Maledicte (26 page)

The slam of the trunk hitting the exposed floorboards jarred him from his thoughts.

“There,” Janus said, hefting the body up across his shoulders with deceptive ease. “Not a leak to be sprung.” He forced the body into the trunk and snapped the lid closed. Bending, he picked up the trunk itself and carried it out toward the carriage house.

Gilly scrubbed at the carpet; the wet cloth, pink-tinged now, shredded.

“Gilly, it’s enough,” Maledicte said, kneeling beside him.

“I just don’t want to be able to see the stain.”

“A new rug is in order,” Maledicte said. “I find I no longer like the looks of it myself. But it could have been Janus’s blood spilled there, or yours, or mine. The fact that he underestimated me made him no less of a danger. I acted as I had to. Forgive me for involving you?”

Wadding up the cloth in his hands, Gilly nodded.

“Will you do one thing more for me tonight?”

“Yes,” Gilly said, hearing Lizette in his mind—
why love him?
—and he could not answer it now either, sick to his stomach and frightened, yet he met Maledicte’s dark eyes, and the tallies began: freedom, friendship, money, and the strange workings that created desire where there should be none.

“Three deaths to my hand now, and I am no closer to killing the earl of Last than I was three years ago,” Maledicte said, quietly. “But I tell you, Gilly, no matter the outcome of this marriage, I will have Last dead within the cold season. But I must have my chance at him; Janus feels there is another danger. Will you go with him tonight? Aid him as you can?”

Maledicte’s eyes were glossy; Gilly could not tell if they were wet with unshed tears, or with anticipation. But, bloody rags in hand, he swore again to aid Maledicte.

G
ILLY LOOKED OVER HIS SHOULDER,
eliciting an exasperated sigh from Janus. “What are you expecting to see? The solicitor climbing free from the trunk? You’ll have us off the road.”

“Why did we bring it along?” Gilly said.

“Do you think Mal wanted it underfoot?” Janus said. “We’ll start with the docks. I wager Roach has his roots there. When I saw him, he was cleaning salt from his clothes. He’s a skinny thing and dark, taller than Mal, but not nearly so pretty.”

“I met a boy with that name some months ago,” Gilly said. “A would-be thief working in a tavern called the Horned Bull.”

Janus’s hands tensed so tightly around the edge of the seat that they seemed carved of alabaster. “You spoke to him?” His voice, as quietly knotted as his hands, made Gilly nervous.

“Not much,” Gilly said, trying to make that unaccountable anger disappear, feeling out his words in increments of Janus’s stiffening or loosening hands. “He offered to housebreak at DeGuerre’s for a fee. I turned him down.”

“Nothing else?”

“He mentioned you. Said you taught him to read. He doesn’t like you. Said you’d killed his girl. How are you going to get him to come to you?” Gilly said, clopping his tongue at the horses as they shied from a drunk staggering down the cobblestone streets.

Janus sighed. “He’s greedy and lazy and undoubtedly in need of coin. I expect he’s whoring somewhere, passing time and waiting for the solicitor to return.”

“You think him a whore?” Gilly could not reconcile the feral, defiant boy in the street outside the tavern with a pliant whore. “He seemed too thin for that.”

“They’re not all like your pretty one,” Janus said, “put in gilded rooms where they eat sweets and wait for their men. The Relict whores are so different you might not even recognize them as human. They’re not.” The bitter edge to Janus’s voice kept Gilly silent.

“Mal fell ill once when we were children; I thought he would die. He couldn’t stop coughing and shivered so violently that I could barely hold him. Ella dosed him with enough Laudable to damn near drown him because his moaning and shaking was scaring away her customers, who couldn’t tell Relict fever from plague. I spent the night with him in my arms, curled beneath the bed, wondering if he was going to wake, and Ella spent the night fucking above us. One sailor after another. That was before she realized Mal was going to be beautiful. Then she cared. But I cared first, and Mal is mine.”

The whole speech was a near rasp, so choked with rage that Gilly felt it was Maledicte telling him this slice of nightmare. He drove on wordlessly; he barely knew how to soothe Maledicte; Janus was a mystery still.

Beside him, Janus’s ragged breathing steadied, but he didn’t speak again until they were at the Horned Bull. “Go see if Roach still works there.”

