Maledicte

by Lane Robins

  Staggering like a drunkard, Gilly gave his fate to the shadow and wandered toward the sailors, toward the gangplank with its lure of safety beyond. Though it made his flesh crawl, and his heart pound as hard as his battered head, he made his way past the sailors and to the gangplank. They made no sign that they had noticed anything out of the ordinary way, not even when the worn plank sagged and moaned beneath his weight.

  The water below him churned in odd eddies, dark and flecked with luminous foam, splashing upward toward him. He fixed his faltering vision on the pier, and at the end of it, waiting by a coach, a pale face in shadow.

  Maledicte, Gilly thought on a crest of relief, come to take him home, and showing a rare subtlety for once, coaxing him from beneath the eyes of the sailors, rather than forcing Gilly’s freedom at swordspoint.

  The water beneath him surged, a sudden high tide rising as he descended, and it slapped salt water over his feet, his ankles, and burned the shadow away. Naga’s touch inimical to Ani’s uncommonly delicate working.

  Gilly urged himself onward, finally reaching the salt-weathered planks of the pier. He stumbled, pushed himself to his feet, concentrated on walking normally. With the cloaking shadow gone, he thought the illusion might have gone with it. The dark sky might hide his identity, but he was still too close to the ship to be anything but their prisoner escaping.

  The shout went up, and Gilly staggered into the closest thing to a run he could approximate, a listing, limping thing that set his head and ribs to throbbing, the world shuddering like an opera curtain, whisking back and forth.

  “Gilly,” a low raspy voice called, “hurry.” Reaching the end of the pier, he found cool, smooth fingers on his arm; the pursuing captain drew to a halt.

  “Lady,” he said, wary.

  Lady? Gilly craned his head to look but was defeated by the dizziness. The rasping voice took on a clear sweetness that Gilly had heard before. “Why ever are you hunting my servant? Has he been brawling with the crew?”

  “He’s mine. Four lunas he cost me.”

  “Forced labor is illegal,” she said. “Such a shame, too.” Gilly tried to tug free; her nails slid into his skin, waking new pains, and Gilly subsided.

  “Purchasing a man’s services is not.” But the captain’s voice already faltered. Gilly, his eyes drifting, found himself staring at a sweep of tattered silk, stained dark around the hem. A ruined ballgown.

  “When those services are already promised—”

  Gilly moaned and she halted herself with a wild laugh. “And here I am going on as if I need to win by words. He’s mine, Captain. Do not argue further. I am most unpleasant when offended.” As verbose as Maledicte, he thought, teeth chattering. But far more inimical to him.

  “But still, you lost coin, and I know how dearly money can be needed. I’ll repay you.” She threw coins at the captain. While he scrabbled for them, keeping them from rolling through the cracks between the planks, she said in a tone like exposed steel, “Any further complaints?”

  “No, my lady,” the captain said, still kneeling, shivering. He knew who she was now, Gilly thought. Even the sailors had heard the tales of Mad Mirabile.

  Mirabile laughed, the sound not as pleasant as it once was, like a bell cracked and off tune. She walked Gilly toward her carriage like a marionette. Wordless, he sprawled on its floor, dripping salt water and blood. She tangled her fingers in his wet hair, dragging her nails across his scalp, setting the long gash from contact with the hearth to bleeding again. “So Ixion finally removed you—or was it Maledicte who cast you into the sea?”

  Gilly winced, but did not reply, concentrating on regaining his equilibrium with the sway of the moving carriage.

  “No answer, and I’ve gone to the expense and effort of saving you. I suppose that means you’re not grateful either.”

  “Let me go,” Gilly said, sick at heart. He’d followed her lure as blindly as a hound on scent, thinking only of Maledicte.

  “You’ll serve me now,” she said.

  “No,” Gilly said.

  “You will,” she said. “In one fashion or another. I’ve waited for my vengeance too long. Ani’s beak has grown sharp, and I would share that pain with others.”

