by Lane Robins
· 30 ·
…he withdrew his knife and stabbed her thrice, seeking her heart, but she merely mocked his prowess with the blade, for Ani’s unnatural children scoff at injury and fear no man. She clawed out his eyes with sharpened nails and when dawn came, she was found still feasting on his heart…
—Grayle’s Book of Vengeances, “The Savage of Issey”
S NOW SPOTTED THE FIRST BRAVE leaves of the spring crocus. Maledicte looked up at the leaden sky, and at the faint sparks of spiraling white drifting down to edge the palace grounds. “Spring?”
Gilly, attending him, said, “Snow’s not unheard of this early in the season. But it is damaging to silk. Best go in now.”
Maledicte smiled at him. “Oh yes, because spotted silk is a terrible sin.” The fey cheerfulness to his manner made Gilly’s stomach ache. He had seen this before. It was as if Ani, knowing Maledicte’s plans, was curled up in sulky approval, sated before the act as She never was after.
“I think you just don’t want to be alone in the dark with a murderer,” Maledicte said, tugging Gilly’s tied-back tail of hair.
“Mal, hush,” Gilly said, looking around. No one was within earshot, but his heart pounded all the same. Halfway to the king’s court, in the winter-riven lines of the garden, with the stables at their back—Gilly couldn’t imagine what Maledicte was playing at.
“Admit it, Gilly. You fear me.”
“Fear for you,” Gilly said, taking Maledicte’s arm and pulling him deeper into the skeleton of the garden. He pressed Maledicte back into the prickly embrace of a hedge, its leaves only faint smudges of starting greenery, and said, “What ails you?”
Maledicte closed his eyes, letting the snow lay ephemeral patterns on his skin. Gilly touched Maledicte’s cheek. Had it not been for the quick, cold nip of snow melt, the dampness on his palm could have been tears. “Mal?”
“I am,” Maledicte said, opening dark eyes. “I am afraid to be alone in the dark by myself.”
Tongue caught, Gilly could say nothing.
“I do things I never expected I could. And that’s cause enough to fear, but more, I do not feel alone in my own mind, in my own skin. She’s there, wanting out. It’s getting crowded, Gilly. The person I was, the person I am, and the crow. We’re all jostling for ascendancy, and I don’t know who’s going to win.”
Gilly opened his mouth; Maledicte put his gloved hand over it. “Listen, Gilly. If Ani wins, leave me. Don’t stay. I would never hurt you, but She would devour you entire. Promise me.”
Gilly shook his head, and Maledicte frowned. Footsteps crunched on the seashell paths as a coachman walked steadily into the dark, undoubtedly heading for the wall the stable staff used as a privy. “Come on,” Maledicte said, ducking under Gilly’s caging arms.
Turning in the direction of the court, Gilly found himself walking alone. Maledicte had gone back the way they had come, heading into the stables.
Gilly caught up, trying to move soundlessly, grimacing with the effort. Maledicte smiled at him when he arrived. “Watch for anyone coming?” He went down the silent rows of detached coaches. Twenty feet away, stableboys fed horses, rubbed them down, and cleaned the stalls.
Maledicte ghosted along the rows of coaches until he reached the glossy blue of Last’s coach, gone drowned and greenish in the flickering lamplight. Maledicte climbed onto the coachman’s bench and insinuated his hand into the juncture of carriage and seat, recovering a worn flask. He joined Gilly again in the sheltering darkness of an unused stall. “Hold this,” he said. He stripped off his jacket and felt inside the seams. Gilly watched, mouth falling open. As Maledicte pulled out two tiny crystal vials, Gilly said in a furious whisper, “You brought poison to court? After what happened to those girls? You are mad.”
“We’re not in court,” Maledicte said, “and these vials never will be.” He levered out the wax stopper and trickled a thin syrup into the coachman’s flask. Closing the flask’s lid, he sloshed it gently.
“You’re going to poison the coachman?” Gilly said.
“Would you prefer me to stalk into the court and strike Amarantha dead by blade, or pour her a drink and have her fall at my feet? This way is more chancy, but far more likely to pass as accidental.”
Maledicte sloshed the flask a moment more, then opened it and sniffed. “Perfect.”
