Kings and Assassins

by Lane Robins

  She glanced back over her shoulder at the shadows draping the nursery door.

  He used a booted foot to press himself from the wall, stalked her in a graceful circle, watching her turn to keep him always in her sight. Once, when his boots came too close to her skirts, she twitched them back, giving him a charming view of pale arches and a bare stretch of heel and toe.

  “No,” he agreed. He raised a hand, watched her eyes grow wary as his touch neared her face, but this time, she refused to flinch or back away. He let his fingertips fall lightly over the curve of her cheek, found it as cool and smooth as ancient marble. “No, I see that. I should have expected nothing less from one who escaped Mirabile's trap.”

  At the mention of Mirabile's name, her eyes darkened. “She dallied too long,” Psyke whispered. “Gloated too much, and I… fled.”

  “You showed remarkable sense for a woman,” Ivor said, meaning it. He knew men who would have shown less intelligence, men who would have gone after Mirabile with a blade and met a gruesome end. “Which surprises me the more that you showed so little yesterday. Accusing your husband of treason was not only rash but ill-advised.”

  Psyke's chin firmed. “I had to speak,” she said. “He killed Aris as surely as if he wielded the blade himself.”

  Ivor let out a breath, fought the urge to smile. This was why he had hunted her, this was what he had needed to hear: How had she managed to witness Aris's death without falling to his agent's sword?

  “Did you see it happen? See his stalking horse so clearly that you could name him one of Janus's men?”

  The stiffness of her body shifted in an instant from rigidity to something softer, leaning toward him. Her gaze traced his face, gauged his interest, his sincerity, and found it satisfactory.

  Ivor bent his brow into deeper earnestness, when he badly wanted to smile. She burned to tell him, her very body vibrated with the need to relive the murder, to be reassured that she had done right, that she was not to blame. A woman's weakness, he thought, to care so desperately about the opinions of others.

  Some of his amusement must have leaked through, because she drew back. “You needn't think I'll tell you anything I haven't already told Captain Rue.”

  “But I might believe you.” A gamble, a large one, but she had the air about her, that bruised outrage.

  She came closer still, her head barely reaching the level of his heart. He took her elbow in his, guided her down the hallway, away from the nursery she wanted to defend, finding a quiet spot near the main landing. She came quietly, docile enough now that she was promised a listening ear. “I thought Janus your friend,” she said.

  He lowered his voice, made it intimate, and watched her fidget. “Had I time, my sweet, I would tell you such tales of Janus in the Itarusine court as to make your blood freeze. Your husband is that most dangerous of creatures, a savage beast with an agile mind.”

  “Yet you spoke to his innocence,” Psyke said. “I cannot trust your words or your intentions.”

  Ivor shrugged, insouciance in the shift of his shoulders, as if he had no real interest in what she might say. Her need for an audience, he thought, was strong enough for him to allow a touch of contempt to lace his voice. “I only spoke truth,” he said. “You did not, and yet I am the one to distrust? You accuse Janus of regicide when he was so distinctly elsewhere. Tell me, did you truly witness the crime, or did you merely seize the moment with the impetuousness and arrogance of an Antyrrian noble, sure no one would dare contradict you?”

  The flush rose in her cheeks so fast that her hands flew to cover them, as if she felt the rage and embarrassment might welt her skin. She shook her head once, twice, as if she were shaking his words away. Her hair, only loosely pinned, slid free.

  Bare feet, worn navy gown, loosened hair; Ivor wondered how roughly Janus had treated her last night to set her fleeing her quarters without even a care for her appearance.

  “It was foolish,” Ivor said, “to make an enemy of Janus.”

  “It would be more foolish to keep quiet and see Janus profit when Aris died.” Her reply was immediate; her eyes ablaze with fury.

  “Then share his description with me, with the guards. Steal that profit from him.” Ivor gave her his most vulpine grin. “And spare me the indignity of Rue's men searching my wing three times over now, hunting some cause to blame Itarus. My father would dislike that, and the treaty that binds our countries in friendship—”

  “Friendship,” Psyke said. “When you bleed us dry—”

  A page scuttled by his tight-drawn shoulders and lowered head a tangible reflection of their raised voices. Psyke turned from Ivor abruptly toward the stairs.

