings, pottery and plate, stained glass and candles.

‘I’ve got a chapel?’ she asked.

‘Previous rulers had their own chaplain, too. A spiritual advisor and confessor. But that particular post has sat empty. Empress Eudoxia was … not the most devout of rulers. This chamber was more to her taste.’

Alex peered into a room three times the size of the one she’d once shared with seven other thieves, dominated by a giant bronze bath.

‘I took the liberty of having water brought up in anticipation of your arrival. I thought Your Highness might want to bathe after your journey.’

‘Oh God,’ whispered Alex, and for once in a good way. Steam rose from it, and flower petals floated on it, and some sort of oil was in it that was sweet on her tongue and peppery in her nose so her mouth watered and she wanted to sneeze together. ‘Can you read my mind?’

‘It is my responsibility not only to provide you with what you ask for, but to know what you want before you ask.’

The handmaidens closed in around Alex, their hands on her but not quite on her, undoing the fastenings of the dress Baptiste had spent all morning fastening her into.

‘Oh, you’re just …’ She’d been feeling way out of her depth, so the very thing she needed was to be stripped naked by four strangers. ‘Getting right in there …’

‘You will never have to undo another button, Your Highness,’ said Cleofa, or maybe Placidia.

‘That’s a relief. Buttons … have really been … my worst problem up to now.’ Alex awkwardly cleared her throat. She felt like a ferret being waited on by leopards. ‘You’re all so … long .’

‘Empress Eudoxia was shorter than you,’ said Lady Severa.

‘She was?’

‘And had a withered left leg and had to walk with a stick for much of her life, and no one took her lightly, believe me. She was the terror of an Empire.’

‘I don’t need to be a terror.’ Alex felt weird and bony and scarred, covered in the marks of a shit life full of losing battles, fought viciously over tiny stakes. The toes on her left foot were all crooked where a wagon ran over them. She had to stop herself sliding the other foot over the top to hide them. ‘I’d settle for not being a joke.’

‘No one here is laughing, Your Highness—’

There was a noisy clatter as one of the girls draped Alex’s dress over her arm and the dagger she’d stolen from a brained soldier in a burning town dropped out and bounced across the marble floor to lie at Lady Severa’s feet.

‘Ah.’ Alex winced. ‘Forgot that was in there.’

Severa took the battered pommel between finger and thumb and stood with it dangling, the way one might pick up a dead rat by the tail.

‘A sensible precaution.’ She flipped the dagger in her fingers and slid it up her sleeve with a skill that implied it wasn’t her first time. ‘But if Your Highness has no objection I will find her a blade that better suits the imperial aesthetic.’

Alex cleared her throat. ‘No objection.’

She gasped as she sank into the bath, the heat making her clench up, then gradually go soft to the tips of her fingers. Someone began combing her hair. Someone scrubbed at her blistered heels. Someone picked the dirt from under her fingernails. She’d barely ever picked her own fingernails, let alone had someone else do it for her.

She caught a glint at the corner of her eye, turned her head to see the girl with the comb had silently produced a knife of her own, its edge gleaming with the sunset.

‘ Fuck! ’ Alex floundered up with a stab of terror, spraying water.

The girl gaped, knife trembling in her hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Your Highness … I was only cutting out a tangle. I never meant …’ Her lip wobbled and tears started leaking down her cheeks.

‘Oh God. Oh shit.’ Alex stood, dripping naked, a few sad petals stuck to her, fragrant water sloshing around her knees, both fists clenched like a prizefighter willing to take on all comers. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Your Highness need never apologise.’ Lady Severa stepped calmly forwards. ‘Duke Michael has told me everything.’

Alex swallowed. ‘Everything?’

‘Enough.’ She offered her hand. ‘To know that you have braved a terrible ordeal.’ Alex took it, so cool, so effortlessly assured, just touching it made her feel stronger. ‘But that is behind you now.’ Lady Severa helped her from the bath. ‘Like our blessed Saint Natalia, you have passed through the fire unscathed.’

‘I sometimes feel … a bit scathed.’

‘Singed but alive, then.’ She kept her eyes on Alex’s while beckoning gently to the others. ‘You have in this room five servants who would give their lives for you.’

Alex blinked at the girls as they closed in around her, each with a sheet. ‘Not sure I’ve earned your loyalty—’

‘You have it already.’ They began to dry her, with gentle rubs, from every side, neither quite looking at her nor looking away, as if they were artists at work on a statue. ‘If you wish, you can earn it later.’

‘From what I’ve seen, that’s not really how it works—’

‘For Empresses, that is how it works.’ Two of the girls had split her hair between them, each drying one side. ‘Below you in the palace, throughout the towers and gardens on the Pillar, are hundreds of guardsmen sworn to protect you.’

‘Hundreds? What are they expecting to protect me from?’

‘Expecting? Nothing. Prepared for? Anything.’ Lady Severa shrugged, and one couldn’t but be fascinated by the way the hollows around her collarbones shifted. ‘You are safe.’

Alex took a shuddering breath. ‘I’m safe.’ Her heart didn’t quite believe it yet, still hammering in her ears. She’d been clinging on so long, like a rider on a runaway horse. The girls swished around her. That blade darted in and snicked away the tangle almost without her noticing.

‘I’m safe,’ she whispered. One of the girls flicked her with wonderful-smelling water from a thing like a little silver mace, another blew glittering dust on her from a tiny bellows.

