by Lane Robins
Maledicte dropped a bow. “You sent for me?” Behind him, a guard lurked.
“Yes,” Aris said, his throat rough. Maledicte’s eyes were heavy-lidded, his hair loosely and hastily tied back. Small jet feathers sieved from them, and Aris remembered the two dancers, one black, one white, whirling around the ballroom, heads bent close together. His hands fisted.
“Come and see what has befallen my brother,” Aris said, stepping away from the bier.
Maledicte came forward, wavering like one of the shadows in the dimly lit room. He leaned over the ruined head, and stepped back, his pale face expressionless.
“Does it satisfy you to see him dead?” Aris said. “I know you hated him, though never the why of it.”
“Yes,” Maledicte said.
“Give me your hand,” Aris said.
Maledicte proffered his right hand. Aris seized it and tugged him back to the edge of the bier. The sickly sweet odor of putrefaction washed over them, driving Maledicte’s perfume back. His hand in Aris’s struggled. Maledicte turned his face away, leaving Aris to speak to the wing of dark hair sheltering him.
“Touch him,” Aris said, voice ragged. The guard leaned forward to watch, witness. Maledicte resisted, and Aris yanked his arm forward, stretching it toward the body. Tears started in his eyes.
Maledicte turned, caged Aris’s prisoning hands with his free hand, stopping him. “A learned man so wild with grief,” Maledicte whispered, his voice meant only for Aris’s ears. Maledicte’s dark lashes lifted; the black eyes met Aris’s and Aris shivered. “Which superstition are we chasing, sire? Is Last supposed to bleed at my touch?” He freed his hand from Aris’s grip, as gently and precisely as a pickpocket liberating coins.
“I doubt you can claim squeamishness.”
“Why don’t you ask me?” Maledicte said.
“You must do it,” Aris said, looking away from the sweet mouth turned down in distaste, hardening his ears to the intimacy of that raspy voice, so close, sounding so caring. False or not, it made Aris tremble.
Maledicte stepped forward and touched his fingers to Last’s forehead, then touched the sodden fabric over Last’s heart. Then he spread his hand to show Aris the unmarked flesh. “I did not kill your brother.”
Aris no longer knew what to believe, his mind as cold and as numb as Last’s corpse. As cold as the fallen debutantes, awaiting their spring burials. He only knew that death had come to his country on Maledicte’s heels, that any member of his court must be an able liar, well versed in apparent sincerity, and that Maledicte had an unsavory reputation as a swordsman and blackmailer. The one Aris could testify to, thinking of the damning Antyrrian audit ledgers kept hidden by this boy’s pale hands, weapons more worrying to Aris than the blade.
As for the sword—those delicate hands were smooth, barely callused, and Aris knew that reputations were often based on gossip. Neither Aris, nor any of his guards, had ever seen Maledicte dueling. Even Echo, ready to condemn, had qualms imagining Last taken by Maledicte’s sword. Last himself granted no aid; though he had spoken out against Maledicte in life, his body, caught up in the Fleur’s anchor and dragged along the keel before breaking free, was too mangled to make any mute accusations.
Aris covered his eyes as if he could blot out the images, blot out the panic surging in his blood.
Aris shivered as Maledicte put his hand on his arm, unasked. He heard the guards shifting uneasily, but said nothing, instead allowing Maledicte to tow him away from the bier. He opened his eyes to see what expression he could catch on Maledicte’s face, as if he could sneak up on verity when it eluded words, but learned nothing new, save that compassion sat uneasily on Maledicte’s clever face.
“I thought you meant to question him, sire,” Echo said, arriving in the doorway on an upswing of anger. Aris put another body width between himself and Maledicte.
Maledicte said, “Ask at will. I will give you no more difficulty.”
“The debutantes,” Aris said, his words overriding Echo’s attempt to take control of the room. “Had you anything to do with their deaths?”
“No,” Maledicte said, startled and frowning. In the background, Echo scoffed, and it was to him that Maledicte addressed the rest. “I am no killer of feckless girls.”
“Whispers speak of a evil pact between yourself and Mirabile,” Echo said, coming closer.
“Are you serving as counselor of gossip?” Maledicte asked, his customary acid eating into his tone.
