Kings and Assassins

by Lane Robins

  Her gaze flew to the bellpull, but Janus had dismissed Dahlia last night; and even if Dahlia did answer Psyke's summons, the girl's clumsiness and nervous questions would slow her rather than aid.

  Psyke ransacked her wardrobe, seeking a particular gown. Another mourning dress, a dusty, dull navy with one singular virtue; it buttoned up the front. With the worst of the wrinkles shaken out, the dust brushed away, she set about dressing herself. Her fingers wanted to linger on each jet button, tasting the death of her sisters, her mother, her friends with each stone, but she had no time for old tears now. Aris's voice, that bled-out urgency, still echoed in her ears. Adiran— he begged. Adiran.

  She pressed her feet into satin slippers and felt them sting like splinters. Kicking them off again, she rubbed her toes against the stone floor, felt the yawning emptiness of the intervening spaces and the chapel below in the sheltering earth.

  The chapel of the murdered king: They'd call it that in years to come, she thought, long after they knew who had died and why. The Cold King was proof of that, his name near forgotten in the common way of things, but Thomas Redoubt had been her ancestor.

  And, she realized abruptly, the scaled man who had guided her dream. His wing, his bones lost in it for all eternity.

  Psyke yanked open her door, fled into the hall, away from her own thoughts and the ghosts that lingered at the edge of her vision. Aris, still entreating. Challacombe with his hooded eyes. Others yet lurking in the shadowy halls.

  The hour was early yet, Psyke knew; the shocked quiet in the palace, the way the Laudable still clung to her, the crisp chill of granite beneath her feet—surely Janus would expect her to lie later abed. And even one such as he must balk at killing an innocent; if she hurried, she could station herself at Adiran's side, as much a guard as any soldier. If she had no weapons to bear but her rank and her eyes as witness, she would pit those against Janus's sword.

  The nursery door was swinging closed behind the maid when Psyke reached it, five hallways and two flights of stairs later, out of breath and still bundling up the mass of her hair.

  The guards looked askance at her disarray but stepped aside to allow her entrance. The nurserymaid looked up from the low table she was setting with child-sized utensils, and dropped into a hasty curtsy “My lady.”

  “Elysses,” Psyke said. “Where is Adiran?”

  His absence was unusual. Twelve years old, and yet he lacked language or more than basic rudiments of intelligence. His dogs were more capable of learning lessons than Adiran. Still, the boy understood time well enough, and this was the hour when Aris came and ate breakfast with him. Usually, the boy prince would be hovering at Elysses's side, snitching bits of his favorite pastries.

  “The window, my lady,” Elysses said. Her gaze rested on Psyke's creased skirts, on the long tangle of her loose hair for a moment, fascinated with Psyke's unusual disorder, before she recalled the question. She gestured behind her, toward the draped window that overlooked the city.

  Adiran had clambered up onto the narrow ledge, balancing unevenly against the glass. Psyke moved to pull him down, and Elysses said, “I wouldn't. He's been doing that ever since that damned… He must have seen him come in through the window.” She shook her head, trying to loose the unpleasant reminders, hid in practicality. “He'll come down when he's hungry.”

  Maledicte again, Psyke thought. A weight in the palace, the shadow that they would never be free of.

  The boy pressed delicate fingers above his head, tracing ripples in the glass, spreading his hands out like the jut of rising wings.

  Elysses finished setting out the plates, and Adiran hopped down with an unsettling agility, pointing out that this collection of rooms was his kingdom and that he was the master of it.

  Psyke clenched her jaw against sudden tears. How would they ever begin to explain the loss to Adiran, the sudden absence of his father? As if her thoughts summoned him, a faint gray smear shimmered in her vision; Aris settling into the rocking chair, watching his son.

  Adiran balked at the table, studying the plates.

  There weren't enough, Psyke realized. Aris ate with him; the table should be set for two.

  Adiran backed away from the table, confused by an inexplicable change, and stopped before Psyke. His gaze was on her bare toes poking out beneath her skirts; a smile glimmered on his mouth. Then he raised his eyes to meet hers, a blue as bright as forget-me-nots, as a summer sky.

