Kings and Assassins

by Lane Robins

  Recovering, he made his farewells, and sought a less traveled corridor to have the inevitable conversation in. As he passed the audience hall, where petitioners usually waited to speak to the king, the page fell into step beside him, a slim, gray-clad shadow.

  Ivor ducked into the nearest private nook, one of many arranged to be convenient to the audience hall for the times when a petitioner might find himself suddenly needing new information, yet reluctant to cede his position in line. As long as a man didn't dally in the nook, his place would be waiting, held by a palace servant.

  The room was near as small as a servant's bedroom, though considerably better appointed. A single brocaded chair devoured most of the space, and Ivor sat in it, the fabric rasping against his clothes, his skin.

  The page drew the curtains closed behind her.

  “I cannot afford to be seen with you,” he said. “Be quick with your explanations. I thought you a-sea by now.”

  She leaned on the wall opposite, though in such close quarters it meant only that she leaned her body away from his; her ankles in neat palace slippers, rested between his own. Overall the poise bespoke her comfort with him rather than her obedience. When her first words, then, were not her excuses, but rather discursive commentary, he was not as surprised as a prince should have been.

  “I think you forget who I am,” she said. “There's no wrong done in a page speaking to a noble. Even a noble like yourself.”

  “You are no page, no matter how well you wear the guise.” The small spots of ink on her gloves took the temper from his response. For her to go to that extent, to ape not only the clothes of a page but also to take on some of the hazards of always being handed parchments wet with ink, reminded him of her devotion to duty. She would have a reason for lingering in Murne.

  “True,” she said. “Nor am I a guard, a maid, or a merchant making a delivery, though I have been all of those today. A palace is not an easy place to remain unseen, unless you give them something to look at.”

  “Oh yes,” he agreed, all silken anger rising. “And to be all those things when you wear an eye patch—how unnoticeable is that? When Rue searches for my one-eyed valet who flirted with a stable boy on our arrival.”

  “I did no such thing,” she said. “As for the guises?” She shrugged her head forward, slipping back into the page's subservient hunch in answer. Her hair covered much of her face, and he sighed.

  “Guard wore a helmet,” she said. “Maid a bonnet, and the merchant? Well, he was quite a dashing merchant and wore vast quantities of feathers hanging low from his cap.”

  He gritted his teeth, and she stepped away from the wall, coming forward and settling in his lap. After a quick glance at the closed curtain, he rested his hands on slim hips. “You cannot afford to be seen. There was a witness.”

  Her confidence faltered. She licked her lips, bent her head in true discomfort. “There was,” she whispered. “I saw her briefly, before it all changed. Ivor, you must be careful.”

  “Of Lady Last? She saw you, but her own fears took root and so she saw the one you resemble so greatly. Mal—”

  His assassin placed a quick, hard hand over his mouth. “No. Say no names associated with those above and below. They take an interest.”

  Ivor felt his heart skip a single beat, a visceral reaction to the obvious fear in her voice. He drew back, freeing his mouth; her nails scraped lightly across his shaven cheeks. “They? Go on.”

  “I saw Lady Last.” She continued, her voice going quieter and quieter until he was listening with his forehead pressed to hers, as if her meaning could be carried to him by vibration. “She stepped into shadow and one of the five gods woke and embraced her. She disappeared before my eyes.”

  “And you're sure your dread over the task didn't influence you to fear immortal judgment? You made rather a mess of things, I understand. Not least by your continued presence here.”

  “I did go down to the sea, I swear on my unspoken name, I did. But I had to rid myself of Challacombe first, and the god confounded me so that the tunnels twisted. By the time I reached the port, my fisherman was gone, and the docks were crowded with the Particulars and kingsguards.”

  The young woman rubbed her arms briskly, as if she felt that morning chill again, the brisk sea air.

  “So I came back to your side, fearing that net more than the palace. Everyone knows an assassin must flee….”

  Her composure faltered, her manner with it. No longer a coquette, a page, or invisible servant, she pressed her face to Ivor's neck. He petted her hair absently.

