Kings and Assassins

by Lane Robins

  Gost said, “For a man who dwells in the future, thinking overlong on the wrongs done you in the past is a sign of frustration, futility, or—most damning of all—doubt in your own purpose.”

  Janus brought his head up, looking for the condemnation in the man's eyes. There was none. Only a strange gentleness. “Allow yourself to be guided, Janus.”

  “By you? By DeGuerre—that desiccated sailor? Or Bull, who sees all problems in financial terms? Or perhaps you mean Adiran—”

  “Lower your hackles,” Gost said. “Your lack of training has already raised comment. I understand you couldn't read the latest missive from Parliament and Aris had to translate it for you.”

  “It wasn't in Antyrrian,” Janus said. “I'm not illiterate.” But Gost's words woke that same sick sensation in his belly as he had had then, looking at the incomprehensible letters while DeGuerre and Bull took up pen and ink and added comments in the margins. He had felt as useful as Adiran, playing quietly in the corner of the king's study.

  “High Antyrrian,” Gost said, “a language used these days exclusively for laws and sensitive material. Or to put an ambitious man in his place. I imagine that Ivor Grigorian could read it. Perhaps even your lady wife? Her father used to boast quite unbecomingly about her intelligence.”

  “I can learn it,” Janus said.

  “You will,” Gost said. “But you will always be two steps behind. Let DeGuerre declare a triad of regents. Give yourself time to grow.”

  “We cannot afford a rule by committee,” Janus said. “Not now, when Itarus stoops like a hawk. The prince ascendant's presence is proof of that. We need a single figure, one who can rally the people, who can save Antyre.”

  “Even from itself?” Gost scoffed. “The aristocrats may be swayed only so far by pretty words and a commanding manner. The poor are not swayed at all by such. They cannot, after all, eat words or promises.”

  “I have more to offer than that,” Janus said. “Have you heard of Westfall's engines?”

  “Heard enough to know that they are torn down as often as they are erected.”

  “The antimachinists say they fear our engines will eradicate even the few jobs remaining. Though they lay claim to preservation, their aim now seems simply to provoke disorder,” Janus said. “I've a man in their ranks, and he believes the antimachinists are being manipulated. He feels the antimachinists can be brought to heel if the leaders are identified and removed, when the remainder see that we can recover our country's strength and their futures. Once the antimachinists have settled, the poor will follow.”

  Gost shook his head. “Perhaps you should study more philosophy. Change is always unwelcome.”

  Another stone came their way, followed by a shout of “Murderer!” The soldiers at the perimeter wavered, torn between fruitless pursuit and standing their ground.

  Gost watched the stone slip through the grass at their feet and tumble slowly downward until it rolled against the Duchess of Love's carriage at the base of the hill. Beside it, Psyke and the duchess watched them. Janus followed Gost's gaze, stone to carriage to wary faces. The Duchess of Love tugged Psyke further back into the security of the carriage.

  “I'll look at your engines,” Gost said. “Show me what you believe to be Antyre's future. But I tell you now—if you wish to be a power in this country you must prove yourself innocent of Aris's death. The people are no longer willing to accept usurpation by regicide. Your reputation works against you. Your misalliance with Maledicte—the rumors of it reached as far as Kyrda. You have enemies aplenty remarkable for one so young, and it seems that your wife is among them. That is she, is it not, with the Duchess of Love?”

  “Ivor Grigorian had Aris killed, not I,” Janus said.

  “Inconvenient then, that you were with him when Aris fell. Rue and Jasper are blanketing the city looking for the agent he used, but this city is a warren and the ship captains are easily bribed to take unlisted passengers. Nor does that account for the fishermen's dinghies that put out to sea with no fanfare at all.”

  “But they're also easily bribed to share information. If one knows the correct people.”

  “Do you?”

  Janus smiled, liking the flash of approval on Gost's face. “Quite well.”

  Gost smiled. “I had heard you were the one running the privateers.”

  “I am. Unless you're speaking to the prince ascendant. Then, I deplore the piracy in our waters.”

