Kings and Assassins

by Lane Robins

  Aris had originally approved the addition of the mezzanine to house the most prosperous and influential commoners, to give them a chance to speak. But there had been such an uproar at the idea that Aris had allowed the subject to be forgotten. Janus thought it was one of Aris's better ideas, well worth pursuing in the coming years. In the meantime, the mezzanine held the aristocratic overflow; those without prestige or power, those who came to see their laws passed secondhand.

  Chimes rang out, five separate tones blending into a penetrating whole, calling the nobles to order, only an hour later than planned. Gossiping circles broke reluctantly, passing last tidbits of information on whispered breaths.

  A furtive motion drew Janus's attention, as well as multiple others'—Savne demonstrating his incompetence once again at playacting. His conference with Blythe was too evident; though he recoiled as if Blythe insulted his lineage and his manhood, the overacting made it clear they had been speaking amiably enough.

  Savne headed upstairs like a hound recalled to his master's side. Janus, tracking his progress, met the Duchess of Love's serpentine gaze, glittering with malevolence. Savne sat next to her, bent to whisper in her ear. Janus, watching them, found more of interest in Psyke, sitting quietly in the duchess's shadow.

  Janus, well aware of all the eyes on him, of the chimes' echo fading, and of Gost drawing breath to chastise, moved to take a seat. Reluctantly Gost gestured at the ornately carved chair nearest to the podium: the former Earl of Last's seat, Janus's now, by birthright.

  Janus said, “Don't trouble yourself. I see my seat.”

  “Last,” Gost said. “What mad start—”

  Janus swept by the man without a further word and headed for the stairs. Seeking an upstairs seat was all to the good, Janus thought, taking his time doing so. For one thing, it irritated Gost; for another, it was a pleasant way to ruin the duchess's day. He wove through the crowded mezzanine and fetched up before her.

  “Ladies, good morning.”

  Savne bristled. Psyke, as was newly familiar, looked back at him with an expression not entirely her own.

  Janus settled himself comfortably on Psyke's other side, ignoring the duchess's continual, hissed imprecations. He unfastened his sword belt, looped it over the chair arm, hilt toward his hand, boots stretched out before him, and accepted a cup of the bitter coffee a servant brought him. Only after a fortifying sip did he react to the duchess, still jabbering at Savne, muttering about murderers and for Savne to do something. Janus ducked his head to murmur close to Psyke's ear. “Do you think I should call the servant back? I fear he's left a kettle to boil nearby. My ears are full of hissing and hot air.”

  Psyke's face was downturned, focused on the tight knot of her hands nestled palely against her black wool skirt. He had only a view of her cheek, the edge of her lips, but it was enough to see the tiny quiver of rosy lips, the sudden shiver of her fingers as they relaxed.

  “If the Earl of Last has made himself quite comfortable,” Gost said, standing at the podium. His voice carried with little effort, his fine baritone warming the chill in the room.

  “Quite comfortable, though a few cushions might not be amiss,” Janus said. He didn't have the benefit of acoustics to help him, but he pitched his voice to be heard.

  He hadn't slept well on Delight's chaise, the surroundings bringing to mind his failures—that disastrous demonstration, Chryses's death, even Aris's murder, committed on his watch—but it had also made a few thoughts very clear. Maledicte's popularity—before his bloodshed grew too great to ignore—had been based not only on his supposed wealth, on his pretty face and form, but also on the acidity of his tongue. There was nothing the court appreciated so much as a heckler.

  He'd played his role incorrectly, Janus realized, when he'd chosen to be somber, serious, and studious.

  “Another mask?” Psyke said, her voice a thin thread of sound connecting the two of them, an act of intimacy with the duchess so keen eared and angry beside her.

  “No,” he said. “I'm tired of masks. Let them make of me what they will. I'll weather it.”

  Gost's speech was much what he had expected, an impassioned plea to let logic rule over sentiment, to apply experience over bloodline, to let Gost take the place of first regent instead of Janus. It would have been more effective, perhaps, if Gost weren't forced to praise Blythe as choice for second regent, as well as himself Or if Gost's cries for experience before blood didn't apply equally to Warrick Bull as to himself.

