by Lane Robins
The cell fell silent at his entrance. In his fine clothing, his perfumed hair, he was a world away from their existence. Usually the nobles met with Damastes, the jailer, handed over their valuables for a private cell, for fresh water, for a mouthful of bread not gone blue. But Echo had brushed by the jailer, ignoring the man’s covetous looks at Maledicte’s finery, and forced Maledicte into the common cell. The rattle and thump of the heavy door woke those who had learned to be wary, and made others flinch in their sleep. Maledicte’s heart leaped again at the long rattle of chains being drawn through iron rings, the wooden bar sealing the cell door shut behind him. Caging him. His mouth dried.
Two women, huddled in the corner, averted their eyes, pulling ragged shawls up to cover their faces. Beside them, a man rose to his feet, bare arms showing the dark ink of a conscripted soldier, a survivor of Xipos Island, and undoubtedly an enemy of the aristocracy that had used him and discarded him. Wary, Maledicte watched him stand. “You’re even taller than my Gilly,” he said aloud. The torchlight wavered through the grill on the door, casting ruddy shadows into the room.
“And you’re dressed for pleasure, not prison,” the man said, his voice equal to Maledicte’s rasp. “Those shiny buttons, that stickpin—hope you won’t mind sharing.”
“I do,” Maledicte said. His hand itched for his sword, but when he was Miranda he’d taken on grown men, unarmed, save for a stick. Though even Miranda, half-mad with starvation, might have balked at this fellow.
The man lumbered at him, meaty hands outstretched, and Maledicte laughed. Snatching up a handful of stiff straw, he lunged to meet him, stuck his makeshift weapon into the man’s eyesockets, and twisted. The man screamed, his voice gone high and hoarse. “You’re too slow and fat,” Maledicte said.
He pivoted, aware of others slowly joining the fray, eager for revenge on a noble, for the temptation of riches enough to pay off their petty crimes or debts.
In the back of his mind, Miranda began to panic—she knew what happened to girls who got overwhelmed, torn down—but Ani raised Her wings and Maledicte let his will slip away, gave himself entirely over to Her hungers.
He reached up to the thrashing giant, climbed his shirt, and bit through the skin at his neck. The man fell, whimpering, covering his bloody neck. Ani spat the tiny scraps of flesh out and they were lost on the floor.
The other men hesitated a moment, and Ani grinned a bloody smile at them. In the corner, the women gibbered, whether in support or terror he couldn’t tell. Ani sucked in a breath, took in the foul vapors of the room, of the death lingering in corners, and spat it all back out. Black foam flecked the floor where his spit landed, splashed on their faces.
“Rot you,” Maledicte said. “Rot you all.”
They backed off, hands touching their faces, wiping the spittle away as if it burned them.
Maledicte’s throat itched as if his saliva had been caustic. He reached for a water pail, skimmed the top of it, and drank the clearer water below. Where his lips touched the dipper, the metal blackened, Ani moving through him in waves of heat.
“What’s all this?” the jailer said from the doorway, keys jangling self-importantly. He checked on seeing the big man whimpering in the middle of the floor. Maledicte looked at Damastes blankly for a moment, trying to recover the courtly ways that Ani had eclipsed.
“He wanted to share the things I’m saving for you,” Maledicte said, touching his jeweled cuffs, his gemstone-buttoned vest, the fine weave of his coat.
“You shouldn’t be in here. Not with the likes of them. You’re Quality,” Damastes said. “Quality”—he drew the word out again, raising his head to stare Maledicte down. His eyes were the color of dirty slate, and oddly opaque, his hair a faded brown, as if he took his coloring from the stone and earth around them.
“I’ve always thought so.” Maledicte said. “Shall we adjourn to your office? Maybe have some wine sent in. That water is foul.” His flippancy felt strained.
The jailer nodded, his eyes assessing. “Yes, let’s talk about your situation.” He bowed with as much mockery as Maledicte had ever managed, and gestured him out of the common cell.
As Maledicte passed through the doorway, guards fell in step beside him from the places on either side of the door, letting Maledicte see that as greedy as Damastes was, he was also wary.
