by Lane Robins
Gilly was torn between agitation and irritation. Lizette had been furious with Maledicte’s intrusion and threats, had failed to meet with him last night, sent Ma Desire herself down to make her sentiments known. He half suspected this emergency mere stratagem, showing whether he valued her.
When he entered, he smelled the hot tang of blood over all the other odors, and knew the need was real. The madam met him at the door, her skirts splotched with blood.
“It’s too late,” she said. “She’s gone.”
“Gone,” Gilly repeated, and went where the madam beckoned.
Lizette’s boudoir was drenched. The blood, mostly stiff and browning, still had a few spots of freshness to it. One rivulet dripped slowly from the bed.
Her back arched; her eyes were open but obscured by blood, her hands locked on the sheets in her last spasm. Gilly gagged. Lizette.
“What happened?”
“Poison,” Ma Desire said.
“Poison,” Gilly repeated, his ears numbing.
“She got a box of chocolates, last night, after she sent you away. She ate them up, didn’t she, most of them at once. And a note—didn’t I read it for her.” She spoke to the room at large, though Gilly was the only one listening. Over by the hearth, another whore, her hands gloved, shoved bloody sheets into the fireplace. A second girl scrubbed at the spots on Lizette’s finest dress, attempting to salvage it.
“Said as how you were sorry. That she should forgive you. Real gentlemanly, it was.”
“I didn’t send it,” Gilly said. But he might as well have, he thought. Somehow this blame fell at his door.
“Figured that out when she started to bleed. She knew then who done it.”
“Who?” Gilly said.
The madam turned her head, studied the room with a speaking silence. Gilly’s breath shuddered out of him. Throat tight, he reached into his pocket for coins.
“’Tain’t for me,” Ma Desire said, as she tucked them into her bodice. “For her. Someone’s got to pay for the burying.”
“Who did this?” Beneath the grief, a flicker of anger grew. He was not Janus, was not Maledicte, to find forgiveness of anything.
“She raved about your other lover, your highborn lady, said the crows were at her, tearing her insides. She felt their beaks. Said your lover had warned her. Said she’d bleed. Said Black-Winged Ani was killing her sure. Said she stole the crow’s man and doomed herself. That true?”
“What?” Gilly said, his mind quaking away from the ruined woman on the bed, the fevered words attributed to her. Maledicte? Maledicte found killing offenses entirely too easily, Gilly thought, sick at heart. And penned at home with watchful guards, unable to bring the sword to bear, a box of poisoned sweets would be all too easy to arrange.
“That you’re one of Black Ani’s creatures.”
“No,” Gilly said. “My master—my friend—” His voice broke. He sat on the bed, touched Lizette’s distorted face, cold, waxy, and faintly sticky.
“You want to protect yourself. There’s charms and such,” she said. “You’re a good boy. Don’t get caught up in the crow’s feathers.” She reached out, touched his hair, the hardness fading from her face. “You was good to my girl.”
THE KINGSGUARDS POSTED near the house eyed him curiously as he pounded up the entry stairs, slamming the door open, but did no more than watch.
Inside, Maledicte, muted in gray wool with a scarlet shirt peeking out, sat to luncheon, his head bent over a book. Gilly paused, the anger in him churning, and he bypassed the dining room for the main stairs. He pushed open Maledicte’s doors, ransacked drawers and wardrobe until he found the wooden case that held the poisons and dumped them across the bed, greenish-gray powder spilling out of white twists, dusting his hands. He rummaged through the small vials, looking for the one that could make flesh melt to blood.
“You’ve only been out for a few hours,” Maledicte said from the doorway. “Surely no one’s offended you so badly in that time that you would turn to poison. But if they have, let me know, and I’ll take care of it for you.”
Gilly’s hand closed around the vial. A scant few purple drops clung to the curved bottom. “You didn’t have to kill her. All you had to do was ask me to give her up. I would have done anything for you. I have done everything for you.”
“Gilly?”
Gilly threw the vial at him. Maledicte caught it easily, looked at it with wary eyes. “Precatorius syrup. She bled to death, as you threatened.”
“Lizette.” Just her name drew Maledicte’s supple mouth into a scowl.
To Gilly, it felt like confession. “She bled out and your bottle is near empty. Why kill her like that? Why make her suffer? Why kill her at all?” Gilly’s eyes blurred with tears.
