Maledicte

by Lane Robins

  “I am sorry to hear it. Perhaps that explains her absence. I rather expected her to return once your name appeared in the broadsheets, claiming her bloodright, or sols for her part in keeping your past quiet,” Aris said. “You have not seen her since your return?”

  Blue eyes met Aris’s, and he was aware that he had startled Janus; yet Aris himself found surprise in Janus’s reaction. Had the boy no family feeling at all?

  “I went back,” Janus said, finally. “They were gone.”

  “They?”

  “Her compatriot,” Janus said. “Another whore. I presume they found a patron, or died of rat fever.”

  Janus’s words were empty of emotion, and Aris was bothered by this; surely it was natural for a boy to mourn his mother. But then, whores and addicts did not make for comfortable family.

  “How do you and Michel get on?” The door swung open as another mastiff sought out its master, pushing the door with its heavy head. Bane raised his lip, rumbled, and the newcomer settled down near the fireplace.

  Janus smiled. “I like his dogs immensely.”

  “Only his dogs?” Aris laughed. “My poor brother. But have you no other response to his care?”

  Standing, Janus paced the room. “I do not love him. His reclamation of me was too clumsy for that. Yet I am grateful to him for this new life. Should I tell you how I feel for my uncle?” He sat on the floor beside the fireplace and stroked the fine stripes in the bitch’s fur. “Or will you tell me something instead—what you would say that requires such privacy? While I am honored to bear you company, I sense a motive beyond socializing.”

  “Of course you’re right. But can you not think of anything you’ve done that might require discreet discussion?”

  Janus bent his head over the hound, rubbed her soft ears. Her tail thumped against the granite hearth. “Maledicte,” he said.

  “Maledicte,” Aris agreed. “Your father would have me command you cease relations with the lad. Make it a matter for law, not family.”

  “Will you?” Janus asked, as if it were only a matter of small importance.

  Aris didn’t answer right away; he watched his placid nephew and found himself wondering what Maledicte admired in him, what fire, what source of desire. Aris thought Janus a pleasant addition to their dwindling family, but milk-watered for his taste, and, he would think, for Maledicte’s. A tiny thread of suspicion arose; perhaps Janus played a part. Earnestness and honesty were not common traits for men trained in either royal court, nor, he would think, for the Relicts. But then, he recalled Janus’s arguments with Last and sighed. A man playing the part of utter amiability would work not to offend anyone.

  “Uncle?” Janus said.

  “Do you love Maledicte?” Aris asked.

  “Beyond all reason,” Janus said.

  “Rumor declares you bewitched.”

  “Only by the oldest magic, that of lover and loved.”

  Aris could not help but smile at the romantic simplicity of the declaration. He remembered arguing with Michel in the great ivy bower of Lastrest, arguing his reasons for marrying Aurora Vornatti, an Itarusine noble, and moreover, kin to a man his brother despised. “With Kritos gone, you are Last’s heir,” Aris pointed out.

  “I am not heir as yet,” Janus said. “Father feels my progress incomplete.”

  “You could aid him,” Aris said.

  “By giving up Mal?” Janus said. “Please do not ask that of me.”

  “I will not,” Aris said, surprising himself. “You will not be the first nobleman to keep company with a courtier. But you must convince Michel that you mean to honor our line. Do you understand?” Aris leaned forward, resting his hands on the great dog’s back as if it were a lectern, he the tutor and Janus the student.

  “I must marry,” Janus said. “Produce an heir. A healthy one.”

  “Marry well. A girl of impeccable lineage to offset the irregularity of yours,” Aris said. “I have heard of your exploits in Itarus. If there is any accuracy to them, you should have no difficulty with a wife.”

  “With the bedding, you mean,” Janus said. His mouth, so long sober, slid into a grin. “No difficulties. But choosing a wife—”

  “I could name one for you,” Aris said.

  Diffidently, Janus said, “Grant me some time to choose my own?”

  Aris set his goblet down. “If you select a bride by the close of the year and present her for approval, you may find your own. If you do not, I will choose for you, and you may be thankful it will be my task and not Michel’s.” The dogs, at Aris’s subtle signal, rose and stretched, their tongues lolling.

  Janus stood and waited for dismissal.

  “Have you—” Aris paused. “Have you met your cousin yet?”

