by Lane Robins
Gilly hissed, watching the game begin. Cat catch mouse, with both men playing. Janus was aware of his shadow, acted the complicit mouse, limited himself to small turns of his neck and head, trying not to catch sight of his pursuer. If he spotted the shadow too soon, too obviously, the game would end, and interest and amusement sparked in those incandescent blue eyes, livening the mask of his face.
The court grew progressively more silent, watching in avid delight.
“Must we continue with this roundaboutation?” Janus spoke aloud, his voice laced with amusement, though he had yet to acknowledge his pursuer with even a glance. In his voice, Gilly heard the same careless arrogance that drove Maledicte’s speech, but layered in tones like sculpted velvet. “I’m but new come to this court, and fail to see how I have erred in your opinion. If I have offended your sister, mother, lover, I apologize. If it’s other than that, let it wait. We have affrighted the musicians to silence.”
“They sounded like cats strangling anyway, and I should know,” Maledicte said. His raspy voice was shocking after Janus’s polished one.
Janus, startled, turned to confront his shadow, and the amused smoothness of his face shifted. Even Gilly, standing so near, could not name the sentiment, the emotion fleeing too quickly to identify, like a ripple over deep water and gone.
Janus took a step toward Maledicte; the courtiers, the maidens caught between slipped away, and the whispering court found their eyes drawn not to either man but to the emptiness between them, the nexus of space that slowly closed.
Maledicte took another step. His face was as pale as his shirt.
“Have we danced enough?” Janus said. “So come, then, declare yourself and have at me.” His lips stayed parted after his words; his face tightened as Maledicte took the space between them and made it an illusion, not the impenetrable barrier it seemed.
“Janus Ixion—” Maledicte said, at the heart of the circle. His voice caressed the syllables, and again that flicker of emotion swept Janus’s face.
“Lord Last,” Janus said, dropping into a bow, his golden hair sliding, gleaming over sky-blue shoulders.
The sweeping arc of the black blade stopped his descent. He tilted his head up, pale throat like marble. “Not in the mood, hmmm?” Janus stood straight, spread his arms. “Have at me then; I will not fight you.”
Maledicte wavered, visibly unable to move forward or back. Janus’s arms closed; he caught Maledicte’s wrist, his other hand caught the shoulder of Maledicte’s embroidered coat and drew him closer. Then he released Maledicte’s sword hand, all as smoothly done as if it were only the steps of a dance and not a potential duel.
“Will you strike me?” Janus asked. His voice, which so far had been pitched for the horrified, fascinated, scandalized audience, dropped to a husk. There was the faintest sound of despairing entreaty in his words, as if Maledicte’s enmity was too heavy a weight to shoulder.
The black blade shivered in the light, a shadow chased by candle flames, moving. Falling. It clattered to the marble floor and Janus smiled. He slid his hand over Maledicte’s shoulder, into the dark hair, and bending close, put his kiss first on Maledicte’s mouth, then on the silk-covered throat. Maledicte threw his head back, in a movement as voluptuous as any woman’s.
Janus murmured something too low for the riveted crowd. Gilly strained, but even his clever ears missed the word. A name? A prayer?
What Janus said, of course, in his crushed-velvet voice, was Miranda.
The silence faltered as whispers broke over the court like the tide. Janus stepped apart from Maledicte, dropped into a bow again, elegant and courtly. Maledicte returned it after a moment, and where Janus’s bow was all Antyrrian languor, Maledicte’s carried the stiff perfection of Vornatti’s teaching. Maledicte spoke a few quiet words, drowned in the hiss of the court, and turned away.
The courtiers flooded inward, erasing the stage Janus and Maledicte had created with their presence; scandalmongers sailed from one side of the room to another, tongues preparing to wag. Trying to follow who might have the most dangerous words to spill, Gilly lost sight of Maledicte in the mass. A faint whisper in his ear, a quick scent of lilac, and Maledicte slipped by him and disappeared with an eerie grace. Gilly turned, trying to track him, and instead caught sight of Mirabile standing, frozen, her face a mere mask. Shock, Gilly thought, and worse—betrayal. Janus fit nowhere in her plans for Maledicte.
