by Lane Robins
“Enough, Mal,” Janus said.
Maledicte, not listening, pulled the sword from Last’s chest, then sheathed it when he realized that all he wanted was to spill blood and that the only person within reach was Janus. He stared out at the sea, dark waters surging and receding, at the ships slowly becoming visible as the fog thinned and faded. The shining figurehead of the Winter’s Kiss, a young man seemingly carved of ice, glimmered as the fogs parted. Gilly would like that one, he thought, and with that the rage faded. The earl was dead. His vengeance done, Maledicte stared down into the blank eyes, the gaping, slack mouth. Ani’s touch subsided into sulky confusion.
Maledicte watched the body, waiting for some sign, his eyes never leaving the corpse, though Janus spoke his name twice, then finally in exasperation—“Miranda!”
She turned, searching for words to explain her dismay. The earl of Last was dead and her victory was as meaningless as when she first heard his name. Last—it had meant nothing to her then. Dead, he meant nothing to her now.
“Over your tantrum?” Janus asked. “Grab his ankles and let’s sink him into the water; we’ll weight his coat with cobbles and delay the discovery that much longer.”
Maledicte mutely did as Janus said. He watched the body drop by slow degrees deeper into the water, fading. “What are you doing here?”
“Aiding you,” Janus said. “Amarantha?”
“She’s here?” Maledicte said.
“Aboard the Kiss, I suspect,” Janus said, lips thinning. “Well, there’s no help for that. Unless we want to fight the entire crew.”
We could, Ani whispered. Turn the waters red.
Maledicte shook his head, and at Janus’s imperious wave, went over to help him with disposing of Last’s men.
They were still stooped, the sagging weight of the burly tiger held between them, when two sailors came out of the night, drunk and staggering. They blinked and one of them frowned. “Milord Last, is that you?” Janus pulled his cloak over his pale hair, and traded a glance with Maledicte, one that needed no special communion to be understood. The sailors had to disappear. Maledicte reclaimed his sword and flew at them, and they, panicking, headed not for the safety of the ship, but back into the dark streets. Janus yanked his cravat up over his nose and cheeks and followed as silent and supple as a cat. Maledicte still gained on the two sailors, moving as light and quick as a shattering of glass.
He darted through a shadowed alley and tore the shadows after him. Looking behind him, one sailor tried to sign an avert charm and stumbled. Maledicte pounced, jamming his head against the rocks. He freed his sword from the hilt, and Janus, flashing by, said, “Not the sword.”
Maledicte snarled but balked, understanding. The sailor struggled to rise, and Maledicte picked up a rock. He brought it crashing down on the man’s skull, heard the wet crack, and remembered Miranda’s lectures. He bent over the corpse and plucked the few lunas left from the bag.
Janus returned, out of breath, but dragging the second sailor behind him. He dropped the body near the other. “Did you get his purse?” he asked.
Maledicte nodded.
“Then let’s leave this. There’s no great mystery to drunken sailors being set upon for coin,” Janus said. “And I need to be home, setting arnica to my mouth. A bruise might be hard to explain, should Last surface with the next tide.” His tone invited apology, but Maledicte denied him that.
In truth, Maledicte wouldn’t be able to apologize even were he so inclined. This final death stole his voice; he fought a surprising urge for tears. The sailor was no part of his revenge. Just a man visiting the city whores and finding his pleasure where he could.
Janus glanced at him and said coldly, “If Ella had had her way, you’d be bedding men like this.” He tugged Maledicte closer, and wound a narrow strip of cording around his waist, cinching the fabric closed. “Try not to run into Gilly, hmm?”
Maledicte touched the dead man’s belt and nodded. He strode off into the darkness, heading for home, clinging to the shadows of the Relicts like a ghost, daring someone to confront him, to recognize him. Invoked by Janus’s words, he almost expected to see Ella staggering out of an alley, shaking down her skirts. Maledicte wondered what would happen then. Would Ella even see Miranda in Maledicte’s guise? Most like, she’d not even look, but scuttle away, recognizing danger, if not her child. Maledicte wondered briefly if Ella had grieved when Miranda left, if she had meant anything to her at all, beyond merchandise.