  Gost's pleasure had not gone unnoticed by the Duchess of Love; her lips below her half veil were pinched. At her shoulder, Psyke watched him, her customary mask of pleasant amiability missing. He had not seen her smiles, false or otherwise, since the evening before Aris's death.

  She had barred her door to him the past two nights—and given the events of the first, he couldn't blame her. Still, it made his skin itch to think of her, alone in her rooms where Rue had found an un-watched exit into the tunnels. No wonder she had been able to rendezvous with Aris unseen except by rumor.

  Captain Rue had closed off the tunnels as best he could, but it was only a matter of installing bars across doorframes; the Cold King's tunnels had been carved from the stone themselves. Collapsing them would result in the fall of the old wing; and it would take weeks, if not months, to bring in enough rubble to fill them to impassability.

  A sudden shout brought him back to the here and now, and he stepped to the side without much thought, noting idly that someone in the crowd, obviously better off than the rest, had hurled bread. The low mutter turned inward; the crowd pushed back in among itself. Fists were raised.

  “This bodes well,” Gost said.

  “Only for the surgeons,” Janus said. “How much longer does DeGuerre intend to keep us here? The crowd grows more agitated with every moment.”

  The Particulars, less confident than their palace brethren, raised pistols and swords; a few unfortunates, the lowest in rank, raised old pikes.

  Janus shook his head sharply. Enough. He pushed past Gost, climbed up beside DeGuerre on the dais, still prosing on, and said, “End it. Now. Or you'll have open rebellion on your hands.”

  DeGuerre's face mottled red, and he pulled his arm free of Janus's hasty grasp. “Do not presume! I am not my sons, to listen to your commands.”

  Bull laid a hand on DeGuerre's boot top, smudging the fine gloss with sweaty fingertips, and raised his face, his brow deeply furrowed. Behind him, Blythe dithered, trying to shelter in the lee of a towering headstone.

  Bull said, “He's right, Hector. Look at the crowd. Let's be done with it and move on before the carriages are endangered.”

  “Before we have to fire on Antyre's citizens,” Janus said.

  DeGuerre bristled, chose not to end his speech with any grace, instead dropped off the dais, leaving Janus a clear target of the crowd's attention.

  “Murderer!” A voice went up, shrill as a woman's, and Janus turned to see a dark-haired head ducking away from his gaze.

  The crowd echoed it, once, twice, and Janus raised a hand in time to catch a thrown stone. It stung his hand, raised welts and painful memories of Relict warfare, but he took care to show nothing on his face.

  “The king is dead,” Janus said, pitching his voice to carry. “If you want the country to follow, continue on your path. The Itarusines await on the edges of the harbor. Give them a reason and they will enter. Their prince is within our borders. A riot endangers him and brings his fleet in.

  “Continue as you are, and you'll have more of a fight than you wish,” Janus said. “Or you can show respect for the country's loss in silence and allow us to bury our dead.”

  Janus climbed down from the dais without any hurry, refusing to let the crowd think he was afraid, though his skin crawled beneath the weight of the dangerous gazes, only some of which were directed at him from within the mob. The Duchess of Love's expression was positively venomous, her mouth pinched shut, her hands so tight on Psyke's arms that Psyke's face was white with pain.

  Gost
helped Janus down the last two steps, shielding his body with his own. “You don't lack audacity or decisiveness, do you?”

  “I'd be no good to the kingdom if I did,” Janus said. “Aris thought too much, felt too much, and dared too little. Look where we stand now.”

  Janus waved impatiently to the lurking gravediggers, and Aris's funeral ended as shoddily as it had begun, with the coffin tipped into the earth and dirt shoveled hastily after.

  ♦ 8 ♦

  URPRISINGLY IT WAS WARRICK BULL who, entering the king's dining room, flung the newspaper down before Janus at the breakfast table, and offered to give him the name of his solicitor. “It's libel, Last, and I hope you won't stand for it.”

  Janus pushed the paper aside after a quick glance, wondering if Bull's apparent outrage on his behalf masked the desire to see Janus's expression when confronted with the sketch on the front of the broadsheet.