“You danced with her,” Echo said, “your heads bent close as if you shared secrets and schemes—”
“Never with her,” Maledicte said. “She’s quite crazed. Send for her, Echo. I doubt she’ll deny her wrongdoing.”
“I sent Jasper to collect her,” Aris said, noting the lack of concern in Maledicte’s gaze. “Echo, it’s early. Let us continue this later, after we’ve spoken to Mirabile…” He drew Maledicte away from Echo, closer to himself, and lowered his voice. “I will see you out of this, but you will repay me with your discretion and silence this winter. I want no gossip to reach my ears of your doings.”
“Such a thing you ask of me,” Maledicte said. “Surely, it is not within my power to still idle tongues—”
“Enough,” Aris said, in no mood for banter, not with his brother’s corpse so near, not with the young man suspected of killing him. “The court is closed. Until spring comes and wipes away death with life, there will be no balls, no celebrations, no masques. The nobles will rusticate in their country homes, or in town estates should they feel inclined. You will do likewise. Do so and I will give you Janus.”
“He’s not yours to bestow,” Maledicte said.
“But his absence is mine to command. I could see him mewed at Lastrest, trapped in mourning clothes and customs. Or I could keep him at my side exclusively—” Aris trailed off. In the dimly lit room, cold with death and pain, Maledicte’s burgeoning anger felt huge, a looming, dark presence. Echo moved closer, hand dropping to his sword hilt.
“Little fool,” Aris said, seizing Maledicte’s shoulders and shaking him with all his pent-up frustrations. “Do not force me to heed the whispers.”
Maledicte suffered the shaking meekly, his hair falling from its loose queue and hiding his face. His harsh voice came like a whisper of scale on stone. “I will be discreet, sire, to the best of my ability, which is not inconsiderable, you’ll agree?”
“Aris,” Echo objected. “Better to hold him until we see what Mirabile has to say—”
“Are you so eager to keep me from my luncheon and my books?” Maledicte asked. Aris felt like one of his dogs gone to point. The specter of the ledgers had been in the room since Maledicte’s entrance. He had expected Maledicte to invoke their power sooner, and more bluntly. This reminder, so gently spoken, could be a threat, or merely a reminder that Maledicte could, indeed, be discreet.
“Go then,” Aris said. His hand, still resting on Maledicte’s shoulder, lifted and twined the dark hair around his fingers, turning his face up for study. It wasn’t innocence that greeted him; Aris would have distrusted such an expression on Maledicte’s face, but there was no triumph either. Its lack softened Aris’s offense. “Go on then. Off with you. Let me hear nothing of you but praise, and come back in the spring.”
Maledicte bowed, his hair slipping through Aris’s grasp.
“Sire—” Echo objected, but never had time to finish. Jasper returned, white-faced, two guards walking behind him, their hands on their pistols, their gazes nervous, as if they had seen devils.
“Jasper?” Aris asked, his voice unsteady. “What’s happened?”
“Westfall’s dead…his house afire—”
“The antimachinists? They dared to—”
Jasper wiped a hand over his mouth and his sweating face as he interrupted his king. “Not them. Mirabile’s run mad, sire. She’s killed them both, poisoned Brierly and murdered Westfall. She took his eyes and heart.” He shuddered. “We saw her, gown bloodstained from hem to
hip, as if she’d been wading through blood. But before we could lay hands on her, she was gone, like a shadow disappearing under the noon sun.
“Gone,” Aris repeated, dumbly.
“It’s witchcraft, sire, I swear. No matter that the gods are gone…she’s found some way to touch power, and no one will be safe until she’s stopped.”
Aris sank onto the bench, looking up at the painted gods, and for the first time in thirty years offered a whisper of a prayer to Baxit, praying that reason would return to his kingdom.
· 29 ·
T HE FIRST SIGNS OF SPRING inside the city limits were the groans and creaking of the ice breaking up near the docks, moaning like live things in torment. Maledicte had slept badly this winter, and would have slept a good deal worse, saving Janus’s presence and the gossip mill turning from him to Mirabile. As the Dark Solstice deaths faded in urgent memory, his rumored part in it fell beneath the waves of Mirabile’s continued depredations.