Sudden thoughts stilled his feet, left him numb. Miranda was nothing, a rat, but Janus—Celia knew Last had taken him—why had she not followed? Surely the gossip reached this far—surely she knew that Janus had come into coin…. Her absence meant she was either dead or so far lost in her Laudable dreams she might as well be dead. And what befell Celia undoubtedly befell Ella. Maledicte shed a shaky breath and went on, dreading his past rising up to meet him. But alleys passed in these uncanny fogs, peopled only in his imagination; Maledicte saw no one.
He arrived home and crept in through the kitchen. Cook drowsed in her chair, and fresh dough rose on the counter. The dark, sour scent of the yeast made his stomach clench. He fled the kitchen, halting when he found Gilly dozing on the main stair, a guttering candle spilling wax over the riser. Maledicte backed away, and crept up the servants’ stairs.
It was done, he thought as he stripped the bloody shirt from his flesh. Even now, Last plagued him, the cloth sticking to his skin, making its removal close to pain.
Done, and Janus to be earl. Maledicte winced. If they escaped conviction. He ripped off the ruined corset and dropped it in the pile of stiffening cloth.
Naked, he fumbled to the hearth, searching for lucifers. He thrust the fabric into the fireplace. Kneeling, he blew at the struggling flame and succeeded only in scattering the fine ash left behind from last season’s fire. It stung his eyes and brought him to tears again.
Why this weakness? Why this grief? Maledicte could not understand it. No such thing had plagued him before.
Daylight showed through the curtained glass of his rooms, and, despairing, he sloshed the brandy over the slow-singeing clothes. Then and only then did the room fill with the stink of burning blood and embroidery. Some of the rigidity left Maledicte’s shoulders. He scrubbed his face with cold washwater, trying to wipe the ashes away. The cloth came away speckled with red as well as black, and he squeezed it out until the basin turned pink. The face, the figure that looked back at him from the glass was that of a madwoman and he refused to let his eyes rest on it. He was Maledicte, the dark cavalier, Last’s scourge. Ani’s servant. Still Her servant. And with Last dead, whose blood could release him?
Daylight reminded him that the maid would come to bring fresh water and morning tea. The clothes had best be burnt by then, burnt to ashes. He stirred them with the poker, set glowing sparks free to sting his bare arms and hands. These faint pains woke him from his stupor, and he dressed with his usual elaborate care. Fine leather breeches laced along the thighs and belly for the fashionable fit. Another corset, secreted in the space that once held Vornatti’s will, bound his chest and thickened his narrow waist. He layered on the shirt, finest lawn, and the brocade vest, tied his cravat in a reasonable facsimile of the popular Leaffall, and called it done just as Gilly’s familiar tap sounded on the door. “Mal?” Anxiety laced his voice.
At his invitation Gilly came in and coughed. “What are you burning?” he asked, flinging the windows open without waiting for permission. He poked at the black remains of the fire, and said, “Oh. Did you do it then? Kill him?” His voice grew tentative and pained. “Were you seen? What happens next?”
Maledicte hefted the brandy bottle, but the liquor was gone, fed to the fire. “It’s all ashes,” he said. “Nothing but ashes. Can you tell me why this should be so unsatisfying?” He took the poker from Gilly and stirred the fire, breaking the charred fabric into black dust. “I plotted this death for years. Gloated over it, imagined it, fed my rage on i
t. And it’s ashes in my mouth.”
“Ani goads you, spurs you on to mad rages, and when you’ve done as She wished, She recedes, taking it all for Herself. And you’re left with nothing but the aftermath of blood. Now that your vengeance is done, She’ll have left you completely.” Gilly let out his breath and studied the carpet beneath his boots, scuffing at soot that had spilled out with the withdrawn fire-iron. “Most of Her previous children have gone mad with Her loss.” His voice shook.
Maledicte said, “Gilly. Look at me and tell me She’s left me. That Ani’s mark is gone. You who see it so clearly. My compact completed—that I am no longer Her stalking horse.”
Gilly sucked in his breath. He touched the shadows under Maledicte’s dark eyes, and then looked into the shadows in the eyes themselves. “No. She rides you still.”
“The earl is dead, but She lingers. Is this all my future holds? Blood and fighting? I wanted Janus back and I have that. I wanted riches enough to never starve. I have that. If this night’s bloody work remains a mystery, Janus will be earl, and there will be nothing left to need.” He wrenched his chin from Gilly’s grip, and collapsed into the chair beside the fire.