  She wished they could stay untroubled, clear of pain; but even as she did, his eyes widened, filling with a grief so profound that Psyke was shaken to her core. While she tried to understand how this could be—how the child who knew nothing of reading nor of the ways of the world could read the death in her eyes—he opened his mouth and screamed.

  ♦ 6 ♦

  ANUS LEFT THE LIBRARY, CATCHING Walker and Simpson arguing in whispers, heads bent together. They sprang apart, and Simpson's teeth clicked closed on the hissed end of Janus's name.

  Simpson, Janus thought, one of his regular attending guards. And apparently one who thought Janus should be waiting out the hunt for the assassin in a cell.

  “Where to, my lord?” Walker said, valiantly attempting to distract Janus from Simpson's words and the weight they left in the air between them. He fingered the scars on his face in a gesture Janus had learned was habitual when under stress.

  “The nursery,” Janus answered. Without waiting for their response, he headed for the carpeted stairs up to the third floor.

  Janus had not been in the nursery since the night he murdered Auron, but as he approached it, he heard all-too-familiar sounds: a child shrieking, the dogs in full cry—a fury of snarling, snapping—and bleeding through it all, voices of two women near to weeping. Despite himself, Janus turned to sweep the hall with his gaze, half expecting Maledicte to burst from shadow, blade bared, for the thick-laid carpets to grow bloodstains again, for time to reverse itself.

  The shadows of the men moved like the flutter of wings, and the fine hairs on Janus's nape rose like a dog's hackles. He pushed past the nursery guards, pressed open the door with a pounding heart, though he knew from their unhappy calm that the uproar inside was harmless.

  The door slipped free from his hand, slammed back against the wall, shaking plaster dust loose and tipping one of Adiran's clockwork carriages over, setting the horse's legs to twitching spasmodically.

  Three sets of eyes met his in varying shades of startlement. Hela, one of Adiran's two mastiffs, raised her head at Janus's sudden entrance, woofing softly to express her displeasure. Across the room, Bane, chained to the radiator, peeled back black lips and snarled. His ivory teeth slowed Janus's hasty steps; they glistened evilly and were larger than the pieces of whale ivory the sailors sold for lunas ashore.

  Adiran hiccupped, his red-faced weeping pausing for a heartbeat, and then beginning again, though softer. The nurserymaid dropped her eyes immediately, hands fisting in the folds of her skirt, a handful of candies falling to the floor, and being gobbled up by Hela.

  Psyke rose from where she knelt, trying to tempt the prince with one of several toys. Janus found his throat drying as she approached him, her steps soundless, oddly delicate as she evaded the broken pieces of some previously refused toy. Her breath was inaudible over the sound of Adiran's weeping, and Janus couldn't help but recall those long hours of the night when her silence had been that of the grave.

  “What's happening here?” Janus said. He stepped back as she approached, his boot heels crunching on glass. She paused in her forward steps and bent to collect another toy. She brushed glass off its sides before answering him.

  “The boy, my lord, is grieving.”

  “Does he even understand grief?” Janus asked.

  She reached out to stroke Adiran's matted curls, and he shrank back, crying more shrilly, in a tantrum unlike any Janus had imagined the boy capable of.

  Adiran let Psyke press a toy into his clenching hands, a wooden ship, carved, painted, and gild
ed. He held it for a moment and then hurled it. Across the room, the nurserymaid yelped and ducked.

  “Enough!” Janus said. His head was aching, trying to decide if grief was a sign of increasing wisdom or not—after all, dogs had been known to pine themselves to death over a lost master and no one considered them rivals to man. “Don't just stand there and weep, girl. Fetch Sir Robert to give the boy a potion.”

  “Do no such thing, Elysses,” Psyke said in immediate contradiction. It startled him, though it shouldn't have. She had made her position clear enough when she accused him of killing Aris, but he had eight months of her quiet passivity to unlearn.

  “He'll make himself ill,” Janus said.

  “Better that than to swallow anything you offer,” Psyke said. Janus took a step back at the cold knowledge in her expression.

  She turned back to Adiran, shaping her expression to sweetness, her voice to light. “Here, Adiran,” she said. “Take your toy.” The boy scuttled back from her, grabbing tight to Bane's heavy chain and leather collar, baring his teeth at her, his eyes swelling shut with all the tears he'd shed.

