by Lane Robins
“And what about Gilly? All I need do is call out—then your secret would be shared with one more.”
“He’d probably thank me for killing you,” she said.
“Would he? If he had to go back to the farm where he came from, bury his wit in the soil? Till the fields alone, next to the graves of his family, dead of the plague? He has no one, no one but myself, and nothing but what I provide. I own him as surely as I own my horses, which would suffer if set free.” Vornatti pushed the blade aside, touched her face, her neck. “It’s not so much I want from you. A name.”
She shivered as his fingers spidered into the vee of the dressing gown, cupped her breast, touched the curling scar beside it. “I will not give it.”
“You’re too thin,” he said, withdrawing. “Get Gilly to feed you more. If I wanted to stroke drawn skin and bones, I’d find my pleasure in myself and spare myself troublesome chits and lads.”
He slumped back on the bench; she took advantage of the space to move away.
“So tell me, girl,” he said, voice growing weaker. “Shall I have Gilly find you breeches or a skirt?”
“Breeches,” she said.
Vornatti dozed, jerked awake. “Well, I own I’m glad not to share your secret with Gilly. He’s a devil with the maids. Thinks I don’t know he spends his allowance on willing barmaids in Graston village.” He coughed, breathed heavily for a moment, studied the heap of her fallen clothing.
“You bind your breasts? The scant handfuls that they are? Well, I can help you there. One of my—friends was an actress who specialized in male roles. Her corset should fit you and be more secure than any length of linen. Come now, girl, aren’t you going to thank me? It’s not every man who’d help a girl find vengeance….”
He patted his cheek, his mouth. Clutching the robe closer about her, she leaned forward, touched his cheek, his lips with her own. Vornatti smiled.
“Let me tell you one thing more, if boy you’ll be: To play the part, you must believe the part—forget who you were. Rumor and gossip are everywhere in this country, even when it involves insignificant little chits like yourself.”
“That was the mistake Kritos made, thinking me insignificant enough to leave me alive,” she said, he said, the suppressed savagery in his voice enough to stifle Vornatti’s smile.
GILLY, WAITING OUTSIDE the baron’s quarters, went in at the sound of the slamming door. Vornatti staggered over to his wheeled chair, panting. Gilly took the handles and drew him over to the bed. Vornatti laughed. “Such a lovely surprise under the filth, Gilly, you’ve no idea….”
The door to the bath slammed open; the boy stalked out, clad in Gilly’s old breeches and shirt, long ago outgrown. He shot Vornatti a look composed of equal parts anger and wariness, but the black look Gilly earned was all rage. Gilly stepped back under the weight of it.
“I’m tired, Gilly,” Vornatti said, holding up his arms. “I won’t want dinner.”
Gilly put him to bed and went after the boy. He hadn’t gone far; Gilly stepped out, and found himself skipping back against the door, the sword at his chest.
“There were two keys,” the boy said. “You let me believe—”
“Enough,” Gilly said, too tired to be wary. He ducked the sword and, cat-quick, seized the boy’s thin wrists in his hands. The boy kicked his shins, and Gilly, remembering squabbles with his hot-tempered little brother, twisted the boy’s wrists sharply, making him drop the sword. When the boy still fought, twisting and biting, Gilly lifted him by his wrists, dangled him in the air. “Enough,” he repeated. It had always worked on his brother, on fighting dogs, and feral cats. It worked now. The boy sagged in his grip, wiggling only a little.
Gilly released him. The boy fell to the floor. Gilly winced as the boy turned a wary face up to him.
“Sorry,” Gilly said. He picked up the sword; the curling hilt scraped his knuckles, and the whole thing seemed to whisper against his palm. “Here,” he said, “take it.” He thrust it out at the boy, regretted touching it at all. It hadn’t felt quite like steel, felt born, not forged, and malign by nature. Perhaps it had been god-created, but such artifacts were few and jealously hoarded. Gilly fisted his hand, ridding himself of the sensation it left behind. With growing concern, he watched the boy sheathe it: Where had the boy found such a blade? He knew better than to expect an answer were he to ask.
“Are you hungry? There’s dinner waiting. It’s venison again. It’s mostly venison all winter. You’ll be sick of it come spring.”