The slaughter of the Westfalls paled beside the subsequent deaths of the four kingsguards who had run her to ground. All four men were found rent and eyeless, and on that violent topic, tongues wagged. Mirabile, some cried, was a phantom, returned to plague the living. A witch, cried others, and one who meant to curse the aristocracy. Others, more cautious, whispered of returned gods and Ani’s touch, whispered so quietly that only Gilly, sifting information, heard that rumor.
One further tidbit kept bored tongues busy. The whisper that Aris had chosen Janus to replace Westfall as counselor. The rumors claimed first that this was merely Aris’s way of leashing his scandalous nephew and keeping the last of a line close. More acidly voiced rumors said that Aris always liked one of his counselors to be in touch with the common folk, and what was more common than a bastard?
Still the season passed, with Janus often at the palace, acting as Aris’s aide. It was Janus who greeted foreign merchants at the dock, haggling for Aris, and spurning the bulk of the Itarusine cargo. And it was Janus, or so it was murmured, who met with Captain Tarrant, that pardoned war pirate, to strike a surreptitious bargain, smuggling those same spurned Itarusine goods into the country, thus relieving the exorbitant prices on staples, and silencing some of the protesting poor. But if Janus spent his days at Aris’s beck and call, his nights were Maledicte’s exclusively.
Even with Janus’s near-constant presence, Gilly knew that Maledicte was more often haunted than not, nights given over to nightmares, and saw, with increasing regularity, the shadows drifting in Maledicte’s eyes as Ani, stymied, made Herself felt in a hundred small black tantrums and nightmares. From the brittle tension that rose between Maledicte and Janus, from the near-resentful looks Maledicte cast Janus on occasion, Gilly thought he understood what had happened. As of yet, he had not found a tactful way to ask for confirmation.
Tonight, Gilly came in with the groaning of the ice, feeling as grave as if it were he doing the moaning. He had, in his hand, the instrument that would shatter their fragile peace.
“Do you know you have frost in your hair?” Maledicte said, lounging in the hall with a glass of wine in his hand. “And you look chilled through.” Maledicte set his glass down on the empty receiving salver. As Aris had requested, Maledicte had refused to attend any of the makeshift festivities, though in truth, few had requested his presence. Maledicte dusted the frost from Gilly’s coat and sleeves. Parchment crackled like breaking ice, and Maledicte tugged the paper from Gilly’s hand.
“What’s this? A note from Lizette? Does your ladybird know how to write?” Maledicte teased. Gilly reached for the letter, but Maledicte evaded him.
Taking up his glass again, Maledicte propped himself against the wall, and began to read the gathered gossip and speculation Gilly paid Bellington for.
The glass splintered in his hand. “When did you know about this?” Maledicte demanded.
“Just this afternoon,” Gilly said. “I got word from the solicitor and went down to the docks to talk to the captain of the Kiss. He confirmed it, said she was showing signs even on the journey out.”
Maledicte let out a strangled sound—whimper, snarl, or both together, combined of rage and despair. “We should have thrown her into the sea with her damned husband. But who would have calculated the odds to be so against us? Five years it took for Last to seed his previous wife, and several slips after that. But Amarantha—wife for a bare sennight—” His breath sobbed in his chest, unequal to his rage.
“What’s the matter now, the soup served cold?” Janus asked, coming into the hall. As he looked from Gilly to Maledicte, the bored humor drained from his face.
“The countess of Last, Amarantha Ixion, is near to term with your father’s child, and she returns to lay claim to the estate and title.” Maledicte belatedly noticed the broken glass in his hand. He opened his clenched fist, let the shards patter down like rain from his unmarred skin.
Janus blanched. “A blow to be sure.” He raised his hand to his forehead, rubbed the narrow spot between his eyes. “Is it Father’s child for sure? Not some bastard thing she’s using to gain control of the estate?”
“If it is not your father’s babe, it is so close that we will never prove otherwise,” Gilly said.
“What do we do?” Maledicte said. “If the child is born, if it is a boy, our plans are thrown over, Janus.”
Janus stroked Maledicte’s dark hair. “You’ll just have to kill her before she gives birth. But be careful, Mal. Aris seems most…interested in your activities. Echo counsels mistrust, while I scoff, and yet we only attain stalemate. Best we heed Aris’s obsession, and be discreet in her death.”