Gilly clambered off the bench and went inside. He nodded at the taverner and slipped into the kitchens.

“What do you want?” A heavyset woman looked up from the hearth where she was stirring a fish stew so old and salty Gilly could smell it across the room.

“Looking for Roach,” Gilly said.

“He don’t work here anymore. Not that he ever did more than rob our customers when they got too castaway to notice. Lift your purse, did he?”

“Something like that,” Gilly said.

“Try down by the cheap brothels. He’s like to be trying his hand at robbing drunken sailors. Sooner or later, he’ll try the wrong man, get hisself killed. If Echo’s Particulars don’t catch him first. Stupid rat.”

Gilly nodded his thanks, and continued out the back door, circling around the building, checking the shadows. A black-haired young man in cheap clothing stepped out of an expensive carriage, drawing Gilly’s attention. The boy tossed a luna from palm to palm, and blew a kiss after the retreating coach. “Mal—” Gilly breathed, but even as he did so, he realized his error. The boy vamped at him, all painted lips and eyes, and headed into the tavern.

“Another Itarusine sailor’s get, I’d imagine,” Janus said, his voice velvet and sudden in Gilly’s ear. “But a startling resemblance, nonetheless.”

Gilly jumped. “Yes,” he said.

Janus flashed a quick, malicious smile. “Though if I were you, I’d not tell Mal you mistook a rented boy for him.”

“I’m not a fool,” Gilly said.

Janus raised a brow. “What did they say, within?”

“That he had turned to robbing brothel customers.” He climbed up onto the bench. Janus joined him and took up the reins.

“I bet he’s not even stripping them of their boots,” Janus said, urging the horses into a bone-jarring trot across the cobbles. “Let’s finish this and go home. I shudder to think what Maledicte has done to the house this time.”

“He has no regrets over the solicitor’s death, and he’s past the worst part of accepting your marriage. What is there to upset him?”

“With Maledicte, sometimes I think it’s the shifting of the wind.”

Gilly turned his head as they came onto Sybarite Street, smiled at the sight of the familiar door painted with the sailing ship.

“Thinking of your girl?” Janus said. “What’s her name?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gilly said, leery of Janus’s interest.

Janus drove, avoiding the whores advertising in the street, avoiding the clusters of young men daring each other to bravery in the fields of love, the hired whisperers who haunted the street, murmuring of places where one could go to buy smuggled Itarusine whiskey or other illicit imports, and as the street grew darker and less well-kept, avoiding the rubble they could barely see. “Gilly, get down. Look for him. If you find him, don’t waste time chatting, but bring him back. I’d do it, but I think you would not like being left with the trunk.”

“No,” Gilly agreed, dropping from the side of the carriage, and wandering into the dark alone, hunting for a half-remembered pickpocket. Abstraction lent an air of drunkenness he hadn’t intended, and the first he knew of Roach’s presence was the skinny wrist reaching for his purse, even as the stick missed Gilly’s head entirely. “Stop that,” Gilly said, grabbing the stick, the thin-boned wrist with practiced quickness.

“I remember you. What do you want?” Roach rubbed his wrist ruefully. “Caught me just as quick this time.”

“Information. I’ll pay,” Gilly said. He closed his fist, opened it, and a silver luna caught the light, a strayed bit of starshine.

“All right then,” Roach said, snatching the coin. “What do you want to know?”

“Not me, a friend. He’s a poet, wants to write verses about the Relicts, wants it to be romantic.” Gilly was surprised he even bothered to lie. The hunger in Roach’s eyes, the lack of caution, spoke volumes. Roach didn’t care for anything but the sight of silver.

“Verses about the Relicts? Is he touched?” Roach frowned. “Going to write about rats and boots and fever, is he?”

“No, he’s another one who wants to write about Black-Winged Ani bringing down the Relicts for love,” Gilly said, thinking he had been too long exposed to the court, finding it all too easy to envision his imaginary poet. He took Roach’s arm in his hand.

“How much is he gonna pay?” Roach said.

“He’s a poet without a patron. Not much. Maybe two lunas.” More and even Roach might find suspicion, but Gilly had given him coin before, easy earnings, and this looked the same.