‘I’m safe,’ she mouthed. Her skin buzzed pleasantly, raw and softened at once, and she began to wonder, the lightest tickle at the back of her mind … whether it might be true.

One of the girls wrapped her in a robe, so soft, while another reached to drain the bath.

‘Leave it,’ said Alex, ‘please. I might soak my feet later.’

‘Of course.’ Severa snapped her fingers again. ‘Now I expect Her Highness would like some time alone.’

Without turning their backs on her, the handmaidens somehow managed to shuffle from the room. Lady Severa paused in the entrance, one hand on each door so she looked like a priest, arms spread in benediction.

Baron Rikard would likely have rolled his eyes in despair at the day’s performance, but Alex tried at least to finish well. ‘Your ministrations have been beyond reproach.’

‘We are at your disposal if there is anything you need.’ And Lady Severa swung the doors shut with the click of a smoothly oiled latch.

Alex took a deep breath, and let it hiss slowly away. ‘I’m safe.’

She walked to the window. In fact, she allowed herself a bit of a strut. Felt good to walk like Alex again instead of Princess Alexia, even if it was only for a moment. She plucked some grapes from a dish on the way. God, they were sweet, she closed her eyes as she burst them against her palate one by one, then looked out towards the sinking sun. The sounds of the city floated up, faint. The tiny ships swept across the harbour, the even tinier people swarmed on the docks. It was easier to think of ruling it all from so high up that it looked like a toy city, filled with toy people.

She felt the slightest prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck and smiled.

‘You can come out now,’ she said.

And just like that, Sunny was leaning against the window beside her, letting her breath go in a long sigh. She pushed back her hood and scrubbed her white hair with her fingers. ‘Thought they’d never leave.’

‘Wasn’t it awful? I despise being waited on hand and foot, but it makes the little people feel needed, so I suffer it for their sake.’

‘Saint Alexia, so modest and so generous.’

‘They should give me my own chapel! Oh look, they did.’

‘Bit small,’ said Sunny, swaggering over to peer through the chapel’s doorway. ‘You couldn’t fit more than thirty in here.’

‘But if we run out of room,’ said Alex, leading her on across the wide expanse of floor, ‘there’s space for another thirty in the bath.’ And she waved towards it. ‘I kept it full for you.’

Sunny slipped past, leaned down to sniff the water. ‘So I get to soak in your dirt?’

‘Oh … I can get them to—’

Sunny raised one white brow.

Alex sighed. ‘I still can’t tell when you’re joking.’

Sunny was where demureness went to die. She shed her clothes like a child on a summer riverbank, spent a minute hopping around trying to drag one sock off, skinny as a pale stick. Alex stood in the doorway and watched her. Couldn’t stop thinking how strange and fine it was that she got to do it.

‘Thought you were going to punch that girl with the knife.’ Sunny finally hauled the sock off, tossed it over her shoulder, and poked one long toe into the water.

‘I reckon I could’ve taken her,’ said Alex.

‘Never doubted it. She had the reach but you’re vicious when cornered.’ And Sunny slipped into the water, barely even making a ripple. ‘Oh.’ She closed her eyes as she sank up to her chin. ‘Oh God.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, I’ve got mixed feelings on God, and he fucking hates me, but oh God.’ Sunny slid slowly under the water, white hair floating on the surface with the flower petals long enough for Alex to get a bit worried, then she burst up and spat out a fountain with a long farting noise. With her hair stuck wet to her skull Alex could see the pointed tip of one ear, the obvious lack of the other. She perched on the side of the bath, reached out to comb Sunny’s hair back with her fingers. Couldn’t stop thinking how strange and fine it was that she got to do it.

‘That Lady Severa …’ Sunny puffed out her cheeks.

‘I know.’ Alex gave a faraway sigh. ‘Everyone should have one.’

‘Not sure everyone can afford one. She looks expensive .’

‘I could call her.’ Alex let one hand trail in the water, fingertips not quite deep enough to touch Sunny’s skin. But almost. ‘Get her to scrub your back.’

‘I’ve a feeling elves are even less popular here than in the Holy City, what with the invasions and the massacres and the crusades and the eating people. Finding one in your bath might give her a shock.’

‘I don’t know, she seems hard to rattle.’

‘And I doubt I’m the strangest thing …’ Sunny caught the front of Alex’s robe with both hands, knuckles brushing her chest. ‘That’s been found naked …’ Tipping her face up towards Alex as she pulled her down, their lips almost touching. ‘In these rooms …’ And Alex smiled a little, breath coming fast, thinking how strange and fine—

Sunny yanked on her robe and Alex toppled face first into the water. She surfaced on her knees and shook herself, and scraped the wet hair out of her eyes. ‘They’ll have to comb me again now.’

Sunny had the tip of her tongue pressed into that gap between her teeth. ‘It’ll make the little people feel needed.’

Alex looked down at her soaked robe and, on some old instinct, wondered what Gal the Purse would’ve valued it at. Then she realised she could snap her fingers and get a dozen more. She peeled it off and tossed it onto the floor with a wet flap.

‘Do you know …’ said Sunny, as Alex slipped one leg over her, slithered into the bath on top of her, skin against slippery skin. ‘That’s just what I was hoping you’d do.’

‘Well …’ Alex leaned down over her and gently kissed her top lip. ‘It’s my responsibility not only to provide you with what you ask for …’

She gently kissed her bottom lip. ‘But to know what you want …’

She pushed her fingers into Sunny’s wet hair, pulled her close. ‘Before you ask …’