by Lane Robins
The half-seen memory of curving crystal spurting away from him flickered back into his mind, and he said, “Poison?,” thinking of the empty space in the embroidery box.
Maledicte said, “Stonethroat.”
“You tested dosages on the cook’s cats? To see what would change but not kill?”
“I would have used hounds, being more man-sized, but Vornatti doesn’t keep kennels.”
“Why do this?”
Maledicte coughed, hand flying to his neck. He dropped his hands to his side. “I will not be mocked, not by Thorn, nor by Vornatti.”
“You poisoned yourself to lower your voice?” Gilly said. “You couldn’t wait for nature?”
“I’ve done nothing but wait,” Maledicte said, his face flushing. “While Vornatti snarls and paws at me and time passes. A third winter approaches and Janus is as far from me as he has ever been.”
Gilly folded himself onto the grotto bench, shivering at the clamminess of damp stone seeping through his breeches. “Maybe his lessons go no more smoothly than yours.”
Maledicte shrugged, eyes still worried.
“Do you fear he will forget you?” Gilly asked.
Maledicte turned his face up, startled and horrified. Gilly shuddered. Had the boy never thought that time passed for Janus also?
“If he has forgotten…” Maledicte said, his ruined voice as devastated as his eyes.
Gilly winced away from the raw pain, and Maledicte levered himself onto the bench with a cough and a sigh. Gilly smelled blood, sweat, and a pungency to both that reminded him of the poisonous trial Maledicte had inflicted upon himself.
Maledicte turned a curved fragment of glass about in his fingers, stilled them, and looked at the glass. “Am I forgettable?”
“No,” Gilly whispered. Maddening. Mercurial. Charming. Never forgettable.
Maledicte coughed again, a series of quick outward breaths like a man puffing to liven a fire.
“Are you well?” Gilly asked. His fingers trembled as he took Maledicte’s damp wrist in his grip. Maledicte’s pulse hammered steadily, more so than Gilly’s. Gilly was all too aware of the boy’s ashy pallor, the warm stickiness of blood on his hands.
“Well enough,” Maledicte said. He freed his wrist, slid down to lean his head back on the bench. He kicked a dead cat from under his boot with a moue of disgust.
“Except the months speed by and I am no more forward.”
Daring, Gilly stroked the damp, dark hair. Maledicte sighed, rolled his head, settled it in Gilly’s lap. Gilly froze, as startled as if a wild creature had unaccountably failed to bite. He twitched his fingers into life again, slid them over Maledicte’s nape.
“Maledicte,” Gilly whispered, the word an invocation. “Dark words, dark paths, a heart laden with secrets, and no one to rely on.”
“There’s always you,” Maledicte said, so softly, so muffled by damaged throat, by the sweep of Gilly’s sleeves curtaining his face, that Gilly felt that his trust was no more than a distant rumor, fragile and easily disproved. His fingers worked loose a tangle from the dark head.
It was with some reluctance that Gilly roughed his voice to speech, pointing out Maledicte’s slow-bleeding arms, the bodies that needed to be disposed of before they lost a cook, and the lateness of the hour for sitting in a damp grotto.
Gilly would not allow Maledicte to help with the dead cats, concerned that some taint of death would sift free and unbalance Maledicte’s fragile control over the stonethroat. So Maledicte watched, his arms bound in wide strips torn from Gilly’s shirt, his eyes as flat and opaque as the stones Gilly cleaned. Still, Gilly thought he heard the soft falling weight of blood on earth. Maybe it was only ghostly steps from the dead creatures Gilly shoveled into a sack, or maybe—maybe it was the faint ticking of an unseen clock, counting down the moments until Maledicte must act.
· 6 ·
Maledicte snooped and Maledicte pried.
No one escaped from Maledicte’s spy.
How many secrets did he find?
One…two…three…
S ORNATTI PUSHED BACK HIS DINNER PLATE, the roast hen only pulled apart, not eaten, and turned on Maledicte. “Your appetite seems well enough.”
“Shouldn’t it be?” Maledicte said, licking his fingers, his voice the mutter of a feral cat.
Vornatti slapped him. “Manners!” Maledicte surged out of his seat as if he meant to return the blow.
