Maledicte (41 page)

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R
OCKING WATER, AND THE STINK
of salt brine and tarred ropes, woke Gilly. He opened his eyes to a room made of shadows and lapping water, fractured and shivering with the pulsing of his aching head.

Alive. Why? Gilly wondered. There’d been murder enough in his face and strength enough in his hands.

Gilly tried to raise himself on limbs that were too numb to support him, and fell forward, splashing face-first into dark water. Panic woke him from his stupor. He scrambled back on unwieldy legs, sucked in air, and reassessed. His hands were knotted in a nest of twine and hemp, his ankles likewise. He was in the bilge of a ship. Gilly let out his breath in horrified understanding. A conscripted sailor.

Was death not enough for Janus; was it suffering he wanted? In the dark hold, dizzy and sick, surrounded by dank water and the strange oil scent of piled metal, Gilly found himself thinking with a clarity that surprised him. He’d been sold for a luna or two to line Janus’s pockets, and more, the ability to tell Maledicte that he hadn’t killed Gilly should Maledicte ask. Gone to sea finally, Gilly thought, and shuddered. Janus had piled the irony even higher; the strange metal shapes could only be bound for the Explorations, to build one of Westfall’s engines there.

He started picking the ropes apart with his teeth, the tar and sodden hemp making him gag. They were still near shore; the slapping of the waves against pilings and other nearby hulls told him that. He had friends on nearly every pier, sailors, harbor clerks, dockworkers, who might aid him. If only he could get free….

The shadows in the bilge massed and roiled as if they were water, stirred by an unseen tide. In the distance, Gilly heard a crow’s call carried on the shrieks of gulls. The shadows seemed to vibrate to its resonance; the pain in Gilly’s head crested and blurred his vision.

He chewed diligently at the knots linking his hands until they gave, but didn’t fuss himself with the tight, salt-sodden loops left about his wrists. Though they chafed and burned, they could wait. He bent to work on the cords around his ankles and a rook flew out of the shadows on silent wings.

It landed on a jut of scrap metal, its talons making no sound as they contracted. Its eyes were matte black, as empty as a doll’s, lacking the shine of a living creature’s, and Gilly swallowed. It opened its beak, fluffed its wings, and bloomed bigger, a crow now, birthed of shadows.

“Mal—” Gilly whispered. The bird fluttered to the edge of the bilge, to the narrow ladder that rose to the deck and freedom. It fluffed its wings, again, and waited, rasping its beak against the splintered wood.

Gilly bent back to the ropes at his ankles, though keeping his head down increased the spinning languor of his body. He wanted nothing so much as to lie down. Instead, he dragged himself to the other side of the bilge and the aid implicit in the metal scraps. The right tool would be quicker than teeth surely, and far more efficient than fingers numbed by swollen wrists.

The ropes parted, surrendered strand by tarred strand, shredding with maddening slowness. When Gilly looked to share his triumph with the crow, he was alone. A flicker of movement pulled his attention upward.

“Mal—” he breathed again. The bird-shade, caught in midtransformation, flopped, wings unwieldy, folding inward, stretching itself tall and thin. A familiar human shape darted up the last rungs of the ladder, pausing for a bare moment to look back before flowing out onto the deck.

Gilly dragged himself to the ladder, up the first rung, sweat collecting on his abused body, chilling him like a layer of hoarfrost. His senses reeled and swam, nearly deserting him entirely. He felt as if he wandered in a dream.

“Mal,” he whispered. Was it Last’s window he was climbing to, hunting the nameless boy, ivy brittle under his gloved fingers, and snowmelt refreezing in his eyelashes, making him blink cold tears? Or was it underground, going further back, before everything he knew, following a staggering boy, newly hatched from Ani’s wings, the sword naked and gleaming in his hands as he climbed into the Relicts.

“Mal,” Gilly repeated, pulling himself up another rung, chasing that delicate phantom. Time stopped, sped up, shadows and light shifting across Gilly’s vision left him standing at the king’s palace, looking up at the high tower, at the slim shape, as black as the blade, standing at bay. Gilly reached up to climb to his aid, and his hand struck empty air. The salt smell of the sea woke him from his dreaming. “Mal….”

No vision this, but a fate he wanted to escape. The foredeck bristled with sailors, drinking away their last hours ashore, telling each other stories, and repairing the fishing nets that would keep them fed on the long journey. The gangplank lay stretched to the pier before them, for easy access to the Relicts’ bars and whores.