  “I cannot keep you here,” Ivor said now, thinking of possessiveness and the flaws it created. “No matter what guise you wear. Captain Rue's guards are everywhere, and Lady Last shows a distressing familiarity with the back ways of the palace, depriving you even of those hiding places. No, we need a safer harbor for you, a position, and a—”

  “No name,” she warned him. “No name at all.”

  He shook his head at her. “I'm not like to forget that. But there's a grand difference between not having a name and playing an incognita.”

  She thumped her head on his shoulder. “You make my head hurt. Let me stay, be your valet, unseen in your quarters.”

  “When the kingsguards take every opportunity to enter? No, I have a new ally in mind, and you will go to her. The Duchess of Love hates Janus so greatly she will turn no aid away if she thinks it will rid Antyre of him.”

  He stood, forcing her from his lap; she kept possession of his arm, her fingers tight against the fine wool, creasing it.

  “Please,” she said.

  The clinginess displeased him but it wasn't unexpected. Ever since he'd found her, the sole survivor of a burned-out Exploration village, she'd followed him as faithfully as a hound.

  He shook his head, removed her grasp from his sleeve. “You know I cannot.”

  “It was hard,” she said, all bravado stripped clean. Her voice wavered. “It was so hard.” The assassin folded herself into the deep creases of the curtain like a child finding solace from a nightmare; her hair clung to the nap like spiderwebs, left trails of shadow behind.

  “You succeeded. Do not doubt yourself now.” Paper rustled in the crease between arm and seat, and Ivor teased out a piece of waxed paper, frowning at the fragment of crimson sugar caught in it. Adiran was partial to such sweets which left his lips painted with dyed sugar, but Ivor hadn't thought the boy roamed so freely.

  “The pistol failed me and all I had was the sword.” Her breath rasped, on the verge of tears, and Ivor gritted his teeth. “For all your instructions you never warned me how it would feel to drive metal through—”

  “There is no warning adequate to that task,” he said. “The deed is done. Forget it, lest you grow overwrought.”

  When she looked inclined to nurse her hurts, he said, “Lady Last allowed her emotions to overcome her sense and what has it gained her?”

  She shifted forward, drawn into question and answer, as he had intended. “Gained her … She made a mistake. She let old fears resurface and thought me Maledicte.”

  “A costly mistake,” Ivor said, “and one that turned the pursuit on Janus. Psyke's mistake aids us.” He took her hands in his, drew her close again, rested her head against his chest, played out schemes in the tangled strands of her hair between his fingers. “Her aid, inadvertent as it is, could shift against us. Psyke concerns me all out of proportion.”

  “She woke a god,” she said, words muffled not only by the layers of cloth she breathed them into but by her caution.

  “Which one? Blood, death, betrayal, despair; all of them wake for such. And the rooks—”

  “The rooks fly about the palace,” she finished. “Black-Winged Ani's eyes.”

  “As you are mine,” he said.

  She tapped the patch over her eye with a rueful humor. “But flawed.”

  He raised her face to his, kissed her lips, her cheek, and mouthed the leather that shielded her ruined e
ye. “You see clearer with one eye than many do with two. You, after all, have learned how to see beyond expectation.”

  She preened beneath his attention, his praise; her back straightened, the miserable tension in her face eased.

  “Go then, join the duchess's household. Watch over our disconcerting Lady Last.” He tweaked a long lock of her hair, and said, “Best wear a veil.”

  She stepped away, straightening her crumpled page's tunic, sleeking her hair to fall just so, shaking the personality from her bones until she was only another invisible servant scampering off on some urgent chore.

  Ivor followed after a discreet few minutes, well pleased with himself. Who would have thought that having his assassin fail in her escape would prove so useful? With her in the duchess's house, he would hold his people in the palace, in the aristocratic circles, and in the streets. The Antyrrians feared his fleet? Let them. He had a small army already on their shores.

  IT WAS FULL DARK AND past his stated time for return when Janus and his guards arrived back at the palace. As a sop to Simpson and Walker, who were uneasy at traversing the darkening streets afoot, Janus had hailed one of the coaches that traveled between the better-heeled districts and the more dangerous streets that promised the very best in vices.