  He jerked away, reaching for the door handle, hoping to tip himself out onto the cobbles. The handle writhed in his hand, supple and scaled like a serpent, coiling around to strike him, and he let go in sheer horror. She laughed and he turned toward her, spoke the words of Baxit’s countercharm. She winced, then slapped him across the face, sending him to the floor again. She slid closer, put her hand beneath his chin, forced his head up. “Such a waste,” she said. “A comely young man doomed because of one man’s refusal to share himself with me. I’d feel sorry for you. If I could.”

  “Maledicte will kill you,” Gilly breathed.

  She leaned closer, confiding. “Black-Winged Ani granted your master a sword. She saw to it that I would never need one. Confused, my sweet Gilly? Shall I spell it out for you? She granted me power….” In her eyes, red fires flared and sank back to a simmer.

  Gilly turned his head away from the madness in her gaze, and she dragged it back, effortlessly. “Look at me, Gilly. Am I not more beautiful than your master? More beautiful than those foolish debutantes?” She rolled her fingers together, opened her palm, and blew dust into his face. Coughing, he tried not to breathe but the stupor in his head settled into his bones.

  “You do love me, don’t you, Gilly?” She touched her lips to his; he shivered all over and felt the heat scorch from her mouth to his groin. “Tell me you love me.”

  “Love you,” Gilly said, the words dragged from his throat.

  “You’ll love me until the day you die….”

  “Yes,” Gilly said, his heart pounding under the twin stresses of fear and lust.

  “More than you love him,” she said.

  Gilly closed his eyes. Maledicte. The image, dark hair, dark eyes, soft mouth against his own, did nothing to cool his body or his fear. Her nails tightened on his face, and he said, “Yes.”

  “I’ll let him know you said so, when I gift him with your body. Let him see what it’s like to lose someone through the caprice of another.”

  “—loves Janus more…” Gilly said, as her mouth descended on his.

  She drew back. “I’ll have him later. But Maledicte must come first.”

  The carriage drew to a halt, tumbling him into her skirts. “Clumsy thing,” she said. “I’ll expect better of you.” She pushed him from the carriage; he got his feet under him just in time, and stood there, swaying. They were deep in the heart of Sybarite Street, past the brothels, beyond even the insalubrious dens that specialized in drug dreams and poison selling. This section of Sybarite bordered on the Relicts, the buildings more fallen than run-down. Still, if he fled, he could get to Ma Desire’s, maybe to safety. If he could move.

  Mirabile took his hand in her cold one, tugged him into movement like a puppet. Mirabile’s coachman slipped off the driver’s bench in a flurry of skirts and cloak, a familiar tail of red hair and brown eyes: Livia. Betrayed rage gave Gilly momentary strength, and he pulled away.

  Mirabile snarled, “Stop.” His limbs locked up at her word. Livia drew her hood up about her face, and edged past him, shifting piled-up boards to reveal a low, dark opening. The ruined building looked as if no one but rats could fit within, yet with the opening revealed, Gilly saw clear rooms inside.

  “Well,” Mirabile said, guiding him in, “Welcome to my parlor.” His shocked gaze recognized the place, even as he started to shiver. The walls were covered with Her image; Mirabile dwelled in the ruins of Ani’s temple, slept in the lee of Her wings. Livia lit lamps around the room, each one revealing another depiction of Ani. Some of them smelled new, smelled as if Mirabile had painted their rough shape with blood. On the altar itself, a dark shape muttered and croaked at their return.

  While he stood numb and helpless, she drew off the ruins of his shirt, his breeches,
and smiled. “Don’t look so frightened, lambling. I’m not going to kill you right away.”

  Mirabile circled Gilly, her expression as proprietary as Vornatti’s had ever been, and far crueler. Gilly felt fourteen again, remembered the dread washing over him with the soapy water, the dull light in Vornatti’s eyes growing brighter with each limb washed clean. But the dread then had been fear of the adult world pressing in on him; he had trusted Vornatti not to hurt him. Gilly had no such illusion with Mirabile, not with her nail marks bleeding sluggishly on his cold flesh, or the hunger he saw in her face.

  Livia, after another averted glance, busied herself lighting the rest of the gas lamps, as silent as she never had been in the town house. The small flames caught and flared under her shaking hands, illuminating wet streaks on her face. Throughout her task, she twisted her head to avoid meeting Gilly’s eyes.