Still near the epicenter of the storm, Janus accepted a glass from Westfall’s hand, smiled his thanks, and headed toward the balcony doors.
His cue, Gilly knew. Maledicte’s command ghosted through his mind. Show Janus to the carriage. We’re stealing him away.
Except Gilly could think of nothing he would like less than to take Janus through the romantic tangles of the king’s maze where he had walked with Maledicte. He told himself it was relief that Maledicte was not launched on his erasure of self, his bloody vendetta without care for his own life.
A quick movement, checked, drew his attention to the dais, to Aris staying the Kingsguard in their search for Maledicte, and wearing a fine, high flush on his cheekbones. Anger, Gilly feared. The king’s eyes shifted to meet his. Gilly dropped his gaze immediately, caught staring at the king like a country fool. But more disturbing to his composure was the unwilling recognition of their shared emotion, the bite of unreasoning jealousy.
The voices of the court were roaring now, the musicians fighting to be heard, belaboring their instruments to make up for their earlier silences. Gilly, making his way out, collected comments like tiles from a mosaic. “Sword in the court. Again. And yet Aris does nothing—”
“Last will not be amused that his son set us such a scene.”
“It’s enchantment, I tell you.” Mirabile’s face was livening finally to well-controlled rage, taking Maledicte’s actions as an affront to her own charms. “First he claims Aris’s approval and now his nephew’s. But how, is the question. I have seen things he would not like me to tell, an altar, books of spells…”
“A devotee of the dead gods?” her hearer, Micah Chalefont, sneered. “Only fools believe in them.”
“Fools deny the evidence of their own senses. I am not so witless,” Mirabile said, snapping her fan closed. The certainty in her voice stifled Chalefont and made Gilly hasten his steps.
He found Janus waiting silently in the dimness; when Gilly approached, those blank blue eyes showed only disinterest. “This way,” Gilly said, gesturing into the maze, and Janus’s eyes burned with eagerness.
MALEDICTE PULLED HIMSELF from Janus’s embrace, settled on the opposite side of the carriage, leaned forward and knotted Janus’s hands in his own. He laughed soundlessly, his constricted throat unable to voice the emotion. “I dreaded this moment, feared I’d never see you again. That you wouldn’t know me if I did…What a fool to forget how we fit together.”
“I’d know you anywhere, Miranda—”
“No,” Maledicte frowned, a fleeting thing, displaced by joy. “Miranda’s dead. Murdered in the Relicts like the rat she was.”
“That’s as Roach told me. That you were dead, and at my hand. Absurd. As if I could ever harm you….”
Maledicte was glad of the dimness of the carriage, the swaying that shadowed their faces and granted them a sweet intimacy, all too aware of the flush on his cheeks, the rush of pleasure at Janus’s careless words. “You went back?”
“Soon as the Kiss docked. Soon as I could convince Kritos that the voyage had made me ill. The only familiar face I found was Roach.” Janus laughed and kissed Maledicte with a greedy mouth. “And here we are.”
Their noses bumped, their foreheads jarred each other’s when the carriage bumped over rough stones. Janus, distracted, peered out the window at Dove Street passing by with its line of tall, trim houses and sculpted lawns. “Where are we going?”
“My town house.” Maledicte slid on the seat, pushing his back into the plush warmth of the cushions, his fingers slipping from Janus�
��s grip, then leaning forward again, unwilling to let go.
“This isn’t just some raid on the nobles’ court then?”
“I told you. Miranda’s dead. Despite the masquerade, I am much as you see me. I am Maledicte, ward to Baron Vornatti, a courtier and not a lady.” Maledicte gave a little half bow, constrained by the seat. “I warn you now. I am a known entity in the court, and you’ve undoubtedly blacked your reputation tonight.”
“You always were the clever one, Mir—Maledicte, was it? Quite a mouthful, love. But tell me, do you know that Kritos is dead now? Do you know that?” Janus said, settling back. “Struck down by an unseen hand, left for rat food.” A smile played about his lips, the same secret communication in his eyes that Maledicte had missed so sorely.
“He took you from me. Should I have let that go unrevenged?” Maledicte said. Ani grumbled beneath the joy in his blood, and he said, “But let’s not talk of vengeance now.” He put himself into Janus’s lap and kissed him again and again.