  The hired coach released them at the near edge of the palace, the coachman's pallor a clear sign that only now did he realize who his passenger had been: the palace's murdering bastard.

  Janus paid the coachman and moved toward the dark gardens, following the lure of gentle fragrance and the softness of lawn underfoot, the guards reluctantly behind him, though Janus caught Simpson's exasperation before the man masked it with obedience.

  The garden walk took him near the nobles' ballroom, unlit for the first time since Janus's return to Antyre. It seemed that even the frivolous nobles drew the line at dancing when the king had been murdered.

  Janus wondered how long their restraint would last. As long, he supposed, as they could applaud themselves for it.

  He veered away from the walk that led past the ballroom's balconies, through the king's maze. The night was full enough of memory; every step reminded him of the night he'd found Miranda turned Maledicte, not waiting for Janus to find her but coming to meet him.

  Delight and Chryses reminded him too much of what it had been like, to be in unity with another person. Quarrelsome or not, they returned to each other again and again, and Janus envied them that. He'd had that once.

  His path toward the rear of the palace woke a challenge from a kingsguard more alert than others. The young man tapped his sword hilt against the stone balustrade, the sound alerting the other guards, but more discreetly than the rasp of a drawn sword would have done. Janus paused in his path up the wide, shallow stairs to note the young man's face. A bit more clever than the rest.

  The guard's query was half begun when the lamplight, bleeding outward, illuminated Janus and his escorts, and the young man turned his challenge into welcome. “My lord.”

  Janus nodded, and entered through the wide glass-paned doors into Aris's study. The warmth of the room enveloped him, making him belatedly aware that the evening had been chill. For a moment, he was caught up in a bone-deep gratitude that he knew a home out of the cold; even if they treated him with suspicion, no one denied he had the right to be there.

  Janus poured himself whiskey, a bare splash against the crystal tumbler. Simpson and Walker were replaced, their shift done, and two new faces came to stand on either side of the inner door into the palace.

  “Wait outside, please,” Janus said. The guards nodded and vanished.

  Janus set down his drink with a last, appreciative touch to its heavy crystal rim. He trailed his fingers along the wood of the desk, admiring the sheen, glossed with the weight of age, of five kings who leaned over it to work on matters of state.

  A lamp dangled crystals around its central core, refracting light in tiny shards across the carpet and dancing in the empty fireplace. Two prisms had been unhooked, lay loosely on the desk, their surfaces smeared by sticky fingers. Janus picked one up, matched the smears to the ones on the candy dish on the edge of the desk. Janus recalled Aris sitting at the desk, Adiran lying on the thick carpet beyond, eating toffees and fur in equal measure as he interspersed candy nibbling with petting Hela.

  Janus felt his lips twist. Adiran hadn't been out of his room since Aris's murder, victim of Rue's new caution. Janus thought they might as well let the boy breathe fresh air; Aris's death was proof enough that assassins could lurk anywhere.

  Janus took out the tiny key he kept secured inside his waistcoat. He wasn't certain that Bull or DeGuerre knew he had it, though they had expressed irritation with the results more than once.

  The key slipped easily into the locked tray of the desk and Janus pulled out the day's correspondence—loose drafts of statements directed to the Parliament and a thick sheaf of paper written in High Antyrrian with his name, worrying and identifiable, in the midst of unfamiliar words. Worse yet was Bull's comment in the margins, laconic: Let 'em whistle for it We continue as we are.

  Janus folded the sheets over, tucked them into his pocket just as a scratching came, mouselike and low, on the door. Evan followed the sound, ducking his tousled head beneath the guard's arm.

  “No one said you was back,” Evan said. “But Walker's in the kitchens, making eyes at his girl, and so you had to be here.”

  “Or they'd murdered me in the streets,” Janus said.

  Evan checked in his path to the desk, visibly judging Janus's mood. A smile brightened the boy's face as he recognized Janus's dry humor and came to stand beside him.

  “I'm s'posed to get you to your rooms.”

  “I'm familiar with the palace,” Janus reminded him and Evan grinned, white teeth in a red-cheeked face.