  “When you’re done, Livia, you may go. Unless I am mistaken, you have no desire to watch me at my play.”

  Livia shook her head, so mute that Gilly imagined atrocities—that Mirabile had torn out Livia’s tongue, or bespelled her to a future as a slave.

  “Come back for your coins in the morning,” Mirabile said. “I’ll need you to do the washing up, after. But don’t return too early. I intend to be about this business until the late hours.”

  Livia flinched; her eyes met Gilly’s for a brief, scalded moment, then blurred and ran with tears. She left with a deliberate pace, as if she wanted to run, but controlled herself.

  Not enough fear, Gilly thought, and Mirabile would kill her. Too much fear and the result would be the same. Like a predator, Mirabile would hunt the fleeing creature out of instinct. Weakness spilled through him, and he slumped, unable to fall while her potions and will held him upright.

  “She’ll go for coin tonight. Go for Maledicte,” Gilly said. “Greedy little girl.” Each word was an effort to push out through his stiff tongue and lips.

  “I do hope so,” Mirabile said. “I doubted her for a moment there—thought I might have to send a messenger less trustworthy, or one that Maledicte might kill on sight, and then where would I be? Without my audience.”

  “Maledicte’s in Stones,” Gilly said, finding a sudden perverse pleasure in the fact that had troubled him so greatly earlier.

  “Was in Stones,” she said. “You used to be better at keeping abreast of the gossip, Gilly. The rooks have all moved again. They follow him, you know.” She drew her hands along his flanks, trailed inward; his muscles jumped and flinched at her touch and she smiled. “They nested at Stones while he was there, and now his little birds have flown to the Grand Hotel. They darkened the sky like a whirlwind. All that power at his will, and he refuses to reach out and grasp it. He could control them, their eyes, their secrets, would he only admit complete fealty to Ani.

  “But no matter,” she said, “That he fails to reach his power is only of assistance to me. But think of it, Gilly, what a sight it would make, Maledicte in the ballroom with the rooks wheeling about him, calling and excreting over all the nobles.” She grinned; were it not for the mad eyes, Gilly could have enjoyed the mischief in her face.

  “A pity it will never happen,” she said, laughing, and wrapped her hands firmly around his genitals.

  He tried to force her hands off him, but she squeezed and his breath went short with unwilled pleasure. Her nails sliced into the tender flesh and he cried out, the pain lancing over his body, then settling back into steady throbbing.

  “Gilly,” she said. “Take up my skirts.”

  Chary of her grip, her touch, he knelt, breathing more easily as her hand slid away to allow his descent. He folded her draggled skirts up about her waist. Under the finery, where the noblewomen wore their slips and petticoats, their lawn chemises, where even the poorest maids wore pantaloons, she was bare. Just above her sex, above the flame of hair, feathers had burst from her skin, small and black. At first he thought she had decorated herself as an honor to Ani, but when she urged his hands to her skin, he knew it was the inverse, that Ani was decorating her.

  “My bodice,” she said. He reached behind her; she knelt before him, pressed her hips to his as if she was nothing but an eager lover. Her bodice fell loose in his hands; she shrugged it from her shoulders, baring more white flesh, patterned with tiny black feathers so small they seemed like scales. He gasped, his hands flying away. She grabbed them, pressed them to her breasts, sank herself onto him. He groaned.

  “You love me, Gilly.”

  “Yes,” he said, her words in his mouth. His own words drowned as she rocked herself over him.

  In his head, he began whispering prayers though the only god present was Ani. Her teeth bit into the welts left by the barnacles on the pier, raised blood again; her nails dug into the deep bruises left by Janus’s fists, scribed the edges of his raw wrists. She tongued the wound on his head, lapping the blood until it stopped, then biting until it bled again. His prayers dissolved into one internal plea. Maledicte.

  MALEDICTE PACED THE ROOM, agitated without cause. He had the sky now, through the high windows, and yet…the sword throbbed in his hands, seeking blood.

  A tap on the door sent him spinning around, sword bared.

  “Sir, I’ve brought your dinner.” The girl’s voice, though tight with tension, was familiar.