  Ivor pulled her back, hands wrapping easily about her narrow waist. “Who did you see that made it evident Janus was behind it?” He breathed the words into her ear, felt her tremble, rage and fear commingled, and almost envied Janus this wife who felt so much. “Who did you see that made your Captain Rue think you a liar or a madwoman? Someone, perhaps, you had thought dead….”

  Another gamble this, but a smaller one. After all, Ivor knew the assassin intimately, and knew what Psyke must have seen, if she had seen anything at all: a dark-haired courtier wielding a blade like a vengeful spirit.

  “I saw—” Her voice wavered, faltered.

  He released her, though he stayed skin close, resting his weight at her back, the plummet of the stairs before her. If she needed leading, he would clap the bridle on.

  “We heard tales,” he said, and every word he uttered was true. “Tales in the Itarusine court of a certain courtier. They said that Black-Beaked Ani Herself took action in his cause. They said also that Janus killed Her avatar with a single blow. In the histories, Ani is not driven back so cleanly. It seems … possible that he survived. Ani's determination is the stuff of legend.”

  “His body was displayed above the palace. The crows ate his flesh,” Psyke said, but her words were empty of belief. Her hand reached out to the banister; she tightened her grip, the dark wood as ruddy as blood against her pale fingers. He overlaid her hand with his.

  “And Janus—did he grieve? When the crows devoured his lover? Or did he continue as before, a man unacquainted with loss?”

  “Why?” she said. “Why do you care? Itarus can only benefit from the confusion and chaos here.”

  “Believe what you will,” Ivor said. “I can weather your distrust and your fear. It is not undeserved. My reputation is more based on truth than slander, and it is a violent one. But do not allow your distrust to taint your vision. Ani's wings are far-reaching; Janus guided Her once to his purpose, clearing lives from his path: his father, his father's wife, their child. Now Aris is dead at a shadow's hand. Janus profits when men die.”

  “Maledicte,” she whispered. “I saw him. His hair loose and wild, wrapped in shadows, his blade leading him into the dance.”

  Ivor hid his amusement. Black hair, shadows, and a blade, and she cried Maledicte! Had his little assassin been red-haired, dressed in white, likely Psyke would be gibbering about Mirabile instead. Fear made people a pleasure to manipulate. “So tell me, how did he let you live?”

  Psyke shivered; her arms came up to clutch her shoulders. She ducked her chin into the shelter of her arms and stayed silent for a very long time. Long enough that it took an act of will to keep his expression just so: a smidgeon of concern, and a blend of interest and belief.

  “Maledicte didn't see me,” she said. “I hid in the shadows of the altar. I hid while Maledicte killed Aris. I saved myself and Aris died while I did nothing.”

  Her breath was fast, her voice hoarse, and her lashes damp, but despite her fervor, her tone lacked conviction.

  Ivor felt his interest kindle higher. His assassin might be young and new to the work he had asked of her, but she was dedicated and loyal to him. Nothing should have spared Psyke from his assassin's blade.

  ♦ 7 ♦

  ANUS, IN THE CHATTERING COMPANY of the high court, followed the palace
servants through the moss-laden cemetery, trying not to slip on the green-slicked stones. Outside the distant gates, carriages disgorged more of the nobility than he recognized. Admiral DeGuerre walked alongside him in thoughtful silence, thinking on Aris, or simply attempting to recall the proper etiquette for a king's funeral. With the gods gone, funerals as a whole had fallen out of fashion, save those times when family felt the need to see their dead safely interred or when death granted an excuse to socialize. Challacombe's body, found in the tunnels during the hunt for the assassin, had been interred without witnesses beyond the gravediggers.

  The usual political ritual—a laying out for weeks, so that the people could visit the dead king and mourn—had been dismissed immediately. No one wanted to open the palace grounds to the public, not with the assassin still more shadow than flesh. So the funeral plan had begun at once, word spreading outward on genteel invitations and a distressingly abrupt notice in the broadsheets when the palace secretary ran out of time.