WHEN ARIS SENT A RUNNER to Janus, informing him that he would be sent to meet Amarantha’s ship with the royal carriage and a slew of guards, Maledicte said, “I don’t suppose you could drown her by accident.” He said it with no particular energy, lounging on the chaise, slowly moving to fill the area that Janus had vacated.
“No,” Janus said, though his lips quirked.
Maledicte marked the smile with one of his own. “At least we know that Aris holds you innocent of your father’s fate, to send you to fetch Amarantha.”
“He sends me with an armed escort. That argues no particular trust,” Janus said, pulling his coat on, settling the shoulders, and checking the lines in the mirror.
“Well, you did murder Last,” Maledicte said.
Watching from the chair beside the parlor door, Gilly raised his head sharply. Janus cast him a baleful look, and spoke to Maledicte. “We are not discussing this again. You killed him, I merely sped him on his way.”
“All your own way,” Maledicte said, still lazily. “The fun of patricide and treason and none of the blame.”
Janus stooped, pulled Maledicte up, and shook him, once. “Enough. What do you want me to do to apologize?”
Maledicte smiled at him. “I can’t think of anything.”
“I can,” Gilly said, drawing two sets of eyes to him. “Wouldn’t it be appropriate to have a welcoming celebration? Urge Aris to hold one.”
“She wouldn’t attend,” Maledicte said. “The letters our spies sent said she had become quite mad with suspicion. To expect her to attend a ball, where others have died—”
“Take it up with the king. If Aris commands it, she will attend,” Gilly said, his mouth dry as he argued for murder. But if Janus meant to see Amarantha dead, Gilly would do what he could to ensure Maledicte’s survival. Without a plan, Maledicte would be far too prone to give in to Ani’s careless bloodlust. And unlike Last, a pregnant Countess would rarely be alone.
Gilly let out a shaky breath. Perhaps this was a second chance to free Maledicte from Ani’s touch. There was no earl of Last, but Amarantha was the titular head of the line—perhaps her death would be enough; perhaps whatever had been done the first time to invalidate Last’s death, Maledicte could undo. It came to him, suddenly, that he was hoping for the death of a woman with child, and his whole body rang with the shock of it.
Ja
nus paced the room. “If Aris agreed, it would be a well-guarded thing, Mal. I doubt you could you kill her there.”
“Mirabile did well enough,” Maledicte said. “You gave me aid when none was wanted, Janus. Give me aid now when I ask for it. Our enemies grow like the hydra. One dead, two created. Let’s destroy this head before we have to kill an infant as well.” Maledicte’s voice shifted.
“Be as honest with yourself as you were with me when you accused me of patricide. Were Amarantha not gravid, you would not need to raise your sword. Infanticide is your goal, Mal. Can you stomach it?”
“I have no choice,” Maledicte said, “if you would be earl.”
After Janus left, Maledicte sank onto the chaise and covered his eyes. Gilly went to his side, hesitant, then reaching out, took one hand. Maledicte’s fingers curled around Gilly’s.
“He killed Last?” Gilly asked, shying away from future murders in favor of past ones. But the confirmation of his fear laced his heart with dismay. If Janus had done so, was it any wonder that Ani lingered, foul-tempered and growing? “That could not have satisfied Ani.”
“In all your books,” Maledicte said pensively, “all your pamphlets and gossip, have you ever heard that Ani can be satisfied? Mirabile seemed to think otherwise.”
“Tell me what happened,” Gilly asked. “How you meant to kill Last, and instead had Janus kill Last and some sailors.”
Maledicte raised his eyes, ringed with sudden weariness. “If you know that, you know it all. We should have taken Amarantha then. If I had, I would not be facing this now.”
“You could wait,” Gilly said. “Perhaps the child will be female, or, like Adiran, will be born flawed, unable to inherit. Or it may die of its own accord, as Last’s most recent son did. Murdering Last is one thing, this is another.”
“Enough, Gilly, I am done with talking about it. If Amarantha attends the party, she dies.” Maledicte burst from the chair, yanking his hand from Gilly’s, and stormed toward the door. He paused at the last moment and turned back, his voice ragged and wild. “I cannot have this, Gilly. I cannot take on your conscience. I need to be free to draw blood at will, be it man, woman, or babe. As there are deaths behind me, that is all that is before me as well. Do not weaken me.”