Gilly said, “Mal,” quietly in a warning. It seemed to him that in the cold months since the self-inflicted poisoning, Maledicte’s temper had grown apace. Or perhaps it was only the uncanny rasp, a menace bred purely by sound. Gilly thought that Last would have little desire to laugh now, if he encountered the boy and his sword.
“To think I thought you could act as a courtier,” Vornatti continued. “Dogs lick themselves. People do not.”
“But I am your dog, am I not?” Maledicte said, visibly warring with his own temper. “You’ve trained me to heel.”
Before Vornatti could retort, Gilly knelt beside Vornatti’s chair. “Tell me, my lord, what have we done to displease you?” There was something, some balance that had changed; ever since Maledicte had poisoned himself, Vornatti had veered between pride in Maledicte’s lessons and rage at the smallest infraction. Gilly thought perhaps Vornatti had also been spooked by Maledicte’s success with the stonethroat. He sighed. Fanciful. Vornatti’s moods were, as ever, dictated by pain, Elysia, and events, not by superstition.
Vornatti’s face, drawn into tight lines, eased at Gilly’s conciliatory tone. He stroked the line of his jaw, his neck. Maledicte leaned up against the wall; the silent weight of his watchful presence heated Gilly’s skin with embarrassment.
“I’ve heard from Aris,” Vornatti said finally. “I have his permission to present my ward to the court without the usual petty testing of manner and dress. Aris,” Vornatti said, “grants a favor for a favor.”
At Maledicte’s questioning gaze, Gilly said, “On occasion, Vornatti…pads Aris’s financial reports to Itarus and to Antyre’s benefit.”
“Still, it seems Aris’s approval matters little,” Vornatti said. “I also received the broadsheets today. Look you at them, and tell me what you see.” He fished the folded sheets out from his chair, passed them to Gilly. Gilly spread them over the tablecloth, smoothing the crumpled lines. His breath caught. The infamous artist Poole had turned his attention to the court.
The caricature claimed most of the front page, a myopically drawn king, a book in one hand, a trailing leash in the other. The hounds, named for members of the court and for political entities like Itarus and the antimachinists, ran freely around him, fighting, fornicating, and fouling the palace. It was titled “The Learned King.”
“Is Poole mad?” Gilly asked. “Was he arrested?”
“No,” Vornatti said. “Aris couldn’t be bothered. The disrespect of the court and papers is ingrained.”
Gilly sucked in his breath, but it was Maledicte who said it for him, paying more attention than Gilly had thought. “So the king’s welcome does not insure my acceptance? Without such acceptance, I have no way to reach Last.”
“Not only your vengeance is at stake, but my position. If they spurn my ward—I have been shunned before, and I will not suffer it again. Gilly! We need to be assured of our acceptance. You will go to town and find such assurance. I want one of the counselors—Lovesy, DeGuerre, or Westfall—to greet us with open arms. Do what you must. Dig up what you must.”
“Leave here?”
“Maledicte can care for me, can he not?” Vornatti traded a long look with Maledicte; after a time, Maledicte dropped his eyes and nodded. Vornatti smiled and gestured to his side. Maledicte came silently over, and nestled down, leaning against Vornatti’s thigh. “Good dog,” Vornatti said. “You can growl all you want, but you know better than to bite.”
Gilly, watching the redness rise and fall in Maledicte’s cheek, wondered if that was entirely true.
&
nbsp; “Gilly, start with the betting books,” Vornatti said. “There’s always scandal there, if you know how to look.”
He nodded understanding and obedience, and left the room, glancing back once to see Vornatti leaning over Maledicte, biting at the marble curve of his neck.
IN MURNE, Gilly found his duty more tedious than taxing, the obstacles many but responsive to his handling. While his target was apparent from the first study of the betting books at the Horned Bull, that rough tavern where the most disreputable bets were laid, the evidence proved more difficult to gather. Still, several weeks later, Gilly held proof of a scandal in his hand, not regarding a counselor himself, but a counselor’s close kin—more than potent enough for their needs. Vornatti, notified by letter, had agreed, and sent Gilly a bonus, as well as further instructions.
A bonus Gilly felt well earned. Gilly left the meeting with their chosen victim feeling that only luck and good planning had kept him alive. The Marquis DeGuerre was a very angry young man; Gilly was glad to immerse himself in the less dangerous details of preparing Vornatti’s town house after his long absence, taking care in the meantime to stay safely away from DeGuerre’s reach. With such determination and little distraction, he was able to send word to Vornatti that the house was readied ahead of schedule.
