Maledicte

by Lane Robins

  Maledicte took the sword up by its blade, held it below the hilt, angled it so it lay under his forearm and extended only a foot past his fist. Picking up the dinner tray, he laid it over the visible blade, and then tapped on the door.

  The guard opened it warily, gaze slipping over the tray, the hair, the cloak, and lit on the figure shadowed beyond. Maledicte stepped up to him, and slid the sword through his throat.

  These guards were not the simple Particulars who had come with Echo to arrest him; the other guard had stayed out of easy reach, and even now turned to shout for aid. Maledicte threw the tray, caught him in the throat, and while he was reeling from that, brought the sword up and made him as mute as his thrashing friend.

  “Livia,” Maledicte said. “Come.”

  “I thought I was to stay,” she said, but hustled toward him anyway. “I thought you were going to sneak out, and leave me behind so they wouldn’t notice.”

  “They’ll notice the bodies in the hall. And even had I time to dispose of them, I do not have time to scrub the carpet clean. When you came in, where were the main force of the guards? And where were the balconies? I foresee a climb in our future.”

  “The front,” she said. “Both at the front of the hotel.”

  “They would be together, of course. Still, no help for it. Let’s find a front-facing room,” Maledicte said. Despite the fear for Gilly, Maledicte almost enjoyed having a goal at hand with the promise of bloodshed at the end of it. For this moment, Ani and he moved in rare concert.

  He darted down the corridor, pulling at the skirts and cloak, trying to keep them from tangling his legs in a hindering embrace. Behind him, Livia trailed, and he reached his hand back and tugged her alongside him. “Hurry, Livia.”

  They turned a corner, startling a drunkard returning to his room. “Are you lovely girls come to warm my bed?”

  “Of course we have,” Maledicte whispered. “A noble with a room with a view. You gladden my heart.” He pushed past the man as he fumbled to close the door, threw open the glass-paned windows.

  “Perfect,” he said. He tucked the sword into Livia’s skirt, and looked down. “Livia, look, climbing roses, how lovely.” He swung his leg over, settled his boots onto the thickest branch. “Livia.”

  She dodged away from the drunk, pushed him back outside the room, and slammed the door. Maledicte began his descent, wincing at the sharp needle kiss of the thorns.

  Livia’s face peered down at him. “Oh, I can’t.”

  Maledicte called up in a hoarse whisper. “You’ll be hanged for helping me, if you don’t come down—”

  Ashen, she clambered over the balcony rail, tearing the dressing gown on its wrought-iron finials, and reached her toes out for a foothold. She let out a little shriek as her weight settled.

  “Hush,” Maledicte said. Above, he could hear the drunkard coming to at least a fraction of his senses, pounding on the door. The second story was going to be full of people soon and there were two dead guards waiting to be found. Maledicte looked down; the ground, dark with distance, seemed to recede. A droplet, warmer than rain, dripped onto his cheek, rolled toward his mouth. Salt and iron. Blood. He licked it up, looked up. Livia’s soft slippers were wet with blood.

  Maledicte settled his hand on a wickedly large thorn, watched the blood well up and stop when he removed it, the pain vanishing. “After all,” he murmured, “we can’t hold a sword with damaged hands.”

  He dropped the last few feet, skidded on a rounded cobble, and fell hard, wrenching his ankle. “Ani,” he said. “We can’t fight with a bad limb.” The soreness retreated, the swelling receded, and he stood.

  “Drop, Livia,” he said and she was either so exhausted or so frightened that her body obeyed without hesitation. He steadied her as she rocked on sore feet, muffled her cries in the cloak. “Shh.”

  Lights flared on the second story, bobbed from window to window; faintly he could hear a woman screeching.

  “Rot them all,” Maledicte said. “Does no one sleep anight anymore?”

  He dragged Livia forward. “Tell me where he is.” She was too slow to keep up with him, too fragile to fight.

  “Her temple. Sir, it’s my fault, all my fault,” she moaned. “I told her—told her you loved Gilly. If he dies—I never meant—”

  Behind them, the hotel doors were flung wide, disgorging the Kingsguard. Shouts rang through the night, including the one Maledicte had been dreading. “There they are! By the wall!”