· 15 ·
M ALEDICTE SECURED HIS BEDCHAMBER DOOR while Janus’s teeth teased his nape. Janus raised his head, looked around at the sumptuous room, at the fireplace, still faintly red with burning coals, the wide chair beside it, the tall windows with their heavy crimson drapes, the plush, high bed. “Your baron treats you well.” The question lurked in his tone.
“For a price,” Maledicte admitted, then skirted the pointed truth for a few lesser ones. “The keeper of my secrets, and my own personal blackmailer. If I displease him, he threatens me with exposure in the court.”
“Would that be such a dreadful thing?”
“I would be ruined. A woman in Vornatti’s house, unchaperoned? A woman with a sword? Not even Vornatti’s novels tell such audacious tales. Besides,” Maledicte said, “I’m rather attached to my persona and the freedom it brings.” It was all the explanation he could give on the matter, and he shivered, wondering what Janus thought, to find Miranda in a circumstance she had always sworn she would never be in.
Janus kissed the silk cravat on Maledicte’s throat once more, then loosed the knot with careful fingers. “They truly believe you a man? With your sleek skin and smooth throat—” He traced the bared lines of chin and neck and collarbone. “I expected a scar to match your voice. It is not an affectation.”
“No,” Maledicte said, “stonethroat.”
Janus kissed the pale skin at the base of Maledicte’s throat, touched his tongue to the hollow there, a tiny flicker of warmth that sparked likewise in his veins. “Such a gamble.”
“Risks are necessary when one seeks a prize of inimitable value,” Maledicte said, opening Janus’s shirt, finishing the job begun in the carriage, easing the stiff, formal vest off, then the silken lawn. In the low-lit room, Janus’s skin gleamed like gold, and heated Maledicte’s blood like fine brandy. Maledicte shoved him toward the wing chair, and once Janus was seated, pulled off his boots, glad beyond measure that Vornatti seemed to have faded from Janus’s thoughts. Maledicte looked again at Janus, at the lazy, hungry expression in those familiar eyes, and gave himself to the moment—more, to their future, for the first time feeling he had more than a tentative grasp on it. He found himself smiling again.
Janus tugged him into his lap, unbuttoned Maledicte’s shirt, slipped the silk away, and paused, amused. “A corset?”
“Padded,” Maledicte said, touching his sides, his belly, his back. “Throughout here, to bulk up my waist, flatten my breasts. This masquerade would be less successful otherwise. Unhook me.” He presented the elaborate back to Janus’s waiting hands.
“How do you manage to lace this by yourself?” Janus laughed. “Every lady I’ve met needed a maid or a man.”
Maledicte moaned as the hooks parted with faint pops and the corset fell free. “Practice. Necessity. And it needn’t be as tight as the ladies’ corsets. It needs only to disguise,” Maledicte said into Janus’s hair, nipping at his ear-lobes.
Janus slid his hands around the exposed narrow waist, the curve of spine and hip, the small, soft breasts. Maledicte sighed, and leaned into his hands, arching back as Janus kissed each tender tip. Things did change, he thought a little deliriously. Janus had changed, grown taller, broader, stronger, harder. Maledicte basked against him, the scent of his skin rising over the court colognes, and smiled hungrily.
He stroked his hands down Janus’s ribs, the sleek, muscle-padded heat of them, trailing light fingertips down Janus’s belly. Janus’s breath grew a little more rapid, and Maledicte chose to slide away from a more intimate touch, even as Janus shifted his hips toward his hands. A delightful thought occurred: This time, they had all the time in the world—no stolen moment made fragile by Ella’s importunate callers, by Celia’s drunken rages, by Roach’s jealous dogging of their heels. This time was theirs alone, and he intended to savor every moment, to relearn the feel of Janus’s skin against his own.
“What’s this?” Janus asked, stopping his caresses to touch the red lines on Maledicte’s left arm and side.
“Sword strike from the Marquis DeGuerre.” Maledicte studied it again, briefly bewildered by a history not shared.
“And this one?” Janus traced the long, serpentine scar that wrapped her left hipbone, veered around her back, and licked the base of her right breast.
“Whip,” Maledicte said. “Kritos, in the Relicts.”