“Can’t take too long. I’m meeting someone,” Roach said, even as he followed in Gilly’s wake.

“Ain’t that a fancy rig?” Roach said as they approached the carriage. “And your man ain’t got more coins than that?”

“Paper’s expensive, as are quills,” Gilly said.

“I bet they are,” Roach said, turning over new thoughts. “Where’s your fancy man?”

“He was here,” Gilly said.

The reins were weighted with a cobble; the carriage door hung off the latch. Gilly wondered what had happened, a soundless struggle? Or had Janus simply grown bored with waiting?

Roach opened the carriage door and peered inside. “Ain’t that fine.”

Gilly picked up the reins and looked up to see Janus come out of a shadow, the knife aimed for Roach’s nape. Gilly gasped, but Roach was already crumpling forward. Janus bent in the same quick economy of motion and shoved the body into the carriage, closing the door.

“Don’t gape, get on the bench, and let’s go.” Janus swung himself up, setting the carriage to rocking, and held down his hand. “Gilly! Let’s not attract more notice than the carriage will have already. Get up, or I leave you here.”

Gilly saw the temper flaring in Janus’s pinched nostrils, in the swelling blueness of his eyes, but he could not respond. He remembered Roach’s desperate insouciance, the thinness of his arm beneath his hand, and his awe of the carriage, all snuffed out in one moment.

Janus snapped the reins and turned the carriage. “Last chance, Gilly. There is still some night left and I don’t mean to spend it haranguing you when I could spend it in Mal’s arms. No? Fine.” The carriage wheels spattered loose bits of sand and gravel over Gilly’s boots. He watched it go, and only then started the long walk home.

It was nearer dawn than midnight when he opened the doors and crept through dark halls. As he approached the stairs, a light flared and smoked, setting shadows to dancing in the narrow stairwell. “Do you realize you always use the servants’ stairs when you’re upset?”

Maledicte was still dressed as he had been for dinner; dark splotches remained where the blood stained his cuffs.

“Did you know he was going to kill him when you sent me?” Gilly asked. His voice shook. He took a seat on the riser below Maledicte when the tremble in his voice reached his legs.

“Yes,” Maledicte said, looking away.

“Why?” Gilly cried. “He was just a boy. The solicitor I understand, Kritos, even Vornatti, but this boy…”

“He knew things Janus thought best left unsaid, a gossip as deadly as Mirabile,” Maledicte said, setting the lamp on the stairs above his head, haloing them both.

Maledicte’s voice was all Gilly heard. He refused to look at him, not wanting to be distracted by the dark eyes, by the lush mouth, by his own desire. “You killed the solicitor. Who else would think to talk to a rat? Why not pay him to go away? Or send him to the sea as aristocrats have done as long as there have been sailing vessels and inconvenient people—” Gilly’s voice broke.

The lamp flared and popped as impurities in the oil burned, and in the silence after those small explosions, Maledicte said, “There was more to it, Gilly. I was scared, and Janus was so sure. But he never liked Roach. Not ever.” Maledicte let his breath out in a shivering gust, as if he had caught Gilly’s quaking.

“Don’t ever send me out again to lure someone to their death,” Gilly said. “I cannot do that. I will aid you in any other capacity I can. But please, Mal—don’t make me kill for you.”

“Hush.” Maledicte drew Gilly’s head into his lap, stroked back the fair hair, streaked damp with night fogs. “I promise. Never again. Not ever. I’m so sorry, Gilly. So sorry.”

He smoothed the pale hair, spreading it over his lap like a gilt mesh, until Gilly’s trembling ceased, and the lamp was beginning to gutter, unaware of Janus standing at the top of the staircase.

· 23 ·

A
RIS PAUSED IN THE FOYER
of the Westfall city estate and watched Westfall’s face, never as restrained as the other nobility, reveal his surprise as Aris nodded and moved on, dog and guards in tow. Aris smiled; he was surprised himself. Westfall’s periodic afternoon parties were really no such thing. If the attendees found amusements, it was through avoiding Westfall, who used the occasions to argue his interest in the equality of the classes, his remarkable engines, and the future world to come.

“Sire,” Lord Echo said, stepping alongside him. “I didn’t think to see you here.”