  Maledicte reached out, intending to shove Livia toward the shadows and dubious safety, but Ani had other thoughts. His hands pulled her before him, into the torchlight; his rumpled dressing gown, the short sooty hair—the guards fired at once. The shot sent her reeling backward, falling into the cobbles. Maledicte turned and ran, hands clenching at his side, shivering, refusing to feel guilt, not while Gilly needed him.

  “Her temple,” he muttered, thinking of the elaborate and twisted length of Sybarite Street between him and the ruined Relict temple, the only temple to Ani he knew. He had no doubt at all that Mirabile had made her quarters there where he had begun his own quest.

  Maledicte slowed his steps as he reached Sybarite Street and the evening’s crowds. He drew the cloak tighter, keeping a wary eye out. The guards would know their mistake soon enough.

  Lights bloomed in the windows of pleasure houses, and slow, drugged laughter spilled like syrup on a cold day. Maledicte moved on, hand clenching around the sword, seeking the darker shadows, tracking his way back to a place he had never thought to revisit. But as if he had mapped the route, he guided himself as steadily, as surely as if he were going home.

  · 41 ·

  And he gave his soul into Ani’s keeping and became Her Avatar, winged and blood-mantled, a sorcerous nightmare in human flesh, who carved his way through the battlefields and laughed. And his words became ravens, and where he walked, men died of plague….

  —Grayle’s Book of Vengeances

  M IRABILE ROSE FROM GILLY’S BODY, shaking her skirts down, stretching her arms above her head. Along her breasts, the feathers shivered. Gilly rolled onto his side, huddled on an earthen floor warmed with his heat and blood.

  “Poor Gilly, but the sea captain might have used you as roughly. I spared you that at least.” Mirabile knelt, turned his chin up to peer into his face.

  Gilly tried not to meet her eyes.

  “Such blueness,” she said. “So clear.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Do you see the gods with those clear eyes?”

  “Only Ani,” Gilly said, wrenching his head away.

  “Well, we can’t have that. You spying on Her at all hours, watching Her, judging Her; it’s the raven for you.” Mirabile stood, walked away from him.

  Gilly took a careful breath and rolled onto his hands and knees. Her spell, whatever it had been, cantrip or poison, had left him. His body was his again. Slow, weak as an infant, and hurting, but his.

  Across the room, Mirabile tugged the weight of rotting fabric from the covered bulk on the altar. The raven in the cage beneath woke to raucous complaint.

  “Easy, love, easy. Haven’t I got the bluest eyes ever seen this side of the sea? And they’re all for you.” She freed the massive bird from the cage. It turned its head up to look at her with one glossy black eye and she dropped a kiss on its head. It clattered its beak and croaked at her.

  Gilly rolled to his belly, wrapped his arms around his head. “Please,” he whispered, remembering Westfall and the others, found eyeless, their faces shredded until all that identified them were their clothes.

  “None of that now,” she said, toeing him in the side, trying to turn him from playing turtle, but he clenched himself farther into the floor, knotted his eyes closed.

  “Gilly, I could bespell you again. But wouldn’t you rather die your own man?” she asked, pulling his hair until his scalp stung. When that didn’t work, she slipped her hand beneath him, slashed her nails over his bare skin. He twitched; she levered hi
m over and dropped the bird onto his chest.

  Gilly recoiled as the stink of its blood-matted feathers washed over him. He tried to shove it away with leaden hands. Its talons scrabbled for purchase on his chest; its flapping wings slapped his ears, left them ringing, and its hungry beak stabbed at his defensive hands. Mirabile reached around the bird’s wings and pinned Gilly’s hands to his sides. He closed his eyes, waited, numb and sick.

  “Go on then,” she said. “Peck, bite, maim.”

  The feathers rustled as the bird settled again, wafting stale blood and feather molt into his face. Gilly shuddered and opened his eyes, stared at the foreshortened beak.

  Mirabile slapped the ground. “Do it now, bird. I command you.”

  Behind her, movement. Gilly’s heart gave a great leap in his chest. “Livia, please….”

  Mirabile shifted her weight, silencing him. “Back already? Did you see him? Is he coming?”

  Livia nodded, her disheveled braid slipping over her shoulder, her heavy cloak shielding her face from the sight.

  “Your time is near, my pet,” Mirabile told the raven. “It’s his eyes or yours.” The bird jerked forward at her pinch; Gilly felt the beak rip the skin of his face, tracing a careful, delicate line along his jaw.

