Maledicte

by Lane Robins

  Janus, assessing, shook himself and then stamped on Maledicte’s out-spread hand. Despite his desperation, Gilly winced when the bones cracked. In an elegant motion, as well suited to a dance as to a duel, Janus swept the sword across the floor with a booted foot.

  “Elysia, in the butler’s pantry,” Gilly panted.

  Maledicte, heedless or insensible of the pain, heaved himself to his hands and knees, reaching for the sword. Gilly exhaled, made himself heavy, thought of immovable boulders, of nets. Janus’s footsteps moved swiftly away, and Gilly thought hurry, hurry. He could not hold him much longer; with every pulse of his heart, Maledicte gained on the sword.

  Gilly yanked Maledicte’s leading arm up and back, spilling him from his inexorable crawl. Then Maledicte slipped sideways, rolled, got his knees between his body and Gilly’s, and kicked. The blow was all out of proportion painful; Maledicte shook free of Gilly’s spasming fingers, and only Janus’s quick grasp saved the sword from making its way back to Maledicte. Janus backed away, the sword held awkwardly in his grip, bloodying his fingers, the Elysia bottle in the other hand, the syringe slipping through the cage of his hand. Gilly made a gasping effort and caught it, rolling clear of the space between them.

  “That’s mine,” Maledicte growled; as if Ani tired of the pretense, of the games, the sword twisted in Janus’s hand and clattered across the floor, skidding up against Maledicte’s boot. He scooped it up with his foot, kicking it into the air, and caught it with his sword hand.

  The bones reknitted, the tendons flexed, and the sword shifted to a better grip. Janus dropped the Elysia bottle, staring at Maledicte’s burgeoning shadow, at the drift of bloody feathers saturating the air. Maledicte stepped forward and broke the bottle underfoot.

  Janus met Gilly’s eyes and for once, his poise was stripped from him. “Keep him here,” Gilly said.

  Janus stepped between Maledicte and the door. Faintly, a frown crossed the blank mask of Maledicte’s face. Gilly wished it concern, but was far more afraid that the emotion was outrage.

  “Hold him!” he called, then ran for the stairs and Maledicte’s rooms. Slamming the door back, heedless of damage, he started searching for the poison chest. Below him, steel crashed against steel, and Gilly wondered, his heart in his throat, how much time Janus could grant him. More, how little time would pass before Janus realized that he was preventing Maledicte from his goal, a goal that Janus wholeheartedly craved.

  The chest in his hands, Gilly pawed through the contents carelessly. All the little crystal vials seemed maddeningly identical to his frantic eyes. But beneath them, a bottle, bigger than the others, caught his attention—what had Maledicte planned for that? Shaking the question off, he snatched it and bolted for the parlor.

  Janus, backed against the door, panted, holding Maledicte at bay with the parlor poker; Janus’s sword, notched and scarred, lay trembling across the room. Feathers littered the air as the maddened rooks spilled unceasingly into the room.

  Gilly gritted his teeth and pulled off his shirt. He soaked the fabric with the bottle’s contents. Janus lunged and ducked and parried, the poker thrust punching Maledicte’s sternum. When Maledicte staggered, Gilly flung the cloth over Maledicte’s head, pressing the fabric close to his face, his bared teeth.

  The sword stroked back and Gilly leaned into Maledicte’s body, trying to hide in the shelter of his back. In his arms, Maledicte contorted and fought. Gilly, holding his breath, had time for the single despairing thought that this was not going to succeed, that Maledicte would step free and slash his way to the palace.

  Janus took advantage of Maledicte’s cloth blindness to strike another blow, breaking the delicate elbow joint and sending the sword spinning away. In Gilly’s arms, Maledicte collapsed all at once.

  Gilly fell with him, sprawled on the floor, nerves singing, shaking as with an ague. The living rooks fled. Janus kicked a few of their bodies out of their way with a fastidious foot and knelt beside Gilly and Maledicte. He lifted the cloth and wrinkled his nose.

  “Ether,” Gilly said, but Janus wasn’t listening. He touched Maledicte’s slack face, the hand that had been broken, the elbow that even now mended itself.