“I’m sure that will be a sentiment I hear frequently this afternoon. And I’m equally sure that Westfall’s cause will draw new interest. I do like to keep my counselors content,” Aris said, and while true, it was far from the entirety of the truth: He had attended for one reason only.

“Thus you attend an affair you have little interest in,” Echo said, with the ease of long acquaintance.

“It’s the industrial aspect that flummoxes me, Dominick,” Aris said. “How Adam thinks that machines that increase the rate of production will aid us when the problem remains the same—that our profits are not our own. I see little reason to benefit Itarus.”

“Eventually the terms of surrender will end, our concessions fulfilled,” Echo said.

“And in the meantime, Westfall’s engines will replace the working poor.” Aris shook his head. “What both you and Westfall forget is that a country is not built on machines, but its people. All of them.”

“The poor are—”

Aris put a hand up, halting Echo. “If you’ll excuse me, I came here to appease Adam, not listen to his ideas. And I think you spend too much time among the sordid types of our city. It makes you bitter, unable to see that good exists on all levels. My offer still stands. Join my Kingsguard and I’ll see you at its head.”

“Your Kingsguard, sire, is not a thinking thing, but an army. I prefer to solve problems.”

“As you will, then,” Aris said. When Echo would have followed, Aris shook his head, and Echo dropped back. Aris moved on, unimpeded, as the small crowd bowed before him. So many familiar faces turned toward him, and yet the one he wished to see eluded him. He frowned at the sight of Mirabile whispering into Brierly’s ear, wondering what poison the woman cared to spread now, and if her presence meant Maledicte’s absence. Aris tapped his fingers impatiently against his thigh, and Bane trotted forward to pant heavily by his side.

Aris slipped into the cool hallways, still seeking. He had expected to see more of Maledicte, now that the young man held the ledgers over his head. Until Janus had left Murne with Amarantha Lovesy, Aris had expected Maledicte to use the ledgers to derail Aris’s requirement that Janus wed. Perhaps Maledicte had been in earnest after all, when he claimed he had no intentions of using the ledgers against Aris. Aris wanted badly to believe that, and not simply for the safety of Antyre.

He finally found Maledicte studying a portrait of a fair-haired woman in Westfall’s family gallery. Maledicte frowned and spoke quietly to his servant.

“Lady Rosamunde, Celia Rosamunde’s mother, and Janus’s grandmother. I believe she was a distant cousin of the Westfalls.” The servant’s words came clear as Aris approached.

Maledicte seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words, lips parting. He touched the painting. “Celia looks much like her.”

“The whole point of aristocratic breeding,” the servant said. “Put a stamp of heredity on the children’s faces, even if it requires inbreeding and creates idiots.”

The guard coughed, and the servant turned, paling. He dropped to his knee. Maledicte’s smile faded, his eyes growing wary. He put a hand on his servant’s shoulder.

“You may rise,” Aris said. “Your sentiments are not new, I assure you. If I spent all my time punishing them, I’d have no time left to rule.”

The servant nodded and stood, uncertain.

“You may leave us,” Aris said. The servant glanced at Maledicte for permission, caught himself, and bowed again before leaving.

Maledicte shook his head. “He’ll be fretted for weeks about that. It’s my fault entirely. I’ve allowed him to be as free with his thoughts as he likes.”

“It’s not his thoughts that will see him in trouble,” Aris said, “but his tongue.”

“Still—it’s pleasant to have an honest opinion,” Maledicte said. “Rare and pleasant.” He turned back to the wall of portraits.

“Yes,” Aris said, nearly a whisper, startled again at the warmth he felt near this lad. He cleared his throat. “I have to admit to some surprise at finding you here. Adam’s afternoon entertainments are known to be deadly bores.”

“Then why do you attend?” Maledicte asked, frowning at another painting of a corpulent gentleman in furs.

“I asked for the attendee list,” Aris said. “Once I saw that you meant to attend—” Pleased, he watched a fragile blush touch Maledicte’s cheek.

“Oh, and what have I to say that lures you to brave such dullness as egalitarianism and economics?” Maledicte asked, his tone a little stiff.