Once Gilly would have considered the crew good company. Now, he could only think of them as enemies, and all he could hope was that they had drunk enough to be careless. But so castaway as to watch him escape before their very eyes? He doubted it.

Gilly clung to the top of the ladder, leaned his head against the salt-scoured planks, watched the sun burning down into the sea, setting shadows roaming over the deck. He had lost all sense of time. Were it not for the spider constellation sparking to life in the sky, he could believe he’d slept for years, lost in the bilge.

The shadow,
his
shadow, divorced itself from its brethren on the deck, and flowed toward him. Not so human-shaped now, it bled outward like watered ink, growing fuzzed around the edges. It wafted toward him, swallowed him in an embrace chilly and dank, and a voice breathed into his skin, like no voice he’d ever heard before.
Hurry.

Staggering like a drunkard, Gilly gave his fate to the shadow and wandered toward the sailors, toward the gangplank with its lure of safety beyond. Though it made his flesh crawl, and his heart pound as hard as his battered head, he made his way past the sailors and to the gangplank. They made no sign that they had noticed anything out of the ordinary way, not even when the worn plank sagged and moaned beneath his weight.

The water below him churned in odd eddies, dark and flecked with luminous foam, splashing upward toward him. He fixed his faltering vision on the pier, and at the end of it, waiting by a coach, a pale face in shadow.

Maledicte, Gilly thought on a crest of relief, come to take him home, and showing a rare subtlety for once, coaxing him from beneath the eyes of the sailors, rather than forcing Gilly’s freedom at swordspoint.

The water beneath him surged, a sudden high tide rising as he descended, and it slapped salt water over his feet, his ankles, and burned the shadow away. Naga’s touch inimical to Ani’s uncommonly delicate working.

Gilly urged himself onward, finally reaching the salt-weathered planks of the pier. He stumbled, pushed himself to his feet, concentrated on walking normally. With the cloaking shadow gone, he thought the illusion might have gone with it. The dark sky might hide his identity, but he was still too close to the ship to be anything but their prisoner escaping.

The shout went up, and Gilly staggered into the closest thing to a run he could approximate, a listing, limping thing that set his head and ribs to throbbing, the world shuddering like an opera curtain, whisking back and forth.

“Gilly,” a low raspy voice called, “hurry.” Reaching the end of the pier, he found cool, smooth fingers on his arm; the pursuing captain drew to a halt.

“Lady,” he said, wary.

Lady? Gilly craned his head to look but was defeated by the dizziness. The rasping voice took on a clear sweetness that Gilly had heard before. “Why ever are you hunting my servant? Has he been brawling with the crew?”

“He’s mine. Four lunas he cost me.”

“Forced labor is illegal,” she said. “Such a shame, too.” Gilly tried to tug free; her nails slid into his skin, waking new pains, and Gilly subsided.

“Purchasing a man’s services is not.” But the captain’s voice already faltered. Gilly, his eyes drifting, found himself staring at a sweep of tattered silk, stained dark around the hem. A ruined ballgown.

“When those services are already promised—”

Gilly moaned and she halted herself with a wild laugh. “And here I am going on as if I need to win by words. He’s mine, Captain. Do not argue further. I am most unpleasant when offended.” As verbose as Maledicte, he thought, teeth chattering. But far more inimical to him.

“But still, you lost coin, and I know how dearly money can be needed. I’ll repay you.” She threw coins at the captain. While he scrabbled for them, keeping them from rolling through the cracks between the planks, she said in a tone like exposed steel, “Any further complaints?”

“No, my lady,” the captain said, still kneeling, shivering. He knew who she was now, Gilly thought. Even the sailors had heard the tales of Mad Mirabile.

Mirabile laughed, the sound not as pleasant as it once was, like a bell cracked and off tune. She walked Gilly toward her carriage like a marionette. Wordless, he sprawled on its floor, dripping salt water and blood. She tangled her fingers in his wet hair, dragging her nails across his scalp, setting the long gash from contact with the hearth to bleeding again. “So Ixion finally removed you—or was it Maledicte who cast you into the sea?”

Gilly winced, but did not reply, concentrating on regaining his equilibrium with the sway of the moving carriage.

“No answer, and I’ve gone to the expense and effort of saving you. I suppose that means you’re not grateful either.”