  Finally he looked up and met Gilly’s eyes. “What the devil was that?” His voice was a near whisper, as if he feared Maledicte would wake. “I hurt him. I broke his hand, I broke his ribs, his elbow, and nothing mattered.”

  “She’s insane, and infinitely more powerful than we are.” Gilly dragged the cloth back over Maledicte’s face. “Fortunately, Maledicte is not, being mere bone and blood like the rest of us…no matter how powerful She is.”

  “She?” Janus said, his sword in his hand, though when it had been recovered, Gilly couldn’t say. Janus’s expression was blank.

  “The danger’s past, I believe. You can put that away,” Gilly said. “She, my lord Last, is Black-Winged Ani.” He shifted his weight, dragged a dead rook out from beneath his knee, and settled back again. “And She grants Her followers certain abilities. Freedom from poison, from injury, and all She asks is their bodies. The longer the vengeance takes, the stronger She grows. She has no cares beside the shedding of blood.”

  “But he fell to the ether,” Janus said. “None of your nonsense, Gilly….”

  “I think immunity from poison is a mistranslation,” Gilly said. “It affects him, but not for long.”

  “She can heal wounds? All wounds?” Janus said, touching Maledicte’s shrouded form again.

  “Some say so,” Gilly said. In his arms, Maledicte stirred, despite the ether-soaked cloth over his nose and mouth. Gilly put his hand back to the bottle and soaked the cloth again. Maledicte subsided.

  “Be careful, Gilly,” Janus snapped. “He’s not very big. You’ll kill—” The wolf paleness of his eyes flickered, the shock of belief hitting home. “Will he wake maddened?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think it takes effort for Her to manifest Herself. I think it had to do with the belladonna Mal drank last night.”

  “Belladonna,” Janus said, his voice low. “How much of it?”

  “Enough to kill,” Gilly said. “All for you.”

  Janus made a small, choked sound, his face whitening. He gathered Maledicte into his arms and put his face into Maledicte’s neck, rocking them both.

  Stiffly, Gilly stood, and surveyed the wreckage. Another mess too difficult to explain to the few servants they had remaining. He picked up one dead bird by its wing, dropped it out the shattered windows.

  Behind him, Janus whispered, “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

  “Didn’t hurt.” The ghost of a whisper turned Gilly about. Maledicte’s eyelids flickered. “Like pain in a dream. Not real.”

  Janus grunted with effort but brought both himself and Maledicte off the floor in a single movement, Maledicte cradled in his arms. “Real or not, you need to rest.”

  Maledicte slipped from Janus’s arms, and picked up the sword, flexing his hand around it, parrying with a few still floating feathers. “See, not hurt.”

  Janus and Gilly tensed, and Maledicte smiled at them both as acidly as he had ever smiled at his enemies. “I would have had it done, had you two not balked me.”

  “You would have died,” Gilly said. Despite the guilt this relationship had sparked, it was nothing compared to the pain of imagining the loss of it.

  “Would I? With Her touch on me?” Maledicte shrugged as if it were a matter of no import, and sheathed the sword. “Perhaps, but not until the babe was dead. My release from Ani is contingent upon my vengeance.”

  “We want more than simple vengeance, remember,” Janus said. “We want the court, the title, the safety.”

  “I remember,” Maledicte said. He sat down at the spinet, flicked a wing from the stained keys, and pressed a few notes, oddly muted. He reached inward, tugged another bird free from the strings, and dropped it to the floor. “Ani doesn’t care.”

  · 32 ·

  A RIS STOOD BESIDE THE E
MPTY CRADLE, rocking it with a trembling hand. In the chair next to it, the wet nurse, holding the infant against her, shot nervous glances at the king and the attendant guards.

  “Adi was never so small,” he said aloud. The woman opened her mouth and closed it again. Against her breast, the baby suckled. In the corner of the nursery, Adi played with Hela, uninterested in the new baby, or in the newly partitioned section of his domain.

  “Speak, if you would,” Aris said.

  “Your son was a full-term child, and this one, this little one—it is a miracle he survived at all.” She rocked the child; his lips rolled back, showing pink gums and a milky tongue.