“Welcome to Murne, my lord,” Gilly said, greeting Vornatti at the door of the Dove Street residence. Vornatti, white with the strain of two days’ travel, nevertheless walked across the threshhold, leaning on a stout cane. Maledicte pushed the wheeled chair behind and came in, dressed in city finery—delicate lawn shirt, leather breeches, a satin vest, all the opalescent black of a raven’s wing. Gilly helped Vornatti into his chair, and turned back, drawn like a magnet to the elegance of the boy.
“You look the part now,” Gilly said.
Maledicte dropped into a bow, smiled up at him. “Gilly.” His voice held distinct pleasure, a purr beneath the rasp, and Gilly hoped it wasn’t merely for his success. He hoped that the month apart hadn’t undone their tenuous friendship, that a month alone with Vornatti hadn’t raised Maledicte’s temper to a razor edge.
“You’re rather elegant yourself,” Maledicte said, tugging Gilly’s blond queue, eyeing his embroidered livery. “But what’s all this?” He gestured to the collection of flowers and wrapped packages.
Gilly cast a cautious look around at the other staff, waiting along the wall for Vornatti’s acknowledgment, and spoke quietly. “Once DeGuerre folded, other courtiers remembered Vornatti’s ways and sent tribute, an urging to look elsewhere.”
Maledicte laughed. “Afraid of you and your watchful eyes. And they’ve not even met me yet.”
“Gilly,” Vornatti said, interrupting their chatter. “I’m tired. Show me to my room, and supervise the unpacking. I don’t trust the maids; they look a shifty lot,” Vornatti said, then grinned. “Especially that saucy one.” His cane swung out, jabbed at her ankle-high skirts.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Livia, sir,” she said, dropping a curtsy. Vornatti’s cane stirred her skirts, revealing her calf. He patted her wrist. “You weren’t hired by the housekeeper, I’m sure. Not with those legs. I’ll wager Gilly hired you personally. He has a weakness for red-haired maids.”
Livia nodded, dimpling.
Vornatti dismissed them all, letting his eyes linger on Livia’s retreating skirts, and when Gilly moved to carry the baron’s personal luggage, Vornatti put his cane in his path, slapping Gilly’s shins with that always-deceptive turn of speed the old man had. Like his crest, the serpent, which struck at speed and without mercy, Gilly thought, wincing.
“Gilly,” Vornatti said. “Your dalliances stop the moment you fail to please me.”
“Yes,” Gilly said, flushing.
“You’ve had free run for a month now. Don’t forget who pays—”
“Leave off, old bastard,” Maledicte said, stepping between the two, touching Gilly’s hand in passing. “You don’t need to crack the whip.”
“And you, youngling, need to recall that we’re in town now, and the rules are different. Gilly, help me to my room.”
Obedient and silent, Gilly did, guiding Vornatti’s chair down the hallway to a room that had once been the second parlor, before Gilly’s frantic redecoration. The last time Vornatti had lived in town, he could manage the wide, polished stairs to the upper floors.
Maledicte, as ward to Vornatti, had been given the room Vornatti would no longer occupy, the master chamber on the second floor. Thinking of Maledicte’s quick defense, Gilly was pleased that he’d taken the time and some of his bonus to fill a bedside dish with toffees of the kind Maledicte had pilfered from Last.
Gilly’s room was also on the floor for family and guests, showing his position for what it was, neither fish nor fowl. The maids served him, Cook chivied him like a mischievous lordling, the butler grudgingly conferred with him. Yet his room overlooked the mews and the trash bins; the furnishings were pieces not good enough for the baron or his guests.
But late in the night, Gilly didn’t dwell on arbitrary inequalities, though his eyes lingered on the scarred dresser opposite his bed. Instead, he listened to the peaceful silence of the sleeping house, wishing he could rejoin it. Sweat glistened at the neck of his nightshirt, damped his back and arms, catching the light of his bedside candle. A handful of spent matches attested to his failed attempts to light the candle with trembling hands. He had not dreamed this past month, and yet, the very day Maledicte set foot under the Dove Street roof, the nightmare returned.