  Janus said, “Seems to me it's you who are upsetting him, not Aris's absence.”

  He glanced back toward the low table, saw the plates laid out, and thought, grief or not, intelligent or not, Adiran understood time and absence well enough. Janus grasped Psyke's shoulders, felt her go as rigid as a corpse in his hands, and moved her bodily from his path, remembering belatedly the wounds on her shoulders. She, no doubt, would think he had pressed upon them with careful deliberation. So be it.

  “Adiran,” Janus said. Bane snarled, deep and low, a rumble that made itself felt in Janus's bones. He moved forward cautiously, and put one hand on Bane's withers, gambling that time spent feeding the hounds treats would garner results now. His other hand fell gently on Adiran's narrow shoulder. The boy let out a tiny moan and fell into Janus's side.

  Psyke made a sound of outraged protest that brought a smile to his face. There were many things Adiran couldn't learn, but Aris had taught the boy about family. And before Janus had fallen from grace, Aris had brought Janus to the nursery often, teaching Adiran to trust his cousin.

  Janus released Bane, who growled halfheartedly but licked at his palm in passing, and took Adiran up into his arms. The boy clung to him, thin limbs tight around his back and neck, his sobs dying as Janus awkwardly rubbed Adiran's shoulders. He'd seen Aris do so before, and Adiran reacted much as the dog did, relaxing against his will. It was a good thing the boy was so small—his arms and legs were awkwardly long as it was. Janus rocked in place, afraid to step forward and trip in the tangle of the boy's dangling legs.

  “Put him down,” Psyke said. Her eyes were huge and shadowed in her face, bruised looking, as if Adiran's affection toward Janus injured her.

  “And start the weeping again? Perhaps your nerves can stand it. Mine cannot.” He shifted his grip on Adiran, rearranged the boy, and began walking toward the center of the room and the low table there. “If my presence disturbs you, you may leave. I am quite competent to care for one boy.”

  Psyke's response was lost to him; Janus passed the glass-paned doors to the inner bedroom, and saw Auron's crib still standing there, the wood varnished where blood had been spilled.

  Mad, he thought, Aris had been mad to keep this reminder in place. Adiran raised his head when Janus paused in his steps; his frail neck twisted as he looked to see what Janus saw.

  He sighed hugely and murmured something in the childish glossolalia that passed for the majority of his speech.

  Psyke's lips firmed. She came closer, reached her arms out to take Adiran from him, and the boy recoiled.

  “No!” he cried. “No!” and buried his hot-cheeked, wet face into Janus's neck, new tears seeping into his cravat.

  “Seems he's made himself clear,” Janus said. “Guards, would you escort Lady Last out?”

  Psyke shook her head at once. “No. I'll see myself out, if I must. The guards will stay and attend to Adiran's safety.”

  “You don't trust me? My sweet, I'm devastated,” Janus said, trying for insouciance, and yet—the growl came through. Her lies could have cost him everything. He could imagine the whispers now, “Even his wife thinks him a villain….”

  In the corner, Bane raised his heavy head, pricked his ears. The chain holding him jangled; he paced to the end of it and echoed Janus's growl, facing Psyke.

  Her cheekbones tipped red. “I am neither a dog nor a fool to be easily misled by a superficial charm. I know you for what you are.”

  “As I know you now,” he said. “I trust we are both enlightened.” He set Adiran down at the table, urging him to his routine.

  Psyke turned on her heel, her skirt flaring out to reveal shoeless feet beneath the heavy wool, as if she had rushed to Adiran's side as soon as she had awoken. Or as if she no longer felt the chill of stony floors.

  Adiran paused in his desultory forking up of boiled egg mash and venison. He watched Psyke leave, the guards opening and closing the door for her, and tugged on Janus's sleeve.

  Janus bent his head down, the better to hear the boy prince's whisper. No random collection of sound this, but a single questioning syllable. “Dead?”

  He shook off the chill the boy's clear voice left and sighed, “Adi, such is life. Everyone dies or leaves you. Best look out for yourself.”