  “He must be whole.” His voice broke on the last word, as he wondered if his brother’s child would be another Adiran. Sound of body, lacking mind. Right now, he could not decide which would be better. He needed an heir, a child of sound mind and blameless parentage, and yet—if the babe were deficient, there was no danger to him. And Aris, who had seen the wreckage of the coach, the twisted wood and wheel, the coachman’s broken body, Amarantha’s gutted flesh, knew there was an undeniable danger.

  Fleeing, he had sought the sanctuary of the nursery, away from the fearsome images evoked by the wreckage, away from the horror of Jasper’s reports. Dantalion had come in with the child just after dawn, the infant still bloody in his arms, but alive. Jasper had brought Amarantha’s body in and laid her respectfully down, his fair face flushed and distraught. “He didn’t wait, sire. Not for her to live or die. He just cut her open and took the babe. Left her body like refuse on the road.”

  At first, Aris had been nearly afraid to look on the child, afraid that Jasper’s words would have left a taint of atrocity on the boy, but the child was an infant pure and sweet. Briefly, Aris let himself remember that too-short moment when Aurora had held Adiran up to him, smiling. Before they knew she was dying. Before Adi’s flaws became apparent.

  Gingerly, he touched the infant’s soft skull, cupped it, warm and pulsing, in the cradle of his palm. He owed Dantalion’s decisiveness for this moment, but still he could not trust the man. Last night, only last night, he had heard Dantalion extolling the virtues of culling the Itarusine children, insuring that only the fittest lived. The ones found wanting were plunged into the icy seas. Aris had thought of his sweet Adiran and had fled the court room.

  “Sire,” Jasper said, entering and dropping his voice to lower tones immediately on seeing the sleeping child. Echo followed him in and averted his gaze from the blushing wet nurse.

  “Have you found the cause of the accident?” Aris asked, but lost parts of their answers, studying the delicate veins in the child’s eyelids.

  “Coachman spooked…lost control of the reins, though why—” Jasper said.

  “We’ve questioned the stablehands…” Echo said. “And found silver embroidery thread in an unused stall.”

  “Which means little,” Jasper said. “Could be off livery, could be signs of a noble girl’s dalliance. Silver’s popular this year—”

  “Maledicte made it so,” Echo said.

  Aris took the child from the nurse with a careful hand. The infant curled his fingers around Aris’s forefinger, and he smiled. “A good grip. And I believe I saw a glimmer of awareness in his face.”

  “He’s a right one,” the nurse said. “Small but perfect.”

  “He is,” Aris said, veering between joy and worry. An heir. A release from his burden. But such a court to leave a beautiful child—

  Behind him, Echo and Jasper’s voices rose, growing harsh and brittle as they argued with each other.

  “I tell you, you cannot blame your favorite in this matter,” Jasper said. “You cannot blame a death on a man who did not attend.”

  “And you—I suppose you see the hand of witchcraft in this?” Echo spat. “Your Mad Mirabile creeping onto the palace grounds, still in her ballgown, poisoning the coachman with her spells? The same spells you blame for allowing her to escape your net?”

  “Perhaps if you could be convinced to share your resources with my men—” Jasper said. “We are at home in the palace, and in the main thoroughfares of the city. The alleys and Relicts are your Particulars’ job, and yet they’ve not found her either. But that has nothing to do with this. I think you must admit—”

  “To you, nothing,” Echo said.

  “We need look elsewhere. Amarantha feared—” Jasper flinched under Aris’s sudden gaze.

  “Feared who?” Aris asked.

  “More than one man,” Jasper said, refusing to meet the king’s eyes.

  “Your bastard nephew,” Echo said, unafraid of Aris. “Your newest counselor. She feared Janus but I still believe the blame lies where it is most obvious. Maledicte.”

  “Echo, you seem slow to learn. Maledicte did not attend the ball,” Jasper said.

  Aris laid the infant down, his throat suddenly numb and cold. He forced the words from his throat, but frozen, they did not carry above their argument. “He was there.” Aris rocked the cradle, all the while remembering the rough silk feel of Maledicte’s lips against his. “I saw him coming from the gardens and stable.”

  Jasper and Echo fell silent, staring at him.

  “He was there, his eyes wild, his manner—” Aris trailed off, knowing himself for a fool at last. He sank down onto the padded bench that Adi often napped on, and covered his eyes. He had looked the other way when Kritos died, when Vornatti died, neither man long for the world, a debt-ridden gambler and an old roué.