  Janus thought about raising the point, but it would only make him seem grasping. Gost's speech evaded that flaw. There'd be no accusations of usurpation after this speech.

  “As sly as a cat,” Psyke said abruptly, “that's licked its whiskers clean of butter before leaving the larder. It might rid you of a mouse, but it takes more than it earns.”

  She ended her comment on a gasp. The duchess had pinched her. Psyke rubbed at the welt rising on her hand with a sulky expression far from her own. Janus bumped her arm, hoping to jostle the ghost within her, and she turned to look at him with a careful calculation he had seen before. It wasn't uncommon to find a schemer behind a woman's pleasant smile, but this one held arrogance and power in it.

  “Don't stare. It's rude,” she said. “If you never paid me attention before, you can't expect me to welcome it now.”

  Janus found a name to put with that ghost but kept it tight behind his teeth. Naming her might strengthen her, and the last thing he needed was an enemy returned from the dead.

  Gost made the expected suggestion that the Duchess of Love should act as Adiran's guardian, gestured in her direction as if he were flinging the praise he spoke. Gost's grand gesture fell a little short as he found himself gesturing in Janus's direction also. He stumbled, but continued.

  The speech wasn't subtle; Janus found himself disappointed. So far, he'd heard nothing but patriotic pabulum and self-congratulation. Then again, Gost was speaking to a room full of stagnant minds. His words needed to be familiar and as weighty as stone to make an impression.

  Gost finished with a verbal flourish, so much so that Janus almost expected the man to put his proposition to a vote immediately. But the aristocracy hated to be rushed. Distrusted it instinctively with the luxury of being the ones in charge for generations.

  That was going to make the vital difference. Janus could act and act decisively while Gost had to honor tradition.

  Servants stationed at the end of each row of voting nobles began passing folded pieces of paper down the line. One servant, after an irritated wave from Gost, made the climb up the narrow stairs.

  Janus watched the crisp paper make its way to him, softening in each successive grasp. He unfolded it, and looked at the incomprehensible script. High Antyrrian. Again.

  Psyke leaned in, murmured. “It's a ballot.”

  “I had assumed as much.”

  The duchess snapped, “Lady Last.”

  Psyke traded a long look with the duchess, and she was the first to yield, turning her attention to Savne's sycophantic mutterings.

  Psyke leaned close and translated for Janus. It was mostly the same as Gost's speech, though there was an irritating addendum, legacy of the last parliamentary session that Janus had been too busy to attend: a motion exempting nobles from outstanding debts if they were of service to the crown.

  Blythe, Janus thought wryly, still failing to improve at cards. He took up a pen from a servant's tray, the nib wet with ink, and lined through that motion, scrawling next to it: Debts must be paid.

  Gost sent a furtive look toward Janus, visibly tensing for Janus to rebut him. Janus hadn't been planning on it; it would be too easy to be drawn into the kind of brangle that showed him to least effect, left him furious and silent, and people about him injured.

  Still, if Gost was begging for it, Janus saw no harm in obliging. “Blythe,” he said. “Honestly? I thought the difficulty facing Antyre was that our prince was mindless. I wouldn't have thought you'd compound the pro
blem by choosing a man with even less intellect than poor Adiran for your second.”

  Belowstairs, Blythe's hand dropped to his sword. “I'll challenge you.”

  The duchess leaned forward, a smile curving her lips, as if the young man had the merest chance against Janus.

  “And thus my point is proved,” Janus said. Psyke giggled unexpectedly—the ghosts again, Janus thought, they were more ruthless than a drowning tide—and set off a slow titter through the room.

  Janus left the mezzanine without waiting for any further response, be it from Gost, Blythe, or someone else.

  A tug on his sleeve drew his rapid pace to something slower; he looked and found Psyke keeping pace with him. “Best look after me. I left my guards behind.” Her words sounded arch, a little flirtatious, still those of the ghost who had giggled at the thought of Janus dueling.