Echo and his damned interference again, Maledicte thought. The jailer was unlikely to treat his other noble patrons with such caution. Too often now, Echo had created obstacles for him. Maledicte, walking down the narrow hallway, ignored the stone walls, the damp, spending his thoughts on sweeter dreams of killing Echo. His fingers curled, seeking the hilt of his sword, and for a moment, the familiar memories of it were so strong, so real that he felt the weight of the blade waiting, smelled the steel tang of it in the dank air.
His hand snatched at empty air; he faltered in his steps as the sense of steel faded to nothing, like smoke in his grasp. “Keep moving,” a guard said, reaching out to prod Maledicte into motion. Maledicte evaded the careless hand and started up the uneven stairs he had been pushed down barely an hour before.
The jailer’s office and quarters were only cells with their walls knocked out, leaving cut masonry edges visible. Narrow windows allowed an unbarred view over the approaching street, but were too thin to permit egress. Around the room, heaped on elegant furniture, jumbled piles of aristocratic castoffs gave the impression of a disorganized pawnshop. Small jewels spilled over the edge of a mahogany dresser, gleaming like water, pouring into the half-open drawers. A riot of chairs made the room a maze of gilded legs and scrollwork, of tapestry and velvet and leather. At the heart of the room, a clerk’s desk, all pigeonholes and paperwork, rested. A fireplace peeked out from behind a stack of dust-felted books.
Idly, Maledicte bent and picked up a pocket watch from a pile of others. Lapis sails, a nacre ship, enameled on washed gold. He swung it from his hands, the chain slipping through his fingers with the heft of a living serpent.
“Sit,” Damastes said.
Tucking the watch and chain up his cuff with the same economy of motion that he had used while card-sharping, Maledicte felt more at ease. If the jailer and his guards missed his small theft, they were not so observant as he feared. He turned his attention to choosing a chair, looking at gilded legs, carved frogs, or lions rampant on leather.
“This is not a shop for your perusal,” the jailer said, brows drawing down over hooded eyes.
“No,” Maledicte said. “A shop would be better organized, and considerably cleaner.” He hauled a lady’s chair up, all delicate legs and filigree, took care to sprawl over it, overflowing it.
Damastes sat in a velvet chair opposite, put his filthy boots up on a carved ivory footstool that creaked under their weight. Maledicte flickered his eyes downward, studied the worn soles of the jailer’s boots.
“All this plunder and you need new boots,” Maledicte said. “Is it false economy that hinders you, or do you just not know a decent shop?” Over the man’s shoulder, he watched the night sky split by darting bats and the sleek flow of rooks.
He was minded to draw this bickering out as long as he could, lulled by the sight of the sky. Only underground for minutes and already he felt buried alive. It was Ani within him who loathed the dirt, he knew; the underground dark had always been Miranda’s friend, her kingdom found beneath the beds, beneath the rubble, beneath the storm-cloud overhangs of stone eaves.
Damastes grinned at him, brown teeth in a turned-down smile. “Say what you want. I’ve been abused by aristocrats before—but remember, you’re here to beg for my favors.”
“Is that what drives you?” Maledicte said. “All this stolen wealth and it means only humbled aristocrats to you? You’re a fool. You could buy yourself a title abroad and live like a lord. If it’s begging you want, I have nothing to offer you.”
“Make him kneel,” Damastes said, his strange, slaty eyes hardening.
They reached for him; Ma
ledicte evaded their hands, stepping behind a wing chair, making them stumble over the heaped greatcoats he pushed from its seat.
“No need,” Maledicte said. “I’m tired of my clothes being manhandled. First my Gilly, who should know better, and Echo, then that oaf in the cells. I see no reason to add two more pairs of damp handprints to my coat. You want me to kneel?”
Maledicte searched out a clean spot on the floor, finding one just as the guards reached for him again. He dropped, letting them grope the air. He grinned at Damastes. “Here I am. Kneeling before you…but very far from begging, I assure you.”
The jailer surged out of his chair, a thin hand knotting into a fist, and paused, his shoulders rising and falling with a laden breath. “I could break you,” he said, his voice striving to match Maledicte’s insouciance.