Aris caught Maledicte’s quick glance at the guard and changed the subject. “I thought you might tell me how goes Janus’s courting? Michel knows nothing. And Amarantha—”

“You ask me that?” Maledicte said, his voice dropping to an offended hush. “Do you think Janus pauses in his wooing to send me accounts of it?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Aris said, his own temper sparking. “Janus has sent no word. To be honest, I had not expected such a political choice of wife from him. I thought him unconcerned with court ways and yet…Amarantha is a difficult woman at best.”

“But very beautiful,” Maledicte said, his tone still distant. “And perhaps he thought the choice would be pleasing to you. A counselor’s daughter.”

“You hold his wooing her against me,” Aris said. The weight of his distress startled him. But what had he expected?

“We all do what we must,” Maledicte said, and to Aris, the quiet weariness in his voice sounded like forgiveness.

“Still, I hate to think I played a part in making you unhappy. Were it in my power—I’d grant your wishes.” Daring, he stroked the soft curls clustered at Maledicte’s nape.

“I don’t believe you would,” Maledicte said, lips curling into a slow smile.

“No?” Aris said. “Won’t you tell me what drives you? What brought you to my court?”

Maledicte looked up through dark lashes, his eyes merciless. “Janus.”

“Just that,” Aris sighed. He took a step back. “Is it true what the gossips say? That you knew him before? That you were—”

“A Relict rat?” Maledicte finished. “I fear my secrets are no secrets at all. But I’d rather not discuss that, if you’ll indulge this wish. The past is past, Aris.”

“No,” Aris said. “It’s never past. Not when everything reminds you of what you’ve done or lost.” He cupped Maledicte’s chin, brushed his thumb over the soft lips, and watched the dark eyes shade yet darker. “Was I wrong?” he whispered. “To surrender Xipos to Itarus, to barter our future away for our present?”

Maledicte laughed. “You ask me? The war was before my time, sire.”

That young?
Aris thought, finding it a strange relief that here was one person who could not force him to relive the pains of his past. He drew closer.

Maledicte’s eyes flickered over Aris’s shoulder.

“He’s only my guard,” Aris said. “He doesn’t matter.”

Maledicte slipped from his grasp. “Aris—how can you say that here? In Westfall’s home, where all men are equal?” The mockery seemed evenly apportioned between Westfall’s follies and Aris’s own.

A sudden shout tore the quiet, and the mutter of voices in the next rooms rose.

The guard swore; the mastiff lunged to attention, pushing between Aris and Maledicte, growling. His hackles bristled.

“Find out,” Aris said, resting a hand on Bane’s withers. “I’m safe enough.”

Another mocking smile bloomed in response. “Do you think your counselors, your
brother
would agree to that? Alone with me—and safe?”

“Why must it matter so much what they think?” Aris said, answering the tone and not the words. He felt suffocated.

“Because, sire,” Maledicte said, “you belong to them, not they to you.”

Aris knew the truth of that by the weight it left on his heart.

“Do you still think my company safe?” Maledicte asked, reaching out. He laid his hand over the king’s. Bane’s growling ceased.

Aris couldn’t tell if it were his hand trembling or the hound beneath it. “Safe enough,” Aris whispered. He leaned forward to taste Maledicte’s lips, to see if they were as sweet as they looked, or as bitter as the words he spoke.

“Nothing of importance, sire,” the guard said, returning. Maledicte stepped away. “Lady Mirabile’s hem was torn by a servant. Done deliberately, she swore. Your brother is taking the whip to him now.”

“That temper of his,” Aris said, shaking his head. “Find out whose servant I will need to replace.”

“It’s yours, Maledicte.” The guard acknowledged Maledicte’s presence for the first time.

Rage washed Maledicte’s face, transforming it so utterly that Aris froze and Bane keened uncertainly. Courtier or not, Maledicte ran from the room like an arrow in flight. “Go!” Aris said to the guard, but to protect Maledicte from Michel or the reverse, he didn’t know. Hand wrapped around Bane’s collar, he followed more discreetly.

The green lines of the garden maze were marred with the violence. Westfall dithered, plucking at Last’s sleeve, while Last worked the whip back into his palm. Beside him, Mirabile watched, a tiny smile on her lips.