  He crooked his elbow and she folded her hand around it, leaned against his side, the better, he thought darkly, to poison him with whatever malign influence dwelled in her.

  The duchess called after her. Psyke paused, eyed the duchess coldly. “Once you told me to judge Janus by the enemies he has and by the caliber of his friends. Well, I've judged. Him by his allies and you by yours.”

  She tugged gently at his arm and set them back into motion. Janus steered Psyke toward the narrow door at the base of the stairwell, framed in wings. The darkness closed around them, marble gone dark with shadow, streaked with distant light.

  “It's peculiar,” Janus said. “The duchess's sudden insistence on your company. I would have thought her pleased to see you at my side, poisoning me with your presence.”

  “She thinks me her lost daughter. Or at least haunted by her,” Psyke said, shifting easily as a careless lordling nearly fell against her. Drunk before noon, still in his evening wear, having attended the secret parties being held in defiance of mourning strictures; the very example of an Antyrrian lord. “No matter how often I tell her, she will not believe that Amarantha doesn't come to me.”

  “She doesn't?” Janus asked. That stiff hauteur, that arrogance and disdain; he had thought it Amarantha also.

  “No,” Psyke said. A clipped, single word; disinclined to annoy her, he let the matter drop.

  He stepped out into mid-morning sunlight, to the yielding surface of age-smoothed wood, ducking his head as the doorway extended farther than he had thought, and Ani's wing tips were sharp. They had come out at the back of the building, the long, raised pathway that meandered through the ill-kempt cemetery.

  A raw scar of earth, russet against green, signified Aris's resting place. Psyke hesitated; her skirts swayed toward that barren patch, and Janus said, “A dead man needs no visitors. Or perhaps I should rephrase that. You need invite no visitations from dead men. This morning is crowded enough.”

  Psyke bowed her head, but changed her direction to match his once more.

  “Anyway,” Janus said, “Aris speaks to you often enough. Or will you tell me I'm mistaken again?”

  “Aris meets with me much as he did in life, to complain about you, to urge me not to trust you. To name you his killer.”

  “Single-minded,” Janus said, “before and after death. And still quite wrong.”

  “So it seems,” Psyke said.

  Janus tripped over the tip of his own boot, caught himself with a hand flung out to seize the rough-hewn railing. He steadied himself and stared moodily at the splinter in his palm. Even when she agreed with him, it caused him pain.

  “Perhaps it should have concerned me earlier that the only one who believed my claim of Maledicte's guilt was Prince Ivor. That aside, I've spoken with the duchess, listened to Blythe, spent an edifying hour with Gost. None of them see anything of the future beyond themselves. The duchess dwells on retribution, Blythe—”

  “Least said, best said,” Janus murmured carefully, lest she cease this quiet confession.

  “Agreed.” Psyke took a few more steps in silence, then added teasingly, “Will you ask me about Gost?”

  “If you wish,” Janus said.

  “Gost is a man given over to vanity. He wants to etch his name into history. Himself before all else.”

  “Does this mean you're allying yourself with me?” Bad form to ask a direct question that put a lady under awkward social obligation, but time was growing short.

  The murmur of voices, distantly noticed, began to take on a discernible rhythm and Janus bit back a growl. “Stay close to my side.”

  “Poole!” the people chanted. “Free Poole!”

  “I'm … considering it,” she said. Her voice was nearly lost in the surge of the angry crowd, many of them waving placards, others sticks.

  Janus put a hand on the small of Psyke's back, steered her relentlessly toward the carriages, wishing he hadn't been so quick to leave the cathedral crowd. If he had been able to stomach them for a few minutes longer, they would have exited at the carriage path, ready to duck into the frail shelter of the coach.

  Simpson and Walker made an appearance, pistols drawn, coming in their direction. Janus shifted, reaching for his blade, but the guards' eyes were all for the crowd. “This way, quickly,” Simpson said.

  “We had the carriage brought around,” Walker said. “The crowd's mood is ugly Poole's only an excuse. They're jostling the carriages, overturned one already.”