“And if he drinks it all now? While waiting for his masters?”
“I’m counting on it,” Maledicte said. “Janus is supposed to goad Amarantha into flight. Failing that, my presence alone should do it.” He looked over Gilly’s shoulder and scowled. Two stableboys had skived off their chores and crept into the coach aisle, and were playing dice in the carriages’ shadows.
“Rats take it,” Maledicte muttered.
“We’ve time,” Gilly said.
“That we do not,” Maledicte said. “Dantalion is too careful. He will not allow his coachman to linger in the yard with the others, playing cards. He’ll want him here. Guarding the carriage against saboteurs.”
“Give it to me, then,” Gilly said. “I look enough like a coachman. I’ll return it; those boys won’t remember me at all.”
Maledicte relinquished his hold on the flask and Gilly sauntered out into the lamplit alley between coaches. The two boys paused in their game, bodies wary, ready to bolt should Gilly show any signs of noticing them.
Gilly realized halfway to Last’s coach that his was more than a little errand that Maledicte could not do, that what he was doing would result in at least one man’s death, maybe more. But the fear that if he balked Maledicte would choose a more dangerous path kept him from freezing in his tracks. “Don’t ask me to kill for you,” he had said once. Now it seemed he volunteered.
Feeling as if he ascended the gallows, Gilly climbed to the bench. He had just reached to return the flask when he heard the cry. “Hoy! What’re you doing?”
He turned, aware of the two stableboys scattering—directed at them or not, the words were too close to the ones they dreaded—and found Dantalion’s coachman staring up at him.
“Get off of there—hey, that’s mine,” he said, his indignation darkening to suspicion and anger. He held out his hand for the flask and Gilly, seeing no alternative, put it in his hand.
“What were you doing with that?”
Gilly, reaching for a plausible explanation, was forestalled by Maledicte. “I asked him to find me a drink,” Maledicte said.
“There’s fancy guff inside. What d’you need mine for?” The coachman scowled at the slim aristocratic shape.
“The last time drink was taken within those walls, people fell dead. Call me overcautious,” Maledicte said, leaning against the stall.
“Mirabile killed fillies,” the coachman said, but after another sneering look, he continued, “though you’ve got more than a touch of the mare about you, don’t you?”
Maledicte’s cheeks flushed, and he dropped his hand to where his sword hilt would have been, had he not left it in the hay when he removed his jacket.
Assessing that motion, the coachman paused. “You’re that one, aren’t you? That cursed cavalier my master natters on about. Maybe you’d better have my flask after all. Take a drink of it, just in case.” He tossed it to Maledicte.
“Too gracious,” Maledicte said, tilting the tarnished metal to his lips.
Gilly’s heart was in his mouth, choking back protest, as he watched for the trick, the movement that betrayed that Maledicte was not really swallowing mouthfuls of his own poison. A trickle of adulterated whiskey ran from the edge of his mouth, and it was too much for the coachman.
“Here! Leave me some. Gi’ me that.” He snatched it from Maledicte’s hand. He shook the flask, and swore. “Drank near half of it, damn you.”
Maledicte wiped his mouth with a lazy hand. “That stuff ’s rot; you really should get your employer to give you better.”
The coachman spat on the floor, and Maledicte moved the tip of his polished boot away from the
glistening, wet spot with a moue of distaste. “And people find my manners lamentable? Gilly, bring my coat with you.” He stalked off without waiting for reply.
“I don’t envy you your master, boy,” the coachman said.
Gilly jammed his shaking hands into his coat pockets. “He pays well.” His words were near as hoarse as Maledicte’s, tight with dread. Dread that Maledicte drank his own brew. Dread that the coachman would drink and die and make Gilly a murderer.
Gilly cast a frantic glance into the gardens, but Maledicte had disappeared from sight. His stomach clenched to the point of pain, imagining Maledicte fallen, convulsing. Would Ani protect him? With Last’s death denied Her?
He snatched up Maledicte’s coat, hearing a faint rip as the embroidery snagged on the baled hay, and hurried toward the stable doors. Gilly looked back once to see the coachman take a great pull from his flask, making Gilly a murderer.
After a few panicky moments, he found Maledicte back in the quiet shadows of the thorny hedge again. His eyes glittered like black water. “Did he drink?” Maledicte asked. Coatless, he seemed smaller, more fragile than he was.