“Is she worth all this fuss? She was just a whore.” Maledicte’s face twisted. “A creature without value.”
Gilly’s fingers clenched; he raised his fist, and dropped it. Maledicte hadn’t flinched.
“I liked her. She was uncomplicated and mouthy. What did she do to you? What did she say? Did she laugh at you? Give me a reason—” He raised his hand to Maledicte’s cheek. “Please.” He needed something, anything to stop the rage and pain churning inside him. He waited in frozen silence for Maledicte’s response, waited to be freed to anger or bittersweet relief.
“I didn’t kill the bitch,” Maledicte said, slapping Gilly’s hand away. “Are you my hanging judge? Go away, Gilly.”
“Chocolate and poison. A sweet with a sting. A note she couldn’t read but had my name on it. It apologized for our interrupted sport. You expect me to believe you didn’t do this?”
“Burn your soul, I—” His voice refused to rise, the rasp giving way to forced silence. Thwarted, Maledicte bared his teeth and shoved past Gilly like a departing evil spirit. The parlor door downstairs slammed with a sound of cracking glass, leaving Gilly cut off from his answers. Small crashes shattered silence like distant cannonfire as Maledicte took his temper out on frangibles.
Gilly’s own rage simmered and roiled. He fled the house, past the lurking guards, and into the city. He was nearly into the merchants’s treets before the fog of temper and pain cleared way for a single thought. Maledicte had never denied his wrongdoings before. Still, it was Maledicte’s bottle that had been emptied….
Gilly moaned, resting his sweating face against his hands. He forgot that he had enemies himself, one of whom resided under the same roof, privy to Lizette’s existence, to her location, to Gilly’s thrice-weekly visits. Grim, Gilly traced his way back in the twilight. He would ask once again, and this time, he would listen.
The door was not locked against him as he half expected it to be. The parlor was awash in wreckage, as if it was the spill point for the tides’ refuse. The mirrored door was broken; winking glass met Gilly’s gaze from every angle; the spinet stool lay beneath the lintel, one leg snapped.
Gilly’s boot crunched in the soft pile of the rugs. A curled bit of porcelain stuck out from beneath his boot. He picked it up—a small porcelain arm. The silk thread and dangling stick were all that told him he held the remains of one of a series of puppeteer figures. He raised his eyes to their shelf. Not one remained, and though he found more identifiable pieces, a dog’s head with a high, ruffled collar, a serpent’s rattle, a minuscule puppet’s puppet with its arms snapped off, he found no whole survivor. Some of them had been broken so fiercely it seemed as if Maledicte had attempted to grind them underfoot.
Gilly set down his handful of parts on the curtained altar with a speculative expression. Janus had gifted Maledicte with these puppets. Maledicte held them dear. Or had. Likened himself to the puppeteer of the gods, but perhaps he felt more a puppet today.
Gilly ascended the stairs to the first level, turning the gas lamps to glowing life as he went.
“Maledicte?” Gilly called. The house was as hushed as if Gilly was the only breathing thing within its walls, and his heart beat faster. “Maledicte?” In the hallway
, Gilly hesitated, then chose to climb the dark attic steps. Faint glimmers of porcelain dust traced a footstep six steps before him and he took the rest of the stairs with more surety.
Cool evening air swirled down, whistled under the attic door. Gilly pushed it open. The attic window gaped with jagged glass. Maledicte sat before it, perched on a pile of trunks. The heavy sweep of his scarlet shirt, the sleeves uncorded, unrestrained by a jacket, draped like bloody wings. His knees were drawn up, wrists crossed over their peaks.
“I’m sorry, Gilly.” Maledicte turned his head to look back over his shoulder; the heavy hair whispered and shifted. His face gleamed in the faint starshine and reflected gaslight straining through the city fogs.
A scrabble and the brushed, whiskery sound of feathers kept Gilly from instant speech as the rooks hopped his foot and lifted off, one wheeling out the window, the other perching on the pile of discarded clothing. It dipped its beak, exposed a rent in an embroidered jacket, and flew out the window, trailing golden strands.
“I didn’t know you cared so much about her,” Maledicte said. His voice was muffled; he laid his head into the space between his arms. “I hated her.”