  “Well, then you'd better hurry. That valet's having nine types of fits and you're gonna be late for supper.”

  Janus fluffed the boy's hair. “One of the benefits of being blood,” he said. “Cook'll wait on my arrival. I'll be unpopular, but I won't go hungry.”

  He caught Evan's sidelong glance at the candy dish, still half full, and gave Evan a few pieces. “Didn't I give you a full handful earlier this week?”

  Evan shrugged.

  Janus smoothed the boy's tufty hair, tilted his face up to him. “What, did you find a maid or bootboy to share them with?”

  Evan blushed, a deep mottled embarrassment, and more, the first honest discomfort Janus had seen. “Who are you sharing with?” If the boy who understood no barriers, no rank, was conscious of wrongdoing… “Evan?”

  “The prince,” Evan said. Janus imagined Ivor stooping down to take Evan's outstretched hand, selecting the best piece of candy with careful deliberation, and listening to the boy's chatter with an attentive ear. Evan had his own uses to a man who collected gossip. But surely Evan had more sense.

  “I'm sorry,” the boy said. “I know I ain't supposed to talk to him, but he talked first. I've got no manners, I know it—get yelled at enough for it—but he's royalty, I had to say somethin' back, didn't I?”

  “What did he ask you?” Janus knew the boy was right, but anger still laced his voice. “What did you tell him?”

  Evan took a step back. “He asked me for candy, and his dog licked my fingers.”

  “The dog—the prince? Adiran?” Janus had forgotten again. To Evan, there was only one prince.

  Evan nodded. “I gave him candy, and he gave me this.” He reached into his pocket, a little awkwardly, torn between finding the item and taking his eyes from Janus. Palace pages were accustomed to casual buffetings from irritated lordlings, but the boy's caution offended Janus. He hadn't ever laid a hand on the child.

  The boy finally succeeded and pulled out a battered feather from his pocket. He looked at it in some dismay; its confinement in his clothing had damaged it. Janus plucked it from his loose grip. The rachis broken, the barbs turned stringy, there was still no doubt. Janus held
a rook's feather in his grasp.

  He let it fall, and seized Evan's shoulders instead, guiding him over to the chair beside the fire and pushing him into it. The boy's feet dangled; he shifted uneasily.

  “Tell me exactly what happened when you met Adiran walking the halls. Tell me what you saw.”

  ♦ 12 ♦

  VAN SHIFTED AGAIN ON THE chair, slipping on the high peak of the over-stuffed seat, and Janus gave him a footstool to brace himself against.

  His reward was an uncertain voice, thinned with discomfort. “I told you.”

  “Adiran was in the halls? Unguarded and alone?” Janus sat on the edge of the footstool, the better to watch the boy's expression. He didn't think Evan would lie to him, but Janus was a man who hedged his bets as best he could.

  Evan nodded, seemingly glad of an excuse to drop his gaze from where Janus held it. “The papers tell truth, don't they? The prince ain't… right. But he's not so bad as they make out.”

  “Papers sell better at extremes,” Janus said, “but that's a lesson for another time.”

  He ran Evan through his story again: the two boys meeting, Adiran drawn close and out of shadow, no doubt intrigued by the rare sight of another boy in the quiet halls, the oddly clear request, I want some candy, please—had he ever heard Adiran speak a full sentence?—and the incomprehensible trade of a feather for the toffees.

  Where had Adiran obtained a feather? It had been new, or Evan's face wouldn't have betrayed concern at its rumpled state. When had Adiran begun to understand the concept of trade?

  Under questioning, Evan admitted to accompanying the prince on his perambulation until they'd made one full circuit of the upper floor and returned to the nursery.

  “The guards there?”

  “Sleeping,” Evan said, and his voice dipped, knowing that something had been very wrong and very unreported. Janus wondered if Rue had heard; Rue would be his ally in this. Adiran was far too vulnerable and valuable to be allowed to walk the halls alone, hound by his side or not.

  The clock struck, tolling nine times, and returned Janus's attention to the here and now. It also brought the unwelcome realization that there was a distinct line between being tardy and being unforgivably rude.