“Did you?” Gilly asked, his voice trembling, a bare whisper.
“You saw me,” Maledicte said.
Gilly tugged at him. “Let’s go home. We’ll find you the antidote. Or maybe you won’t really need one. Ani protects Her own, right? But we can’t risk it.”
Maledicte slipped from his grip. “Gilly, I’ve already taken it. Two vials, remember? You were afraid I was dying? I don’t trust Ani that far. And I’m not stupid enough to die in an attempt on Amarantha’s life. Not when it’s a chancy death at best. I think I’m offend—”
Gilly seized him close, held him, heart beating against his own. This close, Maledicte surprised him by not being awkwardly tall or broad; he fit as snugly in his arms as Livia did. Maledicte sagged against him, giving Gilly license to let his hands rove down across the narrow back and slender hips, pulling him closer still. Maledicte looked up at him, and Gilly bent; at the last, Maledicte avoided his mouth. Gilly’s kiss ended on the slightly slick length of the scar on his jaw. He tasted the flesh there, a tongue tip at a time, and Maledicte made a faint sound in his arms, of appreciation or protest, Gilly wasn’t sure.
Gilly’s clever fingers transmitted a piece of information to him. “You wear a corset?”
“I eat too much,” Maledicte muttered, and while he didn’t take himself from Gilly’s arms, nonetheless Gilly was aware of some wary withdrawal.
Gilly touched the line of his jaw, guided Maledicte’s mouth toward his own, but even as he did, desire faltered to curiosity. The lean bones of Maledicte’s arms and legs argued against such a need.
Maledicte’s sigh against his skin stifled curiosity, and Gilly pressed his suit, aware of his own hunger made evident in the fit of his breeches, his thighs against Maledicte’s.
“Let me go,” Maledicte said. “Enough, Gilly.” The whisper was faint enough that Gilly could ignore it if he chose. But while the tremble in Maledicte’s back, the kneading of his hands on Gilly’s chest urged him on, Gilly was all too aware that Maledicte’s desire did not equal his own, that if they were to step apart, there would be no telltale swelling to mar the smooth fit of Maledicte’s breeches.
“Gilly,” Maledicte’s voice was more urgent. “Let me go, or I’ll make a eunuch of you.”
Startled, Gilly released him. Maledicte staggered away, fell to his knees, and vomited in the hedges. Snow hares rustled and darted away from his sudden descent into their domain. Gilly crouched beside him and Maledicte gasped that he was well. Gilly drew Maledicte’s hair from his face while he was sick.
Maledicte rose and took steps back to the main path, sat down on a stone bench, covered with a thin drifting of blown snow. He wet his hands with it, the snow melting at his touch, and wiped his face. “Sometimes the antidote is worse than the poison.”
Gilly sat down heavily by his side, his heart feeling overtaxed. “I thought you were dying.”
“We’ve had this conversation,” Maledicte said. “And it led us—” He put snow in his mouth like a child. It reddened his lips.
“Led us where?” Gilly asked. It hurt to do so, to probe at the disconnection between them, but he was no more capable of not asking than he was of walking away.
“Astray,” Maledicte said. “Decidedly astray.” He leaned his elbows on his knees, traced images in the frost at their feet. Raven wings, eyes, a sword. “I am his entirely, remember. What I do, I do for him.” His mouth twisted, as if he found the fact not as much of a boon as it once was.
“And he’ll be looking for you,” Gilly said, standing and holding out an arm.
Maledicte hesitated, then took Gilly’s arm. As they walked toward the yellow glow of candlelight and warmth, the drifting voices that held an edge of fear, Maledicte said, “Besides, Gilly, I’m no partner for you. You need a nice girl, one who’ll give you babies, not ask you to kill them.”
Gilly let out his breath. “Lizette’s a whore, and no fonder of me than she is of my money, and our little Livia’s a spy. Yet I care for them both. So what’s the addition of one murderer to my affections?”
“Livia—a spy?” Maledicte said, his eyes hooded by speculation.
Gilly bit his lip, but words once said were impossible to cage again. “She has far more coin than she should and she creeps out nights. And none of our trinkets or teaspoons are missing. Unless she’s thieving other houses, it’s information she’s selling.”