  Maledicte drew open the door; the guards stepped back, out of reach of his sword, too cautious to let him use the maid as a distraction. One guard spoke. “Are you certain you want to go in with him, miss?”

  “He’s my master,” she said. “I brought the food from his own table, what’s left of it, and he’ll be hungry.”

  The other guard shrugged. “It’s your neck.”

  “May I go in?” Livia asked. “You’ve already looked me over, peered in the bowls. You know I have nothing to aid him.” She shifted the heavy tray on her hip, and the guard nodded her in, latched the door behind her.

  Maledicte watched her red hair slide over the shoulders of her damp cloak like a scarf. He raised the sword and brought it winging to her nape, halting it at the very last.

  She gave a stifled shriek, too frightened to move. Then the long braided tail of her hair slithered to the floor, cut. He picked it up. “Get undressed,” he said. “And don’t think of crying out. I’ve no need to hurt you but I must find Gilly.”

  Her skin paled white as marble; her mouth worked, soundless. Maledicte read the word on her lips. “Gilly?”

  Behind his cold rage, the hunger, something as warm as baked bread rose, soothing his temper, then settled back into rage. Anything Livia knew, with her eyes like a dead woman’s, was not going to please him.

  Livia licked dry lips.

  “If you don’t find your voice, I’ll hunt it with my sword,” Maledicte said.

  “You have to help him. Mirabile will kill him.”

  Maledicte put his hands around her neck, found a vicious satisfaction in making her flinch, and undid the knotted strings of her cloak. “Get undressed,” he said again.

  “They’ll never believe it—” she said, fumbling her bodice off, her skirts.

  “They don’t have to for more than a moment. It’s vision driven by expectation, but never mind all that,” he said, tugging her skirt up over his breeches, watching her blink astonishment when the buttons closed around him. “Your bodice,” he said. “Your cloak.”

  “If you’re taking my cloak, I don’t see why you need—”

  “Because a cloak over breeches looks like a cloak over breeches, and a skirt is an entirely different thing,” he said. “As glad as I am you found your voice, now I want you to be silent again.”

  She stood stripped to her chemise, shivering in the chill room.

  “My dressing gown,” Maledicte said, motioning to the bed and the heavy drape of quilted fabric lying across the bottom. “Put it on.”

  Pulling it off the bed, she pulled it on, her hands shaking as she tightened the tie around her waist. He bit back the rage swelling in hi
m, and, unwilling to risk the guard’s overhearing, said with hushed impatience, “For gods’ sake, don’t show off your narrow waist. Have you no sense at all? Tie it around your hips. Turn around. Stand in the window.”

  She did, visibly reluctant to turn her back to him. Maledicte snarled. Her hair, rough cut by his sword, stood out like flame in the dark glass. He looked at the fireplace, long cold, long cleaned, and turned to the oil lamps instead.

  “Gilly,” she said again. “You have to go to him.”

  “I am endeavoring to do so. Or would you have me call a challenge to the guards in the hall, forcing me to dally in bloodlust until dawn? Gilly would be long dead by the time I fought my way clear.” He pinched out the wick, pulled off the glass, ran his hands over the residue inside; his fingers came away streaked black. He scrubbed his hands into her hair, pushing her against the window. She grabbed the frame with shaking hands, clung to it as if she feared he would push her through it and onto the cobbles below.

  He blew out another lamp, dimming the room, rubbed the lampblack into her hair again, and stepped back to look at her. “Unconvincing. Stand up straight,” he said. “Like you’re so frightened your spine is an icicle.” She stiffened, her hands on the window frame whitening.

  “Better,” he said. “A few lessons in comportment and you might be able to pass as a lady. Or a lord.” One more thing was needed, one last piece to anchor belief, even fleetingly. The fireplace would aid him after all. He drew out the poker from its rack with a rasp that made her shudder. “Take this,” he said.

  She clutched it.

  “Like a sword, Livia, like a sword.”

  He threw the food into the fireplace, tucked the loose braid of her severed hair into the neck of the cloak, and drew the hood around his face, leaving only the flare of redness hanging out, the rustle of lace and skirt.