  It lent the entire matter a regrettable air of spontaneity, as if the nobles, bored, scrambled to attend a last-minute ball, those in Murne counting themselves luckier than their country cousins who would miss it entirely and have to make do with secondhand gossip and newspaper reports.

  Janus found it all incomprehensible; as he had when he first attended the Winter Court, he found himself watchful and quietly confounded.

  On Janus's left, Bull and Lord Blythe paced him, equally silent, though Janus thought Bull was visibly uneasy at Blythe's presence. Warrick Bull was a consummate politician, well aware of public opinion; Blythe was repellent, an obvious schemer, but very well connected. To deny Blythe pride of place in the procession would have turned the duchess against Bull.

  The procession should have been family first—Adiran, Janus, and Psyke, before the other counselors, DeGuerre and Bull—but Adiran had been left behind in his nursery, safe with his dogs and nurserymaid. And Psyke… his so-sweet wife had made her opinion of him too clear for comfort, choosing a place in the procession beside his most vocal detractor, the Duchess of Love.

  Procession—Janus spared a sweeping, contemptuous glance at the scatter of aristocrats—procession was far too orderly a word for this movement. During his years in Itarus, he had seen processions with the finesse of military drills, the nobles moving to one purpose, their focus ahead.

  Here, the young pallbearers grumbled under their breaths as they carted Aris's coffin uphill toward the mausoleum, superstitious whispers that traveled much too well in the still air. The ginger-haired lad, fingers white around the handles, went so far as to claim the heaviness of the coffin was due to the soul clinging to the body until his murderer was caught. His companions stifled him with hisses and appalled glances.

  It hardly mattered what they said, Janus thought, not when the aristocrats straggled behind, gossip slowing their steps, and cried for their servitors to dart back and forth from the carriages, ferrying cast-off cloaks in a day gone unseasonably warm, bringing cooling fruit drinks from the hampers or warming spirits from flasks. Even the death of their king couldn't dampen their frivolity.

  Why should it, when they presumed nothing would change, that nothing could change? Their lives were comfortable; the strictures Itarus laid over Antyre spared the aristocrats. Aris had seen to that, finessing the Antyrrian audits; the kingdom bled, the commoners bled, but the aristocrats …

  They reached the end of the stone walkway, penetrated deeper into the green heart of the palace cemetery It, like the rest of Murne, crept toward decay The hillside cathedral had been given over to Parliament, and all the pews had been thrown into the cemetery grounds, scavenged over years, but shards of wood still studded the pitted grounds in unexpected places.

  No one attended services now, no one would, even were the building reclaimed and intercessors found to hold them. But the graves were untended also, ivy eating away at the stones where the salt air had left white stains and etched holes in the marble.

  As they reached the mausoleum, Janus stumbled over a hummock in the grass, a mole furrow or interloping root, and his mood, already bleak, soured. Lady Secret laughed at him from behind her black fan, unafraid and unapologetic. She whispered in her escort's ear; and while Janus watched her, DeGuerre took shameless advantage of his distraction.

  As the pallbearers set the coffin down before the mausoleum, Admiral DeGuerre rose to stand on the crumbling marble dais where the intercessors had stood before the gods took themselves away. Without waiting for anyone's attention, he began speaking.

  A man of Aris's age, gray hair in short ringlets and wearing a coat better suited to the winter months than to this early spring, stepped up beside Janus. Admiral DeGuerre, glancing at his slowly growing audience, nodded to the man with approval. Janus was heartened to see that this new attendee did not return the approving nod. The man's confidence, the elegance of his clothes, his apparent chill on a warm day—all argued that this was Fanshawe Gost, the new head of Parliament, the Kingmaker.

  The admiral spoke of Aris's intelligence, his kindness and humanity, and Janus thought the admiral defanged. This man, speaking in platitudes and oh so carefully turned phrases, had been one of Antyre's feared naval officers—Demon DeGuerre—and had been whittled to what? A man whose war was lost long ago and who was left mouthing another man's words of peace. Aris had much to answer for, not least the gelding of men of war.