“A spy,” Maledicte said, dismay in his voice. “And we have such secrets to sell.” He drifted up the lawn, boots leaving dark tracks in the rime, and paused. “Perhaps we can turn it to our advantage. Do nothing directly until we know who’s buying.”
“Dantalion,” Gilly suggested.
“Or Mad Mirabile, or even Aris, as unpalatable as that thought is. We’d best find out.”
Gilly nodded, a little shamed that he had needed telling.
Maledicte looked toward the lit rooms, spills of light raying out like slow lightning, flickering in the wakes of skirts and coats, and his mouth tipped into a deeper frown. This near, they could hear the forced gaiety, the musicians sawing out newly written tunes, lest anyone be reminded of the Dark Night deaths. “Gilly, go prepare the coach. I will enter only long enough to spook Amarantha, if Janus has not already done so. Tonight, I prefer my nest.”
MALEDICTE WIPED HIS MOUTH one last time; the bitter taste of bile, tannic fluids, and belladonna lingered. He climbed the wide steps from the garden and gained access to the balconies, unwilling to enter under the watchful, fearful eyes of the other attendees. Seen through the open doors of the ballroom, Janus danced attendance on Psyke Bellane, his eyes alight with an amusement she didn’t share.
White around her rosebud lips, the china doll curtsied and attempted to take her leave. Janus stopped her with another question, a hand on her silkdraped arm, smiling down at her. Her chaperone watched with a smile. When Janus lifted his hand from her sleeve, she flew like a dove.
“What kept you?” Janus said, turning as if he had sensed Maledicte’s approach. “I’ve had to entertain myself with sweet, scared Psyke. What did you say to her?”
“Nothing she took seriously enough,” Maledicte said, watching the slight girl slip through the crowds. He fought an absurd sense of betrayal, as if he had expected Psyke to forswear Janus simply because the time spent listening to Maledicte’s threats had spared her from Mirabile’s touch.
He swayed on his feet a moment, off balance by the imagined weight of his hatred. Janus smiled at him and led him back out to the seclusion of topiary and stone.
“You look so fierce,” Janus said, kissing Maledicte’s throat and cheek. Maledicte turned his head to avoid his lips, thinking of toxins on his, feeling as if he’d stumbled into an odd, repetitive dream world. Turn from Gilly’s warmth, turn from Janus’s arms; face the cold wind and the dark alone. He dreaded Ani rising up through his throat
, stabbing out from his mouth, the long beak terrible and gore-smeared, Her wings scratching through his chest, pushing out past his lungs and ribs, dragging him up into the night sky, a soaring, bloody puppet. Distantly, Maledicte realized some of the belladonna must have lingered beyond the antidote, sparking hallucinations.
“What kept you?” Janus asked.
“Gilly kissed me in the snow gardens,” Maledicte said. “He killed the coachman and kissed me….” He shook his head, shaking the moment from his mind. “I fear his ethics have been severely compromised by our association.”
Janus shook him. “Mal, are you mad?”
“Yes,” Maledicte said. “I think I must be.” Lips moving against the roughness of the brocade, Maledicte imagined the threads snaking out to drag him into Janus’s skin.
“To let Gilly kiss you, I must agree,” Janus snapped, pushing Maledicte away. He paced a quick circle and then came back, blue eyes smoldering. “Do you want him, desire him? Is that it? Why you would risk all for a tumble? In the king’s garden? Tell me, Mal—do you love him?”
Janus’s hushed words sounded wounded, stripped of strength, but Maledicte, dark-dreaming with the belladonna’s aid, saw what the low tones disguised—the red cloud settling around his bright form, splintering out from the steady flame of rage behind his pale eyes.
“You are all my desires,” Maledicte said, twining his arms about Janus’s neck. “And so I told him. That I am yours and yours alone. Though you are not exclusive to me…you will marry.”
“And why shouldn’t you?” Janus twitched within Maledicte’s arms at the familiar deep voice. Maledicte felt near panic himself—how long had Aris been listening? Behind the king, Psyke stood in the doorway. Maledicte fought a growl—had she led the king to Janus?
“Sire,” Maledicte said, sinking into a bow.