“Bastard,” Janus muttered, bending to kiss the upward curl of the weal, a wash of breath and heat that made Maledicte gasp, draw him closer.
“Just another dead aristocrat now,” Maledicte said, clutching Janus’s shoulders as his lips left the scar and moved down the pale, soft skin of Maledicte’s belly.
Janus untied the laces in Maledicte’s hair, setting it tumbling free, framing Maledicte’s face and shoulders in whispery tendrils that made him shudder with sensation. “None so blind…” Janus murmured. “You look like no man I’ve ever seen.”
Maledicte preened. “Gilly calls it vision driven by expectation.”
“Gilly knows?” Janus asked. His lips paused in their brushing over Maledicte’s skin, tightened in a frown.
“No,” Maledicte said, flushing at the very thought. “The fewer to know this secret, the fewer to tell it.”
“Are you so sure he is unaware?” Janus asked. “If he has mentioned—”
“He was referring to cheating at cards, and simple sleight of hand. He has not thought to apply his rule to me, I assure you.” Maledicte ran trembling fingers through Janus’s hair, admiring the sparks of sunlight captured in the golden strands.
“He’s aided you, acted your partner,” Janus said. He slipped away from Maledicte, paced across the room to poke at the coals, sending sparks upward in swirls of angry heat.
“My partner on my path to retrieving you,” Maledicte said. “You must be my partner now as well.”
“Like secrets, partners are often best kept to two,” Janus said. “Vornatti knows—”
“Janus,” Maledicte said, impatient with the subject, only aware of the flickering firelight over Janus’s skin, and the answering heat in his own. “Come here and free me of these boots and breeches, unless you fancy taking me as if we were gentlemen in the stables, fumbling and baring only what we must.”
Janus grinned, mood sweetened. “Another time, perhaps.” He knelt, and tugged Maledicte’s boots off; he ran his hands up the thin leather of Maledicte’s breeches, began sliding them down, lingering to kiss the inside of his bared thighs. “Very nice legs…for a gentleman of the court.” The words tickled against his skin, made him shiver, made him writhe.
“I admit the court finds me a rather girlish young man in appearance.” But his good spirits chilled. First Vornatti, now this. He felt that every moment exposed pitfalls he hadn’t imagined, every moment revealing a threat to this fragile joy. He touched Janus’s mouth, halting further banter, and stepped out of the entangling leather. “But Janus, they do believe me a man, and while it is understood, so says Aris, that som
e men have appetites only for their own, it is not a fashionable thing. And I will not give up this role. I am Maledicte now, and so I think myself male, all evidence to the contrary aside.” Maledicte gestured, encompassing bared flesh. “Your reputation may suffer if you are seen in my company overmuch.”
The last words were pained; only now did Maledicte realize the trap he had laid for himself. To become female again was unthinkable, and yet his guise could cost him Janus.
He turned, studied himself in the mirror, distracted from worrying in the shock of self-exploration. It had been so long since he had taken the risk of loitering unclothed, or even thought of himself as Miranda; though he had all her desires, her dreams, he spoke truly to Janus when he declared her dead. Maledicte could not put himself back in her position, could not re-make time, unable to remember how it felt to not carry this secret.
“I suppose I should be grateful I don’t resemble Ella,” Maledicte said, “or this rebirth would have been impossible. My lines are more male than female.”
Janus laughed, snaked an arm over her shoulders; she shivered in relief and want at the sight of his form alongside her in the glass. “You are blind yourself. You are barely taller than most women of the court. Your voice is your most believable attribute, but this—” He cupped one breast, then the other, stroked his fingers over her nipples, making them stiffen. “This is purely female.”
Maledicte’s heart raced; he leaned back against Janus’s chest, playing now, directing his attention. “My hips are not broad enough.”
Janus slid his hand downward, splaying his fingers down Maledicte’s belly, lingering, teasing, his voice furred by desire. “The women of the court wear corsets, boning, bustle, and padding to make them shapes different from their own.”
His fingers slipped into the warm cleft of her thighs, moving in gentle patterns, growing warm, her skin growing slick against his touch, and Maledicte trembled. “Do you still think yourself male?” Janus whispered. “Do you fear I will leave you at the say-so of the court? What care I for their approval when I have you in my arms again?”