  “Thank you for your foresight, gentlemen,” Psyke said. She cast her gaze about, watching the bustle of carriages trying to reach the nobles on the walkways. She frowned, raised a hand to shade her eyes, looking for the distinctive blue of the Last coach.

  “There,” Janus said. “The coachman with the regrettable feather in his hat.”

  Walker and Simpson waved the man over, and then aided Psyke into the carriage. When Janus joined her, he found her tracing the scars and damages previous passengers had left in the wood.

  “Why a hire coach?” she asked.

  “Why paint a target on my back?” he countered.

  Walker closed the door behind them, stepped onto the footman's post, and waved the coachman to set off. The coach lurched, then slowed.

  Walker shouted at the driver to force a way through, to use the whip, his pistol…. Janus leaned out. “Too much haste will call attention to us as surely as the Last coach would. Let the driver go as he will.”

  Walker's lips tightened behind his dark beard, but he nodded. “Rue said you had a head on your shoulders.” As he turned away from the window, Janus heard the man mutter one thing more. “Pity you've no care for ours.”

  The carriage lurched again, like a ship caught in the first touch of the outbound tide. Psyke rocked with the movement, tucked her skirts tight about herself. Without thinking, Janus leaned forward and caught first her knee, then pushing up the heavy drape of black-dyed wool and black-stained petticoat to reveal her bare feet.

  He traced the white arch of her foot, the grit and dust beneath her heel and toes. She shivered.

  “Even outside?” he asked. “Even then?”

  “I crave the clay beneath my feet.” Her eyes on his were sober, testing, as if to ask what would he do with her honesty.

  He rubbed at the delicate joint of ankle and foot, the curve of tight-drawn tendons. “Need I prepare quarters for you in the depths of the palace? Have the servants lay down dirt and stone instead of rugs?”

  “Challacombe tells me my ancestor disappeared into those secret corridors. Perhaps I could spend my time hunting his bones.”

  “And speaking to them?” And what was this between them? Gentle teasing or menace so oblique that Janus wasn't sure who threatened whom?

  She only dimpled at him, as sweetly pretty as she had been the day he had first seen her, dancing with Maledicte. “Sir, I am a lady. I speak only to those I've been properly introduced to.”

  “I must say I've missed you,” he said. “Your guests lack humor.”

  She sighed, leaned back, her smile sliding away. He shifted to sit beside her instead of across from her, heedless
of the poison that might emanate from her.

  Psyke leaned her head against his shoulder, tucking her feet up on the bench. “Well, Aris and Challacombe are dour enough, I admit. But Mirabile finds many things amusing. Unfortunately, I do not. She speaks to me, through me, and even while I mouth her words, respond to her thoughts … all I recall is waking to find her by my bedside and my sisters slaughtered.”

  The quiet horror in her voice, the weary pain, woke old memories in Janus, nights when Miranda snugged herself tight against him and listed their friends lost to predation on the streets.

  Was it any wonder that the Relicts thrived so? When dangerous women like Mirabile had had free rein in society? Only when Mirabile had turned blatantly murderous, when she turned her attention to the most innocent of the nobility—the debutantes—had anyone thought to stop her. Of course, by then, it was too late.

  He idly stroked the curved bones of Psyke's ankle, feeling the skin warm beneath his hand; the pulse fluttering there increased from its slow and steady beat to something quick and light. Her lips parted, palest red and petal soft. He leaned closer, thinking of her saying, I loved your passion, thinking of her spurning the duchess's company for his, of her quietly translating the motions Parliament had made. His mouth brushed hers; her lips and breath were cold, but her tongue, pressing against his own, was warm, a lick of flame in the midst of frost.

  He pulled away, thinking poison.

  “You're very accommodating today,” he said.

  “You brought Dionyses back to the palace.”

  In her eyes, he saw it was as easy as that. For a woman who'd lost her entire family and friends to a murderous witch, Delight was her family regained.

  Our estates marched together, Delight had said. We were to be wed.

  The carriage halted, nearly pitched them to the floor as the horses whinnied and jerked in the traces, refusing to be gentled.