  “I have not,” Janus said.

  “Come then, he likes visitors.”

  Aris opened the door, releasing the dogs, and the page, slumped against the wall, hastily stood. “Sire, Captain Jasper says will you—”

  “Not at the moment, Marcus.”

  Janus said, “If there’s something that demands your attention, Uncle…I understand there are some accords to be made.”

  Aris strode down the hall, talking over his shoulder, his words clipped. “The Dainanders seek to renew our trade agreement, but like Itarus, they want it all to their benefit and none to ours. They think to take advantage of my ban on Itarusine imports. But they discount the Explorations, which are beginning to bear fruit—the nobles may exclaim all they like over exotic fripperies and sideshow spectacles of savages, but the last six ships from the Explorations brought us corn, rice, and wheat, far dearer to my heart. So, I see no need to cede to Dainand’s unreasonable demands. Let them wait and rethink their avarice.”

  “And the Kyrdic delegation?” Janus said.

  Before him, Aris stopped, and looked back. “You seem to be well informed.”

  “I am Last’s son,” Janus said. “Am I not supposed to take an interest in Antyre’s affairs?”

  Aris smiled. “I’m pleased you are. But the Kyrdics may wait also—to be blunt, I am not so sure that they are not a stalking horse for Itarus, with Grigor grown weary of our failure to be annexed. I see no other reason for Kyrda’s interest in our shipbuilding.”

  The dogs loped up the stairs ahead of them, rushing down the long hallway. Aris smiled at the sight, his good humor restoring itself in fondness for the brutes. “They’re Adi’s hounds really, and grudge the hours I keep them beside me.”

  The nursery guard had let the dogs in and Aris could hear their wagging tails thumping the carpet. The guard opened the door, bowing.

  “Papa,” the boy said, rolling on the thick carpet with the hounds. He rose to his knees, saw Janus, and went silent.

  Aris tried to see his son from different eyes, and yet the tragedy was still there—the good-looking lad of twelve, who could not be made to think, learn, or even clean himself as a two-year-old might. Thin-boned for his age, he lacked the gawkiness that preceded adolescence. For Adiran, there would be no adulthood, only this fairy-child existence in a boundless present.

  The boy darted to Aris, clung to his side, and stared at Janus. Janus bowed. “Your highness?”

  “Blue.” The prince advanced, hand outstretched. At the last moment, Janus caught his hand gently.

  “Yes, my eyes are as blue as yours.” Janus’s nostrils flared slightly, as if he could smell it as an animal could, the wrongness in his boy.

  “Adiran, this is your cousin, Janus,” Aris said. “Will you greet him?”

  Ten years of training, ten years of repetition, ten years of concentrated effort on the part of Aris, and Adiran responded to the cue with a clumsy bow.

  Then he whirled and claimed his boiled sweet from Aris’s pockets. Aris pulled his son into his lap. The boy tucked his head under Aris’s chin and worked on the candy, taking it out to look at it, putting it back in. “He has a sweet nature,” Aris said, “which makes it easier for us and for him. But sometimes I wonde
r if he’s not aware, imprisoned within his own mind….”

  Janus raised his hands, dropped them; his words died away and Aris liked him the better for it.

  “My poor son will be king, at least in name,” Aris said. “Itarus will devour him entire.” He shuttered his heart against the pain of that. On the fireplace mantel, the icon of Espit, god of creation and despair, mocked him from Her tangled web, Her laughing mouth at war with Her veiled, teary eyes. Aris, who had removed all other traces of the gods from his quarters, had let this one remain, perhaps simply because it was the loveliest version of Weeping Espit he had seen. It had something of his wife in it, in the way tears caught on Her smile.

  Janus lowered his eyes, then said tentatively, “Uncle, you are not an old man. Will you not marry again?”

  Aris rocked the child, hearing in Janus’s words the echo of Michel. “I will not risk prisoning another child in a broken mind. You must take that risk for me, Janus. Do not deny me that.” He stood, shifted Adiran’s weight to more even distribution along his hip and side. The boy tangled his thin arms around his father like spiderwebbing, fragile and yet binding. “Can you find your way out, Janus, or shall I have Marcus guide you?”

  “Please,” Janus said.