  Mirabile hissed, following the gash with her finger. “Maled—” The raven went wild in her grip, wings pelting them both, before it turned and clawed its way across Mirabile’s face and hair. She leaped up, and slapped it down to the floor, crushed its body with her heels.

  Gilly could only stare at Livia, at the braid sliding loose and limp to the floor, at the pale shine of the face beneath the hood and the black eyes. He knew those eyes, the rage within them, but not like this, not wrapped in woman’s flesh. Maledicte, he thought, dizzy and worn past sense, made an almost convincing woman—if it weren’t for the spare lines of his shoulder and chest, the strength in the white hands, even now pulling the sword free.

  “You came,” Mirabile said, brushing her disordered hair back in long-ingrained habit, playing the coquette. On her face, the weals left by the dead bird sealed flawlessly.

  “With such an invitation, how could I not?” Maledicte said.

  “But, my intemperate guest, you have come before the hostess is quite ready,” Mirabile said. “Still, I can find something to occupy you while I finish with your pet.”

  Maledicte threw himself forward, the sword ripping through the cloak, the skirt, without effort; he dove toward Mirabile, sword extended, aiming at the dark blossom of feathers on her breast.

  Mirabile raised her hands, cried a single word, and flew out of reach of the sword like smoke blown across the room. Maledicte’s eyes widened, then grew thoughtful. The shadows in the room caressed Mirabile’s ragged skirt, and she drew their darkness up her body.

  “You’re weak, Maledicte. You carry a remnant of conscience, and you’ll never know vengeance or true power until it dies. Until you take Ani in fully….”

  Maledicte shrugged out of the cloak remnants. “Why all this advice—you want me? Fight me.”

  “I have no desire to kill you,” Mirabile said. “I want to rule you. And in turn, you and I, ruling this kingdom, the sky dark with Her wings—” She stirred the shadows alongside her, her breath rasping.

  “Mal,” Gilly said, his warning caught in his throat, drowned by his heartbeat. The shadows shaped themselves under her command, taking familiar form. Something skinny and tall, someone holding a stick in a clenched fist.

  Maledicte’s eyes narrowed. “What is this?”

  “You want a fight, I’ll set you fighting yourself first.”

  The shadow snapped into flesh, corpse-pale, with wild snarled hair, a ragged stick held like a sword. Gilly knew this image: a scarecrow boy standing in a pile of broken glass and snow in an old man’s library, a feral child crawling from beneath an altar in his dreams. Maledicte’s own childhood.

  Mirabile swayed on her feet, panting, the feathers on her skin ruffling with exhaustion. Maledicte stepped forward again, the sword gleaming; the shadow child bared his teeth and charged at the sword, stick raised and fearless.

  Trying to gain his feet, Gilly stumbled, found himself clutching Mirabile’s tattered skirts for support. She staggered beneath his weight and he yanked harder, wanting her to fall, wanting his hands around her neck. He brought her crashing down, and struggled to crawl up her body enough to put his hands to use.

  She scrabbled at the floor and swung a piece of stinking darkness at his face; the raven’s body, he realized, even as its beak scraped his neck and shoulders. Mirabile was laughing, high and wild, as she flung the bird at him again. He deflected it, and she kicked him in the stomach, sending him rolling back, giving him a surging view of the room. Of Maledicte diving at his shadow self, the sword barely missing the boy’s head.

  “No, Mal, no,” Gilly said. “No.” If Maledicte killed that child self, what would he become, freed from the child’s innocence? Ani would swallow him entire.

  Mirabile grabbed his hair, reminding him of his own battle, and slapped his face. “I’d wanted him for my audience, but I suppose it’s going to be the other way around. You can watch if you like. A man with a sword against a boy with a stick. And when it’s done…he’ll kill you himself for all those whispered prayers, all those little warnings you dared to voice. Against me.” Blood touched her lips for a moment as Black-Winged Ani surfaced and faded, leaving Gilly shaking in the presence of the god.

  The sword flashed down, impacted on the boy’s stick. Gilly winced, but the stick held firm, the stick and the sword grating against each other. The shadow boy kicked Maledicte on the shin, and Maledicte broke their clinch with a curse. Following the small advantage, the shadow boy slashed at Maledicte’s head with the stick; when Maledicte reached up to block it, the boy darted the stick toward his stomach instead, and Maledicte jumped aside.