Gilly sat on a low trunk, peering up at the huddled shape. “You didn’t even know her. I barely knew her beyond her profession. How could you know her enough to hate her?”
“She came in while I was washing, teasing me. I told her to go away. She wouldn’t, just leaned against the wall, her dress falling off her breasts, flaunting herself. I tried to scare her away and she laughed at me. I only did it to make her stop.”
“So instead of stabbing her there, you came home and sent her poisoned chocolates, leaving her time to spread the story. No, you came home. You spoke to Janus. And Janus killed her.”
“No,” Maledicte said. “Gilly, you have all the evidence. What more do you want? I am a murderer after all, several times over.”
Gilly let out his breath; it left blueness in the chill air. “Tell me you killed her. Tell me you sent death to her, wrapped in pink paper.”
Maledicte stared down at Gilly. “I killed Lizette.”
The shadows made patchwork of his face, created dark holes where his eyes should shine, and his voice was as calm as ever. Yet Gilly felt his pulse jump, his breath catch as he recognized the lie. Maledicte, the competent killer, was a bad liar, more used to half truth and misdirection.
“I’m sorry, Gilly,” Maledicte said. He levered himself to his feet, standing before the open window. He stretched forward, slipped a clenched fist out into the night sky, rainwater washing over his fist, and then he opened it. Small, and glittering malevolently, the carved puppet of Ani plunged to the street below. Maledicte swayed in its wake and Gilly put a steadying hand on his ankle.
“Sorry for something you didn’t do.” Gilly plucked Maledicte from the chests, and let him go, listening to him stumble down the stairs. Gilly looked out the window, down to where the statue had disappeared.
“You’d forgive him anything,” Gilly said. “Even making me believe you killed her. Trying to set us at odds.” Bile twisted in his belly at the sheer callousness of it, at turning Lizette’s life into a pawn move. In the attic’s soothing darkness, Gilly, like Maledicte before him, crouched and wept. If he had any doubts before—he had none now. Janus was a killer, and like his father, like Dantalion, preferred to smile and kill at a distance.
Gilly bowed his head. The fault, after all, was his. He had goaded Janus, knowing that the man would retaliate. But to imply that Maledicte was to blame—Outrage settled the anger in his belly to a steady flame.
His fisted hands touched the stiff, dark patches of Lizette’s blood, transferred when he sat beside her corpse, and he turned to seek his bath. But through the broken window, he heard the coach draw up outside, the horses’ hooves loud on the cobbles. Janus, he thought, and decided to put off his cleaning in favor of confrontation.
When Gilly reached the entry hall, he found Maledicte, blank-faced and white, facing Lord Echo and a brace of Particulars.
“I have a warrant sworn out for your arrest,” Echo said, smiling grimly, his hand on his pistol.
“In what matter?” Maledicte asked. “You’ve sought to blame me for so—”
“One incontrovertible death. The murder of Dantalion Vornatti.”
· 37 ·
H ARDLY MURDER,” MALEDICTE SAID. “A duel.”
“His blood, your sword. You cannot deny that.”
“Why would I deny it? When I enjoyed myself so much?” Maledicte said, though in truth he had almost forgotten it. Dantalion’s death swallowed under Ani’s blood tide; to find himself accountable for it now—His hands shook but his voice remained light. He tightened the small muscles in his hands, and they too obeyed his will, stilling. The sword hilt shifted against his palm, though he wasn’t aware of seeking it out. The feathers coaxed and whispered against his skin. Gilly’s clothes, scented with Lizette’s passing, kept blood in Maledicte’s mind.
There were only three men after all. He could have his sword through the protruding belly of the nearest Particular without much effort, spill the blood out and dance toward the young Particular to Echo’s left. Already his dewy skin paled at the audacity of arresting a nobleman. If Maledicte gutted the first man, the youngster would bolt. He’d lay sols on the matter. Only Echo promised a fight.
Maledicte sucked air through his teeth, felt it cool the furnace of his blood. Yes or no. Fight or fly—he’d have to chase the stripling if he fled. He’d had enough of witnesses. But three were manageable.
“Maledicte,” Echo said. “Lay down your sword.”
“If I choose otherwise?” Maledicte said, still listening to the clock of his blood, ticking away.
Echo pulled his pistol, cocked it, and leveled it at Gilly’s chest. “Do I need to use your friend as a surety for your behavior? Should I see one gesture that speaks of weapon, poison, or even enchantment, I will kill him.”