  “A cross letter does appear necessary. After I've eaten.” He folded the paper over, fastidiously tearing away the corner that had landed in the butter dish, and applied himself to his toast before it could grow any colder, pretending the color hadn't risen to his cheeks.

  Janus was late to the table; it was nearer noon than daybreak, but he had woken late in the dark quarters of the old wing. Woken unpleasantly at that, from uneasy dreams wherein Ivor and he played endless hands of cards over a swath of rippling velvet with tiny ships as currency.

  The broadsheet shifted, threatened to flip open, and Janus laid his saucer upon it. He had seen the image previously; Evan had brought it to him, hesitant and drooping like a dog tucking its tail, while Janus was still in his dressing gown. The sketch was Poole's, even if his iron nerve had failed him and he had sent the drawing to the paper unsigned.

  Poole had given up his usual quick caricatures in favor of something ripped from a penny dreadful. A squint-eyed man wearing a crown peered into the shadows where a cloaked swordsman was stepping out, blade extended, dripping gore. The caption beneath, lettered in a hand entirely different from the usual script, read I am the Last thing you will ever see.

  “It's actionable, Last,” Bull said, slapping his hand down on the table with force enough that Janus's tea slopped and seeped into the rough paper. “Do nothing and the public will wonder why you allow such libel to stand. It argues you fear losing your case, that there may be truth in it.”

  Janus cast a quick look at the guards, wondering if he could have Bull thrown out of the breakfast room, at least until he finished his meal. Regretfully, he decided the ensuing fuss would do as much to keep him from peace as Bull himself.

  “Really, Warrick, have you looked at the sketch? It's designed to be a snare of exactly that sort. The illustration isn't signed, and the lettering beneath … it's not the usual writing. I drag the paper into the courts for satisfaction and Poole will say it's an imitation of his style, and not a good one; the editor will have been elsewhere when this edition was set, and the caption artist will be long gone.”

  Bull's gaze was downcast, fixed on the paper as if he wanted nothing more than to unfold it and rest his eyes on the sketch once more. Janus wet his throat with a mouthful of cool tea, and continued, “All I would accomplish is busying myself with legal woes, keeping this unfortunate image in the public's mind, and wasting my time when it could be turned to far better effect elsewhere.”

  He took another look at Bull's reddening cheeks, and said, “Perhaps that was the intent. To busy me with things inconsequential.”

  Bull coughed. “I won't say you're wrong.” The admission surprised Janus, made him more suspicious than ever. He had known Bull disapproved of him, but hadn't realized the man had any skill in cloaking deceit in truth. That was a talent worthy of Ivor. “It still can't be left to stand. What will they print next?”

  “What would you have me do?” Janus said. He pushed his empty cup aside. “Poole is in Stonegate prison already. Killing him would only lend credence to his illustrated ravings. No, I'll bide. Poole's a poor entertainer these days, harping on one old tune. His audience will grow bored.”

  “Bored? With Aris's murder?” The new voice was entirely unwelcome. Janus pushed away his plate with an ostentatious sigh.

  “Is it too much to ask for a meal to be taken in peace?” he complained. “I swear, I ate more peaceably in the gutter.”

  Admiral DeGuerre balked as Janus had thought he might. The benefit of a scandalous upbringing and a reputation for being touchy about it was that dropping it into conversation left awkward silences perfectly designed for unhindered exits. Janus rose from the table, caught a smile on Bull's face, and hesitated just that moment too long.

  DeGuerre reined in his irritation and demanded to know where Janus thought he was going. “Sending messages to your privateers, I suppose. Spending your time with those deviant twins.”

  “We are not father and son,” Janus said. “I've heard you say it several times over. So my direction can be of no interest to you. I'll return by nightfall. Do try not to make decisions without me.”

  DeGuerre said, “You overreach yourself, Last.”

  Bull agreed. “If the good admiral and I agree on a course of action, your opinion is unneeded. It's a simple matter of mathematics.”

  “This is not Parliament,” Janus said, “nor is this an egalitarian land, despite the violent attempts of the antimachinists to make it so. My blood counts for more.”