“Let me go,” Gilly said, sick at heart. He’d followed her lure as blindly as a hound on scent, thinking only of Maledicte.

“You’ll serve me now,” she said.

“No,” Gilly said.

“You will,” she said. “In one fashion or another. I’ve waited for my vengeance too long. Ani’s beak has grown sharp, and I would share that pain with others.”

He jerked away, reaching for the door handle, hoping to tip himself out onto the cobbles. The handle writhed in his hand, supple and scaled like a serpent, coiling around to strike him, and he let go in sheer horror. She laughed and he turned toward her, spoke the words of Baxit’s countercharm. She winced, then slapped him across the face, sending him to the floor again. She slid closer, put her hand beneath his chin, forced his head up. “Such a waste,” she said. “A comely young man doomed because of one man’s refusal to share himself with me. I’d feel sorry for you. If I could.”

“Maledicte will kill you,” Gilly breathed.

She leaned closer, confiding. “Black-Winged Ani granted your master a sword. She saw to it that I would never need one. Confused, my sweet Gilly? Shall I spell it out for you? She granted me power….” In her eyes, red fires flared and sank back to a simmer.

Gilly turned his head away from the madness in her gaze, and she dragged it back, effortlessly. “Look at me, Gilly. Am I not more beautiful than your master? More beautiful than those foolish debutantes?” She rolled her fingers together, opened her palm, and blew dust into his face. Coughing, he tried not to breathe but the stupor in his head settled into his bones.

“You do love me, don’t you, Gilly?” She touched her lips to his; he shivered all over and felt the heat scorch from her mouth to his groin. “Tell me you love me.”

“Love you,” Gilly said, the words dragged from his throat.

“You’ll love me until the day you die….”

“Yes,” Gilly said, his heart pounding under the twin stresses of fear and lust.

“More than you love him,” she said.

Gilly closed his eyes. Maledicte. The image, dark hair, dark eyes, soft mouth against his own, did nothing to cool his body or his fear. Her nails tightened on his face, and he said, “Yes.”

“I’ll let him know you said so, when I gift him with your body. Let him see what it’s like to lose someone through the caprice of another.”

“—loves Janus more…” Gilly said, as her mouth descended on his.

She drew back. “I’ll have him later. But Maledicte must come first.”

The carriage drew to a halt, tumbling him into her skirts. “Clumsy thing,” she said. “I’ll expect better of you.” She pushed him from the carriage; he got his feet under him just in time, and stood there, swaying. They were deep in the heart of Sybarite Street, past the brothels, beyond even the insalubrious dens that specialized in drug dreams and poison selling. This section of Sybarite bordered on the Relicts, the buildings more fallen than run-down. Still, if he fled, he could get to Ma Desire’s, maybe to safety. If he could move.

Mirabile took his hand in her cold one, tugged him into movement like a puppet. Mirabile’s coachman slipped off the driver’s bench in a flurry of skirts and cloak, a familiar tail of red hair and brown eyes: Livia. Betrayed rage gave Gilly momentary strength, and he pulled away.

Mirabile snarled, “Stop.” His limbs locked up at her word. Livia drew her hood up about her face, and edged past him, shifting piled-up boards to reveal a low, dark opening. The ruined building looked as if no one but rats could fit within, yet with the opening revealed, Gilly saw clear rooms inside.

“Well,” Mirabile said, guiding him in, “Welcome to my parlor.” His shocked gaze recognized the place, even as he started to shiver. The walls were covered with Her image; Mirabile dwelled in the ruins of Ani’s temple, slept in the lee of Her wings. Livia lit lamps around the room, each one revealing another depiction of Ani. Some of them smelled new, smelled as if Mirabile had painted their rough shape with blood. On the altar itself, a dark shape muttered and croaked at their return.

While he stood numb and helpless, she drew off the ruins of his shirt, his breeches, and smiled. “Don’t look so frightened, lambling. I’m not going to kill you right away.”

Mirabile circled Gilly, her expression as proprietary as Vornatti’s had ever been, and far crueler. Gilly felt fourteen again, remembered the dread washing over him with the soapy water, the dull light in Vornatti’s eyes growing brighter with each limb washed clean. But the dread then had been fear of the adult world pressing in on him; he had trusted Vornatti not to hurt him. Gilly had no such illusion with Mirabile, not with her nail marks bleeding sluggishly on his cold flesh, or the hunger he saw in her face.