  IVOR TOOK CARE HUNTING HIS prey through the palace, using the skills of a lifetime spent in court, passing a few minutes of gossip here with that courtly sycophant Savne, listening quietly to Admiral DeGuerre as he spoke with Bull, ostensibly waiting his chance to express the Itarusine court's sympathy, and finally, heard one boyish page fretting to another that Last and his wife were in the nursery, trying to soothe the prince.

  The placement was unfortunate; it took him some time to find a page harried enough to allow him entrance to the private floors of Aris's residence, long enough that he found his quarry coming to him instead.

  All good things, he thought, and tried to make his smile pleasant instead of wicked.

  The Countess of Last rocked back on her heels, and displayed an unflattering and entirely impolite suspicion.

  “Prince Ivor,” she said, and though etiquette demanded an acknowledgment of his rank more sweeping than her bare words, she withheld it from him in an insolence he thought better suited to her husband. “What brings you here?”

  “My lady,” he said. “I came to bear condolences to the crown prince on behalf of my country. Quite pointless, I understand, given the boy's circumstances; still, basic courtesies are rarely unwelcome.”

  She flushed, taking his words as a reproach for her rudeness, and he noted it—new to insolence and not native to her nature. He wondered if she had learned it from Janus or if she was recalling it from some other source. In all his studies of the Antyrrian court, he hadn't paid much attention to Janus's wife, taking it for granted that the gossip had sketched her correctly, a sweet, unquestioning woman, intelligent but not clever, Aris's favorite of the court women and his eyes upon his troublesome nephew.

  Ivor's own spies assured him that after the death of her family, she was like to avoid confrontation at all costs, to plead for peace over bloodshed; in other words, a woman much like Aris. Ivor had never considered that she might be witness to the assassination, or that she would attempt to use the same against her husband. His interest had doubled overnight.

  “I wonder at you pushing in to disturb a family in mourning. A note would have sufficed,” she said. The words came out stiffly, oddly spaced as if she had to work to offend, had to draw again on the pool of something other.

  Instead of doing as she so obviously wished, taking affront and leaving, he curved his lips into a smile. “You have spine behind your sweetness,” he said. “I suppose it should come as no surprise. After all, you have witnessed some truly terrible crimes, or so gossip gives me to understand, including Aris's murder—”

  “I will not discuss that wi
th you.” Psyke turned to walk away from him, then balked, as if belatedly realizing that to do so would allow him free access to the halls behind her and the nursery.

  Ivor let his smile broaden. No, she was no practiced schemer. Her every thought betrayed itself in the sway of her body even if her face remained a mask.

  Ivor would have gambled a pouch of Antyrrian sols that she confounded Janus. While Janus had been in Itarus, letting Ivor teach him how to be something more than a Relict rat, he had spoken often of his fierce Miranda. Focused entirely on the girl he had been forcibly parted from, he never paid the type of attention he should have to the noblewomen of the Itarusine court. More, Janus's obsession with Miranda had led Ivor to a truth Janus would no doubt prefer buried.

  Maledicte, the effeminate courtier who, by all accounts, had captured Janus's attention the very moment he laid eyes on him, who had him running tame by his side, in his bed within a night… Maledicte could only be the Relict girl, Miranda.

  And it followed, therefore, that Maledicte had eluded death as easily as Miranda had eluded her original fate in the Relicts. After all, the body hung above the gates had been male.

  Ivor stepped to the side as if to pass Psyke by, brushing close enough to taste her scent in the warmed air between them, pungent and earthy, like clay brought into the sun. She jerked away from him, breath quickening, her pulse beating in the hollow of her throat.

  “You feel threatened,” he said, “here in the heart of the palace?”

  “Aris is dead,” Psyke said. “Why shouldn't I feel fear?”

  Ivor leaned against the flocked wallpaper—a style ten years old and worn beneath his palms—and smiled lazily at her.

  “How highly you prize yourself. A wife is a small thing, easily set aside and forgotten. A king, however… only death will see him gone.”

  The woman paled, licked her lips, a pale pink tongue touching skin one shade lighter. Ivor's smile grew; whether Janus admired her or not, she was a sweet piece, all rose and cream and gold, the very epitome of an Antyrrian maid. Her words though, her words were as cold and hard as jet. “I never said I feared for myself.”