The boy stood. “I’m not hungry,” he said.
“You’re skin and bones,” Gilly said, wondering if he was always doomed to argue with the boy.
“So he said. But why I should gain flesh simply to please his lecherous—” The boy’s jaw snapped shut; his eyes blazed.
Gilly took the boy’s elbow in his hand, walked him toward the library, wanting to be, if not friends, at least amicable, if the boy’s temper could allow such a thing. To that end, Gilly said, “I know something that might make you feel better.” He drew the boy past the books to the frosted doors. They stepped outside into the winter night; their breaths fled from them like ghosts.
Gilly bent, pulled up a handful of broken marble, snow-dusted. “It’s the old facing from the house. I like to get my anger out this way.” He hefted the fragments, tested the weight, and pivoted, hurling the missiles at the orchard. The rocks hit the nearest tree, scattering icicles.
Gilly collected another handful, thinking of Vornatti giving him precise instructions regarding keys and bathing rooms. He sent another tree-load of ice to the ground, letting the sound drown out his guilt.
He handed the boy the next stone, cold and damp with snow. “Imagine you’re throwing your anger, your frustration out.” Another game he’d played with his brother, who could only be distracted from his tempers, rarely soothed.
The boy closed his eyes, his jaw clenched, the scar flared red, and then he threw. The stone sailed forward, effortlessly hitting the tree. Icicles cascaded, but before Gilly could hand him another stone, the next tree shed its icy teeth. Then the next and the next, until the entire orchard was crashing and shattering with one thrown stone. Gilly caught a shuddering breath at the glittering wreckage the boy had made.
VORNATTI RUSTLED PAPER in his lap, unfolding the envelope. Gilly watched, intrigued. Usually the old bastard tossed Gilly his post, trusting Gilly to file away the gossip, the bills, Aris’s reports on profits sent to Itarus, and to act on the few business letters he received. But this letter lacked the creamy color of Antyrrian vellum, was tinted slightly blue, nearly translucent. The thick lines of script shone through the paper.
“What think you of this?” Vornatti said, passing the letter to Gilly.
Across the library, the boy looked up from his contemplation of Vornatti’s book.
“Read it aloud, Gilly, since it concerns our young friend.”
The boy shut the book, not bothering to mark his page. And why would he, Gilly thought, when he could only be looking at the pictures, and not the text?
“Gilly,” Vornatti warned.
“Sir,” Gilly said, began. “It’s from Itarus,” he said, surprised. “How did you—”
“I have my ways, Gilly. You’d do well to remember that.” Vornatti closed his eyes. “Read.”
“It’s a copy of a letter from Kritos to Last,” Gilly said. The boy stiffened, silent. Gilly angled the letter to get the most of the firelight on the crossed words.
“Michel, cousin, while I acknowledge that you have come to Itarus as I requested, I did not intend for you to dally within the foreign court, and leave me with your ill-begotten, ill-tempered bastard son. He is unmanageable. A feral dog would have more gratitude. A rabid animal would have shown less rage. We’ve had to lock him in the turret, to keep him from escape attempts. If we were not on Ice Island, he would have succeeded. I can not even enter his room without his attack.
“It’s all very well to suggest threatening
him, to derive obedience through fear, but he’s not so blind as that. He knows you want him alive, and what else have I to threaten him with? He cares not for hunger nor cold nor beatings, though at least those serve to weaken his outbursts.
“No, cousin, if you have any hopes of firing him off among the Itarusine court, and then among our own, you will have to take a hand. As it is, I have the severest doubts he can ever learn our ways. I wash my hands of his education. I will be his jailer only. If you would have me do otherwise, you must take a hand yourself.
“Kritos.”
The boy stood, his hands shaking. “Kritos.” The loathing in his voice darkened the atmosphere of the room, bringing winter darkness to the fire-lit circle.
“How did you get this?” Gilly asked, turning the letter over in his hands, looking for some hint of the sender.
“A matter of enmity,” Vornatti said. “Last hates me. As does my heir, Dantalion. As such, they are acquaintances, at least during the days of the Winter Court. It’s a small matter to pay one of Dantalion’s servants to copy any interesting letters.”