“My bones perhaps,” Maledicte said. “But what then? Will you gamble that I am to be incarcerated forever? Or will you strike me, and see me freed tomorrow, full of rancor? My lover does not care to see me abused.”
“Your lover—the king’s nephew,” the jailer said.
“No secret there, an old scandal in the court.”
“You’re as much a bauble as any of these jewels,” Damastes said. “A favored possession. Close to royalty. You’ve been bedded on crested sheets.”
“Sometimes in crested carriages,” Maledicte agreed, all silken tones, like steel withdrawing.
“A collectible and rare. They say even Aris has touched you—” The jailer’s voice dropped to a whisper; he darted a quick glance at his guards.
“That would be indiscriminate of me, surely, to bed both nephew and uncle,” Maledicte said, relaxing into the familiar thrust and parry of spite and gossip. Damastes was simply another fool to be manipulated.
“To add you to my collection, to have something that was theirs…I could—” The jailer paused, an ugly, triumphant light in his eyes. He touched Maledicte’s throat, drew closer, a hand on his own breeches.
Maledicte smiled. “My teeth are as sharp as my wit.”
Damastes took his hand away. Maledicte shrugged, a loose liquid thing, as if he had been only chatting with friends. “Are we not to barter at all? Or have you brought me here only to enact the worst examples of boring pornographies?”
He made no attempt to lower his voice and Damastes snapped, “Shut up, or I’ll gag you.”
“Back to the cell, then?” Maledicte said. “You’ll never get your trophies that way.”
“What have you got?” the jailer said grudgingly, sinking back into his seat.
“No furniture, I’m afraid, I haven’t been here long enough to have furnishings brought, nor do I intend to be. But then, this room is rather bewildered with furniture. All I have is the usual bric-a-brac of a gentleman’s life.”
He turned out his purse. “Two sols, how lucky for you—enough to get your boots resoled. After all, gold is no trophy, gold spends. A stickpin, ruby, jet, and silver.” He dropped it onto the desk. “Had I known I was to be arrested, I would have worn one I liked less. Jet buttons on my waistcoat. Cuff links, ruby again.” They landed beside the stickpin, rolled, and fell to the floor with faint thumps.
“In my pockets, well, Gilly says it’s the mark of a gentleman to have nothing marring the line of my coat, but luckily for you, I am not so much a gentleman as all that. A luna and a snuffbox”—he frowned—“that I stole from Dantalion’s corpse. I’d be careful with it. Knowing the man’s reputation, I’d expect it to be full of something that would do you no good at all to inhale.” He tugged at his coat sleeves, and withdrew another handful of small objects. “Broken porcelain, nothing to interest you there, I’m afraid. That looks to be it. What do you think? Enough for a solitary cell aboveground? That bottle of wine we discussed?”
Damastes jerked his head at the guards. One left and returned with an opened bottle, passed it to Maledicte. Maledicte sniffed, and made a face, acting the spoiled lord. “Adequate, I suppose.” He drank deeply, taking the dryness from his throat, the scratching sensation that the dirt was trying to crawl into his mouth. He craved the night air, fouled with fog as it was, yearned to go over and put his face to the windows.
“All right then,” the jailer said. “Bargaining’s concluded. Guards, take him back to the common cell.”
Maledicte snarled, caught flat-footed long enough for the first guard to take hold of his arm. The second guard caught the bottle square in the jaw, and fell backward, teeth broken and bleeding.
Damastes swung himself over the desk, and helped pin Maledicte, knees digging into Maledicte’s back. He said, “You’re right. Sols do spend. And Echo gave me plenty of them to keep you caged with the other rats.” He wrenched Maledicte’s head up by his hair. “If you want out of that cell, you’ll have to beg.”
Maledicte struggled, clawing and kicking, until Damastes called for more guards to secure him. Even with the shock still ringing through his body that he had misread Damastes so, Maledicte growled, “You’ll be dead before I ever come begging to you.” The jailer’s hand swung around, crashing across Maledicte’s face and ear. When the ringing stopped, Maledicte ran his tongue over his bloody lip, and spat the blood back at him.