“Janus will always want more. He’s near as hungry as Ani Herself,” Gilly said, bitterness in his tone. “Why is Ani still with you? What happened, Mal?”
“It’s all ashes,” Maledicte repeated. He slumped, his face in his hands, tears in his throat.
“I know something that is all ashes, without question,” Gilly said, changing his mood with an audible effort. “What did you do, clean the hearth with your hair?”
Distracted, Maledicte touched his hair, and frowned at the dusting it left on his fingers. Gilly collected the ivory-backed brush from the dresser and said, “Lean forward.”
Maledicte bent his head, letting his hair dangle over the hearth, and Gilly brushed the ashes out, brushed until Maledicte’s hair gleamed like a rook’s wing.
“What color ribbon do you want?” Gilly said. “Your usual black, or something more dramatic?”
“Black will do,” Maledicte said. “I am expecting Echo at any moment. Even if Last obliges by staying disposed of, his disappearance will cause comment. And that means Echo again. I never thought how apt his name was before—he keeps returning, my words distorted on his lips.”
Gilly gathered the dark strands into a queue, tied it off at Maledicte’s nape, making a neat knot and letting the ribbons dangle. “What will you say?”
“It hardly matters,” Maledicte said. “I am not the only one with animus against Last, and until his body surfaces, Echo will be hard pressed to charge me with a crime. He’ll assume I killed Last. But he’ll have to prove it—and he’ll find no witness to the deed.”
Gilly frowned, thinking beyond his immediate worries for Maledicte’s sanity, for the compact still unfinished. “I’ll send out runners and spies, those who can differentiate whispered fact from wishful rumor. We’ll know what Echo plans before he does. And Amarantha?”
“On the Kiss, we think,” Maledicte said.
“I’ll send a letter in her wake, then, asking Vornatti’s spies in Itarus to keep their ears open. If she’s abroad, she’ll seek Dantalion as Last would have done.” Gilly sucked in a breath, beginning to hope that, Ani’s lingering presence notwithstanding, Last’s murder had been accomplished without jeopardizing Maledicte’s neck.
· 27 ·
G ILLY PACED OUTSIDE MALEDICTE’S ROOM, waiting. It was the dark night of the year, and superstition held that the unshriven dead returned on the Dark Solstice. Once there had been solemn ceremonies to placate the dead, but in the bored hands of the aristocracy, the Dark Solstice had become another excuse to play.
Did the dead come back and to the court, Gilly thought, they would return to their graves, ashamed for the antics of the attics-to-let and the debauched, for the gamblers who took advantage of their costumes to cheat with abandon. Though none was truly masked in the select crowd, caught in the nets of well-recognized foible and mannerism, they could pretend and act accordingly. Despite his creeping unease at the idea of Vornatti’s ghostly step sounding in the hall, Gilly wished Maledicte had chosen not to attend, not when Mirabile had paved their path with rumors centering on Last’s disappearance and Maledicte’s possible role in it.
The Dark Masque, though, had put a spark into Maledicte’s eyes, replacing the sullen temper and brooding fits Maledicte had been prone to since Last’s death. Gilly had expected to see only release in Maledicte’s eyes after the earl’s death; everything the boy had craved was granted. Janus, his lover; the earl of Last, dead. Gilly knew where his own unease lay; Ani’s continuing presence as obvious now as it had ever been, darkening Maledicte’s nights, sending him into muttering rages and long bouts of sword practice against enemies only he could see.
Perhaps, it was simply that the changes had proved fickle and fleeting. Janus was Maledicte’s, true, but Janus was also at Aris’s beck and call, and Aris still hunted him a wife. The earl was dead, but earl was a title and it could be bestowed else—
The floorboards creaked along the stairwell; Gilly twitched but didn’t take his eyes from the closed door. For one moment he even wished Janus here, waiting in this dim hall. On the darkest night, Gilly would prefer to spend it in Lizette’s arms, letting the flame of her hair warm him like sunlight, letting the ampleness of her charms drive dead men from his mind. But Janus attended the masque as part of the king’s entourage, and not Maledicte’s escort. Gilly believed that it wasn’t the masque itself that had brought the smile to Maledicte’s face, but the simple fact that he would see Janus this evening, after a long month where Maledicte had seen Janus only rarely.