  The door opened again and Jasper, the head of his Kingsguard, entered with a cursory bow. “Sire, the antimachinists have burned Westfall’s newest engine, and he expects the Kingsguard to act. We need your command—” Aris sighed at the frustration pinking Jasper’s fair face, and sighed again at Marcus peering around Jasper’s solid form, papers still clasped close. “Of course,” he said, letting Adiran down to play.

  Dismissed, Janus bowed, and followed Marcus out, retracing their steps down quiet corridors, stone overlaid with wood and plaster, and was let out into the courtyard, illuminated with hung lamps and candles. From his vantage point in the nursery over the yard, from behind barred windows, Aris watched him go.

  IT WAS LATE EVENING BEFORE Maledicte returned, and Gilly, hearing his footsteps in the hall, crept away from a dozing Vornatti. He found the hall deserted, Maledicte’s coat abandoned over the stair railing. He finally ran Maledicte to earth in the formal parlor when he heard the sound of quiet laughter.

  To his nameless relief, he found Maledicte alone, kneeling before the stage; he had expected Maledicte to return in Janus’s company, braving Vornatti’s wrath.

  On the little stage, a toy puppet theater rested. Without looking back, Maledicte said, “See what Janus has sent me?” Maledicte dragged the tiny crow-god across the false world, laughing. Within Ani’s beak dangled the threads of a smaller puppet, jerking as Ani twitched, strings within strings within strings. Gilly raised his eyes, saw the strings extending beyond the theater, saw them stretching beyond Maledicte and himself and Vornatti, stretching to encompass the far reaches of the city.

  “Only a fool plays puppets with gods,” Gilly snapped. The day had been one well-devised torment after another; Vornatti still kept his Itarusine inventiveness as well as his temper.

  Maledicte only said, “Then many people are fools. These theaters are apparently quite popular.”

  “They were meant to tell the gods’ tale,” Gilly said, remembering his mother telling the story.

  “Tell it to me,” Maledicte said.

  “No,” Gilly said. “You know it already—our demands and dreams drove the gods first to quarreling, then to fighting, and finally, on Baxit’s command, to Their own oblivion. The only way They could escape us.”

  “If you think Ani dead, then I wonder that you fear Her at all,” Maledicte said, taking the figure from Gilly’s hand. “Still, I suppose it stands to reason. Baxit seems much like Aris, trying to guide those who, while crying for help, disregard his words.”

  Gilly hesitated, a frisson touching his spine. “Baxit? You’ve encountered—”

  “Do you think Ani shares?” Maledicte said. “Don’t be a fool. I was merely speculating.”

  In the distance, they could hear the bell shrilling as Vornatti, woken, yanked the bell rope.

  “Come soothe him,” Gilly said, taking Maledicte’s arm. “And don’t mention Janus.”

  Maledicte laughed. “Don’t fret so, Gilly. I brought him gifts. Won’t he be pleased to know I thought of him?”

  Gilly hesitated, alerted by something off in Maledicte’s tone. He seemed entirely too blithe, a child with a gleeful secret. “Mal?” Gilly asked.

  “I brought something for you too,” Maledicte said, selecting a small parcel layered in translucent cloth.

  “For me?”

  Maledicte passed him the flat package. “I bought it off your sailor friend, Reg. He swore you would like it, as if I had any doubts.” He took the remaining packages and went toward Vornatti’s room.

  Gilly peeled back the gilt-edged organza until the object came clear. It was an etched piece of whale ivory, the lines filled in with ink and gold leaf, detailing an elaborate scene. A feather-clad man climbed stairs toward the clouds, a streak of golden sunlight leading the way.

  Gilly smiled, touched out of all proportion. He placed the engraving in his room, amid his small collection of treasures: an elaborate puzzle box Vornatti gave him that held his meager savings, his four books, edges fuzzed with repeated readings, a curved piece of sea glass cradling a twisted seashell, gold on the outside, luscious pink within. He touched the whale ivory at the pinnacle of sun and sky, the gilt warming beneath his fingers.

  Then, recalling Maledicte’s strange cheer, he hastened to Vornatti’s chamber. Vornatti was still echoing variants of Gilly’s own unvoiced question. “But where have you been?”

  Maledicte shrugged. “I’ve told you and told you.” He dropped a nosegay of lilies and evening primroses on the bedside table. “I even brought you flowers, since you spent all day closeted inside, and missed the gardens in bloom. Though, I admit, they’re nothing like as lovely as the bracelet you gave Mirabile.”