  Even when Last fell, Aris had sought other foes, had looked into the dark eyes and thought, shamefully, that perhaps Last was not entirely innocent of his own death. After all, the enmity had been mutual and undeniable. Maledicte might have only defended himself. Aris had even presumed that with Last’s death, Maledicte had no one to hate, and so was defanged.

  But hate, Aris knew, was addictive; why had he never considered that? Instead, he had accepted gentle blackmail from the lad with mute passivity, trusting Maledicte to need no more than diversion from scandal. He had even, Baxit forgive him, found it almost a game of wits between them.

  “Echo,” he said, his voice rough. “You blame him. Tell me what motive he held.” He had been a fool perhaps, but one capable of learning.

  “Janus,” Echo said. “What he does, he does for him.” He held up a hand at Aris’s protest. “I don’t know that Janus understands what kind of man he’s allied himself with.”

  “Janus,” Aris said, “is one of my counselors and my nephew. Your peer. He has never given me reason to distrust him. Perhaps, like me, he is only too trusting.”

  “I’ll send the guard for Maledicte—”

  “No,” Aris said. The refusal came instinctively. There were the ledgers to worry about. They would have to be recovered before any steps could be taken. But Echo waited impatiently on an explanation. “He thinks too quickly for that. I would deprive him of time to prepare glib assurances. Jasper and I will go to him and see if I can surprise truth from his lips.”

  Echo said, “If it were as easy as that, I’d have had truth from him long ago. We should simply arrest him, and let him prove his innocence.”

  “I’d rather you prove his guilt before I see a member of the court imprisoned,” Aris said. Echo glowered, and Aris forced himself to the intricate steps of manipulation so necessary to his court. “Find me incontrovertible proof of a crime committed, Echo, and you may have him. Talk to Dantalion, who knows more of poisons than I would like, being an Itarusine. Ask him if he knows of a potion to send a coachman mad. I will ask Maledicte the same.”

  He leaned over the cradle once more, breathing deeply, as if the child’s innocence would not only grant him clarity and strength, but wisdom.

  ARIS RETURNED from the Dove Street town house, having gone to confront Maledicte over Echo’s objections. The visit had been fruitless and unsettling, Maledicte not at home and the house and hall so spattered with rook feathers and blood that it seemed a nigh-impossible task for th
e manservant left to clean them away. Shaken, Aris retreated without attempting a hunt for the ledgers. At the palace, he found one member of that eccentric household in the nursery, leaning over the sleeping infant, alone. Nearby, Adiran sang quietly and stacked blocks. “What do you call him?” Janus said, without looking up. “My brother….”

  Half-formed fear melted at the interest in Janus’s blue eyes. Aris came forward, and joined his small family.

  “Auron,” he said. “After my wife.”

  Janus touched the sleeping baby’s soft mouth with a finger that dwarfed it. Aris watched as Janus rocked the cradle, setting it to sea-tide swaying until Auron opened cloudy blue eyes.

  “Auron Ixion,” Janus said, “Welcome, your grace.”

  Aris let his breath out in a steady hiss.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” Janus said. “Little brother is the earl. I am only a bastard.”

  “Janus, you will always have a place at court, always be cared for,” Aris said. “My counselor.”

  “I know that, Uncle,” Janus said. “I wonder if Auron will feel the same….” He smiled and said, “If he’s as sweet-natured as Adi, as kind as you, I will never want for anything.”

  Aris said, “I thought to name you guardian to Auron and one of his regents, should I not live to see his ascension.”

  He saw sudden startlement in the pale eyes. “I, guardian?”

  “Who better than family?” Aris said.

  “I think most of your court would say who is not better…but if it is your will, I am honored,” Janus said, sinking to his knee before Aris.

  “Two caveats,” Aris said. “Two conditions fulfilled before I name you guardian.”

  “Sire?” Janus said, face growing still.

  “Do you know where Maledicte is?” Aris asked.

  “At this moment?” Janus asked. “No.”

  Aris studied Janus, seeking honesty, seeking rebelliousness. Instead, he saw only resignation and a glimmer of anticipated pain. “He will be questioned in Amarantha’s death.”