He shook himself like a wet dog, shrugging off tendrils of nervousness and fear as if they were droplets of water. Settling himself into the sheets again, he reached to snuff his hard-earned flame. Then, instead, he rolled his back to the light, pulling the linens over his shoulders.
The nightmare returned as if he had never managed to wake from it. The catafalques again, and one tomb split asunder, the crushing, underground darkness, lightless save for the sullen bloody glow around Her. She perched, talons dug into a dead man’s chest, Her beaked face stabbing into the soft, opened belly. Clotted gore blurred Her features. All Gilly could see were Her starving eyes and a few strands of pale hair gleaming in the offal smearing Her face. Gilly took hesitant steps, wanting to name Her victim, but She had been there already and the eyes were gone, the face ruined.
The unlight that showed him Black-Winged Ani coiled, shifted, and revealed Maledicte, down on one knee, leaning on the sword. He looked at Gilly with eyes as hungry as Ani’s and said, “Is this my vengeance completed? This is not how I expected it to be.”
Ani rose up behind him, Her wings shutting out even that bloody light, a taloned foot reaching for Maledicte’s shoulder. Maledicte’s hand ghosted up, a pale spider in the darkness, and rested atop Her clawed foot; in protest or acceptance, Gilly couldn’t tell. She bent Her face to Maledicte’s, Her beak hovering closer and closer to Maledicte’s eyes.
“Mine” was all She said, but Her voice was as merciless as floodwaters.
Gilly woke for the second time with a racing heart and nausea stirring his belly. His ears rang with the aftermath of Her voice. The candle flame danced with the rushing wind of his breath and Gilly reached for it. As he moved, he saw someone standing in the doorway, a shadow blooming against the small flame.
The maid Livia? Gilly thought, hoping to lose his fear in the game of pleasure. But she wouldn’t have come to his room, risking her position, not now that Vornatti had taken residence.
“Awake, finally?” The rasp identified the speaker beyond any doubt. Maledicte strolled over to the bed, stopping a few feet from the edge.
Still fully dressed in his fanciful black, the candlelight coiling around him, he woke some of the dream dread in Gilly. But instead of despair, Maledicte’s current expression hovered toward offense.
“What were you dreaming, Gilly?” he asked. “You tossed and turned so, and you—” His voice, brittle, broke and faded.
; “It was a nightmare. A most unpleasant one.”
“You said my name in it. I thought you’d seen me come in, but you were sleeping. What were you dreaming?” It was more than interest. It was an angry demand.
Gilly pushed his sweaty hair back, feeling worn beyond his measure, and not in any mood to decipher the why of Maledicte’s anger.
“You have no right to dream of me,” Maledicte said.
Gilly sighed. “Dreaming is a magic beyond reason, Mal. I am sorry that your presence in my dream offended you. It doesn’t mean anything.” Except that Ani, supposedly dead and gone, lived well in his dreams.
“Are you trying to burn the house down?” Maledicte said, changing the subject. “Or have you taken to tippling the old bastard’s opiates?”
“Did you come in to cut up at me?” Gilly asked. “If so, please go away. I’m tired. While you explored your new territory, I worked.”
As changeable as mercury, Maledicte said, “My poor Gilly. I’ll let you sleep, but I do recommend that you put out the candle. I can think of more pleasant deaths than burning in your bed.”
“What do you need?” Gilly said. “I am quite awake and intend to stay so.” To prove his point, he propped himself up into a sitting position against the mounded pillows.
Maledicte drifted to the side of the bed, settled himself. The feather mattress shifted under his weight. “I want to know what magic you worked to gain our entrance. Whose secrets were so interesting…?”
Gilly mistrusted the dark humor in Maledicte’s eyes and tried to delay. “I met a boy who knew your Janus.”
Maledicte’s face shuttered into blankness. “Did you.”
“A boy called Roach? Was working in the Bull and robbing their customers, given the chance.”
“Roach,” Maledicte said, recognition evident in the wariness of his voice. “What had he to say?”
Gilly shrugged. “Our paths crossed only briefly.” Roach, skulking in the alley, had tried to rob Gilly of his hard-won letter and the scandalous information within. Gilly, pleased with his success, had merely shaken Roach silly, and told him he was a fool to try to steal something he couldn’t even read. “He said Janus taught him to read. Said that Janus killed his girl.”