  Gilly moaned, sick with dread. There could be no good end to this. For Maledicte to destroy his own conscience, or to lose Maledicte to a shadow of himself…Mirabile laughed, pressing herself against Gilly’s side, excoriating his tender skin with her feathers. The boy wiped his face; his shoulders heaved with effort, but the stick, held out before him, never wavered. Maledicte’s sword hand shook; the blade tip magnified that tremor into a palsy.

  The boy danced forward and Gilly saw the confidence in his face, realized the boy’s mistake: Maledicte was shamming. The boy had all of Maledicte’s ferocity, the bloodthirsty desire to rush for the throat, but no idea of swordsmanship or strategy.

  “No,” he cried out. “No.”

  But the boy was extended, the stick thrust out too far, and Maledicte knocked it aside. The stick, loosed from the boy’s hand, disappeared into shadow, unmaking itself before it touched the floor. The boy gritted his teeth, eyes wild with panic and rage. Maledicte’s blade, unhindered now, slipped through the boy’s flesh without a sound, and passed through his throat. Maledicte’s hand and hilt protruded from the boy’s nape, dripping shadow plasm.

  Horrified, Gilly could only stare, the boy dead, trying to imagine Maledicte without even the smallest leavening of conscience or kindness.

  Mirabile stood, hands outstretched, smiling. “My compatriot—”

  Maledicte carried his forward momentum on, stepped through the dissolute shadow that had been himself, and took her head from her body, the blood spray splashing Gilly’s skin.

  Mirabile fell, her blood spreading outward in a tide. Gilly crabbed away from it, scuttling on weak limbs to avoid its touch. Maledicte stepped into it, unconcerned, and pierced her heart, then ripped her body open, spilling her guts out onto the floor. “Need I do more?” he asked, voice a wisp. “Will Ani heal that?”

  “I don’t know,” Gilly said. The numbness of his limbs had spread to his lips; he felt as chilled as a corpse. His muscles, so long tensed in struggle, deserted him. He collapsed to the floor, sprawled out, face-to-face with Mirabile’s head. He could see Mirabile’s unwinking eyes sta
ring back at him, and he retched drily.

  “I quite agree,” Maledicte said. He picked up the head and threw it into the raven’s cage, covering it with the altar cloth.

  Gilly curled up, shaking, tears scalding his cheeks. “Gilly,” Maledicte said, kneeling beside him. Gilly felt the soft warmth of Livia’s ragged cloak en-folding him, felt the floorboards shift as Maledicte sat beside him. “Gilly, are you—” The rasping voice cracked, resumed. “Will you be all right?”

  Gilly had no words at all, nothing but the tears that streamed from him, as if anxious to wash away the spilled blood. He folded into Maledicte’s lap, pressing his face against Maledicte’s thighs, sobbing.

  “My poor Gilly,” Maledicte said, voice so soft that Gilly had to strain to hear it, stifling his tears. “Vornatti should have cast me back to the snows, never disturbed the pattern to your days.” Maledicte’s fingers traced soothing lines on his back, bringing slow warmth to his frozen skin. So gentle. Gilly winced. But the shadow boy—

  “You killed—” Gilly said.

  “Am I supposed to regret it? Woman or not, Mirabile was a monster.”

  “But the boy,” Gilly said. “Your own shadow.” He forced himself to look into those dark eyes that he feared to see soulless now.

  The black eyes were dark-ringed with fatigue and worry, but they were calmer than Gilly could ever remember.

  “Yes,” Maledicte said. “I should have done it long ago.”

  “But your innocence—”

  Maledicte laughed, as silent as a cat, his shoulders shaking, near hysteria. “Did you think that Relict rat was innocent? That creature who knew no kindness, only hunger, fear, and rage—whose only virtue was a love so mad that Ani could find purchase in my soul? I am not that thing anymore. How could I be, with you teaching me kindness? For all that I’ve corrupted you, my sweet Gilly, you’ve bettered me. I would not have made the same choice I did then, were I offered it now.”

  Gilly’s breath let out on a gasp, his chest pounded. “Mal—” Maledicte gathered him close, kissed his ear, his temple, drew back when his lips touched the wound on his head.