The servant knelt, half-fallen, pressed back against the hedge, his shirt torn and the skin beneath bloody. He put his hand to the wound, heedless of the whip being drawn back again, and the look of such utter shock on his face told Aris that whatever flaws Maledicte had, beating his servants was not one of them.

Maledicte interposed his slender shape between Aris’s sight and the servant. A faint growl of pleasure rose from Last’s throat as he set the whip flying again. The whistle of it sang in the air. “No, Michel, I forbid it,” Aris shouted, but the stroke had been sent.

Turning as if possessed of a snake’s quickness, Maledicte moved to meet the lash head-on. Aris flinched, but when the snap-crack of contact sounded, the scene had changed. Maledicte held the lash’s tip in his hand, firm against Last’s tugging. The air darkened and drew close.

Last put his weight into the effort to free the whip, his face purpling with rage and embarrassment. Maledicte stood unbudging, his face remote. His other hand dropped to the hilt of his sword and drew a fist length of steel.

Bane growled, low and uncertain, crowding against Aris’s hip, nudging Aris’s numb fingers.

Maledicte’s gaze, as black as city smoke, fell on him and Aris looked away, unable to meet the empty rage in it. Then Maledicte’s dark lashes fell and rose and he was simply another courtier in a temper. He released his grip on the hilt; the sheath swallowed the blade.

“If this is a taste of your vaunted equality, Westfall,” Maledicte said, “and the people you choose to build futures with, I don’t fancy your chances.”

Westfall flushed.

“You insult the king,” Last said.

“Do I?” Maledicte asked, tugging his servant to his feet and supporting him. “I thought I insulted you.”

Last snarled, his hand clenched on the whip handle again. “I will insure that Janus never sees you again.”

“Janus cannot leave me alone. He’s mad for the touch of my hands, my mouth; he begs for me at night. When you are dead, I will lie in your bed while you lie in the ground, one more unmourned ancestor, and I will be free to do as I see fit,” he said, his voice so laced with venom that Aris half expected to see Last finally subject to apoplexy.

“May I take my leave, sire?” Maledicte asked but turned away without waiting for an answer.

“Mal,” Aris said, his voice rough. “Are you—hurt? Your hand is bloody.”

“It’s not mine,” Maledicte said, closing his fingers over the clotting gore. He turned his head and said something softly to the servant, and then they made their way out of the garden. Mirabile dropped a curtsy as Maledicte neared her, and he widened his path to give her a wide berth. Aris watched and worried. Maledicte had faced Last without hesitation or the merest sign of fear, yet skirted Mirabile. Her expression was no longer that pleased half smile, content that a man was whipped for her whim, but something darker, and far more calculating. She swept back into the house, her skirts trailing behind her, undamaged despite her claims otherwise. Aris frowned.

“It’s witchcraft,” Last spat, drawing his attention. “Did you not hear anything he said?”

“I heard a young man in a temper, showing remarkable loyalty to a servant,” Aris said. He turned his unease on his brother, and his tone was cold and unwelcoming.

“You are witched. Do you think I failed to notice you seeking him out? Ask yourself what draws you so?” Last said again, and as if he meant it more than angry words. “Ask yourself what kind of man can take the lash’s touch unscathed?”

“A proud one who refuses to acknowledge hurt,” Aris said. “What man brings a whip to beat a clumsy servant and turns it on a peer of the realm? I think you’ve been too much in the city, Michel. Some rest might suit you. Go home to Lastrest.”

Last grated out, “As you command, sire.” He turned toward the stables, and said, more temperately, “He is dangerous, Aris. I hope you never have cause to regret the license you grant him.”

“Michel,” Aris said, his temper fading, but Last walked away. Aris sighed, and sat on a garden bench, taking care to choose one that did not overlook the hedge where blood still spattered the leaves and lawn.

M
ICHEL
I
XION, EARL OF
L
AST,
lay in wait. He had arrived at Lastrest to find that Janus and Lady Amarantha were riding the grounds, but his temper demanded instant expression. So instead of busying himself with his correspondence, his bills, his petitioners, he sat in his reading room, the double doors wide to the hall and the front door, the leaded windows opened over rosebushes and the smoothly clipped lawn, waiting for the first sound of their return.