  Fanshawe Gost said, voice low so as not to be heard over DeGuerre, “I recall my father's interment. Then praises were sung to purpose and layered about with his flaws, so that the gods might recognize him as he traversed their realms. This empty flattery—”

  “There is nothing of use in it,” Janus said, abrupt and uncivil though he knew he needed to woo Gost. He felt sometimes that Maledicte had been his shield; with Maledicte to speak venom, Janus had no need to do so himself. With Maledicte gone… his anger burned hot and close to the surface, smoldering like a fire on a summer's day “There is nothing of future in it, no guidance for those left behind. Only a smug maundering on the past.”

  DeGuerre's smooth platitudes were interrupted by a hoarse voice laden with the mangled drawl of the street. “Niver min' the dead king. Who's the heir?”

  “Not the simpleton,” another voice protested. “Not when Itarus slavers at our shores …”

  The nobles were no longer the only ones at the boneyard. Beyond the palace soldiers, the lines of the Particulars, the citizens of Murne crowded to watch, and the yell had come from somewhere within the push and falter of the people. Guards rested hands on pistols.

  “Never mind that,” another voice called. This one was crisp and tight, an actor's voice, pitched to carry. “Who killed him? The Itarusine prince assassin or the murdering bastard? Which one of them's the assassin?”

  A group of rats picked up the question, answered it with the maddening chant passed on in the streets. It had been a rope-skipping song, Maledicte's bloody exploits simplified. Now, it had altered.

  pMaledicte's gone; the rooks don't fly, yet through the kingdom sounds the cry: The bastard profits when men die.

  Janus relaxed his jaw, eased his shoulders. Meaningless words. Nothing more.

  Admiral DeGuerre continued as if he had never been interrupted, though his hands twitched. Janus imagined him on deck of his ship, and knew any sailor who had committed such a sin would be sorry soon after.

  “Better a murderer than a fool king.” That same hoarse voice, full of vicious contempt. Janus narrowed his gaze, pinpointing him at the head of the crowd. The man was distinctive, a hawk-faced blond in a butcher's leathers. Beside him, a slight, dark-haired man nudged him, hands brushing. The blond looked down at his hands and grinned wolfishly.

  Janus took a discreet step back; Gost echoed him, and the rock fell far short, rattling off one of the old stone monuments.

  “You notice the citizens,” Gost said. “A welcome trait in a noble.”

  “I notice trouble,” Janus admitted, “a
nd try to predict foolishness.”

  The soldiers had gone after the stone-throwing pair; the crowd booed them and closed ranks so that the soldiers had to force their way through for what would be wasted effort. The mood was ugly, though the nobles seemed unconcerned.

  “So you think on the future.”

  “I quite dwell on it,” Janus said. Gost's solid clap on his shoulder startled him; he looked over to see the man grinning at him, teeth white in a tanned face.

  “Good man,” Gost said, “but thinking's only part of it. There comes a time when one must act.”

  “I'm not feared of that, either,” Janus said.

  “Then you'll round out a triad of regents quite nicely. DeGuerre's experience, Bull's financial sense, and your youth and ambition.”

  “Adiran is heir, and I am blood kin,” Janus said. “DeGuerre is an old man who's forgotten glory, and Bull—Bull's too preoccupied with his banks and making his fortunes to be a support to Antyre.”

  “You think you should be king?”

  “Regent,” Janus said. “And why not?” He was pushing, knew he was, but self-confidence was easily turned to charisma. If Gost were the man the reports painted him, he would be more dismayed by false modesty and attempts at manipulation. Janus would play this game with all apparent openness and win Gost to his side.

  Gost studied him for a long moment, leaned back, and surveyed Janus as if he were a piece of land. “Do you think you're competent to rule this country?” Gost asked. It was the honest inquiry in his tone that soothed the hot roil in Janus's belly, kept it from erupting into intemperate words.

  “I've been trained. I've studied economics, history, the sciences—”

  “I commend you for it. It shows an interested mind. But studying for a bare handful of years is a far cry from practical experience.”

  “If I was expected to learn sooner, perhaps you and your aristocratic friends should not have allowed Last to spurn my mother. Or retrieved me when it came clear that Adiran was damaged. Aris should have forced Last to retrieve his bastard then. I will not apologize for my past.”