  Vornatti said, “So she showed you my gift.”

  “Yes, and a foolish thing it was,” Maledicte said. “Like any beggar, she’ll come back for more.”

  “What makes you think I’ll disappoint her?” Vornatti asked, leaning back against his pillows, smirking. “Perhaps there will be a wedding upon her return to the city. Didn’t I say as much earlier, or were your senses too taken up with Last’s whelp?”

  Maledicte’s eyes darkened, then he shrugged. “You’re far too wily to be caught by the kind who’d see you cuckolded on your wedding night. Besides, we have our bargain, and as I abstain from Janus, so you must abstain from Mirabile.” He seized Vornatti’s grayed head in his hands, kissed his forehead and lips. “Don’t be irascible, you’ll spoil my good temper.”

  “You are done with Janus?” Vornatti asked, skeptically. “Your grand passion burnt out in a day?”

  “I solemnly swear,” Maledicte said, “to any god you care to claim, that you will never see me dealing with an Ixion again. Not Janus, not Last. Do you know, Janus has no interest in gossip at all? It’s all news and trade agreements, and the plight of ex-soldiers. He has as many dreary opinions as Westfall. He asked my opinion of Aris’s ban on Itarusine imports. I ask you—”

  Vornatti smiled and Maledicte brought up the remaining packages. The first one, lumpen under lashings of gauze, revealed a statuette in the best brothel art tradition, which Maledicte danced along Vornatti’s bedsheets. “I thought of you at once when I saw it.”

  Gilly choked on a gasp. The little monkey leered up at Vornatti, its hands locked in a lewd self-caress.

  “Impudence,” Vornatti said, but there was laughter lurking beneath. “And paid for with my name, no doubt.”

  “I had to resort to it; you’ve kept me short of coin of late. If you’d given me jewelry, I could pawn it, as Mirabile undoubtedly has done with your bracelet,” Maledicte said. “But here—” He brought up two silver-wrapped boxes, one small, one large, both ribbon-bedecked. “Chocolates from the Explorations.”

  He laid
the big box on Vornatti’s lap, untied the ribbon, and parted the tissue. Maledicte chose a chocolate for himself, popped it into his mouth with delight. “They’re wonderful—try them, Vornatti. You too, Gilly.” Maledicte tossed the small box to Gilly, who fielded it with quick hands. “Go on. Have it before dinner, be indulgent with us.”

  He held another to the old man’s mouth. “A peace offering, my lord?” Vornatti’s eyes met Maledicte’s over the confection before accepting it; it collapsed under his tongue, and Maledicte let Vornatti lick the chocolate from his fingers without protest.

  Maledicte sprawled across the velvet coverlet, his lacy sleeves foaming over the candy box. He crossed his booted feet, and fished for another chocolate. Vornatti smacked his hand. “Mine. But I’ll share.” Maledicte accepted a sweet from Vornatti’s shaking hand, trapped it neatly with tongue and teeth, and sucked the sweet filling out from the darker coating. Vornatti watched him eat, and took another chocolate himself.

  Gilly turned the package over in his hands; the label was DELIGHT’S, the confectionery shop where Aris bought the prince’s candy. He held a piece in his hand and the smell rose temptingly and yet—

  “Don’t you want it?” Maledicte asked, lolling his head onto Vornatti’s shoulder, letting Vornatti kiss the lingering traces of confection from his mouth.

  Gilly took a bite. Sweetness spilled over his tongue, rich, smooth, cloying. He swallowed hard, as suddenly sickened as if he had found a worm in an apple. The gallows image lingered in his mind.

  “Not to your taste, Gilly?” Maledicte said.

  “Never mind about him,” Vornatti said. “He’s just ungrateful.” At the warning note in the baron’s voice, Maledicte curled closer to Vornatti.

  “I’m grateful,” he said, passing him another chocolate.

  “Pretty little liar,” Vornatti said, but the old man’s thin-skinned cheeks flushed with pleasure. Gilly finished his chocolate in one bite, seeking distraction from Vornatti stroking the juncture of Maledicte’s thigh and hip.

  “Don’t force yourself, Gilly,” Maledicte said. “I sent oysters for our suppers. Will you join us, Vornatti?”