The stairs creaked again and Gilly turned his head in time to see a gray figure slip away. For a bone-shuddering moment, he believed in the dead as wholeheartedly as a child, but it was only Livia, stealing down the main stairs to avoid Cook’s watchful eye.
“What do you think?” Maledicte asked, ghosting from his room.
Gilly shivered, caught by the dark eyes behind the raven mask. It was as if he saw Maledicte for the first time, and he was surprised all over again at how lovely Maledicte was. The lush mouth beneath the jutting black beak curled in amusement, changing the shape of the face. For one dizzying moment, Gilly saw a woman in a mask, behind the mask.
“Speechless?” Maledicte asked, the harsh rasp of his voice breaking the illusion. He stepped closer and the rook feathers sewn into his coat glimmered and shifted green, gold, and returned to black. The scent of dusty feathers washed over Gilly, the sweet pungency of lilac. He imagined touching the lush mouth, and the sudden violence of his desire made him quake.
Lizette teased him often about his love for Maledicte, and he allowed it, acknowledging his fascination, and acknowledging that Maledicte was not his. A bittersweet pang. But tonight, for the first time, he wondered if he could change that, wondered why his heart and body had run so counter to his tastes. He took Maledicte’s slim shoulders in his hands, the feathers rustling against his palms, and drew him closer.
Maledicte looked up, inquiring and impatient. “Say something. I thought you would like the feathers. And what a time I had collecting them.” Gilly imagined kissing the sulkiness from Maledicte’s mouth, but the beaked mask was more than proof against such incursions.
“Do you think it wise to parade your allegiance with Black-Winged Ani?” he asked instead.
“It’s not the fashion to believe in gods, remember?” Maledicte said, pushing away from Gilly. He paused in his path down the hall, and said, “Come along, Gilly. We’re running late, and we must get you a mask. Should Vornatti come hunting for someone to tend his needs, I will not have him find you.”
ONCE AGAIN THE TWO HALF-MOON courts were opened to each other, Aris’s sunrise half and the nobles’ secretive twilight. But the whirl of time and sky was fractured, made into mazes with hanging mirrors, swaying gently in the press of bodies, reflecting dizzying views of gilded
traceries on the walls and the movement of the revelers, clad in fantastic concoctions limited only by their pockets or sense—lace and leather, masks and fur, and gems.
Small groups clustered near these illusory walls, where once they could have expected the gods’ eyes to peer out at them, overseeing the Dark Solstice and its intersection of the living and the dead. Now the mirrors only served to double the attendees’ numbers and the only ghosts were their own cloudy reflections. Masked royal servants, clad in gray velvet, moved like wraiths through the crowd, a reminder of the deaths the aristocrats evaded.
In the heart of the room, a raised dais stood, draped from above with a pale gray cloth that shimmered like rain in moonlight. The gilded chairs on it were empty, the backs of the chairs draped in black—the only symbol of mourning Aris allowed himself for a brother not proved dead.
Maledicte’s face was stern behind the mask; his mouth, starred by a small velvet feather, grew tighter as he scanned the room, dismissing the crowd one costumed aristocrat at a time. In turn, Gilly noticed how few faces, even shielded, braved Maledicte’s gaze.
“Janus will be on the dais with Aris,” Gilly said. “Do you know his mask?”
“Do you think a mask can hide him from me?”
The royal dais became a hive of motion, of servants moving back and forth. Through their smoky shapes, behind the silvery drapes, the diminished family of Last could be seen. Aris, in festival white, nonetheless wore black armbands, and his mask was shaped like Sorrow.
Adiran sat at his father’s right, in the queen’s chair, which dwarfed his fragile body. On either side, the mastiffs, tongues lolling, watched the crowds, gulping foodstuffs that Adiran tossed them. A servant, clumsy with nervousness, stumbled over his own feet, and Hela chastised him with a deep, sudden bark. Adi giggled, tugged at her ears, holding his mask on with his other hand. He wore only a half-mask, white satin, trimmed with blue, and kept pushing it up his forehead, ruffling his hair.