They dragged him down the stairs and threw him into the cells. He crawled away from the door into a dark corner, his head swimming, his body aching, and in his chest, Ani and Miranda vying for panic. Miranda felt the corset loosening as a result of the rough handling, her bladder already protesting the water and wine, and wondered how long she could hold out, how she could repair the corset strings without attracting notice.
A shadow crossed her. She raised her head and hissed; the men, allies of the earlier oaf, backed away. But she knew they’d watch and wait for their chance.
Ani flapped wings through him, setting his heart to racing, his blood pumping; he wanted to fly, but there was no escape from the surrounding earth and stone. He whimpered but swallowed the sound, and refused to make another.
Gilly would tell Janus. Janus would get him out. They wouldn’t leave him here. Gilly hadn’t believed him when he confessed to killing Lizette. He would come, tell him tales to soothe him, make him laugh. Maledicte sank back against the stone, felt a small impact in his forearm, and reached trembling fingers up his sleeve. The pocket watch spun on the end of the chain, catching the faint torchlight from the hall, making a small sun and sea in the dimness of the prison cell. He refused to acknowledge the pressing walls and earth, choosing to dwell on images of the sea and sky and Gilly’s low voice telling him improbable stories.
Ani, displaced by Miranda’s panic, by Maledicte’s careful control, spread outward, seeking egress.
Across the room, one of the predatory men began to beat his head against the stone to the rhythm of Maledicte’s imaginary oarsmen. The sleeping prisoners whimpered without waking. By the time the needs of his body sent him into knotted coils, no one was left to notice. The oaf staved his head in with a sudden last blow. Around his fallen body, his two allies stood and began to beat out the same fatal rhythm. One woman screamed, her face welting up with black bruises that burst when she touched them. People scattered away from her, shrieking, some of them already blistering.
Maledicte dragged over a chamber pot and used it without worry, still imagining the blueness of the sea, and gulls reeling overhead, but sounding like rooks.
· 38 ·
A T FIRST LIGHT, Gilly sought the palace, slipping through the maze to the dark side of the king’s ballroom, skirting it until he saw the house servants at their morning chores. He followed a maidservant burdened by wet linens to the rear entrance of the residential side of the palace. Following her in, he was halted not by an upper servant, which he had expected, but by an armed guard.
“You’re not employed here. What’s your business?” the guard asked.
“Message for Janus Ixion, Lord Last,” Gilly said.
“You can leave a message at the front gate,” the guard said, then scowled. “Wait, I kn
ow you. Your master’s Maledicte. I saw you going in and out of his home.”
Gilly nodded when his startled hesitation made any other answer a lie. But he was dismayed at his own incompetence; he hadn’t recognized the guard, though he had passed him more than once. Such notice used to be his task. He hoped the guard was less aware of Maledicte’s current status, of his arrest—or that, even if aware, had no reason to deny a message.
The guard said, “Ixion’s in quarters next to the nursery. You know where that is?”
“Yes,” Gilly lied, gambling that it was better to be familiar with the palace. He strode away, unwilling to give the guard a chance to decide that Gilly should wait, and wait, and wait for Janus. Not while Maledicte was prisoned.
“You,” the guard said. Gilly turned. “You take the servants’ stairs.” He pointed to the small doors Gilly had passed.
Gilly bent his head, and went into the labyrinthine world of the palace servants. Dark, ill-lit, and narrow, the stairs rose at a leg-burning angle, then suddenly veered. Heat flushed Gilly’s skin, and he thought he must be behind a fireplace. He found himself dallying on the stairs, trying to map the castle in his mind. He acknowledged that he didn’t want to see Janus at all. He shouldn’t have had to, except that when Gilly had gone to retrieve the Antyrrian audit ledgers, intending to use them to buy Maledicte’s freedom, he found them gone.
Hidden as they had been in the recesses of Maledicte’s bedchamber, Gilly had no doubts that Janus had used them for his own purpose. Without the ledgers for leverage, Gilly had tried bribing the jailer directly, but the man refused his coin. So Gilly was left to beg aid from Lizette’s murderer, from the man who had taken Maledicte’s security for his own.
Coupled with that loathing, fear crawled along his spine. If Janus had faulted Gilly for Maledicte’s behavior before, what would he think now, when he learned of Maledicte’s arrest?