“Is there anything else?” the boy asked. “Did Last go to aid Kritos?”
Gilly watched the tremor move from the boy’s hands through his spine and disappear, leaving him as still as a crouching cat.
“So greedy,” Vornatti said. “Here I’ve worked one prodigious collection of information, from my chair, mind you, and you only ask for more. Will you thank me?”
“You derive too much pleasure from your intrigues to need my thanks,” the boy said. “Tell me.”
“I did receive word that Last has retired to Ice Island,” Vornatti said.
The boy’s face shuttered, locking away emotion, but Gilly had seen a quick wash of perplexity cross his face, as if he didn’t know whether to take Last’s involvement as a good thing or bad.
“Come then, thank me,” Vornatti said. “Or are you as unmannered as Last’s whelp?”
“I’m worse,” the boy said.
Vornatti laughed. “How do you figure that, boy? You’ve been brought to heel, domesticated by food and a little frost. The only independence you have left is your stubborn refusal to grant us your name.”
The boy looked to the barren trees in the orchard outside. This winter, they had not gathered icicles for more than a night without rocks being hurled at them. The black rage in the boy’s eyes sank back; he dutifully crawled into Vornatti’s lap and kissed him. Vornatti stroked the black curls, but the moment Vornatti’s lips left his to draw breath, the boy was across the room, never mind that he left strands of his hair in Vornatti’s clutching fingers.
“Gilly,” Vornatti said, smiling. “I’m tired.”
Obediently, Gilly rose, folded the letter in neat quarters, and set it on the desk.
When he returned an hour later, flushed and straightening his clothes, he found the boy still in the library. Gilly hastily tucked his shirt back into his breeches, embarrassed anew under the boy’s dark eyes.
Seeking distraction, he discovered it in the boy sprawled beside the fireplace, in the book spread open before him. Gilly remembered the frustration he had felt once, touching the incomprehensible secrets of letters and words.
“I’ll teach you to read if you like. And write,” Gilly offered.
The boy propped himself on his elbows. “Do you think I come to look at the pictures?” He passed the book to Gilly.
The book was not one of Vornatti’s pornographic woodcuts. It was instead Sofia Grigorian’s text-dense treatise on exotic poisons used in the Itarusine court.
“Are you suggesting you can read?”
“I am telling you I can. And write.” The boy’s lips curled in a smirk that Gilly was beginning to recognize. It betokened the boy’s worst tempers. The news from Itarus was not to his liking, Gilly thought. Despite everything, the boy had hoped for Janus’s return this year.
“So you see how little I need you,” the boy continued. “I can read my own damn letters. And I don’t need Vornatti’s lecherous aid, either.”
Gilly’s own temper quickened as the boy’s words woke the caresses Vornatti had pressed to his skin.
He yanked the boy to his feet. Gilly handed him a quill and the Itarusine envelope. “Prove it. Write something for me then.”
“Anything,” the boy said, defiant.
“Anything?” Gilly grinned. “Promise?”
The boy hesitated in the face of that smile. But then he raised his chin. The smirk deepened. “Anything.”
“Your name.”
The boy’s face froze and he whispered, “Bastard. And you’ll run off to tell him, won’t you?”
“If you are incapable…” Gilly said, goading him.
The boy dipped the quill into the inkwell, shook the excess off, and bent over the paper with a faint awkwardness that spoke of inexperience. But the scrolling ink spread over the silky parchment smoothly and quickly, stirring Gilly’s breath while he read the letters as they formed.
The boy stepped back, bowed, tossed the quill onto the desk with a spattering of inky drops, and left the room, all so smoothly done that he was gone before Gilly’s eyes rose from the paper and the single word that the boy claimed as his name.
Maledicte.
GILLY WOKE TO THE ROUGH sound of Vornatti’s labored breathing in his ear and, from farther down the hall, the distant protest of moving furniture. Gilly wondered drowsily if something new had distressed the boy and he had built barricades in his room last night, or if he was thieving furniture from the other rooms. A settee had already disappeared into the boy’s quarters, and once, Gilly had found the boy preparing to move an enameled table down the wide, slippery stairs. Gilly had carried it down himself, but the boy, as suspicious as a mother cat, had maneuvered it inside without Gilly’s help. The boy—Maledicte, Gilly thought, jerking awake all at once, unnerved again. The name rang in his ears like the voices of mad intercessors and witches, ill-omened.