  He left the room, Simpson and Walker dropping into step behind him, and found Gost poised to enter. “If you've any real appetite, best seek other environs. The company in there will turn your stomach.”

  Gost grinned, a boyish thing in his lean and otherwise austere face. He lingered in the hall, as perfect as any portrait, his dark frock coat a sharp line against morning sunlight and the ivy-patterned wallpaper. Reluctantly, Janus acquitted the man of posing. It was only that Gost walked the palace halls in total ease, regardless of the twenty years spent elsewhere, while Janus still startled at servants appearing of a sudden and begrudged his shadowing guards.

  “Bull and DeGuerre, I presume. Give them more of a chance. Hidebound men may take time to come to the point, but they often have one worth hearing.” Gost turned toward the door; a gray-clad servant reached to open it.

  Janus forestalled him, saying, “I've had months of listening to them and watching Aris daydream his way through their speeches. You may recall DeGuerre as he was. Currently, he's more concerned with his rank, such as it is, than with the kingdom.”

  Gost nodded slowly. “You may be correct. I left Antyre shortly after the war was concluded. Aris felt we needed a strong presence in the other courts to keep Antyre from becoming a country diminished to insignificance by the Xipos treaty. I spent five years in Dainand, returned to Antyre to broker the marriage between Aris and his Itarusine bride, and sailed to Kyrda. The DeGuerre I recall was a man of purpose.”

  “He's spent the intervening time on gossip and petty bickering. He and his cronies spend hours sitting in their clubs, drinks at hand, complaining about the slackness of young men.”

  Gost's mouth tightened, two white lines bracketing his lips. “These are men who fought valiantly during the Xipos War and saw their efforts go to waste when Aris surrendered. These old, useless men sitting in their clubs may find new life now that Aris is gone and the power is shifting. Wouldn't you prefer allies to enemies?”

  “I know where I stand with enemies,” Janus said. He had meant it to be just another cynical remark, leavened perhaps with a dash of humor, hoping to bring Gost back to good spirits. He hadn't expected it to come out as it had: raw and entirely too revealing. He shrugged one shoulder, a vulgar motion covering a more vulgar display of weakness. “I'm afraid I must leave you. I have an appointment.”

  “With your engineers? Your machines?”

  “The very same,” Janus said. “Would you care to join us now? Take a look at what minds not gone fallow can create?”

  Gost smiled. “Would that I could, Last, but
I've a meeting with your old men. But allow me to set a demonstration time for you, and I'll ensure that not only am I there but Bull and DeGuerre. Perhaps a tangible display will go a long way toward allaying their doubts.”

  Janus nodded, quite pleased. “That would serve admirably well, sir.”

  “In three days' time, then? I'll determine the place.”

  “I'll mention it to my colleagues,” Janus said. “They might have situational requirements.”

  Gost stopped Janus in his forward movement with a quick hand; Janus evaded the touch without thought.

  “Have a care, Last. The streets are unsettled. Can you not attend your business through a proxy?”

  “There's the beginning of the end,” Janus said, “when it takes an act of bravery to take to the streets. Show a hound fear, Gost, and it's more like to bite.”

  “True enough. I will believe you, since it's your wife put to the test. She left the palace with only two guards in addition to the coachman and tiger, and if a delicate woman like her is unafraid … she shames us all.”

  Janus's ill humor returned. Off to see the Duchess of Love. Ever since Aris's funeral, the duchess had laid claim to Psyke's companionship with an assiduousness that wouldn't have been out of place in a courting lover. Psyke, when pressed, had evaded Janus's questions in a manner that made him more wary than ever. Nothing innocent hid itself but lived in the open air.

  He nodded once more at Gost, and said, “I'll not keep you any longer, sir.”

  Long strides took him out of the pleasant surrounds of Aris's central wing and back to the Cold King's hallways; behind him, the stone floor reminded him of his following guard's presence—their boot heels thumped after him as steadily as an echoed heartbeat.

  Two guards still stood at his wife's chamber door, and Janus paused. “Is the countess within?”