Rage reddened Maledicte’s vision; his heartbeat, reacting, deafened him. Kill them all, Ani whispered. Bathe in their blood. Feast on their eyes. Even Gilly. He mistrusted you after all, accused you of something you never did. The sword rose in the sheath; his fingers coiled down, touched the cool metal of the blade itself.
The violent simplicity of the idea held Maledicte hostage. Kill them all.
Maledicte felt the movement in the air and he spun on instinct, the sword free of the sheath, registering the shock in Echo’s face even as he did so. It was Gilly moving, only Gilly, and instead of slicing skin and bone, Maledicte twisted the blade, letting the flat of the sword strike Gilly’s broad wrist. It welted the skin and left a fine line of blood where the edge had nipped. But the hand was whole, the wrist entire, the fingers closing on his shoulder. Maledicte panted, watching that slow beading of blood on Gilly’s fair skin.
“Maledicte,” Gilly said. “Be still.” He stepped past him, blocked Maledicte’s view of Echo. “Does the king know you’re here?”
“The king can call me off—he has that privilege. But he need not set me on. There were many witnesses.” Echo smiled. “Maledicte is mine.”
Behind Gilly’s sheltering back, Maledicte started shaking again, this time beyond his ability to control. Stonegate Prison. How could he accomplish Ani’s goal then? How could he even survive, locked in the dark, with constant company—how could he be Maledicte?
The thin thought crossed his mind, a ghost of reason. Echo had not shot Gilly, though Maledicte had drawn his sword; Echo bluffed.
Maledicte bolted for the stairs, for the scent of the sky, and Echo shouted. Behind him, Maledicte heard the report of a gun, but no outcry from Gilly. If he hadn’t been so desperate, he could have wept with relief. But trying to think around the flapping blackness of Ani’s rioting emotions left him little but the frantic intellect of a cornered rat.
Echo’s hard hands grabbed his shoulders and Maledicte kicked back in a Relict rat’s dirty blow. But Echo, though he faltered, w
as wise enough to have anticipated such a trick. Maledicte twisted to bring the blade to bear, freeing himself from Echo’s clawing grasp, and found himself borne back into the wall by Gilly.
Maledicte fought Gilly’s grip, breath sobbing in his throat. Ani whispered, Kill him and be gone. Maledicte gasped his refusal, even as Gilly pulled him closer, clutched him to his body, pressing him between his solid warmth and the unyielding wall.
“Mal,” Gilly said. “Maledicte, please. If you flee now, there will be no Janus, no future, only blood and death.” Gilly’s breath warmed his cheek; his fingers traced soothing patterns on his wrists and back.
Over Gilly’s shoulder Maledicte saw the two Particulars nervously watching, saw Echo’s eyes narrow, and Maledicte hissed at him. Echo took an involuntary step back and Maledicte laughed.
“Hush,” Gilly said. “Hush, this is what we’ll do. Where one man can be paid to do his duty, another can be paid to ease your way. Go with Echo. It’ll be only temporary.”
Maledicte burrowed into Gilly’s warmth, listened to the heartbeat pounding beneath his ear, not as calm as the words Gilly spoke. Beneath the patterns Gilly traced, Maledicte felt Ani retreat, muttering, leaving Maledicte drained but capable of thought.
“You won’t leave me there?” Maledicte said.
“No,” Gilly whispered, stroking Maledicte’s hair, heedless of Echo’s furious gaze. “I promise,” Gilly said, “I will always come for you.”
“Tell him.”
“Yes,” Gilly said.
“He’ll get me free,” Maledicte said.
Gilly nodded. Maledicte reversed his grip on the sword; Echo raised his pistol again, but lowered it as Maledicte handed the sword to Gilly hilt-first. “Take care of this. I’ll need it again.” Then he stepped past Gilly’s sheltering arms, and into the rough grasp of the Particulars.
AN HOUR LATER, shoved into a filthy communal cell, Maledicte reminded himself of the satisfaction that had filled him when he had taken Dantalion’s throat, reminding himself that the bloodlust had been worth the price he paid now. The remembered smell of blood kept away the stink of unwashed bodies, of rank straw, of fouled water and illness, soothed the panicky flutter of his heart.