Vornatti’s gnarled hand sought Gilly’s thigh. “Who would have thought,” Vornatti rasped, “the boy would find such tame pursuits to amuse him through the cold season.”
Gilly smiled, but when Vornatti’s hands stroked higher, he pulled away, freed himself from the smothering weight of eiderdown and fur. “I’ll start the fire,” he said.
“Linger yet,” Vornatti commanded. “It’s rare enough I wake with you in my bed these days. It makes me wonder what sent you fleeing into my arms last night.”
Gilly shrugged, fed the spills into the redly burning coals, grew a little flamelet, and fed the first log in.
“That’s not an answer, Gilly,” Vornatti said, mood souring along with his voice. He gasped, and Gilly knew the old man’s pains had caught up with him once again.
Gilly stirred a spoonful of Laudable into the leftovers of last night’s wine. “Drink this.”
Vornatti gulped it. “Tell me why, Gilly. Do you want something out of the ordinary way?”
“I’m not a whore,” Gilly said, stoppering the lid so hard the seal cracked in his hands.
“Well, not just a whore,” Vornatti said, mocking. “There are endless supplies of reasonably intelligent young men. There are endless supplies of reasonably willing young men. But there are few who are both. And gentle—” Vornatti touched the rough stubble on Gilly’s cheeks, his tone losing its petulance. “What was it that frightened you? The boy?”
“I suppose,” Gilly said. “I didn’t want to be alone in the dark, with only the boy in my head for company.”
“But such fascinating company,” Vornatti said, gloating.
Gilly knelt beside the bed, found Vornatti’s slippers, and slid them onto his feet. Head still lowered, he said. “Sir, have you never thought that this might be a dangerous thing? This boy—sometimes he seems merely a youth with a temper; at other times, he seems uncanny, his rage unnatural, that sword with raven wings like Black-Winged Ani….”
“Black Ani,” Vornatti said. In his voice, Gilly heard old re
membrances, and wondered what it had been like, to live under the eyes of the gods.
“The sword, the hunger for vengeance. His will. His determination. Even his name. Ani could—”
“The gods are dead, Gilly. Any man who fought at Xipos in the endgame knows that. Xipos proved it; men made offerings grim and great, and men died, churned into mud and blood, screaming for Haith’s mercy and hearing nothing. That sword is nothing—stolen from some incautious aristocrat, nothing more. The boy has a magpie heart, we’ve seen that.” Vornatti tugged his dressing gown closer across his shoulders; it sagged where his flesh had once filled it, revealing the great, pitted scars over his spine and hip, the source of his pains and problems, the place where a warhorse had danced across his back with rough iron shoes.
“But—” Gilly started, remembering the feel of the sword beneath his hand and shivering.
“The gods are gone,” Vornatti said. “Baxit Himself gave us that gift. Though some swear it was His curse. To live at our own behest. To answer our own prayers.”
Gilly nodded, obediently.
“My superstitious Gilly, I am an old man,” Vornatti said. “I grew up in the god times. And I saw one god-possessed…. If this boy were Ani’s, he would have slaughtered us both rather than falter in his forward steps. There is an old book of such histories in the library, should you doubt me. I think you merely mazed with nightmares. Haven’t I heard you call out in your sleep while you dream of dead things?”
Gilly nodded, this time with more belief. Maledicte was likely nothing but a clever actor, skilled in evoking dread. It would serve him well, should he ever come to grips with Last, Gilly thought. He refused to think on the sword and the feeling it left in his skin.
“But you learned his name?” Vornatti said. “Tell me.”
“Maledicte,” Gilly said.
Vornatti threw back his head and laughed.
A SHADOW CROSSED GILLY’S LINE of sight as he crouched beside the shelves, pulling out the books rarely read. His hand closed on the spine of one old enough to have grown foxed and spotted, the leather cracking. The Book of Vengeances.